Psalms 34:5:  “They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.”

Now this makes whole bunches of sense to me.  If we are able to look upon the Lord and reflect His light we would certainly not look upon Him in shame.  In fact if we had a lot of shame we could not look upon Him in the first place.

I once worked as an insurance investigator.  This was not the type of investigator that carries a gun or anything like that; I just listened to tall stories.  Now there were some who were professional liars and could tell a wonderful story that would be difficult to determine if they were lying but most people I had to deal with were good decent people who wanted to do the right thing. They were your honest citizens who like everybody who didn’t feel they were lying they were just embellishing the facts a little.  They would never call it a lie which, as far as I was concerned, was.  It was very easy to tell if these people were giving me a tall story.  Their very presences gave them away that they were lying. For one thing they could not look me in the eye and as I would continue my line of questioning they would start getting nervous and eventually we got down to what the insurance claim really entailed and they started to remove all their embellishments,  In other words if they were lying they were ashamed and they showed it.

I really believe if it were not for my faith that Jesus laid all my transgressions on the cross and has forgiven each one I know I would never be able to look upon His face.  No doubt Psalms 34:5 means just what it says.

The word faces is pani from the root word panah in Hebrew which in its Semitic root comes from an old Canaanite word for banishment. To banish someone means to remove their very presence is such a way that there is no knowledge at all of the person, he will never be spoken of again and would be erased from memory.  Eventually the word passed into Hebrew with the idea of one’s face. For, like my investigations, it was the face that gave away all truth about that person.  A slight rise of the eyebrow, a flicker of the eye lash, a movement of the mouth, a wrinkle in the forehead and of course the eyes, the eyes spoke what was in the soul.  Thus panah came to be rendered as face with the idea that it representation of one’s personality, character and his entire being.

So when we speak of the face of God we are not speaking of a literal face, but of His character, who He is, what He is, everything He is.  No man can see the entirety of God or his panah or face and live for we could not handle it in the physical realm, to see the panah or face of God or His entire character and being is to see something beyond natural human capacity, such an exposure would blow all the circuits in our brains.

So when this Psalms says that our faces will not be ashamed it is saying that there is not a part of our being, our spirit, soul, body, minds, and whatever else it is that makes us us will not be ashamed.  Can you imagine that all those little ugly sins hidden away, those little things that we feel have been forgotten will be exposed to God and yet we will not be ashamed? Everything we ever did that was unholy down to that little cuss word we accidently let slip will be exposed to God and forgiven if we just ask Him to forgive us.  His Son died on a cross and carried the punishment of those sins and now they are buried in the deepest sea. As the old song goes that is good enough for me so I can present my panah, my complete, total, utter presence, everything in the past, present and future and not be ashamed.

When you consider it in that light that is pretty heady stuff.  Sometimes we just need to lean back in our chair, stare out our window and reflect on all the ugly things in our past and in our minds all the things we are ashamed of and remind ourselves they were nailed to the cross and in God’s eyes it is as if we never committed those sins and we stand before him totally unashamed of anything.

That word ashamed in Hebrew is chaphar which means to blush or to be embarrassed.  You know I can remember things I said and did as a child and teenager and even in early adulthood that when I think about I still blush; I am still embarrassed at some of the really stupid things I did and said. But, you know what?  The only person I am accountable to for those stupid things is God and that too has been nailed to the cross. He will never throw it up in our face.  I don’t have to worry about God gathering the angels around and saying: “Angels, I’ve got something really hilarious to tell you about that Chaim fellow, I mean you will laugh yourself with holy laughter right off your cloud when I tell you the stupid thing he just did.  Boy just wait until he gets to heaven and we roast him at that marriage supper of the Lamb, I tell you he will blush redder than a boiled lobster.”

Nope even my stupid embarrassing mistakes and blunders have also been nailed to the cross and no one will ever make fun of me or laugh at me because of it and I will never be embarrassed by the thought of it again.