FBC Morning Light – August 29, 2022

Well, welcome to another week, last few days of the month of August, here we are, and heading into September here in just a couple days.

Well, I hope your day is getting off to a good start, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We're able to gather together with God's people yesterday, learn something from His Word.

Well today, in our Bible reading, I want to focus on Psalm 101, because in that Psalm, it's just eight verses long, but in that Psalm, the psalmist says repeatedly,

I will, I will, I will do this, I will do this. And I think it's instructive for us to, just to see, what are the commitments that he made?

Are they commitments that I ought to make? So let's look at those very quickly this morning, and meditate on them through the course of the day.

In the first place, right in the very first verse, he says, I will sing of mercy and justice.

To you, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will sing of mercy and justice.

And that word mercy is the Hebrew word, hesed, it's often translated, like in the

ESV, it's consistently translated, steadfast love. And it has to do with God's covenant loyalty, that in His love for His people,

He will not renege on the covenant that He has made. He is steadfastly loyal to that covenant.

I will sing of that. I will sing of the Lord's steadfast loyalty to His covenant, and of His justice.

In the next verse, he says, I will behave wisely in a perfect way.

I will behave wisely. So he's pondering here the path that is blameless, and he intends to walk in that path.

I think these are some valuable things for us to commit to, too, don't you? Walk in a path that is blameless.

And at the end of that verse, he says, I'll walk within my house with a perfect heart. That is, he's going to walk with integrity of heart, with no hidden agenda, no hypocrisy, no malice, even in the privacy and the secrecy of his own home.

And one of the things that often challenges us is that we put on a front when we're out in public, but in our home, we can be not what we ought to be.

And what he's saying here is, I will be consistent. I will be a man of integrity in public.

I will be a man of integrity in private, in the privacy of my own home. And then in verse three, he says,

I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. Set nothing wicked before my eyes.

I will not deliberately look upon anything that is considered wicked.

It's not always possible to avoid seeing things that are wicked, but it is possible to commit to not deliberately putting those things in front of us.

In going on here in verse four, he says, well, at the end of verse three, he says,

I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. And what he's communicating here is,

I'm not going to, not only will I not set anything deliberately before my eyes that is wicked, but I am not going to,

I'm not going to give place to the work of the backslidden, those who are wicked.

I'm not going to let it cling to me. I'm not going to have anything to do with it. In the next verse, a perverse heart shall depart from me.

I will not know wickedness. And here he's communicating that he will stay away from those who are perverse.

And again, you know, think about this in terms of our own lives and in practical application.

Who are my friends? Who are the people that I associate with? Who are the people I hang around with? He says,

I'm not going to hang around with those who are perverse. And a very good reason for that is evil company corrupts good morals, right?

New Testament proverb. He goes on to say in verse five, whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him,

I will destroy the one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him, I will not endure.

Now the first part of verse four or verse five is not calling for us to, you know, commit murder or something of that nature, but it does call us to make a commitment to have nothing to do with, to put away from ourselves, those who are slanderous of others.

And the end of the verse says, I will not have among my friends and close associates those who are proud, those who have a haughty look and a proud heart.

I'm not going to put up with that. I'm not going to put up with that. Verse six, he says, my eyes in contrast shall be on the faithful of the land that they may dwell with me.

He who walks in a perfect way, he shall serve me. Now, this is King David who is speaking here, who's writing this, and so he's talking about those who are going to be in my employment.

Those who are going to serve me are going to be people who walk in a perfect way. Those who are people who are upright and you know, we're not in control of people who we work with and things of that nature, but get the sentiment that David is expressing here.

Instead of looking upon those who are perverse and having my close associates, those who are wicked and those who are, and so forth, and instead of behaving in a way that lacks integrity,

I'm going to focus my attention on the faithful of the land. I'm going to rub shoulders with the faithful of the land.

I think to apply this in a New Testament context, I think it should encourage us who claim the name of Christ to make sure that we have a good relationship with our church family.

We have a church family and we have a good relationship with that church family. Those are the ones that I want to be around.

Those are the people who will encourage me. Those are the ones who will help me to be what I ought to be for Christ.

I'm not going to put up with those who teach or those who proclaim falsehood.

Now, again, how do you apply this? How can you apply it? You can apply it in a very literal way and talk about individuals not being liars, not having anything to do with them, but I think we can apply it more broadly, can't we?

With the kind of material that we read, with the kind of quote -unquote news that we listen to, to whom do we listen?

To whom do we listen? I'm not going to put up with those who are liars.

Then in verse 8 he says, early I will destroy all the wicked of the land that I may cut off all the evildoers from the city of the

Lord. Now, again, David is a king and David is responsible for righteousness in his kingdom.

He has opportunities and ways of carrying out that commitment that would not be legitimate for you and me to carry out.

But we can make the commitment that I will cut off the wicked from my presence.

I am not going to allow myself to be influenced by those who are wicked.

I'd encourage you to just on your own, if you haven't already read this psalm today, go to Psalm 101 yourself and read through and ponder through these verses and ask yourself the question.

In these different commitments, ask yourself, how can I apply that commitment to my life?

I hope you'll give some thought to that today. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the example of David and for the commitments that he made.

We can learn from them and we can use this as a grid. We can use this as a matrix for even some commitments that we need to make in our lives.

Give us the wisdom to do so, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, we have a good rest of your