Book of Psalms - Psa. 18, Vs. 21-26 (08/27/2023)

Okay, so I'm going to be in Psalm chapter 18 again, just kind of working our way through what is the longest psalm we have gone through so far.

When we get through it, we're going to backtrack to Psalm 17 because I accidentally skipped it. I didn't mean to do that.

I had read through it and then in my brain I had already thought through it too but apparently I did not.

So we'll go back and do Psalm 17 when we're done with Psalm 18. When we last left off,

I believe we were around verse 23 and let me just make sure, at verse 22 is when we ended last time.

So we're actually going to backtrack a little, just to kind of get into the context of things.

We'll be in verse 20 when we start today and we'll go ahead and open with a word of prayer.

Thank you Father for the Psalms. Thank you for David and his relationship with you.

Help us to model ourselves after him in so many ways. Help us to search out your heart and try to get to know you better on a personal level because everything else we do just wouldn't matter without that relationship.

So help us to grow that relationship. We love you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, so the

Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands, hath he recompensed me.

Now who's writing the Psalm? This is what we did last week.

Just to remind you, we said, all right, we tried to figure out, we tried to remind ourselves of who was writing this

Psalm. We know obviously it's the Holy Spirit that is inspiring it, but who's penning the words?

David. Yep. Yep. David is penning the words. And so when he says that the Lord rewarded him according to his righteousness and according to the cleanness of his hands, that's quite the claim.

Remember I said this last week that David is sometimes a type or picture of Jesus.

And when we think about Jesus saying these words, it makes a lot of sense, right? Like my righteousness and the cleanness of my hands.

But when you think about David, whose hands were so tainted with blood that the

Lord wouldn't allow him to rebuild the temple, it seems like, wow, why does, why does

David say this about himself? Who remembers the conclusion we came up with last week, right?

So he's looking at, he's looking at his righteousness as something that was a gift from the

Lord and the cleanness of his hands is something that was wrought in him by the

Lord. And so David is looking at himself through the eyes or the lens of the

Lord, right? So he's, he's saying, all right, well, I have righteousness, I have cleanness. And so we see that David is truly clean.

He is righteous, but none of that is his own doing, right? Like that is

God who did the cleaning. He's the one who did all the righteous works and imputed them unto

David. Now, granted, this is prior to the cross, right?

So when we put ourselves into this scripture, it's pretty easy for us to think from that perspective that our righteousness is as filthy rags, but the works of Christ make us right before the

Lord. They justify us because Jesus did it all right into all, all to him we owe.

But from David's perspective, like he's, he's kind of looking forward to the cross here and he, he's a man after God's own heart.

He just sees himself the way God sees him, which we're going to bring that back up here in just a second. So let's go ahead and get into, uh, verse, uh, 21 here.

For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and if not wickedly departed from my

God. Now, this is where pop had a great, um, comment because we talked about the second law of thermodynamics and how everything heads towards disorder.

And it almost seems as though, uh, it, it doesn't take any, any intentionality, uh, to let go of Jesus's hand and just to get back out of the spirit.

We talked about how the new man cannot sin, right? And so when you are filled with the spirit and you're connected to Jesus through the new man, it almost seems like it would be impossible for you to get disconnected because that in and of itself would be a sin.

Uh, what's interesting though, is pop pointed out that, uh, wickedly departed seems to indicate that there is some intentionality there.

Um, so we talked a little bit how, uh, you know,

Jesus's yoke is easy. His burden is light. Essentially, when you are made a new creature, you're given a new natural nature.

That makes sense. Like a new natural state, which is your natural state is now to be with Christ.

That's why it says in Romans 12, I believe it is, uh, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto

God for this is your reasonable service. In other words, this is what's logical for you.

It's the most natural place for you to be, which is in a place of sacrificing your will to submit yourself to the will of the father.

And so it almost requires intentionality for you to get away from that.

At that point, maybe the second law of thermodynamics doesn't work quite the same way. So we were hypothesizing about that.

I'm not going to go into that so much this week. That's more for your own study. But it kind of frames the idea that David's, his whole existence is wrapped up in the existence of his father, his heavenly father here.

So let's keep that in mind that Jesus has a way he has the, he is the way and his way is the only way and his way is the easiest way.

Sometimes we just, we get it twisted and we tend to think, well, I'm going to do it my way, you know, and so we're supposed to stick with his plan and trust his plan.

Verse 22 for all his judgments were before me and I did not put away his statutes from me.

This is where we ended last week and we're going to kind of hone in on this just a little bit, uh, this week, uh, to have his judgments before him before you, it's, and I think

I said this last week too. It's like when you wake up in the morning, if you were to put on a pair of glasses, everything you look at is now through the lens of those glasses.

If you have the Lord's judgments before you, uh, then everything that you're looking at, every situation that comes, uh, in front of you, every obstacle that tries to stop you, every person who tries to discourage you.

If you're looking at them with God's judgments before you, then you're looking through the lens of the whole, what would

Jesus do a mentality? And that's what David is saying.

He's done is that, uh, all of God's judgments were before him and he did not put away his statutes from him.

In other words, instead of going, all right, I'm not going to do it that way. It was like God's judgments were always before him.

He's going to do it the way God wants him to do it. And he's not going to depart from that. Um, Spurgeon talked about how backsliders begin with dusty by bibles and go into filthy garments.

And I shared that quote last week. When you don't know God's judgments, how can you put them before you?

Right? So you've got to start. One of the reasons why I think a quiet time in the morning is a good idea is that it, it kind of almost forces you to put those judgments before you in the, in the beginning of the day.

Right. And to start the day off like that, it's not easy to do. I struggle with it sometimes, right?

Like we got to get up early already as it is to get kids to cross country and do things, uh, for the kiddos, get them to school and stuff.

It's already a very early morning for us. Um, however, there are ways that you can put in with modern technology.

You can kind of do it on the fly, right? Like we have a long drive to school and Katie will often put on, uh, audio

Bible on the way to school. It's a good, a good alternative, right? But you're also not as active if all you're doing is listening.

So it's a good idea to kind of start in the morning with an active, uh, putting the judgments of the

Lord before you. So we should all try to get better at that. Perhaps, uh, blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth away in the centers nor sit at the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord and on his laws, doth he meditate day and night. Right? So starting in the morning and all the way through the evening, right?

Thinking about the judgments of the Lord before you, uh, verse 23,

I was also upright before him and I kept myself from mine iniquity.

I want to camp out here for just a second. Who's writing this song, David, he's saying,

I was also upright before him, but didn't

David do a whole bunch of evil as well? Didn't he mess up quite a bit, committed fornication, adultery, murdered the husband of his mistress, uh, multiple times didn't actually depend on the

Lord for every part of his, even in his battles, right? There are a lot of times when

David messed up, he was definitely an imperfect person. So why does he have the, uh, why does he have the confidence to say that he was upright before his

God? What do you guys think?

Okay. And we discussed that last week too, right? Like there was an atoning that he did for the, uh, the sins that he did commit.

In other words, I've done the things that I was supposed to have, I've kept the law, right?

When I messed up, I repented and I did the right things. But a lot of that is self -focused, right?

Like I did this, I atoned, I did the religious acts

I'm supposed to do, which are all acts of obedience. I'm not trying to downplay that by any means, but what he's saying is that he was upright before the

Lord. In other words, in the sight of God, I'm upright.

And the scripture also clearly tells us that our righteousness is as filthy rags.

So even if we did all the things and we did all the religious acts that were called to do in obedience to God, those don't make us upright before God.

What makes us upright before him? God's grace, right?

And we, uh, if we, if we take a look at how

David thinks, truly thinks of himself, we'll begin to understand why he is able to look at this in confidence.

So we're going to, we're going to go over to 2 Samuel real quick. Oh man, my reference isn't on here.

It's 2 Samuel, I think it's chapter seven. Let me look real quick. Chapter seven.

Yeah, it is. So we're going to look at God's covenant with David. We're not actually going to go through the covenant because we've done this once already in this study,

I believe, um, the Davidic covenant where basically I'll, I'll sum it up. David wants to build the temple.

He wants to build a house for God and he is told by Nathan, yeah, go and do it all that's in your heart to do.

But then God comes to Nathan and he's like, no, tell David, he's not going to build my, my temple.

Right? Tell him instead, I'm going to build a house for him. And ultimately he'll have a son who will build the temple, build a house for me, but go and tell

David like that. We're not doing his plan. We're doing my plan. And my plan is he doesn't build a house for me.

My plan is I build a house for him. Imagine that, right? The God of the universe says, no, you're not going to do that for me.

I'm going to do it for you. And so instead of focusing in on all the wonderful things that, that, uh,

God promises him, you can go and read about those if you want. It's in second

Samuel chapter seven, um, starting in verse eight, he just lists all these things that he's going to do for David.

And it goes for like 18, not quite 18 verses, like 10 or 11 verses total. What I want to focus on here is

David's response to the God of the universe saying, I'm going to do it for you.

You're not going to do it for me. Uh, so starting in verse 18, it says, then went

King David in and sat before the Lord. This is after he's told all this stuff that God's going to do for him when he had intended to build a house for God.

God's like, no, I'm going to do it for you. Then went King David in and sat before the

Lord and said, who am I? Oh Lord God. And what is my house that thou has brought me hitherto.

And this was yet a small thing in my sight. Oh Lord God. But thou has spoken also of thy servant's house for a great while to come.

And is this the manner of man? Oh Lord God. And what can David say more into thee?

For thou Lord God knowest thy servant. In other words, me, you're going to do all that for me.

Who am I? I'm just a man. You're the God of the universe. I'm supposed to go and do stuff for you and you're going to go do all that for me.

I don't even know what to say. He's like, what? What can David say? He starts talking about himself in the third person.

He's like, I'm speechless. I think about like what that must feel like to David.

Now we get an example of this every day.

Like it's, this is a very, a modern concept that, that God allows to play out in the lives of people.

And here's, here's what it looks like. Ladies, have you ever felt loved by a man?

Yes. Right. Okay. Have you ever felt somewhat surprised by how the guy thinks about you?

Like in other words, I've noticed this, at least about my wife, there are times when she doesn't feel like she's very pretty, but I can make her feel pretty.

Like I can, I can tell her all the things and do all the stuff and I can seemingly raise her confidence level and herself just by showing her that I really think she's beautiful.

So like when I show her that her confidence level will kind of go up.

Have you ever noticed that about yourself? Like the man has the ability to make you see yourself in a different light.

That is what is happening with David and his God. Cause he's like, who am

I? What you see there when David receives the Davidic covenant is like what my wife thinks about herself apart from me, like telling her how awesome she is.

Sometimes she's like, yeah, I'm not that great. And I'm like, no, you're amazing. Right. And so then it's like all of a sudden

I can see a change in her when she feels more amazing. But a lot of times it's in response to what

I say. That's what's happening with David is like, I'm not that great.

But now we see fast forward to the Psalm. We see David saying, according to my righteousness, has he recompensed me according to the cleanness of my hands, right?

I am upright before the Lord. The only way he is all those things is he's, he is receiving the identity that God gives him now, whether I said those things to my wife or not, she actually is all that awesome.

But sometimes she won't accept that identity herself. If I start sharing that enough, then it's like she, she steps into that, that identity more.

And that is what we are supposed to do as Christians is we're supposed to realize who our identity is in, like, where does it come from?

Because identity is not something that you ever achieve. The world thinks an identity is something that you achieve.

It's not, it's not something you achieve. It's something that you receive. That's why kids are so moldable, like whatever environment they're put into often determines the way they think about themselves, what they believe about themselves.

Like what, what the world tells them is, you know, like everybody else, you know, like, you don't want to stand out.

You want to be just average, normal, right?

You don't want to, you don't want to be different because then everybody else is going to think you're weird, right?

And so the world will try to put that into the kid. At the same time, you might have parents saying, you're amazing.

You're awesome. You're incredible. And so whoever the kid listens to the most, that's where they'll begin to receive their identity because identity isn't something that's ever achieved.

It's something that's received. If a spouse is abused, they will begin to think poorly of themselves because they are told constantly, you're not that great.

You're such a complainer, you know, all these things.

So while the world will try to tell you, you need to go and achieve a certain identity, they'll try to tell you to do it by trampling over everyone who gets in your path.

You have an identity, you go and trample over anybody who's going to try and get in your way. The identity that you'll end up with if you do that is someone who is cruel, someone overbearing.

Katie and I were talking about there was an individual that we've encountered in our past who's very much that way, a very driven individual, wants to achieve a lot in life, but is of the opinion that people, in a sense, are expendable to get to that ultimate goal.

So, the reality is, as Christians, we're called to love

God and then love others, right? Love your neighbor as yourself.

And the love that we are told to love with is agape love, right?

A self -sacrificing love. That doesn't sound like trampling over people at all.

In fact, if you go and you read about agape love in Corinthians, the first thing that it lists is love is long -suffering.

It is a sacrificial type love. And so, while the world's telling you you've got to achieve some sort of identity, the reality is you will only receive an identity.

And if you go and try to trample over people to get to an achievement of some sort, then the people who see you trampling other people will ultimately label you as a cruel person.

You'll receive the identity of being cruel. If you are kind, if you're generous, if you're helpful, if you are forgiving, if you are meek, you're humble, people will see that and they'll start to label you as those things.

There will be others who will try to label you differently because they don't like the things of God.

They'll buck up against the things of God. So there will be slanderers who will try to give you a false identity.

That's not necessarily a true identity. There's always a struggle between the world, the flesh, and the devil are all working together against God to try and get you to believe a false identity about yourself.

David very clearly is not believing the identity that the world wants to give him.

He is very clearly believing an identity that only came from God. He knows he's done bad things that he's messed up before, but he's seeing himself through the lens of God's judgments, right?

So he's not just looking at the things outside of him to say, all right, through God's word and his judgments, this is how

I handle the situations. He's also like going, okay, now let's take these judgments and look in the mirror.

What do I look like through God's judgments? They're always before me. Ah, through God's judgments,

I am judged righteous. Through God's judgments, I am clean. I have clean hands.

I am upright before the Lord. David very much knows

God. He's a man after God's own heart. So he knows that even though from man's perspective, he's imperfect, from God's perspective, he is absolutely upright.

So he begins to take on that identity and he says, I was upright before him.

He didn't just say, God saw me as upright. I want you to notice that he doesn't say the

Lord saw me as upright before him. He said, I was upright before him.

You see how that, that is a taking on of identity. That's more than just, well, he sees me this way.

Sometimes you hear that. I hear this from my teenager and my other kids sometimes. If I say, you're, you know, you're amazing, you're beautiful.

Well, when you say it, daddy, it's different. You know, like, that's just how you see me.

But the reality is there is an opportunity there to go, yeah,

I am beautiful, you know, and to take on that identity. Sammo practices that quite a bit.

Sometimes I have to kind of balance him out because he'll walk around saying how awesome he is. Yeah, I got to be like, well, you are awesome.

Keep your head on straight, though, you know, don't brag too much and be humble, too.

I'm going to start saying, Sam, you're so humble, such a humble young man.

So, I want to, I want to just touch on the armor of God, which we've done a little bit before.

I was talking with Maddie about this last night, talking about the different pieces of the armor of God. And the reason why

I want to do this is that when you think of the concept of identity, where does your true identity come from?

If it's something that is received and you could receive a true identity or a false identity, where does the true identity come from?

From God, right? And so, in order to have the proper identity, it has to be rooted in truth.

Well, the armor of God starts with, have your loins girt about with truth.

And that's very important because if you know what your identity is in Christ, which you'll only know by reading his word, he literally tells you what your identity is.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. There's identity, right?

Behold, old things pass away, all things become new. Like God literally word for word tells you what your identity is, but you've got to get into his word to know what the truth is.

And if you have that truth, then it will do what I call balancing you.

I was in martial arts for a very long time. The thing that you do to your opponent to get him off balance is you try to defeat your opponent as you try to get him off balance.

The point at which we say your opponent in martial arts is at balance, he has a balance point.

That balance point is always around his belt. Isn't that interesting? And so, if you try to get him off balance, you try to get his belt to no longer be directly above his feet.

You try to get his belt to the side of his feet and you will get him off balance and you can defeat him.

I find it interesting that the armor of God, truth is the belt because truth will keep you balanced.

It will keep you from getting thrown off your game. If you know who you truly are, you can't get defeated so easily.

But what also is interesting is the very next part of the armor of God. What is it?

It remembers. Having your loins girt about with truth and taking on the breastplate of righteousness, right?

The breastplate of righteousness. You know what righteousness is? It is truth applied to your life.

Think about it. If you know what the truth is, which is what is right and what is wrong, and you apply that knowledge properly to your life, it will be righteousness.

Always. It will always result in righteousness. So to have the breastplate of righteousness, you can't put that on until you get your belt on.

And in fact, in war, in preparation of battle, when they would put on the armor, they would often put the belt on first because if you try to put the belt on after you got that big old metal breastplate on, it's a little bit hard to reach and stuff.

So you've got to put the belt of truth on in order to get the breastplate of righteousness on.

You have to know what the truth is so that you can apply it to your life. And then that will result in an experiential righteousness.

We have positional righteousness from the Lord already. And that is part of the truth that we understand.

But when you apply that truth to your life, it will result in righteousness. Now, there's lots more, which

I think is cool because all the armor of God works together as a single unit, as a single outfit, so to speak.

Each piece builds on each other, and I would go more into that, but we don't have time. We got mostly through it, didn't we,

Maddie, last night when we talked about it? So to receive the identity that you're supposed to be receiving, you've got to know what the truth is.

And you'll only know that if you get into the word and put God's judgments before you at all times. Apply it to your life and the situations around you, but also apply it to your life when you're looking in the mirror.

In fact, usually that's how it starts. When you get up in the morning, before you go take on all your tasks of the day, typically go to the bathroom and look in the mirror, don't you?

It's one of the very first things you do is you look at yourself. One of the most powerful things

I've heard Brother Myron talk about is using the name of the

Lord when talking about yourself. One of God's names is the

I Am, right? The eternal now, the eternally present

Lord. And it's the I Am who is able to operate with outside of time in and of itself.

Because by the time you say something, you try to say something right now, by the time you say it now, it's already in the past.

I'll say it now, just it's in the past now, it's in the past, right? Like you can't really be in the now.

But the Lord is always eternally present. He's in the now.

He's not bound by the present or the future. And so because of that, when you describe yourself and you say

I Am, what are you actually saying? You're first describing yourself by invoking the name of the

Lord, which is a name that operates even outside of time.

And then if you say things like, I am dumb, I am stupid, right? I am slow.

I am not pretty. I am, you name it. With all these things, every time you say that, you're connecting a negative thought with the power of eternity.

That's a pretty incredible concept. We shouldn't do that, right? Now, if you look at what

God says about you, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made and that you are loved or chosen, right?

You are saints. And you begin to look at yourself through the lens that David looks at himself, then you might start talking about yourself a little bit differently like David does here.

We see that David struggled with confidence in many times of his life.

But there were other times where he was more connected with the Spirit of God, and he didn't struggle with confidence in those times.

I find it interesting that when you are closer to the Lord, you are more aware of your present situation.

He is the I am, right? We'll keep moving because I'm starting to digress into a whole other study here.

So, therefore, this is verse 24, therefore, hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.

Notice how he puts in his eyesight at the end, right? Now, he started off a little bit earlier, or the verse before,

I was also upright before him. He's taking on that identity, but he balances this

I am upright with I am upright because of the eyesight of the Lord.

You see, like I am righteous, I have cleanness in my hands according to his eyesight.

That's how you know that David recognizes this identity didn't come from him. This identity came from the

Lord. Now, I want you to see that we are going to shift gears a little bit, and we're going to start to see man's identity intermingling with God's identity.

We're going to see the two identities interact, so to speak.

We're going to show how God shows himself to people with certain identities. Psalm 18, 25 through 30,

I don't know if we'll get all the way through that, but we'll see. So, this is the next verse in the 18th chapter of Psalm.

If we get all the way through 30, then we'll be through the study that I had prepped for today.

With the merciful, thou wilt show thyself merciful. With an upright man, thou wilt show thyself upright.

That makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't that seem like one of those verses where you go, I believe that, and we kind of just move on?

It just makes sense, right? Like, okay. Like, if there's merciful people, then God will be merciful.

If there's upright people, he'll be upright. But isn't God always upright? Why would he ever show himself not upright?

Sometimes I like to ask the questions that just seem like if you just stop for a second, why wouldn't he ever show himself upright?

And what we'll see, a couple of things. One, a merciful man still needs mercy.

Right? So if you show mercy, good for you. You still are in need of mercy yourself.

So you can be an amazingly merciful person. That's not going to get you into heaven, by the way.

You can be an amazingly upright person in the eyes of the Lord. I mean, I'm sorry, in the eyes of man.

That won't get you into heaven. Like, you still need to be upheld by an upright

God. Now, if you read this wrong, it would almost seem like you could work your way to make

God a certain way, right? Like, if I'm merciful, then God will be merciful to me. If I'm upright, then that will cause

God to be upright for me. There's a lot of people out there who believe you can make

God do certain things. And that's a dangerous path to go down.

In fact, I heard a preacher once say, I tithe because I want to get God in debt to me.

A preacher said that. God pays all his debts, so I tithe so that he will repay me.

I want him in debt to me. I'm like, yikes. That's a bad one, right?

You can't make God do anything. But you can understand parts of who

God already is by applying truth to your life and letting that result in the righteousness that you wear.

You will begin to understand him more when you take his word for what he says, you put trust enough in it to say, all right,

I'm going to try it and see what happens. And when you do, that results in righteousness.

And that's when God is showing you a part of him that you never saw before. It's not that you're making him upright.

It's not that you're making him merciful. He already is those things. But you begin to see him for who he is because you're applying what he says to apply.

You begin to understand him better because you're doing what he says to do. I'll reference

Myron. One of my favorite things about his testimony is he says he started reading the

Bible, and he's like, well, that seems pretty practical. I'm going to try that. And he was astounded at just all the practical stuff that's in the

Bible. And he said, so I just started doing it. And it worked. You know, like, I think what happened is he began to understand who

God was better because he started applying God's word in his life. Sometimes what we want to do is we want to wait until God shows himself some way and go, all right, do something big for me.

Show me who you are somehow. And then I'm going to start applying your word. Once I really get who you are,

I'm going to start applying your word and doing what you say. That's not how it works. There's an element of faith, which, by the way, is another part of the armor of God, taking the shield of faith, right?

Above all things, taking on the shield of faith. Taking on the shield of faith, there's another shield in Scripture, by the way, a shield of salvation.

And I believe if you look at the different shields used in war, I'm right back to the armor of God.

I guess we're just going there. When you look at the different shields in war, there are some shields that are designed for holding ground.

They're huge, giant shields that soldiers put in front of them, and they even plant them into the ground so that they can hold ground and not be pushed back.

That would be like a shield of salvation. Like, you're saved. God saved you from your sins, even though you mess up sometimes, and you stray from him sometimes, even when we don't believe he is yet faithful.

That's in 2 Timothy, I believe it is. It says, because he cannot deny himself, right?

So once he's got his spirit in you, he can't deny himself. He's going to preserve you until the day of judgment.

You are preserved. So there's your shield of salvation. But when you read about the armor of God, there's a shield of faith.

And shield of faith, I believe, is a lot like the shields that are used to take ground.

They're typically one that you put out in front of you as you press forward, right? It may not be this giant shield from top to bottom that's hard to move.

It may be something that you can move with. Maybe it's small, which I think is funny because Jesus is always saying it throughout

Scripture, O ye of what? Little faith. So take that little faith, that little shield you have, and press forward.

It allows you to start taking ground. What do you do with that shield? Well, you've got to move forward into the unknown.

When you put the shield in front of you, sometimes you can't really see what's entirely in front of you. But you can know that at least you've got some protection because you've got

God on your side. So you take a step. And that shield allows you to take a step while being protected.

And you take that step, and then you go, Oh, wow, that's the ground God wanted me to take. Or you take a step and you go,

That hurt. Maybe he wants me to go this way. Maybe he wants me to go that way. And then you might have a plan, but the

Lord will direct your steps. The whole time you got to take that shield of faith. So David understands that God will show himself in new ways to those who are actually applying his word and doing the things

God calls him to do. Be merciful. You're going to understand mercy in a whole lot better light.

I mean, mercy is when you don't give a punishment that someone deserves, right?

They deserve a punishment. You don't give it. There's mercy right there. Well, when you do that for someone else.

Might be like, man, you really deserve to be lashed out at by me. You have hurt me in such a way.

Like I could tell you six ways you've messed up. And I would be completely right in all those ways.

Instead, I'm going to show you a little mercy. I'm not going to bring up all those things. And now you begin to understand the love, the long suffering that God has to show the mercy to you.

So you begin to see God in a different light. When you come up against temptation and you overcome that temptation, you know what you had to go through to do that, to be upright.

So now you understand a little bit differently about God and about Jesus when he walked 33 years being perfectly upright before the

Lord. So you'll begin to understand him a little bit differently. But the next verse throws a little twist in things.

Check this out. The next verse, verse 26. With the pure, thou will show thyself pure.

Makes sense. That one's easy, right? We don't even have a problem with that.

But what about this next part? And with the froward, thou will show thyself froward.

Now, how does the Lord show himself froward? How does he show himself as froward?

He's not froward. He's always pure. So how does that work? What do you guys think?

Well, I was looking ahead because a minute ago you were asking the question how you said, you know, with an upright man, thou will show thyself upright.

And you were kind of teasing the idea of, you know, how can he not be upright? And the first thought that came to mind there was he's talking about it's not that there are times when he's not upright.

It's just that unless you have been made upright, you will never see that part of God because you're not searching for him.

So he's implying perhaps that he can only be seen in these ways.

His mercy can only be seen as upright. It can only be seen if you have your heart in the right place, which, of course, is aimed at him.

So I was thinking about that a lot. So naturally, as one of the next verses, I saw the pure part and then

I saw the froward. And I thought that was interesting. And so I looked at it really quick.

And it's a couple of different Hebrew words. There it is. Yep. But it's two different Hebrew words.

I went and asked the scholar back there. Nigga, you got the right answer. Well, it's interesting because the first Hebrew word for froward.

This is the one to describe the man, right? Describe the man means perverted, be perverse.

And the second one to describe God primarily means to be twisted.

Or to wrestle. Like you're wrestling with someone. Yes. Like you are, like you're wrestling with someone.

And it's interesting because my first thought when I think of that is that when you think of the word that is describing man, the perverse, he's saying, if you're perverse,

I will wrestle with you. That tells me that the perversion, that the righteous man isn't immune to the perversion either.

Right. Because Jacob wrestled with, Job said that if I were to ever call myself a pervert,

I would call him the perversion. So God's people aren't necessarily immune to falling into a form of frowardness themselves.

If you read it just to say it alone, it makes it sound like he's talking about, well, here's the pure people. There's the froward people, two different groups.

Maybe not. No, you nailed it. So I'm going to summarize it for those who are listening online.

So Ben looked at the two words for froward. The first word that describes man like to the froward man.

Right. You will show thyself froward. So with the froward describing a man, that word froward means twisted or perverted.

Right. So like someone who is perverted, we know the Lord can't be perverted, which is why we go and look up the second word used for froward.

When it says thou will show thyself froward. It's describing God. It's a totally different word. The word used for God or for froward in describing

God is a word that means to wrestle. Right. So the first word means twisted, distorted, crooked, perverse, perverted.

The second word means twisted to wrestle. So, in other words, if man shows himself as perverted, he's going to be in a wrestling match with God.

And what Ben very, very adequately described is that even

God's people are not immune to experiencing that.

We see Jacob wrestle with the Lord. Right. So that's one of God's people.

And so there's this wrestling that goes on when you are maybe in the flesh acting in a froward manner.

Even if you are one of God's people, you'll be in a wrestling match there like you will be in opposition to God.

If you are just not one of God's people, you're always in that state. You're always in opposition to God. The difference, of course, is that the person who is one of God's people and is acting frowardly, they are also covered by grace.

So even though they are acting in opposition to God, like Saul, who was one of God's people.

And Jesus said, why do you it is hard for you to kick against the pricks? He was wrestling against God when he was being froward, when he was being against God.

That was just before his conversion. Right. And so even

God's people can experience that, but they are covered in grace and God will bring them back into oneness with him.

Which is why I really bring all this up. Because if you go and look at the Hebrew word for pure and pure, it's the exact same

Hebrew word. What does that tell you? When you show yourself pure, you are acting more the way

God would act. In other words, your identity, which is rooted in Jesus, it starts to look like Jesus.

You become a whole lot more like him. To the pure, you will show thyself pure.

You'll be more like God. I'm not saying you will be a God or anything like that, but you'll be more like him.

If you are froward, you are less like him. That's why there's two different words. And so it's vitally important.

And I guess for sake of time, we didn't quite get all the way through verse 30, which is okay.

But for sake of time, we'll stop it there. It's vitally important that you recognize there are two sources ultimately for identity.

There's God and there's not God. Not God covers a lot of sources, the world, the flesh, the devil.

They will all try to give you a certain identity that does not jive with who you really are.

It's a false identity. Don't buy into that identity. Instead, get into God's word morning, noon, and night.

Put his judgments before you when interacting with the world around you, but also when looking in the mirror so that you can take on the identity, which is truth, by the way.

And when you apply that truth to your life, it results in righteousness. Put on the breastplate of righteousness, and you'll be able to, above all, take up the shield of faith and move forward and take some ground as you walk through life.

But you've got to understand, when you do the opposite and you believe an identity that is not yours, you will begin to attach the power of eternity to negative thoughts about yourself, metaphorically speaking.

You'll say, I am insignificant. I am just me. I am ugly.

I am dumb. Don't say those things. That's not who you are. You're fearfully and wonderfully made, and you were worth the son of the living

God. He was willing to sacrifice his one and only begotten son for you.

That's how amazing you actually are, not because of you, but because of him.

So that's the thought for today. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Any last thoughts before we call it quits?

All right. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who we are in you.

Lord, help us to read your word more and to put your judgments before us and to look at the world through your lens and through your eyes.

Remind us of who you are so that we can learn more about who we really are. And Father, we love you.

Help us to have a great day. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen. That's a really good point,