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Bro. Dave Huber
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Back up in verse four. Remember last week, we focused in a lot on the stars, right? And I wanna do that just a little bit, but for a different reason this week, because I want us to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of Psalm chapter 19?
What is the purpose of it? Why does David start off talking about creation and the stars and the sun and the heavens and the firmament? Anybody have an answer to that? What is the purpose of it? Why do we start there?
Okay, so it's to get focus on God, right? And his authority over creation. But if you'll scan on down towards the bottom, you'll notice that we stopped talking about creation. We just start talking about God's word and the way it changes man.
So I would propose that the purpose of Psalm 19 is to get us to think about God and man together. And we start off by looking at God's creation. It's a great starting point for any natural man to begin to understand that there is a creator, right?
Before he even knows who he is, at least he can know that there is a creator to know because of creation. And that's kind of what we focused on last time. What I want us to focus on this time is the dynamic between God and man.
But we're gonna pick up in verse four because there's a reason why God uses creation to tell us about himself. He doesn't just use creation to tell us only about himself. He uses creation to tell us about us.
And I think you'll start to see that here as we pick back up. So verse four, last time we talked about how the word of God and the glory of God, the handiwork of God can be seen throughout all the world.
And there's no language barriers or anything like that. But now we're gonna start seeing some personification of the creation pieces. Like we talked briefly about the son going out as a bridegroom from his chamber.
That's a human characteristic, right? That's not something, like the son isn't getting married, right? The stars are lights in the sky. So why does God use that kind of terminology? Any ideas? Because it helps us learn.
Helps us learn and it helps us think about human beings. When you personify something, when you start to give an inanimate object, a human trait, it's so that you'll see that inanimate object as an analogy, right?
And so we're gonna start seeing an analogy here as we go into the second half of verse four. It says, and their words to the end of the world, in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. In them what?
The stars, in the heavens. So in the heavens, there is a tabernacle for the sun. Strange to have a tabernacle for the sun. A tabernacle means a tent or a dwelling place. If we are to see this as an analogy, which we'll see in verse five, it says, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, right?
This is where we start to bring in the human element. What might the stars picture in all this vastness of space with these itty bitty little twinkling lights here and there, what might those picture?
Or I'll make it easier, who might those picture? Okay, Holy Spirit, good answer. It definitely will be correlated with that. It will be associated with that. Maybe God's chosen children, the bridegroom, for this reason.
The vastness of space, as we talked about last week, it shows us, it is so incredibly huge when you look at each of those stars, they look like just a pinprick, a tiny little twinkle in the sky. And yet some of those stars are massive, bigger than planets.
And so what's the purpose of that? Why does God make them so huge and yet look so small? Because the size of those things is to show us just how much bigger God is, right? The vastness of space is contained within the Lord.
Like He is outside of even the infinite bounds of space. We can theorize about an end to space and we do, but even that end is ever changing and expanding. So we can't really put a pinpoint on the end of space like we would like to try because by the time we put it there, it's moved.
So to His God, like He is infinite. So that could picture, the vastness of space could picture God, but contained within the vastness of space. I would say it more like this. The vastness of space doesn't picture God.
God would, the Father would be outside of the vastness of space. The part that we consider space, that eternal blackness, that would picture creation, right? That would picture everything that is contained within the Father, right?
It's broken, it's messed up because it's fallen, right? God's outside of it, the Father is outside of it. And in it, you have nothing but darkness. A darkness so great that even balls of fire bigger than a planet can't illuminate all the darkness.
That's why you go out and you see giant balls of fire that only look like little pinpricks because the darkness is just engulfing it. The pinpricks though, the little tiny twinkles that we see, I think is an excellent picture of God's people, why?
Because of the terminology that's used here, which says, in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. Now, the sun is a little bit different. The sun doesn't look tiny to us. The sun looks much larger.
Who might the sun picture? The Holy Spirit living in us, the sun, maybe Jesus, right? And his spirit, which makes sense because now it uses terminology, the bridegroom. It's as the bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
I want you to think of what happens when the sun comes up. What happens? Darkness flees from it and everything is completely and utterly changed. In an instant, it goes from you can't see anything to the moment that sun peeks up over the horizon, boom, you can see pretty much everything.
And the higher the sun rises, the more obvious things become, right? Everything goes from what we might would consider, not necessarily chaos, but it could be, but confusion, darkness, obfuscation, obfuscation, is that the, obfuscation, is that the word I'm looking for?
Where you cannot, you can't see, everything is obfuscated, right? Like it's, you can't even make out, have you ever been in a real dark room and you hold your hand up and you're like, I can't even make out my own fingers?
Like, where are they? There is no discernment. There is nothing that you can understand in the darkness. And last week we talked about, praise the Lord, we don't live by sight, we live by faith, right?
But as soon as the sun pops out, in that confident manner, right? Proclaiming the work of God, it's also a picture of Jesus, because he brings the light. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. In him was life, and life was the light of men, light, right? So, the fact that it uses tabernacle, in them, there's a tabernacle for the sun. We are the temple of God.
And so, the word for sun here is semes, or shemesh, that's how you say it, shemesh. And it means brilliant, he's brilliant. It is from an unused root word, which means that, it means brilliant. Which, when we get to the next verse, verse five here, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race, we talked about this part of this verse last week, where the groom comes out with a singular purpose, right?
To get his bride. There is nothing that will come between him and his bride-to-be. So, two, that is Jesus' singular purpose for coming to earth in the first place. He came to win back his bride. And so, I really like the picture that we see here.
I see the untold part, which is what is outside the heavens, what's outside the creation. Those are all declaring his glory. So that's, in a sense, it is told, right? In this chapter, we have the Father, and then contained within the Father, we have all of creation, but it's dark.
And it's illuminated, the darkness runs from the sun, and the sun comes out like a bridegroom to get his bride, and you have a tabernacle, or a tent, or a dwelling place for God, and that's in his people.
Know ye not that you are the temple of God, right? And that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. So now we have, let's get into verse six. I'm gonna try to speed up a little bit, because I do wanna, I wanna try to finish the chapter here, which is gonna take some sprinting.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. So the sun provides light. Light is often used as a picture of discernment, or revelation, life, and think of what our sun in our solar system does for Earth.
It doesn't just bring light, it brings life, and it's the unseen components of the sun that helps to bring that life. So like, even in the daytime, when something tries to cover up the sun, like a cloud or something, you get some really dark rain clouds that can cover up the sun.
That sun still provides a heat. Even if the light is somewhat covered, there is a heat that emanates through those clouds. That's why we get things that feel like it feels muggy. We go outside and we say, oh, it's humid out, right?
Because even with those clouds trying to cover up the sun, there's still a heat that's felt. So even when the sun can't be seen directly, its effects are there. Spurgeon notes that where the light is not seen, warmth is felt, and the effects of the sun touch every corner of our planet.
So too do the effects of God's perfect work of grace. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna shift gears a little bit, and the reason why I wanted to take us through that and give us that mental picture is that everything changes when the sun comes into the picture.
Everything, right? That's what we're gonna see David pray for, for everything to change throughout the rest of the psalm. So we're gonna be in verse seven now. We'll introduce the second book of God. We started off talking about the first book, which is the natural metaphorical book that points to the physical spiritual book, right?
Physical spiritual seems almost oxymoronical, but it is, it's a physical book we hold in our hands, and yet it's spirit-breathed, spirit-inspired, right? God inspired that book. And it has the ability to divide asunder even into the bones and the marrow, right?
So it's almost like a sequel, because first you had the creation book. That was there for man to see from the very beginning. Then he gave us the sequel, and it's so much better than the first, unlike most sequels that we get.
The written word is better, and yet while it's a sequel, it's also a prequel, because it preexisted the word. In fact, it was the word of God that helped to create the works of God. And so we'll see the effects of his word next, and that's where David moves to.
He moves from talking about the natural book of creation to talking about the word and its effects it has on man. So on the heels of this idea of the sun coming out of its chamber, which changes everything, right?
He's going to show the change effects of God's word. The law of the Lord is perfect. When perfection is displayed, it remains unchanged. Otherwise it wouldn't be perfect, right? Like something that's perfect stays that way.
Would y 'all agree? It remains unchanged, and it has an effect on the world around it. In the case of man, it converts the soul. So what law is it that converts the soul? It says here, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.
What law converts the soul? Is that the Mosaic law that converts the soul? What do you guys think? Because it's telling us the law of the Lord is perfect, and it has this effect. It literally changes this thing that comes near to it, which is the soul.
I'd like to know, what law are we talking about? We talking about thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal? Yes, sir.
I think when you find it in that Old Testament context, I just think of it as synonymous with the word of God. Like it says, you have to have the water and the spirit. It's saying that's the Bible and the spirit, so that's the Bible.
And all that works together in what we, in the New Testament, would call the law of grace. The law of grace is what converts the soul. It's God's grace that does it. So what's neat is that this Old Testament book, in a sense, points forward to a New Testament promise, but it had, David could see its effects here, which is really neat.
He understood something about God that most people didn't understand back then. He knew that it was all about God, and that God was his everything, and changed everything for him, and did everything for him.
Like all he had to do was hold onto God's hand, and he would be fine. That's why he could take on Goliath. That's why he didn't, he trusted the Lord through being chased by his own father-in-law. I'm glad my father-in-law didn't chase me.
Ha ha ha. He just threw an imaginary javelin at me. Oh my soul.
Yes, sir. I think it is always fascinating to compare and contrast the Old Testament with the New Testament, and how salvation works. We discuss that all the time, but in some ways it's the same. David, I've said this a thousand times, it's almost like he had a New Testament mind.
He understood grace more than any one of the writers. Yep. I think, even back then, if you compare the Jew to the pagan, the pagan did not have any oracles of God. The Jews had them all. They didn't have any oracles of God.
Right. God chose them as the witness to the world. I mean, you do become a Jew. Mm-hmm. A lot of Gentiles didn't back in those days, because it was the only light. All right, so even the law, if they didn't sacrifice, it's like the law said to do it.
Mm-hmm. The angels, you know, once a year, and then all the ones you do every day, and then the fathers in the homes did it, and everything else, and the children did it. Then that was God's grace, because it brought you under, rolling your sins toward the cross, into the future, towards the cross.
Now, they may not have told them, but still. Right. They knew to obey it, and that brought salvation to their soul. Mm-hmm. Then, you know, this side, look at it, way more amazing.
And that is exactly what I'm getting at here, is David had an understanding of something that where, I mean, you might have the Pharisees that were Jews. Yeah, David could see the grace. The Pharisees, all they saw were the laws.
Keep this law, keep that law. The rules is all they saw. David understood relationship, right? Like he had a daily walk with the Lord, and it wasn't always the best walk. And sometimes that walk got messy, and sometimes it was almost as if David himself felt at odds with the Lord, and it just tormented his soul.
And it was the relationship part that he always leaned into, whereas the other Jews only saw rules. And I love what you brought there, in that those rules, in a sense, were God's grace in the Old Testament.
Like that was God showing the Jews grace. I'm gonna give you these sets of rules that if you'll keep these rules, you're gonna roll your sins forward through the sacrificial system to the cross. This is going to preserve you until the day that Jesus comes, and he ultimately pays the final sacrifice, and then you are released from all of that.
And so that grace, while the natural Jew didn't see it the way we get to see it, I tend to believe that David kinda did, almost, you know? It's certainly not like we can now looking back, but he had an understanding that most Jews didn't.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thanks, dude.
Pharisees didn't rise until the great miracle of Jesus came. It took about a bit of that 300 years for them to get pretty bad like they were when Jesus was born. David was 700 years prior to that, so they weren't, you know, when we think of the law right now, we think of how the
How the Pharisees saw it. The Jews weren't like that when David was alive. Like some Christians are today, you know, we have people, people everywhere all the time. But predominantly, they probably saw the grace in the law.
And certainly the mercy. I like that. And it was probably some 700 years later before that little Satanic germ even was planted. It took maybe 150 years into that 300 year period to get to where it is now, where you had all these tarbans and things where they weren't even studying the Bible.
I'm gonna repeat that as best I can because I want that in No, no, no. No, that's really good. The reason why I want that in here is that important distinction. It may not have been as rare in David's time for them to see the law and understand to some degree the grace that is coupled with it.
Whereas the Pharisees, you said, came 700 years later and they perverted the meaning of that law. They made it more about glorifying man than glorifying God. Whereas what we're seeing through David here may have been the predominant attitude towards God's law in the mind of the Jew is what you're saying.
Is that correct?
I'm sorry, I was reading something else. Oh, that's okay.
To summarize what my question was, you're saying that what David is saying here is probably the predominant attitude towards God's law in the mind of the Jew at David's time. That's what I'm saying.
Okay. And in the initials that are here today, you don't get the context of David saying yes to God, but it was salvation for David. Yes.
Yeah, it definitely. So like for when we take the Old Testament, which is for end samples for us, right?
One other thing that anyone in David's day that loved the Bible, they're saved, but they don't love it. I mean, you are. We didn't like it until we got saved. At least to me.
That's right. Man, Ben, I don't know how you do it. You steal my thunder, even from afar. Like I have that a little bit later. He's so good at this. No, okay, so Ben basically said that anyone who loved the law, no, it's okay, I gotta give him credit because I love it when he does this.
Anyone who loved the law, they are God's person. Otherwise, they wouldn't love the law, right? And what we see throughout the Psalms is a theme of that. There is a love for the law, even right there at Psalm chapter one, which I didn't get to do, right?
That was brother Bill. Brother Bill did Psalm chapter one for us. And I just picked up at Psalm chapter two after he passed away. But what does that start off with? Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, right?
And so what we're seeing here is there's a delight in God's law. David may more than most have understood the grace that comes with that, but he is still under the law, the letter of the law, right? We, on this side of the cross, understand more the grace side.
And we tend to, at times, almost go, well, we don't need the rules, right? But the importance of the rules didn't change, right? So like, when you understand the law of grace and you adhere to the law of grace, it causes you to, even on this side of the cross, love the law that God gives you.
Not in the sense that you need it for salvation, but more in the sense that you want it for pleasing God, right? You want to say, okay, I have the Lord, right? And I am saved only by his grace. But because I'm saved only by his grace, now I want to do things that I know please him.
And if I wanna know what pleases the Lord, you'll see a lot of examples of ways you can please the Lord in the law. So the 10 commandments, they don't save you, but you wanna keep them because you want to please God.
That's just an example. It's not like you need to do all of the law to please God anymore. It's not like you have to go and do this big sacrificial system. All that's been done away with because the sacrifice has been made by Jesus.
But there are many other laws that even to this day have benefit to mankind if we were to keep those laws. This is why, unfortunately, this is why there's a movement of fundamentalism because since there is still value in righteous living, there's still value in keeping quote unquote the rules, we tend to put too much value on that.
We tend to go, well, I mean, there's value there. Why is there value there? Because that's what saves you. No, that's not what saves you at all. That you're thinking Old Testament, right? You're thinking like we've got to keep all the rules to push sins forward or whatever.
Like that's not how it works. And at the same time, we have scripture that tells us a faith without works is dead. So it's by faith in God and it's a faith that he gives us, right? That's the grace that he gives us that we're saved.
But as a result or an effect of that faith, we will do things that resemble keeping the law. And so that is a transformation, right? In David's time, it's that law that looks like transformation. It converts, it converts the soul.
And on our side of the cross, we go, okay, it is the law of grace. But when someone understands the law of grace, isn't there a conversion? Don't you see a change in that person when they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus?
Yes. Next verse, the testimony of the Lord is pure making wise, the simple. Now, a testimony is an interesting word to use because when do you use testimony? When do people give testimony? In court of law, right?
And when you have eyewitness testimony, it brings a lot of clarity to a situation. It brings surety, it brings revelation to what's actually happening in the situation in question. It's used as some of the strongest evidence.
Eyewitness testimony is some of the strongest evidence. And the clarity brings confidence in what the truth actually is. And so where you have eyewitness testimony, where you have a testimony, you have clarity and you have confidence in the truth.
That's what's awarded. So where we lack knowledge, God provides proof. Not just in the heavens, but also in the humans that He has changed. This is the testimony of the Lord. You wanna know the testimony of the Lord?
It's the change that He creates in man. This thing that was a part of the darkness, the thing that couldn't comprehend light. God went and changed it and made it twinkle like a star in the sky. That is something that should bring confidence and clarity to the mind of the believer.
Like, I remember how I used to be. I'm different now. There's surety there. Verse eight, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. Righteousness always promotes joy in the heart of the believer.
If you want to increase your joy, increase your righteousness. You're already seen as completely righteous from the perspective of the Father. He sees you as 100 blameless, holy, set apart. But then you have experiential righteousness.
If you want to feel joy in your life, work on sanctification, sanctify your life. Like put an effort towards loving righteousness. Put an effort towards becoming more righteous experientially, right? Like do what is righteous.
For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace. And what? Joy in the Holy Ghost. It's in Romans chapter 14. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. See, when things get crazy in life and the way begins to seem unclear, holding fast to God's commandment will make the path straight.
It will make it obvious. One of my favorite movie scenes, you know how I like to pull out movies when I'm talking. One of my favorite movie scenes of all times. It's a movie my kids haven't seen yet. Indiana Jones, love the series.
Love it. Last Crusade, Indiana is trying to find the path and he has to stick to the name of God to do it. Love it, Jehovah. He crosses the path and then he comes to a leap of faith and he can't see it.
He can't see that path until the moment when he takes the leap. One of the things that we have to do as Christians is we have to take a leap of faith in adhering to God's commandments because sometimes his commandments, they don't seem like they're gonna help us out in the moment.
It's like, well, I need to get this thing done or I'm in a lot of trouble and I gotta get out of trouble. And if I just tell a lie, I can get out of this pretty fast but God's commandment tells me not to lie.
So I need to stick to truth. There are so many times when what seems like the easy way out will put us on a path of destruction. And having faith to do exactly what God says, even when it seems like it's only gonna make things maybe a little bit worse, we can understand that it's only going to make things worse perceptually.
Like the way we see it, it might look worse to us but it'll actually be better when we adhere to God's commandments. You will begin to see with a whole new set of eyes when you stick to his commandments.
There's no gray with God. There's pure right and pure wrong. Gray comes when we attempt to mix the two. Good seems bad when it causes conflict, right? We go, I'm gonna do the right thing. Oh, but that's gonna create some conflict in my life.
Maybe I don't wanna do the right thing. I don't want the conflict. Bad seems good when it makes someone smile. Like I'm just gonna lie to this person and make them feel good or make them happy because I don't wanna see, again, it's conflict is what it comes down to.
I don't wanna make waves. You be you and I'll be me. You do you and I'll do me. And what happens is because of a fear of inconvenience, we will not stick to the righteousness or the commandment of the Lord.
One of those commandments is to call out what is right and what is wrong. So it does seem like there's a subjectivity to life, doesn't it? Doesn't it seem like, well, this might be right in this case and might be wrong in that case.
And what actually happens is sin makes life seem like it's subjective. It's not. It's really quite simple. Always honor God, period. Now, that might manifest in different ways that you can honor God, but you can't honor God by doing something bad.
You can't say, well, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna make someone feel good and God tells me I should edify others, right? So I'm going to say something that will make someone feel good even though it's probably not a good thing to say.
I'm going to accept you for who you are and just the way you are and God loves you the way you are, right? That makes someone smile. That edifies somebody, it seems like. It makes them feel good. But what if that person is in sin and they need someone to lovingly point out that sin?
I say lovingly because Christians don't tend to do that. We tend to just get mad and we become these angry, spiteful Christians. That's not how God calls us to do it. We're supposed to meekly instruct those who oppose themselves that God, per adventure, we're giving to them repentance.
And so I know it seems like there is a subjectivity to life but there's not. Always honor God. You can't do something bad to honor God. Won't happen. And this is because right and wrong are a condition of the heart.
They're not something that just, you know, the ends justify the means as we like to say. It's not like, okay, if there's a seemingly positive outcome in this area, then it was good, it was righteous. No, what was your heart when you did the thing in that situation?
Was it a heart to honor God or was it not? It's not a rule of etiquette. It's not a social interaction. The condition of the heart will be the same regardless of the situation. The condition of the heart needs to be, I wanna honor God.
When you have God's commandments instructing your heart, your eyes will be enlightened. This is particularly interesting to me because to follow the commandment of the Lord, you will have to live by faith, which as we discussed earlier comes from hearing, right?
So while we don't walk by sight, we don't walk without it either. It's interesting that we're told that his commandments will enlighten our eyes. Why do we need our eyes if we don't walk by sight? Because that's a gift from the Lord as well.
And we can see his works when we adhere to his commandment, we will have a better understanding of what his works are. So yes, we do walk by faith, not by sight, but we are not called to walk without sight either.
Fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. This is verse nine. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Fear of the Lord results in clean living. What's the importance of cleanliness?
Why do we keep things clean? For our health. Why is that important? Ah, to endure, right? To endure forever. The longer you keep something clean, the less decay it experiences. So living and acting from a place of the fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord is to hate evil, the scripture tells us.
So hating evil causes you to live righteously and live a clean life, which is an enduring life. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. This reminds me of the armor of God, these two, truth and righteousness.
Truth is the belt, right? Righteousness is the breastplate. They're my two favorite parts of the armor, even though I know I really like the word of God, the sword of the spirit of truth, right? But I really, my two favorites are belt and breastplate, because they signify, in my mind, balance and protection.
So in martial arts, the belt, we've talked about this before, the belt is the center point of gravity. Ali, you're here today, you did some martial arts, right? You know how you're always making sure that you're trying to get somebody off of their center of gravity, trying to tip them over, right?
And if their belt gets tilted, you know you've got them, you've got them tilted, they're tipped over, that belt is the point that you focus on when you're fighting. You don't look at someone's face, you don't look at someone's feet or their hands, you watch the belt line, because in your peripheral, you'll see every strike coming at you.
And what you're trying to do is get the belt off balance. Once you get them off balance, you can take them down. Truth keeps our belt in balance. I think that's why the Lord used the belt, that's just my guess.
But in battle, when a man's belt is tilted, his center of gravity is off kilter, and he can fall easily. Truth balances us. It keeps us balanced in battle. Righteousness, living a righteous life protects our vital organs, because any area of sin that you have in your life, Satan's gonna be throwing darts in that area.
He's gonna be trying to get you. That's why we have so many pastors, unfortunately, that have this terrible fall, is that they have some area of their life where they're not putting on that breastplate of righteousness, and that's where Satan ends up taking down their ministry.
It literally, in a sense, almost physically protects you, right? Righteous living helps you endure. It's clean. Truth and righteousness, or I'm sorry, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together.
So an example, honor your mother and your father, that your days may be long upon the earth. There's endurance. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. See, there's protection, there's safety, and it's all there to be like a strong tower for us.
Verse 10, more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Gold's greatest property is its ability to hold value through the ages. An ounce of gold has always been enough to purchase a really nice suit, always.
Now, even today, if you went and got an ounce of gold, which is approximately $2 ,000 for an ounce of gold, that would buy you a really nice suit. Some of y 'all would say, well, I'm supposed to wear a really nice suit, but like a custom suit would be close to that price.
There is no loss of value when all other forms of money fail. Gold endures. Honey has natural antibiotic properties. It can heal. So too can the word of God bring back health to those who are spiritually sick.
Verse 11, moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them, there is great reward. This is an interesting verse to me because warning signs are not designed to invoke a spirit of anxiety.
When we think warning, we automatically go to that place like, uh-oh, warning. Like if all of a sudden there was some thing over the loudspeaker, warning, warning, we'd be like, oh, no, what's going on, right?
But why is there a warning? Do not enter on the freeway, right? Do not enter. Why is that there? Keep you from danger. It actually, it creates a confine which creates confidence. Oh, I know that I shouldn't go that way that says do not enter because if I do, I'm gonna be toast.
Like there's certain danger ahead if I don't heed the warning. This way, there's a one-way arrow. Okay, I'm gonna go this way with the one-way arrow, and in doing so, I am safe. Warnings are actually designed to bring peace.
Warning signs bring peace and confidence because they let us know where the constraints are. We don't often think of keeping the warning as resulting in a great reward, do we? We usually think of the opposite.
If I don't keep the warning, I'm dead meat when we're driving, at least, right? If you thought, I'm gonna go drive into that area that says do not enter, and I'm gonna go the wrong way on the freeway, you would only think of what negative could happen from that.
We don't tend to think of not doing that as resulting in a great reward, but it is, like you get to keep your life. It's a great reward. We typically think backwards here. Think of the devastating loss that would occur if we don't keep the warning.
But there is a better reward, a greater reward in my mind, than just keeping your life by not going through the do not enter sign, and that is peace of mind. How many of y 'all really like peace of mind?
Well, God's commandments, his truth, his judgments, they are providing a warning for us, and those warning signs give us peace of mind. It's one of the greatest rewards a human being can have. When we receive, like when we go through a life where we have wars, we have rumors of wars, we've got Amber Alerts sometimes multiple times a day, we've got natural disasters, we've got rising crime, we've got riots in the streets.
I mean, there's a lot of reason to have fear and anxiety in our lives, but if we will stick to the judgments, stick to the commandments, stick to God's instructions, they will give us peace of mind in a very crazy world, and it'll allow us to walk confidently in this life.
Verse 12, who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Now, we're almost done here. We're gonna go ahead and finish up this chapter. We made decent timing, but we're gonna zoom through these.
David moves from talking about what the word of God can do, which is create a vast difference in the life of a human being, convert the soul, make glad the heart, right? Like literally bring complete change to a human.
He goes from talking about the complete change that he sees in nature, when the sun peaks up over the horizon and comes out of his chambers, to talking about an equally dramatic change that God's commandments and judgments and truth bring to the life of a human being, and he says, I want that change.
Now have that change applied to me. Verse 12, who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. David is literally asking for God to cleanse him of even the areas he doesn't know are unclean.
I don't even, man doesn't even know all of his errors. He doesn't know or understand how bad he is. So I want you to cleanse me from even the secret faults, even the things that are secret from me, get all of it out, make me clean.
Make me clean by your standards, God, not by mine. Another thing that is important here is we see that David is praising God through the first half of this, right? He's praising God through the first half of this chapter, and he is asking God to change him with everything he's praised him for.
One of my favorite things about David is that he does this, I believe, for two reasons. One, and he does this throughout all the Psalms. He praises God so that God will be praised to glorify God. But I think the second reason is a super practical one, and that is he praises God and glorifies God so that he will hear himself praising and glorifying God.
That's a very important part of the walk of the believer is for you to hear yourself praising God, and I think that's one of the main reasons why, like at least when I was growing up, and I'm sure it's this way in a lot of churches now, young men, they don't sing in church.
And the reason why they don't sing in church, maybe they don't feel confident in their singing ability or whatever, but it's almost like maybe it's not even cool. You look around, and not just young men, older men too, the men often won't sing in church, and that bothers me.
It didn't used to. I used to be one of those that didn't sing in church, and I went to a church camp where I heard Votie Bauckham teach on worship, and that radically changed my view of worship, and one of the reasons that I sing in church is because I want to hear myself singing to God, because when you hear yourself singing to the Lord, when you hear yourself praising the Lord, when you hear yourself praying to the Lord, that has an effect on you because the things that go in the ears come out the mouth.
When the things go in the ears, change the way you act, and so I think it's very important. David does this in a manner in which he hears himself praising the Lord, so he's asking the Lord to cleanse him from all these things, including things he's not even sure are unclean.
He's doing this in an out loud sort of manner. Verse 13, keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me, then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
We have here David saying, I want you to protect me from future sins as well. Don't just cleanse me from the ones I've already done, protect me from the future ones. Don't let them have dominion over me, and the result of this doing, which we're going to do together, right?
You are going to protect me, you're gonna give me the warning signs, and I'm gonna heed them. The result of this is I will become something better. I will be upright, I will be innocent. And quickly, upright and innocent mean complete, and innocent means free.
So it's like, I will be completely free when we do these things. Last verse, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. He closes this whole thing with his mouth again, right?
He often says this like, let my mouth praise you, right? He'll often talk about how he will get up and praise him in the morning. I'll go to sleep thinking about you and talking to you and praying to you.
I'll wake up talking with you and thinking about you and praising you. He says here, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in the sight in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
He does not have the strength to redeem himself. He knows that only God can do that. He's literally asking the Lord to help him tame his tongue, which is untameable. The heart is wicked and desperate, or evil and desperately wicked above all things.
Who can know it? These are the two things that David is asking for complete transformation in. And he knows the only way he's gonna get it is through keeping the words and the judgments and the righteousness and the truth of the Lord.
So just as the drastic change that occurs when the sun comes up over the horizon, so too we can experience a drastic change in our lives when we have the word of God activated in our actions. All right, that's it.
I'm sorry, I went over time. I needed to get through that last verse. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is truth. We thank you that it has radical transformation power in our lives.
Father, we ask that you help us to adhere to it, help us to yield to it, and help us to be absolutely transformed by it. Lord, we love you and we thank you. It's in your name that we ask these things.
Amen. Ask for David. Come back in three seconds.