Amen. How many of you are thankful for
the work of Jesus Christ? I love that song because it
reminds us that though we're not saved by works, there was a work
that saved us, and that is the work of Jesus Christ upon the
cross through His death, His burial, His resurrection.
We are saved not of any work of our own, but because of His
obedience to come into this earth and to die as a sacrifice
to redeem those who trust in Him as Lord and Savior.
If you have your Bibles, if you would turn with me.
And this won't be a surprise to anyone to the 119th Psalm as we
continue to make our journey through this one.
Chapter in the Psalms. As we look at this series,
living life in the light of God's Word and, and I pray this,
I pray that you are becoming more aware of how important it
is for those of us who are in Christ to live our lives in
light of God's Word. His Word is a lamp unto our feet
and a light unto our path as we have already heard and will be
reminded of over and over again as we study through this
particular chapter in Scripture. And today we come to the 8th
letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the letter heath.
And we know this, that when we come to that Hebrew letter, we
are going to see 8 specific verses that go along with that
letter. And this is no exception.
We will see this all the way through the 119th Psalm as this
has been arranged precisely by God in this order.
And that is why we are looking at each message, at those
particular 8 verses that are joined together.
It's important that. We as we look at this passage
this morning. It's important that we
understand that the psalmist is going to give us insight into
something that we really need to pay attention to if we profess
to know God, if we profess to be living a godly life.
Because we're going to look into the psalmist's life as we look
at these 8 verses, and it's going to give for us some
distinguishing marks of a godly life.
Now, if you're here today and you profess to be, to, to know
Christ and, and, and to be in him, and you have no desire to
live a godly life, something is dreadfully wrong with you.
But if you are in Christ, you will have this desire to live a
godly life. What we're going to do today,
we're going to look at those certain characteristics and
qualities that distinguish the psalmist from those in his day
and if you are truly in Christ. That will distinguish you from
the wickedness and the evil of your day, because it is no news
to us scripturally. We as true believers are to
look, to act, to talk, to behave distinctly different from the
world. Now let me remind you, just as
we sang a moment ago, that is not so that we can earn
salvation. That is because salvation has
already been earned for us through the sacrifice of Christ.
And so the psalmist here giving us a glimpse into his life also
gives us a glimpse into what does it look like?
What does it look like to be a man or to be a woman?
If if that be you this morning, who is truly living a godly
life, Who is truly a man or a woman who's after God's own
heart? Turn with me to verse 57.
There in the 119th Psalm, under the heading Het in the Hebrew it
says this. You are my portion.
O Lord, I have promised to obey Your words.
I've sought Your face with all my heart.
Be gracious to me according to Your promise.
I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to Your
statutes. I will hasten and not delay to
obey Your commands. Though the wicked bind me with
ropes, I will not forget your law.
At midnight I rise to give you things for your righteous laws.
I am a friend to all who fear You, to all who follow your
precepts. The earth is filled with your
love. O Lord, teach me your decrees.
Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, we
come to You now asking that Your Holy Spirit would illuminate and
enlighten us to the truths that we have seen with our eyes and
heard with our ears from Your scriptures today already.
God, we pray that You would root them deep into the depths of our
soul, that these would not just be.
Words that enter into our minds, from our eyes, and audibly
through our ears. But these be words straight from
God that penetrate the depths. Of our being.
God, I pray that you would use these words to mold us and to
fashion us and to shape us into the people that you desire for
us to be. That in doing so, we would give
you all the glory for what it is that you were doing in our life
and have done in our life through Christ.
Lord, I pray for that person who's here who does not know
Christ. God, I pray that you would
shower them with your mercy and your love today.
That you would usher them out of the darkness and into light.
That you would open their eyes spiritually, that they can see.
And that you would renew them and rebirth them today so that
they can believe God. That they would truly believe
and trust in Jesus today and be saved, knowing that that's the
only hope that they have of ever being forgiven of their sin,
never inheriting eternal life. God, I pray that your will be
done, that you receive all glory and honor and praise.
And we pray all these things in Christ's name, Amen.
As we look at the psalmist words here today, I want to make it
very clear to all of us so that we understand it.
And we're going to jump in because we have a lot of ground
to cover. There's a lot that's going to be
said today. There's a lot more that probably
could be said, but I want to make it very clear as we jump
into this today, if you're not living a life that distinguishes
you from the world, your profession of Christ is
completely pointless. It is a completely moot point.
No one gives any validity to your claim.
And so the psalmist here is going to give us some insight
into the distinguishing marks of a godly life.
And why are we going to receive this insight?
It is not so that we can measure the person sitting next to us,
or the person across the aisle from us, or our neighbor back
wherever it is that we live, or our husbands, or our wives, or
even our children. It is so that we can examine our
own lives this morning and to ask even the most difficult
question, do I bear to some degree, do I possess to some
degree these distinguishing marks that he is going to
highlight for us that the psalmist did possess in his
life? The psalmist we know, if you
take the stance that this is David and I won't be dogmatic
about it, but the more that I read, the more that I study, the
more that I tend to lead, lean toward Davidic authorship.
But that's neither here nor there.
Obviously, this is a person, a man who is after God's own
heart. And so here we see this example
of this person who is desiring to live.
A godly life. It would do us a great, great
favor as professing believers to examine his life and to say, OK,
does my life match the characteristics that I see?
Do I see these attributes being developed in my life as a
professing believer? Now, if you're not a professing
believer, if you don't know Christ, you're not yet in
Christ. I don't, don't, don't bother
examining to see if you possess these things.
You don't possess these things. You're not in Christ and these
things have not been produced in you.
But if you are in Christ, or do you think that you are in
Christ? If you are a professor of
Christ, please examine yourself, because mere profession will
never. Save a single soul, there will
be distinct evidence that that profession is legit, that it is
a work of God. And so I want you to examine
yourself. This morning and really lay your
life next to the life of the Psalmist.
Neither of you perfect in all of your ways, both of you sinners
at birth, but you claim redemption.
And of course, the psalmist claims redemption.
And So what we have to do is we have to look at a person who
who's proven that their life is a life of godly character.
We lay our life next to it. What does what I'm reading in
Scripture say about my life? And the first thing I want you
to see, the first distinguishing mark is this that he highlights
for us and what he writes. Verse 57 He says You are my
portion. O Lord, I have promised to obey
your words. He's speaking here in intimate
terms and that's the first thing that I want you to really
examine in your life is do you have an intimate relationship
with God, an intimate and personal 1 You see that right
off the bat with the psalmist. He says You are my portion.
What is he saying? He is considering God as his All
in all, that he can lose everything under the sun, all
the treasures of the earth. He can lose all of the the
members in his family. He can lose his job, he can lose
whatever income he might have, whatever retirement plan that he
is packing away. And if he lost all of that, he
would still have everything that he needs.
And that's when we understand, is God really our portion?
If you were to lose everything, is he still your All in all your
portion, your inheritance, all that you look forward to, not
only in the life that is to come?
We have a problem in the, in much of the Christian circles
today that we only look forward to the life that is to come.
Is he your possession Now? The psalmist didn't say he's
going to be my possession. He says he's my possession right
this minute. He is my All in all.
You want to see someone who displays distinguishing
characteristics of a godly life. God is going to be everything to
them. He says you're my portion.
Lamentations 324. We see there the lament of
Jeremiah and he says this. I say to myself, the Lord is my
portion, therefore I will wait for him.
Jeremiah lamenting over the fact that Israel did not repent of
their sin and he's not really getting all that that caught up
in it because he knows this that the Lord is his portion if if
all of the world ceased. The Lord's everything to Him.
If all of the world as you know it ceased, is the Lord really
everything to you? Is He your treasure?
Is He sufficient enough for you? Is he your everything?
That's what the psalmist is saying here.
He's considering God as His All in all.
Not only that, he's doing something that we don't do often
enough in our intimate relationship or our claim to
have an intimate relationship with God.
We must consider that He's our All in all.
But what about this? He's counting God as his own.
He says. You, Lord, are my portion.
You see the ownership there because we can quickly
understand this, that I belong to God, right?
I belong to God because I have been purchased by the precious
blood of Jesus Christ. He purchased men from God just
as Scripture says, and I belong to God.
Now Church understand this. He belongs to you as well.
And what a privilege that is to know that the sovereign God of
all belongs to us. He is our possession.
He is our portion. We have direct and intimate
connection to God, to Yahweh of the Old Testament.
We can boldly and directly enter into His throne of grace, just
as the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 4.
You know it, He says in verse 16.
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that
we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of
need. He says that we have access
behind the veil because Christ has torn the veil and we can now
go in through the Holy of Holies, even to the mercy seat
of God, to His throne of grace. He is our portion, we are His,
but even more so, He is ours. We possess an intimate
relationship with the God who could not have a relationship
with filthy sinners. Yet in order to do that, this
God sends His only begotten Son, and His Son redeems sinners so
that we can now come in what a glorious and beautiful picture.
We can now not only be counted as His, we can count God.
As ours. This relationship, of course,
can only happen if we are reconciled unto our heavenly
Father, because we know that sin keeps us from Him.
But we also know this if we study the Scriptures, any amount
of time that Christ defeated sin on the cross, so that we can
then be reconciled unto the Father.
Colossians 122 says, But now he has reconciled you by Christ's
physical body through death, to present you wholly in a sight
without blemish and free from accusation.
What is He saying here? He's saying you don't have to
come into God's presence fearing that there's some accusation
that's going to be brought to your charge.
Those accusations were taken care of at the cross where Jesus
bore the wrath that you deserved for your sin.
And now when the accuser of the brethren says you can't come
into God's presence because you've done something wrong, you
can say, no, wait a second, I can boldly go before his throne
of grace in my time of need, just as Scripture says.
Why? Because I have been reconciled
to God, not by anything that I. Did or could ever do I have been
reconciled through the precious blood of Jesus Christ that
atonement has been made. I am covered.
And so now when I approach God because of Christ, physical
death. I have been presented.
What does he say again, wholly in his sight, without blemish
and free from accusation. I say that because there are
many of you who are believers here today and you are afraid to
own God as your own, to truly own God as your own, to to be
able to commune with him and to come into His presence at at
whatever time in your life or season in your life that you're
going through. Let me tell you this, if you are
in Christ, there's nothing in your past that is held to your
charge. Confidently enter into His
throne room to His throne of grace, just as Scripture
commands us to do. You have been reconciled.
Count God as your own, that when you approach Him, you approach
Him as intimately as a son would approach His.
Father, not only does the Son belong or the the Son belong to
the Father, but the Father belongs to the Son.
Church understand that the Psalmist gets that.
You are my portion. O Lord, I belong to you and you
belong to me. Many of you don't experience the
intimacy that God desires that you have, because yes, you know
you belong to God, but you have not reconciled in your heart
that He also belongs to you. What a beautiful picture that I
don't have to wait until I'm invited.
I have already been invited to Sup with him and to fellowship
with him. Not in the life to come, but
even in this life. I have communion with my
heavenly Father because of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ and faith in that is Romans chapter 5 tells us that
faith in that and that alone allows us to be reconciled.
So the psalmist understands this.
He's counting God as his own. He's considering God as is All
in all, in this intimate relationship that he has with
God. But that intimate relationship
is also confirmed through obedience.
He says you are my portion. O Lord, I have promised to obey
your word. I promise to obey your words.
We submit to the Lord, we're simply showing Him the love that
is due for the love that we have received.
We are reciprocating what He has already lavished upon us.
And we will talk much about that in a moment.
But Galatians 5 tells us this in Galatians 5-6.
For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision
has any value. Says there's no value in the
works of the flesh. The only thing that counts is
faith expressing itself through love.
And how do we we express faith through love in regard to our
relationship to the Father? We obey his word.
That's what the Psalmist is saying here.
You are my portion, O Lord, I've promised to obey your word.
Why? Because you're my portion.
You're my treasure. I.
Value you above all things. I count you as my own.
Therefore, I'm not going to go out and to defame the name of my
father by by living some sinful or wicked lifestyle, but.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to obey your word so that
my love for you is made clear. Is that not what Jesus said?
If you love me, you'll what? You'll obey what I command you.
You'll do what I tell you to do. So godly life will be marked
with an intimate relationship and close communion and
fellowship with God. That is never to be broken.
That is purchased for us in Christ.
Secondly, we see the Psalmist say this in verse 58.
As we look at that second distinction, he says, I have
sought your face with all my heart.
Be gracious to me according to your promise, We see here a
desire to please God. Now, the wicked, they don't have
an intimate relationship with God.
And the wicked sure don't have a desire to please God in
everything. However, the believer should
bear both of those characteristics in their life to
some degree. You ought to have that intimate
relationship. With God because of Christ, and
you ought to have a desire to please God.
He says I've sought your face with all my heart, with every
bit of it. What is he talking about?
Seeking God's face? You know what he's saying.
I want your approval. Now we know this to be true.
God sees everyone's life, doesn't he?
But the psalmist is taking it a step further.
I want God to look directly into my life and I want him to be
pleased with what he sees. I seek his face.
I don't hide from his face. I seek it.
I expose myself. God, show me, show me what it is
that you want me to do and and give me strength to obey it.
I want to please you because a true believer is going to have a
desire to please God seeking his face.
Going back to our scripture reading this morning,
Lamentation 3 verse 25, and it says.
This the Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him.
To the one who seeks him. Now the problem with that is
this. There's no one who seeks them.
That's what the Old Testament says, and that's what Paul
confirms in Romans, that there is no one who seek them.
There's none righteous, no, not one, no one who seeks after him.
And So what has happened? A work of God has transpired in
your life through the Lord Jesus Christ and now because you have
been changed by His grace. You now seek Him.
Isn't that what the psalmist says?
I have sought your face with all my heart.
Be gracious to me according to your promise.
He says it's grace that allows me, the grace that has been
promised to me. It's grace that allows me to
seek you with all of my heart and to seek your face and to
live and to desire Your approval in my life.
The psalmist in Psalm 24, verse three, he says this, Who may
ascend the hill of the Lord, who may stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up
his soul to an idol or swear by what is false, he will receive
blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior.
And he says this in verse six. Such is the generation of those
who seek him, who seek your face.
O God of Jacob, are you one of those?
Are you a part of the generation who seeks the face of God?
If you were in Christ, he is raising you up to be a part of
that generation who seeks the face of God.
The Psalm is making this very clear.
I sought your face with all my. Heart what was he doing?
He was desiring God's favor on his life.
He was desiring fellowship with God in his life in that
communion. That's that's all that he
wanted. He wanted nothing more, nothing
less. Psalm 27 verse 8 He says, My
heart says of you seek his face, your face, Lord, I will seek.
He's saying my heart says seek his face.
Why? Because his heart has been
changed. And when your heart is truly
changed, when you receive that heart of flesh that Ezekiel
talks about in exchange for that heart of stone and sin that you
once had, when that's changed, you will now seek the face of
God because your heart will say this is the right thing to do.
I desire to please God. Do you have a desire to please
God in your life? Is that your chief desire to
please Him and to have his face shine upon your life as you seek
his face? That's what the psalmist is
doing here, revealing his desire to please God, seeking his face.
But not only that, he's surrendered to God
wholeheartedly. He's not halfway seeking his
face. You know what he's saying.
I don't seek his face one day a week.
I don't seek his face one day a week during a Lord's Day
service. I'm seeking him wholeheartedly.
This is 100% of the time. All the time I am seeking God's
approval in my life. I desire to please God, not just
when I'm in front of people. I desire to please God when I'm
all by myself, when no one's there watching, when no one's
monitoring what I'm doing. I desire to please God with my
whole being wholeheartedly. As a person who desires to
please God wholeheartedly is never going to accept the
lukewarm Christianity that we see in Laodicea.
You're never going to accept the lukewarm Christianity that we
see in America. You will desire to seek God with
your whole heart above all things.
You have that desire. You have that desire to please
God, to seek his face wholeheartedly.
He says. I've sought your face with all
my heart. He says be gracious to me
according to your promise. He knows this, that he's going
to fail in this, to agree a degree.
He's not going to seek God's face all the time, though.
That'd be his desire. And he's not going to
wholeheartedly surrender to him all the time, though that'd be
his desire. How many of you would testify?
Yeah, that's me. That's Paul, too.
He was torn. Romans Chapter 7.
Man, the things that I don't want to do, I don't do.
The things that I want to do, I can't get those things right.
I'm not saying, nor is the psalmist saying, nor is the word
of God saying today that you are striving for perfection.
Perfection is going to be taken care of at glorification.
What I am saying this is there will be a change and you will
have a desire to please God, but at the end.
Of that you have to realize that you are secured by God's grace.
The psalmist is saying this. The only way that I'm going to
continue to seek your face wholeheartedly is because of
your grace. That's why he says be gracious
to me according to your promise. Anyone here thankful for the
grace of God, the faithfulness in God and giving His grace over
and over and over again and again?
Well, how many times have we gone in our minds and in our
hearts back to scriptures that talk about grace?
And I don't have time to do that this morning, all the scriptures
that teach on grace. But how many times do we go back
to those scriptures that talk to us about grace and we find
security there? We become dependent upon grace
alone. If you are truly in Christ, yes,
you will have a desire to please God, but you will know this,
that the only way that I can fulfill that desire is to
completely trust in God's grace and God's grace alone to do that
work in me. Because if any of you here
today, myself included, have a desire to please God, God has
graciously put that desire in you.
Don't go patting yourself on the back and saying, oh, look at me,
I'm a person who desires to please God because there's none
of you in and of yourself who would desire to please God.
That is a gift. It is a gift of his grace.
See for what it is, just as the Psalmist did.
Desiring more grace right? Aren't you thankful for
scriptures that say where sin increased grace did that much
more increase in the grace that he has continually just poured
out into our lives. How about Ephesians 2 in a very
familiar section of Scripture right 28 and 9.
We all know this. Most of you have this memorized,
but he tells us there in Ephesians 28 and 9 and he tells
us this as Paul is teaching us teaching the Church of his day.
He tells us so that we can remember we have no.
Grounds to brag on anything that God has done in our life.
He says word is is by grace. You've been saved through faith
and this is not from yourself. It's what the gift of God.
Why it's because it's not works and why is it not works so that
no one can boast. Let's be honest with ourselves.
If we could do something good in and of ourselves, we'd take
credit for it and we'd boast. In fact, some of you have not
learned enough about God's grace to know, stop bragging on what
he's done in your life as if you've done it, you haven't done
it. So the psalmist, you're
understanding this, that it is a work of God by his grace, that
he even has a desire to please God.
But his life is marked with that desire.
And that desire, just as he is, is secured only by God's grace.
And so he's dependent upon God's grace alone, just as Paul was
telling the church at Ephesus to be dependent upon God's grace
alone so that you don't brag on yourself.
And the godly person will find themselves dependent upon God's
grace because they know that they can't depend upon
themselves. Isn't that true?
All the times in my life where I've tried to depend upon myself
only to see that I have failed miserably and I am in deep need
of God's grace. Psalm 20, verse 7, the psalmist
says some trust in Chariots and some in horses, but we trust in
the name of the Lord our God. We better keep our trust where
our trust belongs, right? Some, they trust in all of these
other things, but we need to trust in God and to trust in God
alone. And we trust in God and God
alone, knowing that we are secured by his grace alone.
So the psalmist, you're having a desire to please God, but not
forgetting that were it not for God's grace, he would have no
desire to please God. Again, not giving himself
accolade here, but pointing credit where credit is due,
giving God the glory that he rightfully deserves.
And so we see the psalmist even understanding that his desire to
please God comes from God. So if you have a desire to
please God, that's a great mark to have in your life, but know
where it comes from. So if you're in Christ, there
ought to be some element of this in your life, a desire to please
God and an intimate relationship with God.
Thirdly, we see this as the psalmist continues to unfold
this for us, we see a repentant heart.
Verse 59 verse says this. Through verse 60 it says I have
considered my ways and have turned my steps to your
statutes. I will hasten and not delay to
obey your commands. What does he first do?
He recognizes his, or maybe in your case today, her sinful
ways. The psalmist recognizing his own
sinful ways. I have considered my ways and
have turned my steps to your statue.
Now what did he say? He says this.
I've considered my ways, and my ways are directly opposed to
scripture. Isn't that the truth?
When we really get down to it, our natural sinful tendencies
are always in contradiction to Scripture, he says.
I've considered my ways and what I have found is that I always
fall short in and of myself. And now I've turned my steps to
your statutes. You see their repentance.
If you're going to have repentance, you must first
recognize your sinful ways. He recognized that in his own
ways, he is always rebelliously opposed to God and to His Word.
Romans in the 8th chapter, verse 7 tells us that the sinful mind
is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law,
nor can it do so in and of ourselves.
We are all in hostility toward God.
You have to recognize this. You have to own that.
Stop blaming everyone else. If there's going to be
repentance in your life, you must recognize that your ways
are contrary to God's ways, and the Word of God makes that so.
Very clear. Why is that important?
Because you won't repent until you realize there is a need for
repentance. You won't repent until you
realize how awful you are in comparison to the holiness of
God. The psalmist here experiencing
that exact same thing. I've considered my ways and I'm
pretty horrible. Can I just tell you this one?
Kirk Hall considers his ways apart from Christ.
I'm the chief unto sinners. I'm not pretty horrible.
I'm the worst Sinner that ever walked the face of the earth,
but I am thankful today that I have been rescued and I have
been saved and I have been turned from my ways and I have
been turned to God's word. That's what the psalmist is
saying. He's talking about repentance,
Repentance of sin, turning away from my sinful ways and turning
to the ways of God. Luke chapter 17, verse 3.
The Lord says unless you repent, he will all likewise perish.
That's for a church culture in today's time that forgets to
preach about repentance. Repentance is not just something
that occurs at salvation. Repentance is something that
ought to be the mark of our Christian lives, continually
turning from our ways. Considering them, Yeah, Kirk, if
you were going to handle that that way, that's you, man.
That's that's not what God would have you do.
In fact, that's opposite of God. Don't say that.
I have to consider my ways, and when I consider my ways, I see
this. I am not holy, but my God is
holy. And I look to His Word and I see
His Holiness unveiled and He shows me what it is that He
expects of His children. And now my attention is turned
to His statues and away from my own ways.
I have repented of my own ways and turned to the ways of the
Lord defined in Scripture. So we have to recognize our
sinful ways in order to repent. Yes, that is to repent of
salvation, but it goes on. It continues.
Thomas Watson said this. He said knowledge without
repentance will be a torchlight to light men to hell.
Pay attention to that. In the church where we promote
the Word of God, we teach the Word of God, and everything that
we do, we have a high view of God's Word.
But if you're not careful, what you can do inadvertently as you
can get so caught up in gaining knowledge from God's Word that
you miss out on the repentance part.
The fact that we have to consider our ways and we have to
turn from our ways and we have to turn to God and we know that
we turn to God in Christ and not just again at salvation.
This is a continual thing. We will repent all of our days.
It begins at salvation. We recognize who we really are.
We recognize who we are capable of because God shows us that and
He aligns us to that fact, that regeneration.
However, that someone is not going away.
That someone will be in your life until you are glorified.
And as you walk with Christ, what you will learn to do, you
will learn to hate. That old someone, so much I can
tell you this. If you don't hate that old
someone considering his ways or her ways, I would challenge you
to really examine your profession of faith to see if
it's true. I don't say that to cause you to
doubt. I'd say that because I care
about your soul. I am your friend.
And I do want you to know the truth that a true man of God, a
true woman of God. Who desires to please God?
Who has an intimate relationship with God?
As we've seen those things so far, they'll have a repentant
heart. That repentant heart's not going
to go away. No, you're going to blow it from
time to time, but you know what you're going to do when you blow
it? Repent and confess your sin and
to know what first, John 19 says that if we confess our sin is
faithful and just, to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness. You're going to make that wrong,
right? Not only with the Lord but also
with others. You're going to constantly live
in a state of repenting from your old ways.
He says I've considered my ways and I've turned my steps to your
statutes. He said they're opposite of your
ways and I'm turning to you. He recognizes his sinful ways,
and then he repents of his sin. But then he refocuses on walking
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He says I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.
Now what he's not doing, he's not putting it off to a better
time, right? For all of you who have that
sin, that's your little pet sin that you're just putting off
repentance until a more convenient time.
What do you think that you're going to maybe not like it as
much? You're only going to grow to
like it more. It's only going to consume you.
Please understand what sin does. Sin does not decrease it grow,
so stop playing with it. That's a psalmist here.
You're saying I considered my ways and I know my ways are not
right in accordance with your word.
So I'm turning to your word and I'm seeing your way and then.
Seeing your way, I am urgently and intentionally moving toward
obedience. Moving toward repentance, look
at the terms that he uses. I will hasten.
This is not up for discussion. He has seen his ways.
He has seen the ways of God as revealed in Scripture.
And he says I have to turn from me and I have to turn to you in
obedience to you and I have to turn now.
I will not hasten and I will not delay.
I'm going to begin to obey you. Now listen to me professing
Christian in the room who has that little pet sin that I'm
talking about before you get all comfortable.
I'm not going to meddle. I'm not going to ask you what it
is. You know what it is.
I don't have to tell you what it is.
If you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit has already told you what
it is and you just keep ignoring him.
Stop ignoring him. Don't hasten to repent today.
Don't delay. There's a reason that the
psalmist put this in here so that we can have it, because
some of you need to repent today.
Some of you need to turn and obey the Lord today, even as
believers stop holding on to that thing that.
Christ died to free you from let it go and trust that God is
faithful to do all that He has promised him to.
Guard to it. Refocus on God's Word in
obedience to God's Word which you have been crafted and born
again to do. So we see the third
distinguishing mark of the godly life here today is is
repentance. True repentance will mark our
lives, the entirety of our lives.
You don't get to take the day off because when you take the
day off, you know what your ways are going to lead you into sin.
There's been many a man and many a woman who took the day off and
it cost them everything. Continually repent when that
first sinful thought from your old sinful ways comes into your
mind. Mortify and kill that thing
immediately. Immediately.
Don't play around with it because as James describes to
us, that lust, what is it going to do?
It's going to concede. It's going to give birth to sin.
So don't play around with it if you're playing around with sin,
I remind you here in Christ, confess that sin, He's faithful
and justice forgive you that sin and cleanse you from all
unrighteousness. Leave here today without that
thing hanging around your neck weighting you down.
Lay aside every weight and sin that so easily entangles you,
just as the apostle Paul says. So we see there repentant heart.
Fourthly, we see this as we continue on the 4th
distinguishing mark of a godly life.
Is this a devotion to God's Word?
61 He says this, though the wicked bind me with ropes.
I will not forget your law. At midnight I rise to give you
thanks for your righteous laws. What does the psalmist saying
here? He's saying I have a great
devotion to God's Word. In fact, it's so great that I'm
going to be devoted to God's Word despite any opposition
whatever. Comes my way.
Even though the wicked bind me up with ropes, I'm not going to
forget your law when they when they take me and they torture me
and they tell me not to remember the statutes and the precepts
and the commands of God's Word. I'm going to continue to focus
on God's Word. I'm going to continue to learn
God's Word. I'm going to continue to glean.
From God's Word, he says despite any opposition, no matter what
the wicked would do to try to hinder me in learning the Word
of God, I am going to stay focused on the Word of God.
People have asked me from time to time.
Kirk, what would you do if it became illegal in our country to
preach the Bible? And I don't take very long in
answering this. I'd go to jail.
You'd go to jail. And then what would you?
I'd start a prison ministry and I would preach the word of God
in jail. They said what if they took your
Bible away? It lives in me.
I have hidden his word in my heart.
That's why it's so important that we study the word of God,
because what if we do get in that situation where they do
take this away from us, Will. We be like the psalmist and say
even though the wicked bind me with ropes in all opposition,
come against me. I'm not going to forget your
law. It's going to come forth out of
my lips because it is inside of me and it is going to get out.
He had a devotion to God's word despite any opposition, but not
only that, he had a devotion to God's word denying
inopportunity. I want you to pay attention to
this because we could read right over this and not really even
give a second thought to it. He says at midnight I rise to
give you thanks for your righteous laws.
He is denying any inopportunities.
He's saying there is no. Inopportune time to praise God
for his word, to study God's word, to to glorify God, to
worship God. He's saying this at midnight.
Even at midnight, I'm not going to think it's an inconvenience
to get up and to praise you for your Word.
He didn't just lay there in the bed, He got up.
He was stirred by the Spirit, and he was stirred by the Spirit
to get into the Word so that he could then praise God properly.
But we would all call that if we looked at it midnight.
That's pretty inconvenient. That sure isn't inopportune
time. I know we can do it when it's
convenient, can't we? We open the church every Sunday
on the Lord's Day at 9:00 and 11:00.
Make it very convenient. You come in, He worship the Lord
and then you leave some of you from sincere hearts, some of you
because you just want to be seen.
Do we know that I don't think for a second that you're fooling
God about that and you know what I'm talking about right at
election time and the politicians come in right and
they pretend they want to be members of the church just so
they can get the votes of the church people and then they're
out the door just as quickly. They're just wanting to be seen
and some people they come into God's house to don't want to be
seen and there is no real devotion to God's word not the
psalmist here. The psalmist refused to embrace
that there is ever a convenient. Are an inconvenient time to
fellowship with the Lord and to meditate on his word he says at
midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws.
In fact, Mark chapter 1 we see the Lord exemplifying this in
his life. Verse 35 it says very early in
the morning while it was still dark.
Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place
where he prayed. Even the Lord displaying this in
his life, not afraid, right? To wake up in the middle of the
night to be inconvenienced, but to go off and to pray and to
meditate on the things of God. Acts Chapter 16.
We know the story verse 25 about midnight.
Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.
Why weren't these guys asleep? Seems like such an inopportune
time. But Scripture lets us know this
is at midnight, right? They had nowhere to go.
Why not sleep? No, instead they said, you know
what? Let's praise the Lord.
Let's praise the Lord even when it's inconvenient for us.
Let's praise the Lord even though everyone else around here
would think it was an inopportune time.
Don't you know that the jailer thought it was an inopportune
time? Like would these Christians
please shut up until the door flew open, until he was about to
take his own life? Until we asked them what must I
do to be saved? They went and they told him and
his whole household, and they were saved and baptized that
night. That's what happens when we
learn to praise God in inopportune times.
We learned to lean on the Word of God in inopportune times.
I can't tell you how many times in the middle of the night I've
been awakened from a dead sleep with one of you on my mind.
I'm not saying this to brag. I haven't.
I won't tell you who it is or what it was about, but to spend
the next hours praying for you and seeking God on your behalf,
carrying whatever burden it is that you're carrying to the
throne of grace. Why?
Because you don't inconvenience me.
There is no inconvenience. Time to petition the throne of
God. There is no inconvenience time
to focus on him, to meditate on him, to remember what his word
says, and to praise Him for the power that he does bestow.
At midnight, he says, I'll rise. I'll give you thanks for your
righteous honor. Now, I know all the key life
members here today were up at midnight last night praying for
me and the sermon this morning. I do appreciate that.
Sorry to inconvenience you so much.
Nobody sheds light on this, doesn't he?
He sheds light on the secret worship that ought to be taking
place in our life. And why was it taking place in
his life? Because he understood something
that we don't quite understand. Christians need to be concerned
with communion, not convenience communion.
Right, Those of you who are looking at your watch already,
when are we going to get out of here?
Just commune with the Lord. Just keep hearing His word.
Just keep fellowshipping with Him.
Keep fellowshipping with the believers that He's brought to
this place. We don't have to worry about
those things. Let's not be inconvenienced by
those things. Let's just enjoy communion that
we have that has been purchased for us by the precious blood of
Jesus Christ. And you know what?
If He wakes you up in the middle of the night to commune with
you, be thankful. Because before Christ, you were
an enemy of God. You were cut off from Him.
You could not commune with him. Now He desires.
That you commune with him, that you petition on behalf of the
Saints, you petition on behalf of your family.
Well, I remember when our kids were small, I would wake in the
middle of the night and just go into their room without them
even knowing it, without anybody else even knowing it.
Just in those secret times and just to to place my hand on
their sweet little forehead. They were real sweet when they
were asleep. And to pray for them, to pray
for their soul, to pray for their life, to pray for their
future spouses that would have to deal with them.
It's in those secret times that we really see what we really
are. Matthew Henry said it like this.
He said public worship will not excuse us from secret worship.
You know what's interesting about the psalmist here?
No one was going to see him at midnight.
He wasn't concerned with trying to impress people with his
spirituality. He was just simply awake in the
middle of the night giving thanks to the Lord for his
righteous loss for His word. Don't miss out on the joy of
that secret worship. I sometimes walk through this
auditorium in the middle of the week.
It's such a blessing to me because I'll see our pastoral
staff and I hate it when I interrupt one of them that's
here on the altar, praying just alone, not trying to be seen,
not working for any accolades, Pats on the back.
They'll have these cards out of this box, praying for lost
people that they don't even know.
And I rejoice that they're OK with secret worship.
They're OK with nobody else seeing what they're doing and
knowing that God sees all of it and he honors that.
So don't miss out on that. Don't miss out on that type of
worship, devotion to God's Word that you'll get up even in the
middle of the night and praise Him for how wonderful it is.
Thank Him for all of the things that he has taught you in the
Scriptures. I can tell you this, if you've
read the Scripture in any amount of time, you could spend every
midnight that you have until you pass from this earth thanking
him for all the things that we see in Scripture.
Never, never run out of things to thank Him for.
Psalmist said at midnight, I'm doing it.
I'm praising him. What a devotion to God and to
his Word that'll mark our lives if we're truly in Christ.
No one, no, no one will probably ever know that but you.
But does that mark your life? Do you have a devotion to God's
word despite any opposition denying inopportunity and the
idea that it would ever inconvenience you to get up in
the middle of the night to praise Him?
And are you desperate to worship God?
That's what I want to know in the church.
Where is the desperation to worship God?
See, in the American church we have no idea about this because
they're not people who are going to persecute us and take our
lives. We don't have to walk through 6
foot of snow barefooted to get to a church.
We drive our cars here, your air conditioner their air
conditioned and we come out and we walk a few feet in the heat.
We get in an air conditioned building.
We never really have to suffer a whole lot as far as our service
to the Lord and our worship. Wouldn't it be awesome if we
would be desperate for that? Desperate.
We wake up every morning and we're excited with the sunrise
that we get to worship. We get to praise the Lord again.
We get to study His Word. We get to praise Him for what we
see in His Word. That's where the psalmist is.
What insight for us to glean from.
I'll lay that next to your life and see what do I measure up in
this? And here's the thing you you
might realize, you know what, I don't do that all the time, but
there have been those times that is there some element of that in
your life? And you're not afraid to be
inconvenienced, to give God the glory that he's due.
What would happen in the church if we would get desperate and
not care about any inconvenience, but just give God
the glory that he's due? So we see a devotion here to God
in his word. Fifthly, we see this, This is a
very interesting 1. He sends 63.
He says I, I am a friend to all who fear you, to all who follow
your precepts. What he's saying here, he's
saying that communion with God's people will also fifthly mark
those who are living a godly life.
He is agreeing that God's people ought to get along, they ought
to be friends, they ought to fellowship, they ought to
commune with one another. Did you know that we get to
commune with other believers? Why?
Because we get to commune with the Father through Jesus Christ.
And because we get to commune with the Father through the Lord
Jesus Christ, we also get the benefit of communing with the
Saints. This is a privilege and this is
a privilege that comes through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
It's almost understanding what communing with God's people is
all about. I am a friend to all who fear
you. I love when I meet brothers and
sisters in Christ that I've never met before.
You know what I'm talking about. You've met those people when one
conversation you can tell they're a believer and they know
you're a believer and you're both sitting there and one of
these man, should I ask and the other one's going, no, I'm going
to ask and finally someone has the nerve to ask.
And if you're at the hibachi, my wife saying they don't want to
talk to you. That's why I don't even have
hibachis because I want to know if everybody at that little
square rectangle table, I don't know if they're believers by the
time we're done eating that horrible steak that they charge
you way too much for. But you get to that point.
You're like, man, man, this, this, this person's speaking
with grace and they're speaking with kindness and they're
speaking with love and, and you get to that point.
Are you a believer? Yes, we are.
And then you have that bond immediately.
You are family members united, even though you've never met.
You go man, I love and I am a friend to the people who fear
the Lord. I love the communion of the
Saints. People ask me on this earth,
what do you love most? I say Christ.
What about second his church? You say you don't love, You
don't love your wife second, No, I don't.
I love his. I love his church.
Second, my wife's a part of his church.
I couldn't love her the way that I love her if she wasn't a St.
So I love his church. I love fellowshipping with
believers. I love for my family to get the
fellowship with believers because I think a lot of times
we get all. That out of whack.
I love Christ and I love my family and I love the church.
No, here's the thing, I love Christ.
I love his people and my family. They're his people.
And so they are my friends and they are my unit.
Not just those ones that live in my household, but all the other
Saints throughout all the ages. Those are my friends, the
psalmist says. I love and I am a friend to all
of them. He's embracing God's people.
Haven't you met those people? They don't want to embrace God's
people, right? They say this, Well, I can
worship in my recliner. No, you can't.
You can't fellowship and commune with other believers in your
recliner. Well, I don't really want to get
dressed, so I'll just watch on Facebook.
If you're watching on Facebook right now, stop being lazy.
Get dressed next week and come commune with real believers.
It's that simple. I've had people and it's been a
joy. They they said maybe we watched
Facebook for a year and a half before we ever came.
What were you waiting on? Most of them, if they're honest,
they say we're just being lazy and decided COVID made so many
believers just lazy or professing believers.
But real believers, you know what they're going to want?
They're going to want to embrace God's people.
They're going to want to run across the room when they see a
believer that they hadn't seen in a long time.
They're going to want to wrap their arms around them, hug
their neck, shake their hand, tell them how glad they are to
see them. You know this is important.
Why is it important? Because John says it's
important. John's first epistle, chapter 3,
he says we know that we've passed from death to life
because we love the brethren, because we love the Saints.
Psalm is here embracing God's people.
We also see an element of enjoying Godspeed.
We said, they're my friends. Don't we enjoy our friends,
right? None of you enjoy your enemies.
I think I'm going to call my worst enemy up and see if we can
hang out. No, he says that they're his
friends. He enjoys the fellowship.
Shouldn't we enjoy the fellowship of believers?
Right. I know some of you came in here
today kicking and screaming, and I'll tell you this, you have a
spiritual problem. I pray that God solves that
problem for you today. Your wife made you calm and you
really didn't want to, but you made a deal.
If I go to church with her, she'll let me go fishing this
afternoon. Stop making deals.
Come to Christ. And love to commune with God's
people. It's that simple.
Because a true believer will love to commune with God's
people they they will enjoy the time spent together and we know
what Hebrews teaches us there in Hebrews chapter chapter 10 verse
25, he says let us not give up meeting together a summer in the
habit of doing. But let us encourage one another
and all the more as you see the day approaching.
Now, I know the person who's going to jump up and say that's
not necessarily talking about the church.
You're right. It's not just talking about the
church and the Lord's Day services.
It's talking about doing life together as believers beyond the
church. Can I just help all of you out?
If your closest friends are the world, you have spiritual
issues. Your closest friends ought to be
believers. So you have the common bond of
Christ. You don't have anything in
common with the world anymore. And if you do have something in
common with the world anymore, a, you're not saved, or B, you
need to repent of whatever it is that you have in common with the
world. I didn't say that.
It's God's word that says for us to come out and be separate.
From the world you love, the communion that you have with
God's people, embracing God's people, enjoying God's people.
How about encouraging God's people there in Hebrews chapter
10. That's why he sparks the whole
conversation about not forsaking.
The assembly of the Saints, he says, so that you can spur one
another along as the day is approaching.
What day? The day of the Lord?
His return. Do you love God's people in such
a way that you just want to encourage them?
You want to encourage this, Pastor?
How many of you would say, Pastor, I want to encourage you?
Raise your hand. How many of you would say I
blatantly want to discourage you, Pastor?
You want to encourage me? Be faithful to the Lord.
And you don't have to jump
through hoops. You don't have to go out of your
way to to try to make me feel special.
You don't have to. You don't even have to even say
hi to me. No, I like it.
I am a human. I like to be friends with those
who fear the Lord. Did you know that pastors can
have friends? I I was raised up with a group
of pastors that tell you silly things like this.
Well, you can't really be friends with with your
congregation. I looked at Jesus life.
I said that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Jesus was friends with his followers and he laid down his
life for his friends. That's exactly what he said.
And you know what I determined then you know what, I'm going to
be friends with the congregations that the Lord has
me to pastor over and I'll lay my life down for him just as the
Lord did. If need be, some of you looking
at me say volley Gray in your hair.
It won't be long, but community with God's people, what an
encouraging thing. And we get to come together and
encourage one another. You're an encouragement to me
every time when we come together.
I don't care if it's here on the Lord's Day.
I don't care if it's on a Wednesday night.
I don't care if it's something for some church fellowship.
I don't care. I get invited to birthday
parties, right? And everybody's always like, I'm
so sorry. I know you get invited to so
many birthday parties. I love it.
I love to see the Saints operating and working as a It's
family. It doesn't bother me one bit.
I tell people all the time, if I can make it, I'll make it.
If I can't, I just won't. I won't.
I can't apologize. I mean, I'll apologize for it,
but there's nothing to do about it.
But I love to commune with the Saints.
I love to just sit around and talk to believers and to listen
to believers. Why?
Because there's. Something inside of me that says
that's right. There's something about that,
that love that we have for one another because of the love that
Christ has had for us. The psalmist gets that.
He says I'm a friend to all who fear you, to all who follow your
precepts, those who fear you and who follow your word.
Those are my people. If you fear him and you follow
his words, you're my people and I'm your people.
It's high time we value that communion that we have with
God's people, not not take it for granted any longer.
Church, you don't understand how blessed you have been to be able
to be a part of a fellowship. That is the way that this
fellowship really is, that God has blessed by His hand and His
hand alone. I see it all the time.
I see how things just organically happen.
I see people become best friends not because they had something
in common from a worldly vantage point.
But because of Christ and I see mothers ministering to other
mothers, I'm thankful. I'm thankful for all the young
mothers in in this church who when my daughter had her first
baby, they just surrounded her and they minister.
She had all these questions right about stuff that I.
Don't even want to know about, right?
And to see that the Saints would then pour into one another.
I love to see on Thursday nights when the men join together for
Bible study. And you can tell when somebody's
going through something. And I love to see four or five
other men split their arm around.
And just take them over to the side and encourage them and to
pray for them and to lift them up and to not just do it that
one time, but to continue to do that over and over and over
again. I am a friend to all who fear
the Lord, to all who follow his precepts.
That's what the psalmist is saying here.
He's valuing the communion that we have with God's people.
He value that. He value after you begrudgingly
come to church again, no, a true believer wants to be with God's
people and if you don't want to be with God's people, I would
implore you today examine your heart and see if you were truly
of the faith because a true believer will have a desire to
be with God's people. Lastly, we see this and I'll do
my best to hurry. Verse 64 says the earth is
filled with your love. O Lord, teach me your decrees.
The last thing that we see that the psalmist is going to teach
us this morning in, in, in reference to the distinguishing
marks of a godly life is this. As someone who has the mark of a
biblical understanding of God's loving kindness, I say that
because we're so confused about God's love in our church
culture. So I'm going to make some things
very clear for some people today, and I'll just go ahead
and tell you that some of this is going to make some of you
uncomfortable, but hear me out and hear the word of God out.
More importantly, the psalmist here says the earth is filled
with your love. Now some of your Bibles says
mercy instead of love. Some of your Bibles says love
like mine, and then some of you have a translation that might
say loving kindness. What we're talking about is
God's love and his mercy put together and then poured out
into the world. And so either way that you
define that, it's right, the earth is filled with your mercy.
The earth is filled with your love.
The earth is filled with your loving kindness.
That is simply his love and action in the form of kindness
and mercy. The psalmist is looking at this
and he's analyzing this. The psalmist understood God's
love and he wanted others to understand God's love.
Paul prayed the same way. Remember in Ephesians chapter 3
when Paul prayed for the the believers there at Ephesus and
he said in verse 17, he says so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being
rooted and established in love, may have power together with all
the Saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses
knowledge that you may be. Filled to the measure of all the
fullness of God. So, so Paul.
They're wanting the church to to know and to grow in their love
and our understanding of God's love for them.
The Psalm is here wanting the same thing.
The earth is filled with your love.
He's drawing attention to the fact that the earth is filled
with God's love. What does that mean?
Does that mean when you walk through this earth, little
hearts, you're floating around? No, that's not what that means.
And we see God's love in many fashions in the.
Earth as he is describing for us.
And the first one is this. You have to consider God's
general and His common love for mankind, OK?
This is His benevolent love. The fact that He has not, as we
saw in Lamentations chapter 3, consumed all of mankind when we
definitely deserve it. His loving kindness has not
allowed Him to do that. And I am thankful for that.
I'm thankful that His loving kindness secured me until I
could hear the gospel and until I could be brought into faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're talking about God's
general and common love first because we have to make a
distinction that goodness toward all mankind.
Did you notice the lost man woke up today and he took his?
First breath Because God has a benevolent concern for him, He
allowed him to take that first breath.
He allows him to live. He allows him to have a family.
He allows allows him to have a job.
Right, so, so that the Sinner can never say anything as stupid
as God didn't love me. Yes, He did.
He loved you with that general basic love that He has for all
humanity. However, I want you to see
beyond that. We can see God's general and
common love for everyone. I want to see God's gracious and
effectual love, because God's gracious and effectual love is
different. This is the deeper love that He
has for His own. And let me just make this clear,
this love is only found in Christ.
You're not going to find it anywhere else.
If you are not in Christ, you have not experienced this.
Love. And when you?
Experience this love. It will usher you into Christ.
This is His salvific love. This is His effectual love
producing the effect that He. Desires for it to produce again
found only in Christ. How do I know it's found only in
Christ? Because it's only addressed to
Christians in scripture. In fact, Romans chapter 5 verse
8 Romans 5/8. We know it, it says, but God
demonstrates his own love for us in this now US.
It's very important. I learned this in English class
at a very young age. When I come to a pronoun, I have
to find what an antecedent and I have to find that antecedent
because it's going to tell me what US really means.
Now the antecedent of this but God demonstrates his own love
for us in this the antecedent if you will go back and you will
look at the context of Romans chapter 5.
It is those who have faith in Christ.
It is the believer that he is addressing and he said, but God
demonstrates His own love for us in this.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Who are the US's? They are those that God
sovereignly chose before the foundations of the earth for
Christ to die for. I do not make an apology for
that. I know it's going to torque some
of your theology, but I will not apologize to you for what God
has already proclaimed and what has happened here.
As we look at this, we have in our own human minds equated
God's salvific love with His general love.
Don't make that error. Don't make that error because
God loves his children with a special and a unique love.
I know some of you in our culture, you're going to say,
what do you mean his children? We're all just his children.
No, we are not. Only those who have been
purchased through the precious blood of Jesus Christ are his
children. They are the only ones who have
been loved with that kind of salvific love.
So we look at Ephesians chapter 2 and looking at that love a
little deeper. He says this, but because of his
great love for us, again, who are the US's here?
God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.
Only those who are now alive, reborn in Christ are the US's
that he's talking about. So God, because of his great
love for the believer, God who is rich in mercy, made the
believer alive with Christ even when we were dead in
transgressions. It is my grace.
You have been saved. We know this to be true, but we
get confused about the love part of it.
And I know what many of you do you get in your fields right
now. Some of you already in your
fields. Let me help you if you.
Think that God loves everyone the same?
I'll ask you the simple question.
Do you love the babies in the nursery like you love your own
kids? If you do, when church dismisses
in a few minutes, you go pick them up and you take them home
with you. Even the crying ones, the ones
that need their diapers change, you get all of them.
You take them home because because you think it's OK for
you to love your children with a greater love and to love the
other children in the world with a lesser love, but yet you don't
give that same privilege to God Almighty.
Not only do I take note with that, Scripture takes note with
that. And so when we look at this, we
have to understand God's gracious and effectual love.
It's important that we get this. This is again his special saving
or what we call in theological circles, salvific love.
First John 3 verse one, back to first John there in chapter 3,
he says this. How great is the love the Father
has lavished on us? Who?
That we should be called the children of God.
How great is the love that He's lavished on the children of God?
You know what that means? He hasn't lavished the same love
on those unrepentant people who are not children of God.
That doesn't mean that He won't. In time, I pray that He will.
I'm not in charge of that, but what great love he has lavished
on me that I should be called a child of God.
And he says that is what you are.
That is definite. That's what I am and I am that
because he has lavished this specific and salvific love upon
me. He says the reason the world
does not know us. It is that it did not know him.
See the distinction there? He's distinguishing from the
world and the believer. The reason the world does not
know us is because the world does not know him.
And if the world does not know him, he has not lavished that
same kind of love that he has lavished on us.
He says this is important, that we understand this.
This is essential that you understand this because many
Christians have never really understood the blessing of
salvific love. You think that He's always loved
you just like He loves everyone else.
Isn't that the lie that everyone tells?
God loves us all the same? That's sad.
If He loves us all the same, that some of some people that he
loves all the same are going to spend an eternity in hell.
That's not the God of Scripture. Did you know this?
One day for the lost person who remains in their sin, God's
common love will be removed, and they will face the fury and the
full fury of his wrath and indignation for hell for all
eternity. There will be no love in hell,
not even the common love that has allowed you to live to this
point where you can hear the truth and believe in Christ and
have His love lavished upon you. Not even that common love, but
only God's indignation and judgment of sin.
So we see the psalmist understanding this.
The earth is filled with your love.
Oh Lord, teach me your decrees. Teach me all about your love.
This is specifically what he's talking about.
Teach me more about your love. God's general love, God's
salvific love is gracious and effectual love that's found only
in Christ. That's special, that saving
love. Oh, teach me more about your
guaranteeing love. Aren't you thankful that as
believers we have that love that guarantees?
This is, I told you a second ago, his love is going to be
removed from the unbeliever. But did you know this?
We as believers, we have some promises, don't we, that are
very important. Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter
8 says, For I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither
angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither height nor death, nor anything else in all
creation will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What a promise from the Word of God that if we have received
that salvific love, if it has been lavished upon us, it'll
never be taken from us. Well, with that general love
that the lost man received every single day will one day be taken
from him. For the believer, we have the
security of understanding that the love that we have been loved
with is final and that love guarantees us many things.
First, John 4 says this, this, this is love.
Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as
an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
It it assures us that God truly has atoned for our sin.
There will never be a sin held to our charge.
If we have been loved with that salvific love, it'll never be
taken away. That means we will forever be
cleaned and we will be granted with and gifted with eternal
life in the presence of God forever because of the atoning
work of Jesus Christ. I don't know that makes some
people upset. They think in their mind,
because they haven't reconciled it with the scriptures, that
Jesus died for everyone. Jesus died for those who he came
to save, all who the Father right has given me.
Will come. Jesus came for a specific group
of people that the Father had given unto him.
And even Jesus in a conversation said this.
He said, I laid down my life for my sheep.
He laid down his life for the sheep.
Who are the sheep? Those who they are, those who
God has lavished his love upon. Those who God in eternity past
chose to save. Well, listen, I don't teach you
these things so we can get into a doctrinal debate.
You can A believe the Scriptures or B refuse to believe the
Scriptures. But what I pray is this.
I pray that you gain a biblical understanding of God and His
loving kindness toward all. Yes, He has loving kindness in
the form of general love to the unredeemed Sinner, but he has
such a greater love and a greater loving kindness and
mercy that he has bestowed upon the Saints.
Why not so that we can puff our chests out and be arrogant?
No, so we can fall on her face and say, God, why would you ever
lavish your love upon a Sinner like me and stay there in
humility for a while and just bask in that love?
What do you have a biblical understanding of God's loving
kindness? Do you know the guarantees that
we have, if we're truly in that salvific love, guaranteeing that
salvation for us, just as Jude says this?
He says in 21 of Jude's short epistle, it says keep yourselves
in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ to bring you to eternal life.
Oh, what a guarantee to bring. It's coming, the guarantee of
eternal life. And why do we have the guarantee
of eternal life? Because we are wrapped in God's
love, we are abiding there, not because of anything that we
could ever do or ever have done, but because He so chose to love
us. And that ought to bring you to
your knees in adoration and praise for Him.
So we wrap it up this morning. We have seen the six
distinguishing marks or characteristics of a godly life,
and I want to take this opportunity to challenge you.
Lay your life next to that. Lay your not life next to that
and see where you are. See how you measure up to a
godly life as defined by Scripture.
Do you profess Christ? Do you bear these marks to some
degree in your life? Because you will.
Now for those of you who aren't in Christ, of course your life
doesn't bear any of these marks. Your life can't bear any of
these marks. No fruit produced by the Spirit
is going to be seen in you at all unless you first repent and
turn to Christ as Lord and Savior.
And my prayer for you today is that He would graciously allow
you to do that, that He would by His mercy today, His loving
kindness, open your eyes to see that you need a Savior, and that
that Savior is Christ who died on the cross.
And He died in your place to wash you and to forgive you of
your sin. That He would make that ever so
clear to you that you couldn't do anything but cry out in
desperation for Him to save you. And I promise you this, for
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
When He provokes you to cry out to Him, that is a guarantee that
He will save you. Cry out to Him and be saved
today. May God draw you out of the
darkness of your sin, may you draw you out of the wickedness
of your own ways and your own nature.
And may He lavish His mercy and His loving kindness upon you
today, giving you the salvation His only begotten Son came to
earn for you. Let's pray together, Father, in
the name of Jesus, we thank You for Your Word.
You know how we could spend hours upon hours upon endless
hours looking at the things that we have discussed today.
So God, I pray that you use the limited time that we have had,
that you use it to do only the things that you intend to do
with it. Lord, that this service today
will bear fruit for you and for your glory.
God, I ask that you would reconcile sinners unto yourself,
giving them grace and mercy through Christ.
Lord, I ask that you would encourage believers today to
examine their lives and see if they display these Marks and or
that your spirit would give them a desire to even more so see
these things in their lives. God, we ask all these things so
that you would be glorified, so your name would be praised while
we were here on this earth. We long for the day that we see
you face to face because of Christ and we give you all the
praise for what you're going to do in Jesus name, Amen.
You have been listening to Key Life Fellowships Pulpit Ministry
podcast. Join us each week for more
teaching from God's Word. If you would like to speak with
one of our pastors, please visit us on the web at
keylifefellow-ship.com. Thank you again for joining us
today.