Sunday Sermon host delves into Psalm 19, contrasting natural revelation's condemnation with special revelation's salvation through Christ. He typologically links Numbers 35's cities of refuge to Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice, arguing that experiencing the law's conviction is essential for appreciating gospel grace. Rejecting both prosperity and poverty gospels, he asserts God's perfect law aligns with His character, promising that faithful obedience yields wisdom, temporal prosperity in free nations, and eternal reward, while framing sin as a dangerous deviation from reality requiring Christ's forgiveness. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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God Speaks Through Nature00:13:18
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We're continuing in the Psalter, our sermon series through the Psalms.
We've preached at this point through Psalm chapter 1, Psalm chapter 2, Psalm chapter 8, Psalm chapter 16.
And now we've spent the last couple weeks in Psalm chapter 19.
This is our third week in Psalm chapter 19.
We spent one week, one Lord's day, on Psalm chapter 19, verses 1 through 6, where we saw God revealing His glory as judgment to the wicked for those who are not in Christ and as joy to the righteous for those who have been saved by grace through faith in Christ.
And God revealing this glory perceived as judgment by the wicked and joy by the righteous.
And the avenue, the agency, the means by which God reveals His glory in Psalm 19, verses 1 through 6, is natural revelation, general revelation, by what He has made.
And more particularly, what David emphasizes in God's earthly creation, His physical creation that reveals His glory, is the sky.
David is speaking of the heavens, but he is speaking of the physical heavens, not spiritual, but physical heavens.
He's speaking of the sky and all that is above, all that can be seen in the sky above, the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds.
The rain, the lightning, the thunder, all of these things.
David says in Psalm 19, 1 through 6, that God speaks.
He is constantly speaking.
And he's not just speaking, but he's constantly speaking, and not just to one group of people in one place.
But God is speaking to all men, both believer and unbeliever alike, in natural revelation.
He's speaking to all people in all places at all times.
God is speaking, God is preaching, we could even say, through God.
What he has made by natural or general revelation, namely more specifically the sky.
But the problem is, as we see in Romans chapter 1, natural revelation is not sufficient.
It is preaching, it is God speaking, as it were.
It's God's communication, not just to his people, but all people, but it is not sufficient for salvation.
Natural revelation, the revelation of God's glory through what he has made, is only sufficient to condemn.
Not to redeem, not to save.
Romans chapter 1 says this Paul says that what can be known about God is clearly seen, it's clearly perceived, not just displayed by God, not just shown or revealed, but it's interpreted, it's received, it's perceived by man, not just Christian men, but believers and unbelievers alike.
But Paul highlights two specific characteristics or qualities of God.
So it's not exhaustive.
He doesn't say, All that can be known about God is seen in natural revelation, but he highlights God's eternal power and divine nature.
What natural revelation, what God has made, what it communicates about God, this is God truly speaking, and not just to his people, but all people in all times, in all places.
But the question is, what is God saying about himself?
And the reality is, God is saying something, but it's limited.
What God is saying is, I exist, I am creator, I am God, I am forever.
To be blessed, I'm worthy of your worship and your adoration.
I'm the only true God worthy of praise.
I'm holy, I'm divine, I am eternally powerful.
But what is not being said through natural revelation by the skies and the sun and the moon and the stars is that I have a son named Jesus Christ who came and lived a perfect life and died as a substitute for your sin and rose bodily on the third day and has ascended to my right hand.
See, for salvation, you must hear, not just see, not just God speaking through what is seen, natural revelation, but God speaking of the gospel by what is heard, namely special revelation.
So, we have natural revelation that can be seen, that communicates one thing about God, namely his existence, his power, his worth, his divinity.
And all this is sufficient, really, to only do one thing to strip all men of any excuse.
You, O man, therefore, are without excuse, is what Romans 1 says.
So, God speaks through natural revelation in a way that we can see.
And that particular sermon, if you will, the sermon that God speaks, By sight, by what he has made in natural revelation, is a sermon of condemnation.
It's a sermon of judgment.
And it strips all people of any excuse so that no one can stand before God on that final day and claim to be innocent by virtue of ignorance.
Because no one is ignorant.
Every man knows that there is a God in heaven and that he is worthy of our worship, and we have all failed to do so.
So that's natural revelation.
That's Psalm 19, verses 1 through 6.
And we use a lot of Romans 1 in order to exegete that scripture, right?
We want.
Charles Spurgeon, no, Martin Luther, I believe, he said that the best interpreting tool of Scripture is, you guys probably know it?
Scripture.
That's right.
Best way to interpret Scripture is Scripture.
So, Psalm 19, 1 through 6, natural revelation, the whole portion is about how God speaks about Himself by what He has made.
Well, the best way to understand that is to go to another place that talks about God speaking by what He has made in more depth, namely Romans 1.
So, that's what we did.
Now, what we're doing and finishing Psalm 19, three weeks, right?
First week, First six verses, God speaking through natural revelation, revealing his glory as joy to the righteous, judgment to the wicked, through natural revelation, what we can see, what God has made.
Now, what we're doing in Psalm 19, 7 through 14, the remainder of the chapter is we're seeing God again speaking, but this time not in a way that we see in natural revelation what he has made, but in a way that we hear through special revelation what he has said.
I'll say that again.
So, natural revelation, it's God speaking about himself.
By what he has made and what we can see.
In special revelation, it's God again speaking about himself, not by what he has made, but by what he has said and what we hear.
So, Romans 10 is a great scripture to use to exegete the second half of Psalm 19.
So, the first half of Psalm 19 really corresponds, we could cross reference to Romans 1, what Paul says about natural revelation.
The second half of Psalm 19, verses 7 through 14, really cross references well, not with Romans 1, but with Romans 10.
Namely, verse 14 and the corresponding verses after that, that says, What does it say?
It says, That how will they believe unless they hear?
Not see, but hear, because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
We do not walk by sight, but rather we walk by faith, and faith in special revelation, in the gospel, is what God has communicated by his word, not by his deeds, not by what he has made.
So God communicates his eternal power and his divine revelation.
His eternal power and his divinity, his divine nature, by what he has made that we perceive by sight.
But God communicates the gospel of his son Jesus Christ by what he says and what we perceive by hearing.
And faith in the gospel, saving faith, comes by hearing.
Because what we need to receive is special revelation.
The gospel doesn't belong to natural revelation, it belongs to special revelation.
And the means, the medium of special revelation, if you will, is not God's doing in a way.
I mean, obviously, there is the work of Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection.
But it's not what God has made and can be seen.
It's what God has said and can be heard.
And so that's Psalm 19, verses 7 through 14.
And what we did last week, we took this even, the second half of Psalm 19, God communicating who He is through special revelation.
And we're breaking this up into two sections.
Now, what David emphasizes with natural revelation, the first six verses of Psalm 19, is the sky.
Now, there are other pieces of natural revelation, right?
You could look to the earth or the sea.
You can look to the birds of the air.
Well, that would kind of be sky, I guess.
But you can look to the fish of the sea.
And one of the chief pieces of natural revelation of what God has made that you can look to to see that there is a God in heaven who is worthy to be praised is the pinnacle of his physical earthly creation, namely mankind.
The only piece, the only creature in earthly creation that was made in the very image of God.
And yet, David doesn't speak about seeing God or hearing God or God communicating something about himself through people.
So we have natural revelation, but the case study, if you will, the primary example that David cites as a piece, a portion of natural revelation, is the sky.
Now, in the same way, take that same principle concept with Psalm 19, 7 through 14, he's shifting gears from natural revelation to special revelation.
And in the same way with natural revelation, David focuses on one element, namely the sky.
Now, with special revelation, David focuses on one element, namely the law.
Does that make sense?
That doesn't mean that the law is the exhaustive special revelation of God.
It means that the law is a portion.
Now, what's another example in the same way we could say the sky is an example of natural revelation?
But so is the sea, so is the ground, so are the beasts of the field, so are mankind, human beings made in the image of God.
We could cite a number of examples of natural revelation a way that God speaks to all people something about himself by what he has made and what we can perceive by sight, what we see.
In the same way, what's another example?
We should beg the question what's another example besides the example that David lands on, namely the law of special revelation?
There are multiple examples the sky, the sea, mankind.
Well, here we have the law.
That's David's chosen example.
But we would also say something else, another example of special revelation that we hear is the gospel.
The gospel.
Now, that's not, however, what David selects.
And so, although I believe in gospel centered preaching, before I believe in gospel centered preaching, I know this sounds bad.
But trust me, I believe it's right.
Before I prioritize gospel centered preaching, I prioritize Bible preaching.
And there's a way of centralizing the gospel in preaching at the expense of the text.
And that's what we see in a lot of gospel centered churches today the particular text is merely used as a springboard to get to their same gospel proclamation that you hear every single week.
And what happens in gospel centered preaching when it's done?
When it's truncated.
Because I believe in gospel centered preaching.
But what happens in truncated, careless gospel centered preaching is all the sermons actually sound the same.
Right?
Because the sermon is not contingent upon the text.
So each week, the only thing that's changing is the text.
Right?
So we were in Psalm 19.
Now we're in Psalm 23.
But here's the deal if you don't preach the Bible, if you preach the gospel rather at the expense of preaching the Bible, then you're very likely going to have a very monotonous.
Gospel message week in, week out.
And so, what we want to do in faithful preaching is we want to always, because Christ says all the scripture points to Him.
So that's why we believe in gospel centered preaching, because there is no sense in which a portion of the scripture, a book of the Bible, doesn't ultimately esteem and center on the person and work of Jesus.
So, all scripture points to Jesus, and Jesus is His work, His person is the gospel.
The gospel is the proclamation, the good news about Jesus.
So, because all scripture points to Jesus and the gospel is the good news of Jesus, then we could say that the gospel can and therefore should be preached from every text in scripture.
Every text in scripture.
However, the gospel shouldn't be preached the same way from every text in scripture.
It's like this we're always trying to get to the gospel in preaching.
But it's kind of like the old adage you know, all roads lead to Rome.
Well, in every text, what we have ultimately is a different avenue, a different Path, a different road to the gospel, to Christ.
Preaching The Gospel From Every Text00:05:13
That's what we have.
We have a different road.
I was reading this week, I was in the Bible reading with the Robert McShane plan that a lot of you guys are doing.
It's going through numbers, and one of the texts was talking about it.
It was really interesting because I'm doing an in depth study right now, just personally, for my own benefit, and it'll usually come out, so I'm sure it'll be for other people's benefit too.
But I'm doing a study on degrees of murder from the Bible.
Right?
Because we have first degree murder, second degree murder, third degree murder, manslaughter, and we have two degrees of manslaughter, depending on what state you're in involuntary and voluntary manslaughter.
And so I'm doing an in depth study on what the Bible says about murder.
And what I can find so far is there's no such thing as first and second degree.
Now, there isn't this, the Bible says there are those who lie and wait, right?
Those who lie and wait, their feet are swift to shed blood.
So they're waiting, this ambush mentality.
So that would be premeditated, planned, that's first degree.
But then there are also those, Numbers talks about, I think it's, I believe it's, Chapter 35, Numbers 35.
But it talks about those who kill with enmity, meaning they didn't lie in wait, but they became enraged in a moment, right?
It's a crime of passion, and they sought to kill.
And that would be what we use in our culture as second degree murder.
But there is no first and second degree murder in biblical terms.
And what I mean by that is the penalty is the same.
Murder, the cost of murder, the price of murder, is the death of the murderer, right?
It's life for a life.
And when it comes to second degree murder, what we would refer to as second degree murder, Numbers 35 actually says that even if you didn't mean to kill someone, it would still be life for life.
Meaning, if you grabbed, it actually says verbatim, an iron object, if you struck someone with an iron object, even if you didn't mean to kill them, you just meant to harm them in a moment of rage, a crime of passion, but the person was in fact killed by your actions, then it's life for life.
It's treated the same way as first degree murder, lying in wait.
With a bow and arrow or a sword.
So, the penalty is literally the same.
So, whether you lie in wait with a lethal weapon with the intent, the premeditated intent of murdering someone, or whether you get enraged in the moment, a crime of passion, and strike someone over the head with an iron object trying to harm them, but not actually even meaning to kill them, but they do in fact die, your penalty is the same.
So, in biblical terms, it's not first degree, second degree, third degree.
In biblical terms, it's just murder.
There's just murder.
And then it goes further and says, iron object, if you kill them, you didn't mean to, but there was enmity, you meant to at least harm them, you did intend harm, if not death, but you selected an iron object and they die, you're a murderer.
And the penalty is your death.
If it's a wooden or stone object, it's very specific, God's law, and this is civil law.
But if it's a wooden or stone object, then it has to be brought to the judges, and the judges have to determine if that substance, because it's not.
It's not as deadly, it's not as strong and hard and heavy as iron.
Stone and wood have to be brought to the object that was used, and the person ended up dying, but you didn't intend to kill them.
But in rage, in enmity, you ended up causing their death.
That object that you used, if it's wood or stone, something other than iron, it has to be brought to the judges, and the judges will deliberate among each other and decide whether or not that object ordinarily could cause death.
So, for instance, if you killed someone with a wooden spoon, Because you just, in a kind of, you were angry, you meant to harm them, there was enmity in your heart, intended harm, but not intended death, but you just, freak accident, just got very, very lucky, or we should say unlucky, and just struck them exactly in the temple and it, boom, caused them to die, then you may not be guilty of murder.
That wooden spoon would be taken to the judges, they would deliberate, and they would say, yeah, this object doesn't ordinarily cause death.
So you want to be guilty of murder.
What you would be guilty of, though, in that particular case, is the other category of killing, unlawful killing.
Not just war theory or those kinds of things, but unlawful killing in biblical terms, which is manslaughter, which is referred to in Numbers 35 as the manslayer.
That's what the King James says, man killers or manslayers.
So in our culture, we have first degree, second degree, third degree murder, then we have manslaughter, and even that gets bifurcated into involuntary or voluntary and involuntary.
In biblical terms, it's murder and manslaughter, right?
And although there are different degrees of murder, the punishment is still the same.
Whether you lie in wait or whether there's enmity in your heart in the moment, crime of passion, even without the intent to kill, but you did kill and you used a particular tool that could kill, that had the capability of killing, either way, it's murder.
And the penalty is life for life.
In the case of manslaughter, a man killer, you used an item that couldn't actually ordinarily kill someone and you intended enmity, all right, you intended harm, you had enmity in your heart, but you did not intend their death.
In that case, you would be a manslayer and what happens to you?
Well, you go to prison.
And people pay taxes to support you.
Sanctity Of Life And Refuge Cities00:10:54
No, because God is just.
There are no prisons in Israel because we don't treat people like pets.
Right?
We don't take someone who's a criminal and then actually punish everyone else who's not a criminal by taking their money to support the one who does evil.
And then just give them a food bowl and a water bowl and on a leash with a fence around, let them out for some wreck time outside.
You're literally treating people like dogs.
You talk about it all the time.
You hear liberals make the argument of, you know, Christians don't really care about the sanctity of life.
They're against abortion, but they're.
Pro death penalty.
No, no, we do care about the sanctity of life.
We care so much about the sanctity of life that we see the only fitting punishment for someone who would pervert the sanctity of life and take a life is their life.
That's esteeming.
That's not belittling.
That's esteeming the sanctity of life.
And we don't throw people into prison.
So, what happens to the manslayer?
They have to go to a sanctuary city.
There were six cities, and this is so interesting, and it all supports a point, but it's really interesting.
You guys are going to love it.
There were six cities in Israel at that time that were set apart to be cities for the manslayer that they could run to.
And all these cities, one of the things that's unique about them is that all these cities were Levitical cities.
So, in terms of inheritance, Who got what piece of land, what city, what inheritance?
Each of the 12 tribes of Israel had certain apportioned inheritance.
God spoke through Moses and more particularly through Joshua when he superseded Moses and Moses died.
Now, the six cities that were refuge cities or sanctuary cities for the manslayer that he could run to were all Levitical cities.
And they were strategically placed, they were spread out in such a way that Matthew Henry, the late great Puritan, I'm going to quote him at the end of the sermon today, but Matthew Henry, in his exegesis, Of Numbers 35 and the manslayer in these six refuge cities.
They were Levitical cities.
And so, what Matthew Henry says is this they were strategically positioned, these cities spread out to where there was not one place in Israel where you could not flee to one of these refuge cities in the course of a day.
And he says, it is no wonder, it is no coincidence that these were Levitical cities, for these were the place where the priest would dwell and where the sinner, the guilty sinner, could run for refuge and the way was not far off.
For Christ is never far off from us.
And then Numbers 35 goes even further and says that the person who runs to one of these refuge cities, the avenger of blood, right?
The avenger of blood would be the next of kin for the person who was killed in this accident, manslaughter.
So the person who was killed, their next of kin, had rights to actually kill the person who killed their relative.
The next of kin, they would be the avenger of blood.
But the avenger of blood could not harm the person, even though the person was guilty, the manslayer who committed manslaughter, if they were within the bounds of one of these cities of refuge.
Which was a Levitical city, a city of the priests, where they had sanctuary.
They were absolved so long as they stayed within the bounds of the city.
And so, too, as long as sinners stay within the bounds of Christ, so long as we stay hidden within the rock of ages, we have absolvement from guilt.
And the one, the avenger of blood, because there is an avenger of blood.
And it's not merely Satan, brothers and sisters.
The true avenger of blood is God.
It is God who says all the way back in the beginning of Genesis, He says to Cain, Your brother's blood cries out from the ground.
Abel, who you killed, who you murdered by striking him with a stone, all this goes together.
You killed Abel, and I hear his blood crying out from the ground.
And what does his blood speak?
What is it petitioning, crying for?
Vengeance.
Vengeance.
But the blood of Christ, who was also put to death, wrongfully murdered at the hands of sinful men, the blood of Christ also cries out from the ground, and it speaks a better word than the word of Abel.
His blood cries out from the ground not for God to do vengeance, but rather the blood of Christ cries out from the ground for mercy, for forgiveness.
And we see Christ, in a sense, a type of Christ all throughout the scripture.
Even in these Levitical cities, these six Levitical cities strategically placed all over Israel, to where the manslayer who was guilty of killing someone would have refuge from the avenger of blood who was well within their rights according to God's holy law.
They were within their rights to come and kill this person, to do to them what this person did to a close relative, to someone they loved.
But there was a refuge.
There was a rock.
There was a hiding place that they could go and be covered and be protected.
And it was the city of the Levites.
It was the Levitical city, the priestly city where they would find refuge from the one who was crying out for vengeance.
And further, even than that, Matthew Henry goes on in Numbers 35 and says, That the only way this individual, if they ever stepped out of the balance of the city, they were doing so at their own peril, at the risk of their own peril.
Because the Avenger of Blood, if they took one step outside the boundaries of a refuge city, a sanctuary city, the Avenger of Blood would be within their rights under the law of God to strike them dead.
So the only way they could return back to their home, to their family, to their trade, all these kinds of things, was if one thing happened if the high priest died.
The high priest, these were priestly cities, there were lower priests in the Levitical priesthood.
But there was one high priest who once a year would go into the Holy of Holies and he would make sacrifices for sin.
And it was not until the high priest died that all the manslayers in the refuge cities could return to their homes, no longer at the risk of their own peril, no longer guilty.
And Matthew and Henry says with that, he says, And so too we see, even in numbers, all the way in the Old Testament with God's civil law, we see that there is no true, eternal, lasting forgiveness of sin.
Without the death of a high priest, Christ is the high priest, and by his death, by his once and for all eternal sacrifice, the true high priest, not in the order of the Levites, not in the order of Aaron, but in the order of Melchizedek, who is a priest and king forever.
Christ, by his one sacrifice and his death once and for all, all manslayers, all those who are guilty of killing and vile evil, like you and like me, not only do we have to hide in one place, but we now are covered.
With the righteousness of Christ.
And we can go into all the world and make disciples of all nations and preach the gospel with an innocence and a righteousness that we find by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, no longer weighted down by condemnation under our sin, but free in Christ Jesus.
Now, all that is just one example of how all the scripture points to Christ.
Numbers 35.
If you can find Christ in manslain laws in Numbers 35, then there's no place in scripture you can't find him.
I think it was Spurgeon who said this, and I think this is helpful.
He said, Somebody once asked him, you know, is Christ in every text?
And he said, Yes.
And then they asked, In every verse?
And he said, Well, in every chapter.
And I think that is true, and I think that is important.
Because again, back to my previous point, there is a sense in which people preach the gospel, they preach Christ at the expense of the text.
And sometimes you'll see someone in a text like Numbers or Leviticus, and my text for today is one verse.
Right?
And you know you're in for a doozy.
You know, and you'll see me do that from time to time.
But my text says one verse.
It's like this guy's going to preach for an hour on one verse.
Oh my goodness.
And so I have one verse as my text today, and boom, they'll preach Christ.
And the reality is, dude, yeah, all scripture points to Jesus, but like Christ is not in that verse.
If you panned out, if you took out your text 20 verses, you know, and that verse was one of them, and you took a chapter, that's what Spurgeon is getting to, then yeah, we could see Christ.
And the same with Matthew Henry, I showed you how Matthew Henry showed us Christ in the chapter of Numbers 35.
Right, but not just in one verse.
It's not like Matthew Henry took the one verse in Numbers 35 that says, If you strike someone with a wooden object and the judges determined that it wasn't able to kill, then you're treated as a manslayer and not a murderer, and you can flee to a refuge city.
He doesn't take that, just that one portion of, If you strike them with a wooden object that the judges determined could kill, then it is not, the judges determined could not kill, then it's not treated as murder.
And then all of a sudden you say, Well, and the wooden object reminds me of Jesus who died on a wooden cross.
There are guys who do that.
I don't know if you've ever heard that.
Like, gospel.
Gospel ridiculous preaching.
It's not gospel centered preaching, it's gospel ridiculous preaching.
It's like, it's just like, all right, that's, you know, like I appreciate the sentiment.
I appreciate your intention to preach Christ everywhere, but dude, just preach that text.
So, all that being said, all that being said, Christ is in every text.
He is in every text.
But there's a way of preaching Christ at the expense of the text, and there's also a way of preaching the text at the expense of Christ.
Good preaching, Bible preaching, and gospel centered preaching.
Wants to uphold both faithfully.
So, all that being said, Psalm 19, verse 7 through 14, we're now moving from natural revelation, focusing, emphasizing, centralizing on the sky.
We're moving to special revelation, not what's seen, but what is heard.
But it's focusing, central, centering on not the gospel, but the law.
So, is Christ there?
Yeah, I think so.
But is that the main point?
No, David picks the law, and so I'm going to preach.
The law.
That's what I preached last week.
I'm going to preach the law again because that's where we are.
Now, in the law, though, we do see ultimately our need for the gospel.
And so we can get to the gospel from the law in terms of necessity, in terms of the first use of the law, which theologians argue is that the law reveals the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and thus our need for a Savior.
Spurgeon once more, he said this a man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ unless he first comes to see the necessity for Christ.
There's a lot of people who don't really esteem Christ as beautiful and glorious as he truly is because they've never first heard the bad news before hearing the good news.
Bridging The Gap With Christ00:10:14
They haven't had someone really preach to them from the scripture how holy God is and how sinful they are.
Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, the main protagonist, Christian, that character, for a long time before he ever gets to the wicket gate and before he ever gets to the cross and.
The catacombs, the tomb, before the sepulchre is the language, the old English language, before he ever gets to the cross and the sepulchre, the tomb, and the burden of condemnation, it rolls off of his back into the tomb and he knows it no more.
And three holy ones, angelic beings, begin to pardon him of sin.
Before that ever takes place, the main character, modeled after John Bunyan, the author himself, he is weighted down for a very long time by this burden, and the way that the burden first arrives.
Is that he finds in the fields one day as a farmer, he finds the book of the law.
And when he finds the book of the law and he opens it and he begins to read it, it's only at that moment that all of a sudden a burden is placed on his back and it's a burden that he can't remove.
And all the things that used to bring him joy, like his children and his wife and good food and celebrations, he can't find joy in any of it anymore.
He's sleepless, he's restless, he's miserable.
He can't enjoy his own family, he can't enjoy his vocation, he can't enjoy celebration or any of these things.
He is Hunched down, burdened, and weighted down by the weight of this burden that came by a reading of the law.
And he has to work his way through the slough of despondency, right?
Where there's discouragement and where many people turn back, right?
They start their way towards salvation, but they turn back.
They give up.
They give into despondency, into despair.
And he makes his way through the slough of despondency, and it's Pliable who gives up and goes back.
And then eventually he starts going down wrong ways.
He meets a man named Mr. Legality who says, Hey, there's an easy way to pry that burden off your back.
It's legalism.
He sends him to the city of morality where you can.
Talk to, you know, Mr. Worldly Wise and this guy and that guy, and they'll give you all these different solutions to remove the burden from your back.
And Christian listens.
He listens to them.
He begins to go in the wrong direction.
And he's on this path on his way to the city of morality, and there's a mountain hanging over him.
And it looks like at any moment, the rocks of this mountain, like it's about to crumble and fall on him.
And all of a sudden, he's found by a man named Mr. Evangelist, who had already found him before the Slew of Despondency and pointed him towards the wicket gate.
And, and, Christian made it through the Slough of Despondency, but then he listened to false prophets and false teachers, a false gospel of works and morality and worldly wisdom.
And he started off in the wrong path, but Mr. Evangelist, he saves him, he rescues him, he finds him.
And it's right when Christian is about to be crushed by the mountain.
And Christian asks, What mountain is this?
And he says, It is Mount Sinai.
It's the law.
It's the law.
There's another point in Pilgrim's Progress where Christian, he's beat.
Over and over and over by this man.
And he'll get up and try to throw the man off by force and try to escape his power.
But the man would overpower him again and beat him and beat him and beat him.
And Christian asked another character in the story Who was this man who beat me without mercy?
I pleaded with him to stop.
I would try to persuade him to let up.
I would try to escape him and he would just beat me and beat me and beat me.
And the man that he asked, he responds by saying, That was Moses.
He can only beat you for he knows not mercy.
It's the law.
It's the law.
And so it's the law of God, Mount Sinai hanging over Christian's head.
It's Moses who beats him but will not aid him or help him.
All of this points him towards ultimately the wicket gate and then furthermore the cross and the sepulcher, the cross and the tomb, where the burden is finally removed through the preaching of the gospel, free grace through faith in Christ, and the burden rolls into the tomb.
The stone rolls over the entrance to the tomb, seals the burden in to where Christian knows it no more.
He is free at last from condemnation and guilt.
And my point in all this is Bunyan, he modeled this whole story off of his own life.
John Bunyan, the great Baptist preacher and writer, for the first seven years after reading the law of God, he says that he had no assurance of salvation.
He was convinced that he was going to hell.
And it took seven years for him to eventually be able to preach his heart, as other Puritans said, from a clock to a flame.
To preach his own heart in the preaching of the gospel of grace.
To eventually gain the confidence that he had assurance in Christ, that he could have confidence in Christ, that he truly had forgiveness of sin.
And my point is to say that there are so many in the evangelical church today who don't see the beauty of Christ because they've never wrestled underneath the law, they've never wrestled underneath their guilt.
They don't see the beauty of Christ because they don't see the necessity of Christ, and they don't see the necessity, the need for Christ, because they don't see the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.
It's in the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man and the unbreachable chasm between the two that we see how desperately we need a Savior.
And the reason why we want to preach the law again and again and again is because it's the path unto our feet.
That's the third use of the law.
It's the guide.
It's what tells us, directs us where to go and how life makes sense and how life works and how we can experience happiness and peace in this life by doing what God commands, living in God's world according to God's rules.
That's the third use of the law.
But in the first use of the law, the reason why we want to preach the law again and again and again, even to the redeemed, even to the Christian, Is because the law, in its first use, reminds us again and again and again how holy God is and how far we fall short.
And this is not for the Christian to produce condemnation.
See, the wider that gap gets in your heart, the more you hear about the holiness of God, you sit under preaching of the law, preaching of the holiness of God, and you see by the conviction that the Spirit supplies your own sinfulness, your lack of holiness.
What happens is this in your mind, not in real terms, not in objective terms, but in your mind subjectively, you gain a deeper understanding.
Perception, a more accurate perception of the gap between a holy God and your sinful self.
And the wider this gap is, the more you love God.
Why?
Because what fills the gap is the gospel.
See, if you have a small view of your sin, you will have a small view of God's grace.
If you can't see the true holiness of God and your own true sinfulness, then the gap between God and you becomes small.
Again, not objectively, not in real terms, but subjectively in your perception.
And if you perceive the gap between a holy God and your sinful self to be small, then what Christ did at Calvary is small.
But when you see God is holy, I am sinful, the gap in between us is infinite, and Christ did it all.
He covered it all, He filled in this gap.
The bridge is wide.
Then what you see in seeing more of the holiness of God and more of your own sinfulness is you see more of the mercy of God, the grace of God.
The love of God.
And when we see more of God's love for us, we cannot help but respond with more love for Him.
1 John 4 19, we love because He first loved us.
And if we have more love for Him, the next thing that happens is, as Jesus says, those who love me will obey me.
So you want to grow in obedience?
That's how to do it with law and gospel.
Law and gospel.
Preach the law to yourself and sit under good law preaching from others.
And in the preaching of the law, see the holiness of God, see your own sinfulness, let this gap get wider.
And again, not in objective terms.
See, for the Christian, you're being sanctified.
Progressive holiness.
You've been justified, declared perfectly righteous because of the righteousness of Christ received by grace through faith.
Okay?
So that's objective.
Now, in progressive holiness, not justification, but sanctification, as a Christian progresses in sanctification, we are being formed more and more into the likeness of the Son, more and more into the likeness of Jesus.
So, in objective terms, as you follow Jesus as a Christian, the gap between you and God is actually getting smaller in objective terms.
It's getting smaller.
Now, we don't want to split hairs with that because the reality is God is infinitely holy.
So when we say the gap is getting smaller, we're saying it's going from a trillion miles to a trillion miles minus one.
It's still immense, right?
So that's progressive righteousness, progressive holiness in terms of sanctification, not declared righteousness, positional righteousness in terms of justification.
So in sanctification, the lifelong process from conversion to death of being made more and more into the image of Christ, in objective terms, you're getting better, not worse.
And therefore, in objective terms, in a technical sense, the gap is getting smaller, if anything, not wider.
But for the Christian, the way that the gap is getting objectively smaller is because it's getting subjectively bigger.
Meaning, the gap, you're actually becoming more holy in objective terms, but you're becoming more holy in objective terms because you're realizing, in subjective terms, in terms of perception, you're realizing how much holiness you lack.
And as you realize more and more how much holiness you lack and how much holiness, infinite holiness, God has, you're seeing a bigger gap.
But when you see a bigger gap, don't let that cause you despair or discourage you.
The bigger the gap, the bigger the gospel that bridges the gap.
So as you see more of the holiness of God and more of your sinfulness, you see a bigger gap that needs to be bridged by Christ.
And it has been bridged.
God so loved the world.
Objective Holiness Meets Subjective Sin00:16:07
It's His love.
He so loved the world, He sent Jesus to bridge that gap.
That whoever has faith in Him shall not perish, but shall receive eternal life.
So as you see more of God's holiness and more of your sinfulness, You see a bigger gap, a bigger need for Christ.
You see the work of Christ in the gospel as larger, not smaller.
Meaning, you see more of God's love through the person and work of Jesus on your behalf.
And as you see more of God's love for you, 1 John 4 19, we love because he first loved us.
If we see that he first loved us more than we previously thought, then we respond with more love for him.
And if we love him more, we'll obey him more.
That's the progression of how we become obedient.
And it takes both law and gospel.
Law and gospel.
The law is the scalpel.
It slices us open and begins to remove, like tweezers, forceps, cancerous tumors and growths from inside.
But then the gospel is like the salve.
It's what heals the wound after it's been inflicted and the necessary surgery procedure has taken place.
It's the law and the gospel working in tandem, like a left and right arm working in conjunction with one another.
The law doesn't save, but it points us towards the gospel that does.
And so we must preach to ourselves and sit under faithful preaching of law and gospel, law and gospel, law and gospel.
David emphasizes the law.
That's what he emphasizes.
That's what we see in our text today.
This is what I want to do because last week I did it quickly.
So I want to do it one more time.
I want you to see this.
Not just the rightness, if you will, I know that's not really a word or if it is, it's not used very often, but not just the rightness, the moral perfection or correctness of God's law, but the goodness, the benefit.
Okay?
There are six benefits, six purposes of the law, what the law is and what its purpose to do, and six benefits of the law that we find in Psalm 19, verses 7 through 9.
7 through 9.
So I'm just going to read it from the text, not from my notes, because I did it last week, so this is just an overview.
The law of the Lord is perfect.
That's speaking to its moral perfection, its rightness.
It has no flaw, and therefore it revives the soul.
Why?
Because what makes your soul weary is not.
God's requirements.
It's not God's commands.
That's what we think.
We think we're weary because God demands so much.
But Jesus says, All who are weary, all who are heavy laden, come to me and I'll give you rest.
Why?
Because if you come to Jesus, He won't require anything.
He has no law.
He has no commandment that you should follow.
No.
No, come to me and find rest because my commandment, I do have a burden.
I have a command for you, but it's light.
Light in comparison to what?
Your sin.
See, what makes you weary is your sin, not the law of God, not His precepts, not His commandments.
What He requires when we come to Christ is And we don't come to Christ and then he says, Hey, this is a law free zone.
No, he's the holy God.
Of course, he has a law.
So, when we come to Christ, we are coming to a person who's going to demand something of us.
He's going to require something of us.
But what he requires is actually light.
My yoke is easy.
My burden is light.
By comparison to what?
By comparison to the prior burden, the prior yoke that you've been wearing, which is the weariness of sin.
So, the law is perfect.
The law of the Lord is perfect.
That is, it's morally perfect.
It is without any moral flaw, and therefore it revives the soul.
Because what it does is, like a scalpel, it slices us open, and the perfection of the law begins.
It begins to detect and diagnose and identify imperfections, moral imperfections in us.
Now, the gospel ultimately is the only device, the only tool, the only remedy or medicine or solution that removes those faults in us.
But what the law does is it detects them.
The law works like an MRI machine, it doesn't cure someone, but it finds things that are killing you.
Namely, your sin.
And so the law is perfect, and because it's a perfect tool, it discovers, without fault, without fail, it discovers moral imperfections in us.
And then, by the grace of the gospel, those moral imperfections are removed.
And the moral imperfections, namely your sin, is the real culprit for your weariness.
And so, therefore, when your sin is detected by the law, removed by the gospel, the very thing that made you weary, namely sin, is now removed, and therefore your soul is revived.
That's the first thing that the law does.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
Sure, meaning credible, reliable, trustworthy.
So it's not just right, but because it's morally right, it can be trusted.
And because it's trusted, when it's trusted, it makes wise even the simple.
If we trust the law of God, we don't just salute it, we don't just acknowledge it as morally perfect, but we submit ourselves to it.
We give ourselves over to this law that we see as morally perfect.
We trust it.
We don't just.
Salute it, but we trust it because we see it not only as right, but as sure, as credible, as trustworthy.
It produces wisdom.
And not just that it makes the wise wiser.
No, the law is so perfect and so sure, it makes even the simple wise.
Even the simple, those who would never be described as wise previously become wise because the law is perfect and sure.
Next, the precepts of the Lord are right.
Morally right, correct, rejoicing the heart.
How do the precepts of the Lord rejoice the heart?
The law of God perfectly aligns with the character of God Himself, who is the eternal standard for unchanging principles of good and evil in the world.
In other words, God's law functions as the master blueprint.
We talked about this last week, which perfectly details exactly how God designed the world and how He intends for us to live in it.
So, in short, the law of God reveals how life actually works as well as what doesn't work.
Therefore, if we submit to the rightness of God's law, we see it as right, as the right rule by which we should live.
Our hearts are gladdened because we begin to live the right way.
It's God's world, therefore, it's God's rules.
And His rules are right because the one who makes the rules, when we acknowledge God as the rule maker, the one who gets to make the rules for this world because He made the world itself, then we recognize that God's rules are right for this world and all His creatures because God made this world and all His creatures.
Then we submit ourselves to his law because we see this is the right blueprint.
This is the right equation.
This is the right formula.
I have my ideas, but my ideas are folly in comparison to God and his wisdom.
So, God made the world, therefore, it logically stands that God would know how we should live in the world.
So, his rules are right, not mine.
And when we come to that conclusion that his rules are right, then we begin to live by his rules.
And when you live by his rules, life goes better.
It does.
And you might be saying, but that, Joel, that discludes, that fails to acknowledge this category over here of those who are persecuted.
For faithfulness.
Aren't there people who live according to the rule and law of God that is right?
God made the world.
He has rules for living in the world.
And when you live, you're saying when you live by those rules that things go better.
Well, what about the Christian in China?
What about the Christian in North Korea?
I'm not saying that there are no exceptions.
I'm saying, as a general rule of thumb, to live by God's law will go better.
And it always, without exception, goes better in an eternal sense.
By living by God's rules, which are right, it does rejoice the heart.
In this life and in the life to come, in terms of our eternal reward, because this is not ultimately our home.
So, even for the Christian in North Korea, living according to God's law that may produce human consequences, temporary earthly consequences, because of an oppressive pagan regime, they may temporarily experience heartache and consequences for their faithfulness to the truth.
It still rejoices the heart, as Paul and Silas were able to rejoice in prison, singing praises to God because they knew that they had a sure and greater reward in the life to come.
But ordinarily, in a nation like ours, a nation where there's freedom, at least still some, we'll see if it lasts, but at least some freedom, and historically there was more freedom, then you're not oppressed by being faithful to the Lord.
And meaning that when you see God's law is right, the blueprint by which we should live, and you give yourself to living in that way, things actually go well for you, not just eternally in the life to come, but even here and now.
Even here and now, there's a sense in which when we live by God's law, things don't just work out eternally, they work out temporarily, unless there is the variable of someone else's sin impeding upon us.
And the reason why I say that is, again, because within the evangelical church, I'm trying to correct certain things.
So, because we have the prosperity gospel, just have faith and you'll be healthy and wealthy and wise.
Well, that's a heresy.
So, I want to condemn the prosperity gospel, but in evangelicals' condemnation of the prosperity gospel, I think there's been an overcompensation in some instances where we have the introduction of what I would call the poverty gospel, where all of a sudden it's like suffering becomes the badge of God's approval in your life.
So, in the same way that you're saying, okay, the prosperity gospel, you got prosperity false teachers saying, my $67 million jet plane is the badge of God's approval that he's pleased with me.
But then all of a sudden you say, the fact that I have cancer is proof that God's pleased with me.
Neither are biblical.
The fact that I'm poor means that God's really proud of me.
No.
Where do you get that in Scripture?
That's not biblical.
See, what happens in the prosperity gospel, have faith in Jesus and you'll live forever and never get sick and you'll be a millionaire.
False.
Have faith in Jesus and you'll suffer and be miserable, but one day you'll be in heaven and it'll be great.
Also false.
Also false.
That could be the case.
You know, what's pointed to, what's cited as the evidence for that is Jesus and the apostles.
Well, Jesus was faithful.
Look what happened to him.
He was crucified.
Peter was faithful.
He was crucified upside down.
Paul was faithful.
He lost his head.
You know, I mean, all the apostles, yeah, that's true.
In Rome, you have to think of the context.
In Rome, with an oppressive monarch that was pagan and hated God.
But what about a nation that was founded on biblical principles and has a constitution that has these biblical principles at play and it lends towards religious freedom, namely the religious freedom of Christianity?
What happens when you're faithful in that context?
Well, what happens is what's happened in our nation historically over the last 250 years.
The most wealthy, prosperous nation doing benevolence and acts of good to nations all over the world.
The best nation in the history of humanity, without exception.
America is the best.
Quickly losing its title because we have people who are trying to make America the worst by convincing children in schools that America has always been the worst and teaching them to hate their country.
So, my whole purpose in this is to say this.
Ultimately, why do we obey God?
Because it's right and because of the eternal reward.
But I don't want you or me or anyone else to have a theology that says obedience to God only produces suffering.
That's not true.
Because what that does is, even if it's subconscious in our minds and we never verbalize it, what that gets us to believe is this that God, even though He made the world and He's the one who sets the rules for living the world, God ultimately is either foolish, lacking in infinite wisdom, or even worse, we can believe that God is cruel.
That God knows how to live that would produce more happiness, but He told us something else.
Let me give you one example of that.
The cultural mandate be fruitful and multiply.
There are many in the church who legitimately have bought into the secular, pagan, stupid view that the world is overpopulated and we're all going to die.
Right?
The whole climate crisis because of overpopulation.
Well, think about that real quick in theological terms.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
Well, it means if you buy into that as a Christian, what it means is that God commanded humanity to do something in the cultural mandate be fruitful and multiply.
That God knew would actually be the very thing that if humanity obeyed Him, humanity's obedience to the cultural mandate would seal humanity's own demise.
And God just kind of laughing.
I told them to be fruitful and multiply.
And I know that there's finite resources in this world, and I actually set it up in such a way that there wouldn't be enough.
So the more faithful they are to obey me, the more people will starve.
Like I said, if you're logical, it says something about the character and nature of God.
So if you're claiming to be a Christian, saying that God is good, But then also saying that the world is overpopulated, and if we don't start driving electric cars, everybody's going to burn up in 10 years, then you are making a theological statement.
You just haven't logically connected the dots.
But the statement that you're making is this God is either ignorant, God is in process, he's learning as we learn and go along.
So he had the cultural mandate, but now he's like, oh, actually, we fulfilled it, and I didn't know how the world would work, and overpopulation.
I didn't know how climate worked, even though I made it.
And so now God's in process, and he's rechanging.
So that's open theism, process theology.
So that's a heresy.
That's one option.
You can be a heretic.
Or you can say that God is not so much a lack of knowledge or expertise, but it's a lack of benevolence.
It's his character.
He was cruel.
He knew what would happen, and he set it up to seal our own demise by virtue of our obedience.
No, people are demised.
People die.
People perish because of sin.
How dare we ever come up with any kind of concept or theology or thought process that would say that people are penalized by faithfulness?
No, people are only ever penalized because of sin.
And even the apostles who were faithful, or Jesus who was faithful, their faithfulness is not what caused them earthly consequences in this life.
It was the sin of others penalizing them for their faithfulness that caused the consequences.
Consequences in this life, suffering, difficulty, persecution, all these things, they are only the result of sin.
And when we say that they're the result of faithfulness or the result of obedience, then we're ultimately saying they're the result of obedience to what?
To God's law.
So what we're saying, whether we realize it or not, is that God's law is not perfect.
It's not sure.
It's not clean.
It's not right.
It's flawed.
And if you follow it, these blueprints ultimately lend towards building a building with an unsure foundation that will eventually topple and kill everyone inside.
That's the view of many Christians of the law of God today.
Because they bought into the poverty gospel as an overcorrection to the prosperity gospel.
That's wrong.
If you obey God's law, will you have a jet plane and live forever?
No.
But if you obey God's law in an environment that's not led by pagans who hate God's law, like North Korea or like China, Then, yes, things not only will be well for you in an eternal sense, and your heart rejoiced in a spiritual, eternal sense, but things will go well for you temporarily here on earth in a practical sense.
Wisdom Brings Riches And Pleasure00:07:27
Obedience brings blessing.
Obedience brings blessing.
God does not punish obedience.
And God forbid that any of us would even subconsciously hold to that doctrine.
The more obedient you are, the more suffering you'll experience, the more punished you'll be.
And, but that's really good, you know, and just hang in there and God's sovereign.
No, our theology just has to be better than that.
It just has to be better than that.
God is sovereign.
Sometimes people who are obedient get sick.
Sometimes people who are obedient are persecuted.
Sometimes you obey God and a child dies in a car accident.
And God is enough, He's our portion forever.
All that is true.
But ordinarily, in a place like our nation, if you obey God in general, not saying there are no exceptions, but in general, as a rule of thumb, God's law is right.
Therefore, when we Submit to it, our lives go better.
You need to have that motivation.
Obey God because it's right and He's worthy of your obedience and your reward is in heaven.
Yes and amen.
And obey God because you'll be happier here.
You will.
You will.
And how could we say anything else?
How could we say anything to the contrary?
Obey God and life won't go well because God's law isn't as wise or as benevolent towards you as your own rules for living.
That's the only alternative.
How could we say that that's true?
Of course it's not.
All right.
Now that really gets into the point, right?
So if you look at verses 10 through 11, I said the law of God lends towards prosperity and pleasure.
What I want you to see is Solomon.
I'm not going to read the text, but this is the text.
Read it on your own time.
1 Kings 3, 5 through 14.
This is when Solomon comes to the throne.
He's ultimately taking the throne from his father David.
David has died.
Solomon's the new king, and he's young.
He's in his youth.
The Lord visits him in a theophany, as it were, in the night, through a vision.
And the Lord gives him, kind of like almost like a Genie and Aladdin scenario in the Cave of Wonders, and he gets one wish instead of three.
He says, Ask me.
The Lord says, Ask me anything you want, and I will give it to you.
And Solomon rightly asks for wisdom.
And he asks for wisdom.
Notice this he asks for wisdom because of humility.
Humility and wisdom are tied two peas in the paw.
Always go hand in hand.
There's no such thing as an arrogant, wise person.
And so, what happens is this Solomon asks for wisdom because he has humility, which means he already has some measure of wisdom.
He has enough wisdom to ask for wisdom.
You won't ask for wisdom if you're a complete fool.
So, he has some wisdom because he has some humility, therefore, he asks for even more.
And what humbles him is this he's now the king over Israel.
He says, This great people, it's such a great people, and I'm a youth.
How can I lead them?
Make me wise.
But what I want you to see is this 1 Kings 3, verse 5 through 14.
God gives him wisdom, but then God also says, because you didn't ask for long life or riches or this or that, I'm going to give you that too.
And what I want you to see is this God says, because you asked for wisdom, you asked for what is better, I'm also going to give you this other thing over here long life and riches.
You're not just going to be the wisest guy, you're going to be the richest guy.
But what I want you to see is this by asking for wisdom, of course he's going to be rich.
Of course he's going to be rich.
Because in the case of Solomon, who was the King of a theocracy at that time, Israel, God's covenant people, being God's covenant people, also being the nation, the nation, and Solomon's the king of that nation, no one's going to oppress him.
He's not under Mao or Stalin or Hitler, right?
He is the supreme monarch as the king of Israel.
So nobody's going to be able to oppress him and impede his faithfulness and inflict consequences because of their sin.
He's the guy, he's the man.
So if he's faithful to the law of God, what's going to happen?
Of course, he's going to be rich.
So, when he asks for wisdom, God says, I'll give you riches also.
But really, what's happening is this Solomon asks for wisdom, and by virtue of God giving him wisdom, by default, he becomes rich.
Because wisdom produces that wealth, produces those riches.
Wisdom lends towards prosperity and pleasure, certainly in a spiritual and eternal sense.
But ordinarily, apart from oppressive sin of others impeding faithfulness, apart from that, ordinarily, wisdom produces prosperity.
Prosperity and pleasure, blessing in this life as well.
In this life as well.
All right, another text, 2 Chronicles 9, verses 1 through 7.
This is where we see the Queen of Sheba come and visit Solomon.
She heard the reports from all over her kingdom that Solomon was so wealthy and so wise.
And she comes to him and begins to sit with him for hours, is the implication, and just starts grilling him with question after question after question about life and how things work and weather patterns and all these kinds of precipitation.
How does that work?
And the rising of the sun.
All these different things, and not one thing was hidden from Solomon.
The text says, God revealed to him the answers to all of her questions.
He was so wise.
And she responds by saying, This, I heard the reports of your wisdom and wealth, but truly, not even the half of it was told to me.
You're wiser than I thought.
But look how she finishes.
This is verse 7.
Happy.
So she literally says, I came to you.
The reports were true.
In fact, they failed to do justice to the real truth.
You're even wiser than people said.
That's how it starts.
That's verses 1 through 6.
Solomon, I came to see, I was told you were wise, I came to see how wise you really were, and you're wiser than I ever imagined.
And then the very next thing she says is no longer saying, You're wise, you're wise, you're wise.
Now she says, Happy.
That's not a coincidence.
Don't miss the connection.
You're wise, you're wise, you're the king, you're in a position of authority, you're ruling your nation, your people with wisdom and happy.
Happy are your wives, happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom.
Your slaves are happy.
That's crazy.
Your slaves are happy.
You are so wise and you are ruling your nation with so much wisdom and righteousness and equity that even your servants and even your 700 wives, which ordinarily you would think would be very unhappy about that situation, are happy.
Not saying that today, under the new covenant, we should pursue polygamy, but in the case of Solomon, even his wives were happy.
Wisdom begets riches.
That's why I wanted to show you.
That's why I wanted to show you 1 Kings 3, verse 5 through 14.
That's where we see wisdom lending towards wealth, riches, but we also see wisdom in 2 Chronicles 9, 1 through 7, lending towards pleasure, happiness.
And again, a guarantee, godly wisdom for those who are righteous by grace through faith in Jesus, for the Christian, godly wisdom that is available to any Christian who asks.
Obedience Yields Prosperity In This Life00:03:41
That's what James says if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives without finding reproach.
Meaning what?
Implicit point in that James passage about asking for wisdom is God gives without finding reproach.
Well, guess what?
God always finds reproach for those who aren't in Christ Jesus.
So, the implicit thing is that for those who ask for wisdom, He's not just talking about any man, all of humanity, He's talking about one portion of humanity, the redeemed.
Because the only portion of humanity that God would give wisdom to and not be able to find reproach are those who have no reproach because they've been covered by the righteousness of Christ.
Not by works unto the law, so that no man may boast, but rather by grace through faith in Jesus.
So, for the Christian, They can ask for wisdom and God will grant it.
And for the Christian who has wisdom, they see the law of God as good and they are seeking to apply, they're seeking to obey God's law.
For that Christian, they will have prosperity and pleasure guaranteed in the life to come and ordinarily, in some measure, in this life, barring the exceptions, the variables of an oppressive, authoritative regime that penalizes faithfulness to God's law.
Like North Korea.
Am I making sense?
So it's not the prosperity gospel.
See, the last thing I'll say is this on this point, and then I'll read the conclusion from Matthew and Henry.
An analogy or an illustration of the prosperity gospel would be this.
If I teach my daughters, hey, you can be rich, and all you need to do is when you reach the legal age, you just need to buy every single day, go to the convenience store, nearest convenience store, and buy a lottery ticket.
That's the prosperity gospel.
That's to illustrate, as an example, the prosperity gospel.
If I tell my daughters, however, and it'd be better in this illustration if it was sons, so I'm going to use sons as an example.
If I tell my hypothetical sons that the Lord will give me one day, we'll see.
If I tell them, not if you buy a lottery ticket, you'll be rich, but rather I tell them, if you keep your vows, if you don't have children outside of wedlock, and you wait till marriage to have children, and you don't divorce, right, because you want to lose half of your equity, half of your wealth, that's a great way to do it.
Divorce literally makes you poor.
It does, right?
There are real tangible concepts.
So you marry a woman, you remain faithful to that woman, you never leave her or forsake her, as Christ has promised never to leave or forsake you.
You have children after marriage, not before.
You parent them according to God's word, and you practice integrity and hard work.
You will be, I can't guarantee, a billionaire, but you will be ordinarily wealthy.
You will.
You will be reasonably wealthy over the course of your life.
If America doesn't start penalizing hard work and rewarding laziness, which, for whatever reason, they're dead set on doing right now.
If you do nothing, you'll receive a reward.
If you work hard, we'll steal it.
So, as America continues to turn its back on biblical principles by turning its back on God, then that won't.
Then all of a sudden it's North Korea, China.
But then you still will have a rejoicing heart in the eternal reward.
So, it's still worth it.
But ordinarily, apart from an oppressive, godless regime like North Korea or Joe Biden, apart from that, Then it's not just prosperity and pleasure in the life to come, but by being wise and obedient and following God's rules for life, his law, there's also a measure of prosperity and pleasure in this life.
Secret Faults And Betrayal Of God00:09:06
Solomon was wise and rich, king along with it, riches, and he was wise, and not only was he happy, everyone else was happy too.
Everyone underneath his wise rule experienced happiness as well.
So, all that being said, this is how David ends our text.
Right, so he lists the benefits of the law.
There were six of them, and I know I kind of stopped halfway through, but I'm not going to go back for the sake of time.
Then he talks about not just these are the purposes of the law, what it does and its benefits, but also he says, and this is what it produces, what the law produces prosperity and pleasure guaranteed in the life to come, ordinarily in this life, barring those variables of oppressive regimes, penalizing faithfulness.
But then he finishes by this presumption and prayer.
So we saw prosperity and pleasure.
Here's presumption and prayer in the last three verses of our text 12, 13, and 14.
After recounting all the many benefits and advantages that come by submitting to the perfect law of God, David's only remaining desire is that he might experience even more of these benefits and advantages by following the law of God more closely.
So, by meditating on the perfection and goodness of God's law, David learns to call his sins errors.
That's the language that he uses in the text.
Look, verse 12 Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant from presumptuous sins.
Let them not have dominion over you.
Over me.
So he calls him errors.
Now, this is not meant to minimize the heinous nature of sin.
Don't miss this.
Surely David recognizes his sin as a brutal betrayal.
There's a relational component, a betrayal of the God he loves.
How do we know David's used his sin that way?
Psalm 51.
His confession.
Right?
His confession.
He talks about the relational aspect of his sin as a heinous offense and betrayal against God.
So this is not, calling his sin errors is not meant to be a creative.
Tactful way of using language to minimize the severity of his sin.
Right?
So, because you and I can do that.
We got to be careful.
Sometimes we'll say, Yeah, I made a mistake.
Yeah, you know, I made a mistake.
Or, Yeah, it was an error.
Yeah, you know.
And a lot of times we'll use that language to minimize how serious our sin really is.
David's not doing that.
Okay?
So I don't want you, because there is a sense in which our sin is an error.
That's what I want you to get.
David gets it.
We need to get it.
That's what the text says.
We need to understand our sin as error.
But notice this it's not in substitute.
To viewing our sin as cosmic treason against our loving Savior, but it's an addition.
So, our sin is first and foremost, it's a betrayal against the God who loves us.
And we have to understand our sin first and foremost like that, or we won't experience godly sorrow leading unto repentance, which leads unto life.
So, first, we need to experience and perceive the full extent of the severity of our sin by seeing our sin in a relational capacity as a betrayal, an affront, an offense against the God who loves us.
That's first.
Not in substitution to that view of sin, but in addition to that view of sin, we should also see our sin as error, as a miscalculation, as being off the mark.
See, David comes to recognize every one of his transgressions of the law as an error, meaning grounded upon a mistake or a miscalculation or a misjudgment.
What he means by that is this David rightly understands that every wicked practice takes root in some corrupt principle or faulty premise.
All sin is a deviation from reality, the perfect rule by which we are to live.
So, David sees it all of his sin, in some sense, first, it's betrayal against the God he loves and who has loved him, but secondly, all this sin is a Misjudgment, a miscalculation, an error in the sense that in this area, this particular sin, I got off of the blueprint.
I got off of the roadmap.
I was going to a certain destination.
I was following, I was listening to Siri or the iPhone, I had Google Maps up, and I thought it said this, but I took this exit, it really meant the next one.
I got off.
And so he realizes that all sin, ultimately, is rooted in some kind of alternative principle to God's principle, some alternative rule for living other than God's rule of life.
Meaning, it's rooted in something that ultimately is a formula that's corrupt.
And ultimately, because it's a corrupt formula, when I don't follow God's law, aka sin, I'm following someone else's.
And every other law, every other rule for life is corrupt.
It's flawed.
It's a faulty premise.
It's a foundation that's shattered and splintered and cracked.
It's a house of cards.
And if I continue to do this, life will go poorly, things won't work.
Furthermore, by meditating on the perfection and goodness of God's law, David also learns that his sins are so many he can't even begin to comprehend the sheer number of them.
Not only is David incapable, in and of himself, apart from grace and the work of the Spirit, of righting all of his wrongs, David is incapable of even detecting all his wrongs.
And that's the end of our text.
It says this, verse 13 Keep back your servant from presumptuous sins, let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
It's actually in verse 12.
Look at verse 12.
Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
All right, Matthew Henry.
This is where I want to close.
I think he does great justice to verse 12 of the text.
He says this David rightly recognizes that all men are guilty of many sins which through our carelessness and partiality to ourselves we are not aware of.
Many we have been guilty of which we have forgotten.
So, that when we have been ever so particular, so thorough, so careful in our confession of sin, we must conclude our prayers of confession with an etc.
So, even when we're doing confession or repentance in prayer, Father, I confess this before you, I confess this before you, I confess this, and etc.
I think that's profound.
That's what David's getting at.
My hidden faults, my errors that I can't even see.
Matthew Henry goes on, For God knows a great deal more evil of us than we do of ourselves.
In many things we all offend, and who can tell how often he offends?
It is well that we are under grace and not under law, or else we would be undone.
So David takes occasion hence to pray against sin.
All the discoveries of sin made to us by the law, right?
That's what the MRI detects, should drive us to the throne of grace.
That's the gospel that removes the tumor.
There to do what?
We go to the cross, to the gospel, to pray as David does here for pardon and mercy.
Finding himself unable to specify all the particulars of his transgressions, he cries out, Lord, cleanse me of my secret faults.
Now, notice this.
His secret faults are not secret to God, for none are.
Nor are they just merely those secret faults to the world.
So, when he says my secret faults, he's not just saying the secret sin, because we often use that phrase, secret sin, to describe the sin that we know about but other people don't.
So, no sin is secret from God.
He sees it all.
We use the phrase secret sin to say we know it's not secret from God.
It's also not secret from us.
We're aware of it, but it's secret from others.
But David's not praying even about that.
He's not praying about your known secret sin.
Known to you, but not known by others.
No, he's saying this.
He cries out, Lord, cleanse me from all my secret faults, not secret to God, so none are, nor even secret, just those that are secret to the world, but even those sins in my life and in my heart that are secret to me, that were hidden from his own observation of himself.
The best of men have reason to suspect themselves guilty of many secret faults and to pray to God to cleanse them from that guilt and not lay it to their charge.
AKA, you're worse than you think you are.
And God is holier than you perceive Him to be.
Which means that if you're in Christ, God's grace for you is bigger than you ever imagined.
That's the point.
It's not you're worse than you think you are, go home, that's the whole sermon, hope you're depressed.
No, you're worse than you think you are, I'm worse than I think I am.
We're all worse than others think we are.
I know I'm worse than you think I am.
But I'm actually worse than I think I am.
That's what David's getting at.
It's deeper.
Do you see?
It's deeper.
It's not just, man, if people actually knew who I was, I'm so much worse than people realize.
No, no, no.
You Are Worse Than You Think00:03:48
It's beyond that.
It's, I'm so much worse than I realize.
But here's the beauty our omniscient God, He knows.
He knows how bad you are.
And He still chose you.
And sent his son to die for you.
So you're worse than you think you are.
He's holier than you think he is, which means the gap between you and God is wider than you've ever perceived it to be.
But Christ still died for you, meaning that Christ loves you more than you realize.
God loves you more than you know.
That's how theologically that little statement, God loves you so much more than you know, that's the theological framework for what makes that statement true.
God loves you more than you know.
So today, I hope that through the preaching of God's law and also the gospel, you would come to an awareness of a greater sense of your guilt, your sin, but also a greater sense of God's holiness and therefore a greater sense of His love and mercy in the gospel of Jesus Christ, causing you to see more of His love for you, which 1 John 4 19 causes you to have more love for Him, which according to Jesus, Should bring about obedience to the law.
And obedience to the law produces, as a guarantee, prosperity and pleasure in an eternal spiritual sense, the life to come.
But ordinarily, in a nation like ours, assuming that Biden doesn't ruin it, prosperity and pleasure in this life as well.
Let's pray.
Father God, thank you for your word.
Thank you for the blessing of your law.
Thank you for your wisdom, your goodness, your benevolence, and your righteousness.
Your law is wise as you are wise, right as you are right, but also good.
It's not just the right thing to do.
It's the good thing to do.
It is beneficial for those who trust you and obey.
I pray, Lord, that we would be a church that loves the gospel and preaches grace as the only means of salvation and forgiveness of sin, but also a church that esteems the law and loves the law and preaches the law as a way of life because it's right, but it's also good.
I pray that we would raise households and families and children and start businesses and publishing companies and schools and all these things by not following our own.
Wisdom, our own judgments, but your word, your law, trusting it.
It's sure.
The law of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
I think of what Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, where he says, Not many of you were wise according to the world's standards.
And so it is true of me.
So it is true of us, this church.
Let that be the testimony years to come, if it be your will, let that be the testimony that people would look from the outside in and they'd say, Not many of them were wise.
But the law of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
And they just had that childlike, not childish, but childlike trust in the law of God.
Not as a means for salvation.
They weren't legalists.
They trusted the gospel for salvation.
But they trusted and submitted to God's law as the rule of life.
And look at how much they did.
While still being simple in a sense, not many were wise by worldly standards.
They were simple.
Some of these guys in this church, covenant Bible church, they didn't have a college degree, they didn't have this, they didn't have that.
But they just had the good book, they had the Bible, and they actually had the audacity to believe it and to apply it.
And look at what God did let that be, Lord, if it be your will, let that be the legacy of this church and many other faithful churches throughout our nation and the world.
Law As The Rule For Life00:00:19
We pray these things in Jesus' name for your glory, amen.
Thanks so much for listening.
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