A Father Who Has Passed The Test

James 1:12. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Father’s Day Sunday, June 21, 2026.

Men in general and fathers in particular have taken quite a beating in our culture.  It is not that women and moms do not need to be honored and encouraged, they surely do.  However, we do not need to trash men and fathers in order to do that.  The truth is that we need to encourage each other in the right things.

As our culture has deteriorated, the challenge for believers has always been to remain faithful to Christ and his word.  God knows how He has designed us and what makes for our good.  When we work with God’s design and purpose, we remove a lot of problems from life that are self-inflicted.  It doesn’t make life a piece of cake, but it does cooperate with the One who can help us through it.

God’s design is for a wife and a husband to help each other pass the tests of this life, even the test of life itself.  When we do this, we will build better families, a better church, and a better society.

Let’s look at our passage.

A blessed man (1:12)

James uses a formula that harkens back to Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…”  It was also used by Jesus in Matthew 5:1-12 in what we call The Beatitudes.

Jesus shows us that many things which cause us to feel like we are disqualified, even by God, are the very things which God values.  God has you in mind, and part of that is to bless you.  The man who mourns is blessed because God has comfort for him.  The man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is blessed because God will satisfy him.

Notice that Jesus does not put these in the future tense.  He does not say those who mourn will be blessed on the day God comforts them.  You are already blessed because God is the one who both decrees and helps you towards the good that He intends.  He is watching over you and out for you.

We should not complain about our lot in life and tell ourselves that we are cursed or unloved by God.  Rather, we should look to God, trust in Him, and rejoice in the good purpose that He has put before us.  We should also rejoice that He is present with us in all of His goodness before we ever reach it.

James is speaking of a person who perseveres under trial.  Persevering is the patience of endurance.  It means to stick under the heaviness of the trial.  The devil wants you to quit, and your own flesh often wants you to quit.  But God has a blessing in it and encourages you to persevere.

Being a father will, if anything, take perseverance.  It is a different kind of heavy load that doesn’t test our physical muscles but rather tests our internal fortitude.  How can we stick in there when we are tempted to give up?  We must look to Jesus who was crushed under a heavy load for each one of us.

Jesus didn’t use the word for a trial in the beatitudes, but he did use it in the prayer he taught them in chapter 6.  “Do not lead us into temptation (test/trial), but deliver us from evil (or the evil one).”  The sense is a prayer that we not be led into trials and left at the mercy of evil.  It is a prayer for God to help us be victorious.  All people face trials in life, but we can sometimes run away from them.  When we run away from a trial, we are only running towards the next one.  In fact, our refusal to face this one makes it easier for us to run from the next one.  God wants to bring us through the trials in victory.

Whether you think of this as a trial or as temptation, they are both related.  Every trial is both a test and a temptation.  The poor in spirit are tested or tempted by choosing spiritual arrogance.  Those who mourn are tested by their loss and tempted to give up on God.

The trial is not easy and pleasant, but the best response is to trust God and His way through it.  The best response is to say no to the temptation to go another way.  None of us do this without any failure, but Jesus did.  He is our model but also our forgiveness and our help in the trial.  The blessed man is one who is looking to Christ to help bring him through the tests, trials, and temptations of life.

James then gives us the phrase “once he has been approved.”  This approval is not our own approval or the approval of other people.  It is the approval of the Lord.  This approval can be thought of in two senses.  There is an approval of God in our decision to trust in Jesus.  John 3:16 makes it clear that to do this is to obtain eternal life.  However, one who follows Jesus in faith must persevere to the end of this life in faith.  Thus, there is a final approval for those who have endured in the faith to the laying down of their physical body in death.

No man finds the approval of God on his own merits.  Jesus is the foundation upon which we can be approved.  However, we must exercise faith in our life.  It is Jesus who makes the grace of forgiveness and salvation available to us.  In fact, we must be careful of thinking that failure in a trial somehow ends the trial.  Repentance and reconciliation are part of the trial and the approved life.  Yes, it would be better for us to not fail in the trial.  However, we must not fail to repent and turn to Christ for strength to endure and grow.  He can redeem every situation when we repent and put it in his hands.

What do I do with the failure of others?  Just as I should respond with repentance to my own failures, so I must respond with the mercy and love of God at the failure of others.  Speak the truth in love.

Raising kids for Jesus is no easy task and will try every man’s heart.  Yet, you can persevere, ask God for help, and trust Him.  The challenge of God to us is this.  Are you willing to keep walking in my blessing by faith?

James then tells us that, once we have been approved, we will receive the crown of life.  The crown of life is speaking of the eternal life of God.  This eternal life is like a victor’s crown (a prize or award) upon the believer.  Similar to our approval, we can see this in two senses as well.  When we put our faith in Jesus, we are connected to God’s eternal life.  Yet, there is a future fullness of this eternal life that will occur at the resurrection.  We should aim to walk in this life with the approval of God.  We should face the trials victoriously as He would have us.  Yet, our ultimate victory will be at the resurrection.

The final phrase is “which the lord promised to those who love Him.  So far, we have focused upon the blessed man.  The focus here is on the Lord.  The Lord has made a promise of blessing to those who love him. This is a promise that anyone can receive because the Lord makes it to “whosoever would believe in [Jesus].”  You can step into that place of promise, that place of blessing, at any time.

Jesus will keep his end of the promise.  If you will look to him, he will enable you to be victorious over every trial, test, and temptation.  Each of us may lose a battle here and there, but we don’t have to lose the war.

All fathers are able to be a blessed man, not because we have it in ourselves to be so but because we have a God who made us precisely for this.  Don’t be discouraged; God is with you and will help you to glorify Him in the facing of every test.  Don’t you know that you are blessed?

Fathers's Day audio

Father, Turn Our Hearts

Luke 1:11-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 20, 2021, Father’s Day.

We are celebrating Father’s Day.  It is easy in life to let your heart turn towards the things that it wants to turn towards.  It doesn’t help when you have a society that elevates following the heart over doing what is right and pleasing God.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes, God puts things in our hearts, but the follower of Jesus will wrestle with those things, seeking to be intellectually honest before God.  They desire more to follow him than to follow their own heart.

Today, we will look at a man who was grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have any children, and through his interaction with an angel, we are reminded of God the Father’s heart for us.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Father’s impact

In this passage, we are not told whether Zacharias was praying for a child that day in the temple.  He was a priest who had been picked by lot to offer the incense in the Holy Place before the veil, and the Presence of God.  We are told that he and his wife were “well advanced in years.”  This probably means that his years of praying for a child had long since ceased, and his hopes for such had long since died.

God the Father chose a particular day, when it looked like there was no hope, and in fact he wasn’t even looking to see if there was hope anymore.  It was at that moment that He sent an angel to give Zacharias the good news.  God had a present for him, a large measure of grace; he was going to have a son!  As exciting as this news was to Zacharias, notice that this grace is not all about him and his wife.  It is also about the nation of Israel and its need to turn back to God.  We must always remember that the grace of God in our life is a present from a loving Father, but it is also intended to bless more than just me.  It is our natural tendency to be short-sided in regard to the grace of God in our life.

This is probably the first time that Zacharias has seen an angel.  Though we are not given a description in Luke, the angel explains that he is Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.  This angel called Gabriel also interacted with Daniel in Daniel chapters 8 and 9.  There he is described as looking like a man (no wings).   So, it is most likely not what Gabriel looks like that startles Zacharias, but the fact that no one is supposed to be in the Holy Place at that time, but him.

There are things that can make men afraid.  Zacharias is a righteous man who has been serving God “blamelessly.”  It would be easy to say that a righteous man shouldn’t fear anything, even that we shouldn’t fear God; He is on our side!  However, God still does things, or allows things, in our life that we can’t control, and that we weren’t expecting.  Fear is a natural response in these times.

Many fathers try to look like they aren’t afraid, but if we don’t keep our heart and eyes turned towards God, we can become entangled in a web of fears.  You can spend your life trying to become greater than your fears, or you can turn to the One who is greater than all that you fear.  In fact, when we are not living right before God, we often fear things that we shouldn’t.  Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”  We can become trapped by a mixture of real things and figments of our warped imagination.

The real problem in life is not that we fear, but that we are truly bad at fearing the right things.  There are many fathers today who are not afraid to abandon their children, or they are not afraid to help a girl abort their baby.  They aren’t afraid to abuse the woman that they are with.  Really, they don’t fear God who has warned those who do such things of the consequences of the things they are doing.  We are not afraid to play God in our labs, businesses, and government buildings.  We are not afraid of throwing off the time-proven wisdom of the past for the seduction of a future that we think we can control.  Yes, the real problem is that we aren’t afraid of running off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

In the end, God is not a danger to those who serve Him in love.  I should add a caveat to this.  It all comes down to the definition of “danger.”  Jesus served the Father faithfully in love, but he died on a cross.  Yet, God is showing us through the resurrection of Jesus that any danger He purposefully brings before us, or even allows to come before us, has a way through it that brings us to the good things that He intends for us on the other side.

In truth, He is a danger to our flesh, but He is Eternal Life, Peace, and Joy to our soul, and to our future.  He really does love you, and will bless you if you will turn to Him in faithful love.  Like Zacharias, we must be those ones who are rare in a land of men who have turned away from God.  We must pass that reality on to the next generation, both with our natural children and with the spiritual children that God brings into our lives.

The Father’s desire

As the angel describes God’s purpose for the child that Zacharias will have, we see the desire of our heavenly Father’s heart, and the things that were keeping Israel in bondage.

The term “children of Israel” is used in this context as a reference to generation, and not as a reference to age.  It is not talking about everyone under the age of 12, but of the current generation who had been birthed by the generation before.  It pictures each generation as Israel giving birth to the next generation of Israel.  The nation of Israel, both young and old, were the children of Israel, just as we today are the children of the United States of America. 

The problem with any nation is that our hearts get turned away from God the Father.  No matter how good our beginning may have been, all nations run into peril as more and more of their people turn their hearts away from God.  The Father’s desire was that the hearts of that generation be turned back towards Him.

We must not see God as a Father who is hurt and mad that His children don’t love Him.  Instead, we must see the reality of what happens to children who turn away from loving parents, and cast off their godly instruction.  Such children turn towards foolish things, and the path of folly always brings ruin to a person and to a nation.  God’s heart breaks over the folly that is taking over, not just our land, but all of the nations on this earth.  With a Father’s heart, He cries out, “Why will you die?  Choose Life, and turn back to Me!”

He also desires to turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children.  When our hearts are turned towards God, He teaches us to have our hearts turned towards each other in the right way.  There is a plague of fatherless children across our land.  Too many fathers have rejected the heavenly Father and His desire to turn their heart towards their wives and children.  This is not just a problem for fathers.  Mothers and children have the same problems too.

However, men, we must be bold as lions and care for the people that God has put in our lives.  Regardless of how they respond, we must love them and seek God’s best for them, by showing them what a righteous man looks like, and how he lives.  This world successfully seduces our hearts away from what really matters because it first seduced our heart away from God.  This is how Satan plunders us from the goodness and inheritance of God.

Ultimately, the Father desires to turn the disobedient towards the wisdom of the righteous.  Israel had become disobedient children.  They were fathers who were disobedient to the heaven Father, and children who were disobedient to earthly fathers.  They refused to hear the words of wisdom spoken through the righteous men of the past, and written down in the Bible.  In short, to turn is to repent.  There is a lot of turning going on in this world.  People turn from one thing to the next seeking their own happiness.  However, it is not good enough to repent of one fleshly pursuit to go after another.  The only repentance that will actually do you any good, and even do good for the people around you, is the repentance that turns all the way around back towards God.  Finally, when we are truly oriented towards Him, He is able to turn us back around to the people and things in our life in wisdom and righteousness, in a way that gives life, and not death.  May God help us to cast aside disobedience, hear the heart of a loving Father, and turn into the path of life!

Fathers, Don't Quit

James 5:7-11.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Father’s Day, June 21, 2020.

It is always my goal to encourage moms and dads in continuing the hard work of being a parent, whether you have young kids, or adult children who have their own.  So, my message to fathers today is simply, don’t quit.  Your family needs you whether it feels like it or not, and whether it looks like it or not.  Don’t quit!

Don’t quit on the Lord

In James 5:7-11, the section serves as a conclusion to a problem described in the earlier verses of this chapter, an unjust world.  James warns the rich, who are defrauding their workers of their wages, as well as condemning and murdering those who have no power to stand against them.  He tells them, “You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.”  (NKJV). 

It would be easy to be overwhelmed in such a case.  Christians typically were not from the rich class and were quite used to dealing with injustice.  Everyone can reach a point where they feel like quitting in any endeavor.  Now, quitting a bad thing is good and conforms to the biblical message of repentance.  However, quitting on the Lord, His commands and plan, only leaves us without hope.  The world talks a good game, but it always delivers injustice.

James is reminding us that the ultimate judge is coming, the Lord Jesus.  2 Timothy 4:1 says, “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom…”  (NKJV).  Jesus came to earth, suffered and died as a human.  It is God the Father’s decree that the man Jesus is to judge all of humanity and all of the heavenly beings as well.  It is fitting that we be judge by one who has been where we have been, and by one who can identify with all that ails us as humans.  He is the perfect and righteous judge.

Don’t join the scoffers who laugh and deride the idea that Jesus will ever come back.  And, don’t join the scoffers, who mock our faith in Jesus, as a pipe dream that makes us fodder for those who aren’t restrained by God’s Word.  Yes, Jesus turned the other cheek and they killed him for it.  We are not promised justice in this life because this world is the result of the choices of humans and fallen spirits.  What we are promised is a day in which all the righteous of every generation will be vindicated and God will settle all accounts through Jesus.  This is not the time to lose your faith in Jesus.  There is no hope in this world that will actually survive the increasing chaos into which we are plummeting.  Only Jesus can help us.

James then gives us the image of a farmer.  The farmer does a lot of work in order to plant seeds, and then he must be patient.  WE don’t always see an immediate effect from our hard work.  This world is hard work:  making a living, becoming one with a spouse, raising your children, and growing old.  The encouragement is that it takes time for hard work that is good to bear fruit.

There is a proper season for all things.  When your kids are young, it is critical to plant good seeds in their life.  You can’t look at your kid in the terrible two’s and say, “I quit; it’s not working!”  I guess you can, but you really shouldn’t.  You shouldn’t look at that angry teenager and quit parenting, if you really care about them.  Yes, kids often do not listen to their parents, and it is easy for parents to become offended, perhaps retreat from the hard work.  This is called immaturity.  There is a whole world around us suffering and just one of the reasons is this.  People in their lives quit trusting the Lord and that the hard work of doing the right thing would eventually bear fruit.  There are many things that will bear fruit in this life, but ultimately, the greatest fruit of trusting the Lord will be reaped at the Second Coming of Jesus.

In verse 8, James tells us to establish, or strengthen, our hearts.  This speaks of fixing yourself internally upon a certain course.  In Luke 9:51, this same word is used of Jesus.  “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” (NKJV).

We need to have a firm resolve and we need to maintenance that resolve.  In a way, the whole book of the Psalms is a case study in righteous people maintaining their faith in God’s ways, even though they were tired of the injustice in the world.  We strengthen our hearts when we spend time in the Word of God and praying.  We strengthen our hearts when we encourage one another.  Anytime I talk with someone who has failed in this area, they confess that they were not maintaining their faith like they should have.  God help us to fix our eyes upon the task at hand and to simultaneously see the finish line where our reward truly lies.

The devil’s design is to wear you down in this world until you just surrender to the system.  You either go along in order to get yours, or you fight against the system in your flesh.  Both choices are a choice to surrender to him instead of God.  I would rather live surrendered to the plans and purposes of Jesus than anyone else on this planet, myself included.

It is God’s intention that fathers would have good fathers themselves, role models that would be a source of strength.  In this day, it is becoming scarcer and scarcer.  In verses 10 and 11, James reminds us about the examples we have in God’s Word.  If you didn’t have a good, earthly father then know this.  You have good, fatherly examples in God’s Word because your heavenly Father knew that you would need encouragement and a model to follow.  Whether Jesus himself, or the man Job, we look up to these men because they endured great hardship.  They were faithful to God when it didn’t seem to help them.

The concept of patience is used several times in this passage.  In verse 8, “Be patient,” the word is literally to be long fused, that is not easily angered.  It is the patience of keeping ourselves from exploding in anger.  However, in verse 10, patience is a Greek synonym that means to remain under the load, that is endurance or perseverance under pressure.  Both are important to patience.  The first is the temptation of our emotions to throw everything aside and protect ourselves.  It is a temptation to do something bad rather than the good you are doing.  In the second, patience is focused on continuing to do the good work, which is a long hard work of persevering things.  We can do so more easily because God has promised us good things on the other side of the hard work. 

So, what do you do if you have failed in this area?  Quit quitting!  When Jesus found Peter fishing after the resurrection, he told him, “Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.  But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”  (NKJV).  Yes, in this world you will have trouble, but fear not, Jesus has overcome the world!  May God strengthen us to get up each day and do the hard work of being a father to those whom God has placed in our life.

Don't Quit Audio

Being a Righteous Man

Psalm 139:1-12; 19-24.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Father’s Day June 17, 2018.

Our passage today is not so much about fathers as it is about something that every father has to face.  It is necessary for a man to recognize the greatness of God and choose to walk in righteousness before Him.  This is not just for his sake, but also for the sake of his family, and the people around him.  When you step back and look objectively at our culture, there is not a lot of encouragement for a man to be righteous.  In fact, the word has become despised and is projected out of the mouth as if something vile was being expectorated.

Yet, Scripture calls men and women to reject self-righteousness, and embrace the righteousness of God.  This is not an excuse to sidestep the responsibility for decisions we make.  Rather, God’s plan is to set us in a place of safety because of the righteousness of Christ.  From that place of safety we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to hear God and obey Him, thus living out the righteousness of Christ.

In our psalm today we will follow David as he meditates on the truth about God and hopefully we will recognize how it should impact our souls and our lives.  Dads, may you choose to be a righteous man in the eyes of God, rather than in the eyes of this world.

Recognize the omniscience of God

Though David does not use the term omniscience, the word was created in order to name what David is talking about in this psalm.  He defines the truth that God knows all things in a multitude of ways.  In fact, the Bible is filled with a constant barrage of the teaching that God knows all things.

In verses 1-4 David speaks of God’s knowledge regarding the outward and the inward parts of our lives.  In regard to the outward, he mentions the fact that God knows when we are sitting down or rising up.  He knows what path we take and when we lie down.  In regards to the inner life, David mentions that God knows our thoughts even from afar off, and that He already knows the word that is just on the tip of my tongue before I say it.

In a day and age where governments and businesses at all levels seek to have more and more information regarding everything that we do, we can understand how this could be a scary thought.  With man all knowledge is used to restrict and control, and thus an omniscient government would exercise maximum restriction and control upon the people.  However, God is not a tyrant who wants control, despite the propaganda campaign that has been waged against Him.  If He was, we would not be having this conversation right now.  No matter how many years man spends trying to become as omniscient as God, we cannot escape the fact that He is already there, and knows us all completely, inside and out.

In fact in verse 5 David recognizes that he is completely surrounded by God.  He is hedged or enclosed by God, behind, in front, and even has His hand upon him.  Thus God is not only beholding everything, but everything is also within His purview.  Nothing is outside of God’s knowledge and ability to do something about it.  This sets up the next point that God is omnipresent.  But before we go that, let us take a moment to be amazed with David.

When you truly realize the absolute omniscience of God and spend time thinking about its ramifications, you should be filled with amazement, awe, and even a healthy sense of fear.  In verse 6, David recognizes this, but also that God knows us better than we know ourselves.  His level of knowledge is so great that we cannot even come close to attaining it.  All truth brings us to a decision place, where we must choose how we are going to respond to it.  So let’s read on and see how David responds.

Recognize the omnipresence of God

The omniscience of God is wrapped up in a similar idea that God is present everywhere at once.  That is, there is no place that God is not present.  Now notice in verse 7 that David couches this in the language of fleeing.  This should remind us of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  After they had sinned and heard God coming to visit with them, all they could think to do was run and hide from Him.  Of course their attempts to hide were futile, not because they lacked hiding skills, but because nothing can hide from the God who is omnipresent in all places.  Now David expresses that this futility is not just physical but also spiritual by mentioning heaven and hell first.  Of course if we went to heaven God would be there because it is His throne.  But God is in hell?  First, the term translated hell here is technically a word that refers to the spiritual aspect of the grave.  It is the holding place where all spirits, wicked and righteous, go to await Judgment Day.  Thus for the wicked it is a dry, dusty, thirsty, hot place.  But, for the righteous it is a place of peace and rest.  This holding place, or “the grave,” was created by God and is always before Him.  Thus even in death one cannot escape God.  Some live this life believing that there is nothing after death.  They assuage their conscience with the frail hope that there will be no accounting for this life.  But David recognized that God is not just everywhere in the universe, but also in the place our spirits go to when we die.

The futility of fleeing applies to geography too.  Like Jonah, one cannot even flee to the farthest places of the earth, but that God would be there trying to lead you back to the righteous path. And therein lies a twist.  David recognizes the goodness of God in that though he is clearly thinking of ways to flee from God, he recognizes that no matter where he goes, God uses His omniscience and omnipresence not to crush us, but rather to lead us and to hold us (vs. 10).  It is a scary thing for man through his technology to become omniscient and omnipresent, but God who already has these things can be trusted.  He is actually trying to help you, not control you.  Men’s hearts cannot be trusted with ultimate power.  But God has proven Himself time and time again through the millennia.  How great is the grace and patience of our Creator.

David even contemplates being in a place of complete darkness, and yet recognizes that God would see us there.  Sure, science tells us that there are all manner of wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum.  So our military can brag about “owning the night” because they use night vision goggles to pick up the infrared spectrum.  Thus the one who designed our eyes to pick up only a portion of this spectrum must be able to recognize every spectrum.  Yet, this is not what David means.  God is spirit and as such does not have “eyes” that pick up a larger spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation all around us.  Even if a human cooled themselves down to absolute zero and was encased in a shield designed to block out all radiation (Gamma, x-ray, etc.), yet God would still “see” you there and ask you, “What are you doing here?”  This had great encouragement for David because there were times when he was driven far away from the dwelling place of God, the tabernacle.  Yet, God is not held to a particular geographical place on earth.  Thus what could be seen as scary has a comforting side to it.

In fact this is what David goes on to recognize in verses 13-18.  We looked at these verses during Mother’s Day.  So if you want to check out the commentary on those verses go to the entry for May 13, 2018.  Suffice it to say that David recognizes that God was there when he was being formed in the womb.  God created us, knows us intimately, and thinks a great number of thoughts about us.  He is the ultimate loving Father who agonizes over the plight of a child who is far, far away from where they need to be.  God created you, intimately knows you, and thinks about you all the time.  Why would you run from Him?

Respond properly to these truths

In verses 19-24 David moves to his response to this contemplation.  Instead of running from God, David chooses to go towards God.  If Adam and Eve would have truly known the heart of God, they would have fled the serpent at first sight, and ran towards God.  Even after their sin, they should have run towards God, not away.  Only God has salvation and healing for us.  This is the proper response.

Now verses 19-22 can make some people squeamish, at least here in western civilization.  It seems to contradict Jesus who tells us to love our enemies.  It is important to recognize that David is speaking as a man under the law, and not as the Messiah who had come to lead Israel out from under the Law of Moses.  Still, it is better to recognize that the teaching of Jesus is a bit more nuanced than just that we love our enemies.  If you have ever tried to love someone who was bent on wickedness and rejecting the ways of God, then you know the agony of seeking God’s will in this matter.  What does it mean to love someone?  Jesus in no way suggests that the righteous should jump on the same side as the wicked and help them on their way.  Even Jesus warns us that we must make a choice that leaves the world behind in order to follow Him.  “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”  Luke 14: 26.  Ultimately all people must decide for themselves what side they are on, the side of the wicked or of those who follow God’s righteousness.  David has made his choice.  He hates the wicked with a “perfect hatred.”  Of course, being a man of war, it is no shock that he gives such a full-throated declaration of being on God’s side.

We should also notice that David is talking about people who actually hate God and His way.  It is one thing to care about people’s souls and love them enough to share the truth of Christ with them.  But when they spit it back in your face and say all manner of evil against God and Christ, then we cannot say, “O, isn’t that nice.  Blessings, brother.”  C.H. Spurgeon, a British, Baptist preacher of the 1800’s said about this, “To love all men with benevolence is our duty, but to love any man with complacency would be a crime.”  Thus through the years the adage, “love the sinner, but hate the sin,” was created.  The sad truth is that some people will not be separated from their sins and will cling to them in rage against God, no matter how much you love them.  Thus love is not complacent about the lost condition of the wicked, but instead lays down its life in order to open their eyes to Christ.

The last two verses of this psalm focuses on our response towards God.  We should open ourselves up to God and embrace His omniscience.  David has come full-circle.  A righteous man is not righteous because he is so wonderful.  He is righteous because even though his flesh wants to run from God, he has run towards God.  He has opened himself up to God in trust and in faith saying, “O God, search me and show me where I need to change!”  “Teach me the way to live that gives life everlasting!”

Men and women, how can we be righteous?  Not by pretense and image-tending on the outside.  Only by choosing to be vulnerable to The One whom you cannot fool and to whom you cannot defend yourself.  He is The One who loves you better than you can love yourself.  The well known ABC’s of salvation say it well.  We must admit that we are sinners in need of a Savior, believe on the Lord Jesus with full faith, and we must confess this faith in Jesus publicly that all men may know that we have chosen the path of God’s righteousness.  Amen!

Righteous Man audio