Connecting to the Source of Life

John 15:1-8.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 5, 2017.

Our mission statement, here at Abundant Life Christian Fellowship, is: Connecting people to the Abundant Life found in Jesus.  This is a brief and succinct way of saying what our Lord has told us to do.  Connections are a big part of what God is trying to do in this world.  Yet, these connections must be more than just a natural thing.  This all starts with making a spiritual connection to the ultimate, spiritual source of life that is found in Jesus.

In our passage today, Jesus uses a picture of a vine and its branches to help us understand the reality of both an outward connection and a inward connection.  It is not enough to just look like you are connected.  A branch can be physically connected to the tree and yet not be drawing life from it.  So it is imperative that we hear the Spirit of God calling us to a living connection.  Calling us with the words, “Come!   Let him who thirsts come.  Whoever desires let him take the water of life freely.”

Jesus is the true vine

Let’s look at verses 1-3 first.  Jesus describes the metaphor and identifies what each part signifies.  Jesus is the true vine.  His disciples are the branches that are connected to him.  The Father is the gardener who is tending to the branches of the vine in order that it might bear more fruit.  Jesus doesn’t explain how they became branches connected to him.  So let’s flesh that out a bit.

How does one get to be a branch connected to Jesus?  John 3:16 becomes a good starting point.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whoever believes on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  Thus the connection begins with belief in Jesus (Faith, Trust).  Do you trust that the work of Jesus on the cross covers your sin?  And, do you trust that following him as your master will lead to eternal life?  If you do then the Spirit of God connects you to Christ by taking up residence within you.  John 1:12-13 also says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”  Thus when the reality of who Jesus is comes to us, we must receive Him as He is, God’s Son.  Still, our spiritual birth is a spiritual thing, not a natural thing.  No one becomes connected to Jesus because they were born in a particular family or of a particular race.  We must individually believe in Him.  Lastly Romans 11 tells us that God grafts us into the olive tree, which is Jesus, so that we can partake in the life of the tree and its roots.  So we have a part in receiving the Truth that God gives us about Jesus and believing Him enough to follow Him.  God does the spiritual part of connecting us spiritually to Jesus.

Notice that Jesus calls himself the “true” vine.  He doesn’t say anything more about that in the rest of the passage, and so we might miss its significance.  If there is a true vine then it implies that there has been a false vine or many false vines.  The presence of a false vine had been promising life, but had actually delivered spiritual death to the religious leaders of Israel.  They had been tempted to connect to something other than the One, True God.  Of course, on the surface it looked like they were.  But that was only a superficial connection.  Their true spiritual connection was to the ways of the world, to the devil himself.  This is our human predicament.  We tend to connect to all manner of things that we hope will bring us life, but they never satisfy.  Jesus is the true vine that will actually deliver on the life that it promises.  He is not a pretender.

In verse 2 we are told that the Father prunes the branches because He wants them to be fruitful.  So what is this fruit that God desires?  Just as Jesus is a life giving vine, so God wants us to be life giving branches.  The fruit represents that which gives life.  Galatians 5 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit of God in our life is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.  But it also says that the fruit of my own flesh and connection with this world is: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.  Then Paul says, “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”  So there is a certain amount of cutting that happens in the life of a follower of Jesus who is spiritually connected to Him.  They will be pruned so that they can be more fruitful.  Pruning always starts with cutting off the dead stuff.  It stresses the tree and robs it of strength to grow more fruit.  Pruning also cuts off perfectly good twigs.  This is done because sunlight and oxygen have trouble hitting all parts of the tree.  We can complain with things that God removes from our life, but He does so for our own good; that we might be a fruitful branch.

A Connection to Him gives Life

Verses 4-8 give us a better picture of what it means to draw life from Jesus and it begins with a command.  It is not enough to connect to Jesus for a moment or temporarily.  We must abide in Him.  That word is also translated as “remain,” or “dwell.”  Jesus needs to become the source that we are hoping to draw life from.  And, in those times when we are tempted to find another source, we must resist the urge to move.  It doesn’t work to “try” Jesus for a week, a month, a year, or decade.  We must remain in Him and keep drawing into ourselves the life that He is supplying.  So the temptation comes from our flesh and the world around us to disconnect from Jesus and to connect to the so-called life of this world.  But in the end it only leads to death.  This is what Adam and Eve faced.  They were living in connection to God.  It wasn’t just superficial.  He was their very life.  But one day the devil comes as the serpent and tempts them to connect to something else.  You can’t have both.  To connect with the wisdom of the devil is to automatically disconnect from the wisdom of God.  And thus, death entered the world.

In verse 5 Jesus makes it clear that producing any real fruit is impossible without Him.  Some people’s lives look very fruitful because they are making money and living the high life.  But, that is not good fruit that gives life.  You can accomplish all manner of things without Jesus, but none of them will satisfy your soul and give you a life that is so powerful that it is eternal.  Fruitfulness that is recognized by God is only accomplished by following Jesus and nothing else.

In verses 6 and 7 we are reminded again that the connection must be a living connection.  There must be life flowing from Jesus to us.  Now this part of the passage can be seen as each branch being an individual person.  From time to time God cuts off those who have remained in His Church but are only pretending a connection to Him.  They refuse to draw life from Him by trusting the way of Jesus.  However, it is also true that God goes through our life from time to time and asks us to surrender particular areas of growth that may not be bad in and of themselves.  But, they must be removed if we are to be fruitful.  So Jesus points to His Word remaining in us as a further description of Him living in us.  When we hear the Word of God it is speaking to us about what should be cut off and what should be encouraged to grow.  The Holy Spirit also convicts us in our hearts to surrender in trust to the words of Jesus.  In these moments we either draw life from Christ or we harden our heart towards his life.  The enemy of our souls seeks to make us question God’s Word and quit trusting, believing it.  This is what he did with Adam and Eve.  “Did God really say…”  Always, he seeks to break that living connection that we have with the Spirit of God.

Lastly in verses 7-8 Jesus speaks to the area of prayer.  He points out that our prayers are affected by this connection.  The disciples were often amazed at the power of Jesus’ prayers.  For our prayers to be answered we must have a living connection with God.  That living connection is maintained by hearing and putting our trust in it.  Yes, it is important to obey God’s word, but we must do more than that.  We must obey out of a trust in God himself and all that He says.  Now some people try to take this passage to mean that you can have anything you want if you are connected to Jesus.  But, don’t forget that a living connection to Jesus will change what your heart desires.  At least it will cause the things of God to rise to the top.  When you are trusting in Jesus you aren’t praying from the desires of your flesh.  Instead you are praying from a heart and life that has learned the wisdom of God’s pruning.  Even in our prayer life, God is trying to teach us how to prune our own prayers.  Do you want your prayers to be fruitful?  Then learn to pray in accordance with the Spirit of God, rather than the lusts of your flesh.  Our lives can bring glory to God when we trust Him and prayerfully ask His help in this life.

I pray that you have made that connection to Jesus.  But if you haven’t don’t let another day go by without letting go of the false vine of this world and the false life that it promises.  Take hold of eternal life today by putting your faith in Jesus.  Then start drawing life from Him immediately by entering into a trusting relationship with Him.

Connecting audio

The Heart of a Righteous Person 4

Psalm 51:10-19.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 29, 2017.

Today we will finish up our look at David’s repentance in Psalm 51.  By way of reminder, David wrote this psalm after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband.  If we learn anything in this psalm, I pray that we learn this: the heart of a righteous person will be broken by God’s conviction of their sin.  They will repent of it and seek to restore relationship with Him. 

This is an extremely important point because it is becoming common to act like sin is not a problem for Christians, due to the fact that they are covered by Jesus.  However, the Bible tells us to not be deceived.  God will not be mocked.  If Christians sow to the flesh they are going to reap destruction from the flesh.  Sin negatively affects our relationship with God and with other people.  Yes, God can cover it with His grace.  But, we should never use that as a license for sin, and apathy towards the damage it does.  Some worry that warning against sin will create a mentality in which a person thinks they have lost their salvation each time they sin.  Of course, poor leadership could teach this or give this impression.  The truth is that sin detrimentally affects our spiritual relationship with God.  If we do not deal with it by repenting in our heart and doing the actions of repentance then it can eventually shipwreck our faith.

Desires its relationship with God to be fixed

We left off dealing with how God fixes our heart and mind.  David declares that God gives His wisdom to our minds, cleanses the heart stained by sin, and deals with the guilt of our sin.  In verse 10 he adds another thing that only God can do and that is to renew a steadfast spirit within us.  David knew that something had gone wrong in his own spirit.  He used to resist all manner of temptations and steadfastly long for the Lord’s way.  But the seduction of this sin broke through all of that.  Thus he asks God to repair it in such a way that it would be firmly established as it should be, AKA “a right spirit.”  This is a lesson to us about our hearts.  Just because your heart desires something doesn’t mean you should give in to it.  You can want the Lord and His ways more than the desires of your flesh.  In fact it is impossible to please all of the sinful desires that flit through your heart.  There are so many of them that you quickly get into a conflict of interest, which forces you to choose one over another.  David was not some kind of unfeeling, super-spiritual boy growing up.  He had a heart filled with sinful desires just like you and me.  He had done a good job of rejecting them and choosing the Lord’s way, but not at this point in his life.  When he gave in to the desires of his flesh, he found himself in bondage to sin from which only the Lord could free him.

I am going to skip verse 11 for now and look at verse 12 because it gives us two more areas where the Lord fixes our heart and mind.  First, sin had robbed David of his joy.  No matter how good it felt to give into temptation, it left him miserable in the end.  He lived in fear of discovery and hatred of his own weakness.  He had ceased to walk faithfully in the way of salvation and had taken an exit ramp to Pleasure Island.  The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:25 that the pleasures of sin are passing, or temporary.  No matter how good they are in the moment, they cannot replace the eternal joy and peace we have when we walk in right relationship with God.  David tried to walk the fence of looking righteous, and hiding his wickedness.  This will never bring joy and neither will going all out after sin.

The second item in verse 12 is the need for God to uphold us.  Literally we need something to lean on and only God can be that thing.  David knew that his life was falling apart.  His spirit alone was not enough to hold everything up.  In fact, David was in danger of becoming exactly like Saul who had persecuted him for so long.  This concern is not just for holding his external life together, but also for holding his internal mind and spirit together.  Our spirit was not meant to walk life without the upholding strength of the Spirit of God.  We will find that things eventually fall apart without Him.

In verse 11 David’s greatest fear is that God will abandon Him and no longer speak to his heart by the Holy Spirit.  This sense of the presence of God was in jeopardy.  Saul’s sin and lack of repentance led God to reject him as king and to refuse to speak to him.  David recognized that he was in that same dangerous place.  His only hope was to repent with a broken heart and plead with God for mercy.  Saul’s wickedness was not that he lacked faith in God.  His wickedness is that when he was confronted with it, he refused to soften his heart and repent.  David is showing us proper repentance.   There is nothing more precious than the reassuring presence of the Spirit of God in our life.  Even when the Spirit is rebuking and correcting us, we can still take joy in the fact that God does so because He loves us.  Hebrews 12:5-6 says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His son.”  A parent who does not discipline their child does not care about them and only has a superficial love.  David knew he had stepped over the line.  For him this was not a debate with other scholars about whether it was possible to lose one’s salvation.  For him it was a desperate sense that, no matter what, he didn’t want to go forward without sensing that the Spirit of God was with him.

Desires to help others

From verse 13 on, we see a change.  David is still pleading with the Lord, but he is also declaring what he wants to do for others.  His sin has done a lot of damage in the hearts of people throughout the nation.  His sin against the people could not be undone.  But, if God would forgive him, David would lift up the Lord before them.  There are some things that failure in sin teaches us.

In verse 14 David recognized that his past righteousness wasn’t enough.  He would teach people God’s ways.  God’s ways are righteous.  My ways are only righteous as much as I walk in His ways.  It is easy to promote self before others, especially when we are successful and our station in life is elevated.  People love to look up to successful people.  David’s “right” choices had led him into horrible actions and possible destruction.  However, the ways of the Lord lead to life.  The Bible says in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”  I would have to agree with David.  No pastor, evangelist, or missionary can point people to God’s ways because of how great they are.  Rather, we have all personally learned that following the desires of the flesh led to death, both physically and spiritually.  But God’s way leads to eternal life.

In verse 15 David says, “My mouth will show forth Your praise.”  He promises to publicly praise God’s righteousness.  Think of it.  David sees that his time is up and the “bridge is out” up ahead.  When God delivers him from his own sin, he will be filled with joy and the desire to praise God.  We praise God as an exalted form of acknowledgment.  But, we also praise God by way of encouraging each other.  It is important to rejoice in what God has done in your life and share that with others.  As we do this we lift God up and encourage others not to harden their heart, but instead break down in repentance before God and our fellow man.

In verses 16-17 David tells us one of the lessons he had learned.  This is an important part of repentance.  When we receive the forgiveness of God, we want to share with others the lessons we have learned.  Recognize that you don’t have to learn everything the hard way.  God has surrounded you with brothers and sisters who can share with you what they have learned, on top of the vast amount of lessons shared with us in the Bible.  David learned that God is not interested in our sacrifices at His temple.  He is interested in the sacrifices that are happening in our heart.  God wants a broken and contrite heart.  Self-righteous sin tells us to sacrifice everything but our own flesh.  Many people approach this same place as David and they harden their hearts.  Saul had continued to offer sacrifices, but he refused to let his heart be broken before God.  He hardened it all the more.  Yes, we should gather together and sing, hear the Word, read the Bible, and pray.  But all of these things are meaningless if our hearts are hardened towards God.  At the end of the day, all God wants from you is a heart that stops hardening itself and softens towards Him.  The heavenly Father loves you more than you can even imagine.  Don’t harden your heart towards Him.

In the last two verses, we may miss what David is really doing.  In a sense God hasn’t answered in the psalm, yet.  David knows that his sin has affected the nation.  Saul’s sin had caused the nation to descend into 40 years of chaos.  In a sense David is saying, “Whatever you do with me, God, have mercy on the people of Zion and Jerusalem.  Sin has consequences, and many of them affect the people around us.  Part of repentance is recognition of what we have done to others.  David had messed things up and the nation would pay a price.  We all have to own up to our own part of the problem without saying, “Yeah, but they did such and such.”  No matter what, I do not want to put the work of God in other people’s lives in danger.  My sin could snuff out the flame of God’s work in the life of another.  This is a horrible thought.  May God help us to deal with our sin and take the passion that David pours into this psalm as a template for our own act of breaking down in full repentance before God.

Heart of a Righteous Person 4 audio

The Heart of a Righteous Person 3

We apologize, but we do not have an audio for this week.  

Psalm 51:1-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 22, 2017.

We are going to look at the first half of Psalm 51 today, as we continue talking about the heart of a righteous person.  Here we see that the heart of a righteous person deals with its sin before God.  Of course, like anyone else, our flesh tries to avoid the issue of sin because it makes us uncomfortable.  However, at the end of the day, the righteous have learned that this is precisely the area that we must face if we are going to have freedom and joy. 

A unique thing to point out about the Psalms is that some of them have musical notations and statements that are not part of the Psalm, but give us information about it.  Thus, we are told that Psalm 51 was directed to the Chief Musician, but written by David.  More than this, we are also given the situation that led to David penning this Psalm, which is really a prayer.  “A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”  I think it would be good to take a few moments and remind ourselves of this situation.

In 2 Samuel 11 we are made aware of an amazing moral failure by David.  I do not say amazing because I cannot conceive of David sinning.  Rather, I say it is amazing because David has continuously stood strong against some very strong temptations: waiting patiently to be made king, showing restraint when he could have killed Saul, and refusing to reject God out of anger in difficult times.  David had weathered decades of difficulty, trusted in the Lord, and now was King of Israel.  More than this, God had blessed him and his armies were systematically subduing all the kingdoms around him.  At this point in his life, David begins to take it easy.  We are told that he, Israel’s most successful general, decided not to go to the battlefront that spring.  Instead, he stayed home.  One evening, while walking on his rooftop (think of a flat style roof), David sees a beautiful woman bathing.  This should have stopped right there.  But, David’s flesh began to leverage his power.  He inquires who the woman is and finds out that she is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who is one of David’s top 30 warriors and who had been with him in the wilderness times.  Again, it should have stopped there.  But David’s flesh keeps leveraging him.  He invites her to his place and they end up sleeping together.  David had committed adultery with the wife of one of his loyal friends.   To make matters worse, Bathsheba later sends word to David that she is pregnant.  Remember that her husband has been gone to the battlefield for a while.  David tries to cover his sin by requesting Uriah to be sent to the palace.  When Uriah arrives, David questions him about how everything is going and then tells him to go home for the evening.  His plan is that Uriah will take advantage of the opportunity and sleep with his wife.  This would cover up that Bathsheba had been unfaithful and would keep any further questioning leading to David.  Yet, we find that Uriah was a righteous man.  He refuses to go home and sleep with his wife, while his buddies are sleeping on the ground away from their wives.  So Uriah sleeps at the door of the palace.  David even gets him drunk, but Uriah still will not go home.  When David realizes that Uriah is not going to cover up his sin for him, he then changes plans.  He decides to send a note to Joab, his general, to have Uriah put at the front of the battle, and then to withdraw so that he will be killed.  Even worse, David has Uriah deliver his own death sentence.  Joab complies with David’s unlawful order and so Uriah is killed.  At this point David has been able to fix his problem.  But, he hasn’t really.  God speaks to the prophet Nathan and tells him what has happened.  Nathan then confronts the king.  David is guilty of adultery, deceit, betrayal, murder, giving unlawful orders, and pretending righteousness before the people (and much more).

We must understand that God will not allow us to get away with our sins.  We may be able to do so for a long time, but eventually we will be made to face them.  Righteous people are not people who have never sinned, or at some point were able to conquer sin.  They are not exalted people who are better than the rest of us.  They are people, just like you and I, who have learned to go to war against their own sin.  They are people who do not turn to pride and arrogance when they are confronted with their sin, but instead break down in repentance.  This is a righteous person.  So Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of repentance before God when he was rebuked by the prophet Nathan.

It repents of its sin

The word repentance literally means “to turn.”  When we repent we are turning away from our sin, and the path it is leading us down, and we are turning back towards God and His paths of righteousness.  Of course, this is difficult because we have sinned.  Yet, it must be done if we want to be alive spiritually.  It is only through repentance and the mercy of God that we are freed from the tyranny of sin.

In verse 1 David asks for mercy because he knows the character of God.  He knows that God is loving, kind, steadfast and unfailing in His care for mankind.  Yes, David has blown it completely.  But he has hope that God will forgive him.  We are not just talking about feelings that God has.  God doesn’t just have merciful feelings from time to time.  But, rather, God has proven Himself to have mercy as an integral part of His character.  Now, there is a difference between asking mercy when you are forced to do so, and to ask it when you are not forced.   It is interesting that in some ways God is forcing David to face his sin; there is judgment coming upon David.  Yet, in other ways, God is giving David room to respond.  Imagine if, when one sins, a policing angel from God immediately grabbed us and brought us into the heavenly court of God and we were judged there for our sin.  Of course, everyone would immediately plead mercy.  Instead, God gives us enough warning and confrontation to cause us to fear where our sin is taking us, and yet not so much that there is no room to make it right.  I say that because sins that are done in this life must be faced and dealt with in this life.  If you wait until you are brought before the judge upon your death, it will be too late to make your peace.  Through repentance we can approach the heavenly court before hand in order to deal with our sin.  This is what we see in this Psalm.  David begs for mercy.

He also acknowledges his sin, verse 3.  Yes, he had tried to hide for a while.  But in the end we find David humbling himself and acknowledging that he has sinned.  In fact, this is the reason he can hope that God will have mercy; because he acknowledges his sin.  God loves to give mercy, but He will not do so if a person refuses to acknowledge their sin.  It is through these actions of acknowledging sin and asking for mercy that God forgives and we are declared to be righteous by God.

It desires its relationship with God to be fixed

In verses 4-9 David moves from trying to be freed from his sin, to asking for his relationship with God to be made right.  You see it is good to repent out of fear of God’s punishment.  But it is even better to also want our relationship with Him healed.  David did not want to go through life without God’s presence in his life, and God’s approval upon him.  So how can this be fixed?

Though David is king of Israel, he still has a higher King over him, and that is God.  In verse 4 David says, “Against you, and you only, have I sinned.”  To our ears it sounds like David is minimizing what he did to others, like they don’t matter in some way.  What David actually is doing is recognizing that his sin was actually worse.  In other words, when he sinned against Bathsheba by inviting her to the palace and seducing her, he was even more sinning against God.  When he sinned against his friend Uriah by sleeping with his wife, it was if he had slept with God’s wife.  David is recognizing what we often fail to do when we sin against each other.  The next time you are tempted to yell at someone and mistreat them, ask yourself, “What if this was Jesus?”  It is easier to tell ourselves that what we are doing is not that big of a deal, or that the person we are sinning against is an even worse sinner than we are.  But in truth all sin is not just against each other, but even more, it is against God.  Let me make the point another way.  In Matthew 25 Jesus stated that when we help the hungry, poor, and naked, he treats it as if we did it unto him.  If this is true for the righteous things that we do, what about the unrighteous things we do?  When we mistreat one another, does not Jesus see it as if we did it unto him?  God is our judge and we will one day stand before Him to give account for our sins.  How could David ever be seen as righteous before God after what he had just done (not just to Uriah, but to God)?  How can a righteous judge forgive our sins without being seen as wicked himself?  He can do so because Jesus paid the price for the sins of “whosoever would believe on him” at the cross.  But the wicked who refuse to humble themselves, confess their sin, and ask for mercy, will receive none.

The real problem is not the outward things.  The real problem is what giving into sin has done to our heart and mind.  We have been twisted inside and only God can heal our heart and mind.  The real battle against sin must be fought in these areas of our life.  We can’t fix our own wicked heart.  We need God’s help.  Thus in verse 6 David recognizes that he needs God’s help and that God will give it (“You will make me to know wisdom”).  Only God can bring the light of His Truth into our minds that have been darkened by sin.  Nathan’s rebuke was a gift from God to David.  God was revealing to David that he would not be allowed to get away with this sin.  The whole Bible is filled with God’s wisdom for the hearts and minds that have been darkened by sin.  But we will have to humble ourselves to receive it.  We will have to let go of the sensual, earthly, demonic wisdom that led us into sin in the first place. 

Also notice that David talks about being cleansed.  Verse 2 says, “Wash me thoroughly…cleanse me from my sin.”  Verse 7 says, “Purge me…wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”  This is a metaphor of dirt.  Sin is to our heart what dirt is to a clean garment.  It defiles our heart and mind with a layer of filth that will only become harder and harder to clean the longer we wait.  Thus the mind of a sexual addict, cannot just say, “I won’t do it again,” because their mind has been defiled.  There has to be an inner cleansing that is done as we repent before God and come into relationship with Him.  No mere words can accomplish this.  Only the Spirit of God can come into a heart and cleanse it from all unrighteousness.  When we have a clean relationship with God and there are no layers of sin between our heart and His, then we can know the joy and gladness that verse 8 is talking about.  David had lost his joy and gladness.  He knew that he was destroying his relationship with God and defiling his soul.  But he had been trapped by his lusts and bound in chains by his sin.  Only God could cleanse his heart.

Lastly, as we take the initiative to “deal” with our sin, God will deal with the part of our sin that we can’t.  I can confess my sins and ask for forgiveness.  But only God can remove them from me as far as the east is from the west.  Only God can throw my sins into the sea of forgetfulness and refuse to let them be brought against me in His courts.  In fact, David asks that they be “blotted out.”  This is the picture of the heavenly books that record the actions of every person.  Yes, our actions and even our thoughts are recorded in the books of heaven.  David knew that he had a lot of bad stuff recorded on those pages.  He begs that God would blot out his sins.  Again, the only way God can legally do this is if someone pays the price for them, and that is precisely what Jesus did at the cross.  God can acquit us.  Also, once the price of a crime has been paid for we cannot be tried for it again.  We will pick this up more next week as we look at the 2^nd half of this psalm.

Hopefully this walk through David’s heart has encouraged you to not run from God and try to hide your sin.  All our attempts at hiding our sin is like Adam and Eve trying to hide their nakedness from God with fig-leaves.  The fig leaves will not last; they are only a temporary fix.  Also, the very wearing of them signals to God that we have sinned.  Quit dealing with sin your way.  Quit hiding it, and pretending that it is not that bad.  It will destroy you and any relationship you could have with God.  In the end you will stand before the judge and be found lacking, unless, of course, you humble yourself and cry out to God for mercy.  Let’s be a people who are clean before God by dealing with our sin this week.

The Heart of a Righteous Person 2

Psalm 10:1-18.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 15, 2017.

We continue today looking at some psalms in the Bible in order to understand the heart of those righteous individuals who have gone before us.  Last week we looked at how the heart of a righteous person: speaks to God, speaks to people, holds fast to the lessons learned by the righteous found in the Bible, and receives the blessing of God.  Today we will deal with the difficulty that presses on the heart of all who want to be godly in this world.

It has questions

In verse 1 we see that the writer of this psalm has questions for God.  It is common for leaders and those who have been Christians for a long time to give the impression that questions are bad.  This can be because they fear a young Christian falling into heresy, but it can also be a fear of losing control on what they believe.  We need to stop this fearful, knee-jerk response to questions.  There is nothing wrong with asking a question if we sincerely seek an answer.  We may not get an answer.  But God is not threatened with us asking tough questions.  It is not necessarily a sign of unfaithfulness.  That said, a questioning heart can make some mistakes.  We can make the mistake of tying our trust in God to getting an answer that our mind will accept.  In this sense we have quit seeking truth and have started putting God on trial.  The devil loves to stir up questions about God’s intentions and actions.  A mature Christian will learn to struggle with them without losing faith.  There are answers to many questions about God that can be learned in the Scriptures.  However, some things are left unanswered.  Can you trust God when He says, “I will not answer that?”  Clearly you can because countless millions have trusted God to the end of their life with those very same questions.  Lastly, questions can be the result of lacking any trust in God and perhaps even a despising of His ways.  It can be a form of rebellion that seeks to stir up trouble among Christians.  In this sense they have already judged God.  No answer will be enough to satisfy their intellectual judgments.  Thus, God can handle our sincere questions.  But, He will not satisfy the minds of those who have rebelled against Him and are seeking to put Him on trial.

The first question has to do with why it looks like God “hides” during times of trouble.  We sometimes refer to this as the “hiddenness of God.”  Here the psalmist is not questioning God’s existence.  Rather, he questions why God isn’t presently dealing with a situation.  It seems as if God is hiding.  There are many answers that have been gleaned from the Bible over the years.  Some have pointed out that it is more important for our faith to be strengthened then our mind to be satisfied.  There is no way around the strange reality regarding humans that our faith grows stronger in adversity.  If God were to give us every answer and protect us from every difficulty then our faith would not be stronger, but tremendously weak.  God gives us enough to believe, but not too much to weaken that faith.  Another point that has been brought up is that our sins and disobedience create a separation between us and God.  We are often concerned about everything but the sin that God is wanting for us to deal with.  Thus He isn’t hiding from us.  Instead He is waiting for us to deal with sin.  We must also recognize that God values the freedom of His sentient creations to choose their own path.  He influences enough to give us wisdom, but not too much to override our freedom to choose.  In fact, connected to this is that God has always worked in conjunction with angels and humanity.  It is not His desire to control and force everything to be His way.  He leaves room for us to respond freely.  When talking about the hiddenness of God, it is also instructive to remember that God could ask us, me, mankind the same question.  Why do you hide from me?  Perhaps He sometimes gives to us the same amount of relational attention that we are giving Him.  Clearly God is far more merciful to us than we have been to Him.  While we were still sinners, Christ Jesus died for us. (Romans 5:8).

Verse 2 ends with a cry for justice.  “Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised.”  This extends the question about God’s hiddenness to the question of why He allows the wicked to succeed.  It is a grievous thing to bear for a righteous heart to see the wicked person steam rolling the innocent and getting away with it.  At this point the psalmist from verse 3 to verse 11 makes the case for why God shouldn’t let the wicked get away with it.  So we will quickly work through these verses recognizing what makes a person wicked.  As a side-note, let me say that a wicked person can recognize their sin, repent, and be saved.  Some people object to the label “wicked” because it sounds like a person can’t change.  The Bible uses language that describes where people are at, not what they are stuck in.  Thus it has no problem calling people evil, where in our generation it is rare for society to let the term “evil” be acceptable for hardly anyone.

The wicked are boastful and proud (2, 3, 4).  They “boast in their desires” (fleshly ones) with a “proud countenance.”  This area of arrogant pride is not so easily dismissed.  I was listening to a radio program the other day where a commentator said, “I want a coach who is arrogant and cocky.”  Whether in sports, Hollywood, business, or politics, the world promotes those who are arrogant and cocky.  People often desire these traits because such people are so driven to obtain their desires that they will do anything.  Who doesn’t want to be on the winning side?  Well let me put the question another way.  Would you want to be on the winning side in Iraq today if that was to join ISIS and its proud leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?  Is winning so important to you that you would throw out biblical principles, or better the ways of God?  How we obtain success is even more important than the success itself.  In fact, this begs the question, “What is success?”  If getting what I want is success then that is a sad definition.  “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world (because he wants it) and lose his soul?”  Many “successful” people that we envy have lost their souls in the process.  No one will think that these ones have succeeded in eternity.

The psalmist recognizes that the wicked bless the greedy.  The word is more than just greedy.  They are greedy for what you have.  Thus covetous might be a better word.  Instead of being a blessing to those who are hurting they bless the wrong people because they themselves have become wrong in their hearts.

In verse 3 it says that they “renounce the LORD.”  It is more than just a statement.  Such statements come from a heart that has already renounced the Lord and His ways.  They reject what God says to them and despise what God asks of them to do.  Because they have rejected God, they never think about what God thinks in their plans.  However, a righteous person is always thinking about what the Lord would have them do.  They often agonize before God in prayer about the emotional difficulties with such decisions.  Let’s say a wicked person cuts a righteous person off on the freeway and the righteous person gets mad and hits the high beam on their lights for two seconds.  Now I am not saying all people who cut someone off on the freeway are wicked.  But I am using this as an illustration.  My point is this.  The wicked person will not give a second thought about their decision to cut-off another person.  The will just keep driving and curse the person who high-beamed them.  But the righteous person will feel bad about high-beaming the person who cut them off and spend time agonizing on whether they went too far before God.  They will even ask God for forgiveness for losing control of their anger.  Of course it is not our job to determine what the other person is.  It is our job to keep our hearts right before God, even when we fail.

Verses 5-6 repeat some of the same reasons.  The wicked couldn’t care less about the decisions or judgments of God in heaven.  Their pride causes them to sneer at all their enemies with the attitude that they can’t be moved or hurt.  “I shall not be moved!”  This attitude sometimes comes from tiring of being the good guy.  We can reject the path of the humble and chose the path of the pride because we never want to hurt again.   Of course this is often just trash talk.  We will all face adversity and difficulty, even those who do their best to avoid it.  What is interesting is that the righteous are actually able to say, “I shall not be moved.”  They can because they are trusting in God and, when the dust of this life settles, the righteous will be left standing with Christ and the wicked will be blown away as the chaff.  In this life the righteous have much adversity.  But none of it can move us if we keep our trust in Jesus.

In verse 7 the psalmist points out that the mouth of the wicked is full of all manner of evil.  They curse God and people.  They practice deceit in what they often say.  They speak oppression for others.  There is nothing to find in their mouth but trouble and iniquity.  It would be better off if they never spoke because of what happens when they do.

Verses 8-11 basically depict the wicked person secretly preying on the helpless of society.  This dog-eat-dog mentality is the logical conclusion of a materialistic, evolutionary world-view.  If there is no day of judgment to an all-powerful God, then why would I live my life by rules that seem to make me the prey to those who don’t?  Thus the wicked see the righteous as unbelievable fools.  Such people become their meal each day.  Yes, the righteous see the same problem, but refuse to join the ranks of the wicked in order to protect themselves.  There is something that holds them back.  So let’s read on.

It has faith

The rest of the psalm moves back to addressing God.  At the end of the day the righteous would rather trust God then trust the snake-oil that the wicked have purchased with their souls.  Yes, it may appear for a season to be working, but in the end the piper must be paid.  Though the righteous don’t have all the answers, and they don’t understand every why to God’s actions, or lack thereof, they still trust Him.

In verse 14 we see that the righteous trust that God is not hiding.  But rather He is keeping track of the actions of mankind.  Psalm 56:8 says, “You number my wanderings; put my tears into Your bottle; are they not in Your book?”  The Book of Revelation refers to books being opened at the great judgment, and that men will be judged by the things written in them.  It may feel like God doesn’t care and isn’t observing your situation, but in the end you can trust that He is intimately aware and even recording all that you do and all that has been done to you.  So don’t give up.

Not only is God keeping track, but He is also keeping track in order to repay people for their deeds.  He is going to repay the wicked.  Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”  This is not just physical death, but spiritual death as well.  God doesn’t just repay the wicked, but He also repays the righteous.  “The gift of God is eternal life.”  Thus God will help the fatherless, who have no one to stand up on their behalf.  The same is true for the widow and the poor person.  We can know that God will make everything right in the end.

So verse 16 declares the faith that God is the King forever.  He is the ultimate authority, and no matter how great the wicked may succeed (even the devil), it will not remove Him from His place of authority and power.  He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.  So, it may trouble us that God allows the wicked a time of power and authority, but He has set a day in which all things will be set right.  We must trust Him.  In fact, it is partly a tribute to His grace that He gives the wicked their moment in the limelight, for they will spend eternity in darkness, separated from any good thing of God’s.

Lastly the righteous have faith that God will help the humble, vs. 17.  God has heard the cries of the humble (notice it doesn’t say righteous).  Even the wicked think they are right in what they do.  But God will judge on the side of the humble.  This is a reminder to the righteous to avoid the path of pride and arrogance because it leads to destruction.  Yes, we can question God, but we must remain humble if we want to avoid destruction.  It doesn’t say that God will help the humble by answering their every question.  So what is the help God will give?  First He will strengthen their hearts.  Such difficulties of God’s hiddenness and the success of the wicked can cause our hearts to faint and give up.  But God has strength for the heart of those who trust Him without giving up.  By His Spirit He encourages us from time to time if we are listening.  The psalmist also says that God will help the humble by making Himself hear.  This is a humorous way to put it.  But it is also a way of making it absolute and concrete.  Yes, though it seems like God is deaf to our cries today, there is a day when He will make Himself hear.  We need to wait for that day in trust.  Don’t grow weary in waiting.  They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.  They will mount up on wings with eagles; they will run and not be weary; they will walk and not faint!”  Why?  We will do these things because the Lord our God is with us and will deliver us.  Amen!

Heart of a Righteous Person 2 audio