Turn to Psalm 15. I'm going to read it and then I'm going to hand over to Seth. A Psalm of David.
Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?
The one whose way of life is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their
heart, whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor and casts no slur on others,
who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps an oath even when it hurts
and does not change their mind, who lends money to the poor without interest, who does not accept
the bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken. Thank you for reading
that, Steve. Psalm 15. So I want to start us off with a little bit of an English lesson. I know some
of us just got really nervous, right, going all the way back to English class, but I want to start us
off with not necessarily English but more literature, thinking about one of the greatest poets of all
time, not William Shakespeare, but Homer. And see, Homer wrote this great epic called The Odyssey, right?
And The Odyssey was about this guy named Odysseus. He's the guy up there in the left-hand corner.
And Odysseus had fought this 10-year war in Greece, no, against the Trojans, and he was fighting this
war. It took on 10 years, and then Odysseus decided, I'm going to come up with one of the greatest scams
in the history of the world. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called the Trojan horse. And he rolls this
horse in. The Trojans think, oh, okay, the war is over. Great, they gave us a sacrifice. And then these guys
come pouring out in the middle of the night, and the Greeks end up winning the war.
Odysseus then, after this war, what does he want to do? He's been away for 10 years. So he wants to go
back home and experience rest, right? And so a journey that should have taken him about two months,
so he was up here at one, this is his home, should have taken him about two months to get home,
takes him 10 years to get home. And so this journey takes him on all kinds of adventures.
He ends up talking to some mermaids. His crew gets turned into pigs on some aisle. He even goes all the
way down to the underworld. But through all of this, the desire of him is to get back home. He wants
to dwell with his wife. He wants to get back home to rest. And so finally, after 10 years, he's been
gone for 20 years now. He finally gets back home. And instead of going, hey, I'm home. Welcome in. I
want to see my wife. He decides to do something a little bit different. He puts on a disguise. And then
they host this competition, right? Where they get this huge bow. That's it there. And Odysseus
is the only one that can string this bow. And then not only does he string it, he shoots it through 12
axe heads. I don't know how that works. I'm not an archer, but he shoots it through 12 axe heads.
And then everybody knows, oh yes, this is Odysseus. And so his wife had all of these bachelors
that were wooing her, trying to get her to go over and marry them because Odysseus had a lot of land and
a lot of wealth. And then all of a sudden, Odysseus shows back up and starts to scatter them all.
And what is really a pretty gruesome and bloody battle where he starts just killing everyone.
But the desire of Odysseus throughout all of these travels, throughout 10 years of war,
and then 10 years of travel, was that he wanted to get home.
He wanted to experience rest. I know some of the introverts in the room are like saying, me too, I get that.
Today, in our passage, in Psalm 15, we're going to look at a similar traveler on a journey for rest.
But this traveler doesn't want to just see his wife like Odysseus did. He wants to dwell with the Lord.
So in Psalm 15, we're going to see that the psalmist, or we'll call him the traveler today,
is going to have three things. He's going to ask a question. He's going to find the answer to that
question. And then he's going to consider the result. So three things that we're going to break
this passage down into. The first one is he asks a question. And it's important to remember the
context here as we move through the passage. As the reader, we've been reading and going through the
Psalms. And if you were doing that, you would see Psalm 10, Psalm 12, Psalm 13, all have to do with
laments. Basically, the psalmist has been in this pit of despair. And then Psalm 14, if you were with us
last month, Nick did a great job of unpacking that. The traveler that's in despair looks up and considers
the fool all around them. And then he moves from considering the fool now into Psalm 15. And he's
asking the question, who can dwell on the tent of the Lord? Who can live in the holy mountain of God?
See, this is the main desire of our traveler, of the person in Psalm 15.
This is the inciting incident, if you will. This is the main task that the psalmist or the traveler
here wants to accomplish. Just like any good story, there has to be a task to be accomplished, right?
Indiana Jones wouldn't be a story unless he was trying to get the Ark of the Covenant.
If there's any Disney fans in the room, Moana wouldn't, there wouldn't be a story there unless
she was trying to save her island from dying. Odysseus, there wouldn't be a story there unless
he wanted to get home. If he was just some freeloader floating through the ocean, he would
have stayed at the island with the mermaids. But he had a desire to get somewhere. The psalmist,
the traveler here, has a desire to get somewhere. And that desire is that they want to rest. They
want to dwell with the Lord. Look at verse 1. It says, Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain? And you may be thinking to yourself, okay, Seth, that's great.
That's not much of a thriller of a story. A traveler wants rest. Not breaking any new ground there.
And I would say, yes, that's exactly right. This is not a new concept. In fact, this actually
relates a lot to us today, right? How often do we go to work and put aside money?
We sweat and we toil and we don't use that money at the instant right now, but instead we put that
aside for later for what? For a retirement so that we can experience rest at a later date. We are
pursuing something now so that we can have rest later.
Same thing can be said for, if you think just a little bit closer, what do you want when you go
through the craziest season of the year? Whether that for you may be at work, when it's if you're an
accountant during tax season, maybe it's if you're a pastor during Easter, whatever it is, what do you
want after you go through your craziest season? You want a holiday. And then to make this just really
personal, what are you going to want when your alarm blares at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, waking you up,
trying to go to work. Well, you're going to want to roll over and hit that snooze button and get just
a few more moments of rest before you go on. See, we all want rest. Our bodies crave it. The NHS spent 72
million pounds last year on insomnia medication alone. Our society wants to rest.
And so when the opportunity presents itself to the traveler to have permanent rest,
he is more than keen. He wants in. He wants to understand, how can I get this rest?
But the cost is going to be larger than he can fathom.
So let's move on to the second point. See, Odysseus, going back to our main story, the cost of his rest
was a 10-year journey. He had to go through a bunch of trials in order to get home. For the traveler,
in our psalm here, the cost is going to be a perfect life. Are we familiar with the game Hangman?
Okay, good. I'm glad that this illustration is not going to fall flat, then, because that's kind of what
the rest of the sermon is built on. We're going to use that illustration a bit to kind of go through
and help see what the psalmist is talking about as we move through this psalm.
So at first, the psalmist asked the question, who can dwell on the holy mountain?
And now, he's going to find the answer. Look at verse 2. Verse 2 says,
So the first qualifications for those that are trying to enter the rest that only the Lord can
provide is to be blameless. You have to live a blameless life.
Blameless, a simple definition, just means that you are innocent of wrongdoing.
It means that you've never messed up, you've never lied, you've never stolen, you've never cheated.
And if you look at the text, it gives a definition right behind it. It says, right after blameless,
it says, the person that does what is right. And if we think about it, well, this is an obvious one,
we really don't hit this standard. And this would be our first strike, or the head of the hangman.
So we move on now to the second point that says he speaks truth from their heart. Going back to point
one, we understand that there is not a person that is blameless in the entire world, right?
This point even furthers that a little bit more by saying there's actually not even anyone that has a
pure heart. The prophet Jeremiah would say the heart is deceitful beyond cure. Basically, what he's
saying there is there is nothing pure that can come from the heart, because the heart itself is not pure.
And so there's no truth that can come from that. And once again, we fail this qualification for
entering rest. So we'll give our hangman a body. You continue in verse three, it says, whose tongue
utters no slander. This speaks of a truthful person. The pastor from New York, Tim Keller, he had a good
point on this. He said, the Bible basically defines lying as a misrepresentation of truth. In other words,
what this means is that there are no layers to truth.
Jesus, when he was talking on the Sermon on the Mount, kind of redefined truth for us a little bit.
He said, do not swear by heaven. Do not swear by earth. Do not swear by the city of Jerusalem.
Do not swear by your own head. Let your yes be yes. Let your no be no. He was saying you do not have to
take an oath for these things. What does he mean by that? Does he mean when you go to court that
as a Christian, you shouldn't take an oath to say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I think if Christians take that interpretation, I think they're missing the point.
When Jesus is saying this, he actually does mean that when we're talking,
we should let our yes be yes and our no be no, meaning we should say the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but not just because we're under oath.
Let me give you an example. Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C all see Mr. X rob a bank.
When asked about it later, Mr. A says, I didn't see him rob a bank. I don't think he did.
Mr. B says, uh, him may have been there. And Mr. C says, yeah, I think that's his bank.
Who lied? Well, they all did. They say, well, no, hang on now. One of them outright lied. Sure,
but the other two, they were just not giving the whole truth. But is this not lying? Is this not a
misrepresentation of the truth? Matthew 12 says that we will be held responsible for every idle word we say.
So it doesn't matter if we're under oath or not. Jesus is saying as Christians,
we live every hour, every minute, every moment as under oath.
And so we have to let our yes be yes and our no be no.
And so we have to ask ourselves, do we hit this qualification? And again, the answer is no.
So our hangman gets a leg now.
All right, moving on to the next one. Does no wrong to a neighbor. You might be saying,
I got this one. This one's okay. I don't know my neighbors. I'm fine on this one.
I'm saying, hang on, not so fast. Jesus again,
he comes back on the Sermon on the Mount and redefines who our neighbors are.
I'm not sorry. I'm not on the Sermon on the Mount. The very famous parable of the Good Samaritan.
Sorry. Sermon on the Mount was earlier.
But in the Good Samaritan, what is so shocking about that story
is the fact that it was an Israelite
that was hurt, but it was the Samaritan sworn enemies of each other
that came and helped him.
And so Jesus in that story redefines who our neighbors are.
He says, everyone is your neighbor.
And so if you have wronged someone before, you have broken this command.
You have done wrong to a neighbor.
I mean, again, this can kind of go back all the way to point one
of no one has lived a blameless life.
Have you ever lied? Have you ever gossiped?
Have you ever disobeyed a boss, a parent?
All right. You are guilty of this one.
I'm guilty of this one.
So now it's starting to look a little grim for our hangman.
He gets another leg.
It continues on, though, and in the passage,
the traveler says he casts no slur on others,
meaning that the person that is trying to attain rest
does not destroy the name of another person.
Obviously, this can mean physical.
Don't get into a fight with anybody else, obviously.
But I don't think many of us are prone to fistfights
in the congregation.
If you are, Steve's right there.
You can talk to him.
But what the psalmist could be talking about here
and is talking about
is verbally.
How many times have you torn somebody else down
with your words?
How many have you cast a slur against somebody else
by your words?
Again, this goes back to the gossiping.
And this one is hard in our society
because it can be so easy
to gain social standing with somebody
by gossiping about somebody else, right?
Having fun at somebody else's expense.
Tearing down someone else.
And this can be hard,
but we have to come to the grips
and realize that this is a sin.
And so our hangman, once again,
we realize that we do not meet the qualifications
for this rest.
And our hangman has now got an arm.
The psalmist and the traveler continues in verse 4.
He says,
Who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord.
This one seems easy, right?
Condemn the bad, honor the good.
But is this often true?
Do we often look at the moral filth of the world
and turn away?
Or are we sucked in?
I can say it from my own life
when I look at the television,
half the time,
whenever something morally filthy comes up,
I almost feel this pull to go further in
rather than farther away.
It's a sinful nature inside of me
that sucks me in.
But I can even say,
would the opposite of this be true?
We all like to say,
hey, we can fight against this bad thing.
But how about,
do we honor the righteousness of others?
Do we honor those who fear the Lord?
For me, again,
my sinful heart looks at this
and almost thinks of those people
as being too pompous,
too righteous.
I can manipulate it in my heart
to where the people that should have honor
and should be honored,
I get jealous of them for having that honor.
And so once again,
if we were honest with ourselves,
we would fail this expectation.
Our hangman is not looking so good now, is he?
The problem is,
is there's more to go.
The traveler says,
keeps an oath and does not change.
We're going to look at these together
because they're more or less the same problem
and because I think we're getting tired
of realizing that we can't amount up, right?
G.K. Chesterton says,
the man who makes a vow
makes an appointment with himself
at some distant time or place.
In other words,
what he's saying here
is that the man that makes a promise
says,
regardless of what happens in the future,
I will be there.
A promise frees you.
Now, if you're thinking about that,
you might think,
Seth, I think you just misspoke.
The opposite would be true, right?
But if we think about it,
a promise frees us
from the whims
of whatever may happen
in the future.
Only by promising
can we prevent
from being carried away
by an unpredictable future.
The very obvious example
of this is marriage, right?
When you get married,
when you say,
I do,
to your spouse,
you are promising
to love them today,
tomorrow,
and 10 years in the future.
You are saying
it doesn't matter
what happens in the future,
I will love you.
It doesn't matter
if you start losing your hair.
It doesn't matter
if we change houses.
It doesn't matter
if we have kids,
you change jobs.
It doesn't matter.
I promise
that no matter what,
I will love you.
That's the oath
that you're taking.
That's what it means
in sickness and in health
for richer or for poorer.
No matter what happens
in the future,
I am promising
to love you.
But have we ever
gone back
on a promise?
Remember,
we're going to be judged
for every idle word
that we say.
So if anybody
ever invited you over
and you've said,
oh yeah,
I'll be there,
and you had no intention
of showing up.
Or one of my favorite ones,
when somebody texts you
and says,
hey, are you far away?
And you're like,
yeah, I'm five minutes,
I'll be there soon.
And you haven't even
gotten on the tube yet.
I'm definitely guilty
of that one.
That's breaking an oath,
right?
That's lying.
If we're going to be
held accountable
for every idle word,
that is changing.
That's us breaking
this qualification for rest.
And so if we start to look,
our hangman starts
to get a little bit
ridiculous at this point.
And so we're going
to give them eyes.
This is when you're
playing Hamming,
this depends on how generous
the person is with you,
right?
Some people could have
ended the game by now,
but we're going to say that,
hey, we're going to be
a little more generous,
we'll give them eyes.
We have just a few more.
Who lends money
to the poor without interest
is the next qualification
as the psalmist goes on.
And this one seems easy
to understand, right?
Lend money to the less fortunate,
and if you lend money
to the less fortunate,
don't charge them interest on it.
But can you,
I think that this one
even goes a little bit further.
It says,
don't lend with the expectation
to profit in return.
Basically,
when your neighbor comes
and asks you for some flour
for his cake,
another reason to get
to know your neighbors,
you might get cake.
But you should give
your flour to that neighbor
without the expectation
of getting a piece of that cake.
Without the expectation
that he'll come back
and pay you for the flour
that he's used.
Instead,
we should have a generous heart.
See,
the 2 Corinthians says
that God loves
the cheerful giver.
So have you ever been guilty
of lending
and expecting something
in return?
All right?
Once again,
we cannot meet
this qualification of rest,
and our hangman
gets a nose this time.
I started to run out of space
on this.
Lastly,
who does not accept
a bribe
against the innocent.
A bribe is a favor
or a gift
with an obligation
to listen to what
the briber is saying
in return.
Basically,
if you accept a bribe,
you are compromised.
Your judgment
can no longer be trusted.
Again,
we think of this
as the politician,
right?
The one that takes
a bribe
so that they can push
through whatever legislation
that person wants
to be pushed through,
and you can no longer
trust their judgment.
But what about us?
Have we ever given
with the expectation
to receive?
Have we ever given
to church
of our time
and volunteered there
so that we might
be recognized
by the leaders
or our peers at church?
Have we ever volunteered,
maybe not at church,
but with another organization
so that we can have
a good feeling
about the other parts
of our lives
that maybe are not so good?
Have we ever given money,
maybe to the church,
maybe to another organization,
to ease our conscience?
In essence,
what we are trying
to do there
is we are trying
to bribe God
to receive,
just even for a moment,
the rest
that the traveler
is promising here
in Psalm 15.
But it will not work.
That rest
that we're trying
to experience
is more fleeting
than the morning dew.
So we'll finish
off our hangman here
with a frowny face.
And see,
the traveler here
has laid out
a very extensive list,
right?
Like,
you can feel
the weight of this
just hit your shoulders.
Do this,
obey that,
be better.
And we can't
do it.
We feel like
the psalmist
from the previous psalms,
right?
We are in the pit.
We are lamenting.
And every time
that we struggle,
every time we look
up to this mountain
and want to get
to that rest,
we actually
just tighten
the noose
a little bit tighter
around our necks
and end up
like our hangman
friend here.
And that makes
the realization
of the third point
even harder
to hear.
So we started
with the question
who can dwell
with the Lord.
We got the answer
that it has to be
the righteous person,
right?
We went through
a long list.
And then we get
the result.
Look at the end
of verse 5.
Whoever does
these things
will never
be shaken.
You think,
okay,
this is the part,
Seth,
this is the part
where you give me hope.
I've been waiting
for this,
let's get into it.
And you think,
oh yes,
this is the part.
This will be lovely.
If we just obey
the laws,
we will be able
to get up
into that holy mountain
and never be moved.
Our rest
can be secured.
That's where
we're going.
But even then,
our joy turns
to dismay
because we remember
we don't hit
these qualifications.
We don't pass
this test.
We are like
the hangman
done in
by our failures.
We are like
and if we
ended the story
here,
we would be
preaching a gospel
that says,
do this,
be better,
try harder.
But that is not
where this story ends.
There's a twist
and if you're just
reading
through the psalm,
you might miss it.
Look back
at verse 1
for me.
Verse 1 says,
Lord,
who may dwell
in your sacred tent?
Who may live
on your holy mountain?
Where does the traveler
want to dwell?
He wants to dwell
in God's sacred tent
on top of the mountain.
He wants to dwell
in a tent.
This is no small detail.
See,
when God delivered
his people from Egypt,
they were travelers,
right?
Where were they
travelers to?
A promised land.
A land that had been
promised them
years before.
And on their journey,
God had commissioned
a spot
for his presence
to dwell
with the people.
What did he have
commissioned?
A tabernacle,
a.k.a.
a tent.
He didn't have
a palace built
for them
to take along with.
He didn't have
a sanctuary
where his presence
could dwell,
but a tent.
He wanted a tent
at the time
where his people
were dwelling
in tents.
God chose his dwelling
as a tent
because it was
a foreshadowing
of what would happen
thousands of years later.
this time,
though,
when he would
send his son,
it would be
as a man
and his son
would come in bodily
form,
not as a tent,
but he would come
as a baby.
And that man
would grow up,
that baby
would grow up,
into a man
that would hit
every single
qualification
that we have
just talked about.
He would live
the perfect life.
He would do
what was right.
He would speak
the truth.
He would fear
the Lord.
He would keep
his word.
And he would
climb that mountain
to the holy rest
that God had promised.
But instead
of taking the reward
that was due him,
he said no
and took on
our sin,
the shame,
the things
that we couldn't do
so that we
could enter
that rest.
So now
when we get
to the end
of our lives
and we get
up to that
mountain
to want to
dwell with
the tent
of the Lord,
we get up
there,
the Lord
doesn't look
at us and say,
oh, you failed
this, you missed
that.
Instead, he says,
the righteousness
of my son
is imputed,
is given
to you
because he
died for you.
And we can
hear the words,
well done,
good and faithful
servant.
So if you're
a Christian
in the room,
rejoice.
This is the
good news.
This is what
we celebrate
at Easter,
right?
This is the
gospel.
Let this
teaching
warm your
heart.
Let it
encourage you
to go out
and share
with your
friends,
with your
co-workers,
with your
neighbors,
that this
is what
we have
been saved
for.
This is
the reason
that Easter
exists.
And if
you're a
non-Christian
in the room,
let that
truth
sink in.
Think in
a little
bit.
And ask
yourself,
are my
works
enough
to enter
rest?
See,
all Odysseus
wanted to
do
was to
go home
and enter
rest with
his wife.
But see,
Odysseus,
in order to
enter that
rest,
had to go
through a
ten-year
journey
where the
gods were
trying to
teach him
some vague
lesson.
I don't
know,
I remember
it from
English
class.
And he
had to
go through
trial after
trial to
finally get
there.
But for
the Christian,
true rest
doesn't come
after you've
cleaned yourself
up.
It doesn't
come after
you have
done
something.
It comes
when you
accept that
the riches
of Christ
are yours,
not because
you have
done anything,
but because
he gave
them when
he died
and was
buried,
and was
resurrected
three days
later.
And now
all it
takes is
us to
call him
savior and
to want to
have a
relationship
with him.
And we
can climb
that mountain,
enter the
tent,
and have
rest.
Let's pray.
Father in
heaven,
thank you
for today.
Just thank
you for
your word.
Lord, I'm
struck by
how often
I fail,
struck by
how much
I fail.
But Lord,
I'm
thankful
that a
gospel of
grace means
that it is
not up
to me.
Father, we
pray that
this truth
would be
proclaimed
throughout
our great
city,
on Sunday,
on Friday,
throughout
this week,
as we
lead up to
Easter,
and that
people would
see that
they need
you.
And they
would realize
that their
works are
not good
enough,
but yours
are.
Lord, we
pray these
things in
your name.
Amen.
Let's