Hi, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the lead pastor of Church of the Messiah.
! It is wonderful that you would like to check out some of the sermons done by Church of the Messiah,
either by myself or some of the others. Listen, just a couple of things. First of all, would you pray for us
that we will open God's Word well to His glory and for the good of people like yourself?
The second thing is, if you aren't connected to a church and if you are a Christian,
we really, I would really like to encourage you to find a good local church where they believe the
Bible, they preach the gospel, and if you have some trouble finding that, send us an email. We will do
what we can to help connect you with a good local church wherever you are. And if you're a non-Christian,
checking us out, we're really, really, really glad you're doing that. Don't hesitate to send us
questions. It helps me actually to know, as I'm preaching, how to deal with the types of things
that you're really struggling with. So God bless.
Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father, we give you thanks and praise that you have created us. We
give you thanks and praise that you are a God who speaks. We thank and praise you that you have made
us as human beings to speak, to listen, to use language, not only to each other, but also to you.
And we give you thanks and praise that in your word written, you have spoken to us.
We ask, Father, that your Holy Spirit would move with gentle power in each one of us today,
that we might treasure more and more your word, read your word more and more, ponder your word more
and more, and do what you tell us to do in your word. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus,
your Son and our Savior. Amen. Please be seated.
So this isn't a therapy session. It's a sermon. But people who know me know that one of my weaknesses
is that I'm not very good at having difficult conversations. I'm a bit of a difficult conversation
avoider. And in particular, I'm, I mean, I guess there's some conversations that I'd be fine with,
for instance, like asking for money. That's not something which is necessarily difficult
for me, for the church, or for some other worthy, you know, project. But I'm not very good at having a
conversation where I have to issue a godly rebuke, to tell somebody that what they're doing is quite
wrong. And because I love and care for them, and I want to see them flourish, they need to really take
it into, take it on. I'm not very good at that. And as some of you know, that over the last couple of
weeks, I have had to have a conversation like that. I'm not with somebody in the church. I'm connected to
other churches and other organizations, and I'm canon of church planning and all that. So it's,
but a couple of people, I didn't want to go into the details, because it should be private,
but they knew that I was going to have this conversation, got cancelled, rescheduled.
And I asked people to pray for me, because it's not something which I'm naturally very good at.
And one of the things, about an hour, maybe an hour and a half before I had that conversation,
I got a text from one of the people praying for me. And it was a text, which just was a quote of a
Bible text. And it was such a spectacular word for me. It was such a help to get that Bible text.
It just, it really encouraged me. It made me realize I was doing the right thing, and I had
the right heart. And I read it several times between getting that text and having that conversation.
And just thank God for the text and prayed into it. And it just really spoke to me. It was very,
very helpful. One of the things you could pray for me is that on Sunday mornings, as I'm working on the
sermon throughout the week, I start always on a Monday, usually I start on the Monday, reading the
text. And one of the things I pray is that as I'm preparing, as I'm studying the Bible, preparing to
speak, I ask that the Lord would speak to my heart through the text. And by heart, I'm not meaning my
emotions only, I mean the biblical sense of heart, which is the very center of who I am, which is out
where my mind emerges, my will, my emotions, my affections, my desires, all of that flows out of
my center, my heart. And I ask that the Lord would speak to me in his word, to my heart.
And I think every week he does. And sometimes it shows up in the sermon. But once again, because
this isn't a therapy session, but a sermon, sometimes it never shows up in the sermon, because it's
just addressing something very personal in my life. Maybe making some sin I need to repent of,
a blind spot that I've become aware of, maybe sometimes an infusion of joy or hope. But I ask
every week that the Lord would speak to my heart through his word, and that when I preach, I would
be able to have the word speak to your heart. And if you would pray into that, that would be very,
very good, if you're trying to think of how to pray for me week in and week out. Now, I mention that
because all of us have that type of experience where the word speaks to us very, very deeply and
powerfully. But we also have other different types of experiences with the Bible. At times, the Bible can
seem spectacularly boring. I mean, it can't be spectacularly boring. It would be drearily boring.
And sometimes for us, if we're honest about the Bible, we find it incomprehensible. And sometimes we
find the Bible offensive and don't quite know what to do with it, or extremely puzzling.
I mention all of that because today we're going to look at Psalm 119. Not all of it. It's 176 verses.
Um, Morris asked me the other day, should he print all 176 verses in the announcement that goes out?
And should he warn everybody to bring a packed lunch? Because the sermon was going to be exceptionally
long as I went verse by verse through all 176 verses. And I said, no, we're just going to look at the
first 16 verses. But the Psalm 119 is a love poem, a love prayer, a meditation upon the beauty of God and
the beauty of his word, and its wonderful power and the spectacular place it can have in our lives.
That's what the Psalm is all about. It's a 176 verse meditation and exaltation in God, the God who is
there, who speaks, speaks by his word, and that we as his people get to hear his word and have that
word have a role in our lives. And that means it's not just the parts that speak directly to our heart
in a way that we can think of a time, like I could tell you that time just a couple of weeks ago,
but that I'm telling you all this because the Psalmist wants us to persevere in reading the word
because of this wonderful power. So let's have a look. If you open your Bibles, it's Psalm 119.
If you don't have a Bible with you, there are some here that you can use or keep as a gift from us.
And if you don't have a Bible, it's going to be up on the screen, but there's something about having
your own Bible. And I want the congregation to be able to look and see if I'm playing fast and loose
with things and have the Bible come into your hearts for yourself. And actually, here's the,
if I was to give you my own summary and my own words of the message of this Psalm, it would be this.
I'm sorry it's not written up there. It's just, just listen. The triune God truly speaks,
and he speaks so you will truly know him. And the more you know him, and the more you seek to know him,
that the more you seek to know him, the more you will want to hear him speak. So read the Bible
regularly, ponder it deeply, and do as it says. That's the big message of the, of the Psalm. That
the God is, Francis Schaeffer back in the 70s wrote a famous book at the time called He is There and He is
not silent. And so the triune God is there. He speaks, he speaks the truth. He speaks so you will
know him, and you want to know him more. And the more you know him, the more you'll want to hear him
speak to you. So read the Bible regularly, ponder it deeply, and do as he says in his word. That's
sort of a big summary of it. But you can have this other summary of it, which is the very first word of
the Psalm, which says the same thing. And I would, one of the reasons I actually didn't put the,
my summary up there is I'd rather have you memorize the first verse, because that's God's word.
I gave you a summary. It's better if you heard God's word than my word. But one of the, one of
the things I tried to pray into this week about my sermon is I could spend all this time explaining
different problems and very little time actually just having the word proclaimed. And that sort of,
I, in attempting to, to help the text, I'd undermine it. I want you to know God's word. I want you to
all hear it yourself. So look at this first verse, which is in many ways is a, is another, is, is the
summary of the whole Psalm. It goes like this. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk
in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
So the word blessed, for some of you who don't know what it means, we get confused by it. Blessed means
that God moves and does something with power in the life of a person. And the way he works in power
in the life of a person can be either something to do with preparing you for eternity and making
you right with God, or it can be something that has to do with your, just the, the current world
that we live in, or it can be a bit of both. So a bit of a surprising thing. One of the ways to be
blessed, I was thinking about that this week because I had a couple of things that came up this week that
humbled me. And I'm, I'm, I'm a normal fallen, sinful human being, and I don't find being humbled
a pleasurable experience, but I realized that's one of the ways that God blessed me.
Pride isn't a blessing, being humbled is a blessing. Because humility is, is, is, is, we're made to be
humble, right? But so it, you know, it could be, you know, you could, the blessing, the ability to
thrive. So it's God does something that leads you to thrive. And it could be thriving in a sense of,
of, you know, of a deeper life of prayer, reading his word, of humility, of a better ability to use
your spiritual gifts. It could also be a blessing of the, the normal, just created order. He blesses
you with finances, with a promotion, with a house, with, with health, with strength. And it can be one
or the other, or a bit of both. And so that's what this is saying. Blessed, it's a, something that God is
doing are those whose way is blameless, who walk. And, and walk here just means how you do your day,
right? How you do your day, moment to moment throughout the day, who do your day in the law
of the Lord. And it uses the, the idea here that the, the Lord has spoken and created the law. And
we'll talk about that in a moment. But there's an important thing here that you need to understand
just off the beginning. And I know this could get people off on a tangent, but one of the common
problems that we human beings have is that we doubt that God's word is connected to our thriving.
So if you just went up the hill a little bit to the church, just up the hill, if you went into that
church on a Sunday morning, you would see for pride of place in the, in the front of the church,
a huge gay pride flag. And if you talk to the people in that church, they'd probably try to tell
you that the Bible doesn't say what the Bible really says, but that the Bible is just very clear
on this particular issue. But if, if you really pressed underneath all of that would be a sense
that you have thriving and you have God's word. And sometimes God's word works against thriving.
And as good Canadians, if you have to choose between thriving and God's word, choose thriving.
But this text, it's very, look at it again, blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord. It shows here that that's never a choice that we have to make.
That God's, God works with his word. It's the power of, that his power to come into our lives,
to help us to thrive, works with his word speaking. And as his word speaks, it works with this power
that comes from God for our thriving. It's never a choice that we have to make. I mean, we can look
at it and puzzle over it and ponder over it and come and ask others in your small group or your,
you know, your spiritual mentors or your pastor about how to, you know, how to, how, how to,
you know, how do these things work together? How does generosity work with me thriving financially?
You know, how to, I mean, being financially generous. How does, how does the Bible's word on,
on sexuality help me to thrive sexually? Like we can be puzzled about it, but, but God's word is
saying right off the beginning, we never have to make that choice. God has this power to make us thrive.
And he has, he speaks his word and the two of them work completely and utterly together in harmony.
They help each other. And that's this fundamental idea of the scriptures.
Now, before we go any further, there's a couple of problems that some people have with all of this.
Like if you look at it again, blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
And the first one is just this whole idea of, of law. Like, I mean, you know, if, if we were honest,
I mean, I know there's some lawyers in the room and they might actually really like the word law,
but for most Canadians, they'd probably say, I wish I could have gone back in time and just had a bit of a conversation with the psalmist.
But forget about that for a moment, because it's not just the psalmist, it's ultimately God.
But we wish that we could say to God, you know, God, pick a better word than law.
Like, it's not very attractive.
Seems a bit, I don't know, like legalistic, a bit judgmental.
It's not something that Canadians are going to, going to, going to resonate with.
And that's the, that's the first thing.
And, and, and we'll, we'll, we'll deal with that, you know, a little bit in a moment.
But the, the other idea that we have problems with is, okay, George, the Bible just says that,
but you don't have to, you shouldn't believe it just because the Bible says it, should you?
And, you know, if you're a Christian, you, you should believe it because the Bible says it.
But if you're outside of the Christian faith trying to understand it,
or even if you're within the Christian faith and you'd never thought about it,
I don't have the time to sort of, I mean, it would be a whole other talk just to do this.
But here's how I would argue that this is a, in fact, true.
Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord,
that God does actually speak, and his speech is found in the Bible,
and his speech is something that we should be walking in, we should be keeping in, and living by.
And, and we don't have to just take it initially just purely by, by blind faith.
And here's how I would argue for it.
I would say, first of all, let's just take this as a, as what it originally was,
a series of ancient texts and documents.
And if we take it in particular, just the New Testament for us right now,
and I take you through and try to show to you how the, the, the New Testament documents,
each of the individual ancient biographies of Jesus and the letters and some of the other things,
that these were written by eyewitnesses of Jesus or by people who talked to eyewitnesses.
It was written when eyewitnesses were alive, that we can trust that the documents that we have in our hands
are fundamentally the documents that were written back then.
And that would be the first thing.
And the second thing I'd say is, and if you read these documents,
you get a very particular picture of Jesus.
You get to see his, his great wisdom.
You get to see his great insight.
You get to see his humility.
You get to see his love.
You get to see his compassion.
And even many people who aren't Christians, like Mahatma Ghani,
have been often very touched with just the wisdom and the charity and the compassion of Jesus.
And I said, that's going to bring you into a little bit of a conflict,
which is talked about by C.S. Lewis of Lord Lunatic and Liar,
because Jesus says that he is God, the Son of God, that he comes to die for his sins,
that he's going to die and rise from the dead.
And that would be the third thing, that all of these ancient documents
and the record of other people afterwards is that Jesus did die on the cross,
that he was buried, and that on the third day the tomb was empty
and Jesus had risen from the dead.
And because of the ancient documents and because of those other things about Jesus,
it's a completely reasonable thing.
I'm not saying it can be proved like mathematical certainty,
but it's a very reasonable thing.
In fact, it is, I would say, the most reasonable way to understand the ancient evidence
and the start of the Christian faith to accept that Jesus really did die on the cross,
he really was buried, and then the third day he really did rise from the dead
and the tomb was empty and he appeared to people.
And if that is true, then obviously that is who he is has been vindicated,
and then we'd want to know what Jesus had to say about the Bible.
And once again, it's beyond the time that I have right now,
but at the end of the day, Jesus was a Psalm 119 person.
Jesus said that the Bible was written by God for us.
He believed that.
He quoted it in that type of way, and that's why we trust it.
Because Jesus is a Psalm 119 person,
I am a Psalm 119 person.
He is well worth your trust.
He is well worth your obedience.
And so he has told us to trust God's word,
to ponder it deeply, and to do what it says.
So that's why it's valid to take this when it says,
blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord,
to take it that what we're hearing is an authoritative word from God
when we read the Bible.
And it's an authoritative word from God to us in our human situation
that we should remember,
that we should for our good ponder,
that we should for our good seek to do,
knowing that as we do this,
God's power for us to thrive is also at work within us.
Now, I'm only doing 16 verses,
and I want to do something that helps you to read later on yourself.
And what I want to let you know of is that Psalm 119
has what I call the Russian novel problem.
And by the Russian novel problem, I mean this.
The first time when I was in university, 100 million years ago,
I wasn't taking an English course or a Russian literature course,
but I wanted to become better educated,
so I thought I should read a book by Dostoevsky.
And most of Dostoevsky's books are like this,
I mean they're exaggerating a bit,
they're big, fat, honking books, right?
But he had one book called Crime and Punishment that's only this big,
so I thought I'd start with Crime and Punishment.
And so I started reading Crime and Punishment,
and I'm having a real hard go with it,
like really, really, really hard go with it.
But I'm persisting because I want to be better informed,
and it's supposed to be a brilliant book.
And finally, I don't know how it is,
maybe I was talking to somebody about it,
but about a third of the way or halfway through the book,
I realized that one of the reasons I was having a hard time reading it
is I actually thought there were way more characters in the book
than there actually were,
because I didn't understand how Russian names worked.
So I didn't realize that you could refer,
in Russian you could refer to a person by their entire name,
you could refer to a person as part of their name,
you could refer to a person as their first name,
and you could refer to a person as their nickname.
So I was wondering why there were 12 characters
at a certain part in time of the book
when there was actually only three characters at that part of the book.
And so I was always confused.
So finally I realized, okay, well that's dumb of me,
but how would I know that's how Russians do things?
So I went back to the beginning of the book,
I got out a pad of paper and a pen,
and every time I came across a Russian name I wrote it down.
And I started to figure out,
because I talked to somebody how it worked,
and so I'd write down all the names of person one,
all the names of person two,
and then I was able to read the book,
and it's a great book and you should read it,
by the way, knowing stuff like that.
So the same type of thing can happen when you read Psalm 119.
You can think that you're having to sort of take different things
and weigh them against each other,
or that there's different things going in different directions,
when part of the way that Psalm 119 is structured
is it's structured, I think,
every verse except like eight or something
are using one of eight words,
different ways to understand God's speech to us, the Bible.
And out of those other, I think, eight times,
I might be wrong on the number, I'd have to check my notes,
there's a couple of words that just show up a couple of times
that basically fit with those eight,
and I think there's three times
where it has no mention of word whatsoever.
So what we're going to do is we're going to sort of go through
a bit quicker the other verses,
and we're going to look at the eight different words
that Psalm 119 uses to help us understand God's speech to us.
So verse one,
blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord.
And the word law is the Hebrew word Torah,
or Torah, I can't remember how to,
I don't know how to pronounce it,
so don't take that I pronounced the Hebrew correctly on that.
And so it could either mean
the first five books of the Old Testament,
it can mean what we Christians call the Old Testament,
and our Jewish friends either call the Torah or the Tanakh,
the entire Old Testament.
And it also actually can just refer to,
it refers to instruction.
That's fundamentally what it means.
But it's not just any old instruction,
it's that God's word instructs us authoritatively,
just like law,
instructs us authoritatively about how we are to live.
And that's one of the first words.
The second word that comes up is in verse two.
Look at it.
Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart.
So you see, this is really important,
because it's not as if, you know,
you have the law bit,
and you have the testimonies bit,
and you have to figure out how they balance each other,
and they're not going in different directions.
These are just eight different word images or pictures,
all trying to help us to understand
this one thing that God does,
which is speak.
And he's spoken in a public way
through his word written, the Bible,
which is an open revelation,
a public revelation.
And it's just eight different ways
to understand the full aspect and range
of what God does when he speaks.
And so the word testimonies,
in the original language,
is God solemnly testifying
as to what his will is
and what is important and valuable.
That's what the word testimony is,
trying to communicate that when God speaks,
he's communicating to us.
It's a solemn thing,
and he's letting you know
this is really important.
This is really valuable.
This is really worth paying attention to.
And that's what the word testimonies means.
Blessed are those, verse two,
who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart.
And this is another thing.
Just note that what the Bible keeps together,
we human beings want to keep separating.
It's not, I mean, there are some people,
you know, when we were starting Ryle Seminary,
and I talked to professors and students
about this sometime,
what we don't want to have
is like a completely online program
that you can just read text
and you can live in your basement
and never actually talk to people
and become, you know, keyboard jihadis
who fire off angry emails to people,
denouncing them for minute...
I just got a letter, an email the other day
for a blog that I wrote
for the Gospel Coalition
that was such a nitpicky, dumb thing to say
and making me claim
like I didn't believe the Bible
and was not being a faithful teacher.
And gosh, that person needed
to get out of their basement
and actually talk to people
and not be a keyboard jihadi.
Like, I don't know how I'm going to respond to her
because I feel like saying,
get a life is my response
and don't be such a, you know,
a dumb nitpicker, right?
Anyway, sorry, this is therapy.
I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have used the sermon
for part of that.
But the point is that you don't...
Listen to Psalm 119, verse 2.
Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with all their heart.
God's word and seeking him personally
and relationally, they fit together.
You know, it would be impossible for me
to say that I want to know my wife more,
but I never want her to speak to me.
If every time I came home, I said,
Louise, you're going to have a vow of silence
and you're going to, you know,
wear something that covers all of how you look
for the next little bit.
And yes, I really want to know.
No, that doesn't work for human beings, right?
So there's nothing at war with that.
It's a seeking of him.
The third word is really neat as well.
In verse...
Sorry, the third word comes up in a moment.
Verse 3,
Who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
And the word ways is,
I think it's either two or three times it shows up.
It's one of those, you know, non-eight big words,
but it's...
The ways here does, in the original language,
imply something written.
So to get a bit of a sense,
it's really like as if, in a sense,
you're seeing a verbal map of something.
That's behind the word ways.
So verse 3,
Who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
Verse 4,
You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
And the word precepts here is a neat word.
And so it's...
What it is, it's things which are very, very important,
but it's a detail word, okay?
So I know there's a...
You know, if you take a technical writing program,
you want to have somebody who's able to take instructions
and give all of the details
so that you can follow each step.
I hate it when I try to get instructions somewhere
and it's skipping five steps
or it's ambiguous.
Precepts is a detailed word.
And the details all being important.
And that's what precepts is.
So verse 4,
You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
Verse 5,
Oh, that my ways may be steadfast
in keeping your statutes.
And the word statutes there in the original language
has this idea that it really is...
Like, this is like a non-negotiable law, okay?
You shall...
You know, you don't kill people in Canada.
You're not allowed to kill people.
That's like a...
That's not a negotiable law in Canada
that's all right to kill people.
No, no, you don't kill innocent...
Yeah, I should qualify.
You can't kill innocent people just willy-nilly.
And so, but in the word statue,
it's something which is really deeply laid down.
It has binding force and permanence.
And then verse 6,
Then I shall not be put to shame
having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
And commandments is the word to help me to remember
that God is in fact God and I'm not.
It's the word of a superior
speaking to somebody who's subordinate to the superior.
So that when we're hearing God's word read to us,
I am to have the attitude, the heart posture,
that he is God and I'm not.
He's an authority.
He's the creator.
I'm not an authority.
I'm a creature.
And when he speaks, I should listen
because he's over me.
Properly over me.
And within it, it's...
The thing which is really important about this,
if you use a bit of a military analogy,
what you would never want in the military...
I know there's at least one person present
who used to be in the military.
What you would never want is 5,000 privates
let loose with weapons,
with no officers.
That would be a nightmare,
to have 5,000 privates running around with weapons.
You need authority over it.
You need to have officers.
You need to have a mission.
You need to have a chain of command.
And that's all implied in here,
that we should see ourselves not just as privates
doing whatever we want,
but that there's an authority over us.
And then the next thing is in verse 7,
I will praise you with an upright heart
when I learn your righteous rules.
And rules is a good word.
It also can sometimes be translated as decisions.
It means that God has in fact made certain decisions.
He's made certain judgments
about certain types of situations.
He's made decisions around the fact
that our thriving in a world with money
should open the door for us to be able to make money,
and that we should pray for systems
that allow people to make money.
But you can't thrive in terms of money
and making money if you're not also generous.
It's rules around sexuality.
It's decisions about how these different things go
if we want to thrive in the area of our sexuality.
And then verse 8, I will keep your statutes.
We talked about that earlier.
Do not utterly forsake me.
Verse 9, how can a young man or a young woman
keep his way or her way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.
And this is the most general word.
It's just emphasizing that the laws,
the precepts, the commandments,
they're actually words.
God himself actually speaks to us with words.
It's the most general of all of the words.
And then there's just one more.
Verse 10, with my whole heart I seek you.
Let me not wander from your commandments.
Verse 11, I have stored up your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
And there the word translated as word
is a different word in Hebrew.
And that word emphasizes,
sometimes in Psalm 119,
it will be translated as promise.
So it's a word that emphasizes
that it's not just that God is saying,
don't do these things,
but he's also making big promises
that there's something wonderful and beautiful
and anticipatory.
It would be in a little bit like
if you had kids or grandkids
and you say, let's get in the car,
we're going to go somewhere.
Come on, hurry up, we're going to go somewhere.
And the whole idea about the command
to come into the car and go somewhere
is the implication isn't going to be
that you're going to go pick some kale
and eat it, which would not excite most children.
But maybe that you're going to McDonald's
for ice cream cones.
There's something in there of promise
and delight in those words.
And so that gives you a basic sense.
In all of these cases,
it's God who speaks.
He speaks words to us in our human condition.
He speaks words to us in our human condition
so that we will desire to truly know him.
And the more we truly know him,
the more we will want to know him
and the more we will want to hear him speak.
And so because of that,
we should read the word regularly.
We should ponder it deeply
and we should do as he says.
But there's a bit of a problem for some of us.
And that is this.
George, could you just go back?
Like, look at that.
Remember you said, George,
that first verse of Psalm 119
is sort of a summary of the whole thing.
Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord.
And even in like verse nine,
how can a young man keep his way pure
by guarding it according to your word?
George, so here's the problem, George,
with all of what you said.
You've made it sound very, very convincing.
You've made it sound very, very delightful.
And I should do that.
But George, like I'm thinking of people,
you know, sometimes people
who've left the Christian faith.
I think of sometimes people
who talk to me from outside of the Christian faith
and they just say,
George, there's no way in God's earth
I can ever be blameless.
Like I tried, I tried,
I went to church for a while
and I tried to live a really, really good life.
And I don't know, you know,
then I, you know, then I,
I just can't, you know,
and God's word,
you can say all of those things,
but it just crushes you sometimes.
And George, if you're honest,
like that word blameless there,
George, do you think you're blameless?
I remember one person said that,
George, do you think you're better than me?
You think that's why you're going to go to heaven,
you know?
And the implication was you're not,
like I know you, you're not.
Well, the, they,
those are really, really good concerns.
It's really interesting
that in the providence of God,
this, the gospel text that we just read
before I preached was that story,
the parable that Jesus gives
of the Pharisee standing off,
like at a place in the temple
and sort of, you know,
standing there with his chest puffed up
and looking really, really,
really self-satisfied
about how great a guy he was
and how much better he was
than other people
and looking down his nose at people.
And, and in many ways,
that, that whole parable
and then the tax collector,
the one who's not viewed very well
in society
and his beating his breast.
That, that word blameless and pure
in some way
in the original language,
it, it, it,
there's a great mystery
and a great promise in that word.
Because I, I guess I would say,
I am, I am blameless.
Now, don't roll your eyes.
The original word
is, is capturing something.
It's capturing not just,
it implies the need
for forgiveness
and being forgiven.
And so, you see,
in some ways,
that parable that Jesus talked,
gave,
is a, a, a window
into two different ways
of coming to the word.
It's on one level
because he hadn't died
on the cross yet.
It's a way to understand
two different ways
of reading the Old Testament.
But even after the death
and resurrection of Jesus,
it's two different ways
to be a Christian.
And one way
is that you read texts like this
and you, you think
you've got to be blameless.
And you, you try to pretend
that you're blameless.
And, and that only,
all it does is make you
into a phony.
All it does is make you
into somebody who
does things
and pushes people away
so they can't actually see
what's going on
beneath your facade.
And,
and, and many people
get into that
and see it
and they just get sickened
by it
because they,
they just,
they can't live
all those rules.
They can't,
they just can't.
But these original words
are opening the door
to this mystery.
mystery.
And the mystery is
that the only way
to be blameless
is to be forgiven.
And that human beings
desperately,
desperately
need to be forgiven.
It's hard to go
a month
or two weeks
without hearing
somebody,
somewhere,
talk about
our need
to forgive ourselves.
Talked about it
other places,
not going to talk about it now,
but forgiving yourself
will absolutely,
absolutely,
absolutely never work.
What we are sensing
is our need
to be forgiven by God
and to be able
to accept it.
And so
that's the,
it's pointing
to this wonderful thing
and Jesus is helping us
to guard against
two wrong,
like the one wrong way
of reading the text
and the right way
of reading the text,
which is,
see,
when God,
one of the reasons
we don't like the Bible
is because it's an intervention
by God
into our lives
and most people,
when they have people
making an intervention,
like the other day
when I've had to speak
to somebody,
it was really,
what they needed
to understand
is that it was
an intervention
and we don't like
interventions
when they're happening
but afterwards,
we're glad
that somebody intervened
to deal with something
that was going on
in our lives
and that we could have
a blind spot dealt with
or that we can have
an evil in our lives
dealt with
or something like that
but God intervenes
with his word
and it challenges
our pride
and he intervenes
most spectacularly
and most deeply
by having his son come
and die on the cross
and he dies on the cross
in our place.
He is the Lamb of God
who takes away
the sin of the world.
He is the one who dies
so that we will be forgiven.
He is the one
who dies on the cross
and can speak
to the one guy
on the cross
who began the day
also being crucified
beside him
haranguing Jesus
but then comes
and turns
and realizes
something about
the divinity
and the beautiful
the beauty
and the grace
and the compassion
and God being at work
in that
many people
are just
they're just
castigating them
but he sees
something powerful
about the compassion
of God
and he asks
that when Jesus
will remember him
when he comes
into his kingdom
there he is
dying on the cross
and Jesus says
today you will be
with me in paradise
and that can only happen
if that man's sins
are forgiven
and so there's
this profound promise
in the scripture
yes if you come
to know Jesus
your sins are forgiven
they are forgiven
and it's because
they are forgiven
that's that's how
you're going to stand
before God
in all eternity
you still do wrong things
and those wrong things
that you've done
they're also forgiven
and so there's this
whole promise
and dynamic
that you hear
text like this
blessed are those
whose way is blameless
who walk in the law
of the Lord
that I want to hear
his word
and when I start
to realize
that there's things
in my life
I don't have the hope
I should
or I haven't been
thankful as I should
or I haven't been
as pure as I should
I haven't held
to the truth
as I should
I've listened to lies
and I shouldn't have
and I can ask
his forgiveness
for that
at the same time
in light of forgiveness
that I can press on
to try to make
my life a better life
knowing that as I read
his word
and hold fast
to the cross
that there's a power
from God
that comes into my life
for me to thrive
that's how this song
it begins by pointing us
to the point
to the cross
that we can't
read the scriptures
if we try to read it
without the cross
we're just going to become
terrible
legalistic
arrogant
stuck up
people who think
they're better
than everybody else
and everybody
will run from us
we need to be humbled
right off the
it humbles us
right off the bat
so brothers and sisters
blessed are those
whose way is blameless
who walk in the law
of the Lord
read his word regularly
if you have problems
reading
and not everybody's
a reader
get the YouVersion app
on your phone
and for all of the
major English translations
you can listen
to the Bible
if you have trouble
reading
listen
take in the bus
drive in the car
out for a walk
put on your
headphones
and listen to the word
don't have to read
you can listen
but get it into your life
and when there's things
that you don't understand
and things that confuse you
that's why there's the church
that's why there's Bible studies
that's why there's a woman's group
that's why there's a youth group
that's why there's a men's group
that's why there's Bible study groups
that's why there's sermons
for you to understand
understand and grow
and thrive
invite you to stand
let's bow our heads in prayer
Father
we give You thanks and praise
that You
we're not just talking
into the void
we're not just sort of
talking out loud
that You hear
You hear
and that Jesus is present
and the Holy Spirit
is at work
that You hear
and You want us
to speak to You
and we give You
thanks and praise
that You speak to us
in the Bible
Your Word written
and Lord
we ask that You
help us to be
Psalm 119 people
help us to trust
that You will
cause us to thrive
as we
hear Your Word
and take it
and take it as an authoritative
word in our lives
as we ponder it
and as we seek
to try to live it
we give You thanks and praise
that You know our weakness
and our frailty
and our need for a Savior
we give You thanks and praise
that You have intervened
by sending a Savior
the Savior that we need
and we give You thanks and praise
that every word of Yours
is an intervention
into our lives
that we might become
more like Jesus
that we might be fit
for the new heaven
and the new earth
that we might bring You glory
so Father make us
as individuals
Psalm 119 people
and make us as a church
a Psalm 119 church
all for Your glory
and we ask these things
in the name of Jesus
Your Son
and our Savior
and all God's people said
Amen