Let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
as we join our voices together in worship, we're reminded of
how often we've, like David, found our steps in slippery places,
steps of sinking sand, But like David, Lord, you said
that when he went into the house of the Lord, then he knew their
end and found a large room, a place where he could rest and a rock
on which he could stand. Lord, we've come to this place
this morning in hopes of that very thing. Lord, would you place
our feet firmly on the Lord Jesus that we would find in him all
our hope, all our wisdom, all our righteousness, all our sanctification,
and all our redemption. Lord, lift him up. and lift up
our hearts and our eyes. Lord, we thank you for the rain
that you have sent to the earth this day. And Lord, we pray that
the windows of heaven would be open and that the showers of
your blessings would nourish our souls. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. Good morning. We're going to be back in 2 Samuel
chapter 22 this morning, if you'd like to turn with me there in
your Bibles. We began looking at these verses
last Sunday, beginning at verse 26. David is expressing the condition that we must be
found in if we are to come accepted into the presence of God. How
can a man be right with God? How can I approach a holy God? What is the ground on which God
will accept me? And this is a very important
question and a question that all believers are very interested
in because the desire of our hearts is to come into the presence
of God and to be accepted by him. But there are conditions that must be met and that must
be provided if we're to come to Him. And so, the Lord tells
us here in verse 26, with the merciful thou wilt find Him to
be full of mercy. we're to come before God, we
must come seeking mercy. If we come for any other reason,
then we'll be met on the ground on which we come. If we're looking
for fairness or if we're looking for justice, we'll find that,
but it won't be what we need. What we need is mercy. And the Lord's making it clear
here that the Lord will show himself to be full of mercy to
those who come seeking mercy. He delights in showing mercy
and he gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud. And so this is not just a condition,
but this is, This is what the Lord has to do for us if we're
to find acceptance before him to cause us to see our need for
mercy. And if the Lord makes us to be
sinners, we'll know that that's what our greatest need is, for
the Lord to show us his mercy. And with the upright man thou
wilt show thyself upright. Now we saw last Sunday that this
word upright is also used in the Old Testament to define sincerity
or that man which comes with an honest heart. We come before
the Lord and we find acceptance with him when he gives to us
that spirit of grace enabling us to be honest with him, be
honest with him about ourselves, be honest with him about the
condition of our hearts like Isaiah was when Isaiah saw the
Lord and he said, woe is me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips. My lips express the condition
of my heart. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.
So you want to know what's in a man's heart? Listen to what
he says. And we listen to our own words and we find that there
is corruption. in our hearts and that's the
honest spirit in which we come. And Isaiah goes on to say, and
there's no one else around me that can help. I live among a
people of unclean lips. They're all in the same boat
that I'm in. And my eyes have seen the king.
He realized that he was worthy death he didn't want justice
he didn't want fairness he wanted mercy and the Lord had given
to him an honest heart I heard a man say one time honest
men don't go to hell and there's a lot of truth to that all men are liars and we We check
our motives too closely, we're gonna find that every time we
speak, we're doing something to hide ourselves and to promote
ourselves in some way. But by that statement, honest
men don't go to hell. I mean, when we come before God,
there's a genuine spirit of uprightness that the Lord gives when he enables
us to agree with him. about our need for mercy. So that's how we come. We come
with this uprightness. What happened as a result of
Isaiah's confession? One of the seraphim took a hot
coal from off the altar and touched his lips and purged him of his
sin. And that's what we're in need
of. We're in need of the the hot wrath of God's justice that
fell on the Lord Jesus at Calvary's cross to touch our lips and to
make us clean. And so how we come is how we'll
be received. This word upright, though it
is translated sincere, in a couple of places in the Old Testament,
most often this word upright is translated without blemish. And it's a reference to the sacrifice,
the Old Testament sacrifice that the children of God were commanded
to bring for their acceptance before God. they were to bring
a lamb. This without blemish, this upright
lamb is first mentioned in Exodus chapter 12 when God gave to Moses
the commandments for the Passover when they were still in Egypt.
And the Lord told Moses that Each house was to go out into
the flock and choose a lamb, but they were to choose one that
wasn't sick, it wasn't blemished, it had no fault on it whatsoever,
and then they were to bring it into their home and they were
to watch this lamb for three days and make sure that that
there wasn't anything wrong with it before they sacrificed that
lamb and took the blood and put it on the door of the house. And the Lord said, when I see
the blood, I'll pass by you. But that lamb had to be without
blemish. It had to be upright. It had to be without spot. And
what a beautiful picture we have of the Lord Jesus, not three
days, but 33 years three years, particularly in
his public ministry, which even his enemies could not find a
charge against him. He invited them to accuse him
of sin and no man could accuse him except of one thing, the
only accusation that they ever brought against him that stuck
at least in the minds of the religious leaders was that of
blasphemy. This man, that you being a man
had made yourself out to be God. And of course, if the Lord Jesus
was not fully God then he would have been guilty of blasphemy
but he was. He was exactly who he professed
himself to be. But my point is that it's the
only charge they could find against him. And all their efforts to
try to find fault in him, the Lamb, was inspected very clearly
and very closely and and he was found to have no fault. More
importantly, he was inspected by the father and inspected by
the law. Inspected not just in outward
behavior but inspected in heart and And the father came to this conclusion,
this is my beloved son, in him I am well pleased. The Lord Jesus was that upright,
behold, what did John the Baptist say? Behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sins of the world. This is the Lamb that is without
spot and without blemish. He is the upright Lamb and the
only reason that he was able to bear the sins of his people
and offer himself to the Father as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy
God's justice is because he himself was without sin. God requires
a perfect sacrifice. So what is the Lord teaching
us? Look at the verse again. With the upright man thou wilt
show thyself upright. They that come to God in Christ. They that come before God Almighty
looking in faith to the upright man, looking in faith to the
one who is righteous for their righteousness before God. They will have acceptance. The
Lord tells us in Ephesians chapter one that we are accepted in The
Beloved, the only way that a sinner can come into the presence of
a holy God is to be upright. And the only way that you and
I are gonna be upright is to have Christ as our substitute,
to have him as our sin bearer, to have him as our surety and
our substitute before God. And so to the upright man, the
man that comes to the throne of grace. Let's go to that passage, Hebrews
chapter four. Verse 14, seeing then that we
have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus,
the son of God. Let us hold fast our profession.
What is our profession? It is finished. Christ is all. That he is our profession. Let
us hold fast our profession. We have an advocate with the
father. Seeing then that we have this
sin bearer, seeing that we have this upright man, that has passed
into the heavens and taken his rightful place at the right hand
of the majesty on high. For we have not a high priest
which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities,
but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin. He
understands our afflictions. He understands our infirmities. Why? Because he bore them to
their fullest extent. on the cross. He suffered the
full shame of sin, the full sorrow of sin. He suffered separation
from God for sin. So whatever we suffer, He has
suffered it much greater. You know, when we're dealing
with a problem in life, we want to, and we're looking for someone
to sympathize with us. How much more encouraged we are
when we find someone who has experienced that same thing and
is able to say to us, I understand, I've been there. And encourage
us through those, whatever it might be. Oh, that's what we
have with the Lord Jesus. Only he says, I understand. I've
dealt with everything that you deal with to a much greater extent
that you could ever possibly understand or know. And because
of that, let us therefore, look at verse 16, let us therefore
come boldly. That word means confidently.
Doesn't mean to be brash or to be loud. or to be demanding,
it means to be confident. I can have confidence in approaching
God because I have the upright man who has passed into the heavens,
who has bore my sins and understands my afflictions. And so I can
come boldly before the throne, not the throne of the law, No,
how we come is where we're gonna be met. That's the point of this
passage in our text. We'll be met on the ground in
which we come. We come to the throne of grace. That's what we need. Lord, I'm
a sinner and I need a free gift. I need everything that God has
for me to be given to me freely because I don't have anything
that I can offer to buy it. It has to be given to me freely.
That's what grace means. That we may obtain mercy. Lord, you give me the free gift
of grace. And in giving me the free gift
of grace, I will have obtained mercy. What is mercy? The withholding of that which
I deserve. God cannot withhold from me the
judgment and wrath of God until he gives to me the grace of God. We come to the throne of grace
that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in our
time of need. the upright man. This word upright
is used most often in the Old Testament to define the unblemished,
unpolluted, perfect sacrifice. The Old Testament concludes in
the book of Malachi where the Lord is rebuking the children
of Israel and he rebukes them for bringing the blind and the
lame and the sick to God. When a man comes before God based
on something that he's provided, based on his own free will or
based on his own works, He is bringing the blind and the sick
and the lame to God for a sacrifice. And what God says in rebuking
the children of Israel in the book of Malachi, he says to them
this, he says, offer to your governor those sacrifices and
see if you'll be accepted in his sight on the basis of those
things. If the governor won't accept
you, based on a sacrifice that's blind and lame and sick. How do you expect a Holy God
to accept you based on such a sacrifice? Now let's go back to our text.
This is really glorious when we consider this word upright
as it relates to the without blemish, Perfect sacrifice. Look what the Lord says. How
am I going to come into the presence of a holy God? On which ground
can I approach him and find acceptance with him? And the Lord says in
the latter part of verse 26, with the upright man, thou will
show thyself upright. If I come to the throne of grace
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, looking to him as the
only one who is without blemish, the only one who is the sacrifice
that God will accept, then I will find myself in him. And as he is, so am I. I will find myself being loved
by God in the same way that the Lord Jesus himself was loved. I will find myself able to stand
boldly before God, confident before God in the same way that
the Lord Jesus is confident before God if I come looking to the
upright man. Some will read this verse and
they'll think, well, if I can just be upright, then I'll be
accepted. We've got to be perfect. And the Lord Jesus is our perfect
sacrifice. Look at verse 27. On what ground
can I approach God? with the pure that will show
thyself pure. To be is to be made clean, to
be purged, to have all impurities removed. How can that be? Only if the
Lord Jesus took all my sin and put them away by the sacrifice
of himself. Only if he separated them from
God as far as the east is from the west, only if God can't see
my sin, only if they're covered completely
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ can I be found clean and
pure in the sight of God. On what ground can I come to
God and be accepted? Pure. Pure. He that hath Who can approach
his holy hill? David asked that questions. He
that hath pure hands, clean hands and a pure heart. The Lord Jesus was wounded for
our transgressions. And the reason why that they
pierced his hands with those nails is because our hands, everything
we put our hand to is defiled. Our hands are a picture of our
works, and what we do cannot be accepted before God. The Lord
said, when you build an altar, don't put your hand to it. Just
stack up, don't hew the stones. You remember when Uzzah put his
hand to the ark, trying to steady the ark on the cart, and God
killed him right there on the spot. Why? Because he put his
dirty hand I like what Spurgeon said one time, they were talking
about how in some churches the elders would come together and
put their hands on the heads of the elders and anoint them
and have a ceremony of, you know, appointing these men. And someone
asked Charles Spurgeon about that, he said, what good is it
going to do him to put my dirty hands on his dirty head? Now, we need the hand of God,
don't we? And we need those wounded hands to remove the filth of
our own hands and to make us clean before God. With the pure,
thou will show thyself pure. The Lord is, according to 1 Peter
chapter 1, trying our faith, he's trying our faith. A faith
untried is a faith unproven. The Lord tries our faith every
time he puts us in a place where we've got no place else to go
but to Christ. That's the trying of our faith. Is faith all you have? 1 Peter 1, verse 7 says, the trying
of our faith, which is more precious than gold that perisheth, though
it be tried with fire, though it be tried with fire, might
be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The fiery trials that the Lord
puts his children through in this life are for the purpose
of causing us to be purged of those things that we might look
to and make that precious faith, which is more precious than gold,
pure in his sight, that he might have all the praise and all the
honor and all the glory for having done all the work. With the pure thou wilt show
thyself pure. Go back with me to our text now
and look at verse 27. And with the froward thou wilt
show thyself unsavory. This word froward means to be
crooked, or twisted or perverse or divided. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew
chapter six, he said, the light of the body is the eye. And if the eye be single, then
the whole body shall be full of light. But then he goes on to say, but
if the eye be evil, if the eye be evil, then the whole body
shall be full of darkness. And if the darkness thereof be
light, how great is the darkness thereof. Now, what does all that
mean? Well, we have to understand the
word evil first. The word evil means full of labor,
full of labor. To the forward, to the divided,
to the perverse, to the crooked, to those who are looking to more
than one person for their acceptance before God. James put it like this. James
said we must come to God in faith, in faith. What is faith? Faith
is looking to Christ alone for all the hope of our salvation.
Nothing wavering, nothing wavering. For he that wavers like the wave
of the sea, toss to and fro. For he is a double-minded man
and let not that man think that he should receive anything of
the Lord. How am I gonna get anything from the Lord if I'm
double-minded? Now, child of God, if you feel
anything like me, you feel double-minded all the time. But that's not
what that verse is talking about. He's not talking about having
two natures. He's not talking about the old man warring against
the new man. He's not talking about the spirit
against the flesh so that you cannot be what you ought. That's
a daily struggle that we all experience in this walk of faith. He's talking about being double-minded
as far as having an evil eye. perverse eye, a forward eye. The eye that is single is full
of light. The eye that is evil has nothing
but darkness. The double-minded man is a man
who is looking to Christ plus something that he's done. He's
looking to a a decision that he's made, he's looking to a
work that he's performed, he's looking to some contribution
that he's made for his acceptance before God. He's robbing from
Christ his glory and salvation and he's dividing. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed and I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which
I've committed unto him. What have we committed unto him?
Everything. Everything. He's got to be my all in salvation
or I won't be saved. He's got to put away my sin by
himself or I can't do anything to put it away. He's got to establish
a righteousness before God all by himself. I can't make any
contribution to that. The only way that I can come
to God is not to have an eye that's full of evil, an eye that's
full of labor, not to have a double mind as far as what God requires
for me to be accepted in his presence. Paul put it like this
in Romans, he said, if it is of grace, it can no longer be
of works, otherwise grace is not grace. You can't mix grace
and works. But that's what we see in modern
day religion. Well, that's what we see in man-made
religion. It's not just modern day, it's been around a long
time. Man-made religion. They're attempting to mix grace
and works. But if the eye be evil, if the
eye be perverse, if it be forward, as it says in our text. If the
eye be looking here and there then the whole body will be full
of darkness. And if that darkness be light,
in other words, if a person who is in fact full of spiritual
darkness because they're mixing works with grace and they're
convinced And this speaks of all of our religious friends
and family members. You talk to them. They're confident
in their salvation. And if you suggest in any way
that what they believe is not true, they'll fight you tooth
and toenail over it. Why? Because the darkness that
they have is light to them. And the Lord Jesus said in that
passage in Matthew chapter 6, if the darkness that you have
be light, then how great is the darkness thereof. In other words,
the most blind, spiritually blind person in the world is the one
who thinks he can see when he can't. He's the most spiritually
blind. Don't you find it much easier
to talk to an irreligious person about the gospel than to talk
to someone who is religious and trusting in something that they've
done, something that they've added to the work of Christ for
the hope of their salvation? Sure you do. It's like the Pharisees when
they said to the Lord, are you suggesting that we're blind?
And what did the Lord say? If you were blind, then you could
see. But because you say you can see,
therefore your sins remain. The most blind person is the
religious man. who thinks he can see when in
fact his eye is forward. His eye is evil. His eye is divided. His eye is looking not to Christ
alone for all of the hope of his salvation, but to Christ
plus something that he's done. The grace works gospel is no
gospel at all. And it's the worst gospel of
all. with the forward thou will show thyself unsavory,
unsavory. This word unsavory is also translated
to fight or wrestle in the Old Testament. You remember the story
of Jacob fleeing his brother Esau after deceiving him for
the birthright and going to Laban's house and there he meets Rachel
and when he sees Rachel he falls in love with her and he works
it out with Laban to marry Rachel but Laban deceives him like he
deceived his brother and Laban gives him Leah and And then Rachel
later becomes his wife. But Rachel and Leah. Boy, you're talking about sibling
rivalry. Those two sisters fought. And they were so jealous of each
other and always trying to outdo one another. Leah knew that her
husband Jacob loved Rachel more than he loved her. But Rachel
knew that Leah was the one giving Jacob children when Rachel was
barren. And they constantly fought. And Rachel makes this statement
when she says, with great wrestling, I have wrestled with my sister. With great wrestling, I have
wrestled with my sister. Rachel still was bearing, had
never been able to have a child. She was jealous of her sister
and fought her. With the forward, with those who have their eye
divided between Christ and works, Those who don't have a single
eye, those who are not looking to Christ alone for their acceptance
before God, they will find God to be unsavory. They will find
themselves fighting with God. Elihu, the gospel preacher, who
came to Job after Job's friends had accused him of hiding his
sin, and that was the reason why he was suffering what he
was suffering. And Elihu came, and here's what Elihu asked Job.
Why do you strive against God? He gives not account of any of his matters. He doesn't
have to explain himself to man. He doesn't owe us an explanation
and for us to come to him with this grace works mentality and
believers, you know what? the purifying of our faith that
we talked about in 1 Peter 1, the purging of that precious
gold, the purging out of those impurities. Those are the unbeliefs
that remain in us whereby we question God. And Job, Elihu
says to Job, Why are you fighting God? Why are you striving with
God? Why are you wrestling with God? He doesn't give an account of
what he's doing. If we come, if we come before
God forward in any way other than
just bowing, in submission to him. This doesn't just relate
to our conversion and our need to see Christ as all of our righteousness. This is our daily walk of faith. We come before him. And the Lord
says, if you're forward, if you're
divided, if you're accusing me while worshiping me, you're going
to find me to be unsavory. You're going to find yourself
fighting with God. Will a man contend with God? Oh, how foolish
we've been to wrestle with God rather than to just bow to him. Interesting that the word bow
is also spelt the same, pronounced bow. The Lord calls his people a stiff-necked
people oftentimes. How many times we bow up under
our circumstances and we accuse, we don't raise our fist to heaven
and curse God, but when we accuse our other man or our circum,
we're accusing God. May the Lord enable us to just
bow. To be afflicted, let's close
with this. Look at our text, verse 28. And
the afflicted people. Afflicted by the afflictions
that the Lord has sent. And this affliction has made
us to be poor and needy. It's made us to not bow up and
not resist and not be unsavory. Not be forward. Not be divided,
but to just bow. Lord, I don't know what's going
on, but I know that you're right, you're holy, you're just, you're
good. I believe what you've revealed
in your word. I believe that you have nothing
but good for your children. and I've been afflicted by these
things and the greatest affliction of all. The greatest affliction
of all, believer, I know this is your experience, it certainly
is mine, is not my circumstances. But my forward attitude in the
midst of those circumstances. It's my sin that is my greatest
affliction. It's my unbelief that's my greatest
affliction. And how often we've tried to...
contend with God and wrestle with God. And in the end of the
day, the Lord in his mercy, the Lord in his faithfulness brings
us to this place. Lord, I'm just afflicted. I'm
afflicted. And what is his promise? What
is his promise through all these afflictions? And verse 28, the
afflicted people, the weak, The humble, they shall be saved. Saved from
themselves, saved from their sins. Saved, Lord, that's what
I need, I need to be saved. This is how we come. This is the ground on which we
find our acceptance. with God. May the Lord give us faith to believe what
he's revealed. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
comes by the word of God. Amen. Amen.