Psalm 71, let's look at the first
verse and I'm just going to read through this psalm and you'll
get a sense of how the psalm is different than other psalms
and also how it gives a repetition of some of the information in
here to emphasize that. Psalm 71 says in verse 1, In
thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be put to confusion. Deliver me in thy righteousness,
and cause me to escape. Incline thine ear unto me, and
save me. Be thou my strong habitation,
whereunto I may continually resort. Thou hast given commandment to
save me, for thou art my rock and my fortress. Deliver me,
O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of
the unrighteous and cruel man. For Thou art my hope, O Lord
God. Thou art my trust from my youth. By Thee have I been holden up
from the womb. Thou art He that took me out
of my mother's bowels. My praise shall be continually
of Thee. I am as a wonder to many, but
Thou art my strong refuge. Let my mouth be filled with thy
praise and with thy honor all the day. Cast me not off in the
time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength
faileth. For mine enemies speak against
me, and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together,
saying, God has forsaken him. Persecute and take him, for there
is none to deliver him. O God, be not far from me. O my God, make haste for my help. Let them be confounded and consumed
that are adversaries to my soul. Let them be covered with reproach
and dishonor that seek my hurt. But I will hope continually and
will yet praise Thee more and more. My mouth shall show forth
thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day, for I know not the
numbers thereof. I will go in the strength of
the Lord God. I will make mention of thy righteousness,
even of thine only. O God, Thou hast taught me from
my youth, and hitherto have I declared Thy wondrous works. Now also,
when I am old and gray-headed, O God, forsake me not, until
I have showed Thy strength unto this generation and Thy power
to everyone that is to come. Thy righteousness also, O God,
is very high. Who has done great things? O
God, who is like unto Thee? Thou which has showed me great
and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up
again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my
greatness and comfort me on every side. I will also praise Thee
with a psaltery, even Thy truth, O my God. Unto Thee will I sing
with a harp, O Thou Holy One of Israel. My lips shall greatly
rejoice when I sing unto Thee, and my soul, which Thou hast
redeemed. My tongue also shall talk of
Thy righteousness all the day long, for they are confounded,
for they are brought to shame that seek my hurt. So you can
see in this psalm there's several things that the psalmist speaks
of the Lord as being to him. He is, if you look at verse 2,
he says, he says, deliver me in thy righteousness, cause me
to escape, incline your ear, save me, because, in verse 3,
you are my strong habitation, And he says, whereunto I may
continually resort, thou hast given commandment to save me,
so he is his habitation, his savior, and in verse 1, his trust. And he also speaks of him in
verse 5 as being his hope. And then in verse six, by thee
have I been holding up from the womb. So he's the one who holds
him and keeps him. And in verse seven, he is his
refuge. In verse nine, don't cast or
don't forsake me when I'm old or when my strength fails. And
he goes on, he says, don't forsake me in verse 11. In verse 12,
he is my help. And he asked for his help swiftly.
So all these things show us that the Lord is described and held
by the psalmist in his eyes as one who is all to him. So the
Lord is all to the psalmist. Now, I want to begin at verse
1 with you and just walk through this psalm as we are able to
tonight. He says in verse one, in thee, O Lord, do I put my
trust. Let me never be put to confusion.
Now, as you think about that, there's several things that flood
into our thoughts. First of all, I want the Lord
to be my trust, don't you? Every child of God, I think,
more than anything, when we read these psalms, we want to be able
to apply the words of these psalms to ourselves. I want the Lord
to be my trust. I do not want to trust another. I don't want to trust myself.
I don't want to trust other men. I don't want to trust science.
I don't want to trust creation. I want to trust the Lord. And
I especially want to trust Him for salvation from my sins. So this is a very, very dear
thing that the psalmist calls the Lord his trust. And I was
thinking about this because to trust the Lord means that we
lean upon Him. We derive all of our help from
Him. All of our help comes from Him.
He is our help, in fact. We have no strength but His strength. We have no truth but Himself,
the truth. We have no life but the life
that is in God, our Savior. We have no knowledge, no wisdom.
We have no righteousness. We have no standing. We have
no defense. We have no reward. We have nothing
but that Christ is to us. So in all these things we trust
the Lord. And I was thinking about this
There's a place not far from us, maybe a couple of hours drive,
that's called Bald Mountain. And it's essentially just a big,
massive granite mountain. And you can stand on it and you
can look out north and south and see a long way. It's up a
couple of thousand feet of elevation. But one of the things you notice
when you're standing on that mountain is that it's just a
big old rock. And your weight on that rock
is not even making any additional stress to the rock. The rock
is huge and heavy. Even a rock that you can pick
up in your hand the size of a softball seems very heavy. But a man is
nothing. I know in Scotland, I think they
measure people in weight by stones. I know that because I worked
with a man who talked about himself and he called, I can't remember
how many stones he said he was, but the point is is that the
Lord is our rock and he is so massive in terms of his ability
to meet all of our needs that there's absolutely no no burden that we can possibly
be to Him, because He is infinite in His wisdom, in His power,
in His compassion, in His salvation. Everything with God is beyond
all measure. And that's why when it says,
in Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust, God is not burdened by
the trust of his people. There's nothing about a poor
sinner, a helpless sinner trusting God that adds to his work, except
the fact that we see that in the Lord Jesus Christ, God who
is almighty, had to become man and as man had to fulfill his
law and bear our sins and die under his own wrath, under God's
own wrath, to satisfy God's own justice and to fulfill his law
in righteousness. and to give us His own life and
all the things that we have in our Savior because of His salvation
of His people, which did require Him to give Himself for us. So
that also boggles our mind. Christ, who is immeasurable in
His wisdom and strength and His his righteousness and all that
he is, his justice, he had to meet the requirements of God
in order to save us from our sins. God himself is the one
who had to be satisfied. And that's why he is even more
our trust, is that God is not going to compromise. He's not
going to compromise His word, His will. He's not going to compromise
His glory, His character, His name. He's not going to compromise
anything of Himself in order to save His people. And that's
why it costs Christ everything. And so that's why He says in
the next verse, verse 2, deliver me in my righteousness. He doesn't
ask God to compromise. He's not going to make a false
accounting. Everything has to be perfectly
balanced. And the Lord's going to do that
because He is holy. He is holy. And He will not have
a people presented to Himself who are anything less than perfect
and holy. And that's amazing, isn't it?
Now, in Psalm 124, if you want to look at that psalm, I want
to read this to you. In Psalm 124, we haven't gone
through that psalm yet, but this came to my mind as I was thinking
about this first verse in Psalm 71. In Psalm 124 it says this,
if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel
say, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side when men
rose up against us, then they had swallowed us up quick. when
their wrath was kindled against us, then the waters had overwhelmed
us, the stream had gone over our soul, then the proud waters
had gone over our soul." So you see, if it hadn't been the Lord,
who made Himself our trust, where would we be?" So not only do
we admire God that He is able to be our trust in all things,
for eternal life, for salvation from our sin against Him, to
magnify even magnify His own name in our salvation, to magnify
His Son, to make Himself known, all the things that God has done
for us in our salvation, we can trust Him. But also, if it hadn't
been for Him, where would we be? We would have no hope. And
so this first opening verse, the first words of this first
verse, give us such an overwhelming comfort from God that He's all-sufficient. and He has made Himself our trust,
and that if He didn't make Himself our trust, where would we be?
It makes us thankful, doesn't it? If it had not been the Lord, where would every person be if
the Lord did not make Himself the trust of His chosen people,
His objects of mercy? Where would the world be? The
world would have been destroyed long ago. The only reason that
God preserves this world, the only reason that He is long-suffering
with all that goes on in this world, is for the salvation of
His people. Isn't that amazing? In Isaiah
43, we read this in church last Sunday, that God says to his
people, I gave Egypt and Ethiopia for you. He gave Babylon for
his people. He delivered up nations in order
to save his people. The only reason that God endures
throughout the time, the long time since the cross, is so that
because He has compassion on His people, it's God's will that
none of His sheep should be lost. Jesus said, them also, these
ones who were given to Him by the Father, I must bring. There's not going to be any failure
and He must do it. So all these things teach us
what it would be like if the Lord wasn't our trust and what
it is like to have the Lord to be our trust. What horrible ruin
and what eternal misery we would have and that would be our eternal
portion if the Lord did not make himself our trust. So then consider
the immeasurable blessing of God that he would make himself
the trust of poor sinners. And that is the logic of the
Gospel. That's why we see in Psalm 124, if it had not been
the Lord, if it hadn't been the Lord, then we would not have
escaped. The salvation is of the Lord.
And that's why when we read so many places in Scripture that
God works everything for the good of His people. that He is
working all things to conform them to the image of His Son.
This is another reason why we can trust the Lord. He has determined,
He has decreed, He has promised It's His work. We are His workmanship. We didn't create ourselves. Psalm
100 says, we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. It
is He who has made us, not we, ourselves. We didn't put ourselves
into grace. We don't keep ourselves in this
grace. The only way that we know this
is by God-given faith. It's faith in Christ by which
we know our justification. Faith in Christ by which we know
that we've been washed from our sins and sanctified by His Holy
Spirit. Faith in Christ by which we overcome
our sin and the world. Faith in Christ by which we love
God, love His people, and call upon Him throughout the course
of our lives. It's all by God. And He who has
begun a good work in us will complete that work until the
end. This was part of the covenant of His grace. Alright, so that's
the first thing I want to point out about verse 1 here. It is,
In Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be put to
confusion. The Lord Jesus Christ must be
our trust. Do you know? Do you know that
only in Christ and only by Christ can we go to the Father and call
Him our God? Because this relationship of
people to God as their God and God to these people as His people
is a covenant relationship. Remember Jeremiah 31? He said,
they shall be my people and I will be their God. That's a relationship
of covenant people. Remember what God told Moses
in Exodus chapter 3? He said, I am the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. This is my name forever. You see, God has named himself
by his relationship to his elect people. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
were the people, and they represented all of God's people. All of God's
people, all who trust Christ, are also, just like Abraham,
the children of God. And so the promises made to Abraham,
the promises made to Abraham which were made to Christ for
us, are ours in the same way that they were Abraham's. And
it's by this covenant, an everlasting covenant God made, that we are
called His people. So this relationship of us to
Christ as our God and our Savior, is a relationship of covenant
grace. We can't call God our God. We can't say, the Lord is my
trust, unless Christ is our trust, unless Christ is our Lord and
our God. Like Thomas said, when he saw
the nail prints in his hands and in the spear placed in his
side, and he said, my Lord and my God. That is a statement both
of worship and a statement of truth and admiration of who Christ
is, but it's also a statement of trust. It's a statement of
utter submission. All right? only in Christ and
only by Christ can we go to the Father and call Him our God and
our Father. Therefore, the psalmist here
must be understood, first of all, first of all, the psalmist
speaking in Psalm 71 must be understood as Christ speaking
as our representative in our place as our mediator between
us and God, as the man, the one who is both God and man, the
second Adam, the last Adam, the one, the first Adam prefigured.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks here. In Thee, O Lord,
do I put my trust. Those are his words as the last
Adam. also, the psalmist should also
be understood as every believer, because if Christ spoke as man
to God as his God and his Father, and he was our mediator, the
second and last Adam, the one in whom, who was our head, who
did everything, and we did it in him, then the psalmist must
also be understood as every believer, as Christ did, and so we in Christ
come to God by Jesus Christ alone. He's the Lord, and he's both
God and man, the one mediator. He knows, with all the wisdom
of God, what God requires. And he has merit in his will
and in his work, and he deserves all the glory of God. And he
has all that, but also as man, he's able to be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities. As man, he has compassion on
his people. as both God and man. And as man,
he fulfilled God's law. He's the only one who could,
the only one who did. And as man, he laid his life
down. but he did this as one person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the psalmist, first of all, is the Lord Jesus Christ as our
representative head, as our Adam, as the one who stood for us before
God, both in covenant and in fulfillment of that covenant.
But secondly, every believer is also spoken here of. And in this psalm, if you think
about this, when you read the psalm, it helps to understand
it, that this psalm, even though it's expressed in the words of
an individual, That individual can also be understood as every
believer as the body of Christ, as a single body. Because as
the Lord Jesus Christ, so his body. Every believer in Christ
looks to Christ and comes to God by Him alone. And so the
psalm is really about every believer coming to God through the Lord
Jesus Christ because Christ came to God for us and we came in
Him and now we come by Him. We don't trust ourselves. We
trust Christ alone. And this is the way we always
come to God. We have this in our mind. We have this in our
mouth because it's in our heart. and we confess this. We confess
it when we pray. We take God's word to our heart
and we lay hold upon it, don't we? Where does it say that? In Psalm 119 it says, I will
never forget thy precepts, for with them thou hast quickened
me. God made us alive through his
word and so that life that we receive from his word His Word
then is our food, it's our life, and we constantly appeal to His
Word to find the truth of what He has said and how He has saved
us and where our trust lies, where our hope, our expectation
is from His Word. So, this psalm is both Christ
and His people, and you can read it as an individual who is collectively
all of the people of God. Okay? Christ is the way to the Father,
and He is the only way, and we have confidence to come to God
by Him. Why? Well, because God accepted
Him, and God approved of Him. God appointed Him. God anointed
Him. He ordained Him to be our Savior,
to be the Christ, our Prophet, our Priest, our King, our Surety,
our Redeemer, everything, the propitiation for our sins. our
righteousness, all these things, our wisdom, our redemption, our
sanctification, everything, our holiness. Christ is all and we
are complete in Him. He's all-sufficient and He's
everything. The believer needs nothing that
God has not given them in the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the
Lord Jesus Christ, the believer has absolutely everything that
is in God. The fullness of the Godhead is
in Him and we are complete in Christ. And so, So He's the way
to the Father, He's the only way, and therefore we have confidence
because He is the only way. If He's the only way, then God
doesn't look for another. God doesn't look for another
Savior. He doesn't look to us to provide
what is lacking in Christ. We come, as it says in Hebrews
10.19, we come in boldness to the throne, access to God in
all of his glorious holiness, without shame, without reticence,
with boldness because we come by the blood of Jesus. We don't
look to something in addition to or other than the blood of
Jesus. We come by the blood of Jesus.
And because the blood of Jesus is accepted, obviously, Christ
is seated in glory, exalted, the Lamb of God, slain, freshly
slaughtered. And so we come by his blood.
Therefore, we can come boldly, because He's accepted. You see,
our acceptance with God is not of ourselves. It's not in ourselves.
It's Christ. And that's why the believer here
says, in Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. All right. There's
no truth of God. There's no truth of salvation. There is no salvation from sin.
There's no righteousness. There is no life apart from Christ. And this is the problem with
religion. Every religion wants to make salvation and sanctification
depend on the person, but it depends on Christ. And faith
is given to us by God to see that with full persuasion. Like
Abraham and Sarah, no strength, no life to produce, no ability
to produce life from their dead bodies. And yet, God did it because
He's the one who promised and He's the one who brought it to
pass. And this is the message of the Gospel. Christ bore our
offenses and He was raised for our justification. And so we
have absolute confidence in what He did and only in what He did. And so we give Him all the glory.
All right. I also want to look at this phrase
here, in thee, O Lord, do I put my trust, let me never be put
to confusion. Never let me be put to confusion. Now, why does a psalmist pray
this way? Well, when you read this psalm,
you notice that there are those who are called, in verse 4, deliver
me out of the hand of the wicked." And in verse 4, the hand of the
unrighteous and cruel man. And you can see throughout this
psalm that he's talking about those who seem to be taking advantage
of his weakness and his vulnerability in his old age. or to try to
put him to shame. And so he asks God, he puts his
trust in the Lord, in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he asks Him
not to put him to confusion. And the word confusion means
shame, it means being disappointed, it means confused. It means that
I trusted God for something, and I trusted Him in vain. I didn't receive it. It was an
empty trust, because I either didn't trust in the Lord, or
He didn't do what I trusted Him to do. He wasn't the God I trusted. He didn't fulfill his word. He
didn't complete his work. He didn't do what he promised. He wasn't almighty to save. He
didn't save to the uttermost as I trusted him to do. You see
what the difference is here? Confusion means I have trusted
God or trusted Christ in vain. And so he says, don't let me
be put to confusion." Now, of course, God is not going to fail.
My trust might fail, but God can't fail. And yet, the Lord
Jesus is so joined to his people. He's so
joined to them that if he fails, then they fail. Or if they fail,
then he fails. You see? There's no separation. Nothing, it says in Romans 8,
nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. And he begins with our
sin, doesn't he? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Of course, the answer is no one.
God justified them. And who can condemn? Who can
condemn one for whom Christ died? Of course, no one can. So he
immediately deals with our sin. But then he goes on to deal with
everything else, too, in that same chapter. So Christ is not going to fail.
So we ask then, why would he pray then? Don't put me to confusion. Well, because when we sin, what
happens? When we sin against God? Paul,
the apostle Paul in Romans 1, 1 begins that book this way. He says, Paul, a servant of Jesus
Christ. Now, when Paul sinned, it no
doubt had the same effect upon him that it has upon me, only
I'm sure I feel it. I can't imagine the Apostle Paul
being anything compared to me. I'm far, far worse than he was.
But he said, I'm a servant of Jesus Christ. So that if he sinned
against Christ, what would that mean then? That would be an inconsistency,
wouldn't it? That would be confusing. It's
confusing when we sin. Sin brings confusion. It brings
confusion to our mind. It puts us into darkness, doesn't
it? Sin brings darkness. Sin brings
confusion, but God brings clarity. What brings clarity? The opposite
of confusion. Righteousness. And how is that
righteousness made known? Through the light of the gospel.
So, our sin brings darkness and confusion, but the righteousness
of God in Christ brings clarity and light, you see. So he prays
this way because he felt the consequences of those tormentors
that are named in this psalm. Those who would take advantage
of his weakness and try to put him to shame. Which, of course,
this was the case with Christ. Remember in Matthew 27 when he
hung on the cross, the men were mocking around the cross and
they said things like this. He saved others. He can't save
himself. Ha ha ha. Or he trusted in the
Lord that he would save him, let him deliver him. And they
boasted. They seemed to have power over
him. In fact, in Luke he says, this
is your hour and the power of darkness. But the whole matter
wasn't theirs because it was the bruising, the crushing of
Satan's head. But it was only the bruising
of Christ's heel in comparison. And so what we see here is that
men mocked Christ and taunted him in his most painful anguish
of mind and soul and body when he was on the cross. Because
that's the way cruel, wicked men do. And in this, you can
see that they were trying to put him to shame by claiming
that he trusted God for nothing. God, he claimed to be God's,
beloved one, his favored one, the one that trusted God, and
therefore God would deliver him, but obviously God wasn't delivering
him. So what's going on? See how the
next verse of Psalm 71 says? He says, let me never be put
to confusion, deliver me in thy righteousness. If the Lord hadn't
delivered him, he would be confused. He would be put to shame. He
would be disappointed. He would have trusted in the
Lord for nothing. And so he prays against that.
But every believer also because this is not just the prayers
of Christ, but Christ in the place as the representative of
his people. So we take up and follow our
Savior with these words. We claim these words revealed
by the Spirit of God as being the will of God for us, too,
because of Christ. And we can say, Lord, don't put
me to confusion. Don't let my sin become an eternal
darkness over me. Don't let my sin separate me
from the love of Christ. Show me the light of your salvation.
You see, can you see that now? In this one verse, in this first
verse, he prays, because the Lord is his trust, he would never
be put to confusion, never be put to shame before his enemies,
not disappointed in his expectation from God, but in fact, God would
be his God, that he would be his refuge, even from his youth,
and even to old age and beyond old age. Even in the resurrection
from the dead, God would prove himself to be his trust and would
not let him be disappointed in God, his trust. And so that's
the way every child of God is. And as I said, sin brings confusion,
righteousness brings clarity, and the only way that that darkness
of sin can be dispelled, and our blindness because of our
sin can be dispelled and taken away, is if Christ gives us light. And the light that He gives,
we see His righteousness. We see that, yes, we have sinned.
And nothing more than sin can be expected of us because we
are so wicked. And yet the Lord is our righteousness,
and He has given us His Spirit. And our spirit is life because
of His righteousness. And because of His righteousness,
and that life of Christ that is in us, we have this faith
to look to Him. And we declare these things in
trust and in hope of His Word. All right? So, our strength...
Let me say this also. Our strength Our strength against
sin is Christ alone, isn't it? Our strength against sin is in
Christ alone. Therefore, strength against sin
is only by faith in Christ alone. If we attempt to live by our
works, which is living by our flesh in scripture, then we have
no strength against sin. Remember how Paul spoke to the
Galatians? He says, how did you receive
Christ Jesus, the Lord? Was it by the works of the law?
Or was it by the hearing of faith? If you received him by the hearing
of faith, are you now going to be made perfect by the flesh? What's wrong with you? You see,
he was really scolding them, wasn't he? So if we have been
given faith in Christ by the Spirit of God, through the life
of Christ in us, And we know that Christ alone has strength
over sin, and the ability to do anything for us is in Him. Jesus said, without me you can
do nothing, and so many other ways. Then we recognize that
the only way we have any strength against sin is by faith alone. The just shall live by faith. And also, who is he that overcomes? But he that believes that Jesus
is the Christ. That Jesus Christ came in the
flesh. That he's the Son of God. That he was before he came. He
was God the Son. He came in the flesh. He did
what God the Son came in the flesh to do to save us from our
sins. He finished that work. And that gives us release, redemption
from our sins. Satisfies God. Clothes us in
His righteousness. Think about Adam and Eve in Genesis
chapter 3, remember? in Genesis 3, where Adam and
Eve, God had spoken to them after they sinned, and then it says
that God put the cherubim there to guard the way so they couldn't
get to the Tree of Life, and then it says in verse 21 of chapter
3, Genesis 3.21, that God made them skins to clothe them. And that certainly clothed their
physical nakedness, but it had a much deeper significance, because
in order for them to be covered by skins, an animal had to die,
and an animal died who wasn't guilty, and therefore we see
in that act of God, the gospel, that God put Christ to death
to clothe our nakedness in His righteousness. And that's amazing. That gives us strength, doesn't
it? Strength to believe God, to come to God, and to find that
Christ is our strength. And that's strength against sin.
If we recognize our sinful state, that means that we're guilty.
If we recognize our sinful heart, that means that we're corrupt.
And we recognize our utter impotence against the enemy of our sinful
selves, and that this is from God's Word, in Philippians 3.3,
he says, we have no confidence in the flesh. Then, by the gospel
given to us with his life from Christ and faith in Christ, we
live upon him by faith. And faith is always consistent
with grace. And grace is always set in contrast
to works. The flesh and works and dependence
upon our own obedience versus the Spirit, faith, and Christ's
obedience. Those two things are set in contrast
in scripture. And so, we shall not be put to
confusion if Christ is all to us. You see? If He's our trust. Alright. We could go on and on
about that, but I want to go on and see what we have left
here. Let's look at verse 2. We'll
get started in verse 2, maybe. He says in verse 2, "...deliver
me in thy righteousness and cause me to escape Incline thine ear
unto me and save me. You see these different things?
I love the way God gives these lists of things in a single verse. Deliver me, cause me to escape,
incline your ear, save me, and do all this in your righteousness. He doesn't want a compromise
salvation, does he? If God did something to just
In fact, some people read those words in Romans chapter 4 and
other places where it says God counted, when Abraham believed
God, God counted it to him for righteousness, and they understand
that to mean, well, Abraham couldn't keep the law, and so God just
lets us believe Christ instead of keeping the law, and he looks
at our faith, and he considers that good enough righteousness.
But that's a horrible misinterpretation of the truth, because God doesn't
reduce the requirements of his law by making our salvation given
to us through faith. He doesn't make faith righteousness
instead of obedience to the law. But this is just one of the ways
in which this is misunderstood, where God could somehow save
us if he would just Forget about our sin. Just let it go. Like
we would do. Like presidents do in the United
States, for example. We're going to let that go. In
fact, we're going to get you a pardon from here to there in
time. Anything you did that might have been unlawful, we're going
to overlook it. That's not righteous, is it?
No, that's not righteous. It's not righteous because there's
no compensation. The law is dishonored. by that. The law is completely dishonored
when the guilty are set free without payment to justice. Remember
Proverbs 17, 15? He that justifieth the wicked,
or condemneth the just, they both are an abomination to the
Lord. And so God doesn't compromise.
No, in fact, he more than answers for his people. The righteousness
of Christ is a super abounding righteousness that earns them
not just life contingent upon a continued obedience on their
part, but life forever and ever, an unending life, an everlasting
life, even eternal glory. The righteousness of Christ put
on his people by the grace of God, designed by God and provided
by God in Christ for them, is a righteousness that will withstand
all of the rigor of God's holiness for all of eternity. Nothing
can be added to it. Nothing can be taken to it, taken
from it. It's a durable righteousness.
It lasts from everlasting to everlasting. And God can't change. He's not going to be less dim
in His glory because He received the righteousness of Christ instead
of personal obedience from people. In fact, God never intended for
people to stand before Him outside of their head. Remember Adam? We sinned when Adam sinned. We
were in Adam. And all in Adam died. We became
sinners in him. And only in Christ can we be
made alive. In Christ, all of God's people were obedient. And His obedience is our righteousness. And that's the gospel. We don't
have a standing apart from our head. We're either in Adam or
we are in Christ. and we have no hope in ourselves.
And if we're in Adam only, then we are going to answer for our
own personal sins. If we're in Christ, then we answer
to God in our Savior. Christ himself is our answer,
and he is our advocate, the one who answers for us. All right,
so I wanted to mention that about this righteousness here. This
is a prayer that's consistent with the Holy Spirit of God. Nothing is going to be left untaken
care of. Everything will be fulfilled.
Not only fulfilled, but done in such a way that nothing can
be more greatly honorable to God than what He has done in
Christ. Nothing can excel that. Nothing
could ever have excelled that. And I want to remind you of what
David said before we close here of this one verse in Psalm 51
and verse 14. This is an incredible verse that
a sinner would ask this of God. It shows that that man was led
by the Spirit of God. He says in Psalm 51, you know
what Psalm 51 is about. It's David's prayer to God for
mercy after his sin with Bathsheba, after he murdered Bathsheba's
husband, Uriah the Hittite, and after he hid like a pharisaical
hypocrite for all that time until Nathan the prophet came to him
and exposed him. But in verse 14 he says this.
He says, in fact in verse 13, he says of Psalm 51, verse 13. Then will I teach transgressors
thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Sinners
are converted unto God when he shows, when the gospel is taught
to them by God. Verse 14, listen to this. Deliver
me from blood guiltiness, that's murder. O God, thou God of my
salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness."
You see? Because if God did it, it is
righteous. And if God could deliver David
from his guilt of murder, then that is something that only God
could do. It's impossible for men. First
of all, his sin was against God, and only God can forgive sin
that's against him, as the Pharisees even understood. And so, for
God to deliver David from his blood guiltiness here means that
God has somehow done something that upholds his righteousness.
And whatever that is, of course David doesn't, he's not bashful
in saying what it is, it's the blood of Christ. But that's righteousness,
you see. How did God deliver us from our
sin? He made Christ the propitiation for our sins. Remember what the
publican prayed in Luke 18, 13? God be propitious, or God be
merciful, the same word that's used in Hebrews 9 where he says
mercy seat. God be merciful to me, the sinner. He's asking God in that prayer
to look upon the propitiation that God provided as the propitiation
for his sins and to be merciful to him. And that's what, that's
righteousness. Because Jesus said that that
man went down to his house justified. And God doesn't justify the ungodly,
I mean he does, but he doesn't do it without providing a righteousness
for them. He justifies the righteous. And
they're righteous, of course, in the righteousness of Christ.
But that righteousness by which God justifies them is Christ
our propitiation. God made him the propitiation
for our sins. The one who fulfills and satisfies
the law for precept and penalty in the blood of his own son.
Now, God did all that. And so, David says, I will sing
aloud of your righteousness. And Psalm 71 too, deliver me
in thy righteousness. God is concerned with his righteousness. And the Holy Spirit is concerned
with God's righteousness. And the Gospel is good news.
It's the power of God into salvation, as it says in Romans 1.16, because
therein the righteousness of God is revealed. And it's revealed
as a righteousness which we embrace and trust in by faith. and is
revealed to us in order that we should trust in it, trust
in God and His righteousness by faith. In 2 Peter 1, 2 Peter
chapter 1 verse 1, he says it this way, let me read this to
you, as soon as I find 2 Peter. which is after James, he says
in 2nd Peter chapter 1, listen to these words, Simon Peter,
a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ to them, notice, that
have obtained, it means an allotment, that have obtained an allotment
of like precious faith with us in the righteousness of God and
our Savior Jesus Christ. And the word through there should
be in, And if you read it in one of the other literal translations,
it is the word in. God has given us an allotment
of faith, an inheritance, which we lay hold on by faith, and
that faith is in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, our God and
Savior. Amazing, isn't it? The psalmist was concerned that
God would deliver him in his righteousness and cause him to
escape these enemies, which we're going to talk about more next
time, and incline His ear to Him and save Him. Save me, Lord. Save me from everything
that would keep me from You and to put me to confusion. Let's
pray.