This is actually part two of
Psalm 34 we're going to look at tonight. Psalm 34, if you
want to turn there, I read this psalm with you last time and
we did an overview of it, and I gave you an opening text of
scripture that I thought runs parallel to this psalm. It was
found in Isaiah chapter 50, where the Lord Jesus said when he was
on earth suffering, in order to put away the sins of God's
people when he suffered under the wrath of God in their place
for their sins and put them away. He says here, I hid not my face
from shame and spitting. The Lord God will help me. He
is near that justifies me. And then he encourages us, let
him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God, whoever
is walking in darkness and does not have light. Now that's the
kind of situation that the psalmist here in Psalm 34 found himself
in. And we learned last time that
the one that the Spirit of God spoke through in this Psalm was
King David. And before he became king, he
was running from King Saul, who was the first king of Israel.
And King Saul pursued him to death. David fled to a city of
the Philistines called Gath, where Goliath, the giant that
David had previously killed in battle, had lived, and there
David feared for his life, so he pretended to be crazy, a madman,
and he let his spittle drip down on his beard, and he scratched
on the door like he was crazy. And this was the setting of this
psalm. It was in this setting that this
psalm was written, and we learn from that that David, who was
the ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ by birth. Jesus Christ
was born as the son of David, even though he was eternally
the son of God. He came into the world, was born
as son of David. He fulfills this psalm. He's
the one of whom this psalm is speaking. And therefore David's
experience as a prophet and his words in this psalm relate to
the Lord Jesus Christ. They're directing us to Christ's
experience in suffering, in his humiliation when he willingly
became the object of shame and reproach and humiliation in the
eyes of his enemies. And he did that because our sins
deserved that. And he had to suffer the equivalence
so that God's justice would be upheld and his judgment would
be carried out and yet his people would be set free. They would
not have to endure the wrath their sins deserve from God,
but that the Lord Jesus Christ himself would take that wrath
by taking their sins and standing before God and answering to God
for them. That's called the office of assurity,
the one who stands and pays the debt of another. on their behalf
in order to make that person sure to the one that they are
loved, of whom they are loved. So this psalm is about the Lord
Jesus Christ. We determine that not only from
the fact that Christ is the son of David, but that David was
a prophet, the Spirit of God spoke by him, and that in the
volume of the book, all throughout scripture, it is written about
the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus himself in Luke 24 said
this, that in the law, in the prophets, and in the Psalms,
they speak of me, and he said this in Hebrews chapter 10, where
he said he came to do the will of God that was written in the
volume of the book, the scroll from top to bottom. So if we
understand that in Scripture, then we'll understand the importance
of seeing Christ in Scripture. Not only is it important because
this is the truth that God has designed to glorify his Son,
that he has done this for a purpose, and that is our salvation, the
salvation of his people. So when God is gracious to us
and he chose us, the Lord Jesus Christ, as sinners, then we see
that all that he did is all that God required, all that God provided,
and all that God accepted in saving us from our sins. We did
nothing, we contributed nothing, but the Lord Jesus Christ did
everything by himself, and this causes us to be so joyful and
have such great peace before God in our conscience and a transparency
and honesty before men that we are lights in this world. The
Lord Jesus Christ dwelling in us is a light. He shows the world
the same things that Christ has shown us, that we ourselves are
sinners, God is righteous, His judgments are true and holy,
and that we can only escape the judgment we deserve if the Lord
Himself saves us by taking our sins and laying them on Christ,
and this He did of His own free will and good grace, okay? So,
back in Psalm 34, it opens up with this, in the first three
verses, the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking in prophecy, exalts
His own God and Father. He says this in Psalm 1-3, I
will bless the Lord At all times, his praise shall continually
be in my mouth. And notice, at all times and
continually can only refer to one who faithfully knows and
understands and praises God and worships God, which the Lord
Jesus Christ as man faithfully did. And then he says in verse
two, my soul shall make her boast in the Lord The humble shall
hear thereof and be glad." All of God's people are humble, and
this is what he's talking to here. He's talking to the Lord's
people. Believers are humbled people. God has humbled them.
They cannot humble themselves. God's judgments are given in
Scripture. The warnings of God's judgments
are given, and yet we cannot turn. and will not turn unless
the Lord turns us. And that humbles us, that causes
us to cry to the Lord to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
And then in verse three he says, oh magnify the Lord with me and
let us exalt his name together. Now this is such a stoop, such
a condescending stoop of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
Son of God, and the King of glory, and the Lord of glory, the Prince
of life, that he would stoop to sinners and tell them, who
are his people, who have trusted the Lord by his grace, to join
him, together with him, and to praise his God and his Father.
And this is exactly what he says in Hebrews chapter two, in John,
the book of John in the New Testament, in John 17. that he would declare
his father's name to his people, that he would sing in the presence
of his brethren. He was not ashamed to call these
people that he had died for his brethren. And so he sings, he
explains, he declares, he reveals his father's own character and
will and work to his people. And that's what he's doing here
in this psalm when he says, join me, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together. And then we saw last week also
that in verses four through seven, the Lord Jesus holds up himself
as an example of God's goodness to the poor, to the poor, because
he himself was a poor and needy man. If we read this, it says
in Psalm 34, verse four, I sought the Lord, the Lord Jesus speaking
of himself, I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered
me from all my fears. So this was clear that Christ
always sought His Father's will. When the devil tempted Him, Jesus
responded at the end of it. He said, Thou shalt worship the
Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. So clearly the Lord
Jesus worshipped and served God as man. He, as man, as a representative man for his
people, served and worshiped God. And his perfect worship,
his perfect understanding, and his serving God with all that
he was in life, in sufferings, and in death, and even now in
glory, he is doing his father's will as the king of all to save
his people. All of that is what he's speaking
about here. I sought the Lord, he heard me,
and delivered me from all my fears. He, remember, in the Garden
of Gethsemane, he told his disciples, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful
even unto death. He was sore amazed and very heavy. And throughout the Psalms we
see that he trusted in the Lord and he also had these terrors
that he had to face. but he trusted in the Lord that
he would deliver him, and so he rested, he rolled upon his
Father, his God and Father, to deliver him, and he tells us
this in his own experience, so that as the king, of us and the
King of glory who stooped so low, how much more should we
who are nothing and totally in need trust in God too? So he
goes on to say this, look at verse five, Psalm 34 verse five,
I wanna read this to you. He says, they looked to him and
were lightened and their faces were not ashamed. You see that
in Psalm 34 and verse five. Now, if you look at this first
part here, they look to him. Who are these they that look
to the Lord Jesus Christ? Let's see. Well, it was a prophecy,
remember, and all that were then looking and all who came before
who also looked to Christ must be included in the they here. Remember Abraham? God came to
him and gave him promises and he trusted in the Lord. Isaac
also, Jacob, all the prophets, Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, they
all looked. And so the psalmist here is speaking
about those who trusted in the Lord. It says they looked to
him. What does it mean to look to
him? Well, it means we don't look at ourselves. We don't look
for help from ourselves. We don't go to the doctor looking
for help in ourselves. When you're sick, I mean sick,
and you can't help yourself, you expect the doctor to give
you some kind of medicine. that's going to go into your
body, or go on your body, and it's going to help you, you couldn't
do that on your own. And that's a very small comparison. But in the Old Testament, the
children of Israel were bitten by poisonous snakes because they
spoke against God and spoke against Moses. They spoke against the
Lord Jesus Christ when they were tired of the manna and they grumbled. And God sent these poisonous
serpents among them and bit the people. And they were dying. Many of them died. They couldn't
deliver themselves. There was no cure. There was
no antidote for this serpent's bite. And so they had to go to
the doctor, but there was no doctor, so they cried to Moses. And Moses then cried to the Lord,
and the Lord told Moses, this is what you're going to do, this
is the remedy, this is the medicine, this is what they need. You take
a serpent, you take some brass and you hammer it out, heat it
up and hammer it out and hang it, fasten it to a pole and set
that serpent up on that pole so that all in the camp of Israel
can see it. And all those who are bitten,
as many as look to that serpent lifted up on the pole shall live."
Now, Jesus explained that entire account in John chapter 3 when
he says, whoever believes on him, on the Lord Jesus Christ,
is fulfilling that command God gave to Moses to those bitten
in the wilderness by those poisonous snakes. because of their sin. We, because of our sin, are dying.
There's no cure. There's no doctor that can help
us. So we have to not look at our bite, at the sin that we
committed. We can't look at our ability
to get rid of our sin or to stop sinning. If we could stop sinning
and that would fix it, then God would have sent someone to do
something to make us stop, lock us up, who knows what, but we
can't stop sinning. And that wouldn't have done it.
That's why God had to send his son to die. But the Lord Jesus
instructs us in John chapter 3 and verse 14, he said, as Moses
lifted up that serpent in the wilderness, so everyone who looks
upon the Son of Man lifted up on the cross. and trusting Him,
not looking with physical eyes, but with the God-given eyes of
faith, looking away from themselves, looking away to God's remedy,
God's medication, the cure of our sin and the bite of God's
judgment that comes upon us because of our sin, the curse. As the
serpent was lifted up on the pole, Jesus was lifted up on
the cross. And it says in Galatians 3.13
that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law because
he was made a curse for us. Now these are God's words, not
mine. I'm just the messenger, and it's a delightful message
of good news. It says here in Psalm 34, 5, they looked to Him. They looked to Him. They fixed
their eyes not on themselves. They didn't look to themselves
for the wisdom, because they didn't have the wisdom to save
themselves. They didn't look to themselves
for the strength, because they had no strength. They didn't
look to themselves for any riches they could buy their redemption
with. They looked to the Lord to do
what God required, because God himself has to not only dictate
what's required to balance the scales of his justice because
of our sin, but he himself had to provide that payment. So they
looked to him. It's just like a baby. Baby looks
to their mother in order to pick them up, to feed them, to comfort
them, to clothe them, whenever there's something wrong, to fix
it. We look to Christ for everything. And he says here, they look to
him, the Lord Jesus, speaking out of his own experience as
a son of man on earth, They looked to him, he says, he refers to
the history of God's demonstrated salvation of his people because
of his promises. They looked to him, notice, and
they were lightened. Lightened here in this verse,
as I mentioned last week, it means like a stream flowing sparkles. They looked and their faces were
lightened. Now when we look and our faces
are lightened like a stream, it describes the effect of seeing
Christ. When we see that, when we understand
that we ourselves are sinners and in our sin we're blind, we
don't know how we can possibly be accepted by God, that God
has to do something, we come to realize that, but what can
be done? I can't fix myself. I can't remove my guilt. I can't
endure the judgment I deserve. I can't stand before God in judgment.
I couldn't stand the scrutiny of His judgment, His justice. I couldn't suffer the wrath I
deserve. What can be done? God is not going to compromise
his justice. So the only thing that can be
done is if God himself, the one I offended by my sin, reconciles
me to himself by what he requires. And what was that? The death
of his son. And so when we see this, then, by God-given eyes
of faith, they look to him and were lightened Then in out of
the misery of our bankruptcy and darkness and emptiness, we
see then that God has done all in Christ. And seeing this, it
has the effect upon us of God shining on the waters of a stream
and providing that clear water flowing. And it's a sparkling,
refreshing, peaceful, joyful thing. And this is the effect
that seeing Christ, looking to Him, has on us. We reflect the
effects of saving grace on us out of our experience. So the
Lord Jesus Christ, He refers to this. They looked, they were
lightened, their faces sparkled, and their demeanor, their whole
countenance, their appearance, flowed like a stream together.
All of God's people and the enlightening effects of God's grace together
are flowing like a stream in response to seeing that their
salvation is all in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not in themselves. It's what God has done in his
Son. Now, when we see that, that takes
away all of the problem that burdens our conscience. And it
allows us to confess what we truly are, because God has provided
a remedy for our sin in his son. And God is satisfied. God himself
is satisfied. And that's what he tells us.
So the Lord Jesus is referring to the effect that God-given
faith in looking to Christ has on his people. They looked, they
were enlightened. And notice in verse 7 of Psalm
34, he says, he goes on, Oh no, in verse 5 he says, they were
lightened and their faces were not ashamed. They were not ashamed. Now how in the world can you
as a sinner come to God and not be ashamed? You're ashamed if
people knew what you were and what you were thinking, what
you said and what you did. You would hide in utter shame
before people if they knew what you were. What do you think God,
who knows the motives of your heart, the intents of your heart,
when you're doing your very best, and says that your very best
is like a filthy rag, what do you think you would feel in his
presence? But total shame. You would be put in the dust
and unable to look up. You would literally be frozen
in fear and terror and shame because of your sin. But here,
amazingly, he says, they looked, they were lightened, and their
faces were not ashamed. How in the world can we come
before God and not sense or feel shame? There's only one way.
if there is no reason for shame, if there's no shame. The only
way we can come before God and not be ashamed is if there is
no shame. And in Christ there is no shame. They looked to Him, they saw
all that God is in His Son, they saw that all that He is as God,
He came as man and fulfilled in perfect satisfaction and holy
joy and pleasure to God that His justice was magnified and
His grace magnified in the judgment that He executed to save His
people from their sins and bring them to Himself reconciled, not
only removing their sin, but making them His sons. And so
they were not ashamed. You see, the blood of Christ
removes our sins so thoroughly and clothes us in his own obedience
so perfectly that we stand before God absolutely without sin, perfect
in his eyes, without shame, because he took away the cause of our
shame. And that's what the Lord is referring
to here. And he goes on, he's talking about his own experience,
and he's singing this song, this psalm, he's singing this song
to his people as his brethren, and declaring to them by this
song the character, the mind, the will, and the work of God. And in so doing, he lifts his
own God and Father up, and he makes him glorious in their eyes
for the saving mercy he has towards sinners. His faithfulness and
his truth and his grace and his justice and his wisdom and judgment
all are raised to the highest level in perfect harmony in the
obedience of Christ unto death. for his people out of love, and
this is what's being referred to here. Christ's own experience,
trusting God who is all this to his people, and he's declaring
to them who he is in his own experience, because he is the
prophet who not only spoke God's word, but his life, sufferings,
and death conveyed the message of God's own will and work and
purpose of grace to save his people. And it shows, it reveals
to us who God is in all of his holiness. And he says in verse
six, this poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved
him out of all his troubles. OK, and then in verse seven,
notice verse seven, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about
them that fear him and delivereth them. The angel of the Lord encloses,
he encamps around those that fear him. Now tie these words,
them that fear him, back to verse five. And what do you see? If
you were trying to understand what does it mean to fear the
Lord, and you look back to see what these people being spoken
of here are doing that fear him, notice verse five. They did what? They looked to him. What do those
who fear the Lord do? They look to Him. They look to
Him to deliver them, to save them, to uphold them, to do everything
for them. We don't only look to the Lord
to give us food and clothing and houses and tranquility and
all these things, health and our body. Those things are all
fine and they're great blessings to us and we thank God for them.
But what we need the most is spiritual life and health. We
need the provisions our spiritual selves need. And this is had
from the word of God. This is had in the gospel of
Christ. And so he speaks about these
people, they're protected and defended by God's messengers,
the angel of the Lord, in camps around them that fear him, and
he delivers them. This is the story of history.
Out of all humanity, the Lord encamps around and delivers those
who look to Him. And the words God uses is, they
fear Him. Now, when we fear the Lord, we
can see from this that fearing the Lord is realized in looking
to Christ. Does that make sense? I mean,
we fear to be found before God in ourselves. That's what the
fear of God does. It makes us afraid to come to
God in ourselves. How can we come then? In the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. We fear that our sins will overcome
us. How can we then overcome? How
can we be delivered from our sins and actually overcome our
sins? In the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
the one who delivers us. We fear to offend our God, our
Maker, and our Savior, our Judge. How can we avoid offending our
God, our Maker, our Judge, and our Savior? Well, only in the
Lord Jesus Christ. We can only maintain, we can
only fulfill the obedience God requires. We can only answer
for our sins in the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ when
He offered Himself as a sacrifice out of love to His Father and
His people to take away our sins. God accepted His life laid down
as the justice scales balancing, but it didn't just balance the
scales, it doubled. It was a redeeming price that
not only met the just requirements, but exceeded it so much that
it obtained for us an eternal salvation and glory and sonship
and all the blessings that God gives to his son and inheritance
so complete that we are heirs of God himself, joint heirs with
the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, so he's referring to that
those who who look to God, who look to the Lord Jesus Christ
to deliver them from their sins and all things. They fear the
Lord and they fear him because they because they fear him. They
look only to Christ. They can't find anything by which
they can come to God. They fear to come to God any
other way except in his name. They don't come in their own
name, in their own character, in their own works. Not by thinking
about their resolve to do better or their performance in trying
to do better. They don't think about their
potentiality. They only think about Christ's
actual obedience in his actual sin, atoning, sufferings and
death. That's what they think about.
And so that's what the fear of the Lord does. It causes us to
look away from ourselves to look to him. And we see that in the
example where everyone who was bitten in the wilderness looked
to that serpent on the pole. They were dying, they were afraid.
We're going to go into a dark eternity. And so they looked
to that serpent, uplifted, and that typified the Lord Jesus
Christ hung on the cross bearing our curse. But in John chapter
six, Jesus said this, this is the will of him that sent me.
This is my father's will. And here's his will, listen,
he says, that everyone which seeth the sun, what is seeing? Well, it's looking, isn't it?
We look and we see. We see that our salvation is
fully. accomplished by Him, and He obtained
our eternal redemption. He fully sanctified us. He perfected us forever by that
one offering of Himself to God. He redeemed us. He reconciled
us. He made remission of our sins.
He forgave us. He justified us. In fact, He
glorified us. All of this is because whatever
Christ did, in the place of his people, they did in him. God
received it from him for them. In fact, it says that in Philemon,
the little book of Philemon, just before Hebrews in verse
17, Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus. He says, receive him
as myself. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ says to his father for his people. Receive them as me. What greater words of peace and
comfort would any sinner want to hear than those words, receive
Him as me. When we stand before judgment,
when you and I stand before God in judgment, there's one thing
I want to hear, Lord, for my Savior, receive Him as me. Don't you? I want to hear Christ
say that in answer for all my sins and in fulfillment of all
my righteousness. Receive him as me. If he owes
you anything, if he is wrong to you at all, then put that
on my account. I'll repay it. You see, that's
the language of Christ is our surety. I'll be surety for him,
the Lord Jesus entered into an agreement with his father for
his people. And he said, and when he stood before the judge,
he answered every charge with himself. Take me instead of them. and he offered himself to God.
He took our sins, he confessed them over his own head, he answered
for them. He owned our sins, he answered
God for them. And then he rose from the dead.
God justified him and justified his people with him. And that's
what this is talking about. The angel of the Lord encamps
around them that fear him and he delivers them. This is the
story of history. All those people for whom Christ
died are delivered. They trust him, they look to
him, they walk in this attitude of fear of God, and therefore
they come to God only by the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's not
a fear of a slave who's worried that he's going to be taken out
by the condemning hand of God's wrath, but it's the respect of
a son who knows his father has provided all in Christ for him. That's the attitude of those
who fear the Lord, okay? Therefore, we can put it very
clearly now, can't we? Very distinctly, without any
admixture or any confusion of words. To fear the Lord is to
look to Christ. It's to look to Him for salvation.
It's to come to Him. It's to live upon Him and to
live to Him. The fear of the Lord is a way
of describing the walk of faith, or you could say it this way,
the walk of faith is labeled in scripture as the fear of the
Lord. We walk trusting Christ. We live. And how do we do this? Well, just like the way we first
received Christ. In Colossians chapter two and
verse six, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk
ye in him. How did you receive him? Well,
you were blind. You were utterly unable to walk. Your hands were withered. Your back was bent over. You
couldn't stand up. You had no faith. And then you
saw the Lord Jesus coming by, as it were. You heard in the
gospel that he was the savior of sinners, that he did it all.
And what did you do? Lord, save me. You looked and
in looking you found in that look that all God requires, he
provided in him for his people and all that he needs you to
be and all you need to be before God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so your eyes were lightened
and you live upon him now, don't you? You fear the Lord. Your eyes were lightened. You're
not ashamed because all cause of shame is put away in him.
What a wonderful salvation. So the believer with liberty,
it says in Second Corinthians, Chapter three, that where the
spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. The believer has
this freedom, freedom from the debt of sin, that crime that
we committed, those crimes that added up to a mountain of debt
none of us could pay one part of. And the Lord freely forgave
all for Christ's sake. And that liberty of knowing that
we're accepted by God himself in his presence, in Christ, not
in ourselves, but in Christ, That liberty causes us to come
to God without a mask on our face. We come looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ. We see our Savior and we see
our salvation in Him. We see God's purposes fulfilled,
God's glories shining in Him. And so we come with an unashamed
face with an open face and we behold in the face of the Lord
Jesus Christ the glory of the Lord and we're enlightened. We
sparkle. We flow along in life telling
the good news as poor sinners. We're nothing at all. Jesus Christ
is my all in all things. Okay? So the angel of the Lord
encamps around them. He says in verse 8, oh, taste
and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in him. To taste, to taste it. You know what tasting is. Faith,
believing Christ, is tasting. How do you taste? Well, Jesus
said that whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal
life. And that eating and drinking
is not something we do with our physical mouth. It's something
we do with the mouth of faith. The Lord Jesus says, this is
my body broken for you, take it, eat it. This is my blood
shed for you, take it, drink it. And by faith we take the
accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ, that his accomplishments
fully obtained our salvation, we take that, that's mine. That's
mine as a sinner. What right do you have, you sinner,
to come to Christ? Because he said, all who come
to me, I will in no wise cast out. And sinners are the reason
he came. I didn't come to call the righteous,
but sinners. to repentance. I didn't come
to save the healthy. I came to save the sick. We're
sick, Lord. We're lost, Lord. Come find me. We're sinful, Lord. Come wash
me. We have no clothing. We're unrighteous,
Lord. Come clothe me. We're blind.
I can't see, Lord. Give me sight. I'm drowning.
Lord, save me. I'm vile. My mouth is unclean. My lips are unclean. Lord, cover
me. Wash me. Take away this uncircumcised
mouth and lips. We just say all the same things
that those in Scripture said. Lord, save me. Don't be a terror
to me. Save me, Lord. Heal me, Lord.
That's what we say. And this is what the Lord has
taught his people to say. Okay, so tasting means that we
are taking by faith, this God-given faith, taking to ourselves the
benefits of this saving grace. And this grace that God has given
us to believe on Christ, what does it teach us? It teaches
us that the Lord himself is gracious, doesn't it? What do we see when
we believe? What is it that we learn when
we believe? What is it that we delight in,
that we experience? We experience this, we learn
this, we delight in this. The Lord is gracious. We thought before He was just
and holy and would judge us for our sins. It never popped, didn't
by any stretch of the imagination enter our minds that He could
be gracious to us and also be just. And this is what He is
to us in Christ. Taste and see the Lord is gracious
by coming to Christ, looking to Him, trusting Him, relying
on Him, depending upon Him to bring us to God, to present us
holy and unblameable in His sight by what He did. by the sacrifice
God accepted from Him for our sins, by the obedience He rendered
in doing that, by all these things, depending upon God to receive
us for Christ's sake, that's tasting. That dependence, that
coming, that looking, that's tasting, it's taking into ourselves
the benefit of His saving work and His saving mercy. We need
it, don't we, as sinners? The hungry eat, the thirsty drink. We're hungry and thirsty for
God's grace and is found in Christ alone. So taste and see that
the Lord is good. He's gracious to us, okay? All right. Oh, fear the Lord,
verse nine, fear the Lord, ye his saints, for there's no want
to them that fear him. Young lions do lack and suffer
hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good
thing. All right. He goes on, come, you children,
hearken to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who's speaking?
The Lord Jesus Christ. Who are the children? Those are
those who come to him, who look to him, those he calls to himself. And he calls them by his gospel,
the gospel that sends a message to sinners of all of his work
and his glory. He told the blind man who had
been blind from birth in John chapter nine, do you believe
on the Son of God? He said, who is he, Lord, that I might believe
him? And he said, I that speak to
you am he. So he had to open his eyes, he
had to open his heart, and when he did, he saw, he tasted that
the Lord Jesus Christ was gracious. He was one of his children. He
was one of his little ones. One of these, he says, suffer
not, don't prevent the children to come to me. His own children.
I and the children whom God has given me, he says in Hebrews
chapter two. These are the children. He says, you children, come to
me. I will teach you the fear of
the Lord. Because he has to teach us. So
what do we say? Lord, teach me. Lord, make me,
or call me, draw me, bring me, let me see, cause me to look. Don't leave me to myself. Let
me find my all in you. And so he goes on. Verse 12,
what man is he that desires life and loves many days that he may
see good? Keep thy tongue from evil and
thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil and do good.
Seek peace and pursue it. Now, our Lord and Master, the
Lord Jesus Christ here, instructs us to depart from evil, to do
good, and to seek peace and pursue it. So believers desire life,
don't they? We desire life. We want to live
spiritually and eternally. We desire to see good. We fear
the Lord and we therefore pray for grace. We pray for grace
to do what? to keep our tongue from evil."
That's what he says here. You that desire life and love
many days that you may see good, keep your tongue from evil. So
what do we do? We pray to the Lord, keep my tongue from evil. My wife has a plaque on the wall
in the kitchen. It says, Lord, put your hand
on my shoulder, your arm on my shoulder and your hand on my
mouth. It's not scripture, but it communicates that thought
that I don't want to say things. I'm prone to say things that
are wrong, so keep me from doing that. So we pray, Lord, keep
my tongue from evil. Keep my lips from speaking this
deceit and this guile. I don't want to be a pretender.
I don't want to say the wrong things. I don't want to misrepresent
the truth of God. All these things that are guile
and deceit. I don't want to deceive myself.
I don't want to deceive others. And so we seek grace to depart
from evil and to do good, don't we? This is a constant battle.
The believer's life is characterized as a warfare in scripture. The
lust, your lust which war against your soul. Here we have this
tongue. Our tongue, James said, the tongue
is a little tiny member, but it's like the rudder of a ship. It steers a whole ship. And that
little tiny rudder on the ship can move the entire ship. And
so our tongue is like that. It's like, James said, it's like
a little flame. It starts a big fire. And how
many times have we said things that we wish we had never said?
Oh, that was so stupid of me. Why did I say that? And as soon
as you say it, it's like, oh, I could just take that back.
So we pray, Lord, keep my tongue from evil. Don't let my lips
speak wrong things, deceiving things, hypocritical things. We seek grace to keep from evil,
depart from it, and to do good. And we join with God's people,
his congregation, to grasp, this is the other part, he says, seek
peace and pursue it. What does that mean? It means
that we we want to grasp that our peace with God was made in
the blood of his son. That's what it means to seek
peace. To seek peace with God, it means to fully grasp that
our peace with God was made in the death of his son. God made
peace with us in the death of his son. He took away our sins.
And that's the same thing that we try to do when we pursue peace
and holiness. He says in Hebrews chapter 12,
verse 14, pursue peace and holiness without which no man shall see
the Lord. He's referring to all the people of the Lord, the believers
in Christ coming together as a body, as one congregation together
pursuing to grasp what Christ has done to make them holy and
to establish their peace with God. In other words, to grasp
what they are in Christ before God. That's the way we seek peace. Not only that, but when we seek
peace with God, what is the result of that with others? When I'm
at peace with the Lord in my conscience, it has an effect. I'm at peace with my wife, with
my children. They might do things that offend
me, but I'm so much more inclined to think, well, what have I done
to offend my God and my Savior? And he's forgiven me for Christ's
sake. Why can't I overlook this itsy bitsy teeny weeny wrong
against me, a sinner? There's no question here. Be
patient. Be gracious, for the Lord has
been gracious to us. And that's the effect of pursuing
peace and holiness by grasping what God has done for us in Christ.
The effect it has on us, it not only lightens our face, but it
softens our disposition so that we act and behave graciously
and forgiving towards others, patient, And this is the effect
of grace in our lives. So he talks about that here.
And then in verse 15, he says, the eyes of the Lord are upon
the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. Now, if you
look at all the earth over, over all of history, and you could
condense the entire history of mankind and describe it, what
would you say? You would say something like
this. Men have acted out their nature, and it's sinful and dreadful
and offensive to God. God has warned them in judgments,
by His word, with judgments to come. His judgments, His threatenings,
His warnings have not turned them. All men in and of themselves
are under the wrath of God and guilty and worthy of that condemnation. That's the first part. But the
second part is that God has been gracious. He has demonstrated
his full character of grace and justice and mercy and truth and
all of this at the highest cost to himself in the blood of his
son. Christ has given himself for us. He's given himself to
us. God gave his son for us and to us. He's given us his spirit. And all these things have happened
to God's people. And this blessing of God upon
them has resulted in something. They love Christ. They abandon
all claims to being important in their own eyes or seeking
the praise of men. Instead, they admit before men
that they're sinners and they seek glory to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so men hate them. They see
that Christ is lifted up in His grace, and sinners are drawn
to Him, and they're envious of Christ, and they hate Him. And
they see that the Lord's people are open and honest, and they
profess the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they hate them.
And so there's this persecution that takes place in history.
And God's people are hated. And they're hated for Christ's
sake. And what's underneath all of this? What's behind all of
this in history? Well, there's this conflict that
takes place in the world As the believer is saved and stands
up and professes Christ and Him crucified, the whole world sees
that. Some are turned and saved by
God's grace. Others remain in their unrepentance. God's judgments are going to
fall and God's people are persecuted. But what underlies it all is
that the Lord Jesus Christ has been and will be at war with
the kingdom of Satan and will destroy Satan. And all of Satan's
helpers will be cast into the lake of fire, all those who are
with him. But God's people, the Lord's
people, will be saved, and so that their prayers and their
cries to him will be heard. He will deliver them, and he
will judge their enemies, and he will be glorified, and his
enemies will be put down and defeated and destroyed. And now
that's what this verse is saying here. The eyes of the Lord are
upon the righteous. His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against
them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from
the earth. We are not righteous in ourselves. God has made Christ
for us righteousness. He says in 1 Corinthians chapter
1 verse 30, Of God are you in him who of God is made unto us
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The Lord Jesus
Christ is our righteousness. God has given us his own righteousness
as our righteousness. That's the only way we can be
righteous before God. It's the free gift of God's grace. We don't deserve it. We weren't
looking for it, God gave it to us freely of His grace alone.
It was His doing, His choice, His will. And He doesn't give
it and then take it back. It's an eternal gift. Once given,
always ours. This is the way God works. And
so when he says these things, he's talking about the Lord's
people here in contrast to those who hold to their own righteousness. And he says this in verse 17.
The righteous have this characteristic. This is the way they live. This
is the way they walk. This is the way they think. The
righteous cry. And the Lord hears and delivers
them out of all their troubles. All their troubles. But wait
a minute. My troubles so deep that my prayers seem like they're
not even there. And when I pray, it seems so
empty. So what do you do? I cry, Lord, my prayers are so
few and lack any power. That's crying, isn't it? And
everything like that, that we say, Lord, I don't understand.
What do you do? You're crying to the Lord. You
see, the righteous have this, evidence of faith, that faith
compels them to cry to the Lord for everything. And in crying,
the Lord directs them to the Lord Jesus Christ to find everything
in Him. So the righteous cry, and the
Lord hears, and He delivers them out of all their troubles. What
does He do? He directs them to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are
the righteous. Find your righteousness in Him.
You're crying to the Lord. That's the prayer of the humbled
heart. The Lord does that. And it says
in verse 18, the Lord is nigh to them that are of a broken
heart. Our heart's broken. It is not worth anything. It
doesn't work right. The Lord is near you. He says
he is he saves such as be of a contrite spirit, those who
have been broken down because of their offense to God as sinners. Oh, save me, Lord. I'm a wretched
man, who can deliver me? The Lord Jesus Christ alone.
And then he says in verse 19, many are the afflictions of the
righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. He keeps
all his bones, not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the
wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.
The Lord redeems the soul of his servants. You see, who are
his servants? Those who serve him. How did
they come to be his servants? He made them his servants, he
called them. He enlisted them as His servants. None of them
that trust in Him shall be desolate. To be desolate here means to
be guilty and condemned justly for your guilt. None of God's
people will be guilty and condemned. They trust in Him. That's the
earmark. That's the evidence that they're
His. And they cry out of that faith. They look to Him. Their
faces are enlightened. And the Lord redeemed their souls. That's why they're like this.
That's why they're righteous, because he shed the blood of
his son to have them. He made them, but he also bought
them. He made them and they sold themselves
by their sin into slavery to Satan, but he bought them. He
paid the price justice demanded to deliver them from that captor
and make them his captives. And this is what the Lord Jesus
Christ in this is saying. He keeps all his bones. Not one
of his people will be lost. Not one will be destroyed. He
saves them from all their troubles. The Lord Jesus Christ, he's speaking
to us here. Those who look to him, who are
those he speaks to here? Those who trust him. How did
we come to trust him? By his grace. Did we do it ourselves? Did we work up this holy zeal
and will? No way. No, it was the farthest
thing from our ability and our thinking. God had to do this.
Oh, he says, How does he say it in the very first verse here
of this psalm? I should have left my Bible open. I closed it. He says it like
this. Notice the first three verses. He's calling on his people
to join him in this. I'll repeat the opening words
of the psalm. He says, I will bless the Lord
at all times. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. That's our response. My soul shall make her boast
in the Lord. I'm not going to boast in myself. I'll boast in
Him. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. All of God's people
have been humbled by the gospel. Oh, magnify the Lord with me.
Christ was humbled. He magnified His God and Savior.
We are humbled. We magnify our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your mercy to us in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our
Savior, our Master, our Lord, our God. We pray, Lord, that
you would live in us and that we would be enabled by this grace
of your Holy Spirit and this life by Him to believe on you
and to live to you. And we would be enabled by your
grace to call upon you all the time and look to you all the
time. and we would be delivered from our enemies, which are stronger
than us. We have no power against them. We don't know what to do
when they come against us. We are looking to you to do what
you alone can do. It's impossible for us, but Lord,
save us for your namesake and to your glory. In Jesus' name
we pray, amen.