Psalm 25, I want to read this
with you. It says in verse 1, Unto Thee,
O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in Thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
my enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on Thee
be ashamed. Let them be ashamed which transgress
without cause. This is actually a song, I've
been singing it ever since I read these couple of verses. A little
tune that we picked up, Denise and I picked up when we were
younger. Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God,
I trust in Thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
my enemies triumph over me. Let none that wait on Thee be
ashamed. Let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.
So if you look at these words, and I asked this question last
time and tried to answer it, what does it mean to lift up
our soul? And who does this lifting up
of our soul? Well, first and foremost, as
I tried to bring out last time, the lifting up of our soul has
to do with coming to God. And in this case, we're coming
to God in all of our need, or coming in our inmost being. And
in our inmost being, we can only come to God by faith. The Spirit
of Christ lives in us. And these words were ultimately
the words of our mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, who prayed
for his people. He himself, as a man, lifted
up his soul and prayed to God to be heard for us, and also
that God would hear His prayer as our prayer. And so this is
the lifting up of our soul. All of the references in scripture
that speak of coming to God, our access to God, to His throne,
and to the holiest of all, coming to Christ, crying out, calling
to Him, all refer to this action of faith that looks to the Lord
Jesus Christ and asks God to consider him and to receive us
for his sake alone, for his shed blood. And scripture teaches
us to do this. Scripture tells us that the father
draws all those he has given to Christ to bring them to him
and to bring them to him in faith that they would trust him. And
this is God's act, it's God's work to cause us to do this.
And so we find it in ourselves that when we have God's grace
to recognize our great and tremendous need before Him, that we then
call upon Him in prayer. And we express our need in these
words unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul, O my God, I trust
in Thee. Now these words, I trust in Thee,
are very near and dear to the heart of every believer. That's
what faith is, is trusting Christ. And here, when it says, oh my
God, I trust in thee, it's clear that we trust in the living God. And in Acts chapter 20 and verse
21, it says that we are taught from the gospel to have repentance
towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. So it's
clear that we're to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus
told his disciples, you believe in God, believe also in me. And
here he says, oh my God, I trust in thee. Therefore our trust
in Christ is trust in God. He is God. And we don't trust
another because there's no one else who can save us. no one
else against whom we have sinned, that we need forgiveness. And
so we come to him. And in lifting up our soul, we're
lifting up all of our needs in him, in our very soul. Jesus
told his disciples in Gethsemane, my soul is very heavy, full of
sorrow. And so his soul was made an offering
for sin in Isaiah chapter 53. So our soul is our inmost being.
It is that part of us that if God saves our souls and he saves
us all together. And so he trusts in God. Now
look at the next words in verse 2. He says, let me not be ashamed. Let not my enemies triumph over
me. Now these words, I trust in thee, don't let me be ashamed,
they show us that in trusting God, we're trusting him to save
us. We're trusting him to deliver us from our enemies. That's what
salvation is. It's deliverance from our enemies.
And you know the name of Jesus means that Jehovah saves, Jehovah
is salvation, and his name is Jesus because he shall save his
people from their sins. And that's in Matthew 121. So
you know that the name of Jesus indicates his relationship to
us as both God and Savior. Our God is the God of salvation,
and unto the Lord our God belong the issues from death. And unto
the Lord our God belong the issues of forgiveness from sin and deliverance
from our sins. And so that's why we trust him.
We trust him because he doesn't lie. We trust him because he
can't fail. He doesn't change. And he doesn't
start what he can't finish. He who has begun a good work
in you, it says in Philippians 1.6, he shall complete it until
the end. That's our hope, isn't it? The
book of Jude, that little book just before Revelation, it only
has one chapter. In that book it says this, I'll read this to you as soon
as I get there, in verse 24, to keep you from falling, and
to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with
exceeding joy. To the only wise God our Savior,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.
Amen. We trust God is able to save
us to the uttermost. We trust that he does that by
the Lord Jesus Christ, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one
who saves us to the uttermost. It says so in Hebrews chapter
seven, verse 25. He is able to save them to the
uttermost who come unto God by him. And so we're trusting God
to save us from our sins. That's the name of Jesus. We
trust his name. He shall save his people from
their sins. And the prayer here is, since
I trust you, Lord, don't let me be disappointed. Don't let
me be ashamed. Don't let my trust, the one I
trust, fail me in this. And you would think that it would
be too bold to ask God not to fail us. But it's really an expression
of certainty. It's an expression of assurance
that we, because we trust God who cannot lie and who cannot
fail, who is able to save us to the uttermost and who has
done so even in the death of his own son. He can't fail. If He delivered up His Son for
us, He cannot fail to save us. He's not going to abandon His
people. He's not going to deliver them to their sins, having saved
us from our sins. He's not going to save us from
little sins, and yet not save us from big sins. He's going
to save us to the uttermost. He's not going to fail to conform
us to the image of His dear Son, because that's what He predestinated
us to. And God cannot fail because He cannot lie, and He has all
power. His will will be done. That is
what will be done in this world and in heaven and all of His
creation. So God is the one we trust. We
trust Him by trusting Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
the one God has chosen. given all of the salvation of
His people to save them. He says in John 17 that God has
given His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, power over all flesh
that He should give eternal life to as many as God has given Him. And that's what He shall do.
He will not lose one of His sheep. He will not fail to bring every
one of them. He won't leave some with scabs and others heal all
the way. He will heal all of them completely. He will deliver them from all
of their enemies. And that's what we trust him
to do. And so. Our prayer in this psalm, I trust in Thee,
O my God, do not let me be ashamed, and do not let my enemies triumph
over me, is just simply expressing not only our great need and His
promise to save us, but it's expressing our assurance and
confidence in Christ alone, in all these things which we most
we most depend on Him for is to save us from our sins, don't
you? In Romans chapter 6, 14 it says, sin shall not have dominion
over you, and that's the promise of God, and He cannot lie. He's
able to do all that He promised, and so we believe that sin shall
not have dominion over us, not because we do our part, but because
we're under grace. and not under the law. We're
not under a system where our performance is the condition
that needs to be met in order for our salvation to be certain.
We're under the grace of God that gave Christ for us and we'll
see all the way to the end, the salvation with which he has saved
us and promised to give us. Then in verse three, it says,
yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed. So not only me personally,
or not only if this is a prophecy and it is a prophecy of Christ's
words, not only himself personally, but all those who trust. all
those who trust in God to save them through Jesus Christ, he
says, let none be ashamed. Now, as a sinner, what we say
is, don't let me be ashamed, or don't let any be ashamed to
trust in thee, because if any are ashamed, If any are left
unsaved who have put their trust in Christ to save them, then
certainly it would be me, wouldn't it? Don't you know that? That
if you think in yourself, if any of God's people would be
lost at last, it would have to be me, because I'm such a no
account, ruined, helpless, weak, and sinful person. And yet here
the prayer is a prayer of triumph because he says, don't let me
be ashamed, I trust in you, don't let my enemies triumph over me,
and don't let any of those be ashamed who put their trust in
thee. And this is the promise of God in Romans chapter 10 and
verse 13, he said, whosoever believeth in him, in Christ,
shall not be ashamed. We will not be disappointed.
We won't be confounded or confused because we trusted Christ for
everything and he failed to do something that we trusted him
to do. We trust Him for all because we can do nothing. We have Jesus
said, without me you can do nothing in John chapter 15. And we believe
that. We've been brought to understand
that to some degree and trust Him for everything. But in the
last part of verse three, he says, let them be ashamed which
transgress without cause. Now, I don't know about you,
but I'm always troubled by things that seem to shift some of the
responsibility back on me, ultimately. If it says, let none be ashamed,
And then it says, but let them be ashamed who transgress without
cause. I expect that I'll be one of
them, don't you? And that gives me trouble. And
what does that trouble of heart cause us to do? But to call again
to the Lord and say, unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
O my God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
my enemies triumph over me. Don't let my inward enemies,
don't let my outward enemies. Don't let my mind or my body,
don't let my flesh, don't let anything about me be an enemy
that would keep me from you. So when we see these words, but
let them be ashamed who transgress without cause, it gives us some
pause and trouble of heart. And so we ask this question,
what does it mean to transgress without cause? Well, we looked
at this last time. It means to go beyond Christ.
It means, as it says in 2 John 1, verse 9, to abide not in the
doctrine of Christ, which is the gospel and salvation by Christ
alone to the uttermost, and to trust another Savior, because
we don't think He can do the job. We don't think He can really
save us from our sin, and we have to do something in order
to make it happen. But what we do is we look to
Christ, and that's God's grace. God gives us grace to look to
Him and to keep looking to Him, to abide in the Lord Jesus Christ,
to abide in the teaching and the word He has given us, the
promise of the gospel. So to transgress means to do
that. It means to leave Christ and
to not abide in Him. But to transgress without cause
is what we do in all of our sin. God is not the cause of our transgression. We are. No one made us do it. It came from within us. So, in
that sense, all of our sin is a sin without cause, isn't it? We're sinners in mind and in
nature. By nature, that's what we are.
We were conceived in sin. And so we could really say that
as David, the psalmist here, was penning this psalm, he himself
had transgressed without cause, hadn't he, with Bathsheba and
Uriah? And hadn't he also sinned in
the numbering of God's people and in other ways? So we know
here that it can't mean transgression in general. What it must mean,
therefore, is that to transgress without cause is to transgress
without abiding in Christ, and therefore it means all those
who have not been justified in the redeeming blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ are yet in their sins. So we are either in our
own sins and we have to appear before God and give an answer
for our sins, or we are in Christ who bore our sins in His own
body on the tree, and therefore He Himself answered for us in
all that He did as our Savior. Therefore we have no sin and
God seeing us in him sees us with no sin because we truly
have none. And so we can see this therefore
is talking about those who are in Christ. They're the ones whose
sins are forgiven and those who are yet in their sins because
they abide not in Christ. They remain in their unbelief.
God hasn't put them in Christ, hasn't given them His Spirit,
therefore they don't have the Spirit of God in them to teach
them and give them faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right. I've been going back through
this in a summary review, really, and I want to now go on to verse
4 of Psalm 25, where he says, Show me thy ways, O Lord, and
teach me thy paths. Notice how this is progressing
here in the Psalm. First, he calls to the Lord Jehovah,
who is the Lord Jesus Christ, as his Savior. He says, I lift
up my soul to thee. I'm trusting you. I'm coming
to God through you. This is my only hope as a sinner."
He says, don't let me be ashamed of my trust. Deliver me or let
not my enemies triumph over me. Give me the victory over my sin
and all of the enemies that are a result of my sin, like death.
Remember Romans 5, 21, he says, as sin reigned unto death, like a tyrannical
tyrant who reigns without check. Our sins reigned unto death.
Everyone dies and we ourselves are subject to death. We are
dead in sins until the Lord raises us in our spirit. And so our
enemy is sin and it reigns as a tyrant unto death. As sin reigned
unto death, even so grace reigns. through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so here God's victory that
he gives to us is that salvation in Christ. And so he says, he
goes on first, I trust thee. Don't let me be ashamed. Don't
let my enemies have triumph over me. Let all who trust you not
be ashamed. And then he says, show me your
ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths now. The one thing that
we've learned in the gospel that keeps coming back to us again
and again is that Christ is all of the ways of God, isn't he? Jesus said himself, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. And he said, furthermore, in
John 14, six, not only did he say, I am the way, the truth,
and the life, but he said, no man comes to the Father but by
me. So He's the way to the Father.
That means by Jesus Christ, by His coming into the world, bearing
the sins of His people and answering God for them and delivering us
from death and hell and the grave and Satan and his kingdom. And
even the curse and bondage of God's law, God's own law, by
doing that He has brought His people to the Father. He's our
High Priest to bring us to God. He's our King to give us all
that God has given Him for His people and to save us from our
enemies. He's everything for us. He's
the way to the Father. And Him being the way to the
Father, being brought to the Father, we're brought to God
the Father. Is there anything lacking in
Christ and in His Father? Absolutely nothing. Everything
we need is in Him. So He says, show me thy ways,
O Lord, teach me thy paths. He's saying, Teach me that Christ
is all. Teach me that I'm saved only
by Him. But because I am saved only by
Him, I am saved fully. Because He cannot save a little. He saves all the way. All who
are saved by the Lord are saved all the way. And He doesn't leave
any part of their salvation undone. He completes it all perfectly.
In the Lord Jesus Christ, the fullness of the Godhead dwells
bodily, and we are complete in Him, nothing lacking. Full, He
says, He has forever perfected those that are sanctified by
His one offering, therefore there's nothing lacking. Teach me Thy
ways, O Lord, and teach me, and show me Thy ways, O Lord, and
teach me Thy paths. This is God. This is God in His
ways. His ways are all holy, His ways
are all righteous, and they're all found in the Lord Jesus Christ. God's glory is in our salvation
by Jesus Christ. That's His way. He is the way. He's the one we trust, the one
we look to, the one we call upon, the one we want to honor in all
that we do. And it pains us that we can't
honor Him as we would. So the Lord Jesus Christ is the
way. All of God's ways are in him. Don't let me be ashamed. Teach
me, lead me, show me your ways and teach me your paths. And
so once we've been taught of God, we continue to be taught
of God. and we continue to desire to
be taught of God. And what he teaches us is that
he teaches us that once he has delivered to us this faith, the
gospel of our salvation, he continually causes us to earnestly contend
for that faith. In Jude chapter 1 and verse 3
it says, Jude writes, when I gave all diligence to write unto you
of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write to you
and to exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith
which was once delivered to the saints. That's the gospel. The
faith we are to earnestly contend for is the gospel of our salvation,
the power of God. Romans 1 16, it reveals the righteousness
of God in how he justifies the ungodly for Christ's sake. That is the gospel of our salvation. That's the ways of God and the
paths of the Lord. They all lead us to Christ. And
then in Psalm 25 and verse 5, he says, lead me in thy truth
and teach me, for thou art, notice, the God of my salvation. On thee do I wait all the day."
Here again we see God anchoring us as sinners in His salvation. God is the God of our salvation. Oh, that we could get this. That
all of our life would be a constant reminder and ever pressing onward
to find that God, the God that we know. We know Him as the God
of our salvation. We worship Him because of His
salvation. We trust Him to save us. We speak
of Him with great love and praise because He saved us from our
sins. Isn't that it? I remember so
many times in my life talking with people about the things
of God and ultimately I feel like I have to bring things back
to the fact that salvation, it's salvation in Christ is what is
important and we're going to talk about it until we're blue
in the face. I hope we do because our God
is the God of salvation. So he says, lead me in thy truth,
teach me for thou art the God of my salvation. If God has saved
us, then he's going to teach us the right way, isn't he? He
saved us from our sins, he delivered us to live by Christ living in
us, and he causes us to live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved us and gave himself for us. It's that complicated
and that straightforward. Living daily upon the Lord Jesus
Christ, the God of our salvation. He says, on thee do I wait all
the day. To wait on God is to trust him
in expectation that he is going to fulfill his promises because
he is faithful and he is able and we have no other way for
those things to come to pass. Abraham couldn't produce a child
with Sarah. They were too old. Their bodies
were dead to bearing children. And yet he believed that God
was he was fully persuaded that God was able to do what he promised. And that's exactly what we do.
We believe that God is able to save us according to his work
and promises in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what Romans
four says is the faith of God's elect and that faith The Lord
Jesus Christ and His saving work is imputed to us for our righteousness,
okay? So we wait. Galatians 5.5, it
says that we, through the Spirit, do wait, wait for the hope of
righteousness through faith. We wait. It says in Lamentations
3.26, it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for
the salvation of the Lord. The hardest thing for children
to do is wait, isn't it? And the hardest things for us
to do as the children of God is to wait. And this is what
God teaches us through tribulation. It says in Romans chapter five,
that we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God,
not only this, but we have, by this same faith, we have access
by faith into this grace, where do we stand? And we rejoice in
hope of the glory of God, and not only this, but we glory also
in tribulation, knowing that tribulation worketh patience,
That's waiting, and patience, experience, proving that God's
word is true in our experience, that he continually leads us
to Christ, to depend upon him, and finding our faith in him.
We realize it's his work in us, and this experience, a patience experience, an experience
hope, and hope does not leave us ashamed. We're not disappointed
in our God we trust to save us, and this is the experience we
learn through tribulation. And so we wait, we wait. And
so he says it here, I wait all the day on the... I'm waiting.
Day, night, all the years of my life, God is teaching us to
wait on the salvation He has given to us in the Lord Jesus
Christ. We wait with expectation, trusting
God to do what we cannot do to save us from our sins. Then verse
6, he says, Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving
kindnesses, for they have been ever of old. In Jeremiah 31.3,
he says, Let me read this to you so I
don't misquote it. In Jeremiah, this is one of the most precious
texts of Scripture. Every believer loves this text.
It tells about why we're saved and how we're brought to the
Lord. He says this in Jeremiah 31, verse 3. Let me read this
to you. The Lord hath appeared of old
unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
Love, that's a love that had no beginning and has no end.
Therefore, because of God's everlasting love, with loving kindness have
I drawn thee. Why are we drawn? Why do we trust
Christ? Because God loved his people with an everlasting love,
and we know from Romans 8 that his love for us is in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And that love, nothing can separate
us from that love. And so he says here, he says,
remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses,
for they have been ever of old. That's the first verse that comes
to my mind. He has loved me with an everlasting love in the Lord
Jesus Christ and therefore he has drawn me and continues to
draw me and he continues to draw all those that he loved from
everlasting to the Lord Jesus Christ. The ice cream man outside
is making noise. I would turn it down if I could.
He says, this is what the heart of the believer says, I want
him to remember his everlasting mercies towards me in Christ.
Isn't it interesting that God teaches us here by the Holy Spirit
to cause, to ask God to remember. How can God forget? And why would we ever need to
remind Him? We don't. But He wants us to
remind Him because when we ask Him to remember, what are we
doing? We are resting on His promise. We are resting on His own Word,
His own faithfulness to His Word. And so he teaches us this over
in Isaiah chapter 53. He says, I'll read this to you
in Isaiah, not 53, Isaiah 43 and 25. Listen to these words.
He says, I, even I, am he that blotted out thy transgressions
for mine own sake, and I will not remember thy sins. And then
the next verse is, put me in remembrance. How did he blot
out our transgressions? by the blood of Jesus. Apart
from the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. And
yet he says in Hebrews chapter 10, according to the everlasting
covenant, he will remember our sins no more because they've
been blotted out. Full remission has been made
in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says, put me in
remembrance. Remember him. Remember the Lord
Jesus. Remember how you delivered him
up. with our sins, under our sins, to judgment for our sins. Remember his sufferings. Remember
his prayers. Remember the cries of his soul.
Remember how he yielded trust to you and love for you, for
his people, how he delivered himself up. to the hands of sinners
and did so without just cause, except the cause of God and the
will of God. And he did it all in submission
of obedience and faith in God, in love to sinners, in love to
his Father. Remember him. Remember your holy
will, how you would save your people by him. Remember these
things, O Lord." And all we're doing in saying that and thinking
on those things is we're drawing from God's own Word and promises
to His children as His children. Father, this is what you said
concerning your son. Hold these things in remembrance.
It's all of my salvation. So he says here in Psalm 25,
6, Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses,
for they have been ever of old. We're depending on God to be
the same yesterday, today and forever as he is in the Lord
Jesus Christ, isn't he? He told Moses out of the burning
bush, I am that I am. What He is now, He was always. What He is now, He shall ever
be. He does not change. God is love and He will not ever
not be love for His people. He always saves them through
the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no other plan. There's
no need for another plan because this is the perfect and holy
plan of God. All right, verse seven, he says,
not only remember your tender mercies and loving kindness,
he says, but remember not the sins of my youth. And I wish
that was all the sins that I had. But he goes on, nor my transgressions. I'm glad that he added that phrase,
because I would think that somehow this man had only sins in his
youth, but not in his adult life. This is not the case. or maybe
in his young adult life, but not in his old adult life. But
this is also not the case with me. Nor was it the case with
David, and nor is it the case with any of God's people. The
apostle Paul cried out, O wretched man that I am, present tense. And he said, this is a faithful
saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. I'm the least of
all saints. I'm the least of the apostles.
I am the chief of sinners. This was Paul's confession. It's
ours too. The apostle John said, if we
confess our sins, he's not talking about sins that happened a long
time ago. He's talking about today and
the sins of tomorrow. If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Christ Jesus, the righteous, and he is the
propitiation for our sins. So here he says, Lord, Lord,
remember not the sins of my youth. Where did that idea come from,
that God wouldn't remember our sins? God can't forget. There's
nothing that God can forget except our sins. How can God forget
anything? He can't. But he says he won't
remember our sins. How can God not remember our
sins? And there's only one way, is if God himself put them away
by the Lord Jesus Christ, if there are no sins to remember,
because he so thoroughly removed them from us and took them away
as far as the east is from the west. That's how far he has removed
our transgressions from us, Psalm 103. And so he prays according
to God's own word, according to Christ's own work, he says,
remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions, Notice,
this is a prayer of what kind of a man? A man who has sins,
a man who has transgressions. He's coming to God and this is
such a bold thing that a sinner would ask God not to remember
his sins. Aren't you thankful that a sinner
can so approach God and ask him not to remember his sins? If
a sinner couldn't do that, what hope would we have? What hope
would I have? None of us would have any hope, but God, by the
Holy Spirit, has recorded here that we are to come to God and
ask Him not to remember our sins of our youth, nor our present
transgressions, and do so according to your mercy. Remember thou
me for thy goodness sake, O Lord. not according to anything to
be found in me, not according to anything I shall yet do, or
things that will change about me, but only what you find in
yourself for thy goodness sake, for your mercy sake. This is
exactly what David prayed in Psalm 51. After his egregious
sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah, all, he said, was against
God. And he says, have mercy upon
me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude
of Thy mercies, blot out my transgression. There you have it. Always pray
according to who God is, for the glory of his name, not according
to what we are or ever shall be. So this is the way he prays. He says in verse eight, good
and upright is the Lord, therefore will he teach, what? What kind
of people? Sinners in the way. God will
teach sinners in the way. That's the God we serve. That's
the God we love, that he would teach sinners in the way. This is amazing. I would expect
him to say here that he would teach the righteous. Well, he
does, those righteous in Christ, but here he identifies them as
sinners in themselves. He teaches sinners in the way. And what is this way? that He
teaches sinners. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's,
again, repeating the Gospel to us. The only way that sinners
can learn is in the Lord Jesus Christ. They learn of Him. Jesus
told His disciples, when the Spirit of God comes, He shall
take the things of mine and show them to you. Everything that
is the Father's is mine. That's why I said He would take
of mine and show it to you. And so God teaches us of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He teaches us everything about
Him. So we see that here in this verse, He will teach sinners
in the way. I find this especially endearing, don't you? And let's see. Let me go on here. I'm trying to get through this
psalm tonight, so I'm trying to skip ahead. If you want more
detail, take a look at the handout I sent out with the invitation
and you'll get the whole text of this. Maybe I'll upload that
along with the sermon for those who might not have attended the
Zoom meeting. In Psalm 25, verse nine, it says,
the meek will he guide in judgment and the meek will he teach his
way. Now, clearly, Those that God teaches are His people, aren't
they? So what does this teach us then
about God's people? God says they are meek. And meek
means to be lowly and those who want and need God to teach them
His way. They're waiting on God to show
them. to reveal it to them. They have nothing. They are poor
in themselves. In Matthew chapter 5, verses
3 and 5, he says, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Those who have nothing are given
the kingdom of heaven. He says, blessed are the meek
for they shall inherit the earth. That doesn't seem consistent
with the way things work in the world, does it? Of course not,
because it's God's kingdom. In God's kingdom, the poor are
given the kingdom of heaven and the meek inherit the earth. And so we know this is speaking
of all of God's people because they're the ones who are called
the heirs of salvation. The meek are the heirs of salvation.
They're heirs of everything. And so, who does the Lord teach?
Those who have nothing. They're the ignorant. According
to 1 Corinthians 1, they are the foolish of this world. They're
the ones the world despises. They're the ones who are not
the noble. They're the ones who have no strength. They're weak
in themselves, ignorant, need to be taught, and in the eyes
of the world, they're despised. But to them, Christ and Him crucified
is the wisdom of God and the power of God. And so these are
the ones the Lord teaches. How did they come to know this?
God taught them. What did they do to learn it?
By God's grace, they heard the gospel. And in hearing the gospel,
they were persuaded of the truth of it. And then God wrote it
on their heart. God writes on their heart by
the Spirit of God. It's indelibly put in them, and
they're persuaded of it. And by faith, they hold to that
Christ is all in their salvation. And they keep coming back, keep
coming back to him. And so this is a blessed verse.
The meek will he guide in judgment. What judgment? Well, the judgment
that he says in Romans chapter 8, who shall lay anything to
the charge of God's elect? God has had judgment. He held
a court. He made a decision. What was
it? Justified. He justified his people, his
elect. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Do you get that, Romans 8, 33?
And he goes on and he says, furthermore, Who is he that condemneth? Who
can condemn one for whom Christ died? Not any, because it's Christ
who died. Yea, rather, who is risen again,
who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession
for us. So, the meek will he guide in
that judgment. God's judgment is that our sin
and our unbelief, the Spirit of God teaches us, convinces
us of sin because of our unbelief. He convinces us of God's righteousness
fulfilled in Christ because Christ is seated in heaven. And he convinces
us that the prince of this world has been judged because Christ
has risen from the dead and Satan has been cast out of heaven.
God's judgments, the meek God will teach in his judgment. And
then he says, and the meek will he teach his way, which is again,
is the Lord Jesus Christ and justification by him. And then
he says in verse 10, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and
truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. Now, what
covenant is he speaking of here? Well, he's speaking of his covenant
that he made with the Lord Jesus Christ. And how was that covenant
that he made with the Lord Jesus Christ made? Well, it was made
in his blood. Remember, Jesus said that he
held up the cup and he says, this cup is the New Testament
in my blood. So Christ shedding his blood
as the will-maker, the testator, put that will or that testament
into force, Romans 9, chapter 9, verse 15. He put that will,
that testament into force and He did it by His own blood because
it was Christ's blood that fulfilled the conditions of the everlasting
covenant of peace which was made in the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Remember Colossians 1 20-22? We have peace that was made in
the blood of the cross, the blood of Christ. And so this covenant
is the covenant of God's grace to sinners in the Lord Jesus
Christ. We were chosen in Christ, that's
part of that covenant. It's an everlasting covenant
without beginning and without end, fulfilled by the Lord Jesus
Christ. And God made this covenant with
Christ and with His people that were chosen in Him. Christ is
the covenant because he's the head of that covenant. And just
as in Adam, all men were in a covenant with God to obey God in his one
obedience and he fell and we all died in Adam, even so in
Christ, all who are in Christ in that covenant are made alive.
1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 20 through 22. So this covenant
now is God's covenant of peace made in Christ's blood. And how
do we keep this covenant? Well, all those who are in this
covenant look to the Lord Jesus Christ, don't they? It's in trusting
Christ, it's in believing Him, it's looking to Him who is the
covenant head. All those who believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, we're given grace to believe on Him, and
that grace to believe on Him is that grace of faith through
which we are saved. By grace, you are saved. through
faith that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. So we're
saved by grace through faith and that is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so we keep the covenant in
trusting Christ. Remember Romans chapter 10 and
verse 4? It says, Christ is what? The
end of the law for righteousness to who? To everyone that believeth. All right, so now we have it.
We fulfill the law in our covenant head, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And this is true of everyone that believeth. So we understand
now, in this verse, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth
to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies. We have
done that in our Savior, our surety, our mediator, our covenant
head. In Christ, we have obeyed. Romans
5, verse 9, it says, being now justified by His blood. we shall be saved from wrath
through him. And then in verse 19 it says, as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, even so by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous. So we're made righteous, we're
justified by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, our covenant
head, the one who kept it for us. And that's what he says here.
All of God's paths, everything that God has to do, and the way
in which God's people go, that leads to Him. There are communion
with Him. There are paths of mercy and
paths of truth to those who look to Christ for all of their salvation. Let's go on. In verse 11, He
says, for thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it
is great. Now, I preached a sermon recently
called, Why Does God Forgive Sins? And it's on Sermon Audio. If you want to go listen to that
sermon, I talk about this verse. fairly thoroughly, and you can
listen to that. But let me just summarize this,
the conclusions from that. Men try to make up with others
that they have offended by minimizing their sin, don't they? They give
excuses for why they did what they did, and they try to lessen
the severity of it, and all their excuses. No one will come and
say, my sin is actually worse, and I'm asking you to forgive
my sin because it is so bad. They don't do it that way. That's
not what we do. We always try to get out of it.
We shift the blame. We excuse ourselves. We blame
our circumstances. We even try to justify ourselves
by what we've done. There's so many conniving ways
in the heart of man that we will never admit what we truly are.
We cannot until God shows us a complete and full forgiveness
in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only thing that will
allow us to come to God this way and say these words for Thy
name's sake. Make it for your benefit. Do what pleases you and forgive
my sin for your name's sake. That's what we're praying. My
sin is great. I need a great Savior. Therefore,
in forgiving me, you will be able to show the greatness excuse
me, the greatness of your grace towards sinners in my salvation. I will be the greatest exhibition
of God's power and mercy to sinners in heaven because I'm so vile. And yet, and that's what is being
taught here. Lord, for your name's sake, do
it for your own sake. Just forgive my sin because my
sin is so great, it's against you, it therefore has to be great,
and it's great, you've made me see how awful it is. Verse 12,
what man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he teach in the
way that he shall choose. Now, I like this verse because
it says, well, it teaches two things. One, the fear of the
Lord, and secondly, that God is the one we want to choose
for us. He says, what man is he that feareth the Lord? What
does it mean to fear the Lord? I was thinking about this. I
think about this every time I read this phrase, the fear of the
Lord, because I'm never quite sure I've got a handle on it.
But this is what I think it means from scripture. If we fear the
Lord, then we fear not being approved by Him, don't we? We
fear not being accepted by God because we don't want to appear
before Him in any way that He doesn't approve. We don't want
to be found lacking. We don't want to be separated
from him. We know our sin will do that. We know that we've sinned
against him. He said this in the verse just
preceding this, my sin is great. Therefore, for your namesake,
forgive my iniquity, pardon it. But here he's saying, and what
man is he that fears the Lord? So we fear to not be found approved
and accepted of God, falling short, don't we? and yet we also
fear trying to be accepted and approved by a false way. And this leads us to one thing. The fear of the Lord, therefore,
is fearing to be found anywhere except in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's that fear that causes us
to fear looking to anyone to save us but Christ alone. And
so, he that fears the Lord is the one, he says, he will teach
in the way that he shall choose. God's going to choose his way.
He's going to, and we think about this, this is taught throughout
scripture. When you think about our salvation,
or eternal life, or the inheritance we have in Christ, these are
matters far beyond our ability to imagine or comprehend. It's
all in proportion to what God has designed, not us puny people. So when he says he will teach
us in the way that he shall choose, think in proportion to the riches
of God's mercy and the riches of his grace, the riches of his
wisdom and his justice and his righteousness. Think in terms
of God's measure, not our own measure. Eye has not seen, ear
has not heard the things that God has prepared for them that
love him. We hear about it in the gospel,
we believe it, but can we really wrap our hands and our minds
around it? No. Because it's all in proportion
to God's goodness. It's in proportion to the reward
that Christ deserves. All of our salvation is always
in proportion to God, not us. And so he says here, the one
who looks to Christ, who fears to be found anywhere but him,
God is going to choose his way for him. And what a blessed thought
that is. He will teach him in the way
that he shall choose. Verse 13, his soul shall dwell
at ease. Don't you see this is the rest,
that peace that passes understanding? And his seed shall inherit the
earth. Now this is particularly talking
about the people of Christ. All those who believe Christ
are his. It says in Galatians chapter
3 and verse 29, if you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed and
heirs according to promise. So we are called in Hebrews 2.13,
Jesus says, behold, I and the children which God has given
me. We are the seed of the Lord Jesus
Christ in the sense that we're his people. We're not only married
to him as his bride, but we are his children, God has given him.
We're members of his body, we're his sheep, all these things we're
related to the Lord Jesus Christ. We're stones in the temple that
he is the one who inhabits us. So here he's telling us that
our soul, the soul of this man who looks to Christ only, who
fears to look anywhere but Christ, who is led by God to Christ and
given all things in proportion to Christ, he says, he shall
dwell at ease, he'll be at rest, and his seed shall inherit the
earth. Christ's people are going to inherit all things because
If God has given His Son, He's given us everything. What do
we have if we have, what do we not have if we have Christ? We
have everything. We have everything in Him. If
the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, we're complete in Him.
We're full up. We're full up. Here, verse 14.
He says, the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and
He will show them His covenant. God's secret is His secret counsel,
His intimate counsel of His heart. What does God disclose to us
when He teaches us the gospel? The covenant. He discloses us
the very thoughts of his own heart, doesn't he? His secret
intimate counsel. He tells us about Christ. Christ
is the one God has had on his mind forever, isn't he? He's
the apple of his eye and all of his people in him. These are
the thoughts of his heart. He says, I will keep you as the
apple of my eye. The Lord's people are precious
in his sight. They are his inheritance. He
treasures them. He gave himself for them. And
so he says here, he will show them his covenant, the intimate
counsels of the Lord's heart. We know God in his thoughts.
We know his heart. We know his ways. We know his
works. And we know the thing that delights
him when we know his salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then
he goes on in verse 15, mine eyes are ever toward the Lord,
for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Don't you look to
Christ to deliver you from your sins? The net? The net that your
enemies have set to trip you up? He says this in Psalm 79
and verse 8 and 9. Listen to these words. I think
it's Psalm 79. Nope, it's not Psalm 79. It's Psalm 94, let me look at
this with you. Psalm 94, he says this, when
I said, in Psalm 94, verse 18, when I said, listen to what the
psalmist says, Psalm 94, 18, when I said, my foot slips, then
thy mercy, O Lord, held me up. Now do you see what he's saying
here? My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck
my feet out of the net. When I said my foot slips, what
did he say? He said, when I found I was falling. Think of a climber on the rocks,
the granite walls of Yosemite, and he misses his step. His fingers
slip. He's falling 1,000 feet onto
the canyon, the rocks in the canyon below. What is he going
to say? My foot slips. Lord, when I said that, thy mercy
held me up. I knew I had done myself in. And what did he say? What was
the response of his heart brought to his heart by the Spirit of
God? Your mercy, O Lord, has held me up. And so he says it
here, my eyes are ever toward the Lord, he shall pluck my feet
out of the net. The net my enemies have set for
me, he's gonna take my feet out of that net. Verse 16, turn thee
unto me and have mercy upon me for I am desolate and afflicted. Now here's a warrant for us to
pray to the Lord when we're in our lowest state. Here he said,
I am desolate. It's like a barren wilderness.
I look for miles around. There's no water, no trees, just
sand, endless sand and wind, dust in my face and in my eyes.
My throat is parched. My tongue is swollen. I can't
lay down. It's too hot. It's too cold at
night. I'm desolate and I am afflicted. But here he's not
talking about real sand. He's talking about here is desolation
of heart and soul. And he feels that way and he
feels afflicted because of his enemies. And so he pours out
his heart to the Lord. He says, turn to me, because
when the Lord turns to us, then we turn to him. Jeremiah said
in Jeremiah 31 and verse 18, let me read that to you. He said in Jeremiah 31 verse
18, he says this, I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning
himself thus. Thou hast chastised me, and I
was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn thou me, and
I shall be turned, for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after
that I was turned, I repented, and after that I was instructed,
I smote upon my thigh. So here he's saying, Lord, you
turn to me. and I'll be turned to you and have mercy upon me
for I'm desolate and afflicted. Verse 17, the troubles of my
heart are enlarged. Oh, bring me out of my distresses. Verse 18, look upon my afflictions
and my pain and notice and forgive all my sins. This is throughout
the psalm. He keeps asking the Lord not
to remember his sins, to forgive his sins for his namesake. because
his sin is so great and he goes on to say here, forgive all my
sins, look upon my affliction and my pain. Can't we say this?
Can we enter into this? My affliction and my pain and
my sins, Lord deliver me from my sins, forgive me of my sins.
Verse 19, consider my enemies. There are many and they hate
me and they are cruel. Isn't this true of our sins?
Sin reigned to death. How cruel is that? How many are
my sins? There are many. And they hate
me. They would love to see me die. And yet the Lord, by His
death, has put my sins to death. Look at verse 20, Oh keep my
soul and deliver me, let me not be ashamed for I put my trust
in thee. He closes the psalm the way he opened it, like Jude
1 verse 24, unto him who is able to save you and to keep you from
falling and to present you before the presence of his glory, without
fault, unto him be glory and dominion. Amen. And then he goes
on in verse 21, let integrity and uprightness preserve me for
I wait on thee, there it is, he's trusting God in expectation
that he will keep his word, he's able to do it, he's faithful
to do it, to save me to the uttermost, and let integrity and uprightness
preserve me because it's the Lord Jesus Christ's integrity
and his uprightness and our integrity and uprightness is found in him.
And verse 22, the last verse, redeem Israel, oh God, out of
all his troubles. Israel is who? The elect of God. There's no question. In scripture,
when it speaks about Israel and God's favor to Israel, he's talking
about God's chosen. He's talking about the children
of promise. He's talking about those who,
like Abraham, looked to Christ and trusted him for their justification
before God and all things. as their inheritance and everything.
And so he closes this psalm with a prayer for God's elect people,
the redeemed of the Lord. He says, redeem Israel, O God,
out of all his troubles. He doesn't leave anything left,
all of his troubles. And isn't this the covenant?
He says in Romans chapter 11, this is the covenant that I will
make with them. When I shall take away their sins, this is
the blessing of the gospel, is the covenant God made is to deliver
us from our sins, to save us from our enemies, and to do it
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this psalm, the scripture. penned by your chosen vessel
through the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, teaching us about
His saving work, your faithfulness to save your people, your grace
and mercy, to teach them, to lead them, to bring them to Christ,
to preserve them, to keep them, to deliver them from their enemies
of their sins and all of their troubles because of their sins,
and giving them warrant to call on your name as sinners to be
delivered and saved from their sins. What a mercy this is. Lord,
make this, the opening words of this psalm, our words also,
that we lift up our souls unto the Lord, and we trust in Thee,
O our God. We pray that You would not, that
You would not be ashamed, but You would deliver us from our
enemies, not let one of them have power over us, but save
us from them all, and to bring us to the Lord Jesus Christ,
conform us to His image, and present us to yourself without
fault, without blame, because it's your power, it's your faithfulness
that is at stake in the presence of your enemies. We pray, Lord,
that you would justify your people and clear them by the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ and cause us to rejoice in him. For his
name and his sake we pray, amen.