What God Expects From You: Psalm 15

Sermon Manuscript – August 26, 2007

This is a different kind of psalm than the ones we have looked at so far. The previous psalms have been quite emotional – we had Psalms 51 and 44, which were laments, Psalm 139, which is a psalm of praise, and Psalm 30, which is a psalm of thanksgiving. Each of these poured out the heart of the psalmist to God, before others, and each of them were loaded with feeling and emotion.

Psalm 15’s not quite like those. It’s more cerebral and less emotional. It’s actually very similar to the books of Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. It is called a wisdom psalm. It aims to offer wise, practical advice to others. It is counsel, it is words to live by.

Let’s read.

THE QUESTION: WHO MAY DWELL WITH GOD?

Let’s start by looking at verse 1. David poses a question – just one question, stated twice, in two different ways. David asks who may sojourn, who may dwell, in the tent of the Lord, on His holy hill.

What did he mean by that? And what does it mean for us today? We’ll begin by looking at what David is talking about when he says “tent,” and “holy hill.”

There’s two meanings we could take from the word “tent,” two related subjects here, and I think David means both. Pay close attention to these two – keep both of them in mind. The first is the literal meaning – a tent, a temporary shelter. In particular, David speaks of God’s tent. Remember, the Jewish temple was built by Solomon, David’s son. God didn’t have a permanent temple in David’s time. Instead, Israel centred its worship on the “Tent of Meeting,” also called the Tabernacle. It was a very large tent where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. In David’s time, he had moved that Tabernacle to his capital city of Jerusalem, and placed it on the highest hill – Mount Zion. That’s what David means by “holy hill,” in the next phrase – what we now call the Temple Mount. It was God’s mountain, a holy mountain, set apart for His use and kept pure for His glory. This was a place of worship – God’s house of worship. This is the first thing David is talking about here, the first thing I want you to remember: who may draw near to worship God? Who is entitled to stand before this holy and awesome God and offer Him praise?

The second meaning is a little broader. In Hebrew, they often used the word “tent” as shorthand for a household. This came from the days when their ancestors lived as nomads, moving from place to place, and living in tents. The whole household would often share a large tent, and so even hundreds of years later a man’s household, the family which he led, was often called his “tent.” So here’s the second question I want you to keep in mind: David is, in addition to speaking of God’s place of worship, asking: who may live in God’s household? Who may be part of His family? Who may call God “Father?” Who, in short, may enjoy a close family relationship with this awesome God? And that’s closely related to the first, for what do the members of God’s household do? They worship Him! They belong to Him so that they may glorify Him!

Who may live in the place of constant worship? Who may enjoy life in the house of God? This, brothers and sisters, is a gospel question! What must I do to be saved? It’s the same question! David is asking, “What does a worshipper of God – a Christian – look like?”

If you believe in Christ, this is an important question, for David is going to tell us how we should now live. If you aren’t a Christian, if you haven’t trusted in Jesus Christ as your Saviour, or if you aren’t sure, then this message is vital for you. David is about to explain what a person must do to be acceptable before God, to have eternal life.

THE ANSWER: ONE WHO LIVES RIGHTEOUSLY

Who can sojourn in God’s tent, and dwell on His holy hill? Well, first, notice that even the question itself implies an answer. It’s God’s tent, for starters. It’s God’s hill. We don’t set the terms; He does. We don’t decide, as mere human beings, how one is acceptable to God – that’s God’s call to make. He sets the bar. He makes the standards. And since it’s a holy hill, we know that these standards will have something to do with holiness – that is, being set apart, pure, perfect, and spotless. Notice, too, the implication in the question: not everyone can sojourn in His tent or dwell on His hill. If they did, why ask? Not everyone meets God’s standards.

Who can sojourn in God’s tent, and dwell on His holy hill? There’s quite a list here. One of the first things we can draw from this is that a true worshipper values what is right. The worshipper “speaks truth in his heart” – he values the truth on the inside, not just on the outside. Honesty, truthfulness, integrity – they all arise from the heart and soul of this person. He or she knows God’s truth, and he clings to it at the very centre of his being and orders his entire life around it.

And not only does he, positively, value God’s truth – he also, negatively, despises what God rejects. In his eyes – in his perspective, from his point of view, in his opinion – a vile man is despised, David says. The word translated “vile” here refers to something spoiled, and thrown away – there’s a strong sense that the person is cast aside, rejected by God. So it’s not just any sinner, for everyone is a sinner. We’re talking about someone who is hardened in their sins, knowingly and flagrantly living in a vile and lawless manner. And so this despising of the vile person is not a personal thing – we haven’t rejected them; God has rejected them and the way that they live, and we must treat them accordingly until they turn away from that lifestyle and back to God. Yes, we are to love our enemies, and in this case love is tough – it calls evil “evil” and behaves accordingly until there is a change. This is the natural result of aligning one’s values with God. When we do, we love the things God loves – like this man, who honours and respects and loves the person who fears the Lord – and hate the things God hates.

So the worshipper of God values what is right. Second, a true worshipper does what is right. Indeed, most of this section speaks about outward behaviour, especially our behaviour toward others. The worshipper refrains from what is wrong, avoids what is evil. He does not slander with his tongue – saying false and hurtful things about others. No, he speaks the truth, in love. He does not do evil to his neighbor. No, he loves his neighbor as himself! He does not take up a reproach against his friend – that is, he throws no slurs, neither does he rejoice when others are insulted.

One of the points needs explaining. David says that the worshipper does not “lend out his money at interest.” This sounds odd to us. Our entire economy is built on credit – buying even a small house requires a mortgage and interest. Back in David’s day, often a person in great debt would consider selling himself into slavery to pay it back, and often the only alternative available to him was to ask someone for a loan to avoid slavery. This loan would have to be paid back, and in the ancient Middle East interest rates on such loans in such desperate circumstances were often around fifty percent! This practice of charging high interest in taking advantage of a person’s misfortune was called usury, and it was illegal under the Law of Moses. A modern equivalent might be the astronomical kind of interest rates we have seen recently in the payday loan industry, where people have been caught charging up to 1300% interest on short-term loans. The Law forbade Jews from taking advantage of one another in this way. God didn’t forbid fair payment for services, which would include the much more manageable interest we might pay on a mortgage. So a true worshipper does not take advantage of those in need.

The worshipper is honest even to his own hurt. When he swears an oath – when he makes a promise – he keeps it, regardless of how badly he is damaged by it. He does not change – he is a rock others can cling to, he is consistent in his beliefs and in his behaviour, and he treats everyone fairly. He takes no bribe against the innocent – even when doing the wrong thing results in great financial reward, he refuses. Like God, he will clear the innocent.

So David is saying that the worshipper of God will not do these things – that he will treat those who are in trouble with compassion and care.

GOD DEMANDS PERFECTION

Taken all together, David is describing a man righteous – fair, just – in all his ways. In fact, we can sum up his whole discussion with the first phrase of his response: “He who walks blamelessly.”

There’s the standard. That is the level of performance God expects from those who would be His people. That’s the qualification for residence in God’s household. 100% on the exam of life. Blamelessness. Perfection. Holiness.

This passage is hardly unique. In fact, God everywhere in the Bible demands spotless perfection from His people. The sacrifices they brought had to be unblemished – no spots, no wounds, no injuries. Any sin, no matter how small, is a capital offence in God’s eyes. Ezekiel warned Israel, “The soul that sins shall die.” Paul said in Romans, “The wages of sin is death.” Jesus Christ told His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Why is the bar so high? Why can’t God give us a handicap, make allowances for our imperfection? Because we’re talking about His holy hill. Because the worship in His tent is to be holy. Because He is a holy God. Absolutely perfect. Totally set apart. Completely spotless. Listen: no other characteristic of God is spoken of by the Bible the way it speaks of His holiness. Not love, not compassion, not mercy, not anything else. The Bible says repeatedly that God is holy, holy, holy – stressing it three times, the highest emphasis possible in the Biblical languages. God is absolutely perfect and holy, and wants nothing less from us, His people. We bear His image, we represent Him on the earth, we are the crown of His creation. So, for God to expect any less than perfection from us would be to violate Himself. So this list, in a way, is “law”– it lays out God’s expectations, and if we fail to keep them, we sin and fall short of the mark.

THE WORSHIP GOD REQUIRES

Remember, we’ve already seen that this psalm is talking about two related subjects. David began with the question of God’s tent – the two things I asked you to keep in mind: not just how to be accepted into God’s household, but also how one is to offer worship to God. Let’s discuss worship first. This is the application for the people of God, for those who already belong to Him. This is the application for believers. Here it is: worship is not a “come-as-you-are” affair. To God, worship is a VERY serious matter. What kind of worship do you think a perfect God, who expects perfection from His people, wants? There’s a song that we all know, and one of the lines in the song reads, “Come – just as you are – to worship.” Yes, it’s a popular song, but it’s wrong. Worship is most definitely NOT something you just “come just as you are” to do.

Worship is a deliberate thing. It is serious business. If you had an important meeting – like, say, a job interview – what would you do? Would you just wander in “as you are,” in dirty clothes, without rehearsing or going over the interview ahead of time in your mind, without finding out a little about the company and the job first, without taking the time to prepare a resume beforehand? How much more important than a job interview is the call to worship our God? We were made for His glory! Our whole purpose in life is to worship Him! Read this psalm – it’s not talking about dressing in tuxedos to worship. God’s concerned with your character, with the state of your heart, and it had better be right. Worship, more than anything else, requires that you take some time to examine yourself. It means recognizing the sin in your life, confessing it and asking for forgiveness. It means asking God to soften our rebellious hearts so they can receive instruction. It means we seek to be cleansed by God’s grace so that the worship we offer is acceptable to Him.

That’s the first application, the one for believers. Look over this list David gives, and it says this: this is the kind of worshipper God desires. Don’t come to worship just as you are.

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

Now the second application is for believers and for those who do not yet believe. How is one accepted into God’s household? How do we attain to eternal life? Eternal life requires a perfect life. That’s God’s standard. That is the price of admission to God’s house.

Yet no one can be perfect! We all fail to meet this standard! The Apostle John baldly stated that “if we say we have no sin, we lie, and the truth is not in us.” As Paul says, “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” We are “sinful from birth, sinful from when” our mothers conceived us, David says. Jeremiah reminds us that our hearts are “desperately wicked, and deceitful beyond cure.”

How are we supposed to get right with God, then? What if we just stop sinning? What if we do good works to make up for it? That won’t work. Even if we were to somehow straighten up our act, and go forth and sin no more, ever again, we would not be blameless – for we all still have a sinful past. And good works cannot cover our sins, the Bible tells us again and again. God’s holiness and honour require that sin be punished. He cannot and will not tolerate any person standing before Him stained with sin.

Let’s sum up this list. Who can sojourn in God’s tent, and dwell on His holy hill? Only a perfect person can be accepted by God. Only perfect righteousness, a spotless life, will please God.

THE ONLY ONE WHO QUALIFIES

Only one person in human history ever perfectly kept God’s law. Only one man was blameless, did no evil, perfectly loved His neighbor, truly and consistently valued the things of God, whose character was not only beyond any reproach, but never changed – and never changes. What we could not do, Jesus Christ did. He met and exceeded the standard God set. And in doing so, He earned the right to stand before God the Father. And more than that – more than a perfect life and a spotless record – He died the death that we all deserve for our sins. He took the place of sinners on His cross. He was pierced for our transgressions. Crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brings us peace was laid on Him. God the Father laid on His own Son, Jesus Christ, the sins of us all.

Who can sojourn in God’s tent, and dwell on His holy hill? The one who recognizes their failure to do all these things David describes, and realizes that they have no hope of eternal life, of pleasing God, on their own. The only way you can hope to stand before God and not be immediately destroyed is Christ. You must recognize that you are a sinner, and that sin makes you filthy and unacceptable in God’s sight. You must repent of that sin – that means, you must turn away from things that don’t please God. You must abandon all trust in your own efforts to save yourself. The world says, “believe in yourself – you can do it.” The Bible says NO. You can’t. You must give up any lingering hope that you will somehow earn your place before God, that you might be able to impress Him enough to let you off. You must abandon all hope in yourself and hope in what Christ did instead. You must trust in Jesus Christ to be your Saviour, trusting that in His mercy He will keep you safe from God’s wrath. You believe in the spotless life that He lived – trust that this life, this righteousness of His, will be counted as yours by God. And you must put your faith in what He did on His Cross – trusting that your sins were punished completely, all of them, and that therefore no reason remains for God to condemn you to hell.

That’s the Gospel – that’s the good news. That though we could never be blameless, though we could never hope to be worthy of staying in God’s tent or living on His holy hill, Jesus Christ was. And by trusting in Him, we are joined to Christ by faith, and once again have fellowship with God. We may now stand on that hill, in that tent, to praise and glorify God.

If this isn’t you, if you haven’t yet put your faith in Christ for your salvation, don’t wait. Only God knows how long you still have! Cry out to God – ask Him for mercy. God will not wait forever. He will punish sinners.

And for we who have been saved, who do believe and trust in Jesus Christ, here is the challenge: As we read David’s description of a true worshipper, do our lives look like this? Are we really blameless in the way we behave and act? Do we value God’s truth and treat others with love and compassion? And – do we do this consistently? Do we always do this?
If not – why not? We have the Spirit of Christ! God never allows us to be tempted beyond what we can bear! We have no one and nothing to blame for our failure, for we have the Spirit and He enables us to obey. Don’t accept excuses from yourself. Ask God for help, and live like you were born to worship!

WE CANNOT BE SHAKEN!

David closes his psalm with a promise: “He who does these things will never be shaken.” The idea is that such a man, who is blameless, who does what is right, he cannot be moved. He cannot fall, or be dislodged – he is secure, safe and sound.

But again, we fall short of this standard. We don’t do these things David describes. Even those of us who believe find it a struggle to be righteous, and fall short all too often. What about the promise, then? Again – if we can’t meet the standard, then we don’t get the blessing, either, right? But – Christ did. He did all these things. He lived a spotless life! What does that mean, then? Christ can never be moved! Christ cannot be shaken!

What kind of Saviour would He be, if He could? If Christ could be shaken, then how could we trust Him? He might stumble. He might be shaken. He might lose His grip on us. We might lose our salvation. We may fail to be saved, might be lost from Christ’s hand.

But that’s not right! Christ once declared, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day… I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Christ cannot be defeated! He cannot be frustrated. He cannot fail to do God’s will! He is God! What kind of God fails?

Christ lived a perfect life, and God promises that a perfect life cannot be shaken. Jesus was perfect – and that is our assurance. That is our security. That is our hope.

And we, who are joined to Him by faith? We will not be shaken, either. We hope in Christ. God is our foundation and our assurance. Nothing in this life, no powers or persecutions or storms or swords, can ever shake us – for Christ holds us in His hand! They can’t shake us, because they can’t shake Him! Death can’t even shake us – because it’s only the door to Christ!

We can’t do it ourselves – and that’s the very reason why we’re safe! What an awesome God! What wonderful salvation! And what amazing grace!

- Jeff Jones

A Testimony of Praise: Psalm 30

Sermon Manuscript – August 19, 2007

Christians love testimonies. I’ve seen many given in churches, at conferences, youth camps, and on the mission field. I’ve even given my own once or twice. Well, the Bible is full of testimonies. The Apostle Paul gives his conversion story a few times in Acts. The blind man healed by Christ said to the Pharisees, “What I do know is this: once I was blind, and now I see.” And there are many others.

Now, I’ve seen many testimonies go wrong, too. We like to be front and centre, to wrap glory around ourselves. And when giving a testimony, it’s often far too tempting to take the opportunity and make the story about us. Even stories of one’s sinful life in the past become a means of self-exaltation; I’ve heard people talk for 80 percent of the time about how bad they were, how much they did wrong, how lost their situation was, and then basically just tack on a bit about God loving them and saving them at the end.

So it’s nice to find something like this in the Bible, something to learn from and imitate. A Biblical testimony. A person’s one words about how God changed their life, how He set them straight, how He was faithful to them, and how they responded in praise.

This is a psalm of thanksgiving, composed for worship. Let’s try to picture what it must have been like the first time this message was preached, the first time this song was sung. Picture the Jewish tabernacle – a large tent, decorated with gold cords, bronze altars and tables for worship scattered about. There would have been many of the priests, dressed in flowing white robes and wearing colored tassels. These priests were scurrying around, preparing to lead a nervous, buzzing throng of worshipers in some kind of ceremony.

And then a big man steps forward. He’s probably in his forties or fifties, dressed in fancy purple robes. His face and arms carry scars from battle. But his hands carry no sword – instead, they carry a shepherd’s harp. This is David, king of the Hebrews, prophet of God, writer of our psalm. And he’s come to testify to God’s goodness, to share a song with his people.

And there’s a story here. We don’t know the details, but we do know this. David had sinned – he had become proud. David had become rich. He had gone from a fugitive on the run to a conquering hero, a lowly shepherd to a great king. He had slain lions and felled giants, conquered cities and crushed armies. He had taken his capital city of Jerusalem in a lighting raid, and now he ruled from that mighty mountain. Looking out over the valley below, from the towering, thick walls of that fortress, watching his tough, battle-hardened warriors doing their drills in the courtyard below, he must have felt pretty secure. Look to verse 6: as he watched the wagons of tribute from other lands trundling through the gates, as he saw the sacks of wheat and the stacks of weapons and the piles of gold being stored in his treasury, in his prosperity he pridefully said to himself, “I can never be moved.”

As if his own efforts had won those riches! Yes, David was a military genius. He was a great leader, a skilled tactician, a masterful politician. And yet – all those abilities, all those victories, all those blessings had been gifts from God. Grace – undeserved, unmerited favour from God. David had prospered not by his own hand, but because of the hand of God. And it was to God that the credit and the honour and the glory belonged.

But David, in his pride, patted himself on the back as if he had done it all. And as God has done so many times throughout history, he reminded David just who was in control. And it seems God did it in the most ironic way. David, the man who had killed lions, who had felled giants, who had seized mountain fortresses, who had put whole armies on the run, was himself struck down by germs, by foes so small he could never have seen them.

See, judging by our psalm, verses 2 and 3, he’s just recovered from some terrible disease. Illness was a very serious thing back in these times. The Bible tells us of different kinds of diseases, ranging from the dreaded skin condition called leprosy to mysterious plagues that killed thousands in a matter of days.

And what was called medicine in the ancient world was often more superstition than science. The Egyptians, for instance, could perform some complicated surgeries – for example, if you had pressure on the brain from a concussion, they could drill a hole in the skull to relieve it – but they mixed this knowledge with pointless pagan sacrifices and superstitious rituals for the gods. We don’t know what disease David had had. Maybe, like Hezekiah a couple hundred years later, it was boils. Maybe it was dysentery, which killed a lot of people back then. Maybe it was plague, or malaria, or food poisoning. Whatever it was, David had probably tried everything – olive oil, herbs, water, boiled figs, sacrifices, and so on. But the illness had still brought David down to Sheol – the realm of the dead. He had been on the verge of death.

But here he was, and he had come to praise the Lord. Inspired by the Spirit, he had written a song. A song to testify to God’s goodness, to give glory to the Lord, in the presence of the people. So first – let’s see how David testifies. How does he praise His God?

HOW DAVID PRAISED GOD

The whole psalm is enclosed, bracketed, by praise. We see it in verse 1, at the beginning, where he declares, “I will extol you, O Lord.” We see it again at the end in verse 12, where he proclaims, “O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”

David begins and ends with praise. His worship, his adoration is like parentheses, like bookends holding a stack of books, his words of testimony, together. That’s a lesson right there. Worship’s not just something we do on Sunday morning, at the very beginning of the week. It’s supposed to start and end everything we do, guide our every action and thought! Everything we do, we are to do it to the glory of God! We were saved not for us, not for our sake, but for the sake of God’s glory and God’s name. Our whole lives are to be an offering of worship!

Notice, also, that David is speaking for himself here. “I will extol you.” “I will give thanks to you forever.” “My glory may sing your praise.” David’s worship is heartfelt, and personal. It is an expression of his personal, individual relationship with God. David will praise his God even if no one else will. His worship wasn’t dependent on anyone else.

And – he did it. He worshiped. He didn’t just sit there in the service like a spectator. Worship, to David, was something he was responsible to give, not just the priests and Levites. Praise and adoration wasn’t something he could subcontract out to the temple, or delegate to the clergy. As a believer in God, David took ownership of his duty to worship. He participated!

May we do the same! How long did I sit in churches, judging them by how they entertained me, looking for what I could get out of it! How shameful I was, going to watch the performance, sitting like a spectator while others did the work! May God forgive me. May he forgive us all, for we all fall short of the glory of God, we all fail to give Him the worship He deserves. Church is not a spectator sport! We must all lift Him up in praise!

But notice that, in verses 4 and 5, David changes direction. The rest of the psalm, he’s talking to God. But here – he addresses the crowds. He drops his face from the heavens, his hands fall from the skies to point to and embrace the worshipers, and he calls out to them. “Sing praises to the Lord, all you saints! Give thanks to his holy name!” All of you – praise the Lord!

See, David saw his testimony, his experience, as a blessing given to him, that he might bring others to worship. The reason David had come to the tabernacle, the reason he had come to share his testimony, was to see his people praise their God alongside him. True testimony doesn’t just point to God – it points others to God! Even David’s prayer to God in the psalm had this in mind. “Will the dust tell of your faithfulness,” David asks. Tell whom?? Whom shall the dust tell of God’s faithfulness? David is concerned that others hear of God’s greatness and mercy. David is concerned that others learn to worship God – not for their sake, though their lives depend on it, but so that God gets even more glory! That God may be exalted not just by David, but by others, too!

This is how David testifies. That’s a testimony of praise – that’s what it looks like.

Now. Let’s see why he had come to praise God.

GOD RESCUED HIM FROM DEATH

Verse 1 says that God has “drawn” David up. That Hebrew word was used to refer to drawing water from a well. What was David drawn up from? Verse 3 tells us: from Sheol, from the realm of the dead. Which is interesting, because the Old Testament often compares Sheol to a pit. A dirty, muddy hole deep in the earth.

Remember the story of Jeremiah? He was a messenger from God, and carried a rather unpopular message – saying God was going to destroy the kingdom and kill the people and send the children to exile and other not-so-pleasant things. Anyway, his preaching got him in trouble and he was tossed into a cistern – a deep hole used to store water. Jeremiah 38:6 tells us there was no water in the cistern – only mud – and Jeremiah sank in it.

That’s an Old Testament picture of death. A deep, dark, dirty pit so deep, with mud so sticky, that if you fall in it you can’t get out. You’re helpless. You can’t escape death – there’s no going back. And David, as his illness got worse and worse, must have felt like Jeremiah in that hole, sinking deeper and deeper in the mud, getting weaker and weaker from the struggle, all hope fading faster and faster, death coming closer and closer.

Left on his own, Jeremiah never would have gotten out – he would have drowned or suffocated or starved to death. But Jeremiah was saved – an Ethiopian servant dragged him out of the hole and rescued him from certain death. And just like that man, God had come to David in his hour of need and dragged him out of the pit of death. The Lord had come with healing in his wings, and snatched David out of the clutches of the sickness that threatened his life.

David came to praise the God who saves! That’s important. David knew that the only reason his physical life had been spared was because of God’s action – he never could have saved himself. David had to be drawn – dragged – out of the clutches of death by God himself.

And for us, as Christian believers, that should remind us of our own salvation. Jesus Christ, in John chapter 6, once used the same image to speak of God’s action in our own salvation, where he told the Jews, “No man can come to me unless he is drawn” – dragged! – “by the Father. And I will raise him on the last day.” Like with David, we were all mired in the pit of sin, with no hope of saving ourselves. And then the Father drew us – dragged us – out of the muck and gave us to Jesus Christ. We were, like David says in verse 3, restored to life from among those going down to the pit. He saved us, and that’s why we’re here today. Like David, we’re here to praise the God who saves!

David came to praise the God who rescued him from death.

That’s the first reason.

GOD ANSWERED HIS PRAYER

There’s another reason David came to praise the Lord that day. He had prayed to God for rescue. He had thrown himself before God and asked for healing.

And there’s a lot we can learn from David’s prayer. First, look at verses 2 and 12 – look how David addresses God. “O LORD my God,” he says. In the Hebrew, it reads Yahweh, my Elohim. This says something. Elohim is actually a plural word – it is sometimes translated “gods.” But when it is applied to a singular object – an undivided being like the God of the Bible – it adds weight and intensity to the title. The stress of the word Elohim is on majesty and power – and when this plural word represents a singular being it intensifies that meaning – it stresses awesome majesty, and unimaginable power. Elohim – the mighty and awesome God.

But David combines it with a much different word – the word Yahweh. See, Elohim is more of a title. It is descriptive. It says something about God, emphasizes his power, his glory. But Yahweh is not a title. It is a name. More than that, it is the personal, covenant name of God – the name he revealed to Moses at the burning bush, the private and special name God used, and uses, with His special, chosen people. This is a covenant name, which signifies the close, intimate, intense, loving relationship that God shares with that particular people that He has bound to himself by covenant. Using it is almost like being permitted to address a really important person by his first name – only far better. It’s a reminder of the close, personal relationship David shared with God.

And combined, it’s like saying, “You are my God, my awesome God.” Yahweh, my Elohim – it blends love and power. Tenderness and strength. Intimacy and majesty.

That’s Christian prayer – right here in the Old Testament! That’s because we Christians are the new Israel – we are God’s covenant people! God has bound us to Himself by the blood of Christ. He has made us His own and loved us, known us in a way unlike the rest of the world. We have a relationship with God – a family relationship, a close, special relationship – and it is in the context of that relationship, in the trust and intimacy of that covenant arrangement, that we can approach our Father in heaven. Like David, we pray in remembrance of the special relationship we enjoy with God, knowing we belong to God!

Second: verse 8 does not render the Hebrew very well. The English says “I cry”, and “I plead for mercy.” It sounds like David just did it, and it happened. Actually, in the Hebrew, it is more persistent, more long-lasting, than the English makes it sound. David didn’t just cry once; he cried out continually. He didn’t just plead one time – he did it persistently. David was like the widow Jesus described in the Gospels, who went before the judge again and again pleading for justice. And as with the widow, David’s persistence was rewarded. See, Christian prayer is to be heartfelt and sustained. When we continue to offer our prayers up to God, not giving up, not losing hope, even when it takes a long time, this shows faith and trust in God. David prayed persistently and continually. That’s how we, too, should pray.

And third, look at verse 9. What is David’s concern? Does he mention his own life or comfort or hopes that will disappear if he dies? No – he points out that he will be unable to praise God if he dies! David’s concern is not himself – it is the glory of God!

How often do we pray like that? Are we concerned enough with seeing God exalted in our prayers, or just in Him dealing with our issues? When we pray, it should be for things that give God praise! Our first concern in going before God with anything in prayer should be to see God exalted – to see God make even more of Himself in our lives!

David prayed to the glory of God. That’s the prayer that God answers. David was at that tabernacle to praise God – to say, “I cried out to my awesome God, and He heard my cry. I prayed, and He answered me. I praise Him, for He knows my voice and comes when I call!”

GOD RESTORED HIS JOY

But David is not just here to testify about God rescuing him or answering his prayers. God has done even more than that. We see it in verses 5, 11 and 12: God took David’s tears and replaced them with joy. He had changed his mourning into dancing, removed his sackcloth robes of grief and clothed him with gladness. Think about that! Not only has God restored him physically – but emotionally, and spiritually! God doesn’t just heal the body – he heals the soul!

God is concerned with the whole person. His goodness extends to every aspect of our lives. We are to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and God sustains us in heart, soul, mind, and body. David asked for deliverance from disease – God did even more than that! He restored David’s hope! He lifted up David’s soul along with his head!

Even when we recover from a terrible illness, or when a fearful crisis has come and gone, or when the physical damage of a catastrophe has been repaired, we all know that deep emotional and spiritual scars may remain. I’ve known soldiers who returned from war zones, men physically intact, safe and sound – in body, anyway – in a secure and peaceful country. And yet their joy, so to speak, was gone. Looking in their eyes, they seem decades older. What they had seen and experienced had damaged them, emotionally and spiritually.

See, God is in the business of healing His people. And not only does He promise to raise us in perfect, everlasting bodies on the last day, but He also promises to wipe every tear from our eye. And while the end is not yet here, we as God’s people have the privilege of asking for those things now. God still heals today – both the body and the soul.

And that’s why David praised God. This is David’s testimony to the people: God rescued him from death, God answered his prayer, and God restored his joy.

CONCLUSION

Why does David testify? Why is he calling others to worship? We’ve looked at it in some detail. But as we leave today, let’s boil it down to the central verse of the psalm – verse 5.

“FOR – his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

For – a very important little word. The crowds, the nations are called to praise, FOR – because – while weeping and suffering and calamity and disaster and punishment may remain for a while, God’s faithfulness is much, much greater.

David had sinned, and called down God’s judgment upon him. And God’s wrath is terrible. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, the Bible tells us. God was angry with David, because he sinned. And disaster fell on David as a result.

But not all disaster is a result of one’s own sin. David called all the people to rejoice – not because they had all been punished alongside him, not because they had all been sick, but because as human beings, as residents of a fallen and dangerous world, they all knew what it was to suffer. They all faced their times when God had turned, or seemed to turn, His face away, when the light of day that shines from his face suddenly faded, and a long night of pain and tears fell on them.

I’ve been there. Brothers, sisters, we’ve all been there. It’s a fact of life in a fallen world. Paul told the Philippian Christians that it had been granted to them not only that they believed, but that they would suffer for Christ. Suffering is part of this life, and it is an inescapable part of the Christian life, as well.

But unlike the world, we have hope! Our God is with us through the night! Even when we can’t see Him, He’s there and looking out for us. In the middle of the night, in the midst of the darkness, even as there is no end in sight to the pain and the tears, we as children of God have this hope: The joy is coming with the morning!

Night never lasts forever. It has its time, to be sure. Night always comes. As Ecclesiastes puts it, there is a time to laugh, and a time to cry. And when it comes, it remains for a while. Pain and suffering are rarely only a moment, in our perspective. They hang on for a while. Wars drag on for decades. Cancer can linger for a long time, and even come back after being defeated once. Grief at the loss of a loved one is a slow process that can take months, even years. These things hurt. They bring physical and emotional and spiritual pain, and the scars they leave may not be visible to doctors and nurses. But with God, these scars will fade. These nights shall pass.

Compared to the shining promise we have with Christ – eternal life, a perfect, pain-free, everlasting life of pure joy and wonder – no trouble here on earth can really be said to last for more than a moment. And God brings healing and joy even here, in this life, as His people call out to Him. David stands before the crowd and testifies, “My God heard my cry. My God healed me. My God gave me joy again. That’s my God – join me and praise Him!” We’re in that crowd. Some of you may be in the middle of that night that David talked about. Listen to him. Remember David’s testimony: weeping may last for the night – there’s a time for it. But joy is coming. Joy will come.

God gives joy to His people. Don’t forget that. And praise Him for it.

- Jeff Jones

The God Who Knows: Psalm 139

Sermon Manuscript – 12 August 2007

Our text today is Psalm 139. It is a psalm of David, like Psalm 51, the first psalm of our series. Unlike the last two, this psalm is not a lament. It is an outpouring of praise. And today, we are going to be looking at what David is praising God for. What moves David to sing? Why does he praise God? Let’s read.

GOD KNOWS HIS PEOPLE INTIMATELY

Let’s start at the beginning. David tells God that He has searched Him and known Him. If we look to the end of the psalm, David closes with the same words. In fact, the idea of knowledge – of God knowing us – just saturates this psalm. The knowledge of God – God knowing David, knowing His people – is, really, the theme of this psalm. So then – what does that mean? What does it mean to be known by God?

Well, God knows all things, including knowing everything about every person. The Bible is very clear that God has complete and comprehensive knowledge of all things, past, present, and future. Nothing escapes His notice; nothing confuses Him; nothing catches Him by surprise.

And yet the Bible records things that God says, that Jesus says, like this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ How can Jesus, God become flesh, the God who knows all things, say that he did not know someone? Because in the Bible, like with us, to know a person is to have relationship with them. It is to value them, to care for them. It is intense. It is personal. It is an action! When God knows someone, He is doing something!

One of the things I find most remarkable about my wife is her familiarity with our eleven-month-old son. He cries, and I just know he’s upset about something. She knows that he’s hungry. Or that he needs a bottle. Or that he needs his diaper changed, or that he’s tired, or lonely, or scared. I wish I could read him that well, and it never ceases to amaze me that she can! She knows him, even better than I do. She knows him well.

There’s a whole world of difference between knowing something and knowing someone. To know something means to have knowledge about it. But to know someone means far, far more than just knowing facts about that person. Take George Bush, for a moment. I know about him. I know who he is, where he’s from, who he’s related to, what jobs he held before becoming President, what things he’s done since coming into office, and so forth. I know many things about George Bush. But even with all that, I can’t say I know him. That would be a lie. Because if I say I know him, I’m claiming to have a relationship with him. I’m claiming to be personally acquainted with him.

Put another way: I’m glad my wife knows me! I’d be crushed if all she wanted to do was to know things about me, like my height and weight and interests and background and activities, but didn’t care to actually know me personally! It’s not her knowledge about me that makes our relationship special; it’s the fact and the way that she knows me that matters!

It’s the same way in the Bible – in fact, even more so. Knowledge is intense – it is intimate. When we say God knows a person, in this special and particular way, it’s the same as saying that he loves them. God’s knowledge is active, like his love is active, and indeed his knowledge in action, when directed toward a person, is love. To know a person is to know them intimately, to love them. It’s no coincidence that in Genesis 3, when the Bible says Adam knew his wife, a child was the result!

Knowing someone is far different than knowing something. And that’s what has David so amazed in our Psalm. David’s not just in awe that God knows things about him. He is overwhelmed at the intensity and the intimacy of that knowledge. He is in awe that God knows him! God knows all His ways, knows every word before he says it. God knows his rising and his lying down, his every thought and word and action. And, even more than that, this knowledge is not passive! It’s an active thing! God has searched him and known him! David’s thoughts have been discerned from afar – distance is no obstacle to God, who seeks out his every thought anyway! In the very section where David talks about God’s knowledge of himself, there’s all this talk of hemming him in, behind and before; this mention of laying a hand upon him. David hasn’t changed topics here. This is God’s knowledge! In action! God actively knows him, relates to him, loves him, to the extent of going before and behind him, like an army’s vanguard and rearguard. God lays a hand upon him – an image that, to a Hebrew, means to embrace and to guide a person, like a father’s strong, warm hand upon an infant’s shoulder as he learns to walk, keeping him safe and straight. God’s knowledge actively, lovingly surrounds him, guards him, guides him, protects him!

This is how the psalm begins, and this is what the psalm is all about. David is saying, crying out, “He KNOWS me!” He’s just reveling in it, exulting in God’s knowledge and love for him. And what a joy, what a privilege that is! And in this same, special, particular, intensive way, God loves all His own. He doesn’t know the wicked, the workers of lawlessness, as Jesus put it; but he knows his sheep. He knows His special people. God knows His people intimately.

GOD IS WITH HIS PEOPLE

Let’s move on to the next section. In verse seven David transitions from talking about the intensity of God’s knowledge – that is, how strong and special it is – and begins to marvel at the extent of that knowledge. That is, David rejoices in how high and how wide, how deep and how long, is the knowledge of God. Words we often ascribe to the love of God fit neatly with God’s knowledge of us, and that’s because, again, to be known by God is to be loved by Him.

Here David talks about our second point: God is with His people. Now, our modern idea of what a “God” is is not the same as what people tended to think back in David’s time. The nations and peoples who surrounded Israel, who even lived among them, believed in national or territorial gods. Gods like that were thought to exercise power and authority over a certain area of land, or over the activities of a certain people. The Biblical idea of one God who rules the entire earth, and everything and everyone in it, regardless of nationality or location or ethnicity or activity, was a strange and novel concept in David’s day. A God who was with his people wherever they went? This was unusual. And David gushes about this aspect of God.

Where can he run? Where can he hide? asks David. You are everywhere! If only Jonah had thought it through a little better! The Spirit of God is everywhere! In heaven – well, that’s where God is! What about Sheol? The realm of the dead? God is even there! David may not have known what we do about the next life, but he did know this: Death is no escape from his God! What about the wings of the morning – that is, the furthest stretches to the east? Or the uttermost parts of the sea – which, to David, was to the west, in the opposite direction – is this where escape is to be found? No! God reigns there too! If God is a God of light, maybe darkness? Maybe refuge can be sought in the shadows, like it could from the sun gods of the nations. But this, too, is fruitless. With God, darkness is as light – God sees everything clearly.

So how does this discussion of God’s universal rule, His omnipresence, relate to David’s theme of a God who knows His people intimately?

I joined the army at seventeen years old, and I did my basic training in a small town in rural Quebec. When I got off the bus and arrived in my quarters, put my bag on the bed, and realized that the long trip to get there was over – that I had finally arrived – guess how I felt? Guess how I felt, three thousand miles from home, surrounded by a language I could not comprehend, immersed in a culture I did not understand, separated from everything and everyone I thought I knew and understood?

I was scared. Terrified, really. I remember looking out that seventh-floor window over that landscape, and I reached for the only comfort I had. I prayed to God. “LORD! Help me! Don’t abandon me! Get me through this! Give me strength!”

There I was, far from home, from family, from friends, from everything I knew and understood, on the eve of one of the toughest times of my life, and in the depths of that fear I knew this: MY GOD IS STILL WITH ME. I can’t run from Him, even if I wanted to! But that also means that life can’t take me away from Him! Death, even, can’t rob me of Him!

See, God knows me! And this means that no distance or struggle or isolation I ever face on this earth should terrify me, because He is with me! To the believer, to the one whom God knows, his universal presence is hope. It is encouragement.

GOD CREATED HIS PEOPLE TO KNOW THEM

The next section is one of the most well-known passages of the Bible. David describes God’s action in creating life. Some of the most awe-inspiring language in the Bible can be found in this passage.

When Erin was pregnant, we went to get an ultrasound at twelve weeks. And because the doctors were worried about Caden’s health and whether we might lose him, we had the opportunity – what turned out to be a blessing – to receive several such ultrasounds. I saw him moving on that screen, listened to his little heart beating, watched it pulsing. We took home pictures of him taken by the ultrasound, and even then he was adorable – I have one of him grinning at the camera, where the orbital bones around the eyes and the tiny little teeth made him look like this otherworldy, alien creature.

I left each of those sessions just awestruck, overwhelmed with a sense of the power of God. Those tiny fingers, those miniature organs, those fluttery little movements were all being knit together in Erin’s womb – knit together by God, before our very eyes.

What a stunning display of God’s glory. It moved us to tears, and moved David to praise. But why here? Why, in the midst of a discussion of how God knew him?

David’s point in this section is not how God made him. It’s why He made him. And that’s where God’s knowing him comes in. In fact, perhaps the most important word in this entire psalm is that little word “For.” God, you knew me; God, you’re with me. FOR you formed my inward parts, knit me in my mother’s womb. God made David to know him. God’s knowledge of David before he was made, God’s intended relationship with David, God’s purpose for him and choice of him, were the reason for David’s creation. God personally knit David together, handcrafted all of his inward parts, tuned all of his bodily processes, so that David might serve Him and worship Him and love Him and know Him. And God had this purpose, this knowledge, long before David was born.

The Bible makes clear that God knows His people – that is, loves them, gives them a purpose, chooses them, sets them apart – before they are born. In a similar passage to ours, God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” God parallels – compares – knowing Jeremiah with consecrating him (that is, setting him apart) and with appointing him a prophet. Speaking through the prophet Amos, God says to Israel that “You only have I known of all the families of the earth;” some Bible translations even put it “You only have I chosen.”

What David is saying here – and what God is saying to Jeremiah and through Amos – is that God chose him. That He resolved, before their lives began, to make something special of them and build a special relationship with them. This is a second aspect of knowledge – not only is it God’s intimate love, but it is God’s choice. David’s entire life – from being knit together in the womb on forward – has been guided and constructed by God according to this knowledge. So for God to “know” someone means not only to love them intimately, not only to have a deep relationship with them, not only to guide and protect them wherever they go. For God to know someone also means to choose them, to set them apart for a specific purpose.

The New Testament also uses “know” and “knowledge” in this sense of choosing and appointment and destiny. Peter says he is an apostle of Jesus Christ according to God’s “foreknowledge,” not that Peter just happened to make himself an apostle and God foresaw it, but that God chose him, set him apart, and prepared him for the task. The same concept is found in Romans 8:29, where Paul explains that it is those whom God “foreknew” who would be predestined, called, justified, and glorified. So David speaks for all of us who believe – we have been known from the womb, from before we ever lived. Known by God – that is, chosen by Him, loved by Him, set apart, appointed for His purpose, formed and created for His service.

And therefore, it’s no accident that David slides into talking about the days of his life, written in God’s book. Verse 16 describes these days as having been “formed” for David. A better translation might be “appointed” – God chooses each day of our lives and guides their events according to His plan. They were written in the Book of Life not simply because God passively observed what was going to happen and recorded it, as a mere witness, but because God knew David, had a purpose and a special regard for him, and wrote the story of his life before it ever came to pass. God’s knowledge of the days of our lives, like God’s knowledge of us ourselves, is no distant and passive thing; it is an active and involved knowledge, a loving and purposeful knowledge.

God made each and every one of us for a purpose – both believers and unbelievers. The wicked have their purpose too – as Proverbs put it, God made them for the day of trouble. That’s why it’s of the highest importance that if you do not believe in Jesus Christ, you must cry out to Him and ask Him to save you. But for those who believe in Jesus Christ, who are called by His name, this knowledge is a comfort. God made each and every one of us for this moment in history, to glorify God in this life, and He made us so that He would know us – that he would love us and have relationship with us as we journey the path that He already, in that very same relational, intentional knowledge, laid out for us to walk. We know God because he first knew us. God made David to know him. God made every one of His people to know Him.

OUR FIRST RESPONSE: WE VALUE GOD’S THOUGHTS

What an awesome God! What a gracious God, that not only does He know all things, but that He chose to know us! That it is not enough for God to sit back like a bystander and watch our lives unfold, but that He is right there beside us in everything we do and everywhere we go! That we were made not as some cosmic accident, but specifically and especially for God’s purpose, that He might love us and have a relationship with us! That our lives are not left to be the unfolding of a series of random or pointless events, but that God has already, before time even began, crafted each day of our lives and all the events of human history as carefully as He knit us together in our mother’s womb!

What can we say to all this? What is there to say? How do we respond to such an awesome truth?

The first thing we do is what David did. In verse 17, he marvels: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!” David realized what mattered most. What was most precious to him. He valued God’s thoughts.

Remember what kind of God has been presented here in Psalm 139. A God who is so overwhelmingly powerful, that he knows the secrets of the heart. A God so immense, that no place in heaven or earth, in life or in death, is a hiding place from Him. And yet this is a God who focuses all that power and might for the good of individual human beings. This is a God who creates human beings because he already loves them, and for the express purpose of knowing them in their lives.

If God has truly created us for a purpose, and that purpose is shown to us in the way He knows us – that is, in the way He chose us, set us apart, loves us intimately, and relates to us – then everything He says is precious. Everything He says is good for us. Everything He says can only make us know Him better and serve Him better.

God’s thoughts are precious. The only reason we know His thoughts at all, the only reason God went to the trouble of revealing His will to us through prophets and apostles, the only reason we have this precious Bible at all, is because God wanted us to have it. We would never have had them otherwise – David himself says that God’s knowledge is too high for him, that he would never attain it. God stooped down and revealed these things to us because he knew us – because He loves us intimately, because He chose us, because He has a purpose for us, because He intends to have a relationship with us.

Do you want to know God better? We have His thoughts right here! His commandments, that show us His expectations. His Gospel, which explains the way to be saved. This is precious. And they are vast – so much has been revealed to us here, that no human being could ever hope to fully understand all of it. And think of how much has not been revealed to us! We serve an awesome, awesome God.

How do we respond to the God who knows us? We value His thoughts. We value His Word.

OUR SECOND RESPONSE: WE MUST HATE SIN

What was David’s next response? Look at verse 19 and following. David suddenly, abruptly breaks into a prayer against the wicked. It’s very strong, very pungent – shocking, really. “Oh, that you would slay the wicked!” he cries. “I count them my enemies.. I hate them, Lord. I hate them with complete hatred.”

This seems so out of place in this psalm. Such majestic and beautiful language, such moving and powerful verse, and then – this. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, it seems, David switches from praise to condemnation. From hallelujah to hellfire.

It may seem shocking and out of place. But actually, it’s a vital part of David’s message here. It’s vital, because this is his second response to God’s knowing him. How does that work?

Remember, God knows David for a purpose. God loves him, chooses him, sets him apart, forms him from conception for an intimate relationship with Himself. And this is so important. When we truly know a person on an intimate level, when we love them intensely and value them and set them apart in our affections, we begin to value the things that are important to them.

David has come to know God, because God has known him. And he has come to measure everything and everyone else in light of and in comparison to that which he values most – God Himself. And when David sees the wicked, those who, in his words, speak wickedly against the Lord, and take His precious name in vain, he boils with rage. David knows what a beautiful and precious thing his relationship with God is, and the sight of others spitting in God’s face, mocking His perfect law, trampling on his justice, dishonoring and disrespecting His Lord – it fills David with wrath. Righteous indignation. A pure and holy contempt.

Yes, David’s words are strong. Hatred of God’s enemies – complete hatred – is hard to reconcile with the revelation we have received in Jesus Christ. We are to love our enemies, right? To forgive them, to pray for them? How, then, are we to look on language like this, on our side of the Cross?

First, let’s remember that David was calling on God to act. He wasn’t acting himself. He appealed to God to punish the wicked, to slay them. What David does is express his feelings and frustrations to God. He directs his own frustration and rage not at these wicked men, but toward God in prayer. In his anger – as righteous and justified as it was – he did not sin. Instead, he remembered that vengeance is the Lord’s. He left the punishment of the wicked where it belonged – in God’s hands.

Second, even in the New Testament we see prayers crying out for God to punish the wicked. The saints in Revelation, those who have been martyred and stand before God, call out to Him to act, to bring justice. As Christians, we still have the right and the duty to pray that God will punish the wicked and destroy evil. We pray for this all the time! Remember the Lord’s Prayer? THY KINGDOM COME! That’s not just a prayer for heaven, brothers and sisters! When that prayer is answered and Christ comes, it will be in judgment and millions of stubborn sinners will be going to hell.

And third. When we read something like this and something inside us recoils in horror, that’s not necessarily a good thing. One reason that David’s hatred of the wicked causes confusion and even disgust as we read it is because of a failure on our part. The problem, I fear to say it, is not that David overreacted. The problem is not that David took the problem of wickedness too seriously. I fear that the real problem is that, all too often, we don’t take it seriously enough.

Do we really hate sin? Do we really despise wickedness like David does here? Is sin and evil, and all its agents and manifestations here in this world, really our mortal enemy? Do we really understand that breaking God’s law and dishonouring Him through wickedness and immorality is something that we should HATE? Or does God’s holiness and worth and purity and honour mean so little to us that we would tolerate sin, turn a blind eye to the wicked? How often do we choose not to call a spade a spade, and label evil as evil, because it’s just more convenient for us to compromise?

David does not compromise here. He understands that he has been known by God, and that this is a precious thing. And that being known by God carries with it the obligation to look at sin the way God does. David understands that not only does he have to value the words and thoughts of God – he has to hate and despise and abhor wickedness. The second response to God’s knowing us, then, is this: we must hate sin.

OUR THIRD RESPONSE: WE SEEK TO BE MADE HOLY

But David’s hatred of sin is not an arrogant or prideful one. David is no hypocrite. Even as he cries to God to destroy the wicked, to punish sin and evil, he also calls for God to search him and know him, to find out if there is any sinful way in him. He calls on God to lead him in righteous paths. And that is our third response to God’s knowledge of us: We seek to be holy.

Remember – what God values most highly is holiness. Being set apart, totally untainted and unstained by sin. God desires that we act in a manner that reflects His glory. And so the same unrelenting hatred of sin and disgust at wickedness outside of us must also be turned inward.

God has known us! Remember what that means! He has loved us in an intimate and special way, like a husband’s love for his wife! He chose us and set us apart! Like a husband, by marriage, sets apart his wife for himself! What kind of wife repays her husband’s love – his knowledge of her – by flirting with other men, or destroying the things he values?

God’s love is not free. No, it was extremely costly. It cost Him the life of His beloved Son, who died to set us free from sin. When we remember this – when we think of what it cost our God to know us at all, instead of just sending us straight to hell, how can we tolerate sin in our own lives? How can we put up with evil and wickedness in our personal lives, in our character, in the way we speak and think of others?

David knew this. And so he cried out to God to make him right.

CONCLUSION

Our God is an awesome God. He is the God who knows – the God who not only knows all things, but deeply, intimately, intentionally, eternally knows his people!

Brothers and sisters in Christ! God has known us! Think of the privilege! The God of all eternity, the Creator of our vast universe, the Author of history, the Judge of the heavens and earth, chose to know us personally! He stepped down to our level in Jesus Christ. He died to clear the punishment we deserved for our sins. He chose us and set us apart, loved us intensely and intimately – all long before we were ever born! And in this knowledge, with this purpose, He knit us together in the womb, gave us to Jesus Christ, made us alive together with Him, and throughout our lives, as David says, He still searches us and knows us! God knows us!

How then shall we live? We must value God’s thoughts and words, for they tell us what matters to Him. We must hate sin and evil, for they would destroy what matters to Him. And we must seek to be holy.

How do we do this? Look how David did this. He started the psalm in the past tense – Lord, you have searched me and known me! David reminded himself of God’s love and activity in the past. Then he cried out to God in the present tense – Lord! Search me and know me! He didn’t take it for granted! He understood that the same grace that saves us is that grace which keeps us saved. He reminds us that not only did we only get to this point because of God’s provision and generosity, but we can only hope to go on in the faith that God will continue to provide us the protection that we need.

David cried out to God to make him holy. To keep him from evil. To lead him in good and righteous ways. That’s how we seek to be holy – by valuing God’s thoughts, by hating sin, and by asking for and relying on God’s faithfulness.

- Jeff

A Cry For A Clean Heart: Psalm 51

Sermon Manuscript – 29 July 2007

I love the Psalms. They express the heart of God’s people. all the joy, all the sorrow, all the rage, all the love, all the anger, all the frustration, all the hope of a walk with God in a fallen world is on full display.

The Psalms are in a class by themselves as Scripture. While being God’s inspired and perfect words for us, they are also the words of men to God. Moved by the holy spirit, real believers facing real trials and struggles poured their hearts out to God in song and prayer. And this has given us a priceless treasure – an inspired hymnbook, full of inspiration and wisdom.

What makes them so edifying to us, I think, is the sheer variety we see in the Psalms. There are songs of praise. There are songs of thanksgiving. Cries for help and cries of joy. Words of anger and words of comfort.

Our text today is a song of confession and lament. Psalm 51. It is a well-known passage, and expresses better than perhaps any other writing the response of a believing heart to one’s own sin and wickedness.

CONTEXT

It must have been a hot day. It was in the spring, when, as 2 Samuel 11 puts it,

“the kings go out to battle.” The beginning of the campaign season, when the rains have stopped and the roads can handle the heavy traffic that goes along with an army on the move. It was probably April or May, and in Jerusalem, that’s a warm time of year. Jerusalem is on a hilltop not far from the Mediterranean Sea, and not far from the desert, either. The climate would have been something like California.

And in an age without air conditioning, as Erin and I found out by experience last week, staying indoors is an ordeal to be avoided. I don’t blame David for going out on the roof, then. He was probably trying to get out of the stuffy halls of the palace and catch a nice breeze.

A twist of fate – well, in God’s world, there are no coincidences. Samuel tells us that Bathsheba was having a bath on the rooftop. And, as it happened, she was doing this at the same time David took his walk on the roof. By God’s plan, these two wound up on their rooftops at the same time. This was a test.

And think about who was being tested here. David was a man after God’s own heart. He was a firm believer in God, a faithful worshipper and servant. He was a prophet in his own right, who wrote dozens of Psalms we still read and sing today. Throughout the Bible, he is spoken of in glowing terms – a king held up as a model to be imitated, an example of living faith.

And yet David fails the test. He could have averted his eyes. He could have gone right back inside, found something else to busy himself. There was a war on, after all – maybe he could have gone over some of the messages from the front, or grabbed a horse and travelled up there himself.

The Bible reminds us that all sin is our own responsibility. God himself tempts no one, though he allows us to face temptation from others. And in every time of temptation, God ensures that we will face no more than we are able to bear. In fact, he gives us a way out. And like I said, David had a way out.

What a devastating fall. An astounding display of sin. We have lust. Covetousness. Adultery. Deception – trying to have Uriah think the child is his, remember? Betrayal. Murder. And so this psalm, even before we get into the text itself, has a vital lesson for us all in its historical context. David was one of the greatest heroes of the Bible, and he failed.Badly. His status as a prophet of God didn’t protect him. His character as a kind and generous man didn’t keep him safe. Within David’s heart was wickedness – the same evil nature that all of us still fight against in our daily walk. If David, of all people, could fall – despite his character, his knowledge, his wisdom, his grasp of the things of God – so could any of us. And not just into any sin – into adultery and murder. Some of the most shocking sins imaginable.

There’s our first lesson. If David could fall, so can we. If he were capable of such sin, so are we. Let us be warned.

Now, the psalm itself. As you read it, you can feel David’s anguish. He is a broken man. He has looked into his heart and examined his ways, and he is disgusted with himself.

There’s three things we can learn from Psalm 51 – three things that we need to hear and apply in our own lives. First, David has some important insights into his own sinfulness. Second, David cries out to God to change his heart. And third, the way David prays – how he approaches God and what he says – is a good example for us to follow.

WHY DAVID WAS PRAYING

First, David talks about his sin. His words about himself should not be taken as exaggeration or hyperbole. David has some valuable insights into sin that we need to recognize. Let’s start at verse 4:

“Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”

That sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? Against God? God only?

Think for a moment. Just how many people did this sin affect? David was a married man, for starters. What about his wives? By this point, he had at least two – Michal, Saul’s daughter, Abigail, Nabal’s widow, and probably others. David surely sinned against them – breaking the covenant vows he had made to them to be their husband!

What about Uriah? Not only did David take his wife, he betrayed him, deceived him, and killed him.

How about Bathsheba? Whether she has some responsibility in this situation or not, the fact remains that David, like so many men today, looked on her and lusted after her. He treated her like a piece of meat, a means of pleasure. What about her?

What about David’s children? Their father – treating their mothers and his own family with such carelessness and disrespect?

The people of Israel? Their king has dishonoured himself and by extension the entire kingdom. How can David say that he had sinned against God alone?

Because all the people I just listed belong to God. A sin against them is fundamentally a sin against their Creator and Master.

Even more than that, though, is the nature of sin itself. Sin – what is it? It is a failure to meet the standard of God. It is missing the mark. Falling short of God’s expectations.

And so every sin is against God. He is the final Judge. The buck stops with Him. There is no court of appeal. Every single sin ever committed is ultimately and finally dealt with by God, and God alone. Every sin is ultimately and finally against God – and God will require an account for it. Don’t forget that.

That’s the first point about sin – it’s against God and God alone. We can’t blame God for it. There will be no room for excuses – even though God is sovereign, even though your actions are all a part of His plan, it is you who commits them. It is you who forms the desire in your heart – not God. It is you who gives in to temptation – not God pushing you into it. Like David said, “you are justified when you speak, and blameless when you judge.” Our sin is our own, and God will have nothing to do with it. His judgment is just.

Let’s read on: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

Is this exaggeration? David elsewhere speaks very highly of his mother. He was the youngest in his family – his mother and father were married. There was no sin in the way he was concieved.

What David is saying, then, is this. He was sinful from birth. This isn’t poetic exaggeration. Human beings are sinful by their very nature. Erin and I saw a little girl of only two or three years old on Friday, ripping a toy out of Caden’s hands at the photographer’s, screaming “No! It’s mine!!” Caden will have fits of rage if you try to take a remote control or set of keys out of his hands.

Sin is not a learned behavior, like talking or potty training. It’s innate and natural, like eating and breathing. We are not sinful because we sin – rather, we sin because we are sinful. The reason every single human being sins and is guilty in God’s eyes, no matter what culture they live in or life situation or upbringing they come from, is because their sinfulness is part of their very nature. Yes, from birth – from conception. And while a very young child, especially in the womb, may not be physically able to commit acts of sin, and while their actions may not be willfully sinful, their basic inclinations are still sinful. Their nature is sinful.

This is an uncomfortable teaching, because it feels wrong. Babies are cute – I know! I know it well! They’re beautiful. But they are also corrupt – born into spiritual slavery. Stillborn with respect to spiritual things. Children don’t grow up naturally generous and giving – these things have to be modeled and taught and enforced. They have to overcome a naturally selfish nature.

And it’s important for us to realize this – vital that we get this. If you don’t get sin right, you can’t get the Gospel right. And if you don’t get the Gospel right, there can be no salvation.

Listen – Jesus didn’t come to maximize some kind of natural human potential, like so many today believe. That’s a false gospel – it’s a lie. The only natural potential in mankind is toward greater and greater evil. No, Jesus came to SAVE us. From what? From sin – from OURSELVES! From what we bring upon ourselves – the punishment and wrath of an outraged and offended God.

That’s the second point about sin – sin is natural to human beings.

And sin must be dealt with. David cries out for God to purge him with hyssop. To purify him with hyssop. What does this mean? In ancient Israel, the Law of Moses prescribed certain rituals be performed for certain problems. David is referring to one of these – the rite of purification for leprosy. He’s comparing sin to leprosy.

In our age, a simple medication can stop the disease (though reversing its effects is a lot harder). In ancient Israel, if a person had recovered from leprosy, the victim was to go to the priest, who would perform this ritual, which I am reading from Leviticus 14: 2-7.

So not only does David compare his sin to leprosy, but he compares the purification from sin to that from leprosy. There’s a lot in common. An animal is sacrificed – a bird is killed – just as Christ had to die as punishment for our sins. The bird’s blood is sprinkled on the leper, just as Christ’s blood washes us clean. The ritual takes place over running water, a Biblical symbol of the water of life that flows from Christ in the form of His Holy Spirit.

David is crying for God to purify Him, to remove the guilt and the stain of his sin. That’s the third point about sin – it must be removed and cleansed by blood. This is what the Father did for us, sending His Son to shed His blood for our sin.

WHAT DAVID WAS PRAYING FOR

But not only must salvation be purchased by Christ on the cross – it has to be applied to the individual believer in his own life. The ritual we just talked about didn’t end with the death of the bird – its blood had to be sprinkled on the leper, applied to the leper. The work of Christ is followed by the work of the Spirit. It’s not enough that sin be paid for – the whole purpose of salvation is not just to rescue sinners from hell, but to restore them to the service of God’s glory.
David realized this. He dredged the depths of his own heart and brought up filth and evil. He was shocked and appalled at what he turned out to be capable of. Horrified and guilt-stricken, he turned to God in prayer, and asked – asked for what?

For help in doing better? No.
For better luck next time? No.

No, David recognized the root of the problem. He saw the source of the evil in his life in his lyin’, cheatin’ heart. He didn’t adopt the twenty-first century attitude – that given the right conditions, the right encouragement, and enough self-esteem, that the good in him would triumph. David knew that there was no good in the heart of man, except for God’s grace.

And so he prayed for the only thing that would help – he prayed for a clean heart.

What I want to draw your attention to is the parallel between his appeal for a clean heart in verses 10-12, and his description of the heart the God desires in verse 17. There, David rules out the idea that sacrifices and rituals can cover sin or cause God to accept a sinner. What kind of sacrifice will God accept? A broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, he says.

Is he talking about two different things? Is he saying that he is approaching God with a broken and contrite heart, so that God will give him a clean heart? Well, David is certainly broken. He’s contrite – that means repentant and ashamed. But I don’t think these are two different things. David is ashamed and disgusted by the state of his heart right now – otherwise, he wouldn’t be asking for a clean one!

No, David is confessing that what God requires – a broken and contrite heart – is something he does not have. How horrible he must have felt here! Not only has his own heart, his own nature, betrayed him and thrown him into the depths of sin – he’s also realized that, as guilty and broken as he feels about that sin, it’s still only the guilt and shame and sorrow of a sinful and wicked heart. It’s not enough! A broken and contrite heart God will not despise – but my heart isn’t that! My heart led me into sin! My shame and my guilt are not enough!

As Paul said, “Who will deliver me from this body of sin and death?”

That’s why he cries out for mercy at the very beginning – he can’t earn God’s favor. All he can do is plead for God’s grace, in hopes that God will Himself make David acceptable in His eyes. That’s the essence of Christian salvation – and it’s the essence of the Christian life after the point of salvation, too. David recognizes that a willing spirit, one that desires to follow God, one that would be acceptable to God, is something only God can give him – “uphold me with a willing spirit.”

And there is hope. Yes, David knows his heart is unacceptable. But he is broken nonetheless. Not broken enough, maybe, not nearly as remorseful as he knows he should be. But there is shame and remorse, brokenness and guilt. These are signs that God is already beginning the process of reconciliation. If it is true that it is not I that does these things, but God working in me, that applies to guilt and shame as well.

Every one of us has screwed up, time and again. And when we do, it has consequences. We begin to doubt our own salvation – David says here, “Cast me not away… Take not your Holy Spirit.” When we fall into sin, God often will pull back from us a little, cause us to doubt and to search for Him again. God wants us in a position where we realize constantly that we need His grace to go on – that we simply can’t do it on our own.

There are Christians who believe that a sinless life is possible on this side of death. There is much truth in what they are saying – we all have the Holy Spirit, and God always gives us a way out. Sin is something that as believers we have power over – we don’t have to sin. But the Bible is quite clear that even Christians will continue to struggle with sin until death. The Apostle John wrote that “if anyone says he has no sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him.”

This is not an excuse for accepting sin as inevitable, though. Rather, we should look at that truth as a motivation to keep crying out to God, as David did, that He might give us clean hearts, that he might uphold us with a willing spirit. We must never grow complacent – we must always be stretching our arms out to God and pleading with Him for grace.

That’s the second message this passage has for us. We need God to create in us clean hearts. We need Him to uphold us with a willing spirit – to keep us on the straight and narrow by His strength. We can’t do it on our own!

HOW DAVID PRAYED FOR IT

Finally, we could all use a reminder of how God is to be approached after sin. Psalm 51 is possibly the best advice anyone could offer to a Christian grappling with his relationship with God after sin. Is anyone struggling with their walk with God? Does anyone lack joy and wish for God to restore it unto them? If anyone here has sinned and wishes to restore their fellowship with God, this passage is for you. How does a Christian who has drifted from God restore that relationship? What should we ask for? Let’s walk through the psalm and point out a few valuable lessons.

First, notice how David begins his prayer. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness.” This is the Biblical sinner’s prayer – a heartfelt cry for mercy. We think of Jesus’ parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee in the synagogue, where the tax collector prays by saying, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

David pleads for mercy because he knows he deserves punishment. It’s an act of humility. We would do well to remember that in our own prayers. Every breath we take is a gift from God’s hand, and when we sin, the only hope we have is God’s mercy. A humble reliance on that mercy is what we call faith. So that’s the first practical point – beg God for mercy. He is merciful and compassionate!

Next, he confesses his sinfulness. Not only does he confess the specific sin – he mentions bloodguiltiness in verse 14 – but he confesses and takes responsibility for his sinful condition. For his sinful nature. That nature belongs to all of us. It’s ours. And it is our responsibility to deal with it, in the power God provides. Confessing our sins and our sinfulness humbles us before God, because it reminds us that He is pure and perfect and that we do not meet that standard – that we need His help. That’s the second step – confess your sins!

Third, he asks to be purified – to be washed clean. For the Christian, forgiveness of sins is not enough. No – it’s not enough! Not only do we need forgiveness from sin, but we need freedom from it. Whenever the Bible talks about freedom, it means freedom from evil and sin. God has saved us for a purpose – to raise up a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works! Mere forgiveness would get us out of hell, but it won’t enable us to serve God or to live a life that glorifies him. Forgiveness from sin is one thing – cleansing from it and the power to resist it are another. We need both, and we need to constantly ask God for both. We need to ask God to purify us from our sins.

Fourth, he does not complain about the consequences of his sin. David paid dearly for his sin. On top of losing a friend and a solid warrior in Uriah, he was publicly humiliated by the prophet Nathan. Worst of all, his infant son died after only seven days, just as God had promised. David paid dearly for his sin. Did he object? Not in the least. He admitted that God was righteous in his judgment in verse 4. God was in the right, he said. Even more, in verse 8 he asked God that the bones that had been broken would rejoice – in other words, that David might be given strength and wisdom to rejoice in the discipline he had received! When God sends consequences our way, we drop to our knees, we confess that God is right in His judgment, and ask that we may come to accept and rejoice in the discipline that points us back to Him. We don’t complain – we rejoice in God’s discipline.

We’ve already looked at David’s request for a clean heart – one not only free from sin, but one that is as broken and contrite as God requires. Why does David ask this? For himself? Actually, no. The reason David gives for his prayers and requests is not self-centred. It’s God-centred. We would do well to pay attention here. Why does David ask for a clean heart, for a renewed spirit? Verse 13 – then I will teach sinners your ways, and they will be converted to you.” Verse 14 and 15 – that I might declare your righteousness and sing your praise. Why is David asking for a clean heart? That through him, God may be glorified! Do you want to teach sinners God’s ways? Do you want to see unbelievers come to faith? Do you want your praise and worship to be meaningful and edifying? You need a clean heart and a right spirit. Cry out to God for it! Ask Him for it for His sake, not yours! Pray in His name – not yours! Even a prayer for restoration and forgiveness like this is done for God’s glory – like everything should be!

And finally, look to verse 18. David prays for Zion – that’s Jerusalem – that God might be good to them. David did not forget what we all to often fail to remember, and that’s this: Our sin has consequences not just for us, but for others as well. Our sin affects not just our own spiritual selves, but the spiritual walks of those around us. When our foolishness and selfishness brings calamity down, it often causes collateral damage. God warned His people that the punishment for sin would follow them down to the third and fourth generation. Don’t ever forget this, especially within the context of the church, and those who have wives and husbands and children. When we approach God to ask for forgiveness and restoration, we cannot forget those who have been affected by our sin.

CONCLUSION

We stumble and we fall. As long as we have sin in our hearts, as long as we live in this fallen world, we will struggle with temptation and sin, and sometimes we may lose the fight. And when that happens, our relationship with our Heavenly Father suffers. God grows more distant as the Holy Spirit is grieved. Psalm 51 teaches us that restoration and reconciliation are necessary – and that, for the one who cries for mercy out of faith in God, it is a sure hope.

Sitting here this morning, it might be you who has sinned and needs that restoration. Or you may be like the city of Zion, whose pain and suffering David also prayed for. Maybe you’re one of those harmed by the selfishness and thoughtlessness of another. And that sin committed by another has you struggling with your own relationship with God. You have the same hope! The same God who not only waits to hear your prayer, but moves to make your prayer possible in the first place! Who begins the process of healing and restoration before you even think to ask – for how could we ask at all, without the grace of God working through us? Perhaps you do not have because you do not ask. With God, all things are possible. Cry out to Him!

Don’t ever despair. David saw the worst of what man can do, and it came straight from the depths of his own heart. But God, who is faithful – remember, it depends on God – drew him out of the depths and restored him. If David could be restored after such a fall, then nothing you have done is beyond the healing power of God. Cry out to him! Cry for mercy!

- Jeff Jones

Thoughts on the Gospel

The Gospel is the heart of Christianity. It is the core of Christian theology. Other important doctrines and teachings exist, and we can and do get them wrong; but if we get this wrong, the consequences are eternally fatal. As Paul said, this is of “first importance.” (1 Corinthians 15:1)

And if we get it right? The Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation.” (Romans 1:16).

I’ve been thinking on this as I prepare my next sermon. I thought I’d share a few key insights.

THE NATURE OF THE GOSPEL

1. The Gospel is more than an offer; it is a COMMAND. When we stand before people (and before God) and present the message, we plead with them to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Yet this plea is not like that of a desperate boyfriend looking for his girlfriend to marry him; it is the plea of the King’s messenger to His own rebel subjects to lay down their arms before He has to destroy them. We implore them because God takes no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). As Paul said, God now commands everyone everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). We plead and implore, yes, but we do so with AUTHORITY.

2. The Gospel commands REPENTANCE. The Gospel involves turning away from sin. It involves a recognition of one’s sinfulness and recoiling from it, running instead to Christ. This repentance is not optional; it is a duty, a command to be obeyed (Acts 17:30), and failure to do so is sin. We must command sinners to repent.

3. The Gospel is, first and foremost, about FORGIVENESS OF SIN. It’s interesting that though many modern evangelistic presentations begin with statements like “Jesus loves you,” not one of the evangelistic presentations recorded in the New Testament ever uses those terms. There are 13 evangelistic presentations recorded in Acts (Acts 2:14-39, 3:12-26, 4:8-12, 5:29-32, 7:1-60, 10:34-43, 13:16-41, 17:22-31, 22:1-21, 23:1-6, 24:24-25, 26:1-29) A look at them does not reveal even one mention of God’s love, but eight of them emphasize forgiveness and ALL of them mention sin, guilt, or darkness. To preach the Gospel without telling unbelievers of their sin is to fail to preach the Gospel at all.

4. The hope of the Gospel is the RESURRECTION. Modern evangelism tends to emphasize the Cross, and Jesus’ death on our behalf. This is not wrong. However, Jesus did not stay on the Cross – God raised Him to life. A look at the above 13 evangelistic presentations in Acts shows that all but two talk about resurrection. Christ’s resurrection vindicated His claims to be the Messiah and to being God. We must emphasize Christ raised!

5. Certain truths are essential to the Gospel. “For I delivered to you as of FIRST IMPORTANCE what I also received: that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS in accordance with the Scriptures, 4that HE WAS BURIED, that HE WAS RAISED on the third day IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve… 8Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But BY THE GRACE OF GOD I AM WHAT I AM, and HIS GRACE TOWARD ME WAS NOT IN VAIN. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though IT WAS NOT I, BUT THE GRACE OF GOD that is with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-5, 8-10)

See that these things are of first importance. They are essentials that cannot be removed from the Gospel.

THE ESSENTIALS ACCORDING TO PAUL

According to 1 Corinthians 15:

1. Christ died and was buried.

2. If He died, He was mortal – thus He was a man. Denying Jesus came in the flesh is to deny the faith entirely (1 John 4:2-3).

3. Christ died for OUR SINS. We are sinners. A person who denies he is a sinner cannot be saved – knowledge of one’s sin is vital for salvation (1 John 1:10). Again, a Gospel proclamation that does not confront sin is not a Gospel proclamation.

4. Christ died FOR our sins. Christ was punished as our substitute (Isaiah 53). He died in our place, taking the wrath of God that we deserved. Note that our sins had to be punished – they could not be simply ignored or forgotten. God is a holy God.

5. He was raised from the dead. Christ has the power to lay down His life AND to take it up again (John 10:18). This proves two things. First, we have assurance that death is not the end – we will be raised again. Second, only God can give life to the dead. Jesus, by taking up His life again, proves He is God.

6. This was all in accordance with the Scriptures. The Gospel presupposes the authority of the Bible. Rejection of the Bible’s authority is incompatible with salvation.

7. It is by the grace of God that a saved person is what He is. God saves; we don’t. Salvation is a gift; it is not earned or deserved. Salvation is, from beginning to end, the work of God, for even our efforts toward salvation (faith, repentance) are but the grace of God working through us. We can take no credit or praise for our salvation.

8. God’s grace is not in vain. God cannot fail. He cannot be defeated. This is important, for if God can fail in His grace toward anyone, what assurance do we have that His grace toward us will not be in vain? Who is to say, if His grace can fail, that we really will be raised from the dead and given eternal life?

May God bless you by these thoughts.

Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone Be The Glory)

- Jeff Jones

How God’s Law Matters: Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon Manuscript – 6 May 2007

I have noticed, as I’ve gotten to know more and more Christians, that many believers don’t know their Old Testaments well. Now, most of us know the famous stories – Noah and the ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion’s den. But how many believers really understand the Old Testament? How many really appreciate how both parts of the Bible fit together? How difficult is it for us to open our Bibles to the first two thirds and understand what we’re reading, how it matters, why it was written?

Jesus has a message for us about that. Today’s sermon is a look at the foundation of the Gospel, at a very important part of the Old Testament – the Law of God. The Gospel and the Law go together. To be a mature Christian, to be an effective witness for Christ, to faithfully share the hope that is within us, we have to know what the Law is and why it matters today.

This is a deep, deep passage. This could keep us busy for a while. But today I want to pull just two important truths out of it, and from those two truths I want to highlight four practical applications.

Before we do that, though, we need to understand what the Law is. Simply put, the Law is the rules God gave His people in the Old Testament, in the first five books of the Bible. For Christians, the law is tough because it’s so foreign. The Law talks a lot about animals being sacrificed, and what meats are unclean and cannot be eaten, and about stoning criminals to death. These are things that simply aren’t observed in the average church! Clearly, the first coming of Christ marked some kind of difference between then and now.

Some think the law wasn’t meant for the Church. It applied to Israel – Jesus gave different rules for the church. That’s a simple solution, but it’s just not right. People who think that the law was just for Israel forget a very important thing: God has only one people. The Church is the New Israel. There is one olive tree – the nation of Israel – and the Gentiles, the non-Jewish believers in Christ have been grafted into that tree while any unbelieving Jewish branches have been cut off. But there’s still only one tree. God does not have two peoples, Israel and the Church; and He doesn’t have two sets of rules.

Others think that the Law was temporary until Jesus came. Once he died and rose again, the Law was cancelled. It didn’t matter anymore. Well, that’s not right either. Jesus has some strong words here about that. He denies that He has come to cancel the Law. The word translated “cancel” can mean destroy, or demolish, or overthrow. Jesus is not destroying the Law. He is not overthrowing it. Jesus is not the enemy of the Law.

No, He came to fulfill it! Jesus was the culmination of the Law. The Law anticipated Him. It pointed to Him. The Law would have been pointless without Him. It would have been incomplete. Jesus was the only person who ever fully kept the Law, and He was the very reason the Law was given in the first place.

Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to destroy it. Even the tiniest words and letters will not pass away, He said. Jesus warns us not to relax the Law in the slightest. Obviously, the Law is important today. And this is where our first two points come from.

So here’s our first point. The Old Testament Law is vital for salvation. Now that sounds strange. We live by faith, right? We’re saved by faith, aren’t we? That’s what Christians believe – your works can’t save you, right?

Look at the final verse of our passage, though: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The scribes and Pharisees had obeying the law down to a science. They tithed not just their money, but the spices and herbs in their kitchens. They fasted twice a week. They loved the Law. They knew the Law. And in the eyes of the Jewish people, they were righteous. They were holy. They taught in the schools and in the synagogues. They were models and examples to everyone.

And yet Jesus tells the crowds, that’s not good enough. See the Pharisees? See how good they are at law-keeping? Guess what? Unless you’re better than that – you’re doomed. Unless your righteousness is even greater than that, you haven’t got a chance. At the end of chapter five, Jesus drills in this point with these words – words that should make every person tremble: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

More righteous than the Pharisees. Perfect as God Himself. That’s what God expects. That’s the standard. That’s the passing grade – one hundred percent, no less. The crowd listening must have thought, “This is impossible! How could anyone be saved?” And that’s the question, isn’t it? Like the disciples said, that day when Jesus declared it was easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, the disciples asked, “Then how can anyone be saved?” And the answer? “With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”

Here is the truth about salvation. The Law is necessary to be saved. God expects that His law be kept perfectly. He demands that all His commandments be fulfilled. Getting to heaven requires perfect obedience. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that salvation doesn’t involve obeying God.

And this is how obedience earns salvation: Jesus Christ was the obedient one. Not only did His Cross pay for the punishment of our sins – with God, it’s not enough to have the guilt taken away, to have the negatives removed. Before Christ, we had absolutely no righteousness at all – it was all sin. Even the good things we did counted as sin, because we did them for ourselves or for others, but not for God. Our so-called righteousness was as filthy rags! Christ’s blood removed the red ink, but if that had been all, we would have had nothing on that sheet.

It’s like a financial balance sheet. On one side is the black ink, the positives, the credits. On the other are the debits, the negatives, the red ink. Our sins are on the debit side – they count against us. Christ’s blood removes everything from that column. But because we can’t do any good of ourselves, we have nothing on the positive side. We have nothing to our credit!

For shareholders of a company, it’s not enough that the company simply breaks even. They desire that the company makes money – that there be a profit to show on the credit side. How much more, then, does God, who is perfect and just, desire that His people reflect His image and produce good works for Him? God wants more than an empty balance sheet.God requires more than just no sin. He requires righteousness. Christ’s death removed the negatives, and that brought us back to zero. But God wants more than zero. And that’s where obedience comes in. Christ lived a perfect and sinless life. He kept the Law. He obeyed the Law. And when we believe in Him, God not only counts our sins to His account, but He counts the obedience and the righteousness of Christ to ours. Christ bore our sins; we wear His perfect obedience. His righteousness becomes our credit.

Yes – the Law has to be obeyed to be saved. The Good News of the Gospel is that, even though we could never obey the Law perfectly, Jesus Christ has already done that for us. He obeyed the Law. He paid the price, and He gave us His righteousness. He did it all! That’s what it means when Jesus said He fulfills the Law.

And though I’m not done explaining this passage, I want to stop and stress this. If you haven’t believed in Christ – now’s the time. If you’re still trying to please God on your own – you can’t do it. If you’re thinking that you’re a pretty good person, and that you’re better than average, and that God will accept you for that – He won’t. The standard is perfection, and you’ve already failed. The only way is to stop relying on your own strength, to confess and repent of your sin, and to cry to Jesus for mercy. You must believe that Jesus came, became a man, died for sins as a substitute, and rose again from the dead. If you haven’t yet believed, don’t wait. Do it now!

So that’s my first point. The Old Testament Law is vital for salvation!

Second, the Old Testament Law is vital for Christian living. Yes, we’re saved. No, we cannot ever lose our salvation – as long as we are truly believers, as long as the faith that we place in Christ is a true and living faith. But then, once we’ve been saved, then what? How does the Law matter in our lives today? Didn’t Jesus take care of it? Does it apply to us today?

Look at the passage again. Jesus said, “Until heaven and earth pass away,” “until all is accomplished,” “not an iota” – the smallest letter – “or a dot” – the smallest stroke of a pen – will ever pass from the law. That’s the truth. That’s the principle. That’s the theology – the Law stands for all time.

And the application of that principle, the practical expression of that theology, is given by Jesus in the next verse: Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. We don’t relax the law!

If we’re not to relax the law, then it obviously still matters. If Jesus is telling us it is not to be taken lightly, then we are still to obey it and use it.

And we, of all people, have no excuse. Believers have the Holy Spirit. We have, in the words of Jeremiah 31, had God’s law written on our hearts. God will cause us to walk in His ways and keep His commands. We are born again! We no longer have hearts of stone! We are able to keep the law, now! The Spirit lives within us!

What about love, then? Isn’t the Christian faith about love, not law-keeping? Jesus spoke to that question. He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” That’s John 14:15.

So that’s our second truth: the Old Testament Law is vital for Christian living. How then shall we live? In light of what Jesus has told us about the Law of God, what are we to do?

First. We must know the Old Testament. We must read it and study it. The New Testament was never meant to be a stand-alone thing. It’s like going to high school without finishing elementary – your teachers may be able to help you scrape by, but you will never fully understand the material. You can’t properly understand the New Testament unless you have a grasp of what God was doing in the Old. It’s that simple.

So know the Old Testament. Read the stories – Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Joshua and the Judges and David and the Kings and the prophets. That will help you grasp the plot of the Bible. Read the poems and the songs – the psalms and Lamentations and the Song of Solomon – so you understand the mood, the emotions, of the people of God. Read the prophecies – those in Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and others – so you see God’s promises and how they were kept. Above all, read the Law – read through Exodus and Deuteronomy, to start. There you will see God’s holy standard. There you will discover what God’s true will for His people is – that they may be holy, as God is holy.

Study the Old Testament. Know the Old Testament.

Second. We must keep the law. How do we do that? Listen to what it says. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart – He must be your deepest desire, your highest joy. With all your soul – He must be your highest commitment, your highest value. With all your mind – everything you do with your mind must be done in service to Him. We must seek to know and understand Him and His Word more fully every day. With all your strength – all these things must be done wholeheartedly, never looking back, never giving in, never slowing down. All to God and all for God.

And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Simply, we must consider one another better than ourselves. We must be unselfish, always seeking to place the needs of others ahead of our own. We must treat them the way that we would like to be treated ourselves, value them the way we value ourselves, honour them as we honour ourselves and would like to be honoured.

This is God’s will for our lives – that we love Him by keeping His commandments. We have the Spirit; we can do it. We must keep the law.

Third. We must never relax the standards we have been given. We just don’t have the authority to reduce God’s law. In some specific instances, God has seen fit to set aside a specific command of the law – Jewish dietary restrictions, for instance. But in any and all cases where this is not done, the Law still stands – not as a means of earning salvation, but as a standard we strive to achieve. We honour and worship God by honouring and obeying His law. May we never be found relaxing the Law of God!

Fourth. We must use the Law in evangelism. The Gospel is good news – but it is good news because of the bad news. The bad news is this: There is none righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death.

In evangelism, the first task – a vital task – is to explain to the unbeliever that they are a sinner, and that they are under a death sentence. How do we do this? We share with them God’s holy standard. We tell them the law. The Ten Commandments are a great summary when used in evangelism – every human being has dishonoured their parents at one point, or lied, or desired something that was not theirs, or taken a cookie from the jar when Mom wasn’t looking. The Ten Commandments and the two greatest commandments, when shared, convict the unbeliever – showing him that he is not good enough. The Law demonstrates that we are helpless and unable to save ourselves. And thus, the Law prepares the way for the Gospel – the Good News that God has sent a Saviour to do what we could never do ourselves.

To do this, we must know the law. That’s a great reason to memorize the Ten Commandments, if you haven’t already done so. We must use the Law in evangelism.

So we’re going to close today by doing something different. I’m going to read the Ten Commandments, from the first 17 verses of Exodus 20:

1And God spoke all these words, saying,

2″I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3″You shall have no other gods before me.

4″You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7″You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

8″Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12″Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

13″You shall not murder.

14″You shall not commit adultery.

15″You shall not steal.

16″You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

17″You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (ESV)

- Jeff Jones

Worship Has Life and Death Importance: 2 Samuel 6:1-9

Sermon Manuscript – April 22, 2007

One of the hardest things I ever had to do was to learn to speak another language. Those of you who have had to do this can sympathize, I am sure. For me, it was French. It was tough! Even after taking it for years in elementary and high school, I struggled with it in college. For me, it was a requirement to graduate. Be functionally bilingual, pass a government proficiency test, or you don’t get your diploma. As Winston Churchill said, “The threat of death concentrates the mind wonderfully.” Well, it should have helped, but I still only managed to meet the requirement halfway through my fourth year – just months before graduation.

But I’m glad I did it. It taught me a lot.

Here’s something I learned. In English, there is only one second-person pronoun. In other words, if I address an individual or a group, I will call them “you.” Mike – it’s good to see you. Guys, it’s good to see you. It’s the same with both individuals and groups. In the first person, there is a difference – I and we. In the third, there’s a difference – he or she, and they. But second? You and you.

See, French does have the distinction in the second person. Singular is tu, while the plural is vous. So it’s like most other languages that way. But in French, there’s an added meaning to these terms. It’s not just a difference between number – singular and plural. It’s also familiarity and closeness, a difference between informal and formal use. You would use vous to address individuals if you don’t know them or if they are your superior – in formal contexts. You use the normal singular tu with friends and family. So I would address my franco buddies as tu, but when I addressed a francophone officer senior to me, like a major or a colonel, I would always use vous. With me so far?

That’s a big difference from English. And yet, culturally, there’s an important similarity between French and English speakers. See, ours is an irreverent culture. Pop culture glorifies rebellion, and arrogance, and a disdain for authority. It’s the same in the francophone culture. I remember reading a French newspaper article about public schools, where the teachers were complaining that the students no longer bothered addressing them by the formal vous. Instead, they used tu. The teachers were concerned that it was undercutting their authority, contributing to an atmosphere of informality and irreverence in the classroom.

That rings a bell in my ears. That message is like a drumbeat in our culture. Like in the eighties – “stick it to the man!!” Young people hardly bother to vote, but they turn out in droves to riot and smash windows when a political leader comes to visit. We caricature politicians as dishonest and policemen as incompetent, but exalt Playboy models and drug-imbibing rock stars as our cultural heroes.

We are an irreverent society. And I fear that Christians today, prone as they are to take their cues from culture instead of Scripture, are careless in how they teach and preach and model reverence in the church. I feel sometimes that in our worship, especially, we are all too often like those schoolkids in Quebec – we’ve substituted familiarity and informality for reverence and respect. Just compare the worship choruses of today with the hymns of old, and you’ll see my point.

What happens when God’s people take God’s power and authority for granted? What’s the risk we assume when we forget God’s holiness and righteousness – especially in the way we serve and worship Him?

Sadly, this isn’t a new problem. Our text today is a terrifying example of God’s reaction to such carelessness. Let’s set the stage a little.

Israel’s greatest king, David, had a problem. The Tabernacle, the physical centre of Israelite worship, was in one place – Shechem. The ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence and power, was in another – a little town on the Philistine border. David wanted to consolidate these in his new capital, Jerusalem – eventually in a temple he would decide to build – and therefore unify the country.

So he decided to go get the ark. Thinking like a soldier, he musters a massive force to escort the ark. Thirty thousand men. That’s a big force, even today – the U.S. military does not even have that many men fighting the war in Afghanistan right now. David wants to protect the ark from any Philistine interference. If they were to attack and take the ark, even destroy it, it would be a massive symbolic victory. So the ark needed a strong force to guard it – this is the soldier thinking.

The politician was also thinking. The force was composed of men from all twelve tribes. This was a national undertaking, another unifying event. It was a symbol of the united Israelite nation, serving their God together.

With this huge show of force, David meant to show his respect and concern for the ark. He decided to do something else to show this, as well. And this is where he went wrong. He has the ark put on a cart, drawn by oxen. It was a shiny new cart, to be sure. Brand new. Well-built. A worthy mode of transportation for God’s throne, right?

Except that God had already made crystal clear how He wanted the ark to be carried. And He did not mention a cart anywhere in His instructions. This was the first mistake. David didn’t bother consulting God about the matter first. Specifically, he didn’t go to God’s word, the Law. God had made it very clear in His Scriptures how he was to be worshiped. How the objects associated with His worship were to be handled. The ark was not to be carried on a cart. God had given detailed instructions, telling His people that the ark was to be carried on the shoulders of Levites. David should have known that. But he didn’t. Why? David didn’t go to his Bible, his copy of the law that as king he was supposed to have written out with his own hand for his own use.

No. David’s first mistake was to assume that God hadn’t spoken specifically to this situation in the Scriptures. Even as a believer in God, even as a prophet in his own right and the leader of God’s people, David had no authority to ignore the Scriptures and do things his own way.

How often do we jump into things without looking in God’s Word first? How often do Christians plan things in the church and in their lives without thinking that maybe God’s Word has something to say about it? Especially in worship! God cares about His worship! We can’t make the mistake of assuming God hasn’t spoken.

David’s second mistake was maybe even worse than the first. David didn’t go to God’s Word to guide his service – that was the first. He didn’t do something he should have – that was the first. The second – well, David did something he shouldn’t have. His second mistake was to take his cue in what he did do from the culture around him. The Ark had been carried on a cart before, and it’s probably not a coincidence that David chose to do so again. But the first time, the cart was the idea of Philistine religious leaders. Pagan priests. Tired of plagues and disasters, wanting nothing more to do with the ark they had captured, they sent the ark back to Israel on a cart drawn by oxen. That time, it worked out great. The Philistines were delivered from their plagues. The Israelites got the ark back. Everyone’s happy.

But the Philistines were ignorant. They had no Law. They had no Levites to carry the ark. They simply acted as best they knew how. But for God’s people, ignorance isn’t an excuse. For God’s people, improvisation just isn’t enough. God has spoken by His prophets and His Law. The people of God are supposed to know better, to take their lead in worship and service from the Scriptures God gave them. They aren’t supposed to blindly imitate the culture in their worship.

Does that sound familiar? How many of us have made the mistake of thinking that worship is something we do to attract unbelievers, something we do to entertain seekers? How many Christians look at worship as a show they put on for the culture, assume that God is pleased with just anything they can think up? How often do believers, with good intentions, try to baptize and sanctify things they’ve seen in the world and bring them into the sanctuary?

See, that was David’s second mistake – assuming that he, as a human being, had the right to improvise new ways to serve God in worship. He carelessly ignored the Scriptures – number one – and he opted for the ways of men – number two.

What was the result? Disaster struck. Marching along the road, music playing, drums beating, people celebrating, the procession hits a literal bump in the road. The oxen stumble.

Our author reports this almost clinically, in passing. But – there is not one rogue atom in God’s universe. All things happen in accordance with His will. God has ordained everything that has ever happened, everything that will happen. Nothing comes to pass outside of His plan. Do you think those oxen stumbling was some kind of accident? That God’s eyes wandered off the road His ark was driving on? The oxen stumbled. And Uzzah fears for the ark. What if it fell? What if this gleaming golden box was muddied by touching the dirt? What if the fall damaged the ark?

Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark. And he was struck dead. This seems so harsh, doesn’t it. He was just trying to help! He was seeking to honour God! To protect an object of His worship! Don’t intentions matter more than deeds? Doesn’t God care more about spirit and truth than ceremony and rules?

But – that’s the wrong perspective.

When God’s people forget God’s Word, or lose their trust in it to guide and regulate their worship, it is a most dangerous thing. When they turn to human methods instead, it’s even worse. When we fail to consider our service to God through His eyes, from His point of view, and when we make our decisions and do our thing by our own standards and assumptions, we miss what matters to God.

We see this tendency to see things through men’s eyes and not God’s in Uzzah’s actions. Uzzah, like David, made two fatal mistakes. First, he forgot God’s sovereignty. Uzzah knew the stories of the ark’s capture by the Philistines and its return after plagues and sickness. He should have realized that God is perfectly capable of defending His own glory. Uzzah forgot that God was sovereign.

And in forgetting God’s sovereignty, God’s control of all things – even the small things, like bumps on the road and the footsteps of oxen – Uzzah assumed that things depended on him. If Uzzah had remembered God’s sovereignty, he might have wondered why God would allow the oxen to stumble. He might have realized that maybe there was a purpose in it. Uzzah might have perceived this bump in the road as God’s way of stopping the procession, of saying, “That’s enough. I’m not happy. Start over.”

Second, Uzzah forgot God’s holiness. Uzzah, in thinking that the problem was the ark falling off the cart, lost sight of what really mattered to God. It’s not simply that God can protect the ark Himself. It’s what God desires to protect it from. God wasn’t concerned about the ark getting dirty. It’s not dirt that matters. God made dirt. God likes dirt. He made Adam from dirt. Jesus used dirt to heal the eyesight of a blind man.

Dirt doesn’t sin. Dirt doesn’t rebel against the will of God. Dirt doesn’t neglect God’s commands and expectations, or try to do things its own way. But men do.

God is far less concerned about getting mud on his throne than He is with an impure and sinful human being defiling His presence. Uzzah did the unthinkable – he violated the holiness of God. The ark, the symbol of God’s authority, the place where the blood of sacrifice for sins was sprinkled by the priests – carelessly touched by a sinful man. A man who forgot God’s holiness.

The issue isn’t even the ark – it’s what it represents. Look at the passage. The ark didn’t kill Uzzah. This wasn’t some automatic or mechanical reaction, like a child touching a live wire. God killed Uzzah. Personally. His anger was kindled, burned, glowing with holy rage. God executed a man who stepped across a line that man may not cross. God’s holiness was violated, and God cares deeply about His purity.

This is a truth that simply screams to be applied in the Christian church today. How often are we careless with our worship? Do we ever stop and think that what we do on Sunday morning, when God’s people gather to glorify Him, is a life or death matter? When we as a church approach the throne of God, how do we do this? As self-confident individuals walking in like we own the place? Or as forgiven rebels and criminals approaching the high and exalted throne of a perfect and spotless God?

God cares how He is worshiped. Several times in the Bible, he has had to impress His people, by an act of judgment, with a true and proper reverence and awe for His holiness. Look in Acts – at the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They tried to use an act of worship for personal gain, to exalt themselves rather than God. What was the result? God killed them. He took their lives. Because they defiled what should have been holy and set apart with sinful motives. Because they were evil in the midst of a people God was working to make holy.

It doesn’t stop there. Paul later has to admonish the troublesome Corinthian church to treat the Lord’s Supper with respect. The Corinthians had made it into a drunken party. They treated Communion as a chance to fill their bellies and have a good time. They saw God’s worship as a means to meet their own needs and satisfy their own desires instead of as an opportunity to honour a Holy God. What was the result? Read First Corinthians. Some had fallen ill. Some had even died. God had taken their lives. God had executed them for their sin.

God’s holiness is a deadly serious matter. How we worship God matters to Him. He spent three thousand years revealing Himself and His will to us in Scripture so that we might know how to honour Him in spirit AND in truth. God’s worship belongs to Him, not to us. God decides what is acceptable worship, not us. And He’s made it clear in the Bible, what He wants and what He doesn’t. God wants spiritual songs and acts of kindness. He does not want child sacrifice or images in worship. God desires a humble heart that throws itself before His mercy, not a proud one that thinks it has something to add to God’s treasures. God wants a people dedicated to His glory and His praise, not one obsessed with their own comfort and entertainment!

So many years I thought worship was about us. About me feeling good. About what I could bring, rather than what He has done. For so long I profaned the holy duty of worship by trying to do it on my terms and not on God’s. Trying to entertain myself and others, by my standards, rather than give glory and honour to God on His.

And when I read this passage, it terrifies me. God has the power of life and death. My next breath and my next heartbeat will be gifts from His hand. I live and breathe at His pleasure. And if He is a God for whom holiness is a life and death matter, for whom an insult to the purity of His worship can cost a man his life, then this passage needs my attention.

Walter Brueggemann once put it this way: “when people are no longer awed, respectful, or fearful of God’s holiness, the community is put at risk.”

We are the people of God. We are the Bride of His beloved Son. This is our burden! God’s honour and holiness are our concern! And we are expected, required, to know better!

God’s worship is not ours to treat any way we please. God’s holiness is not some trifle for lip service only. We must fear the Lord. We must reverence Him, be awed before Him. We must worship Him as He has demanded, not make up new ways on our own.

So let us not neglect our duty. Let us be, like Apollos, “strong in the Scriptures.” Let us seek every day, even and especially in those things we have done the same way for many years, to look at things through the lens of God’s truth, through the prism of His Word. As we worship God, may we never be so arrogant as to assume that we have the authority or the right or the ability to decide without reference to Scripture what is acceptable worship. In everything we do, let us ever remember He is holy, holy, holy.

- Jeff Jones

What’s In A Name? Ruth 4:1-12

Sermon Manuscript – 1 April 2007

When my wife and I found out that she was pregnant, we were faced with a big decision. Having a child makes you face many decisions, actually – what car seat to buy, what furniture to buy used and what to buy new, whether to find out if it’s a boy or girl, and so on. But perhaps the most enduring decision that parents make is what to name their little boy or girl.

I say the name, because practically every other decision we make will undergo a change over the course of a baby’s life. You’ll get more than one car seat – we did – and eventually he’ll not need it anymore. The baby furniture eventually gets replaced with a twin-size bed and the change table with a real dresser. I know that in our twisted age parents can make a so-called “choice” not to have the child at all, but ours is a God who knows all things and raises the dead, and judges sins like that; and so even that decision doesn’t endure past the frontier of this life.

And while people can get a legal name change and so on, the person never fully leaves their birth name behind – it still exists in government documents, on vital statistics, and so forth.

What’s more, the Bible shows God interacting with people using the names that their parents gave them, with only a few exceptions.

How significant that decision becomes when you look at it that way! My wife and I agonized over the decision. We eventually settled on Caden, which is a Celtic name that means “fighter,” at least partly because we nearly lost him in the third month of pregnancy. Names often represent the hopes and dreams of the parents, reflecting the qualities that they value and hope the child will have.

In the Bible, names have deep significance – far more than we attach to them today. For example, the name “Jesus” is actually, in Greek and in Hebrew, the same name as “Joshua,” which means “he who saves.” Jesus’ very name described His mission on this earth, a mission of salvation – to live a perfect life that we could not do ourselves and to give His own life as a substitute for those of His people as punishment for their sins.

Other names are also meaningful. Peter means “rock.” Abraham “father of a multitude,” Isaac means “he laughs” – because his mother laughed at God’s promise that she would be pregnant.

So when the Bible gives a name, one of the first things a Bible student does is to check what the meaning of that name is – if, in fact, it is known to us. Some we don’t – Ruth is a good example, because we’re not sure what it means. It seems, though, that the name Boaz means “strength,” “man of strength” or something similar. It’s an apt description of the man we read about in these pages.

Names are important in the Bible, because they were important to the ancient people whose lives are recorded in it. So when someone’s name is conspicuously absent, left out, we should notice. When the Bible fails to name someone when everyone else’s names are given, it means something.

Every significant character in the book of Ruth is named. We have Boaz, Ruth, Naomi. We even have Naomi’s husband Elimilech and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, who die in the first five verses. There’s a genealogy at the end of the book full of names. Every important character in Ruth has a name recorded by the author.

With one very glaring exception.

Who is it that Boaz is negotiating with at the gate? What is his name? The author doesn’t tell us.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, he doesn’t name the foreman in Boaz’s field, either, or the elders at the gate, or the other townspeople.” No, he doesn’t. But they didn’t play important roles in the story.

And this isn’t a simple matter of forgetting or overlooking the name. The author deliberately leaves it out. Our English Bibles have Boaz address the other man in verse 1 like this: “Turn aside, friend.” The English doesn’t translate the Hebrew well here. Boaz doesn’t say “friend.” The author literally records it like this in Hebrew: “Boaz said, Turn aside, Mr. So-and-so.”

The author of Ruth deliberately and conspicuously and obviously addresses this man not by his real name, but by a vague, indefinite word. Boaz knew the man’s name, obviously. No doubt he actually said the real name during this transaction. But the author, and the Holy Spirit who inspired him, chose to leave out this name.

Why?

Mr. So-and-so was a redeemer. That’s a person with the responsibility to help out a family member in financial or legal trouble. A kinsman-redeemer had a legal and moral duty to buy relatives out of slavery – with his own money, to buy back family land that was sold outside the clan in times of financial trouble, to defend a relative in court, and to see that justice was done on behalf of relatives. Mr. So-and-so had a big responsibility.

And in our passage, Boaz confronts him and reminds him that his relative, Naomi, was in trouble and was disposing of family land because she needed money. Boaz reminds Mr. So-and-so that he was first in line to take on the responsibility of getting the land back for the family.

At this point, Mr. So-and-so thinks, “Well, okay. Elimilech, the original owner, is gone now. Both his sons are dead. He has no descendants. If I buy the land, there aren’t any heirs to it. I can add this land to my own estate. It will pay for itself over the next few years. Not a bad deal at all – spend a little now, but get a great investment property! I’ll take it!”

And so he says, “I will redeem it.”

Poor Ruth. If she was standing there, her heart must have just sunk. Boaz had already said that he would respect Mr. So-and-so’s decision. The hope of marrying this caring, gentle, generous man was gone.

But Boaz wasn’t done. He brings another matter into the picture. “If you redeem the land, you also take the responsibility of Ruth.”

She’s the widow of the dead man’s son. She’s young enough to have children. And now Mr. So-and-so realizes what he’s getting into. Jewish custom demanded that a widow be provided with an heir – that she be married in order to have a child who would legally count as the dead man’s heir.

But if that happens, the investment becomes a liability. Not only is Mr. So-and-so buying land, but he’ll be paying to support two new family members – Ruth and Naomi. He’ll be required to take Ruth as his wife. He’ll be expected to have a kid with her. And that child will inherit the land he bought – the land he redeemed.

In short, he’ll pay out of his own pocket to buy land and support two, eventually three, people who will inherit that land without ever paying him back for it. His inheritance – his estate – will be badly hurt. This is a potentially huge financial loss.

What should he do? The Law required that these women be redeemed, and the property of Mr. So-and-so’s dead relative with it. Why was this so important? Because without an heir for Naomi, the NAME of her husband Elimilech will disappear forever. He will have no descendants. He will have no posterity. He will have no grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live on his land and keep his memory alive. His family will be blotted out of history.

For an ancient Jew, there could be no greater loss, no greater catastrophe than the loss of one’s name from history. That was the whole point of the law of redemption – to save a family and its name, its history, its memories, its accomplishments from extinction.

The fate of his relative’s family name rested in Mr. So-and-so’s hands. His moral and legal duty was to keep it alive, even though it would cost him dearly.

But Boaz had already said he was willing. That’s a load off Mr. So-and-so’s shoulders! Let Boaz deal with it! Let Boaz take on the financial burden – he’s got money. He can handle it.

And that’s what he does. The community accepts the decision. Ruth and Naomi are redeemed and taken care of. Boaz gets a wife of noble character. And Mr. So-and-so’s inheritance is intact. Everyone’s happy, right?

This was all God’s plan from the beginning. God raised up Ruth and Boaz in order to put them together. Their descendants would include David and Jesus Christ himself. And yet the Holy Spirit, who inspired the writing of this book, still chose to call this other man Mr. So-and-so, rather than use his real name.

How ironic. The man who had the responsibility to rescue his brother’s family name, who was so concerned with guarding his own inheritance and keeping his own name intact, is now known to all generations as Mr. So-and-so. A man with no name.

He may have had the legal right to hand his responsibility off to Boaz. But that doesn’t change his moral obligation to Ruth and Naomi. It was his responsibility. His duty. And by leaving this man’s name out of the book, God expresses his displeasure at a man who put worldly concerns about inheritance and wealth above his spiritual responsibility to look after his relatives.

In verse 6, Mr. So-and-so refuses to redeem because his concern is with his own inheritance. In verse 10, Boaz tells us he’s redeeming because his concern is with the inheritance of his relatives. Mr. So-and-so was selfish. Boaz was selfless. Mr. So-and-so’s action cost him nothing in worldly terms, but earned him an eternal rebuke. Boaz’s action cost him a great deal in worldly wealth. But it gave him a place in the family line of Jesus Christ, and a role in the salvation of the world.

Boaz gave up a lot to redeem his bride. It must have cost a great deal. A thousand years later, his descendant, Jesus, was faced with a very similar choice. It would cost Jesus his very life, the suffering of an agonizing death, three days in a cold grave, to redeem His bride. Christ did not have to go to the Cross. Jesus never sinned. He didn’t deserve to die. Only sinners do. Jesus may have had the legal right to pass on this responsibility. Yet He did not. He told His disciples, “No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, even as He prayed that God might provide another way, He humbly submitted to His call of redemption: “Your will be done.”

Out of love – love for God, love for God’s law, love for his family, love for Ruth – Boaz cheerfully paid the price and bought his bride out of poverty. Boaz did God’s will. And out of love of His Father, love for His holiness, love for His Creation, and especially love for His people – His Church – Jesus Christ cheerfully paid the price and bought us, His bride, out of the poverty and slavery of sin and death.

We don’t know Mr. So-and-so’s name today, because he wasn’t concerned about his relatives and their name. We know the name of Boaz, because he put saving his relatives’ family name ahead of his own wealth and comfort.

And through that act of faithfulness, God raised up Him whose name is above all other names, Jesus Christ, who made Himself nothing in order to save us all.

What will you be remembered for? Will you be like Mr. So-and-so, putting worldly concerns and worries about money and security and wealth ahead of your duties to God?

There’s nothing down that road. Jesus warns everyone who would be called by His name, saying this: Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your NAME, and cast out demons in your NAME, and do many mighty works in your NAME?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me.” You have no name!

Or will you be like Boaz, remembered for giving so much for others expecting nothing in return? Who understood that God gave him so much so that he could be a blessing to others? Who realized that the only reason God gave him money and fields and servants and influence and wealth in the first place was so that he might give it away to rescue two helpless women?

Jesus Christ is calling us to deny ourselves. To take up our crosses. The Gospel is NOT a promise of easy living. It is not an offer of worldly comfort. No! The Gospel is a promise of suffering and pain and self-denial! We are not saved from hell for our own sake – we are saved for Christ’s sake! To be a people zealous for good works! TO be sold out for God and for others!

Boaz was the type of person that Jesus later would be in His life, an Old Testament picture of selflessness and sacrifice and love. Here we stand – here on the other side of the Cross, called to be the type of person that Jesus already was and still is. Called to be pictures in this world of selflessness and sacrifice and love. If it cost Jesus everything to save us, how can we do any less but give it all for him?

- Jeff Jones

Faithful In Temptation: Ruth 3

Sermon Manuscript – 25 March 2007

What would this sound like to you: a mysterious woman leaves her home in the middle of the night, gets in her car, and drives outside the city limits. She turns off the headlights as she drives so no one will see her from a distance. Eventually she arrives at a rather run-down motel. She’s looking for a rich local man who she knows is staying there, because he’s working across the street and has to get up early the next morning and it’s too far to drive home. She quietly gets out of the car, closes the door very softly, and walks into the shadows, avoiding anyone who might see her. She quietly turns the doorknob – the guy left the door open – and slips into the room, closing the door behind her. Finding the man asleep, what does she do? She lays down on his bed! Only early in the morning, before sunrise, does she leave that seedy motel – again avoiding anyone seeing her, and carrying a great deal of money.

Does that sound like a scandalous set of circumstances to you? It should. That’s precisely the same situation described in our story. In our day, prostitutes use seedy motels. In Ruth’s day, it was the threshing floor where bad things happened. Staying overnight with a man not your husband in a hotel is a questionable set of circumstances even today – staying at a threshing floor would have been the same in ancient Israel.

What if I said that Ruth and Boaz “slept together?” What would I mean if I said that? One meaning would be to take the words at face value – they fell asleep next to each other and were dormant all night. Well, that’s what the Bible tells us they did, right? But that’s a bad choice of words for what happened, isn’t it? If they behaved themselves, didn’t do anything wrong, would anyone use the phrase “slept together?” Of course not. Why? Because “sleeping together” is a euphemism for something else entirely, isn’t it?

The author of Ruth does exactly what I just described. Naomi tells Ruth to “uncover his feet.” And that is exactly what Ruth did – pulled Boaz’ blanket off his feet, leaving them exposed, and then lay down at his feet. Literally, word for word, what Naomi said. It doesn’t sound so bad in English. But to ancient Hebrews, “uncovering the feet” was a euphemism for the very same thing that we mean by “slept together.”

Why would the author choose those words? Why would he go out of his way to paint the picture in suggestive terms? So that we might ask, “What will they do?” “Will they obey God?” “Will their conduct be honourable?” The author wants us to ask those questions. The Bible portrays the entire event in a way that grabs the audience – grabs their attention, calling attention to the behaviour and actions of Ruth and Boaz.

So Ruth has approached Boaz in the middle of the night. What happens next? Something unusual. She pops the question!

There’s a show on television named “Perfect Proposal.” Have you ever seen it? They get a camera crew to help this poor guy set up an over-the-top proposal for his girlfriend, and they get it all on tape. It’s actually kind of funny to see the lengths these guys will go to for their perfect proposals. I was introduced to it when I was still dating Erin, and she liked watching these shows with me. Hint, hint, hint? Yeah. Just imagine the pressure that a show like that puts on a guy. How do you top a guy who puts on a reality TV show competition as the stage for his proposal? Like, come on!

One thing I find remarkable about the show, however, is what it says about us as a society. It’s remarkable that in an age when our culture is trying its level best to destroy any distinctions and differences between man and woman, most girls still expect and dream of and look forward to some man sweeping them off their feet, getting down on one knee, and asking her to marry him. And most guys still feel it’s their privilege and responsibility to go save money, buy the ring, and plan some special event when he can pop the question. Even though our society might want to pretend that there’s no difference between men and women, this old habit is dying hard.

See, I think all of us would be at least mildly surprised if a friend or relative got engaged and it was the woman who proposed. Now, in case anyone here did just that, I want to be clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it! But you have to agree with me that it’s not that common, and it is remarkable.

Let’s rewind about three thousand years or so. The culture is far, far more conservative than ours. There isn’t any such thing as dating. Men and women don’t usually pick their own mates, their parents do. Especially for the women. Marriage was not entered into out of love or fuzzy feelings or even physical attraction. Rather, it was a union arranged by two families with the purpose of continuing the family name, and making sure that the family stayed healthy and prosperous. We tend to see marriage today as a union of two individuals for mutual benefit; they saw it as a union of two families and the future of the entire family line. The idea of a woman approaching a man and offering a marriage was even more uncommon in that age than it ever was in ours.

So put yourselves in the place of the original readers of Ruth. Imagine yourself as an ancient Hebrew hearing this story. Ruth approaching Boaz? Being so bold as to propose to him? That would have raised eyebrows, let me tell you.

Ruth and Boaz were faced with temptation. We see Ruth approach Boaz in an unusual way at an unusual place. We see her reverse tradition and custom and ask him to marry her, going against culture and tradition to approach a man of higher status and virtually demand that he marry her. We see her remain the night with him, despite the risk to their reputations. They had the opportunity to sin, away from the eyes of men. But they were faithful. They remembered that it is the eyes of God that matter. They knew the darkness didn’t hide them from their Lord. And above all, they were faithful despite temptation.

What brought Ruth here in the first place? Her mother-in-law sent her, and she obeyed. She went out on a limb, putting her reputation and even her safety on the line. And for what? To find a redeemer for her family. See, Ruth was a faithful woman. Ruth submitted to Naomi. She placed the needs of the family ahead of her own. She put her covenant obligation to Naomi and to God, her covenant obligation to look out for her family, ahead of herself. Even Boaz recognizes this. He praises her for “not going after young men.” Ruth had met plenty of younger men, men her age, in Boaz’ field. But she asked Boaz, a man old enough to be her father, to marry her instead. She could have married someone else – for love or for money, as Boaz put it, “whether poor or rich.” But she chose covenant loyalty, faithfulness to God and to Naomi, instead. She was a woman of faith, whose faith was not just held in her heart – it was expressed through her actions.

Why did Boaz respond the way he did? Asking her to stay the night was a risk to his reputation. But he was concerned for her safety. Harvest time was party time in ancient Israel. Who knows who Ruth might have run into in the dead of night if she went off on her own. See, Boaz was faithful. Boaz protected Ruth for the night at the risk of his own reputation. Why did he send her off with a load of grain? It might have been taken the wrong way – as a payment for questionable services. But again, Boaz is a faithful man. In doing this, Boaz not only provided for the women’s physical needs, but he gave Naomi a down payment. He promised Naomi that, one way or another, she would be redeemed. Her fortunes would change. Her needs would be met. And she, like Ruth, would be sheltered and protected. Boaz was a faithful man.

Ruth leaves Boaz knowing she will be redeemed. But she doesn’t know Boaz will do it. Here we are at the end of chapter three, and the author leaves us hanging. Just when the guy and the girl finally talk about their relationship, when they finally admit their feelings, when they finally tell each other, “I want to marry you,” our author throws in another roadblock. See, there’s another guy. A guy with a stronger claim than Boaz. A guy who has first dibs on Ruth.

And Boaz refuses to go behind his back, or marry Ruth anyway. That wouldn’t be right. The other guy has a legitimate claim. Boaz respects that. He respects the law. He honors God and will not do what is improper. See, I think Boaz knew he was a redeemer, but the reason he hasn’t brought this up to Ruth or Naomi himself is because he knows he’s not first in line. Out of respect for the other man, out of respect for God and his Law, Boaz waits his turn. Boaz was faithful to Ruth, to God, and to his responsibilities.

Ruth was a faithful woman. Boaz was a faithful man. That’s the message here. Against a backdrop of scandal and suggestiveness, despite temptation, this woman and this man remain true to God and to their covenant obligations.

I find one phrase in our story to be so interesting. Remember back to chapter two. Boaz has just met Ruth in the field. Impressed by her faithfulness, he says, “The LORD repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” Remember that prayer? Boaz asked that the Lord, under whose wings Ruth had taken refuge, would give her a rich reward for her faithfulness. Look at chapter three. Do you see something familiar? It’s Ruth’s words – her marriage proposal, actually: Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.

Boaz asks God, who spread his wings over Ruth, to reward her. Now here’s Ruth asking for that reward from Boaz! Using his own words! It’s ironic, actually. Talk about your words coming back to you. Ruth asks Boaz to answer his own prayer!

There’s an important lesson about prayer here. There was a man trapped by a flood, who took refuge on the roof of his house. A man of religious conviction, him, he prayed to God to save him. And in due time a guy in a rowboat drifted over to the house and called out, “Jump in! I’ll save you!”

“No,” the man replied. “God will save me!”

You know the rest. A canoe comes by, and the guy in it calls the man to jump in. Again the man chooses to trust God rather than men, right? A zodiac pulls up. The driver pleads with him to come, but he refuses. After all, God will save him. At last, a helicopter lowers a line to him, but the man still believes in God and won’t take human help.

Then he drowns.

He arrives in heaven, realizes what happened, and, bewildered, looks to God and asks, “God, I trusted you. Why didn’t you save me?”

“What do you mean? I sent you a rowboat, a canoe, a zodiac, even a helicopter!”

Yeah, it’s corny. But all too often we pray and then wait, thinking that God has to do something directly, something spectacular or miraculous, to answer our prayer. We forget that God works through means. We forget that God uses men and women to accomplish His purpose.

The Bible tells us that the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord. Not one thing we do, not even the tiniest action we take, was unplanned by God. His plan includes everything we do, not just what He does Himself. Many of the answers to prayer that He gives are the seemingly ordinary actions of human beings.

God doesn’t want His people to sit on their hands and pass the time until He does something. God uses people who are already in motion. People like Ruth, who trusted God to act and then acted on that faith. People like Naomi, who put their faith in God’s plan and then made their own plans in faith that God would use them.

Ruth showed her faith in God and her faithfulness to Naomi through action. She trusted God, and she had heard Boaz ask God to bless her. But she didn’t sit around and wait for a miracle. She acted – not because she didn’t trust God, but because she trusted Him to act in her life. She stepped out, put it all on the line, and acted in faith – faith that God would use her decisions to answer her hopes and prayers. Boaz showed his faith by acting against his best interest, risking his own reputation, in the hope and the trust that God would turn his actions into divine glory.

A man named William Carey, in the seventeenth century, once called his brothers and sisters to action in world missions. At the time, people thought that if God wanted to save the heathen, He would do it without any help from human beings. Carey changed all that with a sermon that had two points: Expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God.

When Paul and his missionaries were wondering where God would send them, they didn’t wait. They didn’t sit around. They didn’t examine their feelings or look for some ill-defined sense of peace about their options. No! They moved! They were already heading toward Europe when God sent a messenger in a dream to Paul, calling him to Macedonia, confirming the direction they were already taking!

God still does miracles. But far more often he works through the faithfulness of His people. Most of God’s responses to prayer are mediated through the trusting actions of His people.

God hears the prayers of His people, as they are faithful to Him. We must show our faith by our deeds! We ask, and we must act! God may sometimes create from nothing, but he also shapes and molds the actions and intentions that we offer! We are to pray and then to work for God’s glory in trust that God will use our decisions – that our decisions themselves are ordained by God in eternity past, that what we do fits into His plan!

Don’t ever be afraid to act because you are worried about thwarting God. Naomi didn’t. Ruth didn’t. Boaz didn’t. They all acted and trusted God with the results. God’s will cannot, CANNOT ever be defeated or missed. It will come to pass. And if we live our faith in our deeds, if we trust God in our actions, we can be assured that God will give us the privilege of seeing our actions fulfill His purpose.

- Jeff Jones

The Measure of a Man: Ruth 2

Sermon Manuscript – 11 March 2007

Our society, like any other in history, has its idols. For us, they tend to be the living, breathing type rather than the carved wood and stone variety of past years. I remember sitting in a class watching a video of spirit worshippers in Taiwan – it was the weirdest thing. They carried their idols, carved wooden things, on litters like ancient kings. Gods that need to be carried around like my six-month-old son, being venerated and worshipped by adoring crowds – some of whom would beat themselves until they bled as a show of devotion.

It’s easy to call that idolatry. Most of us would look at that and think, “That’s definitely pagan.” And yet we go home, turn on our TVs, and splashed all over CNN is the latest news about the funeral of a dead Playboy model – a story that’s been constant in the news for weeks and just won’t die! You watch Entertainment Tonight and they devote a different episode each day to different eulogies said at the service. It’s sad, and it’s a real indictment of our culture. The producers of those shows are probably spending thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars to feed our appetite for the latest dirt on the hottest celebrities.

Watch the Oscars, and it’s easy to wonder if our culture has really moved past the idolatry thing.

See, to us, these are “great people.” They’ve made spectacular films. We’ve got other idols, too. They’ve written the most powerful software programs. They’ve led the troops in battle to victory over terrorists and insurgents. They’ve overturned a corrupt government and are steering the country in a new direction.

Some of these are real accomplishments. Some of these things definitely make the world a better place. You could argue that God is using some of these people to accomplish good in the world.

But do these accomplishments make a man (or woman) great? What is greatness?

What measure or gauge or standard do we use? Popularity? Results?

Do we even have the right or authority to make that judgment? What about God’s opinion? Isn’t that what really matters?

At the beginning of our chapter, we meet a man named Boaz. The text tells us he is a “worthy man,” or “a man of standing.” The Hebrew word used here usually refers to might in battle, and often means “man of valour.” It is used in Judges to describe Gideon, who took three hundred men against a half a million Midianites in the dead of night and scared them out of the country. Yet Boaz is not a warrior – or, if he is, the text doesn’t tell us. We know of no battles. We hear of no victories, no decisive engagements. So if Boaz is a worthy man in the eyes of the author, it’s not because of some feat at arms.

We do know he’s a wealthy man, and that’s probably what the word is referring to. He’s got fields. He can afford to hire many labourers and servants – all the young men and women working in that field were probably either hired hands or members of his household. Either way it tells us he had money. Later we’ll see him buy a piece of land in a business transaction and take a wife as part of the deal – an act that would have been quite costly in the long run, but he could afford it.

But does wealth make a man great? Does money make someone “worthy” in God’s eyes? Of course not. Every penny of that wealth and every square inch of that land were gifts given to Boaz by a generous God. The wealth wasn’t even his own – it was on loan from above. As is the property of all of us.

If not wealth, maybe wisdom or experience? Does age make one worthy? Boaz was not a young man. In verse 8, Boaz addresses Ruth in a fatherly way: “Now, listen, my daughter.” That phrase appears twice elsewhere in the passage, in verses 2 and 22 – both times from the mouth of Naomi. Her mother-in-law. Naomi recognized the name of Boaz when Ruth told it to her. She knew who he was. She knew he was a relative. The two had probably known one another before Naomi left Bethlehem, through her husband Elimilech. Boaz might have been in his fifties by this time.

The Bible does tell us that age brings respect; and rightly so in light of the wisdom and experience that usually comes with it. But age doesn’t make a man great or worthy. Naomi’s husband chose to leave Bethlehem and run to a land of idolatry rather than repent of sin and call on God. He chose to do it his own way, make it on human terms. Naomi’s husband may have been around the same age as Boaz, but the wisdom he showed didn’t impress God.

But comparing Naomi’s husband with Boaz does give us a glimpse of what God does value in His people. Elimilech left the land that God had promised to Israel. Boaz stayed. Elimilech thought he’d do better on his own away from his covenant with God. Boaz stayed in the land and remained God’s faithful follower. Elimilech didn’t think God would keep His promises. Boaz trusted those promises.

Boaz was a loyal man. When he first met Ruth, he praised her highly. He talked about what Ruth had done for Naomi, about her faithfulness. He pronounced a blessing on her, asking that God would reward her for what she had done.

Boaz was a faithful man. He knew the law of Israel. He allowed a gleaner to work in his field, and
ordered that she be treated with respect.

Boaz was a generous man. He told his workers to pull stalks of barley from the sheaves and leave them for Ruth. This was his own grain. No law required him to give it away. And more than that, he gave Ruth a meal to eat, a meal like she probably hadn’t had in months. Did you notice that Boaz, the man, served Ruth, the woman? Generous, and a gentleman! Actually, in that culture, women served men their food. What Boaz did was astonishing! Even more remarkable, if you remember that this is a poor foreign woman being served a hot meal by a rich man in his own field!

Is that how we treat people in need? Do we even treat our families with this sort of kindness? Remember, these two eventually get married. Husbands, do we treat our wives like this? We can all learn from Boaz.

Boaz was so generous that Ruth went away with 30 pounds of grain. That’s a huge amount. The daily wage in the ancient world, measured in grain, was between a half-pound and a pound per day. Ruth took away one or two month’s worth in just one day of gleaning! That wouldn’t have happened without Boaz.

Boaz didn’t do this because he had a crush on Ruth. Ruth worked in that field for six or seven weeks – the whole harvest – and we don’t hear about any other conversations between her and Boaz. Yes, probably they did meet from time to time, but the chapter closes at the end of the harvest and Ruth is still single in her mother-in-law’s house. In the next chapter, Ruth has to go propose to him! Obviously, marriage wasn’t the first thing on this guy’s mind, at least not at this point in the story.

No, the behavior of Boaz is motivated by his character, a unique and special character. Boaz saw things through God’s eyes. In Ruth, he saw a woman who was faithful to God, who expressed her faith through loyalty and kindness toward Naomi. Boaz saw a woman who trusted God and valued her family. A woman who knew the Jewish law – after all, she was taking advantage of her right to glean that field; who not only knew that law by its letter, but lived that law in its spirit.

God doesn’t give us rules and regulations and laws and covenants to make us Pharisees, obsessed with the details and letter of the law. God cares about the spirit of the law. And Boaz understood that. When you know the spirit of the law, you go beyond the letter of it. Boaz only had to allow Ruth to glean after the harvesters went through, but he told her to work in among them. Boaz didn’t have to offer her a hot meal, but he not only did that – he served her with his own hand! He knew it was a hot day and that she was thirsty, and that this would slow her down. So he told her to drink from his own workers’ supply.

A great man is one who is humble before God and who walks according to His ways. A worthy man, in God’s eyes, is one who not only obeys God’s Word but lives God’s Word. Who lives and feels and thinks and acts as if it’s true in everything it says. Who lives as if it’s the only thing that matters.

Look how generous Boaz was! What keeps us from being so free with our own possessions? I think one of the biggest restraints on our generosity is our fear of the future. We are simply not as free in our giving as we could be because we worry that we might need it later. I’m not just talking about money here. We’re the same way with our time – there is so much work that needs to be done for God’s glory out there in the world, but we don’t make the time to help like we should. We’re stingy with time and money because we fear that if we give it away, we’ll lose something.

Boaz had a character that trusted and reflected God’s promises. That’s a covenant character. God has made us promises as part of His covenant with us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will bless us and keep us. He will be there with us, through disaster and pain and suffering right into eternity itself. And God guaranteed these promises, this covenant, to us with what was most precious to Him – the life, the blood of His own Son. There’s no way in heaven or earth or in all eternity that He will break those promises. And when we understand and believe and live like God is a God of promise, then we can give it all for Him.

See, God has promised to work all things together for the good of those who love him. He has promised to provide for His people. One of the reasons that the church exists at all is to be a place where believers can find help and support. We have to trust him! We must believe in Him! Faith brings freedom. Faith frees us because it removes the burden of tomorrow from our shoulders and places it at the feet of God – who’s already planned tomorrow out! The kind of generosity and kindness Boaz showed is only possible from one who knows God and trusts God. It’s only possible if we understand that God is a sovereign and all-powerful God who works all things according to His will, and who loves us as His own children. It can only happen if we trust God to keep His promises.

- Jeff Jones