Happy Reformation Day! (Or How to Lose A Blogwar)

This is hilarious. 

http://www.oldlutheran.com/humor/reformpolka.html

How to Start a Blogwar

So EN wants a blogwar, huh?  Well, he’s come to the right place.   My debating skills are more finely honed than ever now after six months of reading the meta of the TR watchblogs.   As Gorfchild and I used to say when we played racquetball, prepare to be EEE-RADICATED!!!!!

<parody>I don’t know how any so-called Christian could manifest so little love for his neighbors.  Don’t you know that Jesus said we were to be in the world!  Goodness gracious sakes alive!  *rolls eyes*

The complete absence of any substantive response to your ridiculous statements should in no way be construed as an admission on my part that I have no idea how to answer you.  Deep in their hearts all true believers who aren’t compromised will know that you are wrong.   I ignore your arguments only because they are manifestly absurd to all who have ears to hear.   I will pray for you.</parody>

Seriously, EN is too kind and reasonable to fight with.  And in the end he adopts a both/and approach that is just far too mature for blog discourse.  If this blogwar can’t end with one of us leading the masses to cry out ”Anathema!” then I don’t want to play.

Thoughts on Halloween

This post may be a big mistake, for people have strong and differing opinions about whether or not Christians should play along with Halloween.   Let me say up front that if you have different convictions, I will not despise you and you should not judge me.  This is surely a Romans 14 “disputable matter”. 

I used to believe that Halloween was the Satanic high holy day and Christians should organize 24 hour prayer vigils against all the Satanists meeting in rural graveyards to eat the missing children.  I am now convinced this was almost entirely superstition fed in no small measure by scammers like Mike Warnke.

Then, after I became a Calvinist, I thought we should use the day to have an alternative celebration of Reformation Day.  (Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Wittenburg door on Oct. 31, 1517.)

Then after I had kids and they wanted the candy, I “listened to my wife” (Gen. 3:17) and caved in and let the kids dress up as long as they dressed up like nice things and not like creatures of occult folklore.  So one year we were the characters from the Wizard of Oz Maggie was Toto, Patrick the Tin Man, Joel the Lion, Amy was Dorothy, I was the scarecrow, Katie was Glinda.  Extreme cuteness.

But then last year Amy wanted to be a witch.  I said OK, but I made her promise not to turn anyone into a newt.

You can see how far I’ve drifted.  Better pray for me.   Seriously, here’s my bottom line.  Tuesday night is the one night all year when all our neighbors come to our door.  How can we turn off the lights and ignore them and silently condemn them?   Open the door, give them some candy and tell them how cute they are. 

There, I said it.  Let the egging and the TPing begin!

Faultfinding: A Third Besetting Sin of Bloggers

The first two were censoriousness and a contrarian spirit.

This is an excerpt from a thanksgiving sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:1-9.  Much of it is stolen from a great message CJ Mahaney preached at one of John Piper’s pastors’ conferences years ago.

If you think our church has problems, let me tell you about the Corinthians.  Here’s a church that is on the verge of a split into cults of personality.  Here’s a church in which some members say there is no resurrection.  Here’s a church that gets drunk at the Lord’s supper. Here’s a church that chaotically abuses spiritual gifts.  Here’s a church that fails to discipline a member who commits sexual immorality with his stepmother.  Here’s a church whose members are suing each other in court.            

And yet, Paul can write in 1 Corinthians 1:4 “I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus…”  Wow.  Who is this man, this apostle Paul, and how can we become like him?             

My first point this morning is this:  Paul’s ability to give thanks in all circumstances is grounded in a theology of sovereign grace.

(long explanation of a Calvinist view of effectual calling omitted)

So I ask you, of which are you more conscious: evidences of grace or areas of growth?  In your own life, in the lives of others, in the church as a whole, of which are you more conscious: evidences of grace or areas of growth?    Perhaps in the life of a friend in your small group, in the life of a college student you are mentoring, in the life of a teenager you are parenting, there is a glowing ember of grace, and a whole lot of areas of growth.  Now of course there is a place for correction in the Christian life, but hold off on that a moment.  Would it not be far wiser to blow on the smoldering wick, to fan into flame the grace of God?  Would that not make these other areas you are dying to correct quickly fade away?  I have learned from experience that you don’t have to confront everything.  If you encourage a person in their strengths, many weaknesses will just go away.  

Let’s seek to become people who are on the lookout for evidences of grace in our lives and in each other’s lives.  What a blessed fellowship we would have if this became our habit.  But it has to be cultivated deliberately.  Paul usually expresses his thanksgiving for the churches in prayer.   We need to pray about these things and remember the grace of God and purposefully give thanks to Him.

Now in verses 8-9 we look to the future. 1 Corinthians 1:8-9 He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful

Believing this promise can cure faultfinding, because faultfinding comes from an angry, anxious heart, and anger and anxiety can only exist where this promise is not really believed.   O the peace we would have if our souls would lay firm hold of this promise that those he called, these he also justified.  God finishes what he starts. And notice that this is not just a promise for you as an individual Christian, this is a promise for the whole church.  Jesus promised he will build his church, and Ephesians says he purifies the church washing her with the word. 

I had to learn this about ten years ago because I was on the verge of becoming an angry young man.  You go to seminary, you read some church history, you study theology, you start understanding a few things and all of a sudden you are more acutely aware of the shortcomings of the church and if you’re not careful you can neglect prayer for revival and just start bitterly complaining, as if that will work faster.  But the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God.  

I could tell that something was wrong in my spirit and so I began confessing the sin of pride and one day I was confessing it to an elderly saint and seeking his counsel and he said “It’s not just pride, it’s impatience.”  That’s been an insight of lasting value for me.  It’s impatience with God.  He’s promised to purify the church.  He’s promised to keep us strong to the end and present us blameless on the day of Christ.  Be patient.  That doesn’t mean don’t pray for more grace.  That doesn’t mean don’t diligently strive for obedience.  But be patient.  It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon walk.   God has his purposes for leaving alive some enemies in the land.  We’ve all got our battles to fight, lets strengthen feeble hands and knees and not snuff out smoldering wicks.  I’ve learned in my own life that grumbling about the church is impatience with God.

Of course, if you don’t have a theology of sovereign grace, you may find that hard to accept.  You may think, “God wants to purify the church, he’s doing all he can, but all these deadbeats around me aren’t cooperating with him.  How can I soar with the eagles when I’m surrounded by turkeys?”  But who are you that you look down on your brothers and sisters so?  As Paul will say to these Corinthians in chapter 4 “Who makes you different from anyone else?  And what do you have that you did not receive?  And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

It really is all grace from first to last.  That’s the great secret that made Paul constantly thankful.  That’s the key we need to open the door to a life of thanksgiving.

Calling Fundamentalists to Repentance

 

The true gospel will always be confused with licentiousness. 

 

I should define that word.  Licentiousness means, in the words of Galatians 5:13 and Jude 4, taking grace of God and perverting it into a license for lust, a license for self-indulgence, a license for sin.   I’ve got the grace card now and so I can sin all I want and just put it on my grace card and it even gives me cash back!  That’s licentiousness.  Some people call it antinomianism, which just means “against the law” or “lawlessness”.

 

Now, of course, it is wrong to pervert and abuse grace in this way.   But before I make that point, it is very important to make this one:  If you preach the true gospel of grace, people will routinely accuse you of preaching licentiousness.  

Listen to how Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it, “The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it.  There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean…that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound to the glory of grace.  That is a very good test of gospel preaching.” 

Do you hear what Lloyd-Jones is saying?  If someone misinterprets your message to incite licentiousness, that’s a sign that you are preaching it rightly, because they did the same thing to Paul.  So when someone accuses me of antinomianism, I rejoice!  When someone says that I’m preaching just too much grace and that the eternal life I offer in Jesus’ name is just a little too free, I rejoice!  If some of you are frustrated at this point in our series through Romans and are thinking, “Man, if it’s all really that certain, if I’m really that secure in the grace of God, then it seems like it doesn’t matter what I do!  What do I do?  Tell me what to do!”  If that’s the question you’re asking, then I’ve done my job well.  I’ve faithfully exposited the gospel of God as it was entrusted to Paul and recorded in the book of Romans.  For that is exactly the question Paul’s hearers asked him at this point when he proclaimed the gospel of God.

In the Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a scene where Christian meets a man named Ignorance.  Now Ignorance professes to be a Christian.  Here’s what he says “I believe that Christ died for sinners; and that I shall be justified before God from the curse, through his gracious acceptance of my obedience to the law.”   So Christian begins to reason with him, to correct him and show him that although he is speaking Christianese, what he is really saying is that he is trusting in his own righteousness (which he wrongly supposes is made acceptable through Christ) rather than trusting in Christ’s righteousness alone imputed to him. 

To which Ignorance responds, “What! would you have us trust to what Christ in his own person has done without us?  This conceit would loosen the reins of our lust…For what does it matter how we live, if we may be justified by Christ’s personal righteousness from all when we believe it?” And then at this point in my 100-and-some-odd-year-old copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a footnote, because my copy is annotated by an editor compiling notes from several different ministers of old.  I have no idea who they are, but these notes are wonderful, and they say at this point, “No sooner do you propose to an ignorant professor Christ’s righteousness alone for justification, than he instantly displays his ignorance of the truth by crying out, “Antinomianism!”

Do you hear what they’re saying? The reason why people accuse the true gospel of being antinomian, is because they are ignorant of the power of the true gospel alone to transform lives.  They think they need to add in some law to keep grace from leading people to run wild.  But the truth is that preaching grace produces holiness and preaching law does not.  That would make a good outline in fact for these next two chapters.  Chapter 6: Grace produces holiness!  Chapter 7: Law doesn’t.

Professing Christians who are ignorant of the power of grace, will routinely accuse true gospel preachers of being antinomian.

And on the other hand, when you preach the true gospel of grace, some people really will use it as a license for immorality.  But you got to preach it anyway.  Spurgeon said that there is no way to so safeguard the gospel of grace that will keep graceless men from abusing it and turning it into licentiousness.   He said this in a sermon on the dying thief on the cross to whom Jesus said “Today you will be with me in paradise” and he knew that some people use this story as an excuse to postpone repentance and hope for a deathbed conversion.  But nevertheless, he would not shrink back from preaching the superabundance of grace seen in this Scripture.  Here’s what he said, “Wicked men will drown themselves in the rivers of truth as readily as in the pools of error….Many people think that they ought to guard the gospel, but it is never so safe as when it stands out in its own naked majesty.  It needs no covering from us.  When we protect it with conditions and guard it with exceptions and qualify it with observations, it is like David in Saul’s armor: It is hampered and hindered, and you may even hear it cry “I cannot go with these.”…I am not afraid that this story of the dying and repenting thief, who went straight from the cross to the crown, will be used by you amiss.   But if you are wicked enough so to use it, I cannot help it.”

 

Some people will respond to the true gospel of grace by abusing it and perverting it into a license for sin.   It can’t be helped.  And if you try to stop it, you will only obscure and hinder the gospel.

Here’s MLJ again, “if our preaching does not expose us to [this] charge and [this] misunderstanding, it is because we are not really preaching the gospel. 

Christianity Today tells us that Reformed theology is having a resurgence in America.  More and more people are understanding and embracing the doctrines of grace, and in this I rejoice.  But I am still saddened by how many of these people are still what I would call “Reformedamentalists”   That is they are Reformed Fundamentalists.  They have begun to grasp the doctrines of grace, but they are still so influenced by American Fundamentalism and its legalistic tendencies that they sound like legalists.   They may have understood the implications of grace for their doctrine of election and justification, but when it comes to sanctification, their minds are not yet renewed by grace.  Some of them still enforce these ridiculous holiness codes about drinking and smoking and dancing.  The more sophisticated speak of Calvin’s third use of the law.  (If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it, we’ll talk about it in chapter 7).  Calvin’s third use of the law is fine, but in the hands of these men, it sounds like legalism as they make heavy-handed applications of the regulative principle and argue for strict Sabbatarianism.  They may not by definition be legalists, but it takes a Ph.D. to tell the difference.

It is my deep ambition, and it should be your deep ambition as well, to never be mistaken for a legalist. Paul, in Philippians 3, calls legalists dogs and says that the self righteousness in which they boast is…I’ll use the nice word, dung.  They are dogs feeding on filth.  I don’t want to be mistaken for a filth-eating dog, do you?

I would rather, like Jesus, be mistaken for a drunkard.  I would rather, like Paul, be mistaken for an antinomian.  Now Jesus was not a drunkard and Paul was not an antinomian, but they lived and preached grace so fully that this was the slander they routinely received.

Now it’s time for the altar call.  It’s time to leave your fundamentalism behind.  Which one are you mistaken for?  Are you like Jesus, often mistaken for a glutton and a drunkard because you go to parties with sinners?  Are you like Paul, often mistaken for an antinomian because of the unqualified clarity with which you preach grace alone?  Or do people often find you a little legalistic?  If the latter is the case, I plead with you to get on your knees before God and ask Him to search your heart and show you where you’ve gotten it all wrong.  Where did you go astray?  Pray and say, “Lord Jesus, Friend of Sinners, forgive me for being such an unChristlike, unPauline witness to your glorious gospel of grace.   Change me, grant me repentance.  Empower me to let go of all pride and self-righteousness and make me a person who in my words and by my life testifies to the mighty power of grace alone to produce Christlike love and holiness.” 

Missional Decentralization

Several weeks ago in a sermon I said, “What this church needs is not another prayer meeting.  What this church needs is fifteen new prayer meetings springing up like grass in a meadow.”  Few of us want another church activity on the schedule crowding out opportunities for family time and showing hospitality.   But all of us, I trust, would like to pray more.  And I’m sure there’s 30 minutes somewhere in your week that you could devote to prayer.  Pick that time and find two other people who are able to make that time and start a prayer triplet.   So far I’ve heard of six of these.  Are there more?   Are you in one?  Tell us about it and encourage us in this.

Now today I want to say this:  What this church needs is not an evangelistic program.   What this church needs is fifteen evangelistic programs.  Fifteen events per week that consist of unbelievers being shown hospitality by 2 or 3 CEFC members.    That’s a missional approach to evangelism.   Don’t wait to be given a four color brochure for a leadership exhausting evangelistic program that you can hand out to your neighbors.  Just invite them to dinner.   Join a bowling league and invite them to be on your team.  Take your kids to the zoo and ask your neighbors along. 

Here’s some distinctions between traditional and missional approaches to evangelism taken from Mark Driscoll’s books:

Traditional                                        

Gospel information is presented               

Unbelievers are called to decision

If a decision is made, the person is welcomed into the church

Friendship is extended

Convert is trained for ministry by being separated from the culture.   

Missional

Friendships are built between believers and unbelievers 

Unbelievers see authentic faith and ministry and are called to participate

The gospel is naturally present in word and deed in the friendship

The unbeliever is welcomed in the church before he is converted to Jesus

The church celebrates the conversion of their friend

Traditional

Culture is where the church battles to regain a lost position of privileged influence

Missional

The church accepts that it is marginalized in culture and holds no privileged position of influence, but gains influence by serving the common good.

Traditional

Churches grow through marketing that brings people to church events

Missional

Churches grow as Christians bring lost people to Jesus through hospitality

Can I Get Another Witness?

“Dead to sin” in Romans 6:2 means dead to the guilt of sin, the condemning power of sin, and refers exclusively to justification. 

The word “justified” in Romans 6:7 should be translated as “justified” and not as “freed”.

So say I and Robert Haldane and… (drum roll, please)….John Stott! (ht: Mark_5)

And Piper agrees with the translation “justified” in verse 7 and insists on the importance of seeing the connection between justification and freedom from slavery to sin.  However, he emphasized deliverance from guilt as the key to breaking the bondage, whereas I see that as still too subjective and put the spotlight on union with Christ as the connection between justification and freedom from slavery to sin.

Psalm 139 (Another Sermon Excerpt…I got nothin’ else.)

The subject of David’s meditation and prayer is not just God’s omniscience.  It’s much more personal than that.  He knows me, He knows you.  He knows everywhere we go, he knows everything we do.  He knows when we sit and when we rise.  He knows when we sleep, and when we get up.  He knows why we don’t sleep when we should sleep and why we don’t rise when we should rise.  He is familiar with all our ways.  I have seen his ways, he says in Isaiah 57, but I will heal him.  He knows what’s wrong with you and he knows how to fix it.   He discerns your thoughts from afar, says verse 2, which doesn’t mean he is a long way off, it means that even when your thoughts are still along way off, still not fully formed, he gets where you’re coming from.   He knows your thoughts before they arise to your conscious mind.   It’s the same sort of thing he says about our words in verse 4.  Before a word is on your tongue, he knows it completely.  You don’t understand why you said half the things you said yesterday, but he knows it altogether.   He knows what you said.  He knows why you said it.  He knows what you wanted to say, and why you wanted to say it.  He knows what you should have said, and why you were afraid to say it.   He knows you. 

 

And not only does he know all these things about us, but he even constrains and restrains us.  He hems us in behind and before says verse 5.  He not only beholds us, he besets us.   If he blocks our path before us, we cannot turn back to escape him for he is behind us as well.  And this is no mere guidance by impersonal circumstantial providences, his very hand is upon us. 

 

Perhaps you are beginning to feel terrified.  Perhaps you feel something dreadful in this.  It is disturbing to think that if God is nearer to us than our very thoughts, then when we sin we are sinning right in his face.  And yet David doesn’t call this knowledge dreadful, he calls it in verse 6 wonderful.  Why, what has he learned about God that we need to learn? 

 

David says in verse 7 “Where shall I flee from your presence…if I ascend to heaven, there you are, if I make my bed in the grave…behold! You!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will….

 

Now stop there a minute.  What might you have expected David to say here if you hadn’t read this psalm so many times?  If I flee from you, your hand will catch me?  Arrest me?  Smack me down in my rebellion?   Many read this psalm as though David is simply saying don’t run from God because He’ll get you and then you’ll be sorry.  But David is saying something even more wonderfully gracious.   He says “Even there your hand will guide me.”  Guide.  The same word he uses in Psalm 23 “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.  He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”  Or in Psalm 73 “You guide me with your counsel and afterward will take me into glory.”   

What David has learned about God that enables him to think upon God’s all-searching knowledge as wonderful is that God’s hand is upon him with good purpose.  Last week we read him say in the last verse of Psalm 138, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.”  Is this not the same thing as the last verse of Psalm 139 “lead me in the way everlasting”?   And he also declared at the end of Psalm 138 that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.  So we learn in Psalm 139 that God’s love is even more steadfast than we are stubborn. 

 

We’ve all tried to flee from God.  We’ve all tried many times to hide from God in the darkness.  But praise God he does not let us go, he does not give us over to our sins, but he hems us in behind and before.  He holds onto us, He illumines the darkness, He grants us repentance and turns us around and brings us back.  You cannot escape being known and lovingly led by God.   God’s love is more steadfast than we are stubborn.

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!”  In verse 1 he affirmed that God already has searched him and knows him.  But he still prays for it in verse 23.   We see this again and again in the Scriptures.  We pray for what we already know to be certain.  We know Jesus is coming again, but we pray for it.   We know that he will keep us persevering in the faith to the end, but we pray for it.  We know that he knows and forgives all our sins, but we confess them anyway.  God wants you to pray his promises back to him because he is thereby glorified through your thanksgiving, and you are blessed as you come to trust his promises more by meditating upon them in the awareness of the presence of God.   

In verse 2 David said “you discern my thoughts”.  In verse 17 he said “how precious to me are your thoughts, O God!.   Same Hebrew word.  But now in verse 23 when he says “test me and know my thoughts” this is a different word.  Other versions translate it anxious thoughts, or anxieties.  The word occurs only one other time in the Bible. Psalm 94:19.  I love this verse.  This is a verse that I remember Kris B. stood up and read in our sharing time years ago and it hit me and stayed with me.  Don’t underestimate the power of your simple sharing of the word of God with one another.  So now I read this verse to you in the hopes that it might be the word one of you needs to hear today and that it might dwell in your hearts for years to come.  Psalm 94:19 “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul.”  That’s one to memorize and use over and over again. 

Finally in verse 24 David speaks of two ways.  The grievous way and the everlasting way.  This word for grievous is a word that is used in Genesis in story of the fall of mankind and the curse.   And it is used in Genesis 6:6 where God before the flood looks upon the wickedness of mankind and is grieved that he made us.  And it is used most recently in Psalm 127:2 “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil”  This is a word that connotes our cursed fallenness.   David is praying for God to lead him out of his fallen ways and into the everlasting way of salvation.   This is the leading of God that we need.  Most people speak of God’s leading and they mean a still small voice telling them which job offer to take  But the leading of the Spirit in the Scripture is this leading.  He inclines your heart away from paths of grievous futility and twistedness and into the everlasting way of righteousness.  He is your good shepherd, he leads you in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, and his love for you is more steadfast than you are stubborn and so even when you try to flee from God and live in darkness, his hand will hold you fast, weigh heavily upon you, cause your bones to burn within you until you can’t stand it anymore and turn back to him in repentance and pray this prayer again, “Lead me in the way everlasting.”  So don’t bother running from him, don’t needlessly increase your griefs.  The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.  Turn to him now and ask him to search your heart and lead you out of your fallen ways and into his everlasting way. 

Blamelessness

(Another Excerpt from the sermon on Psalm 19)

Psalm 19:12-13 Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

There is a distinction made in these verses between two types of sin.  Presumptuous sins and hidden faults.  Although any and all sin separates us from God and would condemn us to hell were it not for the atonement of Christ, it is still valid to make distinctions b/w types of sins. 

Hidden faults are not the secret sins that we are ashamed of and hide from others.  Hidden faults are sins that are hidden even to ourselves.  These are the (in Spurgeon’s estimate) tens of thousands of sins that we commit daily and of which we are unaware.  They may be sins of ignorance, we don’t know better.  Or they may be sins of weakness, we commit them unconsciously by habitual attitudes and thoughts.  The servant of God, as David calls himself in these verses, knows that he sins daily in word, thought and deed.  And he knows that he is lost without God’s forgiveness and so he prays that God will declare him innocent.  This is a prayer for justification.

A presumptuous sin, on the other hand, is a conscious, deliberate, and premeditated transgression of a known command of God. Now we must resist the temptation to list off which sins are on which list, for the distinction is not in the sin that you do, but in the presumption with which you do it.   What 10 years ago was a sin of ignorance in your life, may now be a sin of presumption.  And what may be a subconscious sin of weakness in your life might be a presumptuous sin in the life of one who has received more light on that issue.  And whenever you overcome a presumptuous sin in your life, you can be sure that the light of the Word of God will bring another hidden fault to light and now it would be presumption to go on in it. No sin in which you persist should be considered small, and no sin of which you repent should be considered too great for forgiveness.  

Notice he prays differently for presumptuous sins.  For hidden faults he simply asked for forgiveness, but regarding presumptuous sins he asks two more things, first that he would be restrained from them.  Keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins. Even mature saints may fall into the worst of sins if not restrained by grace, so we pray daily “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one” and second, he prays “Let not presumptuous sins rule over me” warning us of the danger that presumptuous sins indulged become dominant sins. 

Then I shall be blameless.  Now we’re ready to make a definition of blamelessness. You are blameless when you are trusting God for forgiveness of your hidden faults, and when you are not ruled by presumptuous sins.  

2 implications of this definition: 1) You can be blameless and even though you are not sinless.  An elder must be blameless, and if that meant they had to be sinless, you wouldn’t have any elders.  Blameless men and women sin.  But blameless people are not ruled by presumptuous sins, nor do they conceal secret sins and make peace with them.  Rather they make confession and seek forgiveness whenever they become aware of their hidden faults. 

2) Let me state the same principle positively.  Even though you are not sinless, you can be blameless.  Even though you will never be free from sin in this life.  Even though you commit tens of thousands of sins every hour, this should not discourage you from believing that you can overcome any and all presumptuous sins and be blameless.  This is what David prays for and it must be our prayer also for it is the revealed will of God for every Christian.

Our hidden faults are beyond searching out and growth in holiness is accompanied by growth in humility and an ever-increasing awareness of our sins and our need of forgiveness.  But nevertheless, we can aim high and can experience the blessing of blamelessness.  Look how high David aims in verse 14:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

Finally, I want you to notice that in this psalm David speaks of his love for God’s word before he expresses his longing for holiness.  This is because without the love of God, the desire for holiness is really just a desire for higher self-esteem or for self-preservation by avoiding the unpleasant consequences of sin.  True longings for holiness flow from a love of God and his Word.  And true holiness is realizable only through loving the Word of God for the Law of the Lord is perfect/blameless, restoring the soul.  So let us like David, pursue holiness by pursuing delight in the law of the Lord and meditating on it day and night.

The Power of the Law of the Lord

(Sermon Excerpt – Psalm 19)

In the Hebrew text of Psalm 19:7-9 the word of the Lord is praised in tightly compact phrases.  It takes the English versions 60+ words to say what is in Hebrew only 30 words arranged in six lines of five words each.  It’s a 6 x 5 box.  It makes for interesting meditation, let me try to reproduce it here.

law                       LORD   perfect            turning           soul

testimonies         LORD   trustworthy   wizening         simple

precepts              LORD   upright            rejoicing         heart

commandment     LORD   pure                enlightening   eyes

fear                       LORD   clean               standing         forever

judgments            LORD   true                righteous        altogether

There are so many possible ways to meditate on these verses.  You could line up the nouns and think about all the different names given to the Scripture. You could line up the adjectives and think of all its different intrinsic qualities.  You could see if you could discover the connection horizontally b/w the subjects and predicates.  You could look for development vertically from line to line.  But I like verbs.  Verbs are where the action is at. So I want us to consider the effects that are ascribed to the Scripture.  The power of the word in our lives.  

The first one named is the foundation of all the rest.  “The law of the Lord is perfect (or blameless cf. v.13) restoring the soul, or converting the soul.  lit.  turning soul to God and his holiness.  word used for repentance in the prophets.  The law of the Lord turns the soul, converts it, is the means through which the soul is given repentance. 

And I believe this is the work of an instant.  I have become convinced that you cannot be in the process of repenting.  You cannot as Elijah said, be halting between two opinions.  If Baal is God, serve him, if YHWH is God, serve Him.  If you believe sin is good and God is evil, then pursue sin.  But if you believe God is good and sin is evil, then turn and seek Him.  A man cannot serve two masters.  You cannot be half-turned.   (theme of Hosea, he called the Israelites of his day half turned, but it is clear that half turned is no repentance) So repentance happens in a moment and it is a work the word of God in your soul.  The law of the Lord turns the soul and restores the soul.  There was a first time this happened to you, whether or not you remember the day and the hour.  At some point every Christian was cut to the heart by the hearing or reading of the word of God and their soul was turned from sin to become a seeker of God.    

And time and again in the Christian life when we backslide into sin the remedy is the same, a sudden turning from sin must occur when we are pierced by the word of God.  If you feel you are backsliding, I want you to know that you will not ease your way out of this sin.  You must snap out of it.  There must be a radical turning and I pray that this psalm this morning might be the word that turns and restores your soul.  I have no promise that after this radical turning you will never fall again.  In fact, if you do not go on walking by the Spirit and abiding in the Word you most certainly will fall.  But then you must again seek the same remedy of radical repentance and you must seek it in the Word of God.  

The second effect of the word of God in our lives is that it makes us wise.   The word “simple”  = open, naïve, easily led astray, blown and tossed by wind as opposed to sure, stable, faithful, trustworthy.   The wise man builds house upon the rock.  But you can’t tell the difference b/w the two houses until the storms come.   Then the wise man’s house stands because it is built upon the sure foundation of the word of God.  

Third effect, rejoicing the heart.  Fourth effect, enlightening the eyes.  seemed out of order to me at first because I was thinking of light to the eyes as guidance, wisdom.  But after studying the phrase I learned that enlightening the eyes is actually an intensified way of saying rejoicing the heart.  It is a picture of radiant joy, of having our eyes brightened as when Jonathan ate honey in 1 Sam 14, same phrase.  It is a word used in the psalms of God’s face shining upon us. Ecc 8:1  A man’s wisdom illumines him and causes his stern face to beam. So note the progression: the Word turns us from sin, gives us wisdom to build for the long-term and produces in us radiant joy.   This joy of the Lord is our strength and therefore nothing is more important in our Christian lives than getting our souls happy in God.  Unhappy people will not persevere in prayer and unhappy people will not be fruitful in witness.  And as a church we groan until revival praying and bold witness characterize our lives.  But we are powerless without joy and we are joyless without the word.