Psalm 19 | "Right Worship of our Rock and Redeemer"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

As Dana prayed, my name is Webb.

If you're new here with us this morning, normally I stand about eight feet further back and I play guitar and I lead our singing.

But it's my privilege this morning to open my Bible with you.

I must confess to you all that my notes had me prepped to say that I was weary and heavy in heart as I prepared this message this week.

And that's true.

But man, was it fun to sing with you guys.

It's good to have you all here.

It's good to be together.

It's good to hear you.

I hope nobody was creeped out by me in the bottom left-hand side here, just occasionally gazing back at all of you singing.

Thank you for being here with us.

Thank you for lifting your voices.

It does at least my soul good to hear you sing.

And so it's a blessing to me.

It really is.

It's one of the ways we love each other here, is we sing for one another.

You may not believe what you're singing today, but somebody needs to hear it.

Or maybe you need to hear your brother or sister behind you sing it.

So sing for one another.

It's good.

It's good.

In the same way, when so many of us may need comfort or encouragement or hope or conviction, let's open our Bibles together.

In the same way we sing for one another, let's study the word together.

As I explain to us all, myself included, what it means.

Would you turn with me to the book of Psalms?

We'll be in Psalm number 19.

Psalm number 19.

And if you would please follow along with me as I read aloud.

Psalm number 19.

To the choir master, the Psalm of David.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.

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.

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

Amen.

Thanks be to God for his word.

The first thing that we need to notice and understand before we dive in here, friends, is that David wrote this song, this psalm, to be sung publicly to the choir master, a psalm of David.

In the oldest copies we have of the Old Testament, in the Masoretic text, that is verse 1.

It's not verse 0.

It's not verse 0.5, that's verse 1.

David wrote that.

There's no reason, apart from a critical spirit, a critical mindset to interpreting the Bible to think it's anything less than something David wrote.

And so we take that as inspired too, to the choir master, a psalm of David.

Pastor Jason told me several weeks ago that he could preach an entire sermon on just that one point.

And I decided I no longer needed commentary, so I would just ask Jason what he thought about the text I was he assigned me to preach.

Because that's just gold.

We could preach an entire sermon just on that.

We could do an entire worship session just on why we sing and how we sing, from David's example there.

But getting a little bogged down.

Notice quickly with me that your Bible breaks this psalm up into 14 verses, and that's good.

Because David wrote this psalm in seven perfect, complete, seven pairings or bicolas.

Notice also that your Bibles may put additional returns, additional spaces between some sections of this psalm.

That's good too.

Because it's pretty clear to me that David wrote this in three stanzas or three strophes, as it were.

We may call them verses today, but that's not quite right.

But all that to say, all that to point out to you that this is one psalm.

This is one song.

This is one thing David wrote with one point, and he wrote it to the choir master to be sung publicly.

This whole thing fits together beautifully in this wonderful poetic composition.

C.

S.

Lewis wrote in his Reflections on the Psalms that he takes this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.

That's a lot coming from C.

S.

Lewis.

But this is one psalm.

This is one poem with one unified point and one intention.

David is after something here.

He has a goal, a goal in mind.

A quote from my Hermeneutics textbook says it well.

Poems originated as complete units.

And so the student, that's all of us today, should interpret poems in their entirety rather than as isolated verses.

They should be read as poetry skillfully crafted by poets who speak by creating images in our imagination and by evoking emotional responses.

And so today, you and I, we want to know what David is trying to create and evoke in the hearts of his people through the work of the choir master.

That's what we're after this morning.

That's better than anything I could make up for you.

And to get there, we're just going to walk through it together.

Some texts, some passages benefit from understanding it and taking a step back and isolating the main point and then working out an outline.

This psalm, I think, more than many psalms or many passages, we just got to trust David here.

We have to trust the order that the Spirit inspired because David is taking his people and moving them somewhere.

So we're going to put ourselves in the shoes of those Israelites in the temple courtyards.

And we're going to let David, we're going to let the Holy Spirit, as he inspires the work of David, to lead us in worship this morning.

That's our plan.

That's what we're going to do.

So let's begin.

Verse 1: the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

This first section begins speaking of the heavens and the sky above as two related and almost synonymous words.

David uses them in parallel.

And this great poem begins with its first sentence, a poem all to itself.

In the original text, this forms a chiasm, which is a fancy word for a fancy Hebrew poetic trick.

It's like rhyme for us, maybe a little fancier than that, where the center of something is emphasized.

And so right away, David writes something beautiful in his first sentence, and he emphasizes the glory of God and his handiwork above the heavens and above the sky above.

And David's not just speaking generically of the night sky you and I know.

He lived before street lamps.

When he looked up at the sky, he saw all the stars and its unfiltered, unparalleled beauty.

And he said then that the glory of God was greater than the best night sky you and I have ever seen.

And so the heavens, while they point to the glory of God, are not as glorious as the glory of God.

They just illustrate it.

They just tell us about his glory.

And so if the heavens are vast and beautiful, countless and infinite, awe-inspiring and yet somehow comfortingly familiar, they're always there.

If they're transcendent and yet always with us, so much more is the God who made them.

The heavens declare his infinite and beautiful transcendence, his ever-present care and his watchful eye.

They declare his glory.

That's what they do.

Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

These heavens don't merely tell forth the glory of God by their own preaching, as John Calvin would put it.

They later, they pour out speech by day and reveal knowledge by night, day to day and night to night, without ceasing and without interruption.

The sun by day and the stars and moon by night, they they bubble up.

That word for pours out is a it's a funny word.

It sounds like what it means.

In the Hebrew, it's it's yabia.

And it sounds like a babbling brook or the sound of a gushing stream.

That's what it means.

It's like as if we were to say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's unamonopoetic.

The heavens gush forth the glory of God.

One scholar put it, the firmament's uninterrupted proclamation of God's glory is copious, extravagant, powerful, and inescapable.

Verse 3, there is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

It's a little bit trickier to get to what David means here.

Some people think that because he just personified the heavens with speech, he's making sure we all know he's not crazy.

The heavens declare, but they don't declare with words.

I get that they don't speak.

I know that.

I'm David, I'm not crazy.

And while I'm sure David does believe that, I don't think that's his main point.

I don't think that's what he's after.

I think that's coming from us, this side of Darwin, trying to beat the evolutionists when we read our Bibles, instead of letting David speak.

I think it's more likely that David is saying that the heaven's declaration could be understood in every tribe and tongue.

The NIV and the New King James get this a little better than our ESV.

It's like saying, there is no speech or language wherein their voice is not heard.

That makes so much more sense when you read the Psalm, because that's where he continues to go.

Verse 4.

Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

Don't you see?

Everywhere you go, every nation on this earth, every mountain and every valley, every stream and every ocean is underneath the heavens.

They look up, they see the stars.

And when they do, they hear the cry of the heavens declaring God's glory throughout all the earth.

The declaration rings out.

And this psalm and this point that the Creator created things to display his glory and that we have all heard it is so very near to the heart of the biblical message.

This is one of those foundational ideas.

All your Bible begins there, frankly.

In the beginning, God created.

This is at the base.

This is so crucial.

And this psalm in particular plays a very important role on the rest of your Bible.

Paul picks up on it twice in Romans, right?

Romans chapter 1, verse 19, Paul says, For what can be known about God is plain to them, that is the unrighteous ones.

Romans 1:19

Because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made.

And so they are without excuse.

The widespread declaration of the heavens condemns our sinfulness.

Nobody can look up at the heavens and think they're big.

The stars make us feel small.

And they reveal our sinfulness.

But in the same way that the glory of God reveals our guilt.

And it does.

It really does.

In the same way, it also delivers the good news.

Paul keeps going later in Romans at chapter 10, when he writes, How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

But they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah says, Lord who has believed what he has heard from us, and so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

But I ask, says Paul, have they not heard?

Indeed they have.

For their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

So if I could skip ahead of the point just a little bit, that while the heavens expose our sinfulness, while they make us feel small, while they remind us that we didn't make this place, we just live in it.

While the heavens remind us of the glory of God in that way, they also hint at his mercy and his grace.

For this glorious God of the heavens, the one who made everything by the power of his word, the heavens obey him.

The heavens are where he put them.

And then he formed us out of the dust, and we disobeyed.

And he would have been entirely within his rights as the one who made it all to just scrub off the little part of his creation that disobeyed and move on.

But he didn't.

I'm still here.

You're still here.

And so, in the same way that the heavens declare the glory of God by revealing our sinfulness, they also hint at his mercy and his grace.

And I don't know what the gospel is apart from the wrath of God and the mercy of God and explaining to sinful hearts how that works out.

And so in that way, the heavens preach the gospel message.

They always have.

That's why he put them there.

So that they would preach his glory.

And what is more glorious of our God than his good news?

Back to Psalm 19.

Verse 4b.

And them that is the heavens, he has set a tenth for the sun.

And so now David transitions from all the heavens together to focus on just the brightest and greatest of the heavenly bodies.

The sun.

He's going to take an example.

It's as if he's saying, Let's just talk about how the sun declares God's glory.

That will make the point on its own.

And so he does.

Verse 5 the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, bursting forth at the start of a new life.

The new groom is no longer a single man, but a husband, a provider, a lover, a caregiver, a protector.

He wakes the first morning of his new life, united to his new bride, with an eagerness to face the day that's entirely unique.

One of my friends got married last summer.

And the morning after the wedding, he texted many of us and said, Guys, I made coffee this morning for my wife.

Every part of life takes on new meaning.

The new groom makes coffee for his wife.

Then he makes breakfast for his wife.

And then he opens his Bible and seeks after the Lord that he might learn how to love his wife better.

And it just keeps going because there's something glorious about untapped potential, a blank canvas, a new day as the sun pops over the horizon.

When the sun cracks over the horizon, it takes the whole day for itself.

The night is gone because it's eager to begin.

It's eager to start, it's eager to take on a new day.

You and I, when we face a blank canvas or a blank page, we freeze up because we don't want to mess it up.

Not so with your God.

He moves forward with confidence and joy, and he does what he does on purpose.

That's who your God is.

And the sun is there to declare that to you.

And like a strong man, the sun runs its course with joy, the sun starts strong, it runs strong, it finishes strong.

Every day without faltering, without flinching, without wavering, the sun rises, the sun moves through the heavens and it sets.

It never changes, it always does exactly what he put it there to do.

And that, too, is what your God is like.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

He moves.

He does.

He's at work constantly and with consistent joy and purpose.

The sun's rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and nothing is hidden from its heat.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

And while the heavens declare their glory in every tribe and tongue, the sun shines forth its warmth on all.

Nothing is hidden from its heat.

And that's got to feel good today, friends.

I hope that's encouraging.

I hope that's good news to you.

That your God sees everything.

That your God knows everything.

That your God doesn't change.

If you don't know him, that's frightening.

Or not to be.

But if you do know him, if you know of his grace and his mercy, that's good news.

And I hope that it feels good.

That the creator of the heavens, the one who sits enthroned on the stars.

In him we can trust.

Because he never fails.

And his smile is warm.

His trustworthiness is his glory.

Verse 7.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

Recall, I told you of three verses or strophes or stanzas, and here in verse 7 we start the second one.

And right away, something changes.

Verse 1 used the generic Hebrew word for God, El, referring to the obvious and eminent maker of the heavens.

But here David shifts from El to Yahweh.

Your Bible translates it as Lord.

He's speaking now not of the God who formed the heavens, but of the I am who called to Moses from in the burning bush, of the mighty one who humbled Pharaoh, of the holy one who gave Israel the Ten Commandments at Sinai.

He's speaking of the compassionate one who led them by the hand in the wilderness.

That's a big shift.

Because David is taking something heavenly, something far up, something far away.

He's bringing it home to his Israelite congregation.

Remember for the choir master, a psalm of David.

The king wrote this for his people to hear it.

And let me just quickly read down this section again, verses seven through eleven.

Because there's something just beautiful to its rhythm and its pattern.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold.

Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.

There's this metrical work here, there's this rhythmic thing in the syllables of the original language, and you can see it in your Bibles.

Your translation is good.

David is building this energy by slowing down the rhythm.

A previous generation did that much better than my generation in their congregational singing.

You know how when you're in our hymnals and there's that optional last stanza setting, and the thing gets huge and it slows down and it stretches out and it gets bigger.

That's what David's doing.

He's talking and he's talking and he's talking and he's talking, and then he makes his point and we listen and we sing louder.

It's like da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Now we need a symbol crash, right?

Woo!

It keeps getting bigger, it keeps getting bigger.

And so as David builds speed in verses 7 through 9, he broadens and builds more tension in verse 10, and then the whole thing just explodes to my reading.

That's not really inspired.

That's just how I hear it, guys.

It just explodes at the moreover of verse 11.

That tension alleviates, and David starts singing softly again.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Um Raya, I've misplaced the remote.

Could we have that first slide?

But David gives us these six matching and parallel phrases here in verses seven through nine.

And I've aligned them for us to see them easily because they look a little funny on our big screens here, but I trust that they're legible on the live stream.

And there's just a parallelism here, guys.

There's a matching rhythm in a meter.

There's a similarity between each of those elements in that first column, and it just screams to me that these things are pointing at the same thing.

They're just different ways of speaking about the same kind of thing.

They're almost synonyms, but not quite.

They run in parallel, right?

The law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the precepts of the Lord, the commandment of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, and the rules or the rulings, the decisions.

The judgments of the Lord.

All of these things give us just an ever fuller picture.

An ever fuller picture of the way the God of the heavens chose, decided to relate to his covenant people.

That's what this is.

David's not singing the praises of a legal code for its own right.

He's rejoicing in the connection to Yahweh that that legal code provided for.

This is what the law gives us.

This is the covenant, guys.

David is rejoicing in the covenant relationship between Israel and Yahweh.

What's more, he's calling you to.

He's calling his readers and his listeners to rejoice in the covenant.

Hear the first thing God said to Moses at Sinai after he brought Israel out of Egypt and they camped there at the mountain in the wilderness.

Exodus chapter 19, verse 2.

Exodus 19:2

There Israel encamped before the mountain.

And while Moses went up to God, Yahweh called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, if that, then, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

And that is what David is singing about.

He's saying to his people, God's law, his testimony, his precepts, his commands.

These are the things that mark us out as Yahweh's treasured possession.

These are the things that make us his.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, David would write later.

So look at that third column.

His soul revived, his wisdom increased, his heart rejoiced, his eyes brightened, his standing before this Yahweh secure, enduring forever.

David sings of the benefits of knowing Yahweh.

But the fear of the Lord is clean.

There is no unfear staining it.

This is the word for ceremonially clean that you guys see all over your Bibles in Leviticus.

It may just be a kernel, it may only be a mustard seed, but it is clean.

And that fear, that true fear, that real fear of Yahweh, that fear endures forever.

So surely as the sun rises and runs its course with joy, the fear of the Lord endures forever.

But there is a sense here, there is something here in verse 9 where David seems to get caught up in singing of Yahweh in his greatness that he loses sight of the temporal benefits we receive of the earthly perks, right?

Looking at those ing words in your Bibles.

David moves from things that are good for us, cool stuff, like enlightened eyes and rejoiced hearts, to the fear of the Lord itself enduring.

And the rules of the Lord being true and righteous altogether.

It's like David quits noticing so much the short-term perks of being in a covenant relationship.

And he just starts praising Yahweh.

But does David get caught up?

Or is he trying to catch you up?

He didn't, David, this isn't a spontaneous thing.

David whipped out in his 20 minutes.

He wrote this.

He has a purpose, he has a goal.

He's trying to evoke something in your imagination and in your heart.

And so he's hoping to catch you up in praising Yahweh.

That's what he does.

I mean, guys, how glorious is it that Yahweh's rulings are righteous altogether?

David effectively says that God's decisions are perfectly and powerfully consistent.

They line up, they hang together, they're all of one piece.

He doesn't contradict himself like a bad parent might.

He does exactly perfectly.

His decisions, his judgments are righteous.

And so when our leaders struggle to respond to a wave of unknown things and unknowable things, one minute we're going left and the next we're going right, and then we decide we should have just stayed going left the whole time.

But maybe we should have gone straight.

We don't really know.

That's not how your God makes decisions.

He's not wandering and bouncing off left and right and kind of forming a straight path.

That's the best I can do.

That's the best you can do.

That's not how your God moves.

His judgments are righteous altogether and they form a straight line.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to his purpose.

And so this creator, God, this magnificent creator who formed the heavens by the power of his word, who's, as if with a brush stroke, painted the stars.

And then when he molded us, when he molded Adam out of the clay and Adam rebelled and Adam disobeyed, when God's grace didn't wipe him out and start over, that right there, that's when God started working everything together for good.

Because he decided to keep painting.

He decided to keep going until he had redeemed his people.

Because this God, even though his creation disobeyed him, he loved it.

It's who he is.

And all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

But remember, rhythm is building, tension is mounting, and here in verse 10, we reach a sort of climax, a symbol crash, if you will, a pinnacle.

The release of a whole bunch of tension that's built up in the previous verses.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

What does that they refer to?

What is David talking about?

Is he just talking about the rulings of Yahweh?

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's talking about the whole thing.

The whole thing.

He sings of the whole chain, because to stand before God as his treasured possession, his royal priest, his holy servant is greater than gold, even the finest gold.

And notice, David's not arguing.

This is not an epistle.

He's not trying to persuade you.

He's not trying to convince you.

Because he's already done that.

He's already done it.

If we were paying attention, and if his original audience was paying attention, we would have realized that we've already agreed to verse 11 before we ever sang it.

When we sing, when we sing that the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, we're already saying it's more to be desired than fine gold.

That's what he's doing.

And so this verse, it seals the deal.

It's the yes and the amen to verse 2.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned.

In keeping them there is great reward.

This verse pivots us from singing the praises of the covenant faithfulness of the God who hung the stars to something different.

And to tell you the truth, guys, this verse is crucial for us.

This relationship between a God who made everything and a God who speaks perfectly and what's to come next is so important.

I spent most of my time this week trying to get my head inside this moment in this psalm because it's the whole thing.

But recall, David starts globally.

He starts even above the globe in the heavens, the stars in the sky above, and then he moves to the law, the Torah, the covenant relationship at the national level.

And here, when he sings of your servant, David brings his people downward even further.

And they look at their hands, and we look at our hands.

To look at our sins.

But I mean, think about it, guys.

David's audience isn't some room full of progressive academics in a coastal metropolitan city.

Creation and evolution weren't a debate back then.

That's when we hear this psalm most often, but that's not what David's doing.

Everybody, or at least most people back then, believed that some kind of God created the heavens.

And the Israelites he's singing to definitely believe that his law was perfect.

David is singing softballs.

He's generating buy-in, though.

He's gaining momentum.

Asking a bunch of Israelites living in the promised land to sing of how great their creator God is and sing of the rewards and the benefits of his law is one thing.

I mean, that's like asking you guys to sing, Great is thy faithfulness.

You're gonna do it.

We could play it in two different keys up here, and you guys would still sing.

That's what's going on.

Even the Levites in the back have their hands up at this point.

And then David writes, Who can discern his errors?

What?

I mean, it's so sharp to my mind that it almost feels like a change of key, like a whole new thing.

There are two reasons.

This is still one psalm, this is still one thing, and David's moving you through it on purpose.

The first is that David forces verse 11, moreover, by them as your servant warned, he forces verse 11 to bridge the gap between verse 2 and verse 3.

Because remember how this psalm has seven perfect pairings of two?

Verse 11 and verse 12 are a pair.

And so verse 11 stands in verse 2, but it's tied to verse 1 of, to the first line of verse 1, so to speak.

So he bridges the gap.

And second, all of those thems in verse 11, by them is your servant warned.

In keeping them there is great reward, referring back again to the law.

And then connecting that to this idea of warning, caution, admonition.

That ties it straight over into errors in verse 12.

Because for David, the glory of the law is immediately connected with the warning against errors.

But this question in verse 12, this rhetorical question, who can discern his errors?

It has this rhetorical force to it because the answer is an emphatic nobody.

It's what makes them errors, their mistakes, their things you didn't even mean to do.

Who can discern his errors?

No one.

No one.

And so in that way, he gets his congregation, his people to admit corporately with one voice the law of the Lord is perfect.

It has no errors.

The testimony is sure and it has no errors.

The precepts are perfectly straight and right with no errors.

We do.

We, we servants of Yahweh, you and I and the Israelites back then, looking down at our hands, we have errors.

The stars obey.

They are where he put them.

The sun obeys, it goes where he tells it to.

You and I, we don't.

We don't.

So then David shifts from praise to petition.

And he says, Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Catch that?

It's so subtle, it's so sneaky.

He invites them to ask God for forgiveness.

So before we were singing praise, and now we're praying for mercy.

And David goes on to list four degrees of sin, four degrees of sinfulness.

Errors, hidden faults, presumptuous sins, and then this great transgression.

Two things about that list to show you quickly.

They're all roughly referring to the same thing.

Just like the list before that's still on the screen.

They're all pointing to the fact that we are not perfect in light of God's perfection.

Right?

And the second thing is they progress.

These four things get worse from one to the next.

Errors are one thing, hidden faults another thing yet.

Presumptuous or insolent sins, things you do on purpose because you don't care, you know what's wrong, but you're going to do it anyway.

Those kinds of sins are even worse yet.

And then there is this great transgression.

If I ever share anything with you all about sin, it's just that simple truth.

It entangles, it ensnares, it drags you down, it lies, it cheats, it borrows just a little bit more wickedness from tomorrow to suck you in.

Your hidden faults are the things you don't stop to think about how wrong they are because you're just cruising through life.

They quickly turn into carelessness about the way you live, the way you live before your God.

You quickly get apathetic about your life.

And then your hidden faults start to grow.

And that carelessness quickly becomes presumption.

You start doing things just not caring.

And that when you when a life filled with presumptuous sins is the life of a presumptuous sinner.

And that's the way in which scoffers walk.

And that kind of life that leads to the kind of sin, the kind of presumptuous sin that is so great that it can make a shipwreck of your soul.

The kinds of sin that portray you may have never known this God in the first place.

Don't trifle with sins.

Don't play around with it.

Don't risk it because it's not that bad.

It only and ever and always gets worse.

So David lists these four kinds of imperfection.

And then he gives four petitions for atonement.

Look at these things David leads us, leads his congregation in praying for.

Declare me innocent.

Keep me back.

Let not sin have dominion, so that I'll be innocent of great transgression.

And then there's a great plea.

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

What a misquoted verse.

How often when we sing or we pray this verse to start our day or end our day, we sing it with this mindset of resolve.

Help me do it, Lord, but I will make the words of my mouth acceptable in your sight.

I'll do it.

They'll be acceptable.

The meditations of my heart, the way I think, it'll be acceptable for you.

We'll do it, Lord.

You do it with me, you help me get it done.

That's how we often pray this, and that's not what David's doing.

That's not what's going on.

Think about this.

It's just another one in the chain.

It's a yet another parallel sequence here.

Declare me innocent, keep me back, and make my words and meditations acceptable.

There's a desperation here on David's part.

He's inviting you to that desperation.

Beg your God.

Because you see, guys, David knew that he couldn't make the words of his mouth acceptable.

He knew they already weren't.

Who can discern his errors?

No one.

Therefore, the words of your mouth are not acceptable.

Because this God, his word is perfect.

His creation is glorious.

And so your words aren't acceptable in his sight.

But David caught on to something, and he hinted at it earlier in the Psalm, right?

Where somehow, somehow we realize in the declaration of the heavens that even though this glorious God created the stars and the moon and the skies above, he didn't wipe me out when I disobeyed.

David, like the prophets before him, had discovered something he just couldn't get his head around yet.

For some reason that David just couldn't understand, this God let Noah live.

He let the Israelites wandering in the desert live.

How often did God say to Moses, step aside, Moses?

And I will destroy this people for their stiff-necked, and I'll make a new nation from you.

God said that to Moses a lot.

To teach Moses to intercede for the people.

But how often, how easy would it have been for the God who made the stars to start over with mankind?

Very easy.

It's not hard for him to do that, but he didn't.

He didn't.

He hasn't.

For that matter, you guys, this God let Adam live.

He let Adam live.

This God is our rock.

This God redeems us from our iniquities.

He rescues us from Egypt, and He saves us from the destruction we rightly deserve.

This last line, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer, this last line is the emphatic point of this whole psalm.

It is the point.

Because this line is the thing David wanted to teach when he sat down to write.

Look back with me at verse 7.

It literally reads in the Hebrew, Torah, Yahweh.

Each one, testimony, Yahweh, precepts, Yahweh.

David invokes perfection in verse seven, and then he only gives us six examples.

I don't know how strict the rules for Hebrew poetry were, but if seven is perfection, not singing seven while singing of Yahweh's perfection has to be borderline blasphemous.

There's this sense, you guys, that he just leaves us hanging.

David's a masterful poet.

In other Psalms, he sings of the statutes of the Lord, he sings of the word of the Lord.

It would not have been hard for him to think of one more.

But he didn't.

He only sang six.

And then he kept going.

And he left us hanging.

It's as if David just refused to let go of his listeners until they heard what he had to say.

More to be desired are they than Golf.

Who can discern his errors?

And then this last line.

This last line, David says, Yahweh make pleasing.

And the whole thing just reverberates with this finality, this resolution.

Everybody in Israel let out a sigh when David finally sang that last Yahweh.

It's perfect.

It's perfect.

That's yet another reason why we know this is one psalm with one point.

Seven perfect pairs of two, seven Yahweh's.

David's not messing around here.

And notice this, you guys, David chooses perfection.

Perfection.

Seven completeness as the accompaniment for God's redemptive and reconciling atoning work.

Get this.

God Most High, the Creator God, the covenant-keeping Yahweh, makes his people pleasing unto himself as perfectly as he speaks and as gloriously as he hangs the stars.

Atonement is set with the background music, the orchestral score of perfection behind it.

You and I, friends, we know how, but David doesn't.

David doesn't know how God does this.

He just knows that he does, because how else would a God who hung the stars do anything apart from perfectly?

So David trusts that this God atones.

David trusts that this God reconciles, but he doesn't know how.

He hasn't seen it.

We have.

We have.

We know that long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

Hebrews 1:1.

Hebrews 1:1

But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son.

We know that concerning this salvation, this Yahweh make pleasing that David's singing about, concerning this salvation, this redemption of our rock and redeemer, David, he's singing of this stuff.

And this is the stuff concerning which the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully.

1 Peter 1, 10 to 13.

These are the things into which angels long to look, friends.

Behold your God.

His atoning work is as glorious as his creative work.

But back to Hebrews.

No, not back to Hebrews yet.

I got more.

We got time, right?

We got time.

How else?

How else would that God, the God who hung the stars and hung the heavens, choose to make us pleasing before him?

If he has to do it perfectly, if he's gonna do it perfectly, what's the most perfect thing he has to give?

Himself.

And so your redemption before God, your standing before this God, the fact that you're acceptable in his sight at all, is as perfect as the blood of Jesus Christ who hung on the cross for you.

That's how this works.

David never would have seen that coming.

He knew God would do it perfectly, he knew God would do it gloriously.

But wow.

That's how he works, that's what he does.

So now back to Hebrews.

How shall we escape then, friends, if we neglect so great a salvation?

We've been given more to see and more to know than David.

You and I have seen Jesus Christ.

This Jesus Christ who is the guarantee of a better covenant.

I could go for days right here, and you should this week think long and hard about just how perfect Jesus Christ is.

Just how secure your salvation is because of who He is.

Just look at the cross.

We could go for days, but now we should sing.

Because your singing will preach it better than I could.

Would you pray with me as we prepare to sing?

We're not praying to close the sermon.

We're praying to prepare to sing.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Oh Lord, oh Lord, we thank you.

We thank you and we love you.

And now, Father, as we stand to sing, to sing your praise, to glory in your goodness, we ask and we pray that by the blood of your Son, you would wash our singing white as snow.

You would cleanse us with hyssop and make us clean.

So that our sacrifice of praise here today, here now, and our sacrifice of worship all week long would be acceptable in your sight because you've decided to make it that way by the blood of your Son.

O Lord, we pray that when you hear us sing, you hear your Son sing.

And may your glory ring out for all eternity, O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.