The Sojourner and Zeal

Well, good morning, and we invite you to uh take your Bible out and turn to our scripture reading for this morning, which is found in the book of Psalms, Psalm 119.

And we're going to be looking at verses 9 through 16 this morning.

Psalm 119, beginning in verse 9.

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commandments.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes.

With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes.

I will not forget your word.

Here ends the reading of God's Word.

Well, we this summer we've been focusing on the Psalms, and we're going to continue this morning in a focus on Psalm 119.

Really, one of the Mount Everest of the Psalms in the book of Psalms.

It is an extraordinary high point in the book of Psalms.

Psalm 119 is a very carefully designed, written prayer that reflects the deepest heart cries of its author.

For the past two weeks, I have been wrestling with why this psalm is in our Bible.

Why is it important for us to read?

Even more than that, this psalm is structured so carefully in a way that it was meant to be memorized.

Why is this psalm here for us to memorize?

I mean, was it meant to be like one of those great biographies that we read?

Of an unusual, unique, extraordinary individual with special strengths that are there just to inspire us or to tap into our curiosity.

That's not why this psalm is here.

All scripture is God breathed.

And all scripture is useful for our training and our teaching in the character and the ways of God, that we might be thoroughly equipped and useful for every good work.

And so in this psalm, there is a great design of God in it that we will engage with this author.

One of the things that is unique about this psalm is that God pulls back the curtain on what the author is thinking here.

He pulls it back.

He likes right here, he shows us what he wants, what he longs for, what he's feeling, and he lets us see deep inside this individual.

The author isn't just a kind of unique individual.

This psalm isn't showing us the picture of some individual who is just so far out there that we could never really attain to this.

Some kind of an individual with great strengths and something we're just to be inspired at from a far, far distance.

No, this psalm gives us the picture of a model person.

This is an individual we are to look at and to learn from and to desire to follow after.

This is someone that is on a journey, and we are invited in this scripture to step into this journey with the author in our own journey of faith.

One of the things that's amazing about this psalm is that in opening up the heart of this individual, God lets us hear first hand.

He lets us hear firsthand the struggles and the amazing blessing of a life of faith in Him.

These aren't just a bunch of platitudes.

This isn't a book that was carefully crafted to teach people.

This is like a diary that was written to reflect the struggles and the blessing firsthand, firsthand from someone who is there in the battle every day.

Well, in this series on Psalm 119, we've been uh zeroing in on some of the main themes of the psalm.

It's a long psalm, it's 176 verses.

We're looking at some of the themes.

And last week we examined how a life of following Christ will put us at odds with features of our culture, and it will leave us longing for our real home with the Lord Himself.

We're never going to be fully at home in this life.

We connect with it at one level, but at another level, we are far from being home here.

We are sojourners, we are resident aliens, and we are on a journey.

We have a destination we're heading to.

We're not just wandering around aimlessly trying to carve out a little space and survive.

We have a home that we're moving toward, and that is one of the heartbeats of this psalmist.

Well, today we're gonna we're gonna move a little farther.

We're gonna focus on what this sojourning, resident, alien author has to teach us about zeal.

About zeal.

And I'd like us to navigate this by by looking at two questions.

Number one, does God even care if we have zeal?

And number two, how do we fight the passivity in the heart?

Well, let's begin with the first of those.

Does God even care if we have zeal?

I mean, is that something we really need to be concerned about?

Well, I think I'd like us to start by defining what zeal is.

We have to know what that means before we can begin to engage with this question.

If you look up the the definition of zeal, you'll find um expressions or words along these lines, uh, intense devotion, eagerness, enthusiasm, feelings of great intensity and warmth, fervor.

Uh, in fact, the the roots of the idea of zeal point to the idea of burning, a fire that burns.

More helpful for me was thinking about the opposite of zeal: apathy, indifference, listlessness, lethargic, dormant, casual, passive.

That is what zeal means.

And does God care if we have zeal or not?

In Galatians 4, there was in a very interesting expression we find that the Apostle Paul says, it's fine to be zealous provided the purpose is good.

And not surprising, one of the ideas that we think of, and that actually is associated with zeal, is being extreme or being fanatical in nature, being a zealot.

That's what that means, is someone who is very extreme.

And all through history, there have been zealots, political zealots and religious zealots, who have been blinded by their zeal and who have lived very poorly in life.

We read about, for example, the zealots among the Jews.

Paul says also in Galatians, they're zealous to win you over, but for no good.

And then we Christians have certainly had our share of zealots throughout history.

Some of them have been some famous missionaries that God has used in surprising ways.

I think of some of the men who opened up Africa or who opened up some of China during the age when missionary movement was moving with great fervor.

Some of these men were hard and rigorous.

And some of that was just because of that's the kind of personality of the people who actually would leave the comforts of America and go off and be willing to die to take Christ to a foreign land.

Some of that they came by just in their natural personality bent.

But these men, some of them were hard and rigorous and prideful, and in their journey, they lost their families.

They lost their health.

They damaged many, many people in their wake, including many new believers that they were trying to win.

So not all zeal is good.

There has to be a good purpose for it.

I would even say that for just the average Christian, we know the kind of bad zeal that we're tempted to.

There seems to be just a well within us that comes to the surface that we have to make up for inadequacies that we feel.

And one of the ways that we just naturally move to do that is to become zealous, is to take on and to do and to become doers.

And sometimes we get swept up in the kind of um the kind of uh teaching and movements that emphasize great, zealous movements.

And um really what's behind all that is an attempt to to make ourselves feel better about our failures, and to feel better about our inadequacies, and to really hide from engaging the real sinful self that we are.

But there is a healthy zeal.

There is such a thing as a healthy zeal, and what does it look like?

Well, our author demonstrates from beginning to end what a healthy zeal looks like.

When I think of him, I think of the word intense, a healthy intensity.

Yes, he's a sojourner, but not with a long face.

He's got a deep intensity about him, he's got a resolve about him.

He is intense to know God.

He's intense to know his word.

He's intense to know God's ways and his character and his reign.

Uh, look with me, if you will, just in verses 10 and 14 through 16.

With my whole heart I seek you.

Verse 14 in the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts, I will fix my eyes on your ways, I will delight in your statues, I will not forget your word.

There's a great intensity here to engage the living God and his living word.

But sometimes this man's zeal shows up in the opposite.

It shows up, it's the flip side of this intensity for God, to know God.

It shows up in an anger toward injustice and toward anti-God sentiments.

And I'd like to look quickly at a couple of these.

Verse 58.

I entreat you, uh, I entreat your favor with all my heart.

Be gracious to me according to your promise.

Uh verse 113.

Sorry, I think that was a miss one there.

Um, verse 113.

I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.

Uh verse 128 says this.

I consider all your precepts to be right.

I hate every false path.

Verse 136, my eyes shed tears, uh streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.

Verse 139, my zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words.

So there is a loud refrain throughout this psalm.

That this individual feels passionate about God.

And he feels passionate about those who would run him down, and those who would ignore him and be indifferent to him and wander from his ways and treat it like it's dirt.

This is truth, and he's passionate about it.

It's good for us to remember that zeal without love is harmful.

And so, this isn't the kind of zeal here that sometimes even Christians in our culture, uh, in our eagerness to defend God, we end up clubbing people with our Bibles and with truth, and we lose sight of love.

But sometimes this healthy zeal shows up toward God Himself.

Sometimes this intensity is an intensity toward engaging God.

A number of times in this passage we read about how others were mocking this guy.

They were accusing him of having false hope and foolish loyalty.

Listen to what he says to God at one point.

The psalmist engages God with great zeal on this.

He says, Lord, uphold me according to your promise that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope.

In other words, he's saying, Father, remember your promise.

You said this would be a great time for you to show up and to show yourself real and alive and to save me and to do something about this drift, this foolish drift that is taking your people away.

And so these are the kind of phases of what a healthy zeal looks like.

You know, is there any other attitude or posture of the heart that it would be appropriate for us to have toward the one who made us?

He fashioned us for a purpose.

He fashioned us to know him and to love him and to relate well with him and to walk with him.

And at great cost to himself, he paid a severe price in the sending of his son to redeem us so that we could become members of his own household and become heirs together with Christ.

Is there any other appropriate kind of attitude and posture that we would say is right than one that has an intensity about it, and one that is not passive and listless and casual and no big deal, and I'll get to it later, and lazy.

When I think of the idea of zeal, and I think of what this guy is doing in this passage, what comes to my mind is a fierce loyalty.

There's a fierce loyalty and love that expresses itself in zeal.

Where there is no zeal, loyalty and love run very, very low.

Well, is it any wonder that God has directed his people, Old Testament times and new, to be characterized by a healthy zeal and not to be apathetic or even lukewarm.

We read in several places of Scripture, just listen to these.

Don't let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord.

Be devoted to one another in love, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord.

We don't want you to become lazy, brothers and sisters, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Or how about this one?

His master replied, You wicked, lazy servant.

So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gathered where I haven't scattered.

Well, you should have put my money on deposit so that when I returned, I'd have it back with interest.

Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.

Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don't give up.

Again and again in Scripture, God points us to zeal.

It's the way of fierce love and loyalty.

The Lord Himself was characterized by this: zeal for your house has overcome me.

And even God himself is zealous for his own name and his own cause in this world.

We read a number of times in the Old Testament this refrain, the zeal of the Almighty will accomplish this.

You see, our author is inviting us.

This psalm is in this book for us to read, to be invited to engage everything within us that is keeping our hearts in a place that's distracted, and in a place that's consumed with fear, and in a place that's self-absorbed, and that's passive.

Well, this brings us to the next question.

How do we fight passivity in our hearts?

You know, the great enemy of zeal is in fact passivity and fear.

It was one of the things that led to the downfall of the human race.

Adam.

Passive, fearful, standing by, allowing the word of God to just be treated like it was optional.

I've been struck this year, in fact, in recent months, by how much damage my passivity does in relationships.

By failing to push into conflict and to stand up for what's good and just.

Those of us who have introverted kinds of hearts and who are not easily pushed into other people and pushed into conflict, passivity and fearfulness can leave us in a place of just inactivity and listlessness.

But this psalm isn't so much about commanding us to be zealous.

This isn't a psalm that's here that's saying, hey, this author was zealous.

Now you get out there and be zealous.

It's more about showing us what we can become.

It's more about showing us what real loyalty and faith looks like, what a real sojourning spirit is about.

We were made to be brave.

We were made to be anti-passive.

We were made to be intense, tempered by love.

That's what we were made for.

But this battle to put to death passivity in our life is grueling.

And if you've been engaged in it, you know that it's grueling.

The battle to be aware and to engage your fear is a grueling battle.

It's going to lead you to places you never wanted to go.

It's going to open up parts of your heart that you would have rather not seen.

It's an impossible journey to do in our own strength.

We know from elsewhere in Scripture that in fact, half we try to do this in our own strength, we only fall deeper in the pit.

We need the Spirit of God to move in us and to do a great work in us, to unveil, to show us who we really are, and to give us the strength and the right kind of impulse to live healthy, zealous lives.

When I think about this, I think about two extremes.

How do we fight passivity in our hearts?

There's two extremes.

The one extreme, of course, is to think that we just do it.

We just get out there and do it.

And then the other extreme is to think that somehow we're just going to lay it before the Lord and He's going to do it for us.

And both of these are kind of pits.

The way forward in Scripture is that the heart is going to be changed as we open it up to the Holy Spirit.

Much of the work of our zeal and of cultivating zeal is going to be about confession.

It's going to be about owning and grieving where we are.

It's going to be about seeing just the listlessness of these hearts that feel so dead.

It's going to be about taking off our masks and being real with God.

But there's another part of this work that will happen at the heart level by our doing.

The heart is also changed by what we do.

There's a kind of feedback loop here, a complicated way that God's designed us.

I think you know that this morning.

If you came in here and your heart wasn't highly engaged with the Lord, how many of you sang and began to enter into the command to rejoice always before the Lord?

And I'll bet for many of you that as you began to sing, as you began to step out and do where maybe your heart wasn't, you didn't assume your heart was there.

You confessed it.

You asked the Lord to give you those strength for this, but you stepped out.

You stepped out.

And there's something about that.

Scripture, Robert Salcy says scripture is like a musical score.

It's not meant to be read, it's meant to be played.

It's meant to be played.

I think as we engage in our passivity that way, we're going to get some traction.

We're going to realize that some of those feelings that we have that we don't think God really wants us, if God really knew who we were, he wouldn't want us in his cause.

But that's exactly who he wants.

He wants sinners in his cause.

Sinners who are real with him, who are sons and daughters, who come to him through faith in Christ.

And because of that, that covering can be truly zealous.

However imperfect it is, however uneven it is, however small the growth may be, that we can enter into that journey with him.

I want to bring this to a close by returning back to this idea that I love it that God has given us a firsthand testimony in this passage.

He's given us one of a man or perhaps a woman who was living a life of zeal.

And what was that testimony?

What was that life like?

Read this psalm.

The author tells us in the verses we read, it's life giving.

It's life-giving.

This is where life is.

We were meant to run and to not be on the sidelines.

You don't have to be mature, deep, to resonate with this.

We're meant to grow.

There's no guilt to be had here that I'm not as far as this guy is.

Hear the invitation and get in the battle and on the road and realize it starts from the heart and work its way out.

Will you join me as I lead us in a closing prayer?

Our Father, thank you for this testimony.

Lord, we've all began on a different road in life, a road in which we try to build our lives on something other than you and your word.

And Father, our first hand testimony, word honest, would be that it was empty and disintegrating.

Lord, would you empower us to taste more of this life giving, sojourning life of faith and loyalty towards you.

We ask that your spirit would get a hold of us and would do a great work in us.

In Christ's name we ask it.

Amen.