"The Life of the Godly Person" (Scruggs) | Psalm 112

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A reading from Psalm one hundred and twelve.

Praise the Lord.

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments.

His offspring will be mighty in the land.

The generation of the upright will be blessed.

Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.

Light dawns in the darkness for the upright.

He is gracious, merciful, and righteous.

It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.

For the righteous will never be moved.

He will be remembered forever.

He is not afraid of the bad news.

His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

His heart is studied, but he will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.

He has distributed freely.

He has given to the poor.

His heart is exalted and honored.

The wicked man sees it and is angry.

The desire of the wicked hair.

Please be seated.

As we continue our summer in the Psalms, context will be our friend.

The context of Psalm 111 is all the ways that God works.

So God works for you.

And then we have Psalm 112, God's Word to You.

And as God works and for God's word, it is meant to be personal and practical.

That's why we begin with verse 1: Praise the Lord.

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.

And man, it's meant to be general.

It could be man or woman or child.

And this, what is personal, is also practical with God's work and word that we will see in this passage.

But I wanted to actually start with an illustration as we move towards the verses before us in the fictional story of the help set in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s, where you have real dynamics of race and class, and also themes running throughout the book of different types of characters.

I want to introduce you to Hilly, who is wrong.

And in her wrongness, that plays out to impact the community.

And at the same time that you have Hilly, you have characters like Abilene Clark and Dr.

Turner and his wife Sissy.

So I want to begin with Hilly and her wrongness.

It begins with her mother that she has actually decided to put her mother in an assisted living home.

At times that certainly is appropriate, but it wasn't her time.

She was fine, but according to Hilly, who wanted her mother's help, Minnie, the best cook in Jackson, the mom had to go to the home so Hilly could have the help.

Minnie.

And what happens when she goes to that home?

Hilly begins spreading rumors about Minnie that she's a liar and she steals, ensuring that nobody else in that community will hire her.

So then she can only work for Hilly.

That's the first example.

Another example happens when Hilly actually has someone helping her around the house.

And one day the help asked of Hilly, could she just borrow$75 to send her two boys to college?

And she would pay her back.

It's a loan of$75, and I confess I only took one math class in college.

I prefer words on pages and languages.

But for$75, if you paid that back$3 over 25 weeks, that would cover$75.

She just needs$75 to help her boys go to college.

And Hilly says to her, based on Christian charity, I'm not gonna help someone who is well and able.

You can figure out this money by yourself.

And eventually she will steal from the home.

And what should just be six months in prison?

Hilly knows the judge's wife, so she gets instead of six months, four years over$75 without interest that she wanted to pay back.

The last and final example this morning of Hilly and her wrongness is social isolation from someone who was once her friend.

And in this isolation, she gets word out about Skeeter, so that's her nickname.

But word gets out and it costs Skeeter a table to play bridge with her once friends.

She plays double tennis.

It cost her her doubles tennis partner.

It cost her being invited to baby showers.

It cost her everywhere she goes, socially speaking, it is as if people can't see her, all because of Hilly.

And this quote from the book I found really powerful.

The relational coldness from Hilly would take 100 Mississippi summers to thaw.

It's this wrongness, this relational wrongness that have financial implication and impacts people as well.

And part of the book, I am getting to a point.

Thank you for your patience.

Part of the book is what do we do about Hilly?

And this wrongness that is impacting all of us.

And the solution is we can only do what is right.

Introduce Aboline Clark.

The prayer warrior.

She says prayer is like electricity, it keeps things going because it keeps her going.

And the right thing that she knows to do, it's the right thing at the right time with the right person in front of you.

And I'm gonna do what is right next, and the rightness according to Abilene Clark.

She does this for God.

That's in part the right thing.

And she also does it to benefit others.

So it's for God and it benefits others.

And I think we do see this in Psalm 111, moving towards Psalm 112 and this completion in verse 10.

If you have your Bibles of Psalm 111, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

All those who practice it have a good understanding.

His praise endures forever.

And the beginning of our psalm this morning of Psalm 112, praise the Lord.

There is a certain amount of rightness when we understand how God works for us.

And God speaks his word to us that is meant to be personal.

And it's also meant to be practical.

We put it into practice, and it would impact our thoughts and our daydreams and our hopes and our fears and how we are peopled in a place with an actual purpose, and we would live life for God, and we would live life to benefit others.

Let's pray and then we'll consider our first point together this morning.

Let's pray.

Father, as we were just reminded from Be Thou My Vision, save us.

Be with us.

Be first in all of our hearts.

And we would pray that we would see that in Psalm 112 that is personal and is practical.

Father, help us by your Spirit to see that now.

Amen.

Let's begin with our first point together this morning.

The source of delight for the godly person.

And the source of delight is God.

And I would encourage you to look this afternoon back at Psalm 111 and all those details of how God works.

And I would invite you to make it personal and practical to yourself.

But just as a way of summary, the ways that God works.

God is really big, and we are small.

And because God is really big, we fear God and we praise God and we trust Him at His Word, and we want to put His Word actually into practice.

It's the bigness of God and it's also recognizing the smallness of us.

But God is big and we are really small.

And He still works in really big ways.

And I think that's why we're here this morning, this call to worship, and it begins with a hymn of praise.

And we just sang together the doxology.

It's this life of praise that God is so big and we are small, but he works in big ways.

And that's why, according to one of my mentors, a very helpful way to gauge someone else is to follow their thankfulness and gratitude and praise about God.

And what that means for us this morning, that your life would be doxology and praise and thanksgiving for a big God that works in his big ways.

But to go even further in this passage, not only is it about praise and it's about fearing God, we also find out, reading in verse 1 again, praise the Lord.

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments.

It's personal, but it also gets practical.

We actually do want to know God and His Word.

We want to love God and His Word.

We want to delight in God and His Word.

We want to live out these words in our own lives, and that's why James says we don't want to just be hearers of the word.

We want to be doers of the word.

We actually would delight in keeping his commands.

And that's also in Psalm 111, verse 2.

Psalms 111:2

Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.

So did you catch it?

We study his works, and we also study and delight in his word.

Delight is used in Psalm 111 about his works, and now delight and is used about his word.

And I found this helpful and I share it with you that you will hopefully find it helpful as well.

Paul, by 1 Corinthians, he talks and confronts that audience with the ugliness of selfishness.

But then if you move to his second letter, 2 Corinthians in chapter 8 and 9, he talks all about God's grace that has been given to the churches.

He says, Grace has been given to you.

Act out on that grace.

And then he continues with these words.

But as you excel in everything in faith and speech and knowledge, in all earnestness, in love for each other, see that you also excel in this act of grace, also.

And then he anchors and secures God's grace for you and these acts of grace actually in what Christ has done for you.

We read these words in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor, so that you might by his poverty become rich.

The psalmist in Paul is reminding us: go back to that source who works for you and speaks his word to you and delight in that source because it is in Christ as we read Psalm 1 and Psalm 112.

It sounds like someone we know.

It sounds like Christ.

But for those of you who are in Christ, it should also sound like you.

And that moves us to the second point.

It's not only the source of delight, it is the outflow of delight for the godly person.

And again, we've just mentioned briefly how it's personal.

We also need to understand how it's practical.

And we have, praise the Lord, blessed is the man again, the man, the woman, or the child.

Here's how it's practical.

This blessing is God's faithful provision to you.

And God's faithful provision to us actually works its way out to benefit others.

So it's not just you, it doesn't just stop at you.

It works out into others, and the psalmist actually begins, it works out in the home.

In verse 2 and 3, and following, we we have the house, the home, uh a physical place for others to actually live.

The psalmist begins there, and verse 2, land would secure a place to work, so you would have something to do.

So the godly person has a place and has something to do and work, and finally we have in verse 3 these wealth of wealth and riches.

I'm gonna read the verse.

Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.

So, what do we do with Be Thou My Vision?

And this verse, and what I mean by what do we do with Be Thou My Vision?

If you know the song, Riches I Heed Not.

Hold on.

We just said wealth and riches.

But the wealth and riches of this psalm, it is material.

But it's meant to be these healthy crops to sell and to provide for things actually on the table.

And the psalmist is making the point for the godly person that you would actually have a place to live, but that place to live would be for others.

You would have things to do, but the things that you actually do would include others.

You would have food on the table, but that food is actually for others because the psalmist is saying everything that you have and everything that you see and everything that you touch is from the faithful provision of your benefactor.

It's the source of your delight, and you want to share it.

It's not meant to be contained.

It outflows and is meant to benefit others.

But not only do we see this in the home, we also see this with finances in verse 5.

It is well with a man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.

So in that verse, it's commendable to give money to others.

And they say they will pay it back.

So this is giving without interest.

And then we have in verse 9 He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor.

His righteousness endures forever, his horn is exalted in honor.

And in this verse, he gives freely.

And this is giving freely to someone who is not going to return that money or the favor.

I'm not sure how many of you have been convicted driving to the bottom of the mountain at the red light when someone is holding a sign.

And my sunglasses are so well tinted you can't see where I'm looking, but I'm watching that person.

And should I give something to that person?

And I remember one morning somebody went through the green light, go and park by in the barbecue parking lot.

He gets out of his car, he crosses the street, he hands this individual something.

She looks at it and realizes that whatever he gave her is enough for the day because she packs up all of her things and she leaves.

And obviously, I watched all of it.

It is being that type of person, and I'm not saying that's what you should do today, but it's giving to benefit someone else, and they're probably never going to return the favor.

It's that kind of generosity in verse 9, and we see this in Corinthians.

God has been generous to me, God has been generous to you.

And he's saying, embody generosity.

Give without interest.

Give when there's no return.

And then we also see not only is it in the home and financially impacting the community, there's actual characteristics.

Did you catch those in verse 4?

Grace and mercy and righteousness, and by verse 5, justice.

And if you read back in Psalm 111, verse 4, he has caused his wondrous works to be remembered.

Psalms 111:4

The Lord is gracious and merciful.

And if you're like me, you're like, hold on.

We just said all those things about God, and now we are saying those things about God to an individual person.

God is the original.

We are the copies.

That doesn't mean you are God.

That does mean that you are like God in grace, mercy, justice, righteousness that actually does endure forever.

You see, when we're lingering in the ways that He works, that is personal, and we linger and we put into practice, and we're doers of the word that is practical.

We start looking like God.

People see us, and they see actually Jesus, Christ working in us.

For those of you who enjoy the progressive insurance commercials, so they get me, they get me every time.

Like if I'm having a bad day, that's what I'm watching before I leave.

Because part of it is Dr.

Rick cannot stop these homeowners who are getting older, they're becoming their parents.

He can't stop it.

What he can do is help them bundle car and home insurance.

We were in Dallas and I did this, and then I laughed at myself.

We were in Dallas this summer, went to a Rangers game.

It's like we have to park at the exit.

So we can be the first to leave.

That is an actual commercial.

That, hey, you've already talked about the exit.

We haven't even gone to the game.

And then they say, When are we leaving the game?

We still haven't gone to the game.

Let's go into the game and let's watch the game.

And then we will decide when to leave.

That was me this summer, and I sounded like my dad.

Here's my point.

You're becoming more and more like your Heavenly Father.

You are becoming more and more like the children that you actually are in Christ.

And you're benefiting others.

And this is what we want from each other in this room and outside of this room to treat us like that.

And God is saying from this Psalm, I want this for you.

I want it for you.

This outflow of delight for the godly person.

He wants it for us.

And because he wants that for us, that's why we have been peopled and we have been placed in this community.

And are you going to love this community?

Are you going to do things that benefit this community?

Are you going to be generous to this community?

Is the question that we are asking from a place of God's faithful provision to actually benefit others?

But we not only have all those, I think, that at least for me is an encouragement to my own heart.

But did you also catch the challenge?

Here's the challenge.

Verse four darkness is actually real.

And it needs to be met with light.

He is not afraid of bad news.

How is that possible?

He will not be afraid.

There are plenty of reasons to be afraid.

And what about the verse five and nine?

What if you're giving away money and resources faster than it's coming in?

What do we do about that?

Darkness, bad news, fears.

Continue to give money away.

We are still placed in the source of the light, and we're still secured in the one who we are trusting.

This God.

Did you catch that?

Where is your heart going to trust?

Verse 6, for the righteous will never be moved.

He will be remembered forever.

He is not afraid of bad news.

His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

His heart is steady.

He will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.

And part of this from David Palison says, Can you get any phone call?

Can you have any interaction?

Can anything be said of you?

And you can say, nothing has changed.

Why has nothing changed?

It seems as if everything changed.

Because you're trusting in God.

You're trusting in his work.

You're trusting in his word.

It is personal and it is practical.

And I want to conclude with this.

Going back to that example of Healy, what is interesting about the story, and again, it's fictional, so I'm not saying that this is anyone in the room.

But she's claiming to be a Christian.

But I gave her as the example of the one who is doing wrong.

And I bring that to your attention for this reason.

Verse 10.

He gnashes his teeth and melts away.

The desire of the wicked will perish.

Over the course of the story, Hilly and her wrongness and doing wrong because she is wrong, is met with right.

God and God's people tactually benefit others.

And towards the end of the story, Hilly is the one who is bitter and angry and isolated and resentful about her community and people in her community.

Because, and again, I share that for this reason, according to the ESV study Bible in the footnote, the wicked person would be the Israelite, so a part of the visible people of God, and at the same time not a part of the visible people of God.

And I think in this psalm, it's supposed to make that person feel convicted.

Verses one through nine were not about me.

And I know it.

And may you be so bold to ask.

I've thought about asking this with my own family at lunch.

Am I Hilly?

Am I her?

It's a question that the psalm might be asking of you.

But it might be also asking of you this.

There are two characters in the story named Miss Sissy and Dr.

Tucker.

And this is what the help had to say about them.

When I asked for a raise, they gave it to me.

When I needed a home, they bought it.

When my husband was shot, Dr.

Tucker came to our home and removed the bullet from his arm.

I have worked for Dr.

Tucker and Miss Sissy for 44 years.

She says, I wash her hair every Friday.

If I die first, who's gonna wash Miss Sissy's hair?

They've been so good to me.

Who can you say that about?

And who can say that about you?

It's an invitation for us to consider this morning for those in Christ.

We are going back to that source of delight in his work and in his word.

It's the outflowing of that delight from God's work and from God's word to actually benefit others this morning.

It is personal and it is practical.

Let's close in prayer.

Father, we do thank you for your word and for the range of psalms that has, they have meant so much to me personally over the course of time.

And thank you for the privilege of preaching these psalms and singing these psalms and praying these psalms and considering these psalms so you would continue to form us individually and as a community into the people that you would have us to be.

We are in Christ, the source of our delight, and we live for Christ so that others might see Christ and that it would actually be to their benefit.

In the name of Jesus we do pray.

Amen.