Bible Lesson 108

THE BOOK OF PSALMS (Part Two)

‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.’

Colossians 3:16 .

‘The truly blessed person is the one who steers clear of the lifestyle of the ungodly.’ Believer’s Bible- Commentary.

In our last lesson, we began to look at the Psalms and to see how God had inspired the Psalmists to write to leave us a guide to a better life, a life that tracks our Lord, in it’s revealing to us how those who have gone before us have handled tough situations by depending upon the Lord and His Word to see us through trouble and strife. Of course, trouble and strife are not the only issues that are addressed by the Psalms.

In them, we find the proper way to praise and thank God, and the Psalms even give us words that can best be sung to give God glory. The Psalms were inspired by God, just as all of the scriptures in our Bible were inspired. God is a loving and merciful God, but He is also a Just God who must punish disobedience by His creatures. That is the reason that God left for us this ‘love letter’ that we call the Holy Bible. God desires that we who are weak in the flesh to understand how being His redeemed creature makes this life more than bearable, it makes it a thing of grace, which even in times of sickness or disaster gives those who are truly saved a sense of peace and pleasure.

Last time we saw that God inspired the Psalmist to write the very first Psalm, the first Psalm to give us a direction of life for those who would benefit from the Psalms. That Psalm begins with ‘blessed’ is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. Why would this man be blessed, and other men not be blessed’ It is because this man and others like him have been called out of the world to serve God, they have been reborn and are walking in newness of life, and they are the children of God by the adoption of their Redeemer Jesus Christ.

That should remind us that there are only two kinds of people in the world today and they are either saved by the blood of Christ or they are lost and under the wrath of God, (Ephesians 2:1-10). You are either saved and are accounted for a saint in the eyes of God or you are lost and destined for hell unless God calls and regenerates you and adopts you into His family. With that said, may I encourage you to seek the face of God by reading and studying and praying about His Word the Bible.

In this lesson, we are looking at how the saints of old thought, and reacted to life by depending on God who was their source as well as ours today. Whether we choose to believe that we are under the wrath of our Holy and Just God the moment we are born, it is a fact (Ephesians 2:1-4).

That should make us stop and think about where we will spend eternity. Most people never think about the fact that every one of us will spend eternity somewhere after we live these short lives here on the earth. We will either spend our eternity in heaven or hell. Now heaven is a place where there will never be another cancer or any of the other diseases that Adam’s sin brought on the world. There will be no sorrow or no tears, no pain: only joy, peace, and pleasure without end there because we will live in the presence of God. Not all will go there because we are such apathetic and distracted people.

Jesus Christ said in His Sermon on the Mount that only a few would go to heaven; because the gate is strait (difficult to go through) and the way is so narrow (Matthew 7:13-14). Can you imagine why there will only be a few that go through that strait gate and walk that narrow way and miss heaven and go to hell’ The Lord of Glory tells us in the very next verse of Matthew chapter seven (vs.15), and it is because there are so many false prophets out there preaching a false gospel and leading simple people away from the truth that sets people free from sin. False prophets’.are men and women, who have not been called or equipped by God to know and impart the message of good news.

We as people who say that we are Christians, but for the most part are only nominal church-members, have outrun God in how we establish churches. Let me remind you that the New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek word that was translated as ‘church’ in our Bible is the word Kuriakos which stands for another Greek word ‘ekklesia, and what it means simply is that the church is a group of truly saved people who are obedient to God and who have been reborn as Christians. Sadly we changed the meaning of what was to be the church to that which we call the church, and that is a building that is occupied by some group that belongs to one of the many diverse denominations.

The church is not all of these buildings that we find on most streets of America and other countries. The church is when the people that are born again, obedient children of God come together. Does that mean it has to be a large congregation’ Jesus said ‘When two or more are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them’ (Matthew 18:20). The true ekklesia or church consists of a meeting where the children of God come together because He has saved them and because they need one another. Now, if the denominations, who all use the same Bible, could and would begin to see each other as Christians who have all the doctrines straight, could stop being competitive with each other for members I would have not to trouble with denominationalism. There is only one Church and that is the Church that Jesus Christ said He would build. That carries with many truths and among those truths is the fact that no man is ever saved by anyone or anything except by the Father’s Grace, through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I have no ax to grind with the visible churches (denominations and creeds) as long as they are working within the parameters that were set forth by God. The first step into the Psalms, Psalms 1, gives us the directions for following God and it simply says that we are not to ‘walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful.’ Can you answer those requirements in your life’ Do you follow God or do you follow the crowd and the latest fads’ Do you stand in the path of sinners’ That means do you associate closely with sinners in the places they go and the things they do. Remember, Christians live in the world but not like the world. We all understand that to stand we must remain in someplace for an extended time. That means if you are spending more time with sinners than with God and His people then you are standing in the path of sinners. I talk to many who wonder how they can break long-standing friendships with the sinner and I always tell them to begin to act and talk and live like a Christian and they won’t have to break off those relationships’.their friends will leave them in a hurry.

The third requirement in Psalms 1 is, do you sit in the seat of scornful’ Perhaps we need to define who the scornful are. They are all around us in our society today and they can easily be identified both by what they say and what they allow others to say about God and Christianity. The scorners will say without hesitation, that we all, regardless of what we call ourselves worship the same God. They refer to God as ‘the man upstairs’ or the ‘Man’ or some vague comment rather than their God. What says you’ God would say that He is the God of the Bible, the God who created all that we know in seven consecutive days. The God who spoke all that we know into being. The God who is a miracle worker, and is a God like no other. If we are true Christians we not only believe that every word of our Bible is the inspired word of God, we believe it to be inerrant, spoken by an infallible God. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. Now, when I say that our Bible is true, I don’t mean that it contains some truth, what I mean is that every word is truth, spoken by the mouth of our Omnipotent, Omniscience, Omnipresent God, who is the only God. Whenever any man thinks he has found some error in the Bible, it is always because the error is in his mind and heart, something that he does not want to believe. Whether we believe it or not does change it, it is settled forever in heaven (Psalms 119:89).

The second verse of Psalms one give us the way that we can succeed in being blessed, and it tells us that the truly blessed man, is the man whose ‘delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law does he meditate day and night’ How about you, how are you answering that requirement’ Do you find the law of God delightful’ Do you meditate about it day and night’ The man who is blessed or happy is the man who is saved and who is not now under the penalty of death for breaking any of the laws of God. We are still responsible to keep the law of God but it is out of love for God for His gracious love for us that obey the law (Matthew 22:36-40). The unredeemed person who does not truly know and obey God is under the law for its penalty of death. A man is blessed if he loves the law of God and meditates on it and in day and night. Meditation is a word that is scarcely used or even thought about in our day. Meditation here in Psalms 1:2 means that the person who loves God and is saved, will desire the word of God as much or more than they do food for the belly.

They will read it by day, and think about it off and on as they go about their daily work or play. We will remember it at bedtime because we have committed it to our memory and our heart and mind. We know it; because God has allowed us to understand it in its context. Our Bible was not given for us to read as if we were reading a book, because you can read a book or many books for that matter and forget what they were about. With the Bible, it is written so that we read it and it becomes part of us. It molds us into the creature that God would have His children to be. How can we read of a God who speaks and the world and all we know just appears. God did not order out dirt and plants and all that the earth and the heavens consist of and then set about to put together the earth. He simply said’.’ Let it be’ and it was (Psalms 33:6-9). That is the beginning of the Psalms and then they go on to lay out what I like to call the pathway of life on earth. Read them, and listen to what God is saying to you, and your life will be easier, more pleasant, and fulfilling.

The Psalms warn us against the folly of Godlessness and assures us of God’s final triumph (Psalms 14). Can there be any doubt that those who believe that there is no God, that we exist here on the earth as the result of a cosmic accident, are literal fools’ Can there be any doubt that there is a judgment of God on those who have set themselves up to be a god in their own lives and have ignored the power and majesty of our Creator God (2nd Timothy 4:1-5). I should not have to tell anyone but under the level of Biblical intellect abounding in our country, I feel that I must tell you or at least remind you about the possibility of spending eternity in hell unless you have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. The question now becomes, how can we know that we have been redeemed and saved from eternal condemnation’ There is the only way to know for sure and this that you will have become a new creature, with the old things passed away and all things become new. Notice now, that is not a future possibility, it is an immediate position of those who are saved by the blood of Christ. You can know by asking a simple question to yourself, ‘Am I obeying all that Christ has commanded me; because I love Him’ If you can’t answer that question positively then you have not been redeemed (John 14:21-24). Now, you have to know that there is a judgment coming where Christ will judge and dismiss all who have not obeyed Him, to eternity in hell (Matthew 25:31-41).

If you continue to read the Psalms you will find that hell does not have to be your eternal home; because our God is a forgiving God who not only forgives those who repent and turn away from sin and turn to follow God, but He puts their sins behind His back and never brings them up again. In Psalms 50:23, we are reminded that ‘Whoever offers praise glorifies Me (God), and to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God’. What a wonderful promise from God to us who are rebellious creatures. God says that when you seek Him long enough for Him to make sure that you are going to obey Him, that He does a work of regeneration that will cause your life to make a dramatic change, and that change will awaken in your continual praise for God. In the Scriptures we find that Faith is a gift of God, it is not something that we can generate or decided to use.

We have faith in a lot of things but that faith is fleshly, not the kind of faith that God speaks of in Ephesians 2:8-9. When we are born in the flesh, as we all are, we are born under the wrath of God because of our sin nature that we inherited from Adam. Saving faith comes as a gift from God at the time of our regeneration and salvation and it is a gift from God, which means that anyone who thinks that they can ‘decide’ to be saved by joining a church group is supremely wrong. God plants that seed of faith in us in salvation and we work to increase that faith as we begin to read and study and meditate on the Words of the Bible (Romans 10:17).

I would ask you to open your Bible and read the 51st Psalm, which is a prayer of repentance by Israel’s King David. David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), and this Psalm show us why he was a man after God’s heart. David committed a great sin and attempted to cover it all up, but when God rebuked Him through Nathan the Prophet, David repented and turn away from his sin. You probably know the story, but The King had his army at war but He remained in his palace, where he looked one evening down into the courtyard of Bathsheba while she took her bath. To make a long story short, David desired her and took her and made her pregnant. Then He had to have her husband killed. Bathsheba had a son who God took by death and then Nathan the prophet accused David of sin and this broke his heart and he prayed this prayer that we find in Psalms 51. He begins his prayer the same way every sinner must if they desire God more than anything in the world’.David said ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, Blot out my transgressions, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from sin.’

In verses 3 and 4 David confesses his sin to God and says, ‘I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, and you only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight.’ David goes on and says that he was born in iniquity, and in sin did his mother conceived him. Incidentally, we have conceived in sin also; because we are under the wrath of God the moment we are conceived. As we have said many times before we are born with the nature of Adam, and he was a nature that rebelled against God, and we are like him. Think about it, from the time you were born you loved to sin. We think of cuddly babies and people think that they are as pure as snow; however, they are little sinners, and if you don’t think so think about what they do when they don’t get their milk on time or their diaper changed or have their way in almost anything. David’s thrust here in Psalms One was to restore his relationship with God. He prayed that God would ‘Purge him with hyssop, to wash him whiter than snow, to make him feel joy and gladness and blot out his iniquities.’

David desired that God would create in him a clean heart, and we are born with a heart that must be changed by God. That takes place when you are saved. There is only one difference between us today and King David. He was under the law and looked forward in time to the Cross. He was visited on occasion by the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit sometimes left him. We are sealed and indwelled by the Holy Spirit and He never leaves us; because we are under grace.

The lesson that we all should take away from Psalms 51, is that God is a merciful God who forgives our sin when we own them and ask Him to forgive them. Psalms 52 reminds those who are evil and proud of it, that God is long-suffering but we cannot know when God will say enough and plucks us out of His world. Don’t think that because you have been a thief or a murderer or a robber or the like for years on end that God does not have His eye on you, and will not allow you to get away with sin. We can always depend on God to be there and to be the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. Nothing escapes His eye and you will pay for all of your unrepented sins. The same applies to any vows that we make to God. Psalms 56 reminds us that vows made to God are binding upon the one who makes the vow (Psalms 56:12).

We, the creature, can never dictate anything to God. We cannot rush him in saving us or cause Him to do anything except what He wills to do. Reading the Psalms will help us to put things in our lives in priority; and God is always, in everything the priority for us. We love Him because He first loved us and because He is the source of all true salvation (Psalms 68:20). God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalms 46:1). God must be eternal and we are frail and our lives are short at the best.

We are people who love to see competition and we enjoy ball games and races and soccer and the like because we love to see who is going to win. We never know who will win before time in those games and the like, but we can know who will win in this battle between good and evil. We know that God will win and has already won the battle in Christ on the cross. In Psalms 110:1 we find ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies your footstool.’ That was accomplished at the cross when Jesus bruised the head of Satan (Genesis 3:15). The battle has been fought and the war has been won, and all God requires us to do is to gather the spoil. So until next time’.please do yourselves a favor and begin to read your Bibles, especially the Psalms.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob