Desiring to Please God

Desiring to Please God

Amen Amen. Well, good morning church, let’s uh let’s bring it on in. I love how friendly everyone is. Um it’s a great joy to be with you all this morning, my name is Alex if I haven’t met you yet, I’m on staff here at our church. I lead or co lead the college ministry christian challenge here at sewer. The pastors Mike, Shayne, Ben and dan have asked me this morning uh, to preach, they’ve given me and trusted me with the great responsibility of preaching God’s word and it is a mighty task um that I’m I’m humbled to receive. Every time I I prepare to preach, I God graciously reminds me of the depth of my own inadequacy and every time I’m just overwhelmed by how incapable I am. But I, but I know how how capable and how good God is. So I don’t have anything to offer you today apart from what God graciously speaks through me and through his word. So let’s go to him in prayer and just ask that he would bless our time together this morning, jesus. We look to you this morning, we know that you are good and faithful and right in all of your ways Lord, you are a good and gracious king and jesus, we pray that you would set our hearts upon you that you would glorify yourself this morning, that all the glory would be to your name. God, would you bless this gathering of your people in jesus name. Amen Amen Amen. So church today is a big day as Mike was talking about. We we no longer have a church or excuse me, we no longer have a house in our parking lot. We still have a church. We still have a church. Okay, But we no longer have a house in our parking lot are our parking lot size has increased and as he said now we have even more opportunity for more people to come and to hear the gospel clearly. And so I’m encouraged by that recent development. I hope you are too. But I want to use that that house as an illustration because that empty, boarded up house is finally gone. Um, but there was a lot that had to go on behind the scenes in order to make that happen. There were dozens upon dozens of phone calls that had to be made. There were hours and hours of communication. Uh much city government red tape that had to be worked through, much of which was unexpected. Pastor Mike had to present an extensive strategic plan to the city council chambers historic committee, I think I got that name right. And there are at least five false alarms that the house is just about to be torn down just to come to find out that in fact it wasn’t and it was gonna take even longer. So I only know all of this because mike has just been passing on all this information to me over the, over the past couple of months. But here’s my point in sharing that that before, something amazing like that happens in public, like a house in your parking lot being torn down. Um a lot has to happen behind the scenes first. And is that not also true of the people of God? That as you read the bible, you read of so many people, you read so many true stories, true events. There’s so many people who did great things for God in public, but they first walked closely and consistently with him in private and I would argue that for you and I today it’s no different for us than it was thousands of years ago. That in order for us to please God, we must first walk with him in private. That pleasing God is private before it is public. And so what does it look like to live before God? In a way that’s pleasing to him? I think, I think we all want to know that we all want to grow in our faithfulness to God and how we live our lives for his pleasure and not for our own. And I think some one on one is going to teach us great things about this today, So go ahead and turn to psalm 101. There are plenty of bibles on the chairs around you if you don’t have one. And as you’re doing that, I just want to encourage you to keep your eyes open for two things as we’re looking at this text Psalm 101. Keep your eyes open for the vows that David is making, and the superlatives or the other strong words that you see in the passage, vows being statements and phrases such as I will or I will not. Or this shall be the case for me. This shall not be the case for me. David making vows to God, and then superlatives and strong words such as nothing or anything or no one or worthless or hate, words like that. So keep your eyes out for those things as we read this passage. Without further ado, let’s read psalm 101 together. A solemn of David. I will sing of steadfast love and justice to you. O Lord! I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh, when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house. I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far from me. I will know nothing of evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart. I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land that they may dwell with me. He who walks in the way that is blameless shall Minister to me. No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house, no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. Morning by morning, I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord. And so I want to begin by providing us with some context as we’re setting our hearts upon this solemn upon God’s word and deeply desiring to grow in our desire to please him and our actual obedience to him, even as as Mike was talking about a minute ago, our faith and our obedience. And so someone no one is referred to as a royal, solemn and it has names including the princes psalm or the Mirror for Magistrates and many of the psalms, even as the video that we had playing the great psalms video? Um many of the psalms are focused on praise on lament on confession on worship. But psalm 101 is largely focused on doing on David’s disposition and what he’s desiring to do in order to please God, both in his private and in his public life. And here’s I think what’s really at the heart of what these words from David written under the inspiration of the Holy spirit are getting at really trying to answer this one question, which is how does a Godly King or leader live and rule? How does a Godly King or leader live and rule. And God is graciously presenting us with an ideal, an ideal image of what a Godly king or leader, what they would do, how they would live, how they will rule his kingdom. And so in this psalm, David is making a vow, he’s making several vows, you could say the repeated, I will, I will not statements uh you see there in the text, um he’s proclaiming that he’ll walk with integrity of heart before God and that he’ll rule righteously over Israel as king and he’s envisioning and proclaiming the type of king that he, he will be, that he, that he sees himself being, that he wants to be one day and probably one day soon as he takes over as king of Israel reigning in Jerusalem. And though David is the one making this vow, I think it’s also helpful to understand that this song provides an ideal for all kings of Israel who would follow after David and it also provides an ideal for any leader, any official, anyone trusted with leading others in a way that’s pleasing to God. So it applies very closely even to us today. And even more than that ultimately, this song foreshadows the coming messiah jesus christ who will perfectly fulfill this description of an ideal Godly king, we’ll come back to that later. But first I want to look at verses one through four, focusing on the private life that pleasing God his private before it is public and in verses one through four, we see David speak of deeply desiring deeply desiring in his heart and his soul to please God in his private life. Giving his heart to God. So let’s look back at verses one and two, I will sing of steadfast love and justice to you. O Lord, I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh, when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house. And so we see right at the very beginning here that David is worshiping God singing praises to God, delighting in God singing of the steadfast love and the justice of God. And not not only the love and the grace and the comfort and the gentleness of God and not only the truth and the justice and the reigning kingship of God, but both the steadfast love and the justice of God together praising God and not just singing but praising God singing to the Lord, Making music to the Lord. Worshiping God from his heart, Verse one helps us to understand that godliness and living a life that’s pleasing to God begin with worshiping God. That pleasing God begins with worship. It’s fueled by worship. It it is itself worship that so much of pleasing God stems from worship, stem stems from what you worship in your heart and we worship God. We as christians as believers. We worship God. We worship God because we love him. We sing praises. We lift our hearts in gratefulness to him. We thank christ for who he is and for all that he has done for us in the gospel, we behold him. We delight in him. We treasure him in our hearts because we know that God has loved us, that he has displayed his love for us and sending his son for us. And we see in verse two that David States, he vows that he will ponder the way that is blameless. That is. David sings to God as he gives God praise that God graciously shapes his heart. And the strong and genuine desire of David’s heart was to meditate on God’s ways and to walk in them. So pondering here the word ponder pondering the way that is blameless what David is saying is. Yes, he will think about God’s ways. He will read God’s word. He will meditate upon what is right according to God, but not only will he just think about them, but again, there’s a there’s a piece of obedience here where he he meditates upon them. He ponders God’s ways in order to walk in them and he desires to honor God, to walk in humility, not using his position as king to love himself to serve himself, but to serve God. Then there’s this question, oh, when will you come to me? And it seems almost a little bit out of place where David is making Valley after Valley after Valley of how he intends to live as king when he assumes the kingship of leading Israel. And this this question. This statement is really a plea to God for help is a cry to God. God. Will you help me God? When will you come to me? How can I rule and reign? How can I walk before you in a way that’s pleasing to you without your help, asking that God’s presence would grace him and help him to walk in holiness. And what a great encouragement that is even for us today, that even the great man, the Godly man, the soon to be king. David, a mighty leader, a mighty warrior. He knew that he couldn’t walk in faithfulness before God without depending upon him. It’s no different for us today as well. What a great encouragement. And then David speaks of walking with integrity of heart within his house. And so clearly here he’s speaking of walking with integrity of heart in his physical house, in his physical home. But even more than that, I think David is speaking of walking with integrity of heart in his private life and the house or the home is even for us today, probably our most private place. So christian as you as you see, David’s the meditation of David’s heart and the longing of David’s heart to walk before God with integrity in his most private moments in his most private places, christian. What is your private life look like? And is your private life consistent with your public life? Where is your heart at Charles Spurgeon says what we are at home that we are indeed the brothers and sisters God sees and God knows all. And if you have un confessed or hidden sin, I just want to encourage you that God is still gracious, that God is still merciful. If you will turn to him in repentance, Let’s move on to verses three and 4, Verse three, I will not set before my eyes. Anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far from me. I will know nothing of evil. And so with this first phrase in verse three, I want to make the point that there’s a difference between seeing something and setting something before your eyes, that setting something before your eyes, as David is speaking of. In verse three is a very intentional and purposeful act that he’s giving his soul attention and focus to something purposefully. And he says, I will not set before my eyes anything that’s worthless. Again, we can’t always control what we see or what we look at or what passes by us, but we can control what we set before our eyes and what we said before our eyes will undoubtedly reach our hearts. So believer christian, What are you frequently setting before your eyes? Are there things that are good and pleasing to God or not? And what kind of impact is that having on your heart? Because what you set before your eyes will undoubtedly reach your heart and moving on, how can one rule with justice? How can one rule over a kingdom that God has entrusted to him in this case for David? How can one rule with justice unless in his heart he loves God’s God’s law and he hates what opposes it, and that’s what he’s speaking of at the end of verse three, that he hates the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me, speaking of hating the work or hating the product of the lives of people who forsake and reject God, that he’ll turn away from their evil words, their evil deeds, because he knows that’s gonna impact my heart. That’s gonna lead me away from God. David is vowing to rid himself of sin, rid himself of evil works, rid his heart of evil when they do draw near to him in church, I pray that God would produce in me and in every one of us, a deeper love for him and a heartfelt resolve to please him in our private lives. And then to look at verse four, a perverse heart shall be far from me, I will know nothing of evil and hear David is referring actually primarily to himself Still things haven’t changed when he says a perverse heart shall be far from me. He’s actually not referring primarily to to someone else, but primarily to himself and to his own heart saying that his own heart will not be full of evil. And again that he desires to rid evil from his heart, that he does not want to meditate upon wickedness. He’s committing to guarding his heart against sin and against the lies from people around him. And so as we reflect on the heart and on the private life, I just want, I want all of us to, to reflect and just ask, ask ourselves, what are we often talking about? Because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. What are we frequently thinking about? What is the meditation of our heart when we’re in our house or in our most private moments because church pleasing God is private before it is public. This past week I was cleaning out our gutters and fun job, right? Uh cleaning out the gutters of our, our garage in our house and as I’m up there and on a somewhat steep roof, especially in the house and trying not to fall off. I’m, I’m scooping handful after handful of mud and sticks and leaves and ants and beetles and roly poly’s everything, everything you can imagine. I probably touched it and I’m getting my hands filthy. I’m sweating a bunch in the humidity. I’m getting pestered by mosquitoes. But it’s very important work, right? Because what happens if I don’t clean out the gutters of our house and garage probably looking at eventually flooding water, damage, mold growth. I’m sure the list goes on and after cleaning my gutters for a while, I think the Holy Spirit made it clear to me that the work I was doing was actually a great analogy for this point for the guarding of our hearts, that it’s the dirty work of the christian life, that it’s difficult. It’s it takes a lot of time, a lot of diligence and just like nobody sees the condition of our gutters, no other human physically sees the spiritual condition of our heart because you and I, we look on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. And if we neglect that maintenance, if we neglect that heart maintenance, it’s gonna have major no, no, it’s going to have major negative consequences in our lives. And so casting sin out of our hearts. Is this daily discipline of forsaking your thin forsaking your sinful thoughts and desires. Then turning to God depending on him and his strength and praying that the Holy Spirit would help you and give you the grace that you need. So for David pleasing God begins with singing praises to God, which then shapes his heart, which leads him to walk in faithfulness in his private life, which will then result in him ruling in a Godly way over his Kingdom Church. Let’s turn our attention to verses five through eight as we look at the public life now. So the the private life and versus one through four and now the public life. And verses five through eight Reading verses five and 6, whoever slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart. I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land that they may dwell with me. He who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. And so the one who slanders his neighbor, the one who looks at others with this proud superiority. That’s what a hottie look is referring to. A high look or a proud look or a proud and arrogant heart. David will not tolerate any of these people in his council or in his kingdom, Jesus says in Matthew 12 verse 36, I tell you on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word that they speak. And then James four verse six, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble And so we see based on these two verses that God hates slander and he hates pride. And similarly, David says that he will likewise set himself against those things that he won’t endure those things in his own heart, but he also won’t endure or tolerate those things. And the people that are near to him, that he will surely not receive the counsel of those who are proud of those who slander of those who are malicious with their words. But he’ll also set himself against them. And this has to be done right. This has to be done in in David’s position as he’s about to assume the kingship and reign as king over Israel. This must be done in order to maintain peace and righteousness and goodness in a godly kingdom. Sin has to be opposed. And then in verse six, this is kind of on the opposite hand. So David is looking for and employing and designed to bless those in his kingdom who are faithful to God. That he’ll look with favor on the faithful in the land that they may dwell with him and look at the connection there with with verse two. So, from verse 62, verse two, that if David is pondering on and walking in the way that is blameless, as he says in verse two, how could someone who is doing the same thing? Not be a great encouragement and blessing to him? And that’s what he’s speaking of. In verse six, that he desires to have those people near to him to dwell in his house, to receive counsel from those who walk in the way that is blameless. Iron sharpens iron and wise leaders will surround themselves with people who love God and live their lives to please God. That’s what we can learn One thing we can learn from that verse, Let’s look at these last two, verses, verses seven and 8, no one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house, No one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. Morning by morning, I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off the evildoers from the city of the Lord. And so here again, we see a strong contrast between verse six and then verses seven and eight, so kind of 57 and eight are together and then six is a little bit on its own. Um, but we see that the faithful will dwell with David, but the one who is deceitful surely will not. And church just think about how much deceit can be present. How much does honesty? How much line can be present when it comes to people in power? Or even for us today, even for people who aren’t in power as we would think of it. And it can become even a normal and expected thing. That deception is okay, lying is okay, as long as you don’t get caught. And even worse for someone who’s constantly deceptive, constantly lying, constantly leading people astray even worse for for that person to consistently have an impact on our own hearts and lives so much so that it leads us away from God. And David says that he’ll have nothing to do with this as king of Israel, That first and foremost, he wants to please God, not himself or anyone else. And then looking at this final verse verse eight that morning by morning, he’ll destroy all the wicked in the land, that in his position as king. David. David desires to purge evil from his kingdom. That is completely necessary to oppose sin. I’m sure many of you have heard the quote that with great power comes great responsibility and the leader of many must hold even more firmly to justice when it comes to leading a kingdom or leading others. Church, pleasing God is private, but it should also flow into our public lives. And so I think there are two main dishes that we can fall into when it comes to this whole topic of, of pleasing God, of talking about what does it look like to please God, especially for someone who’s who’s leading, what does it look like to please God. I think the first ditch here is worldliness, which is in short, all grace and no works. That this perspective often comes from believing the lie that God is all grace and no holiness or all love, but doesn’t really expect our lives to look any different. If we have truly been saved church, What we believe about God directly shapes how we live. And so we need to have a sound and biblical understanding of who God is. We’ll never understand him fully, but we need to have a right understanding of who he is. Peter writes in 1st. Peter one as obedient Children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you, is holy. You also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. So in order to avoid worldliness, one thing that we can do is to set our minds on the holiness of God, on the goodness of God, toward us of how worthy he is to be praised and to be worshiped with all of our lives. The second ditch here is legalism, which is in short all works and no grace. Legalism becomes all about following the rules and keeping the laws as best as you can in order to gain God’s approval, and we know that none of us can keep the whole law or even really a sliver of it in and of our own strength pleasing God has to flow out of love for him, church, out of deep genuine love for him. Otherwise, it becomes legalism, it just becomes about following the rules and obeying the laws. So again, the need is christ and the need is a right understanding of who God is, Romans three, beginning in verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there’s no distinction for all, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ, Jesus. And so the narrow road right down the middle of these two ditches is the one that focuses on christ and leads toward christ. So the simple application here from Psalm 101 is to focus on God’s truth and God’s love for you. Very simple to focus on God’s truth and God’s love for you because christ is pleased the father perfectly. And if you’ve been saved by God, he’s given you a new heart and with that new heart, you now desire to please God because you understand his love for you, you understand the abundant and steadfast love that David was singing about in verse one that God has for his Children and praise God right, praise God that it’s not up to us, it’s not up to our pastors. It’s not up to our government officials or leaders across the world to perfectly meet this ideal of a Godly leader because we love God. We should have this deep longing in our hearts to please him and we should be growing in Godliness and pursuing Holy living. But we can never ever do it perfectly, but praise God that there is one who is not like every other human, There is one who never sinned, who never fell short lived up to every Godly standard. He upheld all of God’s law. He walked with perfect integrity of heart. He never said before, his eyes, anything that was worthless, He never walked in evil deeds. He was never haughty or arrogant or proud in heart, like every one of us had been the perfect king, The one who still reigns as king over all, the one who pleased God in everything that he did. The true and the perfect fulfillment of Psalm 101 that is jesus christ, and jesus not only lived in our place, but he also died in our place. He bore the full penalty for our sin upon himself and upon the cross in order that the wrath of God would be completely satisfied the wrath of God that we deserved. But then three days later jesus rose from the grave. He conquered sin. He conquered death, and he displayed that he was in fact, truly God. That sin could not hold him in the grave, that death could not hold him, and that simply by faith in him and who he is and what he has done for us, that we can be set free from our sin, that the wrath that we deserve is now poured out on christ because he has died in our place. And so we need to put our hope in him church. We need to put our hope in jesus christ and what he has done, not in ourselves, not in gaining the most comfort or pleasure that we can in this world, not in our ability to keep the law or to detain to this perfect, high ideal standard of Godliness in our own strength. Those pursuits are all vanity in and of themselves. But we must put our hope in the finished work of jesus christ. Brothers and sisters pleasing God is private before it is public as christians. We should live to please God with all of our lives. We should walk with integrity of heart in our private lives. But most importantly we should fix our eyes on christ, The one who has pleased God perfectly. I’d like to close by reading the lyrics of this amazing song. I love this song. It’s a song is titled The King In all his beauty. The King and all his beauty. It’s by sovereign grace. Music. David was a good king. He was a faithful king. He was a man after God’s own heart. He was a great and Godly example for us today of what it looks like to pursue God and to live all of our lives for his pleasure. But David was not perfect. You and I are not perfect. But this song speaks of the perfect king. Let’s set our hearts on the perfect king, jesus christ the perfect fulfillment of these words, knowing that we’re completely unworthy in and of ourselves. But that jesus christ is entirely worthy of all praise and honor and glory. The king and all his beauty. Oh lift your eyes to heaven, see the Holy one Eternal behold the Lord of majesty exalted in his temple, as symphonies of angels praise. Now strain to sound his glory. Come, worship fall before his grace. The king, in all his beauty! How worthy! How worthy? How worthy the king and all his beauty. Now see the king who wears the crown one made of shame and splinters the sacrifice for ruined man, The substitute for sinners as earth is stained with royal blood and quakes with love and fury. He breathes his last and bows his head the King in all his beauty! How worthy! How worthy! How worthy the king and all his beauty! Now see the savior lifted up the lamb who reigns in splendor. The hope of every tribe and tongue. His kingdom is forever bring praise and honor to his courts, Bring wisdom, power blessings for endless ages will adore the king and all his beauty. How worthy! How worthy! How worthy the king in all his beauty! Let’s pray jesus, you are the perfect king. You are the perfect fulfillment of David’s words Here in Psalm 101. And Lord, we are so thankful for you, jesus. We just ask and cry out for your help as David did. Lord, would you help us to love you and to walk before you both in our private and public lives in a way that is pleasing to you, and we need your grace desperately. We need your spirit to lead us so. Would you be with us today, as we go forward in jesus name Amen.