Sayre Woods Bible Church

Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. (Psalm 32:2)

Blessed is the forgiven person…the person who no longer has to live in guilt, who can rest assured that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), who knows that every day he is loved infinitely and unconditionally by the God of this universe, who can wake up to God’s new mercies and go to asleep in God’s abiding grace, who can do nothing to gain more of God’s love or do nothing to lose God’s love, who experiences wave after wave of God’s grace (cf. John 1:16), who has reason to rejoice, reason to hope, reason to live in freedom.

And blessed is the spiritually honest person…the person “in whose spirit is no deceit,” who no longer has to put on a mask before God or pretend to be sufficient in himself, who can openly acknowledge his sin, his weakness, his need for grace, who no longer cherishes secret sin, who yields his life to God, who prays LORD, search me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts (Psalm 139:23), who no longer has to play games with God or maintain his image, prove his worth or project a false persona to others, who is free from sin by being open to the daily work of the Spirit in his heart.

This is the blessed life. Total honesty before a holy God and total forgiveness from a gracious God. No more guise. No more guilt. No more self-righteousness. No more self-condemnation. No more secret sins. No more shame.

Thank You, LORD, for grace! May I live in Your grace today.

But I trust in You, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in Your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me. (31:14-15)

David is having a rough day! Psalm 31 reveals more of the struggles that David faced in life. This psalm was probably written after his son, Absalom, rebelled against him and the whole kingdom basically switched allegiances to Absalom. David was rejected and left Jerusalem to save his life. David was losing everything–his family, his friends, his position, his possessions, his security, and possibly his life.

In the midst of all this, you can see the spiritual struggle in David’s life. He is fighting to maintain faith in the midst of the trials. He wavers back and forth from “In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge” (31:1) to “My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning” (31:10). David is physically and emotionally spent. Socially he feels alone, isolated, abandoned, and rejected. “I am the utter contempt of my neighbors; I am a dread to my friends” (31:11).

Where does David turn? He turns to God for strength. This is not some easy faith decision either. It is a battle with his own soul. “In my alarm, I said, ‘I am cut off from Your sight!’” (31:22). 

David did not immediately sense God’s presence. He felt abandoned by God too. But in faith he made a declaration. “But I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’” (31:14).

I like the fact that he said, “You are my God.” It is almost as if those words could not just be thought in the mind, they had to be spoken with the mouth. He needed to verbalize his faith. “You are my God.” He needed to hear those words come out of his mouth. He needed to speak them in faith. He needed to declare them to himself and to others.

Then he needed to realize one more thing…”My times are in Your hands” (31:15). Whatever happens…my past, my present, and my future are under the care and control of You, O LORD.

Nothing escapes God’s notice. Nothing is outside His control. Nothing removes us from His hands. We may not see. We may not understand. We may not always feel safe and secure. But in faith we speak, “You are my God.” And in faith, we trust that our times are in His hands.

Lord, You are my God.

Now in my prosperity I said, “I shall never be moved.” LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was troubled. (30:6-7, NKJV)

There is an inherent danger in prosperity. The New King James says “prosperity.” The New International says “security.” The Hebrew word is shelev which means “to be at ease, to be secure, to be prosperous, to have quiet and peace.”

One of my goals in life is to be at peace, at ease, secure, calm. No one likes stress. No one likes disruptions. I certainly don’t. I like a sense of calm, a sense that things are under control.

This in itself is not a bad thing. God promises us rest (Hebrews 4:9-11). Jesus invites us to follow Him and “find rest for our souls” (Matthew 11:29). Peace is one of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

God doesn’t want us running around, out of control, worried, fretting, biting our nails, churning in our stomach, frazzled in our mind. In Him, we have the hope and the confidence that we will not be shaken. I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken (Psalm 16:8).

But the line from confidence in the Lord to confidence in self is so fine. How quickly we move from “Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken” to “I shall never be moved on my own.” Security in the Lord easily becomes complacency in myself. I get lazy. I become less vigilant toward sin. I start feeling immune to lust, to lying, to greed, to a major downfall. I become self-righteous (I am not like that person) and self-sufficient (I have things under control).

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12).

I am never immune to sin. I am never secure on my own. Sin knocks on the door and enters the house when I feel strong enough to take him on or lazy enough to not care anymore.

David reached this state and the Lord “hid His face.” The Lord removed His hand of protection. This was not done to harm David but to wake him up. David’s false peace had to be disrupted in order to draw him back to real peace. God allowed a trial to hit David’s life in order to knock him to his knees.

Lord, I feel a complacent streak in me, a tendency to depend on my own and to forsake You, to ignore You. Draw me back to Yourself. May I seek You in my prosperity and not forget that You are the source of all my blessings. When trials come, may I run to You and not away from You. O LORD my God, I will give You thanks forever! (30:12)

The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. (Psalm 24:1)

I have been thinking about the word “mine” lately. During my sermon on Sunday, I read “Kids’ Property Laws” which humorously looks at a kid’s concept of possession. “If you have it, it is mine…if I want it, it is mine…if you set it down, it automatically becomes mine…and so on.” From early on in life, we look to own things, to have things. to take possession of things.

A.W. Tozer perhaps said it best:

“There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets things with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.” (The Pursuit of God, 22)

Psalm 24 is a good, simple reminder. Everything is God’s. Nothing truly is ours. Everything we have is a gift from God, on loan from Him.

Again, I think of my kids. They walk around our house thinking that different things are theirs. “This is my bed…my toys…my clothes…my dessert…” In actuality nothing is really theirs. Everything they have has been given to them by us, the parents. They live in our house, use our things and eat our food. Of course, Liz and I love them so we provide them these things voluntarily and with joy. But how audicious it would be for them to start thumbing their noses at us and saying, “This is mine! Leave me alone.” It would show a total disregard for how privileged they are, how blessed they are, how dependent they are. It is foolishness. It is biting the hand that feeds you, so to speak. Yet I can tend to do that in God’s household. I can easily forget how blessed I am, how privileged I am, how dependent I am. I can start clinging to my things as if they are truly mine. I can look at God’s directives and instructions as interference into my life. This is foolishness.

The way of wisdom is recognizing one simple truth…The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. I have no room for pride. All I have is a gift from God. My life, my breath, my body, my abilities, my family, my things, my possessions…all are gifts from Him. My only appropriate response is gratitude.

Thank You, Lord, for Your gifts to me!