Psalm 25
Let’s hear from God’s holy word,
Psalm 25. This is a Psalm of King David. And he says, To you, O Lord,
I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame and
let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for
you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are
wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O
Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach
me. For you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all
the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord,
and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember
not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to
your steadfast love, remember me. For the sake of your goodness,
O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord.
Therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble
in what is right and teaches the humble his way. All the paths
of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who
keep his covenant and his testimonies. For your name’s sake, O Lord,
pardon my guilt, for it is great. Who is the man who fears the
Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.
His soul shall abide in well-being, and his offspring shall inherit
the land. The friendship of the Lord is
for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.
My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out
of the net. Turn to me and be gracious to
me, for I am lonely, I am afflicted. The troubles of my heart are
enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction
and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are
my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me. Oh, guard
my soul and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame, for
I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness
preserve me, for I wait on you. Redeemed Israel, O God, out of
all his troubles. Amen. Let’s pray together. God,
we pray that in the next few moments, you bless us with encouragement
from your word. And we pray that by your spirit,
we understand and believe and that we walk out of here again
this next week, living out of the grace you’ve given us to
be faithful Christians in a world that is after us, a world that
hates us, and that we live with great courage, for we are your
friends, and we have intimate knowledge of you and your holy
word and your way. In Christ’s name we do pray,
amen. Some of you probably read the Bunyan book, Pilgrim’s Progress,
about Christian, the pilgrim who’s walking from this life
to the next. Heard some of these phrases over
and over as we’ve studied Hebrews, but it’s a good reminder that
we are strangers, we are pilgrims, we are exiles. We are not permanent
residents here. We are what we call in modern
times resident aliens. We may live here, but we are
aliens. We are not from this place, we’re from somewhere else.
And so Psalm 25 is a helpful reminder to us as Christians
about how to stay on the path and to stay straight. How to
stay on the path of God’s way of life without stumbling, without
being sidetracked, without being enticed, without falling in such
a way that we don’t reach the destination that God has for
us. You don’t have to live much of
life to experience what I’m speaking of. You know that we have several
enemies as a Christian. We have our own remnant sin within
us. And it’s good to hear folks, as we spend a little time confessing
our sin, acknowledging to God, we are still sinful. We still
have remnant sin in us. Yes, it’s pardoned in Christ
Jesus. Yes, God has washed away all
our sins. But that remnant sin is still
there. And maybe we think back to our time when we studied the
Christian life, that remnant sin is much like the hot coals
in a wood stove. When you wake the next morning,
push back the gray ash, and there are those hot coals. And like
our remnant sin, it takes just a little stirring, a little kindling,
and a little fuel, and you’ll have a raging fire. And so we
remember that our remaining sin in us, our flesh, as the Apostle
Paul calls us, not our skin, but our flesh, he calls the remaining
sin, is there, and it is a rebel in us that wars against us. interesting to hear. One of the
prayers of confession tonight was basically right out of the
Apostle Paul’s mouth, right? That’s a good way to pray. Pray
the Bible. But I know what I ought to do, but I don’t do it. And I know what I ought not to
do, and yet, what does the Apostle Paul say? That is the very thing
I do. And so we have, as we’re making
our way to heaven, our own flesh is an enemy. But we have the
world. We have the world and all that it offers. Just watch
television commercials. They have something that they
can provide for you. And what is the job of a television
commercial? It’s to create a need that you did not have. Sometimes
we say this to our kids when we go into a shop. At least I
do, because I’m the tightwad. Don’t create a need that you
didn’t walk in here with. Y’all hear me say that, don’t
you, sometimes? Yeah. I mean, don’t come begging for
my wallet. But the world offers us all kinds
of things that it thinks we need. And we need to be careful that
we listen to not the world, but the word. And then the devil
himself, we know the devil’s chief job is to discredit Christians,
to devour Christians, to destroy Christians, to anything that
starts with a D. It’s about the way it goes in
the Bible. The devil wants to do it. And so we are making our
way from here to heaven with these three enemies, the world,
the flesh, and the devil. And what David is acknowledging
is that walking the straight path to heaven, walking the narrow
way as Jesus calls it, it requires humility. It requires ongoing
learning from God. It requires repentance. It requires forgiveness. It requires
grace. It requires so much. And what he’s gonna say to us
in this passage is, If you want to make it safely to heaven,
you need to trust in God for guidance and provision. And there’s
a sense in this Psalm where he’s saying, he says over and over,
let me not be put to shame. Let me not be put to shame. Now,
some of you probably can remember your mother saying, shame, shame,
shame, shame on you. And what do we think of as shame?
We think of it as something that coats us, you know, the scarlet
letter. something that marks us because of our sin and our
own wickedness. Well, in this particular case,
the way the Bible uses the word shame is very different. It’s
saying to you, if you trust in God, he will not let you down. Maybe some of you in years past
don’t raise your hands, but maybe you made some foolish investment.
You know, you saw on TV that currency was gonna fail and so
you bought some shammy whatever that was gonna passed through
all the test of economic downturn and failures. And so you bought
this item, this stock, this piece of gold or whatever it was, and
you realize that at some point in time, it’s worthless. And
that’s what God is saying, you put your trust in me, you will
not be put to shame. You will not be left holding
an empty certificate worthless and worth nothing. And so if
we’re gonna put our trust in God, One of the best ways to
look at Psalm 25 is to look at what God offers to us. It’s sort
of a sense of reading the psalm and saying, look at all that
God is and has done, and that will benefit me. So if we want
to make our way safely to heaven, what about God? What about his
provision for us will help us? Well, if you look at verse three,
we’ll start at verse one. He says, to you, O Lord, I lift
up my soul. No other gods, I’m looking to
you. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let
not my enemies exult over me. And he goes on to say in verse
3, Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They
shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. He’s saying to us
that God is faithful. You will not wake up at the end
of your life. You will not come to realize
at the end of your life that God was lying to you, that God
was selling you a bag of goods and a bill of goods in the Bible.
No, everything God said is absolutely true. And so we find he’s faithful.
Then as you make your way to verse four and five, he says,
make me to know your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths. Lead me
in your truth and teach me. For you are the God of salvation,
and for you I wait all the day long. I don’t know about you
guys, but you walk through Walmart in their little book section.
You walk through Barnes and Noble in their book section, or even
go in the Christian bookstore. Here’s a good rule of thumb for
you. If the author’s picture is on the book, don’t buy it.
Okay? If their picture is on the book,
or if they have all their titles, you know, doctor so-and-so or
whatever. Don’t buy their book, right? That lets you know it’s all about
them. But what book should we read? The Bible? Well, yeah,
we should read the scriptures. Somebody was recently saying,
why do we go read every single book there is? Why do we go read
all the stuff that’s out there and we somehow ignore the Bible? But let me tell you this, there
are plenty of people who are wanting to give you their advice
on how you should live, basically, so they can get another book
sold and another royalty. And what does David say here?
Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me
in your truth. Teach me, for you’re the God
of my salvation. There is some sense where unless
those other books and resources point us deeper to the truth
or further in the truth, we ought to stick with the scriptures.
Those other books can supplement for sure and they can help. But
there’s so much out there that is not really helpful to us. But God’s word will never fail
us. It will always lead us in the
right way. And then notice how it gets into
the character of God, verse six. He says, remember your mercy,
O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. One of the things we consider
as we make our way through Hebrews, particularly chapter 11, is that
the Hall of Fame, or the heroes of the faith, they recognized
over and over and over in their lives that God had been faithful,
God is being faithful, and that God will be faithful. And that’s
what strength and foundation we have to rest and rely on. This last two days, we went to
see my brother and his family for his child’s first birthday,
and they live in Washington, D.C. Make your way around Washington,
D.C., and one of the things you’ll notice is everything is old. And everything is huge. And everything
has pillars and buttresses and stone and whatever else. And so you realize this is, humanly
speaking, a lasting city. You look at the Capitol building
for the last couple years now, it’s had a scaffolding around
it because they’ve been not just pressure washing it, but resurfacing
it, making it look shiny. Again, these are old buildings,
but they symbolize for us a nation, a federation, a land and ideals
that are firm and, humanly speaking, rather lasting. There’s lots
of marble, there’s lots of precious stone, there are lots of huge
things. Yesterday on our way home, we
stopped and visited with a cousin who lives in Richmond, and they
live in a house that was built in 1850. Human history speaking, that’s
not very old. But the cousin who married this
man, we’re picking his brain about the house, and he was talking
about how his house sits on a hill in Richmond. He said, my house
saw the Civil War. My house saw the rise of the
South. My house saw the rise of tobacco. My house saw the
rise of, and like our psalmist is saying, these things are from
of old. And what are we like in our day
and time? We like new. We like flashy. We like the most modern
thing. And what is the psalmist saying
to us? He’s saying the twin characteristics of God that we ought to most
rely on, his mercy and his steadfast love, they are from of old. They are ancient. They are proven.
They are the gold standard, so to speak. And he says, lead me
in your truth. Remember your mercy and your
steadfast love. And then he moves on towards
God’s grace. in his life. Good and upright is the Lord,
in verse 8. He instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right. He teaches the humble. What is God’s disposition toward
us? We mentioned earlier in our prayers,
we sang of it in that song, Satisfied, from our hymnal today, of the
prodigal son. As one modern writer has said,
it’s really of the story about a prodigal God. but He’s always
ready to receive us. He’s always ready to instruct
us. He’s always ready to rehabilitate us. You know, we very quickly
write off things that are wrong. We very quickly want to move
away from something that’s ugly and messy and hard to deal with. What is God’s attitude towards
us? He is good and upright. He instructs sinners. There’s
something about His investment in us. He’s at work redeeming
us. He doesn’t just write us off
and put us to the side, but he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble. And then notice verse 10. He
says, all the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness
for those who keep his testimony. There again are twin pillars
of God’s goodness. His steadfast love and his faithfulness
are ours. Just before in verse six, his
mercy and steadfast love. Those are great characteristics
of God’s character. And then he goes on in verse
11 to say, your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for
it is great. Now we haven’t mentioned anything
about the context of this psalm. Often we understand that when
David is speaking, there was an event in his life that he
speaks of. And he says, or it seems to be maybe David in
his old age, because he says, remember not the sins of my youth. Maybe he’s getting a little thoughtful. I don’t know if you’ve been with
somebody in their old age, particularly when they’re facing death. People
are usually one of two things. They’re either very joyful because
they can see the glimmer and brightness of heaven, and some
people get rather sad. They get rather cast down, and
they begin to look back at their life and say, I really wasted
some days. I wasted some opportunities.
And that may be where David is, if that’s the case here. It may
not be the case, but at least it’s something to think on, is
he’s being thoughtful about the wasted days of his life, broken
relationships, trouble with enemies. Remember a good bit of David’s
early calling as he followed God was being chased by Saul,
being pursued by enemies, hiding in caves in great difficulty.
But he was also a young man, just like we were once young,
and he was foolish. but he says that God has been
loving and faithful to him, and that for his own namesake, he’s
pardoned his guilt, for it is great. So God is a forgiving
God. And he speaks in verse 14 of
his covenant friendship. The friendship of the Lord is
for those who fear him. He makes known to them his covenant. God has a relationship with us. Y’all notice every week, Our
worship service is designed to be a conversation. God greets
you, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and is
to come. God calls you to worship and you respond, you’re here,
that’s one response, but you sing, you pray, you confess,
you give your tithes and your offerings, you give your fellowship
and greetings to others, you receive God’s word, you respond
to God’s word, we sing praises, there’s a back and forth dialogue,
God speaks, you speak, God speaks, you’re silent. God speaks, you
repent. God speaks and grants you forgiveness. Life is to be a relationship.
Remember last Sunday we spoke of how Enoch walked with God?
There was something, we don’t know exactly what, but there
was some sort of intimacy that God had with Enoch, and he desires
that with you. He’s a covenant-making, covenant-keeping
God, but his relationship with you is with covenant, and we
ought to desire to spend time with him and in his word. It’s
a time now a period of life where we’re not silent. There’s always
a smartphone nearby. There’s always a television on.
There’s always a radio. There’s always some sort of noise
making, distracting device. And it ought to be that we spend
some dedicated time with the Lord, with our paper Bibles,
maybe even a paper journal and a pen, but just to speak to God
and let him speak to us and to nurture that covenant relationship. But he’s a covenant friend to
us. And as we move towards the end
of the psalm, we recognize a couple more characteristics. Look at
verse 16. He says, turn to me and be gracious to me for I am
lonely. I am afflicted. The troubles
of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distress.
Consider my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sins.
There’s only one place we can go for help. There’s only one
answer to our life’s difficulties, and that’s with God. He’s the
only one who can heal our sins and heal our diseases and fix
our brokenness. And then look, if you will, at
verse 15 and then verse 20. He says, my eyes are ever toward
the Lord. He will pluck my feet out of
the net. And then verse 20, guard my soul and deliver me. There’s only one place we can
go for help, and that’s with God. Now, what’s the best way we can
apply this to our lives? Well, one of the things you’ll
notice, or not notice, is that this psalm, at least in the Hebrew
language, is an ABC psalm. That’s why I titled this, The
ABCs of Walking Straight. It’s almost all the ABCs of the
Hebrew alphabet, which you can’t see in your English translation. But it’s one of those psalms
where the psalmist is saying, this is a complete thought, this
is a complete way, this is a complete system. It’s not five ways to
grow closer to God or five ways to live your sin loving life,
that kind of thing. It’s just simply here’s the God
you can trust and here’s what he requires of you. And did you
notice sort of interspersed in the psalm, there’s all this about
the character of God, his steadfast love, his mercy, his kindness,
his grace, his forgiveness. But he says a few things about
the Christian, the one who follows verse nine. says he leads the
humble in what is right. He teaches the humble his ways.
And that’s a good reminder to us as Christians to be teachable.
Show up, sit under the word, get your Bible out, sit under
its authority and its teaching as often as you can, as often
as you are able. Verse 10 speaks of obedience. All the paths of the Lord are
steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant.
You know, even our modern conservative Bible-believing culture, the
word obedience has become code word for, oh, what is it? Pharisaism. It’s become code
word for following the law and ignoring
grace. But you know what the Bible teaches
over and over? God loves obedience, just like parents love obedience.
God loves the obedient hearts of his children who say, God,
what would you have me do? Show me your way and I’ll do
it. And as I do it, I’ll receive blessing from living graciously.
So there’s humility, there’s teachability, there’s obedience.
Notice in verse 12 and 14 also, he says, who is the man who fears
the Lord? Him he will instruct in the way.
And then verse 14, The friendship is the Lord for those who fear
him. So there’s humility, there’s teachability, there’s reverence,
as these last two verses have said. Remember last week in our
study of Hebrews 11 on Sunday morning, Noah, out of fear, built
the ark. It was an act of reverence that
he built the ark. It wasn’t a carpentry project,
it wasn’t a boy scout, eagle scout project, no, it was a divine
task, and out of reverent, holy fear of God, he built the ark. And then finally, verse 15, my
eyes are ever toward the Lord. The psalmist is expectantly looking
to God, saying whatever rescue, whatever deliverance, whatever
salvation I need will come from you and you alone. And so let
me encourage you in this way, if you’re looking for salvation,
or joy or happiness or whatever apart from God, you have just
created an idol. He’s saying, I only look to God
and I expect with open hands what he will offer. Now notice
the very last verse. Often as you’re reading through
a psalm, you’ll read a psalm and it’ll have some kind of logical
progression and then he’ll just sort of stick something on the
end. Well, verse 22 is the something stuck on the end. He moves from
a personal reflection, a personal sort of thought process to a
corporate one. He says, redeem Israel, O God,
out of all his troubles. This is the king moving from
himself to the nation, moving from his own life to the life
of the church, to the people of God. And so we can say together
as God’s people, we can say these things individually, but we can
say them together. O God, you will never let your
church be put to shame. Now think on that as we end tonight.
People think Christians are a bunch of weirdos, and we probably are. We’ve been called out of the
world. That’s what the church is, the called out ones. We’ve
been called out of the world, called out of darkness. Like
Abraham, we’ve been called out of paganism and idolatry to live
set apart and separate for God. God will never let his church
be put to shame. You will never stand before the
world and be put to shame for following God. God will always
exalt you and lift you up. And his prayer is our prayer.
Redeem Israel. Redeem your church, oh God, out
of all his troubles. We don’t need to despair, individually
or corporately, for God is our God and he loves us. Let’s pray
together and then we’ll sing of his goodness from Lord, I
lift my soul to thee. Our God, we thank you that you
are a place of refuge. We can run to you for both learning
and forgiveness. We can run to you for your mercy,
your steadfast love and your grace. And we pray, Father, that
as we leave this place tonight, that this week we would call
on you even more. We would call on you from reverence
and humility. and that we would call on you
because we are ignorant and we need to learn, and that we would
call on you because we are desperate to land safely on heaven’s shore
and to walk the path straight. By your grace and by your mercy,
we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.