Psalms Lesson 9

Psalm 26:1

Turn to Psalm 26; we’re going to have a real challenging time in this Psalm. This Psalms it turns out, I didn’t arrange it this way but they seem to be graded in the areas of difficulty. The one that I’m going to give as kind of a take-home exam next week for you to work on to see what you can some up with on your own, don’t worry about it, it’ll be easy compared to anything like this.

Let’s read Psalm 26, “Judge me, O LORD: for I have walked in mine integrity. I have trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide. [2] Examine me, O LORD, and prove [try] me; test my heart [reins] and my mind [heart]. [3] For Thy loving-kindness is before mine eyes; and I have walked in Thy truth. [4] I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. [5] I have hated the congregation of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked. [6] I will wash mine hands in innocence; so will I compass Thine altar, O LORD, [7] That I may make known [publish] with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all Thy wondrous works. [8] LORD, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honor dwells. [9] Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men, [10] In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. [11] But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity; redeem me, and be merciful unto me. [12] My foot stands in an even place; in the congregations will I bless the LORD.”

In this case, believe it or not, this is classed as an individual lament Psalm. When you look at it, however, you wonder where is the lament and this is the particular problem with this Psalm. This Psalm is very important for a learning reason. So far we have shown you, we’ve gone over and over these categories, we say that it starts off with an address, then we have a lament, then we have petition, then we have praise, and somewhere in here we have trust. Those are five categories that act as tools for you to look for when you try to read these Psalms and understand them. But, as always happens, and those of you who have tried to learn a language should know this, when you get a rule of grammar, the rule of grammar is always dependent and open, in other words, you don’t cram, ram and jam everything that you read in that language into your rules of syntax because you always have to watch for the exception. And this is simply an acknowledgement that our categories are built on finite information in this case. It is also an acknowledgement that these Psalms are pieces of creative literature. These are really creative writing.

We have a teacher in our congregation; she was telling me the other day that she had an argument with a colleague on the faculty and she was trying to teach the children the parts of speech, what was a noun, what was a verb, etc. and the other teacher said oh, you don’t teach them that, all you do is just let them creatively write, they don’t have to know the parts of speech, the idea being that you somehow stunt creativity by drilling into them the basic categories. That’s like stunting creative mathematics by failing to drill in 2 + 2 = 4, but nevertheless we have this mentality.

Here, this is the kind of things that refutes that; here is genuine creative writing by a believer as unto the Lord, and these categories are used but the Creator is not dependent totally on these categories. He’s free to jockey things around. Nevertheless, in this Psalm remnants of these categories are still here. So what I’d like to do first is just remind you of a few initial things; first of all, the main problem with this Psalm is that there is no clear lament and petition sections. This is one of the great problems with the thing, and since those are the two large sections in any individual lament Psalm, obviously we’ve got a tremendous problem with this one. The other thing that you want to remember as you read this in your translation is that everywhere you see “will” plus a verb, in other words it’s set into the future tense in your English text, remember that’s probably a translation of the Hebrew imperfect and can be translated “may,” “habitually or do,” or something like this. So you can have all these alternate translation possibilities. That’s the other thing to remember.

Now, let’s have some observations on this, what did some of you come up with as you worked through this thing. Start with the address, anybody have any ideas about where the address is in here, or any other section you’d like to talk about. [someone says something] Okay, verses 2-3 for the address. [someone else] All right, verses 1-2. This is a hard Psalm so don’t feel that everything has to be right in the groove here on this one; this is a player’s choice at some points.

Anyone else? [someone says something] Okay, 1a, we’ve got a range of opinions. As you can see you have quite a latitude of experiment. These are various guesses on the address.

Let’s look at some other sections. Can anybody spot any other sections in here. [someone says something] Okay, 1b for trust; [someone says something] Okay, 3-7, dump it all in trust. You can tell our categories aren’t working too well in this particular Psalm. But the reason, by the way, for these categories, don’t knock them even though in a particular Psalm like this it doesn’t work too well, because it’s these categories that will get you thinking, to force you to start into the text, and if they do nothing more than that they’re performing a function.

Can anybody see any other section in here of your five parts of an individual lament Psalm: the address, the lament, the petition, the praise and the trust. [someone says something] A petition in verse 9. Okay, on the petition, where else do you see a petition, besides just verse 9. [someone says 11b, someone says 2a, someone else all of verse 2,] and this may not be petition, this may be address, but obviously 1a is also a type of petition. [someone says 2-10] 2-10 is a petition? Okay. Anybody else. [someone answers] Okay, 11a trust and praise verse 12. What about praise, anybody else got any ideas on praise? [someone says verse 8] Okay. [someone says something] Verse 7 talking about praise.

Now in this case of the Psalm, one of the things that is confusing in the King James, unfortunately, is this problem of verb tenses. Now we’re going to come across many, many things in this Psalm that will show you… you can see why I didn’t start with this Psalm as an illustration of an individual lament Psalm, but we’ll learn about that and we’re also going to learn about the fallacies of certain translations because that comes out loud and clear in this thing. But I have worked long and hard on this particular Psalm and let me suggest to you the outline that I’ve picked and why I’ve done this.

If you look at verse 1 you see it starts off with an imperative, do you see where it says “Judge me, O LORD,” after that imperative it gives a reason, “for I have walked in mine integrity;” semicolon, end of the sentence. Now if we’re going to say that the address is an introduction to the whole Psalm, how does this sentence relate to the rest of the Psalm. It seems to me that the content of the sentence, “Judge me, O LORD, for I have walked in mine integrity,” period, that that particular sentence, and also I’ll show you in a moment the rest of verse 1 is saying the same thing but you’re never going to catch it in most English translations, but because verse 1a is clearer than 1b in most of your translations, let me just argue my case on 1b. Okay. In 1a “Judge me, O LORD, because I have walked in mine integrity.” Now if you read the rest of the Psalm isn’t it but a development of that sentence? The rest of the Psalm essentially develops that phrase, “Judge me, O LORD,” and I’ll explain what the word “judge” means, and that is all fouled up in some translations, but “Judge me, O LORD, because I walked in my integrity,” and that is the theme of the whole Psalm, essentially.

Now if you look at the way verse 1 is structured, with an imperative and then “for,” you have a hint as to what to do with verses 2 and following because verse 2 see, is heavy with imperatives, “Examine me, O LORD; prove me, O LORD; try my reins and my heart, O LORD.” Those are all imperatives. Do this, do this, do this! And then verse 3, “For…” do you see verse 3, “For Thy loving-kindness,” and you could just put “for” in front of verse four, “For I have not sat with vain….” Verse 5, “For I have hated the congregation….” Verse 6, “For I will wash my hands in innocence; so I will compass Thine altar, O LORD.” The praise that is mentioned in 7 and 8 flows out of verse 6 which in turn is plugged into the “for” clause, do this because of this. In other words, Lord, verse 2, “Examine me” because, for example, verse 6, “I will wash my hands all the time,” these are habitual imperfects, “I wash my hands in innocence; in order that I might compass Thine altar, O LORD, [7] That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving…. [8] LORD, I have loved Thy habitation,” and so on. So though this describes praise, if you look at the structure of the sentence, verses 7-8, it is dependent on verse 6, so that though it is true verses 7-8 have praise, that is what the psalmist is already doing; it’s not something he’s going to do in the future, this is a practice of his life up to this point.

So the way I’ve worked it out, I have verse 1 as the psalmist summarizes his petition and its justification. That’s the way I’ve described it; this would probably correspond to the address format because it’s a summary of what he’s going to do, it’s all coalesced in one sentence. Verse 1 again: the psalmist summarizes his petition and its justification. Then I have taken verses 2-8 and I have cut the section off at the end of verse 8 because verse 9 starts the cycle again. Verse 9 is an imperative, “Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men, [10] In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. [11] But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity,” it’s the same theme again. So I have split the section at verse 8. So I have the next section, verses 2-8 and I’ve entitled this one the psalmist expands his petition and its justification. The first one summarizes it, verses 2-8 is an expansion of it.

Then the next section is verses 9-11, you may wonder why I… there’s a “but” in verse 11 and I’ve cautioned you that when you see this watch out because that’s a shift in the text, but I think if you’ll read verses 9-11 they all fit together; in other words, verse 11 is a shift, stuck by itself it doesn’t say too much, plugged with verse 10 it does, so I made verses 9, 10 and 11 as follows: the psalmist desires final separation from sinners and identification with Yahweh. And then verse 12 I see as the praise section; the psalmist vows to praise God because his petition will be answered, verse 12.

Now the way I’ve given you the summary of the outline I’ve deliberately made it very abstract; now if I were really outlining this Psalm it would be more describing what the psalmist is saying and less structure here in my outline, but I’ve done this so that those of you who have followed through with this on this individual lament thing may be able to follow the structure in this Psalm. The Psalm has a 1, 7, 3, 1 structure. Now I debated, frankly, whether I should split verse 12 off in my outline from verses 9-11, but it shifts in viewpoint but the odd thing is, and this is just something you pick up by experience in the Psalms, that the Psalms tend to be symmetrical as to how they start and how they end. You’ll just notice this; Psalm 22 is another example of this. For some reason they wrote these so that if the address was one verse usually it ended with a one verse; if the address took two verses, often times the conclusion will be two verses. So there seems to be a symmetry that was consciously followed in many of these Psalms.

Now how do these parts correspond. I think verse 1 corresponds to the address; obviously verse 12 corresponds to the praise and it’s vow to praise, not declarative praise; he’s looking forward to the time when God answers the prayer but God, in fact, hasn’t completed the answer yet, at the writing of the Psalm. So it’s a vow to praise. Now as far as the other things, I see verse 2 starting as a petition but then he’s describing why God should answer the petition, it’s not really a lament, because a lament is more O God, look at the mess, now you should answer this. But if there’s anything that corresponds to it it would somehow be in there but I just put a parenthesis around it because a lament really… it really isn’t a lament here. And then this one starts out with a petition again with a justification after it. So it seems there’s a conscious structure to this.

So if you see the breakdown now: verse 1 is the address, Judge me, O LORD for I have walked in mine integrity. I have trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide.” Then verse 2 starts out with a petition, Examine me, O LORD,” and verse 3, because this is true, this is true, this is true, this is true. Then verse 9 is a petition, “Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,” and then verses 10-11 reasons. And then finally verse 12, looking forward to the answer. [someone says something] That’s why this is properly classified as a lament Psalm; it definitely has a lament to it but then when you turn around and say where is it, you’re hard pressed to find it, but it’s just the flavor of the Psalm, you can tell it’s a lament type Psalm.

This will become more clear, if some of you aren’t clear what a lament Psalm is and why this is, the only thing I can say is just bear with us until we go into the praise Psalms, and then when you start working the praise Psalms then you’ll look back and the lament and you’ll see what I mean; there’s a definite shift in these things. [someone says something] Okay, here you would say that instead of crying about the problem he’s getting angry over the problem, and this introduces us, I think, to the second problem we’ve got to deal with in this Psalm, and that’s the theological problem. There’s a definite theological problem with this Psalm, if you read it the wrong way. What is it? [someone says something] Okay, in fact if you look at this Psalm show me one verse that speaks of grace. It’s in the Psalm but you’ve got to look for it.

Can any of you suggest where grace comes out in this Psalm? [someone says verse 3,] Verse 3, “For Thy loving-kindness is before mine eyes; and I have walked in Thy truth.” Okay, it’s God’s loving-kindness, not his. [someone says verse 11] Verse 11, where in verse 11? The last part of verse 11, okay, “Redeem me and be gracious to me.” Now when you get down there, do you know what the word “redeem” here is? It’s to pay my ransom; it’s the word that means redeem in the New Testament, to pay the ransom. And so obviously he’s not a legalist; if he were a legalist he wouldn’t be using that vocabulary when he got down to verse 11. Verse 11, the vocabulary, he knows he is in bondage to something and that somebody from outside has to come and pay the price, and he uses the word “O LORD, ransom me,” pay my ransom note. So you see, he is casting himself on grace.

But there’s another dimension to this Psalm, that it is true and because we don’t desire to get messed up with the legalistic end we don’t want to say oh, I’m afraid of legalism; in fact, all the way off of a point that is being made in the Psalm. Now just reading this Psalm over, what is the point that forms the whole guts of the Christian way of life. [someone says something] All right, you do receive rewards but let’s make it a little bit more general than this; he’s not just talking about rewards, there’s something that’s more connected with the character of God. [someone says something] Okay, now he has trust in the Lord and therefore the Lord will sustain him; this word, this logic, because I trust in the Lord He will sustain me, can we as Christians say because I trust in the Lord He has to sustain me? Let’s consider that proposition a moment. If I trust in the Lord He is obligated to sustain me? [someone says you have to define the word sustain] Come to one’s aid. You would vote yes. Okay. Anybody vote no. The question is whether it is correct or incorrect to say that if I trust God He has to sustain me and come to my help? Anybody vote no. You vote no; why? [can’t hear] But didn’t God sustain Job? The very book of Job is how God sustained Job, isn’t it? If God… look at it this way, that if God does not sustain you even for a moment in the problem, we’ve got a severe difficulty. [someone says something] But you have to go back to the fact that He is providing something to you in the present moment to enable you to meet the trial, because if He isn’t then 1 Cor. 10:13 is wrong.

The point here is that you can see how Psalm 26 and this is going to be typical and it’s going to even get worse when we deal with the so-called imprecatory Psalms, when the psalmist would pray oh God, bash their babies heads against the wall. That’s the one the liberal likes to bring out and say see, immorality taught in the Bible, etc. Now this Psalm, 26, it begins to move us into this area where the critic rapidly misinterprets the Psalms. The reason this occurs is that unless you are a mature believer you’re soft, and here’s where subjectivity, by the way, freely enters into this. If you personally have not had a deepening experience with the Lord you will misread this Psalm.

And this is exactly what the critics are doing; they have not had the personal experience of the psalmist and therefore they can’t understand what the psalmist is talking about. And this you will see becomes more and more and more critical as we get into these psalms and get into these oonchy areas, is that you have got to have in your own personal life some experience that will illuminate your heart as to what is going on here. And if you don’t, you look at verse 1 and it sounds like the most proud arrogant individual you could ever run across; “Judge me, O LORD” because I’m perfect. And the unregenerate and the carnal believer say boy, that’s self righteousness, that’s legalism, etc. And you can understand why they come to this conclusion. But the thing that I want you to see from Psalm 26, and you’re going to have to fight this as a believer all the time, there are some passages … [tape turns]

… Who is writing the Psalm? David. Now if David is writing the Psalm David is locked into God by how many covenants? The Davidic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, Mosaic Covenant, the guy’s got three covenants that control his relationship to God and he has a right to demand God fulfill that covenant. What David is arguing here is that God, this covenant is a two-edged sword, it works both ways; if I fulfill my conditions You fulfill yours. Now some of you will feel that this is still arrogance to talk to God this way, but if you can understand this, it’s not arrogance. It is a believer simply saying God, you have defined Your relationship with me as a believer, now You keep Your part of it. Again, you can’t say it, but you feel like something’s wrong talking to God this way. In the final analysis this is very glorifying of God’s character and this is what’s hard to see, is that the most successful people in prayer operate this way, that they will get down and almost flat demand things from God, and if you hear their prayer, you think good night they’re arrogant, audacious to come to God and talk to God that way, who do they think they’re talking to? God! But this is the whole theme and atmosphere of this Psalm.

So what I’m trying to do at the beginning before we get involved in all the details is to show you this is not legalism. Legalism is… let’s think about what legalism is for a minute. Legalism basically as I see it, three things about legalism that always happens. It starts with negative volition to begin with; the second thing about legalism it substitutes human good for God’s divine good; it’s always human good in place of absolute righteousness. In other words, legalism always lowers the absolute standards of God. Illustration: the Pharisees in Jesus day, absolute righteousness said thou shalt not hate, and they said don’t kill because the policeman might catch you. That’s what Jesus said, “You have heard it said thou shalt not kill, and those who kill shall be in danger of the counsel, but I’ll tell you, that whosoever hates his brother is in danger of judgment.” Now what is Jesus doing? He was just knocking human good and replacing it with absolute righteousness. So the thing that you want to see about legalism, it always is a way of lowering standards. This is why legalists always concentrate on externals, see, because the mental attitudes are always harder than the external behavior. So legalists will always emphasize the external behavior patterns, how you dress, what you do, etc.

And the third thing about legalism is that because these people who are legalists are always on negative volition, for one thing, and they have gone over to human good for the other thing, therefore they reject grace. It obviously follows because in order to meet their own standards of human good they don’t need grace; that’s why they’ve got the human good. Once you let go of the holy high standards of God and replace them by something trivial, fleshly and human, you no longer need to call upon God’s gracious enablement to get you there because you can get there by yourself. And the other thing about legalism is that it always tends to bully grace oriented believers. These people can’t stand to see another believer operating by grace. And this is why they will always try to cram down your throat some of their pet little taboos, thou shalt not chew bubble gum, thou shalt not do something else, this kind of stuff. Thou shalt always have an invitation after the sermon so everybody can roll down the aisle while we sing Just As I Am. And this is made the test of orthodoxy.

[someone says something] Usually what happens is… it is easier for them to delude themselves into thinking they can fit their own standards, that’s the way you usually see this operate. But since we always, all of us have a tendency to legalism, it varies relatively from each one of us to the other, just remember to watch for this as we go through Psalm 26 because the tendency can be to develop a legalism from going through this Psalm and I’m just trying to prepare you at the beginning, that’s not what the Psalm is talking about; it’s an altogether higher experience than this trivial thing called legalism. It’s on a much loftier plain than this.

Now let’s get through the first verse anyway, this is the address and this has got a lot of stuff in it so I want to take it slowly. “Judge me, O LORD,” now the word “judge” is translated in the Living Psalms, and again, I’m not trying to pick on Ken Taylor here but I’m just trying to show the danger of some of these paraphrases. If you have a Living Psalms you’ll notice it says “Dismiss all charges,” now that is not what the word shaphat verb means in all of its fullness; that’s partly what it means but that’s not all it means. And the thing to correct your understanding about what the word “judge” or shaphat means, shaphat is the word used for the judge in Judges. Now what did the judges do in the book of Judges? They ruled but do you remember at the time of the nation, the national history, what was the judge most known for. He was a ruler yes, but in what kind of a context? There was a deliverance to it; don’t you see, shaphat me. Now you read that quickly and you think oh, that means he’s calling for a trial. Well, that’s part of it but that doesn’t exhaust the meaning. You see, just to say he’s calling for a trial, that’s partly the meaning of the verb but it’s more than a trial, it means trial, you pass the trial and God now delivers. Deliverance is included in shaphat.

So when he says “Judge me, O LORD,” do you see why that verb, “Judge me, O LORD” fits with the verb you notice in verse 9, “Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,” get me out of here, see, there’s a cry for deliverance that is included in the verb shaphat. So when you see that immediately you’re off on the wrong boat if you read the word “judge” the way you normally read it in English; you’re starting off on the wrong foot. So that’s the first thing to correct, your understanding… and the way to correct it is think of what a judge did in the book of Judges and then you’ve got it; that’s your historical content to what shaphat is.

“Judge me, O LORD; for,” reason, “I have walked in my integrity,” now this is the loaded phrase and this is the theme of the whole Psalm because as you notice in verse 11, “I have walked in my integrity,” see it recurs, so let’s get down what this means: “I walk in my integrity.” Now if we miss this we’re again up a creek. See you can get off by looking at the verb “judge” and now you can get off by looking at this phrase. You can look at this phrase and read this as perfect, now you’re in trouble. If he’s really saying “Judge me, O God, because I’m perfect,” we really do have a problem, don’t we. So let’s see how this is used.

The first place it’s used that’s nearby is in Proverbs 19:1; this teaches you a lesson about Bible study. Use your concordance and when you use the concordance look up the word in the nearest kind of literature. “Better is the poor that walks in his integrity than he that is perverse in his lips and is a fool.” Now what kind of flavor do you get to the word “walks in integrity” from looking at Proverbs 19:1, “He that is poor that walks in his integrity is better than he that is perverse in his lips.” We could spend more time on this but we won’t, but for those of you who are taking notes a similar phrase occurs in Proverbs 20:1 and 28:6. You can check it out but basically it means to walk in good conscience.

Now let me take you to the New Testament and show you Acts 23:1. I want you to see how Paul used exactly the same phrase. “And Paul, earnestly beholding the council said, ‘Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.’” Now was Paul claiming perfection there? We know in his epistles he said I have not yet counted myself as having attained. So Paul can’t be teaching perfection here. But yet he does claim that “I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.”

In Acts 24:16, what do we read here, same kind of thing, what does Paul say. “And herein do I exercise myself to always have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.” That is what the psalmist means when he says Lord, I have walked in my integrity.

Now this comes out more if you’ll think in terms of the structure of the human soul and think of what the conscience is and how it’s related to mind. When we do this, all of a sudden it dawns on us that, why of course, the Hebrew noun which means “integrity” is none other than the Hebrew noun to be complete, to be healthy. That’s what integrity means, to be at health, to have health, to have completeness, to have soundness. It’s not the idea of absolute righteous perfection; it’s rather a wholeness or a healthiness. And what the psalmist is talking about is avoiding the problem of the clash between the mind and the conscience. In other words, he is saying as a rule, Father, when my conscience has bothered me, I have made my mind submit to my conscience. Said another way, the psalmist is saying I have walked in my conscience; that’s what he’s saying.

Now again, to sharpen our understanding of this, if you’re a thinking person you’re still going to say wait a minute, isn’t this walking in perfection that is known? How is perfection connected with this. Fortunately God has given us a passage in the New Testament, 1 John 1, there the same thing is called “walking in the light as He is in the light.” So I walk in mine integrity, the psalmist says; Paul says I walk in good conscience; and in 1 John 1 John says I walk in the light. All three are saying the same thing: I walk in integrity; I walk in good conscience, I walk in light.

Let’s look at this, verse 6, “If we say we have fellowship with Him and we walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.” This is talking to believers, having fellowship with Him is exactly the way we used the word here, in fellowship or our of fellowship. If we have fellowship and we walk in darkness, we lie, we are not doing the truth. Now what is John saying? Can anyone summarize 1 John 1:6. What is John saying there? Substitute “conscience” for this business of walking in the light. Let me say this, maybe to shorten it up; what part does external objectively observable behavior play in verse 6? [someone says something] Yes, but the thing of it is all I wanted to point out here in verse 6 is that John is saying that if we say we are in fellowship with the Lord and our behavior pattern doesn’t fit, we don’t even have to look inside, the conscience, we know there’s something wrong; something’s wrong somewhere. That’s what he’s saying, walk in darkness.

Verse 7, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light,” and by the way, it doesn’t say we become the light, notice this, you can be dirty John says and still in the light. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” And that cleansing at the end of verse 7 isn’t the judicial cleansing of the cross; verse 7 is the temporal cleansing of what do you suppose? The conscience, in other words, the merits of Christ’s finished work on the cross are taken and applied to the conscience that has been violated. Now this is amazing, just think of this, that available to believers is a medicine of infinite price that is available for nothing. And yet time after time people will go to all sorts of extremes, shock therapy, drugs and everything else, expensive substitutes for an infinite medicine that is available to the patient for nothing. And that is the work of Christ on the cross. “The blood of Christ cleanses” what? The conscience. And nothing else can get there because no other medicine can touch the spiritual. See, medicine can work on the central nervous system; that’s the domain of medicine in the body, but what medicine can work on the conscience? And Christian says man is made of both body and spirit, the problem is in the conscience, not in the body, and you drug the central nervous system all you want to and it still doesn’t solve the problem of a violated conscience which can only be cleansed by the blood of Christ. So here John is simply saying that if we walk in the light, in other words, we are submitting to what our conscience is telling us, then God takes care of it… God takes care of it.

But then in verse 8, this is another thing, I have often read this as just “If we say we have no sin,” and I never thought to think that verse 8 is saying more than that. Verse 8 is addressed to the person who then is walking in the light, and while he is walking in the light he is saying I have no sin; in other words he says right now I am perfect, I don’t believe in perfection forever, in the sense of the old fashioned we gradually reach perfection in the Christian life, but I believe right at this one moment I can be perfect. John says if you are walking in the light and by your walking in the light you say you have no sin, that is the sin principle in your life, you deceive yourself and the truth isn’t in you. Do you see what he’s saying is that we have many, many different areas where our conscience can talk to us, so to speak. Now if our conscience doesn’t happen at this moment, at 8:27 on Wednesday night, the conscience may not be bothering here, here, here, here, and it may not be bothering here, it’s just bothering there and there, two little areas. John says just because your conscience is only bothering you in two areas, don’t think you’re perfect in the areas where it isn’t bothering you. It’s just that right now, at this hour, and this minute, God wants you to pay attention to this area. Don’t worry about the other areas, they are not to be worrisome. But don’t draw the false conclusion the because right this moment… God isn’t saying I want you to deal with this that later on He’s not going to ask you to deal with this.

So then he says, “If we confess our sins,” this is the proper response, in other words, the conscience has made an area, verse 8 deals with the areas where the conscience isn’t making something an issue; just because it isn’t don’t draw false conclusion. Verse 9, the conscience is making an issue, and he says when it does, confess your sins. Confess it, break down that stubborn will and confess it; that’s the point. And the last part of verse 9 says and then God will take care of the rest of the areas where the conscience isn’t bothering you at the moment. God isn’t going to make those an issue right now.

Now there’s something that’s dynamic about this that will get rid of the mechanistic view of the Christian life that sometimes can act as a spiritual stultifying device. If you will see your relationship with the Lord as a personal family centered relationship, then you can visualize easier how God will come to you today and say now look, I want that straightened up. And then maybe next week, now I want that straightened up. And why this week He can make an issue of this and next week He can make an issue of that. What theological reason do we have to justify that kind of treatment, why God can, as it were, ignore sin in the believer’s life and not even make it an issue to the conscience, and we can still have a personal relationship with the Lord. Why? [someone says something] The point is, what have we got on our credit account, so to speak? [answer given] So legally we have our position, that doesn’t change. So your position is the reason why God can, as it were, ignore whole areas in your life, that’s great, it’d drive us crazy if it didn’t. But He can ignore vast areas and just take one little one and deal with that, and then that, and then that, and then that. And if you notice, and if you are careful to observe in your life as a Christian, you’ll see that that’s exactly what God does. He doesn’t clobber you with a shotgun approach, okay believer, now you’re My kid, now I’m going to belt you in every area. That’s just not the way God works. He deals with this problem and then this problem, this problem, this problem.

What practical result should this result in in your attitude toward new believers? The point is that all too often in Christian circles here’s what happens. You get a new believer and he’s got some pattern of behavior that just hacks off the person that led him to the Lord. Maybe you get a person who was raised in a real Christian home, no smoking, nothing else, and so this kid says I just trusted the Lord; and he’s sitting here reading the Word, and sharing things over the Word, [apparently Clough does something to indicate he’s smoking] and the Christian coughs and sputters and immediately he tries to make an issue out of it. That’s wrong; God hasn’t made an issue out of that, so get out of the way. That’s the thing about legalism and that’s where people have gotten in trouble and Christians have not been [can’t understand word] properly in this area. You’ve got to remember, God the Father is going to handle His children according to [can’t understand word.] Now sometimes you can, as an outside observe watch this. If you are following up a young believer and that young believer has been laid on your heart and you pray over them, you will probably be alert in talking with them where it is that God’s working in their life and you can, as it were, read it, and then parallel God’s work in their life. But don’t just barge right in and automatically presume that you know exactly what’s the score because it’s different in every person.

Verse 10, “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar,” you see how he intensifies in John; in other words, verse 9 deals with okay, my conscience has made this issue, issue a over here and issue b, conscience has made those two items points of contention, and if we come back with the response of verse 10, oh no they aren’t, I haven’t sinned, “we make Him a liar,” and that is pretty strong language; that is probably one of the strongest passages in all of John’s writings; you are calling God a liar when you don’t listen to your conscience. And the psychological price is quite high for calling God a liar.

Let’s conclude by turning back to Psalm 26:1. Let me conclude by summarizing the six things that the conscience does. The conscience does six things. First, it under girds society as part of divine institution number one; the first thing the conscience does, it under girds society as part of divine institution number one. Illustrations: providing common ground between the non-Christian and the Christian; another illustration: language, communication. Communication cannot exist without absolute. And this is taught in 2 Corinthians 4:2 and 5:11. The conscience under girds society as part of divine institution number one.

Secondly, the conscience restrains the individual through two systems. It restrains the individual through the person’s own conscience and restrains the individual through the other person’s conscience. In other words, you can be restrained, you can get your own conscience zapped out pretty easy, but there’s always the problem that you feel kind of condemned by somebody else knowing about it. Why do you get that kind of feeling, of being condemned by somebody else that knows about it? Isn’t it really that somehow you know that they have a conscience and that you’ve crossed it. So conscience restrains inwardly and outwardly. And that’s taught in Acts 23:1 and Acts 24:16.

The third thing, the conscience orients the ego to its absolute reference point. That means it gives us a point of reference where we can maneuver; 1 Timothy 1:19. A person who has destroyed their conscience will be a very unstable person. They’ll be going along and you’ll think they’re stable and all of a sudden they’ll be going… it’s like an airplane that has no orientation whatever.

Four, the conscience approves or disapproves of faith. If the conscience does not give its green light we cannot believe; we can sit here and try and still can’t believe, without the green light of the conscience. So the conscience approves or disapproves of our believing, Romans 14:23.

The fifth thing that the conscience does, it stores our record for judgment, Romans 2:15, a very sobering fact. It’s the indelible tape recording of everything we say or think. By the way, there’s only one way of erasing that tape; that’s the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing else can erase it.

Sixth, the conscience responds to the Word of God, Hebrews 4:12. It is the receptacle for the Word of God. It’s the thing that is built to receive the Word. Remember what it says, “the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and pieces even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit,” the deepest part. And where is the soul and spirit hooked together? At the point of the conscience. So Hebrews 4:12 pierces right to the conscience.

That’s all for tonight.