A Picture of God’s Servant for 2024

This morning we are going to be reading from God’s word in Psalm 15 which is on page 397 in the front section of the Bible under the chair in front of you.

One of the joys I have being a pastor here at Faith is having the opportunity to work closely with the youth here at the Faith West campus. The teenagers here in the church are just fun to be around but they are also sometimes the most encouraging crowd to fellowship with because in some of them you can see a clear love for God and His word at such a young age.

Recently in the past few months one of the high school students asked me to meet with him because he wanted to ask me a variety of questions about the Bible and about God for a school project. I thought to myself, “Well this is what ministry is all about. I get to meet with a teenager who is going to ask me all sorts of questions about the Bible. I’ll do that any day of the week.” So, I gladly met with him, and he asked me all sorts of questions about the Bible.

All of the questions he asked me were great and most of them quite frankly I saw coming. He asked me about some of the events in the Old Testament such as the creation account and the flood, which is obviously one of the things teenagers are going to be interested in if they are seriously studying the Bible for the first time. It’s supernatural and it’s interesting. And he asked me questions for probably 30 minutes or so. He had them all written down in a little notebook and once he was done interviewing me, he closed his little notebook and then he said, “Can I ask you one more question before you leave?”

I said, “Of course!” and in my head I’m trying to guess which question he’s going to ask next and then he said,

“What can I do to grow in godliness so that by the time I’m 18 I’m ready to be a godly adult in this world.”

I’m pretty sure I just sat there for a second because that was not the question I was expecting. It’s not that I had never thought about that question before, but I sure didn’t expect a highschooler to ask me that question outright. In fact, I’m pretty sure I stumbled through the first part of my answer because I was still trying to process what this teenager had just asked me!

That is one of the best questions he could have asked, and it was at the same time one of the most obvious questions he could have asked.

Not obvious in the sense that everyone thinks about it all the time, but obvious in the sense that it is one of the most pressing questions that should be on a teenager’s mind. “How can I become spiritually mature?”

And there are many questions like this aren’t there? Questions like, “What does it look like for me to life a life pleasing to the Lord? Or “What does God mean by ‘love your neighbor as yourself?’”

And here in Psalm 15 we have one of those pressing questions asked by King David.

His question is a rather simply one, and it is, “who can be in the presence of God?”

Follow along with me as I read this Psalm.

Now sometimes as we read a Psalm like this it is easy to not notice the structure of the Psalm and it is important for us to see the structure because it is clearly there.

Verse one is the question of the Psalm that drives the rest of the passage. “Who may dwell in the presence of God?”

-There was obviously an Old Testament context to this question in the sense that God was physically and gloriously present in the tabernacle and later in the temple in a way that He is not currently present today.

-When we go to worship God on Sunday morning, we don’t go before a room to worship Him knowing that He is in the room either behind a closed door or behind a veiled curtain.

-That’s not how it is today but we do still need to think about what kind of person God allows into His presence because we all desire to physically be in His presence someday!

And simply put, verse two is the answer to the question.

-It’s a person who is a person of integrity. Some who outwardly works righteously and inwardly is a truthful person.

-A good way to think if integrity is by thinking of an individual who is both consistently righteous on the outside and on the inside.

-It is the idea of being a whole person or a complete person in the sense that the entirety of the individual is defined by righteousness and a desire to do what is righteous.

-So, the answer to the question, “Who can dwell with God” is really answered in verse 2 and the answer is that it is the person of integrity.

Now verses three through the beginning of verse 5 describe what it looks like for someone to be someone of integrity.

-There are eight descriptive lines that follow verse two that help us get a picture of what kind of person this is.

-These descriptions are obviously not exhaustive, but they give a representative illustration of a blameless person.

-Now what is important to understand about these descriptions is that they are descriptions!

-These are not commands!

-Now these concepts are definitely prescribed or commanded in other places in the Scriptures but here they are simply given as a picture.

-But why?

-The Psalms often do this. Instead of just commanding us to do something, the Psalms often have the purposes of causing the reader to reflect, to consider, and to examine ourself.

-These descriptions are to cause us to ponder and consider whether we are this kind of person and they help us think about where we need to continue to grow in godliness.

-This is obviously not a list of things to do in order to be saved. The Scripture teaches from beginning to end that salvation is by grace through faith, but these eight definitions do help us evaluate the direction and condition of our lives.

And the end of verse 5 concludes the Psalm with a blessing for those who live lives that correspond to what has been stated in this passage.

This morning we are looking at..

A Picture of God’s Servant for 2024

and in Psalm 15, let’s look at…

4 truths for the servant of God pursuing integrity in 2024

And the first thing we see in this passage is that…

I. Our God is a God of integrity

Psalm 15:1 O LORD, who may abide in Your tent?

Who may dwell on Your holy hill?

If integrity is when your actions and attitudes line up and they are both focused on doing what it righteous, our God is clearly the person of the highest integrity.

God is not a God that is fragmented. One that Has desires and heart attitudes one way, but when others are around He acts differently.

No God is always pure, always right, and always just and that’s because…

God is characterized by holiness

Holiness is a concept that can be thought of in multiple ways throughout the Bible.

The first way we can understand holiness is that it is the idea of something that is set apart for a special purpose. It’s something that is a cut above rest.

You see this concept play out on Easter all the time. A family full of little kids come walking in to church all cute and matching. The girls all have dresses that match and the little boys all have matching ties and coats that match what there dad is wearing.

Church gets over and they all go to grandma and grandpa’s house to have an easter egg hunt and eat ham. And as soon as soon as lunch is over the kids ask, “can we go outside and play?”

And the answer you often hear is, “Yes, as long as you don’t get your church clothes dirty.!”

And why shouldn’t the kids get their church clothes dirty? Well because those are clothes for a special purpose, and they are made to keep them nice!

Now the kids can obey this command, but they almost never understand it. “I don’t understand why I can’t get these clothes dirty; we own a washer.”

But you do, because you probably paid for them.

The church clothes are “holy” in the sense that they have been set apart for a special purpose.

So, in a similar way, God is holy in the sense that He is above everyone else. No one is like Him and He is greater than us in every way.

Now within this idea of God being holy or separate from us is the idea that God is morally separate or pure.

That means that God is the purest person to ever exist. No one even comes close to God’s moral purity and even the angels say that He is holy, holy, holy.

The fact that God is a being of integrity comes directly from the truth that God is a holy God.

All of God is pure. That means God’s thoughts, God’s heart, and God’s character are all pure and because the inside is pure, everything He does is also just as pure.

And this is what makes God so beautiful.

He’s not fractured like us. He is whole and complete. He is consistent in every way and always does what is right.

Now because God is so holy…

He requires His people to be like Him

That’s why this entire Psalm is here. It because God is holy.

This concept is stated explicitly for one of the first times in the book of Leviticus where it says…

Leviticus 19:1–2

1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:

2 “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

It’s clear that only those who are holy will be able to dwell in the presence of a Holy God.

In the first line of this Psalm it asks who can “abide” with God. That word is the same word for sojourning or staying somewhere for only a temporary time. But in the second line of this passage it uses the word “dwell” and that word carries with it the idea of staying or settling down.

God requires that those who dwell with Him or stay with Him to be people who are holy and people of integrity.

Now looking onto verse 2 we see that integrity is defined by someone who does things outwardly that are righteous and inwardly at the same time.

So...

II. Our integrity is a mark of the whole person

Psalm 15:2 He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness,

And speaks truth in his heart.

And we’ve already touched on this a bit but it is important to flesh this out a bit.

First integrity can be seen in…

Our works

It’s easy to see someone is not a person of integrity when even their actions are unrighteous. Everyone knows this.

This is why James says…

James 1:22

22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

But the actions that come with integrity are just the surface level.

Everyone knows someone who you thought was a person of integrity because of their actions but then later showed themselves to be otherwise.

That’s because integrity really comes down to…

Our heart

When you think about our hearts it is often helpful to think about them in comparison to the engine of a car. The heart is what is driving a person. It is what is on the inside.

What we are referring to now is what cannot be seen by the human eye. It is the immaterial part of a person.

When someone doesn’t have integrity, their actions often saying one thing and if you could read their heart, it would say something else.

There is a common phrase when it comes to integrity that everyone likes to quote and it goes something like this.

Integrity is doing what is right even when NO ONE is watching.

And that’s true. When someone is alone, their actions often change.

But there is another definition that shows the other side, and the saying is something like this.

Integrity is doing what is right even when EVERYONE is watching.

When someone is living in a fragmented way. When they are trying to conceal their true heart motivations and cover them us with righteous deeds so that others won’t see their hypocrisy, God has a way of revealing that.

And that is exactly what He did in Matthew 23 with the Pharisees.

Matthew 23:25–28

25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

26 “You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

28 “So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

The Pharisees might have looked great on the outside, but God revealed that they were not men of integrity. They were men of hypocrisy and men defined by deception.

And where did you see their hypocrisy and deception the most?

We see it in their relationships with other people. They said that they were worshipping God with a pure heart but the way they treated those around them proved that they were not blameless after all, and we see this in Psalm 15 as well.

And that is that…

III. Our relationships will display our level of integrity

Psalm 15: 3-5a

3 He does not slander with his tongue,

Nor does evil to his neighbor,

Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;

4 In whose eyes a reprobate is despised,

But who honors those who fear the LORD;

He swears to his own hurt and does not change;

5 He does not put out his money at interest,

Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

Verse 3 has a lot to say about how we use our mouths.

It says this kind of person is not given to slandering other people.

To slander simply means to spread lies about someone.

Gossip is going around sharing information about someone else’s problem to other people who are neither a part of the problem or a part of a solution to the problem.

Gossip is bad enough, but slander is almost the next level because the news that someone is sharing in not true.

Lies are being spread to others and the next line explains that a bit and says that that is doing evil to one’s neighbor.

And the following says that this sort of person does not even take up a reproach against their friend.

A reproach means to use your language in a way that is against someone. It can be to tear them down with your tongue or to disgrace someone.

Now this is what the person of integrity does not do but what they do use their mouth for can be seen in another passage in the NT.

Ephesians 4:29

29 Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

That is what the blameless person does with their mouth, they build rather than destroy.

They view the current circumstance they are in, the consider what the need of the moment is, and then they use the mouth that God has given them to speak words that give grace, no destruction. Lies lead to and result in destruction but words of truth give grace to those who hear them.

And I don’t know about you, but when I look back on 2023 I see a whole lot of people giving grace with their speech.

-It’s not hard to find stories about pastors who want to pull their hair out because their inboxes are full of people complaining about, gossiping about, or even slandering other people in the church.

-Well, by the grace of God that’s not a pastor’s problem in this church.

-I learned this after only a few months of being a pastor on staff here. The biggest problem I have is what am I going to with all of these thank you cards. Now that’s a good problem to have isn’t it?

-I have stacks of cards lying around that are filled with words of encouragement, words of thanksgiving, and words that build others up. Now I don’t want to throw these kind words away so I find a place to store them and keep them as encouragement for later.

-My point in saying all these things is well first,

-Thank you for all the encouragement you give to your pastors and also praise God that this church is filled with people of integrity.

-The people in this church are a joy to be around and a joy to shepherd.

TS: Now when we think about the people we should be involved with that does bring us to our next line in this Psalm.

Verse 4 can be tricky, but it is helpful to understand the first two lines of this verse contrasting one another. So those two verses are really in conjunction with together.

They says

In whose eyes a reprobate is despised,

But who honors those who fear the LORD;

Now the tricky part is the word reprobate. That is a word that we could really follow through the Bible and go down all sorts of rabbit trails of theology but in this context its meaning is actually straightforward.

The reprobate is one who is against God! It’s someone that is opposed to God’s ways and even opposed to the character of God. The person is obviously not someone of integrity.

Now the contrast here is that the person of integrity despises those who despise God but they honor those who fear God.

That doesn’t mean that they hate the reprobate or refuse to do good to them. No, not at all, we are called to even love our enemy.

But what this does mean is that a person of integrity holds highly the character of those who fear God and how they choose to live their life and they do not view a person who despises God in that same way.

They don’t want to be like the person who hates God, but they most definitely want to honor and imitate the one who does fear God.

As we close 2023 this can be a helpful topic to reflect on because this time of the year is when everyone is discussing who the person of the year is for 2023, who was the MVP of the year, and so on and so on.

But we as Christians can use this as an opportunity to reflect on who we see as most honorable and worthy of imitation.

Obviously, that answer for us all is the Lord Jesus. That’s who we want to worship and that’s who we want to imitate. But for those who are currently on this earth, which of those people do you want to imitate?

Now lastly this Psalm ends in a promise.

IV. Our stability in life is linked to our integrity

Psalm 15:5b He who does these things will never be shaken.

What does this mean that they will never be shaken?

Well it doesn’t mean that they will never go through trials but it does refer to the way they go through sufferings.

James 1:2–4

2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.