SUNDAY PSALMS PART 30 OF 48 - PSALM 119:25-32

Post Road, Indianapolis, across from Fort Ben State Park

 25   My soul clings to the dust;
      Revive me according to Your word.
26   I have declared my ways, and You answered me;
      Teach me Your statutes.
27   Make me understand the way of Your precepts;
      So shall I meditate on Your wondrous works.
28   My soul melts from heaviness;
      Strengthen me according to Your word.
29   Remove from me the way of lying,
      And grant me Your law graciously.
30   I have chosen the way of truth;
      Your judgments I have laid before me.
31   I cling to Your testimonies;
      O Lord, do not put me to shame!
32   I will run the course of Your commandments,
      For You shall enlarge my heart.
                    Psalm 119:25-32, New King James Version

Three points I want to make with this section.

1. First, a confession that I relate to the Psalmist's mindset in verses 25 and 28. How about you?
2. I love verse 26, and I find it an invitation, a promise, and a challenge. An invitation to tell God what's on our minds and our plans. A promise that He'll answer us. A challenge to ask God to show us His statutes. Do you think that prayer will be answered?
3. I love the two sides of the coin verses 29 and 30 show. The first could be said to be the Calvinist verse, asking God to remove the path of lying and to grant us His law graciously. The second is the Arminian counterpart, stating that we chose the way of truth and that we willingly are setting God's judgments before us.

What does this Psalm segment say to you?

 

SUNDAY PSALMS PART 4 OF 48 - PSALM 12

 

Downtown, Indianapolis.

1    Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases!
    For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
2   They speak idly everyone with his neighbor;
    With flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3   May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
    And the tongue that speaks proud things,
4   Who have said, "With our tongue we will prevail;
    Our lips are our own;
    Who is lord over us?"

5   "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy,
    Now I will arise," says the Lord;
    "I will set him in the safety for which he yearns."
6   The words of the Lord are pure words,
    Like silver tried in a furnace of earth,
    Purified seven times.
7   You shall keep them, O Lord,
    You shall preserve them from this generation forever.
8   The wicked prowl on every side,
    When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

Psalm 12:1-8, NKJV

Another Psalm that seems relevant today, doesn't it? Doesn't it seem like the righteous and faithful have vanished? Don't we regularly hear a lot of idle talk, flattery (e.g. "You are enough"), and pride? 

Verse 4 makes me think of the Libertarian principle "You own yourself." Now, don't misunderstand me. I know exactly what the Libertarian means: it's talking about the human level, where we're not slaves, where we have personal liberty, where we're not obligated to vote for the major parties just because they're the major parties. However, the reality is that principle is a lie, because God owns us. If we're believers, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 makes it crystal clear that our Lord owns us. If we're not, we fall under the first verse of Psalm 24: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the earth and they that dwell within" (meaning everyone). 

Then, we get to verse 5. The Lord is watching, and will give the poor safety. Stop a second. If you put how verse 5 starts in place with the previous four verses, you realize that the poor are not in safety with the SFL (Society of Flattering Lips). In other words, those who think they have no accountability are at best selfish and arrogant and couldn't care less about the needs of others, and at worse are downright oppressive.

When I first noticed this Psalm, verses 6 and 7 got my attention, and I wrote a chorus for that Psalm. Verse 6 clearly talks about the purity of God's Word. But is verse 7 still talking about the Bible when it says "You will keep them.... you shall preserve them forever?" Some King James Only people make that claim, and hold that God's Word is preserved by their preferred translation. But does "them" in verse 7 go back to verse 5, where it talks about the oppressed poor and needy?

The final verse of this Psalm goes from the future hope that God will put an end to oppression to the present reality. Is vileness exalted among men? How many movies and Jerry Springer episodes do you need to watch to realize it is? 

Pardon me, but I'm not going to make things more comfortable before I close today's blog. How often does the church fall into the same category, exalting vileness? Do we cover our TV/movie/listening with prayer? Do we, as Paul encourages in Philippians 4:8, think on what is pure and lovely and true and noble and just and of good report? Or are we allowing our minds to be defiled by the world? And yes, I face the same temptations.

 

WHAT'S THE REAL REASON PEOPLE DON'T TRUST THE BIBLE?

 

I  know of three groups that believe the Bible was corrupted by the Catholics. Why?

The first are new-agers who believe the original Bible taught re-incarnation. Have they found an original language manuscript pre-dating the 300's that confirms that? Well, no. Then what basis do they have for believing the real Bible teaches re-incarnation? Basically, because they believe in re-incarnation, and thus the real Bible would teach what they believe is truth.

The second are Muslims. They agree with the New-Agers that the Bible is corrupt, but they don't believe in re-incarnation. Then why do they think the Bible is corrupted? Because they believe the true Bible would have had prophecies of Mohammed. Like the New Agers, there's no text that backs that up. It's just what they believe, and being wrong is not a possibility. Thus, those rascally Catholics corrupted it.

Then, there is a group called House of Yahweh. Again, they agree with the "fact" that the Bible is corrupted, but disagree with what the corruption was. In the case of the House of Yahweh, the corruptions were not removal of pet teachings but the inclusion of things they disagree with: Sunday worship and the Trinity. Now, they claim the New Testament was originally in Aramaic or Hebrew and not Greek (unintentionally or not forgetting that Greek was basically a global language in NT times and that some of the places Paul wrote letters to were in Greece and thus would normally speak Greek).

For the record, I find the House of Yahweh's claims ironic and revealing. Groups like the Seventh-Day Adventists likewise agree that the Lord's Sabbath is Saturday, but they'll tell you the idea of Sunday worship is nowhere in the Bible. On the other hand, there are other groups who like the House of Yahweh deny the Trinity, but they likewise don't think it's in our current Scripture. In my opinion, the House of Yahweh's claims reveal that Sunday Worship and the Trinity are in the Bible, despite what other detractors say.

What do these groups have in common? Their claims of corruption are all subjective. None have recognized objective proof of their claims. Rather they want you to trust them and their teachings rather than the Bible. 

I find it interesting that if these groups were correct that the Catholic Church corrupted Scripture, why don't they believe in Sola Scriptura? To the Roman Church, the Bible is not corrupted. It's just not sufficient. We need the official teachings of the Church in addition to the Bible. Likewise, the Mormons say that we have one part of the story of Jesus, but we need the Book of Mormon and the teachings of the Mormon prophets to have the complete truth.

Are there other things that need to be added to Scripture to teach truth? I've heard some say that scientific theories, political ideologies, or psychological teaching must be considered.

There are Christians who also use their view of interpretation or how they translate certain words from the original languages to win arguments. One friend, for example, believes God is a God of love and not of wrath. But what about John 3:36 which says that "He who does not believe in the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him?" My friend says that mistake was due to "weak translators", and that word means "desire", not "wrath." Never mind that the same Greek word is regularly translated "wrath" in contexts where "wrath" was the best choice.

Hope you make it to this point. Yes, I do believe each of these is an attempt to get us to trust the word of men and not the Word of God as our authority. But let me also state that you shouldn't trust me over the Bible either. Be a Berean. Go to Scripture. Read it in context. Compare Scripture with Scripture. 

Likewise, you need to discern whether the person is a fellow believer who agrees on the essentials of the faith and those who reject false teachings. Some people who expect me to take their word for it agree with me about the inerrancy of Scripture, the Deity of Christ, and salvation by grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone. Others deny one or more of these. 

Is the Bible your authority? Have you ever unconsciously expected people to trust your word rather than check it out with Scripture? How do you defend the truth when someone claims the Bible is corrupt or insufficient or doesn't really mean what it says?

BOOK REVIEW: SOUND DOCTRINE (9MARKS SERIES) BY BOBBY JAMIESON

 

Are you aware that solid Biblical teaching (also known as Sound Doctrine) has an effect on other areas of your life, such as loving others, corporate worship, personal holiness, etc.? Bobby Jamieson does an excellent job of showing the importance of good Scriptural teaching, likening it to being a professional jazz musician (he was one) and a surfer (again, he was one).

What is sound doctrine? Jamieson defines it as the teaching  that is consistent through Scripture. The drawback on the subject - good Christian teachers sometimes disagree on what sound doctrine is. To some, sound doctrine would include the eternal security of the believer, while another believes sound doctrine allows a Christian to fall from grace. For the most part, Jamieson doesn't get into areas of controversy, though he does mention the doctrine of election later in the book. Rather, his examples are in areas of doctrine most Christians regardless of denomination would agree on.

This book is part of the 9Marks series.

How does Biblical doctrine (i.e. teaching) affect your life? What sources do you use to increase your knowledge of doctrine?