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Psalms 14 and 19 in Preaching the Gospel
How could someone read Psalm 14 and think that salvation is by works? Read verses 1-4:
1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. 2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. 3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.
I ask you to consider how conclusive these verses are. They are speaking about everyone, anyone who has ever lived. The LORD is looking down from heaven, and He doesn’t miss anything. He says that every person is corrupt, has done abominable works, does not good, does not seek God, has gone aside, and is filthy. He does all these things and then he does not call upon the name of the Lord. He is helpless to live a righteous life and yet he still does not call upon the name of the Lord, whom he needs so that he can be righteous. He’s not depending on God, because he’s proud.
Men can’t save themselves. It’s not just that they’re sinners, but they could never sustain a righteous life by doing good works. They do not do good works. This is reality for mankind. God knows this better than anyone. Whatever a man may say about himself, these verses are the truth. A person is lying to himself if he thinks he can be saved by works. He’ll never succeed, because this psalm is who he is.
The Apostle Paul refers to this psalm in Romans 3 with his treatise on sinfulness of man. Many of you reading know that it says this in verses 10-12:
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Then you also know that he writes the following in verse 23:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
And from that a man should conclude according to verse 28:
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
The point of that argument by Paul is so that men will submit to justification by faith alone and not by works. If you can’t do good works and you aren’t righteous, then you can’t be saved by works. You should conclude that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works. You should believe in Jesus Christ to receive His righteousness by faith, which is to have His righteousness imputed to you and the forgiveness of your sins.
Psalm 14 is quite a psalm to be singing. This is a song to be sung to God expressing the truth of man’s sinfulness. God wants to hear that men agree. He’s praised by this truth. It assumes that men need God.
The Old Testament doesn’t teach salvation by works. It teaches that men are sinners and they need God for forgiveness of sins and righteousness.
What about Psalm 19? It says that from God’s creation alone men know God. These are statements of reality. God knows. He says:
Verse 1a: The heavens declare the glory of God.
Verse 1b: The firmament showeth his handiwork.
Verse 2a: Day unto day uttereth speech.
Verse 2b: Night unto night sheweth knowledge.
Verse 3: There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Verse 4: Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
All of these are sheer statements of fact. They also state the truth of what man knows. From the standpoint of knowledge, he is without excuse. Everyone living in this world knows God through the declaration of the heavens — the handiwork of the firmament, the speech uttered by the day, and the knowledge shown through the night. The day speaks through the sun, as seen in verses 4-6:
4 In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, 5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. 6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
“Them” in verse 4 refers to “heavens” in verse 1. The word “their” all the way through (vv. 3, 4) refers to “heavens.” Poetic language describes how the heavens talk, specifically through the sun. The heavens during the day are a tabernacle for the sun, which shows itself in all the helpful, beautiful, and awesome ways explained.
A beauty of the revelation of the heavens is that it transcends a particular speech. It can be heard in every speech, every language. An Italian, Russian, Hispanic, or English person hears the voice of the heavens from God without exception of place. This speech goes out to the whole earth and to the end of the world.
When we evangelize, we should learn to use and then use creation as a basis of introducing the God of the Bible to an unbeliever. He already knows. This revelation has reached him. We should assume that. People that haven’t even read the Bible, which are more than ever, still know God and through His creation, the heavens.
Furthermore, scripture, also the revelation of God, called “the law of the LORD,” “converts the soul” (verse 7). For salvation, the soul needs to be converted. It is stained and corrupted by sin.
James 1:25 calls the law, “the perfect law.” The idea of “perfect” isn’t contrasting with “imperfect,” but with “incompletion.” The law of the LORD is complete or sufficient. It lacks nothing, it has everything in it that anyone would need. Conversion of the soul is the total transformation of it.
The first designation of the Word of God in Psalm 19 is the law of the LORD. The usage of that term refers to all of the Word of God, not just the first five books of the Bible or just the parts that are laws. The Hebrew word for “law, torah, means instruction, direction, or doctrine. It reminds me of 2 Timothy 3:15, which says that the “holy scriptures,” referring to the Old Testament, are able to make a child wise unto salvation.
The LORD’s law instructs man sufficiently for his soul to be converted, which is to be restored. It has been ruined by sin and it can be restored to moral rightness before God. It makes sense that the “law of the LORD” isn’t just the Mosaic law, which in itself wouldn’t convert the soul, even though it has an important part according to the Apostle Paul, who in Galatians (3:24-25) says it is a schoolmaster to bring someone to faith in Christ. The instruction of the LORD, which is His Word, is powerful to save, specifically the Gospel (Romans 1:16).
Psalm 19 says that salvation is the conversion of the soul. In the Old Testament, the soul is nephesh and in the New Testament, psuche. Jesus said (Luke 9:24) that to save one’s life (psuche, soul), someone must lose his life (psuche, soul). He’s got to give up his soul. He gives it to God and God restores it using scripture. This is the sanctification of the truth, the Word of God, that God uses in salvation. The conversion of the soul is the transformation of a life, where the person becomes a “new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Peter calls this the knowledge of Jesus Christ through which someone becomes a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:2-4). After the conversion of the soul, the sinner has a new nature, a divine nature, and is returned morally to the image in which God created him. He now has the ability not to sin.
Someone might consider the teachings of Psalms 14 and 19 to be New Testament concepts. No, they are biblical concepts of salvation, which is the same in the Old Testament as it is in the New. They can be used in preaching the gospel.
Sanctification Summary: Christian Holiness or Sanctification—A Summary from Eternity Past to the Eternal State
During the recent Word of Truth Conference at Bethel Baptist Church, I had the privilege of preaching a summary of what Scripture teaches on sanctification. It was suggested that this summary be made into a pamphlet. You can now download the pamphlet on the FaithSaves website by clicking here; it is entitled “Christian Sanctification: A Summary from Eternity Past to the Eternal State.” The video is also live at FaithSaves; it can also be watched on YouTube by clicking here; if it is a blessing, I would encourage you to “like” it on YouTube and leave a comment. I have also embedded the video below for your viewing edification.
May it be a blessing to you, and with those with whom you can share it who want to understand what Scripture teaches about sanctification.
–TDR
My Lifetime Surprising Struggle With My Own Sin
Nobody on earth, what I say, “breathes pure, spiritual air.” Nobody has their head in some superior spiritual cloud. Everyone must struggle against sin. My life has been one of a continuous struggle with sin. When I say that, some might act like they are surprised. I was surprised too, because when I was young, I didn’t understand sanctification. Little was said about sanctification as a struggle, the latter a technical word to describe a successful Christian life.
I don’t expect believers to live a sinless life. Scripture itself informs me of this (1 John 1:7-2:2). It’s been, especially in certain seasons of my life, a real struggle, even after I became a pastor in early adulthood. Being a pastor doesn’t take away the difficulties of living the Christian life and not sinning.
To a pastor, it seems very, very important not to be sinning. It’s similar to sinning as a husband or parent though. Your consideration is that the people you are leading will not do well with your leadership if you are sinning, you are not doing right. Struggling with sin seems to be very, very incongruent with influencing people under your leadership, so you don’t want them to know that you’re struggling with it too. This tends toward this idea that you’re really not, when you really are.
Struggling with sin doesn’t sound like a good Christian life. It sounds like failure. Yet, that’s what the Bible says sanctification is, a struggle. It will be harder at different times in your life too, and it would be helpful to know that.
The struggle isn’t losing. It is struggling. Losing is giving in to sin, saying that you are just going to continue in sin. When someone is struggling with sin, he’s not comfortable with his sin. He’s vexed. He doesn’t like it. He’s battling, which can look ugly. It is. But he doesn’t settle and give in, to where he’s now a committed sinner, not giving it up.
One reason someone might not want to admit a struggle with sin is that someone might think he’s even unsaved. This is an important reason why to teach believers that sanctification is a struggle. It isn’t an excuse to sin. Where is this doctrine though? The classic passage is Romans 7. Romans 7 gives a lot of hope to any Christian when he finds out what it’s like to live the Christian life. It seems impossible to have assurance of salvation without a passage such as this, looking at Romans 7:7-24, but especially focusing on 7:14-23:
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
When you read it, it is pretty self-explanatory why this passage is so helpful to present the true Christian life as a struggle. This is not some novice, weak professing believer here. This is the Apostle Paul, sometimes considered the greatest Christian who ever lived. This is his describing of his own life, not someone else. It doesn’t sound possible, but it is true. Where do we get the idea that the Christian life is not a struggle if he said this about his own Christian life?
I write “surprising,” because I had the definitive impression that my Christian life wasn’t going to be like that, a struggling one. Why? I don’t remember anyone telling me it would be a struggle. Keswick theology, which was the environment of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, that I grew up with, portrayed Christians able to live in an ionosphere of near perfect Christianity. It’s not that people were doing it, but it was what was portrayed by preachers. They weren’t living this way, but they were making it look this way. I wanted what they had that they didn’t have.
How did I figure out that it wasn’t what was presented to me? It took me awhile. Ironically, it was a struggle to find out it was a struggle. I had to study the Bible. I had to reject what I heard or was taught, to sort through and understand without anyone telling me. That’s not the preferred way, which is one reason why our church has recently put so much emphasis on sanctification in our Word of Truth conference, spending four years of conferences on this subject. I’ve written on it.
Pastors are not disqualified for struggling with sin. Parents are not disqualified as parents for struggling with sin. The people we pastor are not disqualified for struggling with sin. There is disqualifying sin for a pastor. He can’t pastor any more for varied reasons, but he’s not disqualified because he sins. Paul was obviously sinning and he was the one who wrote about disqualification.
In writing this piece, I thought of pastors who are judged by a perfectionist standard, who actually don’t judge their own people in their church by a perfectionist standard. They are trying to help their people. Why are leaders judged harshly? They are going to be judged, but a big reason for harsh judgment can be that the followers want to use their leaders as an excuse for ejecting from the struggle themselves. They don’t want to live the Christian life, and they use the struggle of a leader as a reason not to struggle. This doesn’t make sense, but it happens. all. the. time. Especially young people today are harsh about their leaders. They don’t want to be judged by their leaders and then they use their own judgment of their own leaders, not to live the Christian life, but to not live the Christian life.
I’ve been careful in my leadership to give room to young people to grow and to help them to grow. I don’t excuse their ejecting from the Christian life though. I expect them to want the Bible, to love Christ, and to struggle. Just giving up on the struggle and then using whatever leader — parent, pastor, teacher — as an excuse, to give up, to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, to go out from us and discontinue with us, is inexcusable. This is apostate-like behavior. Every true believer is going to struggle and the support with that struggle needs to be there, either with the follower or the leader.
The Apostle Paul was attacked all the time for his Christian life and for his leadership. The whole book of 2 Corinthians among other chapters in other epistles accounts for this. People used Paul’s example as their basis for false teaching and bad behavior. He was regularly defending himself. Why? It was crucial for followers that they didn’t have him as an excuse.
I believe in continuous Christian living, a practice of righteousness, that is seen in 1 John and James among other places. However, not in contradiction to that is a struggle with sin. My lifetime has been a surprising, relentless struggle with sin. Losing the struggle is giving up. A true Christian will not give up. Giving up is not an appropriate response to someone who is struggling.
Someone struggling is at least struggling. Someone giving up is doing his own thing in contradiction to struggling. Endurance is a struggle. Followers of leaders should give leaders some room to struggle. They are not following their example when they give up. They can’t use the example of a struggling leader for ejecting from true Christianity.
Was the Apostle Paul a broken, useless leader because he was doing what he hated? Was he not worth listening to? We don’t want to trample and kick someone to oblivion, just because he has sinned. It’s also contradictory in someone who is living in sin without repentance because he saw others sin, and those same people have judged him or her. The question should be, is the judgment true? Isn’t the point to repent, submit to and please God, and grow as a Christian? In so many cases, it is just about not being judged. This was the case with the critics of Paul. They criticized him because they didn’t want to be judged by him and they had an agenda and life of their own they wanted to live.
Our judgment of other Christians should have as their point the desire to see repentance and growth, the actual winning of the struggle against sin. It shouldn’t be to excuse behavior. It isn’t an excuse. Everyone is going to stand before God by himself. He needs to struggle with sin and then help others with their struggle.
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