In respect to God's Word, please remain standing as I read the holy, inspired, inerrant Word of the true and living God. Psalm 111 and Psalm 112. Praise the Lord. I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart, in the company of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord. They are studied by all who delight in them. Splendid and majestic is His work. and His righteousness endures forever. He has made His wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate. He has given food to those who fear Him. He will remember His covenant forever. He has made known to His people the power of His works and giving them the heritage of the nations. The works of His hands are truth and justice. and His precepts are sure. They are upheld forever and ever. They are performed in truth and uprightness. He has sent redemption to His people. He has ordained His covenant forever. Holy and awesome is His name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding have all those who do His commandments. His praise endures forever. Praise the Lord. How blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. His descendants will be mighty on earth. The generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Light arises in the darkness where the upright. He is gracious and compassionate and righteous. It is well with the man who is gracious and lends. He will maintain his cause and judgment. He will never be shaken. The righteous will be remembered forever. He will not fear evil tidings. His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. His heart is upheld. He will not fear until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries. He is given freely to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. His horn will be exalted in honor. The wicked will see it and be vexed. He will gnash his teeth and melt away. The desire of the wicked will perish. Amen. So ends the reading of God's precious word this morning. Please be seated. For a year now, we have been considering the why, the who, the where, the when and the what of worship. Today and for the next two, maybe three weeks, I want us to look at the result of worship, and then we're going to close the series. But what does worship mean for us? What does it do in our lives? You see, there's this great principle in the Scriptures that you become like the God you worship. For instance, in Psalm 115, we hear how the idols have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. And then the psalmist goes on to say, And those who worship them become like them. And in the New Testament, the Apostle John gives his testimony in his first epistle, chapter 3. We know that when He appears, that when Jesus Christ appears, we will be like Him. Because we will see Him just as He is. And anyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself just as he is pure. So you hear it. You become like the God you worship. Now these two Psalms together are another instance of this very principle. Now these two Psalms really are to be joined together in their likeness and in their themes. Both of these are, well the likeness is highlighted by the fact that they're both acrostics. That is, that in both Psalms, each half line begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet. They are known as wisdom songs. They carry the theme that's found in the book of Proverbs, for instance. How do you become wise? How do you skillfully live in this world? How do you navigate through all the temptations that this world throws at us? Well, Psalm 111, verse 10, declares the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And Psalm 112, verse 1, declares how blessed is the man who fears the Lord. See, this fear of the Lord is the summation of Hebrew wisdom. And it summarizes the point of these two Psalms. You see, Psalm 111 tells us why we should fear the Lord. Psalm 112 tells us what this fear looks like in our daily lives. So as we look at these two Psalms today, we'll see that the fear of God, this genuine worship of God produces in us a certain likeness to Himself. So Psalm 111 again calls us to the worship of the true and living God. Not to some external emotional hype kind of worship. No, it's drawing us to a real heart-engaged worship of the living God. I point this out because much of worship can be merely external. We can come here, we can go through all the motions and not be engaged in worship. That's not what God wants from us. In fact, both in Isaiah and then in Matthew, we see Jesus commenting, as He quotes Isaiah, how the people of His time would say all the right things, but their hearts were far from Him. We were created to worship God. That's the best thing that we can do in life, whatever it is. If you're called to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a garbage collector, it doesn't matter. The best thing that you can do in life is to worship God. That's what you were created to do. That's what Jesus Christ redeemed us for, to worship Him. But there's a battle going on. There's many idols in the world. There's many idols even in our own hearts and in our own minds that call out to us, that beckon to us. And we are so easily swayed by them. We hearken to these idols. And the question again is how do we overcome idolatry? How do we give ourselves over to heartfelt worship? The psalmist says the fear of the Lord. And those who study God's works in Psalm 111, those who study God's works will delight in them. God's works are splendid. They are majestic. And as we study them, as we observe them, as we look at them, God becomes greater. God becomes sweeter. God becomes more marvelous in our eyes. Jonathan Edwards. wrote like this. He said, true saints center their attention on Christ and His beauty transcends all others. His delight is the source of all other delight. He in Himself is the best among ten thousand and altogether lovely. These saints delight in the way of salvation through Christ because it demonstrates God's perfection and wonder. They enjoy holiness, wholeness, while they take no pleasure in sin. God's love is a sweet taste in their mouths, regardless of whether their own interests are met or not. They rejoice over all that Christ has done for them, and they delight merely because God is God. And this delight spills over to all other God's works. God is God! And the more we worship Him, and the more we hear from His Word, and the more we sing of His praise, the more marvelous He becomes in our eyes, and the more we want to worship Him and throw away those idols. We overcome idolatry. We are led to heartfelt worship when God's person and His works are pondered, when they are sought after, when they are studied. And so the psalmist says, and His righteousness endures forever. Again, here pointing out how God's righteousness is the focal point of the saints' attention in worship. His righteousness is splendid, it's majestic. But the question that is for us this morning is, what is righteousness? Now oftentimes, righteousness is understood in terms of having an ethical or moral standard. where one's character is freed from immorality. One's conduct and thought is pure and good. In fact, in the Old Testament, a righteous man was an innocent man. There was no fraud, there was no deception found in him. He upholds truth in uprightness. However, while that is certainly part of our understanding of righteousness, the Hebrew word, tzedkeinah, contains a richer meaning than simply just that. Sometimes the Hebrew word is translated also as justice. But this justice is more than just bringing a judgment upon the wicked doer. It's a justice that's understood as rescuing and setting right a wrong. See? Sometimes translated as justice. But this kind of justice or righteousness seeks to eliminate anything that breaks the peace of the community, as well as seeks to preserve the good order and the prosperity of the community. And so again, righteousness shows itself by being honest, loving, merciful, reliable and trustworthy. Deeds reveal a loyalty, first to the covenant, then to the community that that covenant establishes. And so righteousness then creates certain attitudes and actions. And in Psalm 111, we see examples of God's righteousness. What does it mean for God to be righteous? Well, Psalm 11 tells us certain things. God's character, for instance, here is described as being gracious and compassionate. true and just, sure and upright, holy and awesome. And because God is all that, the psalm says that He gives food to those who fear Him. He remembers His covenant forever. He gives His people the heritage of nations. All His precepts are sure. They are upheld forever and ever. They are performed in truth and uprightness. He has sent redemption to His people. The psalmist here calls us to praise God and to fear Him, you see, because He is righteous, because His justice, His uprightness is displayed in the preservation and the protection of His people. Even as it flows out of His unmerited favor that He bears towards them. He remains constant and loyal to them. Psalm 111. calls to mind how God established covenant with Abraham. With Abraham's children. And it rejoices that in the making of this covenant, God is righteous. That as God is true, He's just, He's honest. He's loyal. You see, the covenant will not and cannot be disannulled because God is righteous. The Israelites were unfaithful to the covenant. They broke covenant time and time again. But though they were unfaithful to it, God remains loyal. He remains loyal to His promises. He's faithful to His people. And so redemption, the psalmist says, redemption cannot fail because God is righteous. Redemption is not found in ourselves. Not found in our works. Not found in our abilities. It's founded upon The grace and the purpose and the will of God Himself. But then we move on to Psalm 112. And what's surprising in this psalm is that God and His worshipers are made alike in righteousness. when we consider how great and how holy and how gracious God is. It's a pretty bold statement to make that God's saints, that God's holy people are also righteous. I mean, how can the righteousness of a frail, finite people be like that of the lofty and transcendent righteousness of God? Such a statement almost seems to be the heightened ramblings of a fevered enthusiast. But here it is in our text. Look at the second phrase in verse 3 of both Psalms. In Psalm 111, it speaks of God. And it says, And His righteousness endures forever. And then in verse 3 of Psalm 112, it speaks of those that fear the Lord. And notice the words. And His righteousness endures forever. The godly are described in the same way that God Almighty is. Two different subjects, God and the saint, but one description of both. Gracious, or His righteousness endures forever. The worshippers of the righteous God will be righteous like God. You become like the God you worship. Well, what does this righteousness for the godly then look like? Well, first, in Psalm 112, we see that man's righteousness is the characteristic that fears the Lord. This righteousness takes delight in His commandments, we're told. This phrase, the fear of the Lord, of course, is found all throughout the Bible in Proverbs. It's found in the New Testament. What is that fear of the Lord? Well, is it as slavish fears? Is this a dread that we have of God? Well, let's look at it. Psalm 111, verse 9 and 10, we have the phrase, the fear of the Lord, but that phrase follows the statement about God, that He's holy and awesome in His name. In other words, the fear of the Lord is this reverence and this awe of God's greatness. It is, as it were, an admiration or an appreciation of God's majesty and of His holiness. And then in Psalm 112, verse 1, how blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. You see, righteousness is to fear the Lord, but notice that it merely doesn't say he obeys. God's commandments. Rather, it says that he delights in the commandments. He greatly delights in God's commandments. You see, true righteousness is more than just keeping the commandments. It's delighting in God's law. Paul echoes this very sentiment in Colossians 3, for instance. In verse 22, he writes, slaves in all things, obey those who are your masters on earth. not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Paul parallels the fear of the Lord with a sincere and heartfelt service to God. And that service, again, is expressed in the way we live before men. So let me be bold here and say that however externally you might be keeping God's laws, unless you are delighting in those commandments, You're not really keeping it. Remember how Jesus in John 4 ministered to a Samaritan woman. And when the disciples came back, they questioned this, and He said, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. Now, Jesus said that after He ministered to that Samaritan woman. Even though He Himself was tired and hot and thirsty and hungry, Nevertheless, he ministered to that woman because he delighted in the will of God. He didn't see obeying God. He didn't see doing what God commanded him as a terrible, heavy burden. But it was his delight. You see, in righteousness, again, is that sincere love for God that reverences Him as Lord and seeks to serve Him as the greatest privilege given to any creature. Righteousness produces a real piety. Calvin says this. He defines what piety means. He says, I call piety that reverence joined with the love of God, which the knowledge of His benefits induces, for until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, and that He is the author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him. They will never yield Him willing service. Do you hear what Calvin is saying? Unless you see God as infinitely great and worthy of your praise, as you see that He has provided for you all your needs, that He gives to you wonderful gifts, unless you see Him as wonderful and as great as that, you will never give Him Joyful service. And that's what Psalm 111 and 12 are calling us to. Here, Psalm 111 says, study to see how God gives you all these benefits. How He cares for you. And if you see God as your highest good, O saint, you'll want to serve Him with joyful and willing heart. And that joyful and willing service is displayed again by serving God's people. Psalm 112 verse 4 says that the righteous man is gracious and compassionate. The righteous man is gracious and compassionate. Let's look at verse 4 of Psalm 111. It says that God is gracious and compassionate. You see, God is gracious and compassionate and those who worship Him become gracious and compassionate themselves. Now this description of God, that He's gracious and compassionate, is found in each section of the Hebrew canon. The Hebrew canon was broken up into three sections. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. And this particular phrase, this description of God is found in each one of those places. The first time you read about how God is gracious and compassionate is actually in Exodus chapter 34. Just after the people sinned in their idolatry with the golden calf, Moses intercedes for them. God announces that He will, in fact, forgive the people because He is gracious and compassionate. And the last time you read of this particular description of God, it's actually found in the prophets. It's found in the prophet Jonah. Jonah complained to God that he didn't want to go to Nineveh. Why? Because God, I knew that you were gracious and compassionate and that you would relent concerning the calamity that you threatened. Now my friends, I'm glad that our God is gracious and compassionate. I need a gracious and compassionate God because of my own sin. So do you, because of your sin. We need God who is not only holy and just and righteous, we need him to be merciful. But again, in this great description of who God is, gracious and compassionate, those attributes are to be found in us. Why? Because we're so quick to seek revenge. We're so critical of others. Think, for instance, of Jesus' story of the man who owed his master a great sum of money. And he's forgiven that sum. Then what does he do? He goes out and he seeks out another servant and demands from him the lesser amount. And the lesson that Jesus is teaching in that story, what is if that we owe all our hope and peace to a forgiving God, how can we not make the principle attitude of our dealings with others, that of mercy? Having received mercy, shall we not also show mercy? The test of your understanding of forgiveness is really your willingness to forgive. That's what Jesus is saying. If worship causes us then to be more and more like God, beloved, how amazing then the first thing that is mentioned in this resemblance is the attributes of compassion and grace. Righteousness in the believer makes him a compassionate soul. But again, This is not something that we're born with. This comes by beholding the perfect God, stooping down to bring us forgiveness. Listen to how Peter describes this as he contemplates this understanding of the Gospel. He says in his first epistle, chapter 4, verse 8, Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Keep fervent in this righteous behavior. In other words, work at it. Why? It's not easy to love one another, is it? It's not easy to be forgiving. We need to keep working at it. It's not something natural to us. But it is cultivated when you remember that God's righteousness is revealed by Christ's blood covering our own transgressions and sins. And this attitude of compassion demonstrates itself in action. Psalm 111 says, immediately after declaring God is gracious and compassionate, it goes on to say in the next verse, He has given food to those who fear Him. Well, in Psalm 112 verse 5, after it says that the holy man, the righteous man is gracious and compassionate, it says that he is well, or it is well with the man who is gracious and lends. And then, in verse 9 of both Psalms, it says of God, He has sent redemption to His people, in Psalm 111, Psalm 112, it says of the godly, He has given freely to the poor. You see, man's open-handedness in regard to money is parallel with God's open-handedness in giving grace, giving redemption, food, to those that fear Him. Our paltry giving is parallel with the unspeakable gifts that God has bestowed upon us in salvation. Poor though our bestowments must be, they are not unlike God. They are a reflection of His own giving. The righteous man sees that his money, his time, his energy, his gifts, his abilities, all these things are gifts from God. He is to exercise a stewardship over them and He is to use them. We are to use what is in our hands to preserve the good order and the prosperity of the community. Righteousness, you see, from the Psalms means that we cannot be stingy, we cannot be miserly, we are to be generous, we are to distribute freely. And those who truly worship God become like Him. in His compassionate grace and freely giving generosity. Now the question might arise for us, how are we to be made compassionate? How are we to be made generous? How are we to pursue the best for those around us? Well, the Psalms tell us because righteousness, righteousness means that we understand God's Word is sure and trustworthy. Notice how Psalm 111, verse 7 declares, all his precepts are sure. Psalm 112, verse 7 corresponds to that saying, he will not fear evil tidings. All his precepts are sure. God's Word is sure. And therefore, we will not fear evil tidings. Verses 8 of each psalm reads like this. His words are upheld forever and ever. And so, his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. These four verses, these parallel passages present a correspondence between the stability of God's Word on one hand, and the stability of the heart that holds him in faith. You understand what I'm saying here? If I'm led to trust in God's ability to sustain me, to protect me, I'm free to give myself away. And that's righteousness. Going back to Psalm 111, God's works are true and just. All His precepts are sure. They are upheld forever and ever. They are performed in truth and uprightness. And what all this means is that His promises are based upon His true and sincere desire to bless His people. Therefore, my friends, you can always trust Him. He will not tell you one thing, and then change his mind. One of the great effects of righteousness is that you're able to trust God in situations that will lead others to fear. One of the metrical versions of Psalm 111 puts it like this. Fear Him, ye saints, and you shall have nothing else to fear. Fear God and you don't need to fear anything else. Because God has proven Himself to be sure, to be truthful, to be loyal. His Word will never falter. It is steadfast forever and ever. Therefore, you can trust that the world will crumble. Nations rise and fall. The power of nations and their armies, gone. But God's Word abides forever. Isn't that wonderful news? And because God's Word is faithful, because it is true, because it will never be undisknown, You can trust it to fulfill all its promises. If you fear God, you have nothing else to fear. He will make good in all his promises. When Abraham was told, for instance, that God would give him a vast multitude of children, there he was in his old age. He had nothing to show for it. He had no reasonable human ability to cause that promise to happen. And yet, Genesis 15 verse 6 says, he believed in the Lord and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. See, God's Word, whether it be in the nature of guiding precept, or in the nature of revealing mysteries, or truth, or in the nature of promises, all God's Word is is sure, reliable, and utterly trustworthy. Righteousness, trust that God's Word will direct us right. Righteousness says that God reveals absolute truth to us, so I can stand on this truth. It will hold no false promises. God's Word, we're told in the Psalms here, is established. In a whirling world of change, with plenty of dangers all around, what a great comfort that is, isn't it? I've got to confess, I'm not very comfortable with heights. When I'm on a high ledge, I only very gingerly sneak up to the edge and I touch the rail, make sure that rail is secure. I don't want to fall into the gorge. The rail of God's Word is firm and secure. They are sure and have held forever and ever. by the omnipotent hands of Almighty God. You cannot lean too hard upon God's Word. In fact, the harder you lean upon God's Word, the better it is. If we establish our faith on that firm foundation, then as the psalm says, he shall not fear evil tidings. His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. The conclusion of this whole thing then, we're coming down to that conclusion. Righteousness is not found in us, beloved. It's not found in us. It's given to us as a free gift and justification. As we hold on to Christ by faith, we are given the gift of righteousness. But we are also made righteous. and sanctification. As we come more and more into conformity into Christ's image, we are made righteous. We can't work out for ourselves a righteousness that will satisfy our own consciences, let alone standing up next to God's perfect and holy standard. No, we fall short of that all the time. Experience itself shows that we cannot secure for ourselves a strength that will give us a peace of heart and mind, that will enable us to remain calm and steadfast in the stormy weather around us. We cannot live a life of selfless generosity. We cannot have that stability of desire that gives us the aptitude of serving others when they are ungrateful or mean-spirited towards us. Other than by clinging to the very Word of God revealed to us in Christ. Christ is revealed to us as our righteousness. He is the righteousness of God because in Christ you see God demonstrated His steadfast love. God demonstrated His gracious and compassionate heart in Christ. God eliminates the barrier of sin, working in us also to prosper us in the covenant. God shows Himself faithful. That's why Paul said that he gave up his own efforts to obtain righteousness on his own strength. Rather, he fell upon the righteousness of God in Christ. And the thing that the psalm here is directing us is that we obtain again this righteousness through faith. But notice again how Psalm 111 begins. Praise the Lord. I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart. And where will he do this? Where will he give thanks to the Lord? Where will he praise the Lord? In the company of the upright and in the assembly. Again, my friends, what he's getting on at here is that it's in the place of worship where our devotion to God has grown, where the fear of the Lord has developed and where the faith is strengthened. It's while we worship that our eyes and our hearts begin to be fixed on the promises of God. Christ is seen as our only true hope. It's in the worship service that God most ministers to us that we might learn to delight in Him above everything else. that we may see His glory and His majesty. Love begets light. The Scriptures say that we become like the God we worship. Living in His presence bathes us with His light. Worshipping our God creates in us something of His own beauty. A beauty that exhibits itself in loyal, loving, compassionate service. to one another. Let's pray. O Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You, O Lord, that even as we gather week by week to worship You, Your Spirit is working in us that He might create in us the very image of Christ, who is the very face of God. We thank You, O Lord, that in salvation you do not merely make us to be slaves, merely servants who have no family resemblance, but that you make us to be children of the Living God. That we would have something of your own character instilled in our hearts, Lord, we give ourselves to you promptly and sincerely and ask, O Father, that you would continue that good work of sanctification until Christ returns for us. In His name we pray. Amen.