Okay, we will go to Psalm 101, Psalm 101 tonight for our Bible study. Trust that you had a good prayer time. We'll continue to take our requests before the Lord as we take our lists home and I'll also email this out and we'll continue to help share one, help bear one another's burdens as we share our requests and share our burdens with the Lord and with each other. All right, Psalm 101. I've been purposely choosing some psalms that are less familiar to us. We have several, of course, that we know and are very familiar, that we often go to, and obviously there's nothing wrong with that, but I've been purposely choosing some psalms that are a little less familiar, and it has been a great delight to my soul to dig into some of these psalms. And I've read the psalms, I don't know how many times in my life. And isn't it just a delight from the word of God, how you can read a passage of scripture, you can read texts over and over from the word of God, and each time it continues to feed the soul. And I've learned things in the psalms through this study that I never seen before or not quite understood before. And so we'll be in Psalm 101 this evening, a Psalm of David. This is part of book four of five books in the book of Psalms. Psalm 90 through 106 is book four, and then 107 to 150 would be considered book five. Again, the book of Psalms is a hymn book. And so these songs, these Psalms were often sung as songs, and we don't know the occasion for all of them. but there are several psalms that, in groups of psalms, that we know were sung at specific times, specific seasons, or specific feasts, or occasions, and we don't know the specific context in which this psalm was sung, but it appears to be a psalm, or a song, that David wrote around the time of his coronation of his becoming king. And we'll see that here, hopefully a little bit more as we go through this Psalm tonight, we are entitling the Psalm, a king's resolve. And if you have the prayer bullets in tonight, there is an outline. If you want to fill in the blanks, if that helps at all, and we'll see a true, we'll see truth within the king. and will see truth within the people. The king is resolved to be a godly king, to be a righteous king, and to lead his people in righteousness. So we see again, as I just mentioned, that Psalm 101 is a psalm of David, and the only other psalm in this book of psalms, from Psalm 90 to Psalm 106, the only other psalm in this particular book, If we wanna say five volumes, volume four of the Psalms, the only other one ascribed to David is Psalm 103. And then we see two primary themes, again, and these are in the outline, truth within the king and truth within the people, but we see the desire of the king, of course, the human author, writing by the inspiration of God, is David. And he desires, you can read clearly in this psalm, his great desire to lead in the fear of God with righteousness of life. David was a man after God's own heart. As he led those sheep in the wilderness, out in the fields, so he wanted the Lord to be his shepherd and to be the shepherd of the people that God had called him. You can sense that burden in this psalm, the great desire of David. And again, as he wrote this psalm as a song, quite possibly at the time of his coronation, you see his desire to not just be a godly king, but to lead the people in righteousness, for righteousness, the righteousness of God, to be the prevailing influence among the people of his kingdom. wonderful desire. What a high goal to set for yourself and for your people. Wouldn't it be great if more of our leaders, political and in other places, have that desire? It seems the number one desire is sheer raw power and then money and whatever fame and popularity and All that that goes with it, those seem to be the driving factors, legacy. Even if that legacy is wickedness and ungodliness, we see leaders that just are obsessed with their legacy. We see this with athletes and among celebrities and superstars. And sadly, again, far too many of those in leadership, whether it be in politics or in work or in sports or whatever, far too many have the wrong priorities in their leadership. But we see David. He wants to be a man of God. He wants to lead in the fear of God and with righteousness of his own life, setting an example for the kingdom and then for righteousness to be the prevailing influence among the people of his kingdom. So the psalm ultimately is a messianic psalm in the sense that it points to the Messiah Christ, who will one day reign with true righteousness and holiness. David's going to obviously fall short of that. We are so thankful for his heart and for his desire. Sadly, he fell short. And again, we are reminded all throughout the Old Testament, there is no perfect prophet, no perfect priest, no perfect king. But we find all of those in the perfection of holiness in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. And so this psalm ultimately points to the Messiah Christ, who will rule and reign in perfect righteousness and in true holiness. So that brings us to our outline tonight, and that is, first of all, truth within the King. Truth within the King. He sings, in verse one, of mercy and judgment. I will sing of mercy and judgment unto thee, O Lord, will I sing. This word mercy is the word in the Hebrew language hesed. And I am not like Craig Hartman who can say it with the Hebrew hesed. Or as my professor in Old Testament survey, Dr. Yeagley, we used to call him Vaguely Yeagley because his tests were so hard, four multiple choice questions. Two of them you could immediately eliminate. And then you sat there and agonized over two of those four that you just, oh, which one? And there'd be this one little phrase or one word. Oh, I just, I knew. So we called him vaguely Yeagley, Dr. Yeagley. What a great professor, Old Testament Survey. And he used to talk about chesed in Old Testament Survey. And I still remember him up there teaching us. But it's a wonderful, it's a rich, rich, rich word. We had to do an entire paper, an Old Testament survey on this one word. And what an enriching study that was. It's loyal love, it's the loyal love of God for us. It's his loving kindness to us. We think of the word mercy, of course, as God not giving us what we deserve. And that's embodied in here. It's a strong implication that we are unworthy recipients of his loving kindness of his loyal love. We love him because he first loved us. So we see mercy and then justice. He sings of God's mercy and God's justice. Again, this word justice is much wrongly defined, much misused in our culture today. We talked a little bit about this on Sunday night. It's really the idea of David speaking to God's justice, God's equity, God's fairness, God's rights, judgments, his rule and his decrees that are right, that are holy, that are what are best for us and for the world. And he desires to live out that, to execute his power as king, as the anointed king. But he's speaking, first of all, to God's power, God's justice, the proper execution of God's power, obviously in perfect holiness and in righteousness. It's the punishment of evil. It's the rewarding of the good. And it is discernment in decisions. Again, he's singing first and foremost of God's mercy, of God's judgment and his desire to emulate that and to be a good example of those attributes of God in his leadership. And then we see, oh Lord, the word Jehovah, Yahweh, all capital letters, Lord, Unto thee, O Lord, will I sing. We see the personal nature of this song. And then we see integrity of life. We see integrity of life in verse number two. Seeing God as who he is, the holy, the righteous God of mercy and of judgment, justice, who decrees, who leads in perfect righteousness and holiness and is perfect in his power in his punishment of evil and in rewarding the good, we often fall short of that. We often do not meet God's measurement in those areas, but having exclaimed who God is in those areas, what's his response in verse two? We read there, I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. Oh, when will thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. What a response. And that's the way it should be for us. We should respond to seeing God in his holiness and his justice and his judgment with, oh Lord, I am not worthy, but I need you to help me to live out these attributes as best as I can. of my ability by your grace and for your glory. And that's the heart of the king here. Again, this is probably around the time he is anointed or he is coronated as king and he wants to be a godly king, a God-fearing king to rule with the knowledge of God and in light of God's holiness. And he wants to execute his power with that same kind of balance of mercy and truth, loving kindness, and also discernment in his judgments and his decisions. He knows as a king, he's gonna have to make some difficult calls. He wants to do so with the compassion and loving kindness of God, but also to make sure that truth is lifted up, that evil is punished, that good is rewarded. And I know that all of us, whether it be as parents, or whether it be in some place of leadership or influence. It can be tough, right, to balance those two. It can be tough. And there were many, many a time, as a school principal and even as a pastor, where trying to get two groups of people or two people together and helping them to see God's will and God's way. And I've been in too many meetings where a parent and a child or Two people trying to reconcile. They can't get on the same page because they can't see God's will and God's way and they both want to point fingers and I've seen parents take on their child's, in their child's sin. I've literally watched parents defend their child's sin because they can't stand the fact that the other child might not have been guilty, and their child is the one that's actually the guilty or the guiltiest of the whole situation or in that situation. And I've watched parents defend their child in their sin, sitting there in my office, and I'm having to make a decision as to how to split the baby in two. so that there's proper punishment when I know no matter what I do, somebody's gonna be mad at me. And that's tough. We get like that in parenting and any kind of management, leadership, coaching. On and on we could go. David has a great desire to have integrity of life that he is blameless in his own heart and his own character that he's without hypocrisy because he knows that he is going to have to make decisions. He is going to have to use discernment. He's gonna have to make judgments. So he wants to let her see there. He wants to affirm biblical values in his life. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. We can get into various fences and guardrails that we put up in our homes and our lives that I think are good and necessary. We need boundaries. And I think that we need probably more fences and more guardrails than we like to admit. But we can set our fences and guardrails in different places, I realize. But the point is that we should be making it easy, I like how Ran Hummel talks about it, how we should be making it easy to do right. We should be making it easy for us to make the right decision, for us to honor God, for us to glorify God, for us to not sin and make it hard to sin, make it hard to sin. Set up boundaries and fences, set up guardrails in our life so that it is hard to sin and easy to do right. If we know that we're gonna spend most of our day at work and we're gonna have to put up with a lot of garbage, from bad language to whatever, it probably would behoove us to spend less time observing and listening to that at home with our entertainment choices. To me, it just seems if we're gonna spend most of our day, because of our work, having to deal with a lot of the world's carnality, it would seem to me, instead of filling our minds with more of that at home in our entertainment and our music, Wouldn't it be better if we have to deal with that sewage all day to cleanse our minds, to set before us things that are going to help us? Because we're beat down all day by the garbage of the world. And sometimes we have to make choices at work and in different places of recreation to say no, because we're not gonna go there, we're not gonna do that. But there are some things, we just go through life and we, like Jesus did with the disciples, he said, you have to have your feet washed. And we come home, and we deal with things all day, and deal with certain things, and we have our own flesh, right? And the world and the devil that we're fighting all day, and we need our feet washed. We need some baths with the word. Setting no wicked thing before our eyes is the basic principle, but it's the idea of affirming biblical values and adhering to godly character. It's true about leadership, but we can apply it to just regular relationships of friendships and people that we come into contact with, that we build relationships with. It's primarily in the context of leadership. But he says, I hate the work of them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me. I will not know a wicked person. He's not saying you go into a cave, you dig yourself a molehill, and you bury yourself underground and never associate with anybody. That's not what he's saying. It's the same principle of we have to be in the world, but not of the world. What is he saying? He's saying my life, is going to be such that I'm going to surround myself with people who encourage righteous attitudes, righteous actions, godly behaviors. David's going to put into place, he wants to put into his cabinet, into his leadership, people who will help him make godly decisions, help him live right, help him execute righteousness and justice according to the truth. And good leadership will do that, will surround oneself with those kinds of people. A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes. A wise king scattereth the wicked and bringeth the wheel over them. Mercy and truth preserve the king, and his throne is upholden by mercy. Even down in verse number six, Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me. He that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. Proverbs chapter 16, Proverbs 16 in verse 13. Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him that speaketh right. Proverbs 22, Proverbs 22 in verse number 11. He that loveth pureness of heart for the grace of his lips, the king shall be his friend. And then one more, Proverbs 29, in verse number 4. establisheth the land, but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it. I think it's pretty clear that those in leadership, and really leadership is influence. So yes, kings, yes, those in places of politics and other management and oversight type of positions, yes, there's a specific application for them, but I think there's applications in general for all of us. We can look at Absalom, who stole the hearts of the people through false compassion and end up in rebellion, undermining his own father. Chose wrong kinds of people to be his closest companions and friends with, again, false compassion and undermining his father. Rehoboam ignored wise counsel from the elderly, from the veterans, from the wise, and he believed and listened to and accepted the wrong counsel of the young who really did not know what they were talking about and led Rehoboam in rebellion and ended up splitting the kingdom. We think of Solomon and his wives who led him away from God and into idolatry and rampant, just wicked idolatry, along with obviously the sin of polygamy. We know from 1 Corinthians 14 that evil communications corrupt good manners. Evil companions corrupt good morals. We're told in Proverbs that Not go in the presence of an angry man. Lots of applications, lots of principles and commands about who we surround ourselves with, who our closest friends and influences are. I talk about entertainment, I talk about music, I talk about choices of who we have as our primary influences in our lives. Is it a celebrity who's ungodly and immoral that we idolize and practically worship because they make us feel good with their music or they are such a good actor or actress? What kind of morals are they? You see the error that is in the culture, it often gets into the classrooms and then it is applied into the culture by celebrities, by superstars. It's a pattern that we see throughout American history. Errors that begin in certain obscure places, they end up in classrooms and various places of learning and in pulpits, but oftentimes it's the cultural influencers who really put it into the cultural psyche. that then it permeates into homes and families and we have to deal with phones today and all the influencers and influences of social media. I know I harp on this too much and I apologize if I do, but who are our greatest influencers? I talk to young people, it's true for adults as well. Who's on your social media accounts? Young men, do you have ladies who are provocative and immoral? Are they on your social media accounts? And they're putting various images. What's the language and the voice and the philosophy of the entertainment and the influencers of society? David says, I wanna have good, godly influence in my life. I want people edifying, and directing me, and counseling me, and iron sharpening iron, and pointing me to Christ, and keeping my flesh in check, and questioning me, and giving me godly advice, questioning me when I'm about to do something that isn't right, people who will hold me accountable that will point me to the Lord, that will help me in my integrity, that will help me in my walk with God so that I have good leadership. We close tonight with just a few minutes left with the second point on the outline tonight. And I'll just go ahead and put all these up here on the screen. But we see truth within the people. David's desire to lead the people in the fear of God and in righteousness so much so that the culture The people of the culture of the land, they are influenced by godliness, by righteousness, that what is set in front of the people, what is lifted up is what is true and what is righteous and what is good and what is godly. Again, we see so much in our culture today. We see leadership that chooses. Look at this whole Epstein scandal. Look at how many politicians and celebrities and superstars. I use the illustration all the time. It's like rats in a sewer. They're all climbing through the same sewage, climbing all over each other, and then there's all these scandals and courts and legal proceedings and lawyers and prosecutions, and look at them. They're all taking pictures at the same parties involved in the same kinds of activities, and then, oh, they're pointing fingers at each other. Well, you're worse than me. Well, you, I didn't go that far. But, you know, what are you all doing together? What have you been doing for the last 50? And they wonder why we don't trust the leadership in our country when we see it. And then you find out among the celebrities and the superstars, they're covering for each other. Well, I wasn't at that party where they were doing that. Yeah, but you were over here doing this. You were walking right on that line. And then you point fingers, well, the truth is gonna come out one day at the judgment, right? David says, I don't want that to be the case for Israel. I don't want that to be the case where God has called me. I want there to be a righteous standard. I want goodness and godliness and righteousness, biblical truth to be high and lifted up in the land. I want that to be true for Berean Baptist Church. I wanted that when I was the school principal at our little Christian school. I wanted there to be truth and righteousness, and again, it's not about me, I'm not trying to say that, but I wanted there to be, in our Christian school, a desire for righteousness, for godliness, to not just play the part, but for it to be real. I wanted our chapels to be real. I wanted our chapels to have preaching and to have a place where the kids could come and they could learn the Word of God. I wanted our Bible classes to be rich and full with the truth of God's Word and not for Bible classes to just be another whole home academic class. It's the easiest class of the day, right? As some kids would say. I want it to be more than that. I want it to be a place where kids could be discipled and grow. The people. built on the word of God, growing in Christ. Leadership built on character, not on character assassination. David says in verse five, whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cut off. Him that hath a high look and a proud heart, will not I suffer. He says, I don't want people in my cabinet, I don't want people in leadership under me, or people who are coming alongside, giving me counsel, who are full of character assassination, mudslinging, inflammatory rhetoric. all just to tear the other person down. Don't we see that all the time in politics? Don't we see that way too much in leadership, even among churches and ministries? Sadly, it's even crept into churches. Arrogance, pride, ego, narcissism, lies, deception, hypocrisy, down to verse seven. He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house. He that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. He said, I don't want leadership built on those things. I want leadership built on character. Leadership that surrounds oneself with faithful people who are righteous, who are loyal to God and to the truth. Leadership that exercises good discernment and distances oneself from evil and those who practice it. Oh, wouldn't it do us a world of good to surround ourselves with those kinds of people and those kinds of influences? And what a great place that God has given us to have that. It's called the local church. What a great place for us to have that kind of leadership, that kind of influence. And may we see that grow and develop here at Berean even more, even more than it already is, that we can influence more and the next generation for Jesus Christ. What a great psalm. Hope that it has been an encouragement to us tonight. Let's close in a word of prayer. Lord, thank you for this psalm. Thank you, Lord, for David's heart for you. We know, Lord, he had failure in his life, but Lord, we know that you used him in a great way in spite of his sin. And Lord, you use us in spite of our failures. And Lord, we want to walk with you. May that be true into the inner depths of our heart like it was for David, that Lord, we would have a heart for you to be led by you to walk in the spirit and Lord to Have the character and the integrity that comes from a life of faithfulness to you and to your word. Help us to surround ourselves with people who love the Lord and who will help us in our walk with God. And again, we thank you for this psalm. Thank you for your word. Thank you for who you are. Guide us, lead us, direct us. May your grace be real and sufficient in our lives. And we thank you, Lord, for our time together tonight. Pray for safety and for your help and strength throughout the rest of the week. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for being here tonight. We look forward to being back together, Lord willing, on Sunday.