all day. Listen to Psalm 26. This is the Word of God. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, and try me. Test my heart and my mind, for your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness. I do not sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence, and I go around to your altar, O Lord, proclaiming thanksgiving aloud and telling all your wondrous deeds. O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Do not sweep my soul away with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men, in whose hands are evil devices and whose right hands are full of bribes. But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity. Redeem me and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground. In the great assembly, I will bless the Lord. Well, let's have a quick word of prayer and ask the Lord to bless our reading and preaching this evening. Let's pray. Lord, we ask now as we open your word and as we think and meditate upon it, Lord, that this would be the starting point. Lord, that the word read and the word preached would have its effect. by your spirit in our hearts, but that this would spur us on to further meditation, to further consideration, to further their application in our own lives. Lord, that you would provide the spark that gets us moving, gets us burning. Lord, that you would make use of your word this evening, and that you would continue making use of it throughout the week. Father, we ask that as we think about this as being our dialogue in Christ, that this would help us to know who we are and to know how to act all week long as we seek to honor you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, you commit to a course. Committing is no easy thing, we know this. And we live in a rather commitment-averse society, whether we look to marriage, whether we look to the average length of job. My father-in-law has worked at the same company for, what, 38 years up until last week? 42 years? I forget what it was now. Actually, it's not the same company, because they trade hands two or three times. But he worked at the same place doing the same job that whole time. So I think he gets credit for being at the same company his whole life. But we have a problem with commitment. Committing's difficult. But when we do commit, we've sort of just taken that first step, right? Like, it might feel like jumping off a cliff, but then, you know, our foot hits the ground and we realize that that was just the first step. It was an important first step. Journey of 100,000 miles, or however the quote goes, begins with the first step. You gotta step out. You gotta commit. You gotta set a direction. You gotta go. But you gotta keep going. And part of the commitment is not just starting, it's continuing. You set a course, and that course begins with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God, waiting upon Him. That course begins, as we thought this morning, when we're ready to acknowledge our sin, confess it to the Lord. No longer let it hold shame over us, but now humble ourselves and entrust ourselves to the one who loved us and died for us. But then, you gotta walk. You gotta walk, you gotta continue walking. And that's where the inner dialogue becomes so important. What you say to yourself, the truth you speak to yourself, or the lies you speak to yourself are so important. Now, I'm going to be talking as if you're speaking to yourself. And the reason I'm going to talk as if you're speaking to yourself is because you are. You might not realize it, maybe you think that only crazy people talk to themselves. Maybe you think I don't do that, but you do. Maybe you don't always say it out loud, but I bet some of you do. But you do spend your day talking to yourself, talking yourself into things, talking yourself out of things, belittling yourself. boasting to yourself. You spend your day talking, and that inner talk, which is so important if it's being done properly, it's also important if it's not. You need to recognize what you're saying to yourself, because very often we spend much of our day telling ourself lies, and then wonder why it is that we have trouble sticking with our commitments. We entered a race some weeks ago, I've probably reached the limit of race analogies I can make for the year, so I acknowledge that now, but I'll repent of it this evening. We entered a race some weeks ago, and you know, that's a good commitment to make. We're gonna enter a race. We're gonna run a race. We got our numbers, we got there on time that morning, we signed up, we registered, we start running. All looks good so far. Everyone has a plan. to quote Mike Tyson, until they get punched in the nose. I've used that quote before, and I'm probably at the end of my usage of that quote. Mike Tyson, for all of his weaknesses, was being interviewed before a fight, and the interviewee said, you know, the contender says he has a plan for I was going to beat you. And Mike said, yeah, well, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the nose. You know? And all of a sudden, You're reconsidering the plan. You're wondering if this was a foolish plan. You're wondering why you ever did this in the first place. Why would you ever get in the ring with Mike Tyson, right? Well, you're in the race and you start running, and of course you feel okay at first, but then you get to that point where you get punched in the nose. You get to that point where your side hurts, and you get to that point where you just can't understand why anyone would actually do this willingly. You get uncomfortable, you're outside your comfort zone, and you start lying to yourself. You start saying things like, I can't do this, I'm in pain, I'm hurting, I can't breathe, I can't finish, I have to stop. Reasonable people don't do this. And that internal dialogue is so important. It's so important. It makes the difference between you continuing and you not continuing. This isn't just the power of positive thinking. This certainly isn't the power of positive self-talk, although that can't be denied. What lies you're telling yourself are the lies you become and believe. You committed to marriage and it was beautiful. You had this idyllic proposal, right? There was a sunset, there was poison ivy all over the ground. There was a ring and a picnic. You had wonderful ideas about the future and how great it would be and the vast opportunities that lay ahead of you. And then you hit hard times. And then the realities of putting two sinners in a household and the curse of Genesis 3 come to bear. Two sets of expectations and two people hurting each other and getting defensive and becoming offensive. And what do we start to say? What is the internal dialogue at that point? You had babies, and what could be so hard about that? Little socks, and onesies, and then late nights, and terrible twos, and late nights, and laundry, and disrespect, and mess, and late nights, and discipline, and rebellion, and late nights, and teenage angst, and you had a plan. You had a commitment. But what's your internal dialogue? Because too often what it becomes is, I can't do this. I didn't sign up for this. I don't deserve this. I'm being stifled. I'm being smothered. No one should have to put up with this. I need out. And if you tell yourself that sort of thing all day, one, you need to recognize it's a lie. And two, you need to recognize that you're just talking yourself into or talking yourself out of your commitments. The Lord tells us that we should be careful who our counselors are. And I think that certainly has to mean the counsel that we spend all day giving ourselves. I'd like you to think this evening about Psalm 26 as who we commit to be or who we remind ourselves that we are as we commit to follow Christ. The first point is simply that I'm a child of God. I'm a child of God. Look at verse 1, 2, 3. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, try me, test me, my heart and my mind. For your steadfast love is before my eyes and I walk in your faithfulness. I'm a child of God. Again, making this something of your internal self-talk, your dialogue. It's not just the psyching yourself up before a game in the athletic analogy. It is the you moving through your day, reminding yourself directionally who you are, or positionally who you are, and directionally what that sort of person does. I'm a child of God. I walk in integrity. This is what I do. This is all I do. These are the only options I lay available to myself. These are the ones I consider, those that honor the Lord. I have walked in my integrity. I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. This immediately sends some bells up and we'll talk in a little bit about the fact that certainly these are words David writes that fit most fittingly and most fully and most only in the mouth of Christ, the only one who could say these words. And yet this is who we are as we are in Christ. If you have trusted in Christ, if you have been united to him by faith, If you have been declared righteous in Him, if you have had His robes draped over you, as it were, this is who you are. And when you remind yourself of this, you're not lying. You're telling yourself the truth. You're reminding yourself of your true position, of who Christ is making you into. I walk in my integrity. I only leave options open that honor the Lord. Book of Proverbs says, entrust yourself to the Lord, trust in the Lord, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways trust him and he will make your way straight. That this is who we are. I walk in integrity. I entrust myself to you. I bring my life into conformity to the direction that you would have me walk in, and I trust you for the outcome. I don't waver. I don't second guess. And this isn't stubbornness. This isn't like crotchety old grandpa Christianity. This is confirmed, I'm a follower of Christ Christianity. We listen to wise counsel. We consider all God honoring options, not just the ones that are most culturally relevant or most culturally approved of. But we don't waver from the Lord's direction that we remind ourselves that somebody gives me a suggestion, I will consider whether that is honoring to the Lord. But if the answer is no, I don't consider it. It's not who I am. We work hard, we sacrifice, we push, we continue to stay the course, we fix our faces like flint because who are we? Well, I have walked in my integrity and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. This Christian is who you are. It says, Lord, prove me, test me, try me. Now he's going to make an appeal to the Lord that, Lord, you don't allow this hardship to come upon me. You don't allow this trouble to come upon me because I have walked in my integrity. And we immediately hear in David, again, some alarm bells. How could David say this? David could only say this. in a small way. Lord, I have not done this thing I'm accused of. But he speaks words that are completely true of Christ, who as he hung on the cross could say, I have not deserved this. But not my will, but your will be done. But you and I can take these same words, Lord, try me, test me, prove me, because we are endeavoring to live lives that honor the Lord. We are endeavoring to fill out what it means to be a child of God, to commit ourselves to that path. And we certainly want to know those areas of our life that, despite our best intentions and best efforts, are out of keeping with the Lord. Lord, would you try me? Would you test me? Would you show me what I need to do better? Have you humbled yourself enough to allow the Lord to examine your life? Maybe we could ask it differently. Have you humbled enough to allow your wife to examine your life? Or allow your mother? Or allow you fill in the blank? Or do we say things like, you don't know me. I was doing the right thing. Have you humbled yourself and been willing not to question your commitment to Christ, but to question your performance, to question whether or not you have seriously sought and seriously accomplished in honoring the Lord in all you do? Well, Those verses again, vindicate me, O Lord, for I've walked in my integrity. I've trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, try me, test my heart and mind, for your steadfast love is before my eyes. I walk in your faithfulness. I have fixed my eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of the faith. For the joy that is set before me, I seek to emulate my Lord. In despising the shame and taking up my cross and following him, This is who I am. This is David's self-talk. This is who he reminds himself that he is because of his great son. You are a child of God. You are going to continue faithful to the Lord. This is what you do as a child of God. That may be simple, but let's make the next one even simpler. Verses 4, 5, and 6 say, I don't sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consult with hypocrites, consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers. I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence and I go around to your altar, O Lord. You're a child of God. Conversely, you're not a goat. Tell yourself who you're not. And this is an important exercise as well. Who you're not. Because you see people all day that you're tempted to envy. You're tempted to look at them and say, why not me? And at least part of your answer often needs to be, well, because I'm not a goat. I'm not going where they're going. My goals aren't their goals. I'm not living for what they're living for, so of course not me. Go back to that race analogy. If you're pushing yourself in a race, something I don't particularly enjoy doing, but, you know, it's part of racing, I suppose, you get to the point where you're expending more breath, well, if you're like me, you're expending more breath hyperventilating and crying than actually breathing. Went for a jog with my daughter and she said, Dad, take deep breaths and stop crying. It doesn't help you. But you do, you start to lie to yourself. And if you're not watching out for it, you start to believe something that isn't true. And you start to really get in your own head. You're not a goat. You need to tell yourself who you are, you need to tell yourself what you are, but you also need to remind yourself of what you're not. State it negatively. I'm not one who walks out on a marriage like everyone else seems to. I don't quit on my kids. I don't give up. I don't take illegitimate shortcuts. I don't cheat. I don't excuse my bad behavior because it falls somewhere below or above the average. I don't take advice from Oprah or Dr. Phil just because it's popular. I don't settle for the world's plans for my marriage or career or what the world says is success with children. That's not who I am. I'm not going to identify myself with that. Verse 4 says, I don't sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. There is always the temptation to make the goals for our life, for our marriages, for our children, for our careers, for our households, be culturally conformed and acceptable. And maybe there's no getting away from that. We are part of our culture, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But we can't allow the influence of culture and our desire to sort of be in the mainstream to allow them to set the goals and expectations and the priorities of our life. We need to be on the watch that we aren't living lives that simply seek to emulate the visions of success that the world gives, the visions of success that are very often, at least at odds, if not in rebellion, to what the Lord says that people are for, that life is for. I'm not gonna live by the principles of those who live a life that the Lord hates. I'm not gonna strive to have a seat at that table. Verse six says, I wash my hands in innocence and I go around to the altar of the Lord. You see, what is the reason you're living for? You want to make it back to the altar of the Lord. You're living and marching toward that day when you will stand and see face to face, where you will be found and bidden to draw near to the throne of grace, not just in this place, but in that place. That's why we live. And so why would we live like something we're not? Why would we bring our lives into alignment of acceptableness to a world that has no desire to go to the altar of the Lord? I'm not a goat. That's not me. I'm not going to consider highly the priorities of the PTA or the guys at work or the guys at the gym. I'm not going to take shortcuts. I'm not going to turn away from wisdom because I'm not a goat. I'm a child of God. And this becomes the self-talk. This becomes the internal dialogue. And as options come up that seem reasonable, that the world gives you and makes you look so palatable, so moderate, so understandable, and you look at that and you say, I'm a child of God. Is this something I do? Maybe it looks so tempting, so much easier. But I'm a child of God, is this what I do? I'm not a goat. Is this acceptable for me to partake in? Well, verses seven and eight, we're gonna think about the fact that we worship the Lord. Verse 7 says, Proclaim Thanksgiving aloud and telling all your wondrous deeds. Oh Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Proclaim Thanksgiving aloud, telling all your wondrous deeds. Oh Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. You are a child of God. You're not a goat. You worship the Lord. You worship the Lord. This is a commitment that we make. It's a commitment that we stick with. It's a reminder. that we need to continually make to ourselves that we worship the Lord. We look for the goodness of God because the Lord says that all of His ways are steadfast love and faithfulness. The Lord says that He makes your cup overflow and that He anoints your head, Psalm 23, and He sets a table for you in the presence of your enemies. We look for and expect to see what God has promised, that he is good and that we will see God's goodness in the land of the living. Not because we're Pollyanna, not even because we're optimists and we like to see the glass half full, but because we're committed to seeing what's really there, the whole picture. You know, as we read this morning in Psalm 25, that all the pathways of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness. You know it's there. We just like to not see it. We like to not see it. Do you remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, those weird posters where everything looked like a checkered board and then someone would say stare at it long enough and a picture pops out of it? And so I think it was just a trick to make us all look stupid as we leaned forward and backward and stared and put our finger in front of our eyes and nothing, I never saw anything. Maybe some of you did. But our eyes are trained to focus on what hurts. Our eyes are trained to focus on what we can complain about. Our eyes are trained to focus on what we would like differently. Pain avoidance is the program that most of us are running. And the negative things that we experience seem to stick in our brains a lot more than anything positive. We are almost hardwired because of our sin, let me add in by way of qualification, to only see things to complain about. We have to really work hard and commit ourselves to an attitude of worship. And when you decide to look for it, it's really there. It's not like the posters where you just look silly Moving back and forth, when you commit to look for the goodness of God in the land of the living, I promise you you'll see it. I promise you it's there and there will be much to worship the Lord for. You are committed to not focusing only on difficult and tragic things, but to see the whole overwhelming reality of God's goodness in your life and worshiping him for it. And when worship is part of our internal dialogue, when you say, thank you, Lord, for my children more times a day than you correct your children, when you worship God for your spouse more times a day than you get frustrated with them, it will change your posture and approach to the people in your life. It enables us to fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith. We press on towards the goal to win the prize of the upward call of Christ Jesus. And in some ways, we're able to do that more effectively because our eyes aren't fixed on the next problem or the last problem, but our eyes are fixed on the goal. Our eyes are fixed on worshiping and the fact that all we do in this situation is to bring about worship and honor to the Lord. What does it say there in verse eight? Oh Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Lord, I love the place where I get to meet you. And that is certainly a reference to the temple, and it's certainly a reference in our New Testament age to gathering with the people of God who are the habitation of God, the place where the Lord dwells in a special way. When we gather as the church, we come and we get to meet with God in a way that we don't get to experience, even in our most intimate times, of devotion. And yet, there is a way in which we need to recognize that we meet with God. And one of the most important ways that many of us meet with God is in the same crucible of work and family and marriage where the Lord confronts us with our sin, shows us who we really are, assures us of his forgiveness and his grace despite our continued failures. And I wonder how many of us could say, even as we have a sort of temptation to gripe, to say, Lord, I love the place where I meet you and you show me my sin and you show me how abundantly merciful you are. The very place of my stress is the place where you meet me and you show your promises to be true. But this is where we're headed. We're not walking the same direction as the people around us. We're not taking our priorities and our marching orders from the people around us. They're going a different direction. They have different goals and priorities. Here is our goal and priority. Lord, I love the habitation of your house. That's where I'm marching. That's what I'm moving towards. So verse nine, do not sweep my soul away with sinners nor my life with bloodthirsty men in whose hands are evil devices and whose right hands are full of bribes. I want to skip this and move on to the last set of verses, sorry. Verses 11 and 12, but as for me, I shall walk in my integrity. Redeem me and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground in the great assembly. I will bless the Lord. Look at those verses again, but as for me, I shall walk in my integrity. Redeem me and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground in the great assembly. I will bless the Lord. I want to maybe hand these words to you as uncomfortable as they may seem at first and say, these are words that not only that you can speak, that you should speak. These are words that define your identity of who you are in Christ and that you need to remind yourself of again and again. But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity. Redeem me and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground in the great assembly. I will bless the Lord. My position is firm. I have a standing before the Lord now because of what Jesus has done. The Lord has been gracious to me and I will walk in my integrity. This is your internal dialogue. This is who I am. I will stand on level ground, not just one day in heaven, but I will stand on level ground here. Now, the funny thing is that when everything's moving around you, even if you're standing still, you get that sort of You know, like you're sitting in traffic, your foot's on the pedal, right? And then all of a sudden, the car's on either side, you start to go, and what do you do? Grab the wheel, and you step on the pedal all of a sudden, right? Or if you're sitting in your garage, and all of a sudden, the car next to you starts to move, and you think, I'm gonna back out through the door, and you slam on the brake, well, it was just the car next to you moving. Or maybe when you're standing on the ground and looking up at the sky and all the clouds are moving above your head, right? And all of a sudden you get vertigo and almost fall over. And it feels as if the ground you're standing on is no longer steady. It's moving underneath you. And of course, in all three of those scenarios, you probably haven't moved. And I submit to you that standing on the firm rock of Christ is always firm, but it but it might not look quite as firm as it is. It might look, when the whole world is moving around you and shifting, that maybe they're all sort of going together in the same direction. Maybe it looks a lot like you're the one moving, right? Maybe it looks like this ground I'm on is somewhat shaky. But that you are able to commit, no, I'm going to stand. No, the direction and revelation of the Lord has left this as my best option. This is where I stand. I can do no other. Lord, give me strength. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And you will find as you stand. on that solid rock of Christ that one day all other things will be shaken and you will find yourself standing on the only thing that cannot be shaken. You will find yourself standing in heavenly Mount Zion and when all things have been turned inside out and have gone up in flames and have been purified by fire, you will find that you have been standing on very firm ground all along. Well, this is who you are. And you take these words of Psalm 26, and you make this the dialogue of the race. And when you get to mile three or mile five or mile 50, I don't know how many miles you figure you got left in your race, and you start buckling, this is what you say to yourself. This is who I am. I walk in my integrity. I entrust myself to you. Do not sweep me away. I will walk in my integrity. My foot is on level ground. See if you can live more like Christ as you remind yourself who you are all day long. Let's close there with prayer. Lord God, we ask this evening that you would help us to hear our self-talk. Father, that we see David speaking to himself in the Psalms, both in words of rebuke and reproach and words of encouragement. Lord, we acknowledge that we speak to ourselves all day long. And that can be a very healthy thing. Lord, we ask that you would help our internal dialogue to be one that honors you, that is speaking truth to ourselves, that is reminding us of the imperative or the indicative and then the imperative of who we are and who you would have us to be. Lord, that we would be like those who look at in the mirror of your word and see our true face and know who we are and walk away and know what to do. Lord, we ask that you would allow this to become both habit and mantra and meditation. Lord, that you would fill up. our vocabulary with these words that describe the internal life of Christ Jesus, and that this might become the narrative that reminds us of who we are and how to live. Father, we ask that in doing so we might not commit, but we might continue to commit and continue to walk in our integrity all the days of our life, until the day we summit Mount Zion and see you face to face after the glorious resurrection. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.