Psalm 25

¹²         Who is man who fears the Lord?

[The Lord] will instruct him in the way chosen for him.

¹³         His soul shall abide in well-being,

his offspring shall inherit the land.

¹⁴         The [counsel] of the Lord is for those who fear Him,

[The Lord] will show them His covenant.

¹⁵         My eyes are ever toward the Lord,

 for He alone will pluck my feet out of the net.

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His Assurance

For the Lord’s Day:  the 27^th of February 2005

Introduction:  “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine!”  So runs an old and favorite hymn, which is not far off the mark of the poetic medley contained in these four verses.  Such a wonderful assurance is of course, the hallmark of these central alphabetic verses in Psalm twenty-five.

 

This section begins with a rhetorical question in the first line of verse twelve:  “Who is man who fears the Lord?  Without pausing a beat, the psalmist shares an insight straight from the heart of God:  [The Lord] will instruct him in the way to be chosen.”  Spurgeon delights in making verse twelve comprehensible to us as he carefully unfolds the intentions of the text:  “Those whose hearts are right shall not err for want of heavenly direction.  Where God sanctifies the heart he enlightens the head.  We all wish to choose our way; but what a mercy is it when the Lord directs that choice, and makes free-will to be good-will!”

 

When the boys were young, their financial assets were carefully guided.  After all, I had learned well from my own father to manage the assets of others more carefully than I would my own.  Early on I was imbued to be a good steward of all the Lord gave into our care, even as Dad had shown over the course of a long and carefully detailed life.

 

Once, one of the boys noted after a profitable undertaking, that he would not have chosen to do what I had intended.  And then he asked a pregnant question:  did he really have a choice in the matter, or had I already pre-determined what his choice was going to be.  He had guessed at the truth, of course – even at a tender age.  In time, as they learned the principles of Capitalism, the value of hard work and a thankful attitude towards the allowances of the Creator, they all learned to be judiciously careful with the financial blessings that came their way.

 

May all the fathers here today, listen carefully, mothers too, of course - as well.  It is your responsibility to make good choices for your children possible and profitable.  Now, when it comes to green vegetables – I’m not too certain how you arrange that – but the lettuce in their wallet is another matter that should not be neglected.  When the boys were really little, their weekly allowance was a dollar.  “But, Dad – it is only ninety cents: because you make me put a dime in the collection plate!”  I responded, “When you get older, you get to choose – but for now, the principle is your way of life.  Of course, if you don’t want to share your prosperity, than I suppose I shouldn’t either?”  Now, I wasn’t always so heavy handed – but certain principles are important for little ones to understand.  And by ages eight and nine – more and more decisions came their way.

 

Now, let us come back to our text – was it really your choice when you came to the Lord and slowly laid out your whole life before Him?  Haven’t things gone better than ever expected when you began to live daily before His face, and doing everything in the light of His principles?

 

Yes, we all make choices and sometimes the Lord blesses them beyond measure and other times we sense that perhaps we were selfish or rebellious.  Then we are really happy when all of the chickens do not come home to roost!  Twice, when I was in the Army, I tried to get to Southeast Asia where the action was.  The Lord had different plans and my last year in the military was spent in Europe.  God does indeed protect His foolish servants, sometimes in spite of their best intentions.

 

Development:  Just as David realizes in this psalm, the Lord God of heaven and earth guides and protects all of those for whom He has a plan and a purpose.  David admits, that even in the midst of trials and troubles the Lord has guided him and his ways.  The “man who fears the Lord,” David writes: “His soul shall abide in well-being, his offspring shall inherit the land.”

 

No matter what comes our way, the Lord can turn every event to our benefit.  Certainly, there were many of my generation who were carried away to the next life in the conflicts and troubles of the sixties.  Such, of course is always the case for every generation.  Sometimes, even those close to us are suddenly gone and we are left to ponder the well-being in which we find ourselves and the prosperity of our own children and grand children.

 

While we all entertain certain fond hopes for our offspring, we must patiently learn that at least a third of their lives will be lived without our presence and the Lord will have plenty of time to work out His divine purpose in their regard.  And so even if, our offspring seem too earthly minded, still the Lord God of heaven and earth is sovereign and we can continue to pray and hope for something beyond a mere earthly inheritance.

 

In the fourteenth verse, the psalmist celebrates the spiritual secrets of the Lord God of heaven and earth.  “The [counsel] of the Lord is for those who fear Him, [The Lord] will show them His covenant.”  Delitzsch urges upon us, the word “counsel” here for the secret will and purpose of the Father.  The word can also be translated “friendship.”  Spurgeon observes that the word “signifies familiar intercourse, confidential intimacy, and select fellowship.  This is a great secret.  Carnal minds cannot guess what is intended by it, and even believers cannot explain it in words, for it must be felt to be known.”

 

How many Christians even understand the word “covenant”?  Isn’t it a real and solid blessing that frames and forms the “graces” we receive?  Calvin observes that “the covenant of God is nothing else than his secret or counsel.  By the use of the term secret, he means to magnify and extol the excellency of the doctrine which is revealed to us in the law of God.” 

 

Every once in a while I run across people who despise the teaching of doctrine.  I know of one or two churches where this is an unspoken article of faith.  In both cases, the leaders of the church are always micro-managing the lives of the saints by threats, discipline and personal vindictive.  I learned a long time ago that the more theology the members of the church can do on their own, the less counseling and decision making there is for me.  After all, if we are to trust people to stand up and affirm that God has made Himself evident in their lives, we should also trust that He will do as He has promised in this Psalm: to guide and teach them according to His covenant of grace.

 

There are in some of the financial magazines and even on the web of course, the promise of secrets to prosperity.  Those worldly secrets always have a price tag!  But, not so the secret counsel of God’s perfect will, at least not for those who submit to His kindness and love!  There is a price of course, but God Himself has covered it in the blood of His only Son:  Jesus Christ.

 

Application:  Living after the time of Christ, of course – has its additional benefits.  All the more easily may we understand the implications of the last verse before us today.  “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He alone will pluck my feet out of the net.”

 

Here is the salvation of the Lord.  David likens the sins and turmoil of this old world to the hunting methodology for birds.  That is the use of the net.  In this case Satan is the hunter and his netting will catch any and all, unless the Sovereign owner of everything spoils the hunt.  And in our case, even as David experienced it, God alone has disentangled David’s ankles from the trapping net laid out for him to stumble into.

 

The net of course here is a metaphor for sin, and even while the saints train their spiritual eyes upon the Lord, their feet are on this earth and sin always so easily entangles.  Spurgeon here intimates that the word “’pluck’ is a rough word, and the saints who have fallen into sin find that the means of their restoration are not always easy to the flesh; the Lord plucks at us sharply to let us feel that sin is an exceeding bitter thing.”

 

The words here remind me of a story I often tell about the Tom Cat I once found in my barn, all wrapped up in a giant fly strip.  He had succeeded in bringing down a ten foot long by one foot wide strip of gooey gunk which I had hung to reduce the number of flies.  As I tried to help him out of his predicament, he became feisty, and scratched at me in frustration.  So, I just hung on to the fly paper and let him pull his own fur loose.  As he growlingly made progress, I made the last pull easier by grabbing him by the tail and yanking him loose!  He was free of course, but he wasn’t too sociable for a couple of weeks!  But at least he was set free!

 

And so are we, if we will just keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.  So never mind the roughness with which we are sometimes handled – we deserve it, even as our own children felt the wrath of our hands on their back sides from time to time.  So just, as we were able to put the raise our children according to the Lord’s guidance and instruction, so are we raised as well.  May we like David, learn to love the kind mercy and guided providence of our Lord as well.  After all, that experience is the best assurance that He is ours and we are His.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

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