When the Godly Men Cease

[00:00:00] If you would get your bible and turn to the book of psalms. We'll continue in our study of the book of psalms, which is the heart of the Bible, in psalm number twelve tonight. [00:00:11] Psalm number twelve. [00:00:16] Psalm number twelve. [00:00:24] All right, psalm number twelve. Let's start in verse number one. I'll read the subtitle here to the chief musician. Upon Sheminath a psalm of David. [00:00:35] Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth. For the faithful fail from among the children of men. [00:00:45] They speak vanity every one with his neighbor. With flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. [00:00:52] The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips. And the tongue that speaketh proud things. Who have said with our tongue will we prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us? [00:01:07] For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy. Now will I arise, saith the Lord. I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. [00:01:18] The words of the Lord are pure words. As silver tried in a furnace of earth. Purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, o Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. [00:01:33] The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted. [00:01:40] Let's pray together. [00:01:42] Our Father in heaven thank you for the opportunity to come together as your people. Lord. There's some of us, Lord, I in our church here that can't be here. Because they're still dealing with this situation. Lord, please bless them and strengthen them. Lord, give them joy. Give them peace. Lord, even as you've given peace and joy in the midst of difficulty with some of the people that have given testimony here tonight. [00:02:07] Thank you for taking care of your people. Lord, we do pray for those that are suffering, those that are. [00:02:16] That are lost in western North Carolina who are waiting for help, perhaps and haven't gotten help. Lord, please get help to them. Please extend your mercy to them and lead the rescuers down in the right way. To those who are in need right now. [00:02:35] Please give grace to Brother Muxlow. And please give grace to Miss Baruch. And please strengthen them and give them healing and give them a full recovery from the different ailments they have right now. And, Lord, as we look at psalm twelve, we just want to commit this time to you, Lord. We don't meet for our own purposes, Lord, but we want to see what you have spoken. [00:02:59] The word of the Lord is pure. And, Lord, help us to benefit and profit and understand it here this evening. So, Lord, would you please help your people and give me wisdom and guide me to help me to say the things that they need to hear in Jesus name. Amen. [00:03:17] Psalm number twelve, verse number one. Help, Lord. I'll just point out a little nerd note in verse number one. For the godly man ceaseth. For the faithful fail from among the children of men. Notice it says, the godly man. That's singular. Ceasethe. For the faithful fail from among the children of men. Now, some people, you know, in our Bible, one of the chief criticisms, I guess you could say it like that. One of the chief criticisms that people have of our Bible is the these and the thous and the ests. And the ests. Right. The verb endings. And this is one instance that helps us. And I want to just kind of point it out to you because. And I know this is a nerd note. Don't worry. We won't be here long. If this. If your eyes just glaze over, that's okay. That's okay. [00:04:11] So you notice in the first part, it says, the godly man ceaseth. And then it says, the faithful fail. But faithful is not really clear whether it's singular or plural. But just by looking at it, it could be faithful people could be faithful man. You know, we say the faithful. It could be either singular or plural. [00:04:28] But the verb endings in our Bible and the verb endings that are from the 16 hundreds, and they were kind of in the 16 hundreds, they were kind of transitioning out of common use. [00:04:41] But what you have to understand about the scripture is that in Hebrew, and especially in Greek, they are called, especially Greek is called a highly inflected language. What does that mean? That means it has verb endings for everything. It has verb endings for all kinds of things. And so you could just have a verb, and you know a great deal about the subject and the verb. You know a great deal about the sentence just from the verb. In fact, there's many sentences in Greek where you just have one word and the endings tell you everything else you need to know. And that's the way the language was spoken. Why does that matter? [00:05:21] Because in our Bible, our Bible is the king James Bible is more inflected than modern English. And so here you see the godly man. That's singular. And so it says, see Seth. Right? But faithful is plural. And so it says, not faileth, but fail. And then this is also true whenever you see first person and second person and third person. How many of you are still with me right now? I haven't lost you? Okay, good. Good. So when you have. When you have first person, you say, I love and then second person, you love. And third person, he or she loves. Right? You notice love loves is just add an s for the third person. But in our Bible, it's I love, thou lovest, and then ye love. Or he, rather he love, he loveth. [00:06:15] So even for first person, second person singular, which is est, and second person plural is different in our Bible. So you can. This is one aspect, I know it's one thing that's often criticized, but it's one aspect that has made our Bible make it so. It's clearer now. I know there's a learning curve, right? There's a learning curve. But it is one aspect that whether it's the these and thous and the ye's and or those things or the verb endings, they actually give us information. Let me give you an example of this. In John chapter three, the Bible says, jesus said to Nicodemus, marvel not that I said unto thee, that's singular, ye must be born again. So he's speaking to Nicodemus. So he says, marvel not that I said unto thee, singular to Nicodemus, ye not just Nicodemus, but all of those elders from whom he was sentence right that he mentioned that said, we know that thou art a teacher, come from God. All of that he said, ye must be born again. But in modern English, it just says, don't be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. And it's less clear. So, of course there's a learning curve. But this is one example that I noticed kind of as I was going, and we'll pass on by it as we go. To the main point of what I want to say. There are reasons for that. And it's not just we're hung up on the past or, you know, it's tradition or anything like that. There's more to it. There's a lot more to it. So we'll leave it at that. Now, let's look at verse number one again. The Bible says, help, lord. [00:07:54] Help, Lord. We talk about the book of psalms being the heart of the Bible. [00:08:02] And many times you see the psalmist cry out to goddess and express his heart. Now, here's what he's saying. Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth for the faithful fail from among the children of men. And this is not a prayer that would be probably be unfamiliar to us, because when we see, when we look at our society now, our society is not a christian society, and our society is, for all practical purposes, is a pagan society, an idolatrous society, if nothing physical idols, but idols of the heart. Our society is that. And so we live as pilgrims, as strangers in the midst of people who are not exactly friendly to our Lord. [00:08:46] But sometimes when we look out and we see the direction of our society. And how many of you love your country? [00:08:54] Right? I mean, I love my country. [00:08:58] I'm glad that I was born as an American, as a missionary. I would drive. Bye. When we drove into the Capitol and we would see the embassy and about the only place you could find an american flag on a flagpole. And literally, I mean, I don't know how many times I drove by and I just almost couldn't hold back the tears in my eyes. [00:09:17] You know, here you see it all the time, but, you know, I'm glad I'm an american. But how many of you have felt this prayer? When you look at the degradation of your country, you say, help, Lord. Where are the godly men? Where are the God fearing people? [00:09:35] Where are they? [00:09:36] You look at our politicians, right? And politicians are just people. I'll say more about this in just a second. And you say, where are they? [00:09:43] Where are the godly people? Help, Lord, the godly man ceaseth. The faithful fail from among the children of men. Look at. Look at what's happening. Help. [00:09:52] And we feel that kind of. That kind of panic, that discouragement, right? From what we see. [00:09:59] This is the same thing. Now, David's society was a bit different. These were God's people, Israel. But even in that society, where the law of the land was the law of God, right? That was it. [00:10:11] Yet he saw this degradation. [00:10:15] He saw this degradation. [00:10:18] Now, I want you to note a couple things. In verse number one, it says this. The godly man, the faithful man, or men, as the case might be. And of course, this includes ladies. And then notice it says, cease and fail. [00:10:32] And notice it says, children of men. Now let's pause a second. We covered children of men, I think it was last week. What is the children of men as a scriptural term? It's not a way we would say it, but what does the children of men refer to? Anybody? Remember, all mankind. Exactly. It's a word that encompasses, not jew, gentile, but just all mankind, the children of men. And so he's saying, now I want you to note in your mind, godly and faithful, because we're going to look at the definition of that in a little more detail in just a minute. But notice it says, the godly and the faithful cease and fail. Now, that's kind of. That's not. [00:11:11] If I was. If I was going to say something like that. I would say something like, they're dying or they're departing from the Lord or something like that. But this is kind of an ambiguous way to say it. Cease. What does it mean for a godly man to cease, faithful to fail? [00:11:27] There's basically two things that you could say here, and it's not exactly clear which one it is. Number one, the godly could, and the faithful could be ceasing, could be failing because they're dying. [00:11:39] They're just. [00:11:40] They're passing off the scene. [00:11:43] But it also could be because the godly and the faithful are departing. And you'll see that in just a minute. But let me ask you a question. Among the children of men. All right, got that in your mind? The children of men in our world, the children of men is the society in which we live. Okay. [00:12:00] What happens when the godly and the faithful fail and pass off the scene? [00:12:08] What happens to the numbers, obviously, to the godly? [00:12:13] As the godly pass off the scene, the number of the godly goes down. Right. And so the ratio of everyone else who's not godly. Right. Because people aren't born godly. You're not godly unless you're actively, really, truly godly. It's not like, well, if you don't, you know, if you don't, if you don't cheat on your taxes and you don't commit adultery, you're godly. That's not what we're talking about here. [00:12:41] So as the faithful, and this is just a natural occurrence, the faithful and the godly pass off the scene. There's fewer of them in our society. [00:12:52] The ratio of the godly to the rest of mankind, or the rest of our society, as the case might be, gets smaller. [00:13:01] So the question must be asked, who will take their place? [00:13:06] Because there are real world effects to the diminishing of the godly, of the faithful in society, there are real world effects. Think about these verses, and you're familiar with these things. Genesis 612. Notice this. [00:13:24] Remember what I just got? I just finished saying, now, remember this specific point about this ratio of the godly versus the society at large? [00:13:34] And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. What happened to the ratio of the godly to everyone else? It was basically eight and a billion or however many it was prior to the flood. [00:13:56] That's a really bad ratio, is it not? [00:14:01] Eight, eight souls. Noah, his wife, three sons, three wives, eight. [00:14:06] That's a really bad ratio to the entirety of the human race. [00:14:12] You think of Sodom and Gomorrah. How many people was lot trying to whittle that number down to? [00:14:19] He was trying to get down to what? Ten. Why? He was thinking of his daughters and sons in law. He was thinking of his family and his daughters and sons in law. And they at that point were lost. Were lost cause the ratio, there weren't even enough to prevent judgment. [00:14:42] Jeremiah five. One says this. [00:14:45] Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment and that seeketh the truth, and I will pardon it. [00:14:59] You see, the ratio is not good. So this is not an uncommon thing in history, right? Where the faithful fail, they pass off the scene. And the natural result of that is that there's a. The ratio starts to change naturally. If the godly are dying off, the wicked are. You know, there's not a shortage of wicked, right? There's not a shortage of the ungodly. In fact, ungodly is kind of the default state. We've already talked about the wicked. Maybe that's another kind of a worse category, right? A more sinful category, scripturally. But the ungodly is just standard, right? You just. You come out of the womb and you're basically going to be that. [00:15:43] But what this does show, the fact that the godly man and the faithful man that are departing is noticed. It does show us that the godly do have an effect upon the world in which they live. [00:16:01] You and I living in this society have a positive effect upon this society. [00:16:10] What do you mean? Does that mean we're starting hospitals and opening charities and. No, no, no. We're not talking about that. And that's all fine and good, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about in the normal, everyday living for God, doing righteousness like the Lord tells us to do, being salt right, being light, we have a positive effect upon those around us. [00:16:41] There is a positive effect such that when the godly is diminished, like in verse one, there's also an effect with that, a negative effect. That's the first thing I want you to see. The godly do have a good effect upon the world in which they live. [00:17:02] But this also shows us the second thing, which is this, how easily mankind is manipulated and altered by influence. [00:17:12] So if there's a society where there's a believer and he or she is just dead level, honest I mean, honest. Like, I was talking to Ben before the service, and we were. We were joking around about whatever we were saying, but he said something. I said, you could have just left it there. And he said, no, I got to say the rest, because to be fully honest. But you know what? That effect, when we're just living for the Lord, trying to walk with God, we're being salt, we're being light. [00:17:45] Other people are influenced by that for good, even if they don't know God, because by our actions. And we don't do this consciously. If we do it consciously, we're liable to destroy our own motives doing it. You know, it's like, well, look at me. No, we do it subconsciously. We do it as kind of a byproduct of our walking with God, but the result of our honesty, the result of our loving our families, loving our wives, loving our husbands, taking care of our parents, using clean language, turning away from godliness and filthiness, rebuking wickedness, all of these things that are part and parcel of a walk with the Lord that has an effect upon those around us. And any of you that live, you know that work. You know, you have a job among people that don't know God. You know the effect that that has on them. How many of you have experienced, you know, the conversation quiets, or somebody blurts out a curse word, and then they kind of take it back, say, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Joseph. I didn't mean to. You know, that is a positive effect, and I know that's minor, and that's kind of petty. I get it. But that is kind of an example of the positive effect it has that the godly have in the world. [00:19:02] But the reverse is also true when the godly are diminished, which is what's happening in verse one. [00:19:10] The wicked influences take over. The wicked influences begin to influence the children of men, because there's not. That positive influence is not there. The salt, the light is not there. The rot sets in. [00:19:25] People become desensitized to that which they used to be sensitive to, and the rot starts. Look at proverbs, chapter 29. I want to show you. This verse kind of dovetails with our. Our study here. Proverbs 29, verse number 16. Now read it. Read it slowly as I read it. We'll read it really slowly, and I want you to really think about what it's saying. Proverbs 29, verse number 16. [00:19:58] When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth, but the righteous shall see their fall. Notice the beginning. When the wicked are multiplied. [00:20:16] Transgression increaseth. That's an interesting verse, isn't it? This is one of those flyover verses. You probably wouldn't stop at very often, right? [00:20:27] You see this ratio in verse one of psalm twelve? The godly, the faithful are diminishing. They're dying off. [00:20:37] But in this verse, you could look at it like the wicked, as a result, are increasing. What is the result of that increase? [00:20:45] Transgression is increasing. [00:20:49] Transgression is increasing. [00:20:52] Now, I thought, as I was meditating upon these verses. I thought about our government. [00:20:59] We have a representative government. [00:21:02] You know what that means? That means that our representatives are both from us, from society at large. The children of men, if you will. From verse one, our representatives are picked from among the children of men. [00:21:22] And also our representatives represent society at large. [00:21:30] And so that means. That means whether the godly diminish and the wicked increase. Or the godly increase and the wicked diminish. It will be. And you can see it. It's not hard. Just open your eyes. It will be reflected in the representatives. That, as we might say, are put before us. That we have to choose from. [00:21:56] That's just the way it is. You want to know why we're so frustrated about our government and our elected leaders? You know why there's a spiritual rot as the godly cease and the faithful fail. [00:22:14] It hasn't always been like that. [00:22:19] The quality of our representatives in our representative government. [00:22:24] Is seen and demonstrates the spiritual and moral. Really spiritual state. [00:22:31] Based upon the ratio of the godly and the wicked. Because we already saw. We already saw. When the wicked are increased, what happens? [00:22:38] Transgression. Transgression abounds. Right. [00:22:42] Transgression increases. [00:22:45] Look at verse number eight, the last verse in the psalm. [00:22:49] The wicked walk on every side. When the vilest men are exalted. [00:22:54] Exaltation is a place of authority, a place of honor. And notice it says, the wicked walk on every side. The idea is, they're everywhere. They're everywhere. [00:23:04] And what's happening? The wicked are being exalted in places of leadership. And this, listen, this is just an effect of verse one. The godly are diminishing. The question is, who is going to take their place? And I'm not talking about government. I'm talking about in the place of the godly, the faithful. You see that? [00:23:24] Who's going to take their place? They're dying off. [00:23:29] They're going the way of man. Right? Just like we all will. But is anybody going to take their place? [00:23:37] Because if the wicked walk on every side. Transgression increases and the children of men, the society will rot. [00:23:47] This is the way. What we're reading in psalm twelve is the way in which a society rises and falls morally and spiritually. It is based upon the ratio of the faithful and godly to the rest of the children of men. If you want to sum it up like that, the spiritual state of a society is measured by that ratio. [00:24:13] This is a scriptural principle. [00:24:16] When the godly increase, righteousness increases. [00:24:19] When the wicked increase, so does transgression. Look at proverbs again. If you would look at chapter 23. I want to show you one other thing. [00:24:29] Proverbs 23, verse number 28. [00:24:36] This is a little twist on what we said earlier, is referring to the whore in verse 27, the strange woman in verse 27. Notice in chapter 23, verse 28, she also lieth in wait as for a prey and increasethe the transgressors among men. [00:24:57] So here's this particular form of sin, right, that is laid out, that is accessible. And the result is, because of its accessibility, more men partake in sin, and those who were godly have ceased. [00:25:15] Why transgression has abounded. [00:25:20] That's why I say it could mean the verse. One could mean transgression. The godly cease, the faithful fail. Could mean they're passing off the scene. Or it could mean they're departing from God. The effect is the same. That ratio is off. [00:25:32] That ratio diminishes because transgression ensnares many. And I think about our society, think about how sin it seems in our modern world in the past ten years. Look, ten years. [00:25:48] Does anybody know when this came out off the top of your head? If David was here, he would know. [00:25:56] I believe it was 2008. [00:26:01] I might be wrong. It might have been 2012. [00:26:04] Went to Cambodia in zero eight. They didn't have the iPhone. They don't think. Or maybe we were just too poor to have one. [00:26:13] This is not an old invention. [00:26:16] And yet you know what it has done? It has made vice and sin and wickedness accessible, readily accessible. And it has increased transgression among men and society has degraded. You know why? Not because sin is more, but because godly have diminished because of this widespread and easily accessible vices. You think about pornography. What happens is those people who are once godly fall by the wayside, and thus the godly are diminished. That influence is diminished. The wicked rise, walk on every hand, and transgression increases. And that's where we end up with a government, where our representatives. [00:27:11] This is who we have to choose from, because it reflects our society. This is what's so. This is what's so sad about the abortion. Did anybody watch the debate last night? [00:27:22] Shameful the way that senator Vance, no doubt taking orders, totally compromised on the question of abortion. [00:27:35] Whether the child. Nobody even, nobody even, nobody even brought. Everybody's talking about the woman and the woman's right and her body, and nobody even brought up whether the child has any value at all. None. [00:27:47] That's not even an issue anymore. [00:27:50] That's just put to the side. [00:27:53] And in fact, what brother David tells me, and he's one who knows, that those who push that particular sin and blight on our society say more abortions are being done now since Roe versus Wade was overturned than were before. [00:28:11] And 60% of them are done with pills, chemical abortions, not done at a clinic. [00:28:20] So has it decreased? I mean, we're glad it was overturned and all that stuff, but the net result is it's increasing. [00:28:29] The question is, and here's why I brought that up, why? [00:28:35] Why do not Americans have a pallet for protecting babies in the womb? Why? [00:28:43] Because transgression is increasing and the godly. Listen to me carefully. This is not a political question. This is really not even a societal question. This is verse one of twelve, psalm twelve. The godly man ceaseth, the faithful fail. They are going down. There's fewer and fewer who fit that description, and it's being reflected in the electorate. That's what's happening. [00:29:11] Well, if we just tell them, no, no, no, listen, we got to win hearts and minds and all of that, but there is a spiritual rot in our society that is directly related to that ratio. [00:29:29] This is the way society societies rise and fall, both morally and spiritually. The number of the godly in a society is what determines the spiritual, and therefore the moral. Spiritual is most important, the spiritual temperature of that society. So the question I have, I want to pose to you is this, what is the solution? [00:29:54] That's the question. When you see a society in it, the moral ills and vices are increasing. You see a society where the godly are diminishing. What do you do when you see that? Help, lord. Right? That's what he's saying. Help, lord. What do we do? [00:30:12] Should it be a call to change, to a change in the morality in society? No, you're just treating a symptom. [00:30:21] Listen now, all the moral ills that we see are just a symptom. [00:30:29] The change must be first spiritual, because the first cause is spiritual. [00:30:36] The godly have ceased. The faithful have failed. [00:30:41] When the godly are increased, so the spiritual and moral temperature increases. You see, that's what is being shown here. [00:30:51] Now, here's the kicker, but how do people become godly? [00:30:59] The only way a person, a children of man, if I could put it like that, goes from that to godly is by conversion. [00:31:09] Let me ask you a question. Is it possible for a person to be godly without being a believer in Christ? Think about that. Now. [00:31:16] What if that person is faithful to his wife and he goes to church? What if that person is honest on his taxes and he doesn't use foul language? Is he godly? Let me ask you, is he godly? Biblically, is he godly? No. [00:31:34] You cannot be godly without being a child of God. You might be moral, but you are certainly not godly. [00:31:46] Godly is not just another way of saying moral, you know, it's like, well, if you don't do these things, you do these things well. Ho, ho. To be godly is more. To think of godly as just moral is a gross mistake. Not to mention it's a misinterpretation of the Bible. That's not what godly means. It doesn't mean just you keep a loose set of morals. Listen, everybody in whatever party, political parties, brother Rob went up to Washington and got to meet people of the political types. They're all moral. By, if you doubt it, just ask them. Oh, yeah, I'm moral. I'm very immoral. Moral, right? [00:32:30] That is not the same as godly. We don't set our own standards here, but we gotta be aware of false motives. [00:32:41] We think of the rot in society and it causes a. Causes us to be nervous. Right? We don't like it. We don't like to see what's happening. [00:32:53] But our first motive for everything we do must be for the glory of God and the uplifting of the Lord Jesus Christ, not to change our society for good. [00:33:06] That's a subpar and inferior motive. [00:33:15] Really. The moral reform of society is an effect. [00:33:19] It's not the goal. [00:33:21] Matthew 516 says this, let your light so shine before me. You think, great, you let your light shine. That's that influence I'm talking about earlier, right? You let your light so shine. All right, great, great, great. And look, it's having positive effects. People are nicer and people are what? You know. No, no, no. That they may see your good works and glorify your face, Father, which is in heaven. See, that's a spiritual thing. The first priority is people getting right with God. And there you come back to verse number one. [00:33:51] The godly, the faithful. [00:33:56] So some sort of moral reform is not an end in and of itself. It is not the goal. It is just a secondary effect. [00:34:08] And listen now to some. [00:34:11] If society were more moral, they would be happy. Listen, if society was just more moral, if we could just get the Republicans in there, or if we could just get the freedom Caucus in there, if society was just more moral, we'd be happy. Whoa, whoa, whoa. [00:34:34] God wouldn't be happy even if they would be happy. Even if Jesus Christ were not believed, he were not loved, he were not obeyed, he were not worshiped. And this kind of moralism is wicked. [00:34:51] I think, honestly, I think a lot of Americans, especially conservative thinking, you know, everybody in here is pretty much like that. [00:34:58] They'd be happy if just the right party got in, if the election goes their way, and it's like, whoa, did our work. [00:35:07] The godly is still at its number. It's not increasing. You think that's going to help? No, the rot is still going to be there. [00:35:17] That's just moralism. [00:35:20] How many people are considered moral that do not know or love the Lord Jesus Christ? [00:35:29] This is not about morality. Again, that's secondary. It's about the godly, the faithful, those who have personally put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose lives they're working. And as that increases, society benefits, society benefits at large as a secondary effect. But the first goal is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. [00:35:54] And I know I spent a lot of time on that, but I wanted to show you this biblical principle of where the kind of the, I don't know if you could say root cause, but one of the primary causes of the rot that we see. Why is it, why is it going like this? Well, this is it right here. [00:36:12] This is it. This is one of the main drivers of it from a spiritual perspective. Verse two. Notice I, they speak vanity everyone with his neighbor, with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. Notice all the references to the mouth, to the speech. The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips. There it is. And the tongue, there it is that speaketh proud things. Who have said with our tongue will we prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is Lord over us? You think about this. I will say what I want to say. I have freedom of speech. [00:36:46] Well, to our government you do, but you don't have freedom of speech to God. [00:36:51] In fact, the Lord Jesus said every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. You know what that means? You don't have freedom of speech. [00:37:04] That's what that means. [00:37:07] And I'm glad, you know, we're glad we have freedom of speech in our government. But in the government of God, we will all give an account for what we say. But these people notice it's such a weird thing. Their words almost represent them. [00:37:23] If they. They feel like nobody's gonna tell me what to say, nobody's gonna tell me what to do. [00:37:36] So we might say it like this. The Lord of the Lips is the Lord of the life. [00:37:45] The lips represent the whole of the life to these people. [00:37:51] Which is why the children of men insist that none shall rule over their lips. But it's a good reminder to us, right, that the Lord is the Lord over our lips. Is that not what that says? [00:38:08] Does he control what you and I say? [00:38:13] Our lips are not our own. [00:38:17] Right. [00:38:20] Our lips are the Lord's lips. [00:38:26] And the last thing I want to point out in that context, remember, this psalm really is about the words and those speeches and the lips of the wicked. Right. Of the children, really the children of men in verses two through five. And then we get to verse six. And now we hear from the Lord's lips, right? That's the contrast. You see, I've always thought, as I read this passage, I always thought verse six kind of stood out. Kind of out there, kind of like an island in the psalm. But it's not. It's talking about the lips of the children of men and how they misuse their words. And there's a flattery and there's deception. And there's words that have mixed motives and thoughts don't match the words. There's proud words. These are all in verse two through verse five. And then you get down to verse six and it says, the words of the Lord are pure words. As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Which is to say, they're not like man's words. [00:39:21] Man's words are not like this. Now notice it says, is silver tried in a furnace of earth as silver tried in a furnace of earth. [00:39:32] Notice at the beginning of verse six, it says this. The words of the Lord are pure words. Right? And then in verse, at the second part of verse six, it says, purified seven times. [00:39:46] Purified seven times. [00:39:49] A comparison is used to a furnace. [00:39:53] In other words, you take silver or silver ore or some mixture of silver, and you put it into the furnace over and over and over. And then you scrape off the. They call it the dross. Or is it the slag? Once you melt it, is it called slag or dross, was it? Oh, slag's iron. Okay, so see, I don't know all that stuff, but you put it into the furnace and then you scrape the top off because the unwanted part comes to the top and you scrape it off, you put it back into the furnace and you scrape. And when you pull it out the 7th time, which is number perfection. Right. Completion. When you pull it out the 7th time, what do you have? You have pure silver and that's what's being described here. So the word of God is not being described as like. Well, when God spoke it, it wasn't quite pure. Right. And then, you know, it had to be purified. No, no, no. It's being described as the final product that has been purified. [00:40:44] God's word is pure. It's already at the 7th stage. It's already pure. It's not like God spoke it. It was part pure and then it was purified. No, when God spoke it, it was pure, because God is pure. And what that means is there is like, not in verses two through five. There's no mixture of error, no mixture of motives, there's no mixture of falsehood. It is absolutely, 100% perfectly pure. [00:41:17] Psalm 19 eight, nine. Listen to this. The statutes of Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean. You know, that's the same word as is pure in our text here. Enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Psalm 119 140. Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it. Psalm 30, proverbs 35. Every word of God is pure. He is the shield of them that put their trust in him. So what can we learn from this? And this is the last thing I want you to see. I know I've been long tonight. [00:41:55] Here's the principle in the context of psalm twelve is this man's words must always be only trusted insofar as they are true, because they often aren't. That's what two through five says. [00:42:16] They often have a mixture of error, but God's word is purely true and deserves unreserved confidence. [00:42:31] Unreserved confidence. [00:42:36] In other words, what God says, we can take it to the bank. It is pure. There's no mixture of error. This is one of the places in scripture that demonstrates the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture. Although scripture is not mentioned in verse six, it just says the words of the Lord. Sometimes that's spoken, sometimes that's written. But the same applies to both. [00:43:00] We can trust God's word. [00:43:03] Man's word should always be kept. Just a little bit skeptical, right? Just a little bit skeptical. [00:43:13] God's word should be trusted. Holy. [00:43:16] No mixture of error. Let's pray together.