Reading through the Psalms, you might ask yourself this question from time to time.

For example, several weeks ago in his sermon, “The Lord is My Rock,” Ryan preached from Psalm 18, where David writes:

The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. So the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. – Psalm 18:20-24

Twice here David says he is righteous, and that his hands are clean. Once is already one too many times for those who accept the biblical doctrine of sin. We aren’t righteous. We don’t have clean hands.

So, what’s going on here?

If we were to sit down with David and ask him to explain what he meant, what would he say?

One way to get an answer to that is to look at the other things he has said.

First, as Ryan pointed out, David knows he is a great sinner.

There are plenty of places where David confesses great sin. Psalm 14, 32, and 51, for example, reveal the depth of David’s self-understanding as a rebel in God’s world. In Psalm 143:2, he says clearly, “no one living is righteous before you.” With that clarification, a clear takeaway from David’s reflection in Psalm 18 is to say that God loves and, indeed, God rewards obedience. Inasmuch as David was obedient, God was pleased to reward David, even if this isn’t all there is to say about David or God’s dealings with him or us.

But there is more to see from David’s own writing.

Second, David knows where any human goodness or greatness comes from: God!

This comes out beautifully in his prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:10-14:

Therefore David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. And David said: “Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.”

In his helpful article, “Who Owns Greatness?,” our friend, Fred Zaspel, helps us to see the significance of David’s words in this passage and on this subject. I’ll quote a large portion of the article here, though the whole piece is worth reading:

The gist of David’s praise is clear enough — God rules over all in greatness, power, glory, victory, and unrivaled majesty. But notice that David’s thinking goes much deeper than just that. He does not say that God is great. He says that greatness belongs to God. He does not say that God is majestic. He says that majesty belongs to God. “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power,” and so on. It is one thing to say that God is great, but it is quite another step to acknowledge that greatness itself — all greatness — is his. That is to say, whatever greatness we see in this world is a borrowed greatness, on loan from God. Whatever power there is, it is a power that comes from God. It is all his. And whatever measure of greatness we have — physical, moral, political, societal, financial — we have it because God has condescended to share it with us. “Both riches and honor come from you,” David says, because it is all his to begin with.

We need to learn this well. It is a massively humbling truth: the more we do for God the more we are indebted to God for the honor of it. I can take no credit for any measure of greatness or goodness I may possess, for it is all a gift from God.

Having recognized all this David takes the inevitable next step of worship. He prays that God will continue to show this favor to his people, and keep their hearts for himself. “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts toward you. Grant to Solomon my son a whole heart that he may keep your commandments, your testimonies, and your statutes, performing all, and that he may build the palace for which I have made provision” (1 Chronicles 29:18-19).

So, God does reward obedience. But at the end of the day, our obedience and, thus, God’s favor is not a credit to our own greatness, but to the God of all greatness. David gets that. God is great in Himself and is the source of any greatness we find in the world, or any greatness that we ourselves possess.

Finally, David knows that God will provide a son who will eclipse him in greatness and wholehearted obedient to God.

He wouldn’t have been able to speak about Christ with the kind of clarity that we have from our position. Indeed, Peter tells us that the prophets “searched and inquired carefully” to understand where exactly all of God’s promises were pointing (1 Peter 1:10). David was in that boat.

But threaded through David’s prayers is the expectation of a messiah to come. Sometimes that expectation is pronounced and glowing. Sometimes it shows up in confessions of what God requires that show us David’s desire, but also his own inadequacy as God’s king. He is not God’s ultimate solution. In Hebrews 10:5-10 the author of Hebrews made this connection when he quoted David from Psalm 40, writing about Christ:

When Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” . . .then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

As Christians, we can thank God that He rewards obedience, and we can thank Him for providing the obedience He requires of us in Christ.

Jesus is our obedient King. He was obedient to his Father’s will in everything, unlike us. And he was obedient to his Father’s will in everything for us, “to the point of death, even death on a cross,” (Philippians 2:8). In Christ, we inherit the reward for the obedience that Christ performed.

As we read the Psalms and learn to pray them together, it’s good to know who we’re listening to and to know who these writers think they are. David knows he’s a sinner, that his greatness is from God, and that God’s promise to save His people rests on God’s own faithfulness to fulfill His Word.

With Christmas in mind, it’s good to know who we’re celebrating and what we’re proclaiming: the one with clean hands and a righteous life, who gives to those who believe in him the reward for both.

In Sunday’s sermon, “God’s Words–Better than Gold,” Ryan unpacked the second half of Psalm 19, which is something like a love song about God’s Word. God’s Word, says David, is perfect, sure, right, pure, and clean. It revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, endures forever. It’s better than much fine gold and sweeter than honey. All of this is true because it is true of the One who gave it to us. The Bible is the “Word of the Lord.”

If the Bible is true and it really is the Word of God, then what it says about itself must be true. It also does what it says it does. The Bible is, as Ryan said on Sunday, self-authenticating. It proves itself true. C.H. Spurgeon put it this way: “Scripture is like a caged lion. I defend the truthfulness of the Bible the same that I would defend a caged lion. I don’t need to defend the lion to prove to others that he is a lion. I simply need to let the lion out of his cage.”

If you’re interested in learning more about what the Bible is and how the Bible works, there are several resources worth checking out. First, a few years ago Ryan conducted a four part Saturday Seminar, The Reliability of the Bible, and the audio is available online.

Additionally, there are now two books at the Resource Center at a super cheap price that are worth picking up:

• Reverberation: How God’s Word Brings Light, Freedom, and Action to His People, Jonathan Leeman
• One-to-One Bible Study: A Simple Guide for Every Christian, David Helm

Finally, if you missed Clarus this past April, the theme of the conference was, Scripture: God Speaks. In the course of his talks, G.K. Beale mentioned three things that discourage us from reading our Bibles: 1) Media immersion, 2) Busyness, and 3) Expecting the sensational. These conference talks are full of helpful reflections like this. Here are links to the talks from this year’s conference:

• “The Effects of Meditating on God’s Word,” G.K. Beale
• “The Prophetic Word: What Preaching Is and Is Not,” Carl Trueman
• “How to Guard the Good Deposit of Scripture,” G.K. Beale
• “Scripture’s Authority: An Ancient Doctrine,” Carl Trueman
• “The Centrality of Scripture in Marriage,” G.K. Beale
• “A Clear and Present Word: Luther and the Clarity of Scripture,” Carl Trueman
• “Receiving and Resounding God’s Word,” G.K. Beale
• “Like Sheep without a Shepherd,” Carl Trueman

The Law of the Lord is perfect, and it is perfect because the Lord is perfect. Therefore, it is good for us to make a big deal out of it, to read it, to hear it, to memorize it, and to speak it. It’s also right for us to respond as David did with the kind of prayer David prayed: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

In Sunday’s sermon, “A Picture Worth a Thousand Words,” Ryan unpacked the first six verses of Psalm 19 for us. As Ryan said, Psalm 19 as a whole reflects on God’s communication through both “stars and Scripture,” or, “world and Word.” In verses 1-6, David reflects on that first way that God talks: through what He has made. The opening line is a nice summary for the section: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” In other words, “everything God made declares the glory of God.”

To be sure, creation isn’t all we need. As we will find out next week, God has also spoken specially and specifically with words, and we need those words to know Him, and not because His speech in creation is deficient, but because we’re deficient to receive it as we ought.

As those who have received the Word, who have traded the glory of creation back for the glory of the Creator, we can actually glory in God more fully for a right enjoyment of what He has made. And so we should.

Two resources can help us to this end. First, Old Testament scholar, Mark Futato, has written a helpful reflection on and exposition of the significance of creation, in, Creation: A Witness to the Wonder of God.

Second, in his book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, John Piper writes a chapter on, “How to Wield the World in the Fight for Joy.” Considering Psalm 19:1-6, Piper writes,

Clearly this poet wants us to see and to feel that when the sun pours forth speech about the glory of God, the message is that the glory of God is an overwhelmingly happy thing. Why else would he say it is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber? The point here is not merely that the bridegroom is decked out in the finest clothes and surrounded by his noble groomsmen. The point is that this is the happiest day of his life. This is the fulfillment of dreams. This is the beginning of a whole new kind of joy. That’s what the glory of God is like. That’s the message we should hear when we see the sun rise with lavish red and gold and lavender in the eastern sky. God’s glory is a happy thing—like the happiness of a bridegroom on his wedding day. (190)

The joy poured forth by the sun is the same joy emitted by every good physical thing in this world. Piper sums this up well in his conclusion: “Joy in God is not the same as joy in sex or a sizzling steak or deep ravines or powerful music. But God’s will is that all these—and every part of his good creation—declare the glory of God. All the world, and even the imperfect representations of it in human art, is a witness to the glory of God. That glory is the ultimate ground of all human gladness. Therefore, the created world is a holy weapon in the fight for joy” (206).

This chapter and Piper’s whole book is available for free from Desiring God. This book is also available on Amazon and at the Resource Center on Sundays.

As Christians, we have a high view of the goodness of the physical world, because we believe that it was made to reflect and direct us to the One who made it. And as Ryan reminded us on Sunday, where things are not right in this present order, we are reminded that the world itself is “groaning” with us for the day when Christ will make all things new (Romans 8:18-8:23; Revelation 21-22).

In Sunday’s sermon, “The Lord is My Rock,” Ryan showed from Psalm 18 that God’s care, protection, and victory can be rightly seen from two perspectives – one heavenly, the other earthly.

From verses 7-17 David reflected on the heavenly perspective of God’s rescuing work in his life. God cracked open the heavens and came down (9a), the earth reeled and rocked (7), smoke went out from God’s nostrils (8), thick darkness came (9b), God rode on a cherub, on the wings of the wind (10), He thundered (13), He sent hail and coals of fire (13b), He sent lightning like arrows (14), and He exposed the foundations of the earth with a mere breath (15b).

But David didn’t actually see any of that. He believed it all, but his experience of God’s saving goodness was known from an earthly vantage point. In verses 31-49, David reflects on God’s rescue by thinking about what happened to his feet, his hands, and his arms: “He made my feet like the feet of a deer. . .He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze” (33, 34).

Behind the scenes God is working out His purposes in the world, and even the smallest parts of our lives have their place.

As we reflect on David’s account of God’s saving goodness, we can ponder the divine design of specific moments in our lives leading to salvation in Christ, specific people, and specific difficulties. And we can see God’s saving and sovereign goodness throughout the entirety of our Christian lives, as He works everything together for good for those who love Him, and conforms us into the image of Christ. He loves us, provides for us, and makes us like Christ through the most seemingly mundane things.

So what are some ways in which God has “invisibly” helped, orchestrated, and strengthened you (like vss 7-17), but behind the scenes you know all along it was God cracking the heavens and coming down to intervene powerfully and gloriously in your life (like vss 31-45)?

In Sunday’s sermon, “In Hot Pursuit of His Presence,” Ryan explored Psalm 16 to show us how we can pray with the Psalmist, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you…in your presence there is fullness of joy.”

In the course of his message, Ryan took some time to develop how the Bible relates the presence of God with the people of God. In what sense is God always with us and in what sense is He with us when we meet together on Sunday mornings? How And what is different for us as those who live on this side of Christ’s coming and have received the Spirit of God?

That portion of the message is worth listening to several times, as those are important questions. But if you are particularly interested in this central biblical theme, there are two previous sets of messages that you should consider: Ryan’s Saturday Seminar, Biblical Theology, and Ryan’s Sunday morning series, Mapping Out the Old Testament.

In reflection upon Psalm 16’s call for us to find our delight in God and in His people, Ryan addressed what has become a rather obvious and awkward weakness here at DSC: Some of us are not coming regularly and many of us are coming late to our Sunday services.

Noting the obvious periodic good reasons for being late, Ryan gave us several reasons why we should labor to make showing up early the new normal at DSC:

• Reverence for God
• Respect for others
• To set an example to our children of what’s really important
• To demonstrate to visitors that God is among us (1 Corinthians 14:24-25)
• To get as much of what we ultimately need (God) as we can get

Ryan also gave several practical suggestions:

• Prepare on Saturday night
• Plan to be early and take into consideration various predictable interruptions
• Listen for the band when they start playing one minute before the service starts
• Be willing to end your conversations around the building graciously, even if awkwardly, in order to get to the service on time

On this subject, two resources are helpful, including a sermon by John Piper, “Prepare to Meet Your God,” and Coty Pickney’s “Preparing to Worship.”