The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): David's desire was to live a holy and exemplary life, especially in his role as king. He sought a blameless heart and to be blameless in his actions, yet often fell short. As David strove to live up to the high standards he set for himself and others.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. While David was a sinner and unable to live up to his own high ideals, he never stopped trying to do what was right and surrounding himself with faithful men.

Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 101 and shows us that, while David fell short of perfection, there is one who meets God's standard and who one day will govern the world in righteousness.

Dr. James Boice: It's hard for me to believe as we turn to our Psalm today that we have made our way two-thirds of the distance through the Psalter. It has 150 Psalms. We've done 100 of them, and today we're going to look at Psalm 101.

Now, it's identified as a Psalm of David. It's been quite a while since we have seen a Psalm of David. The last one was Psalm 86. There's going to be one more to come. This is the first in this fourth book of the Psalter, but just a couple later, Psalm 103, we're going to find that that's identified as being by David too.

A lot of scholars reject the idea that David would have written this Psalm, and yet it's a very appropriate Psalm for David. It sounds like him. In it, he's extolling the high standards by which he intends to run his kingdom. We know he didn't live up to these high standards himself completely. We're all sinners. David was, and he fell, but nevertheless, he did pretty well.

Regardless of what his own achievements were in the area, the standards that he talks about here are of lasting value. They certainly are valuable for anyone in a place of authority, whether that would be in civil government, which is the chief emphasis of the Psalm, or in the church, or in business, or in the home, or whatever.

I think Charles Haddon Spurgeon had good judgment when it comes to the tone of the Psalms and their authorship, and he received the Psalm as being by David, and he wrote this. He said, "This is just such a Psalm as a man after God's own heart would compose when he was about to become king in Israel.

It's David all over, straightforward, resolute, devout. There's no trace of policy or vacillation. The Lord has appointed him to be king, and he knows it. Therefore, he purposes in all things to behave as becomes a monarch whom the Lord has chosen. We call this the Psalm of Pious Resolutions. We will perhaps remember it all the more readily."

Now, sometimes when we come to these Psalms, we want to see if we can find a setting historically, and that's particularly true when we deal with the Psalms of David. You don't always have to have that in order to appreciate the Psalm, and sometimes an historical setting wouldn't contribute anything at all.

Psalm 23, that great Psalm of David, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," it really doesn't make any difference at all when he wrote it, or for that matter who wrote it. It's just a Psalm of timeless thought and timeless value. But sometimes it helps, and when we come to a Psalm like this, we're already beginning to think somewhat in terms of an historical setting.

If what David is doing in the Psalm is setting out the standards for an upright administration, we tend naturally to think of it in terms of something he might have written early in his administration as king or shortly before he became king or something like that. At least we can say that much about it.

I think there is more that can be said, however. I want to acknowledge that there is some degree of uncertainty in this, but let me suggest what I think is the background of the Psalm. The clue is in verse two where David suddenly and almost inappropriately, it seems, in the flow of the thought, asks the question, "When will you come to me?"

Now, when we read words like that, we think generally of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost or perhaps in some special time of our lives when God makes himself particularly real to us, but that is generally not the way language like that would be used in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, they didn't think so much of God coming to them as their going up to be with God, and often when they talked about going up to the temple in Jerusalem, this is the way they spoke. So when David asks the question, "When will you come to me?" that's an unusual thing to find in the Old Testament, and it suggests that there really is some kind of a background behind it.

Now, I want to suggest that the story is probably found in 2nd Samuel 6:1-11. That's that Old Testament passage in which David, as he thought by the blessing of God, was trying to bring the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem. It had been left in a place called Kiriath Jearim. He had brought it up from the house of a man named Abinadab.

And what he had done was have the Ark placed on a cart that was being drawn with oxen. And then because this was a big event and very important in David's understanding, he had many thousands of the men of Israel, 30,000 in all, accompany him along with a band, an orchestra, and singers, and it was a very great and festival time.

And then suddenly in the midst of this celebration involving all of these people, something terrible happened. The oxen, as they were pulling the cart, stumbled and the Ark was shaken and it began to fall. There was a man walking along, a son of Abinadab in whose house the Ark had been kept, whose name was Uzzah.

And seeing as he thought the Ark about to fall off the Ark, he reached out his hand and steadied it. He didn't want it to fall. It was apparently a very innocent act and certainly well-intentioned, but we're told in Scripture that the wrath of God burned against him because of his irreverent act, that is, touching the Ark.

And the verse says therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the Ark. Needless to say, the party was over. The music stopped. The king was angry and embarrassed. They didn't know what to do. Finally, they just moved the Ark aside into the home of somebody who was nearby.

For a considerable length of time, it was left in the home of a man named Obed-Edom, and they didn't go any further. Now, here's the important thing, and it's why I retell the story. In that account in 2nd Samuel, David says in his distress, verse 9 of chapter 6, "How can the Ark of the Lord ever come to me?"

What I'm suggesting is that for David, the arrival of the Ark and the presence of God were very nearly the same thing. In the way he spoke about it, he almost identified the two things. And so what you have here in this story seems to be a background for the question David is asking in the Psalm.

God had shown himself in this instance to be a holy and utterly unbending God. Striking down Uzzah for such a seemingly small thing showed that God took his commandments concerning the transportation of the Ark very seriously. It was never supposed to be moved in any other way than by the high priest, covered, and nobody was ever supposed to touch it.

And here this man had done it and he had been struck down. It was a reminder that the God we serve is utterly holy and unbending in his holiness. And I suggest that David, sobered by what was a tragic and embarrassing event, must have asked himself, if that's what God is like, how can I possibly ever expect the Ark of God to come to me?

Now, we might say at that point, we might take this approach, well, if that's what God is like, it's impossible. You know, who could ever live up to the standards of a God like that? But interestingly enough, David doesn't take that approach. You see, David has been reminded of how serious it is to serve a holy God, but he doesn't just throw up his hands.

He says, no, if that's what it is, I'm going to try to lead a moral and an upright life. Moreover, I want my kingdom, I want my rule, I want my government, I want civil affairs in this kingdom to be done according to the standards of God. And so that's what we have in the Psalm. I want to suggest that that story is behind everything that David says here.

Now let's look at it. Verse 1: "I will sing of your love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing praise." I don't often take issue with the New International Version and its translation because I think it's a good translation. None are perfect, of course, but it's a good one. I'm happy that we have it.

But I do think the New International Version has made a mistake here in verse one. Well-meaning, but nevertheless a mistake. In the Hebrew text, the word "your," Y-O-U-R, in the first line is not present. It doesn't say "I will sing of your love and justice." What David actually says is, "I will sing of love and justice."

I think that's important because that means that what he's talking about are these virtues as he expects to have them enacted in his human kingdom. In other words, it's as if this is the title line of the Psalm. You know, years ago in American literature, people used to write essays that had titles like this: "On Friendship" or "On Self-Reliance" or something of that nature.

And it's as if that's what David is saying here. He's saying, "What I want to focus on in this Psalm is love and justice." Now, the word "love" is the word hesed. It also means covenant love. It has with it the idea of mercy. And so David is actually talking about these things.

And he says, "When we want to talk about the standards for an upright administration, this is the point at which we have to begin." Now, I think the New International Version translators thought that it was God's love and justice that David had in mind, and that, of course, is true to the extent that any human standard has to come from the divine standard.

And what he's saying is that it's these characteristics that he wants to see in his kingdom. Now, if that's true, mercy and justice, if those are the things he wants to see in his administration, it obviously applies to us personally as well. This should characterize our lives. We should be known as both.

You see, sometimes we emphasize one at the expense of the other, and we forget that they have to go together. If we emphasize love, as some people do, forgetting about justice or righteousness, then love becomes sentimental, indulgent, and can actually be harmful.

On the other hand, if we emphasize justice and we forget about mercy, then justice very quickly becomes tyranny, and that also becomes harmful. And David says he wants to have an administration that is characterized by both. Now, verse one, as I said, is a title verse.

And so from this point on, verse two and following, you essentially have an exposition of what those two terms should mean. When I was looking through various material that had been written on this Psalm by other people, I made a very interesting discovery, and that was that Martin Luther had done an extensive exposition of this Psalm.

Martin Luther wrote a great deal about the Psalms, as you know. They meant a great deal to him, and the material we have from Luther's pen is abundant. But sometimes he gets over even long Psalms quickly, and he doesn't do that with this one. The version I have, this main edition of Luther's works, he spends 80 pages dealing with this Psalm.

And the reason is he was deeply concerned about civil government in his day. And Luther understood that this is talking about civil government, what government should be like. And so he emphasizes that these two qualities should be present in the life and actions of any human ruler. Let me just quote him.

"What the Psalm calls mercy and justice is said not of the mercy and justice of God," Luther understood what the Hebrew text actually said, "but of the mercy and justice which a prince practices toward his servants and his subjects. A prince and lord must use both of these.

If there is only mercy and the prince lets everyone milk him and kick him in the teeth and does not punish or become angry, then not only the court of the land but the whole land too will be filled with wicked rascals. All discipline and honor will come to an end.

On the other hand, if there is only anger and punishment or too much of it, then tyranny will result and the pious will be breathless in their daily fear and anxiety." Well, I said we need to apply that to ourselves as well, so let's do it. Let's say, are we really concerned about justice in our own lives, in our dealings with other people, and at the same time are we concerned to show mercy?

If we are looking for a standard in that, we find the standard in God himself, who, as we were reminded by the incident of the moving of the Ark, is an utterly upright God, but nevertheless is also merciful. Just two Psalms after this, we're going to find David writing, "The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him."

So here we have a standard, and we have a model for that standard in God himself. Now, the next characteristics that we find David talking about in the Psalm are what have to do with personal moral character. And he refers to it in two ways. You have the phrase "a blameless heart" and then also in verse two, "a blameless life."

Now, they belong together because the only way to lead a blameless life is to have a blameless heart. Our Lord Jesus Christ said that in other language in Matthew 12. He said, "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." So what you have inside is what you say, and what you have inside is what you're going to do as well.

Now, what strikes me as significant about this as I look at the Psalm and find David talking about a blameless life is how naturally he assumes the existence of such a thing and doesn't quibble about a definition of what a blameless life is all about. We've come into a period of history in the West, especially in this country, when people, because of their relativism, are so uncertain of what morality should be that they're always floundering around, as it were, trying to discover the right thing.

And people who observe this say that's really strange, isn't it, that today we should be spending so much time with our ethics committees and such branches of government as that, discovering the right thing, where a generation ago, people wouldn't question it at all. They just knew what was right.

They didn't always live up to it, but they didn't have any question at all what should be done. Not long ago, my attention was drawn to a column written by Meg Greenfield in Newsweek magazine. It was entitled "Right and Wrong in Washington." Kind of interesting. It was an exposure of what's wrong in government.

When we require, as we increasingly seem to require, ethics officers, committees, or specialists to tell us what proper moral behavior should be. And this is the way Meg Greenfield wrote. "People should know what is right and wrong, but today they say, 'I asked the ethics officer and they said it didn't fall within the category of impermissible activity.'

Or more frequently, when there's a flap about something that's already occurred, they say, 'We've directed the ethics officer to look into it and report back to us in 60 days.' And then Meg Greenfield says, 'Good old 60 days for something that your ordinary morally sentient person wouldn't need 60 seconds to figure out.'"

You don't have any of that belabored moral search for definition with David. David doesn't have any doubt at all what's right and what's wrong. He knows he doesn't always live up to it, but he knows that what we really need is a blameless life. Now, when he talks about that in verses two and three, talking about a blameless life and a blameless heart, he says, "As a result, I will not set before my eyes anything that's vile."

Or the way he actually expresses it, "I will set before my eyes no vile thing." Now, that leads us a step further. You see, what we had in verse one is a thematic verse. He's going to talk about mercy and justice. And then in verses two and the first half of three, you have the positive, what that actually means.

It has to do with being blameless. But now, beginning with the second half of verse three and through verse five, he looks at the negative, saying it's not enough merely to say I want to do what is right. If I want to do what is right, I at the same time have to repudiate what is wrong. And so he begins to talk about some of these things.

"The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me. Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him I will put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him will I not endure."

Well, there's a number of vices there, aren't there? Things that he says you just can't countenance, you just can't tolerate in yourself or in others if you're really going to live a blameless life. Look at them. He talks about faithless men in verse three. Now, faithless behavior means breaking faith or failing to keep faith, that is, breaking agreements.

In regard to human agreements, it means being dishonest or untrustworthy. In regard to God, it means being apostate, that is, falling away from something you professed at one time. It's the exact opposite of the word "covenant love" or "faithful love" that you find in verse one. He's going to talk about love, covenant love, mercy, and justice.

Here you have the exact opposite. In verse four, he talks about men of a perverse heart. Now, perverse means wicked, but it has in it the added idea of having turned aside from what is known to be good, true, or morally right. It also has the idea of willfully diverting someone else or some cause from what is morally upright.

David doesn't want to have anything to do with that. Verse five, he talks about slander. Now, slander has to do with words, not actions. And it's a reminder of how often in these Psalms of David we find him talking about people who do harm by words. It seems sometimes when we read the Psalms that he's more afraid of the damage that can be done by words than he is by the swords or armies of his enemies.

Because words are so subtle and they work away to destroy that which is good in ways that you hardly know it's happening. That's very true of government. People undermining one another as they jockey for positions of authority. It's true in our government. It was obviously true in David's government as well.

And then finally, he talks about haughty eyes and a proud heart in verse five. Now, that's what we call arrogance. Arrogance is supposing that we can manage it all by ourselves without the help of other people and certainly without the help of God. Now, today people actually think highly of that characteristic.

Someone who shows a certain amount of arrogance, we kind of think that's good, but it's actually a terrible vice because it's the vice of Satan, who thought he could do without God. He said, "Let's just push God off the throne of his universe; I want to take over because I can do as well as God."

And a lot of people are doing that today with their own lives. They think they can handle their lives without God, manage quite well without him. It's a kind of arrogance which is ungodliness and is terrible. I said Martin Luther saw a lot in this Psalm, and he saw a lot in this particular point because he spends a great deal of time, as a matter of fact, he spends about the first quarter of those 80 pages I mentioned, reminding the government leaders of his time that they can't accomplish anything of any value apart from God.

Luther says, "Everything is a vain sham and deception if God is not in it." Now, the vices listed in these verses are also mentioned again in the Psalm as we move on to the second half, where David seems to be writing there about evil in the land and not just evil in my house, meaning in the central government.

So what he's saying in both of these sections is that he doesn't want to encourage or, as a matter of fact, even have dealings with such evil persons. On the contrary, what he says is he's going to put to silence all the wicked of the land. Why is that? He knew because you can't stand for right conduct yourself and encourage people who stand for something else all at the same time.

Now, that brings us back to the positive again. If you want an outline of the Psalm, it goes like this: I've already suggested part of it. Verse one is the theme verse. And verses two and the first half of three are the positive. The second half of three through five are the negative.

Verse six goes back to the positive again. And then you have the negative counterpart in that in verses seven and eight. Now he's introduced these great administrative virtues: love and justice and upright behavior. He's followed it by these harmful vices: faithlessness, perversity, slander, arrogance.

And now what David says is that as far as his government is concerned, what he wants to do is seek out the faithful in the land and promote them to positions of high honor. "My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me."

In other words, what he's saying is that he wants to surround himself with good people, people who can get the job done but do it in the right way. One of the great temptations we have in any position of authority where we're entrusted with a job is to try to get it done at all costs.

And you see that a lot in government. It's one thing that corrupts government figures. You have a job to do. You start out wanting to do it rightly, but above all you say to yourself, "We have to get the job done." And so we want to get to somebody who's effective and really does it, and we don't want to ask too many questions about how he actually accomplishes the task.

Now, you see, the Bible's very balanced in that way. It doesn't say, "Well, it doesn't matter whether you get the task done, just be upright." That's not what David is saying. David wants to administer the kingdom. That's his job. He has to do it. He has to do it well, but he wants to do it through upright people.

So he's holding the two together. He's saying, "Here's the task to be done, but here's the kind of people I want to do it." And so he's looking out for them. And he says as they emerge, I want to promote them to positions of authority. It's exactly what we should be trying to do in government and in the church and in other places as well. We need people who can get the job done, but we need the faithful of the land to do it.

Now let me just say two things as we conclude, ending on both a sad and a happy note. The sad note is that although David possessed these high and wonderful ideals, he didn't live up to them. He started out well and he was for the most part a moral man, but the last years of his reign were marked by his own personal sin and by growing violence within his own family and the government.

It wasn't that he was not a good king or that he had inadequate moral standards. It was simply that he was a man and thus also a sinner as all of us are. No human being, however noble his or her intentions may be, ever lives up to a perfect moral standard of righteousness.

And that's why otherwise good political administrations tend toward corruption in their later years. It's good to have changes of government because the tendency is always downhill. It's why old leaders often fail. That's the bad news.

But here's the good news. Although human leaders fail and always fail to live up to these high standards, there is one who nevertheless has done it, and that is Jesus Christ, God's Son. And that's why God ultimately has placed the governing of the universe in his hands. It says in the book of Revelation, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever." Revelation 11:15.

We've had a great tendency in America to look to our government as if the government is the savior. It's called statism. It's making a god of the state. And evangelicals, unfortunately, have fallen into that and have been trapped and betrayed by government leaders again and again.

Government has a function. We want the best possible people in it. That's why we pray for those in positions of authority. The Bible tells us to do that. But we do not look to the government to be our savior. Instead, we look to the one who is the savior, Jesus Christ, and we try to serve him.

And in the meantime, isn't it true that Jesus, like David, has his eyes alert for the faithful in the land? Isn't he looking for those who will serve him now and therefore will also dwell with him in glory at the end of time? Jesus is looking for people like that in the church.

He's looking among us to see if we'll be one of them. Will you? Will you be one of those faithful ones who tries as best as possible to serve Jesus Christ? The way to do it is by keeping as close to him as possible and serving him always and doing it in the best way that you can.

Our Father, we are thankful for this Psalm and the time that we have had here to study it together. We recognize how practical some of these Psalms are, that they deal with even matters of government and personal morality and how we handle ourselves within the church, the home, and in business.

In all of that, we look to you to accomplish what we know we can't possibly accomplish in ourselves. So we pray asking that you'll bless this Psalm to our hearts and use it as a part of that continuing instruction we need in order that we might live more and more like Jesus Christ. For we look to him not only as the model but for the source of the power to do it. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

To learn more about the Alliance, visit AllianceNet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians, or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888.

Please take the time to write to us and share how The Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep The Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come.

You can do so at our website, AllianceNet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support and for listening to The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.