What is the Right Response to God’s Word? The book of Revelation is a marvelous picture of responding to God’s word. On the one hand you have all of heaven in chapters 4 and 5 bowing in worship to God sitting on his throne, and to the Lamb at his side. The right response. Then you have repeated instances where it says, “And they refused to repent,” where earth-dwellers persisted in their rebellion against God. The wrong response. There are those who held to the testimony of Jesus, did not take the mark of the beast, refused to worship the beast, and worshipped Jesus alone. The right response. Then there are those who despite the preaching of the 144,000, despite the preaching of the multitudes who worship Jesus, despite the preaching of the 2 witnesses, despite even the preaching of angels and eagles, they took the mark of the beast, worshipped the beast, worshipped idols and demons, persisted in their sorcery, sexual immorality, murders and all sorts of others sins. The wrong response. What is our response to God’s Word?
Our sermon is titled “The Right Response To God’s Word, Part 2.” From Psalm 19:12-13. Last week we began to look at the right responses to God’s Word. We saw the first two: 1) Take Warnings Seriously, and 2) Be Motivated By Your Rewards. This week we look at the 3rd and 4th responses: 3) Be Humble About Your Blind Spots, 4) Do Not Sin Willfully. Next week we’ll look at numbers 5 and 6: 5) Make Your Heart & Mouth Pleasing To God, 6) See God as Your Rock & Redeemer.
#3 HUMBLE ABOUT OUR BLIND SPOTS (12)
The third right response to the Word of God is that we are humble about our blind spots. Notice verse 12 with me, “But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” David is not talking about sins he knows about that he hides from other people. He is talking about sins that he himself isn’t even aware of. The attitude of a godly person is not only to be humble about the sins they are aware of, but also the sins they aren’t aware of in their lives.
But this is the effect of God’s word on us: God’s word not only makes us see clearly our sins, but it also makes us realize our sin runs way deeper than we actually know. David knew he had faults that were hidden from his own eyes. “The heart,” Jeremiah 17:9 famously says, “is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Indeed we cannot understand the depth of the incurable deceitfulness in our own hearts. But God’s word humbles us, and makes us come to see that we can’t even see all the ways that we sin. David is convicted that he has blind spots and that the ways he offends God are far more than he can see as he looks in the mirror.
Let me emphasize a contrast. This is not the same thing as a stubborn, rebellious person who has no fear of God, who won’t listen to correction or rebuke, who is blinded by their pride, and who grows increasingly blind to their sinfulness as they keep going in sin. That is 180 degrees different from where David’s posture is here. David cares deeply about not sinning, the other person doesn’t care about sin.
Psalm 19 is David expressing the careful, attentive concern of a godly man, a man who wants all his life to be pure and clean. This isn’t a man who is trying to hide his sin, but a man who wants to find it, bring it into the light before God and confess it so he can be cleansed of it. “Forgive my hidden faults!”
Its not just the humility of acknowledging he’s more sinful than he knows, its the movement towards God David has to seek God’s mercy for his hidden faults: ‘FORGIVE! Forgive my hidden faults!” He wants no leaven on the table out in the open in the house of his life, and he wants no leaven in the dark corners of the basement either. His He wants everything in the light of his life and in the dark to be pure in God’s eyes.
And here’s the thing: God’s word starts showing us that while we don’t see all our sins, God does. The song of Moses is recorded in Psalm 90, and in verse 8 it says, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.” Everything that is in the dark spots of our lives is as though it is in the light to God.
Paul instructed and assured the believers in 1 Cor 4:5 when he said, “The Lord judges. Therefore judge nothing before the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.” God knows what is hidden; He sees everything in the “dark” as though it is in the light and in His time He will bring everything that is in the dark out into the light.
Turn to Hebrews 4:13 with me and see this brought home even more powerfully, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” Nothing is covered up and hidden from God’s eyes. Nothing is in the dark to God’s eyes. And at judgment God will bring it all out.
Put a pin in this verse and think about what 1 Timothy 5:24 says, “The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them.” The thought here is that some sins are in the light, obvious to all, and to God, so that when a person arrives to judgment God says, “Your reputation precedes you. We’ve heard all about your sins.” But then there are people whose sins are in the dark, no one knows about them, they’re hidden. But not to God. WHen they arrive at judgment they’re hoping those sins are buried in the dark, lost and forgotten forever. But they’re not. God points over their shoulder and says look behind you, here come those sins you hid in the dark and thought you could keep hidden. They’ve followed you all the way here.” Why? Because God sees what is in the dark. God remembers that which is forgotten. Time does not diminish God’s memory, or the anger He has towards sin.
APPLICATION: Seek Forgiveness for your hidden sins. “Forgive my hidden faults” David says. God won’t forget your sins. But he will forgive them. Do not go through this life hoping that God has a bad memory. Do not hope that just because you forgot your sins that God will too. As a matter of fact, the only way to make God forget your sins is to believe that Jesus died for your sins and ask Him to forgive you for your sins. If you do that, God says in Hebrews 10, “I will remember their sins no more and forgive all their wickedness.”
APPLICATION: Don’t go easy on yourself while you go hard on others. Being humble and acknowledging you have blindspots will make you more humble when it comes to the faults of other people. In other words, don’t be the kind of person that is so energetically scrutinizing of the way other people sin while you’re way more easy on yourself. Certainly don’t go around acting like you have no sin and that you have no hidden faults. Don’t forget your obvious sins, and don’t be blind to the fact that you have blindspots.
#4 DO NOT SIN WILLFULLY (v13)
The fourth way that is right in responding to God’s word is this: Do Not Sin Willfully. Because of God’s Word we should not sin willfully. Notice verse 13, “…..”
All sin is sin. But not all sins are the same. There are three kinds of sins: sins committed out of ignorance, sins committed out of weakness, and sins committed willfully. God is more merciful towards sins of ignorance, and more severe towards willful sins. In other words, how informed and how willing you are to sin are factors. Jesus said of judgment in Luke 12, “The servant who knows his master’s will and does not do it (willful) will be beaten with many blows. The one who does not know (ignorance) and does things deserving of punishment will be beaten with few blows.”
Sins committed out of ignorance are sins people commit not realizing they are sins. The Law of Moses recognized such sins in Leviticus 4 and Numbers 15. In the NT we see Jesus’ prayer while they’re nailing him to the cross, “Father forgive them they know not what they’re doing.” Peter tells the Jews in Acts 2 that they acted in ignorance when they rejected Christ. Paul said of himself in 1 Timothy 1:13, “I used to be a blasphemer…but I received mercy because I acted ignorantly and in unbelief.” This is what David is saying in the previous verse, verse 12, “Forgive my hidden faults.”
Another example is when King Abimalek took Sarah as his wife (Genesis 20) , he did so ignorant of the fact she was married to Abraham. She and Abraham lied and told the king she was Abraham’s sister, so Abimelech was ignorant he was committing sin. God is far more merciful towards these sins – which is why God kept Abimelech from touching her, came to him in a dream, warned him and gave him the chance to make the situation right. He was ignorant, and was about to sin because he was ignorant of that sin.
Then there are sins of weakness – which are just that: we commit sins because we are weak in some way. We know its sin, but we’re weak against it. It may be because we are not strong enough to resist temptation and we haven’t yet mastered our flesh. Or we may be weak because of worldly pressure and we compromise out of a fear of what others think. This would be Peter when he was rebuked by Paul in Galatians 2 for causing division between Gentile and Jewish believers. Paul is describing sins of weakness in Romans 7:18-19, “I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out. The things I don’t want to do [that are sin], I keep on doing. The things I want to do [that are good], I don’t do. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death!” Paul is describing his weakness in his struggle against sin. He’s not ignorant of sin, and he’s not proudly walking in sin. He is struggling and feeling his weakness against it. With sins of weakness, we don’t want to sin, we feel guilty over sin, we don’t defend them and rejoice in them, and we have a sense of misery over our weakness against them. It makes us turn to God’s grace more fully, looking to Jesus as our Redeemer – like Paul in Romans 7 and David in Psalm 19 we look to Jesus as our Rock of Salvation and our Redeemer from sin!
Then we come to willful sins. David in Psalm 19 is mindful of willful sins. Willful sins are those done out of arrogant insolence. They know God’s view on them but they don’t care. Some translations say, “presumptuous sins” and that is another great way to translate it. The point is these are sins committed with arrogance, presumption, insolence, and disregard for God. God used phrases like “You have shoved me behind your back” to describe this attitude of sinners. Let me point out 2 things here:
First, willful sins will enslave you. Notice David’s concern, “May they not rule over me.” Here is something to be soberly aware of: if you persist willfully in a sin and refuse God’s correction, that sin will eventually enslave you. Presumptuous sins that you repeat over and over, will become dominant sins that enslave you.
You may be exercising your “will” in the beginning, but sin is a master, enslaving you one sin at a time, until you lose any shred of ability to say “No” to it. You start out all arrogant: “I’m going to do what I want” and “No one’s gonna tell me what to do,” and you end up a miserable slave to that sin. Because you kept slavishly giving yourself over to it, it has now become your master.
That’s the nature of what sin does: it enslaves. It’s like Cain. Turn to Genesis 4 with me. Read verse 6-7. Sin desires to have Cain. The word is used only 3 times in the OT.
- Once in Genesis 3 where it say Eve’s desire will be for her husband, and in context it means her competing with her husband for marital headship. In other words she will seek to control him. Its a condition of the fall, the frustration of roles and attitudes within marriage relationships.
- The second use of the word is with Cain, where sin wants to control and be the master of Cain.
- The third use is romantic and positive, but you’ll see the connection with the other verses. In the lovers book of Song of Songs 7:10, the bride says, “I belong to my beloved, and his DESIRE is for me.” He wants his way with her, in a romantic way.
That’s what sin wants with all of us – to have its way with us. To subdue us and become our masters, enslaving us, doing whatever it wants with us, making us do whatever it wants.
In the OT, when God brought the Israelites into the land, they were told to live righteously, according to God’s law, in order to stay in the land. They were told to worship God alone, and not any foreign gods from other nations around. But the Israelites disobeyed, persistently, willfully, until God finally judged them and removed them from the land. But you have to understand the perspective: living in Israel required worshiping the God of Israel. But since they worshipped gods from other nations while in their own land, God judged them by removing them off the land and sending them into captivity of other nations. In other words, if they wanted to worship foreign gods, they would be sent to the lands of those foreign gods. The point is God gave them over to that which they worshipped so that they would become enslaved and ruled by it.
If you persist in worshipping your sin and serving it rather than God, you will end up becoming enslaved by it.
APPLICATION: You must kill sin in the egg. You must not give an inch to sin. If you give sin an inch you have given it a mile. If you let it rule one inch you will let it rule every inch of your life. That is because if you indulge and justify one inch, it becomes easier to justify and indulge the next inch. You must be ruthless with your own sinful temptations. That is why God told Cain, “Sin desires to have you, but you must MASTER it.”
APPLICATION: Jesus sets free from sins enslavement. “All who sin are a slave to sin,” he told the Jews in John 8. But, “whoever the Son sets free is free indeed.” Jesus sets us free from the bondage of sin. Paul said in Romans 6, “For sin shall no longer be your master, for you are not under the law, but under grace.” Until Jesus sets you free from your enslavement to sin you are a slave to sin and under God’s judgment. And unless you see Jesus as your emancipator from sin, you are not seeing Jesus rightly. This is why David said in verse 14, “My Rock and my REDEEMER!”
Secondly, God’s help is required to keep us from being ruled by our willful sins. Notice David’s prayer, “Keep your servant from willful sins…” A blameless and innocent life is not done for God APART from Him. Its done in total dependence on Him. David is asking God to keep him from being ruled by those willful sins. He’s reaching up to God for God’s powerful intervention in his life to prevent him from becoming arrogant and presumptuous and insolent, BECAUSE he does not want to become enslaved by such sins.
APPLICATION: There is no faithful walking in holiness and avoiding sin without the empowerment of God. “Lead us not into temptation,” Jesus taught the disciples to pray. We need God’s leading and beseech Him to lead us away from temptation. But when we are tempted we need God’s help getting out of it without sinning. That’s why 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Then Paul famously said, “But BY the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10. You and I cannot avoid willful sins and avoid being ruled by them without the enabling work of God in our lives. “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh,” Galatians 5:16.
APPLICATION: Stop trying to live for God. Stop trying to live for God without God helping you. Stop trying to do it on your own for God. We mistakenly think it is noble, and well-intended, but it is misguided, and unspiritual. Anything done for God utterly depends on God.
- What else did Paul mean when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ,” Galatians 2:20 famously says, “and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Or when Paul told the Philippians that it was God who worked in them to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purposes.”
- This is why our Statement of Faith says this about the Holy Spirit, which is very similar to all doctrinally sound churches, “We believe that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, and during this age to convict men, regenerate the believing sinner, and to indwell, guide, instruct, gift, and EMPOWER the believer for godly living and service.” We understand that living godly means dependence upon God.
CONCLUSION
We are responding to God’s word the right way when we 1) take the warnings seriously, 2) are motivated by our reward, 3) are humble about our blind spots, and 4) do not sin willfully