Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Psalm 16:3
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

To begin with, I’ll read the first three verses of Psalm 16. “Preserve me, O God, for in thee do I put my trust. O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, thou art my Lord. My goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.”

Let’s pray. Father God, we thank you that you have brought us to a position where we acknowledge before you and bow the knee to your majesty, to your kingship, and to your lordship over us, your creatures. We thank you, Father, that we as a congregation have said that you are our Lord and our Savior and our King. And we pray now that you would bless us by helping us understand your scriptures, the law of the King as it pertains to our relationships to one another and to you. We pray, Lord God, that you would bless this message now, that you would bless the word to our hearts. We’d receive it with joy and gladness. We’d receive it to the purpose of obeying it. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Last week we talked about the balance of Psalm 16, and I said then that we would deal with the third verse specifically in another talk. And then in a couple weeks we’ll talk about prayer, which is where Psalm 16 starts—with a prayer of David. We’ll deal with that in Psalm 17 in the next couple of weeks.

In any event, basically what we said last week was that Psalm 16 relates first and foremost to Jesus Christ. It also, of course, relates to David who wrote it, and also relates to us who have been called by Christ to conform ourselves to his image. Psalm 16 basically is a psalm that expresses the delight of the servant to his master. Jesus Christ delighted that Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, was his Lord, his Adonai, his sovereign in this life. And that sovereign is an Elohim, or a strong one, before him to deliver him from his enemies and from sin and death.

And we should have that same mind about us—that Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, covenant God to his people, is our God. And he has brought us into covenant relationship with him in Jesus Christ. And we then should acknowledge that and obey him in everything that we put our hand to do. He should always be at our right hand, controlling and guiding everything that we say and do.

And today specifically, I thought we should look at something very simple really. And I hope I don’t spend too much time belaboring the point this morning or making it more complicated than it is. What we want to talk about is very simple: the fact that God delights in us, which we find in verse three where it says that my goodness extendeth not to thee but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight. And remember that this is first and foremost relating to Jesus Christ and to God himself.

So I want us to recognize this morning that God delights in us. On the basis of that, then we should delight in what he tells us to delight in, and that includes that we should delight also in the saints, the excellent ones, the called ones of his.

To that end, I thought first just to get a visual image in our mind: in verse three, the word “delight”—the Hebrew word used there is *chefetz*, which means to incline or to bend toward something, or to be pleased with something. Therefore, to delight in something is to bend toward it. And God bends toward us, of course, in Jesus Christ, and calls us to himself. It’s a bending down, a condescension as it were, of him to his creatures.

Remember in the confession it tells us that God makes himself known through covenant because he desires to reveal himself to his people. He bends toward his people and reveals himself in the scriptures and in the covenant of grace. So that’s the basic word we’re talking about this morning: delight.

Now there are other biblical words used for delight, and we’ll talk about one of those a little later. But most of what we’re going to have to say today is that type of delight where God bends toward his people, and we should bend toward one another.

We see here that God delights, but we also notice there’s a qualifier: that God delights in the saints and in the excellent.

This time of the year we hear a lot about the good message of peace on earth, and it’s a good and great thing that once a year all of our country basically comes to think about Jesus Christ—perhaps in not the correct way in many cases—but they have to acknowledge the importance of Christmas. The Christmas carols, of course, remind us of the finished victory of Christ, the initiation of his kingdom, and we take great delight in those carols here in this church. And there are many of those carols that talk about the peace on earth that he brings.

But if you read the New American Standard Translation of when the angels proclaim that peace on earth, it’s qualified by this saying: that there’s peace on earth to those with whom he is pleased. To those with whom the Savior is pleased, or with whom God is pleased, there is peace on earth, and Christ came to bring that. But to those in whom he is not pleased—to those who are rebellious and covenant breakers, and who walk not in faithfulness to that covenant—there is no peace on earth. There is great dis-peace. There’s unpeace. There’s war. There’s other problems on earth. And that’s because they’re not turning to Jesus Christ for salvation.

But in any event, the delighting in the saints is qualified by the fact that it’s a delight in the saints. We read, for instance, in Numbers 14:8 where the two spies came back from the land to give the report of the land—whether or not the people of Israel should go into Canaan. They said, “If God delights in us, he’ll give us this land. Only rebel not and don’t be fearful.” Another qualifier: if God delights, he may not delight. And why would God not delight in these people if they rebel or if they’re fearful? If they say there are other gods in that land who are stronger than our God, and therefore we won’t have victory—if they rebel against what they know to be the voice of God—then God will not delight in those people.

So there are qualifiers to whom God delights in.

What are some of the considerations of the scriptures about that delight?

In Proverbs 11:20, we read that God delights in the upright in their walk. So it’s not just people who are thinking correct thoughts about him or have good emotions toward God. No, it’s the upright in their walk. Those who walk blamelessly—they conduct their lives in accordance to the word of God.

Proverbs 11:1 says that God delights in a just way. And we could spend hours talking about what the implications of that are. And for those of us who are fortunate enough to know Judge Beers when he was still with us here on this earth, they would know the implications of that statement about God delighting in a just weight. And we as God’s people should delight in that just weight also, and not delight in things like the Federal Reserve and in rubber-yard sticks such as the current monetary policies of this country are. We need to return to just weights and measures. But it also talks about justice. Just weights and measures talk about us and our dealings with one another, our fairness, our equity in our relationship to our family members, to our extended family here in this church.

So God delights in just weights and measures.

Proverbs 12:22 says that God delights in those who deal faithfully with one another, and it’s contrasted to people that have lying lips. So truthfulness and faithfulness to each other should be a qualifier to those people that God delights in. If we deal with covenant faithfulness to each other in this covenant community, then God will delight in us.

Proverbs 15:8: “The prayer of the upright”—God delights in the prayer of the upright. And it’s contrasted to the sacrifice of the wicked. When we talk about Psalm 17 in the next couple of weeks, we’re going to consider the question of whether or not God hears the prayers of unbelievers, or if God hears the prayers of professed believers who walk not in the law of God, who are antinomian. This verse 15:8 is a clue to the answer to that question we’ll find in Psalm 17. The prayer of the upright is delighted in by God. The sacrifice of the wicked and the prayers of the wicked—he has no delight in.

Jeremiah 9:24 sort of sums up maybe some of these things, and it’s always been a favorite verse of mine. When my wife and I went to Allen Avenue Baptist Church, there’s a man there who drew up a little melody to this, and we would sing this occasionally. Steve Nelson probably remembers it. I don’t know if you remember the tune or not, but if it comes back to you, maybe we’ll learn it here. It’s a good way to memorize scripture.

Anyway, in Jeremiah 9:23 and 24, it says: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him that glories glory in this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, which exercises loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,’ says the Lord.”

God delights in kindness, in judgment, and in righteousness. And because of his delight in those things, those are qualifiers to the people that he delights in.

And you’ll notice, too, by the way, that it says that because he delights in these things, he exercises them in the earth. And I think it’s important, as we’re in the middle of the Christmas season, to meditate a little bit in the coming week and a half, couple of weeks, in your devotions on the fact that Jesus came to earth and took on himself human form. And as a result of that, we know that salvation is not just related to the spiritual realm. We don’t have two gods—a god of the spirit and a god of the material. No, Jesus came in human form to redeem those of us in flesh and to redeem the entire created order. God delights in his physical creation as well.

And God’s judgment and justice is not postponed until the judgment day, as it were. Remember, we were talking several months ago about some of the foundations that possibly made their way into the Declaration of Independence. There was the idea amongst people then that the judgment of God was not imminent. It wasn’t a daily sort of a thing. It was put off to the end of time. And therefore, if we wanted to have good civil justice, we had to find other foundations for that justice.

Well, this says that God exercises these things in the earth presently. Kindness, judgment, righteousness are now present in the earth, and God exercises those things now. And that’s part of the message of Christmastime.

In Proverbs 29:17, we read another verse about delighting. And that is that we are instructed to correct our sons, and of course by implication our daughters. And if we do that, then they’ll comfort us. They’ll be a comfort to us, and they’ll also delight in us—they’ll cause us to delight in them rather.

So we see there a connection between the idea of disciplining and delighting, and that’s a very important verse. Of course, we could spend a lot of time talking about that and its implications in childrearing: if we don’t discipline our children, they will become not a delight to us and not a comfort to us. They’ll be quite a problem for us. And if our children are beginning to become great problems to us, perhaps we should look at this verse and see if our correction is in place.

In any event, there’s a connection there between delighting and discipline.

And indeed, in Proverbs 3:12, we read that “whom the Lord loves, he reproves,” as a father reproves the son in whom he delights. When we receive discipline from God, we should receive it as discipline and correction because it should remind us that God delights in us.

As Keith was saying last week during communion, it’s so important to understand that when hard times come for us who are part of the covenant community of God, it’s because God is disciplining us because he delights in us. He delights in us, and so brings about discipline. That’s extremely important.

And as a result of that, also, we know that in Psalms 18 and 19, David says this. He says, “They prevented me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me forth also into a large place. He delivered me because he delighted in me.”

So when we receive correction from God, problems in this earth, it should never be our fear that those problems are going to overwhelm us or somehow overtake us or destroy us. God delights in us as his covenant people, and he’s promised on the basis of that delight that he will save us. And David understood that, and we should as well.

We have hard times. Grievous things happen to us. We should understand that God delights in us. He’ll rescue us from those who seek to put an end to us, and that whatever he causes to come about in our life is as a result of his love and his delight in us.

God delights in us, and so he reproves those whom he delights. You know, David in the Psalms talks about how he was glad for the discipline of God, and glad that God would—the word there that’s used to purge David of his sins, that he talks about in one of the Psalms, is the word that means to wash or to beat a shirt. That sort of washing. And David delighted in that purging action of God in terms of David’s sin.

Why? Because the shirt, if it’s still being washed, if it’s still being disciplined, if it’s still being cleansed, is still in use. When the shirt is no longer disciplined, when the shirt is no longer cleansed, it’s because it’s thrown away and gone into disuse. So when reproof comes to us from God—discipline—we should delight in that. We should rejoice in that because it shows that God is still delighting in us and is still using us.

God is a God of covenant faithfulness. And if we sit in this congregation today, and the assumption is—and if you’re allowed to the communion table this afternoon—the assumption is that you’re walking in covenant faithfulness to the God who has called you in Jesus Christ to be his own, who’s marked you. God is a God of covenant faithfulness. And as a result of that, we understand that he delights in us.

This verse tells us that God delights in the saints, is excellent ones, and we should take great comfort and assurance in that.

One of the songs by one of the Messianic Jewish groups, Lamb, perform a lot of songs that are based upon scripture. And in Isaiah, I think, God tells us that he has engraved his people on the palms of his hands. Their walls are always before him. That’s the way God feels about us. He delights in us. He engraves us on the palms of his hands, and he’ll take care of us. More than take care of us—he’ll direct all things for our good and for our benefit.

Psalm 18, which we’ll be talking about in a few weeks, David says that the covenant people of God are the apple of God’s eye. We’re the apple of God’s eye. These things remind us of songs. I suppose we’ve heard about the apple of the eye in terms of a love relationship. And that’s not too bad an idea to have a song like that, because we know that God pictures his relationship to his covenant people as those of a faithful husband to a wife. God loves with that sort of love and devotion and covenant faithfulness. And we should delight in that. We’re his bride. And so God delights in us the way he has told us to delight in our brides. That should be a great source of comfort to us.

And also, it should teach us that we should therefore delight in God.

In Psalm 1:2, it talks about the man who—the upright as opposed to the wicked man. His delight is in the law of God. The same word there, delight.

In Psalm 37:4, it says, “Delight in the Lord, and he’ll give you the desires of your heart.”

Now there’s a different use. There’s a different word there that’s translated “delight.” The word translated “delight” there is a different Hebrew word, which has the implication in it not of “to bend toward,” but rather “to be soft or pliable unto.” When the scriptures tell us that we should delight in God, it’s not like God delighting in us. God delights in us by bending toward us, by reaching out to us. We delight in God by being soft and pliable and conforming ourselves to him. And there refers to his law.

That’s the kind of delight we have for God. And so it’s frequently said in the Psalms—in Psalm 119, of course—that David delighted in the laws, the testimonies, the statutes of God. And in Psalm 119:35, David says he delights in the path of the commandments. Again, the idea there is not just of a knowledge of the law of God, but the path of the commandments. That should be our delight.

Psalm 48 says David says, “I delight to do thy will.” And that should be our delight as well.

So we should delight in God, of course, and in his law because he delights in us.

But the third thing we wanted to talk about this morning—and this is where I want to spend most of our time—these other things are a reminder, I suppose, are important to remind ourselves though that God does delight in us. But the last thing is perhaps a little less often heard or stressed in our congregations.

The third thing is that we should therefore delight in the saints. We should delight in the saints, the excellent ones.

Why? First, we image God, of course, and we know that God delights in the saints, and that should be our attitude toward one another. Secondly, we know that David delighted in the saints. In Psalm 119:63, David—one of the models after which we’re to model ourselves in terms of covenant faithfulness—says that he is a companion of those that fear God and of those who keep God’s precepts. A companion. The word there for “companion” has the idea of joining together. And initially, originally, the word had the connotation almost as if brought together through a spell or an enchantment of some type. And we don’t believe in spells and enchantments here, but we do believe that there’s something to that union we have as brothers and sisters in the Lord and as a church that goes beyond simple covenant relationship in terms of law.

There’s more to it than just a legal binding nature to it. There’s a delight in companionship—or it should be a delight in the companionship of those who fear God and of those who keep his precepts. And again, you see David there imaging God. He delights not just in those who profess faith in Christ. He delights not in those who profess faith in the covenant God of Israel, rather, but he delights in those who keep his precepts—who prove by their walk that they’re in relationship to God.

In Psalm 101:6 and 7, it says: “My eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land that they may dwell with me. He that walks in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He that works deceit shall not dwell in my house. He that tells lies shall not tarry in my sight.”

You see again there David imaging God. God says, “If you’re going to dwell with me on my holy hill in Zion, then you can’t be a person who delights in lies. You have to be a person who delights in doing God’s will.” The faithful of the land were David’s companions. In the same way, then, the faithful of the land should be our companions—should be the ones whom we delight in, and particularly those people that God has called us into covenant relationship with in this church.

It’s interesting that it says that the saints in the earth and to the excellent—and the conjunctive there, the “and,” it’s not talking about a different group of people. It’s talking about the same people. The saints are called here the excellent ones of the land. It’s interesting that the same Hebrew word is translated in various ways in other verses as, for instance, “glorious,” “lordly,” “mighty,” “noble,” “worthy.” The whole idea there of calling the saints “excellent” is that they are pre-eminent. They’re special people. They’re lordly. They’ll be understood in an extremely important fashion as being important people before God.

And of course, this is by virtue of their relationship with the covenant God of Israel. We come together as fellow servants, fellow members of the king’s household. And we should treat each other with that kind of respect and with that kind of understanding of their personhood.

Apparently there was at one time a king named Ingo, an ancient king of the Dres, who, making a stately feast, appointed his nobles—at that time pagans—to sit in the hall below, and commanded certain poor Christians to be brought up into his presence chamber to sit with him at his table to eat and drink in his kingly cheer. And at this, many people wondered, of course, and he said that he accounted Christians, though never so poor, a greater ornament to the table and much more worthy of his company than the greatest peers unconverted to the Christian faith. For when these might be thrust down to hell, those might be his comfort and fellow princes in heaven. He understood that Christians were to be accounted a special place in his presence chamber, at his feast.

Modern corollary, I suppose, would be the banquets of state that President Reagan gives. And if you can imagine President Reagan saying to the various nobles of the land, the various cabinet members, “Sit down, while I have Christians here to sit with me because they’re more noble. They’re more eminent in God’s sight than you are.” That’s the sort of thing it’s talking about here. That’s the appreciation we should have for one another in this church.

It is an amazing thing that we can treat each other—for whom God shed the blood of his only son and sent him to death into the reaches of hell and brought him back again—we can treat those people, for whom God loves so much and has so much concern and compassion for, as if they were nothing, and not give them the special honor with which we should accord them.

It’s important we recognize that people in this church—we look at them, we should think of them in terms of the excellent ones in the earth.

John S., can you stand up? John S. is an excellent one in God’s sight. A saint, a called one for whom he gave his blood. Go ahead and sit down, John.

Vic. Vic is an excellent one in God’s sight. An honorable one. Glorious and a pre-eminent one in God’s sight. Go ahead and sit down.

Keith is an excellent one in God’s sight. And when we see Keith, we should think those things. Go ahead and sit down, Keith.

I won’t go through all of you if you’re worried about that. But I think it’s important that we recognize that application of it. It’s not just a verse here. And it’s not just head knowledge. And when we see each other in this church, we should think of them with that kind of regard.

What does that mean, then? That means that these people have been marked by baptism, covenant sign, as special—having special relationship to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He has counted them worthy of his company and of the sign that he gives to his covenant people, and we should count them worthy also.

He’s redeemed them, and so we should count them as the faithful of God.

In Isaiah 43, it says this: “But now thus says the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. When thou passes through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walks through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou was precious in my sight, thou has been honorable, and I have loved thee. Therefore, will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.’”

That’s the concern, love, and compassion that moves God toward action on behalf of his covenant people. That should be our apprehension of them as well.

We should have that same regard for them as God does when they go through the fires in this church—of trials and tribulations in their personal lives. We should be with them as God’s people, and as a presence of God to them, in times of trouble. As they go through the rivers that they would fear would overflow them—in terms of hard times or struggling with grief or death in the family—these sort of things we should be with them, upholding them the way God upholds them.

He’s called us forth to be his people and to minister unto his people.

What should our reaction be? Given these things, this kind of regard for their excellence, well, it says in Psalm 2—what it’s talking about in the context here is “my goodness extendeth not to thee,” to God. In other words, I can’t do anything that’s going to help God. Okay? You have to understand that God didn’t make us because he was lonely and needed companionship. He didn’t make us because he needs to be ministered to. No, we should minister to God, but we can’t do anything that helps God in that sense.

But what can we do? Our goodness can extend forward to the people that he has called. And that should be our reaction to a proper understanding of who we are in relationship to God. Our goodness should extend forth to our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Our good works, then, is what we’re talking about here. Our love for the brethren.

Romans 13:8—we’re told by God that “we shall owe no man anything,” and we’ve talked a little bit on that. We’ll talk more about that in the future, I suppose, in terms of a debt. It’s very important. “Except the continuing debt to love one another.” To love each other is a debt. I don’t know if any of you have ever been in great debt or not, but when you have a debt, it’s always on your mind. If you’re concerned about your financial affairs, you want to get rid of that debt if you know you shouldn’t be in debt.

In the same way, our indebtedness to love one another should be always on our mind. There should be a presence about us of loving one another. And there should be a realization that love is not just some sort of—as the judge used to say—”pashy gush.” Love should be action-oriented. The scriptures tell us that love is action for the best of the other person.

In 1 Thessalonians 3:12, there’s a linkage between the love that we have for one another to our position before Christ, and in 1 Thessalonians 4:9, Paul says: “You don’t need any instruction in terms of brotherly love. You receive that instruction from God. But you have practiced this with the Macedonians, and I’d urge you to do that even more.”

He’s saying that in terms of brotherly love, you’ve been doing these things toward the Macedonians, and I want you to do more. You see, love isn’t just a feeling they had for the Macedonians—they put that into action. It was good works. There’s a relationship there where Paul actually equates the two things: love and the action toward helping the saints in Macedonia.

Hebrews 13:1 says, “Let brotherly love continue.” And it’s interesting that it follows the section that we’ve talked a lot about where God has called us to himself into Mount Zion in Hebrews 12. And that section ends with the fact that God is a consuming fire. And on the basis of that, then he says, “Let brotherly love continue.”

In 1 Peter 1:21-22, he says this: “Who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God, seeing ye have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeignèd love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.”

Those verses tell us that there’s a linkage between our salvation and one of the purposes for which God has saved us, which is to love the brothers.

Now, we know that God has saved us in order to give glory and honor to him. But there’s a tremendous emphasis in the word of God upon loving the brethren. If you look at the Ten Commandments, which we know are binding upon us today, most of those—the second table of that set of commandments—has to do with our relationship with people. God has saved us because he now has put us in right relationship to him. He then calls us to, on the basis of that relationship with him, to give that love and concern and good works toward those people, the rest of the people that he has called to himself.

But he has called to himself. It’s like we were saved to serve God, and in part, an essential part of that service to God is our service to one another in the body of Christ.

You know, I suppose I need to say that because we have come out of churches that have stressed brotherly love to the extent that they’ve disregarded the commandments of God. And of course, we don’t want to fall into that sin. But neither do we want to ignore those things that God has told us to do. And there’s a tremendous amount of scriptural admonition to love the brethren.

And in fact, the scriptures tell us that the commandments are contained in: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” So it’s theonomic to love our brothers. It’s theonomic to act in good works toward each other in this church.

It’s kind of interesting, you know, because I wanted to just talk on a few of the things mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 here. And you know, Steve Nelson asked last week about preparation of some of these talks. And basically what I try to do is read the verses, meditate on them, read them several times—maybe five, ten times—meditate upon the psalm we’re going to talk about, see what in that psalm applies to what we need to have here in this church. Pretty well set my mind, and then I go to commentaries after I’ve done my studying and done my cross-referencing to other verses. And I like then to look at as many different perspectives on the verses in place as possible. I use Spurgeon, I use Derek Kidner, I use Matthew Henry, and then I try to take the various works written by Reconstructionists in the last five years and see if there’s any reference to the verses we’re talking about, to the principles involved in those books.

And you know, as I looked at 1 Corinthians 13, there was an absence of comments on those verses in the various works by Reconstructionists that I tried to find it in. I suppose it’s a question of emphasis. I suppose 1 Corinthians 13 has been preached enough in this country perhaps. But on the other hand, I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t be more attentive to these concepts of brotherly love and body life than we have been in the Reconstruction movement. And maybe it would take care of some of the things that have occurred in the last few years in the Reconstruction position.

In any event, I just wanted to mention that I think it’s important that we go through these things and understand that God has called us to act in obedience to these command words in his relationship to other people in the church.

1 Corinthians 13, then, we want to talk about practical application. How do we delight in the saints? And I thought that probably the best thing to do is just review briefly the things that God tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, the definition of love, because that’s what we’re being called to do: to love the brethren.

1 Corinthians 13, verse 4: “Charity, and we know the word there, charity is actually love. Charity suffers long and is kind.”

Charity, love, is longsuffering. The New American Standard translates that “patient.” We should be patient toward one another. We know that God is patient with us. We know that our growth in grace is a gradual growth in grace and in sanctification. We accept that gladly when it relates to us, and we greatly rejoice and thank God that he doesn’t require a radiant sanctified life of us when we become Christians.

It takes a long time to reform ourselves according to the word of God. You never do it completely. One of the models of the Reformation was “a reformed church always reforming.” This church is that same way. We’re a reformed church always reforming. We want to expose our church, what we do, to the light of God’s word in a corrective fashion throughout its existence. And we as individuals should be the same thing. We never arrive. We should be a reformed people continually reforming.

And we should recognize that of each other when we see faults in those other people in the church that we know, and we see sins in their lives, and we see them falling short in certain areas. We should recognize the fact that God is doing a work in their life. Assess where they’re at in their own spiritual life. How long have they been Christians? Is this a problem of rebellion on their part? Is it a problem of not understanding how the word of God relates? Be patient with one another and longsuffering.

Now, on the other hand, of course, we don’t want to be patient if there’s grievous sin involved. There’s always a matter of balancing here. We can’t, if our brother commits a sin that calls for church discipline or discipline of the civil magistrate, we can’t overlook that and be patient with it. But there are many other sins that we involve ourselves in daily that we don’t even know are sins yet because God is patient with us and causing us to grow in grace. We should have that kind of patience with each other in this church.

It’s wrong and sinful to just look at each other—if they’re trying to figure out what they’re doing wrong at this point in their walk.

Love is patient. Love is suffering long. Love is kind.

You know, it reminded me when we teach the kids in Sabbath school. One of the verses we always like to teach them, if they don’t know it yet, and review it frequently, is a little chorus that says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” And that’s a quotation from the writings of Paul. And it’s important, of course, down there, to keep kids to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other. And we should have that same sort of attitude up here.

We should be kind toward each other. I think that has the implication of being kind: that we should be actively searching out those things whereby we can reach out, we can bend toward, we can delight in other members of the congregation. To be kind to people is to be ready to do good works for them and actually seeking out ways in which we can accomplish those things in their lives, and being ready to help them and looking for that opportunity.

1 Timothy 6 says we should be generous and ready to share with the holy ones of God. We should be ready to share. We can’t be ready to share if we don’t understand the people we’ve been covenanted together with in this church. We don’t know them well. We should be kind.

Love envies not. Love doesn’t envy. It’s not jealous. We should, rather—the positive side of this—we should rejoice in the blessings that God brings upon a specific family or a couple or individual in our church. If they have blessings from God, we should rejoice in that. We shouldn’t be envious.

You know, all these things, as I was studying through them, reminded me of the Sermon on the Mount. And you remember what Reverend Rushdoony said a few weeks ago in one of the tapes we were listening to in the question-and-answer time? It wasn’t like Jesus was saying, “This is a new law I’m giving you.” He said, “It says in the law don’t kill, don’t murder. Says but I say if you have hatred in your heart for your brother, you’re guilty of murder. Says don’t commit adultery. If you have lust in thoughts, you’ve committed adultery.”

There are implications to the law that go far beyond the original specific commandment “thou shalt not kill.” There’s a whole range of case law that help us interpret that in the Old Testament. And then there’s all these scriptures in the New Testament that help us understand what that law means.

As we read through 1 Corinthians 13, what it’s talking about here is the implications of the Ten Commandments and specifically the second table as it relates to our relationships with one another. So it’s not as if he’s giving us new commandments with these things. These are implicit in the original commandment. And by the way, they’re also implicit in the way he deals with us, his patience toward us.

Love doesn’t envy. We should rather be rejoice in the benefits that those around us accrue to ourselves. That’s a hard one, by the way. That sounds really easy, you know, just don’t be jealous and don’t feel bad when somebody gets something and you don’t have it. Boy, that’s tough. Why does God tell us it here? Because it is tough. And he wants us to remind ourselves to do that.

And so this week or next week, if you have an opportunity where you might start to begin to feel jealous towards somebody else, check yourself. Don’t just say, “Well, I can’t do it.” Check yourself from the word of God and say, “That’s wrong. I want to repent of that before God and turn from that jealousness or that enviousness and turn to God in prayer and have him help me with it.”

These things aren’t easy. It’s easy to gloss over them. It’s much tougher to apply them. But that’s our obligation in this church toward one another: to apply them in covenant faithfulness.

Love doesn’t envy. Love is not boastful or conceited. Love doesn’t brag. Love isn’t arrogant. Boastfulness or conceitedness produces an attitude of separating us from the people that we’re around. We’re better somehow, and so we’re separate. The very reverse of what these verses have called us to do, that we’ve talked about this morning. We’re to delight in the saints. We’re to consider other people as more important as ourselves. We’re to have relationship with one another and not be separate from them.

Philippians 2:3 of course talks about this and gives us the model of it: Jesus Christ. “Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than themselves. Esteem people better than yourself. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”

He goes on to talk about his ministry among men. That’s the mind that Jesus Christ had—the Son of God, God himself—when he came to this earth.

You imagine, I mean, the humanity of Christ. He lived 33 years on this earth out of his love and concern for us. Thirty-three years in that body of obedience to the law of God and obedience to the commandments of the second table as well. That’s the kind of servant attitude that Jesus Christ had. That’s the kind of servant attitude God calls us to have in this church: to not be conceited, to not be separatist, to be involved in the affairs of the church, to be involved in each other’s lives, and to count other people as more important than ourselves.

A lot of talk these days, you know, about how you have to have a good self-esteem before you can go on to love others. You got to love yourself first. Well, I’ve always maintained—because the scriptures maintain—the word of God tells us no man hates his own body. Every man loves himself. God says, “None of us is going to, you know, do things that are harmful to ourselves. We will try as much as we can to help ourselves because we love ourselves.”

Now, it’s true that it is important for the people of God to recognize and accept the forgiveness offered in Jesus Christ and to understand the basis of that being in Christ’s doings and dyings and not our own. And it’s important, as I mentioned earlier, to recognize that God delights in us. But that’s a far different thing than to try to build up some sort of love for ourselves so we can help others. God calls us to just the reverse. He says, “You already love yourself. Now put the interest of yourself lower than those people around you in the church I’ve called you to minister unto, and indeed to the rest of the body of Christ all over the world as well.”

Love doesn’t act unseemly. Charity becomes not itself. It’s not puffed up. Does not behave itself unseemly or coarsely around each other. It’s important to recognize that.

Of course, love seeks not her own. And this is what we were talking about before in relationship to others. We don’t seek out our honor, our praise, or our glory. We try to find ways to honor and praise and glory the strengths and values of other people and to try to assist them in their walk before God—not seeking our own love.

Love is not easily provoked. I think one of the implications there is a restrictions we have to put on our emotions. People may rub us the wrong way. People may irritate us because we’re different personality types, for whatever reason. It doesn’t make any difference. It says love is not easily provoked.

Now, it does say “not easily provoked,” and I suppose eventually you would be provoked if there’s a real problem, but you shouldn’t be easily provoked. And when we have dealings with other people, people here in the church, if we find ourselves being easily provoked, then we should go to God in repentance for that and say, “Help me put a check on my emotions, on my emotional side of my walk. Help me to love this brother. Help me not to be easily provoked by him.”

These are the things that God has called us to do practically in this church.

Love thinks no evil. And the implication there could be—the actual Greek word means “to reason out evil.” And you could see in that the implication, along with the “believing all things” verse later on in the verse. Those things go together to teach us that when we have a problem with a believer in the body here—a member of the body—and we think there might be a problem, we shouldn’t reason out evil. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions about his relationship.

In other words, we’ve got a problem. Well, I’ll give you an example. I was reading in the paper a couple of weeks ago about Gordon Shadburn and his letter in Portland to some churches saying, “You know, homosexuality is not a good thing. We should convert these people to Christianity into heterosexuality, and we should minister to the homosexuals.” And he called the homosexual community “a society of Satan,” I believe. A little strong for county commissioner, but I think he’s right on. I mean, that’s obvious. The scriptures teach that homosexuality is a grievous sin before God.

And anyway, in the Oregonian was quoting this article on him. It quoted a man from the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. We expect that out of Ecumenical Ministries, right? If you know anything about them, they’re not going to be against that kind of thing.

Randy Roth, president of the Greater Portland Association of Evangelicals—now, that’s a group that is supposedly more Bible-believing, and you’d expect a little more biblical position from them. Randy Roth supposedly said, “At this point, I would want to distance myself from Gordon in that letter. I’m not tied into that.” And it seemed like here was a man who was not honoring men of God as they take hard positions. That’s what it seemed like. But I told my wife as we got this—I was very upset. Said the possibility always exists that the man was misquoted.

I called him. I called him for several days, left messages, and finally he got back to me the next week. And indeed, he was terribly misquoted. He says the only thing he told the reporter in the Oregonian was that he hadn’t seen the letter, and since he hadn’t seen it, he couldn’t comment on it. He also said the letter was not put out by the Oregon Association of Evangelicals. But as it turns out, Shadburn sits on the board of the Greater Portland Association of Evangelicals. I mean, it’s not like they were saying we don’t like this at all. According to the pastor that I talked to, he said they were terribly misquoted.

Would have been easy there to jump to a wrong conclusion about them. And I suppose I did to a certain extent. And we can find ourselves doing that in this church as well.

I don’t mind mentioning a specific incident that happened several months ago when one of our families moved. There was a joke told about an article of furniture that was owned by the church. And I don’t know how much detail we need to get into, but some people, on the basis of little or no evidence, jumped to the conclusion that this family had absconded with something that belonged to the church. Now, it just wasn’t true. It was a complete misunderstanding and grew out of an innocent, you know, an innocent joke or pulling one’s leg. But the point is, when we hear things like that and we have the capability of thinking either that person has actually sinned or maybe I’ve had the information wrong, maybe somebody’s misquoted—we should do this thing here. We should believe all things. We shouldn’t reason out evil. We shouldn’t jump to wrong conclusions about that brother and assume right away that he’s in sin.

You know, I’m convinced these last couple of years, as we’ve been a church, may sound a little strange, but I don’t want to say that God tricks us, but God certainly tests us, and then he evaluates that testing. You see that pattern throughout scripture. God will put incidences into your life where you have the opportunity to think worse of a brother—to think that a brother has fallen into some kind of sin or is not treating you correctly or not treating somebody else correctly.

I’m warning you, don’t jump to that conclusion. Don’t act on the basis of the fact that you know that person has sinned. Find out what’s really going on, if it’s your business, because I’ve jumped to wrong conclusions. Other people in this church have jumped to wrong conclusions, and then you really have to repent before God for your grievous sin against your brother in this church.

God’s going to give you opportunity. He’s going to test your willingness to think the best or to believe all things about people in this church. He’s going to test that. And I’m just reminding you now so when it happens, answer that test based upon the command word of God, which commands us to believe all things about our brothers in the church and to not reason out evil.

Love rejoices in the truth. Part of that same thing, the positive side. We should rejoice in the truth. We should rejoice in the truthful walks of those around us. We should know those things and rejoice in them.

Love bears all things. Now, Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 uses the same word, and he says that I had it coming to me to be supported by your money as I performed the service that I performed. He says, “But I didn’t take that money. I bore that because I didn’t want to be a hindrance to the gospel.” You get the implication there.

He was due money for his ministry to the Corinthians, but he bore without complaining because he didn’t want to be a hindrance to the gospel. He didn’t want the Corinthians saying, “You’re only doing this for the money.” He bore that instead.

When our relationships go out in this church, we’re going to have times we’re going to bear things. Okay? Now, that doesn’t mean you put up with blatant sin, but it means that if you’re in a situation where a thing can be overlooked easily—where it isn’t an important and central part of your relationship—you can bear those things. A brother’s not treating you correctly. You don’t have to get even. Every time you can bear those things. You don’t want to be a hindrance to the fellowship and to that particular person’s growth in grace.

Paul recognized the Corinthians at that point in time were young Christians, immature Christians who didn’t understand things. Their mind was still basically conformed to the world. They hadn’t had time to conform it to the word of God yet. On the basis of that, he forbore payment for his services and bring it up because he didn’t want to be a hindrance to the work of the gospel in their life as God used it to bring them into sanctification.

Be patient with one another. Bear up under things that they do wrong, occasionally, if you know that it’s a part of their condition in their early walk in Christ—bear up under those things.

You know, we think of something the Garretts always say—you know, if people sort of feel down or start to feel sorry for yourself because somebody isn’t giving you money or helping you out or being more kind to you—they say, “We’ll have a pity party for you.” You know, pity for you. And we’re not supposed, you know, to be that kind of self-sorrowing, self-pitying people. We’re not supposed to be that way. We’re to recognize that those people are being worked on by God also. And that God is our defender and our shield. We don’t have to feel sorry. We know that God has brought all these things together for our own good and is maturing us to the image of Jesus Christ.

Love seeks the other person’s good, as Paul did of the Corinthians, and as you will do to those that you bear up under.

Love believes all things, and we talked about that a little bit.

Love hopes all things.

Love endures all things. These are some very practical ways to apply the concept of delighting in the saints in this church and loving one another: enduring, hoping for the best for those people, believing these things. These are all action-oriented words.

Remember, love is not an emotion we have for one another in this church. Love is action. We’re to act for the best of the people in the church. We know it’s best for them because the word of God tells us it’s best for them.