Psalms 101:1 NASB
“I will sing of mercy and justice;
To You, Lord, I will sing praises.”
It is good, if possible, if we can use Bible study helps
like Bible Gateway and Bible Hub, which are both on the internet, mainly
because the English translations of the Bible do not always do justice to the
original text. But we should never use these in place of the Holy Spirit. And
we should not rely on commentaries to tell us what the Scriptures mean or to be
God’s voice to us. For they are the thoughts of humans who could be wrong
sometimes.
So, the psalmist said he would sing of God’s mercy and
justice, for it was to the Lord he was singing his praises. Now this word “mercy”
means goodness and kindness, and kindness is another word for grace. And this
word “justice” can also mean “judgment,” but it appears to carry with it the
meaning of God’s rulings, his decisions, his verdicts, and his sentences. For
our God is both a God of mercy (grace) and of justice (judgment).
Too many people these days are only teaching on God’s grace
but they are not teaching on God’s justice and judgments. And much of what is
being taught on the subject of grace is being perverted and taught in a way not
true to what God’s grace is all about. For Jesus Christ did not die on that
cross just to forgive us our sins so when we die we get to go to heaven. He died
to put sin to death in our lives so we would now obey him.
So the gospel is not all about Jesus saving us from our sins
so we can go to heaven when we die. Our salvation is all about us being
delivered from our slavery (addiction) to sin so we can now be slaves of God
and of his righteousness. It is all about us putting sin to death in our lives,
by God’s grace, so that we can now walk in holiness and in righteousness, in
walks of obedience to our Lord, for the glory and praise of God.
And the gospel is not all about grace. It is also about
justice and judgment. Yes, by genuine faith in Jesus Christ we can be saved
from our sins and have the hope of eternal life with God. But this grace has
provisions. We must die with Christ to sin and we must now walk in holiness and
in righteousness in obedience to our Lord. For if we continue to live in
deliberate and habitual sin, and if we do not walk in obedience to our Lord,
and if we do not walk in holiness and in righteousness, then the Scriptures
teach that we don’t know God, and he does not know us, and we don’t have
eternal life with God.
Psalms 101:2-4 NASB
“I will carefully attend to the blameless way.
When will You come to me?
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.
I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;
I hate the work of those who fall away;
It shall not cling to me.
A perverse heart shall leave me;
I will know no evil.”
When we believe in Jesus Christ with God-given faith, we are
crucified with Christ in death to sin, and we are raised with Christ to walk in
newness of life in him, created to be like God in true righteousness and
holiness. Our old self is crucified with him in order that the body of sin
might be brought to nothing, so that we will no longer be enslaved to sin but
to God and to his righteousness. For if sin is what we obey, it ends in death,
not life.
Therefore, we are to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies,
to make us obey its passions, for sin shall have no dominion (rule, control) over
us, for Jesus bought us back for God with his blood so that we would now honor
God with our lives. Now we are to walk (in conduct, in practice) not according
to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Sin is no longer to be what we
practice, but righteousness and obedience to our Lord are to be what we
practice.
Yet we cannot do this in our own flesh. It is impossible. We
can maybe do some behavioral modification in our own flesh, but we cannot walk
according to the Spirit in our flesh, for the flesh is opposed to the Spirit
and the Spirit is opposed to the flesh. So this in no way is about trying to
earn or to deserve our own salvation. It is us, in the power of God, walking in
the salvation we have already received by God’s grace.
But if we are truly in Christ by genuine faith in him, this
is what our lives should look like. We should be people of integrity. We should
walk in holiness and in righteousness in obedience to our Lord’s commands (New
Covenant). We should forsake lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, idolatry,
moral impurity, and faithlessness, etc. And we should live our lives on this
earth to please our Lord in all that we do and not to please our sinful flesh.
We should set no worthless or wicked thing before our eyes. This
is a big one! For we live in a generation, at least here in America, but in
other countries, too, when probably the majority of people are on the internet
either for work or for entertainment, and there is a whole world of evil on the
internet available to people at the touch of a finger on a pocket-sized
internet device, even in the privacy of a corner of a crowded room.
There is so much trash on TV, on the internet, on some music
videos (even some Christian ones), on some video games, and on social media (YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and tiktok, etc.). Most of it is just worthless,
but much of it is pure evil, and some of it beyond our imaginations and what we
do not want to imagine of evil, for those things should not even enter our
minds. So if we are going to be on the internet, we have to guard our minds.
But the Lord also uses these sites as places where we can
share the gospel of Jesus Christ, and where we can share Christian music and
Christian videos. But “Christian” can mean many different things to different
people, and so all that is called “Christian” may not be Christian, in reality.
But the internet and television have been the means of sharing the gospel with
people all over the world, and so it is being used for good, too.
So, if we are on the internet for good purposes, and not for
evil, still we have to guard our eyes and our minds, for there is much evil out
there which flashes across our eyes or which ends up in our social media feeds
or in the advertisements. So we have to be diligent to look away or to express
that we do not want to see those things and then to set our minds on things
above and not on things of the earth, or we could fall if we are not careful.
‘Til The Storm Passes By
By Thomas Mosie Lister
In the dark of the midnight have I oft hid my face
While the storm howls above me, and there's no hiding place
'Mid the crash of the thunder, Precious Lord, hear my cry
Keep me safe till the storm passes by
Many times Satan whispered
There is no use to try
For there's no end of sorrow, there's no hope by and by
But I know Thou art with me, and tomorrow I'll rise
Where the storms never darken the skies
Till the storm passes over, till the thunder sounds no more
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky
Hold me fast, let me stand in the hollow of Thy hand
Keep me safe till the storm passes by
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_obOSQoOpQ
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