Psalm 13:1-2

Introduction:

When it comes to Lament Psalms, like this one, I believe that you and I run the risk of being disconnected... or at the very least we run the risk of rushing to resolve.
And, I think the reason is that the lament Psalms are foreign to the Christian culture we are so comfortable in.
Whether we like to think of our culture in this way or not, we live in a culture of hope, answers, courtesy and niceties.
It’s in our songs both in worship and on the radio stations.
It’s in our paintings. Thomas Kinkade is the “painter of light,” painting happy little trees and happy little cottages where light plays freely and you feel like your “in heaven.”
It’s in the reality that we can find a “Christian” substitute for anything and everything that meets the standard definition of entertainment.

Transition:
In fact, I tend to identify most with C.S. Lewis most when it comes to the way we understand and seek to interpret and apply the Psalms.
C.S. Lewis in his book "Christian Reflections" (published in 1967), wrote,

"The dominant impression I get from reading the Psalms is one of antiquity... In that momentary proximity they are almost shockingly alien; creatures of unrestrained emotion, wallowing in self-pity, sobbing, cursing, screaming in exultation (pg.114) ... we shall find in the Psalms expressions of a cruelty more vindictive and a self-righteousness more complete that anything in the [Greek] classics. If we ignore such passages and read only a few selected favourite Psalms, we miss the point. For the point is precisely this: that these same fanatic and homicidal Hebrews, and not the more enlightened peoples, again and again -- for brief moments -- reach a Christian level of spirituality. It is not that they are better or worse than the Pagans, but they are both better and worse." (pg.116)

I think that sums it up nicely... as you and I approach the Psalms it’s as if we are approaching something that is shockingly alien to our life and experience.
Yet, more often than not we assume a familiarity with the words that we are reading and in a hope to apply the authors circumstances to our own situation we rush through to the resolution and discredit the journey that it took to get there.

Psalm 13:
In Psalm 13 we could do the same... we could read the first two parts of this Psalm, this visceral confrontation with God, as though it is a kind of charade, a puppet show... and then jump to the last two verses for the real stuff, the true heart of the Psalmist is in this last part... the hope and trust.
And I understand the desire for resolve... but we rob ourselves and we rob the Psalmist of the intent of the passage and of the reality of the struggle of life in this fallen human condition if we fail to see the genuine despair and utter desperation for Yahweh to come and do something, because He can, and He’s the only one who can.
This is radical speech that gets straight to the point in an almost condescending way, vs.1
“How long, oh Yahweh? Will you forget me forever?” Forget? How can God forget?
vs.2
Does God hide? More specifically... does God hide his face?
What do we know God cannot look on? Sin.
Allow me to submit to you that this is not the case here in Psalm 13... the Psalmist is not living in known or unknown unrepentant sin.
In times when we searching for God, longing for His response in our life and we are unable to hear Him speak to us... our starting place must always be repentance.
Now, we’re going to stop here in the Psalm, picking it back up next week, so that we can deal with confession and unknown sin.

Confession and Unknown Sin:
1 John 1:9
This verse ought to be familiar to every believer in Christ.
Each of us needs to rely on it every day of our lives.
It is by confessing our sins that we receive the forgiveness which we need.
While it’s true that our sins do not result in the loss of eternal salvation, they do interrupt our personal relations with God our heavenly Father.
Human confession and God given forgiveness restores that harmony.
But what about unknown sins? How can you confess something that you are unaware you did?
And some people might respond, “That’s ridiculous. How can you not know that you have sinned? You lie, you know it. You lust, you know it. You respond in self-righteous anger, you know it. At best you simply deceive yourself into thinking that whatever sin you committed was justified.”
But here’s the thing... sin is subtle... it’s deceptively subtle... and more than that, sin is best defined as anything you say, think, our do that runs contrary to the nature of God.
We tend to think of sin in terms of commission... stuff that we do... but what about sins of omission?
Jesus dealt with this concept in His parable of the good Samaritan.
In fact, if you go just 1 verse up in 1 John 1:8... what you get is, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
The reality is that every time we come before the throne of God... we come to Him as sinners, not as the just.
However, no one can confess sins that they do not know... it would be impossible for God to hold us up to this standard... and He doesn’t.
Look closely at the verse.
In the NKJV the second "our" is in italics. This means that the translators have supplied it, but that it is not actually in the Greek text.
Let's translate the first part of the verse literally without the second "our":
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us the sins . . .
What does "the sins" mean?
Obviously it means "the sins we confess."
If we confess the sins we know, God forgives us the sins we confess.
But He does more than that. He also is faithful "to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness"!

Conclusion:
So that's the answer! When I am honest with God and confess the sins I am aware of, His forgiveness and cleansing extend to "All unrighteousness."
But what if sin has been confessed, forgiveness has been doled out... and you are still unable to see and/or hear the response of God?
We’re going to delve into that a little more next week.
For tonight allow me to encourage you with another shockingly alien-like Psalmist response... Psalm 66:16-20

Awana - Grand Prix Derby

34 Racers
150 In Attendance
A night of fun and organized chaos.

Custom vs. Principle

The claims that are in the Bible are the result of the world and the culture that they were written in and they can’t be applied today.

• Context - Consider the whole context of a book and then consider the whole context of the entire Bible
• Custom vs. Principle - How to decipher between a Custom and a Principle
• Community

Custom vs. Principle

How can we distinguish cultural norms and customs from overarching principles in the Bible?

Two meanings of word Custom 

- “Tradition”The word tradition comes from the Latin, meaning "handing over, passing on" - “Social Norm”Social norms are the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. Failure to follow the rules can result in severe punishment, including exclusion from the group.

Biblical Principle

Biblical principles are God's way of conveying to mankind how to live, and to Christians the path of progressive maturity in the faith. These principles are interwoven into the fabric of human beings and nature, so that as we relate to them we are able to understand God's way of life for us. 

How to decipher between a Custom and a Principle

1. Ask when the passage in question was created
2. Ask who it was originally given to (OT covenants; NT covenants; Specifically to an individual or to a group: Specifically to the Jewish Nation or Specifically to NT believers)
3. Remember the difference between OT and NT:        
   

One of the most obvious and most ignored truths of biblical reality is that the word "testament", as used in Old and New Testament, is interchangeable with the word "covenant." ...In our modern world this is known as a "contract". Logic defines "old" as what was, and "new" as what is. In the context of the Bible, the Old Testament is the former contract God made with man, specifically the nation of Israel. The New Testament is the current contract God has made with all mankind.

           In the normal course of the affairs of honest contractual dealings in society, the institution of a "new" contract either nullifies or redefines an existing one...and the former contract is deemed no more than an historical reference. The doctrinal practice of mainstream Bible-based religion is a strange blending of the old and new contracts that dictates those doctrines. By enforcing some of the old contract's provisions, and some of the new contract's stipulations, while ignoring many of the old and most of the new contract's aspects, they have in fact created a completely separate and totally illegitimate third contract. The treatment of women by the mainstream church is based almost solely on the provisions of the old contract which, of course, insures total domination by men resulting in the extreme deprivation of women in every aspect of their lives.

          The God who was party to the Old Testament / Contract, became the man Jesus who was party to the New Testament / Contract. It is, therefore, absolute truth that doctrines / provisions of Jesus redefine the old contract with the nation of Israel and those past doctrines are of no effect, being replaced or fulfilled by the new. To deny this is to deny the power and authority of the Holy Spirit which guided Jesus in the formation of this new contract and must be strongly considered in the light of this doctrinal certainty:Matthew 21:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

4. If you want to apply an OT passage as a life-principle, find proof for it in the NT
5. After finding this proof, figure out whether it is itself a custom or a principle (you’ll need to search for the context of the NT passage, including the culture that the issue is addressed in, the person or people that the issue is addressed to, and the practice of, or abstention from, the issue in the New Testament church as a whole.

Never disregard the question of custom vs. principle when applying Scripture to your life, and never form an opinion on a specific topic without first doing the work.

Psalm 12:5-8

What is our response to difficult circumstance?

• When the world seems to be crumbling down around us, when our beliefs are consistently being challenged, when we feel as if we are about to crumble... where do we turn?  Where do we find our hope?
• Psalm 12 is one of the many, many Psalms that shows us one of the most God honoring human beings response to these sorts of circumstances.
• And the study of David’s life and his response to life’s circumstances are highly important and relevant to us today.
• In fact, I would go so far as to say that, other than Jesus, David is the most important human being in scripture to consistently study.
• Why?  More has been written about David than any other Bible Character:

Abraham and Joseph - 14 Chapters

Jacob - 11 Chapters

Elijah - 10 Chapters

David - 66 Chapters not including the Psalms or the 59 references to his life in the New Testament.

• This is no accident.  There was something about this man’s life and this man’s heart that God wanted to draw our attention to.
• And I think, in relationship to the Psalms, one of the primary things that God wants us to see and to emulate is David’s response to difficult circumstances.

Psalm 12 can be broken down into two parts.

1.  vs.1-4 - The apparent hopelessness of David’s circumstances.
2.  vs.5-8 - The source for hope in the midst of hopelessness.

We’ve discussed vs.1-4... now I’d like to draw our attention to part 2, David’s source for hope.

And it begins in vs.5

• What does David do here in vs.5?  David quotes God.  He refers to four passages of scripture here, three from the Psalms and one from Isaiah.
• I think that it’s important to note that David doesn’t use a direct quote from any single Biblical text.
• God had never said these words in this order in any other recorded place in all of scripture... and I think that this was intentional on the part of David here.
• David is not speaking for God here... instead he’s communicating to the reader the necessity of a personal  and intimate knowledge of the Lord.
• See, the source for David’s hope, in all things, was God.  It was based on his knowledge of and relationship to God.
• In reading any one of the 70 or so Psalms that David pens in this book... not once do you see David call out to God timidly... not once do we witness David unsure of whether or not he should be speaking to God a certain way or asking God to do certain things.
• And while many of the Psalms end without a definitive resolution to David’s surrounding circumstances David’s conclusion is always the same: “My circumstances seem hopeless but You’re God and You’re in control and You’re just... so I wait and have hope.”

And David’s reason for this resolve is found in the next two verses, vs.6-7

• David’s resolve is in the tried and tested truth of God’s Words.

• Now, last week we discussed how you and I can have confidence in the idea that God has preserved His Words, through the process of time and translation.

• And, it is because God is the one responsible for the preservation of His truth that you and I can say, with confidence, that the Bible that we have today is accurate... it has accurately recorded God’s message to human beings from Moses (or Job for those of you with a little Bible chronology background) to John the Apostle.

• That being said, what we need to need to be able to understand and apply here in this text is that, when difficulty and challenges come... and they will come... our hope and our survival will be based on our knowledge and understanding of who God is and what God is doing as it has been revealed to us through what God has said.

• A very common philosophy for religious people in general is to turn to the Bible for topical application that is relevant to our current circumstances.

• And because we have so many wonderful Bible study tools at our disposal what ends up happening, in so many God followers lives, is that we begin to rely on what I like to call a quick fix faith.

• Here’s what I mean by that, and understand that I’m not saying this is a wrong way to search for God’s truth to speak into our lives and our circumstances... what I’m saying is that this method was never meant to be our Modus Operondai, our M.O., our go to response to difficult circumstances.

• God gave us His Word so that, as we apply ourselves, we might grow in our understanding and application of it’s truths.

• So... example... Let’s say someone is struggling over this topic of divorce... maybe it’s personal, maybe it’s because of a friend or a loved one... but whatever the reason they are looking for a way to respond to this topic in their lives.

• And so they research... they do a word search on “divorce” through one of the many wonderful Bible study tools online.

• Then they do a topical search online to see if there are any books about the topic or random blogs that are available to read.

• Maybe they talk to a pastor or a godly friend that they respect.

• And this isn’t bad... this is excellent and it’s certainly many, many steps ahead of what most people would do.  This takes initiative.

• But, for the individual who is serious about consistently living a godly life, about responding to their circumstances in a god honoring way... it’s not enough.

• You know as well as I do that some times you just can’t wait until after you’ve done all of the necessary research before you respond to some things.

• Life doesn’t always work that way, you can’t package it into this nice little formula every time.

David draws our attention to this very point in the last verse, vs.8

• Evil’s everywhere, wickedness is everywhere... and the ability to make immediate, God honoring decisions is an absolute necessity in the life of anyone who intends to be used of God.
• We have been given a gift... an amazing gift.  We’ve been given the completed Word of God.

How are we using it?

• Understand that there is no down time in the pursuit of godliness.
• While we experience periods of life where we are fortunate enough to be in between spiritual crisis and/or difficult circumstance we need to be more intentional with our Bible reading, we need to seek a deeper and more intimate knowledge of God.
• Like David, we need to know God words in such a way that we are able to speak and respond with God’s heart in confidence.
• We need to prepare ourselves to respond in those circumstances where we don’t have the luxury of time.

The Bible on the Preservation of the Bible

Introduction: 

- How can you have any confidence that the book that the Bible that you hold in your hand is anywhere near to being the inspired Words of God?

- There are a lot of things to consider when you begin to think about this topic.

1. Any English translation of the Bible is, at best, a translation of a copy of the originally inspired texts.
2. Culturally we are so much different than the people whom the Bible was written to over 2,000 plus years ago, there has to be a number of things that we can’t really fully understand.
3. The Biblical accounts, in telling some of the same stories, have what appears to be conflicting information in them.
4. There are a number of other texts that people suggest to have been of Biblical origin and yet, we do not include these texts in the list of 66 books that make up our Bible.

- And the list could continue . . .

Transition Questions:

• How do we respond to so many voices of criticism?
• How can we have confidence in the accuracy of the English translations of the Bible that we use?

Mini-Series Intro:

In our Sunday Night series through the articles of the faith we began our discussion with article one - the Bible.We discussed a number of things in that study. (Inspiration, General and Special Revelation, Absolute Truth, and so on) Tonight, David adds one more to the list that helps us respond to so many of the claims that stand in opposition to God’s Word today. Psalm 12:6-8The concept that David deals with in this section of the Psalm is the preservation of God’s truth.When we talk about preservation what we’re talking about is the process by which God has supernaturally protected His word through many reproductions and translations.  The idea of preservation holds that God has faithfully superintended His Word down through the ages, so that even today, some 3,500 years after portions of the Bible were written down, we can say that what we possess, what we love and what we read are the very words of God.Now this is a huge topic, there are a lot of places we could take this discussion and a lot of information that is significant concerning how God preserved His Word through human authors and translators.So what we’re going to do is split this up over the next few weeks (perhaps 3) breaking down this information into 3 categories (a fourth will be available on-line)

1. The Bible on the Preservation of the Bible.
2. The application of vs.6-8 in the context of this Psalm.
3. The Custom and Culture Question.
4. The Historical Preservation of the Bible. (Online)

The Bible on the Preservation of the Bible:

Now . . . it’s important to understand that we are working off of one major assumptions.We’re working off of the assumption that the original autographs, that is, the writings of the original authors were divinely inspired.  Sadly, none of those original autographs have survived to this day.  In other words, you can’t go anywhere in this world and find a scrap of paper containing the actual writings of Paul, John, Moses, Peter, James, Daniel, Isaiah or any of the other biblical writers.  Since that is true, how can we be confident that the Bibles we possess today are in fact accurate and are the very Word of God?  And to answer this question we need to begin with the Bible itself . . . more specifically the claims that God makes about His recorded Word.

The Old Testament on Preservation

• Psalm 12:6-7
• Numbers 23:19
• Psalm 89:34
• Isaiah 40:8
• Psalm 119:89

The New Testament on Preservation

• Matthew 5:18
• Matthew 24:35
• Titus 1:2
• 1 Peter 1:25

Conclusion:

To my mind, the conclusion from these verses is crystal clear: God had indeed promised to preserve His Word! The internal evidence is overwhelming!  I have given you nine passages that explicitly state God’s intentions in this matter.The question I have for you is this: How many times does God have to say anything before we can conclude that He means it?  We have the promise of God, Who cannot lie (Heb. 6:18) Who identifies Himself as the “Faithful and True Witness” (Rev. 3:14) that He will forever perfectly preserve His Word.  However, while that may be all the evidence Bible believers need, that is not all the evidence we have.  If you’d like more information, more will be available online.

The Majority Text (i.e. Textus Receptus or Byzantine Text)

      The other text family had its origin in the city of Antioch in Syria.  The scholars in Antioch took a more literal approach to biblical interpretation.  They considered the Bible to be more than mere allegory; they believed it to be the very Word of God. As a result, they were diligent in seeing to it that they were faithful to copy it correctly, employing many of the same techniques of their Jewish predecessors.  It is this textual line that has given the world many of the great Bible translations: The Erasmus Greek Text, 1522 (Later to become known at as The Textus Receptus, 1633); Martin Luther’s German Bible, circa 1530; Tyndales Bible, 1522; Coverdales Bible, 1535; The Geneva Bible, 1560 and the King James Bible, 1611.

      While the new versions rest on a total of 45 manuscripts, those versions that were translated from the Majority Text rest on over 5,210 manuscripts!  The overwhelming number of manuscripts agrees with the Majority Text.  By the way, when the Nestles-Aland 27^th Text is compared to The Textus Receptus, you find that there are some 3,000 words omitted in the Nestles-Aland text and some 20 verses are also omitted.  Among the verses omitted are: Acts 8:37 and 1 John 5:7.

      This is astounding when you consider that Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which was written in 52 BC has only 9 good manuscripts supporting it and the oldest dates from some 900 years after the time of Caesar!  The Iliad by Homer was written in 900 BC. There are only 643 copies. The earliest copy was made about 400 BC. The textual tradition of the Iliad ranks a distant second to the NT tradition when you consider MSS numbers, age of documents, and quality of texts. Tacitus was a Roman who lived from about AD 55-117. His two long works are Histories and Annals. Only four and one-half of the fourteen books of Histories survive, while only ten of the sixteen books and two partial books of Annals survive. The text for both depends on one ninth century MSS and one eleventh century MSS.

      When you total it all up, the New Testament rests on over 86,000 fragment and manuscripts.  There is more evidence for the accuracy of the New Testament than there is for any ancient writing, period! Do we have the Word of God?  Absolutely! 

      While the Majority Text has much more evidence in its favor against the Alexandrian Text, some would argue that the Alexandrian texts are older, and therefore they are more reliable. 

The Alexandrian Text

      This text family receives its name from the fact that it originated in Alexandria Egypt.  It was the work of such early church fathers and Clement and Origin.  Both of these men are held in high esteem by biblical scholars, but it should be noted that both of these men rejected a literal interpretation of the Bible, leaning instead toward an allegorical interpretation.  This simply means that they believed the Bible was a collection of spiritual stories designed to teach truth.  Much could be said about these men, but it is enough to know, for now, that they did not accept the Bible as it was literally written.  This fact alone makes the texts that they had a hand in creating suspect.

      This family of texts rests on about 45 manuscripts, many of which are very ancient, some dating back to around 330 AD.  The two primary texts in this family are called Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph) and Vaticanus (Codex B).  These are the oldest known manuscripts in existence.  Both date from the 4th Century.  Codex Aleph was discovered in the 1840's at a monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai by a man named Count Constantin von Tischendorf. He saw several old leaves from ancient books in a pile to be used to start fires in the kitchen.  Upon inquiry, he discovered that they had an even older book in the monastery. The monks then showed him the manuscript known as Sinaiticus.  This ancient manuscript contains over 12,000 corrections and revisions by someone other that the original copyist.  It also contains several spurious books such as The Shepherd of Hermes, The Gospel of Thomas and the Didache.  All of these books have been rejected by the believing church for nearly 2,000 years.

      Codex B was discovered in the Vatican library in 1481. It too, dates from the 4th Century.  This manuscript is the one most relied on by modern Bible translators. This codex has been heavily corrected by Roman Catholic copyists.  By the way, the King James Translators knew of the existence of Codex B, but chose to avoid it.

      What is interesting is that these two manuscripts, which form the basis for all modern versions of the Bible,disagree with one another over 3,000 times in just the four Gospels alone!  There are 43 other manuscripts that support this textual family.  Remember, every new version of the Bible, with the exception of the NKJV (It gets its footnotes from the Alexandrian line of texts), was translated from Greek texts based on these manuscripts.  A whopping total of 45 manuscripts stand behind all the new versions of the Bible.

      These texts were taken, translated, collated and come to us today in the form of the Nestles-Aland 27^thGreek Text.  This text is considered the standard by most Bible scholars.  Yet, it still only rests on some 45 manuscripts!