Does Not Rejoice in Iniquity - Agape 10

It's amazing how, as children get older, you can hide what family they belong to. I mean, they look like their family. They'll have traits like their families. As they get older, just mannerisms that, you know, there's things that are genetically passed on, and there's things that are just learned in the family. And it's always interesting to see somebody you haven't seen for years. You know, I'll run into people at the feast, and they'll come up and say, I knew you went camp. Well, yeah, you were 14, and now you're 28. And, but, you know, oh, wait a minute. You're so-and-so's child, right? And then the family connection, because you see the resemblance. You know, God has called us to be His children. And Jesus Christ modeled for us the behaviors we're supposed to have to be the children of God, not only the behaviors, but the very character we're supposed to have. And in doing so, we are to become reflections of God. In other words, people should be able to look at us and say, ah, you're related to Jesus. I know you believe God is your Father, right? You believe God is your Father. We know that because you act like that, and they should be able to see that in us. About a year ago, I started to go through, a little less than a year ago, 1 Corinthians 13. We haven't finished it because I would do one or two, and then there'd be some other sermons we needed to do and do one or two. We still have two left. So I'm going to try to get through those this month so we can get through the last two sermons on 1 Corinthians 13. Because 1 Corinthians 13 is where Paul describes Agape, the character of God. If we're the children of God, this is how people will know we're the children of God. We will proclaim God, keep His Ten Commandments. There's certain things we'll do, but we'll also have the character of 1 Corinthians 13. So much of what we've talked about in 1 Corinthians 13 is how we are to treat other people. That's much of what we've talked about as we've gone through all the different elements of Agape. Today we're going to look at where Paul brings out something else. Something else that we have to understand if we're truly going to have this character of God in us. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 13.

And verse 6. So we've been going through how Agape suffers long, it's kind, it does not envy, it's not parading itself, it's not arrogant, it's not rude, it's not selfish, it's not easily provoked. Last time we talked about how it thinks no evil. So we began to move away from just how you treat other people. But in the last sermon we went through how it has to do with the way you think.

And we started to get into sort of the negative aspects of this is what you don't do, okay? This is what you don't do if you, if we're to have Agape. And then we come to verse 6. And then we come to verse 6. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Does not rejoice in iniquity. How can you and I rejoice in iniquity?

I mean, everybody here is against sin, right? Everybody here believes we should obey God. None of us here want to be evil. And yet, not rejoicing in iniquity is an interesting way to state this. He doesn't just say, doesn't participate in iniquity. Because it's possible not to actually be literally maybe participating in iniquity, but in rejoicing in iniquity. Now, how can we do that? We're going to talk about some ways we can do that. The first one is that we still look on sin, on the things that God says not to do. We still see it as the forbidden fruit, something that we really would sort of like to do.

It's the forbidden fruit. We're not repulsed by it. It's like, oh wow, I wish I could. And I've had people tell me that over the years. I wish God hadn't called me now because I could have had fun. As if living iniquity is fun. And that's, there's the great lie to it. We actually believe that it would be better. My life would be better. Better things would be happening to me. I would be happier. I could rejoice more if I was just allowed to be a little bit more bad.

Now, I think that's very common for children to feel that way. Unfortunately, it can be for us too. It's an aspect of corrupt human nature that we always believe the forbidden fruit contains something in it that we would really, really enjoy. And of course, there's always a grain of truth in that. You know, there is usually a little time in which the forbidden fruit does produce something in us that we sort of like.

You know, the person who is at a party and drinks and drinks and drinks until they're high, and that's sort of fun for a little bit. Later, when they're hugging the toilet, it's not so much fun. But somehow, there's this belief I can have the forbidden fruit and not suffer the consequences. And if you don't believe that, just to go into any frat house, or just go to downtown Nashville on Friday or Saturday night. Right? I know later I'll be hugging the toilet, but right now I'm having fun.

Now, we can sometimes look at the forbidden fruit and say, all of I could just have it. You know, there's an interesting story in the Bible. Let's go to Genesis 34. This story I a lot of times have given in sermons at the feast when talking to young people, because the forbidden fruit here seems like, I'm not going to participate. I'm just going to go look at it. It'd be like Adam and Eve saying, well, we didn't bite into the forbidden fruit. We just touched it and smelled it.

Boy, did it smell good. Boy, you know, not it's forbidden. We need to get away from it and run from it. It's that touch it. Let's smell it, but we can't bite it because God said, don't eat it. So you're actually rejoicing in iniquity. You're finding some pleasure in iniquity, but trying to draw the line. This, of course, is the story of Diana. Verse 1, Diana, the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. The thing here is she did not have an intent to do something wrong. It just seems so exciting. You know, here we are, this nomadic tribe. We smell like sheep all the time.

You go into town, and boy, did those girls smell good. You go into town, and they dress so nice. And the boys, wow. You know, the boys are always interested in me, and they have such nice jewelry compared to what I have. I just want to go see it. That's all I want to do. I just want to go see it. She has no intent of doing anything wrong, but the forbidden fruit has to at least be sort of touched, maybe smelled a little bit, so we can, you know, because why is it forbidden?

But it seems so good. And then Shechem, the son of Hamar, the high-bite, prince of the country, saw her. He took her and lay with her and violated her. His soul was strongly attracted to Diana and the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke kindly to the young woman.

So she ends up being seduced. This isn't what she had planned, but this young man looks at her and says, no, I actually love you. I want to take care of you. I want to bury you. I want to fix this. Actually, we read through here. This man had some character.

So Shechem spoke to his father, Hamar, saying, give me this young woman as a wife. And Jacob heard that he had defiled Diana, his daughter, and now his sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob held his peace until they came. Then Hamar, the father of Shechem, came out to Jacob to speak with him. So he comes out to speak. Now, we know from certain other scriptures here in Genesis, or passages in Genesis, it was common for the brothers to negotiate the marriage to a sister. He had to have permission from the father, but the sons sort of negotiated it. And the sons of Jacob came in from the field, and they heard it, and the men were grieved and very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, a thing which ought not to have been done. But Hamar spoke with them, saying, the soul of my son Shechem belongs to your daughter. Please give her to him as a wife, and make marriage with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves. And so you shall dwell with us, and the land will be before you. Dwell and trade in it, and acquire possessions for yourselves in it. Now, this seems like a good idea, but there's a real problem here. God had told them that they were to marry people who weren't followers of him. And notice, He doesn't just want Diana. He says, we'll just intermarry with each other, and we'll trade with each other. Here you are with all these sheep and goats and herds of camels, and you're a very rich nomad, tribe, and we have a little town over here. Think about this. We'll trade. People will come from all over to buy your goods, because this will be your trading post, our town. I mean, there's some real advantages here for this, except God had told them not to. Now, Diana here is only talked about. She doesn't participate in any of this. This wasn't what she intended. She just wanted to touch the forbidden fruit. She didn't want to get in there and eat it. She didn't mean to eat it, but she did. Because why? Because it's attractive. She thought she could rejoice in iniquity, sort of, by walking this line. You read the story. Two of her brothers decide, okay, here's the negotiation. If you want her, all the men of your village have to be circumcised. You have to enter into a covenant with God, with our God, and be circumcised. And Shechem loved her so much, he said, okay. Now, I tell you what, that's quite an expression of love for a grown man.

And his dad said, okay. And they told all the men of their village, this is what you have to do. These are all unintended consequences, just because she wanted to see the forbidden fruit. So they do. They circumcise everybody in the village. And two of her brothers go in, while they're too sore to move and kill every man in the village. They kill them. Jacob is horrified when they come and tell him. He says, what people are going to want to do anything with us? We made an agreement with them. They were circumcised. And you went in and killed them? We got to move on. We got to get out of this country. We got to get out of here. And they did. They had to move on. Think of Diana, alone in her tent, crying, this is not what I intended at all. I just wanted to go see what other girls lived like in the city, because I'd never been in a city before. I just wanted to see what they lived like. I didn't know some prince was going to show me all this attention. I didn't know he would want to marry me. I didn't know my brothers would kill everybody in an entire town. Every man, not every, the women and children, every man in an entire village. I didn't know they would do that. The law of unintended consequences. It's a law. It's real. Unintended consequences. Because she wanted to rejoice in iniquities, sort of. Sort of. She wanted to live in the gray world. I'm not doing wrong. Just almost doing wrong. And the results were devastating. What her brothers did was a terrible sin.

All those people didn't have to die. All those men didn't have to die. Especially tricking them into thinking they're making a covenant with God.

The law of unintended consequences. But they're real and they happen. And this is one way in which we can rejoice in iniquity. We don't shove it aside. We don't run from it. We sort of live as close to it as we can.

As close as we can. You know, when you look at the fruits of the Spirit, and we talk about that all the time. I gave what? Eight sermons on the fruit of the Spirit about four years ago. We talk about it all the time. But the fruits of the Spirit are in contrast there in Galatians with the works of the flesh. They're supposed to be compared. They're supposed to be compared. And what is supposed to be... Well, let's go there. Let's just go there. Galatians 5.

So we're talking about character here. We're talking about how we process life. And our corrupt human nature says, uh, iniquity is exciting. It's fun. It's good to a point. I mean, so we live in this gray world. I mean, what do you allow yourself to do on the Sabbath? How gray is that? What do you allow in your mind as entertainment? How gray is that? What is the gray world we live in?

Why do we live in the gray world? Because we want to live in the gray world. Because the forbidden fruit has at least the smell of everyone's smell. Because it smells good.

Galatians 5.19. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions. Think of all these things. And you say, okay, I don't have a lot of these, you know, adultery, fornication, I'm doing that. I don't have idolatry. Except maybe money. But I don't worship a god. But money is my main goal in life, then it's idolatry. Sorcery, hatred. We live in a world of hatred. You know what's happening in this country that's amazing? Is the level of hatred people have. It is absolutely appalling how people hate each other. They hate each other. And many times, because of the issues, there is no middle ground. You know, Eric mentioned about in a world that murders children, we are here to celebrate children. There's no middle ground there, is there? There is no middle ground. I made this comment to someone the other day. I said, I can no longer give the pledge of allegiance. I can no longer put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to a country under God because it's not under God. I just can't do it. And he got a little upset with me. He called me this week and said, you know what? I now agree with you. I can't do it anymore either. He said, I just wanted to call and tell you that because it's not under God.

The hatred. If we're not careful, we'll get dragged, we'll get sucked into that hatred. I mean, there is no middle ground in these arguments. We're going to talk about here how we have to be careful. I mean, in one area, one way, we can get where we hate the sin so much, we despise the people. Or the other way, we try to love the people so much, we tolerate the sin. We can't do either. We can't do either. We have to hate the sin. He says, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, it just goes on and on. Drunkenness, revelries, which is this party spirit and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in times past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is agape, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is where our lives should be. Our lives should be in this list, not the other list, but some of those other things drag us in. Sometimes I just have to turn off the, you know, the news. Now, the way I watch news, as I mentioned before, I just go on YouTube and I'll watch five minutes of CNN and five minutes of Fox and five minutes of the BBC and five minutes of, you know, I even watch Al Jazeera once in a while to see what's going on in the world. And then I have to shut it off after a while because I have no love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, mercy, faith. I just feel some kind of rage or some kind of just distraught, right? So I can turn it off a while, go back later when I'm prepared to go back and do it. The world pulls us into that. But you know what? Some people like it. Some people are addicted to watching news because it gives them the ability to say, I'm good, you're evil. And therefore, they feel better about themselves. We should hate this evil. We're going to talk about that in a minute. It does not rejoice in iniquity. Let's go to Romans. Well, before I go to Romans, let me mention something else because it's sort of a second point of this. Now, the first point is that we can't live with this secret belief that we would rejoice in the forbidden fruit. Life would be better if I could cheat. Life would be better if I didn't have to pay my taxes. Life would be better if I could just be dishonest. I could make so much more money. Life could be better if I just fill in the blank. And we really sort of believe that the we don't understand the forbidden fruit is forbidden by God because it's destructive. And the what he gives us is much, much better. And so that way we can rejoice in iniquity. It's a subtle way. To rejoice in iniquity tends to be a very subtle thing. I mean, there's people who rejoice in iniquity because they just love to go out and do it, right? I mean, there's people who actually love to steal. They rejoice in stealing. But you and I don't do that. Our problem with this is much more subtle. The second way we can rejoice in iniquity is we approve of it. This is interesting. We don't do it. We approve of it. You and I live in a sinful world. And here's what happens if we're not careful. We become numb to the ugliness of sin. We become numb to it. It no longer bothers us. It no longer bothers us. We're just numb to it.

I mean, right? You go to work and you know that, you know, out of the 10 people you work with, two of them are commanding adultery. Two of them, you know, are alcoholics and they beat their wives. Two of them are homosexuals. And you know that. Two of them are atheists. And you know that. And in order to live and work there, you have to become sort of numb to it. The problem is, is it becomes, we become so numb to it that we begin to approve it. I mean, I've had conversations with people in the church who have said, you know, I've come to the conclusion that, and you can feel it all kinds of things. You know, transgenderism isn't that bad because they were born that way. No? It's still bad. That'd be like saying, you ever meet somebody that's born with, I mean, you know it as a baby. They have a temper, a violent temper. At three months old, everybody's saying, oh, you're going to have trouble with that kid. Did that justify them growing up and killing people? Oh, they just have a violent temper. They were born that way. Of course it doesn't.

Of course it doesn't. But see, we can begin to approve things. Now, participate, but approve. We excuse it, and eventually it's really not all that bad. It's really not all that bad. Romans 1.

I haven't read this little passage in quite a while here. I try to read it every once in a while. Bring us back into focus.

See, we can't go through agape and just read about not being rude, being kind, being patient with people. We also have to look at these other issues that are part of the character of God, is that we will not rejoice in iniquity. And we can rejoice in iniquity simply by sort of approving it. We...we're just used to it. We're used to watching movies where there's long sex scenes. We're just used to it.

So we just...we approve it. Well, I'm not doing it, but I approve it because, well, I don't want to turn this movie off. I mean, man, you look at my Netflix, it's just...there's, I don't know, 50 movies on there that I've watched the first 10 minutes. Uh-oh. You know, suddenly people are naked. Boop, that's off. You know, I think I just got all these movies. But we can get so used to it, we just sort of approve of it. It's okay. It's okay. Well, here Paul describes the Roman world, and it is an exact description of the world you and I live in. He starts in verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in righteousness. Now, they don't agape where we have agape. We do not, you know, rejoice in iniquity, but it also says we rejoice in the truth. Here he's talking about iniquity because the truth is suppressed. The truth is suppressed. And this is what we cannot do. And our desire to love others, which we're supposed to, we're supposed to love our enemies, we can't suppress the truth. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. He says, you know what? Human beings, in certain areas, in certain times of history, they have been seen the truth enough, they should have seen it. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so they are without excuse. I did watch this week, it was an interesting little clip from a college. And in this college, they had, I think it was three, there was the, I don't know if he was one of the deans, and three professors on stage. And the one person who they asked to speak first was the evolutionary biologist. In other words, they believe in biology and they believe in evolution. And this woman said, the issue we're here to talk about is the reality of our world. And she said, we may, people may not like that reality, but it's true. She said, men are, for the most part, taller than women. Men, for the most part, have more muscle mass than women. Men, for the most part, are stronger than women and faster than women. Women can lactate. Women can give birth. Men cannot. And all of a sudden, students started booing. They actually started booing. And she said, this is reality. She says, this is biology. I'm telling you, this is reality. There's, there's chromosome differences. There's cellular differences. You can't say there's no differences. And so, students started to get up and walk out, booing them. One knocked over the sound system so that it shut down the sound system, so she had to shout to have anybody listen to. And so, someone was out in the hallway with their phone as they came out. And these students all came out, and most of them you couldn't tell whether they're male or female. And they were shouting down with the fascists, down with the fascists that believe there are differences between human beings. And I watched them walk out, and I thought, and they were so arrogant at what they were saying. And it made me think of this. The proof is right there, and it's not being given to them by a religious person, or someone even seems to, maybe doesn't even believe in the Bible. I doubt if an evolutionary biologist believes in the Bible. It's just the facts. And that's what he says here. Creation itself should tell them something. And they refused the facts in a hatred and in an anger, and they were shouting power to the people as they left. They've got to get rid of these scientists, because they know more, at 19, about reality.

It goes on and talks about the problems that they had in that society. He talks about the worship of pagan idols. He talks about how they worship nature itself. He talks about homosexuality in great detail. He talks about covetousness and maliciousness, and envy and murder and strife and deceit and evil-mindedness. And he goes on. There's just list after list of this is what these people have become. And then verse 28. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. They did not want to know God. And he gave them over to a debased mind. The old King James translates this, and is actually more accurate, as a reprobate mind. Now the Greek word, there's an interesting word, the Greek word translated reprobate is what they would do with metals. Say you were making a pot, and you're making it out of metal. They would work on that pot and work on that pot, and then they would test it to see if it was usable. If it wasn't usable, it was reprobate. It had been tested, and it was not usable, and it was rejected. And that's what Paul is saying about the world we live in. God looks at it, it has been tested, it has been not usable, and it is rejected. That's the way of this world, in the mind of God. And we can't live in the gray. We can't live in the gray.

Now this is the New Testament. We're not going to the Old Testament, we're going to the New Testament. We're talking about Paul looking at the Roman world, which our world is very similar. God said, I've tried you, I've tested you, you are totally unusable, and you have been rejected by me. That's what he said to the world. Now we know there's a second resurrection, but you know what? We can't let the second resurrection give us an excuse to rejoice in iniquity, because look what it says here. We can't just somehow approve of it. Ah yeah, we live in an evil world, but you know, it's not that bad. Verse 32, "...who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death." All human beings are deserving of death. You and I are deserving of death. It's only because of God's grace and mercy and our repentance and his forgiveness that you and I right now have an advocate. So we're not deserving of death because of him. But notice the rest of the sentence. Not only do the same, but who will prove of those who practice them. We have to be very careful what we approve of. What do we approve of?

We can rejoice in iniquity by approving of things and others. And then a last way is that we rejoice in the sins of others. I mean, think about it. How in the United States we all make everybody into an idol, right? Our news people, our singers, our actors, everybody's an idol. And then everybody loves it when they find out a scandal about them, right? Every NFL player, every basket NBA player, oh there's a scandal. Oh man, let's read the scandal. What did this person do this time? I mean, it seems like I even been keeping up with sports much lately, but it seems like the biggest story in sports is Tom Brady's divorce, right? Because it's a scandal. Everybody wants the dirt. Who did what? Whose fault is it? Oh, you know, this is going to be big news probably for months. Did somebody cheat on somebody? We rejoice in the sins of others because somehow it makes us feel good about ourselves.

You know what it is to live as a Christian in the world, no matter when you lived? 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter 2.

And verse 6.

Breaking into the middle of a sentence here, Peter says, In turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly, and delivered righteous lot who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. For that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds. Living with Agape, living in a relation with God, with Christ, so that the very character of God is being developed in us, we are becoming his children, puts us in opposition to the world around us, and we will always be out of step. We will never fit in. If you're a real Christian, you'll never fit in. That's the reality. You will be oppressed by it. Now, we can't let that oppression overwhelm us, but we can't deny it either. We can't approve. We can't approve. The second thing he says, that I just want to cover here quickly, is Agape, that Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13. Agape rejoices in the truth. He's talking about the revealed truth of God. We have to rejoice in this. We have to love this. We have to know this. We have to study this. And if this book isn't important to your daily life, you're not rejoicing in the truth.

Agape rejoices in the truth. Look at 2 Thessalonians, this famous prophecy here about the end time. And the great false prophet is going to come along. 2 Thessalonians.

And why people will so easily follow this false prophet. And there's a warning here to us. Verse 8. And then the lawless ones. I was talking about this great false prophet who sits in the temple, who deceives the whole world through great miracles. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. So this is that great false prophet that comes on the scene before Christ returns. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders. So people are going to be deceived because of the power and the actual miracles, what appear to be miracles that he does. And with all unrighteousness and deception among those who perish, because they did not receive what? The love of the truth that they might be saved.

People are going to want this so much, what he's offering, what he's selling, so much. Because they don't love the truth. And so they will buy into the lie. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. In other words, once again, we're back to rejoicing in iniquity. Iniquity seems better, so they reject the truth because they don't love the truth. If God has opened your mind to the Bible, understand what a miracle that is. We look at healing as a miracle, and it is. We've seen lots of miracles. God doesn't heal us of everything. God doesn't keep us alive in this physical body forever. He never said He would. But to open your mind to become a recipient of God's Spirit is the greatest miracle of all. That's the greatest miracle that can happen. What's greater than that? We're talking about eternity here. If God has opened your mind to receive that miracle, then the truth must be loved. We must rejoice in it. We can't sleepwalk through our Christianity like we're just somehow doing it sort of every day, every once in a while taking a good smith of the forbidden fruit. Not really eating it, though. Living our life that way. We must rejoice in this. This is where our happiness is. It's in our relationship with God and with Jesus Christ because we love the truth. And that truth guides everything we do. That truth is central to how you live every part of your life. This is agape. It rejoices in it. It rejoices in the truth. You know, David understood that. Let's go to Psalm 119. Psalm 119, last scripture we're going to go to here. Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. And it's a poem. Song lyrics, actually, where David talks about his relationship with God. And I just want to pick out a couple verses because this theme is repeated over and over and over again. And this is why David was a man after God's own heart. He made mistakes. He made sins. He struggled. Sometimes he lacked faith. Sometimes he didn't. You look at his life. But what you find is a central love of the truth of God. A love of God and a love of the truth. He says in verse 1, "...blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart." There's nothing halfway about this. There can be nothing halfway about our Christianity.

It's everything. God gave everything. Jesus gave everything. What did they expect in return? Everything. And there is no halfway Christianity. They also do no iniquity. They walk in His ways. You have commanded us to keep your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep your statutes. He keeps going back to the instructions of God, the commands, the precepts. He says, oh, if I could just get this right, if I could just be this way completely, then I would not be ashamed when I look into your commandments. I will praise you with uprightness of heart. I will learn your righteousness. I will keep your statutes. Oh, do not forsake me utterly. He says, don't give up on me, God, because this is what I want to be. I want to learn everything. And you can study this book forever and not know everything. I called my 14-year-old grandson yesterday or last night because it was his birthday, and we talked about video games, and we talked about all the stuff that he and I talk about. And then he said something about the Bible because we always end up with some Bible thing, you know. And he said, isn't it amazing? You can study the Bible your whole life and never know all of it. I said, you'll never know all of it. It's the mind of God, but we better hold on to what we know. I thought, hey, proud of you, boy. Good. Then we went on to talking about goofy stuff, you know, 14-year-old stuff. We had a good time. Let's go down to verse 27. This whole chapter is filled with these kind of things. Make me understand the way of your precepts. So shall I meditate on your wonderful works. Make me do this. We have to ask God, open my heart and my mind. Purge me of my false understandings. Purge me of the untruth that is in me. Make me understand the ways of your precepts. I shall meditate on your wonderful works. My soul melts from the heaviness. Strengthen me according to your word. He goes on and talks more and more about teach me. In fact, verse 33, teach me, O Lord, the way of your statues. He rejoiced in the truth of God. He rejoiced in it. It was more important to Him than anything in life. One last sort of comment here. Rejoicing the truth means something else too. It means trying to seek the truth in everything. And the one thing I've learned in life, one of the few things I've learned in life that I can, you know, state emphatically is, much of what happens in life, we will never know the complete truth in this life.

Human history is a mess. What we're living through right now is a mess. What is the truth? And a lot of times my answer is, I don't know. Everybody has a theory for what's happening. I read an interesting article this week, trying to remember who sent it to me. One of the ministers in the area, he said he found this interesting. It was a man who had spent years and years and years trying to figure out every conspiracy theory to figure out who was really driving the world. Who's running the bus? He says, and I've explored and believed every conspiracy theory you can think of. Right wing, left wing, you know, every place, crazy stuff. And he says, you know the conclusion I've come to? There's nobody driving this bus. It's insane. And in the comments down below, someone wrote, oh yeah, there is somebody driving this bus. His name is Satan. There is somebody driving this. But his conclusion was humanity is absolutely insane. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. So who's driving the bus? And it was from a major magazine.

Well, some little comment, and the few people that commented was, yeah, there is somebody driving this bus. But you're looking for a way to get to the place where you're driving you know. The real bus driver is somebody, this person. Of course, the next comment just made fun of him. There is no Satan. You're just making this up. You're just, you know, you're just, that just shows you're part of the people that are crazy people driving the bus.

Satan's always got things messed up. And this is true, too, when we hear anything about another person. Before we spread information about another person. Is it true? Is it true? See, truth isn't just the truth we learn from God. The more we learn truth from God, the more we want to know truth. What is reality? And as this evolutionary biologist said, men and women are different, and that's reality. And that's truth. Absolute truth. To say it's not means you're out of touch with reality, which is, by the way, a definition. One of the definitions of insanity. If I walk around saying I'm Napoleon, I'm insane. Right? I'm out of touch with reality. Search for truth in everything. Understanding that in this world, we're not going to know the truth of a lot of things. We're just not. But we can know the truth of God. I had a conversation this week from a man who called me. He's in a church. I'm not sure which... I think he's united. I'm not sure which congregation he goes to. About some class his daughter was taking in philosophy.

And he said, this professor has all the kids so messed up with what is reality. Yeah, that's philosophy. It's not based on the Bible, so therefore it's not true. So I can't give you a philosophical answer. I can only give you a biblical answer.

Because I can explain his philosophy, but here's the flaws in it. But you have to believe in the Bible to understand the flaws. So what have we looked at today? Agape does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Here's some things we need to do. We need to look at our lives and say, am I secretly wanting the forbidden fruit? I mean, I'll be eating it, but I'm sure getting as close as I can. At least touching it. Am I vicariously rejoicing in sin?

Approving it, but not really doing it. Or am I enjoying the reports of the sins of others? I just love it when I find somebody has sinned, and I can think about that and put them down and talk about it. Ask God to stir up his Spirit in you. Ask him to help you rejoice in the truth. Ask him to help you find that. Ask him to wake that up in you, that you will rejoice in the truth of God, what we find here, what we know is the ultimate truth. And ask him for that so that your deepest thoughts and your desires will be guided by him. And we'll become like David, or we'll say, teach me, and find our joy in God, not in the crazy world that we live in with no bus driver. Well, no, the wrong bus driver.