The Lord Weighs The Spirits

When you read through the Old Testament and you see the word spirit, it's an interesting word in Hebrew. Most Hebrew words don't have a large amount of meanings or uses, like English, where we have words that have multiple, multiple uses. But the word that is translated spirit does. It literally just means breath. It just means breath. But you will see it sometimes translated wind, air. It is the animation of life. Both animals and humans, when they are alive, have a spirit.

There's something animates them that gives them life. We see that it is also used to denote the special presence of God, the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God. Sometimes it's used to denote either angels or demons, fallen angels, and they're sometimes called spirits. But there's another way that is used that is very interesting and very fascinating.

And that is, it's used to denote the inner mindset and emotional disposition of a person. In other words, at the very core of what motivates a person is a spirit. Sometimes you will see in the Old Testament the spirit of jealousy, or a sorrowful spirit, or a faithful spirit, or a haughty spirit, or a proud spirit, or a humble spirit. And when it's used in that way, even though it's the same word that is used in all those different ways it's translated, it's very specific in what that means.

In other words, there's human beings, we are motivated. And what motivates us is our spirit. It is the core of our lives. It's the core of who we are. Deep inside there's an inner person, and our actions, all of our actions, are the result of that motivation. And usually it's an emotional motivation. Now there's intellect involved too, but it's interesting to see that spirit of jealousy.

If a person is driven by that, you'll see the word used that way a lot in the book of Proverbs, especially in terms of people who have an angry spirit, or a humble spirit, or a proud spirit. And that's what motivates their lives. Let's look at one place here that's used this way, as in Proverbs 15 and 13. Proverbs, verse 15, is a very hard to make secure for countenance. In other words, if you're happy, if you're a happy person, you look happy. It's amazing if you're really happy you can't hide it. You just look happy. And then it says, but sorrow of the heart, or but by the sorrow of the heart, the spirit is broken.

In other words, we can become so sorrowful, so saddened, that it becomes our inner motivation. I find it interesting, in Hannah, in 1 Samuel, the mother of Samuel, she's approached by the priest, and she says, I have, or I am, a sorrowful spirit. I'm a woman of a sorrowful spirit, I think is what it says. Or she says, yes, I look saddened, because deep inside, at my inner being, I am sad. That's because she could not have a child, and that was something that was deepest inside her, one of her greatest motivations.

When she got up in the morning, all through the day, when she went to bed at night, she was hurt by, she was saddened by, that she could not have a child. And so she said, I am a sorrowful spirit. You know, a person could be sorrowful for a short period of time, but you wouldn't say, well, that person had a sorrowful spirit. Sorrowful spirit means that it's my motivation now, it's become who I am.

Look at Proverbs 17, 22. Proverbs 17, 22. A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. A broken spirit, a person who is just broken up inside. Now, we're going to look at where this is used in a positive way, too. But to stay in a broken up state with no purpose and no meaning, actually can make us sick. We can't always separate our mental state and our physical illnesses, either.

They're connected. And so a broken spirit can cause us to have actual physical health problems. But the one verse in this whole discussion I find the most fascinating is in Proverbs 16, 2. Because this is what we're going to talk about today. Proverbs 16, 2.

Proverbs 16, 2 says, "'All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits.'" That's the title of my sermon today. The Lord weighs the spirits. He judges the spirits.

Now, what does that mean here? You know, it's not talking about angels or demons.

It's talking about the inner core of who we are, our emotional motivations, and the Jewish publication society's translation of this verse is very interesting.

This is how they translate this.

"'All the ways of a man seem right to him, but the Lord probes motives.'" Why do we do what we do? Eventually, our actions come from our motives.

Eventually, whatever we do is driven by some inner impulse. Now, external forces can change our actions, right? External forces can change who we are. That's part of what happens when we first come into the truth. We come to church, and external forces change who we are, but it can't stop there. It can't stop there. I really do believe that most human beings, and unfortunately, this is true of us, too, those with God's Spirit. Most of us are driven by motives. We don't even know what they are. Most of the time, we are driven by motives that we don't even know what the motives are. We are driven to do things. We're driven to say things because of inner because inside of us, deep in our inner part of our core, there are emotions, there are feelings that drive those things.

I talked about how, a couple weeks ago, how between now and Pentecost and actually into the summer, we're going to be talking about two very important things. A lot of sermons, the sermonette today, are going to be about Pentecost and what it means. The pouring out of God's Spirit and how we are to interact with God's Spirit and what the Church is. So those two things we're going to talk about a lot over the next two months.

Today, we're going to talk about our spirit. What is the spirit that motivates us?

Because much of the time, we're motivated by our emotions because we truly believe what I feel is truth. What I feel is good. See, there is a way that seems right to a human being, and at the core of who we are, our spirits are a set of just contradictory emotions, conflicting emotions, and we are driven by those emotions believing that is what we should do. And it isn't what we're supposed to do. These impulses. You know, if you look up motivation in the dictionary, the English dictionary, it talks about impulses.

So there are things that aren't thought through emotional impulses, and it motivates us, it drives us, is what we do. If you love going to work, I don't care what it is, you have a great time. If you hate going to work, if your emotion towards work is bad, I don't care if it's the best day in the world. You come home exhausted, depressed, right? How you went to work in the morning, how you felt how you went to the work, determine how the day went. So if you hate your job, and you think about it, and you get up just loathing to go to work, and you go to work, and you get a raise, you still come home unhappy. Because I got to get up tomorrow and do that all over again.

It's an emotional impulse. Our spirit, when it talks about the spirit, the spirit of jealousy, the spirit of hatred, the spirit of love, these are our emotional impulses. And eventually, they determine our actions as much as our thoughts. Now, we have to change that. We'll talk about that. We have to change that. We cannot be driven by these impulses. And next time, probably the next sermon, we'll talk about how the Holy Spirit helps us deal with those impulses. That's not what we're going to talk about today. We're just going to show how those impulses can lead us to the point we think we're doing something right, or actually doing something wrong. But it feels right, just like every country song about cheating never written. It feels so right, but it is so wrong. It cleaves the ass of these seven.

Cleaves the ass of these chapter seven. So, this sermon is just... We're not going to cover everything that we could cover, because this is going to be at least one, maybe two more sermons tied into this over the next month or two, along with sermons about as we go through the church. Cleaves the ass of these seven. And verse eight, The end of a thing is better than its beginning. The patient spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools. He says, don't be in a rush to have an angry spirit, because foolish people, anger resides inside the core of who they are. It's in their bosom. Have you ever met somebody that's so angry that they don't even need a reason to be angry anymore? They have a spirit of anger. They don't even need a reason to be angry anymore. They get up every day, and they're just angry. They expect the worse. They expect God to hurt them. They expect people to hurt them. They expect things to turn out bad. They don't deserve this, and they're just plain mad. And they're like that all the time. The spirit of anger, he says, don't rush to have a spirit of anger, because it's inside the core, inside your bosom. You're a fool if you live with an angry spirit. What kind of spirits do we have? This also leads us to an interesting question.

Is it possible to do the right thing, but still not please God, because we have the wrong motivation? Is it possible to do the right thing, but have a wrong motivation? We'll see that the answer to that is yes. It is actually possible to do something right for the wrong reason, and in the end, God is not always pleased with that. Now, today we're just going to go through the Old Testament. I don't usually do this, but we're not going to go to any New Testament scriptures today. When I get into explaining how the Holy Spirit helps us with these emotions, with these driving spirits, these inner motivations, then we'll spend a lot of time in the New Testament.

But I just want to go through three places in the Old Testament where it shows we can study and understand the person whose motivations were wrong, even though in some ways what it appeared to be doing was right. And then I'm going to go to a psalm. Each of these problems we look at, we're going to go to a psalm where the answer is found in something written by David. So we'll go through three places that they're all during the time of the kings, the kings of Israel. We're going to look at three kings. We're going to look at three situations where they thought they were doing something right, but their motivations were actually wrong. And then we're going to look at how David dealt with that in his own life, because he had to deal with those things in his own life.

So let's start by going to 2 Chronicles 24, our first lesson.

What's amazing, by the way, when we get into the New Testament and how God's Holy Spirit helps us deal with these inner impulses, these driving forces, we're going to find that David had a profound understanding of how God's Spirit worked. Profound understanding, because he had God's Spirit.

And we're going to find that what he taught was exactly what the New Testament writers said that had to happen to us. 2 Chronicles 24, picking up the story here of Joash.

Joash was seven years old when he became king and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jabbiah of Mersheba. And Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Joah. I always have trouble with this name. Well, Jo.

I don't know why. You ever have a mental block? I have a mental block with this guy's name. For years I've had a mental block with this guy's name. I've actually said and repeated it over and over. And then every time I get up to say it, it doesn't come out right. So, Jo, we're going to call him Jo. It's actually Jehoiada. So, anyway, Jehoiada the priest. Maybe every once in a while, I'll call him Jo. Okay, Jehoiada the priest. And Jehoiada took two wives for him and he had sons and daughters. Now, what happened after that, or this, is that Joash set his heart on repairing the house of the Lord. He said, we need to fix the temple. It is fallen into this repair. It's not being used to the worship of God, of Yahweh. We need to go back and rebuild the temple.

Then he gathered the priest and the Levites and said to them, go out to the cities of Judah and gather from all of Israel money to repair the house of your God from year to year and see that you do it quickly. However, the Levites did not do it quickly. The Levites just didn't think this was a good idea. People really didn't want to give. There was too much idolatry in the nation. People just weren't really wanting to follow God. Whatever reasons they came up with, they didn't do this. Their motivations were suspect here. Okay? So, the king called Joe, the chief priest, and said to him, why do you not require the Levites to bring in from Judah and from Jerusalem the collection according to the commandment of Moses, the servant of the Lord, and of the assembly of Israel for the tabernacle of witness? He went back and said, look, this is in the law that money is to be collected for the service of God. For the sons of Atholiah, that wicked woman, had broken to the house of God, and also presented all the dedicated things of the house of God to the bales. These were the gods of the Canaanites. He said, well, what's happened is this woman, who's some kind of prophetess or priestess, her followers actually broke into the temple, and they've actually dedicated everything to these gods. The Levites aren't going to go in there.

The Levites say, well, what are we going to do? Drive these people out?

Then at the king's command they made a chest and set it outside the gate of the house of the Lord. They made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to bring to the Lord the collection that Moses, the servant of God, had imposed on Israel in the wilderness. Then all the leaders of the people rejoiced, brought their contributions, and put them into the chest until it all had to all had given. The leaders came and gave more and more and more wealth until they had enough to do the repairs. Now, this is good, isn't it? These are good actions.

Joash is doing the right thing. The leaders of Israel or Judah are gathering all the money they need. The Levites now start to respond, and the actions are good. The actions are good.

Verse 11, So it was at that time when the chest was brought to the king's official by the hand of the Levites, when they saw that there was much money, the king's scribe and the high priest officer came and emptied the chest and took it and returned it to his place. Thus they did day by day and gathered money in abundance. Every day this kept repeating itself over and over again.

And the king and Jehoiada gave it to those who did the work of the service of the house of the Lord. And they hired masons and carpenters to repair the house of the Lord, and also those who worked in iron and bronze to restore the house of the Lord. So the workmen labored, the work was completed by them, and they restored the house of God to its original condition and reinforced it.

Wow! This is amazing! This is good! God's even pleased with this, as he says, and we'll see.

Verse 14, When they had finished, they brought the rest of the money before the king, the Jehoiada, and they made it from it, articles for the house of the Lord, articles for serving and offering spoons and vessels of gold and silver. They offered burnt offerings in the house of the Lord continually all the days of this high priest. At this point on, Israel went through a repentance, or Judah went through a repentance. And people came back to the temple and they worshiped the true God. And there were services there, and there was Sabbath observed again. There hadn't been Sabbath services observed, and Holy Day observances observed in the temple for a long time, because it had been dedicated to all these Canaanite gods. People returned, started to return to the law of God. They started to live the way they were supposed to live. The actions are really good here. Verse 15, But Jehoiada grew old and was full of days, and he died. He was 130 years old when he died.

At this time period, 130 was a long time like it is today. It wasn't like in the ancient days before Noah, where people lived hundreds of years. This man lived a long time, way above normal, way beyond what most people lived. 130 years. Verse 16, And they buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done good in Israel both toward God and his house.

So this man is honored in the Bible, because he helped bring about a revival in Judah. This man's heart was right with God, his motivations were right, and therefore God did a great thing to this man, because his motivations were right. His inner impulses were to serve God, to worship God, to do what God asked of him no matter what. And that's what he did. And God did something great through him. Verse 17, Now after the death of Jehoiada, the leaders of Judah came and bowed out to the king, and the king listened to them. Therefore they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers, and served wooden images and idols, and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of their trespass. Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Jehoash is still king. These are the same leaders. These are the same people who followed this high priest for years. For years they did what was right. For years they followed what they were supposed to do. For years they went to Jerusalem for the Passover. For years. How does this happen? Verse 19, Yet he, God, sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord, and they testified against them, though they would not listen.

And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, who stood above the people and said to them, Thus says God, Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has also forsaken you. So they conspired against him. And at the command of the king, this is Jehoash, this is the one who followed God, this is the man who helped bring an enormous change in all of Judah that lasted for quite a while. So they conspired against him. At the command of the king, they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord. They killed the high priest's son, who came and said, Come back, we'll just return to God. This isn't right. How did those people go from one point to the other? Over a period of time, they repented, they changed, they followed God. And at the depth of the high priest, within a very short period of time, they simply went back to the point where they killed the man that they followed, they killed his son. This is what happens when we don't deal with our spirit, our inner motivations. When we don't deal with our spirit, our inner motivations, spiritual chains will only be temporary.

If we only deal with our actions, and we don't deal with the motivations for our actions, and they stay the same, guess what we will eventually do? We will go back to our original actions. I mean, that's just basic psychology, right? You can change a person's behavior, but if you don't change the motivations, when they get a chance, the first thing they're going to do is go back to their previous actions, because actions are the result of inner emotional impulses.

You know, it's what all 12-step programs are based on. You change the behavior, but eventually you have to change the motivations, or you'll go back to drinking. If you don't change why you drank, constraints, you know, they can put you in a hospital, they can put you in a program where you dry out, and you're in this hospital for two or three weeks or a month, and you come out, you know, how many times do we see where movie stars and rock stars, and what, they're put in a rehab center, and they're there for a month, and they come out, and for the next two or three months they're fine. And then, you know, they wreck their motorcycle in some place, and they're back in the hospital again, and, you know, they beat up, the guy beat up his girlfriend and put her in the hospital, and you think, how did they do that? Well, they changed his behavior, and a lot of times you can keep people's behavior changed as long as there's an external restraint. But take away the external restraint, and we will go to the behavior that our impulses motivate us to do. That's why sin is so hard to deal with.

So it's not just our behavior, because if our behavior is only put on us by restraint, it's not just our behavior.

15 years ago, 16 years ago, some of you were in a church that didn't eat bark, didn't eat clean and unclean, you know, obey God's law and clean and unclean needs. And one sermon was given that said, God had done away with that. Now, you and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm going to go back and look at that, because that's not what it says.

Thousands of people ran out that night and ate as gorges themselves with as much pork as they could.

They said, how can that happen? Over the years, I could not figure out how that happened, and I realized they were doing it. Their behavior was modified through the external force.

Somehow, they had never dealt with the internal force.

And as soon as the external restraints are gone, they do what they really wanted to do anyways.

How did David deal with this? How do we make sure that changes God makes in our lives are permanent? How do we do that? Psalm 51. I won't read all of Psalm 51. I know I go to Psalm 51 probably three, four, five times a year in service, because it's such a profound passage in the Bible.

It's David's Psalm, one of his Psalms, of repentance after he committed adultery and murdered a man, lied about it, committed all those sins. He had to deal with this. And here's how he deals with the realization that his motivation is given into inner motivations instead of following God's motivation. When we get into God's Holy Spirit, how it interacts with us, we'll begin to understand how God deals with those motivations and changes our motivations. He doesn't just change our behavior. He changes that too. But if it's only external change of behavior, when external restraints are gone, we will do what we want to do anyways.

Verse 10 says, Create me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. See where he goes? He goes right to, deep inside my inner motivations has to be renewed because they're all messed up. I lost something here. I was going through life and I was obeying you, and I lost contact with you. And in doing so, I gave in to inner impulses.

He realized where it came from. He didn't say, it's Bathsheba's fault. He didn't come up with a whole list of reasons why he had done what he'd done. He simply said, I get this. Inside, my spirit became a spirit of lust, and a spirit of self-righteousness, and a spirit of fear, because I didn't want anybody to find out what I'd done.

And because I was driven by those inner emotional impulses, look what I did! He understood exactly where his sin came from.

And he goes to God and says, you're going to have to fix this. This is where we go.

This is where we go, or we end up like Joe Ash.

We end up with Joe Ash, or like Joe Ash.

He says in verse 11, do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me, because without God's Spirit, he could not change those impulses. You and I cannot change those inner impulses without God's Spirit.

We can't.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your way, and sinners shall be converted to you. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise. You do not despise sacrifice, or I'm sorry, desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. You realize he went to God and he said, break my spirit.

Break it up. It's hard and it's wrong.

How many times would you and I have a problem when we find ourselves sinning, or in certain attitudes, when we find ourselves in the spirit of jealousy, or anger, or hatred, or self-righteousness, which is the hardest one to see?

That's the hardest attitude to see.

When we find ourselves in the spirit of greed, or lust, or pride, do we go to God and say, break my spirit? You know how painful that's going to be? And yet, that's what David did. Break my spirit.

Those inner motivations are wrong, and you're going to have to come in and break that.

And I want you to break that, so that I can have a clean heart. I can have a renewed spirit.

We can live keeping the Holy Days and the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments in the letter, which is good. We're commanded to do that. You and I cannot be true Christians and be breaking God's law. But, if we're dealing with the inner motivations, sooner or later, we'll break them anyways. Sooner or later, we'll break them anyways. Because we want to.

Our motivations are there. If you have the spirit of greed, sooner or later, you will lie, steal, cheat, or do whatever you have to do to get money. If you covet, if you hink your neighbor, you'll find a way to mistreat your neighbor.

So, we have to realize when we have this issue, the issue is that when we don't deal with our spirit or inner motivations, spiritual change will be temporary. The antidote to that? We have to go to God and say, I need a new spirit. Break mine. That's a hard one, folks.

Break my spirit. But, if we truly want to be where God's taking us, you and I have to go do that. And we'll find things about ourselves that we do not like. We will find parts of our innermost impulses that we do not like because they're not godly.

The second story is in 1 Kings 10. 1 Kings 10.

See, as we go through what the Church is, and we go through the work of the Holy Spirit, these two things combine. We can talk about what the Church is, and we can become a nice social club with a set of doctrines and still not be what God wants the Church to be.

Because, individually, we have to go through this level of change, and we have to move from just doing this because it's in our heads, and we have to do it because it's in our hearts. It's our spirit to do this. 2 Kings 10. 2 Kings 10.

And let's start in verse 23. Here's a king that did something very positive. 2 Kings 10.23. And Jehu said, proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal, so they proclaimed it.

I think, wow, this king's calling everybody together to worship Baal. Then Jehu said throughout all of Israel, when all the worship of Baal came, that there was not a man left who did not come. So they came into the temple of Baal, and the temple of Baal was full from one end to the other. And he said to the one in charge of the wardrobe, bring out vestments for all the worshipers of Baal. So they brought out vestments for them. Then Jehu and Jehonadab, the son of Rekab, went into the temple of Baal and said to the worshipers of Baal, search and see that no servants of the Lord are here with you, but only the worshipers of Baal. So they went into the sacrifice, they went in to offer sacrifices of burnt offerings. Now Jehu had appointed for himself 80 men on the outside, and had said, Have any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escapes whoever lets him escape, it shall be his life or the life of the other. I want you to understand what he just did.

He said, All you who don't worship God or worship Baal, come together. Put him in one room, got 80 men outside, and says, Kill every one of them, and if any of them escape, I'm going to kill you. We're going to clean this country up for God. You think that's pretty gruesome, but God actually said, This is good. This is good because these people are corrupting. They were corrupting his nation. Verse 25, though, what happened, as soon as he had made an offer into the offering of the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard of the captains, Go in and kill them, but no one comes out. And they killed them with the edge of the sword. Then the guards and the officers threw them out and went into the inner room of the temple of Baal. And they brought out the sacred pillars of the temple of Baal and burned them. They also broke down the sacred pillar of Baal, tore down the temple of Baal, and made it a refuge dump to this day. Thus Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel. Then you think, Well, wow! Jehu must be listed as one of the greatest kings of all time in Israel. He did the right thing! Yeah. But you know, sometimes, in fact, many times, I have conflicting motivations. Especially, you know, we have God's Spirit, our inner motivation and the motivation of the Spirit are in conflict with each other all the time. We'll talk about that when we get into the work of the Holy Spirit here sometime in the next couple of weeks.

He had conflicting motivations. The first one, I'm going to go obey God, clean up the mess, and we're going to go back and worship God. But I want you to notice the next verse.

However, Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebot, who had made Israel's sin, that is, from the golden calves that were Bethel and Dan. He goes on and says, God says to you, I'm going to reward you. The next couple verses, God says, I'm going to reward you for what you've done. But then verse 31 says, Jehu took no key to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with always heart. For he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel's sin. Now, you'll see the word heart and spirit used many times interchangeably because it has to do with the inner motivation. He says he never sought to obey the law of God with his very inner motivations. He obeyed God. He got rid of Baal worship, which was good. And God rewarded him for it. But he had another motivation, too. The sins of Jeroboam. If you go back and read 1 Kings 12, I won't go there, 1 Kings 12, the sin of Jeroboam was God had separated Judah in Israel.

And Israel was given to Jeroboam, and God said, I'm giving this to you. But Jeroboam didn't trust that. So what he did, because it says he was afraid the people would go to Jerusalem, because they were still commanded by God to go to Jerusalem to worship. If they went to Jerusalem to worship, guess what would happen? Well, the people of Judah and the people of Israel would get back together. So he didn't want them to do that. So he set up places of worship in Israel and changed the dates of the Feast of Tabernacles to another time.

Yeah, we can see the Feast of Tabernacles in just a different month.

He had a motivation, and in his case it was a political motivation, and Jehu had the same motivation. He had two conflicting motivations. I'm going to obey God unless it takes away what I really want, and what I really want to do is be king. And then I fudge.

We keep the Feast of Tabernacles. What's the problem? I moved it. You know, Jerobo moved it. Not me. We can't have those people going down to Jerusalem.

I mean, they go to Jerusalem. They're going to see Solomon's Temple. Guess what they're going to say? Whoa! See, sometimes we have conflicting motivations, like Jehu did. How do we deal with conflicting motivations? And I guarantee you, if you have God's Spirit, unless you are not sensitive to the Spirit of God, if you're not sensitive to the Spirit of God, then you're not experiencing this. If you are sensitive to the Spirit of God, I guarantee you you have conflicting motivations. You have to because part of us is still evil. Part of us is still evil. We have to explore those motivations.

Look at Psalm 32. Dr. Henderson isn't here today. He's going up to Austin for services, but he sang this a couple weeks ago in services. And I thought it was amazing, the absolute silence, since everybody listened to him sing this. The words were these words. Psalm 32.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. We deceive ourselves all the time, and we deceive others all the time. We pretend to be something we're not. We live lies of deceit.

It's the whole core problem with hypocrisy. We think hypocrisy is you see someone trying to do something right, and they fail. They commit a sin. No, that means they gave in to an inner impulse they shouldn't have given in to. Hypocrisy says, I'm really not that bad.

Hypocrisy sees, cannot see that the person cannot see themselves for who they really are. So they make up a charade, and they live the charade.

You see people who do this who commit adultery all the time. You see people who are involved in all kinds of wrong business practices all the time. They separate this, and they pretend that's not what they're doing. And so, we cannot see the reality that we deep inside have at our core evil motivations. Every one of us does. And we have to look at those, or eventually we'll give in to them, and our conduct will change.

Our behavior will change, even though we may be doing the right thing now.

He says in verse 3, When I kept silent, my bones grew old, though my groaning all the day long, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality has turned into the drought of summer. David said, and God just wouldn't let me go. I could inside this conflict between the inner driven urge and the drive to follow God's Spirit, His Spirit, God's Spirit. There was a conflict. And he said he could feel God's hand. And he says, God's hand has got heavier and heavier and heavier. You know, he says, now I'm on my knees, now I'm laying flat out on the ground. And he says, God's hands are still there on top of me. Verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you, at a time when you may be found surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near him. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.

When was the last time you felt like you were surrounded with songs of deliverance?

God was delivering you from your sin. Why didn't we experience that? We say, but I changed my behavior.

But we also have to deal with, I've changed a lot of behavior in my life, and I'm going to confess here, folks, but deep inside I still wanted to do it. I still struggle with that.

And I still, there are days when I still think I could make more money, not in the ministry.

Because I think this is too hard. And I think, wait a little, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I don't choose my duties and responsibilities. God does.

Right? God chooses who we are. God chooses who the family is.

And I stop and think, you know what? I couldn't do anything else in my life. I'd go crazy.

First of all, I'd worry about all of you so much I've had a nervous breakdown.

And second of all, God would cut me off.

The inner urge goes away. I'm quite happy to do what I'm supposed to do.

We all fight that. We all fight this urge to do wrong, whether you can have the spirit of jealousy, the spirit of self-righteousness, the spirit of pride, the spirit of anger, the spirit of hatred, the spirit of greed, the spirit of lust, whatever it is. And it wouldn't be nice if it was one.

And then you get one of them under control, and you've got three other ones.

Right?

And I think of, you know, when I read through here, I think of a fascinating person in history, Albert Speer. Albert Speer was an architect in the 1930s, and not a real successful one, but an extremely talented architect in Germany. And he designed a house for Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe. And Hitler was so impressed he invited Albert Speer over with ideas on how to build Berlin into the greatest architectural wonder of the world. And he did. He built models and plans. And Hitler, I mean Hitler just, of all the men around Hitler, this is the one he loved the most. This guy could see his vision of what he wanted Berlin to be.

And Albert Speer began to build this new modern Berlin. Now, Albert Speer wasn't political. He was motivated by a desire and a need to do work and be recognized for his work.

And he was so happy, because Adolf Hitler, I mean, this man was held up as just the most brilliant man in his entire regime. Well, as the war dragged on, once the war started, what happened was, throughout Germany, the American bombers and British bombers and Russian bombers were just bombing all the industry. So Hitler put Albert Speer in charge of trying to keep the industrial base of Germany alive. And it's amazing, because all through 1942, 43, and 44, we would send a thousand bombers a day. And the British would send a thousand bombers a night. And Albert Speer kept redesigning the whole German system so that they actually kept producing more and more airplanes and more and more tanks. And it was like, how are these people doing this? We could devastate a city, and two weeks later, the city would be rebuilt. Or at least all the factories and the homes for the workers. And it was like, how are they doing this? Albert Speer was an absolute genius. Albert Speer did amazing work. The war ended. They brought him before the tribunal for war crimes.

And Albert Speer said, I knew nothing of the Holocaust. And they said, well, you designed the railway systems. You're the one who kept everything going. You're the one who made this possible. And he said, well, I'm not really political. They said, well, didn't you hear about it? And so I heard rumors, but, you know, they're just rumors. Well, why did you think you were doing what you were doing? I don't know. Everybody just said I did good work. So, unlike the other conspir- other people who worked with Adolf Hitler, they didn't kill Albert Speer. But he was in jail for 20 years, where he reviewed Christianity. You know, I'm gonna, I guess, I'm gonna have to deal with what I've done wrong here. And he got out. It was amazing when you read the interviews, interviews with him, because he said, it's horrible what Hitler did. It's terrible.

And what we were going to do, and he kept talking about the genius of what he was going to do.

And in the end, he died a very empty man. And the reason he died a very empty man, he could see the actions were wrong. He could see other people were wrong. And Albert Speer said, I was wrong. But my motives weren't wrong. He never could see his motives were wrong.

So they let him out of jail. But in one interview, he talked about the guilt he carried all the time. He kept seeking repentance. He kept seeking forgiveness. He couldn't find it. And he couldn't find it because he never dealt with his motivations. Oh, I tell you what, he would say the Holocaust was horrible. They killed millions of people. It was terrible. And I was involved in that. And it was wrong. Why were you involved in it? Well, you know, I wasn't political. It really wasn't my fault. That's the essence of his argument. That's what happens when we get to the place where we have conflicting motivations and we don't want to go and see the motivation for what it is.

It's rebellion against God. It's the spirit of rebellion. It's the spirit of lawlessness. It's the spirit of greed. There's the spirit of hatred. Whatever it is, we don't want to go there.

So we build actions. And we're willing to say, well, some of my actions were wrong. And you know where I read this story? You know, just a moment ago, Chuck Colson died.

Chuck Colson was one of the inner circle men with Richard Nixon. And Chuck Colson wrote a book that said, I was like Albert Speer. He said, I did illegal things at a loyalty to the President. Thinking I was doing was right because I never wanted to search myself and see that my problem was my ambition. And so he wrote a book about how he says, I learned it. Albert Speer never did.

He says, I learned that my motivations were wrong. He said, I kept saying, well, maybe some of my actions were wrong, but my motivations were always since he had they were.

When he was in prison, he discovered that it was his motivations.

So when we try to live with conflicting motivations, we must learn to submit totally to God's motivations, even though there is conflict. Once again, that's a whole other sermon yet we'll do. Third point, 1 Chronicles 21. 1 Chronicles 21. Now Satan stood up against Israel, this is verse 1, and moved David to number Israel. He moved him. I think it's an interesting translation. In his inner motivation, in his spirit, David said, I went to number the people. And Satan played on that.

This is the third way that we have to deal with our motivations. We have to understand that we allow, we will allow Satan to motivate our inner desires. Since it's what we want to do, and he knows that, he'll play on that. Anything you really want to do, he's going to find a way to get to you. That's why you can look at somebody who has a problem with smoking and say, why can't that person overcome that sin? What's their problem? They're just a weak Christian. You know? And I just, all day at church today, I must have told 15 people, that's a weak Christian. No, I don't really have a problem with gossip.

You see? Now, the person who has a smoking problem may have no problem with gossip at all.

They have no inner desire, no inner motivation to gossip. But they have a problem with smoking, and their inner desire keeps driving them there. But they're both sins, and Satan will play on every sin you have. Every little motivational flaw that we have, he plays on. David did a census. Now, God told Moses to do a census. I mean, there's nothing inherently evil in a census, but we'll see the problem we have here.

So, David went to Joab, who of course was the lead of his army, the general of his army, go to the leaders of the people, go number Israel from Be'er Sheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to me, and I will know it, that I may know it. And Joab answered, May the Lord make his people a hundred times more than they are, but my Lord the King, are they not all my Lord's servants? Why then does my Lord require this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel? Now, why was the general arguing this? You think his general would say, yes, sir, go do it. Nevertheless, the King's word prevailed against Joab. Therefore, Joab departed and went throughout all of Israel, and came to Jerusalem. And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. All Israel had one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and Judah had four hundred seventy thousand men who drew the sword. You see why he was doing it? He wasn't doing a census. He was seeing how big his army was. He was seeing how much power he had.

An army that size at that day and age, he was a world power. He was a world power.

I mean, today an army of almost one and a half million men would be a world power, right? If they were properly equipped. That's a huge army! And David got his army! And Joab still do this.

Now, Joab wasn't a very righteous man, but he was wise.

You see, this is not good. God won't like this.

Verse 6 says, But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the King's word was abominable to Joab. Therefore, he didn't even go to the Levites to number them or the Benjamins. He said, This is wrong, but David is doing this wrong. So he even disobeyed the King at one point.

Verse 7, And God was displeased with this thing. Therefore, he struck his room. Now, verse 8, David says, I have sinned greatly because I have done this thing. But now I pray, take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.

David once again understood. David didn't say, But God, what's the point? What do you mean? You gave me this army. You gave me this nation. We're a unified nation. Under Saul, they were never quite unified. They're a unified nation. We have it. Shouldn't I know who the army is? He immediately said, Wrong motivation. Wrong motivation. Shouldn't have done this.

Because the action wasn't a sin in itself. Taking a sentence wasn't a sin. But his motivation was a sin. And Joab saw it, which, by the way, tells us something. When you're being highly motivated to do something wrong, God will bring you a way out. In this case, Joab argued God's side, which is really ironic if you study the life of Joab. He's arguing God's side. Don't do this, God! Send someone to David to say, Motivation's wrong. But David was so motivated by that inner impulse, he wasn't listening. How many times people say, Why sinned? But God didn't help me. Yay, He did. Somewhere along the line, He sent somebody or something. We just didn't see it. We didn't hear it. And a lot of times, if you think back through, you think, Oh, yeah.

There was a warning flag. It went on. It was a buzzer that went off someplace. There was somebody arguing with me, Don't do this. God sent somebody. But Satan had gotten to him, and he wasn't listening.

Because what happens is, the reason the point where you give into that impulse so much that Satan feeds it, and you and I do not have the power of ourselves to stop it. You ever talk about people get into a blind rage? You know, there are people who commit murders and have no memory. The impulse is so strong, and yet it goes against their morality. They have a motivation not to kill, and a motivation to kill, and they will kill and have no memory. The memory is gone.

How can that happen? Because the motivation to kill was so strong, and probably being fed by Satan, that the other side, the other motivation, erased the memory of what they had done. Are they still responsible before God, and before the law? You bet they are. But there are people who have committed horrible crimes without no memory of it. Not because they have brain damage, and because of this issue here. Satan is driving that force. Part of them doesn't want to do it. Their impulses are in conflict, and they give into the wrong impulse.

David looked at his impulse, and this is what makes David such a unique person. And he said, I did it. Wrong motivation. I mean, immediately, as soon as Satan backed off, as soon as God came to him and said this was wrong, he didn't defend himself. He said, wrong motivation, wrong motivation, wrong motivation. I really boo it again, didn't I?

Because unto that point, he thought what he did was right. See, he thought. He felt right. Psalm 143. Our last Psalm here, where David deals with this kind of issue in his life. Psalm 143. Hear my prayer, O Lord. Give ear to my supplication, and your faithfulness answer me, and in your righteousness. Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living is righteous. Now, you notice in this Psalm, even though he's going to talk about his problem here, he already has a broken spirit coming into it. In Psalm 51, he literally has to go to God, I know you want a broken spirit, you're going to have to clean up this me who I am. You're going to have to renew a spirit in me, because this is all messed up. He was basically asking, God, break my spirit. This one, he already comes in with a broken spirit and says, okay, I've sinned again. I've looked at this. Wrong motivation, wrong inner impulse, gave into it. I don't know what it is. He doesn't say. But what I find interesting is verse 3 and 4. Now, he's not talking about Satan here, but Satan is our enemy. So, we can apply this to our enemy. Okay? For the enemy has persecuted my soul, he has crushed my life to the ground, he's made me to dwell in darkness like those who have long been dead. Therefore, my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. He says, my whole spirit is overwhelmed. If he said, well, do you have a spirit of lust or greed, or what do you need to deal with? He says, I'm just overwhelmed. My spirit is just, I have no way of dealing with what's happening to me. That's what Satan does to us. We get to the place we say, I have no way to deal with what's happening in my life. I have no way to overcome this. That's because we are giving into those impulses, and he's feeding them. Never underestimate how much Satan hates humanity.

He's real, and he hates humanity, and he feeds our impulses.

And that's what we do. We destroy our lives. We make stupid decisions. We waste our time. We destroy our own marriages. What do we do? And we do this because of impulses. We're driven by emotions. And David says in verse 5, I remember the days of old. I meditated all your works. I'm used on the works of your hands. I spread out my hands to you, my soul longed for you like a thirsty land. Here's one of the things you and I have to do when we're being driven by those impulses. We have to stop, and we have to think God's way. You have to study God's way. You have to renew God's way. You change your emotions by your thoughts. I've said that a hundred times, but it's so important. You change your emotions by your thoughts. You reprogram your inner motivations by going back and thinking about God's way, studying God's way, praying to God about His way. That's what David did. Answer me speedily, O Lord. My spirit fails. He says, there won't be anything left of me. I'll be an empty shell. I'll be an empty shell if this continues. Do not hide your face from me, unless I be like those who go down into the pit, into shield, who die. Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning. For in you I trust, or do I trust, cause me to know the way in which I should walk. For I lift up my soul to you.

See what David said. God, teach me. Come into my life, or my spirit will be a broken spirit. It'll just be a crushed spirit. There'll be nothing left. You and I have to go to God and say that at times. We have to be willing to pour that out to Him. To go to Him and say, you must do something. You must cause something. Let me hear your loving kindness. Let me hear your love. Let me experience your presence.

In my inner motivations, let me feel the way you feel. That's what we have to do. Or you and I can keep changing behavior. Oh, we can change behavior.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't change behavior. Out of, the spirit comes behavior. But if all we do is say, okay, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to measure a man's hair to see how long it's too long. Because the Scripture says, man should have long hair. So, we measure that shorter and shorter and shorter. And the more righteous you are, the more shorter your hair is, too. We're all bald. And now we're all righteous. If it's only about behavior, let's shave our heads. And then we will all be the over-righteous, the super-righteous.

Well, I'll be bald men. Now, you women can't do that. Your hair is your glory. So, guess what you want to do? You have to wear your hair down to your waist. Then you are the super-righteous. You see how that works? If we're only going to deal with our actions, that's what we'll do. If we deal with the inner man, the inner person, where God's Spirit dwells, then, yes, our actions spring out of that. And guess what? Women aren't going to have shaved heads, and men aren't going to be walking around with hair down to their shoulders.

We're just not going to do that. But we're not going to also have to measure people's hair as they walk through the door, as a sign of a righteousness.

God weighs the spirits. God not only judges our actions, but He judges our inner emotional motivations. Ask God through His Spirit to reveal to you your inner motivations. Go ask. It's not going to be pretty, though. Go ask Him. What is it motivates me? Ask Him to search you and see how much you are still motivated by the spirit of rebellion and greed and lust and hatred and self-righteousness and selfishness and jealousy and anger and pride. Confess your sins with a broken heart. And when you do, when you do these things, you will find yourselves, like David, surrounded with songs of redemption.