Worthy to Stand Before God

I had mentioned I was going to give a sermon on the economic impact and crisis of this past week. I wrote the sermon up yesterday and finished it. I looked at it again and said, I don't really want to give this. So I decided to do a different sermon.

I'll talk a little bit about it during the announcements here. I mentioned that in my letter Thursday night. Sometimes you write a sermon and think, no, this doesn't wash. So you put it aside and it gives something else. This past week, obviously, if you look at it, beginning last weekend, America had two major storms hit. One was the Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast. The second began brewing last weekend. It actually started long before that, but it really began to be noticed and making headlines even over the weekend with the ongoing financial crisis on Wall Street.

That hit full-blown on Monday with the crisis with Lehman Brothers, a big financial bank on Wall Street, and then AIG, the world's largest insurer. Merrill Lynch basically went out of business. You'll still see the brand Merrill Lynch, but it got absorbed and bought. They went looking for a suitor and got purchased by the Bank of America. Years ago, I opened my first brokerage account when I lived in Fort Wayne. I had a little extra money from the sale of a home.

I decided to open a brokerage account. I went to Merrill Lynch, downtown Fort Wayne. I remember talking with the broker that was setting up my account, and he said he was kind of holding up a dollar. He was bragging about Merrill Lynch. He said, Merrill Lynch is just like General Motors and the American dollar, he said. What else do I need to say? He was talking about confidence and strength and stability. Fortunately, long ago, I closed that brokerage account, went with another broker who's still more conservative and doing fine, and they're still in business.

I've always remembered what he said that morning in his office as he was touting the strength of Merrill Lynch. Well, they essentially had to be bought out and rescued by Bank of America. As the week went on, I think they thought maybe the Treasury Department and the federal government decided not to step in and bail out and take over Lehman Brothers. They thought they wouldn't have to for AIG. From what I've read and what happened, I think sometime along Wednesday, Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, had a wake-up call and looked into the abyss and realized that the federal government had to go in and socialize or nationalize, take over AIG, the big insurance firm, that they could not afford to let it go under just as they had done with Freddie May and Freddie Mac a couple of weeks ago.

So, we've seen those two, Freddie May, Freddie Mac, and now AIG, basically bought up by the federal government. We've entered a form of socialism in this country. Capitalism has taken a hit. It's not out the door, but it's remarkable that the world has taken place during this past week. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Every morning, you looked at the headlines as to what was going on. This was Thursday's headline for the Wall Street Journal, Mounting Fears. You never see this type of headline on the Wall Street Journal. They just don't do that until Rupert Murdoch took over here about a year ago, and he's a little bit more flamboyant. But Wall Street Journal, very staid, very conservative, laid back. They don't do big headlines like this. But to see something across the entire top banner, and to see it two days in a row, Thursday and Friday on the Wall Street Journal, tells you something big is happening.

But on Thursday, it says, Mounting Fears shaped world markets as banking giants rushed to find buyers. That, of course, has just covered all of the front-page news. Friday's was U.S. Moles' plan to clean up finance system as part of a widening effort to stem the crisis. Financial Times, published in London, is a pink paper. Don't read anything into this.

It's not making a statement about anything personally. It just happens they printed on pink paper to distinguish it, I guess, from all the other white paper. But on their op-ed page, in talking about the financial problems, one of their writers said this headline was, This Greed Was Beyond Irresponsible. And as you look into the stories behind the various banks and mortgage companies and insurance firms and stories of how this all has developed, it's been going on for more than a year when the mortgage crisis, the subprime crisis, began to explode a year ago, and it has just snowballed.

And when they thought it was over, perhaps in March when Bear Stearns went under, they thought maybe that it had modeled out and it didn't. And then this hit this past week. But something big did happen this week. Let's just put it this way. How big? I don't know. I don't think anybody really knows for a long time. But you saw the stock market drop about a thousand points, and then come back by yesterday at the close of the day to within just a few points of where it was a week ago.

I mean, that type of a swing where you lose a thousand points and the value of the market drops. And about Wednesday morning, I realized I don't check these things all the time in terms of my own personal accounts. But about Wednesday, I was saying to myself, well, instead of retiring at age 80, I'm going to have to work to age 90 now, it looks like, with the IRAs and the 401s and all those things that you put money away into.

And I don't personally plan to retire, but probably after this week whatever else happens, any idea of retirement is out the door. But it's been that way, and it's been a very cyclonic week in terms of how this hit. Now, one thing to realize, this basically hit Wall Street. It didn't hit Main Street where you and I do business. I mean, I could go to my bank, put my debit card in, get money, cash a check, go to the grocery store, buy groceries, get gas, a little bit higher this week.

Groceries a little bit higher, but we're still doing business. Our banks are still open, fortunately. I don't know of anybody here with a bank that's lost anything. Main Street necessarily hasn't been hit. It's Wall Street that was hit. And they kind of run on parallel courses in some ways. But with the restructuring that has taken place, the government that has stepped in, and especially with what has happened in the world, when I look at these things and try to figure it all out and understand it in regard to Bible prophecy, where we are in the whole march of prophetic events, I don't look so much at what is happening here as the reaction from other countries.

And the American economy is a massive economy. We don't appreciate that sometimes, but it is huge. And when we talk and we write and I write and I talk about a relative decline of America, Britain, prophetically, we have to understand that we are talking relative decline. We are not talking about imminent decline to where everything is going to fold up next week. We have been in relative decline for a long time. By that I mean we haven't gone out of business. The economy, and I do believe, in some ways, a lot of people would argue with me, some of our fundamentals are sound.

A lot of our fundamentals are not sound. But the economy has been held up. And on Thursday morning, I think it was when everything opened up, and I was watching some of the news on this, they were saying that the central banks around the world, other governments in London, in Frankfurt, in Tokyo, India, around the world, they were taking dollars. The Federal Reserve had released about $250 billion. I don't even know what $250 billion is. You don't either. But they had released this for these banks to have and to use when they were opening for business so that their customers would have dollars.

We were taking in Euros, but they were taking in massive amounts of American dollars, which has declined in value in recent years and has had its own misfortunes. But they were, in essence, cooperating with us. They can't allow us to go down. We mean that much to the world economy. I'm talking about the American economy. So, they were working with us. Things are still strong. We're still standing. And I think Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary and President Bush, and the others who are on top of these things, they're probably still trying to figure out what happened, and they couldn't tell you what the long-term impact of this is going to be.

My personal feeling is that, from what, again, we understand in the Church about prophecy, that other countries are not going to let themselves get drugged down by whatever problems we have. And this could very well accelerate their distancing themselves or setting up systems to where they are not that reliant upon us. Right now, they are.

But we've still got big problems. General Motors could go bankrupt by the end of this year. And I know that several of us are retirees of General Motors, and that impacts health benefits and retirement benefits. But General Motors is still on the ropes, and a lot of other companies are. I don't think we've seen the last of turmoil and problems.

Bottom line, I think God in heaven is holding up the American economy. That's what I conclude. For His reasons and His purposes, we're still very, very powerful in terms of our influence economically in the world and what we mean to the world's economy. I would even go out a little bit further to say, folks, that we're going to see this global economy get turned around through all these cycles, and it's going to get bigger. Countries, individuals, nations are going to get richer. We're going to see more wealth, because when you read in Revelation 18, the system that is described there is a worldwide system of tremendous wealth that comes crashing down at the very time of the end.

So we're not going to see the whole world go south, or even the United States goes south right now. I don't think that's going to happen. Something has happened, though, and I don't know what. It will play itself out. Do you remember the old bozo the clown things that we...

when we were kids, at least when I was a kid, I don't know what you had, but you'd punch these things and they'd bounce down and come right back up, and you know, punching... mine was a bozo the clown. I don't know what yours was. But that's kind of what's happened.

Last... this past week, the American economy got punched, and it went down, but it's come back up. And it may get punched again, and it may come back up. I know that's not necessarily an economic... economic...graduate-level economic explanation, but another thing I've learned this week in reading, as I...for the last few years, I've tried to educate myself about economics just to have a working knowledge so I can understand what's happening and write a little bit about it, and edit other stuff that's written about it and don't look foolish within our publications.

But I wrote the other night about derivatives. How many of you know what a derivative is? You know what a derivative is? Carl, I might... I might expect Carl Rothenbacher might know what a derivative is. He might... I don't know if he could explain it.

His explanation might be different from one or two of the rest of us. As I was saying, I'd had dinner with a friend who's a banker... or he's not a banker, but he's a businessman down in North Carolina, and he told me back in March that the next big thing was going to be derivatives. Well, derivatives was at the heart of what happened this past week. And I haven't been able to find anybody. Not even Warren Buffett knows what a derivative is. And these very complicated financial tools and instruments that get...

that are really at the heart of some of the problems we've had this week. But I took heart when I saw that even Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox News and News Corp, they don't know what derivatives are.

But these are very complicated financial instruments that have got us into a lot of trouble. In addition to a lot of greed, mismanagement, lack of accountability, and a lot of other matters right down the road. So that is about all I probably should say about that. It's something to...we have watched you and I in various degrees this week, and we cannot perhaps fully focusing on it for other reasons. If it doesn't...I can say, if you can still go cash your check, get gas, and go to work, you know, our life goes on, we don't...that necessarily doesn't impact us.

It does long-term down the road in ways that...other ways that we will have to figure out. But it's been an interesting week to watch. I don't make any wild predictions about these things. Like I said, I think that the American economy is going to go on for a while.

To the degree that it does, it's because of God. I always go back to Ezekiel chapter 10. In Ezekiel 10, you have a vision of the temple in Jerusalem and the problems of that society at that time. Ezekiel is taken in vision to Jerusalem, and he sees the presence of God leave the temple. It's a very dramatic scene there. The presence of God leaves the temple.

God is showing to Ezekiel that he has left Judah and Israel. They're on their own. He's withdrawn his blessing. As far as our country being the modern descendants of those peoples and inheriting the tremendous promises that Abraham had given to him by God, we still, in a sense, have God's hand on this nation. When God removes it, when his presence leaves the nation, it'll be all over. I don't think that's happened yet. I don't think it's going to happen next week or next month. But I think that's what is holding up this country when you look at everything and realize the house of cards that has been erected and what has been involved in all of this.

That, to me, from our worldview, which is a biblical view, that to me is the answer. So I'll write some more about it. At some point, I'll give a sermon on it, but I thought I should make a few comments about it since I had indicated that I would. What did I decide to speak on instead of that, which takes 15 minutes to cover? Well, another thing that has been on my mind is on your minds, besides just financial matters and world economics.

But we are coming up to the holy days. We're coming up to especially the Feast of Tabernacles. My mind has begun to focus on that as I've had to prepare messages for my feast assignments. My son gave his sermonette here on it to help us think and work and plan in that direction as well. One of the things that we focus on, one of the themes, is certainly the return of Jesus Christ.

We'll be here on the day of Trumpets talking about that in more detail. There is an image from Luke 21 about Christ's return that strikes a very important message in my mind. Luke 21 and verse 36. Well-known scripture. I want to focus on something else that we don't always focus on here. Luke 21 verse 36. It says here, Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass.

We read this and we tend to talk about watching. Watching world events. Watching Bible prophecy. And that is a part of the application. It's not the total application that means to watch. I think the primary application of watching has to do with us watching our own lives. Watching our own spiritual condition. That, I think, is the prime focus that Jesus uses when he talks about watching in the scriptures.

But notice at the end of verse 36, he says, all of this is to be done so that we can escape these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. Now, either that's some type of metaphorical image that, you know, or it's a literal fact. I'm not here to dissect which it is necessarily today, but let's imagine that this statement of standing before the Son of Man is literal.

That when these events all take place, when the time of judgment is Christ's return, you and I will stand before the Son of Man. Let's take it literally and ask ourselves a few questions. What will it take to stand before God? What type of a person? What type of character? What type of record will we have? Sometimes when you think about the judgment of God, you conjure up these images of a judge at a bench, the great white throne judgment.

Okay, let's call it as a white throne. We come before God in some type of a big final judgment. I don't think that's exactly what it will be, necessarily. But as human beings, we tend to think of it in that way, and we're going to have to give account for ourselves. Well, in some way, in some time, we will have to give an account for ourselves. And it says here, to watch that you might be counted worthy to escape these things and stand before God in the time of a future period. What type of people? What type of person must we be to be able to stand before God?

And in this sense, he's not talking about just kind of walking up before God, but to be able to be invited and able to stay in the presence of God in the sense that the invitees to the marriage supper and the other parables talk about having the right garments, and you come to the marriage supper and be able to sit at the table because you've got the right invitation.

In other words, you belong there. You're supposed to be there, and you can stay there. To stand before God, here in this sense, is really saying we can be in God's presence because we're supposed to be there. We are, in a sense, if I can use the term, worthy to stand before God.

And we belong there. What type of person will we have to be? We could go through all kinds of explanations, and the rich man that came to Jesus said, What do I have to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, Keep the commandments. We could go to the Ten Commandments. We could talk about the law of God. Many different ways we could talk about the type of person we would need to be able to stand before God.

But let me take you today to just one succinct source, and let's spend a few minutes going through what it says, and see if we measure up. If what this particular section of Scripture says about someone, which we would call, you and I today, a Christian, and those who are going to stand before God, let's see if we measure up to it. Turn with me back to Psalm, the book of Psalms.

Now let's go to the 15th Psalm. Psalm 15. You'll find that it is one of the shortest. It did not be shortest. I didn't do a word search to see if it indeed was the shortest.

But it is a short psalm, certainly not as long as Psalm 119, which is the longest psalm of all the psalms. But Psalm 15, you will see, is a psalm that is five verses long. How am I going to base the sermon on five verses? I don't know. Let's find out. But in Psalm 15, we have a very interesting set of verses and description.

Psalm 15 has a set of principles embedded in it that describe an individual who is going to be able to stand before God. In verse 1, it says, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill?

Let's connect this to what we just read in Luke 21. David, the psalmist here, the scripture shows that it's one of his, asks the question, Who can abide or live in your tabernacle on your whole and dwell in your holy hill?

Now, when David wrote this, in his mind, he was thinking about the tabernacle, which was the one we read about from the book of Exodus in Numbers, this goatskin, temporary, portable tent, which is about what it was, but it was a rather elaborate tent structure that served as the tabernacle, around which all the offerings, the priests, and sacrifices of that period of time evolved.

David had eventually moved that tabernacle into Jerusalem, and offerings were made there. He later made collections, and his son, Solomon, built a temple, a permanent structure. But by this time, it was on a hill in what was Jerusalem, and the tabernacle was there. The tabernacle, we should remember, was where God dwelt. Remember the Holy of Holies, where the mercy seat was, and the Ark of the Covenant, and the very presence of God, which represented God's presence within the people.

And that was where God was. And the Holy of Holies, of course, only the high priest went in there once a year on the Day of Atonement. And that was sitting there on a hill, literally on a hill, in Jerusalem, which is the old Jebusite city that David conquered. And he had placed it there, at a particular spot. This was long before he even had bought the threshing floor that became the site for the later temple.

And there he saw it, this tent, with the curtains all around him, and an altar. And there was smoke at the time when sacrifices were made. The priests were there offering every day as the king. He was probably up there on a daily basis himself, praying, or not making offerings. He wasn't a priest, but involved in some way as he was watching it, and involved in the services there. And he recognized that as he went there, he was going before God.

And he was standing and dwelling on the hill of God, where God's presence was among his people, and there in Jerusalem. And he raised the question, who can live there? Who may dwell in your holy hill? In other words, who can stand before God? Which is the later version that Jesus talks about in verse 36 of Luke 21. Be able to stand before the Son of God. David says, what type of person, literally and really, can go in there and be worthy to stand before you and be in your presence, and in a sense, to live with you?

This is what he's asking here. How can we prepare to live in God's holy hill? In God's holy presence? And what he does in the next four verses, he describes, in about ten points, the character of a person who can stand before God. Who can be in God's presence. This is essentially what Psalm 15 is all about. It's been called the description of the perfect gentleman, or gentle woman, as we might say as well. The perfect, we could also say, would be a description of the perfect person, or the perfect Christian, or the ideal member of God's church. To be able to stand in the presence of God and to live with God.

We're coming up to the holy days. We go up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, to use the terminology from the Scriptures. We're coming up before God's presence. And so it's a good thing for us, perhaps, to just go through and to examine ourselves in relation to what is said here. As we seek to be in God's presence and to learn exactly spiritually what that means.

As a member of God's church, as Christians, how will we act? How will we be? As we prepare for the Feast of Tabernacles, this is a good place to start. So let's do so. Let's look at some practical applications here of God's law as it really gets down to some of the brass tacks of human nature of how we are to be. In verse 2, we see the first point. This is the person who can be in God's presence and abide with him. He who walks uprightly.

He who walks uprightly. He walks uprightly. Sometimes we have poor posture and we walk slouched over. That's not exactly what's being talked about here. It's talking about a way of life. Other translations put it to live in a blameless life. Whose life is blameless is why one translation puts this. Who has a blameless life? I don't see any hands going up. You don't see mine going up either. But this is the description. It's really the same question or the same statement that was put to Abraham by God back in Genesis.

When God said to Abraham, Walk before me and be you perfect in all your ways. This is what God laid upon Abraham in Genesis 17 verse 1. God said, Walk before me and be perfect. This is talking about living a good life.

Living a striving, at least, for perfection. None of us come up to it. None of us come close. But this is, again, where it begins. This is the type of person who is going to be in God's presence. One who walks in their life, lives their life each day in a right manner, and seeks to walk and to live according to the principles of perfection. That's a hard challenge, as we all know.

But it is what God says to anyone who will attempt to live up to being His servants, His people. He says that from the book of Genesis forward. I've already quoted Genesis 17 with Abraham. We read it here. You turn over to Philippians. You can just hold your place here. Put a place marker in Psalm 15. And over in Philippians 2, verse 12, Paul writes, This is another description of walking uprightly, being blameless and harmless.

Children of God without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. So it's the same prescription that is given. One who is going to be able to stand before God is one who is working and striving. There's an element of working and striving in this particular psalm.

We have to put forth the effort to walk. God doesn't do it for us. We've got to get up, get off of our chair, get off of our couch, go to work every day, get outside, go to our jobs, serve someone, help someone, do something for ourselves. Walking involves our own effort. So there is that element of our own works to show our faith, to show what type of person we really are.

We have to do it in the midst of a crooked and perverse world. It's the same thought and idea that is used when Paul describes in 1 Timothy 3, the qualities to look for in an individual that you are considering as an elder, a bishop, as he says in 1 Timothy 3. It says there in verse 1 that a bishop then must be blameless. Upright is another way to put that.

Having a good report, it says, of them which are without. So there's a level of blamelessness, there's a level of conduct that is important to have and to strive for. So we're not blamed openly, patently for being greedy, for being not able to use alcohol, let's say, to get specific. Or to have a temper, not being able to control our temper, or selfishness, representative, stable, happy marriage, or children, or the way we conduct ourselves.

These are things that Paul says when he's looking at an elder. Look at these as basic minimum things to consider, to be blameless in. And again, carrying it back for all of us in the context of Psalm 15, we are to walk uprightly. This is the type of person who will stand before God. Now, go back to Psalm 15, look again at verse 2, and let's look at the second line of verse 2.

And it says, he works righteousness. He walks uprightly. Secondly, he works righteousness. Again, this goes beyond appearances. To work righteousness, again, we're getting into a little bit of legalistic works theology, if you will. Not that we're saving ourselves by our works, but we do have good works to show, and to strive for, and to live within. Works of righteousness. We have to do something. We have to be actively participating in God's way of life, and contributing to God's way of life. That's what it's all about. That includes, for all of us, having a desire to give, to serve, to help, to do something. When something needs to be done, we have a desire to do it, but also we have the inclination, and we will actually do it.

We will support. We will comfort, where we may need to offer comfort to someone, and to encourage. It really means that, as he says here, works righteousness, or does righteous worse. You can turn it around in that way. We're actually working at pleasing God, working at obeying God, working at serving his people, serving his church, serving our world, working at overcoming. Sometimes we, in recent years, I think, have gotten away from using the term, overcoming. I've probably been as guilty of that as anyone, because we don't want to be trapped into or accused of a works theology, where we're trying to work our way up into God's kingdom, and climb that big, big ladder to where we finally get to the last rung.

Bingo! We tumble over into God's kingdom because of things we have done. When we do understand the Scriptures, we are saved by grace, not by anything we have done. But we are created, as Ephesians says, we are created unto good works. So we have the pattern, we have the standards, we have the law of God that shows us how we are to work in that sense, righteousness, and to live. And again, it takes us getting out and doing, and being an active part of our life in that way.

So right off the bat here, David mentions walking uprightly and working righteousness. Doing, actively involved before God in doing things that are pleasing to Him, doing things that fit the pattern of righteousness, and being aware of it. I've mentioned many times over the years that periodically, at times of the year, usually around the Holy Days, is when it happens for me. I'll get down off my shelf, some of my books that deal with personal success, self-improvement, all these plethora of books that many of us have read and have on our bookshelves. And I'll review certain passages and things that kind of speak to me with the books that I have, whether it's books by Stephen Covey or some other author.

I've noticed over the years, I've kind of dwindled them down, and I keep going back to certain ones, and I may have marked them. And even the yellow highlighter that I marked them with 20 years ago has now faded.

But it tells me at least where I was 20 years ago, or what I was thinking, what struck me in this particular book. And some of them I've taken my fresh yellow highlighter and gone back over them, because they still mean the same. But I've noticed I have fewer books that I come back to as I get older. I'm not sure what that means, but I've thrown some of them off.

I've given them to half-price books and tried to buy less books in that particular genre and realized I've probably got enough for the rest of my life to read in that particular area. But even there, those books show you a path to walk and how to work righteously and to walk uprightly. You sift it and sort it and compare it all with God's law and God's way of life. You can come up with your own particular set of principles by which you live and things that speak to you and help you to do this.

But most importantly of all, it's God's Word that we've always come back to. Point number three is at the end of verse two. This person who dwells before God is also going to speak the truth in his heart. Speak the truth in his heart.

Again, another translation puts it this way. He whose words are from the heart. He whose words are from the heart. Speaks truth in his heart. Words are spoken from the heart. Not just from the head. There's a difference of what we might say from the head as opposed to what we say from the heart. Sometimes we may just pop off and we'll say something to somebody we shouldn't say. To our husband, to our wife, to our kids, to our neighbor, to our minister, to your best friend. And you realize, oh, I shouldn't have said that. And you're sorry. You're truly sorry. But as we all know, when we've said it especially, we can't get those words back in.

You see your kids kind of... they just drop. You see somebody's countenance change and you realize you've heard them. And yet you've spoken from the head, not from the heart. Because it really doesn't reflect the way you feel about your kid. It reflects the way you feel maybe right then. And what has happened... maybe they spilled the beans, they got your fresh car, wash car, all dirty, or they ran their bike through your flowers or something like that.

And you react emotionally. But it's not from your heart. It really truly doesn't reflect your heart's feeling for your parents, your friends, or your kids, or your mate. But nonetheless, we've said things that we shouldn't say. And so what this is talking about is getting ourselves to the point where the words we speak, indeed, are always, or more often, words from the heart.

And they're healing words, they're comforting words, they're true words. They do reflect how we feel deep down about people and about life and about our situations. And we have our emotions in control, we have our temper in control, to where we're not just saying things flippantly, out of immaturity, that we have to go back and apologize for. Because you know deep down before God that's not the way you feel, but you've said it anyway, and if somebody wants to hold on to it and hold a grudge, they can't.

I mean, I'll be right, but they will. The one who stands before God is going to be able to speak the truth from the heart and to speak in that way. So, keep that in mind. In Hebrews 4, Hebrews 4 says something here about the Word of God that connects a principle to this thought. Verse 12 of Hebrews 4, For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper, that any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

God's Word, through His Spirit, can discern the thoughts and intents of our heart. God knows what our heart is. But God's Word also forms and shapes the thoughts and the words and the intents of our heart. So, putting our minds on those things are important. If you ever find yourself doing housework, painting the house, mowing the yard, you're doing something and you're doing something routine, you can do it, but you're feeding in your mind on something else. We all think that we'll get out and work and we'll do these things, we'll be thinking about this or that, and sometimes we're mad at somebody or we're thinking about how we're going to react to a certain situation or something that's bothering us.

If you go on and on like that for a long period of time, you just kind of work yourself into a real funk and a bad attitude. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help any of us. One of the things you could learn to do is to, instead of thinking about the situation or the problem or whatever, put your mind on God's Word. Because this verse tells us that the Word of God is powerful and it begins to push out those malevolent feelings and attitudes that we have. God's Word gets down into the very marrow of our bones and to our heart where our thoughts and intents are and begins to mollify and work over and get those other things out of our mind.

To where we can be a type of person, as Psalm 15 and verse 2 says, speaks the truth from his heart. Speaks truth, true words, true feelings, true thoughts, because we've put it in there. And if we put it in from a basis of God's Word, that's going to be a whole lot better than a lot of the other feelings and moods and attitudes we all get into over situations at work, people, life, the world, whatever it might be. And we feed on what we dwell on that.

Force your mind to think upon other things. It works. Many of you, some of you are nodding your heads because you've experienced it. We've experienced the good and the bad part of that. But to get ourselves to the point where the words we speak are truth, we have to be thinking more in those lines and letting that mollify the hurt, the anger, the frustration, whatever it is that may be in there. That's the type of person that is going to be able to stand before God again.

Let's go back to Psalm 15 and verse 3. The fourth principle that is mentioned here is, this type of person does not backbite with his tongue. Does not backbite with his tongue. What are we talking about? That's right, folks. One thing that you don't like to hear any sermons given on. Gossip. G-O-S-S-I-P. Gossip. Backbiting with our tongue. David's kind of in a groove right now and he's talking about words that come out.

He says, this type of person is not going to backbite with his tongue. Now, we all do this. We've all been guilty, are guilty, will be guilty of gossip, slander, backbiting with our tongue. But this psalm here tells us that the person who dwells with God is not going to be doing this. Which means that if we do it too often, if it's more of a pattern and a regularity in our life, we're not really walking with God.

We're not really dwelling with God. We're just kind of going through the motions and we're just one of these. It's what I take from it. What I apply it and I think about myself.

Jesus said at one point that we're going to have to give an account for every idle word that we speak. We can turn back to James 3 and verses 1-12, some of the most powerful words in the Bible that convict us every time we read them. It talks about the tongue.

Verse 5, I won't read all of this, but verses 1-12 of James 3 talks about it. Verse 5, he says, The tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire by hell.

James, I've always admired the writing of James. It is always direct to the point. It doesn't pull any punches. And this about the tongue and the use of the tongue says it about as plain as anything else. He says it is something that cannot be tamed. No man can tame the tongue. It's ruely, unruly, evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless God and the Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude or the image of God.

Which means that you and I can spend a little bit of time in prayer and think we've made contact with God. Get up and yell at the dog, or their mate, or the kids, or say something about somebody that is backbiting, poisonous, unruly. It happens. It happens to everyone of us. When we think we may be even the most spiritual, we can succumb to that. I don't know how many of you remember the old television show Hee Haw? One of the funniest lines that came out of that show was about this very subject. I think it was one of the female characters who used to say, Never repeat gossip.

So listen carefully the first time. How many times does that fit us? We all like to hear it. One of the most insidious parts of it is that it just seems to give us some type of personal power and stimulation. It can give us a rush, almost like a drug, and we have to happen. We have to be very, very careful about it. God says here that to backbite with our tongue, we're not going to be standing in His presence. We're not going to be dwelling with Him. Probably other parts of our life are not going to be reflecting godly character.

Let's go back to Psalm 15 and verse 3. Verse 5 brings in the same thought. He does no evil to His neighbor. He looks upon His neighbor with kindness. That includes everything else, probably, that the tongue doesn't take care of. If you want to throw in the golden rule of doing unto others, as you would have others do unto you in terms of relationships, that fits in right here in this particular verse. He's not going to backbite with His tongue nor do evil to His neighbor. Then it goes on at the end of verse 3 to say, nor does He take up a reproach against His neighbor.

He takes up no other reproach. The idea that is behind this phrase here gets a little bit different than that of the words and the gossip and the things that might be done. The word here for reproach comes from a word that means to basically strip and to make bare, to make naked, to strip someone completely off, to take all of their clothing off, to rip it off, and to expose them, and to embarrass them, and to disgrace them. That's really what this means. If you were going to be this type of person, you were going to reproach your friend, you're going to treat them with your words, with your conduct in such a way that you are basically stripping them naked in front of people, in front of public, and exposing all of their private parts, all of their dirty laundry, all of their character openly before other people, and leaving them insulted, debased, embarrassed, with nothing to do but to just slink off.

That is the type of attitude that is being addressed here, which kind of gets to maybe the worst that actions and words could inflict upon somebody. If we really would stop to think about it, then we could get to a point where we can strip a person naked with words or deeds. I don't think any of you have ever had that happen to you. I hope not. But maybe in our own mind we've done it with others. Maybe with our own words at times we've insulted someone to the point where they have no recourse, but just to leave the room, leave our presence, leave a relationship, because they've been stripped bare with words.

That is not what is the attitude of a person who is going to be standing before God. Sometimes in group situations, group dynamics get to the point where we can backbite like flies, swarming over something that is an open wound that is festering. Group dynamics can get to where people can do that on someone who may be weakened because of a particular situation, maybe a legitimate mistake. But it is something that runs against the character of God. Exodus 21. Exodus 23 verse 1 says, You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

There is a time to be a righteous witness and adjust cause, but choose your friends carefully, this verse is saying. Don't run with the wicked in an unrighteous cause, which means you better take the time to find out who your friends are and whether or not the cause or the problem or the rumor is correct, just, your place to do or say anything. A lot of things that would be factored into that.

But it says, don't circulate a false report or put your hand with the wicked. Verse 2, You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. Group think. Group dynamics. Two, three, four, half a dozen people in a particular setting getting caught up, spreading evil, keeping something alive, creating a problem. Do not follow a crowd to do evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. A lot of wisdom in these two verses right here, dealing with conflict resolution. Conflict resolution is one of those things that people pay consultants a lot of money to come in and resolve conflict in offices, in businesses, in churches.

There's a whole field of people who go around to churches and they are hired as consultants to resolve conflict in churches. And that's all they focus on. There's groups of conflict resolution people for businesses, companies, and commercial enterprises for religion. And that's how they spend their...they make a lot of money doing that because it's big business. We've even floated out getting people to come in at times in the church when we have conflicts and to help train us in that.

Literally, one of the principles of parts of the strategic plan that we have in place, codified over a two-page spread within our operations and strategic plan within the United Church of God, is to train the ministers in conflict resolution. And we all know we need it.

We need training also in conflict prevention as well as conflict resolution.

But it's big business because it's a big problem among people of all different walks, persuasions, and attitudes.

So God's church needs it. Businesses need it. Sometimes it comes down to just you, to me. One person making a decision to walk away from the group dynamic, from the problem that is generated within a group. There's a time to sit down and listen and to try to then bring the facts together. Sometimes some problems just seem like they're unsolvable. And I think at certain times, individuals may have to make certain decisions to leave their employment, find another job, get another office to work in, go to another school, sometimes even people go to another church, and to find peace.

I'm not saying that when it comes to church or when it comes to God's church, that's not always the best answer or the only answer. Sometimes it is an answer. But the solution usually is found way down deep inside. If we're part of the problem and we go someplace else, we're just going to take the problem over there, wherever that might be.

So at some point, each of us has to examine ourselves as to where do we fit within this larger problem, whether it's within the church or congregation, whether it's within the office, whether it's within the neighborhood, whatever. What's my contribution? What do I give? What have I provided? How am I part of the problem? Sometimes your only contribution to the solution may be to remove yourself in whatever degree from the friendships, from the relationships there, to find personal peace, and maybe even to be no longer part of the catalyst and part of the problem.

So there's a lot to think about. Again, it's right at the heart of those who are going to be standing before God, dwelling in His presence, bona fide Christians, abiding and dwelling in God's holy hill. Well, let's go on. We could talk all day on each one of these points, obviously. Verse 4 of Psalm 15 says, "...in whose eyes a vile person is despised or condemned, in whose eyes a vile person is despised." We are able to view people, situations, the state of the world, and remove ourselves from it. We don't set anything wicked before our eyes, as another psalm puts it.

We remove things from us, from our life, and we flee it. Whether it's fornication or immorality, as Paul puts it in one example in Corinthians, we are able to walk away from it or keep it in front of us. We are able to stay away and remove ourselves completely from a situation that is ungodly and is described in this particular verse as something or someone that is vile. That takes discernment. That takes the ability to recognize that when we feel uncomfortable, that is a warning signal. With what we may be watching, what we may be reading, what we may be listening to, who we may be with, where we find ourselves, we feel uncomfortable, we remove ourselves.

We recognize that that is not a place where a Christian should be. That involves putting the breaks and the limits on ourselves and establishing our code, a personal code that might be a little bit different, sometimes even higher, than someone else's in terms of entertainment values, relationship values, all of that, so that we are able to discern and make that judgment within ourselves, this is not for me. And we are able to stay away from it and stay away from it and not idolize situations or desire to be a part of those situations.

Point number eight is the second line of verse four. He honors those who fear the Lord. Honors those who fear the Lord. If we just look within ourselves, that includes all in the church who are striving to have a record of obedience. We honor each other. We look up to one another. We don't seize upon the stumbles, the mistakes, the weaknesses, or the problems. We are able to overlook those when they are minor and recognize the ones that are minor from those that might be a little bit larger. But we honor those that fear the Lord, which speaks to the respect that we have among ourselves and how we value each other.

Many of us have been around the church for a long time. One of the dangers of familiarity and even a smaller group that doesn't always get a influx of new people or situations is that we get very comfortable with each other. We know each other. It's not just us here. It can be any of God's churches. I think it's a particularly critical situation for the United Church of God at this particular point in time where we are small.

Our congregations are relatively small compared to the past. This is a larger congregation by some standards. Some of our congregations are only 15 people, 20, 25 people. You can well imagine how well people know each other in those situations. But there's the danger, whether it's 20 or 120, of familiarity where we fail to honor each other and respect the years of service, the years of membership, longevity, the perseverance that we're still here. That we still walk through the door.

That they might still want to be sitting next to you. Think about it that way. Next time you kind of get your nose bent out of shape toward someone or begin to even think about it in a situation, look to honor one another.

We try to do those as much as we possibly can in certain set patterns and traditions and customs that we have within the church. We should do more, recognizing an anniversary or a birth or something of that nature or another type of accomplishment, graduation, things like that. All of those are part of it. Again, we should probably do more. But we need to honor one another. Honor those of the household of faith. That is a very important principle of those who are working together to strive together within the church of God and to think the best until shown and proven definitely otherwise when it comes to each other in our lives.

The next point is he honors them of fears the Lord. We talked about that. The ninth point is he swears to his hurt. Change is not. He swears to his own hurt and does not change.

Our word is our word. Our character is our character.

To be able to have said of us by someone that we're steady, we're dependable, that we're not going to be able to be accused of certain problems because that's not a part of our life. If somebody said, you know, this so-and-so is quick to anger, you know him well enough to say, no, not at all. That person is pretty solid.

We don't change. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Are we consistent? Are we loyal? Constant. Faithful.

Not just in a relationship, in a friendship, but in attendance. In what we do, in our service. Constant and faithful. Loyal. Keeping our agreements. Contracts. Oaths. Relationships. That's what he's talking about here.

We will do it even if it puts us out. And it's not convenient. When it comes to what we've said we will do, what we will be. And that comes from our commitment to God as a Christian, all the way down to the commitment to help someone move, help someone do something, support them, be there when they need someone.

As a friend, as a fellow member of the church, and even when it's not convenient. Our word, our character, our lifestyle is consistent. Nothing changes.

The last point is in verse 5. And it deals with money.

He who does not put out his money at useery, nor takes a bribe against the innocent. This is, again, the type of person who will stand before God. And the Old Testament law is regarding the society that Israel was to set up. Did you know that they were not to charge interest on money that they might loan to a fellow Israelite? That was embedded in the law of God.

Money lending was looked upon to a fellow Israelite as a service. And you didn't charge them interest. Now, you could charge a foreigner interest. That was legal within God's system. And for certain commercial ventures, you could charge interest.

But if someone needed a loan for some need in a legitimate situation, that was considered to be an act of service. And you didn't charge them useery or interest. Now, you have to be careful, again, that you just don't go throwing money around. That doesn't do away with using wisdom and how money might be dispensed.

But it speaks to a philosophy about money. How it is used. Practicing, really, a give way of life. How we use our money, what we spend it on, says so much about our character.

That's why you find in the parables Christ used talents and pounds, units of monetary exchange, to describe aspects of the kingdom, character, character development, growth. Somebody took one talent, increased it five times or ten times.

Money is a barometer of how we really are. There was a book I bought a little more than a year ago that talked about this particular principle. It was making the point that how much money people have and how their finances are set up is probably the most secret aspect of one's life.

I mean, I can know you, you can know me, but I don't know how much money you have. I don't know how much money you make. I don't know how much is in your checking account. I don't know how much debt is on your credit card. I don't know how much money is in your IRA, socked away for retirement, or in a Swiss bank account, or offshore account, or whatever it might be. You know why? Those are the most secret and personal and intimate things of our lives. Sometimes people even keep those things from their spouse. That happens a lot. I remember going into a domestic situation one time a number of years ago, and the man of the house would not open up to his wife as to how much money. He was having some health problems and some terminal health problems, and she was wanting to get a better handle on the finances. He had it all tucked away in a drawer in his desk and a key on it. He showed it to me. I knew it. I knew that for a fact. He wouldn't let her know. All I could do was just say, look, you're not going to be here at some point. She needs to know. She needs to have some...but that's a part of our nature. Not all relationships are like that. But if I knew your checkbook, if you knew mine, or my credit card statement, we'd know a whole lot about each other. That's just the way it is. What we do with our money tells a major part of our character, our likes, our dislikes a lot. So when God gets around to talking about money, we ought to listen. In this particular case, he is making some very strong points about a citizen of the kingdom of God, those who are going to be able to stand before God. There's a philosophy toward money that has it right. They know how to use it to serve, to be productive, and they are not turned by money. That's why they don't take a bribe against the innocent. They cannot be bribed because they can't be bought. What's your price? What is your price? Think about it. What would turn you to accept an amount of money to compromise some part of your character?

You think about that. And don't be so sure that for any of us, there's not some point. And it may not always be an amount. It may not be a million dollars or five million dollars. It might be something even smaller in a situation that would cause us to turn away from our principles and be swayed by money against the innocent, another person, against God, against our own conscience.

It's a good question to ask yourself from time to time, what's your price? What is your price by which you or I could be bought and our character, and possibly even our eternal life, undermined and compromised? Big talk this year in political circles is reform. Senator McCain is running on as the reform candidate. He's got a governor of Alaska with him. They're both reformers. We all know that Washington should be reformed. I've always been a little bit leery of someone who spent 30 years at a particular place and then comes around telling me that the place needs to be cleaned up.

And that, you know, just human nature is human nature, even though you might like somebody. That's a big topic. How many of you know the name Jack Abramoff? Some of you watch the news. Jack Abramoff was a big-time lobbyist in Congress who got busted.

And he was involved with a lot of congressmen and senators as a lobbyist, which meant paying off a lot of money for perks, favors, favorable legislation. Quite a corrupt situation. He got caught. He was probably the poster boy and maybe not the only one, maybe not even the worst. But he was pretty bad. He got sentenced a few days ago. And he evidently had his come to Jesus moment. He kind of repented. And before the judge, he was just bawling and crying.

And he admitted his mistakes and he was embarrassed. His family was embarrassed. He was ruined. He was going to jail. The prosecutors had asked for only a certain number of years. And standing before the judge the other day, he blubbered and cried and admitted he was sorry. And what a wretch. Essentially, he was handing out bribes. And how he was corrupt and he corrupted the system.

And the judge looked at him and she added four years to what the prosecutors were asking for. She added four more years. She says, You betrayed the American public. You betrayed the faith of the American citizen. And I thought, good for you. She added four more years to it. I don't know how many you'll eventually serve. But that's the way business is done in the halls of Congress in many ways. But I'm going to have to get into all of that.

At the heart of this financial crisis that we've seen on Wall Street this week has been greed. Taken to such a degree that Michael Douglas and the character he played in Wall Street 25, 20 years ago in that movie where he said, Greed is good. But it makes them look pretty squeaky clean.

Some of the things that have been going on in legal, unregulated deal-making that just built up a huge and larger house of cards based on nothing that came collapsing, ruining a lot of lives, a lot of jobs, a lot of money, and playing into the hands of who knows what else that can happen down the road. Money and a philosophy toward money is an important matter to have for us as Christians.

How we handle our finances, how we use it to serve ourselves, our needs, God, each other, is very, very critical. And to be able to understand that we can't be bought, that we are not going to take the bribe, we're not going to be turned, for whatever amount it might be, to compromise our character. That's the type of person that is being described here. These are ten points, ten principles, they're not the ten commandments. One Jewish scholar says that all six, I think 613 points of the principles and points of God's law covered in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.

I didn't know there were 613, but one Jewish commentator brings this out that there are 613 points of the law in the first five books, and they're all covered in principle by Psalm 15. So it's a pretty succinct summary of godly character. One who, as he says in verses 1 and 2, will abide in God's tabernacle, where God dwells and dwells with God in his holy hill.

As we think about God coming before him on the holy days, the time of judgment of the Feast of Trumpets, the time when we will be with God in the kingdom, let's think about being able to stand before God. And to stand in his presence because we belong there. And we belong there because we've lived up to a code, to a standard, to principles. We've lived up to the description of the citizen of the kingdom of God.