Blameless: A Commentary on Psalm 18
Guests: Doug Sharp and Rich Geer
Description: We know that by grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works lest any man boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Our reward is based on how well we follow that path. It’s like driving on the highway. How we end up is a combination of our obedience to God’s laws and a measure of God’s grace.
Read Psalm 18:20-36.
God is blameless. The person who accuses God of being unfair misunder-stands His purpose. I watched a blog about a Jehovah’s Witness who started questioning what the church told him and in reading the Bible he concluded that his righteousness was better than what he was reading about the God of the Bible. He now declares himself to be an atheist. He needs to read Jerry Bergman’s new book Canceled Three Times. Jerry went from being a Jehovah’s Witness to atheism to academia only to find out all three were wrong.
The person who makes up his own religion is finally confronted with the fact that he is ultimately judged by his own standards and falls short. We need a savior. That Savior is Jesus Christ and the work he did on the cross.
There is a lot of misery in this world, with most people barely getting by. Corruption is everywhere and we get a sense that there is very little that is right with the world.
The world is full of poverty: physical, spiritual, and mental.
Two reasons:
A. The misery is self-inflicted when God’s ways are not followed.
B. The misery is inflicted by someone else on an innocent person when that other person doesn’t follow God’s ways.
But God is blameless in both cases.
Those with self-inflicted misery (reason A) often claim to be the victim (reason B) blaming someone else for their misery when in fact in most cases they were the cause, not the result.
If a person walks blameless in the sight of the Lord, they are not immune to trouble from Reason B, yet they eventually will receive their reward if they persevere in doing what is right.
Ultimately that reward is in heaven. There, the devil will be out of the way, and the Lord will set things right.