972. Loving God with a Blameless Heart

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program preacher sermons from travel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Every day students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel platform were continuing a study series called loving God.

These messages were preached in a special seminary chapel for students preparing for ministry today speaker is Dr. Mark Minnick, a seminary professor at Bob Jones University. The title of his message is loving God with a blameless heart from Psalm 101 verses one through four like to invite you to open your Bibles together this morning to the 101st Psalm Psalm 101 that topic this morning is loving the Lord with a blameless heart and were going to be reading a portion of Scripture that does not make use of the English word blameless, but it does make use of the Hebrew word that has reference to that, and in other translations is rendered. That way, Psalm hundred and one. When you read the first four verses I will sing of mercy and judgment under the old Lord, will I sing I will behave myself wisely. In a perfect way to win wealth outcome under me. I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of them that turn aside, it shall not cleave to me for word heart shall depart from me, I will not know a wicked person. One of the most famous seals and all of Christian history is that that was devised by the French reformer John Calvin. You probably have seen images that it it consists of a single hand and it is a human heart and the Latin inscription around that image reads my heart, old Lord, I offer to you promptly and sincerely. My heart, I offer to you oh Lord promptly and sincerely doubt there's no mention of love in that motto, and there's no mention of love in this Psalm either the first four verses that we read together the verses that follow it. Question is when Calvin devised that seal and when he encircled it with that inscription.

Was there any love involved in that. And when this Psalm speaks of what it does and says what it does about the psalmist heart. Is there any love involved in it.

In the second verse, I will walk within my house with a perfect heart and the word that is translated perfect their is translated in both the new American Standard Bible in the ESV, which probably many of you are looking at with what word not the word perfect, but what other word integrity is the word that shows that there is anyone looking at a translation where is rendered blameless. What translation is that the NIV renders a blameless, okay this is the word that when our Old Testament speaks of blamelessness. This is the word, but typically not always, but typically is used in what's interesting about it is that that words loot occurs in this passage to other times it occurs a second time. In verse two where it's also rendered perfect in the King James, I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. Let's think for a moment, a blameless way.

My behavior will be blameless in my house. I'll walk with a blameless heart and then occurs again in the sixth verse where again the psalmist speaks of those in this case, others who walk in a blameless way. Most of the people. He says that he wants to have in his service as a king. What does it mean to love the Lord with a blameless heart perfect heart heart of integrity. That's what the question is the lies before us today. We need to began with both of those words which are Scripture words and the pastor who used to have the church that I pastor would remind us from time to time that the Holy Spirit was not careless in his use of words.

What do those words have reference to that we so casually reference and use what we talking about what is my heart. Very interesting when you look at studies that are done that have reference to the internal anatomy of our being in that terms like heart, soul, mind, spirit, most people who study those terms come to the conclusion that there is such an overlap between them that in some cases there is almost synonymously in Scripture that tends to be the case because the Scripture will attribute the same actions to two or more of those words with the soul will do the same kind of thing. The heart will do so there's this overlap, but I do want to draw a scriptural distinction this morning Scripture says that we are souls.

I am a soul but I'm not heart, my soul possesses a heart if you ask yourself all right.

What part of my soul is my heart Bible comes back and speaks of it in terms that allow us to say my heart is the center of my soul. Now it's not the center like the core of a baseball it's a center like this if my soul were a river. My heart would be the what it would be the spring or if my soul were a tree. My heart would be the seed. In other words, when the Scripture speaks of my heart and my soul possessing a heart it's talking about the center of me that actually permeates the whole and it permeates it. The determinative lady. This is exactly the imagery that James uses when he's asked these questions can a fountain send forth water that is both bitter and sweet, and the answer to that is what now because the fountain determines the whole course of the water. The character of any use. The other image that I use. This morning when he says, can an olive tree produce figs, and the answer is no, that's not it's genetic makeup that's not in its DNA. The original C determine everything when it comes to what permeates the whole that's the way heart is permeates everything. That is why the Scripture can say things like this out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. That's why the Lord can say it's out of the heart to perceive my thoughts and my deeds. That center permeates everything when it comes to thinking, doing, and talking even determines whether I believe with the heart man believes Romans chapter 10% says so right there at the very center of my soul is this thing that Calvin was saying, Lord, I offer it to you who okay I will mean to offer it up as blameless in its character. In other words, not better, but sweet. What is that mean well, we need to spend just a moment, talking about the word blameless, then even though those English words blameless blame without blame the stirrups don't occur very often in our Bibles. In fact, in the King James Bible the word blameless only occurs three times, all the Old Testament and the new American Standard Bible occurs over 30 times but still not very many times, and because you don't see that English terminology very often. What's invisible to us is that actually the Hebrew root form, and the variations it takes occurs many many many times over 200 but translated in various ways. So you're not aware that what you're actually seeing is this concept blameless in your seeing it many times in many places and not aware of it. What does blameless mean is the Holy Spirit uses it in the Old Testament. Well, if we were talking about a construction project.

It means all the parts are there but he doesn't just mean that they're lying loose on the ground like when the flatbed trucks first delivered means that all the parts have been assembled in the project is complete but were not talking about a construction project. If were talking for instance about a sacrificial animal, then it means there is no defect in it. It is blameless, or for talking about a body, it means it's without sickness or wounds and what that really brings us to is this understanding and I think is pretty much holds up. Maybe there's an exception here there but I think in general this holds up folks that what the Holy Spirit is drawing our attention to by the use of this term repeatedly throughout the Old Testament is that blamelessness has both a qualitative and a quantitative aspect quantitatively. Everything is there. At the very center of my being, my heart, I offer to you who Lord promptly and sincerely all the parts are there. Everything the determines the way my mouth speaks.

The actions that I do the thoughts that come out of my heart, even my. It's all there in Lord, qualitatively many is this word morally when it comes to moral character. It's not defective.

Now let's move from that those concepts really fleshing that out wasn't mean for me in the ministry to love the Lord. That way, with the very center of my soul. Everything is there and there are no blemishes in it. What actually does that mean well scripturally, it means first of all, something that is noted here in various ways. In the 101st Psalm that we looked at the fourth verse and the word heart also occurs there but in this case. That heart is not blameless. It's not complete it's not whole it's not unblemished.

The King James word speaks of this heart being the word when's the last time you use that in conversation which showed up on your Facebook page.

Probably not very often. What does that word mean the means twisted.

It means crooked and what is very interesting to me about this is that in the book of Proverbs.

This is the contrast that most often is used as the opposite of a blamelessness, crookedness with stiffness so folks, what is it mean as a minister, a person serving the Lord in office as an elder pastor or seminary teacher on the mission field wasn't mean to love the Lord with a blameless heart certainly means this means that I'm a man of the ministry who is not crooked inside I'm not twisted inside the opposite of that would be that humans are not crooked.

I want I am's rate you know anybody like that ever known anybody in their gases.

Yes, and they know is no and you don't miss trust their motives. They had such a track record with you in ministry that when they get up and launch a building program or they say would have a different emphasis in Sunday school next year or were changing translations you've known them well enough and long enough to know there's not an ulterior.

What, there's not an ulterior motive here. They are not devious their slate. That's what it's talking about. And of course folks the tremendous necessity of that is that in ministry we don't represent ourselves. We stand in God's place. When we speak to these people and lead them. That's what it would mean to truly love the Lord. As a minister, to love him with a blameless heart in my ministry. I'm not crooked inside and as a result of that, the things I say are crooked. The things I do are crooked, what comes out of my mouth is actually what I think in my heart and what I think of my heart is blameless, but the other thing that that means is what David prays for in the 86 Solomon.

I'd like to ask you to turn there with me if you will. Psalm 86 in the 11th verse. David prays that the Lord would teach him his own divine ways.

And David makes this commitment in the middle of verse 11. The Psalm 86 verse 11 Teach Me Thy Way all Lord hears the commitment and I'll walk you. I will walk in my truth.

But this is what it's gonna take to do that.

You can't just get up one morning through the shades open say I'm just going to change the whole course of things on my own can't do that.

David resorts to petition, unite my heart to fear thy name, unite it folks remember what blameless has reference to the Scripture.

There's not just a qualitative emphasis.

For instance, its story and clue, not crooked and wicked is not just a qualitative emphasis but there's the other side of it like a building project is what kind of emphasis it's a quantitative emphasis. David is aware that when he prays Lord take all that the separate parts. All of the wanderings of the various components that are inside the center. My soul and please bring them all together. That would be completeness, unite my heart that way and what does that mean in ministry. Well, it means that the entirety of our being inside is committed to the Lord's calling upon our lives and what were doing that we really are people who finally by God's grace over process of years, and again this is a hard thing to just make a one small decision about me just from that day on the battles. One, it will be that way. This battle was fought many many times day after day sometimes with this matter of actually being a hole inside, in the sense that there is not a part of that center of my being, whether it be my affections or my mind or the decisions I make that there's not the kind of distraction that has really disjointed and fragmented me inside so that it couldn't be said of me that with his whole heart he enters in to what God is called him to do this. One of the great things that God was concerned about with the kings of Israel will give you another reference that is really struck me about this is Deuteronomy 1717 and this is God. Looking ahead to the day when he would give a king to Israel, and God commanded that the king should not multiply two things in this particular verse previous verse even mentions courses but Deuteronomy 1770s not to multiply wives and is not to multiply silver and gold, because God says this will turn his heart away and what it's talking about is getting a portion of his heart. If you were to ask yourself what are the current God's for the younger generation. This is the answer comes back in the polls social media.

Computer games as number two in sports. What's interesting about all three of those is they are all matters that are morally indifferent. In other words there all lawful, but when it comes to the things that people cannot live without things that become determinative of the decisions they make about their time and resources. These are the touchstones and the decisions are made in light of freeing up more time and having the energy for. And these are the things that they would say. Are there passions. That's the word that she used so loosely in folks.

I just want to ask us this morning as people who are getting ready for the most glorious and really the most responsible task in the world. Compared to what you are going to do with a group of people, no matter how small the things that appear in the headlines of the sports page are as nothing.

I like sports played sports in high school, but a guy running up and down the field with white stripes, caring little piece of pigskin under his arm compared to what you are going to do with the raw material of people's lives and what you do is going to have eternal consequence to want a necessity. There is for us to plead with the Lord to unite our hearts so that when it comes to our passion and what really determines how we spend our time that it is our love for the Lord that we can truly say is our delight when real Puritans Thomas Adam used to say what we need to do is use the world but the light in God. Our difficulty is we use God and delight in the world. Somebody else said the way you put it is that we play our work and we work at our play, and that is a fragmented heart and your folks. I would like to give you something that may prove to be a very a very accurate measurement about this very matter that I'm talking about and that is something that, in my estimation, the Bible does not, and demand of me as it did in the Old Testament. It doesn't legislate it for me and maybe maybe this really is God's way of making at a supreme test. The fact that he doesn't legislate. But that is what I look forward to in the way I use the Lord's day every week and it is called the Lord's day. There's only one other place in the New Testament where that form Korea cost belonging to the Lord is the form there's only one other place in all the New Testament that occurs first remains 11 awards table I eat every day I give thanks to the Lord every day. It's got a provides my food every day, all my meals came from the Lord. But there is a meal that in a significant way and in a completely distinctive way is the Lord's peculiar possession that same word is used of the first day of the week either glorify the Lord every day.

I live for the Lord every day, but the New Testament itself singles that they out and when it came to what was legislated in the Old Testament, the Sabbath God challenged his people this way in Isaiah 58.

If you would turn your foot from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath, you know, this verse called the Sabbath what a delight.

If you would do that not doing your own ways were finding your own pleasure, then eliciting this then you will take the light, not in the day you know what it says you will be taking delight in the Lord. They know it's one thing for God to legislate but Calvin take his heart and handed over. It's another thing to do. This out of the sheer love that is at the light in the Old Testament where you have that day legislated God still sense. It isn't that I want you to do this legalistic late. I want you to find out where your delight is in the New Testament, there is no legislation at all on the what that actually does is that ups the ante now were really going to find out where your delight is folks, this is not a side application. I am a minister.

The first day of the week, the Lord's day is my major business day. It will be yours. By the grace of God. Where's your heart that day and if your heart isn't 100%.

I'm scattered but complete and unblemished in your commitment to the glory of the Lord and the things he gave you to do. I don't know about the other six days. What about the days that are called the Lord's day. It really is. It is a very interesting and probably an extremely appropriate test of where our hearts really are in the face of a culture whose major gods and passions are what the polls have come back with Melissa be tested. Folks again and again and again and that's why were to find ourselves of David's position of constantly having to pray that the Lord would unite our hearts much better for prayer, loving father grant to us. We ask in understanding spirit and give to us clearly a desire that we may grow in this grace and we may do it out of our love for you. Pray in price precious name. Amen. You would listing to a message preached at Bob Jones University by seminary professor Dr. Mark Minnick, which is part of the series. Loving God. Join us again tomorrow as we continue the series on The Daily Platform