“He who is walking uprightly,^a
And working righteousness,^b
And speaking truth in his heart.^c”

From the last post on Psalm 15, it becomes clear that to be able to dwell with God and live with him is one of the greatest gifts that we receive through the Holy Spirit. This is also something that we should remind ourselves not to forsake and always remember God as our Lord and Savior. David describes the type of man, or Christian who is able to dwell with God. Just because the Holy Spirit dwells in us does not make give us an easy ride to talk with God, in fact it may make it more difficult in some aspects because Satan will try doubly as hard to try and ruin us by sin. If we do not possess the characteristics of Psalm 15, we quench the Holy Spirit within us.

A) When David says, “He who is walking uprightly”, the word for “uprightly” in Hebrew, tamim, literally means perfectly, complete in all its parts. What is the Christian walking in though? Each day we walk along the thin line that is the will of God. The will of God when described by most commentators is not an individual plan for your life, though there is one for all of our days are written in His book, but one that is the moral will of God. (Psalm 139:16) This moral will is described perfectly in Colossians 1:9-13:

“Because of this, we also, from the day in which we heard, do not cease praying for you, and asking that ye may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, to your walking worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, in every good work being fruitful, and increasing to the knowledge of God, in all might being made mighty according to the power of His glory, to all endurance and long-suffering with joy. Giving thanks to the Father who did make us meet for the participation of the inheritance of the saints in the light, who did rescue us out of the authority of the darkness, and did translate [us] into the reign of the Son of His love.”

Paul clearly lays out the will of God for every believer. The will of God is never directed towards the individual, but for all God’s children. (Though God has a will for the individual, this is seen in retrospect when we see God’s hand on our lives) We are to walk in these things daily if we want to be able to walk with the Lord. These are the things that David says we have to walk in all parts, we cannot skip one and go to the next. When you read 2 Peter 1:5-8, these are all the characteristics that a Christian should have, this is what God wants for your life, what the will of God is for you. Do not be ignorant, may the Holy Spirit convict you on what you are missing from your walk with the Lord. Like David, let the Lord search you by His Spirit and show you what is missing. (Psalm 139:23) In fact, there is a complete list of all the things that God hates in Proverbs 6:16-19. (The Seven Things God Hates)

B) Going into the Hebrew again for the 2^nd part of this verse, the Hebrew word for working, paw-al, is something that should be translated as, “systematic, habitual work.” This is not a type of work that every once in awhile when God smacks you over the head to do something good. You will know when you are doing this when you never receive a rebuke from God about doing works of righteousness because you are always doing it. I think that Christians are way too lazy and need to actually start getting out there and working. One of the best descriptions of work and labor is in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, when Paul says to “labor in love.” This type of labor is work that breaks you down and is merciless. This is not something you can do each day without it crushing your spirit and building it back up. Did you not know that God always called Israel out on the lack of care for the poor and widows? What are you doing this week to help those who need it and feverously work righteousness? This is not something you take your time and say, “not now, maybe tomorrow or the next day.”Maybe your worldy needs are being met and you have no reason to seek out the hungry and poor. Will God still answer your prayers? Of course, but to what extent? Will your lack of fervor for His will hold back or delay an answer?

C) The person who speaks truth in his heart does not make false promises or teaches lies. Whatever his heart convicts him of, he speaks it. He is a man who believes in the truth and makes it a practice of living by it daily. This truth can mean he speaks Gods word and that of the Bible, or that he does not let any falsehood escape his mouth. Solomon talks about this in Proverbs when he says that if we make any type of promise we cannot keep, we are to go immediately, forsaking sleep, and right the wrong. (Proverbs 6:1-4) Do we have the truth in us? Do we not hear from God every time we read His word? If we go against what He says, the truth is not in us, and we do not speak it in our hearts, let alone follow through and produce fruit from it. Are we slandering those around us, or are too promiscuous with our words? If all our words are played back before us when we stand before Christ, will we be able to stand on them or have them crush us? For a man’s words either condemn him or save him. (Matthew 12:37)

1 Corinthians 5:12:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?  Are you not to judge those inside?  God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you.’”

I decided to write an article on judging those within the church because this seems to be a forgotten message.  In fact, it has been twisted. Perhaps this is because the gospels create a tone of non-judgment upon others – who can cast the first stone if none of us is without sin?

In Matthew 7:1, Christ says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  However, if you read a little further down, at 7:15-16 Christ also says that you will know others by their fruits.  How can you know others by their fruits if you do not examine the product of their lives?  Therefore, Christ is not calling us to be universally and unconditionally accepting.  Rather, Christ is telling us not to be judgmental.

The difference between judgmental and mere examination of one’s fruits is that judgmentalism includes placing a verdict on the motives of someone’s heart.  Examining the fruits of one’s life does not place a verdict on their motives, but instead allows for correction due to the bad fruit.  The former does not spare room for correction, the later does.  Judgmentalism cannot be done through love, which when absent negates any good work that we are doing.  Examining the fruit of one’s life can only be done through love because we are expected to either encourage or correct based upon if the fruit was good or bad, respectively.

Therefore, to those within the body, we will know a tree by its fruit.  Matthew 7:17:

“So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.”

A fruit tree can produce good, bad, or no fruit. We will know fellow believers based upon their fruits. By knowing these fruits we are called to encourage or correct so that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Provers 27:17).  Through this accountability system, the church helps us on our paths to sanctification.

What is the good fruit that we should be looking for?  Turn to Galatians 5:22-23:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Many misread this verse by pluralizing “fruit” and thereby, changing each quality and isolating it from the others.  This is outright wrong.  Paul does not pluralize “fruit” because each quality creates the fruit.  Think of it as a cluster of grapes and the cluster being the fruit.  Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit consists of all nine qualities.  Do you have seven out of the nine?  So to do those in the secular world.

As John 15:5 states “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”  Verse 6 shows that for those that do not remain in Christ, he is like a branch that is thrown away because it is dead.  Examine the fruits in the lives of those within the church.  Does one think he is fruitful because he counsels effectively, plays on the worship team, or speaks a message?  That is not biblical fruit.  You will know a tree by its fruit.  Next time I write, I will write on what each of the qualities of the fruit are.  But till then I will leave you with what a friend once told me:

“How can you judge someone by their fruit?  It does not always work like that.  If a man at my church is a drunkard and he came to my house for counseling and I told him he needs to repent completely or else he will die a sinner, then he angrily stormed out of my house, crashed his car and died, how can you say there was any fruit from that?”

Every tree produces fruit – whether good, bad, or none at all.  And that example is a perfect example of how fruit is produced even through our deaths.

-Mark

So many of us ask this question.  While we are unsanctified, we will not hear from God properly.  We think God is telling us something, but it is our mind tricking us.  When we are sanctified, we can hear God more clearly and distinguish between sin and love, God and Satan; because the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of God help us to understand his ways and hear him clearly.  Therefore, sanctification affords us the option to lay down our passions and desires and choose God (for further reading, study Acts 21, in particular verse 4).  But I can tell you a biblical approach to determine where God is leading you.

I like to use to scriptures when determining where God is leading me.  The first is Ecclesiastes 11:6:

⁶ Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let not your hands be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well.

Although we are called to put our desires before the Lord, our thoughts are not the thoughts of God.  Therefore, give yourselves backup plans and since God is sovereign, trust that He put one of the plans in your heart for as long as you are seeking the moral will of God in your life, you can be sure that He is directing your steps.  God will choose one to succeed, but it isn’t for us to know which.

The second scripture I like is Genesis 26:19-22:

¹⁹ Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. ²⁰ But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. ²¹ Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. ²² He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”

This story of Isaac is illustrating God’s sovereignty over the lives of those that are righteous in His eyes.  Whether Isaac knew that God was leading him from one land to another is unclear and irrelevant because the main point still holds: God leads us where he wants us.  In this story, Isaac was pushed from one land to another because of conflict and draught.  However, Isaac knew where to settle because it was the land where water was found and where there were no other settlers to push him out.  Through this scripture, a well with water does not necessarily indicate an open door.  Just because there is fruit down one road does not mean that it is the fruit that God wants you to eat.  Just because something is permitted or possible does not mean you are to drink of that “well”.  But a point is clear: Isaac never would have settled in a land where his well had found no water.  Therefore, a door needs to be open and fruit needs to be evident.  Next, we should not choose a direction if it will lead to others perceiving you as not being blameless.  Isaac could have settled or waged war (he was rich from his father’s inheritance). But he chose peace over war, calmness over tension, blameless over blamelessness.

Combine the two scriptures together and you will be sure to not confuse your will with that of God’s. So  sow your seed in the morning and find something else that will allow you to reap a harvest in the evening – for you do not know which God will choose to succeed.  If you are not in the season to harvest yet, let the story of Isaac be an example to determine if you are in the right place.

-M