Let’s go back in time. Back to the days when a chip was something you ate, not a computer component. The days when spam was luncheon meat. We’re going back to the days you wished you could have the newest gadget. It was the cell phone Construction crews used which weighted 10 pounds and you couldn’t hold it to your ear longer than 30 seconds because you’re arm got tired holding it! I’m talking about the days when I was in Bible College. Fridays were not fun. Those were the nights we had ‘work sections”. You heard me -- “work sections”. We changed out of our holy threads to work-clothes and started cleaning the College, from scrubbing potatoes to scrubbing floors. And none of this mop in a commercial bucket with the hand-pressed mop wringer. It was on-your-hands-and-knees-floor-cleaning routines. The “inspectors” walked through with their white gloves to “inspect” our work and when you finally met their standard you enjoyed an hour and a half of free time because the College locked down at midnight on Fridays. You dare not be late getting in. Somehow we saw the value of these rigorous routines, drawing on the words of the musical “cleanliness is next to godliness, soap and water is divine.”
My story reflects the tough work of cleaning what becomes stained and soiled. No matter how hard we scrub or how often we clean, life spills gunk all over everything and leaves stains everywhere.
While this sermon speaks to all of us it is particularly an invitation to the young people, you who will be Prime Ministers and Politicians shaping the social, spiritual and economic structures of our Country in the next forty five years. I’m appealing to the future teachers, pastors, and members of community who will decide the fate of Canada when we’re old (some of you think we’re old now…you ‘ain’t seen nothin’ yet). When the fifteen-year-olds are 50, I’ll be 82! I wonder what the world will look like (if the Lord hasn’t returned already) by the year 2044 when I’m tearing up the golf green and you young men and women are only in the prime of wisdom and experience, making all the important decisions for the people around you? Just don’t touch my retirement pension!
If you’re 15 to 25 I am speaking especially to you but in the same breathe I appeal to everyone who says they love the Lord Jesus.
The reason I appeal directly to the younger generations is because of what the writer of Psalm 119:9-16 says. He appeals to the young men which translated in today’s reading is an appeal to young people. Sources say King David wrote Psalm 119. At this time he was not a young man so we see a King looking back and doing two things. First, wondering how he could have lived a clean life and second, seeking to pass some wisdom along to young people so they can avoid the same mistakes he made.
Do you long to reflect a life that doesn’t feel dirty and make you feel like a tramp? Do you want to approach God every day and offer him your life, pouring it out every day like fresh, pure water for God to enjoy? Our King deserves the best!
As desperate as many of us are for this reality we are too aware of the reality. The minute our feet touches the floor in the morning life happens. It starts grinding on us and it stains and spills gunk all over everything. We seek God and sometimes, just sometimes when we’re really screaming to be clean we feel it and there’s an amazing wave of cleansing that happens. Then, over time, life dirties us again and we’re back where we started.
The writer of this passage asks a question and says in verse 9, “How can a young person live a clean life?” That’s a loaded question because King David is saying, “How can a young person not only have moments of living clean but actually live a clean life every day through every moment? How can anyone live a clean life, never mind the challenge it presents for young men and women. You face strong peer pressure to behave in ways that make you very uncomfortable. The weight of image and influence is powerful. The truth is you have good days and bad days; most of you really want to please God but are frustrated because too often you just can’t “get it together”. Many of us know how you feel because we go through many times just like you because life is messy and it spills all over us.
It’s hard but you can have an amazing relationship with God that’ll blow your mind and win your heart completely for God! King David draws from his life experience and God-given wisdom and offers some answers for your desire to live a clean life so you will be unexploited and unsullied by this world, so you can be a man or woman of God.
King David shares five things to give you want you long for.
1. Follow the Instruction Manual
2. Fall in Love
3. Find Your Hiding Place; sign up for
4. Fitness Training and
5. Follow the Leader
This is a type of Q and A. The question is in verse 9a to which the writer gives an answer. The first answer to the question is,
1. Follow the Instruction Manual
Verse 9 – “How can a young person live a clean life? By carefully reading the map of your Word.”
There’s one thing I don’t enjoy when I purchase new software or equipment and that’s reading the instruction manual. I remember trying to install software once that just wouldn’t work. After an hour of frustrating attempts I pulled out the manual and noticed an important step 2 and 3 that I hadn’t done. I put step 2 and 3 between my steps 1 and 4 and what do you know – it worked! That’s probably why Windows Vista has automatic run/installation features. They know most of us don’t read the manual! It’s easier and quicker to install it for us than to receive calls to customer service which we could avoid if we just read the book!
We know driving 70 kilometers an hour in a 40 kilometer school zone is wrong because laws were made and signs posted to tell us we shouldn’t do that.
We could never know what God wants if he didn’t tell us. So that’s what God did. He gave us the Bible. The challenge is taking time to read it and understand what God expects and want he wants. If we are going to live clean lives we have to read the user manual.
The Bible addresses hundreds of subjects that we face every day. I’m going to mention ten of them. As I do, take the paper provided for you and in just two or three words write down a Bible thought that you know speaks to that issue. You don’t need the reference but just something that relates to the problem. Are you ready? Here we go.
1) Someone’s out to get me; 2) Sexuality; 3) Theft; 4) Hurting my body; 5) Paying taxes; 6) Supporting the church; 7) People losing their jobs; 8) Depression; 9) Feeling unloved and unvalued; 10) Pregnancy
8-10: you know the Manual well!
5-7: you have some knowledge but it needs some work
1-5: you’re in trouble. Instructions to live clean won’t come easy
(I also realize I caught many of you off guard and need more time to process)
Verse 9a, “How can a young person live a clean life?”
2. Fall in Love
Verse 10, “I’m single-minded in pursuit of you; don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted.”
In the movie A Vow to Cherish a husband struggles with his wife’s Alzheimers. The most difficult thing is the fact that she doesn’t know him and he is a complete stranger to her. He kneels in front of her and pledges he will love her till the day they die. He recites the vows they had shared years earlier and the scene ends as he gently kisses her on the forehead.
It’s a beautiful picture of true love – the love God has for us and the love he wants from us. We can score 10/10 to the quiz but knowing the answers is not much good if you don’t do what it says. Only true love will motivate us to do what God wants. It’s about being in love with God, not the touchy, feely sentimental stuff we call love. No, it’s the sacrificial-willing-to-walk-with-you-through-anything type of love.
Verse 9a, “How can a young person live a clean life?”
3. Find Your Hiding Place
Verse 11, “I’ve banked your promises in the vault of my heart so I won’t sin myself bankrupt.” Or, as the New International Version states it, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
The Secret Garden is a fascinating children’s classic. It is the story of a British child, Mary Lennox, who lived in India but is orphaned because of her parents’ death due to a cholera breakout. They send her to England to live with her only surviving relative, her uncle who is still mourning the death of his wife who died 10 years earlier. Through a series of events and a curious nature that won’t be denied Mary discovered an overgrown, run-down garden. It was a beautiful garden owned by her aunt which her uncle locked up and ignored after she died. When her uncle went to find her there he found his previously crippled son walking and the garden revived by the children’s efforts to plant flowers and plants. The story is a wonderful tale of Mary bringing life to the garden and to a grieving man.
You need to know that you have a hiding place, a secret place that God designed for you and him. It is your heart or if you will your mind. God gave us the ability to think, reason, discuss and above all experience him and talk about life, hurts, problems, and to simply enjoy each other’s company.
It is in this secret place King David invites us to understand the value of memorizing Scripture. He tells us that Scripture committed to memory kept him from sinning.
There are situations and problems that catch us completely by surprise. A dilemma comes out of nowhere and we have to act and respond to the situation, almost without thinking. Things we’ve committed to memory have a way of impacting our response to a given situation. Science proved this to be true. A type of training called ABA therapy helps children with autism. I read an article just released two months ago and it says, “Studies show time and again that as students adjust to the routine of ABA and begin to participate in the therapy the nerves and pathways in their brains actually begin to rewire themselves. These new pathways make it possible for children who were once unable to communicate to speak fluently, express ideas and emotions, and to learn from the environment around them.” (http://www.articlesbase.com/learning-disabilities-articles/aba-training-is-more-than-memorization-865702.html)
We need to “rewire” our minds. The more we stuff our minds full of God’s Word the less room we’ll have for the garbage that influences our behaviour and responses to life. We’ll respond differently with the way we speak, we will express ourselves with controlled emotions instead of fits of rage and outbursts and our desires will be for the good of other people instead of always being concerned about what I want.
Verse 9a, “How can a young person live a clean life?” Sign up for
4. Fitness Training
Verses 12-15a, “Be blessed God; train me in your ways of wise living. 13I’ll transfer to my lips all the counsel that comes from your mouth; 14I delight far more in what you tell me about living than in gathering a pile of riches. 15aI ponder every morsel of wisdom from you.”
I’ve been doing a lot of cycling. You’d never know it by looking at the evidence (or lack of it). I know my problem for not looking trimmer and feeling healthier. I’ve not changed my eating habits. I burning calories for sure but I’m packing in more than I’m burning.
Some of you have gym memberships but never get to the gym. What’s the point of a gym membership if you don’t go to the gym or change the unhealthy habits of ingesting too much or the wrong foods?
So too with saying I want a clean life but I don’t pay attention to God’s training exercises to help me reach that goal. King David invited God to train him in wise living. He wanted to be so in touch with God’s training routine that he planned the very words God spoke he would speak. He saw the value of holding more dearly to what God had to say than holding onto wealth and possessions. He would think through God’s wisdom as a person savors every last piece of juicy sirloin steak. David wanted to train right, eat right, walk right and as a result, live right.
If we want a clean life we have to ask God to train us in that direction. Like weight training, cycling or any sport, it is hard work, you’ll sweat at times and you’ll think you can’t make it to the finish line or climb that last hill. But you have to take that risk and endure some discomfort if you want a clean life. You can’t do on your own exercise plan. You need the Trainer.
Verse 9a, “How can a young person live a clean life?”
5. Follow the Leader
Verse 15b, “I attentively watch how you’ve done it.”
How well we remember the days of “follow the leader”, that little game of mimicking everything the leader did, said and went. At any point the felt someone wasn’t following or stumbled in their efforts to follow, the person was considered “out” and was disqualified. The smallest distraction would throw you off course and put you out of the following.
It’s not easy to follow our Leader. We have good intentions and we work really hard to stay focused but distractions come along and then times of not listening really means we end up going in the opposite direction. King David knew the secret to living a clean life. It is carefully watching our Leader’s example. If our Leader did it, it’s okay for us to do. If it wasn’t something he was willing to do then we should have a close look at that before we do it.
Paul the apostle was so sure of his example that he said to Jesus’ followers in Philippi, “Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example.” (Phil 3:17) When he was dealing with issues of working hard he said to Jesus’ followers in Thessalonica, “For you know that you ought to follow our example. We were never lazy when we were with you.” (Thess 3:7) Are you so sure you’re following the Leader that you would easily invite people to follow you? I want confidence like Paul, to be so sure I’m following Jesus that I won’t worry about people getting off track if they follow my lead.
WRAP
We can live clean lives. The question implies the possibility. The answer involves
- Following the Instruction Manual – start reading your Bible on a regular basis
- Decide that you want to know Jesus more than you do – fall in love with him
- Memorize the Bible and “rewire” the way you think and behave
- Invite Jesus to get you in shape
- Follow the Leader – live like Jesus
Come clean!
