“I Will Instruct You” — Part One

I invite you to turn again to Psalm 32, to the passage that was read for us by Bing. And as you turn there, we’ll pray once again:

Father, we have sung your praise, and now we seek your wisdom—the wisdom that comes down from heaven that is first of all pure and peaceful and open to reason.[1] Grant us minds that will think clearly, hearts that are opened by the touch of your gracious hand, and lives that are ready to put into practice that which you instruct us in. We’re desperately in need of your help, and we come humbly to seek it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, I think this is the fifth study, now, in Psalm 32. We planned, at least when I started out, I was going to do a sermon on Psalm 32. And it’s not a testimony to my ability, certainly, that it’s taken us now five studies, and we won’t finish yet. But I hope it’s proved at least helpful for those of you who have been following the course along.

We have noted that David is announcing the distinction—and the very significant and clear distinction—between the heaviness that he experienced when he played the part of the cover-up artist, when he sought to hide from himself and from God, when he did everything wrong and tried to run away and recognized that, frankly, he was just a complete mess. And the heaviness of God’s hand upon him was in direct contrast to the happiness that he then declares as being discovered in knowing the living God as a result of God’s wonderful forgiveness of our sins. And there is a sense in which we could look at Psalm 32 simply in terms of the contrast between that heaviness and happiness.

I also reflected upon it and wrote down a number of words that seem to trace a line through it. The story so far is of David’s transgression. In fact, he mentions that in verse 1: “[Happy] is [the one] whose transgressions are forgiven.” And the transgression that is unremoved reveals itself in depression in verses 3 and 4: “My bones wasted away.” And then the depression is alleviated by confession: “I confessed my sins to you. I acknowledged my sins.”[2] And in that confession there is liberation, freedom, and as he sees all that is his in God, he recognizes that it is God who is the source of his protection, and verse 7: “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble.” And then between verse 7 and verse 8 there is a voice change, and God speaks in verse 8, and we move into the realm of instruction. Instruction.

I think sometimes those words are helpful. If they’re not, you can just forget all about them. But it seems to me that there is some form of progression through the psalm: transgression, depression, confession, liberation, protection, and now the instruction that he requires.

Verses 8 and 9 are essentially the Lord’s reply to David’s words. Let’s just read them again:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
 I will counsel you and watch over you.
Do not be like the horse or the mule,
 which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
 or they will not come to you.

David is here making this wonderful discovery—and it is truly a wonderful discovery—that God is not only able to deal with his past, but God is also willing to direct his future. It bears saying again, doesn’t it? He is reminded that God deals with his past and directs his future.

If you pay attention to people’s conversation, as I’m sure you do, you will have noted, as I have noted, that not only in the realm of athletics, and particularly professional golf, but also in just about every aspect of life, it is difficult to go through a week without somebody telling you that they are just “living in the moment”: “I am just in the moment,” or “I was in real time.” And that kind of phraseology has become part of our common, everyday interchange.

It’s not surprising, because the quest to live in the moment is mitigated by the past and the future, both in good ways and in bad ways. Good ways: there is so much in our past that is wonderful and happy and memorable—photographs that are etched into our memory that we’re able to recall and enjoy; that when we daydream, we go into the past and bring up material which invades the present. In the same way, we’re able to look forward to the future, hoping for things: the achievement of success, the completion of programs, the meeting of friends, the enjoyment of Thanksgiving, the arrival of Christmas. And as we look into the future, so it has an impact on the present.

But at a far more disturbing level, I think most people would be prepared to acknowledge that their inability to deal with the sixty seconds they are now experiencing is, more often than not, tied to the fact that when they go backwards, it is to recrimination and to regret and to disappointment and to failure. And indeed, one of the questions of their lives is, “Is there any way, is there anyone, who can legitimately deal with my past? And in looking forward, is there anyone who can help me with my fears? Fears about my health, and about my future, and about my family, and about my retirement, and about my eternal destiny, ultimately.” So if you’ve had any of those thoughts, I think you’re simply representative of what is generally the case. And therefore, I hope you will be helped, at least in that respect, by what we find before us this morning.

David, introduced to the fact that God not only deals with his past but directs his future. He doesn’t simply take him up out of a miry pit, out of the clay, as in Psalm 40, and set his feet upon a rock, but he establishes his going. At least that’s the King James Version; that’s how it finishes. Psalm 40:2: “[He] set my feet [on] a rock, and established my [going].” The whole notion of forward momentum, of the propulsion that takes us on.

God is not only able to deal with our past, but God is also willing to direct our future.

Now, it’s quite common for someone who has recently accepted God’s offer of forgiveness—someone who has recently come to understand who Jesus is and what he’s done and has become a believer, has been converted, has become a follower of Jesus—for them to ask the question, “What happens next? Is there any kind of course of instruction?” And the answer, of course, is yes. And wonderfully, as this eighth verse makes clear, not only is there a course of instruction which is very comprehensive, but it is God himself who promises to do the teaching. And this God who promises to do the teaching has provided for us the course notes, and all that we have for the course is provided for us in the Bible that he has given to us. And this God, this instructor, is the one who takes a very personal interest in the welfare of his children. “I will counsel you and watch over you.”

One of the great hullabaloos in contemporary education at the postgraduate level—at least at the master’s level, as some of you will have found to your great shame and disappointment—is that you decided to sign up for postgraduate study, and you thought that this would take you to a whole new level of intellectual advance, only to get in the class and discover that some of the people who were teaching you were actually just as dimwitted as yourself and were only in the class about two weeks ahead of you. And the professor had gone off to write a book somewhere, and he had entrusted it to some well-meaning soul who was going to teach this particular course. And you said, “I wish I’d never spent the money. I thought I was going to be instructed by the main person.” And I think that’s a legitimate expectation. And I think, incidentally and in passing, you ought to pay careful attention to every institution that fails to provide it.

But the promise here is not that God passes it off to some lackey, not that he gives it away to some inferior being. No, he says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and [I will] watch over you.” You say, “Well, he doesn’t do that directly, does he? He does it through the Bible, he does it through pastors and teachers and so on. He uses means.” Of course he does! But here’s the issue: I, or any other individual, may do my best to exegete this passage. I may study it, learn it, hopefully get it as right as I can, and convey it to you. You may listen to that, and at a cerebral level, you may process the information. But unless God is your teacher in that and through that, then everything that happens, happens at a completely superficial level.

It is when you are listening to the Bible taught by a mere individual that a divine dialogue takes place with your soul whereby you recognize at a deep-seated level that something is taking place in this interaction that cannot now purely be explained in terms of the verbiage of the one addressing us, but that at the very core of our being there is an instruction taking place, and we feel as though we are instructed by the very one who wrote the book into whose pages we are looking. That is what God pledges to his servant to do—and he does to us, who also serve him. Spurgeon gets it wonderfully when he says, “He who … made you his child, will put you to school, and teach you until you shall know the Lord Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.”[3]

It’s impossible to travel on any day without meeting somebody who’s “on a course.” Have you noticed that? You sit down on the plane: “So, what are you doing?” “I’m on a course.” You go in the coffee shop. “What’s that big book?” “I’m on a course.” Everyone’s on a course! Don’t feel left out. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are on a course. And here it is. Not a golf course! An instruction course. Look at the verbs: “instruct,” “teach,” “counsel,” “watch over.”

Now, let’s look at this under four headings, or four words, concerning this instruction. Let’s notice, first of all, that it is vital; secondly, that it is practical; thirdly, that it is personal; and fourthly, that it is rational. We’ll never get to four. We may get to three. But why worry?

Vital Instruction

First of all, this instruction is vital. It is vital instruction. And we can’t say that about all instruction, can we? Not every piece of information that comes our way is vital. It may be extraneous: “Do you know this? Have you learned that? Do you know this or the next thing?” And someone says, “Well, no, I didn’t, but it doesn’t really make a difference to me getting up in the morning or going through my life.”

But when we come to the instruction of verse 8—indeed, the indication of God’s instruction to us in his Word—it is vital. And it is vital for three particular classes of person. Number one, it is vital for the beginner. For the beginner. We all have to begin somewhere. And at the outset of any journey, we usually know very little. That’s one of the difficult things, and the humbling things, about becoming a Christian when you’re mature. You have actually established yourself in society. You have perhaps done well, and you are known for your intellectual prowess, or for your athletic ability, or whatever else it might be. And now you’ve come to an understanding of the need for the forgiveness of your sins, and you’ve discovered the joy of this forgiveness, and you’ve been ushered into a whole new world that you never knew before. And there is a language that you have never learned. And you find yourself surrounded by individuals who seem to know so much more than you.

Well, don’t be alarmed by that. Everybody experiences that. We’ve become infants—spiritual infants. We are infants in the matters of divinity—an old word from an earlier era. But we just know so very little about God, and God’s ways and dealings. And consequently, we know so very little about ourselves. Before we ever trusted in Jesus, we viewed ourselves in a certain way. We viewed other people in a different way, and we viewed Jesus in a different way. But all of that has changed.

In fact, you might want to just have that reinforced for you by turning for a moment to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and in 2 Corinthians 5 we have what is a classic verse: “If anyone is in Christ, he[’s] a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”[4] Now, if we were asked to explain how the evidence of transformation is revealed, we might mention all kinds of things.

Interestingly, in the context in which verse 17 falls in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul is pointing out that the big change in the person who has been changed is in, essentially, the way they view things. The way they view things. And we understand this by recognizing his identification of what now is so that, antithetically, we know what was not.

Let me just show you. Those who are not new creations—verse 12—“take pride in what is seen.” Okay? They’re all about externals; they’re all about the outside. Secondly, in verse 15, they “live for themselves.” Thirdly, in verse 16, they regard Jesus “from a worldly point of view.” Okay? Before a person comes to trust in Jesus, they “take pride in what is seen,” they “live for themselves,” and they regard Jesus “from a worldly point of view.”

But when a person is in Christ and becomes a new creation, these three things are altered. And the believer has an altogether different view of Jesus, of other people, and of himself or herself. That’s one of the ways we identify the fact that we’ve actually become Christians! Because we look at people and we say, “I wonder if she’s a Christian?” We never thought that before. It was never a question. We didn’t know anything about being a Christian, or we thought everyone was a Christian. Or we find ourselves listening to the television, and somebody says something about Jesus, and besmirches the name of Jesus, and we find ourselves saying, “That pains me to hear Jesus spoken about like that.” That’s an indication of the change. Before, it was commonplace. What’s different? We have been changed. And the change on the inside reveals itself on the outside.

Now, unless we’re able to go to the Bible, to the instruction manual, then we’re never going to know that kind of thing. By nature we viewed ourselves in one way, and by grace we see ourselves completely differently. And when we begin the Christian journey, we are so unaware of who God is; we’re really unaware of ourselves and what we’re like—our vulnerability to temptation and to dangers. We’re just, frankly, a bunch of babies. And we need to be suckled by the milk of God’s Word, as Peter says when he writes to his followers.[5]

The instruction, then, is vital, first of all, for the beginner. Secondly, it is vital for the confused. For the confused. You’ve probably heard somebody remark, “Well, you really shouldn’t pay much attention to me; I only know enough to be dangerous.” Which, if you have an electrician working in your house, you probably don’t want to go out and leave him alone if that’s his introduction to you.

Actually, that phrase reminds me of our son on one occasion when he had cut his hand open with a bottle, and he went for stitches somewhere here in the Chagrin Valley. And they had him lying on the bed, and he had to lay his hand flat on a little tray. As the doctor came to him—he was a young-looking doctor—and our son looked up as he came towards him, and he said to the doctor, “Did you ever mess one of these up?” And quick as a flash, the doctor said, “I never did one of these before.” Well, we don’t want that kind of thing when it comes to our discovery of the details of the Christian faith.

The Bible acknowledges that we are foolish people. We are wayward. That’s why verse 9, to which we’ll never come this morning, is right there: “Do not be like the horse or … mule.” It’s a very straightforward statement, isn’t it? I think many of us would be tempted to take verse 8 and annex it: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.” I’m sure somebody can put a lovely melody line to that. You know, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.” It’s a nice, cozy thought, isn’t it? Well, who’s going to write the tune for “Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no unders…” It’s not a nice way to treat people, is it? It’s saying, “Hey! Excuse me! Listen up, class! Cut the horsey stuff, cut the mule stuff, would ya? Listen!” That’s what he’s saying: “Don’t be like a horse or a mule.” What are horses and mules like? We’ll talk about that later. I’m still researching it. But the fact is, they’re not particularly rational. That’s why you have to nudge them and squeeze them and bang ’em and hook ’em and whip ’em and do all those things.

And we are by nature a confused people. The Galatians were confused. That’s why Paul writes to them and says, “You foolish Galatians! Are you getting confused all over again?”[6] Paul writes to Timothy and he tells him, “You need to understand that there will be people in your congregation who are swayed by all kinds of evil desires. They will be always learning and never able to acknowledge the truth.”[7] Did you get that? Always learning, never able to acknowledge the truth. That’s one of the saddest aspects of pastoral ministry, incidentally: to have people under your tutelage, in your care, who, by a certain point on the road, ought to be teachers, but they’re not; and they constantly, like children, drift from one idea to another. And their great need is the instruction which God provides.

I know that you think that all I do is read Pilgrim’s Progress, ’cause I mention it so much. You say, “It’s the only book he’s ever read apart from the Bible.” But it’s not true. But when I was reading this again, I remembered the interchange between Christian and Ignorance, towards the end of Pilgrim’s Progress. And let me just give this to you as a little test, okay? You don’t have to hand in papers, but I want you to think about this.

This is Ignorance speaking now, and our thought is the vital nature of the instruction for the confused. Now, none of you are confused, I am sure. Not like Ignorance. Let’s see.

Ignorance speaks: “I believe that Christ died for sinners, and that I shall be justified before God from the curse through his gracious acceptance of my obedience to [the] law.” How does that sound? False? Good. One person said false. There’s about twelve hundred in here. We don’t know where we are with the rest. “Or,” says Ignorance, “Christ makes my duties, that are religious, acceptable to his Father by virtue of his merits, and so shall I be justified.”

Christian responds,

Let me give an answer to this confession of thy faith.

1. Thou believest with a fantastical faith, for this faith is nowhere described in the [Bible].

2. Thou believest with a false faith, because it taketh justification from the personal righteousness of Christ and applies it to thy own.

[Thirdly,] this faith maketh not Christ a justifier of thy person, but of thy actions; and of thy person for thy actions’ sake, which is false. …

Therefore[, fourthly,] this faith is deceitful, even such as will leave thee under [the] wrath in the day of God Almighty.

But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if on first reading, if I didn’t tell you—set you up—by letting you know that this was Mr. Ignorance’s statement, that some of us might have had to think a great deal to see what is possibly wrong with this statement. After all, it begins so well, and it seems to make much of Jesus.

Of course, what it does is it underlines the absolute necessity of this instruction for those who are confused. And we dare not be confused about what it means to be put in a right standing with God not on the basis of any of our actions but on the basis entirely of what he has done—not on the basis of our keeping of the law but of his keeping of the law, and of the fact that he was the sacrifice for our sins because we are, by nature, lawbreakers. In essence, what Bunyan is addressing there is the idea that justification includes both the work of Christ and our good actions. And it doesn’t, according to the Bible. It is all in what Christ has done—all of our actions… It is faith alone that saves, but the faith that saves is not alone, because the faith is accompanied by actions, but those actions do not contribute to our acceptance with God.

It’s hard, you know, to say these things over and over again, as we do here on the pastoral team, and listen to some of you talk, or receive your emails, or the suggested conferences that we might attend as pastors, or the books that you have found so very helpful—to shake my head and say, “Can it possibly be that these people, who by this time ought to be teachers, remain so confused?”

And thirdly, it is vital instruction for the forgetful. For the forgetful. You say, “Well, I’m not confused,” and I hope you aren’t! I’m not suggesting that everybody is. The potential is there. But most of us are forgetful, aren’t we? That’s why the Bible tells us again and again to remember. “Remember Jesus Christ,”[8] Paul says to Timothy. Who could ever forget that? “Remember Lot’s wife,”[9] who looked back and turned back. “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”[10] Indeed, the ministry of teaching and preaching is essentially a ministry of reminder. Peter makes it clear when he says, “I intend always to remind you of these things, even though you know them and are doing them, so that after my departure you may be able to recall all of this.”[11]

Well, let’s move on. We spent too long on that. I’m sorry. This instruction is vital.

Practical Instruction

Secondly, this instruction is practical. It is practical. It is not merely theoretical. God is not content for us to be loaded up with information. To have big heads, as it were—just gargantuan craniums stashed with phraseology and information. “What do you know about what the Bible has to say about the doctrine of x?” And out it comes, [garbled speech], and someone else, [garbled speech]. And the fact of the matter is that the information is given to us in order that it might be worked into the warp and woof of our lives.

The ministry of teaching and preaching is essentially a ministry of reminder.

So, for example, a young man is going through his life, and he’s seeking to be a follower of Jesus. He’s trusted in Christ, and the heaviness has been replaced by this great happiness in finding the will and the way of God. And he’s wrestling with the question of purity, and he reads in the instruction manual, and the instruction manual says that you’re to live in purity. And as he is buffeted and challenged both by temptations from within and without, he finds himself saying, “But how in the world am I supposed to do that?” And he goes back into the instruction manual, and he finds the answer: that there is not simply the doctrine, but there is also the precept. Psalm 119:9: “How [will] a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.” Here is the demand, here is the imperative, and here is the indicative.

Vance Havner, the old Southern preacher, I heard just a couple of times before he died, after I arrived in this country. I always loved to hear him preaching on Moody. He had that great voice. “Yew,” “y’all,” he’d say—that great vo… And he used to say, “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.”[12] It’s good, isn’t it? No, not my accent, but I mean, there’re, like, five vowels: siiiiin, siiiiin, a-e-i-o-u: “Siiiiin will keep you from this book.”

Sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. Have you noticed? Neglect this, and it’s much easier to sin. It’s much easier to deviate. It’s much easier to wander. It’s much easier to play fast and loose with whatever’s out there. But when we have a steady, daily diet and input of the instruction manual, it changes things. That’s why we say to you, “Did you go through there and get the New Testament in a Year? Did you buy one? Do you have one? Do you want one? How can we help you make sure that this instruction is intensely practical for you?”

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.” “In the way you should go.” Remember Solomon says in Proverbs, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death.”[13] And the way that we should go is different from the way that seems right to people. And that’s what makes it so tremendously exhilarating, and very often dreadfully challenging, to go out into the thoroughfare of life and say that we’re going this way—that we’re going to go God’s way, because God’s way is perfect. And men and women say, “But that’s not the way most of us are going.” Of course it isn’t! And that’s why the psalmist says, “Teach me your way, O Lord.”[14]

Now—and we must draw this to a close—how does this work itself out in life? Well, take any doctrine you want. Take, for example, the doctrine of creation. Here we have the instruction of God’s Word about creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”[15] That’s the instruction. So we start from that point. How does that work itself out? Well, it changes the way in which we view, for example, the elderly. It has a radical impact in the way in which we view the information coming from Great Britain this week that is suggesting that malformed babies, after birth, should be killed. It changes the way we view the elderly in our society and moves us from the realm of sheer pragmatism into wrestling with the consequences of this doctrine, this instruction, that God made man in his own image,[16] and therefore, the image of man is to be protected and cared for because of who God is.

Or, if we take the doctrine of Jesus—second person of the Trinity—the lordship of Christ, “Jesus is Lord.” The incarnation. It changes everything.

It came home to me this week when I was involved in a little interview with one of the local television channels here. And in the course of the interview, the gentleman pressed me routinely on the exclusive claims of Jesus. “What,” he asked me, “about all the billions of people that have never heard of Jesus? What about all the comparative religions of the world? What do you have to say about that? What are you saying? Are you actually saying, Alistair, that Jesus is the only Savior?” Now, it’s one thing when your next-door neighbor asks you that question. It’s another thing when they’ve got you absolutely under a television camera and you know the answer is going to go out to the whole of the Cleveland area.

So what did I say? I’m not gonna to tell you. No, I will tell you. What I said was, “I have no option but to affirm this fact. Jesus is the only Savior because Jesus is the only one qualified to save. He is the only Incarnate One. He is the only one who bore our sins. He is the only one who was raised from the dead. He is the only God-man. Therefore, we are shut up to that.”

“Well then, what are you going to do?”

I said, “We’re going to go out into all the world, and we’re going to tell as many people as we possibly can about this glorious, wonderful news that is as wide as the ocean and is as vast as the sands of the sea, and the company that God is putting together will involve people from every tribe and nation and people and language and tongue throughout the whole universe.”[17]

Now, how do we get to that? Only from the Bible. If Jesus is Lord, we have no freedom to believe anything other than what Jesus himself taught. If Jesus is Lord, we have no freedom to behave in any other way than the way in which he said we must behave. So the instruction, vital as it is, is intensely practical.

That’s why Jesus said, “There was a wise man, and he built a house, and he built it on solid foundations, and it didn’t fall down when the storm hit. There was a foolish man, and he built a house, and he built it on the sand, and it collapsed when the storm hit.” And he said, “The one whose house stood is the picture of the man who hears my words and puts them into practice. But the collapsed house is the picture of the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice.”[18]

I can only but imagine that his brother James listened very carefully to him on that day, because by the time James writes his letter, it is absolutely packed with practical information. And it is clear to James that this instruction that is provided for us changes everything: the way we conduct business, the way we handle money, the way we treat our employees, the way we view social standing. And his classic question is there for us: “What good is it … if [someone] claims to have faith but has no deeds?”[19] It’d be like memorizing recipes but never cooking meals, and certainly never sharing them with anyone who was hungry.

This instruction is vital. It is practical. Thirdly—I knew the word I had wrong—it is watchful. We can’t come to that. And then finally, of course, it is rational. But we’ll come back to this.

Father, thank you that we have a Bible, that we can go away and read this stuff and check to see if it ties in with our research. We pray, Lord, for you to accomplish your purposes as a result of our study now and later. We thank you that you don’t cry to us at arm’s length, as it were, but that you’ve come right down and in beside us in the person of your Son, Jesus. So,

Take me by your hand today,
And teach me Lord and lead the way,
And let my words and life convey,
That, Father, your love is faithful.[20]

Now may the grace and the mercy and the peace from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be our portion, now and forevermore. Amen.

[1] See James 3:17.

[2] Psalm 32:5 (paraphrased).

[3] C. H. Spurgeon, “Bit and Bridle: How to Escape Them,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 37, no. 2190, 101.

[4] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV 1984).

[5] See 1 Peter 2:2.

[6] Galatians 3:1 (paraphrased).

[7] 2 Timothy 3:6–7 (paraphrased).

[8] 2 Timothy 2:8 (NIV 1984).

[9] Luke 17:32 (NIV 1984).

[10] Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NIV 1984).

[11] 2 Peter 1:12, 15 (paraphrased).

[12] Attributed to John Bunyan in, for example, H. A. Ironside, Studies on Book One of the Psalms (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1952), 123, and Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (1958; repr., San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1979), 38.

[13] Proverbs 14:12 (paraphrased).

[14] Psalm 86:11 (NIV 1984).

[15] Genesis 1:1 (NIV 1984).

[16] See Genesis 1:27.

[17] See Revelation 7:9.

[18] Matthew 7:24–27 (paraphrased). See also Luke 6:46–49.

[19] James 2:14 (NIV 1984)

[20] Robert Critchley, “Father Your Love” (2002). Paraphrased.