Psalm 1 with Ps. 2 form the Psalter’s intro, asserting God’s rightful interest in things personal & cosmic. In Ps. 1, the wicked & righteous man are contrasted, but both are revealed in their relationship to God & His word. May you be judged righteous in THE Righteous Man.

Part 2 of this sermon on Psalm 51 (the Sin, Story, Song, and Savior) emphasized the inside (heart) work which God must do, to make us clean within … and how that impacts joy, witness, & sacrificial service to Him. All this points to the impact of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of atonement.

This passage highlights God’s active work; the hand of the Lord was on His people as the gospel went out. The Lord worked in incredible ways! And do not miss the picture of our identity: Acts 11 is the first time anyone was called a Christian. What once was an insult becomes an identity: We belong to Christ!

Our guest preacher this week is Quinn Sloan, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the full-time campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Kansas.

Psalm 51 gives us one of those rare worship songs for the church for which we know the precise historic circumstance behind it … in this case, King David’s notorious sins involving Bathsheba & Uriah. Can such a sinner have a truly clean heart? Depends who you ask and the basis for your plea.

Our salvation is in the Lord; God is the one who determines the clean and the unclean, casting our sin far from us because of the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

Our guest preacher this week is Quinn Sloan, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the full-time campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Kansas.

The special contribution of this Psalm is to describe the members of God’s universal choir of praise, and also to challenge our highly limited sense of what praise (& worship) really are … ultimately, being & doing precisely what God created us to be & do. Affections follow.

Can we trust in and experience God as our Rock & Salvation in a world of lies, violence, and treachery? David under the Holy Spirit says YES, but we will have to call ourselves often to this faith and ask God to make it a habit of the heart.

Jesus is the perfect Shepherd for sheep like us; we might recognize ‘design’ in the relationship! As such, Jesus knows, leads, feeds, and protects His flock and each member of it. Let us trust, thank, and follow.

Because of the good, great, chief Shepherd that Jesus is, His blessed flock can know eternal peace & provision. Put away the proverbial calm, pastoral scenes; Jesus must be more like a warrior to bring us all the way through … and this He does, for the sake of His own name.

One of the fifteen “royal psalms,” this one is also the most quoted OT text in the NT, as it reveals a Father/Son conversation in the Godhead and assures us of our King’s absolute rule over all things. In response, we should volunteer freely in His & our days of strength.