Keeping Our Vows

Psalm 101 - Riley Boggs

“I, so-and so-, take thee, so-and-so, to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part." These classic wedding vows have been stated millions, likely billions, of times throughout history. In 1549 Thomas Cramner wrote these vows in his Book of Common Prayer, and you can still find them there today in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. By the way, that means if you used these vows, you have an Anglican marriage. If you wanted it to be a Baptist marriage you should have used words like “ya’ll” or “reckon”. In all seriousness, no matter what words you decide to use, vows are a part of the wedding ceremony. I’ve never been to a wedding where there hasn’t been any vows, and I would guess the same of everyone here. And, if you did go to a wedding without vows, I would also guess that it would feel a bit strange, like something is missing.

See vows are a necessary part of a marriage ceremony. Without vows there is no declared commitment. Without vows there are no promises being made. Unfortuantely, for those of us who are married, we likely don’t think of the vows that we made on that wedding day very often, but maybe we should. Maybe we should think back and see what it is we said that we would do until we die. After all, we declared in front of family and friends, and to our spouse, that we would do these things. Vows are an important thing, not something we should do flippantly. When we make a vow, a promise, or a commitment, we ought to bring it to fulfillment as best we can. That doesn’t mean we don’t often stumble and fail to uphold them perfectly. I know that I haven’t cherished my wife all the time like I said would over 5 years ago. But I also know that when I fail to do this, it’s my responsibility to ask her for forgiveness and try to cherish her all the more. Vows are meant to be kept, not dismissed. Remembered, not forgotten.

This morning we find ourselves in Psalm 101 where David makes vows to God. David had either just become King, or was about to become the King, when he made these vows. And it’s clear when you read them what David desires for the nation of Israel under his leadership. David wants Israel to be a righteous nation that follows God. He’d seen what Israel had done in the past under other kings, and he wanted his reign to be different. He wanted Israel to be different. No more wandering in disobedience, it is time to thrive in obedience. And he wants this so dearly and he commits to leading in such a way that it will happen. He says to the Lord over and over again, “I will do this” and “I will do that”. He makes vows to God.

Have you ever made a vow to God? Have you ever told Him what it is you intend on doing, what you are committing to doing? For everyone here who knows the Lord and has professed faith, we ought to be nodding our heads yes. If we say that we are Christians who have been saved, then our answer is yes. We have said in our words and our baptism that we are committing to follow Jesus. We made a vow when we did that.

This is how I want to address our text this morning. I want us to look at these vows that David made as he planned to lead Israel towards righteousness and then see how we might apply them to our own vows to follow Jesus. I want to see what it is that David said he must do in order for Israel to walk blamelessly before the Lord so that we too might walk in the righteousness of God that we have been saved to. If we are professing to follow Jesus and obey all that He has commanded, what must we do to uphold our vows? That’s what I want to answer this morning. And the first point this morning is this.

1.) We must learn what is good and what is evil

Within every person there is a conscience. There is this intangible thing that tells us what we should or shouldn’t do. This is why cultures all over the world generally agree on human rights, and when they don’t, they are looked down upon by the rest of the world. There are all these truths that God places in the hearts of men and women, a common grace, that keeps a world full of sinful people from doing the most egregious things they can imagine. Why would a man who denies the very existence of God care for his family and spend his life providing and protecting them? Scientist will you it’s the evolutionary process and his attempt to extend his bloodline. But we all know that’s not true. When that man goes to work or sacrifices his own well-being for his families, he isn’t thinking about his bloodline. No, there is something within him, placed there by God, that says it’s good to do this, and so he does.

But, while these common grace truths exists, they are not all encompassing. Yes, there is something within humanity that says too take an innocent life is evil, but there is not something that says you should gather with other believers each Sunday morning so that you might be strengthened in your faith. You can’t look at the world around you or look within yourself and find that truth. That is a truth that has to be taught. This why when Jesus gives the great commission He says, “19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Jesus knows that obedience has to be taught. He knows that people do not know what is good and what is evil to the fullest extent. There is the general conscience within every man, but every man must also be taught even further.

David knew this reality as well. And so as he considers how he might lead Israel towards a path of righteousness, he acknowledges that he must learn what is good and what is evil. In verse 1 he says that that he, “will sing of (God’s) steadfast love and justice.” It’s an immediate acknowledgment that God is the standard for what is good and what isn’t. If David is to lead a nation towards real love and real justice, he must look to the One whose love is steadfast and whose justice is right. He must look to God.

And he further confirms that this is what he must do by making vowing to God in verse 2 that he “will ponder the way that is blameless” and then asking God when He will show it to him. That word “blameless” there is a word that really shows what it is David is getting at. This is word that is connected directly to the law of God. And I think the reason that David uses that word is because he wants to acknowledge to the Lord that he knows what is required of him according to the law. He knows that in order to lead Israel well, he must look to what the law that God gave to them has said. David is making a vow to God to do this very thing. To ponder what God has said so that He might walk in it.

One of the things that makes disheartens me the most about the American church is the Biblical and Theological illiteracy. I meet people all the time who have been attending church regularly for years and yet it seems they still haven’t scratched the surface of God’s Word. Maybe it’s because the church doesn’t think it’s necessary or they don’t think people are capable, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it’s a dangerous thing to do this. It’s dangerous because what can happen is sin can creep into their life without them even knowing. They haven’t been taught or shown what is good and what isn’t good, so when something that God clearly speaks against in His word comes along, they might just step right into it.

I think one of the clearest examples of this is when dating couples move in together. It seems harmless enough, right? They both love each other and they both plan to get married and isn’t that what God wants? The whole living separated thing was just sort of added onto everything in the past, but it’s not really a thing anymore. We’ve heard those things before, but the truth is that God has said something about this in His Word. He has said that there is a place for intimacy between man and woman in marriage, but not before then. And to walk that line before committing to one another in marriage is sinful. It’s not one of those things that you have to read between the lines about in the Word, it’s abundantly clear in multiple places throughout the New Testament. And yet people who claim to follow Jesus fall victim to this sin because they are unaware of what God has said about these things.

The point is simply that if we are professing to follow Christ, we must learn what is good and what is evil. We need to look and see what Christ has commanded so that we can follow it. If we are going to keep the vows that we made, that we are following Jesus, then we need to learn how to follow Him. We need to know what to do and what not to do. What to love and what to reject. What to celebrate and what to admonish. We can’t walk in ignorance and expect to be people who keep our vows. We need to spend time in the Word learning how we might be better vow keepers.

There’s a passage in Micah 6 that sort of asks these same kinds of questions. Micah poses these questions about how do we know what to do in order to follow God; how can we please Him? And then He answers it. Micah asks, “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Then He responds and says, “8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

God has not left us in the dark concerning what is good and what is evil, what we should pursue and what we should flee from. He’s told us and it’s our responsibility to learn it. But not only are we to learn it, but we are to search out the plan whereby we might put it into place. That’s our second point this morning.

2.) We must search out the path of righteousness

In Paul’s letters to the Ephesians he writes this section about God’s sovereignty in our salvation. He says that God loved us and saved us, though we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And Paul says that not only did He save us from our sin, but that He saved us for something else. That is, that we have been made alive in Christ so that we can walk in faith and obedience to God in ways never possible before. And one of the things that He adds at the end of this section to remind the Ephesians of the kindness and sovereignty of our God is about how God has already planned works for people to walk in. He says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” In other words, not only did God save you from your sins and give you the ability to obey Him, but He’s even planned good works for you. He has planned for you, before he even saved you, good things for you to do.

And what that means for us is that now we spend our lives searching out by the path by which we might find these good things. God has planned them for us along the path of righteousness. These goods works won’t be found when we are pursuing our sin. These good works won’t be found unless we are pursuing Christ in faith. And this is exactly why we must search out the path of righteousness, so that we might find them. David knows that he needs to search out this path if he is going to lead Israel in this way. He knows that it is going to take some foresight and thoughtful planning if he is going to lead Israel righteous living before God. Over and over again he says, “I will” do these things.

Look at the things that David said that we he will do to this end. He says “I will walk with integrity of heart within my house;3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. “I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me.” David is searching out the path of righteousness, and He is vowing to walk that path. He is going to walk with integrity and keep his eyes from worthless things. He is going to promote those who are faithful to God to high places so that they might help him lead Israel well. He is going to celebrate righteousness and cast out evil. He is making a plan to do all these things because he knows he must in order for Israel to be all that it can be before God.

The same is true for us. If we want to be faithful believers who walk in bold obedience, we need to search out the path of righteousness. We need to be thoughtful in how approach everything in our life. We need to be thinking and praying asking, “Lord, is this the right thing for me? Lord, is this going to be glorifying to you?” So often we run ahead without considering these things and find ourselves in places we never thought we would be, saying things like, “Well, it felt right in the moment.”

Recently I’ve tried to start running and I quickly realized how important it is to plan the route for my runs. I set out to run one day, planning to make a loop that brought me back to my house. I started running, following the sidewalks, until eventually there were no more. I thought surely they pick back up just over the hill, so I ran through some parking lots, jumping curbs and avoiding cars, until eventually I realized, the sidewalks weren’t showing back up. So, I had to turn around and run the same path home.

Sometimes I think we do the same thing as Christians. Rather than planning how we walk as Christ followers in this life, we just take off running. And we go and go and go until eventually we realize that though we’ve been running the race for some time and it seems that this path isn’t going to lead us where we need to go. Our whole race has been run in search of things like money, notoriety, or comfort, all the while thinking it was Jesus. Things that aren’t sinful in and of themselves, but none of which we have we professed to follow all the days of our life. Instead of Jesus being the driving force and the reason we are running, other things have been. And then we get to the end of that path and think, “What went wrong? I thought I was running the Christian race and yet here I am as miserable as ever before.”

I know it’s not as simple as that all the time, but I think the point still stands. If you want to grow to have strong faith like those in the missionary biographies you read about. If you want to be like the older lady or man in the church who has had such a hard life, yet seems to be the most joyful in the room. If you want to honor God with as much of your life as possible. If you want all of those things, then search out the path of righteousness. Make a plan. Center your life on acts of obedience to God, intentionally. Don’t expect to stumble into a faith that can withstand storms, ask God to build that kind of faith within you through acts of obedience.

One of my previous pastors said this often and I think he is spot on. We do not drift towards holiness. That is, if you aren’t paddling the boat towards Godliness, you are going to be drifting towards sin. If you aren’t searching out the path of righteousness, then you are likely walking the path of unrighteousness. We have got to be disciplined in this. Casting our eyes on our Savior and seeking to live lives that reflect that.

David knows that this is true when it comes to leading Israel, so He vows to that end. He said that he will pursue the path that God has for him so that he and his nation would glorify God. But not only does he search out the path of righteousness, but he also actively removes that which is unrighteousness. And that’s our final point for this morning.

3.) We must actively rid our lives of sin

If you want to eat healthy it’s pretty obvious that you have to start eating things that are good for you. You need fill your body with healthy foods. But that isn’t all you need to do. You can eat all the fruits and meats and vegetables you want, but if you’re nightcap is sleeve of Oreos, Mountain Dew, and some airheads, you still aren’t eating healthy. See eating healthy not only requires eating what is good, but it also requires not eating what is bad. The same is true for our own spiritual health, and in David’s case, the health of Israel.

There is a clear disposition towards sin in this Psalm. David holds no punches when it comes to sin and evil. Look at what he says. Verse 3-5 “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. 4 A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. 5 Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure.” Then in verse 7-8, “No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. 8 Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord.”

It’s pretty clear what David plan is regarding sin and evil. He is not going to tolerate it at all. He is going to hate it and rid the nation of it. He knows it’s corrupting nature and he knows that Israel will never be all that he wants it to be if it’s ignored or even worse, accepted. He’s determined to actively guard himself from sin and to rid the nation of it. He makes the vow to God. Brothers and sisters, we have to do the same thing. We have got to actively rid our lives of sin if we want to be keep the vows we made when we said we would follow Jesus. Following Jesus means ridding our life of sin. It doesn’t mean ignoring it and it doesn’t mean tolerating it. It means actively trying to push it out of your heart and your mind.

And it’s not an easy task because the sinful root in us can never been pulled completely out. We spend our entire life pulling the sinful weeds. We see one pop up in the way we talk to our spouse, so we pull it. We notice one sprout in our ungratefulness and jealousy towards other, so we pull it. We realize that one has started to grow in bitterness that we have harbored for years and years, so we pull it. But no matter what the weed is when we pull it, the root doesn’t come with it. And if the root doesn’t come with it, then what will happen? It will likely grow again. So we put preventative measures in place, and we constantly keep our eyes open, ready to pull anything that comes up, knowing that one day, when we die, the Lord Himself will remove the root of it all. Then, there will be no more sinful weeds to grow ever again. We’ll be free of it all.

That right there is the Christian life; Gardening our own lives. But listen, we cannot grow lax in this. We cannot ignore sin in our life. We cannot tolerate it. We cannot justify it. I know it is not easy to do these things because I know how difficult ridding your life of sin can be. It means confessing things. It means giving up things that you love. It means maybe making drastic changes in your life. And all of those things can be especially hard. But no matter how hard they are, they are worth it. Every single time they are worth it. Remember the vows that you made. Lord, I will follow you. I am committing my life to you. Follow Him in this way, by actively ridding your life of the sin that He has saved you from by His death and resurrection. Follow Him boldly, no matter the difficulty, remembering who He is and what He has done for you.

David wanted all of these things, and he vowed to do it. He vowed to learn what was good and what was evil in the sight of God. He vowed to search out the path of righteousness for himself and for Israel. He vowed to rid his own life and his nation of sin and evil. He made a vow to do all of these things and guess what? He failed each one to uphold each one of them over and over and over again. David wasn’t a perfect man, and he wasn’t a perfect king. He broke his vows many times.

And I know that none of us have kept our vows perfectly either. We haven’t always trusted the Lord. We haven’t always done what is right. We haven’t been always faithful followers of Jesus. But can I tell you something? Jesus made a vow to us as well, to all those who have trusted in Him for salvation. John 10, starting in verse 22, “22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

There is a new and better David, Jesus. And He has vowed to keep us until the very end. He is our Great Shepherd. He’s promised to protect us and guide us all the way home. Until then, we are to follow Him. We listen to Him, our Shepherd, as He tells us what is good for us and what isn’t. We try to walk the path that He has asked us to walk. We try to avoid the things that dishonors Him and hurts us. And then, when we inevitably fail at one or all of these, we go to Him, repent of our sins, receive His forgiveness, and begin to follow Him again. Continually trying to uphold the vows that we have made, but knowing that our salvation is sure not because of the vow we made, but because of the vow He has made. Thanks be to God for His endless grace and mercy.