Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 15, exploring the question of who can dwell with God. He emphasizes that God desires integrity and character in those who seek fellowship with Him, highlighting traits such as honesty, respect for others, and commitment to one's word. The sermon encourages believers to reflect on their lives and strive for deeper communion with God, assuring that those who live according to these principles will find stability and security in their faith.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Imagine that times 400.
We had 400 kids at youth camp this year, and that was a wonderful time of worship and fellowship. If you have a young person that wants to go to Children's Church, we have that available for you. First grade and younger, that is available for you. Yes, son, you can go to Children's Church.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to go to Psalms chapter 15. As you can tell by that song, there was that one line, My failures I hide, my victories I boast,
my crowns that I hoard, I freely give it all to you. And oftentimes that's how we are. We want to put ourselves in the best light possible. And the Lord says He just cares about us coming, completely abandoned and totally sold out for Him.
And so thank you, young people, for singing that. Psalms chapter 15 is where we're going to be at today.
As I talked to multiple men across the country that are friends of mine, I called one of my buddies and I said, I talk to him every day, John, and I ask him what he's preaching on, what I'm preaching on. And he just started preaching through the entire book of Psalms.
He started in Psalms 1. He's going to preach 150 Psalms.
It's going to take him like three or four years to do. And I just do it in the summertime. I give you a little reprieve in the summer. And he called me on Monday and said, hey, what are you preaching this week? Because he knows I'm in Psalms. I'm in Psalms 15.
I just sort of pick them and pray through what I'm going to do.
He says, you're not going to believe it. I'm actually in Psalms 15 as well.
And so it was cool this whole week. We're sort of sharing what we're both studying. It was a great time. And so Psalms 15 is where we're going to be at today. I've entitled it, Who Can Dwell With God?
And so if you have your place there, we'll stand. The words will be on the screen as well. Out of honor of reading God's word this morning. The Bible says, It says, Lord, we love you.
We thank you for your blessings. We thank you for the reading of your word. Lord, I thank you for these young people that led us in worship. It was just an overwhelming experience to my heart.
And I pray that they would continue to live in the gospel, continue to live in what they've experienced this last week.
Understanding Wisdom Psalms
And I love you, Lord. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated.
This is, as we get started by way of introduction, this is what we consider a wisdom psalm. And so these are wisdom statements that the psalmist is writing down to help us understand how to live life. The Bible is a practical book, as we say often, read before leaving earth.
And so we must read the word of God. We must understand it. And we must practice these principles that are given to us.
And I want to start out by sharing a story about the old Colonel Sanders. You might know who Colonel Sanders is. The Colonel, the King, the King of KFC, the King of Chicken.
He became a household name in Kentucky for probably what you would know, Kentucky Fried Chicken. But as he began starting, and I like to look at people who are entrepreneurs and how they start and the struggles they had.
But when he started, he struggled a lot. The business didn't take off the way he wanted to. It started actually during the Great Depression. And he started actually in a small gas station in Corbin, Kentucky.
Now, I love gas station food. I'll take a pause here in my moment here. I love stopping at a good gas station food. If you can give me a good place that serves, there's a place in Arkansas. It's called Dodge's Chicken.
It's a gas station. And they serve the best chicken, biscuits and gravy I've ever put in my entire mouth. There's a place right down from my house called Phil's. They serve some of the best fried chicken and potato wedges.
Brody loves going there with me. Allison doesn't like fast food from gas stations as much. I love it. I think it's some of the best cooking you'll ever have.
And so Colonel Sanders started KFC out of a gas station. He not only sold gas, but he also served food to people who were traveling by. What made Sanders different in this standout wasn't just his fried chicken, but it was his character.
Most people don't know this, and I didn't even put in my illustration, but I read it later, is that one person came to him, did not know who he was and was trying to find the owner. And he was in the bathroom mopping up one of the bathroom stalls.
As the owner of the company, a multimillion dollar company this time, was in there mopping up the floor in the bathroom. And they said, hey, we're looking for your owner. And he said, well, let me go see if I can find him. He was very humble. He didn't put himself up on a pedestal a lot.
But one story earlier that I read in his early years said this, a customer came through and ordered a meal, and he paid that meal with a $20 bill.
Sanders, in the distractedness of his busyness of his day as people were getting gas and getting food, he gave the man a change for a $10 bill instead of a $10 bill by mistake. It wasn't until the man had already driven off that Mr.
Sanders looked and realized that he had made a mistake and that he gave the man the wrong amount of change. Most people would have struggled this off. They would have said, it's during the Great Depression. Times are tough. It's no big deal. You're completely fine.
This is a busy time, and money was tight, and Mr. Sanders said to himself, I can't let this happen. He closed his business. He closed the gas station.
He got in his truck, and he drove several miles down the road to catch up to the man that he had done wrong to. He explained what had happened, and he gave him the missing change. The man was stunned and replied, no one would have ever known.
Why would you do this? And his response was, I would have known.
I would have known that I did you wrong, and I could not sleep at night with that on my conscience. That small act of integrity stuck with him, and over the years, his reputation for honesty became the cornerstone of his business, his personal brand.
And even when his company began to grow and franchises multiplied,
Sanders would travel to each and every location, inspect their quality himself, always insisted that the food and the service match the values that he lived by. Now, I told all that story not to say that we need to be good businessmen, even though we should be good business people in our life.
It goes much deeper than that. It gives us a glimpse in the story of Psalms 15 that the psalmist writes down that talks about someone who walks blamelessly and upright, who speaks truth from his heart, as we shared this morning in Sunday school, where
John the Baptist spoke the truth without fear of reputation, without fear of harm coming to him.
And no matter what, he keeps his oath even when it hurts. This kind of person, God says, is fit to dwell in his presence.
Now, I don't know about you, but I desire to stand in the presence of God one day. I desire to look God face to face.
No man has ever seen the face of God and lived. And I desire that day where we get to sit in front of God, where we get to stand in front of God and see the glory of God.
As one person said it this week at camp, one of our young people was 18 years old who was at the other church. He said, when I think of seeing God, all I can think of seeing is the feet of Jesus.
Because as I began thinking about God and Jesus sitting on his throne and the worthiness that he has, I just see myself on my knees and I can barely see the feet of Jesus. The lights went out. Wonderful.
We can barely see the feet of Jesus. And he said, this is what I began to see and visualize in my mind is I'm not even worthy to look up and see the face of God. And yet, one day we will dwell with God.
Right now, we live in a world where character is negotiable. Character can be twisted and it can be negotiated with someone else.
Fellowship with God
But when we look at God's standard, when we look at what God has for us and we look at Psalms 15 specifically, we can understand how not necessarily to earn the grace of God, but how we can walk in the Lord. So let's look at what God says is welcoming to his presence.
And I want to give one statement that I didn't put in your notes I probably should have. God approves those who live with integrity.
Integrity is something that's missing a lot of times in our day. Integrity is something that is difficult to learn.
But once you learn it and you have it, it is so wonderful to live in that integrity. And God desires all of us to live with integrity.
So as we begin our notes, the first thing I want to look at is the question that God poses. What is the question here that God says, how can you dwell with me?
It's simple. He says, the Lord who may dwell in your sacred tent, who will live in your holy mountain? I want to rephrase this into another question. How can we enjoy the fullness of God?
And how can we enjoy the fellowship of his goodness? How can we enjoy the fullness of God and the fellowship of his goodness?
Think about it. You go home, it's Thanksgiving time and you're around mom or grandma's table. You're sharing stories that you've heard no less than a hundred times. Mom's sharing it and you're just, I know the ending. But as soon as mom gets to the ending, we all laugh. We enjoy the fellowship.
We enjoy the goodness. Grandma comes out with her homemade pecan pie and everyone's enjoying the fullness of that meal. Everyone's enjoying the company of everyone together. The question that we have here is, God, how can we enjoy that?
God, how can I sit in your table? How can I sit down and enjoy the fellowship that you have for me? This is not necessarily a question of salvation, but more of a question of fellowship. God, I want to fellowship with you more than I ever have.
I want to be able to ride in my car and no one's there. And I want to be able just to talk to you and just sense your presence and know that you're there with me. I want to enjoy the closeness and the ongoing communion that we have with God.
This word communion was brought up multiple times this week at camp. And it's the thought of celebrating or sitting at the table with Jesus.
Sitting at a table and he's right across from us and he's fellowshipping one by one. If you're sitting at your table with your wife or your kids and you're talking about their day and what they had, this is the communion that God wants with us.
Are we having that type of special communion, that special time where we're spending time with Jesus?
You see, as we look over these next six points, I want you to understand that these are not the requirements for salvation.
Oftentimes, people read these things and say, OK, if I can checkmark all six of these things, this is going to be my salvation ticket. God is simply laying out some what we like to use in my life or characteristics, but not necessarily credentials.
Some things that we have that are going to guide us in our life. There are guardrails on the interstate. If you're riding around a valley or a bend, there's going to be guardrails.
And those guardrails are there to keep you from present danger that's there. And these characteristics are the guardrails on both sides of the ditches that are going to keep us from falling into the ditches of sin and of the world.
And I want you to imagine it like this. I want you to imagine as we think of this fellowship with the Lord and how we can know him more fully, think about a dinner invitation with a king. The king has prepared the table. He's prepared all the fixings.
And he has invited you free of charge to come sit at the king's table. Now, in order to come,
all you have to do is accept the gift and show up in a code of conduct. You've got to show up and you've got to do some things that the king expects, right? You're going to bow before the king.
You're going to do some things that are going to honor the king. And this is what the Lord is saying as we think about this.
And so I want to ask you a question before we get started with the second point in the bulk of our message is, do you desire to dwell with God?
Do you desire to sit in the presence of God Almighty who sent his son to die for us?
Do you truly desire to sit in front of him or do you just desire to visit him occasionally?
I look forward every single night to sitting down with my family and asking them about their day and asking them about what they went through and the troubles that they're in and the different struggles that they're having and
having my wife tell about the stories of school and all the fun things that happen. I look forward to that every single day. Do we look forward to that type of experience with the Lord every day?
Or are we like, you know what? I just care about the Thanksgiving dinner. I just care about the one time a year where I spend time with all my family. Or is it I want that every single day of my life?
Characteristics of God's Approved Person
God says he wants to dwell with us if we will just simply draw close to him and we begin to get closer to what he has for us. Number two, the person that God approves.
This is the bulk of the message, the two through five section, where we look at some of the outlining of the portrait of a person who would walk closely with God. What that would look like and what that would begin to be a mark of. And I'm going to,
for the sake of time, quickly go through this. The first is his character. Verse two, it says he walks blamelessly. Those who walk blamelessly. This is not a sinless person.
If you are a sinless person and you're looking for a perfect church, this isn't the church because your pastor is not perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect church. And if there was and I were to step in, it would no longer be a perfect church because we are all sinless.
But what this is simply saying when it says that he is a walking blameless, it is someone that is sincere or someone who is consistent.
I want you to think about that word consistent because this is the walk that we do, the practice that we have, the process of every single day of our life as we go through our life. The trials that we go through, are we consistently going back to the Lord?
The traits that we go through in our life, are we consistently saying, Lord,
I want you to pave this path in front of me. And I'm just going to continue to walk on it. I don't care if there's a valley. I don't care if there's a mountain. I don't care if there's snakes on the side of the road. I'm just going to continue to follow you.
I want to be consistent in following after you, the character that we're paving with our life.
Does your private life match your public life? Does your private life match the public life that everyone else sees?
Not only do we see his character, but we see the conversation. The Bible says that he speaks truth from his heart.
This is someone who is honest, not just outwardly, but also inwardly. You can speak to yourself. Some people like to speak to themselves. Every once in a while, I'll be up here and I'll be studying and I'll hear voices. Voices all throughout the church.
And some people that would make you scared. All of a sudden you're hearing voices in the church and you're by yourself. But those voices are oftentimes,
we have some wonderful clean ladies that will like to talk to themselves. Mim is one included. She's not here so I can pick on her. She talks to herself. She'll be walking around and it's just like she's got someone beside her.
She's just talking. We can talk into our own soul. We can be a person that's having conversation. But oftentimes, are we honest with ourselves?
Are we honest with who we are and what we're doing? Or are we people that are gossiping and slanderous and deceitful?
Are we someone who begins to live a life one way in front of one people and another way in front of another people? Our conversation matters and people pay attention to those things.
I liked an illustration that I came across of a cracked mirror. A mirror that is designed to present a visual representation of someone. But a cracked mirror, it shows it poorly.
All of a sudden, your face doesn't look right. Your hair doesn't look right. For Claude Jr., his hair always looks perfect. And so we begin to see this cracked mirror and we get a false perception of who we really are.
How many of you have ever been to an amusement park where they've got the room of mirrors? And the mirrors that are all shaped differently.
Some are in small and some are out wide. And you walk through and you're like the skinniest person that's ever been seen. And then you walk to the next mirror and it's like the largest person that God ever made. Right?
This happens when we walk through these houses of mirrors. Some of you didn't think that was as funny as what I was hoping. But oftentimes, our conversation can cause us to have a false view of ourself.
I like to, like I said earlier, I like to read biographies of other people. And Steve Jobs is one of the guys that I like to read after, The Inventor of Apple. And Steve Jobs had what they called the reality distortion field.
Where when he came into a room, he perceived reality was completely different than what it was.
They're working on a project and he goes, well, it's a really cool project. I think we could have it done in about a month. And the engineers are over here like, Steve, a month isn't going to happen.
We're like two years away. Ah, we'll get it done in a month. And they said he had this distortion field around him that he couldn't actually see reality. And what it did was it perceived everything around him was completely different.
He had a cracked mirror in front of him. Is this how our life is?
Are we speaking life into other people? Are we spreading lies with our conversation? What are we doing with the words that we're speaking to other people, but also the words that we're speaking to ourself? Number two, number three, our conduct.
Relationships and Peace
The Bible says that he does no harm to his neighbor. He does no wrong to his neighbor. Relationships are marked by peace and respect. Relationships are marked by what we do and how we live our life.
One older man one time told me, he said, you can look at the past relationships of someone to tell the character of that person. If the past relationships that they've been dealing with are broken, messed up people time and time again, that person is probably speaking bad into their life.
But if you can look at the history of the people they've dealt with and you see brokenness restored, as the song said, when you see lives changed from the goodness of God, from the world to the goodness of
God, when you begin to see this in their life, you can see that their life is marked by good things that are around them because they're pouring truth in to someone.
Think of a garden. I'm not a gardener. I don't garden a lot.
But think of a gardener who comes in and nurtures his plants, who pulls the weeds, who puts the peppermint oil, right, Peggy, as you were talking about the peppermint oil to keep the bugs and the spiders away, who
cares for those plants versus the four-year-old boy that I've got on the front row that just went to children's church, who sees the plants and is like, oh, it's flowers.
I'm going to run through these. And tramples all the plants down. He's not nurturing those plants. He's just destroying everything around him.
Our conduct matters in life. And I really want us to ask ourselves, who are you building up? Or are you just tearing people down that are around us? This is who God is saying that is someone who is approved to stand before him, who he desires to stand before him.
But not only do we see that, we see his convictions as well. The Bible says in verse four that he honors the faithful and rejects the evil. He despises a vile person, but honors those who fear the Lord. This doesn't mean of hatred,
but it just simply means he rejects their ways and values. He sees that they're living a wrong life, and he tells them, I love you, but I can't condone the lifestyle that you're living. We begin to see that his convictions are coming forward. He desires to honor God rather than honor men.
He desires to speak up for what he believes in. This is very dearly lacking in our Christian culture for not speaking up for what we believe in. We were okay with non-confrontational.
We're okay with not speaking the truth and not rocking the boat. And it has happened to a fault of the American church because we have not stood up for what we believe in.
We have not stood up for the right of life.
We have not stood up for the right of marriage. And we must stand up for people and for the honor of what God says in his Bible in the face of opposition, in the face of when man comes to us and says, I don't like what you're saying.
As I shared this morning in Sunday school, if we're preaching the word, if we're preaching the Bible, if we're preaching God's word, and they don't like what has been said, they're not disagreeing with me. They're disagreeing with God and his word.
And so we must be men and women of character who are pointing almost like a compass who sees true north.
And you begin to follow that north and you're not trying to change the compass to make north a different way. You're just following the path of what God would lay out for us in a true north area.
Or is our convictions aligned with God's moral direction? Good test for this. A good question for you to ask yourself is, who are your heroes? Who are the people that you look to, that you look after, that you model your life after? Most human studies people,
there's actually a term for that. I messed up. I'm not going to get an anthropomorphic people, whatever it is. There's an actual scientific term for that.
Most people say that your three most listened to people are who you will begin to act, talk, and begin to be around.
Who you'll begin to look like, act like, sound like them. Are the three most influential people in your life. So begin to ask yourself, who are the three people that are pouring into my life who are causing me to live the way I'm living? This is the heroes in our life.
Commitments and Keeping Promises
And how does that say, or what does that say about your heart specifically? As we really quickly push through these last ones, our commitments or his commitments. He keeps his word. It says he keeps an oath even when it hurts. Integrity matters more than convenience.
A few years ago, we were driving to Arkansas, and as we're driving to see Allison's family, we had crossed the mighty Mississippi River right there on the Tennessee and Arkansas line in Memphis.
As we passed through there, there's always hundreds and thousands of cars that go across that bridge. And that year when we crossed over and we got into Arkansas, there was a video that had surfaced of some kayakers that were kayaking the Mississippi.
As they were going down the Mississippi, one of them pulled his phone out, and he took a video of the bridge as it connected, and there was a massive crack in the middle of the bridge.
And as cars were coming across it, you could see the bridge doing this number right here. And they put the video out on Facebook, and they said, someone's got to fix this bridge. This is a crumbling, broken bridge.
And so it added like two hours to my drive on the way home because I couldn't go over that bridge, and I had to go a different way. But how often is our life that way?
How often is our life a broken promise like a crumbling bridge who is shifting up and down because we don't have the commitments that God says to us, and our lives begin to be unsafe. Our lives begin to be unreliable.
And as parents in here, as a parent myself, we must be so committed to what God has for us that we are directing our kids in a way that it's going to honor God, and they're going to begin to grow up and going to serve Him with
their entire life. The number six here, he says here, our cash, this man's cash. How does he handle his money with justice?
Who lends money without interest and does not accept a bribe. He simply says, if someone's going to be approved by God, they must be someone who is not greedy, someone who is not manipulative,
someone who uses their money to bless others, not to exploit others for their own good. This is someone who is allowing money to be a tool and not a master. Oftentimes, money can be a master over us.
And the Bible says very clearly as Jesus talks through that, you cannot serve two masters. You can only serve God or you can serve mammon, and that is a direct correlation to allowing other people or other things to control our lives other than God controlling our lives. How do you handle your money?
And how do you show love towards God or towards yourself? Or is our money simply just there to bless ourselves? Are we having our money used to bless other people around us?
And then he begins to get to the very end of this passage. The question has been asked, the person has been laid out, and then the very end, he begins to lay out the reward that God promises. The reward that God promises.
He says this very quickly, very simply, whoever does these things will never be shaken.
I don't know about you, I don't know about you and your life. There are trials that come in my life that rock me to the core, that begin to even sometimes question what I do and why I do what I do.
There are young people, there are older people, there are adults, there are elderly people that come to me and will begin to ask questions, and it rocks my world because it's like,
Lord, how can this happen? How are these problems in my life and in other people's life, but yet I'm serving the Lord, I'm following the Lord, and it brings me back to this, and it brings me back to, allow me to say that this is not a promise of a promise-free life.
I'm sorry, this is not a promise of a problem-free life, but a secure life. He says here that they shall never be shaken.
And a boat that has an anchor that's firm into the grasp of the sea, even though the water are crazy, the boat is secure in where it's at.
The boat's going to have problems, the water's going to hit the sides of the boat, there's going to be problems that come, the winds are going to come, and it's going to blow it a little bit, but the boat is not going to be shaken because it's anchored in a firm foundation.
It's stable, and it's enduring because it is founded on the Word of God. This is what he says here, when your life is founded on God, it's not going to be shaken. Imagine with me, a storm comes across a tree.
We were there, look up, and there's a massive lake around, and I was talking to one of the guys. I said, how bad did Hurricane Helene hit you guys?
He said, he showed me a video of the lake, and it had come up massively amount, and he said this, he said, we watched the trees across the way that are on the side of the mountain, and he said the wind would come, and it would go,
one, two, and the third time it came to the ground, it just snapped these massive pine trees. He said, we watched them, 20, 30, 40 trees that had just been snapped by this wind,
and I began thinking through this promise here how these trees were, during a storm, had just been able to be wiped away,
but yet God says, in Psalms chapter one that we looked at last week, and in Matthew chapter seven, when you build your life, when you build your house, on a solid rock, when the winds come, and the waves
come, no matter what comes in our life, it's going to be sitting on a firm foundation, and nothing is going to be able to move it, and I have to ask ourselves this morning, when your life is shaken,
where are your roots at? Are your roots digging down into the word of God? And yeah, it's going to be tough, and you're going to question some things, but your mind immediately goes back to, God, I'm trusting in you. I don't understand why my child is going astray.
Understanding Life's Challenges
I don't understand why these things are happening in my life. I don't understand why a first grader just had his father taken away from him, just moments away from here. Why are these things happening?
God, God, I just want to trust you, and trust your sovereignty, and trust that you are in control, even when I don't understand the outcome. As Terry comes in place for us, as we begin to conclude today,
God desires close fellowship with every single one of us in here. He desires for us to be at the table, as we looked at that illustration this week. He desires for us to be people of integrity, inside and out, and he desires us to use the scripture,
Psalms 15, and many other passages of scripture, the entire Bible, as a spiritual mirror, to look at ourselves in view of scripture, and say, God,
how can I become more complete? How can I become more like you?
As I shared this morning, as we heard this past week, how can I become more of a little Jesus? A Christian is just simply a little Christian.
And how can I live my life that is gonna become more and more like who you are, and what you have done for me? Two questions as I close. Which areas of your life in this list, character, conversation, conduct, conviction, or commitments, which of these areas is the Lord working in your life?
We all can be better Christians. We all can be better husbands, and wives, and sisters, and brothers, and children to our parents. How can we use this as a way to say, God, help me be better for you. Help me be better for your glory, so that I can dwell with you one day.
In the presence of your holiness, in the presence of who you are, I can sit there, and I can honor you, because my convictions were right. My character was right. My cash was right. Everything I did was for your honor, and for your glory. And are you willing,
my second question, are you willing to let the Lord, through this passage, shape your life, so that you can enjoy deeper fellowship with Him?
Again, God desires to have a deep, personal relationship with you. Just as I desire to have a deep, personal relationship with my children, with my wife, with one day my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, I desire to have a deep,
personal, intimate relationship with them. And God, in His sovereignty, desires that same thing for you. Do you desire that for Him? Do you say, God, when you wake up in the morning, God, I want to interact with you more today than I did yesterday.
God, I want to be closer to you today than I've ever been. Is that our prayer, and is that our goal in our life? Lord, we love you.
Lord, work through this message. Work through what you've done in our life. Continue to allow us to bless you more than we ever have. We love you. Have your will and way in this invitation. In your name we pray. Amen.
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