Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Living A Divided Life | The Writings | Psalm 15

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Do you ever feel like you're living a double life? Does the way you actually live reflect the way you want to live? In today's episode, Jeff looks to Psalm 15 to find out what it looks like to live a whole life in God. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 15

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. We all have a natural aversion to the divided life, when someone is meant to be whole, yet is broken apart in some fundamental way. Robert Lewis Stevenson's classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shows us the ugly nature of living two lives when the respectable Dr. Jekyll transforms into a wild, evil version of himself under the name Mr. Hyde. A more modern version of the divided life is found in the character

Harvey Dent in the Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent begins as an honorable, upstanding leader who promises to be the just hero of Gotham City. But over the course of time and tragic events, Dent is transformed into the villain Two-Face. Now, if you've never seen the Dark Night, it's worth noting that the physical depiction of Two-Face, is a disturbing one. It's the film's way of showing how tragic it is to live a divided life, to be two different people instead of one unified person.

Seeing the two-faced nature of a divided life is one thing, but it's a totally different thing to come face to face with it in our own lives. See, we all long to be whole, unified people. It's what we were made for. It's also the kind of life that we encounter in Psalm 15. This Psalm of David begins with an exploration of the unified life with two piercing questions. Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?

Who may live on your holy mountain? The words dwell and live here indicate a deep communion with God, the kind of connection that God made us for, and the kind will experience perfectly in his presence in the new heaven and new earth. But this isn't just a past or future kind of connection with God. it's something that can also happen now. There is a nearness and intimacy in David's words that should shake us up a little bit. Some of us have relegated God to a topic of inquiry or an object to pontificate or think about. We may even sense a degree of pride when we think about how much we know about God.

But Psalm 15, verse 1, humbles us to see that the life of faith isn't about collecting theological facts like trading cards. It's about intimate connection with our maker. Do you have that? Do you want that? The goal of Psalm 15 is to help us see this deep communion with God and see how it shapes every square inch of our lives. It's the antidote to the divided self. As Psalm 15 goes on,

it invites us to examine ourselves to consider where we may be living a divided life before God. These beginning questions in verse 1 acts almost like a surgical knife of our motivations, our desires, and our actions, making us really ask who can dwell with God? Who can live with him? How would you answer those questions right now? Is your answer based on how many quiet times you have? How much emotion you express during a worship service? How many times you pray? How much you volunteer? How many worship songs you listen to in the car? Those are all great things. Yet they aren't the kinds of things that we find in Psalm 15.

Let's go on to verse two and see the kind of person who dwells with God. The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart. Now out of the gate, Psalm 15 isn't giving us a list of beliefs that someone recites or activities they go through in a worship service. It's giving us a character portrait. The word walk here describes the way we live in every area of life. and the way of life, the walk of the person who dwells with God, is blameless. The Hebrew word for blameless here, Tamim, is rooted in a sense of being complete or whole or sound, specifically being whole in relation to God's way and God's character.

So the question of who can dwell with God is answered in a way that's less about ritual worship and more about the integrity of our character. It's about being a whole person before our creator. This undivided whole person walks with God through their actions. They do what is righteous through the depths of their desires. They speak the truth from their heart. So the very core of their being resonates with the truth and beauty of who God is. Verse 3 continues to unpack the life of the whole person.

This is someone whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others. There are two big things we can notice in this section. First, like so many other areas of the Bible, Psalm 15 points to the power of our words. One of the primary ways we can live a divided life is through the words that we use. So we sing worship songs on Sunday morning

and we lash out on family or friends on Sunday afternoon. We can recite scripture at Bible study but then go and gossip about our co-workers at the water cooler. We live divided life with our words. Think about the ways that you've used your words this week. Do your words reflect that you're being a whole person before God and others? Or is your speech a window into a heart that's divided? The next feature of this character portrait might be a bit perplexing at first, but it's so important.

Psalm 15 goes on to say that the whole person who dwells with God is someone who despises a person, but honors those who fear the Lord. Now, at first glance, this may seem like a kind of holier than thou religious person who looks down on other people, almost like a Pharisee. Does this mean that we compromise Jesus' command to love our enemies? Not at all. Let's remember the context of Psalm 15. We already know that being a whole person before God and other people means that we don't use our words to tear others down. So this can't be a kind of self-righteous comparison that dehumanizes other people. Verse four raises the issue of allegiance and admiration. Who we uphold or honor or lionize, the people we idealize and want to be like. So to despise the vile person,

the person who rejects the Lord, is to refuse to hold up, celebrate, or admire the two-faced person who has a divided life, to not emulate those who live inconsistently before God, but instead honor and revere and be shaped by people who are also whole before God, who live with an awe of the Lord. Verse 4 challenges us to consider who we're trying to be like, spurring us on to long for the kind of character we see in people who really love God and love others in a unified way. The second half of verse 4 leans into the theme of loving other people,

especially when it costs us. It says that the unified person is someone who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change their mind. This is a kind of integrity that's preserved and even fought for, especially when it involves sacrifice. To live in this way is to remain whole even when it hurts. I love the way that Old Testament scholar Bruce Walkey describes this kind of sacrificial love in the life of a righteous person. He says, the righteous disadvantage themselves to advantage others, while the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advance themselves. That's so challenging for me, yet also such a beautiful picture of how we cultivate a community of flourishing.

The final character trait in Psalm 15 comes from verse 5, where we see that the unified whole person is someone who lends money to the poor without interest, who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. So Psalm 15 addresses everything from the words that come out of our mouths to the money and our accounts. The issue of lending here is on a personal level, not necessarily the kind of commercial lending that we may think of today. And the character trait being examined is whether we use our money and our resources in ways that benefit others or only ourselves. We can kind of riff on Walt Key's description of the righteous person here. When it comes to money and resources, am I willing to disadvantage,

myself to advantage others, or am I taking advantage of other people to benefit myself? Looking back on Psalm 15, we see some big themes in the life of a person who dwells with God. The traits aren't about signing off on belief statements. It's a kind of character transformation that happens in community. Notice how all of the traits here in Psalm 15 are inherently relational. They're not tasks that you can just scratch off of a list. They are truths. that shape us, making us more like Jesus, who is himself the perfect embodiment of Psalm 15. This Psalm examines us, it challenges us, yet it ends by encouraging us. The end of verse 5 says, whoever does these things will never be shaken.

I love that. Whoever does these things will never be shaken. There's a commentator named Derek Kidner, who says this about the ending of Psalm 15. The qualities the Psalm describes are those that God creates in a man, not those he finds in them. The threat of insecurity expressed often in the Psalms by the word moved or shaken is met not by siding with the strong, but by steadfast trust in God. Kidner goes on to point out that the last Hebrew word in the Psalm is really meaningful. It reads, he will not be moved or shaken ever for eternity. So the main point here is that the whole person isn't strong. because of their temporary strength. They're strong because of God's eternal strength.

I love how Psalm 15 begins by having us examine our own hearts, yet ends by pointing us to the heart of God. As much as we hunger and thirst to be the kind of person who exemplifies the unified identity of Psalm 15, we also depend on our creator and Redeemer who graciously grows us into that kind of person. It reminds me of Paul's words in Colossians 310. which describes our calling to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge and the image of its creator. So being a whole person, being a Psalm 15 person, is both an act of discipline for God and dependence on God as he renews us. The one who makes us whole is the one who keeps us whole. So think about your life today. What are some ways that you harbor a divided

life. How does Psalm 15 help you examine tendencies that need to be brought before the transforming power of grace? What would it look like for you to grow into a whole person who's held together by the love of God?