Lets review quickly by saying we are reading a “royal psalm,” meaning a song or poem read to the king by the levitical choir with singers and instruments. Before the king would begin listening to the petitions of the people, we can imagine a royal psalm like this one being sung or read aloud.
Verse one introduces us to the profound principle that guided the king’s daily decisions: a delicate balance of judgment and mercy. This balance was not a mere suggestion but a crucial aspect of the king’s role. If the king would rightly balance these two aspects in his own judgments, then he would be exercising authority in accordance with God’s character, a task that was both challenging and significant.
1 I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.
Verse two gives us what I’m going to call the “perfect sandwich.”
- I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way.
- O when wilt thou come unto me.
- I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
I know this is Sunday School and not a preaching sermon, so i will give you some technical stuff so you can better understand and study your Bible. However, I want everyone to experience the heart of the text. which is the meat portion or middle portion of the sandwich, “O when wilt thou come unto me.” I don’t read my Bible, pray, or practice spiritual discipline because I like Hebrew and being nerdy. But my one goal is to get close to God and ask Him to be close to me. So, bear with me if you are not interested in the technical parts of the language. But I do believe the more you find God’s word fascinating in all its details, the more you incline your heart to seek God’s face.
This “perfect sandwich” only works in King James’s version because other versions will translate both “perfects” differently. The ESV will translate the first perfect as “blameless” and the second perfect as “integrity.” The King James version translates both of these words as “perfect”, but they are two different words in Hebrew.
The first “perfect” is the Hebrew word “tamim”. (תמים) And the second word is “tam” (תָּם).
Tamim is mostly used in the Bible to say something without a blemish, like the requirement for a lamb to be used as a Passover sacrifice.
Exodus 12:5-7 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: 6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. 7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
As in the Passover, the people could only escape death if the blood of a perfect lamb was sprinkled on their doorposts. The price for life is to be sinless, but no one in the household is sinless. So God gave them this temporary provision to use the blood of a perfect lamb to substitute for them. If they cannot be sinless themselves, then there must be a substitute for them. In this case, God required a lamb without blemish to die for them.
Why does David in our Psalm sing about walking perfectly without sin? Because he wants to have God intimate friendship.
“O, when wilt thou come unto me?”
Loving God is an agonizing endeavor for the sinner. It is because of our unclean thoughts, impure lifestyle, and many idolatries that we cannot enjoy an intimate fellowship with God.
It is as though you are away from the love of your life. You might speak to her over the phone or send a postcard. But none of those things are satisfying until you can be in each other’s company once again.
The whole story of the Bible is built upon humankind bringing sin upon ourselves and thereby losing our touch with God. We were created by God and for God. Nothing can be satisfying without God. Some people realize this more than others, and that is only because God works in our lives.
The writer who said, “O when wilt that come unto me?” is in agony because they desire God, yet don’t possess Him in fullness.
So, how does one possess God in fullness?
Genesis 6:9
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
The standard or price of walking with God has always been “Perfect”, Tamim, like a lamb “without blemish”
Genesis 17:1-3 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. 3 And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, 4 As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations
When God began a formal relationship with Abraham, what we know as the “old testament”, its condition was to walk with God in a “perfect” way.
David loved God as a person first, not just because he was a king and needed God’s help to rule the kingdom. Before David sat on the throne to make decisions for the kingdom, he agonized for God.
His sin bothered him because it distanced him from God, who he loved. If you love God, your sin will steal your rest, and you will agonize as you have to speak to God as if from a long distance.
In the same way, as fathers, you cannot lead your home asking God to help you only because you’re a father and there’s kids that need understand God’s ways. You must be a lover of God yourself. If you are the kind of believer that only follows God because of duty, or because you have to, then your children will see that.
Lovers of God do not behave themselves wisely to impress their children, but they are toiling so they can possess God. Sin is no longer defined as simply “doing bad things,” at which everyone chuckles, but when your life is about loving God, sin becomes more heinous, more despicable, and more ugly. Sin is whatever thing that is hindering you from having God.
David was a lover of God. God said he was man after his own heart.
Psalm 42:1-2 “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”
So David spent much of his life diligently studying God’s word so he could know what it means to “walk before me and be perfect”.
Our verse says, “I will behave myself wisely,” which is a sort of curious way of saying it for our modern ear. We no longer say it this; we might say, “I’ll be well behaved,” or “I’ll behave myself.” as if a child was trying to avoid getting cracked with a wooden spoon by his mother. But David means something a little deeper than just having good manners and maybe avoiding a spanking.
David means he is putting in the effort to study God’s law, that he might well consider the kind of life God says is “perfect”.
The first two verses of David’s most famous Psalm 119 says as much:
1 Blessed are the undefiled in the way, Who walk in the law of the Lord. 2 Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, And that seek him with the whole heart.
For David, there is no separation between studying God’s law and chasing after God. You cannot chase God without toiling in the scriptures, loving the words, and doing a diligent search.
Adam and Eve infamously tried to sidestep loving God with all their hearts and become wise themselves without trusting God fully. We do the same thing when we look for wise solutions to problems on our own and forget that we are here not to pursue wisdom itself but to pursue God’s heart. That is the beginning of wisdom, to fear the LORD your God.
Psalm 111:10
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all those who practice it have a good understanding.
His praise endures forever!
The bad news is that if you try to behave wisely and be perfect and walk before God in hopes of having God as an intimate friend, you’ll fail- just as David failed. Remember, last week we mentioned whenever we read and study David’s Psalms, we’re reading and studying someone who eventually raped and murdered to get what his perverted heart wanted.
When we read this Psalm, we see a standard set so high that it would be ridiculous for anyone down here to try and achieve it, but you would never achieve it.
And God knows that we can’t achieve it. But He set the standard anyway, so anyone who truly loves God will see how much of a struggle it really is.
But try we will because what other option do we have? There is no other God besides God. There is no other life besides His life. There is no other satisfaction for the soul outside of God, so we pathetically struggle to reach a height of perfection we’ll never reach.
This is the “perfect” sandwich because there are two of them. Let’s say that somehow you lived the perfect day before God. Somehow, you woke up, and no lustful thoughts entered your mind all day. Somehow, you were perfectly loving with God and loving with everyone around you. Somehow, you made it to bed, shut your eyes, and fell asleep all before you could start worrying (which is a sin) about things tomorrow and the problems of this life. Even if you could reach that impossible height of perfection there is yet another perfection that is required.
Verse two, “I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.”
This perfect is the Hebrew word, “tam”, is often translated as integrity,
Proverbs 20:7, for example, says, The just man walketh in his integrity: His children are blessed after him.
And this integrity means you live perfectly all the time, every day. You don’t just live one miraculous, perfect day, but you also must live every day from here to the end of eternity perfectly before your God.
Once you begin to ponder how incredibly impossible that is for human beings like you and me, you also begin to see how holy Jesus is.
You see, the Hebrews could not live up to the perfect sandwich either. So God provided them a secondary way to be considered perfect when judgment and death came for them. The lamb that was without blemish and perfect, gave its life to spare the lives of the imperfect.
Jesus’ perfect holiness was gifted to human beings when Jesus died on the cross. His cross provided a way for God to look over your sinful life and somehow say, “The perfect sandwich!” Here it is! God looks at you, who bows the knee to Christ, confesses Jesus as Lord, and says, “This one is mine.”
Romans 10:9-10
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV)
“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
Philippians 3:9 (KJV)
“And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
Romans 4:3-5 (KJV)
“For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
Romans 4:22-24 (KJV)
“And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.”
If you would put your faith in Jesus Christ, you’ll be the perfect sandwich. And you’ll be free to pursue God with your whole heart, never worrying again about anything that can separate you from the love of God.
J. C. Walz – Faith, Fiction, and DEvotional Writing 
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