Psalm 100: Make a Joyful Noise

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Psalm 100: Make a Joyful Noise

Spencer Cary

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Good morning. My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We are in Psalm 100 today, which is on page 287, your blue Bibles that are under you, around you. You can follow along there. You can also follow along on the screen. The text will be on the screen this morning.

So, we've been in the Psalms this summer. This is our final week in the Psalms. And then a couple of years ago we were in the Psalms. And we'll continue to come back to them because they are good for our souls to sit in. But there's a lot of similarities in the Psalms and all 150 of them.

But there's also some differences. They do different things. You look at Psalms like Psalm 19 and 139 that we looked at this summer. And those Psalms had immense depth and truth in them and doctrine that helps shape us and guide us as the people of God. You look at Psalms like Psalm 23 and Psalm 42. And those are Psalms that help us in the midst of loss and suffering and grieving.

And they help us worship God through lament. You look at Psalms like Psalm 51 that help us in repentance. Psalm 67 that gives us a taste of Jesus reaching the nations. Like there's Psalms that do all kinds of different things. Some of them are very long and some of them are very short. And then you get a few Psalms like we're going to be in today.

Psalm 100 is five verses. It is a short, succinct look at how we are called to worship God. And there's a few Psalms like this that are real short, real compact. But they just help us praise God because He's worthy of it. And that's how we're closing up our summer in the Psalms. It's looking at Psalm 100, receiving its commands to help guide us in worshiping God and then helping see why we're called to do it.

So I'm going to read through it all at once and then we'll walk through it together. Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God.

It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name. For the Lord is good.

His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. Let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Father, I thank You for the Word of God. I thank You for the Psalms. This beautiful Psalm book that we get to come back to over and over again that helps us worship You. These songs and prayers that guide us towards the heavens, towards You.

God, I pray that You would help us be present this morning. That You would speak to us and that we'd respond in faith and repentance and obedience and worship. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so there's a subtitle in Psalm 100 that kind of frames up the Psalm.

It says a Psalm for giving thanks. So this Psalm comes at the end of a five-Psalm set called the kingship Psalms. Okay? It's all about God is our king. And this one is saying, no, we're going to be thankful to our kings. That frames it up.

And then verse 1, the first of many commands that we're going to see here. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. All right. So, make a joyful noise. So, it may not be something we're as familiar with here because we're not Pentecostal. But we're better than most Baptists, you guys.

We get a little animated. But let's just make a joyful noise. Maybe the most familiar setting where you would hear this is coming up Saturdays in the fall in the south. Yep. Preach. It's college football.

That's what we're probably most familiar with. That's where you hear a joyful noise. Where you hear 80,000 plus fans. Not too far away from here. Directionally, wherever that is. At Williams-Brice Stadium.

Who may or may not. Depends to be. Or remains to be seen. Have a joyful thing to celebrate this fall. We always hope for the bestest Gamecock fans. And they never always let us down.

But, that's it. Right? That's the most joyful noise that you're going to hear in our area. Is a bunch of people. Mostly adults. Cheering on 20 year old young men playing a child's game.

It is. Silly. Can't be idolatrous. But that's where you most are familiar with this type of joyful noise. That's being commanded here in Psalm 100. And the psalmist.

In some Psalms. They're concerned with the congregation worshiping God. In some Psalms. They're focusing on the individual. Interacting with God. This Psalm is bigger.

It says. No. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth. This isn't just all the peoples. This isn't every body.

This is all of creation. That's what earth is getting at. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth. This is similar to when Jesus. Is doing the triumphant entry into the city on Palm Sunday.

And the people start praising him. And the Pharisees get upset at this. And say. You need to stop this. And he says. I tell you.

If these were silent. The very stones would cry out. He's saying. You don't understand. The whole earth. Praises.

Me. Because we're. I'm worthy. Of. This. As we're getting at Psalm 19.

We looked at this summer. The whole earth is testifying. The whole creation is testifying. To the glory. Of God. And Psalm 100 says.

Let's join in that. Let's join in the whole chorus. That's. Joyfully. Praising. God.

Don't miss this. We're called to do this. Joyfully. We're commanded to do this with. Joy. And listen.

This isn't something that we just manufacture. Okay. That's not the kind of joy that's happening here. This is what it means to behold God for who he is. And his glory. And his goodness.

And his beauty. And the. When you behold him. What flows out of you. Is. Joy.

Like if you've ever seen a. Set of new parents. Holding. Their newborn. Child. They are.

Beaming. With joy. They are. Grinning. They are. Excited.

They are. Terrified. There is an. All. In them. You see that.

Now listen. They don't have to. Manufacture that. They're not faking that. That's real. Because they're holding the most.

Beautiful creature. That they've ever seen. In their entire. Lives. And listen. Children are.

Beautiful gifts of God. Okay. They make jokes. But they're wicked sinners. And they are. But don't miss it.

They are beautiful. Amazing. Gifts of God. That reaction. Is how it should be. But our children.

Pale in comparison. To the glory of God. Our God is. More. Beautiful. More.

Glorious. More. Worthy of all. And. Joy. And when you behold him.

For who he is. You get to. See an overflow. Out of you. That is. Joy.

Because you are. Worshipping. The Lord. Okay. So. He says.

Make a joyful noise. To the Lord. All the earth. And then he gives a. Second command. Serve the Lord.

With. Gladness. Serve the Lord. With gladness. Now. Serving with gladness.

May be a category. That we're not familiar with. That's not. Like if you're. If your boss says. All right.

I need you to stay late. Okay. I need you to finish out. The reports. So we close out the quarter.

I need you to. Finish up these cars. So we can get them off the lot. Back to the customers. I need you to stay late. A few hours after.

Five. Most of you aren't like. Yes boss. I'm in. With gladness. I will serve you.

That's just typically. That's not a natural response. For us. Is this joyful. It's almost childlike. Giddy.

Glad. Service. My son. Bridgers. Is at. Like the perfect age.

He's at five. And it's awesome. Because I am like. The greatest to him. He. He thinks I'm the coolest.

He thinks I'm the smartest. He thinks I'm the strongest. Like I. He is. Very excited. When I ask him to come serve me.

I say. Hold this tool. While I'm doing this. He is. Glad. Because his dad is the greatest.

Now. He's in for a huge let down. When he realizes. Like I have the back. Of like a 60 year old man. That like I just.

I'm rarely the smartest person in the room. That includes. In my own home. So like. He's due for a let down. But hear this.

There's no let down with God. There ain't no let down with God. When you serve the Lord. And you realize how good he is. There's a lot of joy. In it.

Because his perfection. Is untainted by any. Perfection. That his power is unhindered. By any weakness. He is.

Inexhaustible. That his love. Is uncorrupted. His grace is unfathomable. His wisdom. Is unsearchable.

You see. All the attributes. Of God. Lined up. And there's. No one in this world.

That comes. Close. So as you follow God. And you're obedient. To his word. And you're obedient.

To where he calls you to. In life. We get to. Serve him. With. This.

Gladness. Because our God. Is truly amazing. Then he issues. Another command. He goes on to say.

Come. Into his presence. With. Singing. Come into his presence. With singing.

He commands. His people. To sing. He commands us. To sing. Now some of you.

Just got really excited. Because like. You're like Matt Freeman. Who just sings. All the time. He does.

He sings. All the time. Y'all. And. And singing. Singing to the Lord.

Is something. That you're all in on. Say yes. Amen. I'm going for it. I will sing to the Lord.

All the time. And some of you are like. Please no. I'd rather not. I'll go do the service stuff. But I don't.

I don't want to sing. And I want to take a few minutes. Just to. Help you see. Why this command is good. For those of you.

That don't really enjoy. Singing. Maybe you don't really sing here. On a Sunday. I want to help you see. Why this is actually.

Really really good. About working through. Some of the reasons. Why you might not sing. And the first is. Is that it's humbling.

It's humbling. Some of you may find it humbling. Because. The when you sing. It sounds more like verse one. Sounds more like a joyful noise.

Coming out. That's. Listen. I'm on your team. All right.

When I sing. It's not the most pleasant sound. In the world. So maybe that's you. You don't like to sing. Because you're just not very.

Good at it. We would never set you up here. On a Sunday. And leave others. In worship. Maybe you don't sing.

Because you think it's silly. That it's. It's a little silly. It's a little childlike. It's a little beneath you. It's just a little like.

Ah. Just I don't. I don't. I'm not all about that. Listen. It's humbling.

Okay. Whether you struggle to sing well. Or whether you. It's a humbling experience. If I sing to my wife. Which I don't do.

Because that doesn't show her love. She wouldn't appreciate that. Okay. But if I sing to her. I position myself beneath her. Right.

I'm humbling myself before her. In singing. So yes. Singing. It is. Humbling.

Okay. It absolutely is childlike. And some of you. And to be honest. And this is anecdotal. I don't have stats to back this up.

But the majority of people that don't sing. In worship. Are men. That's been here. That's been. All the churches that have been a part of.

Is that men are less likely to sing than women. You may have a lot of reasons that you don't sing. But let me tell you why you should. Because if you are willing to. Joyfully praise. 20 year old.

Young men. Throwing a football around on a Saturday. If you are willing to. Joyfully sing at a concert. While the lead singer is singing about ants marching. Or thunder.

Or a pickup truck. And a girl. Which is like a thousand different country songs. Whatever your speed is. If you are willing to join the chorus. At a concert.

If you are willing to. Cheer people online. Who are playing with a fake digital character. Playing another nerd. Halfway across the world. Who has their own digital fake character.

Listen. I don't understand it. I don't have to. You do you. But if you are willing to do that.

And joyfully cheer someone else on. But you are unwilling to sing here. On a Sunday. You have misunderstood reality. No. We need to sing to our Lord.

He is worthy of our worship. We need to joyfully celebrate him. It is humbling. If you are willing to humble yourself. Before anything else. And not the Lord.

We need a reality check. We need to change here. Repent here. And actually sing. And obey this command. The second reason.

It is about your heart. Not your ability. Okay. It is about your heart. Not your ability. You might have a very pleasant voice.

For a church our size. I am unbelievably blown away. At the amount of people. That God has gifted. To lead us. In worship.

It is such an immense. Blessing. But you might have a great voice. But guess what? If your heart is not in the right place. Right?

If it is about self. If it is about how good you sound. Or look before others. The Bible says very bluntly. God hates that. God.

The book of Amos. Says that very bluntly. In Amos 5. It says in verse 21. I hate. I despise your feasts.

I take no delight. In your solemn assemblies. Because the people of God. Were still having assemblies. And still praising God. And bowing down to idols.

And not doing justice. That God had called them to do. They were still living in sin. And acting. Doing the part. Their heart was in the wrong place.

And still doing the actions. Then it goes on in verse 23. To say take away from me. The noise of your songs. To the melody of your hearts. To the melody of your hearts.

I will not listen. That corrects the heart. That sings about themselves. But that also gives us the picture of. That it's truly about the heart. Which means.

If you sound like a bad American Idol audition. Right? That's okay. Because it's not about your ability to sing. It's about your heart's position before the Lord. Third.

It's not about you. The third reason why you should sing. It's not about you. That's one of the things I appreciate about congregational worship. It's not about the individual. It's about the corporate.

I personally. Love the cover. Of all the saints in the room singing. It's great. It means I can sing louder. Right?

The only people who have to endure my singing. Are the ones who sit directly in front of me. So. Sorry. Sing louder. You won't hear me.

But I love that. Because that's how. Listen. I would argue. That's by design. Okay?

When you zoom in on the individual. You're going to hear all the imperfections. But when you zoom out. And you hear the collective. You hear a beautiful chorus. Right?

Like we went to a pastor's conference called. Together for the Gospel. This. In April. And Together for the Gospel has these. The worship at those conferences.

Is a guy on a piano. With a microphone. And 10 to 12 thousand. Pastors and ministry leaders singing. And their albums are on. On Spotify.

And you listen to them. And it's amazing. Dear 10,000. Voices. Praising God. It's poetic.

It's. It's. It's. It's brilliant. It's so. Pleasant to hear.

And I think that's by. Design. I think that's the God view. Of worship. That's what he gets to hear. As the saints come together.

For corporate worship. Which tells you. It's not about you. You get to join in the chorus. Of all the saints. Praising our God.

For who he is. So. Listen. Obey the command. Obey the command. Come into his presence.

With. Singing. Third. Or verse three. Know. The Lord.

He is. God. That's the next command. It says. Know that he is God. Which is one of the ways.

That we do this. Is through word. And prayer. That we want to know. That he is God. And be reminded of this.

On a daily basis. To know. Him. And then he goes on to say. It is he. Who made us.

That's creator. Language. It is he who made us. And we are. His. Now we're switching into more covenantal.

Language. This is the covenant relationship between. God. And Israel. And the Old Testament. And it.

Furthers the idea. When he says. We are his people. And the sheep of his. Pasture. That's God in Israel.

That's the shepherd in his. Sheep. And the truth that's being taught there. Is that we belong. To God. We belong to him.

And that's powerful. For two reasons. First. It means that we are his possession. It means that. If you believe in.

Christ. You belong to him. He possesses. You. The Old Testament. The Old Testament taught us.

In Deuteronomy 7. When it says. For you. Are a people. Holy. To the Lord.

Your God. The Lord. Your God. Has chosen you. To be a people. For his treasured.

Possession. Out of all the peoples. Who are on the face of the earth. That's true. In the new covenant. In the new testament.

In first Peter. When he says. But you are a chosen race. A royal priest. A holy nation. A people.

For his own. Possession. That you may proclaim. The excellencies of him. Who called you out of darkness. Into marvelous.

Light. He. Possesses us. We belong to him. In that way. In the same way.

That my children. Belong to. Me. Like I helped. Make. Them.

And I have to remind them. Sometimes. That my wife and I. We bought everything. In this house. Because they'll fight over toys.

And they'll fight over territory. And it's like. Listen. Stop. We own everything. In this house.

It is on loan to you. To be able to use. For your enjoyment. But we. Bought all of this. You belong to us.

And there's a lot of benefits. That come with them. Belonging to us. We love them. More than anyone else. In this world.

Does. We. We would protect them. More than anyone else. Would want to. Like we.

If someone touches my child. It's on. Right. That's built into parenthood. I'm their biggest fan. Like I get to coach my.

I got to coach my son's. T-ball team. This last spring. And I did my best. And I think I did a decent Job. Of being the coach.

Who's objective. Okay. Who you know. Didn't. Try to favor his son. Over the other kids.

But there were moments. When I watched him hit a ball. And run. Awkwardly. To first base. As fast as he could.

That I was beaming. I was like. Yes. That's my boy. Woo. Like I was going for it.

Because. I'm his biggest fan. I'm my children's. Biggest fan. Because they belong to me. That's built into the relationship.

And it's built into the relationship. Of God and his people. That there's immense. Benefit. And belonging to him. That he possesses us.

That he's in our corner. More than anyone else. That he's for our. Good. And our ultimate good. More than anyone.

Else. That's the first picture. That I think is really powerful. For belonging to him. To being the sheep. And his.

Pasture. The second. Is that we have a place with him. I love that picture of. We are his people. The sheep of his pasture.

That we. We have a place. With the Lord. That we. Belong with him. In that way.

Because many of us. Have been searching for belonging. For a very long time. You felt it in middle school. Where you. Were searching.

For a place to belong. And you kept searching. And. You know. It might change. Middle school.

You know. Is one thing. But. That. Search. Continues.

Throughout life. Looking for a place to belong. Looking for a people to belong to. And I want to tell you. And very. Be very.

Candid. I. I think the church. Is an. Is an. Unbelievable place to belong.

I think our church. Is an unbelievable place to belong. The church. Of Jesus. The local church. Is a beautiful.

Messy. Wonderful. Place. It's a bunch of misfit sheep. That got us called together. As his people.

People. And our shepherd. Is really. Really good. So. You've been searching.

For a place to belong. The people of God. Is a wonderful place. To be. That's how it always has been. All the way back to Psalm 100.

When this was written. That the pasture of the Lord. Is a wonderful place. To belong. If you've ever. If you've ever wandered.

A long distance in life. Trying to find belonging. Hear the encouragement. That Jesus offers here. Then he gives the next commandment.

Verse. Four. He says. Enter his gates with thanksgiving. And his courts with praise. Give.

Thanks to him. Bless. His name. Now. This picture. Is the Old Testament picture of worship.

When they would travel to Jerusalem. To the temple. And the temple courts. Where they'd offer sacrifices. Where they would sing. Praises.

And offer thanks. To God. But the command to give thanks. Is something that. I think is lacking. For many of us.

I think many of us. Forget all the things. That God does for us. And all. I think we forget. How great he really is.

And we. We don't give thanks enough for that. And being as children. That. That happens. Children can be entitled.

Like I. When I was. At the end of the day. End of my junior year of high school. My mom sold her family business. And became a stay at home mom.

And she actually was. She's already. Was a good cook. She was actually going. At some point. For culinary classes.

To further just her skills. Because she wanted to. So my senior year. I had the distinct privilege. Of being able to eat. Some wonderful meals.

It was great. And what would happen. Is I would finish football practice. I would finish baseball practice. And I would call home. And my.

My school was about 30 minutes. From my house. I call home. And she said. What do you want for dinner? And I said.

I don't know. Steak. Your brown rice. That you make. Our secret family recipe. For mac and cheese.

Which was Stouffer's. Which. Is a very underrated mac and cheese. In fact. I would argue. That the Chick-fil-A mac and cheese.

Is just Stouffer's. They sprinkle some cheese on. Okay. For those of you. Love it. I can't back that up.

But. That's my theory. I was like. Can you make it? And she'd say. Yes.

She would. That whole senior year. I got to eat all these great meals. Got to come home. And I'm sure. Every now and then.

I said. Thank you. But at the same time. You just got. I got accustomed to it. For the whole year.

It was very. Great. And that happens with kids. You just. They just get. Like I realized.

As I became an adult. When I finally realized. That I didn't give enough thanks. To my parents. Is when I started having my own kids. And I started watching them.

Do the same things. That I used to do. To go through life. Expecting this. Expecting that. Expecting this.

Getting mad when you don't get this. Getting mad when you don't get that. Rarely saying thanks. And I'm trying to. I'm working. We're discipling our kids.

I'm trying to coach them. Trying to say. Hey listen. Your mama just did that. Thank her. Say.

Look at her eye contact. Thank you. Thank you. But that doesn't naturally flow out of them. But here's what I've realized.

As a parent. I don't do it for the thanks. My wife doesn't do it for the thanks. We do it because we love them. We love our kids. And we sacrifice for them.

And we do all these things for them. Not to get applause. But because we immensely love them. And that is how our God is with us. And then some. God loves us.

Deeply. It is all the things for us. And all the ways that are seen and unseen. Because he loves us. And we're missing out. If we don't thank him.

Thank the God who gave us life. Who gave us existence. Thank the God who gives us daily bread. That we take for granted. Thank the God who gives us different abilities and talents. And if you're a Christian.

Thank the God who gave himself up for you. Thank the God who in Christ gives us immense spiritual blessings. Thank the God who gives us an unbelievable unending eternity of joyous praise before him. And we have unbelievable benefits. Endless benefits. That he's worthy of thanks for.

It is good for our souls. The people of God. They had to come to Jerusalem. To be in the presence of God. To offer thanks to him. And in Christ.

We don't have to do that anymore. If you believe in Jesus. You can wake up each day. And you can thank the Lord. You can go to sleep each night. And you can thank the Lord.

One of the things. I quote Philippians 4.6 quite often. Do not be anxious in anything but through prayer. And supplication. With thanksgiving. Make your requests to be known to God.

I focus on a lot of times. Do not be anxious. Which is a powerful part of that. And make your requests. Which is a powerful part of that. But with thanksgiving.

Often gets missed. Our prayers should be lined. With thankfulness. I want you to do something this week. I want you to set a timer for ten minutes. Grab a pen and a pad.

And for the first five minutes. I want you to write out. Thanking God for who he is. Just who he is. God you're merciful. God you're loving.

God you are the creator of all things. God you are gracious. God you are a God of justice. I want you to just take five minutes. And write out. Thanking God for who he is.

And in the last five minutes. I want you to thank God for what he has done for you. Specifically. Thank God for the things he does for you. On a regular basis. The big things he's done for you in life.

The small things. Just take ten minutes. And you will start to line that paper. With all kinds of reasons. And you're not even scratching the surface. We're called to give.

We're commanded to give thanks to our God. Alright. He gives command after command. After command. After command. To help us worship God.

And the way that we were designed to. And then he says what? Verse five. For. That's purpose. For.

The Lord is. Good. Good. His steadfast love. Endures. Forever.

And his faithfulness to all. Generations. The Lord. Is. Good. Now that's hard for us.

In the English language. Because goodness. Is kind of a very generic. Vague. Category. Just is.

Try to define it. Try to use it. I can say. That the. Pork chop. Dinner.

At. Bodhi Thai. In Lexington. Or. Five Points. At Saludas.

Either one of those places. You want a fancy dinner. You get to the seared pork chop. With the sides. They're different. Different places.

But that is good. That is a good. Meal right there. I can say that the drum solo. And in the air tonight. By Phil Collins.

Do do. Do do. Do do. Do do. Do do. Do.

That is. Good. And it is. And then I can say. The Lord is good. And go.

Oh. What? Those aren't on the same level. Right? Now. A few of you.

Are going to want to fight the good fight. And say. I will never say anything is good. Somebody is going to ask me. Are you good? You don't even know what good is.

Listen. It is a losing. It is a losing battle. Okay? The English language. It is just not.

It is kind of a mutt language. It is not very good with words. Or. When you hear. The Lord is good. You elevate that.

To a category. Of spiritual. Goodness. That has. That is completely untainted. With evil.

There is no sin. In that. Goodness. There is no failure. In that. Goodness.

There is only purity. And perfection. In that. Goodness. When you are. When you are thinking of the attributes of God.

And you are just saying. God. You are so. Faithful. You are so. Gracious.

Like. One of the things that just fall back on us. I don't. You are just so. Good. And it is just almost a catch all.

For everything that he is. He is just. Good. And then he goes on to say. His steadfast love endures forever. And his faithfulness.

To all generations. Now. Those phrasings. Are some of the more. Repeated phrasings. Throughout the scriptures.

You hear all the time. His steadfast love endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. And what is powerful here. Is the psalmist. Wasn't even able to fully.

Realize. What that meant. He wasn't even fully. Able to realize. How that was going to be fulfilled. When God inspired this in him.

Because. But this side of the cross. And this side of the empty tomb. We know what it means. That his steadfast love endures forever. And his faithfulness.

To all generations. Because the goodness of God. And his steadfast love. And his faithfulness. Was perfectly displayed in Christ. That Christ left the heavens.

And took on flesh. And dwelt among us. That he fulfilled the law perfectly. That he went to the cross. To be crushed for our rebellion. That he walked out of the empty tomb.

To make. To give us a way. To be partakers. Of this beautiful promise. Of this beautiful. Steadfast love.

He was faithful to us. Who were faithless. We understand. What this means. And we get to. Anchor this deep.

Into our soul. Over and over again. When we come across Psalms. Like this. When you look at this Psalm. And it's brief.

Five verses. It's so basic. In fact. The phrases in this Psalm. Are repeated. All over the Psalms.

You can flip and flip. And see back and forth. You're going to see this. All over the Psalms. So why at the century Mark.

Of the Psalm book. Did God. Inspire such a succinct. Five verse picture. Like this. I'd argue.

It is because these truths. Need to be. Anchored deeper. Into our soul. They need to be sung. Into our soul.

The Psalms were songs. They were prayers. They were meant to be repeated. Over and over again. So they could be.

Anchored deeper. Into our souls. That's what singing does. Y'all. Singing. Anchors.

Truths. Into our soul. There's a reason why. A whole generation. Of baby boomers. Have the philosophy.

You know. You can't always get. What you want. But if you try sometimes. You know. You might find.

You get what you need. You know why. Because the philosopher. Mick Jagger. Wrote that. And they sang it.

A thousand times. They sang that truth. Deep into their soul. That's what singing does. It sings. Truth.

Deep into your soul. And we need Psalms. Like Psalms. 100. To be sung. To be recited.

Deep into our soul. That's good for us. Y'all. When you can't remember scripture. Sometimes. You can't remember a song.

I got. When I'm struggling. With sin. And suffering. I might not be able to remember Romans 8. My mind might be all over the place.

But I can remember rock of ages. Cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood. From my wounded side. Which flowed.

Be of sin. The double cure. Saved from wrath. And made me pure. I can remember that. And that reminds me.

Of how good our savior is. We need this y'all. We need truth. Sung deeper into our soul. We need these Psalms recited. Deeper into our soul.

Like Matt Freeman. Our pastor of worship. Who's over here in the keys. Like he spends time y'all. And he has help sometimes. With some different volunteers.

From our worship ministry. But he writes the liturgy. And he's thoughtful about it. And y'all. This liturgy that we recite. Every Sunday.

It gets repeated. Like Psalm 100 gets repeated. Once every two or three months. Which is going to blow. Some of your minds. Because some of you.

Miss that every week. Because you roll in late. But if you came in on time. You'd hear Psalm 100. Once every two to three months. And you hear it over.

And over. And over again. And that truth. Would get sung deeper. And deeper into your soul. And listen.

We need that. We need to know the command. To make a joyful noise. The Lord. We need to know the command. To serve the Lord.

With gladness. We need to know the command. That we're called to come. Into his presence. With singing. We need to know.

That he is God. We need to realize. And let it sink into our hearts. That we belong to him. And all the benefits. That come along with that.

Because he's good. Because his steadfast love. Endures forever. And his faithfulness. For all generations. We need that.

And we're going to do that. As the band comes up. We're just going to sing. Two more songs. And I want us. To sing.

I want us to sing. And grow in this. To sing these truths. Deep into our soul. Listen. You may not know the songs.

I would encourage you. If you want to know the songs. Go talk to Matt. After worship. It gets in your playlist. It can send you some songs.

That you can sing regularly. To be familiar with them. But we need this. We need to grow. In actually. Worshiping.

The Lord. We need to grow. In singing. Praises. To our God. And actually.

Singing. We need to grow. In thankfulness. Thanking the Lord. On a regular basis. For all.

Who he is. And everything. That he does. For us. We need to grow. In worshiping.

Our God. Because he's. Worthy. Of it. Now some of you.

May be checking. This out. Maybe checking out. Jesus. Maybe. Feel like an outsider.

Listening into an insider. Conversation. And I just want to say. Very clearly to you. If you are exploring. Our faith.

You don't know where you stand. Before the Lord. I want you to hear. What he says. Very clearly. There's an invitation.

Here to be a sheep. At his pasture. There's a place. For you to belong. Amongst the people. Of God.

Our shepherd. Is unbelievably good. He's unbelievably loving. And he loves you. So much.

That the shepherd. Came and laid down. His life. For you. So that you could experience.

This endless joy. This endless love. This unbelievable faithfulness. There's a place for you. In the people of God. And the invitation is there.

And my hope is. Is that as we sing this morning. You'd so clearly hear. The invitation of our shepherd. And that you would place. Your faith.

In him. Because he's worthy of it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. Thank you so much. For the Psalms.

Thank you. For a couple of months. Just to gaze upon. In your beauty. In your glory. In your faithfulness.

God help us worship. Help us be a people. That are so blown away. That are so enamored. With who you are. That the overflow of that.

Is this obedience. In Psalm 100. God I pray. If there's anyone here. That does not know you. That doesn't know.

How good of a shepherd you are. That this morning. They would. That you would break down. The doors of their heart. And they would believe.

We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Psalm 115: God > Idols

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 115: God > Idols

Spencer Cary

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Transcript

Good morning. See, I clean up well, you guys. All right, so before we get started, it's an exciting day when we get to baptize anyone, and especially our kids. I just want to plug two resources. Some of the things we do in family discipleship, in our road mapping curriculum, which you can find online, is we plug books that we think are helpful. I have one right here.

This is the whole story for the whole family. It's a year of Jesus-centered devotions. This one's really helpful because it has really easy-to-do devotions, actually has some fun activities to go along with it. So if you've got kids from three to about nine, ten years old, this is a great book. I actually have two free copies of this, so if you want one, come talk to me, and I'll give it to you. And then we also have, out there at our spiritual formation bookshelf, the New City Catechism.

This is 52 questions and answers that help guide the process of just helping our kids know who Jesus is and what the gospel is. So I would encourage you, if you would like to go grab those, those are free. We've got plenty of those. So we have been in the Psalms this summer. We have one more Psalm next week, and then we're going to be in the book of Jude, which is four weeks, and then we'll be in the book of Exodus. So we're in Psalm 115 today, which is on page 293, and your blue Bibles that are around you.

If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. That is our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible that you can read. But we'll be in Psalm 115 today. So my wife and I both like disaster movies, okay?

So day after tomorrow type stuff, it gets even better, the cheesier it gets. So like, you know, geostorm, computer, controlling the weather, that kind of stuff is really fun for us. I also personally like satire. When satire is done well, I like it. And finally, the two genres melded together last year for a movie that came out on Netflix called Don't Look Up. So caveats, it's got some language in it, and I always do my research when it's rated or ahead of time, because it's got some sketch stuff at the end, which I just cut off and never watched.

But I wanted to see how they took satire and combined this with one of my wife's and I's favorite genres. And the whole premise is, is that an asteroid is barreling down towards the earth. And in typical asteroid style movies, you would expect they'd come together, they'd figure it out, and they'd save the day. Bruce Willis would go up there, and they'd blow this thing up. But this movie asked the question, what if that didn't happen?

What if we weren't good at this? What if our dysfunctional society right now just couldn't handle this? And it plays on a bunch of different themes. But one of the things that I found to be incredibly telling is it asked the question, what if we're too disinterested? What if we don't care? What if we're willing to ignore reality, and just because we like, you know, social media and the movie, they're too busy, you know, scrolling on their phones to care?

What if there's too many things to entertain ourselves with, too many things to focus on? And that aspect of satire, I truly appreciate it. Because you could easily apply that to our faith. Like a few weeks ago, we were in Psalm 19, and Psalm 19 has two big ideas, that creation declares the glory of God. That it points to a creator, and it declares his glory. And then later on in the Psalm, it talks about the scriptures.

How the scriptures give us this specific picture of who God is. That it tells us beautiful truths. And when you combine the two, you see we have a God who definitely made this universe. And the scriptures tell us who this God is. And we, as especially Southern Christians, can listen to that sermon, can read that text and go, yes, amen. We can say we believe in God.

The majority of Southerners would even say they believe in Jesus. But the reality is, is we live like that's not true. We're going to see in the Psalm, it says, our God is in the heavens. And we live like that's not a reality. Because we're so easily enamored. So easily in love with created things.

That our attention and our focus and our affection, and ultimately our worship, is on lesser created things. Ignoring the reality of our creator God. To our own demise. That is what this Psalm is going to look at today. It's going to speak directly to us. Calling us out for falling in love with lesser created things.

And not beholding our creator God for who he is. So we're going to see that picture and how that applies to us. So let me pray for us and then we'll jump in. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would open our hearts to receive your word. That we would be challenged. That we would see you as glorious.

And you'd help us walk this out in faith and belief and repentance and obedience. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so. Psalm 115 is in a series of Psalms. A series of five Psalms called the Hallelujah Psalms.

Okay? So thematically they all have the same kind of Hallelujah is in its most base form is praise Yahweh. So it's praise the Lord. So that's what's showing up in these Psalms. And at the very last one in this section, Psalm 115, is a Psalm that they would have actually sang together at Passover meal. So at the Passover meal, they would have sat down and had good food and good wine.

And they'd come together and then they'd sing this joyous, challenging Psalm. Starting in verse 1. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. For the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. So it's this joyous beginning.

Not to us, O Lord. No, no, no. Not to us, but to your name give glory. Why? Because of, for the sake of, your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Because you are steadfast in your love towards us, O God, when we don't deserve it.

Because you are faithful towards us, O God, when we are faithless. Not to us, O Lord, but to you be the glory. And that is joyously sung against the backdrop of those who taught them. So we pick up in verse 2. Why should the nations say, where is their God? So, that is, the nations is the Gentiles.

So at this point in redemption history, the Gentiles are outside the covenant of God. This is non-Jewish people. These are the surrounding nations around the Jewish people. They don't worship the God of Israel. They don't believe and they're taunting and they're saying, where is your God? And this is where the psalmist starts to get a little snarky.

See, this Psalm has some don't look up type of vibes to it. It's very satirical. It's very snarky. It's very sarcastic. And this is when the psalmist begins to answer that taunt and fire back in verse 3. Our God is in the heavens.

He does all that He pleases. Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. He is not like your false gods, O nations. He's not a God that is tangible and created so that you can see. No, no, no.

Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. We don't have to do a song and dance to get His attention. And He doesn't step to our desires. That's not how our God works. He will not be coerced.

He will not be cornered. He will not be convinced. Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. He is not like your gods. And then He goes on to dial up the snark even more.

And He starts to criticize and belittle and make fun of their false idols. Verse 4 and following. Their idols are silver and gold. The work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak. Eyes but do not see.

Ears but do not hear. Noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not feel. Feet but do not walk. And they do not make a sound in their throat. He is belittling them.

He is comedically belittling their false gods. He says your gods are precious. They are adorable. Look at His little mouth and His little nose. It has got little hands and little feet. I bet you put that beside your bed table at night.

That is adorable. He is absolutely stomping on false idols. He says no, no, no. Your God is not like our God. Our God is in the heavens. You have these false gods.

And it is an absurd picture. This is what Elijah picks up in 1 Kings 18. Belittling the false gods. In 1 Kings 18, he has a showdown with the prophets of Baal. Baal is one of the most prominent false gods in the Old Testament. And at this point, the prophets of Baal have pretty much taken over Israel.

And Elijah goes, all right, let's go. Let's go to Mount Carmel. Let's have a little showdown. We are going to set up an altar. Put a sacrifice on there. We are going to see which God is real.

We are going to figure out which God is going to come. Come and light this sacrifice on fire. And then in 1 Kings 18, it says in verse 26 and following, And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it, and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, answer us. So the prophets of Baal are calling out, Baal, answer us, answer us. But there was no voice.

No one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. They started doing their little dance, going around the altar, limping around. And one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Verse 27, And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he is a God. Maybe he can't hear you.

You should cry louder. Got to get his attention. He says, Cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, which is a cleaned up way of saying, using the bathroom. Is your God, is he going to the bathroom? Where is he?

The mocking is on point. He says, Or is he on a journey? Or perhaps he is asleep, and must be awakened. Is he taking a nap? Go get him. Surely, and this, this does not sit well with them, and they get angrier.

And verse 28, it says, And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after the custom, after their custom was swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention. Why?

Because Baal isn't real. He's not the one true God. And then Elijah goes on to, say, step aside. They put water all over the altar. Calls down fire from heaven, and boom, lights it up. And that's usually where the children's stories, book Bible version, kind of just stops.

If you want to take it further, and even do some dramatic reenacting, he goes and slaughters all the prophets of Baals. So, fun stuff to do in your household. More family discipleship advice for you. It's an absurd picture. That's the way Elijah's getting at. Your gods aren't real.

Bowing down to this is an absurdity. When I was in, years ago, I was in India, and I was studying Hinduism as a part of the study of God program. And I went and traveled and looked at Hindu temples. Went to Hindu temples and watched. I watched people bow down to false idols. This made, decorated idol with incense burning.

I watched them and studied how they worshipped false idols. And when you see that picture, you see, man, how ridiculous is this? That you're bowing down, seeking for this to provide, for this to take care of you. what he's hitting at over and over again here is that idols are lifeless and they are dumb. No. Our God is in the heavens. So he gives this heavy, intense critique, and then in verse 8, he gives an absolutely helpful warning. those who make them become like them.

So do all who trust in them. What he highlights is an unbelievable truth. What you worship, you will become. What you worship, you will ultimately become. And if you worship these dead, lifeless objects, then you will receive spiritual death that comes along with it. You'll be spiritually deadened by it.

Now, reading this through the lens of a 21st century Westerner, you might think, good, glad we don't have little carved idols in our bedrooms. Am I right? Might want to distance ourselves from this. Might look at the Hindu practices of bowing down to false idols that still happen today and think, good thing that's not us. But the reality is, is that we do this, we just do it in a far more sophisticated manner.

This is what Ezekiel, and the prophet Ezekiel is picking up in Ezekiel 41, and it's going to be developed throughout the rest of the scriptures. In Ezekiel 41, he says, it says, Son of man, these men have taken idols into their hearts. Taken idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? And then in verse 6, he says, Therefore, save the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God, repent and turn away from your idols and turn away your faces from all abominations.

It is here that we see a theme that gets picked up and developed throughout the rest of the scriptures that idolatry is worshiping anything in the place of God. God. It's heart idolatry. It's choosing anything and beholding that, loving that, worshiping that in the place of God. This is why John Calvin says that our hearts are idol-making factories. That we easily, because of our fallenness and our flesh, can make idols out of anything.

That we would worship anything in the place of God. We are designed to worship. That's how humanity is designed. And ultimately, we're designed to worship the Lord. But we reject that for the tangible things that are right in front of us.

And the psalmist is warning us. If you worship idols, you will become like them. For the one who worships money through greed, you ultimately, if you worship this, you will become like that dead object. Your heart will be hardened towards generosity. You will sacrifice and sever relationships with friends and church family and family. You'll sacrifice all of that because the goal is to make money, make money, make money, stacks on stacks on stacks.

If I can get that, then I will be happy. And ultimately, if you pursue this and you worship this, you will become Ebenezer Scrooge or Walter White. And it will ultimately end up to your own demise, hardening your own heart, deadened to what is ultimately good. If you bow down before the altar of pleasure, you will follow the road of sensuality until ultimately you don't have a taste, you have a distaste for God. and you fill that in with drugs or porn or explanation or whatever. But you follow that road and what happens is you eventually just, you don't want God.

I've watched people who went down that road and then ultimately they're just like, I don't care anymore. And it deadens you spiritually until you're numb and you don't want God. I stumbled upon a quote from a Sri Lankan theologian that I have never seen before until this week. His name is Vinath Ramachandra. And I thought he nailed it. He said, It is not surprising that those who worship technology eventually develop machine-like personalities.

Mark Zuckerberg. Right? I mean, develop machine-like personalities, emotionally underdeveloped, shallow and the relationships driven by a desire to control and quantify every human situation, unable to appreciate beauty and value in anything outside the artificial. What a unbelievable critique on this cultural moment. We bow down to social media, we spend all of our time and our energy in the artificial. this is going to get worse as the meta comes on board and everything else that comes with that. He says, No wonder.

No wonder we have shallow relationships. We're driven to control and quantify every human situation. You see that in kids that are on devices all the time. You see that in adults who have lost the ability to have a nuanced discussion with anyone or just lobbing grenades like crazy. Because you've bowed down before this idol over and over and over again and it's starting to make you in its image. He goes on to say, Those who worship sex, on the other hand, are incapable of trust and commitment in their human relationships and hide a lonely existence behind a mask of superficial adulthood.

Benoth is throwing bows. Man, he is going for it. I mean, he is absolutely, he can go on and on with this. He is absolutely showing us what the psalmist is teaching us that idols will ultimately create you in their image. You no longer will be conforming to the image of our creator. When you bow down to idols, it makes you in their image, ultimately to our own spiritual destruction.

You see why the psalmist has this aggressive, polemic, sarcastic defense, this aggressive nature against idolatry? There's so much at stake in the human soul. There was so much at stake for Israel as ultimately it was their own destruction because they worshipped idols. There's so much at stake for us because our flesh loves it. Our flesh loves idols. A couple months ago, I was talking with one of our pastors, I was talking with Chet, and I was just, I was confessing some sin.

I just was like, man, I'm just, I am, my flesh loves sin. Like I just, like I'm struggling right now. And he had a very helpful picture that will stick with me for probably ever. He said, you gotta see it for what it is. He said, it's, it's meth. And I was like, yes, it is meth.

Absolutely is. Have you ever seen before and after pictures of what meth does to people? They're a normal, functioning human being and then a few years, the before and after, they, it's conformed them into this horrible image as they bow down to this drug over and over and over again and it's stolen the life out of them. Yes! He knew how to get to me. I was like, that's absolutely it.

It is like that. It spiritually decays and destroys. That's what sin does. That's what idolatry does. So he gives that aggressive warning and then he pivots to beholding who our God is.

In verse 9 and following, he says, O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. He's gonna repeat that three times. Their help and their shield. That is kingship defense language. Okay?

He's saying, our God is our help and our shield. He's the one that defends us. He's the one that provides for us. He's the one that takes care of us. O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.

O house of Aaron, verse 10, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. The house of Aaron was a part of the tribe of Levi. This is where the priesthood came from, was the house of Aaron. So what he's highlighting there is the priesthood is bowing down to foreign idols.

They're falling prey to this. Which absolutely fits pretty one-to-one with our current culture. Because the priesthood throughout America and those who plan to be pastors literally are leading people into worshipping idols, worshipping success, worshipping money for the sake of lining their own pockets and getting a G4 and all that mess. we're not much different. Verse 11, you who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. He's saying, you who fear the Lord, everyone who fears God, trust in the Lord.

He is their help and their shield. He's like, believe this. Believe this. He will protect you. He is better. He will protect you in the way that idols cannot.

And then he moves from this repeated promise to a repeated blessing. He says in verse 12 and following, the Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great.

He's saying, this Lord, this God will bless us. Listen, Israel, Aaron, everyone who fears the Lord. And this is a deep, spiritual blessing. This is not a shallow, material one. Believing that ultimate hope is found in material blessings that will ultimately end up in a landfill one day. No, this is deeper than that.

This is the kind of blessing that resounds into generational blessings. Verse 14, he says, may the Lord give you children, or give you increase, you and your children. May this blessing resound through you, to your children, to your children's children. What a powerful legacy of faith that we might uphold when we behold who our God is. This is in verse 15, may you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.

It's highlighting a truth that God is in the heavens. He rules and reigns. But as we see in Genesis 1, he entrusts earth. He gives us the ability to have dominion over the earth. That's why it says, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it.

That's the truth that he's highlighting there. And then in verse 17 and 18, the final two verses, he says, the dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord. He says, those who ultimately worship idols, those who find their hope and satisfaction and fulfillment and idols, well, they ultimately will receive what is coming, death. And the picture we see of that is judgment.

He says, but we, we will trust the Lord. We will praise him. We won't go down in silence. No. We will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord.

All right. So this Psalm is noticeably different than many of the Psalms we've tackled before. Sarcasm shows up a little bit in the scriptures. Aggressive defenses like this show up a little bit. This is different than some of the Psalms we have covered. And he is hammering one central truth over and over again.

Idols are dumb. Idols are ridiculous. Idols are not worthy of worship. Our God is in the heavens. Behold him. Worship him.

He is greater than idols. But the problem for Israel and the problem really for us is that idols are very tangible. Idols are, you can see them, you can touch them. It's the reason why they bow down to golden calves and Asherah poles. They could grab a hold of it. The psalmist says that's foolishness.

That's foolishness. Our God is so much bigger than that. Can't you see? Our God is in the heavens. Don't bow down to these objects. Don't worship anything in the place of God.

And we may be more sophisticated. We may be more sophisticated than this time period. But we are not smarter. Not at all. We're very much like them. We may, listen, Southern Christians, we may know the Bible.

We may know stories about Jesus. We may know the right things to say. You know, all kinds of things about who our God is. But to us, He's not as tangible. Not saying that Jesus is embodied. He certainly is.

But He reigns at the right hand of God the Father. But idols are tangible. They're right in front of us. And our flesh says, I want it. Money is tangible. Put your hands on it.

Pull up your app and watch your bank account. Your crypto wallet. Whatever it is that you do. You can see that. It's material. You can purchase things that your heart desires with that.

Amazon packages are concrete and tangible. Right? I thought about this this week. I was like, you know what? I'm going to see if I can total up how much we spent at Amazon this year. So I thought I could go on Amazon and look at the order details and stuff in that section and see.

But shocker, they don't let you know that. Because I don't want you to know how much you've spent there. Because it's a lot. That's tangible. It's something you can get in two days or less. That's tangible.

You can put your hands on that. Social media is tangible. You can spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours obsessing, worrying, getting stirred up, getting angry, getting jealous. That's tangible. Children, spouses, relationships, friendships, success, comforts, you name it, our heart can make it and we can bow down to it. It's tangible.

It's right in front of us. And our hearts will go after it until little by little our affections, our desire and our worship towards God is slowly turned towards created objects and we're more deadened and more deadened and more deadened until spiritually it's like, I don't want God. and then we reject Him just as the nation of Israel did. One of the things we talk about in our church is the concept of deep idols. The concept of deep idols and if you want to, we have sermons that expound on this more, you can go on our website and you can go into our sermons and do it in the search bar and you can type in deep idols and hear some more teaching on this but the premise is is that we try to look at the sin beneath the sin, the motivation beneath the motivation, the idol beneath the idol and there are four main deep idols, four main categories that you can funnel most of our sin into.

That's comfort, control, power, and approval. And you can literally take any concrete idol that you'd bow down to and you can run it through those categories and see, like if it's money, not something you obsess over, you think about, you live your life for, you can try to determine which deep idols is this rooted in? Is it approval? Do I make lots of money so that I can be liked? So that people will accept me?

So that I will get claps in adoration? Or it's control. Maybe you grew up with less money and you said, I ain't doing this anymore. I will absolutely control my future and every dollar, every paycheck is another opportunity to control your destiny because you've rejected ultimately that God is sovereign over your future but you can control it with your hands. Maybe it's, maybe it's power. You make money because that gives you influence.

That gives you the ability to peddle and to meddle and to manipulate because it puts you the one in power. Maybe it's comfort. That you worship money because it brings the comforts in this life. You can buy the next car or the next house or the next vacation until you fill your life with comforts that never truly satisfy you. Listen, we're not much different. We're not.

The Psalm is for us and we we have to see idols for what they are. We have to see it for what it is. They're as healthy as meth. They're as life-giving as the wood from your kitchen table. They're as secure as a house that is built right on the top of beach sand. They are not better.

Idols are dumb. They're not worth pursuing. They're not worth worshipping. Trust in the Lord. He is ultimately worthy of our worship. With Him comes blessing and promises.

Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever He pleases. The psalmist is pleading with us. See God as better than idols. And when you start to believe this. Listen, when you start to when God starts to unlock this truth in your soul.

When you start to realize that what you've worshipped doesn't satisfy. That it never truly brings fulfillment. Whatever that is for you. And when you've examined your soul and you realize that God by His grace shows how infected we are with idol worship. How we bow down to so many other things through our attention and our affections and our desire and our worship. when you see that for what it is your one logical response should be how can the God who created everything who is the only one worthy of my worship how could He possibly love me in spite of all of my rejection in spite of all of the worship that I've given towards lesser created things.

And it is in that moment that you can discover the goodness of the gospel. And the goodness of the gospel is that God knew that. God knows all of that. He knows all the idols that you bow down to. He sees all of it. And still He sent His Son to die for you.

And still He sent His Son to rise for us. And still He came to His Colossians 2 teaches cancel the record of debt the record of sin that's done against us with its legal demand. And His kindness as Romans 2 teaches leads us to repentance. Away from lesser created things back to our Creator. Our God does all that He pleases. And the good news of the gospel is that it pleases Him for you to worship Him.

And it pleases Him for you to desire Him. And it pleases Him to see you repent of idols because they are not worthy of your worship. He is.

Psalm 139: Search My Heart

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 139: Search My Heart

Matt Freeman

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Transcript

It's good to see you guys this morning. My name is Matt. I'm one of the pastors here. If you would, go ahead and grab a Bible. We are going to hop right in this morning, and I want you to go ahead and turn to Psalm 139. Psalm 139.

If you don't have a Bible, go ahead and grab one of the blue Bibles that we have that are tucked under some of the seats. It's going to be on page 300 in those. We're going to be looking at Psalm 139. As a worship leader, I love the Psalms. It's the Psalm book of the Bible, you guys. I'm obligated to actually love the book of Psalms.

But I do. I love the book of Psalms, and specifically Psalm 139. What we get in the Psalms is the entire range of human emotion. John Piper says that you can always find yourself in the Psalms, and I believe that. I believe that's true. Regardless of whatever you're going through in your life, whatever circumstance, you can always find yourself in the Psalms.

And so I'm excited to be teaching from one of my favorite passages today. So if you'll look, go ahead and look in your Bible. We don't always point this out. But if you look at the top, right underneath Psalm 139, it says, to the choir master, a Psalm of David. Okay, so it tells us that this is one of the Psalms of David. In fact, nearly half of the Psalms in the book of Psalms are David's.

And it's important for us to know that David wrote this and to think about his life because it colors how we're going to understand this Psalm, how we study it. But as we're getting started, I want you to go ahead and look. We're going to look at the first verse and the final two verses before we even start because they actually frame in what David is talking about in the Psalms. So you can look in your Bible or you can look up here on the screen. It says, Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

And then at the very end, David's praying and he says, Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. So David starts with saying to God, God, you have searched me and known me. You know everything about me. Nothing is hidden from you. And then he concludes by asking God to continue to search him, to know his heart, to know his thoughts, to show him his sins and to lead him on the right path.

Now there's a lot of things that we're going to look at in between this frame, but I think it's important to just highlight part of David's life before we hop in because of what he's talking about here. So this is the David that the Bible presents to us. He's the youngest of seven sons of his father. He's kind of the runt of the litter. He's the shepherd boy out tending the sheep, but God saw fit to anoint him to be the next king of Israel. This is the David that the Bible talks about who goes up against the giant Goliath with a sling and a stone and takes him down.

This is the David that wins the hearts of the people of Israel. In fact, the Bible describes David as a man after God's own heart. And while there's a lot of great things we can point out about David, sometimes we forget to talk about the darker side, that David wasn't perfect. And maybe you're not as familiar with this story, but there was a time when the Israelite army went out to war and David didn't go with them. He stayed back. And he's walking on the rooftop of the palace and he sees a beautiful woman bathing.

And he desires her. And so he brings her to his palace and he sleeps with her. Her name is Bathsheba and she becomes pregnant. And David's trying to figure out how to cover this thing up. So he sends for her husband, Uriah, who's one of his best soldiers, sends for him to bring him home so that maybe he'll go back to his house and sleep with Bathsheba and this thing will be all covered up and they'll never know it was his child.

But Uriah was so faithful, he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't leave the king's house. And so David sends Uriah back out into battle and tells the commander to pull back from him. And Uriah's killed. David was responsible for the murder of somebody else. And so it makes you wonder, as we look at this Psalm, as we looked at this framework we just created, that how can he pray this at the end?

How can he pray, continue to search me, continue to examine me and see my grievous ways in light of everything that he has done? And if I'm David, I don't want that. I don't. In fact, I don't want that. And I would bet for most of us, we don't want that either. The things that we've hidden, the skeletons in our closet, the things that we wish and hope that nobody ever finds out about us.

But it seems that David has discovered something better. What we're going to see is that in spite of everything that David has done, God still desires relationship with him. He gets the offer of redemption and forgiveness. And so that's what we're looking at this morning, how David can have such confidence in his relationship with God that no matter what he had done, he still saw it better that the Lord would know him deeply and intimately rather than keeping things hidden from the Lord. And that hopefully we'll actually leave here with that same kind of confidence, that same kind of confidence and vulnerability and freedom that we can have in our relationship with God.

Okay? So that's what we're looking at this morning. Why don't we pause and pray as we go further? God, what a bold prayer that you would search us and know us. And it's difficult for us to even comprehend how we could do that. And so we pray that you would speak from your word, that you would help us understand what David had come to know, what David had come to know, and that you would lead us in the way everlasting.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, so look at your Bibles. Let's hop into the text. Okay, verse 1. Oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh, Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high. I cannot attain it. So he's talking about this God, this God who searches and knows, and he's trying to color that in and describe it. Verses 2 and 3, David says, when I sit down and when I rise up, he says, you know my path and my lying down, and you're acquainted with all my ways. He says, God sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

He knows if you've been bad or good. But seriously, he knows everything about you. He knows when you're sleeping. He knows when your feet hit the floor. He knows what I do throughout the day. David crafts this song to show that there is no activity, no action that escapes what God sees.

He knows. He knows. Not only that, look at verse 3. It says here, you discern my thoughts. I'm sorry, verse 2. You discern my thoughts from afar.

Come on. Like, not only does he know our activities, he discerns our thoughts. He knows what you're thinking. Right now. And right now. And right now.

So the thing I thought when that person cut me off in traffic, God knows. The thing I was thinking when my co-worker asked me how I was doing, he knows. The thing I'm daydreaming about right now while Matt's talking, he knows. He knows. Not only that, look at verse 4. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it all together.

So that's a crazy progression. He knows our actions. He knows our thoughts. And even before we formulate words, he knows it. I have two daughters, a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old. My 7-year-old is named Emmy.

And if you know Emmy, this story will make perfect sense to you. We like to cook. Like specifically, my girls love to cook pancakes. And so that's usually a group effort for us. When Emmy was really young, we had the griddle out. We had the bowl of pancake mix.

And we were doing the whole thing. And I walked across the kitchen to grab something. And I got to the other side of the kitchen with my back turned to her and said, don't touch that. And I turn. And her hand is over the griddle. And she's just looking at me like, are you a wizard?

Like, child, I know you. And I'm way smarter than you. Like, I knew what you were going to do. I know what you were going for. And that multiplied times infinity is God towards us. He knows you.

He created you. Verse 5 says, You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. You hem me in. Now, he's drawing from shepherding terms here. Okay, so it's a little bit lost on us. But this is, he's drawing from his experience.

Shepherds would be out in the fields with the sheep. And they would be tending them and keeping them together and making sure that they went on the right path, that they didn't fall off of a cliff, that they were able to find fresh water and fresh food. And then at night, they would try to kind of hem them into an area for protection. And then oftentimes, the shepherds would just lay in harm's way so that if a wolf or a predator was coming, they would know it. They would be first in line. It's a beautiful picture here.

You hem me in behind and before. And then you get to verse 6. And he just exclaims it. He says, Such knowledge is too wonderful and high for me. I can't grasp it. And I feel that.

I bet you do too. That's David's point. He's giving glory to God for his all-knowing power. We use big words for this sometimes like God's omniscience, which just means that he is all-knowing or his omnipotence, which means that he is all-powerful. God knows everything and he is all-powerful. And even though David can't fully comprehend it, and neither can we, he's still able to glory in it.

And there are two things I want to point out from these six verses and then we'll move on. The first one is this. This is terrifying, right? Like God knows your actions, your words, and your thoughts. For those of you who are into stranger things, this isn't like a Vecna scenario where God's going to use your thoughts and stuff to torture you. Like we're not all headed for a Chrissy wake up situation.

Okay? But it is terrifying that God knows everything about you. Hear that clearly. What David is saying here is that God knows everything about every person in this room without exception. And for most of us, even those of us who are Christians, that's terrifying. We don't want God to know everything.

If he did, we think things like, how could God love me? How could God accept me? There's no way he could use me. There's no way I could belong to his people and be loved. And as Christians, we know these things aren't true. Yet we convince ourselves all too often that they are.

We give in to the lies and the false beliefs instead of glorying in who God is and knowing that he's all powerful and all knowing. And I will say this. I think part of the reason we do this is because in our lives we've experienced people who have used knowledge of us to hurt us. Okay? You've been there before. You've told something to someone and they told everyone else.

You shared a struggle with someone and then they used that in your relationship to manipulate you. We've all been there. But that's not God. The God who sees you and knows everything about you is wholly other than that. And because that's true, the other part of this passage is that this ought to be incredibly comforting to us. That even though he knows all of our thoughts and words and actions, his posture towards us is that of a shepherd.

With his sheep, he wants, even though we would rebel and try to run, God, his posture towards us is that of a shepherd. That's what verse 5 is talking about. It says, you hem me in behind and before. You keep me. God keeps us. And I'll be honest with you guys.

This is something that I pray on a regular basis. I pray this on a regular basis underneath my breath. God, you hem me in behind and before. You hem me in behind and before. I have a tough day parenting with the kids. You hem me in behind and before.

When I want to run to the fridge at 10 o'clock at night for some comfort, you hem me in behind and before. When we've got a difficult situation going on in our church, when we need wisdom and we don't know it, you hem me in behind and before. God's knowledge of us is both terrifying and comforting. So what do we do with that? What do we do with that? Look at verse 7.

It says, where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you.

The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you. It's as if David tries to illustrate what all of us are prone to, right? Run. Like, run. He says, but where would I go? Where would I flee from your presence?

He says, if I go up to heaven, you're there. Which, obvious David, but I understand it's a progression. You've got to start somewhere. You're there. If I go down to Sheol, you are there. When we have Sheol in Scripture, it's just a poetic way of saying, it's a poetic name for the place of the dead.

He says, if I go up to heaven, you're there. If I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. He says, if I take the wings of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, you're there. He says, if I take flight in the morning, okay, the morning sun rises in the east. If I head towards the east or if I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, the uttermost parts of the sea for them was the Mediterranean. If I go up, down, north, south, east, west, you're there.

Where can I flee from your presence? So where do I go? The dark. I'll hide in the dark. You guys, you guys ever play hide and go seek with some kids? All right?

Come around the corner. You know the kids behind the couch. So you go and look behind the couch and as soon as you make eye contact that with the kid, they go, I can see you. No, you can't. Well, now I can hear you too. Like I, but that's us.

That's us when it comes to the fact that we think that we can hide in the dark from God or that even in the midst of our darkness, God somehow is not there. So I love what verse 11 and 12 say. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you. Guys, are you seeing what David's saying in these first 12 verses? That God is all-knowing.

He knows everything. Your words, thoughts, actions. He's all-powerful and He's all-present. There's no place that you can flee from His presence. And I do just want to take a second and highlight this here. If you've run to the dark or you feel like right now you are in the dark, God's there and it is not dark to Him.

It is not dark to Him. He's with you and He sees you. And we're going to talk more about that in a minute, but I just want you to know that. He sees you and He's with you. And as David continues on from here, what he's going to do now is give us an example of God seeing us, knowing us, and being with us in the darkness. That's why verse 13 begins with 4.

It's an illustration. It's an example of God being with us in the dark. Here's what it says. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret. Intricately woven in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them. David gives us this beautiful picture of God being with us in the midst of darkness by describing a baby in its mother's womb.

And specifically he tells it from his perspective. He says, you formed my inward parts. You knit me together. I am wonderfully made. Extravagantly, miraculously, uniquely made. My frame wasn't hidden from you.

You wove every detail together. You formed my substance. And not only that, my days were written in your book even before I was born. Not only does David say that God was active in forming him in the womb, he says, even at that time God had established purpose for his steps and his life. David's saying that God was with him, forming him and shaping him in the womb. And that's the big picture of what David's driving at in this Psalm is that the God who knows and sees us is with us.

And that's amazing. Y'all, how good is this picture? The God of the universe fashions and forms each one of us. It's just beautiful. And in fact, it's not the only place in scripture that says this. I actually want to highlight a couple of others.

They're not going to be on the screen. I'm going to read them for us. It says, in Job 10, this is Job talking, he says, your hands fashioned and made me and now you have destroyed me altogether. Remember that you have made me like clay and will you return me to the dust? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews.

You have granted me life and steadfast love and your care has preserved my spirit. It's beautiful. He's picking up on the same kind of language that is used later by David. He says later in Job. Job says this. He says, if I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant when they brought a complaint against me, what then shall I do when God rises up?

When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb? He's saying, if God as creator comes to question me, what am I to say? He made me. He formed me.

And not only that, if I'm in a dispute with someone else, he made them too. In Jeremiah, beginning of Jeremiah, this is directly, this is the words of the Lord. 1 verses 4 and 5 says, now the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. It's that same idea that David was talking about, that God knew him before he was in the womb.

He had predestined his steps. He had purpose for his life. He had been consecrated. And one of my favorites is once we get to the New Testament, the angel comes to Mary, says she's going to give birth to the Son of God. But Mary's aunt is pregnant at the same time.

And she goes to visit Elizabeth. And here's what Elizabeth says. She says, for behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. This child has personhood and is able to express joy. And the point that the Bible is trying to make clear in multiple places across multiple time periods is that life begins in the womb. And while David is using this as an illustration of God seeing and knowing and being with us in the dark, it's not just an illustration.

It's truth. It's a reality. And it's one that has taken center stage in our country over the last month or so. And so what we're going to do is we're going to press pause for a second. And we're going to take the next 10 to 12 minutes and talk about what is a current topic in our culture right now, which is life beginning at conception and the topic of abortion. And now, that's not the main point of this passage.

But it is most certainly a direct application and an ethic that is derived from this idea of a God who knows us and sees us and forms us. Okay? So we're going to press pause and talk about this as an application and then jump back into the text. Now, I realize that I have just polarized the room. I'm aware of that. Some of you just thought, yes, get them.

Roe fell a couple of weeks ago and it's time for us to plant our flag in the ground. Some of you just thought, if you say what I think you were about to say, I'm walking out of this building and I'm never coming back again. And some of us are just too disengaged from the conversation because you don't feel like it impacts you. And so I want to make a suggestion and a request this morning. Okay? Here's my suggestion.

Can we just press pause on all of our political arguments for a moment and realize that whatever you think about this, that this is an incredibly difficult and painful situation for a prospective mother and father to walk through. Can we be a people of compassion? Can we do that? Can you set your political leanings to the side for a second and just own that? This is incredibly painful and difficult. And out of that suggestion, I want to make a request.

Okay? If we set that aside, I want to make a request. Can we just take an honest look at what God says to us in His Word out of this passage? Can we just be honest about what it says? Because here's the deal. If we are, if we'll be honest, we can't read this passage and the others that I mentioned without agreeing what it says, that life begins in the womb.

That God is working, He's knitting us together and forming us in our mother's womb. That God predestines our steps from the womb. And to reject this is to reject the authority of Scripture. We must trust God and His Word here, which means that the overall thrust of the Bible is for life, which means that a rejection of life through abortion is sin. Period. In the majority of conversations that I have had with both believers and unbelievers on this topic, pretty much everyone, not everyone, but most of the people I have talked to show some level of discomfort with someone having an abortion just because they don't want the baby for elective reasons, just for no reason.

There's varying levels of discomfort with that, but often the conversation shifts towards the most painful and difficult kinds of situations for why someone might get an abortion. And I feel this tension. What about the 10-year-old who was raped by her father and is now pregnant? What about the 35-year-old mother who has health complications and might die giving birth? What if there's a serious fetal abnormality and the child might have incredible life complications? Guys, I can't imagine.

I cannot imagine having to wrestle with those deep questions. Those are incredibly difficult and painful circumstances. And I can tell you this, the initial response as the church, as the church comes in contact with these situations has got to be to love, to be present, to sit and to weep, to hear their story, to pray with them, to be someone who can listen. That's got to be the initial response. Got to be. But the reality of this conversation is that those exceptional types of abortions are just that.

They are exceptional. That the vast, they're in the vast minority of reasons why someone might would get an abortion. Now, I'm not a chart guy. I don't love statistics. Okay? But in my research on this topic, I care about it.

And so I wanted to read widely and soak things in. I came across some statistics that I thought were helpful for showing this. Okay? So in the state of Florida in 2020, in the state of Florida, they have to record a reason for every abortion. If someone goes to get an abortion, they record the reason. In the state of Florida in 2020, there were 74,868 abortions in one state in one year.

And so what we're going to do is I want to show you a chart that shows the reasons for those abortions and then it also gives you kind of a percentage of why the reason, okay, the percentage of the whole. Okay? So I just want to walk through this. Let's show the first one..01% were some kind of family incest situation. I, goodness, I can't, I can't even like fathom the difficulty of a situation like that. But you see the percentage.

The next one, rape. Not only had they dealt with that such a difficult circumstance, but now they're pregnant. The next one, okay,.20% is that the mother's life is in danger. Okay? The mother's life is, this could be fatal for the mother. But even if you, as you look at this, we're at, we're at.36% and then you add in fetal abnormality.

Now it doesn't say that this is a life-threatening fetal abnormality, but there's some type of abnormality in the baby. And you can see these are, these are small Numbers and if you look at the, just the total here, 1.34%. And guys, these are exceptionally difficult. Reasons, they are. They're hard to wrestle with. Kind of going on in the statistics, we kind of jump out of that into, you know, we're moving away from these exceptions.

1.48% Were for physical health. Non-life-threatening physical health. And it doesn't even tell us like how, how much physical health was at play here. And then the next one is psychological health, mental health. 1.88%. If you add that up, you get to 3.36%.

And again, we can just kind of agree that these are outside of those first exceptions that we kind of looked at that are really, really exceptional situations. We've got two more categories. 20.4% for social reasons or for economic reasons. And if you're good at math, you know that the final category is 74.9% for no reason. they were elective, which brings the total to 95.3%. If you add in the physical health reasons or the psychological health reasons and broaden that category, it gets you to over 97% of those abortions. That means that 72,500 of those over that number were done for those reasons, for reasons outside of those.

How did we get here? How did we get to a place in our country where we can terminate life for elective reasons? And we can all agree that this is a complex issue, but one thing is crystal clear is that our culture has separated sex from its original God ordained design. God designed sex to be enjoyed within a marriage for the purpose of enjoyment and procreation. And our culture has hijacked this definition and said that sex is for your enjoyment and that conception of life is a consequence rather than a gift. But that's not the ethic of the Bible.

God is for life. That's what scripture says over and over again. In my preparation for this message, I felt led to reach out to my Old Testament professor from seminary. Her name is Dr. Ingrid Pharaoh and she is a brilliant woman. She's a Greek scholar and a Hebrew scholar and I just reached out to her and I said, here's what I'm teaching, here's the Psalm I'm looking at, can we talk about it?

And she gave me an hour of her time. And we just had a Zoom call where we wrestled with what this says and she agrees. She agrees with what we're talking about here. In fact, she's an expert on the book of Genesis and she pointed this out and I thought it was helpful for us. That God is the giver of life. He's the creator of life and he gives the gift of life to his creation.

To Adam and Eve and he looks at Adam and Eve and he says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over life. And he tells them, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because in the day that you do it, you will die. He says, choose life. And Adam and Eve eat of the fruit and sin enters the world and death enters the world. And you know what the first thing that happens is in Genesis 4 after sin has entered the world? Murder.

Cain kills his brother and God has judgment on it. Incredibly painful and the difficult truth that we've got to face this morning is that a rejection of life in favor of death is sin. It is the taking of life. It breaks one of the original Ten Commandments. And regardless of the situation or circumstance, however tragic and difficult, it is outside of God's design. And I know that it's devastating.

Our church family is not untouched by this pain. sin. We have walked with mothers who have had an abortion. We have walked with fathers who have encouraged their significant other to go get an abortion. Maybe you've encouraged someone to have an abortion or you helped fund it or you took them to the clinic. But God's answer from his word is that it's sin and God has judgment for us.

He has judgment for it. But we've got to remember who's writing this Psalm. David. The same David who says that God sees us and knows us. The same David who said that God formed him and knitted him in the womb is also the same David who slept with Bathsheba and then had her husband murdered. David was a murderer.

And David's response is where hope can be offered to everyone in this room. What David had done was deceitful and heinous and wicked. But remember David serves the God who knows and sees. And God sends Nathan to confront David and David responds in complete humility and brokenness and confesses his sin. He owns it. He doesn't hide it in the dark anymore.

He doesn't justify his actions. He just says I have sinned against the Lord. And you know what happens next in the very next verse? Nathan says the Lord has put away your sin. Like how beautiful is that? David was a murderer.

We should expect judgment and condemnation and maybe even God to strike David dead but he doesn't. The God who knows and sees offers David grace and forgiveness when he confesses his sin and seeks him for mercy. And that's the reality for every person in this room. That's one of the things you've got to walk away with. If you've had an abortion, if you were pressured into it or supported someone, if you're considered, God sees you. He knows you and God is with you.

You are not outside of his grasp or his love. Even after what David had done, God didn't leave him or forsake him. When David was confronted with his sin, he went running into the arms of God for forgiveness and that's what's offered to you. Go read Psalm 51. It is David's confession specifically over this. And it's forever memorialized in Scripture to help lead us back to God.

Brother, sister, you are not outside of the reach and the love of God. Just run to God and confess and accept his forgiveness. Receive his love. And lastly, God, listen, I know this has been long, but I wanted to cover it well. One last thing before we jump back into the text. We desperately need this last thing.

Christians have to recover and embody what it means to be pro-life in all of its forms. The church in America as a whole, on the whole, has been overwhelmingly unhelpful and unkind to people who are in this situation. And the reality is, when you close your heart to someone in judgment, you no longer have capacity for grace and mercy in the mission of God to offer people hope. And that's what we're called to do. That means, first of all, for mothers and fathers who would choose to say no to abortion, we have to be willing to step in. They don't know how to raise their children.

Christians have to say yes to adoption. Christians have to say yes to fostering and helping the support system for abandoned children. Yes to supporting people financially who are pursuing adoptions. Yes to volunteering and supporting organizations that work with mothers and fathers who need to know what their other options are besides abortion. Yes to being the people that walk with single moms and single dads as they deal with mental and emotional and the socioeconomic toll of raising children. Yes to walking alongside families that have children with special needs and the difficulty of that venture.

Yes to being a place of refuge and help for those that have been abused and neglected and left. What we just saw in this Psalm is that God is the God who is with people in the darkness. That God's presence is with those in the pit of hell and if God is there, that's where his people are supposed to be. Supposed to go into the darkness to love and to help people. Let's not be a people who are just against abortion.

Let's be a people who are for life and all of what that means. Now there's, listen, there's more that could be said about this and if you want to talk about it, we're here. Your pastors are here to talk about it. But again, this application comes directly out of what David is saying. It's exactly about a God who knows and sees us. So we're going to shift back into the text because it sits within that framework.

God knows everything about you. Your actions, your thoughts, your words, you can't flee from his presence. And once again, David just has a praise break here. He just erupts in praise again of this God. He says, verse 17, how precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake and I am still with you. It's just too much for David at this point. He just erupts in praise. It's like he gets praising and like he passes out. And then he's like, oh, I woke up and I'm still with you. Sweet, it wasn't a dream.

Like he's just overwhelmed with who God is. And then continuing on in verse 19, it takes an interesting twist here. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. What on earth? Like we were, I thought we were in a praise break. I thought we were taking a praise lap, David.

Why? Why are we? Oh, men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

Do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Like what on earth, David? All right.

A couple of things I want to point out here. First of all, this is raw emotion. And the Psalms give us raw emotion, which is actually really, really good news for us. Okay? Because the Psalms give us permission to take all of who we are and all of what we're feeling and thinking to the Lord and letting him sort it out. Okay?

God doesn't want the canned version of you. He wants it all. So you can take it to him. Just take it to him. And the truth is, the other thing is, if you actually see God the way David does, that he's all-knowing and all- powerful and always present, he's holy and good, then it's not a far step to want that God to exercise justice. Right?

That we actually want God to do something about wickedness. And specifically David. David was the king of the people of God. And God at times would use his people to be the instrument of his justice in the world. But we, like we actually want this.

We want God to be just. Right? We want him to deal with wickedness and sin. Just as long as it doesn't, it's not us. You know? But we want, we want someone to hold Russia responsible for what they're doing in the Ukraine.

We wanted someone to be held responsible at 9-11. Okay? We want someone to be held responsible for sex trafficking. Right? And so as David has this big picture of who God is, he just, he lays his petition before this God who is all-powerful and all-knowing and can do anything. It makes sense.

Even if it catches us off guard. And then we're right back where we started. Verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting.

The reason that David can actually pray this is because he found refuge in the God he described in this Psalm. As painful as it was for him, David recognized that God knows everything about him. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And David knows there's no place he can flee from God's presence. And in spite of everything David has done, God still wants to be in relationship with him. That's because the relationship that David had with God was not based primarily on who David was or what David had done.

But it was based off of who God was and what God had done. You see, God had promised David that there would never cease to be one of his sons on the throne of Israel forever. And that's exactly what happened. That from his line would come the Messiah. David had Solomon by way of Bathsheba. And then hundreds of years later, Jesus was born.

Son of Adam. Son of David. Jesus came so that we might have life. He lived the perfect sinless life on our behalf. Jesus died on the cross to pay for anything and everything we've ever done. And then he rose from the grave so that we might have life everlasting with him forever.

And that's the good news that's offered to you today. Just like David was offered forgiveness in light of everything that he had done, the same offer is given to you. Our relationship with God, hear me, is not based off of what we have done or who we are. It's based off of who God is and what Jesus has done for you. So it doesn't matter what you've done.

David was a liar, an adulterer, and a murderer. What about you? What about you? What are the things that you've done, the things that you've thought, and the things that you've said that you think keep you from God? What are the things that you have hidden in the dark that think disqualify you from a relationship with God? There's no thing that could have just come to your mind that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

The offer of mercy and forgiveness is for you today no matter what you've done. God sees you and knows you and you can't hide it from him. David tried. He tried to hide it, but God loved him so much that he sent Nathan to confront him so that the relationship could be restored. God was pursuing for the relationship to be restored. And that same offer is given to you in Jesus today.

So there's a couple just little points of application as we close up here. How do we apply this? First, we do exactly what this Psalm does at the end. We pray and ask God to search us and to examine us. We actually want that. We want God to point out our mess.

And the truth is, guys, we can't see it sometimes. I challenge you, sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and just pray, God, reveal anything to me that is hidden from you or hidden from me. Anything that I'm trying to hide from you, point out any sin and just write down whatever God brings to your mind. And then pray and ask God for forgiveness and receive it. Maybe you go to people in your group and you ask them, we've got blind spots. Ask the people in your group, they'll point out your sin.

They may have a better grasp on it than you do. But we can do that. And when they point it out, don't be defensive, confess it, ask for forgiveness. Second point is that we ask the Lord to lead us in the way everlasting. Just like David does. To lead you on the right path, to hem you in, behind and before, to lead you on the path of everlasting life, to keep you.

In fact, it may be that you have to put feet to the prayers that you just prayed asking for the Lord to reveal it, that He might help you to be obedient. And if you're in the room this morning and you're not a Christian, I want you to understand something. God knows and sees everything and there actually is judgment for sin. But His desire is that you might run to Him and accept His love and His grace and His forgiveness. Your steps are exactly the same as what I said above. Ask God to show you your sin and confess it and accept His love and forgiveness and then walk in it.

You don't leave terrified. You've been offered something better. We all have. Kelly and Isaac are going to come back up and we're going to take communion. Communion is the tangible reminder of what Jesus did so that we can actually receive the grace and forgiveness that I'm talking about. That Jesus' body was broken and His blood was shed so that no matter what we've done, we can receive forgiveness.

And so if you aren't a Christian, I beg you to see God for who He is. He knows you. He knows your words and your thoughts and your actions and you can't hide it from Him. He chose. He chose to make a way for you to be in relationship with Him. So that's what we're asking you to do is to consider.

Consider that. Confess it before the Lord. And the truth is if you do that, then come. Come take communion for the first time and celebrate what Jesus has done for you. But if you're not ready to do that, we want you to sit and consider the weight of what we've talked about this morning.

And if you're a Christian, I want you to sit and ask the Lord to expose any grievous ways in us to lead us in the way everlasting, to quit hiding, to bring it into the light. Maybe there's something in your past that is haunting you. It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to. He offers you grace and forgiveness. Accept it.

And then when you're ready, come and take communion. Come and celebrate what Jesus has done for you. Let's pray. God, you know us and you see us and you're with us. And in spite of everything that we've done, you desire for us to be in relationship with you. And you have made a way for that to be possible.

So all across the room right now, Lord, I pray that you would go to work on our hearts, that we would confess our sins before you, we would confess our fears before you and bring it into the light so that you might forgive us. And we can walk in freedom, Lord. We're not chained by our past. We're not chained by the things that we've done. Lord, we can be free in Jesus. And it's in his name we pray.

Amen. I'm just going to play for a minute. I want to ask you to just pray and to consider all around the room.

Psalm 19: The General, Specific Knowledge of God

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 19: The General, Specific Knowledge of God

Spencer Cary

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Today. So you can go to page 259 in your blue Bibles. The text will also be on the screen. Sometimes with people, you get a very general picture of who they are, but it takes time to get to know them specifically. You listen to their stories, get to hear more about them, and then the picture of who they are gets more colored in. That was true for me with my grandfather.

My grandfather passed when I was 10, and as a child, I had a very general picture of who he was. I knew he was kind of this Titan-esque type figure in our family. I knew that he was a good man, a respected businessman, but as a child, there's only so much you can know about the depths of your grandfather. He passed away, and then in the years that followed, I got stories passed down to me. I got to learn more about him. I got to hear from my grandmother while she was still alive, stories about who he was.

I got to hear from my mom, from different people who knew him, from people that worked for him. I mean, even he's been gone for almost 20 plus years, and about a month ago, I went to a place to get my hair cut that I don't normally go to, and I sat in the chair, and this woman in her 70s started cutting my hair, and we started chatting it up, and sure enough, she cut my grandfather's hair all those years ago and gave me more stories of who he was. And it helps complete the picture for me of who my grandfather was. It happens with people, because you can know them generally, but you get to know more about them.

You hear their stories. You get to know them more specifically, and the same is with our God, as what we're going to see in Psalm 19 this morning. The Psalm is going to start with this general picture of God as revealed in creation. Creation gives us a general picture of God, and that is known as the doctrine of general Revelation. And then the next section, we're going to see that the word of God gives us a more specific picture, that the stories that have been passed down to us in the scriptures help give us a different picture that helps fill in who God is, and that's known as the doctrine of special Revelation that we're going to see.

And then the Psalm is going to close out with what our response should be to this God. So let me pray for us, and then we'll jump into the text. Father, I thank you that we get to worship you, that we get to sing praises to you, and we get to sit under the authority of your word. God, I pray this morning that you would help us be present, that you'd help us listen, that you'd help us respond in faith and repentance and in praise. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so we're going to be starting off in verse 1. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. So the psalmist starts by saying, look up, see the heavens, see how it proclaims the glory of God. Now, glory is a hard word for us to conceptualize. It's a hard word for us to really understand. Like, I can tell you that it means his splendor, his majesty, the honor and deference that is due to him, but that's still abstract and hard to picture.

But what we see here is that creation helps us picture glory, that God's creation helps us understand it further, that when you look at the heavens, you can see that. When you look at a sunrise or a sunset, you can visualize the glory of God. Like, when I was in college, I did a study abroad program called Semester at Sea, and got to travel around the world on a ship, and a lot of days on the ship, I'd sit out and look at the sunset that would drop into the ocean, and then I woke up for one sunrise, because all I could muster in college is to get up for one sunrise. I had one sunrise and a bunch of sunsets.

But man, when you see the sunrise and the sunset over the open ocean, it's beautiful. It's unbelievable. There's something transcendent, like surpassing about a sunrise and a sunset that everyone feels when you see it. That's why the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when he is describing a sunrise, he says, how small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings and the presence of great elemental forces of nature. Now, he's not a Christian. He was a philosophical rationalist.

But he even says, in the face of a sunrise, how small and petty are our ambitions and our strivings. And he says, in the face of great elemental forces of nature, but someone who doesn't believe in God says, I feel small in the presence of something so big. And he's tapping into something that we just understand. There's a reason that we don't look at the sky and immediately think, oh, what a beautiful array of colors as the light is bending along the horizon. Like, we don't go technical. Even the most hardened atheists would look up at the sky and have to suppress this impressive feeling of transcendence.

When you look at a sunrise and sunset, that is glory. That's what that feeling is. It's we're tapping into the glory because creation declares the glory of God. The sunrise and sunset, the heavens shows his handiwork, reveals who the artist is. So when I'm with my kids and we're driving and we see a sunset, I say, kids, guys, look, look at what God has painted for us this evening.

How beautiful is that? How wonderful is that? To help us see and feel like this is the work of God on display. And it isn't just the day that reveals his glory. It's the night. In verse two, it says day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

The creation isn't just speaking. It's isn't just declaring. It's speaking. It's pouring forth knowledge. And night to night, it's giving us more knowledge of who God is. A few months back, I think I mentioned this in a sermon a while back, that I was reading my Garden and Gun magazine, which is what I do these days.

But I was reading it. And I learned that you could look at the, that you could see the Milky Way with the naked eye in certain parts of the world that don't have light pollution. I was like, you can actually see this thing? I was like, that, goals, I'm in. Like, I want to do that. Like, you can, you can look at, in certain parts of the world, just look up at the sky and see that.

I mean, how unbelievable is that? That's a, that's a, just a camera, you guys. Took that picture. The next one that you can stare up at the heavens in a way that the psalmist probably would have. This psalmist, they don't have light pollution back then. They're not dealing with what we got right now.

Hey, look at that in the sky when it's clear in certain parts of the year and see how powerful that picture is and feels so small. When you see something so beautiful, when you encounter this type of glory, you feel smaller and smaller, like you're part of something that is much bigger. Scientists will say that, they say that the, it's debated, but the universe is somewhere around 93 billion light years in diameter. Okay, so a light year is 6 trillion miles. So 93 billion times 6 trillion equals a lot of math.

And, and that's, and they said that's the observable universe. Some theorize that it's, it's even bigger than that. Like there's a new telescope that's out. This is kind of a new thing that's went online this week. The James Webb telescope took a picture that the Hubble telescope couldn't take as clear as this. That's an actual galaxy.

That's, that's a, that's a picture of God's grand creation. Like God made this. He, he, he is bigger than this. When you catch a glimpse of that and his greatness and his vastness, you're tapping into his glory, you're witnessing the glory of his creation. The, the fact that our God thought this into existence, made this out of nothing. It's incredible.

And that glory echoes across the world in verse three. It says, there is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the ends of the earth, to the end of the earth. One commentator said it this way, that creation resounds with a speech that human beings can neither hear nor understand. We just, we can't wrap our minds around how big this is. The psalmist continues, and then he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

But the imagery being here, that it got to set a wedding tent. The sun comes out like a bridegroom who after consummating his marriage is joyfully bursting forth every morn. And in verse six, it says, its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them. And there's nothing hidden from its heat. In Akkadian and Sumerian mythology, which I'm sure is what many of you dabble in in your spare time. But this is a dead, dead language, a dead religion, people group from, you know, 3,000 years ago.

But in their mythology, they have, they would worship a sun God, and they would use very similar language like this. It would burst forth from the wedding chambers every morning. And commentators theorize that maybe the language being so similar here is a bit of a shot that God is bigger than that. Not an object that we worship as it comes forth every morning, that he stretched the tent out for it. He created all of it and stands over all creation. So this first section of the Psalm poetically paints the picture known as general Revelation, a doctrine of general Revelation.

That when you look at the heavens, you gain knowledge of his power, of his wisdom, of his beauty, of his majesty, just by witnessing creation. That's why in verse 2 it says, day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. That creation gives us a general picture of who God is. That's what Paul is getting at in Romans 1. In Romans 1 verses 19-20 he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they are without excuse.

What he's trying to help us see is, is that when you look at creation, when you witness this, that you're getting a general glimpse of the invisible attributes of God, namely his eternal power and his divine nature, is evident in creation. It is why even the most hardened atheists can look at a sunrise and feel something and feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. Feel like that what they're seeing and what they're witnessing is transcendent, which shouldn't even exist for their understanding and their worldview. It is because creation points to its creator. That's why he goes on to say, they're without excuse.

That when you experience creation, you have a general understanding and a knowledge of who God is. No matter how hard we try to explain the beauty of that, of a sunrise and a sunset, as some subjective experience, no, this points to our God. Now, let me say one last thing on this. For the Christian that is witnessing this, this helps us picture glory better. This helps us understand glory better. C.S.

Lewis in The Four Loves said, But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. Meaning that looking at nature helped him understand glory better. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the fear of God could ever, could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. Which is really thick C.S. Lewis philosophical language.

But what he's saying there is, is I wouldn't have understood glory, I wouldn't have understood the fear of God had I not looked at some of the scariest aspects of creation. The ominous ravines, the unapproachable crags. What he's saying is, is that creation, that nature helps us understand this. That the sunrise and the sunset helps us see the divine beauty of God. That when you witness a very powerful storm and a fearfulness. I remember years ago I was camping on Lake Murray and we were on a tiny little island and a storm blew through.

And it blew our campsite into the water and we'd get pounded by wind and rain and thunder and lightning all around. And I felt so small and helpless. And that was just a small, tiny taste of the power of God. And that helps us picture, helps us feel, helps us understand what the fear of God and the glory of God is. So as Christians, listen, this means you should get outside a little bit.

Alright? Seriously, get off the phone. Put down the game controller. Get out of the meta. Whatever it is. Whatever your speed is.

And go experience God's creation. Like see it and witness it. So that we can have a better feeling, understanding for glory. So he walks through that. Gives us this general picture of God. And then he gets to the next section which is going to be a more specific picture.

Starting in verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. Making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right.

Rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure. Enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean. Enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together.

So, while creation gives us this general picture, the scriptures are going to color that in. It's going to give God definition. It's going to help us see the hows and the whys in understanding who our God is. Which I appreciate. That helps. The scriptures helps us really enjoy God better.

Like years ago, growing up, there was a big song when I was a kid called Closing Time. Right? Love that song. Right? And as a kid, really enjoying it. Good song.

But later, years later, the songwriter, the lead singer said, Listen, I wrote that song about becoming a father. It's not about closing time at a bar. It's about becoming a father where the next chapter of your life is about to start. And it's going to be very different. That's why he ends the song saying, Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. And I was like, man, when you understand the depth and the commentary behind that, that's powerful.

It helps us appreciate it better. That's what the scriptures help us do. It helps us see and savor God in new and better ways. And in this poetic section we just walked through, there are six synonyms for the scriptures. It says the law, the testimony, the precepts, the commandment, the fear, and rules. So we're going to work through each of these.

He says in verse 7, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. So the law there is the first five books of the Old Testament. The Torah. So that would be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That was, at the time, that was their scriptures. Later on, more Old Testament scriptures are starting to be added.

But for them, in this time period, they're looking at the law, which is their scriptures. And the psalmist says the law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfect. It is blameless. And we look, as Christians, at the scriptures, the very Bibles that are in this room. We say it's perfect.

When we say that, there is skepticism that creeps in. Some people will say, yeah, how do you know it's perfect? You don't even have the original manuscripts. And the reality is, is that the longer I study this, the longer I study the scriptures, the more unbelievably compelling this case is. How trustworthy and perfect and true they are. That's why we use words like inerrancy and infallible.

Because even though we don't have the original manuscripts, there are more manuscripts, more copies of the scriptures than any ancient text. And it's not even remotely close. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of those manuscripts all around the world. And now digitized on the internet. And when you overlap each of them, okay, over 99% of it lines up perfectly. I mean, think about 2,000 years or 1,500 years of a copying tradition.

And that lines up perfectly. And the less than 1% where this word is used here and this word is used here. There's an unbelievable tradition of scholars who are way, way, way smarter than me. That have studied the original languages their whole life. And they come up with really helpful explanations for why there's some differences there. It's unbelievably trustworthy and true.

And then other skeptics will come in and say, well, what about the contradictions in the Bible? And I just say, well, where? Show me. Point them out. And a lot of times, look at Google. Find them.

But you can work through each of those. Work through each of the things. You get the commentaries out and some closer study and basic logic. You can work through a lot of them. I remember in college, I studied religion at a school that did not believe the scriptures were true at all. And they knew I was, I did.

And one of my professors, she came at me real hard one time. She's like, oh, you believe the Bible's in error, right? All right, well, tell me the story of Noah. Did they load up two by two or was it seven? And as a new Christian, I was like, oh, no. I'll get back to you.

And I said, no. But a little closer study realizes, oh, wait, no. They did load up two by two and they added seven of clean animals. Why? Because those were for sacrifices they were going to offer later when they got off the boat. God didn't want to have these species go extinct.

Just basic stuff like that. That's a closer study of the text. Over and over and over again, the longer I studied the scriptures, the more I realized the law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfect. It revives the soul. Like someone wandering in the desert with cracked lips, thirsty.

And they stumble upon an oasis and they drink of the water. So the scriptures revive the broken soul. The law of the Lord is perfect. He goes on to say, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The testimony of the Lord is sure. It's trustworthy.

It's a trustworthy thing. It is secure. It means you can bank your life on it. We as Christians believe that. We believe that our life, our authority is God in the scriptures. It's God's word that shapes us.

It's our foundation for how we live our life. And some people would say, well, why would you choose something so old, so ancient, so archaic? Why can't you get with the times? Why can't you have a more updated understanding? And when that happens, a good thing to do is, okay, well, what is your foundation for belief? What is your foundation for how you live your life, for how you understand the bigger things in life?

And if you can ask some questions like, why, well, where do you get that from? Well, why? And press in a little further. There's typically two main places where the skeptic will land. It will land that they are their own authority, which is what I believe. Well, they are their own authority, or they place their authority in a handful, just a few different, mostly dead, older white guys, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud.

But it's like, no, I believe that our foundation is more secure than that. I believe wholeheartedly that the scriptures that have guided the people of God for thousands of years still holds immense value. Like, last summer, we spent a summer in the Proverbs. And we looked at the Proverbs, which are, they're not promises. They're proverbial advice, guidelines for how to live your life so that you can stay out of poverty, so that, like, a passionate lover doesn't try to kill you. You know, basic advice for life.

We looked at that, and it's like, no, this is wisdom that is worth building your life upon. And if you do that, it generally goes well for you. There are a lot of young guys who just lost all of their life savings on NFTs. And if you want to know, if you don't know what NFTs are, it's okay. You never need to know what NFTs are. Just, it's basically a Ponzi scheme for people under the age of 40 that like really bad digital art.

Okay? Gambling on that kind of stuff. But they lost everything on that. And it's like if you just paid attention to the wisdom of the scriptures, which Proverbs 13, 11 says, wisdom or wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. Man, if you built your life upon that, it generally will go better for you. That's worked well for the people of God for the last 3,000 years.

So when I was researching NFTs, I was like, oh, this feels kind of schemey. This feels a little bit better. If you build your life upon it, it is trustworthy and true. Verse 8, it says, The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The precepts, these are the rules. They are right.

That if you live your life in line with the will of God, you'll get more than happiness as the American dream defines it. You'll tap into some eternal joy that rejoices the heart. He goes on to say, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The commandments of the scriptures, the teachings, where God commands us to do a thing, that's actually pure and good for us. And it opens our eyes to what is ultimately good. One of my friends from study abroad, her husband, he got an acting role on a TV show that just got released.

And I've been watching, we're Facebook friends, I've been watching him post about it all the last year. He's like, I'm going to be on a show with Chris Pratt. I was like, sweet. So I turned it on, I watched the, it just dropped on Amazon, the terminal list. I watched the first couple episodes. I saw him in the first episode.

I was like, man, this is awesome. And then I was like, oh, this, this is just going to be a super violent show where he just brutally murders everyone who wronged him. I got to look at it ahead of time. I knew there wasn't like sex or nudity and stuff that wouldn't be good for my soul, but I didn't fully realize it was just going to be completely vengeance. He's going to brutally murder everyone. I was like, no, I'm good.

I don't need this. Because if you have a framework for your life that says, if you basically, if you, the prism for how you live your life was basically two basic commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love other people, your neighbor, enemies, etc. If you love God and love other people, and that was how you made decisions, you'd realize there's certain things like, no, this doesn't actually help me love God. Does this actually inspire anything that is good for my soul? I'll pass.

It's because the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. Now, we don't normally see fear as a synonym for Scripture, but here it fits and it's like, oh, this is what he's getting at. The fear of the Lord is clean. And what this is tapping into is that the Scriptures help us fear God. Now, over the last 20-ish years in the American church, there's been like an attempt to say, well, fear of God, when the command says fear God, that actually what it's getting at is it's just saying worship Him.

Just revere Him. Reverence and awe and worship. And it's like, no, not quite. Yes, it does imply that. Fear is worship and awe and reverence. But it also means what it literally says, fear.

There's a command here to fear God. It is good for us to fear the Lord. Yes, He is gracious and good and kind and merciful. And all of those attributes. And also, He is the scariest object in the universe. He should be feared above all things.

We should absolutely see that. Because it is clean and endures forever. The roles of the Lord are true and righteous all together. That's highlighting more of the same things that we just walked through. That's how He paints the Scriptures. With these pictures.

They help us understand God. They help us build our life on something bigger. And then in verse 10, He summarizes. More to be desired are they than gold. Even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them there is great reward. He says they're more desirable than gold. Gold was the most valuable and the most valuable objects of their time. Honey, honey. They didn't have sugar.

Cane, like us. That was the sweetest thing of their time. So He says, the Scriptures are more valuable than the most valuable object you could lay hold of. It's sweeter than the most sweetest thing you can taste. That's what George was tapping into last week when he said delight in the law of the Lord. There is, listen, there is immense value.

There's immense value in experiencing our Creator and His Word. By enjoying our God. By reading the message of the Gospel from Genesis to Revelation. By these Scriptures we are warned and we are rewarded. The Scriptures color in this picture wonderfully. We get this general, big picture of who God is.

We look at creation. And then it gets further colored in. And we get to see more of who our God is. And why He made us. And why He would redeem us. And how He redeems us.

As we look at the Scriptures more and more. And if we do that. If you look at creation. And see how big our God is. And then look at the stories that are passed down. It will help you understand our God better.

In the same way that a 10 year old can't understand their grandfather. I have a general picture. It takes stories being passed down. And we have the Scriptures that are passed down to us. That help us picture who this God is. Just look at the Gospels, y'all.

Look at the stories of Jesus. Over and over again. There's so many stories about our God in the flesh. That are just wonderful. Like I think about Jesus when He heals the leper. In Matthew 8.

When this man that has leprosy comes to Him. And it wasn't just that he had a disease. That he had to be healed. That he was seen by his culture as disgusting. And dirty. And had to live outside the people of God.

He couldn't be in community with other people. That he comes to Jesus. And Jesus puts His hand on him. And says be clean. And He heals him. And changes that man's life.

And that story happens over and over and over again. Even in a more spiritual reality now. For those of us who feel dirty. And broken. In a need of redemption. He cleanses us through His righteousness.

And His blood. When I think about Jesus on the cross. And He is dying. And He says, Father forgive them. They know not what they do. I look at that and say, how could you say that?

Jesus, they're murdering you. You're talking about people who are murdering you. And you're concerned about their forgiveness. How beautiful is that? How glorious is that? I think about even smaller stories.

Where Jesus, even after His resurrection. He's at the end of the Gospel of John. He has this moment with Peter and James and John. Where he's about to teach Peter about the need for shepherding. But they're on the boat.

And they're fishing. And they see Jesus on the shore. This is before He ascends into heaven. They see Him on the shore. And they come ashore. And it's just a simple picture of Jesus making breakfast for them.

He's cooking fish for them. Which is not my kind of breakfast. But if Jesus was doing it, I'm in. And He, just a simple, He's the God of the universe. He could have done it anyway. But He's simply, humbly making them food.

I mean, guys, there is story after story after story after story after story. That helps us see how good our God is. How much He loves us. How much He cares for us. How glorious He is. And how better it is to live with Him into eternity.

And when you finally understand that. When you see the general picture of God in creation. And are overwhelmed by His glory. And you mind the scriptures to see who our God is. Your only response should be how this psalmist finishes. 12 through 14.

Here's how He responds. Who can discern His errors? That's rhetorical. Nobody. Who can discern His errors? Who can call out God?

He says, declare me innocent from head and faults. He says, God, declare me innocent of a sin that I cannot see. And then He goes on to say, Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. So He says, keep me from the hidden sins that I cannot see.

And keep me from the willful sins. I don't want any of it. The stuff that I can't see. The willful ones that I do. God, keep me from all of my rebellion. Don't let that have dominion over me.

He says, then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. And then He goes on to finish this off with this unbelievably poetic and powerful request. He says, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. He says, God, let everything. Let everything.

My thoughts. The meditations of my heart. Let the words that come out of my mouth. Let everything. Let all of it be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The God who created the universe and created me and has every fiber of my being. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. What a powerful prayer. And as Christians, we read this Psalm. This side of the cross and empty tomb. We know how to do this.

And it's as simple as Romans 10, 9. Because you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. You will be saved. That is how we are blameless before the Lord. When you encounter how big God is and how glorious God is. And you realize how much we've sinned against Him.

How unacceptable on our own we are before Him. When you realize how our sin earns death and hell. When you realize that part of the gospel. And then you encounter how much He loves us because of His great love. The only reasonable response to the gospel is this. It is throwing our lot in with this God.

And saying, I believe in you, my rock, my redeemer. Y'all, we as Americans are so unbelievably blessed to have access to God. Where we can look up at the heavens and see the glory of God. And have a Bible on our phone. We have unbelievable access to our God. And if you're figuring this out.

If you're feeling out Christianity. You're not sure about this yet. I invite you. Look up at the stars. See the unbelievable design. Of this universe.

I mean, look at the earth. And how it's perfectly positioned from the sun. At the right distance. With the right tilt. All the way down to how the cells in our body are designed. And how the, like our eye and the complexities.

Look at all of it. And see. This points to our Creator. And then I invite you. From that position. Come to the Scriptures.

And see who He is. And if you are a Christian. Witness creation. And worship Him. Search the Scriptures. And delight in Him.

Don't miss that. Life is busy. Okay. It is boom, boom, boom, boom. Death. That's it.

It moves very, very quickly. And we as Americans are very, very busy. And fill our days with all kinds of things. Don't miss this. That when you're driving into work. And you're concerned.

And worried about the things you've got to do at work. And you see the sunrise coming up over. Don't miss that. Look at that sunrise. And be reminded of how big. And how glorious.

And how majestic. And how amazing our God is. And respond like this psalmist. When he says, Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. See the sunrise.

And go, God, you're so big. And you're so glorious. God, thank you for redeeming me. Thank you for loving me with a fierce, unbelievable love that I don't deserve. That when you look out in your yard. And you see the birds.

Mining the grass for food. Every morn. Remember. That God provides for His creation. Look at the Scripture. Remember what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew 6. That's a picture of how God provides. That He provides. He takes care of His creation. That when you are in a storm. And your house is shaking.

Or an earthquake. Because that's a thing here nowadays. When you feel that. And you feel scared. Let that roll up into what the psalmist says. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me. Let that fear roll up into God. You're so big. You're so powerful. Don't let the hidden faults. Or my willful sin against you.

Don't let that roll over me. Let that roll up into worship. And praise. And obedience. That comes from a position of deep love for God. Tonight.

As the moon rises. I think it's a full moon. Maybe. As it rises up over. The horizon. You see it against the backdrop of the stars.

And you see how big and vast. This universe is. And you think about that. The God who made all of that. Who stands over all of it. Knows every part of who you are.

Knows your past. Your present. Your future. And holds it all in his hands. Respond like the psalmist. Let the words of my mouth.

And the meditation of my heart. Be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord. My rock. And my redeemer. Let creation.

And the beautiful. Word of God. Help us. Worship. Our glorious. God.

Psalm 1: Delight in His Word

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 1: Delight in His Word

Jorge Garcia

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Transcript

Good morning my name is George Garcia and as Spencer said I am one of the community group leaders here at Mill City Church Casey we are going to be in Psalm 1 today that will be on page 254 of the blue Bibles if you do not own a Bible or do not have one currently please take that one today not only is today's sermon from the Word of God it is about the Word of God so today would be. A wonderful day for you to take home a Bible and since it is about the Bible we're going to be talking about reading the Bible now reading the Bible is something that I struggled to do a lot growing up and even to this day whether it was because I was lazy or I just simply forgot or because even when I was reading the Bible I did not know what I was doing growing up I didn't. Really grow with a lot of direction and a lot of explanation as to why reading the Bible is so important all I was told that it was just something that a Christian should do when I actually began implementing Bible reading as I grew as I grew and as I mature it's just I just added it to the list of something to do I just added it to my routine which I was fine with reality is for me I'm someone who. Can do the exact same thing every single day I can wake up I can shower read my Bible go to work come home play guitar if I have some time catch up with my wife eat dinner and go to sleep I could do that every single day for the rest of my life and I would have no problem with that now to some of you that sounds like a prison routine to me your prison is my dream regardless even if you grew up Bible.

Reading all the time or you've tried to implement Bible reading your life or even if you've never even opened up the Word of God Psalm 1 serves as a reminder and an explanation as to why we should not only just read the Bible but we delight in the Bible so we're going to read Psalm 1 it's only six verses then I'm going to pray for us and then we're going to tackle each verse one at a time Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night verse 3 he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does he prospers the wicked are not so but are like. Chaff that the wind drives away therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish let me pray Lord we are humbled and undeserving of this opportunity to open up your Word and I ask as we read through Psalm 1 may it serve to remind us and explain to us why we get to. Meditate and delight in your finished work Lord I ask that if there's any area any anywhere in our hearts that are distracting us from this morning I ask that you take that away and we focus and we pay attention and pay their respect to your Word that we are supposed to I pray this in your name amen verse 1 blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of the.

Sinner nor sits in the seat of scoffers now we're not starting off with the positives clearly we go from walking in the counsel of the wicked to then standing to then taking a seat among the scoffers this is a natural flow of sin sin is a very progressive thing and since we are naturally inclined to be comforted by sin this is sin this is the process of sin in our life an example of this. Is actually myself in the workplace I work in my free time not in my free time the summer is my free time I work at a school I am a PE teacher which is awesome but as if there's any teachers in the room you know that during the school year teaching can be draining and because it's so draining and sometimes it feels unrewarding it leaves room for gossip and for slandering so usually when I'm walking. The halls before or after school because we don't ever get an opportunity to talk to each other during school I'll listen I'll hear some gossip in the classroom or just wherever the break room is and I'll stand there I'll be walking then I'll stand I'll listen to it and I'll think to myself it's not worth it I shouldn't do it but that person's pretty terrible let me just see what they have to. Say let's just let me just let me just walk in we'll see and then before I know it I've taken a seat among the scoffers and I am either condoning what is being said or I'm contributing to it and it just happens just like that and so the reality is what verse one is getting at is what how sin progresses in our lives we also see this in social media where you can see someone asking for.

Help or advice and with the situation they're going through and all you you read through the comments you read through whatever is being responded to them and it's just terrible it's strictly worldly advice there's nothing it's rooted on but the problem is we go from mindlessly scrolling then all of a sudden we're also contributing that same type of advice we see this in movies and videos and shows we watch. We get so hooked they're very clever with how they bring us in and before we know it or being more influenced by the show we watch than by the word of God we see this with political commentary a show that I used to watch or listen to was the Ben Shapiro show I know Spencer has mentioned that a couple of times it's a political commentary show it's a conservative political commentary show which essentially. It's just an excuse to lash out on anything that isn't conservative and you know what I love it I love it because in my sinful nature for some reason is drawn to that is drawn not necessarily to the political idea but to the idea of someone lashing out on someone else and so I've had to stop watching it and listening to it because I get hooked. And I get influenced by it all of a sudden I'm I'm thinking these things that uh the show talks about we also see this with lust and the over sexualization of pretty much everything you can just be watching a movie with friends or your spouse and then some triggering or provocative scene comes up and now you can't get that out of your head and before you know it you're indulging.

And acting upon those thoughts and feelings now when you take a seat somewhere you normally take a seat when you're comfortable right you don't take a seat somewhere and stay there for a long time if you're not comfortable and so we see that in verse one that the last step is to take a seat among the scoffers because that's when you get comfortable and so we need to take a look a closer look at what. Gives us comfort where are areas in which we have taken a seat among the scoffers or even what we're playing with fire what catches our attention what makes you stop in that hallway and what makes you finally eventually join the psalmist goes on to give a direct count to this in verse two verse two but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. Now there's a very it's a big u-turn here we go from what the blessed man does not do to what he does do and what he does is he delights in the law of the Lord the hebrew meaning of delight being pleasure so what he is doing is he's taking pleasure in the law of the Lord now side note but also very important to the rest of this is that when the psalmist wrote this they were referencing the. Ten commandments when they said law of the Lord they were referencing the ten commandments which was the written word of God in the new testament we see the writers and the authors reference Psalms Proverbs as well as the ten commandments for the same exact reason it's the word of God so we fast forward to today and we have this right here so when we read that in Psalm when he meditates.

In the law of the Lord we are referring to the written word of God he is meditating on the written word of God now with knowing that we can go back to verse two the psalmist goes from listing what not to do to an all-encompassing encompassing word in delight the word delight is used several times in the Psalms all pointing to ultimate joy and satisfaction it's not just don't do this or don't do that. It's take pleasure in and delight in the law of the Lord this is why this is a the way verse one and verse two kind of go together is verse two is a complete uh opposite reaction it is it is a it is a counter to walking in the counsel of the wicked standing in the way of sinners and sitting in the seat of scoffers and it uh what that means is what the psalmist is trying to get at is that delighting. In the law of the Lord is the fundamental alternative to walking and sitting and standing in sin I'll say that again delighting in the law of the Lord is the fundamental alternative to walking and sitting and standing in sin now why is that the case well because the word of God is a story from front to back that all points to Jesus alistair beg who is a pastor in cleveland ohio put it like this. We find christ in all the scriptures in the old testament he has predicted and the gospels he has revealed in Acts he has preached in the epistles he has explained and a Revelation he has expected in Genesis God tells us that the serpent he will he tells the serpent he will bruise his head with the offspring of that woman and that eventual offspring being Jesus Jesus arrives in the new testament and we.

See miracles and his teachings all throughout Matthew Mark Luke and John such as bringing lazarus back to life turning water into wine and revealing that he knew the woman at the well these are just all of the countless examples of Jesus's miracles and his work that in Acts we see people like paul and barnabas preach the finished work of christ to the nations and then some areas and people need. Correcting or refining so they need Jesus explained to them they need that finished work explained to them so that's why we have the letters to the people in corinth and galatia and colossus and then in Revelation the bible ends on the expected return of Jesus and it's not just like oh he's coming back now it's if you take a look at revelations it is a triumphant return he will come back and collect his. People so all throughout the bible from front to back it's all about Jesus it's all about the wonderful story of Jesus coming to the earth and reconciling his people we get to delight in that story that's why it's the fundamental alternative now we can focus on the word delight a little bit it's used here purposefully delighting in something is an external and an internal reaction to something take for. Example you have a friend and by God's grace I do have a friend in our group by joe benton who uh he has a smoker so just picture that you have a friend who has a smoker and they text you like five in the morning because that's usually when these things happen and they say hey I'm gonna smoke a brisket today come on down later tonight first of all wonderful friend and second of all I'm there.

And once you get there you know you wait all day they pull that brisket out and I've just been smoking for several hours and it's being pulled ever so easily because it's been there for like 10 11 hours and it's on your plate mac and cheese and baked beans are there but they're not important right now you take that first bite and you just take in that moment I know some of you are already thinking. Of it and I know lunch is later but there you take in that moment and in that moment I am delighting in what's in front of me I'm delighting in the food in the brisket I am delighted it's not only internal it's external right I'm saying but I'm also like oh this is this is amazing but the crazy thing is ever since I found ever since I got that text ever since I was told that. My whole day got better I've been delighting the entire day my day was that much more enjoyable because I was looking forward to what was to come and then when I partook in it forget about it that's when the song that's what the psalmist is trying to get at here delighting in the law of the Lord day and night to the light in the law of the Lord day and night is. To constantly be influenced and affected by the word of God so much so that you are so eager to return to it after you're done reading it and you're eager to return to it because all you're thinking about or at least what some of the things you're thinking about are the word of God it's keeping you in check it's helping you respond to your co-workers it's helping you be loving and patient to people that.

Don't deserve it and the only way you can do that is by delighting in the law of the Lord we move on to verse three he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does he prospers now we're going now we're seeing what the blessed man is what what the word blessed is the streams of water that plant the tree is the. Word of God the tree mentioned has a firm foundation it has one that is everlasting and solid and that's where we need to be right where we are where we're naturally inclined to be is we like to walk and listen to the counsel of the wicked we like to stand in the way of sinners and we like to sit down because it's comfortable because it's easy it doesn't take that much effort. What we want to be is like the tree that's planted by streams of water that lasts forever even in seasons of difficulty even in seasons of suffering Jeremiah goes on to say it like this from Jeremiah 17 verses 7 through 8 blessed is the man who trusts whose trusts blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord whose trust is the Lord verse 8 he is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. And does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought for it does not cease to bear fruit what a wonderful picture that is of a tree that is planted by streams of ever flowing water and that is what is true for the christian who is delighting in the law of the Lord that seasons of suffering seasons of anxiousness don't feel that anxious they don't.

They don't you can bear it because you have the word of God you have the truth and the delight in that story that can bring you comfort peace and joy that actually lasts now if you look at me you can clearly tell that I've planted plenty of trees in my time regardless what I do know about planting a tree specifically trees that bear fruit or specifically fruit trees is that they bear fruit. And it bears fruit for the benefit of the planter and for those around it if you ever had a friend who gardens normally whenever their vegetables or fruits come in they come in a surplus and in almost and almost always because they come in a surplus they share it with those around them that's what it's like to be planted by streams of water the Lord delivers in a surplus. You prosper and you get to share that fruit with others you get to show love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control to those around you and it does not wither so you get to bear that fruit into eternity about been leading group for about four years now four and a half years and not that the first two years were bad by any means but something changed about two years ago. And you can chalk it up to people you know maybe we had some new people come in and they were great but something radically changed in our group and what that was was by God's grace we began to fall more in love with his word as a group and it came at a great time because then we multiplied we were a group that was in love with the word that was being taught the word that was talking constantly about the word.

And then we multiplied and now we have another group that meets in congress in the casey area and I know that they are being infatuated and in love with the word week in and week out and that changes that's what actually changes people it convicts it convicts us is the word of God and so and none of that has to do with the group leaders by the way it all has to do with his word. It's all because we decided that we we pressed on we kept reading his word that eventually it will it will change someone moving on to verse four the wicked are not so but are like chaff that the wind it drives away now this is a very contrasting image in that the chaff is being driven away by the wind we talked a little bit about this when we went uh when we were in Ruth but an example I can. Think of to kind of better picture it in your head is and and the reason I chose this example because I am a coffee snob but when you roast coffee beans uh it's a very tedious process you got to put it on the the roaster but on and off on and off it takes forever but after you actually do the roasting and the beans look like what we would all uh picture uh coffee beans to look like you have to put it into. A colander which I recently learned what I when I got married I learned what a colander was and you put it in the colander and you kind of shake it back and forth because you're trying to get rid of the skin of the bean or the chaff because it's no good you don't want that on your coffee bean the chaff brings no benefit to anyone and they have no foundation therefore it makes complete sense.

That the wind would drive it away charles spurgeon who was a preacher in the 1800s describes the chaff as intrinsically worthless dead unserviceable without substance and easily carried away it is very clear that the wicked have no foundation unlike the blessed one is planted by streams of ever-flowing water and the other one has nothing to stand on. It is driven away by the wind Psalm 1 is very very clear on this that's why I'm thankful for verses like 5 and 6 verse 5 therefore the wicked will not stand in judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish the one that walks in the counsel of the wicked the one that stands in the way of sinners and the one. That takes a seat with the scoffers will not stand with the congregation of the righteous it will be very clear to the Lord who is who we see this in Matthew John the baptist is making a reference to what Jesus will do Matthew 3 12 his winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Jesus will return for what is his the rest will not make it which is why I'm thankful and completely humbled by a verse like verse 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous now this is more than just knows about okay so when you when you read that uh it's like a spouse knowing you or like a best friend who knows you they know a lot about you you know that they know.

Your tendencies they know maybe they know some of your thoughts because maybe you you know you talk to them you confide in them but there is only one person one being who knows everything about you all the good and all the ugly and when you think about it it's kind of terrifying imagine if your best friend knew every single thing about you and you think they know a lot about you but imagine if they. Knew everything about you it would be quite terrifying but the one that knows you completely is God the righteous can have peace because a loving God in heaven knows their way and will protect and he will preserve them if there's anybody I would want to know me like that it would be him and one of the main reasons I can think of is because a lot of times people will use. Knowledge of you to hurt you right when people find things about you one of the reasons we get a little scared to confess sin scared to talk in group is because we're scared that people knowing this about me what are they going to think of me what are they going to say about me what are they going to talk to other people about when it comes to me a lot of times that is a very very terrifying thought. But we can have peace knowing that there is an omnipotent loving gracious God who knows us and he will not use that knowledge against you that is the that is the grace aspect of the Lord now you may be asking or telling yourself what if I'm not good at this what if I'm not good at reading the bible what if I've tried and I've tried and it came to nothing what if I just can't.

Here's my encouragement to you last summer I was part of the summer internship here and just to give you a little insight on the summer internship there's a lot of meetings a lot of classes you go it's it's it's pretty rigorous honestly and one of the biggest things about the internship is showing up on time and I love punctuality um I do so when I discovered that punctuality was a major. Component of this internship I was really excited to show off my arriving on time skills but second week in I forgot that I had a meeting with isaac so not only was I late I was non-existent for the meeting third week I was very late or arriving just on time to the things between monday and thursday my pride was being tested the final straw for me was on sunday as it was on a on a sunday. And I forgot that we were supposed to show up at 8 a.m here we're supposed to show up at the church at 8 a.m and at the time chat was my track leader I was on the pastoral and like teacher development track and chat was my track leader and I remember that I I had to I was like I have to apologize this is like the fifth time and I remember the walk of me going to apologize to him and even as I was apologizing. Him the shame that I felt of my failure was honestly unbearable I had my head down I was I was talking to him and I was like this because of all the shame that I felt and after I apologized I kind of just stood there and chat looked at me and he said hey chin up I thought okay but then he said you're fully known you're fully forgiven and you're fully loved by a.

Savior who would gladly do it again feel that remember that and continue your your day like you believe that notice he didn't just say hey chin up show up on time next time hey chin up maybe what you can do is this this this this and this to show up on time now he reminded me of the gospel the work is finished and even in our shortcomings such as reading the bible we get to be forgiven. And out of that out of that forgiveness and grace we are empowered to be more like him and part of that is delighting in his word so then how do we set ourselves up for success in reading the bible I have a couple of practical ways that can work first and foremost pray pray pray for the desire to read his word the reason praying is the first thing I could think of is because praying sets. Us up for success and because it is the acknowledgement and the remembering of why we are able to delight in his word if we skip this step if we don't pray if we don't ask the Lord to make us more like him and to desire his word then we're just doing good works that we're just we're just it's just something else to do and we'll be missing the entire point of delighting in his word second recognize it's a battle. If you struggle to meditate or even just read through the bible like any goal you start with pure discipline now uh I started uh working out for the first time in my life about two years ago and when we started this was me and two other guys we we were we were on it like three or four times a week that was crazy but then the second I let go of that discipline the second one of us.

Was like it went from four three to four times a week to two to three times a week to once or twice a week to maybe once every two months so my point in that is that stay disciplined to reading the word read it in the morning great time to read the word of God now I know some of you are saying I'm not a morning person my question to you is what time do you go to sleep the night before. Now my point don't get me wrong my point is not that reading in the morning is the way but my point in that question is what are you doing to set yourself up for an opportunity to read the word of God third set a specific goal so if I'm up here and I tell you that I want to learn a new language and add it to my arsenal of languages and I just say hey I just want to learn a new language. It's really easy if I just keep it at that broad vague goal it's really easy for me not to be held accountable to it and you really don't know what to ask me really all you can ask me is hey how's that new language going and I can just say it's all right it could be better but if I told you I want to learn 45 new words write three new sentences and be able to have. A one-minute conversation with someone in that new language and the new language being portuguese let's say then you would know exactly what to ask me when you come up to me hey how's portuguese going hey how many words have you learned what's your favorite word what's the sentence you wrote it'd be a lot more difficult for me to kind of make something up there so set a specific goal fourth ask people.

In your community group to hold you accountable more specifically we all have that one person ask that one person that you know will hold you accountable sometimes we selectively choose who to hold us accountable because we know maybe they're not going to ask us also I learned this term recently it's called the bystander effect. Don't just tell your entire group I struggle with reading with the bible gather in two or three people because the temptation if you tell 10 to 12 people is that they'll probably be like oh I'm sure he'll ask him about his bible reading I'm sure they'll ask right and the problem is if everyone does that no one's going to ask you about your bible reading to get about two or three people and that. Just decreases the chances of oh I'm sure I'll ask him lastly don't forget why we get to do this we get to do this because of Jesus's finished work on the cross that is what empowers us and changes us to be more like him and follow him there is no one like him the band is going to come up we're going to sing a song that is based on Psalm one and I want this to be our prayer and our. Encouragement for this week there's a line in the song that I really love and it's in the chorus so we're going to hear it and we're going to sing it over and over again form us more and more into a people who love your word I love that because it implies and it's it's humbling because it's us admitting that we need the Lord to be able to love his word on our own.

We will we will easily and so fast we will so quickly we will take a seat among the scoffers but we love his word we love him we love people because he loved us first because he finished the work on the cross that is why I love this line because it is just it is that we are admitting that we need him first also I love the word form because you're not it's not going to be something you. You all of a sudden fall in love with tonight and then you're reading the bible every day starting tomorrow when you form something it has stages it takes time it takes steps so don't lose heart don't be discouraged because you lost you didn't read it one day but in those days of our shortcomings remind yourself of the finished work on the cross remind we need to remember that we are forgiven. We are fully known and that knowledge will not be used against us that knowledge is actually what is what brings us to him and because of that we get to delight in the whole we get to delight in that the whole time we delight in the story of salvation and the truth of grace and the truth of reconciliation we get to delight in that and that will give us joy peace and comfort that is everlasting let's pray. God I pray that as we are singing this last song as we are just thinking of what Psalm one has to say about your word Lord I ask that you through your grace and your forgiveness and in our shortcomings Lord may we not use your grace to paralyze us but may we use your grace to motivate us to push us to empower us to delight in your law.

Oh remind us as we are reading and as we delight in your word or as we fight to delight in your word Lord remind us that even if we even if we don't understand even if it takes time Lord you're not going anywhere you will sustain us you will preserve us you will maintain us the whole way we are so appreciative of that we are so humbled by that Lord we pray all of this in your name amen.

Psalm 42: Why Are You Cast Down?

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Psalm 55: Cast Your Anxieties

Spencer Cary

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Transcript

Alright, so, if you've been around long enough, you know this. We don't line up sermon series and individual sermons with holidays that aren't Christmas and Easter. It's just not a thing that we do. We did last year do Psalm 31 on Mother's Day, but that was very much the exception, not the rule. So, it's not intentional to put a Psalm of lament right before July 4th, but it is where it landed on the calendar. And that's what we're looking at today is Psalm 42.

It'll be on page 268 in the blue Bibles that are right around you. You can grab one of those. You can also follow along on the screen as we walk through this. So, culturally, in America, we don't handle suffering and sadness very well. That's just a cultural thing we don't handle very well. And in the American church, we're not much different.

We don't handle that subject well either. I could give you lots of examples of how that proves to be true. I really just want to give you one this morning, and that is K-Love. That is Christian Radio. So, this might step on some toes. I'm mildly apologetic about it.

But, Christian Radio in this department is very painful. It's painful in general for many reasons. First off, there's a lot of stuff that ends up on the radio that just is bad. It's bad theologically, songs you should not sing, bad quality, songs that should be done differently. You know, there's lots of reasons. You know, the songs that come from churches that I would never recommend you ever visit personally, ever, ever, ever.

There's a variety of reasons why Christian Radio can be a landmine. But one of the ones that is more pertinent that K-Love really misses the Mark on is that they're literally branded as positive and encouraging. That's it. Positive and encouraging. And what that really means and how they define encouragement is very narrowly what they mostly mean. It's positive.

It's positivity. And, you know, that's kind of been a thing for years in Christian Radio. It's just like it's all, it's a lot, it's very, very happy, positive, positive, positive. And, listen, I'm not against encouragement. I think encouragement is a very biblical thing. But you've got to have a broader category for that.

And, you know, that's been a thing. But I didn't want to. I was like, you know, I haven't listened to Christian Radio in some time. So let me get on K-Love and listen. And as soon as I turned it on, this song got off. And this guy got on and was like, it's National Selfie Day.

He's like, and just got really excited about National Selfie Day. And then he had this little jingle that went with it that was, you know, turn that frown upside down. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. It took two minutes for me to hear this. And I was like, all right, no, I think they're on brand. I think they're sticking to what they do.

Okay. Here's why that's problematic. When life curb stomps your happiness, okay, when it destroys the good things that are happening in your life, you need more than just positivity. That's not going to cut it. But, I mean, listen, you need more than even solid, cheerful theological songs. All right.

Psalm 100 is glorious. I mean, that's a beautiful Psalm. Some of the songs we sing are very joyful. Great things he has done. But there's got to be more than that.

The Psalm book gives us more than just joyful songs. When life is hard, you need more than celebration. You need a dirge. You need lament. And the Psalm book gives us that as a holistic part of worship. That there are Psalms throughout the whole 150th Psalm book that give us this, and we're in one of them today.

And my hope is that this would expand a category of worship for us. But what we're going to see as we follow through this today is that godly lament does not seek to fix our pain and suffering and loss, but it will help us endure. And that is what Psalms do for us. They help us endure through it all. So we're going to see that this morning as we walk through this.

Let me pray for us, then we will jump in. God, I pray that you'd help us be present this morning as we walk through a Psalm that is heavier. There are folks that are in a joyous season right now. And I pray that this would speak to them, preparing their hearts for the day of suffering when it comes. There are folks in our church family that are suffering. That right now this is very apparent in their life.

And I pray, God, that you would use this Psalm to provide unbelievable comfort that is found in you. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, so the Psalm book, the Psalms have subscripts underneath them that I'd argue probably go back to the original when it was recorded. And this Psalm 42 has that. It has a subscript that gives us some context.

And it says, To the choir master, a mascal of the sons of Korah. Now, we don't know what mascal means. It happens in the Psalms. There are certain words we don't know. It could be an artistic teaching type Psalm. But we do know who the sons of Korah are.

If you know the story of the sons of Korah, their descendant, their ancestor, is Korah. So Korah was a part of a rebellion that happened against Moses in the wilderness. And that rebellion did not go well for the people who rebelled. The earth literally gave way in judgment and swallowed them whole. So some of the sons of Korah survived this, and they bear the history of their ancestor's rebellion, of his unfaithfulness.

But they go on to do... This is a really cool redemption story. They go on to do great things. They become worship leaders. They become Psalm writers. Some of them are in the party of David, when David is on the run for his life.

And it's just a really cool backdrop to see the suffering that they come from, and the redemption that they have, that sets up Psalms like Psalm 42. So that's the subscript. Then you get into verse 1. It says, As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. So, as a deer pants for flowing streams, I like to deer hunt. That is a hobby of mine.

I actually got to join a hunting club this year. I'm very excited about it. Been working on the land, getting it ready for the fall. One of the things that you, when you're choosing land to hunt on, you want to choose land that has a water source of some type. Because if it doesn't have a stream, or a creek, or something nearby, you will not have a lot of luck. Deer need water.

That's the point. As a deer pants for flowing streams, as an animal who is in need, who's dehydrated, who needs water to survive. So my soul pants for you, O God. We're going to see this next week in Psalm 1, when Psalm 1 says, He is like a tree planted by streams of water. That God is this vibrant life source, this well of worship, and joy, and goodness. He says, As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you.

He's desperate, in need of the Lord. And what it's setting up is that, that this man, is a man who loves the Lord. That this lament, is not disconnected from the fact, that he is a godly man. He loves the Lord. He longs for the Lord. And that, that's a part of building this category of lament.

That it needs to come from a desperate, love, and desire, and pursuit of God. Because often times, culturally, mourning, and sadness, and lamenting of our culture, isn't that. When we're sad, we'll escape. Or we'll distract ourselves. Or we'll comfort ourselves. Which in the south means, a lot of unhealthy food.

And I'm not saying, like, bringing food isn't, I'm not, I'm not down on that. But you've got to have a broader category, that says no. Godly lament, is coming before the Lord, desperately needing Him, longing for Him. That type of godly, lament, does not seek to fix, our suffering and sadness. But it, it helps us endure.

It helps us withstand. And that's what He's doing here, when He gets into verse 2. My soul thirsts, for God, for the living God. When shall I come, and appear before, God. So, we're going to see this, throughout the rest of this Psalm. But that statement there, when shall I, when shall I, come and appear before God, we're going to see it fleshed out, that He can't be, in the presence of God, right now.

That He's far away, from the presence of God. So, in this period, the presence of God, ruled and reigned from, this is either written, during the period, when the tabernacle, was in existence, or the temple. But both of those, have the same thing. This is where God, ruled and reigned, amongst the people of God. This is where, He ruled and reigned from, and this is where, worship happened, before the Lord. So, when He's separated, from the Lord here, He can't be, worshiping, before the Lord.

And that's a very, joyous event, as the sacrifices, were being offered, there was all types, of joyful singing, before the Lord. There were instruments, like trumpets, and harps, and lyres, and tambourines, and strings, and pipes, and cymbals, and dancing. Yes, dancing. Baptists. There's this joyful, worship before the Lord, and He can't be there. We don't know, if it's because, He's on the run with David, if He's one of those, Corites, or if He's been banished, from the temple.

We don't really know, why He can't be there. But He longs, to be there, like in a barren, desert, needing, thirst, He needs, God. Which, just pause for a moment. That just gives us, that elevates the importance, of corporate worship, of what we do here, every Sunday. It is good for our souls, to be here. And we just, a lot of times, we take that for granted.

Like the inside joke, for us as pastors, is if we want to make, an announcement, it's got to be not just done, on one week. You have to do it, like multiple weeks in a row. Because we're, this is something, we're not alone in this. A lot of southern churches, struggle with this. That if you're, had a long week, or retired, or you know, coming off vacation, or whatever, it's just easy, to miss out on this. And even in our church, it's a lot easier, actually to be in a community group, and show up on, in the week, than it is on a Sunday morning.

And I want to push on that, a little bit, to say no value this time. It's good. It's good for your soul, to be amongst the people of God, worshiping Him together. So he goes on in verse 3, he says, my tears have been my food, day and night. What a vivid picture of suffering. That he's, in such mourning, he can't drink from the streams, of worship, that is before the Lord, that he's, day and night, crying.

So much so, that tears are flowing down his face, they're flowing, blubbering into his mouth. And that should expand, the category for us, and especially, men more struggle with this, generally speaking, that emotions are okay. You don't have to put your emotions, in a box, and put it up on a shelf, and never talk about it again. No, like, tears are fine, it's a healthy part of worship. Jesus, the God man, wept, when he saw Mary and Martha, mourning, when Lazarus died. We should have that, as a category of response.

I'm trying to build this, in my own son, who's four. I'm trying to help him see, listen, there are things, that we don't cry about. Alright? Not getting the right ice cream, not getting the right toilet, like, that's not, you know, yesterday was his sister's birthday, and his time's frustrated, he's not, no, no, no, it's alright. We're not gonna cry about that. There are things, you do cry about.

There are things, that you should grieve, there are things, that you should have tears for. I'm trying to build that, in himself, or build that in him. We need that, we need to grow in that. He's weeping, before the Lord. My tears have been my food, day and night, while they say to me, all the day long, where is your God? So, in the midst of, weeping, he's being taunted, with where is your God?

And I would argue, that that's more than just, the skeptical taunting, of where is your God? Because we hear that, culturally, you hear that a lot. Where is your God, when the shooting in Uvalde happened? Where is your God, when children were dying? I don't think that's what's, happening here. I think it's more personal to him.

He can't be, in the presence of God. So they're, they're poking on something, that's deeply hurtful for him. Where is your God? Oh, you can't be there, amongst your people, in the presence of God. Verse four, these things, I remember, as I pour out my soul, and then he starts to, recollect, how I would go, with a throng, throng is just, a crowd, the crowd worshiping together. I would go, with the throng, and lead them in procession, to the house, of God.

With glad shouts, and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Oh, I remember, how I used to lead, and worship, amongst the people, with, glad shouts, and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. That's such a human, response, in the midst of suffering, to long for the good old days. Maybe that's, maybe that's for you, that's long for the days, when you were a kid, in high school, the days of college, longing for the days, when you're in this community group, with this group of people, and this time of life, this friend group. That's very natural. That's what he's doing, he's longing, for the days, when he could joyfully, worship in the presence of God.

And in verse 5, we get this refrain. So the way that this Psalm, is structured, is you've got, verses, refrain, verses, refrain. So think like, verses, chorus, verses, chorus, that's kind of how this works. Here it is, verse 5, Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil, within me? Why am I so sad?

Why is there so much turmoil, in my soul? That is a question, that many of us will ask, in life. Why am I so sad? Why am I depressed? What's wrong with me? Why can't I feel, better?

And a lot of times, those answers, are not readily available. Last week, we looked at Psalm 55, which was, cast your cares, your burdens, your anxieties, upon the Lord, he will sustain you. And as I walked through that, can I help us, see a little bit, that anxiety is complicated. And we've taught that in the past, it's complicated. There's, there's physical things, that contribute to that. There's spiritual things, that contribute to that.

There's behavioral patterns, there's all kinds of things, that makes anxiety, a very complex subject matter. But the scriptures, say in the midst of that, it has a word for it. It has a word for us, when it says, to cast your cares, upon the Lord. The prescription is, coming to the Lord, with our anxieties. And depression, well depression is a close cousin, of anxiety. In fact, a lot of times, they come together, for some folks.

Depression and anxiety, come together. And depression is complex. It just is. There are physical things, that add to it. All the way down, to where you live, geography matters. Right?

You live in more northern parts, of the hemisphere. It's a little bit harder, when you have less sunlight. Sunlight matters. The vitamin D is, it matters. Seasonal affect, depression matters. That sometimes winter, is very hard.

There are physical things, there's chemical things, that are happening, that contribute to depression. There's behavioral patterns, that contribute to depression, and deep sadness. It's a strong correlation, between social media usage, and depression. Especially, the younger you are. There's contributing factors, that make it a very complicated, thing. It is definitely, multifactorial.

The part of the treatment, is very similar. It's coming before the Lord, with our depression. Coming before the Lord, with our sadness. That's what the psalmist, is doing here. He's deeply depressed. He's lamenting, before the Lord.

And he's asking, before the Lord, his own soul, why are you cast down? Why is the innermost part, of my being, so deeply sad, and distressed? Why is there so much, turmoil within me? Or as one songwriter, paraphrases this. He says, why so disturbed, within me? He's asking this.

These are difficult questions, to ask before the Lord. You have to, that's the question, why is he asking this, of himself, before the Lord? And it's very simply, he is acknowledging reality. He is acknowledging, his reality, before the Lord. That he, is in a desperate, depressed, sad, state. You can try to act, like you're not depressed.

Try to act, like you're not sad. You can try to grit your teeth, and get through it. Or, you can acknowledge, reality, before the Lord. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the most famous, preachers, in western, history, the last 500 years. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, was, I mean, had an early ministry, from 20 all the way, until he passed away, in his mid-50s. And what some people, don't realize is, that Spurgeon, if you read about his life, was depressed, on and off, most of his life.

Most of his adult life. He struggled with depression. I mean, there are times, where he literally, he could not, muster the strength, to stand up, and proclaim the word of God. He's nicknamed, the prince of preachers. That's his nickname. That's a dope nickname, that you want, if you're a preacher.

But he, could not muster, the strength sometimes, to actually come, before the Lord, and proclaim the word of God. That there were times, that he was deeply, deeply sad. And part of it, there's multiple things, there's multiple things, that contributed to that. One of the things, that he had, was he had chronic pain. That he had, chronic gout, and kidney disease. And he had to leave London.

The doctor said, you need to leave London. So he had a place, in the south of France, where he would go, to get better weather, less harsh climate, more sunlight. That's actually where he died. Because he got away, out of London. And he just never came back, because he died there. Spurgeon, once said this, I could say with Job, and Job is an Old Testament story, where a man suffered immensely.

I could say with Job, my soul chooseth strangling, rather than life. And then he says, I could readily enough, have laid, violent hands upon myself, to escape, from my misery, of spirit. That is Spurgeon saying, that, I could have readily, harmed myself, than endure this, miserable, spiritual state. And Spurgeon, was a great man of faith. He understood, this song well. He's a great man of faith, and some people will try to reduce, depression down to, well, if you just have enough faith, you'd be joyful.

Don't you, don't you know the gospel? Don't you know how good, the news is? Just believe the gospel. And it's just not, that simple, sometimes. To muster up enough faith, to lift you out of this. Faith does not guarantee, hear this, faith does not guarantee, a permanent state of joy.

It just doesn't, not this side of the fall. It does not guarantee, a permanent state of joy. But in faith, we get to endure, through suffering, through lament. And through, hear this, a right understanding, of who God is. So when he says, why are you cast down, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil, within me, in his next breath, he says, hope in God.

For I shall again, praise him, my salvation, and my God. In the midst of depression, he knows where his ultimate hope, is found. His hope is in the Lord. He's not able to praise God, joyfully now. That day is coming for him. He will joyfully praise God again, but it is not yet.

So that's the refrain, that's going to be repeated at the end. And then, from that position of faith, knowing who God is, he continues, my soul is cast down, within me. Therefore, I remember you, from the land of Jordan, and of Hermon, from Mount Mazar. So this is where we see, how separated he is. Okay? But he is in the land of Jordan.

He's, that's far away from Jerusalem. That's how far he is, as he's, suffering, longing to be back in Jerusalem. Longing to be, before the Lord, in his presence. And then verse 7, he says, deep calls, to deep, at the roar, of your waterfalls. All your breakers, and your waves, have gone, over me. Water is very metaphorical, throughout the scriptures, and how it's being used.

You just saw, in verse 1, like God is a stream of water, that he longs for. But the picture here changes. It's replaced with, a violent picture of water. The roar of a waterfall. Waves crashing, over him. Like the judgment waters, that crashed over, Jonah.

This is the picture, that's happening here. And I want you to hear, what he says. I want you to, he feels the pain, but I want you to acknowledge, I want you to see, what he acknowledges here. He says, your breakers, your waves, have gone over me. He's talking to God. Your breakers, your waves, have gone over me.

And that highlights, and taps into, a difficult truth, that is mysterious, and hard, to wrap our minds around, that God is sovereign, over suffering. He's sovereign, over our suffering, and our pain. People try to get around that, try to explain that away, and they'll say, no, it's actually, this is the work of the devil, that increases suffering, in our lives, or this is our own flesh, you know, our own sin, you know, results in suffering, or the world, is a fallen place, and in a fallen place, there is suffering, and all of that is true. Okay? The enemy absolutely does, increase suffering. Our sinful mistakes, absolutely do, increase suffering.

We do live in a world, that is fallen, and broken, and because of that, suffering exists, but, God is sovereign, over all of that. Which is why he says, your breakers, your waves, God has ordained for him, to suffer in that purpose. God ordained suffering, in our lives. We don't always understand why, we don't understand the purposes, the mysteries, all behind it. But don't miss that, when he says, your breakers, and your waves, are crashing over me.

And as he says, that, right, in the next breath, he says in verse 8, by day, the Lord commands, his steadfast love. And at night, his song is with me, a prayer to, the God, of my life. As he's acknowledging, the suffering, the God is sovereign, over the waves, and your breakers, are crashing, over me. You are the God, of steadfast love. And look at this, at night, his song is with me, that at night, he's worshipping God. This man loves the Lord.

He is worshipping, in the midst of his suffering. And he's pouring out, songs, and prayers. And we get a glimpse, of his prayers, in verse 9, when he says, I say, to my God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning, because of the oppression, of the enemy? As with a deadly wound, in my bones, my adversaries, my adversaries, taught me, while they say to me, all the day long, where is your God? He says, I say to my God, why have you forgotten me?

What a bold prayer. Why have you forgotten me? Why do you, why do you allow my enemies, to taunt me like this, in the midst of my, suffering? That almost feels dangerous, to question God like that. And it would be dangerous, if it was done from a place of arrogance, or a place of pride, if he was questioning, the character of God. But he's not doing that.

He says, you're the God of steadfast love, you are my rock. The breakers, your breakers, he understands, who God is, and the character of God. So he's not doing this, from a place of arrogance, or pride, or self-righteousness. He's doing it, from a place of deep humility. It's a legitimate plea. Spurgeon, once said that, faith is allowed, to inquire of her God, the causes, of his displeasure.

They're done from a place, of faith. faith. You can ask, God, why have you forgotten me? Why have you forgotten me? Why am I so sad? Why do I suffer, O Lord? And then he ends it in verse 5, or the repeated refrain of verse 5, shows it in verse 11.

This is the final verse. He says, why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil, within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation, and my God. And that's it. There's a promise, a future joy, but it's not now.

And it is an end joyfully. It acknowledges the reality of it. There's no verse 12 that says, and everything gets awesome. This is not, it's not what happens here. It just ends. And I could expand on this Psalm, in a lot of different ways.

There's a lot of different directions, you can run with this, to deal with sadness, and loss, and depression, and suffering. I just want to, I just want to end, on one idea. You need, good theology, to help you endure, a downcast soul, in turmoil. You need, a right understanding, of who God is, and a right worship of who, of God, to endure, depression, suffering, and loss. Jerry Bridges, a pastor once said, trust is not a passive state, of mind. Faith, is not a passive state, of mind.

It is a vigorous act, of the soul, by which we choose, to lay hold, on the promises of God, and cling to them, despite the adversity, that at times, seeks to overwhelm us. He says, faith, is not a passive state, where you're passively, just believing, the promises of God, is a active, vigorous, clinging to, claiming, holding, the promises, of God, laying hold, of who he, is, and that happens, throughout this entire Psalm. Verse 2, God is the living God, verse 5, God is my salvation, verse 8, God is the God, of steadfast love, verse 9, God is my rock, verse 11, God is the God, of my salvation. This psalmist, has a healthy, understanding, of who God is.

And there is a great danger, as a Christian, being unprepared, for, suffering. There's a danger, and an over emphasis, on positivity, on faking it, until you make it. On saying, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm fine. And never, actually, preparing your soul, for what awaits you. If your understanding, of God, and believing in Him, is that He is going to, faith, equals, blessing, in this life. If that's the equation, of your heart, that you are setting yourself up, for failure.

You're setting yourself up, for, when that happens, the questions of God, that are not done, from a position of faith, but are done, from a position of arrogance. It says, I would not believe, in a God, who lets, this happen. I can't believe, in a God, who would let, this person die. My brother, my sister, my father, my child. I can't believe, in a God, who would allow, this type of suffering, in my life.

Psalm 55: Cast Your Anxieties

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 55: Cast Your Anxieties

Spencer Cary

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Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. So before we get into the text for today in Psalm 55, which is on page 272, if you want to go ahead and flip there, just have a church family quick announcement to address really the elephant in the room. So Friday was a big emotional day in our country with the fall of Roe v.

Wade. If you've not been around our church the last few years, we are not a political church in the slightest. We do approach things biblically as they arise in the scriptures. When it talks about life in the womb, when it talks about justice, we will address the issue. We do believe as a church that life begins at conception. We believe that God is knitting and forming a child in the womb.

And where biblical ethics overlap with political things, we will actually address that from the scriptures. Now, I'm not going to get into all of that today. What I will say is if you have not been here long enough, and that was a lot to hear, I would invite you, please have a conversation with me or one of the pastors. We would love to have that conversation with you. I understand it is a very, very hot button issue right now, and there are a ton of emotions that are stirring in the midst of all of that. But the reason I say that is because that ruling will directly affect this state.

And there will be an opportunity for Christians to do what we are called to do in the coming years in this state. There will be unplanned pregnancies that happen in this state. And we as Christians are called to care for orphans. That's biblically, James 1, 27, the pure undefiled religion before the father is this, to visit the orphans and the widows. That is historically, the church has stood up for orphans all the way back to the first, second, and third century when children who had birth defects were being abandoned by Roman families and Christians were swooping in and adopting children. We get the opportunity to live out our faith and the calling of Christians when it comes to orphan care.

That we'll have an opportunity to step into that through the foster system, which some of you should be praying about. Domestic adoption. We have families that do domestic and international adoption in our church. I say all that to say that we have a benevolence fund in our church. It's $15,000 this year. That benevolence fund is for a lot of different things, from paying for families in our church that are behind on payments, to supplementing counseling costs, to engaging community needs that we do from time to time.

We have $15,000 that we set aside in our budget for that. We will be, in the future, giving adoption grants out of that because we want to incentivize and come alongside some of the financial costs of adoption because we deeply care about orphans. And my hope, my prayer is in the response to all of this, that we would first walk in wisdom, be salt and light, but that we would get behind the biblical ethic of orphan care and actually step into a need that is going to happen. So I want to start this conversation. If you have questions about any of that, please don't leave today frustrated or angry.

Please come and talk and we can start a conversation. But we are going to be moving this direction with orphan care and we want to encourage this as a church family. So we're going to be in Psalm 55 today, which is on page 272 in your blue Bibles. You can turn there and follow along. The text will be on the screen. These first three Psalms and this summer in the Psalms that we have deal with.

Last week, Chad introduced the idea in Psalm 37, a fret not. Be still before the Lord. Don't worry. This week, we get to walk into that a little more from Psalm 55. The next week is a Psalm of lament. It's kind of all three go together on this broader subject matter of what do you do in the midst of suffering.

So we're in Psalm 55. We'll follow along with that in a moment. About a month ago, if you know me, I love music. I listen to lots of different types of music, different genres of music, different time periods of music. And I have Spotify, different playlists and shuffles that happen. And I had a shuffle.

I was in a late 90s, early 2000s music, alternative music kind of mood. So I was letting the Spotify shuffle. And that's, you know, that was my childhood, late 90s, early 2000s. So these are songs that I grew up listening to. And then all of a sudden, one came on and it hit differently because when you're listening to a song, when you are a kid, it doesn't hit the same when you're in your 30s. So it was a song called Breathe by Anna Nolik.

That, you know, 2 a.m. and she calls me because I'm still awake. All right. So that song. Listening to it, I'm like, oh man, I remember this. And then all of a sudden, the chorus hit. And I went, oh man.

The chorus says this, because you can't jump the track. We're like cars on a cable. And life's like an hourglass glued to the table. No one can find the rewind button now. So cradle your head and your hands and breathe.

Just breathe. And I heard that and I went, oh man, I did not know songs from Grey's Anatomy could do that to me. Like I just, I was like, man, she has a point. Life is like an hourglass glued to the table. Like there is no rewind button. She's talking about all like difficult situations and life is hard and suffering happens.

And her advice is cradle your head and your hands and breathe. Just breathe. And I was like, yes, man, that is so good. It's so close. Like you almost got it. You got part of the picture.

The gospel gives us a more complete picture. And this Psalm 55 today helps paint that in more completely. It helps give us a picture of what to do in the midst of suffering when life hits us in the face and how we are called to respond. We're going to look at this, the Psalmist David, in the midst of deep trials and suffering. And we're going to see his response and how that is key for us and important for us in understanding how we are to respond in the moments of trial. So if you feel overwhelmed right now, if you feel ridden with worry or anxiety, if you feel like you are struggling, this Psalm is for you.

Okay? Let me pray for us and then we will get going. Father, I pray that you would help us be present this morning. You help us hear the words of the Psalm, the wisdom that is bound up in it, that it would be balm for the soul. That it would help us see how we would respond in the midst of trials and suffering. And that you would help us walk this out in faith, in repentance, in glorious worship.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Verse 1. He says, Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me and answer me.

I am restless in my complaint and I moan. There are four urgent pleas right out the gate. He says, Give ear. Don't hide yourself from me, O God. Pay attention. Answer me.

This is a desperate, needy posture. Lord, listen to me. Give ear to my prayer. And then he says, I am restless in my complaint and I moan. You ever heard someone moan before? And by someone, I mean not a child.

In our household, we have, in the summertime, we have ice cream. Because we're a fun family. And I'm a cool dad. And we have, my wife bought the variety pack of, box of drumsticks. Which back in the day, they just had like the vanilla centered ones. Not anymore, you guys.

They have ones that are filled with chocolate in the inside. And caramel in the inside. And about every day, our kids are like, Can we have ice cream? And most days, we're like, Yes. Now, they love the ones that have the chocolate and the caramel in the center. Right?

Because that's awesome. And, you know, they get the chocolate ones. I may or may not clear out the caramel ones. But by the end of the week, or however long we have them, what's left is just the original ones, the OG drumstick. And there is weeping and lamenting in our house sometimes. But there's moaning and deep complaint.

And it's like, Oh man, y'all have not experienced suffering yet. If this is the type of lamenting that happens. Like, it's not a child. But if you ever heard, you ever heard an adult moan? And deep pain. It hurts the soul.

It is heavy. It is a deep hurt. Deep complaint. That's what's happening here. And then in verse 3, he says, Because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, for they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. So, context.

David is the Lord's anointed. He is a man after God's own heart. God fiercely loves David. David fiercely loves David. And yet, he ordains that David suffers. In fact, when you follow his life in 1 and 2 Samuel, you see he suffers over and over again.

He has enemies that seek to destroy him, to kill him. Some of these Psalms are written in the midst of those times. And that's what's happening here. So, God loves his people deeply. That does not mean he will spare us from suffering in the slightest. Verse 4, it says, My heart is in anguish within me.

The terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me. And horror overwhelms me. David is in emotional and physical torment. He's restless. He cannot sleep.

Moaning. It says, His heart is in anguish. Fear of death. Fear and trembling are upon him. Horror overwhelms him. And some of you have felt that.

You felt that with the death of a loved one. You felt that with abandonment that has happened in your life. That type of deep anguish of the heart. You felt that with rejection that happens in a way that makes you question reality itself and what's happening in your life. We feel this. And at some point, if you have not felt this, you will feel this.

Suffering is guaranteed this side of the fall. You will feel this type of pain, the kind of pain deep in your soul when you have no more tears to cry. And when this happens, you may feel tempted to run. And that's what David feels here in verse 6. And I say, Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest.

Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. Selah. Which, by the way, we don't know what Selah means. Okay? In the Hebrew, we just don't know.

It could be a pause. It could be a musical note. Not even Kanye knows what Selah means. We don't know what that means. But before that, he's like, if I had wings, if I could just spread and get away, if I could fly away, if I could wander and get in the wilderness.

Who hasn't wanted that to run from your problems? Who hasn't wanted to flee and get away from it all? Maybe you're someone in a marriage that is filled with suffering and you want out. Maybe you're a teenager that's in a home that you maybe feel misunderstood. Or maybe it just feels toxic. Or maybe you're the parent of a teenager where you feel misunderstood and things are tumultuous and you just want to get away.

Listen, most of us, we're not going to physically escape. It's not going to happen. But we will do it mentally. Right? That's our go-to. We'll mentally escape.

We'll go to Netflix. We'll go to social media. We'll go to pornography. Because that's easy and controllable. To get away from it. Fly away to it.

What feels like a safer place but ultimately isn't safe for the soul. David feels that. He wants to get away from it all. He's acknowledging that before the Lord. I want to get away. Verse 8, I would hurry, verse 8, to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.

A tempest is a storm. I could just find shelter in the midst of all of this from this storm. From this raging storm of suffering that he's enduring. Maybe you've wanted that. Maybe you've wanted that. You've been in a group and a community group that feels like there's a lot of suffering, a lot of trials, a lot of people that are hurting.

Maybe there's some relational drama that's happening. You just want to get away from it all. Maybe you're a group leader and you feel that as a group leader. I just want to stop leading this group. Maybe you feel this as it pertains to the whole church family. It's like, I just want to leave this church.

I want to find somewhere else. I want to find shelter from what I'm facing. Listen, you have felt this or you will feel this. This side of the fall in a world that's filled with suffering. David feels this. He feels this and he continues in verse 9 to describe what he's facing.

Destroy, verse 9, O Lord, divide their tongues for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls and iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. So he has enemies that seek to destroy him but he's also in a city that's filled with oppression and fraud and violence and sin.

He wants to get away from it all to the wilderness. He wants to leave it all behind. That's a familiar feeling for our country. And that was 2020. Cities falling apart. People trying to leave and get away from all of it.

My sister recently moved to Bozeman, Montana with her husband. And when they moved out there and they were, before they moved out there they were on a job interview out there and the Uber driver that was driving around said, hey, where are you from? They said, we're from South Carolina. He said, oh good. He said, as long as you're not from California. Because Montana and some of the states have been overwhelmed.

People trying to get away from the cities, get away from the violence, get away from everything that's happening. The reality is it's not just the cities that have sin all over it. It's the suburbs. It's your phone. It's the internet. It's all around us.

David feels this. Iniquity, sin is all around him but the situation is much worse. In verse 12 it says, for it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from it. The enemies are not the worst part of what I'm facing here. Verse 13, but it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.

We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house we walked in the throng. David has been stabbed in the back and betrayed by a close friend. By a familiar friend. That's an intimate, close friend. A friend he used to go to advice for.

The end of throng is worship. So he used to worship together with him in the house of the Lord. This friend has betrayed him and it is crushing. If you've ever been betrayed, it hurts. My first big dose of that was when I was 17 and naive, 17, dating a girl, thinking, things are, things are great. All of a sudden, boom, find out she's cheating on me with not one, not two, but most likely three.

Couldn't confirm the third one, but I'm almost positive. Third. Three of my friends and football teammates crushed me. I was like so naive. Like how could this happen? You were my friends.

You were my girlfriend. What in the world? And it taught me one valuable lesson. You really cannot trust anyone fully in this life like you can, God. No one is 100% dependable like the Lord. But what came out of that is a lot of cynicism and a lot of deep anger.

I worked through it, you guys. It took some years to be able to get in to trust some people. But if you felt that kind of betrayal, it hurts if you've been betrayed by a family member or a friend or a church family member, a mentor or a child or a parent or a significant other. It hurts. When you've had your trust violated seemingly beyond repair, it hurts. One of the most famous lines in all of Western literature is from Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

And Caesar, in the midst of the conspirators, in the midst of the senators who are killing him or stabbing him is fearless. He's fearless. But the moment he sees Brutus, his friend, he's no longer fearless. One of those famous lines, et tu, Brute. And you, Brutus. And this is a picture of, oh, man, you would betray me as well.

A dear, close friend. That's what David feels. A king betrayed by a close friend. And when that happens for us, you will, there's a part of you that longs for retribution. Longs for, maybe it's not retribution, but it's justice. But you feel that in you.

That's what David feels in verse 15. He says, let death steal over them. Which is a poetic way of saying, let death come upon them by surprise. Let them go down to Sheol alive. Sheol's the place of death. The best I can tell what he's saying there is let them be buried alive.

For evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. David has put his enemies, the evil in the city, his close friend, all in the same category as he's lamenting before the Lord all of this. this shows the real thoughts and sorrow that David feels. Many of us have felt that. Maybe a co-worker that has hurt you. Maybe a family member that has hurt you. We can't relate to what David is saying here.

And then a shift happens in verse 16. After 15 verses of David before the Lord lamenting all the pain and suffering that he has endured and is facing, he shifts to the one whom he's crying out to in verse 16 and says this, but I call to God and the Lord will save me. He cries out to God because God is his help. Throughout the Psalms you see this one of the ones that David writes and throughout the Psalms the Lord is our help. The Lord is our salvation. This cry here in this Psalm is personally humbling for me to read this, to see this on display because what happens for me and I'm probably not alone is that when I face problems right, every now and then it's like clockwork in our family.

Every three years we're due for like a major medical bill that just comes out of nowhere and when it comes like we're feeling with right now it's like alright I'm going to hustle who I got to call alright, insurance company, doctors, how are we going to negotiate this? I get into I'm going to fix this.

Psalm 37: Fret Not

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Psalm 37: Fret Not

Chet Phillips

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I turned my mic off before walking up here, which means it was on forever. So if the music sounded particularly good, you're welcome. Singing along. Go to Psalm 37. We're starting a series. During the summer, we're going to walk through some of the Psalms together.

So we're going to be about eight weeks in the Psalms over the course of the summer. The Psalms is the Bible's songbook. It's the Bible's hymnal where God gave us, through the psalmist, ways to pray and to praise. He gave us songs of worship and songs of lament. There are poems and wisdom in the Psalms. And so they are helpful for us to periodically take some time to just spend some time here to grow in prayer, to grow in worship, and to grow in understanding how to deal with a lot of what's going on inside of us in relation to God.

Because that's what the Psalms deal with quite often, is how we feel, and then turning over to what's theologically true in worship and what's true about God. So the Psalm we're looking at today is Psalm 37. It's a poem written by King David. And he wrote it when he was older. The way we know that is in this Psalm he says, I'm old. And so that helped us.

That was the clue. Tipped us off. And so we see that he wrote this when he's older. And what he's doing is he's looking at the world. And it's as if he's surveying everything. And he's going, okay, I see evil.

I see wickedness. And so often it seems like evil works. Wickedness helps you prosper. It's kind of what he's seeing in the world. That being violent, being aggressive, being greedy. So often seems like it helped them.

That they've prospered. That that was the way to go. To be aggressive, to be violent, to be harmful to the poor and the needy. Somehow helps people win. That's kind of what he's looking at. And you can see, you almost feel him as he's looking at this going, and that tension of, is this how this is always going to be?

Is this how this always works? And so he gives this encouragement in the midst of surveying this. That Psalm 37 is an encouragement to us. And here's what he says. Let's look at verse one.

Fret not. Fret not. That's the theme of this Psalm. Fret not. To fret is to be anxious. To be worried.

To wring our hands. To have something roll in our mind over and over again. It's this feeling of turmoil and fearfulness. It's this feeling of frustration and anxiety. And if you've lived recently, you'll know that we live in an anxious time. We live in a tumultuous, frustrated time.

And that we're told to be anxious and frustrated. That much of the message today is, aren't you mad about this? Aren't you upset by this? Don't you see what they're doing? And it really doesn't matter which side of any of these arguments or these issues that you fall on. Don't you know they're coming for you?

Don't you know they're coming for your children? Or don't you know that the children are coming for you? Don't you know they're coming for your guns? Or they have guns and they're coming? That these, whatever, which way ever it is. And all these things.

There's this general fearfulness. Anxiety and fretting. Because of the wickedness that's out there. The oppression that's out there. And how troublesome it is. And so, David says, The most helpful thing that I would just encourage you to use this in any kind of discussion you get into when someone's upset.

Calm down. That's what David says. Shh. Try that next time you get in an argument. It's nice. Works well.

I found that that works really effectively with babies. But not so much with my wife. But that's what he's saying. Fret not. And immediately your response is, Sounds great. Would love to do that.

How? I'm so glad you asked. Because that's what David's going to spend this whole Psalm explaining to us. That he proves his point. That you can fret not. So let's pray.

And let's walk through this together. Lord, if we're honest, we have so much to fret over. We have so much that if you just talk to us for a little while, if we just remain undistracted for a little while, we're afraid. Lord, we're anxious. We look into the future so often and we feel vulnerable. And so, Lord, we take a Psalm like this and we look at it and we're told to fret not.

And we pray that by the empowerment of your spirit and by the goodness of your word, that you would help us to see how that can be true practically and fundamentally in our hearts. We ask that you would apply this to us today. Help us to learn. Help us to grow. And help us to walk this out by the power of your spirit. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. So what we're going to do is we're going to walk very slowly through the first 11 verses. If you peek ahead, you'll see this is a long Psalm. And so after a few minutes, as we've walked through the first few verses, you're going to think, oh, we're going to be here for four and a half hours. And as much as I would enjoy that, we're not going to do that. We're going to go very slowly for the first 11 verses because in the first 11 verses we're given about 12 commands.

So in some ways, at the very beginning of this Psalm, David's taking us and grabbing us by the ears and looking us in the eye and he's talking directly to us. But at about verse 12, he releases our ears and he turns us and he says, see? So he's going to give us these commands and then he's going to go, look, I'm going to show you how this plays out. And then when we hit verse 12, we're going to move at a bigger, more landscape kind of pace. We're going to move a little faster to try to see how we can take what he told us in the first 11 verses and how he can press it in a little more in the back part.

So I'll tell you when we're making the turn. But at first, we're going to move a little bit slowly. OK. Fret. Fret not yourself because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers.

First thing I want you to notice is that the evildoers and the wrongdoers exist. He's not saying it's not as bad as you think it is. He said, no, no, no, they're out there. And I know that evildoers sounds like who Batman fights at night. Ne'er do well. But what he's saying is people who do evil, that there are wicked people.

There are people who actively seek to lie and oppress and use their power to harm. There are people who go out of their way to to take and to defend their position. They don't care about others. There are people who lie, that steal, that cheat, that murder. And he says, yes, we acknowledge that. But then he's going to tell us to fret not and be not envious.

And it feels like those are often the two paths that we kind of have when we're looking at evildoers and wrongdoers. Fretting is this general sense of anxiety, this, oh, my goodness, how is this going to work out? Oh, they're winning. It's working out for them. They're coming for us. That general feel.

And we just roll it over in our head over and over and over again. It's almost like we're churning butter. You take something that exists, take some milk, and you just keep messing with it. You keep churning it. And eventually it turns into cream and then it turns into heavy cream and then it turns into butter. And you take something that's real and you make it worse and thicker and more problematic.

That's what fretting does. Take something that's real and you just keep rolling it over and over and over again. So it's the only thing that exists. It's the only thing that you can think of. That's one of the options for us. The other one is to be envious.

And we take that route sometimes. Which is if that's how they're going to act, that's how I'm going to act. If that's how they're going to do politics, that's how we'll do politics. If that's how they're going to talk, that's how we'll talk. And it can be real simple things. Like I used to work sales.

And there's a thing I learned. Is that you sell things if you lie. I worked with a salesman. He was a great salesman. And he was a liar. People would ask him questions.

And he would just... I knew he didn't know the answer and he would just answer. And at first I was like, is that real? And he was like, I don't know. So then I just learned.

He's just making stuff up. I learned after a while that I knew more than he did. But he just would give better answers than I could. Because his were fictional. Sometimes it was just he made up an answer so that he could keep the sale going. Sometimes you asked him a question and he actually had a bad answer.

And he would just go, oh no, no, that's not these. That's those. And it's like, no, it's those too. Those also have that problem. They know their stuff. They're just...

And so you can be envious. You can go, you know what? I think I'm just going to have to lie. I think I'm just going to have to join that. I've worked with people in our... As I've been being pastor.

And trying to help them get out of situations. And they're fighting. And they're working. And they're laboring. And I've had the conversations with them. And they go, this isn't worth it.

I'm going to go back to selling weed. Because I can make so much more money so much quicker. I know it's wrong. But I'm just going to do that. Because the guys around me that are doing that, everything works out easier for them. And so there's this fretfulness or this being envious.

And he says, don't do that. And that's what he says. Don't. Stop. Stop. And I'll tell you, that's how I...

If you ever get to do counseling with me, that's how I do it. I ask you what you're doing. And I say, stop it. And then I say, let's pray. Okay. So it's not super helpful, but the meetings are short.

So you can get back on your merry way. That's what he says. He just says, stop. But he's going to tell us why. He's going to give us some reasons. We're going to move on.

So he says, for. That's how he starts this next sentence. So when he says, for, that means, here's why. Here's why not to fret. For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. He says, the reason you don't have to fret, the reason you shouldn't be envious of them is it will not work out for them ultimately.

Watch them for a little while. It doesn't work. They'll fade like the green grass. They'll wither like the green herb. They'll look about like your front yard looks right now. Unless you've been running your water constantly.

Spring came. The grass was like, ah, the sunshine. Okay, that's enough. Okay, all right. Too much. Too much.

Stop. Please stop. It's just been cooked. That's what he says. It's going to look like that. It's going to wither.

It's going to fade. It's going to fail. I don't get green herbs a lot, but I do sometimes buy bananas. If you have children, they'll have a week where they each eat three bananas a day. And you're like, oh, we eat bananas here. And then you buy a bunch of bananas.

And they're like, I don't like bananas. I don't get that away from me. And so then you watch like seven bananas that you bought just so you could murder on your counter. And you watch them wither. That's what he's saying is that if you watch it for a little while, it's going to fail. It's going to fade.

And I love how this is written because he says they. Now, he's referring to the evildoers and the wrongdoers. But I love that he says they because isn't that who's after us? They. You ever have someone go, you hear what they're doing? Do you hear what they just did?

It's never anything good. They is not out to help us. It's never like, you know what I heard they're doing? They take our military and they train them so that if something bad happens, they can show up and help. Can you believe that? I heard they're taking our teachers and they're teaching them so that later they can teach our children how to read.

Can you believe that? It's never what they're doing. They're coming for you. They're coming for your wallet. They're coming for your children. They're coming for your house.

They're killing all your cattle. They're invading all these things. They did covid so they could put the batteries back in the birds. All the crazy things they are doing. They are never up to anything good. And it just depends on who you're talking to as to what they are doing.

And I will encourage you every once in a while, go to the other side of the Internet so you can hear that your team wins, too. They're scared of you also. But they are never up to anything good. And so I think what you can do is say, you know what I heard? I heard they will soon wither like the grass. And fade like the herb.

We're going to be OK. They won't win. The wickedness that they're up to, the evil that they're up to, they won't win. That's the promise. That's why you don't have to fear is because they. Will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.

So he keeps going. Trust in the Lord and do good. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. What he's not saying is don't do anything. He says do good.

Do what's in front of you to do. When he defines this later, he's going to talk a good bit about generosity. He brings that up a couple of times. You do good. You do what's in front of you to do. But you do that out of a position of trust, not fear.

We do that out of a position of faithfulness, not fretfulness. We do that out of a position of understanding who he is and how good he is and that we're supposed to follow him. Not if we don't do this, everything will fall apart and they'll get us. We get to trust and do. But you got to be in the position of trust that ultimately.

We have a Lord. That's what he says. We don't have to be fearful. We have a Lord. He's king. He's in charge.

He rules with a scepter. He's the king of kings and the Lord of lords. He's overseeing this. Trust him and then do. And I love the back half of that verse where he says, dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. I stared at that for a long time.

I was just trying to wrap my head around what does dwell in the land mean? And I think in this context, what he's getting at is. Live a life. Trust the Lord enough to live a life. To plant, to harvest, to build. To live.

Don't always have your bags packed. Don't always have one foot out the door. Don't live in such a way that you can't ever think that anything good will happen in the future so that you're terrified. Dwell in the land. And then he says, befriend faithfulness. Make faithfulness your friend.

That's your new friend. I appreciate that. Because so often we've befriended anxiety. Fearfulness is our best friend. You're about to go to bed at night. And anxiety just busts up in the door.

Opens your refrigerator. Sits down on the couch next to you. It was like, hey. I was thinking. What if first we'll just start running through some memories from middle school for the heck of it. Then I'm going to tell you how all your friends currently think about you.

I can read their thoughts. And guess what? It's not looking too good for you. Then I'm going to tell you how the future is going to go. Awful. Spoiler alert.

And then after we've done this for a couple of hours. So it's like, I don't know, one or two in the morning. Then we're just going to talk about how you haven't fallen asleep yet. And tomorrow is going to be awful. And we'll just discuss how you should fall asleep. But because I won't shut up.

You're not going to. That's our friend. Faithfulness. Fearfulness. Anger. He says, no, no, no.

I mean, did I say faithfulness? Yeah. He's not our friend yet. But we should have him as our friend. Y'all got it. Pay attention.

All right. Faithfulness is who your friend needs to be. That you're trusting in the Lord. You're walking steadily in faithfulness. And so often we've made anxiety, anger, and fear. That's who we dwell with.

And he says, no, no, no. Trust in the Lord. He's good. You have a Lord who oversees all of this. Let's keep going.

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. If we can learn to find what is good and fulfilling from the Lord. That if our hope is in him, two things happen. First, if your delight is in the Lord and then someone comes and says, don't you know they're going to take everything from you? Not my delight.

They can't take him. They can take everything. But where my hope is, where my fulfillment is, they can't take. See, if our delight is in the Lord, then everything else gets to be everything else. That if he's really where our joy is, if he's really where our foundation is, then guess what? Money gets to just be money.

It's nice. It's helpful. It can be a gift. But it's not our hope. It's not our future. If our delight is in the Lord, then our kids just get to be our kids.

Little sinners that live in our house. They don't get to be what makes us okay. They don't get to be what saves us. They don't have to be our hope and our future. If our delight is in the Lord, then our relationships, our romance just gets to be that. A gift.

It's nice. But it doesn't have to fix our souls or save us or make us lovable. And then, as our delight is in the Lord, he says, he'll give you the desires of your heart. Now, this isn't like a wink your delight is in the Lord and then you get whatever you want. Like, okay, how do I make him think my delight is there so that then I can have what I really like? That's not how that works.

What he's saying is if you genuinely have your heart set in the Lord where your joy comes from him, then he blesses and works in a way that you get what your delight is. You get him and you get the other stuff, but the other stuff just falls in its right spot. And it doesn't have to be there for you to be okay. That's what Jesus says when he says to seek first the kingdom of God and the rest of this will be added to you. That if you've got this in place, everything else falls into place. And if it doesn't fall into place the way you want it to, you're still okay because your delight's in him.

Verse 5. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. So this is the same thing he's been saying to us the whole time. He's telling us, trust him. Commit your way to him.

What's just a saying? Don't be envious of wrongdoers. Just say, Lord, I'm going to do the thing that you tell me to do. I'm going to walk the path that you lay out for me. And we trust him and he Acts. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noon day.

That justice and righteousness are carried out by him. That he Acts on our behalf so that we can trust him knowing that he's going to accomplish these things. Verse 8. Oh, verse 7. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way over the man who carries out evil devices.

I want you to see what it doesn't say is that evil never works. What it's saying is that evil never ultimately works. That you watch them and they prosper in their way. That it's a good way to get ahead. And he just says, yeah, but it's temporary. They're carrying out evil devices.

They're winning. Have you noticed how much culture, your social media, your radio, your YouTube videos, and your friends who are on social media, listen to their radio or watch YouTube videos, are telling you they're winning. We're losing. They're prospering. And if you said, yes, I've got a plan. I'm going to be still and wait.

What? When something happens, people will post, you know, our thoughts and prayers. And people have started just saying, we don't need your thoughts and prayers. We need your action. We don't need being still and waiting. We need you to move and do.

I will say, the world actually doesn't need our prayers. It doesn't need us to post on Facebook that we're praying. Just throwing that out there. It does need our prayers. But there's this general sense of you're going to wait.

You're going to be still. That's crazy. You've got stuff to do. Aren't you enraged? Aren't you frustrated? Aren't you scared?

Don't you see what's going on? Verse 8. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not yourself. It tends only to evil. I've said this before, but one of my favorite types of movie is the you've ticked off the wrong guy movie.

I love that movie. Like, he was minding his own business. You started it. Now you and all your friends are going to die. It's one of my favorite westerns is that. Look at this farmer.

Uh-oh. Now he's going to have to kill everyone. But what verse 8 says is that Denzel Washington is lying to you. That this tends towards evil. And that we're to forsake wrath. We're to refrain from anger.

There's some amount of, I should be mad. I should be angry. And this is going to fuel my work. This is going to fuel what we're going to do. I'm going to use this anger as a furnace. I'm going to fret.

I'm going to wrap my head around this. And we're going to be able to accomplish this. And he says, yeah, that actually just leads to more evil. Calm down. Fret not. Verse 9.

For, again, he's telling us why. He's reminding us over and over again why. For the evildoers shall be cut off. But those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Who cut the evildoers off? The Lord.

And those who waited. Inherit the land. That God goes to work. That's what he's saying. Take a deep breath. Calm down.

God works. Now there are times where God works through people. And that's where it's trust in the Lord and do good. There are things to do. But to be done from a position of faithfulness and trust.

Not from fearfulness. In just a little while, the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land. And delight themselves in abundant peace. This is where, that the meek shall inherit the land is what Jesus is saying when he says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This is a direct quote of this. So here's what we've been told so far. Trust. Trust. Be still. Wait.

Wait. Wait. Refrain. Forsake. Fret not. Fret not.

Can you hear David's tone? Come have a seat. Look at me. It's going to be okay. Wait. Be still for a second.

Well, I've got to, I've got to, we've got to. Be still for a second. Wait. Trust. Trust. Don't worry.

Don't worry. See, our culture looks at us. And if we say, that's what we're doing. I'm trusting. Don't you care? Yeah, I care.

But I'm trusting. Aren't you going to do something? Yeah, I'm going to wait. I'm going to be still for a moment. I'm going to wait on the Lord. Our culture tells us, oh, you're just putting your head in the sand.

You're just looking down. And David says, no, no, no, we're not looking down. We're looking up. I cast my eyes to the hills. That's where my help comes from. It's not up to me.

I'm not the hero of this story. But there is a hero. There is a Lord. And I'm going to sit and watch. Because he's coming. And he's going to sort this out.

And he's going to help us. And I'm going to trust that his timing is good. Because I trust that he is good. Okay. We've made it to verse 12. Now David's going to turn with us.

He's just going to start telling us how things work. We're going to move a little faster. You're going to have to do a little more work to pay attention. But I believe in you. It says, The wicked plots against the righteous. And gnashes his teeth at him.

But the Lord laughs at the wicked. For he sees that his day is coming. The wicked draw the sword. And bend their bows. To bring down the poor and needy. To slay those whose way is upright.

Their sword shall enter their own heart. And their bows shall be broken. Better is the little that the righteous has. Than the abundance of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken. But the Lord upholds the righteous.

The Lord knows the days of the blameless. And their heritage will remain forever. They are not put to shame in evil times. You ever feel like we're in evil times? They are not put to shame in evil times. In the days of famine they have abundance.

But the wicked will perish. The enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures. They vanish like smoke. They vanish away. Why can we sit and wait and trust on the Lord? Because he watches the wicked and he knows their day is coming.

Because he breaks their bows. He breaks their arms. He takes their sword from them and sticks it back in their own heart. He breaks their bows. He breaks their arms. And he takes their sword and sticks it back in their own heart.

Now, that means we can wait. That means you can sit. That means you can be still. That means you can trust. Now our culture tells us this is backwards.

Our culture says, how dare God judge? Did you hear that? Who is he to sit and say what's right and what's wrong? Who is he to say this is good, this is bad? Who is he to... I can't believe in a God that would judge, that would have wrath.

I can't believe in a God that would send people to hell. And then, at the same time... Which the answer to who is he is. The answer is he's God. But at the same time, they'll say to us, aren't you mad?

Aren't you frustrated? Don't you see how wrong this is? Aren't you going to fight to fix this? Aren't you going to stand up for injustice? So they want us to be excellent Judges, but they don't think that God is.

And the Bible says, no, that's backwards. Humble yourself, trust in the Lord, and know that he's a good judge. There's an idea that the thing that makes us peaceful is that we believe that God is kind and peaceful. That if we believe in a God of anger and wrath, then we'll be angry, wrathful people. But if we believe a God who's loved, then we'll be loving.

But there's a theologian, he's a Yale theologian. His name is Miroslav Volf. He's a Croatian, and he saw all the violence in the Balkans. And in his work, The Exclusion and Embrace, he says this is the exact opposite. What he says is, my thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. What he says is, if you're going to be calm, if you're going to sit, if you're going to wait, you have to believe that there's a God who breaks bows, breaks arms, and kills the wicked.

That if you're going to be calm, if you're going to wait, you have to trust that there is a God who does not let evildoers escape. That's his thesis. And he says that this idea, he said, soon you will discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge. So he's saying, if you believe, no, no, no, the only way we can be nonviolent is if he refuses to judge. He says, that takes the quiet of a suburban home. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.

In his work, he says, when you, when you, your village has first been pillaged, then knocked to the ground, when your wives and sisters have been assaulted and your brothers and fathers have had their throats slit, you have to believe that there's a God who takes up the sword. Otherwise, you have to. And so, if we're going to not fret in the midst of evil, we have to believe in this God that Psalm 37 just told us about. that he breaks bows and he breaks arms and that evil doesn't win. And if that's true, then you can take a deep breath and trust his timing and his justice and his judgment. Otherwise, we have to fret.

Verse 21, the wicked borrows but does not pay back, but the righteous is generous and gives. I want you to just look at that for a second because it's likely that you don't put money in the category of wickedness and righteousness, but the Bible does. The wicked borrows and does not pay back. Some of you might need to consider how you're operating in some low-level wickedness in your tool shed. You might need to consider how your bookshelf operates and operates in some low-level wickedness. The wicked borrows and doesn't pay back, but the righteous is generous and give.

Twice when he gives examples of what the righteous does, he talks about they're generous. For those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off. The steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand. So those who delight in the Lord are walking around holding hands with him.

I don't know if you've had the opportunity to walk and hold hands with a child that wants to hold your hand. It is a blessed thing. Often I hold hands with unwilling participants. My four-year-old says, you're hurting my hand. And I say, well, quit trying to snatch it out of my hand and I won't hold it so tight. But we're in a parking lot, homie.

You're this tall and you don't have any sense. People can't see you and you're dumb. That's a recipe for disaster. But there are times when he willingly chooses to hold my hand and it's wonderful. And I don't know if you can think back to the times that you got to hold onto a hand that was much bigger than yours and that was keeping you safe and that ability to hold the hand helped you know you were going to be okay. And that's what he says that when we delight in the Lord we just get to walk along holding a hand.

It's so much bigger than ours. And when we fall, because we will, we aren't cast headlong. We trip. We fall. But our head doesn't smash into something because he's holding our hand.

You might say, well, I've fallen. It's like, yeah. He's got you. And he picks you back up. And we get to keep going. That's the promise there.

I have been young and now am old. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. He is ever lending generously and his children become a blessing. Turn away from evil and do good. So shall you dwell forever for the Lord loves justice.

He will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever. Some of you need to wrap your soul up in that. In the midst of your sin, in the midst of your doubt, he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever. The children of the wicked shall be cut off.

The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell upon it forever. The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom and his tongue speaks justice. The law of his God is in his heart. His steps do not slip. The wicked watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death. The Lord will not abandon him to his power or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial.

Now wait for the Lord and keep his way and he will exalt you to inherit the land and you will look on when the wicked are cut off. I have seen a wicked, ruthless man spreading himself like a green laurel tree. But he passed away and behold, he was no more. Though I sought him, he could not be found. You see, death is the end of the wicked but the righteous are held forever. Mark the blameless and behold the upright for there is a future for the man of peace but transgressors shall be altogether destroyed.

The future of the wicked shall be cut off. We're going to finish where he finishes which is verse 39 and 40. We're going to look at this for just a moment. The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord. He is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them.

He delivers them from the wicked and saves them because they take refuge in him. Fret not. How? Fret not. Calm down. Don't be anxious.

How? The answer is theological and outside of you. He says, trust the Lord. Look at who he is. Look at what he does. The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord.

He is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them. He delivers them from the wicked and saves them because they take refuge in him. The only thing that you do is run to him to take refuge. He does everything else. Fretting not is anti-work.

It's not something you accomplish. It's something you run to him and then he does everything else. It's trusting. It's placing faith in him. And he does everything else. My little boy that I was just talking about came back from preschool and he had gotten to go to the library.

And the preschool library has a lot of just books that people have turned over. Kind of a lot of used books. Their teacher teaches them in the library that you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit. Which is fun to then quote at them now. It's like, you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit. He brought home a book that was Batman's secret code book and he was pumped.

And so it was this Batman's secret code book and you open it up and it's got little pictures of Batman and it's got these huge giant blobs of red. And on the front of the book it says, use your secret decoder glasses. Well the person who generously gave this to the school didn't seem to give those or they stayed at the first house they went home with or whatever. But we didn't have Batman's secret code book. We had Batman's giant red blobby mess. So he was excited and I was like, yeah we'll read that later.

And I got on Amazon and I ordered some old school 3D glasses with the blue side and the red side. And so when that came in we had secret decoder one-eyed things that you could look through. And so then, I hate bragging up here. But I know all Batman's secrets. I know a lot of things about Batman that y'all don't know. Because we decoded Batman's secret decoder book.

Often, when we're looking at the Old Testament, what we get to do as Christians is see the whole picture. When they were promised that they could trust in the Lord, they didn't know how far the Lord would go to prove His trustworthiness. When they promised life for the righteous that was eternal, they didn't know how God was going to accomplish that. But we do. That we get to look at this through the cross, through the resurrection, through, when we talk about the Lord, we know of a risen king who's one day going to return and set everything right. And we get to look at this and know that if He wouldn't withhold Himself from us, that if God wouldn't withhold His Son from us, how can we not trust Him in all things?

If He's for us, who can be against us? This is Psalm 37 parallels so well with Romans chapter 8 where it says all of this is going on but we have hope in something bigger and better and we have an assurance in Christ that's been accomplished for us forever so that we can trust knowing that He rules, that He reigns, that He's good and that He's trustworthy. The band's going to come back up and we're going to try to be people who fret not. The next time someone comes to you and tells you what they are doing, I want you to say yes, but they will wither and my King will not. They will fall but the Word of the Lord lasts forever and though they take everything from me, I'll still have what I delight in which is my King and the righteous are preserved forever and I am not made righteous through my own works but I'm made righteous through Christ and I get to walk in faithfulness not fear.

That's our hope that we can be people who are not wrapped up in anxiety and frustration because we have a King in whom we trust. Let's pray. Lord, may we be people who have joy and delight because we have you and may we be people who can be still, who can forsake wrath, who can trust because you are trustworthy. We praise you that you save sinners and that you judge righteously and that our hope is in you both to rescue us from our sin and to rescue us from evil. we leave it up to you in your wisdom and your timing and your grace. Amen.