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.

Psalm 66 - Remembrance

Psalms 66 - Remembrance

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City. We are closing up our final week in the Psalms. We spent nine weeks this summer walking through the Psalms. We started off in Psalm 1 where we got a picture of how Psalm 1 and 2 give us a picture of the rest of the Psalms.

And then we looked at how the Bible and its beauty and its glory is shown through the Psalms. Then we learned how to use the Psalms for prayer. We got to see a picture of rest and repentance. We spent one week learning the command to sing from the Psalms, which actually has kind of been my favorite week since we started it. Matt Freeman walked us through that text that week. We got to do a worship night together.

And since then, I've kind of noticed the singing has been elevated, which has been good to hear. We spent a week learning what it looked like to be an emotionally healthy Christian from the Psalms. Last week, we got to see a Psalm of Lament and what it looks like to mourn. And this week, we're going to be looking at a Psalm of Remembrance. There are specific Psalms that just are devoted to remembering God's work. And many of the other Psalms kind of touch on remembering different aspects of how God has worked for His people.

So we're going to be in Psalm 66. If you have a Bible, you can turn to page 275 in your white Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, take that white Bible home with you. That is our gift to you. All right.

So there are four pictures that I brought with me today that kind of show my story, kind of show where I come from, who I am today. And I'm going to put them on the screen. The first picture is a picture of my baptism nine years ago, which is why it's really fuzzy, because back then cameras didn't, on phones, didn't have that great a picture quality. But that's my baptism, and that's significant for a few reasons. Firstly, that for 17 years, I walked as an enemy of the Lord and was brought into the family of God. The fact that I placed my faith in Jesus.

We're going to have baptisms here in about a month. If you wanted to talk more about what baptism is, we'd love to talk to you about it. But we're excited for that. And I look back at that, and I thank God that God saved me, and that baptism is a picture of the death-to-life conversion that happens in Christ. This picture is actually cool for another reason. That baptism happened at Midtown Fellowship Church, which is cool for me now, seeing as how we were planting Antioch Church, now we're joining forces, and we're all Mill City Church.

Mill City was planted by Midtown, so it's kind of come full circle for me in the past nine years since then. So that picture is significant for me. The second picture is a picture of our wedding day and my wife. That is cool for a few reasons. Firstly, our wedding day was awesome. We had a lot of fun.

We had people that came up to us in the years that followed, and they were like, man, your wedding was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was. We had a good time. And it's also significant, because we've been married for six years. I love my wife. I love getting to journey through life with her.

There's ups, there's downs, there's all kinds of chaos. But there's nobody I'd rather be with, journeying through this life together. She makes me a better man. She makes me a better husband. She helps me in so many ways. The next picture is a picture of our kiddos.

That's a recent picture. It's Eloise, who's our daughter. She's two. Bridgers, who was just born about six weeks ago. And they, man, kids change the game. They do.

They change everything. Sometimes it's chaotic, and most of the time, when I come home after a long day of working, I get to see my kids. It's just exciting. And I thank God for them. I'm growing in my ability to shepherd and care for others and learning to be patient with a crazy two-year-old and a baby who's crying and all of that. So I love my kids.

There's so much a part of my story and my future. This last picture, I'll rip that out of my sister's yearbook, is a picture of my family, not all of my family, but much of my family. I come from a crazy family. I know that everyone says my family's crazy. My family's nuts. They're nuts.

But we love each other a ton, and so much of the experiences I have, the good experiences, the bad experiences that I've had of my family have shaped me in profound ways that will help me shepherd and care for others because I can empathize with so many different situations that we've been through as a family. So those four pictures kind of tell my story, and it's cool to kind of go through Facebook and look back at pictures of our story to see where we come from. And in the same way, the Psalms do that. Like the Psalms give us pictures. They paint pictures of God's continued redemption and care of his people.

Like there are multiple Psalms that are solely dedicated to remembering how God saves his people. There are eight different Psalms that mention the event of the Exodus and the Egyptians, which we'll get into in a second in Psalm 66. There are three specific references that mention the Red Sea and that aspect of the story of Exodus. It was important for them to hear their story. Like they needed that because much of Israel's history is a lot of trials, a lot of really tough times. So they needed pictures of God's redemption to remind them of that.

Now you may be wondering, like that's great. Like you seem, preacher man, to be really excited about the Psalms and really excited about Psalms of remembrance. But what does that actually have to do with me? Like how does remembering Israel's history, how does that actually help us as Christians? Yeah, I get that. Like I get that.

I feel like that's one of the reasons why the Psalms are difficult to relate to. Like with the rest of like the Old Testament, there's usually stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And then it picks up with another story. And when you jump into Psalms, man, there's all kinds, there's emotions. It's messy. They're referencing all kinds of history.

There's all kinds of language that we're not familiar with. And it's hard to relate to them. But here's where I'd press in and here's where I'd say. That looking at Psalms like Psalm 66 and remembering God's work in the Psalms is good for us. The reason why is because we are just like the people of the Old Testament. We're just like them.

We are tempted to believe that because of our circumstances, that God doesn't care about us. Because of what we're facing, that God doesn't care about what we're going through. And we are just like them. And we need to be reminded of how God works for his people. So we're going to look at Psalm 66.

And we're going to see four helpful pictures as we walk through it. The first is a picture of God as creator. The second is a picture of God as Savior. The third is a picture of God as worthy. Worthy of worship. And the fourth is a picture of a God who loves.

So as we walk through this, we'll see those pictures. So let me pray and then we'll dive in. God, thank you so much for the Psalms and this season that we've gotten to spend in them. I pray that you would help us see their beauty as we close this out. That we'd see them as a good way to relate our experiences to how you work for your people. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, so pick up in verse 1. Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of his name. Give to him glorious praise. Say to God, how awesome are your deeds.

So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. Selah. So the word selah, I don't think we've really covered this in the Psalms yet.

You'll see that in other Psalms. We don't really know what that means in the Hebrew. We think it means a pause. So we'll pause with the psalmist here. The first thing we see here is God as creator. There's a call here for all the earth to worship God.

In verse 1 it says, shout for joy to God, all the earth. Verse 4 says, all the earth worships you. And the picture here is that God is the creator of all peoples, everywhere, of all things. Everything he has created and everything is his. And all of creation reflects his glory. We see this in Isaiah 44, 23.

Isaiah 44, 23 says, sing, O heavens. He's talking about the sky, the moon, the stars. Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it. Shout, O depths of the earth, breaking forth into singing, O mountains, O forests, and every tree in it. The heavens, everything above, and everything below, the forests, the mountains, all of it reflects his glory. Isaiah 49, 13 says, sing for joy, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth.

Break forth, O mountains, into singing. Another picture of all the earth sings God's praises. Jesus, at one point in the New Testament, Jesus, he's getting ready to walk into the city of Jerusalem. And the people are praising him like he's a God. Spoiler alert, he is. So they're praising him.

And then all of a sudden, some of his enemies come in and say, no, no, no, you've got to stop that. They're praising you like you're a God. And Jesus, he answers them. He says, I tell you, even if they were silent, even if they were silent, the very stones would cry out. He's like, even if they stop praising me, the stones will cry out. And he just drops the mic and walks into Jerusalem.

Jesus, the creator of the universe, all of it reflects his glory. And we need pictures of that. And we need to see that from the big things that he's created to the smaller things. Like we need to know, we need to think and remember that the earth revolves around the sun at like 93 million miles. All right?

I want you to think about this. If it goes out too far, all of life on earth dies. And if it comes too far in, all of life on earth dies. So God is holding the earth around the sun, going 93 million miles around. He's holding it at an axis of 23.5 degrees tilted. If it's tilted too far in, there's no life on earth.

If it's too straight, there's no life on earth. And I know some of you have been watching YouTube and you're thinking, the world is flat. I know that we thought that was settled science. It came back. And it still works for your worldview. Because if you take a map and you tilt it 23.5 degrees, we all come toppling out.

So God actually has to hold us together as we're revolving around the sun. So from the big picture, God, he sustains all of life. All the way down to like the smaller details. Like our eyes are the most complex organs in our bodies. And like two weeks ago, we got to sit under a solar eclipse. And I downplayed it.

I was like, there's no way. People are freaking out about this. This cannot be that cool. And it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I was so jacked for three minutes. We're cheering.

We're screaming. It was awesome. And then some people took pictures and video with really, really nice cameras. And you got to look at them online later. And tell me, were those pictures, those videos, they match what you saw in person? Not a chance.

What you got to see in person was amazing. Because our eyes are so complex. You can see the depth and the glory and the beauty of God's creation. All the way down to like our taste buds reflect God's glory. Like the fact that our tiny little taste buds help us taste food. I mean, this is like the best time to be alive to eat.

Like I know there's some Netflix documentaries that say otherwise. And I will contend there's some problems with our food system. But think about this. You can go to a restaurant where you can sit down and a chef will prepare a meal with food like spices and meats and vegetables from all over the globe on one plate. And you get to enjoy that on a regular basis. Because down to our taste buds reflect God's creativity and his glory.

So like why do we walk through all that? It's important for us to see how big our God is. How much he's in control. All the way down to the details. So that we can compare the glory of how big our creator God is to what we currently face.

And that's what Jesus does in Matthew 6. In Matthew 6 he's teaching on anxiety. And he says, don't be anxious. Do you see the birds? He's like the birds wake up every morning. They sing God's praises.

And God feeds the birds. And he says, look at the fields. The fields are clothed with beautiful flowers. Like I feed the birds. I clothe the fields. Like how much more do I care for you?

You who are made in the image of God. Like I care for everything else. And you are made in my image. Like I, that is the creator God who cares for us. And we need that picture. We need to remember that picture as we walk through pictures of like this in the Psalms.

So we get a picture of God as creator. And as we walk through we get a picture of God as savior. It picks up. In verse 5. Come and see what God has done. He is awesome in his deeds towards the children of man.

He turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him. Who rules by his might forever. Whose eyes keep watch on the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves.

Selah. Alright, so when he says he turned the sea into dry land. And when he says they passed through the river on foot. What he is giving a picture of is the picture of Exodus. Like every Jewish person who hears this. Who sings this.

They are thinking of the event of the Exodus. I want to walk really quickly through what the story of Exodus is. If you have not read the story of Exodus. Please go home. It is the second book in the Bible. And read the story of Exodus.

And bonus. You can rent Prince of Egypt. Or go find that movie. It is a cartoon retelling of the story of Exodus. And it is actually fairly bitterly accurate. And it has an all star cast.

Like Liam Neeson. Sandra Bullock. Val Kilmer. You are never going to get a cast like that for a Bible movie again. So go.

Watch that movie. Read Exodus. I will tell you the highlights. The people of God have been enslaved by Egypt for around 400 years. And God is ready to bring them back into the promised land. So he raises up Moses.

We don't have time to get into his story of how he was born. And how he was called. But eventually Moses goes toe to toe with Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the ruler of Egypt. And he says let my people go. And Pharaoh says no.

I will not. And then one by one. He starts. God starts bringing plagues upon Egypt. To break Pharaoh. And he turns the river Nile into blood.

And each plague after that is actually a picture of God's dominance over the false gods of Egypt. Because those plagues are tied to false gods in Egypt. And one by one. Plague by plague. All the way to the tenth plague. Pharaoh says no.

And then on the tenth plague. Moses says if you do not let my people go. Every firstborn son in this land will die. And then Pharaoh says no. So Moses goes to the people.

And he says I want you to protect your family. I want you to take a lamb. I want you to slaughter it. I want you to take the blood of that lamb. And put it on the doorpost. And when God comes through.

To take the firstborn son out of every family. He will pass over your house. So they do. Egypt does not. And every firstborn son in Egypt dies. And Pharaoh finally says.

Get out. Leave. And not only do they leave. God says we're taking gold, silver, jewels with us. So they take Egypt.

They unload their riches. They walk right out of Egypt. They get close to the Red Sea. And Pharaoh changes his mind. He takes an army. And he comes to chase them down.

Take them back. And there's this scene at the Red Sea. Where they're coming down. They're barreling down on the Israelites. God creates this firestorm out of the heavens. It's kind of a lead blocker for them.

Then Moses takes his staff. He puts it in the Red Sea. And the Red Sea splits it too. And they travel through on foot. The other side safely. And then the Egyptians finally come through.

And the water collapses on them. And the enemy is defeated. And God's people are saved. That story shows up throughout the Bible. You can look at Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings. And in multiple Psalms you see the story referenced over and over and over again.

Which begs the question, why? Like why do the Israelites need to be continually reminded of this story? For some of whom happened centuries and centuries and centuries ago. The reason why is because it shows the heart of God. And His specific salvation of this people. Like I was reminding the Israelites.

I saved you. Like the reason you exist as a people is because I redeemed you from Egypt. From slavery to Egypt. I saved you. And they need this. They need this because their present circumstances.

For many who would sing this and read this, it doesn't feel like that at all. Like you pick up in verse 8. It says, Bless our God, O peoples. Let the sound of His praise be heard. Who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us.

You have tried us as silver has tried. You brought us into the net. You laid a crushing burden on our backs. You let men ride over our heads. We went through the fire and through the water. Yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

So there's two pictures that are happening in this section. Like the first picture is more references to what happened in Egypt. Like when he's talking about the burden that was placed upon their backs. Like that's a picture of what happened in Egypt. But because of the context of what this is written in, this is also, there are two pictures going on here.

Because for many people who would sing this, who would hear this read, for many of them, this is their current circumstances. Like when he says, For you've tested us. You've tried us like silver. When he says, You brought us into the net. You laid a crushing burden on our backs. Like they feel that because many of them are in exile.

Many of them are slaves again. Many of them are scattered across the Middle East. Far from the homeland. When he says, You let men ride in over our heads. They feel that. That's a picture of the enemy who came in with chariots and literally rode over people's heads.

So that's their present circumstances. And yet the psalmist here, he ends this section. He says, Yet you have brought us to a place of abundance. And in that context he means, We still exist. We are still abundant as a people. You still have sustained us.

And what's really cool about us, As we're applying our story on top of a Psalm of remembrance, Is that we get to remember our salvation story as we read their salvation story. Like we get to read in the cross into what happened with the Israelites. Like when they remember the Passover lamb that was slain so that they might be saved. We get to remember that on the night Jesus was betrayed, He celebrated a Passover meal. And that the following day he went to the cross and he became our Passover lamb that was slain for us. We get to remember our Passover lamb.

We get to remember, When we look at this picture, As they're remembering the Red Seas and the waters being parted, What we see as a connection in the New Testament, That baptism has some connections there. We get to remember baptism. Baptism is a sign of the death to life conversion that happens in Christ. And just as they pass through the waters and escape death into life, We get to remember our story as we read their story. And then you get to the place of abundance. And you get to think about the abundance of riches that we have in Christ.

Like the fact that we have victory over sin. The fact that we have a righteous standing before God. The fact that we have eternal fellowship with a God who's never going to forsake us. Like we get to remember the abundance of riches that we have there. And that is huge for us to remember in the midst of our trials. Like last week we touched on this.

Like if you're in the midst of health problems, It is so easy to believe the lie that is spilled into our heads from the enemy. That God doesn't care. That He doesn't care about my troubles. And we get to go back to our story and remember our salvation story. Remember, no, God does care. This is temporary.

But we are eternally His. Like we get to remember our story in the midst of marital problems. Like some of us are facing all kinds of marital issues. Like there's a scoreboard in your house. Like an unwritten scoreboard. And every time your spouse does something, You're marking it up.

And you're pointing to it. And you're remembering, Do you remember when you did this? Do you remember how you treated me there? And you've forgotten your story. You've forgotten that marriage is a reflection of the gospel. Like the God who lavished grace upon us.

That's what our marriage is supposed to reflect. Not remembering all the wrongs. That husbands are supposed to love our wives like Christ loved the church. And laying down our lives. That wives are supposed to follow our husbands' lead. Like we forget that.

We forget our story. So fill in the blank. Whatever problem you're facing, Remember your story that Jesus died for us. Because we have an enemy who's going to come in. He's going to tell us that God doesn't care. He doesn't care because of what you're facing.

And we're just like the Israelites. We need to be reminded of our salvation story. And that should turn us to praise. And that's what the psalmist picks up when we see a picture of how God is worthy of worship. Verse 13, it says, Now that form of worship should seem a little bit foreign to us. Like if Matt came in here on a Sunday and was like, Guys, I got some new stuff for you.

And he just started playing. He got his guitar. And he started strumming. And he said, Oh, we're going to slaughter animals. There's going to be blood everywhere. It doesn't sound like that.

It's kind of a Nickelback voice. But if he started singing songs like that, We'd all be sitting back and saying, Are you, like, get them off. Stay out. If you're not a Christian and you're new to some of this, You'd be like, I knew it. I knew it. They are crazy.

But as Christians, we'd be like, What's Matt doing? Like, that's not how we worship. And so the reality is our worship has changed. The picture of worship changes. So when we read passages like that that seem foreign, We get to take what is great about the way we worship now And apply it to how we're reading it.

Like we get to look at Romans 12.1 That says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, By the mercies of God, To present your bodies, hear this, As a living sacrifice, Holy and acceptable to God, Which is your spiritual worship. Like we, That is touching back to this picture Of the Old Testament. That the picture of worship changes. Like you don't have to go to the temple And make sacrifices anymore. Like we get to read this and go, Praise God that we are living sacrifice now. Because of what He has done, We're living sacrifice.

That we don't have to go and make sacrifices. We can point back to Jesus, Who perfectly fulfilled this sacrificial system. That He is our sacrifice. We can look back, At this, And remember, That we don't have to actually go to the temple To be in the presence of God. That we can worship God from anywhere, In every aspect of life. We can honor Him, As a living sacrifice, In our place of work, In our neighborhoods, In our homes.

We don't have to go to the temple, We can have, We have access to God from anywhere. And the fact that we actually have access, To God, Like they would have to come, A couple times a year to the temple, To make sacrifices. And in the temple, There's an inner part called, The holiness of holies. And there's a thick curtain, That separates it from the next room. And the next room, The inner courts, And the outer courts. And there's this huge separation.

You have a high priest, Who can go in a little bit for you, Who makes sacrifices for you. It's like, No, no, We have access to God, Now. Forever. In Christ. That when Jesus died on the cross, That curtain, That was in the inner part, Was torn in the two. And that symbolized, That we have access to God, Now.

And that we have Jesus, As our high priest, As the book of Hebrews teaches. That He is our high priest, And this miraculous, Mysterious way, Is at the right hand of God, Offering prayers, To the Father, On our behalf. I mean, It's just, The picture of worship, It gets so much better. And when we read, Sections like this, We get to remember, We sing songs, That are really, Really good, That remember our Savior, And what He has done, Because He is worthy, Of worship. And in the psalmist, He closes out this section, With a picture of how God, Loves His people. In verse 16, He says, Come and hear, All you who fear God, And I will tell you, What He has done for my soul.

I cried to Him with my mouth, And high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished, Iniquity in my heart, The Lord would not have listened. But truly, God has listened. He has attended, To the voice of my prayer. Blessed be the God, Because He has not rejected my prayer, Or removed His steadfast love, From me. So again, In this section, We get two pictures here, Of what's happening.

In verse 16, He says, Come and hear, All you who fear God, And I will tell you, What He has done for my soul. So we are seeing a picture, Of God's love. And then, In verse 18, He says, If I had cherished, Iniquity in my heart, The Lord would not have listened. Which is also, A picture of love. But, It seems, On our first reading, You're like, Is He talking out of both sides, Of His mouth? In one part, He's saying, Come, And I will tell you, What God has done for my soul.

And in the next breath, He's like, But if I had cherished, Iniquity in my heart, God would not have listened. And you're like, How are those both, A picture of God's love? Growing up, I have two, Vivid, Pictured, Like memories, Of my stepdad. Like the first, The first is this two week trip, That we got to take, He, When I was a freshman in high school. Just me and him, We went to California, And, And we, We went to Sacramento, Then we drove to San Francisco, Spent some days there, Went down the highway one, And all of it's, I mean, That's such a beautiful drive. Went to LA, Then we went to Las Vegas, We went to the Grand Canyon, We went to Bryce National Park, To Zion National Park, Sequoia National Park, The Yosemite, It was two weeks, Of just so much fun, With my stepdad, And that was a picture, Of how much he cared, About me, And still cares about me.

So, I have that picture in my head, I also have a picture, Of, We towed the line. Now you, You didn't break curfew, In our house. That, That did not go well. Like you didn't talk back. You, This is off script. Alright, As a kid, I don't have this memory, But when he first came into my life, We, We tried to stone him.

Like my mom was dating him, We tried to stone him. He was watching us, And, And we took rocks and sticks, And we attempted to stone him. I don't have this memory, My brother remembers it, Because he's older than me, He was the ringleader, And we tried to stone him, And we'd never been spanked, In our life. And he spanked us, And we were mortified. They were dating, Like I'm so glad, That story didn't come up, Because if that story, Would have come up, Man, She broke up with him. But the years that followed, Like we got discipline, And we needed that.

Like we needed discipline, In our lives. And the reason why we needed that, Is because we needed to learn, To respect authority. And the reason that, I'm able to submit, To the authority of God's word, Is because I received discipline, I received instruction, I received warning. So I learned, Both of those, And both of those, Are a picture, Of God's love. And the psalmist here, The psalmist is so picturesque, Of remembering God's work. And specifically in prayer, The psalmist is reminding them, He's like, You know, A heart of obedience, It matters.

That doesn't mean, That we have to earn God's favor, We have to earn his ear. That doesn't mean that. We have a great high priest, Like all, That's settled. But there is a reality, That if our hearts, Are captivated by sin, Or as the psalmist says, He says, If I had cherished iniquity, In my heart. If our hearts, Are captivated by sin, And our prayers, They seem shallow, And base, And low, And not in alignment, With the will of God. But when we are sensitive, To his goodness, And to his glory, Man, When we're in that season, Our prayers tend to be rich, They tend to be, Spirit filled, They tend to be, In alignment with what God wants, For us.

Psalm 22 - Lament

Psalm 22 - Lament

Spencer Cary

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Transcript

Good morning. So we timed it well because some of you stayed up late and watched the fight. And we cut the air conditioning off. So, yeah, you guys will be awake the whole time. We're going to be in Psalm 22, which is page 260 in the White Bible. If you do not have a Bible, please take that home.

That is our gift to you. And, yeah, so my name is Spencer Carey. I am a not a church planning resident. I am a pastor in training here with Mill City, which is fun to say. You can celebrate that. We are excited.

I did not see this coming, but God has made it clear like we are better together. So to celebrate that, we're going to preach. We're going to go through a Psalm on sadness. We're going to be in Psalm of Lament. And so as a culture and even really as a church, like we're really bad at lamenting. Lamenting is mourning.

It's grieving. It's being sad over something. And we're bad at it. In college, my freshman year, I had a family member unexpectedly die. And I was in my dorm room, and it caught me off guard, and I was crying. And my suite mate, who's in the room next to us, heard me.

And he came over, and he said, what's wrong? And I explained what happened. And he went, ah. And I'm a hugger. Like I'm not on a scale of like Chet to Matt, like where Chet doesn't like physical touch, and Matt hugs everyone. Like I'm somewhere in the healthy middle.

But we weren't like that. We weren't that close to suite mates yet. And he kind of came in. He goes, oh, with the most awkward hug. Slowly kind of came around, and then just kind of did this thing. And then said, I'm so sorry.

And then he backed away, and he walked out. And I just was like, what in the world just happened? I was completely caught off guard. It's just because sometimes we don't know how to respond to someone who's grieving. I've also been someone who's been bad at helping someone grieve. A couple years ago in Louisville, we worked for an apartment complex ministry.

We spent time with the residents. We got to know this one family. It's this mother and father and their son. Their son was a high school football star. He went on to be a quarterback and now a wide receiver at University of Louisville. And his freshman year, the father, who actually I've gotten to know fairly well, suddenly passed away.

And so a couple months later, I just wanted to check in on the mother, and I walked over to her apartment. I did not call or text or give her a heads up. And I knocked on the door. And she opened, and she was a little confused while I was there. And I just said, how are you doing? She said, good.

Can I help you? And I was like, the church is supposed to help the widows. It just came out. And it was not comforting at all. And she very sweetly just gave me a hug and said, thank you, and shut the door. Because, I mean, we just want to fill that gap of silence sometimes, and we don't have the best things to say.

Sometimes you hear, like, empty platitudes, these sayings that don't really have a whole lot of helpful meaning. Some people will say, we know when someone dies, they'll say, you know, God, he needed another angel. And it's like, no, that's not how that works. Like, we're humans, and his other creation is angels. Like, we don't convert to being an angel. That's not how that works.

And I really miss them. Like, that's not helpful. Some people will say, not necessarily with death, but also just with the loss of a job or just tough times. People will say, you know, God will never give you any more than you can handle. And I'm like, no, it certainly feels like it's more than I can handle. And you got that from 1 Corinthians 10, 13, which is about temptation.

It's not about actually trials. Like, those are two separate things. That doesn't help me. Some people will say, everything happens for a reason. And it's like, yeah, okay. It still does not comfort me in this moment.

The other thing I see more and more, and it comes from a really good place, is that when someone dies, let's not do a funeral. Let's have a party. And I get that. I get the understanding behind that. The understanding is, is that, especially if they're a Christian, like we're celebrating, they're in the presence of Jesus. They're in a much better place.

We should celebrate that. And I understand that. And I hear that heart. But that's not how human emotions are supposed to work. That's not how we're designed to work. And that's not how Jesus responds to loss.

When you look at Lazarus, his friend. When Lazarus dies, Jesus hears about it. He is coming. Lazarus has been dead for days. He knows what he's getting ready to do. Like, he knows he's going to show his power.

He's going to raise Lazarus from the grave. So he knows how this is ending. And he shows up to the gravesite. And Mary and Martha are there, and they're crying. And what does it say? The shortest verse in the Bible.

That Jesus wept. Like, he weeps with those who weep. There's the process of grieving and being sad is important for our souls. So we're bad at lamenting alone, too. Like, some of us, our go-to is, like, we'll run to alcohol. We'll run to Valium.

Anything we can do to numb the pain. Others of us will bury grief. It's like, I just ignore it and bury it. And we know that that never works. Some of us binge on food or Netflix or video games. Whatever we can do to escape our present reality.

And our culture, largely, it avoids sadness at all costs. Like, avoid sadness and hoard happiness. That's kind of how our culture is. We don't want that kind of sadness if someone's grieving. If someone has lost a job, we get really uncomfortable. We want to hear about all the details.

If we have friends who are in a long depression, like, we want to stay away from that. If we have friends on Facebook who kind of go on Facebook and are repeatedly posting sad things, what do we do? Hide the post. Unfriend them. It's kind of our go-to. I think the makers of the movie Inside Out realized that adults are terrible at this.

That we don't have a category for sadness. So they had to make a movie to show that there's a place for that. If you haven't seen the movie, one of the whole points of the movie is that there's this little girl. And she's got the different emotions in her head. Different feelings in her head. And they tell sadness, you stay over here.

You stay in the circle. You don't move. And by the end of the movie, they realize there's actually a real place for sadness. And as a culture, we censor death. We censor loss. And when we do that, we hurt ourselves.

Because the reality is that death and loss, we live in a fallen world. That is going to come. And if we don't know how to process it well, the sting of that loss, the sting of that death will linger. And our souls. And it will do real damage to our relationship with God. It will do damage to our relationship with others.

So we, as a church, have to grow in being better mourners and being better lamenters. So we are in Psalm 22 this morning. And in this Psalm, I want us to grow in two areas. On how to individually, healthily lament before God. And how to lament with one another as the church. That's how we want to grow as we walk through Psalm 22.

So I'm going to pray. And then we're going to dive in. God, thank you for Psalms like this. That remind us that in our pain. That in our suffering. That in our loss.

You have words for us. I pray that you would let these words be helpful for our souls. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so Psalms 22, verses 1 and 2.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me? From the words of my groaning. Oh, my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I find no rest. All right, so we'll stop there.

So we've covered David's life a good bit throughout the Psalms. Because his life kind of sets up as the backdrop. And the context for many of which the Psalms are written. And as we've talked about him. We've noticed that his life was a lot of life of suffering. Like, yeah, he was a king.

And there was times of prospering. But he also was on the run for his life a lot. He was suffering pain and loss and death. And Psalm 22 is written in that context. And he starts out saying, my God, my God. Now we have to stop there.

In the Hebrew language, which is what this was originally written in. Repetition is really important. It serves as a major marker. So as the Israelites would have heard this, they would have stopped and thought about what he was saying. The reason why he stops and he says, my God, my God. Is because what we need to see is that he is lamenting from a position of faith.

He's lamenting from a position of faith. In the midst of loss, David still has faith. You are still my God. So I want us to see that all healthy lamenting is done from a position of faith. And we see that in David's life. And we also see that in the story of Job.

Job is one of the books that's the most helpful books that we have in the Bible on suffering. If you haven't read that book, it's a longer book in the Old Testament. It's one of the oldest stories in the Old Testament. And it's about a man named Job. And Job has a lot. His life is prosperous.

He has a large family. He has lots of money. He has lots of land. He has great health. Everything's going well for Job. And he also loves God.

And then Satan comes along and he talks to God. And he says, you know, the only reason that job loves you, the only reason he has faith in you, is because you've given him all this stuff. If you took all that stuff away, he'd curse you. And God, knowing Job's heart, says, no, that's not what would happen. And in a very uncomfortable reading as we read through it, God says, okay, you can take everything away except for his life. So Job's life immediately starts to fall apart.

His children die. He loses all of his money. He starts suffering. His health starts deteriorating. And he's falling apart. And that's like the first part of the book.

And then the rest of the book, most of the book, is about Job's three friends. They come and they give three speeches. And they're long. And basically, to summarize them, they're kind of this, you must have done something wrong and God's punishing you for it. Some kind of weird God-controlled karma. You earn this.

And Job, as he's listening to these speeches, like he missteps. He missteps. He gets a little arrogant. He questions God's character. But what's beautiful about this story is that his faith doesn't change.

And one of the most beautiful passages in all of the scriptures, Job 13, 15, Job says this. He says, though he slay me. He's talking to God. Though he slay me, I will hope in him. Like that's the position of his heart. And it doesn't change.

And at the end of the book, like God corrects him on his arrogance. But his faith never changes. And God restores his family, his wealth. And he lives a long life that comes out of that. And what we see from Job's story and what's helpful for us for understanding Psalm 22 and lamenting is that God does ordain suffering. Like he allows suffering for a purpose.

I mean, he's the sovereign king of the universe. Like if he wanted to stop a hurricane of pain from happening in your life, if you want to stop Hurricane Harvey from happening, he would. But he doesn't. And we don't always get to know those purposes. Most of the time we don't get to know the purposes behind it. And David is in that context as he's lamenting.

He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where are you? Like, why are you far from me? I mean, I'm crying out to you day and night. And all I hear is silence. And I understand David's situation.

We've got to jump down a little bit to verses 12 through 15. I understand what David is going through. In verse 12, he says, As many bulls encompass me, they open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. And the picture here is poetic. He has enemies that are like bulls that are ready to destroy him. And some of us, like we feel like we can relate to that.

Like some of you may have work situations where you feel like every day you go into work, you've got enemies that are ready to take you down, ready to ruin your reputation, ready to move in front of you, ready to take your livelihood. I had a friend in Louisville. He was in the dermatology program at the University of Louisville. It's one of the most competitive programs in the country. And he'd come to a community group every week. And I'd say, man, how was your week?

And he said, it was awful. It's awful. Every single day is awful. Because everyone's positioning. Everyone's trying to sabotage one another. Everyone's trying to move ahead so they can get the next fellowship so they can move on and advance past you.

And some of you, like you feel that. Every day you go into work, you feel like there's enemies that are surrounding you. Some of you feel like that with your families. Like there's people trying to rip your family apart, trying to tear your lives apart. So we can relate to David when he says this.

He keeps going in verse 14. He says, I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. And the picture here is that David is physically suffering. Which makes sense. I mean, he spent most of his life in battle. Like his body is probably starting to fall apart.

And I can relate to this in a small way. I have regular back and neck problems. Like you saw Chet bring this up. I had to come over and say, dude, my back is starting to tense up. When we brought this over here earlier, I was like, oh. I felt it tightened up a little bit.

Because I regularly have back and neck problems. I had a violent wreck in high school where I flipped a truck on top of me. And ever since then, by God's grace, I survived. That was like a really, I think the survival rate on that wreck is like 1%. But since then, ever since then, I've had back and neck problems.

I mean, every couple months, I'm having to do some rehab. I'm having to get some shots. And it's painful. And as I've been here with you guys the last year, my suffering does not hold a camel to what some of you have walked through. Some of the physical suffering that I've seen in our church. And we're often left wondering, like, why am I suffering like this?

Why is it that I'm continually, I can't, like, God, you could make me better. Why am I suffering like this? And David keeps going in verse 15. He says, my strength is dried up like a pot shared. That's a broken, dried up piece of pottery. So my strength is dried up like a pot shared.

And my tongue sticks to my jaws. And the picture here is that he's starving and he's thirsting to death. And we have stories of David that show that. That on the run for his life, he's starving and he's thirsting. And we can't relate to that as much because we're Americans. And, like, we have an abundance of food.

McDonald's is, like, five miles away at any given time. And you've got a dollar menu. You can go buy food like that. We can't relate to that one-to-one. But we can kind of relate to the financial provisions part of it.

The God providing for us daily bread. I mean, some of us, I mean, I feel like when we build up a little bit of savings, it's like we take two steps forward. And then, like, three steps back, we have a medical bill that comes. Or we have a car that breaks down. And some of you feel like that. You can't ever get over the hump.

I was talking to somebody a couple years ago, and he had made a mistake 15 years ago and was still paying for it. And still financially paying for it. And he looked at me and he said, when is God going to relent? Like, when am I going to get over this? And I just looked at him and I said, I don't know. I don't know.

So we can relate to David's suffering. We can relate to what he's saying here. All healthy lamentsing is done from a position of faith. Like, that idea, we have to hold that central. But lamenting is also airing out, making known, revealing your sufferings before God.

That's airing out your sufferings before God. And we, as we do this, we need to be careful here. Like, we need to be careful because we can air like Job. We can mess up like Job and we can come at it to God from a position of arrogance and pride. And that's not what this is supposed to be. The tone of lamenting is not arrogantly questioning God for our suffering.

It's airing out our sufferings from a position of faith. But here's the deal. We're still called to, like the psalmist, to air out our sufferings before God. And that takes some honesty. I mean, and here's a little bit of the freedom we have here. Like, God knows your heart.

Like, if you're questioning God arrogantly in your heart, like, He knows the thoughts you're going to have before you have them. He knows what's going on there. So we need to ask God to change our heart to help us repent of that. But we need to be honest with God. And if you're like me and you feel a little bit uncomfortable with doing this, just take a Psalm of lament like Psalm 22. Read and pray through it.

And air out your sufferings alongside the psalmist. So, from a position of faith, airing out our sufferings. And then we get to see David's, what he's facing here. As he's facing it, how he remembers God's past presence in Israel. In verses 3 through 5, he says, In the midst of his lamenting, David is remembering who he is and who he comes in the line of. He's remembering the fathers of Israel.

So, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David is an anointed king. He's following in that path. He's remembering his identity. That he's a chosen son of God. That he's a chosen king. So, likewise, in the midst of our lamenting, we have to remember our identity.

That we are sons and daughters of God. Now, we're going to touch more on this next week as we close out the Psalm series. Remembering God's work in our lives. But it's important for us in lamenting here to remember this. To remember that if you believe the gospel. Like if you've trusted in Christ as your only hope.

That God finds favor upon you. That, hear this, God loves you. That he loves you. In the midst of our lamenting, we can remember that. Even when it doesn't feel like it. When our situations may seem like that isn't true.

God still loves us. And David, he kind of messily works through this. In verse 6, he says, he goes back. But I'm a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind and despised by the people. I mean, that's how he feels.

He doesn't even feel like a man. He feels like a worm. Despised by others. And then he keeps going and showing how others are questioning his identity. In verse 7 through 8, he says, Here's what they say. He trusts in the Lord.

David trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let God rescue him. For God delights in David. So they mock him.

Yes, some things, some things never change. Like David, he hears that. That false understanding that if you're loved by God, suffering won't come. He hears that from others. And some of us, man, we'll hear that from others. We'll hear that from our own flesh.

Just kind of saying, does God really love me? In the midst of all this, really? Does he love me? Some of us are going to hear that from our enemy, from Satan and his band of demons. Are going to whisper in our ear, causing us to question, does God really love you? In the midst of your suffering?

It sure doesn't look like it. And we're going to hear those type of lies and hear those type of doubts. And like David, we should respond with truth. He picks it up in verse 9 through 11. He says, Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breast.

On you was I cast from my birth. And from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me. For trouble is near and there is none to help. So David, he hears the lies and he responds in truth.

He's remembering truth in his lamenting. That God has found favor on David in a unique situation. He's found favor on David since his birth. And out of this truth, he calls upon the Lord. And he says, Be not far from me. For trouble is near.

And in our grieving and our lamenting, we are going to face doubts like David. And we have to respond with truth. Respond with the truth of the gospel. If we can learn to individually lament before God from a position of faith. Airing out our sufferings before God. Remembering our identity as sons and daughters of God.

And responding to doubts and lies with truth. We can grow in being healthy lamenters. Like God can equip us when suffering comes. And suffering is going to come. In college, when I had a family member die, My response was not good. Like I immediately was frustrated and angry.

And my immediate thought was, Why, God? I mean, don't... I thought you loved... Like what's... I was mad. And I started questioning God's goodness and His character.

And I didn't have a good category for how to air out sufferings from a position of faith. And I was having trouble remembering my identity as a son of God. And I did not do well in responding to the lies with truth. And in the years that followed after that, I realized like that cannot be the pattern for how I lament loss. That can't... Like I'm...

That's going to do damage. So over the years, Like I was trying to grow and mourning the smaller losses. And lamenting the smaller losses. And trying to be more faithful throughout that. So I could grow and be prepared.

Because the reality is we live in a fallen world. We live in a broken world. And suffering is going to come. And it came for us in a big way last summer. Last summer, we're getting ready to move down here. And we're excited.

We're getting ready to church plant. But even more than that, We're excited because Anna, my wife, was pregnant. And we were really excited. And we didn't want to see a doctor while we were in Louisville. Because we're getting ready to move. So we waited some time.

We moved down here. We tell our friends. We tell our family. And then eventually we find a doctor down here. So we go to see the doctor.

And we're excited. It's the first sonogram appointment. And the sonogram tech starts to do her work. And she finds the heartbeat. And it was really, really dim. And immediately, my wife picks up on something's very, very wrong.

I'm a little bit slower. And the nurse finally says, Have you had trouble in previous pregnancies? And that hit me like a ton of bricks. Because we didn't have a history of that in our family on either side. And it hit us. And there was a painful silence for the rest of that ultrasound.

And then she gets up. And she says, The doctor will see you when you're ready. And we are scared. And I just take Anna's hand. And I just start praying. I'm like, God.

You're sovereign. You're the king of the universe. You can save our child. I put a ton of hope in that heartbeat. I was like, you can save our child. But whatever happens, God, just be with us.

Help us get through this. And then the doctor comes. And she's just honest with us. She said, listen, based on what we're seeing, you're going to miscarry in the next couple of weeks.

Psalm 62 - Emotionally Healthy Worship

Psalm 62

Chet Philips

Transcript

Well, good morning. My name's Chet. We are in a series on the Psalms. We've been spending some time just walking through and allowing the Psalms to train us in what it looks like to relate to God in the normal, everyday parts of life. To walk with Him when things are good, when things are bad, to be able to praise Him, and just kind of train us in what it looks like to live a life of worship. Today we're going to be in Psalm 62.

We'll start off there. We'll look at the first eight verses. We're going to talk a little bit today. Because we've been studying the Psalms, one of the things we're seeing is that this is the Bible's songbook, and there's poems, prayers, and songs. And one of the things you'll run into any time you begin to interact with poems, prayers, and songs is that you're going to face and get to see an inside look into real human emotion. That one of the things that happens for humanity in our songs, in our prayers, in our poems, is we pour something of ourselves into them.

And that's one of the things that we get to see in the book of Psalms, is that there's a lot of emotion. Now, many of us are unhealthy emotionally. We just are kind of emotionally unhealthy as Christians, and so today we're going to spend a little bit of time just talking about how the Psalms train us in our emotions, how they help us out to begin to have some healthy emotions. We're not, in the next 40 minutes, going to fix you, so don't get your hopes up. We are, though, going to try to learn a little bit from the Psalms in how to begin to take a step towards having healthy emotions. Next week we'll specifically spend our whole time talking about lament, which is being sorrowful, which I think is an area that we need to grow in America, and in American Christianity is learning how to lament.

But today we're going to talk about kind of a wide range of emotion, and we'll start in Psalm 62. I'm going to pray, and then we'll read the first eight verses to get us started this morning. God, we just ask for your help this morning. We are complex in so many ways that so much plays into our health, our mental state, our temperament, and we just ask that you'd give us wisdom and insight into our own hearts this morning, that you might begin to go to work on us, that we might look more like you. We love you, and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Psalm 62, it's on page 274. If you have one of these white Bibles, if you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. That's our gift to you. We'd love for you to have a Bible. We'd love for you to read it often. Verse 1.

For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. So the psalmist hears this David, and he's saying, I'm going to wait on God. I'm going to trust in him. He alone is my salvation. And he kind of turns and says, Everyone around me is just trying to tear me down, trying to destroy me.

Verse 5, he basically repeats what he said at the beginning. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory.

My mighty rock, my refuge is God. And verse 8 is where we'll end and where we'll spend most of our time focusing this morning. Trust in him at all times. O people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. So David's kind of talking about his own situation.

He's talking to his soul. He's talking to those who are attacking him. And then he turns and talks to the people. And he says, he kind of gives this call to trust in the Lord. Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him.

God is a refuge for us. So he says to trust in him. He says, pour out your heart to him. And then he says he's a refuge. Which means that in the middle of pain and trial and difficulty and fearfulness, we can run to him. It's like a storm shelter.

That if you had some sort of underground buried thing in the middle of a tornado coming, you leave your house. You run and you get in that thing. You close the door and you're okay. A storm shelter or a bomb shelter. Like that's the, what he's saying is like, he's the thing we ought to run to in the middle of everything being chaotic and difficult and painful. And right there in the middle, he says, pour out your heart before him.

So I just want to, I want you to think for just a second this morning. If you could accurately do that, actually take your heart, all your hopes, all your dreams, all your fears, all your desires, all your sadness, all your anger. If you could accurately go to God and just pour that out, what would come out? What would happen if you were actually able to do that? If you were actually able to take everything that's in the deepest, most real part of you and pour it out before God, what would be poured out? Now, some of you, maybe you have a pretty good answer for that.

Maybe you already know kind of what's going on in there. I think for many of us, it's like, I don't know. I think it'd be a hot mess. If you're like me, it's like, honestly, I've learned how to stay up in this zone. I don't get down in that. Like, I don't mess with that heart level stuff.

Like, I'm up here. You know, it doesn't say take your logical thought process to God. No, it says pour out your heart before him. Take what's in you and real. And honestly, we need to learn how to do this. And that's what we're going to start talking about this morning is how to begin to do this.

Because for many of us, specifically maybe for those who've ever tried to stop smoking or for those who've ever tried to go on a diet, we learn something very quickly. Our brain can know things. But if our heart isn't in it, it ain't going to happen. They can put as many little pictures of gum cancer on a cigarette box as they want to. Your brain can know all you need to know about cancer. But if you don't have your emotions behind it, if you don't have the willpower behind it, it's not happening.

Like, that's just the way we work. And so some of us, we need to begin to learn what's going on in us and learn how to run to God in the middle of everything and learn how to pour our hearts out to him. So, before we get into this this morning, we're all over the place. Some of you, a lot of how we deal with emotion and think about emotion comes from where we grew up. I'm not going to, I don't have any kind of analysis for this. I'm just trying to help you see it.

So I don't feel like I'm about to, like, psychology this up. I just want you to know. It comes from, a lot of it comes from where you grew up. So, like, some of you came from households where emotion, feelings weren't talked about. They didn't exist. Maybe you had a dad when something happened and you started crying.

Maybe your dad or your mom looked at you and said, we can continue this conversation when you'd like to be reasonable. And you learned tears, tears ain't cutting it here. This isn't happening. Maybe you had, like, like a 30-second timer. It's like, okay, you can be sad until it's cutting on my nerves. You're going to have to cut it down.

Like, you just got to shut it. Like, maybe some of you came from households where emotions steered the ship. It wasn't odd for people to blow up, throw things, whole plans be changed based off of fear, lifestyle be changed based off of anger, sadness to shut everything down. Like, maybe you came from households where someone who was in charge was, like, just their emotions ruled the day. Some of us come from households where certain emotions are okay and other ones aren't. So maybe you grew up in a house where anger's fine.

We can handle anger. We know what to do with anger. Anger makes sense. Of course you'd be mad about that. Like, if this was inside out, that little red dude's just driving the thing. Everybody else is tied up in the corners.

Like, he's already putting them down. Like, he just is getting to do his thing. Some of you, maybe it was sadness. If somebody was sad, everything stopped. They're sad. They're feeling things.

But if you got mad, it was like, we don't do that here. You cannot act like that. It's completely unacceptable. Just to put my cards on the table a little bit, I want to tell you a family story. I grew up in a house. I have two brothers.

And my dad's a rather intense guy. And this actually happened with my younger brother when I was off at college. So he was in high school, middle of high school, sophomore year, junior year, somewhere around in there. And my dad was cutting his hair because my dad always cut our hair because it saves money. And that's why we still cut our hair sometimes. I got to cut my own hair.

So everyone's like, if you think, man, it's a terrible haircut, it's because I did it myself, you guys. And I remember actually the first time I ever got to go to a barber, I was surprised at how gentle they were. Because I'd only ever had him cut my hair. And he would just grab your head and move it. And your natural reaction is to push back. But if you did that, he would just hit you.

And so you learned real quick when his hand came up to just like go limp, let him do whatever he wanted to. And so he was cutting my younger brother's hair. And I don't know what they were talking about. And I don't know if it was about the haircut or about something else. But my dad called him a name that I am not allowed to repeat up here.

But he called him a name. And my brother said, he's like, Daddy, you shouldn't talk to your son like that. Like you should not call. He said, do you know how that makes me feel when you call me that name? And so my dad stopped, cut his clippers off, came around and he said, Vince, I never knew you had feelings. If I'd have known about your feelings, everything would be different.

I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings. I was at college. He called to tell me. He called to tell me that my younger brother had feelings. But it's a real story.

It's how my family worked. And because I'm a part of this family, every year my mom at Christmas would get an ornament for the tree that kind of represented things that happened that year. Like if we had moved or we started school or somebody was playing a sport. And I was walking with my wife, Anna. She wasn't my wife then. But we were walking through a mall.

And they had a little cart where they would make ornaments, like special ornaments. And so I found a little pink cart with a little bow and some little ballerina shoes. And I had them write, Vince has feelings and the year. And every year we put that on our Christmas tree. And he's still known as the person in our family who has feelings. And every time you bring it up, he gets his feelings hurt.

And we're like, hmm. For real, if he ever comes to visit us, y'all should be like, oh, you're the one with feelings. And just watch his face. I don't know where you come from. I had to learn. You guys, I had to grow up and learn.

Some of that's not healthy. I didn't know that. It took me four years. Four years of being married to realize if my wife cried, I should hug her. Four years. It was way better after that, you guys.

She would cry. And I was just like, what? I don't even know what to do with this. And like one day I was like, it was something. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit helping me out. I was like, maybe you should hug her.

So I just hugged her. And it was like, whoa. This completely helped. So now I still don't like empathize, but it's like I see tears and I know what to do. She yawned the other day and a tear ran out. And I was like.

So I don't know where we're coming from. Some of us right now are like, yes, we're going to talk about feelings. Other ones of us are like, we've said the word feeling and emotion way too much already. Pour your heart out. No, thank you. So I don't know where we are, but I want us to see that for us to be emotionally healthy, the Bible actually equips us maybe in some ways that we hadn't seen and helps us out in some ways we hadn't seen.

And the Psalms interact with emotions maybe in some ways we hadn't noticed. And so what we're going to do for just a second is I'm just going to read some Psalms that move around in different emotions to help us hear it. And so I will put the Psalm, like the actual Psalm on the screen, not the words of the Psalm. I would rather you just, if you want to jot them down so you can refer to them later, but I'd rather you just listen. Just kind of like if you were listening to an album or, you know, this was an open mic night at like a poetry dram or something. Like, I don't know, the things they played a little.

I can get on that thing and just be like. So just listen to try to hear the emotions behind the Psalmist as they write this and the fact that this has been included in Scripture for us to see, for us to study, for us to learn from. And so I'm going to move around a little bit. I'm going to read these and try to help you see kind of the different emotions in some of these Psalms. So we'll start with Psalm 100.

And in a lot of ways, we're just going to hear joy and gladness and celebration. So 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 is to all generations. So it says enter his courts with singing, enter his courts with thanksgiving and praise.

Be joyful, rejoice. And there are so many Psalms that say this. For us to sing, for us to dance, for us to be glad, for us to celebrate. And I think for some of us, we believe that that is the appropriate way to approach God. Gladness, thanksgiving, joy, rejoicing. That's the way to approach God.

And that's the only way to approach God. So that when we're somewhere else, when we're in sadness and pain and frustration and anger, we've got to get it together because we've got to enter his courts with thanksgiving and with singing and with praise. I think some of us, even if we don't realize that's what we believe, we start doing that when we show up in the parking lot out here. You don't realize that's what you're doing, but that's what you believe. I know. Everything else, I just got to rise above.

Everything's got to be fine. We believe this is the only way to approach God. It's a good way. It is a way. We should celebrate. We should rejoice.

But it's not the only way. I'm going to read Psalm 13. In this Psalm, we're going to hear the psalmist basically pleading with God, trying to understand his situation and why things are working out the way they're working out. Psalm 13. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. So the psalmist there is saying, how long am I going to be stuck here? How long is this how this is going to work? Some of you, maybe you feel like you're in that situation or you've been there before where it's like, God, I thought things were supposed to be better by now. I thought I was supposed to be better by now.

I thought I was supposed to be like, how long am I going to be stuck here? Are you not going to help me? Or can you not hear me? Will you consider what I say? And then he gets to the end and he ends with, but I trust you and I'll sing. And so there is some appropriate amount of being in a painful place and saying, no, no, no, but I'm going to remind myself of what I believe and what's good.

And a lot of Psalms do that. They talk about bad stuff and the pain and the brokenness and then they'll end with, no, but I have faith and I have hope and I'm going to run to you. But not all of them. I'm going to read Psalm 88. And this is a little bit longer, but I think it's helpful. Listen for the desperation, the depression, the despair, and the bitterness that are included in this Psalm for our benefit.

Oh, Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you. Incline your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to Sheol. That's the place of the dead. I'm counted among those who go down to the pit.

I'm a man who has no strength, like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions of dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape.

My eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you in the morning. My prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors.

I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me.

My companions have become darkness. And that's it. No hope. No, I'll trust you. He says, I pray every day. Why do you cast my soul away?

I come to you. I cry out to you. You have placed me in the deep and the dark. And you've made all my companions shun me. My friends are darkness. Psalm 137.

This is a Psalm for those who had been taken into captivity into Babylon. So they had been, the Babylonians had ridden in, had destroyed, burned down, killed, and then dragged off slaves to Babylon. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there, we hung up our lyres. Those are instruments. They said, we're done.

We're done singing. We're done with joy. We're hanging them up. For there our captors required of us songs and our tormentors mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. So they're saying our captors, our tormentors, those who have enslaved us said, hey, sing us one of your happy songs that you used to sing in your childhood when you lived in Zion before we rode in and killed everybody and brought you here.

Sing us one of those. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites. That's a group of people.

The day of Jerusalem. How they said, lay it bare, lay it bare down to its foundations. O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us. Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. So that's a Psalm included in the Bible that ends with, may God bless everyone who rides into Babylon, grabs a child, and smacks it on the ground.

May God bless whoever comes in and burns this place down. May God bless them forever. May they be lifted up. May they be glorified of those who would come in here and harm you and your children. May they be glorified of those who are Christians and learn things from Jesus like love your enemies and pray for those who hurt you. Maybe a question rises up with like, is that okay to say?

Can we actually pray for this? And that's a really good question. Psalm 42. I'm going to read just the first half of this. And I think it's helpful because we see that the psalmist is just kind of confused. It 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 then he goes through and says it all again, basically, what's going on. And then he says, Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God. And so you almost see the psalmist wrestling with himself and saying, I believe that God is good and I trust in him. But why can't, why can't I actually make that stick? Why can't I undepress myself? Why is my soul cast down? Like trust God that he's good.

He knows what he's doing. But it's like it's not taking. It's not working its way in. It's not become real yet. He can't make it roll over into joy and to peace. See, in the Psalms we see grief and anger, guilt and fear, pain, confusion, frustration.

And even as we read those, I want to ask, do you feel like you are allowed to say some of the things that were said in these Psalms to God? Because there's something that we read and you're like, no, can't say that. No, he doesn't want to hear that. No, you can't end the prayer like that. You can't, you can't pray and end with, you made all my friends hate me. And then like slam the door like some sort of teenager.

Like you can't, you got, you got to, you got to end with like, but you're good still. Like, I mean, I'm asking. Are there some, like the prayer, like I, blessed be anyone who takes your children and dashes them on rocks. Like, are we allowed to? Are you saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't, you can't go to God and talk like that.

You can't ask for that. There's Psalms where, where the psalmist says, thank you, God, that you break the teeth of the wicked. He doesn't mean cavities. He means you hit them in the face. And it's like, are we, are you, can you say that? And so I want us to read, if you're still in Psalm 62, if you're not, I want us to look back at verse eight.

Trust in him at all times. Oh, people pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Trust in him at all times. Oh, people pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us.

So, do we trust God enough to honestly and accurately tell him what's going on inside of us? Do we believe he's a refuge enough that we can be real with him about our sorrow and our depression and our pain and our anger? Or is he not trustworthy enough? Is there a chance that we'll tip our hand and he'll get rid of us? Is there a chance that he's only a refuge for those whose hearts have good things to talk about? Is there a chance that when we come to him, he's not, he's not going to accept what we have to say?

He says, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart before him that he is a refuge for us. That we can run to him with everything we have. And so I want to make a few real basic kind of quick observations from what we just read and from what Psalm 62 is telling us. Emotions are real and they matter. Emotions are real and they matter.

We were intentionally designed to be emotional beings and they're real. Sadness is real. Anger is real. And it matters. See, if it didn't matter, we wouldn't have all of this real raw emotion shown for us so clearly in the scriptures. We wouldn't have them.

This would be teaching us. No, no, no, no, no, no. Put your emotions on lock. But it doesn't. It talks about taking them to God. It talks about talking about him like it shows us how they lay it all out before him.

David says, pour your heart out. Christianity does not call you to be perfectly stoic. And perfectly unfazed by anything. That's not Christianity. That's ancient Greek stoicism. That's the enlightenment.

That says that you should never be in some sort of Zen. I'm a Christian. So nothing ever bothers me. That's that's not the God we meet in the Bible. We don't see that in Jesus. That you've not been called to be perfectly unflappable.

That you have real feelings and you should investigate them. In some ways, our emotions are like if you were sitting in your house or maybe in your office and you heard a beep. It doesn't really even matter how loud. Maybe you're just sitting in your office and you hear boop, boop. You look at your computer like, what? You go back to work 30 seconds later.

Boop, boop. Eventually, if this keeps happening, you're going to get up and figure out what's beeping. Or you're going to lose your mind. They actually make a thing that beeps at random intervals with different noises that you can hide in someone's magnetic. You can hide somewhere to make someone go insane. Like if you did that to your roommate, my only hope is that they take it out on you.

That's a real thing. When you hear a noise, if it's a loud beep, if it's a my son was it was early in the morning. Something beeped in our kitchen. He was in his room. It was like nine o'clock in the morning. It beeped.

He looked at me when my pizza is ready. I was like, no, but maybe we should change up your diet choices. If you hear a beep and you think pizza, we maybe need to step up our parenting game. But that's a real thing. And for some of us, we're sitting and our anger is going boop, boop, boop. And we're just ignoring it.

And here's the thing. That keeps beeping and you don't deal with it. You're going to go crazy. That's not going anywhere. Some of us, our fear is doing that. Some of us, our sadness is doing that.

And we're just saying, nope, can't hear it. La, la, la, la, la. And the people around us in our house are like, hey, what's that beeping? What's that noise? And you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And they're like, you need some help.

Well, so I'm going on with you if you can't hear that beeping. Like if you can't tell how you just responded in that situation, no, no, I'm fine. Like some of us need to realize that you have real emotions that need to be investigated. They need to be checked out. You've got to figure out what's going on. That if you're angry, you're angry for a reason about something.

If you're fearful, it's about something. These are worthy things to begin to investigate your heart so that you can pour them out to God. But acting like it's no, no, it's fine is not biblical. It is not faithful. And you are not trusting in God at all times and believing that he's a refuge. That we ought to, our emotions matter and they're real and they ought to be investigated.

Secondly, your emotions are not in charge. They're real. They're not necessarily valid. So when you're angry, you're actually angry. It's a real emotion. But maybe you shouldn't be angry.

They're not in charge. That's why they have to be investigated. And secondly, they have to be submitted to God. That's why he says, pour out your heart before God. He didn't say pour out your heart on everybody that lives near you. He says, pour out your heart before God.

Bring it to him. He's a refuge. He's like, take him and let him. It's submitting it to him. That you're bringing it to him and saying, you're trustworthy. And I can run to you in the midst of everything.

And I can trust you to make this good, to make it safe, to work here. That's actually what happens in every single one of these Psalms. Even in Psalm 88, where he just ends with, all my companions are darkness. Do you know who he was talking to the whole time? God. Even in the midst of that, he's still bringing it and submitting it to God.

He's still acknowledging that God's the authority over this. That God's reigning over this. That he can come talk to him about whatever. And he can bring it to him and say, like, this is a real thing. It's all in submission to God the whole time. That your emotions are real, but they're not in charge.

And they're real, but they're not necessarily valid. Some of you have some things that are beeping. And really, the batteries just need to be changed. You just got to fix the, you shouldn't actually be angry about that. You should have communicated better on the front end. You shouldn't actually be fearful about that like we're supposed to.

But the only way that happens is as we begin to investigate that and submit it to God. And he begins to work on our souls. He begins to train us. So there are some of us in this room who our goal has been to be perfectly stoic. I feel nothing. I'm fine.

And we need to begin to learn to sit long enough and to listen well to figure out what's going on with us so that we can talk to God about it. To investigate our hearts so that we can present it to him so that we can pour it out to him. And some of us in this room, you're like a ship without a rudder. And it just depends on how the wind's blowing, what the waves are doing that day as to where you're going to be. And those emotions have got to be brought to God and submitted to him before they're acted on and before they begin to run everything. That we would be slow to anger.

That we would be slow to respond in so many ways. That we would learn that our first step is to investigate and take it to God. Say, this is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm... Help me know where your truth lines up with this. Help me know if I'm right.

Should I be mad about this? Should I be happy about this? Like, work in me. That that's the response. That's it. When I said we're just going to learn kind of a first step in this, that's it.

That we would begin to investigate our emotions and bring them to God. Now, I think some of us maybe just heard, okay, go somewhere towards the middle. If you're not really emotion-y, start having some emotions. Maybe cry at something really magical like the end of Sandlot. And if you're too emotion-y, maybe tone it down. Got it.

That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I think the Bible says. I honestly think that Christians should have very powerful, potent, real, and raw emotions. That there are times in your life where wrath needs to be the best description. That there are times in your life as a Christian where sorrow needs to be the best description. Where fullness of joy needs to be the best description.

Not moderate, temperate. No. Such a good humor. Such a rich laugh. Such a joy that you make everybody else around you more joyous. Such sorrow that it infiltrates a room.

You see, that's the example we have in Jesus. We have God becoming a human who sits down and weeps. Who at other times, because he's slow to anger, makes a whip before using it. And then walks into a temple with a whip and flips everything over and drives everybody out and stands there and preaches. With zeal and anger that was terrifying. And I know it was terrifying.

Because if you went and did that at the flea market, you would have to be insanely terrifying for them to let you stand and keep preaching. Nobody came walking back towards him. He got to say what he wanted to say. Because wrath was the best word to describe it. Who's weeps and is sorrowful. Who's joyous.

The Bible doesn't recount this, so I'm making this up. But it seems so fitting because of how we're designed. I think Jesus had the best sense of humor. I think he laughed at exactly the right time and made jokes at exactly the right time. There's something very human about when your brain trips over itself that you just laugh. Have you ever thought about how weird that is?

It's like your brain, like it just like, it's like that shouldn't have happened that way. And you're like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, like it's a weird thing to just shoot noise out of your mouth, you guys. But God designed that in us. And there's something about it that's good and joyful. That wells up in us. And you say, oh, I laugh a lot.

Well, maybe there are times where you're laughing when you shouldn't be and it's inappropriate. See, I don't think Jesus was flippant. I think he had a good sense of humor. And I think as Christians, we're designed to follow Jesus with a real, raw, deep emotion that's acknowledged, that's walked in, but always under the authority of God, submitted to him and his truth and his wisdom and the fittingness of the occasion. Some of you are saying, okay, what if I'm naturally, like I just naturally calmer? That's okay.

What if I'm naturally more emotional? That's okay. Like some of that, like, you're good. But all of us need to begin this process of engaging our heart, investigating our hearts and submitting it to God. If you're naturally more fiery, naturally more excitable, yeah, start there. But maybe some of that needs to go away.

Maybe you need to grow out of some of that. And some of that's okay. Like we've got some people here that are a blessing to our church because if you're sad, they will immediately get sad and it's not fake. There's some people in our church family who when you aren't doing well, they'll walk up to you. You have told no one that you're not doing well. They'll walk up to you.

They'll look at you. You will start crying and be like, I need to tell you everything that's ever happened. That's beautiful. And we need that. We have some other people that in the middle of situations will sit like a rock in the middle of it and go, no, no, no, no, no, guys. Come on.

Come on back. No, no, no. You can't drift over there. Come on back. We've got to remember what's true. And that's beautiful and good.

But all of us have to begin. We can't keep ignoring the beeping. We can't keep ignoring the emotions and we can't keep letting it just toss us about. We've got to begin to investigate our hearts and take it to God. And here's what happens when we do that. Here's what happens for us as a church and as people who follow Jesus when we do that.

When we are emotionally healthy as Christians, we then accurately and beautifully reflect the tone of the gospel. And when we're emotionally healthy Christians, we can accurately and beautifully reflect the heart of our God. You see, we're people of the cross. The Christians are people of the cross, which means that we ought to have great sorrow, great bitterness and anger towards sin and its effects. There should be times that we weep. There should be times that we fall before God unconsolable over the brokenness that's going on in the world.

There should be times when we are angry, when we are wrathful because we're people of the cross. There should be times that we do sit down with those who are hurting and mourn with them over death and loss and pain, all of which have been led by the enemy into a good world and have infiltrated and caused destruction and difficulty that would not have happened outside of sin. And we ought to be people of the cross who can engage in that. But we're also people of an empty tomb who have an untouchable hope, an overwhelming joy that rides underneath everything because our our certainty of a future and inheritance with Christ has been made sure by an empty tomb.

Like so we we ought to be the people who are the most fun at parties. And the most consoling at funerals who are leading in the midst of injustice and brokenness and hurt along those who are hurting and who are celebrating everything that's worth celebrating. You see, some of us are so afraid of emotions when things are good. We don't even celebrate well. We're just like, well, I don't want to get too cocky. Just kind of quietly enjoy it.

I had a football coach who used to say when we'd win, he'd right before we win, he'd say, act like you won before. Which means like don't pour everything out and set everything on fire and act like crazy people. Pretend like you've done this. And some of us in the middle of really good seasons in life are like, I'm just going to keep it cool. Not really going to be excited. And it's like, no.

Celebrate. Play some music. Start dancing. I don't know how good you dance. Stop when other people get around. But, you know, celebrate.

That we're a people of the cross and we're a people of the empty tomb. And so we get to walk in real deep, genuine emotion without having it rule us. And we get to see that in the Psalms. And we get to begin to engage in that and grow in that as we walk with each other in life. I'm going to pray. And then the band's going to come back up.

But I'm going to pray first. God, we ask. We ask that through the power of your Holy Spirit, you would begin to help us see what's in our hearts. That we might learn to begin to pour that out to you. For those of us who have grown in a pattern of shielding ourselves from emotion and feeling, I pray that you'd help us to learn the joy and the depth and the reality of them that you've given us. That we would look more like Christ.

And for those of us in this room who have been tossed about and ruled over by our emotions. I pray that we would begin to rest in the hope and the surety and the truth of your gospel and of your rule, submitting those to you, and that we would begin to look more like Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Psalm 96 - Music and Song

Music and Song

Matt Freeman

Transcript

Good morning. I think that was the remix version. Get halfway through. God's working magic up there. It's good to see you guys today. My name's Matt.

I'm one of the pastors here with Mill City. If it is your first time hanging out with us, welcome. We're glad you're here. We do pray that this morning there'll be a blessing to you. And as Spencer said earlier, we are walking through the book of Psalms, basically talking about what does it mean to have a life of worship. And today specifically, we're going to talk about singing and music.

And for most of us, if you grew up in and around the church, that's actually the thing you think of first when you hear the word worship. You think music and song is the first thing that kind of pops in your mind. And I kind of want to address this right up front. So singing and music are worship, but worship is not just music and singing. Okay. So what we do on Sundays is worship, but worship is not just Sundays.

We believe that worship is a lifestyle. That's the way the Bible talks about it. That basically anything we think, say, or do when done for the glory of God is worship. So that's everything, which also means that music and singing do fit into that category. So as we continue the Psalms today and talk about worship, we're going to talk about music and singing.

Make sense? Got it? All right. I'm going to interchange those words today. So I just want to make sure we're all on the same page.

Go ahead. Grab a Bible. Turn to Psalm 96. It's going to be on page 286 in the white Bibles. As you're turning there, if you don't have one of these, if you don't have a Bible that's your own, I want you to take this one with you. We want everyone to have a Bible.

And as Spencer said earlier, we do have our Psalms books kind of over there by the door. But here's how Psalm 96 begins. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name. Tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. You guys pray with me as we get started this morning. God, your word very clearly commands us to sing, commands us to make music. And so our prayer this morning as a church family is that as we continue to grow in what it looks like to have a lifestyle of worship, God, that you would work as your Holy Spirit speaks, as you speak through your word to teach us how music and singing can be used as worship of you and how we ought to do that. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. So right from the get, Psalm 96, Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord. Sing to the Lord. Tell of his salvation. Declare.

Bless. So like right up front, you're kind of hit with a whole bunch of commands. A whole bunch of commands right at the beginning. Sing, sing, sing. And then the other three commands, bless, tell, and declare, are all just tagging back to this idea of singing. So right out the gate, this, this Psalm is talking about singing and music.

And really, all told, the Bible has over 400 references to singing and music and over, there's 50 direct commands to sing. I mean, that, that's crazy when you think about all of scripture. Uh, the book of Psalms is really one of the largest books in, in the Bible. And it's basically a book of songs. In the New Testament, we're commanded in two different places to sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs when we're together. Uh, Psalm 22, which is, uh, in reference to Jesus says that in the midst of the congregation, I will sing.

The night before, uh, Jesus was crucified, he gathered with his disciples and they sang a hymn. In Zephaniah 3, 17, we get this picture of God singing over his people, exalting in the midst of his people. And it's just kind of crazy how much the Bible actually talks about, uh, music and singing. But if you think about it, that's, that's kind of weird. Or, or it at least makes you ask the question, why? Why does God command us to sing and make music?

Because I think for most of us, there are other commands that it's way easier for us to get on board with, right? It just, it just kind of makes more sense. Uh, so when the Bible commands us to love one another. Okay, makes sense. I can see how that works out well for us. Uh, the Bible says don't commit murder.

Okay, well, if we're going to love one another, that makes sense. Probably, probably shouldn't kill each other. Bible commands, open your mouth and sing loudly with a group of other people. That, it just, it just doesn't quite fit in the same category. Like, if I'm sitting down with someone and I'm kind of in a, oh, lost my papers here. Uh, if I'm in a pastoral counseling situation with someone, and they basically look at me and say, Matt, I am really struggling right now with two sins.

Two major sin areas in my life that I am just struggling with. I'm stealing. Every time I see something that I want, I just, I just take it and I'm stealing. And when our church gets together on Sunday, I don't sing. There's one of those that I'm just going to kind of just move to the side. I'm saying, all right, grab a Bible.

Let's go to the 10 commandments where it says you shall not steal. It also says you shouldn't covet. Uh, let's talk about the punishment for stealing. And like, that's, that's the one I'm most comfortable going after. Uh, but here's the deal. The Bible actually only talks about theft and stealing in general 52 times.

The Bible talks about music and singing 400 times and has 50 direct commands to sing, but that's not the one I'm going after. I'm just kind of shooing that one to the side because for some reason in my brain, it fits in a different category. Like it's, it's not a command. It's a, it's kind of like a suggestion or maybe it's optional. It just doesn't fit in the same category. I've even been in conversations with people, uh, like about what we do on Sundays and they'll say things like, wow, man, you know, I really don't like to sing or I'm not a huge fan of the music that we do on Sundays.

And I have in those conversations said, ah, it's not that big a deal. You know, just stand, you know, just, just listen. Don't worry about singing. Bad pastor, bad, bad pastor. Like if I have said that to you wrong, like I am wrong there. The Bible commands us to sing.

It carries the weight of obedience, which means that God's serious about it. And when we don't do it, it's actually sin. So, and I think, truthfully, I think there are all kinds of reasons why, why people don't want to sing on Sundays. So, uh, for some of us, it's a self-conscious thing. Okay. Like we just, we do not sing well.

And so we do not want other people to hear us sing and therefore be a distraction. I get that. Uh, for some of us, maybe just music isn't your thing. You don't connect with music or maybe you just don't, uh, see the point. Uh, maybe you're a guy and you think, ah, music's kind of effeminate. And look, I know our church family.

Uh, some of you are going, I don't know about that fancy musical term effeminate, but it's kind of girly. Uh, fair point. Uh, maybe you just kind of think it's weird and awkward. Okay. So maybe you didn't grow up in and around the church.

And so standing with a bunch of other people and singing just isn't comfortable. Or maybe you like music. Maybe you're kind of a music person and you like coming in and singing songs, but you just kind of come in and you just kind of go through the motions. Like you're singing good, good melody. It's like you're, but you're not actually thinking about the words. And the truth is whatever spectrum you kind of fall in, uh, wherever you fall on that line across the room, we got to wrestle with the fact that God commands us to sing.

And this really is one of the most unique aspects for us, uh, as followers of Jesus. There are very few organized groups and even organized religions that gather on a regular basis for the purpose of singing together. And I'm not talking about like at a concert where you sing along because you know the words or like in a high school course. I'm talking about singing with a group of other people because you believe the same thing. And the purpose is to glorify and magnify and lift up the name of Jesus. Like that, that's us.

And it's part of what makes us, us. It's very unique. But if you think about it, it, it is kind of weird. It is odd. It is different. So the question we got to wrestle with is why would God command us to sing?

Why would he command us to do that? Um, most of you know this, but I studied music in college. And so I just tried to, to take a second that when the Bible says, sing to the Lord, a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth. Like, I wanted to just think like, what is it? What could it be about music in general? What, what is it made up of, uh, that might clue us in on why God might call us to sing?

Why might command us to make music to him? So these are just, these are some general observations. These are not coming directly out of the text, but I think we would all agree to most of this. And I think it'll help us see why God commands us to sing. We're, we're actually going to put these up on the screen. Uh, if you're a note taker, uh, maybe these are helpful for you.

If not, just, just kind of listen along. Uh, the first one is this music helps us learn, remember, and internalize. It does. Music just helps us learn, remember, and internalize. Think about, think about this situation. What if I asked you, what are the three letters that come after I in the alphabet?

Yeah, someone's, I heard it. I heard someone singing it. That's how you got there, right? You didn't just go J KL. Nobody's doing that. You went A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L.

Also, did anyone think elementa was a letter for a while? Elementa, man. Sorry, that's a tangent. Helps us learn good things and bad things. J KL, it's how you learned, was by song. Here's another one.

Play along. One little, two little, three little chickens. I'm going to try again. And I'm going to expect better results. One little, two little, three little chickens. All right.

Yep. We're talking about making a joyful noise in a second. But yeah, that's part of how we learn to count. And music has that ability. It helps us remember things. It makes things sticky.

It just does. Play along again. Ready? Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Yeah. You all know the jingle.

When you got $3 in your pocket and it's midnight and you kind of want some semblance of a hamburger. You know that jingle. Okay. Don't stop. Oh, that was better. We were having more gusto on that one.

Yeah. Everyone's favorite wedding song. Music just sticks with us. It helps us remember things in a way that without music we're not able to. If you were to sit me down and ask me the question, Matt, what has more value? The book of Ephesians or Limp Bizkit's album from 1998?

I would without batting an eye tell you the book of Ephesians. If your follow-up question was, which one of those two do you have mostly memorized? Don't judge me. Stop it. Stop it. You all have songs and albums memorized that you couldn't forget them if you wanted to.

Music has that ability. It just makes things stick with us. It helps us learn, remember, and internalize in a way that without it you can't. You can remember an entire song but not the parts of the body on an exam. I mean, like, that's how it works. Music helps us do that.

The second thing is this. Music can bring us together. It is. It's just one of the properties of music. Music has the ability to bring us together. For those of you who are Carolina fans, just imagine.

In a couple of weeks, you're in Williams-Brice Stadium with upwards of 20,000 other people. And sandstorm. Yeah, it'll sink in. And sandstorm comes on. And you're just like... You didn't say two words to the person sitting next to you until that song came in.

And now you're just in it together. I mean, it's your favorite two parts of the ballgame. Music just has the ability to bring us together. That one will sink in later. Okay. Or imagine you're at a baseball game.

Imagine you're at a baseball game and this is what you hear. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. What are you doing? You are standing up. And you're going to sing. You're going to sing with other people who are Americans.

The national anthem. Or you've probably been to a concert where you've just gotten like lost in the moment. Some of our church fam went to a Beyonce concert last year. And they just talked about it forever and ever. And ever. My wife and I are going to see...

In Charlotte next week, we're going to see Counting Crows. And Matchbox 20. I'm very excited. It'll be a bunch of other 30-year-olds who now have kids that were product of the 90s. And we'll throw on our Birkenstocks and sing Mr. Jones at the top of our lungs.

But there's something about that moment that just makes you connected to the people who are around you. But not even on the big scale like that. Think about small scale. Let's imagine you're working with someone. And then all of a sudden you realize they like the same band that you do. Like a whole new level of friendship is unlocked.

Or maybe you find out it's like they like country music. Like old country music. Not new country music. They actually hate new country music. They love old country music. Your best friends from forever except for like Chris Stapleton.

We'll take him. But it does. It just helps us connect. We bond over music. What happens very often after tragedies like the Manchester bombings or even after 9-11? Benefit concerts.

Why? Because music has the ability to heal and to bring us together. Okay. The last one I just want to point out as I thought about it is that music also has the ability to connect with our emotions. It just does. Even if you're not an emotional person, music has the ability to connect with our emotions.

Music can get behind our walls and boundaries that we have set up and get to our hearts. And in some ways music can get deep inside of you to stuff that you didn't even know was in there. Think about it like this. If you're in a good mood, if you're happy and you listen to a happy song, it makes you happier. If you're sad and you listen to a sad song, it makes you sadder. It helps us connect with our emotions.

Music does in a way that really nothing else can. And I want to just illustrate this. Okay. So, I'm going to play some stuff on the piano. And I'm not going to tell you what to feel. I just want you to think about what it makes you feel in the moment.

Okay. You ready? Just turn it on. We're good? For real, imagine Jaws without the soundtrack, right? It would really be a camera person following someone doing a beautiful breaststroke and then shark.

Like there's no suspense, no buildup at all. Like really any movie. Think about any movie without the soundtrack. Or just imagine you've got the camera angle where you're looking up through the water at the person swimming. Doesn't match, right? It doesn't create the same type of emotion.

Okay, but it's not just fear. Like some of you are ready to go run right now. Okay, here's another one. Some of you makes you think about a wedding. Some of you guys got that sick feeling in your stomach again. I will remember you.

I will remember you. I will remember you. Will you remember me? It's not like you say sorry. Who's waiting on a different story? This time I'll...

Music does that. It has the ability to make you feel all kinds of different things. And here's what I want to point out. If all of that is actually true about music. That it has the ability to help us learn and remember and internalize. And it can bring us together.

And it can make us feel things in a way that without it we can't. Doesn't it make sense that the God who so desires a relationship with us to connect with us would give us the gift of music. And its fullest expression would be when we actually give it back to Him. God didn't discover music. He created it. He made it potent and powerful.

And He's weaponized it. That melody and harmony and beat and rhyme and meter and melody and harmony. All of it can be used by Him to teach us who He is and to help us connect with Him. So when the Bible actually commands us to sing to the Lord. God's got a purpose in it. And it's to help draw us closer to Him.

So with those kind of things in mind. Since music actually can do that. Now I want us to walk through and look at these verses. And basically say if that's what music can do. What should be the substance of our music and song? What should the worship actually look like?

So we're just going to walk through. I'm going to kind of move at a quick clip. Because I think the scripture helps us see this very clearly. We're just going to make six observations about what music and song and worship should look like. So pick back up.

Psalm 96. Verse 1. Oh sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord bless His name. Tell of His salvation from day to day.

Declare His glory among the nations. His marvelous works among all the peoples. Okay so we already said this. But it starts off with six commands. All of which are pointing towards singing. Sing to the Lord.

Sing to the Lord. Sing to the Lord. I want to read that again. And I'm just going to add some emphasis. Because I think it will help us see the first aspect of worship. Oh sing to the Lord a new song.

Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord. Bless His name. Tell of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations. His marvelous works among all the peoples.

Sing to the Lord. The worship of the church should be God centered. That's the purpose. So when it says sing to the Lord. Our worship is about Him. It's to Him.

It's for Him. It's through Him. The songs that we sing collectively are in worship to God. So they're going to be for Him and about Him. And I want to point this out. So perk up this morning.

If any of those hesitations or reasons for not singing kind of resonated with you earlier. I want you to hear this. Because this is important. Maybe the most important thing you hear this morning. Whatever reason it was. So like take the example of I don't like to sing.

Because I don't sing well. Okay. The Bible actually kind of addresses that one clearly. Raz read it earlier. Psalm 95, 98, and 100. All say make a joyful noise to the Lord.

But all of those reasons that we give. Whether it's we don't like music. Or we don't feel it. Or it really doesn't do anything to us. Think about this for a second. What better way for you to make your worship God centered.

Than by moving past all of your personal thoughts about music. And singing to God. You see that? So every one of the reasons or excuses that we leverage to say. Well I just don't sing. It's not my thing.

What better way for you to worship God. To make your worship God centered. Than by putting those to the side. Because what happens is. What's happening in those moments when we choose not to sing. Or when we choose not to make music.

Is that worship is actually about us. We're the most important thing in the room. But when we move past that. And put it to the side. And give ourselves fully into worship. God's honored through that.

And if you tag back to some of what we said at the beginning. God's got a purpose in it. If the songs that we're singing are to him. And for him. And about him. God can use those.

To help us learn. And remember. And actually begin to internalize truths about him. That music can take that truth. And plant it in your hearts. In a way that affects normal everyday life for you.

So when we gather for corporate worship. It's going to be about him. He's the point. It's to him. And for him. Verse number two.

Kind of repeating a little bit of what we've already read. But it says. Sing to the Lord. Bless his name. Tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations.

His marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord. And greatly to be praised. Okay. I want to point something out. That if you just read the text.

It's hard to pick up on. If you go back to the original language of Hebrew. That this was written in. You'd notice one thing. That every one of those verbs. And commands.

Are not in the singular. They're plural. It's not you sing. You tell. You declare. It's y'all.

Y'all sing. Y'all declare. Y'all tell. Which means that. The worship of the church. Should be congregational.

Should be congregational. It's an us thing. Or here's. Here's kind of another way to say it. The worship of the church. Should be corporate.

It should be unifying. It should be among other people. It should bring us together. It's not solely a personal thing. It can be. It absolutely can be.

Music and singing can be a personal thing. But we are commanded together. To sing. To the Lord. Among other people. And let me give you a little clue into why.

At least why I think this is so good. Have you ever walked into this room. Just not feeling it. You're down. You're depressed. Maybe you're angry.

About something. Maybe you're struggling with sin. It's just. You're done. You're just done. But you showed up this morning anyways.

And you walk in. And people stand up. And they start singing. You stand up with them. But you're not singing.

But you're listening. You're listening to people singing on your left. And on your right. And they're singing truths about God. That you're wrestling with. Believing.

Whether they're even true. And God starts doing something in that moment. That as you hear your brothers and sisters. Stand and sing about how good God is. And how he's to be worshipped. And how loving he is.

The Holy Spirit starts doing something in that moment. To encourage us. He's helping us see that like. We're not alone. We're not by ourselves in the midst of that fight. That you've got people on your left and right.

Who believe the same thing you do. Who are going to bear burdens with you. Who are going to call you to holiness. He does something in the midst of us singing. That encourages us. And brings us together.

So in those moments where we think. Well I don't need to sing. Or I don't need to participate. What's actually happening. Is that we're short changing the people around us. From one of the means that God actually uses.

To heal them. That part of the reason the church is called to sing together. Is to remember that we're in us. That we are a family. That we are in this together. So we can actually.

The worship of the church should be congregational. So that we can remember that we're in us. That we're actually together. And let me just say this. There are going to be times. There are going to be times where you need to sit and listen.

There are going to be times where you're not there. You're wrestling with whether our singing is actually true. You need to sit and listen. And to ponder that. But on the whole.

We're commanded to sing. And it should be done. Together. Grab your Bibles. Go back to verse 7. Ascribe to the Lord.

O families of the peoples. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Oh I'm sorry. I jumped. I jumped. Go back.

Strike that. Go. Go back to verse 4. Says this. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. For he is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the people are worthless idols. But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Says great. Great is the Lord and worthy to be praised.

He's worthy of it. Because of what we've already talked about earlier. His wonderful deeds. And his marvelous works. And then it says. He is to be feared above all gods.

Little g. Gods. We said this earlier. But music has the ability to get to our emotions. In a way that nothing else really does. Has the ability to get past our walls.

And our boundaries. To get to our hearts in a way that exposes stuff. So that when it says that God is to be feared above all gods. It is tapping into the idea of our emotions. Fear has the ability to influence in such a way. That it becomes the dominant feeling or emotion.

But fear and emotion. It goes beyond that. It goes to a place where it's a recognition. That begins to expose what we love. What we value. What we hold up and honor.

Fear. So when it says he is to be feared above all gods. What it's saying is. When we come together and we sing these truths. What happens is that it begins to expose. All of the areas in our hearts and in our lives.

That we're fearing all of the other little g. Gods. That something else holds sway in our life. Other than God. There's all these little g. Gods.

And that can be our spouses. That could be our work. That could be our bank account. And what happens is. When we come together and we start singing. There's something the Holy Spirit does.

That is you're singing truths about how big God is. And how glorious. And how he provides. And how he redeems. It actually begins to expose. All the other little things that we're trusting in.

That aren't God. So in that moment. Music is getting to our hearts. In a way that we weren't ready for. And so the worship of the church should affect our hearts. And lead us to repentance.

And faith. So that in that. In those moments where we're singing. Truths about God. And the Holy Spirit's moving and working. There should be times.

When you are absolutely cut to your core. Because you're singing something about how God provides. And the Holy Spirit's going. Not your bank account. You don't believe that. We're talking about how big.

And how good. And how loving God is. Because it's not your wife's Job. And we're broken. Over it. And the Bible says.

In that moment. We get to repent. We get to turn from. Wrong belief. About who God is. And turn to.

Correct. Belief. That's part of what music does. It has the ability to get to our hearts. And help us see that. Help us see what we're loving.

Trusting. And believing in. More than. Jesus. And so we turn from it. In.

Repentance. And faith. Verse 7. Now. Now we'll do this one.

Ascribe to the Lord. O families of the peoples. Ascribe to the Lord. Glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord. The glory.

Do his name. Bring an offering. And come into his courts. Worship the Lord. In the splendor of holiness. Tremble before him.

All the earth. Okay. So it starts off with. Ascribe. Ascribe to the Lord. Ascribe.

Ascribe is a fancy word for acknowledge. To acknowledge that God is the source of. Fill in the blank. And maybe another way to think about it. Is to. To give credit to.

Or to attribute. Something to. But it's not really a word we use very often. But basically it's saying. Acknowledge that God is worthy of worship. Or he is the source of.

All of these different things. That. That. Glory and strength. Or do his name. That we should bring an offering.

That we should. Tremble. Before him. And here's. I want to take a step here. And help us see something.

If our worship is supposed to be. God centered. And we're supposed to. Ascribe. Or acknowledge him. As we ought to.

Then it's on God. To reveal himself. To us. So that we know who he is. And what he's done. And the way that he does that.

Is through the Bible. Okay. So it's not specifically. Saying that here. But the only way.

We're going to be able to acknowledge God. As we ought to. Is through the Bible. So the worship. Of the church. Should be.

Formed. By the Bible. It should be huge for us. That's why we spend so much. Time in our worship gatherings. Together.

Preaching. It takes the majority of our time. But even as we. Talk about praying. We're talking about it. In reference to the Bible.

Giving. Because God calls us to. To it through his word. The songs that we're singing. Are coming directly. From the Bible.

Without the Bible. We're sunk. When it comes to worship. But through the Bible. We begin to learn. Who God is.

And what he's done. And why we ought to be. Worshiping him. Most of you know this. But part of.

Part of my job. As one of our pastors. Is that I get to plan. Our time of worship together. And I have a great team of people. Who help me do this.

But that's. Really what we're shooting for. When we're choosing songs. For us to sing. Are songs that. Accurately reflect.

What the Bible says. About God. And what he does. And in turn. What that means for us. And what we do.

Because music is so catchy. It helps us learn. And remember. And internalize. If we're singing things. That aren't true about God.

Or aren't true for us. It's actually helping us. Rehearse bad theology. It's actually part of the reason. We. You probably noticed.

That maybe you don't know. All the songs. When you show up. We steer away. From some of the stuff. That's on Christian radio.

Because it has the ability. To just talk about us. But the point of worship. Is God. So we try to find songs.

That actually help us. Remember. And learn. And internalize. Things that are true. About God.

And here's another thing. The Bible not only tells us. About God. And why we should worship him. But it tells us.

How to do it. So. We're already talking about. Sing to the Lord. But here.

Just check out this list. Okay. I'm going to kind of tag it quickly. And we'll keep moving. Psalm 9. 2 says singing.

Isaiah 29. Says standing. Dancing. Psalm 71. Says shouting. Psalm 5.

Says praying. Psalm 30. Says dancing. I'm going to say that one again. Psalm 30. Says dancing.

Some of you with Baptist roots. Just died a little bit inside. I need y'all. Church. I need y'all to hear that this morning. I know the predominant stance.

In worship. Is coffee cup. In this hand. In this hand. In this pocket. But watch.

You can. You can. Guys. You can move. You can dance. As a part of worship.

Says clapping. Psalm 47. Guys. You can clap. Before a song. During a song.

After a song. Permission granted. Go for it. Lifting hands. That's Psalm 134. Bowing down.

That's Exodus 34. The Bible actually tells us. How to worship. It tells us how to do it. I want our church. To be a place.

Where you can freely. Express yourself. In worship. If you want to raise your hands. Do it. If you want to clap.

Do it. If you need to bow down. And pray. Do it. As part of the reason. We're doing a worship night.

This coming Thursday. Is that we've got room. To grow. As a church family. And actually being able. To express ourselves.

In worship. One of the coolest aspects. Of this Psalm. In particular. Is that it's actually used. In worship.

In the Bible. In 1st Chronicles 15. And 16. David's leading the Ark of the Covenant. Back into Jerusalem. And the people actually use.

Part of this Psalm. To worship God. They're singing. And it says. They're clashing cymbals together. And people are playing trumpets.

And they're playing lyres. Which is like a string instrument. It says the people. Were singing. And making music. Loudly.

David. Danced. Before the Ark of the Covenant. And that was a man. After God's own heart. So we've got room.

To grow. As a church family. What it looks like. For us to worship. I'm not afraid. To put a saxophone.

On stage. Not afraid. To have a drum set. Be up here on stage. That's why. It looks a little bit different.

Every Sunday. Because there's so much. Variety for us. In worship. And we've got a lot. Of room to grow.

But for us. The Bible is central. It helps us see. Who God is. And how. He wants to be.

Worship. Verse 10. Say among the nations. The Lord reigns. Yes. The world.

Is established. It shall never. Be moved. He will judge. The peoples. With equity.

It says. Say among. The nations. The Lord reigns. The whole. The whole world.

Tell it. To everyone. The worship. Of the church. Should propel us. To mission.

It should. The worship. Of the church. Should drive us out. To tell more. And more people.

About. Jesus. The part of the reason. We come together. As a church family. On Sundays.

Is to sing. And to celebrate. And to remember. The good news. Of the gospel. And that it's good.

So that when we leave this place. We're more apt. Because we've been reminded. That God is good. And the gospel is good news. For everyone.

So the worship of the church. Should drive us out. Should remind us. That as believers. We've been called. To share that message.

To tell. To bless. To declare. To sing. To go tell as many people. About Jesus as possible.

And I'm going to lay all my cards. On the table. If you. If you're in this room. This morning. And you are not.

A Christian. That's what we believe. We believe. That Jesus. Came and rescued us. At our point of need.

That we were dead. In our sin. Without hope. And that Jesus. Came to rescue us. And to redeem us.

That he died on the cross. To pay for our sin. And he rose from the grave. So that we could have. New life in him. And that's why we come together.

To celebrate. And that's the good news. We want you to know. You can place your faith. In Jesus today. And for us.

As a church family. When we sing. Songs about the gospel. It drives us out. Drives us out. To tell as many.

People. About it. As possible. Verse 11. As we wrap up. Let the heavens be glad.

And let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar. And all that fills it. Let the field exult. And everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest.

Sing for joy. Before the Lord. For he comes. For he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world. In righteousness.

And the peoples. In his faithfulness. You see that? The sea is going to roar. And all the animals that fill it. Fields and creation.

Come to life. Trees singing before the Lord. As he comes. What we get here. At the end of this Psalm. Is a look forward.

To what's going to happen. In the future. Which means the worship of the church. Should fill us. With hope. And joy.

In Christ. Should fill us with hope. That one day. Jesus is going to crack the sky. And come back. And get his church.

And everything that is wrong. With the world. Will be made right. The world itself. Will be returned. To a state.

Of the garden of Eden. That justice. Will be had. That vengeance. Will be served. And God's going to set up.

His eternal reign forever. And that's actually good news. For Christians. That's the best news. Because it says. He will judge the world.

In righteousness. His. Right. His righteous standard. And for those that have placed faith. In Jesus.

Your hope is secure. There's joy. That we can go through. What. Everything we're going through. Right now.

Is just a blip. On the radar screen. Of eternity. We can walk through life. Right now. With hope and joy.

That we have in Christ. In fact. When the church gathers. On Sunday. When we gather to sing. It's actually just a little bit of practice.

For what eternity is going to be like. We're actually getting in work now. That when you sing with brothers and sisters. All across this room. That's just a small picture. Of what heaven.

Is going to look like. Should fill us with hope and joy. Raz and Bianca are going to come back up. And we're actually. We're going to take a little bit of time. To just put this into practice.

That when God commands us to sing. He's serious about it. But it's for our joy. That he created music with a purpose. That it can help us learn. And remember.

And internalize. And bring it. It can bring us together. And can help get to our emotions. So that as we sing as a church family.

We're going to make it about God. We're going to sing songs together. And remember that we're unified. We're going to allow the Holy Spirit to work. And get to our hearts. And lead us to repentance.

And faith. We're going to sing songs. That come out of the Bible. Like we're about to. That come from the book of Romans. And 1 Corinthians.

And John. And Psalms. And Hebrews. And then as we leave this place. We're going to be filled. We're going to be reminded.

That our worship should. Propel us out to mission. And give us joy. And hope. I want to ask you guys to stand. Go ahead and stand.

We're going to sing in just a second. God my prayer. Is that we would be a church. That rightly sees the joy. Of your command to sing. To sing to you.

And bring honor and glory to your name. That God you use it. You use it powerfully. God to work in our lives. In such a way that we. Come to know who you are.

Or that you can get to our emotions. You can bring us together. Father. So God my prayer. Is that you would actually. Help us push back.

All of the hesitations. All of the reservations. All of the wrong thoughts. About your commands to sing. And your Holy Spirit. Would allow us to do so freely.

This morning. Because you're worthy of our praise. In Jesus name. Amen. You guys sing with us.

Psalm 51 - Repentance

Psalm 51 - Repentance

Chet Phillips

Transcript

All right, grab a Bible, go to Psalm 51. You'll be on page 271 if your Bible looks like this. If you don't own a Bible, take one of these home with you. It's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible. We want you to read it.

My name is Chet. It's good to see you all this morning. Today we are in the fifth week of our Psalm series where we're trying to walk through the Psalms and spend some time allowing the Psalms to kind of train us in what it looks like to live a life of worship. The psalmists were writing as they related to God and that they begin to equip us and train us for what that looks like. How to love God, worship God, pray to God in the good times of life and the bad times, both emotionally when we're doing well and emotionally when our tank is empty. That's kind of what they're training us in.

And so we're going to be in Psalm 51 today and we're going to be talking about repentance. I want you to read. Your Bible should have some sort of heading before verse 1. It should say 51 and then there should be some sort of a heading that kind of tells us, and we find these often in the Psalms, that tell us what the circumstance is, who wrote it, what's going on, what it was used for, and then you'll see, you know, the little one and there'll be verse 1 and we'll go on down in the Psalm. So it says, To the choir master, so this Psalm was written as a song to be sung with a choir, to the choir master, a Psalm of David.

That's David the king, and we're going to talk more about him in just a second. When Nathan the prophet went to him after he, that's David, had gone into Bathsheba. To the choir master, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. And so we are told at the very beginning of this Psalm what the circumstance is that we're under, what is being addressed, when this was written. It's referring to some events that we have recorded for us in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12, and I'm just going to walk us through that story. I'd encourage you to write it down to go read it later, but I'm just going to kind of tell it to us.

So David is king, and David wasn't always a king. He used to be a shepherd, and he was like a little kind of shrimpy shepherd, although the Bible says he was good-looking, which has to make you feel really nice. If the Bible, the God of the universe, was like, no, you're handsome, put it in there, it's true. So it says that he was, but when Saul was king, God sends Samuel to go anoint the new king. He goes, and he goes to this family, the house of Jesse, and Jesse begins to put his sons in front of him, and Samuel sees him, and he's like, man, that's like a big, good-looking king, and God's like, no, not him, and he goes on down the line.

They eventually go all the way down, and you can tell, like, there's this moment in the text where it was just, like, awkward. They're just waiting, and none of the sons were king, and they forgot that David existed. Like, he has to ask, like, don't you have any other sons? And Jesse's like, no. Oh, yeah, there's the other one with the sheep, but, like, he's really far away, and obviously not. And Samuel's like, go get him.

So they go get him, and it turns out he's supposed to be king, and that's David. And David becomes king. He faces Goliath. Eventually, he becomes king. He's a great warrior. He's a great leader.

He's a man after God's own heart. He's a poet and a prophet. Like, this is, if you had, if you were a Jewish boy, in Old Testament times, you had the King David action figure. Like, he is, he's it. And then in 2 Samuel chapter 11, we're told this story. And it begins like this in 2 Samuel 11.

It says, in the spring, when the kings go to war, which just means it's not cold anymore. They got to go do something. In the spring, when the kings go to war, David sent Joab, but King David stayed home. And so they're giving us a hint in the text right away that David is not, he's veered from what he's supposed to be doing, and he's doing something different. And it says that one evening, David is walking around on the rooftop of the palace, and he sees Bathsheba. He doesn't know who she is.

He sees a beautiful woman bathing. And he calls his servants and says, I want y'all to go get that woman for me. So he's king. He has power. He should be out fighting war. He should be out leading his army.

But no, he sends someone else. And then he walks around the palace, and he sees this lady, and he says, I want y'all to, I want y'all to, I want y'all to go get her for me. And we're told that his servant responds in a way that I really, I'm so proud of the servant. We don't know his name, but I'm so proud. He responds like this. He says, you mean Bathsheba, Uriah's wife?

Like, he's trying to help him out. Like, I can't say that you should not do this, but I'm going to say all the words that I can possibly find right now to help you know that you should not do this. David misses it. Yes. If that's Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, then yes, that is what I'm saying. So they go get Bathsheba.

David and Bathsheba sleep together. We do not know, the text does not tell us, whether or not Bathsheba was excited about this, a willing participant, or if she just was caught up in something where David was in power, and this basically is rape. That when she was brought over there, she just had to go along with it for fear, for the position that he was in. They sleep together. Uriah, at this point, is in David's army. He is one of David's top 30 men.

David would have known who he was. I don't know if they hung out on weekends, but he would have known him. He is off fighting in a battle that David should be leading. David sleeps with his wife, sends her home. She contacts David later to say, you need to tell the king I'm pregnant. So David hatches a plan to cover up his own sin.

2 Samuel chapter 11, he sends messengers to the army and says, send Uriah back so that I can talk to him about how the battles are going. So Uriah is sent back. David is going to talk to Uriah, and then they talk. He says, how's the battle going? That's great. Good report.

Hey, man, you go home. Hang out a little bit. Uriah leaves the palace, walks out the doors, and sleeps on the steps. And it's reported to David, hey, Uriah didn't go home. He slept on the steps of the palace. David talks to him the next day and says, hey, you've been at battle for so long.

Why don't you go home? David's goal, his plan, what he's come up with, to cover and hide his sin, is for Uriah to go home, to sleep with his wife, and then Uriah will come back. His wife will be pregnant. He won't do the math that well. Maybe we can say it's a really big, healthy, premature child. And problem solved.

Uriah looks at David and says, how could I go home and spend time at home when my men are in the battle? I would not do such a thing. And he's being honorable, but this has to bring great shame on David. I don't think that was his goal, but it just shows, highlights in this moment, how honorable Uriah is being and how shameful David is. And David says, oh yeah, good point. We'll stay another night.

And David has him stay and has him drink until he gets drunk. His goal now is, okay, if Uriah won't do this in his right mind, I'll get him drunk and then maybe this will seem like a better idea. Some of you understand David's thought process here. He gets Uriah drunk. Uriah goes out of the palace, sleeps on the floor. So David has to come up with a new plan because his first plan is not working.

So David's new plan is, he has a message, he writes it, folds it up, seals it, hands it to Uriah and says, I need you to take this to Joab. Uriah delivers a message to Joab that says, I need you to put Uriah in the hottest fighting and leave him so that he will die. So Uriah delivers his own death sentence to Joab. So Joab does. From the order of David, Joab leads an entire unit further in than they should have been up against the castle wall where people can throw and shoot down upon them and they lose a lot of people. So it wasn't just Uriah that dies, but that was the intention.

Others die as well. He draws back once Uriah is dead and Joab says to a messenger, you need to go tell David what happened. And when he says, how foolish was it for you to get that close to the wall? Don't you know that they would have killed you, that they would have shot down on you, that that's a bad tactic? When he says that, you need to respond, yes, we do know and Uriah is also dead. So the messenger goes to David, tells him this.

David says, go back and tell Joab that a lot of people die in war. To not be stressed out by this, it's okay. After Bathsheba mourns, David takes her as his wife, brings her to the palace and we're told at the end of chapter 11 that the thing David did displeased the Lord. That David, who God had taken from shepherding sheep and made a king and placed him in the palace and given him honor and wealth and power and David uses it and abuses it for adultery, rape, murder and then thinks he's gotten away, Scott free. We don't even understand at this point if David even feels bad or if he's just like, good, my plans worked.

That's that. So then we're told in chapter 12 that God sends Nathan the prophet and Nathan the prophet goes to the king and the prophets spoke on behalf of God and they had a lot of authority and so Nathan shows up and says, king, I need your wisdom on something. I need you to sort a case out for me. I need you to judge between two men and your kingdom. This is a normal thing so David says, what is it? So Nathan tells him this story.

Nathan says, king, in your kingdom there's a man who's very wealthy. He has lots of herds, lots of flocks, lots of sheep. He's just a wealthy guy. He's got a nice house and he lives next to a man who is not wealthy. This man who lives near him kind of in the shadow of his great mansion, his great fields and kind of lives in the shadow there. There's a man who lives and he has one sheep and he loves the sheep like it stays in his house, it plays with his kids, it's like a child to him, like he feeds it from his own hand.

This is like his best friend sheep and the rich man had a friend come in from out of town and he wanted to honor that friend and fix him a meal but he chose not to slay any of his own sheep but rather went because he was wealthy and powerful to the man who was his neighbor, took his one sheep and killed it to feed his friend. And I need you to help me understand what we need to do. And the text tells us in 2 Samuel chapter 12 that David is furious. That as a shepherd he understands what it's like and he just, he loses it. He stands up and says, this thing shall not be done. He will pay back fourfold and he just starts going off and in the middle of this Nathan looks at him and says, you're the man and you did exactly this when you took Bathsheba. it says David stops cold and he says, I've sinned against the Lord.

That he sees it clearly. It had to be moved over here in order for him to see it but he says, I've sinned against the Lord and we're told that Nathan looks at him and says, God will not kill you. He has hidden away your sin. There's going to be consequences and those are laid out in 2 Samuel chapter 12 but he says, you're not going to be destroyed in your sin. That God's hidden it away. And for us, as we follow Jesus and as we look at Psalm 51 today, what we're trying to see is that as you walk in your life following Christ, if you are a Christian and you are trying to live a life honoring and following him, you will sin. you will fall short.

You will make decisions that at other times you would have sworn that you would never have done. I know this is true in my life. There have been some things that I have done that if you had asked me, I don't know, a month before, will you ever do this and describe the situation, I would have looked at you with absolute certainty and said, no, I would not do that. That's not who I am. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't act like that.

I wouldn't, no. Two months later, you could ask me about that event and say, did you, did you, did that bring joy? Was that a good idea? Did you, do you love that you chose this? And it's like, no, but I've sinned. I've tricked myself.

I've lied to myself. I've made terrible decisions. This is going to happen as we follow Jesus. If you are not a Christian and you are in the room, if you're here checking this out, trying to understand what the Bible says, or you, you may be life's rough right now and you're thinking, I need to, I need to grow. I need to see what the Bible talks about. I need to maybe get back in church.

You have to understand that much of your life and much of your pain is caused by sin. That, that you have sin, that you've made bad decisions. You've harmed others. You've lied. You've made bad choices and then you're, when it came to, when people were finding out your best next option, you thought was just to lie. Just to, just to hide it.

Just to cover it. We've all lived as David has, making a bad decision and then tacking on top of that bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. We need a way to respond in our sin. We need a way to move forward in our sin. And so we're going to look at Psalm 51 as we get the song that David wrote in his sin. we're going to look and see what it looks like. How, how can we move forward?

I'm going to pray and then we're going to begin walking through this text. God, we ask that by your grace your hand would be heavy on us this morning. That your presence would be felt. that by your grace and through the power of your Holy Spirit we would see your character more clearly and that our sin would be drawn into sharp focus. That the hiding and the lying would stop. And that by your grace you would pierce our hearts and wound us that you might lead us to the joy and the freedom that is found in repentance. I pray, Lord, that you would equip us for future days that what we talk about today that what we read in Psalm 51 would stick in our minds crawl into our hearts that we might have a way to respond in the future when we've been led astray when we've wandered when we've sinned.

And we ask for your grace and we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. The concept we're going to be talking about today is repentance. The word is not used in this text. We are actually viewing from the side repentance. We're getting to look down at David repenting.

He doesn't use the term but that's what he's doing. And repentance is not only a confession of our sin but it is us turning away from it. That repentance that is confession only is not repentance. And when you say, oh yeah, I did wrong but then you go right back into like that's not repentance. That maybe you were caught maybe you had gotten to the point where you had to be honest about what was going on but repentance involves life change. And that's what we're looking at today that we turn from sin and we don't just acknowledge it.

Like that's not repentance. That maybe you were caught maybe you had gotten to the point where you had to be honest about what was going on but repentance involves life change. And that's what we're looking at today that we turn from sin and we don't just acknowledge it. So verse now chapter 51 Psalm 51 verse 1 David begins this way. Have mercy on me oh God according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy

Blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. So David says have mercy on me oh God I think whenever we use that word when we use the word mercy mercy it's a borrowed word for us but it's not a borrowed word for David. What I mean by that is we don't use that term a lot. So maybe you use it when you're praying maybe you use it because you read the Bible

Maybe but maybe you know you say Lord have mercy when something bad happens or like maybe it's in some songs you sing but there's not a whole lot of times where we've actually used the word mercy you haven't looked at someone and said please I pray be merciful like that's never been a thing you've said to someone you've never you've never looked at someone

You've never been in an argument and looked at your wife and been like am I not merciful like this never happened unless you were quoting the gladiator it's never happened like but David it's not a borrowed word he knows what it is because he's a king who led battles and here's here's how David would be understanding this when he talks about it you see mercy is what people would beg for when they had

Lost the battle that they would look at the king who now had ridden in who the person in charge so the captain or the king or whoever was in charge or the people that were surrounding them with weapons and they would say I ask for mercy it's the moment in the battle when you've laid down your arms there is no outrunning this there is no continuing to fight

The only thing you have is please please please have mercy I'm completely in your power and only will this go well based off of what you choose to do so if we had fought a battle and our side lost and there's 10 of us 20 of us 200 of us but we're

Surrounded and we raise our hands and we ask for mercy it is now based on what the king decides to do and he could say kill him that'd be the end of that there were kings in the old testament that would cut people's thumbs off and have them stand around the table and when

They were done eating they had to pick up crumbs with their fingers there were people that would have their eyes gouged out like it just it's this moment where David is saying God I can't run I can't win I have nothing to offer I have no way

To fight he's raising his hands and saying I'm asking for mercy but that's the beginning of repentance you see in our sin when we see our sin because there are times where you do not see your sin by God's grace you will but there are times

Where we do not see our sin but when we see our sin we have some ways to respond there are normal ways that people respond when they see their sin one of the ways that you'll see you respond and others respond is you just you kind of deny it

Or you justify it so yeah yeah I said that but you should have heard what she said yeah I did that but you should have seen what they did oh sure I've acted like that at work but you hadn't met my boss it's this my sin

Yeah okay kind of it's there but not really but that's a way that we respond to our sin there's the justifying or trying to pay it off it's like you sin and you see your sin you feel the weight

Of your sin and the only thing you can think is well I've got to get to work I've got to pay it back I've got to restore it I've got to make it right some

Of us see our sin and the best plan we can come up with is just to run just to try to hide so we quit talking to people in our community groups we quit talking to the people that we've

Sinned against we know we shouldn't have done what we did but we have no way to fix that so we just don't answer their phone calls yeah I shouldn't have talked to you like that but heck if I know how to go any like I guess we just aren't friends anymore like I don't know how to we do that some of us have sin

And we feel it and we know it and the best plan we've come up with is just let it crush us just let it bear down on our souls just let it be a boulder that smashes us underneath it and all of life feels like that like I will never

Get out from under the weight of the sin that this guilt this shame will be carried by me forever but David gives us another option that in our sin when we see our sin we would turn and look at God and say have mercy

Don't do to me what you could don't crush me have mercy and David says this have mercy according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin David

Throws himself against the character of God against the nature of God he says have mercy on me according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy he says be the way you say you are I'm trusting that you're good I'm trusting

That what I've heard about you what you've told us about yourself see David's pointing to places in the Old Testament where that's what God says he's abounding in steadfast love and he has mercy and forgiveness for sinners and David's saying this is what you're like for us

We have a leg up on David because we get to look to the cross where God proves doesn't just promise promise but proves that he has steadfast love and abounding mercy we get to look at him and say deal with me according to the cross where I know that you love

Me and I know that you paid for sin wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin you see we can go to God in our sin that when we see our sin we can repent we can ask

For mercy because of who he is let's keep reading verse 3 for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight

So that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me behold you delight in truth in the inward being

And you teach me wisdom in the secret heart so David starts off in this section he says for I know my transgression my sin is ever before me David is not

Downplaying this this whole section 3 verses 3 through 6 David is just kind of saying no no no it it's all around me

I know my sin I see it clearly one of the first things we have to do in order to repent is to own

Our sin to see it to know it to name it David is not downplaying this he's not saying well I'm kind of a

Good person I just did some I made a mistake David is not going to God and have mercy on me for this accident

David is saying no no no I know my sin it's ever present with me it's real to me and against you and you

Only have I sin if you haven't noticed your sin God has he is well aware of it it is not hidden from him

And ultimately all sin is against him that's kind of an outrageous statement for David to make no no no he hasn't just sinned

Against God he sinned against his servants he sinned against Israel he sinned against his captain Joab he sinned against Uriah he sinned against

Bathsheba the list goes on and David looks at God and says my sin is against you that I had to stray from you

And run from you and hate you and rebel against you before I would ever do any of those things I have dishonored you

And then he says what I've done is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in

Your judgment what David is saying is that in my sin I see clearly how good you are and how right you are and

How true you are David is not downplaying this he is not hiding it he said I know my sin it's against you and

Then in verse five he says something that I think is helpful for us behold I was brought forth in in in in in

Sin did my mother conceive me David says this isn't just something I'm done this is part of who I am this is in

My this is in my DNA this is in the marrow of my bones I am sinful I was born sinful Paul is going to

Refer to this as us being in Adam that when Adam the first man sinned that all of us are born into sin sold

Into slavery that we're dead in our sin that this is how we begin that no one had to train us in sin it

Was born into us that there are certain things that are born into people like personality and some of those kind of things that

They have to come out and have to work on their whole life but for all of us sin is born into us you

Can't look at the globe and go yeah well you can tell Anglo Europeans they're sinful but it hadn't reached South America yet like

We can't do that it's like no there's corruption and brokenness everywhere and nobody had to teach it to you sure you had some people

Work on your technique but they didn't have to teach you how to sin you had someone tell you cuss words or whatever but

You didn't it was already in you I have a two year old we have to teach him things like how to share we

Did not have to teach him how to say mine he just picked that up on his own I actually learned now that he

Only uses the word share when I have a thing he understands the concepts of turns if you have something but when he has

It it it doesn't really apply to this sharing is kind of a foreign concept I have seen him places and watched him we

Go to hang out with other children and other families that have kids and he'll see a toy that he likes and he'll pick it

Up and he won't put it back down and do you know why he understands in his little brain this actually doesn't belong to

Me and if I put it down there's a good chance it won't get to belong to me but if I hold it forever

It'll make it to my house and then it will belong to me I didn't have to teach him that do you know how

Often we're at doors and we're like okay put that down put that down say thank you for like no like you hoping we

Didn't see it we didn't have to teach this to him I read I heard about an article recently where they did a study

Where they found out that your cat that you have at your house if it was big enough would eat you that was the

Study they did you can look it up that's what they discovered they discovered that your cat is a predator week it dawned on

Me that that is true for toddlers he would not eat me but I would have to fist fight him over everything currently the only

Thing that works in our house he's not reasonable the only thing that works in our house is I'm way bigger than he is but it's already

In him to want to defy and want to fight and want to argue he did something he was supposed to do I picked

Him up I popped him on his leg and he hit me in the side of the head and some of you were like

Well you taught him to strike first okay maybe a little bit but no not really because we have kid city last last week just

So y'all know we had 30 children here which is amazing and we're thankful to Jesus for it that we just got new volunteers

And new rooms and stuff because otherwise all of our kid city volunteers would just be quitting because we had 30 children here last week

You know what we have in our kid city handbook bite protocol what we have to do when your sweet little angel bites another

Child and you know what we've never done when your child has bitten another child we've never come to you and said we think

You should stop doing bite punishment at your house you did not train them they had teeth and were angry they put it together

Themselves I've never thrown a wooden train at my son when I was angry he picked that up on his own David is saying

I know my sin you know my sin and let's be real this is in me he's saying it's not that I'm a sinner

Because I've sinned I'm sinning because I'm a sinner this is who I am I was conceived this way I was born this way

This has been a part of me and David is going to God and as honestly and openly as he can be he's not

Hiding he's not holding back he's not saying a little bit or kind of like this or he is as clear as he can

Saying God without you without your mercy I'm in trouble he says behold in verse six behold you delight in truth in the inward

Being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart what he's saying is that God you at the deepest most real level you

Want to change me and for some of you for some of us who've been good you're really good at using the right phrases

And you're really good at saying the right words and you're really good at and I just want to be real clear with you

You can you can fool everyone in your community group but by God's grace and goodness towards you you cannot fool him he knows

Your inner being and your secret heart and David is owning up to that before God and he's saying you delight in truth and

You teach me wisdom you go to work on the deepest most real part of me we have to as Christians become students of

Our own sin he says I know my transgression my sin is ever before me we have to become students of our own sin

What I mean by that is you need to know yourself you need to know your proclivities you need to know what you are

Led into you need to be able to look at your community group and say hey guys I'm an accountant and we're coming into tax

Season and let me tell you what's going to happen when I get stressed usually I like to look at spreadsheets and crunch Numbers all day long and then

I go home in the evening and enjoy a nice glass of red wine and I'm going to quit answering phone calls and I'm

Going to quit hanging out with our group and then I'm going to show back up a couple months from now and try to

Recruit and I need you around me some of you need to be able to say hey guys October is coming up and it's

A hard month for me every year in October I get depressed because of some things that happened in my life and some situations

And family members and here's the good version of me loving Jesus and being depressed being sad and mournful but loving Jesus and here's

The sad depressed running from Jesus version like we need to be a student of our own sin that we can look at people

And say here's where I need you here's when I need you to because we believe verses 3 through 6 that we are sinners

That you do have sin I have never once met a couple that came through our doors and it's like oh look Michael and

Sarah and I've never thought well I hope they're the first people to join our church who haven't sinned yet they'll bring our average

Up never thought that I can tell you things about them I've never met them you want me tell you something about Michael and

Sarah they're messed up there's something wrong with them they do some petty stuff they got problems it's because we're sinners in need of grace and as

Christians we are going to sin and we need a way to respond and it's to run to God like David has and ask

For mercy and wash me and I shall be whiter than snow so he he's referring to when he says purge me with hyssop

He's referring to some of the ceremonial things that happened in the Old Testament law specifically we're going to refer to a section in

Leviticus 14 I'm just going to tell you how that works hyssop was a branch and so when you had leprosy this is laid out

In Leviticus 14 when someone had leprosy which was a skin disease that made you not be able to be around anyone else it

Was catching so that if you had it you could give it to others until you eventually had to go away and you would

Slowly rot away fall apart and die that leprosy worked the extremities would work its in your skin would die and your sensation would

Die and eventually because this was dead it would just fall off and you would have to announce that you were lepers and there

Were whole leper colonies but if your leprosy began to go away you could go present yourself to the priest and they would take

Two birds and a bowl of clean water and they would kill one of the birds and drain its blood into the bowl and

They would dip the second bird in some hyssop which is a branch in that and they would sprinkle you with the hyssop seven times

And then they would let that bird go free what David just said in verse seven prophetically as he pointed back to the Old Testament law

And as he pointed forward for us he said I need the gospel you see we have that in Christ we have the ability

To go to God and say I need to be sprinkled with the blood so that I can be clean and I can be

Welcomed back I need see Jesus died was laid in the grave and his blood covers our sin but he also rose and ascended

The bird can't do that that's why they need two of them Jesus can he can die and fly away he can die and

Rise and what happened was David is saying I need you to sprinkle me with the blood and wash me with the water and

For those of us who are in Christ we get to go to God in our repentance when we see our sin and we

Don't go to him saying I failed and I don't know what to do I I failed and once again I need your mercy

I need the blood from the cross and I need the covering from my baptism when I was buried in death with you and

Rose again to life I need the water and the blood to cover me and then I'll be clean and I'll be whiter than

Snow verse 8 let me hear joy and gladness let the bones you have broken rejoice let me hear joy and gladness let the

Bones you have broken rejoice there's a proverb in the book of Proverbs that said it's better better are the blows of a friend than

The kisses of an enemy and David is going to God and saying thank you for breaking some of my bones so that I

Could see my sin you broke me and let that be a joy to me let me limp with joy for my life as

I know that you did that because you love me and you were going to let me run away and be happy in my

Sin and there's a joy in repentance I want to show y'all this is from Psalm 32 David says blessed is the one whose transgression is

Forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity that's sin and in all day long for day and

Night your hand was heavy upon me my strength was dried up as by heat of the summer keep that up for just a

Second we often convince ourselves that hiding our sin is the best route and it is exhausting and it dries our bones up and

We groan under the weight of our sin and what David is talking about is the joy that comes from repentance that comes from

Owning our sin and being honest about it and real about it and celebrating the truth of the gospel of God's grace towards us

That there is joy in repentance I've had conversations with people not in our church before that they'll say well if y'all believe in

Grace why y'all talk about repentance so much it's like yeah yeah because we believe in grace repentance is us celebrating grace it's us

Enjoying the grace that we're offered you see that we are sinful so we get to repent and that's where grace comes in that

God pays for our sin that we don't pay our own debt it's not about our morality or our goodness that the more we

See our sin the more we enjoy the grace of Jesus and his greatness and that's what iniquities hide your face from my sins

And blot out all my iniquities I remember being in elementary school I don't remember what grade it was I did have a pen

So they don't give those like you what third grade you graduate to pens like when you're in like kindergarten they give you that

Pencil that's like the size of a stick they don't give you pens for a while though so I had a pen I remember

That and I had zoned out and I remember this moment of absolute clarity where I was sitting and I looked down at my

Paper and I had written the name of a girl like three times and when I realized that had happened I was terrified because

If anyone saw that like that that will ruin you in third grade I don't like and so what I did was I took my

Pen and I rewrote other words over top bared down real hard rewrote other words over top because this is a great way to

Cover some of it you can find out what it said so I rewrote some other words over top of them real quick and then

I scribbled this way and this way now I probably look psychotic and if you came by my paper later you would be like

There is something wrong with this kid and this was before they gave children ADD medicine all the time but I'm sure my teacher was

Like I'm going to make notes of this because she saw he is not learning math I don't know what's going on with him talk to

His parents but then my paper was blotted out you see when David says this they didn't have erasers he's saying I need you

To go to the ledger I need you to go where you have David son of Jesse written and where next to it you

Have adulterer and where next to that you have murderer and thief and liar and the person who like when you write all this

Out prideful wicked I need you to blot it out I need it to be covered so that when someone pulls up David son

Of Jesse and looks at the sheet of paper they don't know what was written there and you see for us we get to

Ask the same thing in Christ I need you to take what was written where my sin is and I need the blood of

Jesus to you are free to go the file has been corrupted we have nothing to hold against you you are free to go

That is what we need next to our name where it would say liar thief addict abuser all of these things that they would

Be covered and blotted out create in me a clean heart oh God verse 10 and renew a right spirit within me cast me not away from your

Presence and me restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit you see when we go to God we need

To ask for the gospel to cover us that our repentance would be based off of his sacrifice that he would restore to us the joy of repentance and that he would go to work on the

Inside of us that he would blot out our sin and go to work on the inside of us that's where he says create in me a clean heart

And renew a right spirit within me David's not just saying I need my past taken care of he said I need you to

Take care of my future too I need you to go to work on my heart so that I'll be different make me new on

The inside and then keep me there that's where verse 12 restore to me the joy of your salvation make me new bring me back and then

Uphold me with a willing spirit keep me there verse 13 through 17 he kind of lays out what will happen when that happens

He says then when you've done that when you've wiped away my sin when you've restored me when you've made my heart new then

I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you I love that because that is true you want to tell other

People that this is how God responds this is how he Acts this is how he treats us in our sin often I find

When they say that you know this many people in the Christian church hadn't shared their faith with anybody over the past however many

You know nobody hadn't told anybody about Jesus this past year that kind of stuff it's like yeah because they I'll start telling everybody

Because that's how it works delivered me from blood guiltiness oh God oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of

Your righteousness that's us every Sunday morning that we've been delivered from our guilt by Jesus and we sing to Jesus about his righteousness

Oh Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart oh God

You will not despise maybe says you don't want to sacrifice for me you don't want work for me I can't pay you back

I have nothing to offer you says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart build up the walls

Of Jerusalem then you will delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings then bulls will be offered on your altar

So what David says is you don't want an offering you want humility but once you've changed me then you'll want sacrifice then you'll

Want work and for us that's we don't come to God and work beforehand to be saved to pay back our debt that we're

Saved based off of coming to God in repentance and humility and then God delights in your work God delights in your service because

He's the one empowering it because it's not you're not serving so that you'll be okay you're serving you're sacrificing because of how good he

Is not to pay him off but to delight in him and so he delights in your work as we close out this morning

We're going to have a chance to respond it's maybe a little bit different than some mornings but I think helpful for us look back at verse

16 And 17 for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it you will not be pleased with a burnt offering

I hope that verse crushes some of us this morning for those of you in the room who think that the role of Christianity in

Your life and in the life of others is to sacrifice and to do good and to be moral to guard your soul and

To act right and then God will delight in you David just said no for those of you this morning who have seen your

Sin and said okay I gotta pay it back I gotta work really hard I gotta be a good person and then God will

Like me David says no that's not how it works that will not work he will not delight in it if you are here

To do some sort of penance and to deliver to God some form of good work some form of morality some form of church

Attendance let this be very clear he does not delight in that you have presented him nothing but verse 17 should bring great hope

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart oh God you will not despise those of you in

This room who have seen your sin and are broken over it hear the words of David God does not despise that God does

Respond to that he does delight in that for us to have a broken spirit and a broken heart some of you you see

Your sin and you know I can't pay this back I'm crushed by it I'll never get out from under this I'm destroyed by

It I have nothing to offer to God David says take your broken heart to him lay out before him just as I have

And say God I need mercy and my sin clings to me and it's ever before me and I was born like this and

I can't fix myself and I need you to blot it out and I need you to change me and David says when we

Do that God stoops and he welcomes and he wraps us up and he does not despise that that that's the sacrifice that you

Would humbly submit yourself before him in the midst of your sin in a minute we're going to take communion together but before that we're

Going to have a time where we get to sit and repent where we get to collectively as a church ask God for mercy in

Our sin some of you right now are untouched by this this has been maybe interesting to see what David went through and you're going to

Need to ask that God help you see your sin help you see where you've run from him where you've gotten so cold to

Him that you've grown so used to your sin that you don't even notice it anymore so we're going to pray three things here in a

Second we're going to ask that God would help us see his character that he'd help us see the cross we'd see his holiness and

His mercy and his love and then we're going to pray that he'd help us see our sin and hate it and then we're going to

Pray like David blot it out and make me new renew me keep me and if you are in this room and you have never placed

Your faith in Jesus you want to you want to you want to have him pay for your sin and make you new that

You can be forgiven and you can be welcomed and you can be loved and you can be renewed that you can come to

Him right now and fall on your knees like at the end of a battle when you have no other options you can say

Have mercy on me and he does that he has died for our sins and he does have love and he is merciful all

The and it doesn't matter what you've done in your past or what's happened to you or what marks you or what you think

On the paper underneath your name that his blood can blot it out and you can be forever free so if you've never fully

Mentally intentionally committed yourself to Jesus and said I need you to pay for my sin because I have no other options and I

Need you to forgive me and have mercy on me you can do that right now and then in a moment you can stand

Up and you can take communion as a Christian for the first time and truly celebrate that his body was broken for you and

That his blood was shed for you and that forever when God looks at you all of your sin will be blotted out by

The blood of Jesus and you will be covered and if you have done that I would encourage you to repent today from the

Sin that you have allowed to grow up that you have been hiding and go as a Christian take communion one more time and

Celebrate the fact that we have a great God and father who loved us so much that his son died for us that our

Sin could be forever and that he would cover us and renew us so right now for a moment we're just going to sit

And have a chance to pray and then we'll get to respond through communion and singing and celebrating but let's pray together God I

We come to you and we ask that our sin would not be hidden from us because it's not hidden from you we ask

That in your grace you would show us our sin where we've rebelled where we've run that you would hem us in and your

Hand would be heavy on us that we might bend and repent and ask for mercy and God we pray that people would run

As fast as they possibly could to you today and that people in this room who never placed their faith in you would and

Would be forever welcomed and covered by Jesus

Psalm 23 - Sabbath Rest

Psalm 23

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

You remember when you were in school and you had a summer vacation, like a summer break, so that you could kind of feel the school year drawing to an end and it was getting warmer, and then you had like some of those half days, and then you had summer, and there was just nothing that had to happen. Do you remember that? Can you just think back for a second and remember that? And some of you are still in that. You're in school. You are in summer right now.

Isn't it nice? Doesn't it just feel good? You at some point kind of grow out of that. But do you remember any of those times where you would just say, I'm bored. Oh, I'm so bored. There's nothing to do here.

And some of you, you know, you grew up in this area, and some of you grew up in like podunk nowhere. And so whenever you would hear someone from around here say, there's nothing to do. It's like, you don't even know what nothing to do looks like. You hadn't even come close to smelling nothing to do. Like, I can tell you what nothing to do. Like, but you know, like there was those moments where you just were like, oh, everything is stupid.

I have nothing to do. I'm bored. Do you remember that? Some of you have maybe maybe you have kids that are in that age, and maybe they've been saying this to you consistently throughout this whole summer. And you're sick of that phrase. But I can tell you that at some point in some point in life, most of us traded in bored for busy.

At some point, we began to make the shift from I'm bored to I'm busy. I'm just busy. I just have I have too much going on. Like, I don't even think we use the phrase bored anymore. Like you might say a movie was boring, but that's like that's it. You don't you might say sermon was really boring.

You might say phrases like that. If you ever visited another church, you might say something like that. But but you you don't we don't use that phrase anymore. Like I don't I don't use the phrase bored anymore. Like if I have a moment to be bored, it's delightful. Like I just sit there times where it's like it's it's like there's there's like a it's kind of like a lunar eclipse.

There's like three minutes after the kid goes to sleep before I'm too tired to stay awake that I just sit and it's like, oh, this is nice. I have nothing to do for most of us, though. We've traded in bored for busy and we don't really know how to get out of that. We're we're we're beyond busy. We've become restless. We actually don't know how to rest.

We don't know how to stop even in our downtime and the few amounts of time during the day that we could have had downtime. We pull our phones out. Some of us, that's our alarm clock. So we wake up with a screen in our face and we go straight from alarm clock mode to checking news feeds and Facebook and Twitter and random videos online. And like that's the beginning of our day and it does not stop. We move straight from that into a hectic, frantic.

Rest of our day until in the evening, sometime we crash. Usually after staring at a screen again for some amount of time and go back to sleep. And then we we live this life on this cycle of exhaustion and restlessness. And we feel as if we're always behind and there's something we got to catch up to and something we got to fix and something we got to work on. And so as we kind of look together at the Psalms this summer, what we've said is this is Psalms, a life of worship. And what we're trying to to do is figure out how to allow the Psalms to train us and how to follow God in a in a joy filled way.

How to how to know what it looks like to follow him in the normal parts of life. And so today we're going to spend some time talking about rest. And before we go to the place where we'll we'll spend the majority of our day, I want to show you a few other quotes from the Psalms that I think help us see some of the issue that we face. This is Psalm 127 verses one and two. It says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor, those who build it, labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain.

Vain means useless. It's a waste of time. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil for he that's God gives to his beloved sleep. Keep that up for just a minute. Anxious toil. I think for far too many of us is an action is a good description of what life feels like.

Too much of the time. That it's anxious toil that we have stress and anxiety and all of life feels like toil. It's not work. It's not creation. It's not making things better. It's not ever getting to a place where you go high and you get to sit back and be satisfied with your work.

No, it's anxious toil. It's every day is a grind. And then we go to sleep and then we get to do it again. The next day is going to be a grind and we're going to be tired. But but we'll tell ourselves it's just for a season.

It's just for this amount of time. Like eventually it's going to go away. Eventually this weekend I'll rest. Well, next weekend I'll rest. Well, you know, the summer's coming. Well, after summer's over, because there's so many things to do in the summer in the fall, I'm going to wrestle.

It's football season and there's just too much. And then eventually God graciously lets us die. But that's what life feels like sometimes. It's like I keep postponing rest. I keep saying it's a season, but it actually hasn't stopped being this season. And life feels like anxious toil.

And what the psalmist is saying here is unless God is at work with you, unless he's helping you watch the city, unless he's helping you build the house, all of your work is going to feel like that. And the assumption in the text that he's making here, the point he's making here is that if God is with you, then building the house, all of your labor won't be a waste of time. And if God is helping you watch the city, then watching the city will not be a waste of time. And that God will remove anxious toil and let you actually rest. I want to show you Psalm 46 verse 10 says, be still and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth. So the God at this in this Psalm, it says, just sit still. Just sit for a second and know who I am. Just sit for a minute and know that I'm God. Rest in the fact that I am big and capable. And so what we're going to look at today, go ahead and grab your Bibles and go to Psalm 23.

It's going to be on page 261. If your Bible looks like this. That page number is wrong. That is not helpful. It's going to be 261 if your page looks like this. If your Bible looks like this.

And if you don't own a Bible, this is our gift to you. You can take this with you. What I did was I put the number of the Bible I was using, which is not this Bible. So just so you know, I'm pretty smart. Here's what we're looking at. We're going to read this Psalm.

It's a Psalm of David who was a king in Israel. And he's writing to tell us what God is like. What relating to God is like. What life with God is like. And here's here's our goal for the day. We're going to listen to David.

We're going to study what he says. And we're going to try to see what it looks like for us to have a life of rest, a life of peace as we follow God. Now, what I don't mean is laziness. What I don't mean is if you follow God, you don't have to have a job. If you've been around our church for a while, you probably know that we wouldn't say that we push for work and work is good. And we want you to be to be in a healthy way.

Busy, not busy, frantic, busy, but but creating and a part of God's good system. But so and honestly, not having a job does not remove the anxiety and the toil. So we've met, you know, people who are lazy and still restless. Still seem to be that the ability to rest is is gone from them. You know, people who work really hard and have enough money to go on two week vacations. But when they come back, it's not like they actually rested.

Their soul doesn't know how to. Maybe some of you have been on a week long vacation and you come back more exhausted. And it's because we don't know how to rest. But we also know people who have who are busy, who are at work, who are diligent and are at peace. And that's that's the picture we're going to get from David here is that there is a way to walk with God so that we actually are restful and at peace because of how big and how good he is. That we know how to be still and know that he is God.

That's what we're going to. That's our goal today. And our goal in some ways is fairly simple. We're trying to grow our faith this morning. We're trying to look at what the Bible says about God and actually have greater faith when we leave. Believe it a little more.

See, we're faith people. So we we take what's true about God and we believe it. And we're told that that goes to work on us. That goes to work in us. That that's the gospel is that we believe what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross. And that that belief changes us that through faith God gives us grace.

And that's our goal this morning is to study what Psalm 23 says about God. And grow our faith. Actually, just for a little while this morning, begin to believe this a little more. And in some ways, it's like you ever you ever had a friend who started dating someone and you hadn't met who they were dating yet. Or maybe you had a sibling and they had had someone they were dating and you you got they described to you the person before you met them. And so they kind of told you what to look for.

They said, oh, they're so funny. They have a laugh that's infectious. And like, I don't know if you're like me, I'm like, I will see if I get infected. Like, it's just like they're telling you kind of here's what you need to expect. Or they'll say maybe if they're bringing you to meet their parents or something, they'll say, hey, before we go in, just so you know, this is something I had to always do with my friends. Just so you know, my dad's going to say intense, awkward things to you that he finds very funny.

OK, let's go in. Like I just that was about all I'd give you is like, just so you know, he probably doesn't mean it, but he might. Who knows? Let's go. He may make a joke that makes you uncomfortable. Just deal with it.

That's kind of what we're going to get to do today. We're going to get to see what David says. This is what the relationship's like. This is what he does, and we're going to start looking for it in our own lives. We're going to begin to, as we leave here today, going, OK, David said this is what you're like. Infect me.

Let me see it. Let me enjoy it. Let me partake in it. Psalm 23. We're going to read the whole Psalm, and then we're going to walk back through it. Our goal is to grow in our faith.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Look back at verse 1. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Okay, so the immediate picture that David gives us is that of a shepherd with sheep. And David is a king at this point, but he used to be a shepherd who had sheep. And so David's relating this to something he's very familiar with.

And what he's saying is, I'm a sheep. He's the shepherd. He's going to take care of everything. That's his first sentence. That's his proposition. That's kind of his thesis statement that everything else is going to flow out of.

He says he's the shepherd. I'm the sheep. And he'll take care of everything. That's what he means when he says, I shall not want. We use the word want to mean I desire, I would like. So I want a cookie.

He's using it here to mean lack. So if I looked at you and said, I am want for a cookie, it does not mean I lack a cookie. That's not what I would be communicating. I would be saying I want a cookie. But he's saying lack.

What he's saying is, because the Lord is my shepherd, I'm not going to lack anything. He doesn't mean because the Lord is my shepherd, all of my desires will be met. It's not the way he's using the term want there. And here's why this is actually very freeing. David's point for the rest of this Psalm is that if the Lord is your shepherd, and we're told as Christians that Jesus is the chief shepherd, he's the good shepherd, who's laid his life down for the sheep, that we belong to him like sheep belong to a shepherd. So we get to come with David and say the same thing if we're Christians, is that the Lord is my shepherd.

And what David is saying is if he's your shepherd, you'll have everything you need. He will be in charge of what you get and he will give you what you need. You won't actually lack any of the good things that you need. Now, that may be hurtful to hear because at times it seems so evident that we are lacking. But it's actually encouraging to know that the shepherd is good and will provide.

He will give you what you need. He will not have you lack any good thing. That's what David is saying here. He's saying that I will get exactly what the shepherd wants me to have. That's the point he's making throughout the rest of the Psalm is that since he's my shepherd, I'll have what I need. Now, that means at times that we'll feel a desire for something.

David can't mean we'll always have our desires met, but he does mean that that God, our shepherd or for us, Christ, our shepherd will give us everything that we need. We will not be lacking because he's good. And that's that's our hope. That's our faith that we would believe that that we would trust him enough to know that whatever I have, whatever he's given me, whatever he's blessed me with, whatever he's withheld from me is because he's good and I can trust him. So let's keep reading.

He says, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want or I won't have any lack. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

So he starts off. He says he makes me lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside still waters. And I just want to say this encouragement to some of you who feel like I have to work. I have to be busy. I have to be diligent. That's what God wants from me.

I have to be active or he'll be disappointed in me. The first thing David says is he's my shepherd. He makes me lie down. Some of you need to picture Jesus pushing you down and saying, just stay, just stay for a second. You're like, but I've got so much to do for you. And he's like, lay down and stay like me with my two-year-old.

If you get out of that bed again, like that, because I want him to sleep, it's good for him. So maybe Jesus has a better attitude than I do. But he makes us lie down. He gives us rest. That if you come to this morning, if you think God wants cheap labor out of you, and he's some sort of a cattle driver, that's not what David starts off with. David says, no, he makes me lie down.

He gives me rest. My grandmother is one of these people that she can't sit still. She's busy all the time. And she's a godly lady. She was a missionary in Nigeria. And there's a, in the New Testament, Jesus arguing with some Pharisees about the Sabbath, which was their day off when they weren't supposed to do any work.

And he says, if your ox falls in a ditch, don't you get it out? And so my grandmother, whenever she was doing work on the Sabbath, on her Sunday, when she was supposed to not be doing work, would say, the ox is in the ditch. Which meant the ox is in the ditch. I got to get to work. And at some point, as I got to know her, I started thinking, I think you're pushing the ox in the ditch. So you have something to do.

Like, I think you, your ox is always in the ditch. Like, drive your ox better. Build a fence. And some of us, that's the case. It's like, we always feel like we have to be active. We have to be working.

And I just want you to see this. Jesus, the good shepherd, makes us lie down. Makes us lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. I want you to see something else here. That David is saying that, like, he will provide.

I won't lack anything. He's going to give me green pastures. He's going to give me still waters. He's going to provide for my soul. He's going to provide for me. And I just want you to know that some of you who are feeling like, no, I'm lacking.

I am lacking right now. Trust. Trust that he is providing in ways maybe unseen, in ways maybe unlooked for. But that he will provide and that he does. And that you can continue to follow him. Verse 3, he restores my soul.

That is so encouraging to me. For two reasons. One, David's soul needed to be restored. I think we can fall in the trap of believing that if I follow Jesus, I'll never need soul restoration. I'll always be fine. That's not what David says.

David says, no, no, no. He's good. So he goes to work on me when I'm not fine at all. When my soul needs work, he restores it. That there are times in life when our soul needs restoration. It needs love.

It needs health. He needs to be mending us. And secondly, that we get to run to him. That he's the only one who can restore it. And we get to trust him that he will do this. It's like when my wife and I, at times our marriage has not been the funnest marriage to be in.

We weren't just laughing the whole time and skipping along rainbows. And it's like that where I knew in those moments when our marriage is really hard and we don't really like each other. And our house is not a joyous place filled with potpourri and giggling. Like it just wasn't nice. I knew the only way to fix it was not to draw away from her, but to draw close to her. The only way to mend our marriage was for us to continue to be in each other's face and each other's space and grinding against each other.

So that, so that, so that, hopefully we can edit that before it makes it to the internet. It's not bad advice, you guys. I'm just saying it's not what I meant. All right. So that we were knocking off all the rough places in each other's souls so that we would grow.

I'm going to repeat that last sentence as we regain our focus collectively. So that we were knocking off all the rough places in our souls so that we would grow together. That when, when we were hurting to draw near to each other was the best way for this to, to be mended. And that's the same thing he's saying here, that, that when his soul needs restoration, he doesn't run from God. He runs to him. He rests with him, that he draws near him.

He knows the only way for this to get fixed is to be next to God. Lord help us. All right. So I think the question for us as we come out of this section is what do you think you're missing out on? What is it that you consistently feel you are lacking? And do you believe that he's actually good enough that he knows that?

And he doesn't believe you're lacking and that he will provide what you need. He keeps going. He says he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. And I just want to say that he ultimately fulfills that for us who are Christians in the cross. That he leads us through paths of righteousness for his namesake, which means that he, he gets the glory from us being good, from us walking in righteousness.

And what we're told in the new Testament is that he was righteous for us, that he took our sin on himself, that he died for our sin and gave us his righteousness. And so that we are made right with God for his name. That it's actually Jesus that gets all the glory from the church being made righteous. Every once in a while, people will say things like, I don't like the church. Everybody in the church is messed up. I'm like, yes.

Isn't Jesus good? That he invites messed up people like that's, that's our church. We're the first people to raise our hands and say, I am a hot mess and I need Jesus. That's it. He makes us righteous for his glory. That is actually how messed up we are and how broken we are and how sinful we are and how far away from if all of us got together because of how good we were.

Who gets the glory? Whose name is lifted up? Ours. Because of how good we are. But when we gather together as people who can barely get along with each other.

Who have sin at work in our lives that we're fighting against, but we're trusting that Jesus is good and that he saves sinners. You know who gets the glory in whose name? Jesus is. That's what he's saying. He ultimately fulfills that for us that he brings us into righteousness for his name, for his glory, that Jesus gets all the glory as he works righteousness out in our lives. Verse four.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Then he goes on in verse five. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

It's interesting. In verses one through three, he says he. He does this. He does this. He does this. He hits verse four and he says you.

He says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you. And I think here's why. When life is good. When we're in the pasture by the still water, having our souls restored, we can talk about God. We can praise him. We can lift him up.

We can say, here's what he's like. And we actually get to enjoy all the good gifts he's given us in a way that that points us to him. We get to look at the green pastures. We get to look at the the the goodness of life. And we get to point to and say, this is how good he is. This is how glorious he is.

But when we're in the valley of the shadow of death, we start talking to God. We start praying. It's less of a place of praise and more of a place of prayer. That we begin to call out to him. And I want to show you something that I think is that I'm very encouraged by, because what we're looking at is David is showing us this is what life with God is like. That it's better off with him in charge that we're more free.

That's one of the things I think David's really trying to show us here is that true freedom and true rest and true hope comes not from our own autonomy, our own sovereignty, our being our own boss. But it actually comes from being utterly dependent on a good shepherd. Because that's what sheep are. They're dependent on a shepherd. And if the shepherd's good, then life is good. And if the shepherd's bad, life is bad.

And what David's saying is that real freedom and real joy comes from being dependent, not not autonomous, not sovereign over ourselves. To be under the king and not our own king. That's where real freedom comes. So David says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me and your rod and your staff, they comfort me. So David just got done in verse three says he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, it seems as if he's really tying those together in a way that is saying there are times where God leads us through the valley of the shadow of death. The good shepherd is actually walking with us through that. And I heard John Piper talking about this. And he said he spent some time thinking, why would God do that? What is the point of a shepherd taking sheep through the valley of the shadow of death? And he said the only answer he could come up with is there was something better on the other side of that valley.

That he had a place he had to get to that the only way to really get there was through the valley. And I'm inclined to agree with him. So he's saying that God does lead us and there are times where it seems dark and scary and painful. But here's what David says. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, even though fear would be all around me, even though hope would be lost, even though I would have no way to get myself through this, he says, I will fear no evil for you are with me. See, in verses one through three, David is talking about the comfort is the pasture.

The comfort is the water. And Jesus led him there. But the good stuff was the pasture. The good stuff was the water. Like he's enjoying this and he's just saying, you're great because you brought me here. It's like when somebody cooks a meal and you compliment the meal and you're kind of rolling that up and compliment to them, like in praise to them.

So my wife cooks something. I go, girl, this chicken. Like she knows I'm saying good Job with the chicken. And she takes it as a compliment to her. She's not like, why are you complimenting the chicken? Say something about me.

It's like, no, she gets it. That's what David is doing in verses one through three. He's saying the green grass, the pastures are good. He doesn't have anything to say is good. In verses four and five. What he has to say is in the middle of everything else being terrible, you're still good.

You comfort me. I won't fear anything because you're here. What he says is I can't see anything good. I don't see anything that I can look at and say thank you for right now. I can't. I'm sure there's stuff, but I can't see it.

Sometimes it bothers me. And I may be wrong about this when people are really hurting and it's like, well, you should find something to be thankful for. It's like just maybe not. What? That's really hard right now. I can't see anything to be thankful for.

But David says, you don't have to. He's good. Let him comfort you. Let the fact that he's still there be good. And I love what he says. He says, you.

I will fear no evil for you are with me. So he says, what's good is here is you. That's it. I got nothing else. You're good. And he says, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

So a rod and a staff were shepherd's tools. A rod could be this long or as long as a staff. At the end of it, it had a knot. Some of them have little spikes. Some of them are just a knot. The rod was for hitting things.

Not the sheep. Bears, wolves. The rod was for outsiders. The staff was for the sheep. And that's the one you're used to that has a little crook. It looks like a candy cane.

Your nativity scene has it. That was for the sheep. And this is beautiful because you know what's terrifying about being in the valley of the shadow of death? There's two things absolutely terrifying about those moments in our lives. Specifically for Christians. For the sheep that belong to Jesus.

One is that what's in the valley is going to get you. That you're going to be attacked. You're going to be harmed. That you're not going to make it out because this assailed you. And secondly, that because you're in the valley of shadow, you're going to bolt and leave the shepherd. That's actually the thing I'm most afraid of.

Is that when I get in the valley, I'm going to cease to see that he's good and I'm just going to run. I'm just going to run away. And what he says is both your rod and your staff comfort me. One is to hook around my neck and keep me close to you. And one of them is for everything that comes in this valley and tries to get me. And here's what's so encouraging about this.

So this is David writing this. David was a shepherd. He used to write songs. Tend sheep. So he was kind of arty.

He wrote poems and songs. And he was a shepherd. And he comes to one of the main stories about him that you maybe have heard about is David and Goliath. This is the same David we're talking about. Goliath was a giant. He was defying the armies of Israel.

And David comes and he goes and talks to the king Saul. And he basically says, hey, I'll go kill Goliath for you. And the king's like, because he's just kind of a young guy and he's not in the army. Like he tends sheep. The king's like, this is probably not the best plan. But this is the first guy who said, I'll kill Goliath for you.

So Saul's going to hear him out. Because all the other guys were like, I think Goliath was going to kill all of us. And this was the first kid who was like, I'll kill him for you. And so Saul was like, well, let's talk. Tell me your plan. So Saul's talking to him and he says, you're just a boy.

Like he's been trained in military things his whole life. This is 1 Samuel 17, by the way, that I'm paraphrasing. David says, I've tended sheep. And when a bear came or a lion came and took one of the lambs, I would follow it. I would strike it and get the lamb out of its mouth. And then he says, and if it came at me, I would grab it by its beard and kill it.

I've killed bears and lions and I'm going to do the same thing to Goliath. He'll be like one of them. Isn't that, I could just imagine Saul being like, all right, let's go. And he's following him out and people are like, you're actually going to let him fight. He said, he said he's going to grab Goliath by his beard and hit him in the head with a stick. I'm going to watch this.

He said, that's what he's going to do. I want to see it. That's what David's saying is he had a rod. He would go to a bear. He would hit it and he would give that bear a chance to back up. David was being nice to the bear.

He's like, you give me the lamb. You can go. But he's like, if that bear bowed up to me, I killed it. Did the same thing with bears and lions. Next time I go to the zoo, I'm looking at him and I'm picturing David jumping on him, grabbing him by their beard and hitting them with a stick. What David says in this Psalm is when I'm in the valley and it's dark and death looms over us, I'm going to remember that you're the scariest thing in the valley and that if a lion comes or a bear comes, they need to be afraid.

David's like, I'm going to do my best to get their attention and go, you're going to want to go home. That's what David's saying is that in the valley, when it is dark, when it is dismal, I'm going to trust that you're going to keep me close to you. Your staff is a comfort to me and I'm going to trust that in your other hand is a rod and this whatever is in the valley will not win. That you are the biggest, most fearful thing in the valley. That's our hope as we trust Jesus. Not that we'll never enter the valley of the shadow of death.

Not that it will never loom over us. Not that there will never be a time in our life when we cannot name a good thing. We don't know where grass is. We can't remember the last time we sat by still water. We're not promised that. We're promised that when we go in there, there will be the most fearful being in all of creation that rules over creation.

He will be with us and be a comfort to us to both keep us and to guard us. That's the hope that David says he has as he walks with God. Verse 5. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. That is a crazy sentence.

Because when you actually get to sit at a table and enjoy a nice meal, that's when life's going pretty well. Like you don't even get to do that in the morning. And you're grabbing like a drink and a Nutri-Grain bar and hitting the door. Like you don't even have enemies there. You just, the alarm clock, like you lost to it that morning. Like what David is saying is, in the presence of my enemies, I'll be surrounded, but I'm going to still get to sit down and enjoy a meal that you've prepared for me.

That in the middle of all the things that should rob us of all joy and all comfort and all peace, God sets a table and says, have a seat. That his supply lines aren't cut off and that he can continue to fill us up. That's what David's saying. The way I see this so clearly in my own life is with my sin. So that at times I feel like I'm surrounded by my enemies and that's what my sin is.

That it's actively at work to destroy my soul, to rob me of joy, to keep me from having a good relationship with God and good relationship with others around me. That my sin and at times I feel so accused by it. Look at who you are. Look at what you do. Look at what you're thinking. Look at what you're, like it's overwhelming and it feels like it's hemming me in.

And all I can see is my sin. And then in the cross Jesus sets a table, says have a seat. I'm actually going to show my power and my glory and my magnificence and my rule over sin as you sit and enjoy life, surrounded by what should destroy you but that I've set you free from. The thing that should rob you of all joy, I'm going to stand next to you as a guard and you're going to actually get to enjoy. Because he forgives us in the middle of our sin and it does not destroy us. He says you anoint my head with oil.

My cup overflows. I think there's potential for two pictures here when he says you anoint my head with oil. That was something they would do as kind of a custom when they would share meals together and when they would come in, it was a way that you could smell nicer and it was a way to honor guests. And so he may just be simply saying you honor me as a guest. Like you prepare a table for me, you honor me as a guest and my cup overflows, meaning I'm more than provided for. But specifically because this is David writing this Psalm, we're told of the time that David was anointed with oil to be the king of Israel.

And so David may be trying to draw everybody's mind to, you set me aside for a purpose. I think so often one of the things that robs us of the ability to rest, that makes life anxious toil is this feeling like I have to find my purpose and I have to achieve my purpose in order to have value. David says, no, that's in the shepherd's hands too. That he has a purpose for you, that the shepherd decides what the sheep get to do, that he anoints your head with oil and he sets you aside for his purposes and his glory and his name. And you can trust him in that too. So that the amount of anxiety we wrap around, is my life going to be worth it?

He says, no, I've pushed that onto Jesus. Trust the shepherd to give you value and purpose. He says, my cup overflows. That God provides more than enough. So I think our question here that we ought to ask as we try to walk in this.

See, at first in verses 1 through 3, we need to ask, what is it that we think we're lacking? In verse 3, maybe we need to ask what it is we believe would restore our soul. What is it that we run to in those moments when we should tie ourselves to the shepherd? In verse 3, where he says, he leads me in paths of righteousness, maybe we ought to ask, what is it we believe actually makes us good? And is it Jesus? Are we resting in him?

Verse 4, he says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and he goes through there, what is it that we're afraid of? And what are we trusting to save us? All these things rob us of peace and of joy. Where he says, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

Maybe we ought to ask, what is it that we think gives us purpose and value? And do we have to consistently keep that up in order to be okay? Are we robbed of rest and robbed of joy because we can't let any relationship begin to seem even like it started to fall apart because we need people to love us to be okay? Is that where our value and our purpose comes from? Do we have to work unending hours in order to make enough money to have value and purpose? And we rob ourselves of joy because we won't trust that ultimately he holds all of that.

Verse 6, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David begins in verse 1, with the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He says, this is kind of how it's going to work. He's the shepherd, I'll be okay. And then he ends with this like proclamation of faith over the rest of his life. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

If you met a person and they looked at you and with genuine sincerity said, I will be happy my entire life. You'd be like, that's bold. I'm like, I'm proud of you. I hope that works out. But you don't know.

Maybe you wouldn't tell them. I'd probably tell them. I'd be like, well, we'll see. I don't know why I'd be rooting against their happiness, but I'd just be my natural reaction. They looked at you and said, all good things will come to me forever. He'd be like, boy, you sound like a fortune cookie.

David says this. And he got to write it down and it got to stay in the Bible. How does he get to say that? He gets to say that because of what he said in verse 1, which is the Lord is my shepherd, I won't lack anything. David gets to end with this bold statement of faith over the rest of his life that goodness and mercy will follow me and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And the reason he gets to say that is not because of what he's going to do, but because of who he belongs to.

That as Christians in Christ, we get to say the same thing. I want to read from John. This is Jesus speaking, so I just want you to sit and listen. This is what Jesus says about himself. I think this is helpful. John 10.

I'm the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. And I come that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. And the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. But I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay my life down for the sheep.

You see, we get to stand next to David and without blinking, without hesitating, say, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. If we belong to Jesus, he's laid his life down for us. He knows his sheep. He loves his sheep. He doesn't flee from our sin. He doesn't flee from our wickedness.

But he dies in order to redeem us. And we belong to him. That's who we have as a shepherd. And that we get to read Psalm 23 and believe it. That we won't lack anything. That he will provide.

That he will restore our souls, even though there will be times where it needs to be restored. There will be times when we can't see anything good but him, but he's still good. And that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life. You can rest. You can stop. You can trust.

He is good. He does love you. He does care for you. That you belong to him and he knows you and you know his voice. For all of us who've placed faith in Christ, that is true for us. And maybe, maybe we all need to read Psalm 23 every day for the next month until it seeps into us that this is real and this is who he is and this is what he's like.

That he begins to restore our souls even from these pages. When we read Psalms and pray them. That he begins to work in us that we would remember that this is who he is and this is what he's done and this is the hope that we have. But you can rest and you can trust because he is good and he does love you. He's not going to lose you. He holds a rod and a staff.

Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life and you will if you belong to Jesus, dwell in his house forever. The band is going to come back up as we finish out this morning. We're going to spend in our community groups this week, we're actually going to talk about how. Practically, how do we make time? How do we rest? But today I just wanted us to try as we could to grow our faith that we could believe that we actually can.

That we believe why we can make time. Why we can rest because of how good he is. You see, freedom and rest come from dependence, not autonomy. That we get to trust that he handles this, that he will provide, that he is good, that we don't have to labor and toil in order to make things okay for ourselves. So as a church, we're about to take communion.

Communion. And communion is simply, we have bread, we use grape juice.

Psalm 86 -Prayer

Prayer

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

All right, how are we doing this morning? Okay. We're going to be teaching on lament at some point in the Psalms, so y'all just go ahead and get ready for that. It'll help you be really mournful and sad. Well, as we get started this morning, I want to take a second and I want you to kind of picture something with me. So it's Monday morning, first day of the work week, first day of the school week.

Some of you work retail. It's Monday. It's just a day. And you decide, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it, and this time it's going to work. I'm going to do it, and this time it's going to be good.

I'm going to set my alarm a little bit earlier. I'm going to get up before I have to. I'm going to wake up before I've got to start getting ready. I'm going to wake up before the kids do. I'm going to wake up before my roommates do. I'm going to wake up before I have to get to class or to work.

I'm going to do it this time, and it's going to be good. I'm going to pray. And I don't know for you, so you set your alarm. You get up. Maybe it's 30 minutes earlier. Maybe it's 45 minutes earlier.

I don't know how quickly you move in the morning or how much time you thought. Maybe you were like, I'm going to pray, and you set your alarm 10 minutes early. I don't know what you went for. And you went to your favorite chair. You went to maybe your desk. You went to just the living room, went and sat on the couch.

Maybe you went and sat at your kitchen table. Some of you, maybe you have a front porch, and you can kind of look out at some trees or something. Maybe you went out on your porch. I don't know your morning. I don't know what you went for. Maybe you got a cup of coffee.

Maybe you got one of those fancy, like, one-cup things. Maybe you're the person who brews, like, a whole pot for yourself. I don't know if you do redneck coffee. Some of y'all are holding Mountain Dews in the morning or some jolt or something. Some of y'all, you know, maybe you got a cigarette in your hand. I don't know what your morning looks like.

But you got up. You're going to read. You're going to pray. You're going to do this. You're finally going to pray, and it's going to be good. You're going to actually pray good stuff, and God's going to listen.

He's going to respond, and there's going to be this conversing, and there's going to be relationship. And there may be even some moments where it's like hands in the air. You don't ever do that, but maybe you will this morning. It's going to be good actual prayer the way that other people pray. The way you have never prayed, but the way that other people pray, you're certain of it, and you're going to do this. So you go.

You got up. That was hard. You did it. Man, you feel like almost the battle is won at this point. I am awake, and I have time. You go to your chair.

You go to your table, and you sit, and you start praying in your head, and you realize pretty quickly that you did not start very good sentences, or maybe you don't realize really quickly, and about four minutes later, you realize you're just thinking about nothing, or you're replaying an old TV show in your head, or you've started just thinking about your day, so you decide, okay, I'm going to pray out loud. And you say, God, and then you realize that volume sounds weird for how early it is, and the fact that you're by yourself, so you go, God, like, sorry, like it was too loud, and then you're like, and you start praying some more, but then you get mumbly, and you go back to your head, and you get distracted again, and then you're like, no, I need something to wake me up, so you get your computer out, you're going to play some music, or you get your phone out to play some music, something, you've got to have some background noise. And so ten minutes later, you're checking email, or you're on Facebook, and you realize, I should never have gotten this out. Some of you didn't even intend to get it out, it just magically appeared in your hand.

There was three seconds where your brain was still, so your hand was like, I know what to do, and just stuck it, went down and got your phone for you. Some of you used it as your alarm, so that was the first thing. You didn't even get to your chair, you were already flipping through stuff. Eventually, time's up, and you feel like, I really should have slept that extra 30 minutes. And in some ways, you may be a little more frustrated, a little more disappointed. I don't know, some of you, maybe you actually prayed.

Maybe you fought through and you prayed, but it ended up being kind of just like a list of things. You just kind of listed out maybe the things that were going on in your day. It was, maybe you prayed about just some stuff you're worried about. Like, maybe you prayed and you're like, cool, I prayed, but you leave still feeling like, I didn't quite, there wasn't, like I didn't feel the fellowship. Like that Bible word that people use that means some sort of like good, potent, juicy friendship. Like, I didn't feel that with God.

I didn't, I didn't, I didn't commune with the Holy Spirit. These words that the Bible uses, like I didn't feel that. Some of you were like, I didn't even really pray. So I'm not surprised that I didn't feel that. And so what we're going to do today is going to be a good bit different than, than normal Sundays for us. It's not, not, not crazy different, but it's, it's going to be different.

And I got to explain why. One of the, one of the reasons we're going to do, what we're going to do today is, is that I have just described to you many a morning of my own. And I leave feeling like I'm the only person who does not know how to pray. And then I'll read about these other people like Luther and Calvin and Mueller and missionaries and all this kind of stuff. I read this one about this guy and it was like, he, he, he went in, he told somebody who was helping him. He said, look, I'm going to go pray for an hour.

Come get me after an hour. And the guy went in after an hour and saw him and he was just, just too into it. And so he just left him alone. And finally, after four hours, he was like, okay, it's been too long. And he went and got him and said, hey. And the guy said, man, as soon as he tapped him, this is a missionary.

And he got up and said, man, an hour really flies when you're, when you're praying and relating to God. And the guy was like, yeah, it was four hours. I read that story. And do you know how depressed I was? Like, I've, I've, this is, I've set an alarm on my phone for three minutes. So that when it went off, I could remember that I was supposed to be praying and had gotten distracted.

So that I could pray for about a minute before my brain's like, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, just off on something else. And I, I have, at times feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know how to pray. Like, I feel like everybody else has got this and everybody else is praying well. And, and other, other pastors, they wake up at four in the morning and they go pray and they, they sweat and tears roll out of their face. And then they just go and seize the day. And, and it's just not like that.

And, um, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of us feel like this. Anybody who has tried to pray has found it exceedingly difficult. Anyone who's spent any time actually trying to pray has found it difficult to get started, to get going, to continue. Um, and so what we're going to do today is what we've been doing in our Psalm series. You can go and grab your Bible and flip to Psalm 86. Um, if you have one of the white Bibles, it'll be on page, uh, 283.

And if you don't own a Bible, we just encourage you to take this one with you. It's our gift to you. We want you to own a Bible. What we're going to do is we're going to have the Psalms help teach us how to pray. They're going to help teach us how to pray. And, and we're going to approach this a little bit differently, uh, than normal.

So when you went to learn how to drive a car, and some of you haven't gotten there yet, but I'm going to explain a process that you'll get to do at some point. Most of us though have, when you went to learn how to drive a car, you, you got the, the book, the little, you know, you had to pass the like written test first. And so they were like questions like, what do you do at a stop sign? Uh, every single one of us skipped the, what to do at a four-way stop because no one in South Carolina knows how to do that. I'm assuming that paragraph says, pull up, get uncomfortable, point to someone and say, anyway, um, and I know we don't know how to do it because my wife and I argue about what's actually correct.

I'm going to get a book. I've just realized I need to read this and figure it out. So you read the book. You remember most of it. You took the written test. At some point, someone sat you in a car, pointed to things, said that one gives it gas.

And that means it's going to go forward. That one's the break. That's a clutch. Uh, you know, they explained how to do things. And then at some point you just got in the car and they sat next to you and you drove. And in order to learn how to drive, you, you had to stall out.

You had to grind gears. You had to hit the brakes way too hard. Or you had to be going up towards a stop sign that you apparently couldn't see while the driving instructor was over there tapping the floor or your parent was. Or they had their own brake. You remember that one? And they could put the brakes on it for you.

And so you were driving along. And that was one of the things that happened with the driving instructor. With me, I'd be driving and all of a sudden the car would stop. And I'd be like, what's wrong? And he'd be like, you don't stop appropriately. That's how I learned the word impetuous.

My driving instructor said, you are impetuous. I said, what does that mean? He says, you try to make a decision quickly and decide just to punch the gas. And that was at that moment I learned why I was a bad quarterback in high school. Because I think he might be covered. Throw it.

Interception. He was. He was covered. I shouldn't have done it. At some point though, you had to get in the car. And you had to drive.

And what we're going to do today is we're going to show you how the Psalms, how you can use the Psalms to sit next to you and help train you in how to pray. You will mess stuff up. You will pray bad theology. You will pray things that are not even remotely close to being true about God. But the Psalms are going to train you.

What I'm saying is there are going to be times where you stall out or you grind gears or you run a red light. But the Psalms get to sit next to you and hold your hand and train you in how to pray. And that's what we're going to do today. We're actually going to practice that. We're going to walk through it. And I'm going to show you how you can use the Psalms to train you how to pray.

The reason I say it's different is that usually we read a passage and we explain what it's talking about. And we talk about it. Maybe we give some principles or some points of application. We're going to do less explaining today and more saying you might pray like this after you read that. You might pray like this just to try to help you see how you can actually sit and do this. And so really what we're trying to accomplish is I'm trying to sneak into your house on that Monday morning and stick this in your hands.

So that your phone cannot magically get in your hands because something is already in your hands. And so that you have a guide and a help for learning how to pray. I want to read a quote because this helps my brain so much. It's from Tim Keller's book on prayer. And this is a quote from Tim Keller's book where he's quoting someone else. He's quoting Eugene Peterson and then he's like interacting with what Eugene Peterson says.

So he says, Eugene Peterson reminds us that and now he's quoting Eugene Peterson. Because we learned language so early in our lives, we have no memory of the process and would therefore imagine that it was we who took the initiative to learn how to speak. However, that is not the case. Language is spoken into us. We learn language only as we are spoken to. We are plunged at birth into a sea of language.

Then slowly, syllable by syllable, we acquire the capacity to answer. Mama, Papa, bottle, blanket, yes, no. Not one of these words were a first word. All speech is answering speech. We are all spoken to before we spoke. And then Tim Keller goes on.

He says, in the years since Peterson wrote, studies have shown that children's ability to understand and communicate is profoundly affected by the number of words and the breadth of vocabulary to which they are exposed as infants and toddlers. We only speak to the degree we are spoken to. They go on to argue. Or Keller goes on to argue that that is what the scriptures get to be for us in prayer. We get to plunge ourself into the word and allow it to train us in how to speak and how to pray. And how to talk to God, to give us the words first so that we can answer, so that we can respond.

God has first spoken to us. I have a two-year-old. And when he started trying to learn how to speak, my wife and I talked about it. We had to sit down and I told her, we are not going to talk to our son. I want him to figure it out on his own. We're not going to let other people talk to him.

We go see family and they'd be like, hey, buddy, shh. I couldn't even tell him why I shushed him. Because I'm not allowed to talk around him. That's crazy. Nobody does that. You talk to a kid like it understands you.

It does not. You just say things. Is that offensive? He, her. They do not. You talk to the child like they understand what you're talking about.

I remember the first time my son responded with a full sentence. It scared me because I was not prepared for that. You get so used to them just kind of being there. But not. I was. I walked in the room.

I said, boy, where's your mama? He said, I don't know where mama is. And I was like, oh, God. There's a tiny human in my house. And even after that, he still will at times look at me and go, Jim and I'm the shoes. And I'm like, Jim and I'm the shoes.

And I'm like, Jim and I'm the shoes. Isn't where I got. I got shoes. He's like, uh-huh. Like, what about shoes? Jim and I'm the shoes.

And I have to sit and try to figure this out. And what I'm saying is there are going to be times where you're trying to pray. And you're looking at God and you're saying, Jim and I'm the shoes. And I'm not talking about a prayer language. I'm talking about you're praying bad theology. It doesn't make any sense.

What you said was not even remotely close to being coherent. But God loves you and is going to listen to you. And the Psalms are going to train you. So, yes, for a while in prayer, you will pronounce hippopotamus, hop-a-piss. But that's okay.

It's okay that while you pray for a while, you don't quite get it. But you're going to use God repeatedly looking at you and saying the correct words. Repeating it, looking at you and calling more out of you and speaking into you in order for you to learn how to pray. Some of us have completely removed the Bible from our praying and then wonder why we have such a hard time praying. It's because we're not allowing God to speak into us first so that we might respond. And so what we're going to do today is I'm going to show you how you can, on a Monday, get up earlier.

And some of you, that's crazy talk. Stay up later. Your brain doesn't work in the morning. That's fine. It's not God's more listening in the morning. Find a time to sit, open the Bible, and use the Scriptures to train you how to pray.

So we're going to practice that this morning. We're going to actually read, and I'm going to say, here's kind of what David's saying. And then I'm going to say, but maybe this is what you would pray. And that's how we're going to talk through it. And we'll kind of try to keep moving. But it's just going to be, here's what David's saying, but here's maybe how you would sit if you open this Psalm.

And we're using Psalm 86 to train you how to pray. Here's how you would pray. And you can use all of Scripture to do this. The Psalms are easier because they are directed towards God, most of them. There are places in Paul's letters where he's talking about prayers. There are places in Paul's letters where he's talking about theology.

It's easier. You can use all of Scripture, though. Another really good one to use is the model prayer that Jesus gives just to go through his words. Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Sorry.

I memorized the King James Version. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. To go through that and lead it, let it lead you in prayer. But we're going to use Psalm 86 this morning. I'm going to pray as we get started because that seems wise. And then we'll start.

God, we ask for your help that we might become a praying people. We ask for the humility to realize that you will first speak to us before we will ever appropriately, correctly, and joyfully speak to you. That relationship begins on your side. But we ask, Lord, that in that, as you have first spoken and as you have first worked to relate to us, we pray that we would respond well and that you would train us well through your word. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Psalm 86. At the top, it says it's a prayer of David. So this is David. He's praying. We're going to read his prayer. And we're going to try to watch and listen and try to see how we might would respond to God.

So if you sat down, you opened it up, you've got your Bible. You're going to read a little bit and then you're going to pray, whatever it makes you think, whatever it leads you to say. That's what we're trying to do this morning is for you to see how this process would work. So incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me. For I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly.

Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Okay, let's stop there. Like I said, I'm going to do a little bit of saying. Here's what he's talking about and then I'm going to show you how you might pray it. So this is David.

He's praying. He starts off by just saying, God, listen, I'm poor and needy. Listen to me. I have nothing to offer you. And then he says, preserve my life. He actually had people at this time trying to kill him.

So he means that very literally. Help me not be murdered. Preserve my life, for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. So David starts off by saying, God, I actually have nothing to offer you.

We see a really beautiful principle for prayer here. Because he starts off with humility. I'm poor and needy. Like if you're going to do anything, it's going to be you doing it. It's not because I earned it. It's not because I'm valuable.

I just, I'm poor and needy. But then, then he says, preserve my life, for I am godly. Save your servant. You are my God. So then he says, I'm poor and needy, but I belong to you.

I'm your servant. I'm trying to follow you. Save me. And he has this like humble confidence. And so maybe you start your prayer like that. Maybe you start off by saying, God, there's nothing in me that would make you have to respond to me.

Maybe my sin has separated me from you that I don't actually deserve for you to listen. But I've placed my faith in Jesus and now I know I belong to you. That you are my God and I ask you to answer and to be good to me. Maybe that's how you pray, how you begin your prayer. But it's you read these words and then you just think about what they make you think.

Maybe as you're getting started in the morning, you're just going to read the words back. Read them out loud. Pray them out loud. Let's keep going. Verse 3. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day.

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. So he says, be gracious to me, which means give me what I don't deserve. Be good to me beyond my, what I've earned. So he's not saying pay me my wages. He is saying just give me some money. Like he's not saying here's what I've earned.

I punched the clock. You owe me. He's just saying be good to me. Like just because you're good and you're wealthy and you're rich and you have like be gracious. That's what grace means, that you get something you don't deserve. Something good that you don't deserve.

And then he says, gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. I love that he says gladden the soul of your servant. Do you know why he says that? Because he wasn't glad. There was no joy in him right now. He's mournful.

He's sad. And so he's asking God. He said, I'm bringing you my soul. And I'm asking you to bring back some happiness, to bring back some life, to bring back some joy. And so maybe you focus in on that. Maybe that's true for you that moment when you go to read this, you realize I'm not happy.

There's no joy in me right now. And you just begin to ask God to gladden your soul, to take away the tears. Maybe you're fine, but you pray it anyway. You're like, God, make it better. Bring joy to my soul, even though I'm doing okay right now. He says, for to you, O Lord, are good.

For you, not for to you. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of trouble, I call upon you, for you answer me. So you just read through that?

You're sitting there? And you see what David is doing is he's looking at God and saying, here's what you're like. Here's who you are. You're good. And you have steadfast love for all who come to you. Like he's just saying, this is the person that you are.

And this is one of the things that happens in Scripture all the time. And it happens in the Psalms a lot. They remind God who he is. They just say, this is what you've said about yourself. This is what you've said you're like. And I don't believe it's that God has forgotten.

But this is a normal, healthy, good way to pray. To say, I'm banking on you being who you said you are. It's a little bit like if you tell a five-year-old, if he eats his meal, he can have cake afterwards. He's never eaten the meal and forgotten about the cake. And he'll say, but you said, if you say, if you behave here, we'll do this. Or any kind of promises.

Like they remember that. They can't remember anything you told them. But your children will remember the good promise you made. And you get to go to that. You get to go to God and say, you're like this. You said you were going to do this.

You said this is who you are. And so in that moment, David's reminding himself. But he's also reminding God. So maybe for you, that is a reminder. And you just realize as you're praying, God, I'm not believing that right now. I'm not believing that you're good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love.

I don't see that right now. Maybe that's what you pray about. Maybe that's the first time you've ever really heard that. That in your mind, God's always been really big and harsh. And so maybe rather than being a, you're just like, Lord, help me believe this. Help me.

Like that's beautiful. Maybe for a moment, you just see God. And you see that he's good and he's forgiving. Forgiving means that he doesn't hold your sin against him. That you can show up with a lot of problems in between you and he. And he'll forgive you.

He'll wipe it away. He'll make it okay. You don't have to fix everything before you come to him. And that he abounds in steadfast love. Meaning it's not going anywhere. He abounds in love for all those who will come to him.

So maybe for a second, you're able, just the only way your brain can wrap around this is you picture your grandmother's house. Maybe, maybe when you had run away from home, you, you had rebelled as much as you possibly could and have nowhere to go. You showed up there to someone you knew was good and forgiving and abounded in love to all those who came to their door. And maybe for a picture, you can just kind of, you feel yourself almost just drop in your bags and having someone wrap you up and look at you and say, I forgive you. Like, I love you. This isn't going to ruin us.

And so maybe that's what you think about. And maybe that's what you pray. You say, God, help me always to remember you're like that. I mean, to know that and to feel it. Maybe you just praise him because he is like that. He keeps going.

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of trouble, I call upon you for you answer me. So David's saying, when I'm in trouble, I call to you because you'll answer. And he says, listen to my plea for grace, meaning I need you to step in and do things because you're good, because you are forgiving and abounding in steadfast love. The word grace is used a lot in the Bible.

It's used a lot in the church because we are Christians. So we're grace people. We believe that we are saved by the grace of Jesus, meaning that he earned salvation for us, that we're OK because of what he did. But someone I've recently this past week, somebody told me something they had memorized about grace to help them define it. And I thought it was really helpful. They said grace is G.R.A.C.E. is God's riches at Christ's expense.

We get all the riches of God. We get all the joy and all the love and all the greatness. And Christ paid for it that we get. That's what grace means, that everything good that comes from God was paid for by Christ. It's like we got an all expense paid vacation. And the only person you can celebrate when that happens is the person who paid for it.

And so maybe you just spend some time after you read that, you just praise God for grace. That you'll get to spend an eternity with him in joy and love that your sins not held against you because he's good, because Jesus paid your debt. So in verse seven, he says, in the day of my trouble, I call upon you for you answer me. There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name for you are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God.

So what David said is that there's none like you, like when it's a day of trouble, I run to you because nobody else is like you. You're big and you're glorious and everything you do is more wonderful than anyone else. And I run to you because you alone are God. And so maybe when you read that, because the point is you're going to allow these words to help you have words or to help reveal things to you so that you might have. In some ways, you're using the Psalms to be conversation cards, topics that help you. You ever had those or like some people have those books where it's like it just is a bunch of questions to try to give you something to talk about.

Some of you have used those to get to know people. Some of you have used those to to make like you maybe it's the person, you know, really well, but you'll end up talking about the same thing all the time. How's work? Good. How's your day? Good.

How's the kids alive? All right. Like, that's it. So you're like, I got these conversation things so that I can ask you, would you rather fight one duck sized horse or whatever? One horse sized duck or a thousand duck sized horses like those kind of are like, what's your biggest dream or what's your favorite movie? Like just things you wouldn't ask each other because I know you.

It's like, I don't need to know your favorite movie is. We're married. Well, what's my favorite movie? I don't know. Like I like those kind of things is a conversation starter. And that's what that's what the Psalms get to be.

It leads you to pray about things you might would not otherwise pray about. It helps you push your brain somewhere you might not otherwise go. And so it trains you not only in new words to say in ways to talk about God and what he's like, but it also helps you for someone who's prayed a lot, not pray the same thing every day, but actually be pushed in a different area to pray about something. But maybe when you read this and you see that it says the day of trouble, I call upon you. Maybe some of you. When he says in the day of trouble, I call upon you for you answer.

There's none like you among the gods. And you see that little G gods. Meaning that there are people that claim there's things that set themselves up as gods as worthy of worship and worthy of devotion and worthy of praise. But only you are big and only you are the big capital G God. Maybe when you read that, you realize that you are unlike David. Maybe the Holy Spirit reveals to you that in the day of trouble, you do not run to God alone, but that you run to a lot of little G gods.

Maybe you realize in this moment as you're reading this and you have to confess to God that actually whenever there's a day of trouble, I run to MasterCard. Whenever there's a day of trouble, I run to the bank, to my bank account, just to see a certain number of zeros so I can feel okay again. Maybe when there's a day of trouble, I run to the approval of others. And I'm not just talking about the love and the health of a good relationship with a friend, but I actually will intentionally go get around my Christian friends and be really mopey and fish for compliments because I need them to fill me up again.

And I know they'll take the time. I know they'll take the time to pump me back up. And it's not healthy. It's just a way for me to feel okay again. And you begin to realize that in the day of trouble, I do not run to you. So maybe you confess.

Maybe you repent. Maybe you spend some time talking to God about him changing that in your soul. Maybe you didn't see that at all. Didn't even think about it. All you focused in on was verse nine. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.

And so maybe you spend time praying for missionaries that all the nations are to come. You say, Lord, help me not to be a racist and to think that people who speak English are somehow better than people who do not. And God, I pray for all the people that are in other countries right now where it is very difficult for the gospel to be proclaimed. I want to spend some time right now praying for every single pastor, church leader, missionary that is currently in a prison that will receive beatings at the hands of those that have incarcerated them today. And I want you to give them hope and I want you to give them joy.

I'm praying for the underground church in China who has to hide. And when they gather, they don't all get to just roll out at the same time. Y'all, this section gets to leave. It's like when you go to a wedding and they let tables go eat. You get to leave two or three at a time, two or three at a time, two or three at a time. It takes for everybody to get here because you have to show up two or three at a time because you can't all just show up to a place without the cops finding you.

And she spent some time praying for that. Maybe you noticed neither one of those. You just saw all nations and thought, I'd like to see the nations. And you prayed that God would help you take a European trip someday. I don't know. I don't know where you are.

I don't know where God's working with you. That's okay. Like the point of this is for you to be able to take the Bible and pray and not have to have the best theology and not have to know where this connects to other places. Because as you continue to do this, you'll begin to know. You'll begin to see. You'll learn new words.

You'll have a bigger vocabulary. You'll have a greater health and understanding of theology. Every once in a while, just to help my soul, I'll go read through old journals I have right when I felt called to church planting. And I can go read through where I wrote stuff. And there's some stuff that if I preached it here, I would get un-eldered. There would be a meeting.

They would say, you cannot do that anymore. You should go read your Bible but not say words out loud to people. Because it was something I read and I would read it and go, oh, that's exactly what this means. And it would be so clear and I'd write it out like this. And then I would read somewhere else and go, that is not what that meant. And that's okay.

And that's what we're going to use in the Psalms to help train us and to teach us how to pray. Let's keep going. 11. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart.

And I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love towards me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. All right, I want us to do something. I want to take just a second, starting in verse 11, of 11, 12, and 13. I want you to read that again.

I'm going to read it out loud again. I want you to read it again with me. And I want you to think about what you might would pray. What that leads you to think. Where the Holy Spirit's guiding you. Something you might pray about.

Now, teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart. And I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

I want you to look at that. And I want you to take just a second to pray something. I'm going to give you about 30 seconds. I just want you to pray something. That this leads you to think about and to pray as we practice this together today. Okay.

For some of you, that was not helpful. For some of you, maybe it was. Some of you, when you pray, you are going to have to pray and read out loud for the sake of your mind. Some of you can do things inside your head very well, and that's fine. But I don't know.

I don't know what you prayed. Maybe you read, teach me your way, O Lord, and you have a decision that you're having to make. So you see, teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. And you just say, God, help me to make a wise decision here. Help me to make one that lines up with your truth. Help me to take the right path.

Maybe you read that I'm, that unite my heart to fear your name. And you thought, why would, why would I want to be afraid of God? And so you prayed, God, I don't understand why I would want to fear you. That doesn't sound great. But he's asking for it, so maybe it's a good thing to ask for.

So help me to have the appropriate good kind of fear that he's talking about. Maybe you read that and you realized you're too afraid of God. And so you said, God, I'm scared of you. I can't do it in a way that my heart's involved. I'm just terrified. I don't know.

Maybe you saw that he says that I will glorify your name forever and that you've delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. And Sheol is the place of the dead. And so maybe you thought, God, you've set me free from hell. And because I will be set free from hell and I will spend eternity in heaven with you, I will glorify your name forever. Because I will be there because Christ paid my debt. And so forever me being in heaven will be a testimony to the goodness and the grace of God and the name of Christ.

Maybe you got distracted, thought about something else. That's cool. It doesn't end at verse 13. You get to keep reading. We'll go to 14. So David is saying there's a band of men who are trying to kill me.

They don't trust you. They don't follow you. And turn and be gracious and save me and give me strength. Show up and do something. That's what David's praying. So maybe as you're reading that, you think about there are people who don't set God before them.

And so you pray about injustice. You pray about all those who are actively harming others. Maybe you don't see that. You don't think about that. Maybe you just read Insolent Men. Then you think, man, this is David's just praying to God about the things that stress him out.

So you pray about hospital bills. You pray about the things that are making you fearful, making you lose sleep. Maybe you see Insolent Men and the only person you can think of is your husband. And so you pray about him for a while. And that's good. You might not would have otherwise prayed for your husband that day.

Maybe you see a band of ruthless men and you think about your three sons that tear your house up ruthlessly. You pray for them and you ask that they would set God before them. That they would grow up to be a group of men who do set God before them. I don't know. But the point is you're allowing God to speak to you and you're learning how to pray.

And eventually you do line up more with what is being said. Seventeen. Show me a sign of your favor that those who hate me may see and be put to shame. Because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. I do want to say something here. David, when he's praying, says, show me a sign of your favor.

He's saying, show up. Let me see so clearly that you are good. That you are all these things you've said you are. You're forgiving. You're gracious. You're good.

You're abounding in steadfast love to all those. Show me a sign. Do something. And we gather because we already have the sign of God's favor. That he is good. That he does abound in steadfast love and that he is forgiving.

You see, we gather this morning because of the cross, which is the sign of God's favor. That he put an exclamation Mark in the middle of history. That he is good and that he is for us and that he does forgive sin and that we can have hope. That we can go to him and be welcomed and loved. Not because we're good or because we've done anything, but because Jesus has accomplished it all for us. And so when we get to this point and we're praying together, maybe we just get to say thank you for the cross and help it be forever in front of me.

That I would always feel as if you were showing me the cross. That you were showing me the sign of your favor. The grace and the goodness and the forgiving love that you have poured out on us and all who believe. So like I said, today's a little different. We approach this differently than we usually would and hopefully it helps. Hopefully it shows you how you could walk through this.

I don't know if you got up early tomorrow. I don't know how long it would take you to walk through this and to use it to pray. But I do know it will help you pray. It will help you have words. It will help you have things to talk about. It will train you in how to speak to God.

It will clear up for you your mind. It will help you focus. And so I would encourage you to begin using the Psalms to teach you how to pray. There's a lot of them. By the time you go all the way through, they're good. You can start back over.

You won't remember them. You can do it again. It's like The Office, the TV show. You can just watch all the way to then and then just start back over. It's just good. Keep being good.

Psalms are better than The Office, by the way. God's called us to pray. But He doesn't leave us alone. He holds our hand and He equips us. He gives us the words to speak because He speaks to us first. So don't feel, I need to pray, I should pray, and then just try on your own.

But ask the Holy Spirit to guide you through His Word and use this to help. And we can't afford to not do this. Life's too hard. There's too much struggle. Too many decisions we have to make. There's too many people dying and going to hell for us to not be a group of people who pray.

And so let's collectively as a church begin praying and begin allowing God to teach us how to pray through His Psalms. The band's going to come back up and we're going to finish out by doing this. I'm going to read through Psalm 86. I'm going to pause at different points and just give a little bit of time for you to pray along with Psalm 86. Then I'm going to pray collectively for us as we walk through this entire Psalm again.

Then I'll say amen and we'll stand and sing. So I'm going to read, stop. You're going to pray where you are. If you need to mumble, that's cool. There'll be some music playing. If you need to keep your eyes open, that's good.

If you're like me at this time in the morning, you bend over, close your eyes. We'll have to wake you up when we get done. Then I'm going to pray and then we'll sing. Psalm 86, a prayer of David. Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me. For I am poor and needy.

Preserve my life for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Amen. God, we ask this morning that you would listen to us and that you would help us to always pray in faith that you do listen. God, we're poor and needy.

We have nothing that we can offer you. You owe us nothing. We have accomplished and earned nothing. So we ask you to listen, to love us because you're good. Because that's who you are. And God, we, those of us in this room who place faith in Christ, you have made us the righteousness of God.

That you have swapped places with us so that Jesus became our sin and we became righteous. So we are godly. And we are your servants. And you are our God. God, we ask that you would bless this church. That this would be a place where people would lift up our souls to you.

That we would feel free and welcome to cry to you here. That among this people you would gladden our souls. That there would be a joy in your church. That in the midst of pain and in the midst of darkness, that we would bring ourselves to you and to each other. And that you would bring hope. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble, I call upon you. For you answer me. God, we believe that all of our days of trouble are caused by sin. And that the ultimate day of trouble is when we stand before you in our own sin.

The ultimate day of trouble is when we stand before you having to pay our own debt. And so we pray for our friends and our families and our neighbors and our city. That there would be pleas for grace. That you would listen because you are a good and forgiving God. Abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. We ask, Lord, that everyone who does not know you would call upon you.

That even those in this room right now that don't know you have not yet placed their faith in Christ would call upon you. Because you are good and forgiving and you abound in steadfast love. That you would offer grace. And listen. There is none like you among the gods, O Lord. Nor are there any works like yours.

All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord. And shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God. God, you are alone. You alone are God.

God. You alone are holy. You alone are worthy. You alone are valuable. All of your works are wondrous and good. And you do promise that there will be a day when every tribe and tongue and nation and people will gather around your throne.

That you will claim someone from every people group. That you will claim someone from every ethnicity. That we will gather and praise your name. That all nations that you have made will glorify your name. And we ask, Lord, that we get to be a part of that here. That this will be a church that sent people.

This will be a church where missionaries are called and raised up and sent out. Where we send money and we send people and we send effort to see the tribes and the nations and the languages proclaim your glory. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord, my God, with my whole heart. And I glorify your name forever.

And I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. God, we are people in need of wisdom. We pray that you would teach us your way. That we would walk in your truth.

That you would unite our hearts to fear your name. We thank you that you do save from death. That you died that we might live. O God, insolent men have risen up against me. A band of ruthless men seeks my life. And they do not set you before them.

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious. Slow to anger. Abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. God, you forgive sinners. Insolent men do not have to be crushed in their rebellion. But can be welcomed by a merciful and loving God.

You redeem us from all of the poor choices we've ever made. You wipe away everything that would mar us. And dirty us. And separate us. You are good and gracious and abounding in love. And faithfulness.

Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give your strength to your servant. And save the son of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor. That those who hate me may see and be put to shame. Because you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

God, through the gospel, you are our comfort and our help. And we pray that we would be a people that forever remembers the sign of your faithfulness. The sign of your favor. That you love us and gave yourself up for us. And that we have hope and joy forever in you. Give us strength to continue to obey.

To serve. To love. And give us grace to do it all with joy. May we praise you, our helper, and our comforter. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Psalm 19 - Bible Reading and Meditation

Psalm 19 - Bible Reading and Meditation

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. Like I said earlier, my name's Chet. I'm excited to be with y'all this morning. We are in the second week of our Psalms series, and what we're trying to do in this series is begin to grow using the Psalms and allowing the Psalms to teach us, begin to grow in what it looks like, to live a life of worship, that for Christians, our goal is to walk with God, walk with Christ all of our days. And there's going to be a lot of sorrow and a lot of joy and a lot of pain and confusion and darkness and celebration in our life, and we're trying to begin to make it a rhythm and a pattern and a discipline for us to learn how to, in the middle of everything, walk with God, and the Psalms teach us that.

They teach us prayer, and they teach us the goodness of the Word, and they kind of teach us in a sideways manner, that we get to come alongside, and we get to look into the Psalms, and we get to make observations, and we get to grow along with them, that the Psalms kind of walk with us as they train us to walk with God. So grab your Bibles, go to Psalm 19. If you have one of the Bibles that's on the row, one of those white Bibles, it'll be on page. We should have this up in just a second. 2.59. There we go.

All right, so Psalm 19 will be on page 2.59. We're going to walk through this entire Psalm today, and what we're looking at today, what the Psalmist is going to teach us, is the goodness of the Word, the goodness of the Scriptures, the goodness of the Bible. And so as we get started this morning, I have just a few questions for you to kind of think about as we turn there. You don't have to raise your hand, although I'm not sure you would have anyway, but anybody in the room just feel weary. You're just tired. Every day is a burden.

It's hard to see how things are good. Emotionally or spiritually exhausted. Is anybody in the room just trying to work through some decisions in life, trying to make good plans, trying to... You've got something going on, and you've got to set the pace for, all right, we've got to decide this, and this is going to set up for us how we're going to walk through life. Anybody just in some confusion and need some help making good decisions? Is there anybody in the room, you just need a win?

You just need something to celebrate, something to laugh about. You just need a little bit of peace in your heart. You just need a moment where you can sit down and feel okay without having your mind racing to everything that's painful and difficult. Anybody just confused? Just need some clarity? Just need to be able to see something correctly and don't think you're looking at it right yet?

Or is there anybody in the room who just needs something solid? Just need something you can bank on, something you can rest on, something you can run to, because everything else feels flimsy and fragile, and all the stuff that maybe you had built everything off of is falling apart right now. If you answered yes to any of those, or yes to multiple of those, and I'll even, even if you just said kind of to maybe one or two, what the psalmist is going to say is that you need the Bible. You need the scriptures that they step in and begin to serve and to train and to help us here. And so as we read Psalm 19, and this is written by David, and he wrote it as a song, but David is going to tell us that we need the scriptures.

We need the Bible, that you need it in your life. My wife, a couple years ago, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto, which is a type of motorcycle. No, it's an autoimmune disease that has to do with your thyroid. And so they kept checking her thyroid, and they kept checking her Numbers, and finally they said, okay, here. And so we were looking while we were waiting for some of those tests to come back, and we're looking at kind of the thyroid symptoms, and she was like, yes, yes, yes, like this is me. And then we went to the doctor, and the doctor said, you need this.

And you need to wake up every morning, and you need to take this. It's a little pill, and it straightens you out. It's something that you're going to need every day forever. At some point, we may have to dial it down, or at some point, we may have to crank it up, but you're going to need this. And that's what David is saying about the scriptures. He says, this is what you need.

If you're checking off some of those boxes of, yes, that would be great. I would love to have more wisdom here. I'd love to have more clarity here. I'm trying to make a decision that would be, or yes, I'm just exhausted right now. David's going to say, here's what you need to do. You need to wake up.

You need to, before you go to bed, you need to, at some point in your day, some point in your week, you're going to need the Bible. That's David's answer to us. So we're going to begin in Psalm 19. We're going to read this whole thing, but we'll pray as we kind of jump in this morning. God, I pray that even in this short amount of time that we have together this morning, that you would help us see the goodness and the value of your written word, but that we wouldn't stop there, that we would ultimately see the goodness and the value of your son as proclaimed to us and displayed to us in your word.

We ask that we would be a Bible people. In Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. So David starts by saying that when you look out into the heavens, when you look at the sky, when every day rolls by, when every night rolls by, it's proclaiming how big and good and glorious God is, that it's showing his handiwork, that every day pours out speech, and that every night pours out knowledge.

He's saying that all of life is telling you, is proclaiming to you, there is a big, glorious creator. There's a big and glorious God. That's what he's saying. Verse 3. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Okay, so if you read it in the ESV, if you're holding that version of the Bible, which is translated from Hebrew, the way that reads makes it sound like he's saying that we recognize this.

But for other versions, it's going to say there is no speech, there are no words, no voice is heard. And that's going to come across more like he's saying God is speaking, but not in an audible way. Either way, whether it reads a little bit more in the English as we're recognizing this, or it reads a little more in the English as there aren't actual words, but God's still getting his point across. What David is saying is that we can look into creation and we can get it. We can begin to see that there is a creator God. Paul says this in Romans 1, that all of humanity is without excuse because all of us have seen God's creation, that he has written himself into what he created.

And that's what David's saying here. Verse 4. Their voice, so this is the voice of God's creation. This is the voice of night and day. This is the voice that's pouring out knowledge. Their voice goes out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

In them 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. Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. And so David gets a little poetic here. He's talking about the sun and he says it rises like a strong man and it runs its course with joy and nothing is hidden from its heat. And he's just talking about like the glory of God imprinted into creation. And some of you, as you're reading this, there's just like, yeah, because you're one of those people that's like, oh, when I relate to God, I just need to go be near a tree.

I can just get near a tree and I can just stand next to a white oak and I can just look into the top of it and I just know he's big and glorious and good. If I can just see a sunrise over the Atlantic. Some of y'all are fancy. You've seen a sunset over the Pacific. Proud of y'all. Most of us have been rocking up at Myrtle Beach.

Some of y'all are like, I ain't up at a sunrise if I go to the beach. Right, but you saw the moon come out. You turned away from the ocean, listened to it and saw the sun drop down over that hotel. I don't know. But you're saying there's this being outside, something in this, in this moment we're reading this and we're like walking through a field and there's meadows and birds are chirping and there's flowers.

And then verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. And it's like David paints this beautiful picture and then he takes his Bible. You're in a meadow. There's a breeze. The sun's on your face.

And then he goes. And suddenly like the whole scene changes. You're in a dark room. Your eyes are trying to get adjusted because you were just out in the sun. There's dust everywhere because of that giant book he just slammed on the table. There's an old grumpy person who's going to teach you the law of the Lord.

That suddenly we went from this glorious, beautiful God who painted the colors of the wind. And now it's the law of the Lord. It's perfect. And it doesn't seem that way but David did this on purpose. What David is doing here as he makes this transition is he's saying God proclaims through creation his bigness but we need more. God proclaims through creation his handiwork.

He puts his thumbprint everywhere but we need more. And the law of the Lord is perfect. It is exactly what we needed so that we might know God. And when he talks about the law he is as he's writing this as he's a king of Israel he's writing about the law the Old Testament law which would be our he'd be referring to the first five books of our Old Testament. But he also as he goes through this is going to talk about God's precepts.

He's going to talk about God's testimony. He's going to talk about and so what we end up seeing in this Psalm is that what he means by law what he means of precepts what he means of God's rules is he means the entirety of God's written word to us. And as we stand here today or sit here today we're looking at all of scripture. That's what David would have in mind if he got to come look at us now he'd say yeah and all the stuff that we got from all the prophets and all that was kept and when the gospels were proclaimed and written down and put in a codex and passed around like all of it. And what he's saying is we needed that to really know God.

That if you you get to you get a glimpse of him from a tree you get a glimpse of him from the sunrise you get a picture of what he's like staring into the night sky but you needed you needed more than that. So if you took your favorite Spielberg you took your favorite director and you said I'm going to watch all of his movies and I'm going to I'm going to read some of the biographies about him I'm going to read about you know how he came about and maybe how they filmed E.T. or what happened with Jaws I'm going to learn about Spielberg. That's still different. It's still outside. You're looking at his work but you don't really know him and it's different than the person who's been a close friend with him for 20 years and can tell when he's messing with someone.

Can tell when he's telling a joke. Can tell when when he's about to tell a joke. My wife and I have been together long enough now that I don't know I don't know what my face does but she'll go don't. It's not the time. It's like it was going to be a good one though. I guess I get really excited right before I make a joke and she can tell but that's what I'm saying like you don't and that's what we needed.

We needed God to introduce himself to us. We needed God to explain what he was like. C.S. Lewis says that if Shakespeare was ever going to meet Hamlet Hamlet's a character in one of Shakespeare's plays if he was ever going to meet Hamlet it would have to be Shakespeare that did it. Hamlet can't come out the page but Shakespeare can write himself into the story and that's what we have in Scripture is that God has written himself into the world so that we might know him. And as we begin it says the law of the Lord is perfect and we believe that.

Into the story and that's what we have in Scripture is that God has written himself into the world so that we might know him. And as we begin it says the law of the Lord is perfect and we believe that. We, Mill City Church we, most of the Christian faith believe that this was or much of the Christian faith believe that this has been handed down to us handed down to us accurately that we have thousands upon thousands of manuscripts when they go back to translate a version of the Bible they don't go back to the most recent

They didn't translate the ESV from the King James Version they translated it from the original Greek and the original Hebrew and we have those thousands upon thousands of texts that have traveled around and been handwritten we can compare them to each other and we know that they're within 95% certainty that this is the word they wrote in the order they wrote it the other 5% there's some things that have been moved around a little bit and when it comes down to it

We really have about a percentage of 1% that we're not quite sure and most of your Bibles will have a little asterisk you'll be reading it'll say something like and then they took the goat and there'll be a little asterisk or a little number and you look down at the bottom and it's like we don't actually know if that word means goat but for the most part what we have has been perfectly handed down to us and we believe that it was written by the God of the universe authored through human authors and that it is perfect

So we bank on it we stand up and teach it for 45 minutes to an hour on Sunday some of you you're new here and that just scares you we lock those doors from the outside I'm just kidding fire codes but what we also believe is that we get to in the written word of God that the Bible the Bible actually says there's three different types of the word of God that there's the written word of God and then as we get to the New Testament we see that there's the proclaimed word of God that that's the gospel

That the written word of God eventually leads us to the proclaimed word of God this is where first Peter is going to say he's going to quote the Old Testament and say the word of the Lord stands forever and when that was written it was talking about the written word of God it was God's word that he's put into the world it stands forever and then Peter's going to say and this word that that's referring to is the gospel that we've proclaimed to you so there's the spoken proclaimed word that Jesus Christ came the message of Christ the message of the gospel

The good news that Jesus came that he lived perfectly on our behalf that he died in our place for our sin and that those who place faith in him can be rescued can be redeemed can be made right and then the Bible is going to tell us that it's not just the written word and the proclaimed word but also the incarnate word that Jesus is the incarnate the flesh human version of God's word that's what John 1 says that the word became flesh and dwelled among us and so the purpose for us

As Christians as we study the word is that the written word would lead us into the proclaimed word the gospel which would lead us to know the incarnate word Jesus so as we read this morning that we're going to have that in mind but what we're going to start with is what David is going to tell us are the qualities and the benefits and the value of the scriptures so the qualities the benefits and the value of the scriptures and we're going to see what David says about it

So let's pick back up at verse 7 and we're just going to kind of talk as we go through here what David said scripture is like the law of the Lord is perfect reviving the soul so all the word is perfect reviving the soul reviving means to bring back to life or to give strength or to give energy to that it's perfect that it is exactly what is needed so for those I'm willing to bet that everybody in this room at some point

Has been physically exhausted you pushed yourself at work you pushed yourself in how long you stayed awake for something either you were studying or you were on a trip or you pushed yourself because you were I don't know in two days in high school football camp you pushed yourself you were physically exhausted but there was something about it in that moment that you weren't spiritually exhausted you weren't emotionally exhausted the exhaustion was only skin deep you just needed some rest

Even for some people it was like I was on a trip or I was on a mission trip or something and I was exhausted but there was still joy there was still life there was still hope when he says it revives the soul what he's talking about is a soul level internal spiritual exhaustion so that even if your joy your enjoyment of life can only go skin deep but that internally your bones feel like they're cold and wet your soul

Feels like it has dry rot in it that there is no life and that even though things around you may be good like you just can't you can't seem to shake that it doesn't go past the skin that it doesn't ever sink into your soul and what he says is the law of the Lord is perfect and it revives the soul that it is exactly what you need for those dealing with emotional spiritual soul level exhaustion

That you need strength and energy just to keep moving that you need to be brought back to life he says the law of the Lord is perfect it's exactly what you need you're running a marathon you're exhausted and there's people standing alongside this is why they hand out little cups of water because that's what that person needs nobody's got a Merlot holding it out for somebody that's not perfect that's not what they need in that moment now later

If you're at a fancy restaurant and you've got a T-bone somebody the waiter brings you over on those little cups of water you can be like Kat what are you doing I need a red I gotta get something going here it's perfect it's exactly what you need at that moment to revive your soul and so I would say to all of you who are weary listen to David and begin to read the word because it's exactly what you need the testimony of the Lord

Is sure making wise the simple so not only does the Bible not only does the scripture revive your soul bring back life but it's certain it's sure and it makes wise the simple I love that promise about the Bible love it because what it's saying is that the Bible will take people who are simple meaning don't think through things well traditionally make

Bad decisions have a hard time thinking through things if they're thinking through one thing they're not thinking about any other thing you ever done that like you had a season in your life where I'm trying to figure this out and so 15 other things just turn stupid because you can't you can only focus on one thing at a time if that's not you I'm proud of you but this promise is for the simple it says it makes wise the simple I will

And it says it's sure it's certain you can bank on it so like let's say we all join the mafia and we learned or we orchestrated the McGregor Mayweather fight we set it up so that one person was going to take a fall it's a sure thing we know it's going to happen so we can go with absolute certainty to Vegas and put all of our chips and not sweat it even if you're watching the fight and it looks like it's going poorly you're like round five

That's what he's saying that the law of the Lord is like that his testimony is like that we can push all of our chips on it and just wait and say no he says this is how it's going to work and it makes us wise because we get to line up with the wisdom of God without having to figure it out ourselves many of us are robbed of the joy

Of this because we feel like we have to be convinced by God that what he says is true rather than being able to rest in the fact that he's wiser than we are he has a greater wisdom so this has been a great source of joy for my life and I'll give you two quick examples do you know how many people have opinions about parenting the answer is all the people you don't have to have

Kids to have opinions about parenting if you do have kids you have opinions about parenting also the internet has opinions about parenting and there's a whole lot of here's how to do this here's what not to do here's how you're going to mess your kids up here's how you're going to make your kids great here's how to like in ad nauseum endlessly I could read as much as I wanted to and so when it comes to let's just take the issue of spanking your children

There are opinions there a lot of them guess what you guys I don't have to read blogs I don't have to think about it because the bible speaks and gives wisdom and it keeps me and my wife from having to figure this one out there are things we're going to have to figure out this one isn't one of them I'm going to read you a couple of Proverbs so the bible just gives us wisdom that we get to line up with him on Proverbs 22 15

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of discipline drives it from him Proverbs 23 13 do not withhold discipline from a child if you strike him with a rod he will not die isn't that great I say that to my wife it's not going to kill him go read Proverbs read your bible girl that's what I say whoever spares the rod hates his son but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him I as a parent spank our son

And then I go sleep like this I don't have to worry about it I don't have to think about it if you come argue with me I'm going to say look I'm tapping into some wisdom that I might not would have come to that conclusion my wife and I might not would have come to that conclusion the blogs that we read might not would have come to that conclusion but God says this is how this ought to work and we just get

To line up with him and it's wisdom and wisdom means knowing what to do with the information you have and being able to see beyond things that we can't see that God knows what he's talking about he created this that he set a tent for the sun and makes it like he does all of this and then he says this is how this ought to work and we get to line up

With him another one that is at work in our life I grew up in a Christian home and was taught at a young age that money when it came in should go out to God so I started doing this it's the concept of first fruits that God provides everything for you and that when your money comes in you give some back to him as like a reminder

To yourself that he is the one who provides for everything that he's trustworthy that he's good he also makes all these promises in scriptures about generosity and about how our money will take over our hearts and so one of the ways that we fight that is by giving away generously and by giving back to him and by trusting him to provide for us and so

My wife and I when we got married we never had to think about this we had both just kind of committed to do this a couple years ago we did get convicted that we should give out of gross pay and not net pay because I came to the conclusion one day that Uncle Sam was getting first fruits and not God that's a personal thing the Bible doesn't say any of that stuff but we just

Came to that conclusion and I will tell you that if you were our financial advisor and you were not a Christian you probably wouldn't come up with this plan because you could look at our budget and you could say hey y'all you could use that money for I don't know paying your bills like this money would be useful like I think most financial advisors would say generosity is great but wait until that makes sense

Fiscally and you know what we said nope because we believe that he's given us some wisdom helping us see things that we can't see like how valuable heaven is he says it's like a treasure hidden in a field like we we trust him in this and we believe that he's he's good and we'll honor and so there's there's countless versions of that

I have more if you want to talk more about areas in my life where it's like I just get to rest I get to push all my chips onto a sure thing which is that God says this is how this works and then there's a lot of freedom in that eight verse eight the precepts of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart the commandment of the Lord

Is pure enlightening the eyes so what he's saying is that what God says he's right he's correct and that brings joy to us it rejoices our heart to be a part of something that's the right that's inside of that he wrote the world and he created it all and he's right when he tells us what this looks like

How we ought to live and to work there have been times in my marriage when my wife has gone somewhere and gotten lost and been very frustrated and called me and I've been able to be like alright I've been able to get on Google I've been able to pull up Google Maps I've been able to say tell me the road you're passing I figure out where she is and then I say what's the next one

So I can figure out what direction she's going and then I'll go okay because I'm looking at the map I can see things she can't see and I'll say when you see this take a right and you know what she gets to do she gets to she doesn't always do that but she gets to calm down listen to what I'm saying because I can see stuff she can't see she gets to then begin to trust

She gets to begin and it brings joy in that moment and what he's saying is that when we're reading the Bible and we're talking to God and we're going I'm like if I was saying look I can see the road you need to turn right the building's over there it's going to be on your left and she was going I know you're saying that I'm feeling a left and be like baby I don't this is right you go on two roads and then right

I'm going left like this would be it would be silly and what he's saying is that when we read God's word we don't have to go with this feels right to me we get to just trust that he's right and that brings joy to us it brings rest to us and ultimately it brings us into joy whether we see it or not it will ultimately lead us to joy so there are things that God steps in

And says you can't have this we were at my parents house yesterday my son I think all they feed him is jelly beans when he's there because he'll say because his grandmother man he'll say go man's house eat jelly beans that's what he says when we were there yesterday we let him eat a lot of jelly beans because it's like it's just it's just one day you guys and just

Whatever jelly beans he didn't sleep well last night he shared that with me but if he did that every day it would rob him of joy and and sometimes all we can see is the thing that's right in front of us and God steps in and says I know you really want that but you can't have it because I want to rejoice your heart over here and you won't

Get there through this there's things that we say I just don't understand why God would say that I just don't I don't see what he's talking about and the answer to that often is right but we get to trust that he's right and that it's going to rejoice the heart eventually one of the examples of this

I believe it's worked out in my life with my wife and I we got married I was a Christian I believe that husbands should lead in the home and I kind of stopped there I was like I'm supposed to be a leader and I imported with that like a whole lot of machismo and leadership looks like being the boss you know what I'm talking about

So I brought that in that worked well you guys so we would get in arguments one of the things I would do is I'd get really angry because I'm good at that and then I would leave the room and I would go post up somewhere usually at a table put my arms on I'd sit like this maybe flex a little bit try to get my traps going

Something like that just I would make her come to me because I wanted her to have to like I wanted there was like this position of power like I was a king or something she had to like enter into my domain and then we would dispense with like I would do this my wife's really stubborn sometimes she didn't come but it's like alright we'll see

Who's going to sit longer but what I realized was I had left the bedroom she could go to sleep like what am I going to do but I began to read in Ephesians 5 and the Lord kind of trained me in this Ephesians 5 says that the husband is to love his wife like Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her and as I began to read that and study that

And kind of sink in that soak in that I began to believe that what that meant was I tried to think about how does Christ love the church we got ourselves into a mess by our sin and he took the pain on himself to get us out and so I felt like God was leading me to regardless of how the conversation started regardless of how the argument started regardless of whether she was wrong

Or I was wrong I had to take on the pain to get us out and so one of the ways I began to do that was to try to lead in repenting first I should be the first person to begin to own sin because that's what Christ did for the church he stepped in and owned our sin and that was not fun and very difficult to be so extremely right and have to go in and admit where you were wrong

It's hard and really sometimes you'd have to go in and say I agree with the position I took earlier but I'm going to need to repent for the way I talked about it the way I treated you my attitude because I were sincerely and severely wrong we're going to still have to talk about this but we got to talk about this issue first and it's actually brought joy in our marriage that

We would not have found otherwise and I would not have agreed that that was how leadership worked until I saw Christ doing it and his scripture revealing it to me and for the record I'm still not great at that but Jesus paid for my sin you guys so there's hope still in verse 8 it says the commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes

That it's crystal clear it's pure other versions might say radiant that it lights things up it helps you see it's what it enlightens the eyes it makes things clear some of you maybe you grew up and you shared a room with siblings or you went to school you had a roommate or maybe

You have a roommate now or you got married and you've tried to get ready in the dark tried to get dressed in the dark or move around a room in the dark and you slammed into something or put your clothes on inside out anybody just me I'm the only person who did

This like you've run into something in the dark okay what he's saying is scripture lights stuff up for us it shines a light in areas we would not otherwise have light we would not otherwise be able to see we would not have clarity some of you right now in your life

Are jumping up and down swearing and holding a stubbed toe and the word of God would have shown a light in that area some of you you can stub your toe in the daylight you can be reading your bible and still stub your toe

I'm just saying some of you could be avoiding some things that's what he does he lights things up for us nine the fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever the rules of the Lord are

True and righteous all together so they had clean and unclean laws and they would have to whatever was unclean they would have to clean it and what was clean got to stay and what was unclean had to be rid of and so

What he says is fearing God trusting him revering him is clean it it lasts the fear of the Lord is this submission to his bigness and

His goodness and that it lasts it endures forever and that his rules are true and righteous all together ten more more his rules

This is his word more to be desired are they than gold even much fine gold sweeter also than honey and the drippings of

The honey come so we understand that gold is valuable but we don't deal in gold much don't have a lot of gold I

Don't think you have a lot of gold I don't think you keep up with your money in pounds so what they had they

Didn't know anything about high fructose corn syrup and that's why we invented scientists to take something almost as useless as corn and turn

It into something as delicious as mountain dew I don't know for you what he's saying is it's so valuable it's like money that

God's word is so valuable it's like money it's so sweet it's like honey I don't know for you that treat that delicacy that

If you find out like you're on a diet or something but it's like oh well that's here that's excusable it's on my list of

Things I can always eat no matter what I don't know what fits in that so I don't know for you if that's like

Your mama's double layer chocolate cake or pecan pie I don't know if you're like it's like the hot now sign at Krispy Kreme

Like jerks your car off the road like it was a magnet what he's saying is for our family it's a cookie cake like

We make up excuses we're like it's summer let's celebrate with a cookie cake like we we want to have just get them to put

A sign on that thing and we think about it and look forward to it and what he's saying the word of God is

Like that it's it's not only valuable it's sweet it's enjoyable so I think right here he blasts a hole in something kind of

Jerks the rug out from under us whenever we say and we say this often I would read the Bible I'm just too busy

I've got too much going on I would read the Bible I and a little bit it's like David that's such beautiful poetry but

I kind of wish you hadn't put it in here because what he says is that no God's word is more to be desired

Than money so if you called me and said hey what are you doing on Saturday and I was like nothing and I I

Need you to come work with me for 10 hours I said what I had said when I said nothing what I had meant

Was if you said hey man I want you to come work with me for 10 hours because I got this deal I worked

Out with a food truck when we get done I'm going to hand you $2,500 cash I got 10 hours on Saturday I was free

I will call my wife and I say hey baby you are going to watch our son all day long by yourself and then

When I come home I hand you $2,500 cash and she goes to say $2,500 cash and then we go dance because I suddenly

Had time because we'll all make time for what's valuable we'll make time for what's valuable you're making time for that those extra episodes

Or that new season that you're waiting to have drop on Netflix you'll make time for the training that you want to do you'll make

Time for the thing that you find enjoyable restful you'll make time for the articles you want to read about the sports figures you

Want to read about and the stats you need to memorize so you can keep up with who the recruiting class is you'll make

Time for the things that matter and what he says is the word of God is better than gold even a lot of shiny gold

It's better than money it's sweeter than honey and he just when we say we don't have time he walks over and snatches that

Out from under us because he says no you'll make time for what matters so verse 11 moreover by them is your servant warned

In keeping them there is great reward so he says they're better than gold they're more to be desired than gold they're sweeter than honey

And more over I'm warned and I'm rewarded through your word that it should be valuable to us desired by us longed for and

So I would just say this we got to start making time for the Bible gotta start making time to read gotta start making

Time to study and I don't know where you are on this if you've never read the Bible you've never messed with it or

Maybe you want to but you just don't want to start we'd love to talk with you afterwards and try to give you some

Pointers if you're in a community group talk with your leader but just reading a verse a day in your Bible or setting a

Timer or making a rule that I'm not going to brush my teeth until I've read the Bible that's a good one too by

The way for those of you brush your teeth because if you tie it to something that's already a habit it'll help you do

It maybe for you you're like I read some but I'm kind of inconsistent so maybe I'm going to get a partner someone else who's

Going to read along with me someone I'm going to talk through this with but I'm going to figure out a way because this

Is more valuable than gold I'm going to figure out a way to make time for it because I do need wisdom and I

Do need warning and I do want reward and I do need my soul to be revived because I'm exhausted married couples with kids

Little kids one of the things we talk with people about is just kind of block for each other so husband you get home

From work take the kids so you got an hour you got 30 minutes just sit catch your breath you got 30 minutes I

Want to get your Bible out I want you to read or maybe we get up early in the morning earlier than the kids

Do maybe we go to bed at night we trade off who's putting kids to bed so the other person can read with them

I heard recently of a mother who said she has too many children and too little time so she can't read the Bible so

She memorizes it so it can read it you memorize it maybe if you are at home with little kids like I am some

It you are going to turn this verse into a song because right now I could sing so many dag moana songs and maybe

If I could start singing some scripture it would stick with me better teach it to my son I don't know we got to

Figure out a way to not neglect this they originally would have listened to the word most of them were illiterate so it's perfectly

Fine for you to get an app that reads the Bible to you that reads it to you on your way to work that reads

It to you while you while you run if you're one of the people that really has a hard time reading maybe you do

Both maybe listen to it while you read we we made those Psalms books on that table over there they have three maybe for

Some of you it's just you need to get more consistent in it so we've got devotional set up for three times a week

To read the Psalms and then it gives you some ways to think about it and follow up but we need the Bible verse

12 As we finish up this morning who can discern his errors so he kind of he asked this rhetorical question so he just

Said moreover by them your servant is warned and keeping them as a great reward and he says who can discern his errors and

Then he says declare me innocent from hidden faults and so David has just made a turn here because what he was doing a

Second ago was telling us how great the what he what he done let's read this I find it very interesting and helpful verse

12 Who can discern his errors that's a rhetorical question that means nobody nobody can see where they're wrong like they need help you ever been in an argument with somebody and it was so obviously

Clear how wrong they were they just couldn't see it and you had already told them very clearly multiple times you even at one point

Yelled it loudly because maybe they were hard of hearing they had not noticed how wrong they were and in that moment they're thinking

The same thing you just can't see how wrong you are and David just steps in and says yeah who can tell where they're wrong

And the answer is nobody but he says who can discern his errors declare me innocent from hidden faults so he's telling God I

Need you to make me innocent from all the sins I can't see I don't even notice I become blind to keep back your

Servant also from presumptuous sins a lot of versions of the Bible will translate that willful meaning that I'm intentionally stepping out of balance so

He says I need you to forgive me I need you to declare me innocent you catch that when he says declare he just

Saying I need you to make a call on it I have sin it's a hidden sin I just need you to say you're

Innocent I need you to declare me innocent and then I need you to keep me back from all the times I want to

Intentionally sin let them not have dominion over me and that interesting about willful sin so often we intentionally choose that sin and then

Eventually it owns us it has dominion over us it has begun to rule so we willfully chose it of our own free will

Because it was inside of our power and suddenly we realize it's not in our power anymore we're in its power he says let

Them not have dominion over me and then he says then if you do that if you declare me innocent if you keep me

Away from willful intentional sin and if you don't let them destroy me and own me then I'll be blameless and innocent of great

Transgression let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight oh Lord my rock and my

Redeemer this gives me so much hope did y'all catch what David just said as he ended this he said the word of God

Is perfect it's righteous it's true it's good it'll give you wisdom and you almost think that the conclusion to this is so get

The word and you'll be fine read the word and you'll be fixed if you can just memorize the law if you can just

Be moral enough but what he say he says all this about the word and then he says God I need you I need

You to declare me innocent I need you to keep me from sin I need you to keep sin from owning me I need

You to change me inside and out and then I'll be okay and ultimately because the written word leads us to the proclaimed word

And the proclaimed word points us to the incarnate word ultimately this is all fulfilled in Christ that he's souls and through faith gives

Them life he revives the soul that he's pure that he's certain and he he's the ultimate wisdom of God that what was hidden

In frailty and darkness and laid in a tomb was God actually working to bring life that he's he's right and he brings joy

To the heart that he's pure and we only truly see correctly how God designs us to see when we understand fully the gospel and

What Jesus has accomplished for us that he makes us clean so that we might endure forever that he's true and righteous all together

And that he is better than gold and sweeter than honey and more to be pursued and more to be desired than anything and

That ultimately he does exactly what David asks shows us our sin but then he declares us innocent because he gets to be for

All those who run to him a rock and a redeemer get to bank everything on him you get to put all your chips

On him you get to build your life on the rock and then he rescues and redeems that's that's the Christ the Jesus that

We meet in the scriptures where he fulfills for us what the psalmist is telling us today so church family we need this you

Need this life's too hard there's too many decisions to make there's too much going on too much that's difficult and painful too many

Areas where we need wisdom and we need wisdom beyond our ability to argue and hash it out and figure it out and we

Need God to step in and clarify for us and we need ultimately to read the written word so that we can be reminded

Of the proclaimed word of what Jesus has done for us and so that we can spend time with and enjoy and worship the

Incarnate word of Christ to know him to love him and to see what he's accomplished for us to be able to rejoice and

Be revived and rest we got to figure out a way to make time for something that is as valuable as this let's pray God we

Thank you for your grace we thank you for your word we thank you that you did join us in humanity to accomplish for

Us what David asked of you that through faith in Christ we can be declared innocent and we can be set free from sin's

Dominion we pray that we would learn to love you as you are revealed to us through your scriptures that we might grow wise

Through your word that we might have joy and life in Jesus name amen

Psalms Intro

Psalms Intro

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I am a church planning resident here at Mill City. I'm excited for the series we're in this morning. We're starting the Psalms. The goal of this series is that we would learn to delight in God daily in everyday life and that we would grow in our love for the Psalms.

So we're going to spend nine weeks walking through them. Today we're going to be in Psalms 1 and 2. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to page 254. Maybe we'll get to that in a second. All right, so back in the 70s, NASA sent a spacecraft into space with a record player and a record.

And that record had a list of songs. It had anything from Bach and Mozart and Beethoven all the way to Chuck Berry. And the goal was that they sent this into space that tens of hundreds of years down the road, an alien would discover it. And they would think, Earth has got a nice playlist. This is what humans listen to. And I guess not wipe us out.

I don't know if they left the address for Earth or what. But that was a real mission. That actually happened. So with that waste of taxpayer dollars, I thought we should double down. We should send another spacecraft. And this could include an iPod that covers the full range of human emotions.

So we have songs. We have playlists for different emotions if you're happy, if you're sad, if you're angry. So let's put this up there and send it up. So I thought this morning I put a pretty widespread of music together that we can go through that I think would be good to send up there. You can feel free to push back or you can celebrate it. You can give a grunt of assurance.

But here's a few different emotions and a few different songs that will match it. So if you're happy, here are a few songs we would listen to. ABC by the Jackson 5. Like that. You can't listen to that and not be happy. Hey Ya by OutKast.

OutKast, the greatest hip-hop group of all time. Hey Ya is just a fun, happy song. Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, going back to the 70s. That song, it's a happy song. Here's a quirky one. I Believe in a Thing Called Love by the Darkness.

Who's heard of that song? A few of you. It's back in the 2000s. It sounds like it was made in 1983. But you listen to that, the guitar solos and the car, air guitar, that is a happy song.

All right, switching gears. If you're angry, you might listen to Down With This Sickness by Disturbed. Now you may think, I never expected to hear that in a sermon. But you would. If you like kind of harder rock music, Down With This Sickness is a pretty angry song. How about Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine?

Or for that matter, any song by Rage Against the Machine will work out some of your anger. If metal, if rock is too much for you, just wait until Taylor Swift has a breakup and she will have a song for you that you can work your anger out. How about when you're sad or emotional? Here are some songs that might be good for you. Johnny Cash has a cover of Hurt. It's a Nine Inch Nails cover.

That song Hurt is just, it's so good. It's emotional. It's somber. How many of you have heard of The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics? Show of hands. No one.

One. Two. Two of you have heard of it. Okay, just when you go home, Spotify, Google, YouTube, whatever, The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics will make you want to go hug your dad or your stepdad. It's just a, it's an emotional song. Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, another good one to listen to.

They have a whole genre of music called emo music. How many of you, like me, were in emo music back in the day, right? A few of you, all right? I'm thinking Hawthorne Heights, Ohio's for Lovers. Was anybody Hawthorne Heights 2006 down in Columbia concert? Anybody there?

I was. None of you? Okay. There's a whole genre. Some of you never left it. I'm thinking of maybe Josh Baboom.

But there's a whole genre of music for that. We'll end with this last one. Music that inspires you. Hey Jude by the Beatles. Man. In the early 2000s, Paul McCartney, Super Bowl halftime show.

The whole stadium joins in at the end. It just inspires greatness. The Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve. That's a 90s band, a 90s song, another great one. In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. Maybe you're like me and you bought into the whole back story where Phil Collins was out at a lake one night and he saw this guy and that guy watched somebody drown and didn't help and he invited that guy to his concert and he sat in the front and the lights shone down at him and he sang in the air tonight and he was singing to him.

That's not true at all. It's a fake story. But I bought it. Do-do-do-do-do-do. The drum solo. It's money.

How about Wake, if you know who Arcade Fire is, Wake Up by Arcade Fire, another song that's just amped, inspires greatness. If you like hip-hop, Lose Yourself by Eminem. That is a, it's hype. We'll close with this. Peter Gabriel has a cover of Heroes, David Bowie's Heroes. Just, if you get a chance today, write it down.

Just watch it. Just listen to it. It's so good. It inspires greatness. We all have playlists and music for different emotions. If you're happy, if you're angry, if you're sad.

Maybe you have a workout set list. Maybe you have some study or workflow music and on down the line. In a way, God has given us a playlist for worship and we have that in the Psalms. God is teaching us how to relate to him, how to worship, how to be, how to pray, how to be angry, how to be sad. Some of you feel like you have to be happy before you come and worship God. Some of you may be angry.

You feel like you've got to just put that away before you come and pray to him. And I think the reason why we have these kind of issues is we lack the categories for how to respond to God. But the Psalms, they give us that. The Psalms are some of the most beautiful pieces of literature I'd say ever written. They're beautiful because they cover the full range of human emotions. They're beautiful because they relate to God in raw and seemingly dangerous ways at times.

They're beautiful because they're songs. They're songs that have been sung by God's people for centuries and for thousands of years. They're beautiful because they continually recount and remember the promises of God. A lot of the songs that we sing every week that remember God's promises are inspired by the Psalms. They're beautiful because they're prayers. They're prayers that have been prayed over the last 2,000 years by other Christians.

When you pray a Psalm, that is something that Christians across the globe for the past 1,000 years have prayed. They're beautiful because they're intentionally crafted poetry that covers subject matters like repentance and laments, remembering God's promises, joy, rest, and all these things that we're going to cover in the weeks to come. We're going to spend nine weeks covering these. And during this nine weeks, we want you to immerse yourself in the Psalms, which is why we have a devotional guy on the back. We want you to grab when you leave. Use it.

I've been guilty in the past of grabbing something like that, throwing it in the back seat, and then three months later remembering it was there. So actually take it, use it, wherever you might have a few minutes of the day to do devotion. Maybe that's at your house or your place of work. But here's why we want you to immerse yourself in the Psalms. We want you to grow in personally relating to God in everyday life. And we want you to grow in your love for the Psalms.

And if you do this, if you spend the next nine weeks doing this with us, it will dramatically change your faith. You can take that to the bank. So in order to do that, we've got to introduce the Psalms today. We're going to introduce Psalms 1 and 2. Psalms 1 and 2 are kind of the gateway by which we read the rest of the Psalms. So as we go through Psalms 1 and 2, you're going to see a lot of the other Psalms, the other 148 Psalms that follow that look similar to this.

And as we walk through Psalms 1 and 2, there is a framework that we will see. And that's this, that it is blessed to be, you are blessed to be God's people because you are like a tree rooted by streams of water. Unlike, which is contrasted, unlike the enemies of God who are called the wicked. So we're going to see that and we're going to walk through that. And the second thing we're going to walk through and we're going to see at the end is blessed are all those who take refuge in the King. So we're going to walk through that.

Before we unpack that, let's pray. Father, thank you that you've given us this word, that you've given us the Psalms. God, I pray that we would see them as beautiful today, that you would help us understand your word, that you would speak to us, and that we leave here seeing more of your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we jump into Psalms 1 and 2, we've got to do some background.

Now, the Psalms were written by many different people over the span of a thousand years. So Moses, he wrote one of the first Psalms we have back in 1500 BC. The last Psalms were written about 5th, 6th century BC. So they're written over a span of a thousand years. They're written by a few different people. We have David who wrote the most of them.

All right, so he wrote about 73 of them. Then we have Moses. Then we have a group of people called the Sons of Korah or the Sons of Korah. We have someone named Asaph who wrote a few of them. And then there are some people, some Psalms that we don't know who wrote them. They're unknown authors.

The word Psalm goes back to the Hebrew word for song. So these are songs that were sung by the Jews for years. This was their hymnal. Around the last time, around the last Psalm, the time the Psalm was written, the last Psalm that was written, they were arranged into a collection of 150 of what we now call the Psalter. And in the Psalter, there are five books. There are five sections.

They carry a few different themes. And we're in the first book today. We're in Psalms 1 and 2. Psalms 1 and 2 don't have an author in their heading. If you look at the Psalms, sometimes you'll see an author in the heading. But we know that David wrote this because in the New Testament it's quoted that David wrote these.

So let's start Psalm 1, verses 1 through 4. 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. So scoffers are mockers, those who mock. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 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. All right, so we'll stop there. One of the ways that we know that Psalms 1 and 2 are meant to be read together is through a literary term called an inclusio. That is a fancy way of saying that the first line and the last line have similar language and style, so what comes between them is meant to be read together. So Psalm 1 starts out as blessed is the man, and Psalm 2 ends with blessed are all those who take refuge in him.

So we know that these are meant to be read together. So the psalmist David, he starts out with a contrast between two groups of people, the wicked and those who delight in God's law, who he calls the righteous. Much of the Proverbs is set up like this. Much of wisdom literature like the Proverbs is set up like this. The wicked and the righteous. In David's context, the wicked are his enemies.

They're enemies of God. They're enemies of the nation of Israel. They curse God, and they curse David as king. They rob, they murder, they bring all kinds of violence. Much of David's life, he was under the threat of violence from this group of people called the wicked. The righteous are simply those who follow and delight in the law.

That's the first five books of the Old Testament. It's called the Torah or the Torah. So it's those who delight and follow the law. The rest of the Psalms flow out of that logic. Many Psalms we see are deep cries of justice against the wicked. Many are, a few of them are laments, deep cries of sadness because God's people have experienced all kinds of injustice and pain from this group of people called the wicked.

Many of David's Psalms were written while he, who was an anointed king at one point and then became the king, was on the run for his life. He's starving, and he's wondering where God was. I mean, David's doing everything he's supposed to do. He is delighting in the law daily while his enemies curse God and curse the king. And David, he's wondering why is it that his enemies, why is it the wicked prosper while he is doing everything he can as God's chosen king, why he suffers. And that's the position in many of the Psalms.

It's why the wicked prosper while God's people suffer. And I think if we're honest, I think we sometimes wonder the same thing. Why is it that the wicked financially prosper? Those who don't love God financially prosper, and those of us who love God, man, we suffer financially. I'm a real estate agent by trade, and I see often these days someone who bought a house in 2007, and 10 years later, they're going to sell their house, and they're taking a huge loss. After 10 years of paying their mortgage, they're having to bring cash to closing.

And the reason why is because back in 07, the houses were artificially at a high price because of the shady backroom Wall Street mortgages that were happening. And they were profiting, and it was building up, and the whole worldwide economy stalled into a worldwide recession, and people lost their houses. Some people lost everything and went bankrupt. There were suicides that happened because of this. And there are many people who love God, who lost everything, and are wondering, why is it that I'm suffering financially when the wicked prosper? Only one person from that entire mortgage corruption went to prison.

The rest, man out like bandits, man out with enough wealth to carry them through, to carry them through the rest of the recession. So you may be wondering, why is it that the wicked prosper? You may be wondering that when it comes to health. Why is it that God's people suffer in health, while those who don't love God prosper in health? I, so the people in our culture that we look up to as the glamorous are rock stars, and movie stars, and many of them explicitly say they're not Christians. They don't love God.

In fact, they mock Christians on a regular basis. And many of them live long, healthy lives. They might do all kinds of drugs and partying are crazy, and they live long lives. And many of God's people suffer sickness, and disease, and trials. Some of them are kids. They get cancer.

And many people, if we're honest, are left wondering, why is it that I'm suffering while the wicked prosper? It doesn't seem like I'm all that blessed. David and the rest of the Bible lays it out. Blessing is not circumstantial. The wicked often look blessed because they don't lack any material blessing. But blessing isn't based on your circumstances.

So David lays it out. You are blessed because you have eternal blessing and delighting in the eternal God. You are blessed when you delight in God's word daily because when you do that, you stare upon God's perfection. You gaze upon His beauty and His glory and His goodness. Now, I don't want to spend too much time there today. Chet's going to cover that next week in Psalms that meditate on God's word.

But the reason that we see here, the reason why that life is better than the counsel of the wicked, is that that's the only way that you can truly flourish as someone who's made in the image of God. Because the picture here is when you do this, you're like a tree planted by eternal streams of water, yielding fruit and its season. Now, some of you, you're in that season. Like, you're feeling it and it's joyous. You can look to Psalms like Psalm 100, which is a Psalm of praise. For the Lord is good.

His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. Like, that is your heart and it's a joyous season. I have learned over the years as I've matured as a Christian to celebrate with people that are in seasons like that. I used to be really cynical and I'd show up to a community group where we're going to confess sin and I'd be, Psalm 51 would be kind of the season that I would be, Psalm 51 is a Psalm of repentance. It's David, he says, cleanse me with hyssop, which is a cleansing branch that I may be clean. Wash me, that I may be whiter than snow.

Create me a clean heart and I'm just wading through my sin and I come to confess sin and I pour out there my soul and then next guy gets up and he's like, well, I have something to confess to. He's like, my goal last week was to have seven quietness. Five times and I had six. It was a Wednesday and it was busy and I just didn't spend time in God's word and I just want to be held accountable to spending more time with God and I'm like over here and I'm looking at that, I'm like, what just happened? Like, this guy can't be real. He's got to be lying or hiding something like, like there's no way and I used to get really frustrated.

There are some people in this state that need to be honest and open about their brokenness and maybe they need to be more open but there are some people that just are in a season where they are joyous and they're delighting in who God is and I've learned to celebrate with them over the years. Some of you, that's not the season you're in. Some of you, this fruitful tree, this picture here of being planted by streams of water, man, that just didn't seem real and if that's you, man, know this, our faith, which we know is secured and given to us in Christ, that is the tree. You may be in suffering and sin or in sickness wherever you're at but you need to know that Christ is the one who secures that tree for us and as we go through the next couple weeks, we're going to cover Psalms of lament and Psalms of repentance and Psalms of remembering God's promises and this season, those Psalms can be a comfort to your soul but know that you're still near the living well.

You're still near the water. You are still a deeply rooted tree next to living water. The storms of this world may be raging against you like storms raging against a tree but you are firmly planted in the soil. You're not going anywhere. You may feel the heat of sin or of suffering like the heat of the sun on a tree but you're always near the water. You're always near the water.

You're rooted and you're secure unlike the picture that we're given here of the wicked which is the picture of chaff. Now the picture of chaff is when they harvest wheat they throw wheat in the air and the chaff would float away. I'm not a wheat farmer. You're not a wheat farmer so it's not as helpful for me. I'll give you a picture of what I think is helpful for me. I have a somewhat nerdy hobby.

I roast coffee. I roast it. I love doing it. Coffee comes from a coffee tree. It comes from these coffee cherries. They take the cherries they take the beans out they're green they wash them they dry them they send them all over the world and then people like me or Starbucks buy them and we roast them.

And so I roast them and as you roast them they start to turn brown and then eventually the whole the husk kind of breaks off and it's chaff and it's thin flaky almost like dandruffy. It floats up and I have a little chaff basket that it catches in the chaff basket and then when it's done I grab the chaff basket and I take it off and when I take it off the chaff almost some of it just blows away immediately and I take it and I throw it in the trash. That is the picture of chaff. And another thing it's just it's momentary it's there and then it's gone and that's what God says of our moment in time it's like dew in the morning he says it's here in the morning and then it's gone by lunchtime.

It's so momentary it's thin it's not rooted and when the fires come the picture we have here is the wicked are driven away. It's not rooted it's not secured when judgment comes the wicked won't stand. Verses 5 and 6 say this 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. Now you may be thinking you may be thinking at this point that's kind of intense language like you said the Psalms were beautiful and you mean to tell me it's filled with language like this. Yep.

All over the Psalms and as we see it all over the Bible and as Raz preached last week Christ one of his key features and characteristics is that he will be the judge that comes to judge everyone. So yeah the Psalms are filled with pictures like this and I think the reason why it's hard for me and hard for some of you to see pictures like this and to actually relate to them is because we in our culture in western culture we don't experience injustice like the rest of the world. Like global Christianity when they come upon when they come upon Psalms like this they find comfort in these and the reason why is because they experience all kinds of injustice financial suffering religious persecution I mean they experience all kinds of injustice and they find comfort in this and if I'm honest I feel like the reason why I struggle with this is not just because I'm western it's because I'm also white. We have black and brown brothers and sisters in our country who experience injustices all the time.

Man the only the main injustice that I experience on a regular basis is on I-20 and where they're doing the construction and somebody cuts me off and I'm like I want fire to come down on them I mean I get angry quick some of you are in the same boat no lie but that's the kind of injustice that I experience and that's not the injustice that many people experience that's why I think it's hard for us to relate to the Psalms

So at the end of Psalm 1 it's meant to be a comfort and it's also meant to be a warning it's a warning that God's justice is coming don't be tempted by the counsel of the wicked God's way is better so that's how Psalm 1 ends Psalm 1 starts with the counsel of the wicked Psalm 2 gives that metaphor a face so I'm going to read all of Psalm 2 it's 12 verses all at once

This may be hard to stay with me if you are having trouble staying with me grab the fidget spinner start spinning we'll work through all 12 at once alright verse 1 why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together so like David's writing this and the picture is the nations are surrounding him and they're plotting

Together and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us alright this is how God responds verse 4 he who sits in the heavens laughs the Lord holds them in derision another version says the Lord ridicules them then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying

Ask for me I have set my king on Zion my holy hill I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me you are my son and today I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel now therefore O kings be wise be warned O rulers of the earth serve the Lord

With fear and rejoice with trembling kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled blessed are all who take refuge in him so David spent most of his life being hunted down like the walls of his world were consistently caving as he was being hunted down and that was his life enemy after enemy rising up nation after nation

Rising up bringing threat against him and the picture here in this Psalm this is viewed by the generations of David that followed after him that this was the pronouncement of his kingdom that the line of David that king after king would come nations would come and rage against God's people against his kingdom and it would stand as verse 9 he would break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel but shortly after this

Shortly after David not you know a couple generations later the kingdom splits in two and after the kingdom splits in two because of civil war the Assyrians come in and wipe out thousands in the most brutal awful way that we see depicted in the scriptures the Babylonians come another pagan nation comes and slaves some and deports some and the Persians come

And nation after nation comes and the people who look at this Psalm are just they're baffled they're confused like what what was this supposed to mean I mean I thought David's kingdom was going to reign and nation after nation takes over and it's important to remember at this point that the Psalms are inspired scripture meaning

God is the chief author here God is using David's experiences and his language to communicate God's eternal word so the intent of the author which is called authorial intent that matters it matters in scripture it matters in music how many of you have heard the song by the police every breath you take most of us some of you that was your song back in the day with your woman

That's what you dance to you claim that that was your love song it sings like every breath you take every move you make every bond you break every step you take God be watching you and it kind of sounds sweet Sting the lead singer of the police comes out years later and he says it's not a love song this song is about stalking it's meant to be creepy so if it was read like it's supposed to it's every breath you take

Every move you make every bond you break every step you take I'll be watching you you ain't dancing to that song you ain't choosing that song to be the love song that you hold dear so I might have crushed that song for you that's okay I'll choose one more this will actually enhance this song there's a song by a semi-sonnet called Closing Time it's from the 90's and up until this week I thought this song was about closing time

At a bar it's closing time one last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or a beer that's what I've always thought it was when he says I know how I want to take me home I'm like oh like responsibility doesn't end driving maybe he's got a girl or a friend who wants to take him home that's really cool just real simple the lead singer came out years later and he said I wrote this song when I was getting ready

To have a son his only kid because I was getting ready to have a son and I wanted to write a song dedicated to him but I thought if I do this my bandmates will eventually hate it and they won't sing it so I hit this song in a song that looks like it's called Closing Time at a Bar so when you go back and you listen to the song and you hear lines like Closing Time turn out all the lights on every boy and every girl

Closing Time open all the doors and let you out into the world Closing Time every new beginning comes from some other beginnings and what he's saying is is that his world is getting ready to change we have a daughter but we're getting ready to have a son here in the next couple weeks it could be tomorrow it could be in a couple weeks and it just hits home for me like everything is going to change again every new beginning comes from some

Of their beginnings and the intent of the writer of the author it matters and the Jews sang from their psalter from their hymnal for centuries and then in the first century a baby is born in Bethlehem and 30 years later he starts performing miracles and he starts teaching and he starts quoting the Psalms and he starts quoting them and saying they're about me he starts quoting them about himself this Psalm and many others are forward looking to the one

Who was to come in Psalm 2-2 the Hebrew word for anointed is where we get the word Messiah it's where we get the word Christ the king here in Psalm 2 is ultimately Jesus the holy hill is the hill where he was crucified this Psalm is fulfilled in Jesus and this passage is quoted in Acts 4 the book of Acts is the first Acts of the church

Jesus ascends into heaven the church is commissioned out they start the church starts blowing up and then they start getting persecution and in Acts 4 this Psalm the first two verses is quoted Acts 4 verses 25-27 who through the mouth of our father David your servant so that's how we know David wrote this said by the Holy Spirit why did the Gentiles

Rage and the people's plot in vain the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed alright so there's the quote here's the interpretation verse 27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles

And the peoples of Israel so kings like Herod leaders like Pilate the crowds screaming crucify him which is both Jews and Gentiles that's the ultimate category of the wicked that we see here those who hate God's law and then this group of people and then Peter brings it home and makes it even more personal in Acts 2

He's preaching to thousands of people who have come into the city thousands of whom were not there when Jesus was crucified and he says you're all guilty we are all guilty we are all the ones that put them there and the point is is that it's all of us and our sin that puts them there so when the category of wickedness is expand it's all of us it's all of us Romans 3 says

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God there is none who does righteous not even one we're all lumped into this category and that pride the same pride that we share with leaders like Herod and Pilate God responds in Psalm 2 4 he says he who sits in the heavens laughs the sovereign God the God who rules and reigns he stood in the heavens

And he laughed because their plot was in vain they thought the world Satan thought that they had stopped God's plan but it was God's plan all along that Christ would be crucified the father sent his son the king to die on a holy hill and because of his death and resurrection and because he ascended to the heavens and he sits at the right hand of the father

And the nations have become his inheritance because of that we get to see why the Psalms are so great for centuries they sang these Psalms not knowing who it was about and because of the gospel and because of where we are and what we know we get to look back at them and see what the author meant we get to see the full meaning of what's happening there and we get to sing them out of that perspective out of the perspective

Of the gospel so when we come to Psalms of lament which are important you need a category for how you can be you can be sad and mourn you're not if you have the picture that Christians are just supposed to be happy all the time chuck it that's not the case there are times there are seasons for mourning and sadness but 1 Thessalonians 4.13 says that you may not grieve as others who do not have hope we

Yes lament grow in lamenting but we don't do it as those who don't have hope we have the hope of Christ and we we can come to Psalms of repentance and pray them and sing them but we come from the perspective of Ephesians 2.8 it says for it's by grace you've been saved through faith we have a perspective of the gospel and we get to claim the promise at the end of this Psalm

When the psalmist says blessed are all who take refuge in him we get to take refuge in our savior and that's the point of the next nine weeks learning how to take refuge in our king growing in Psalms and learning Psalms of repentance and laments and remembering God's promises learning how to take refuge in our king so take the next nine weeks seriously

Like journey together as a church and let's grow in seeing the Psalms and their beauty and when we do this I'm telling you your faith will transform dramatically but I'll close with this some of you need to hear this call from the first time that we have a king who died on a holy hill so that you could be a tree eternally rooted by streams of water that's how much God loves us

You need to hear that call for the first time and for the first time you actually need to take refuge in him not in the things of the world not in the counsel of the world but in Christ take refuge in him place your faith fully in him and then take the next nine weeks and journey with us as we gaze upon the beauty of these Psalms the band's gonna come up they're gonna close this in a song

It's a song that some of you may know it's called ten thousand reasons it was written by Matt Redmond and in this song in this song he based it off of Psalm 103 the first two verses of Psalm 103 he read the first two verses of Psalm 103 and I'll read them here it says bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name bless the Lord oh my soul

And forget not all his benefits so he took those two verses and he started listing out his benefits he started listing out reasons why God is worthy of praise so we're gonna sing that this morning we're gonna sing why our God is glorious and why he's worthy of our praise let's pray Father thank you that you've given us these songs I pray that that we would journey together

As a church we would take the next nine weeks seriously that we would gaze upon the beauty of the Psalms and we would grow in how to relate and worship you God I pray if there's anyone here that has not taken refuge in him that they'd start today God bless you bless this time and bless our praise in Jesus name Amen