Summer of Psalms - Part 11

Psalm 119:1-8 - Laws that Lead to Life

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are wrapping up our series and Psalms today. Not forever. As we've said before, this Psalm, we have so many Psalms to cover, and so we're going to return summer after summer to cover more Psalms. But it's been an encouraging series. We hope it's been an encouraging series for you. Pastor Chris and I, we love, and Lauren, love teaching this series and Psalms because it addresses very relatable human tensions, very real emotions. It helps redirect us to God throughout our day-to-day lives. And so on that thought of emotions and tensions, I just want to ask you guys, by a show of hands, how many of you in this past week had a moment where you were just, you were struggling? Anybody had a, yeah, any moments? Somebody had some really good, okay, yeah, most hands. Good for you, if you had a great week and nothing ever went wrong, I'm so happy for you, praise God.

More specifically, let me refine this question. How many of you in this past week, when trying to live like Jesus, struggled to do that? Anyone raise their hands? Yeah, mine would be like both of them up here. Just the life of frustration and trying to love people who are difficult to love at times. All of us just struggle to perfectly live like Jesus. Being like Jesus, living the way that God wants us to is hard, it's impossibly hard. We cannot do it apart from the grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God within us. The amazing thing is that, as you know, God has given us more than just the Holy Spirit to guide us in our lives, He's also given us His holy word, the Bible. And we all know and experience being a Christian doesn't mean that life is any easier, still means that we go through challenges, go through difficulties and struggles, but it does mean that we have Jesus to walk with us through all those things, and it also means that we have God's word to guide us, and His word tells us how to walk in the best way possible.

I think sometimes we take, and I speak for myself first and foremost, we take for granted the Bible and the power that it has. We have it at the ready. Most of us probably have more than one Bible. We have different versions. We have it on our phone at the tip of our fingers. We can have different translations and we have large print, small print. You have Jesus' words in red. You get any Bible that you want with any different option, calfskin, pleather, all the many different kinds of Bibles out there. And sometimes we just need to be reminded of the power of God's word, and the necessity for us to be in his word often and regularly. And so today is gonna be just that, a reminder of the power of God's word and encouragement in the spiritual practice of reading it, reading scripture. Why do we need to do this? Well, because we have a life problem of sin, every one of us in this room, whether you raise your hand or not, we all deal with sin, and the best and only successful way to live a life that honors God and doesn't give in to sin is to follow God's word, His law. Somewhere along the way in life, law developed a negative connotation in the world. Probably because we're human, we don't like being told that we can't do something. Most of us are prone to go do something. Someone says, "Don't do it." You're like, "Well, I'm gonna go do that because you just told me not to, and I want to, and I can." But God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's also about what we should do. It guides and instructs us in how to live a life that doesn't lead to death as sin does. But it tells us how to live a life that leads to eternal life with God. God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's what we should do, and it guides and instructs us. And I'm not saying that we, the Bible tells us how to earn our way to heaven. That's not what we're saying, and that's what the Pharisees thought, and Jesus scolded them and made sure that all the disciples knew. That's not what I'm saying, that's not what Jesus came to teach. But we're reminded that God has given us an amazing playbook here of how to live life and with his help, of course, through his spirit and by his grace.

And so the psalm that we're gonna cover today that teaches and shares in that truth is Psalm 119. It is the longest psalm. Don't worry, we're not going through all of it. We would be here all day if I would just sit and read all of that chapter. We are only gonna cover a bit of it. I am, you may know this already by many of my references in my preaching, but I'm a bit of a nerd. And if you would allow me, yeah, Pastor Chris reminds me kindly often that I'm a little bit of a nerd. And I would like to nerd out just a little bit on this Psalm 119 and share with you some of the very cool things. Okay, so if you're there in your Bible, you can turn there, you don't have to, but it might help to see the visual. There are 22 sections in this chapter, just in this chapter, and each section is one of the Hebrew letters. And so it starts with, it's going through the Hebrew alphabet. So it starts with "alef," which is our version of "a." And so you have every 22 sections, 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And within those sections, this is where it gets really cool, each verse starts with that letter. So in our "a" section, our "alef" section, every verse would start in the Hebrew with "alef." And now it doesn't translate that way into English. So you're looking at your Bible and you say, "Andre, it doesn't do that at all." It does not work in the English. And that's a bummer for us because that's part of the beauty of this Psalm is someone in the Hebrew culture would see this and read this and it would just start to click. It would be like us having a song in our ABCs in English and everything in the, you just follow and describe who God is and what God, what he does and it would be an easy way for us to remember and just be like, oh, the ABCs of theology and of who God is and let's go through that.

So that's what Psalm 119 is and it's beautiful. I don't know if there's a song that exists like that in English, any songwriters out there. If you're watching online, please, this is your invitation, please write a cool theology song that takes every letter and describes God. We have a book that we read, our daughter, I'm excited to read it to our latest addition to our family, that it's not the whole alphabet, but it goes through and highlights different characteristics of God. All to say that this psalm, okay, is one of the most carefully constructed psalms. The intentionality is not just in the message, but how that message is packaged. And each line of Psalm 119 offers a deeper and different perspective of God's law. I don't know if you've ever had the chance to look at a diamond. Anything that I recall right now about diamonds is from years ago when I bought my wife an engagement ring. But I vaguely remember, you're looking for cut and clarity, and the jeweler, you know, you either get that little cool monocle eyepiece to look really closely, or there's a big magnifying glass and they hold the jewel under it so you can see it, and they start to just show you this diamond, and you get to see it from the top, and you say, "Hey," and you look at it from this angle, you can see the beauty of it, and then they'll start to rotate it, and you're like from the side, and you see the light hit it, and just as they rotate that diamond or that jewel, you're just like, "This is beautiful," and the more they rotate it, the more you appreciate its beauty.

Well, Psalm 119 rotates God's law so we can see God's law from various angles and better understand the beauty of God's truth. And today we're gonna cover just one of those angles, this first section, Aleph, the first eight verses. So if you guys would read along with me. Verse one, it says, "Blessed are those "whose ways are blameless, "who walk according to the law of the Lord. "Blessed are those who keep his statutes "and seek him with all their heart. "They do no wrong but follow his ways. "You have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed. "Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees. "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands. "I will praise you with an upright heart "as I learn your righteous laws. "I will obey your decrees. "Do not utterly forsake me." Again, the goal of this psalm is to enable God's people to admire His word so strongly that they will work and pray hard to have it shape their character and their conduct. And already in the first eight verses, we see God's law held to such high esteem and a profound desire to follow that law because the people understand that it leads to life and it's a blessing to have this law available to them. The ESV commentary says, "The written word of God "stands as one of the greatest, most precious "of all of God's gifts to his people.

Psalm 119 celebrates the wisdom, truthfulness, clarity, grace, direction, and power of this written revelation of God. Folks, what you have available to you, what you have in the seat in front of you or in your hands is a gift. And it's not to be taken for granted. And this gift has power to transform who we are and what we do. And that's the interaction with this Psalm. is the more that we learn about who God is and what he does, it would change who we are and what we do. And so we see in verse one that people are blessed for walking according to the law of the Lord. This is Psalm 119, draws from a lot of other Psalms. And so if you are familiar with Psalm one, the very first line of the book of Psalms, this is reiterating that. Blessed are those who walk according to the way of God. "The people are blessed whose ways are blameless." This isn't, we read this and we may think, so God wants us to be perfect? Well, no, he doesn't have that expectation 'cause he knows we can't be. This isn't emphasizing perfection as much as it is focusing on a person who has the highest integrity and lives with complete honesty. And the psalmist is saying, that's who we should wanna be. People in this world with the utmost integrity and who live the most honest lives. In verses two and three, we see God's blessing on those again who follow his statutes and seek him with all their hearts. God's desire is that he be the biggest priority in his people's lives. He's saying that in his infinite wisdom, he knows what it will take for a person to walk in the way of life, not in sin and in death. He knows that He must be the priority in our hearts. And if God isn't the priority, if we are giving all of ourselves to anything else other than God, then it's a recipe for disaster. It means that sin will be guiding us away eventually. It may not seem that drastic at the beginning. Think of the, I've never been, I've sailed once in my life, but I've heard for long distance sales that just one degree off on that compass which means miles and miles far away, you're gonna be hundreds of miles from your destination. And that's that way with sin.

Even just for a moment, if we let anything other than God guide us through life, if that sustains, if that's kept up, sooner or later, we are gonna be so far away from God. So God wants to be the priority in our lives. And he says this throughout scripture. I mean, the first commandment, "shall have no other gods before me." And so in this first section we see, again, the psalmist just rotating God's word and saying, "Look at this. "Look how amazing this is. "Look how beautiful God's law is." And now the psalmist changes who the psalmist directed to. In the first three verses, it was being said to an audience, it's a song to be sung, stating who God is. But now in the last four verses, or the five, yeah, change their attention to be directed to God. Verse four says, "You, God, have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed." I like this line a lot. I feel I'm gonna integrate this in my life. We don't use precepts a lot. I don't know if I've ever heard someone in their common speech say precepts, but I'm thinking as the youth pastor, when the youth get a little rowdy, I might just quote this and be like, "Look, youth, I have precepts that need to be fully obeyed. Better get in line. They're gonna be like, "What are precepts? "I don't know what you're talking about." The point is that we see that there is a desire as well as an expectation from God for his people to be completely obedient to him. It's not just a suggestion. It's not saying, "Hey, if you feel like it, "my people, you should try to maybe follow me." It's one of the options that you have. No, he's saying this is, this is it. This is the best way, this is the law, and I expect you to obey it.

In verse five, this verse speaks to the loyalty in obeying God. We have to be consistent. We have to be devoted to God and his law. The word that is used is steadfast. Whenever you see steadfast in the Bible, Think of it as a hyperlink to Exodus when God is speaking to Moses and describing himself to Moses, saying this is who I am. And we talked about this in an earlier Psalm, this hesed, steadfast. God is perfectly steadfast to us. He wants us to be steadfast to him. But the Psalmist here is recognizing that we, despite our best efforts, humanity cannot be perfectly steadfast to God. We will fail in our commitment at some point. Just ask Israel time and time again, falling away from God. Even David, you know, the renowned psalmist, the renowned best king in Israel's history, he had moments of terrible sin, falling away from God. But the goal here is that each follower of Yahweh would share in their eager yearning to be like God and obey his commandments. And then together, as a people, as a community, there's accountability and there's more opportunity for course correction. The Hebrew word in this verse at the very end, obeying your decrees, evokes images of boundaries, healthy boundaries. The Hebrew word brings to mind like someone taking a rock and etching something in, or like taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand. And so you can think of it as God drawing the boundary and saying, this is, be on this side, people. this is where I want you, don't go over there.

And that is a theme that is all throughout scripture. I mean, that's all the way back in Genesis, in the garden. God's saying, hey, I want you here, I have great life set up for you here, just don't do this. I had a professor once describe boundaries, because we often think of boundaries as restricting. Again, going back to that negative connotation of the law. And we don't like boundaries sometimes. But I had a professor describe boundaries, or the views of the law, and some people think of God's law and following it like a tightrope. And you just have to do your best. It's very hard, there's a single straight line, and if you fall, you're done. Or to maybe like a two-lane road. And this analogy kinda doesn't work. When I heard it, I was like, I get what you're saying, so I'm gonna convey what he said. If you don't like it, I'll pass that along. But like a two-lane road, and there's the yellow divider line, and he's saying the safest place to be would be straddling that line. If you got the metal guards on either side, the safest place, theoretically if there's no traffic, is right on the middle. But really, God's law is more like, instead of that yellow line saying you can only be here, it's more like the metal rails on the side, just keeping you in the safe place, in the place that is living wisely. Or maybe also, like he mentions a river. And you don't have to be exactly in the middle of the river. Just the banks are the things that keep you in the water where you're supposed to be. And so whichever one you like, and if you don't like any of them, that's okay. But those analogies of God's law, there's wide berth to follow him, and we should view it not so much as restricting as life-giving. God's law is not restricting, but it gives life and it leads to life.

Verse six says, "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands." And this verse alludes to the vastness of God's law. It covers so much. It covers all we need for life. I think sometimes we start to put the Bible in compartments of our life. We just say, well, the Bible addresses this area, and so this area, I'm gonna go to the Bible, and I'm gonna look for wisdom, but for this area over here, I don't need to talk about the Bible. I don't need to reference it, I don't need to go to it. I know this much over here. But God is saying, no, my law covers every part of life, everything that you will do, I have wisdom and I have insight for you. There's a recognition that God's ways are best and we must come to that same conclusion.

In verse seven, the psalmist conveys the anticipation of learning. I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. The psalmist is instructing us to learn. Learning is so important. In our household, with my parents and with our daughter and my extended, like my sister, my brother-in-law, and their kids, we've gotten to this habit at family meals of doing trivia after dinner. And so I'll just pull up a trivia website. And even the kids are getting into it. I have to look up kids trivia because they don't know random stuff of history. But what are all the colors of the rainbow? And what's the largest mammal? And it's really fun. And we are trying to-- not only is it fun, but we're trying to instill this desire to learn. We don't know everything. We do know some really random stuff, and that's really fun. But we don't know everything. And this can be a fun way to learn. And it's good because those little ones, there's age differences, and some of them are in school already. And so they're getting questions like that. And then the little ones are like, I haven't answered any questions. And it's like, it's OK. Just learn. Just listen. Pick up on that. And the next time around when we ask, you might know that one. But learning is so important. OK, before we get away from learning and trivia, do you guys want a quick trivia fact? Okay. In the last ... I'm like 99% that this is true, by the way, so if you fact-check me ... (Laughter) If I'm off, you'll see where I might be off. In the last 100 years - this has to do with the Olympics, so we're still on theme, with the Olympics ending today - in the last 100 years, in the 100-meter race, typically known as the fastest human on Earth, whoever can win the 100-meter race, in the Olympics, with all the increase of technology, of training, of health, diet, the better track that they run on, the better shoes that they have, how much faster do you think we are than 100 years ago? I say we, I did not run this race, not we. How much faster do you think humans have run than 100 years ago? Any guesses? Any thoughts? Ten seconds? Okay, ten seconds faster than 100 years ago. Any other guesses? I can't hear, but maybe you guys are thinking yourselves. You guys ready for this? A hundred years ago, so today, the world record, not today, because I think it's Usain Bolt, 0.81 seconds faster than a hundred years ago. It's crazy. That blew my mind when I learned that, which I'm pretty sure I learned, and I'm pretty sure that's true. If it's not, it's less than a second, though. If I'm off, it's still less than a second. That's crazy. OK, so you learn something new every day. We'll get away from the Olympics.

The more we learn, back to God, who God is, the more we learn about who we are meant to be. The more we learn about who, what God does, the more we learn about what we should be doing. The Psalmist is saying, continue to learn. It's a lifelong process. And then the chapter ends with an acknowledgement that there is a wide gap between the wicked and Yahweh, and we should have this desire to remain as close to God as possible. So we've just went through the first section of Psalm 119, the olive section, and it's a beautiful section of Psalms that is praising God in his word, his law, and I wanna take some time to just end our sermon by reflecting on our relationship to God's law and to him. So I have a couple questions, and the first question is this. What are you learning about God? Getting back to that verse seven, we should be lifelong learners of God. There are rabbis who dedicate their whole life to memorizing and studying the Torah. And some of them have dedicated their whole lives to just a section of the Torah. And after 50 years of studying day after day, they are still learning something new about God.

We need to be curious about the God that we serve and worship. People who are naturally curious love learning. That's not all of us. Some of us just like trivia. Be like, "Oh, I just want to learn more random facts." I was reading a book by author Vander Bloeman recently, and he pointed out that you can always ask a curious person, "Hey, what are you learning?" And it'll always be something new. Just because they are just going to keep learning random things. And the next time you see them, you can say, "Hey, what are you learning?" And they're going to give you a random thing, and they're going to give you a lot of it. Because they got into it, and they went down that rabbit hole or YouTube video or whatever it is, they can't help it, they want to know more, and we need to be like that with God. We should be eager to learn more about God. And I think on top of that, we should maybe be open, we might start off awkward, but I think it'd be okay to just ask each other, hey, what are you learning about God recently? What have you learned about him? And we don't have to be worried about any shame of, well, it's not some great theological new breakthrough that I've learned about God. No, we're not gonna learn that. I could just be, man, I've just been learning more about his grace. I've been learning more about his love through what I've been going through, my situation in life and reflecting on how God's loving me. I'm learning more about that. But we should be encouraged to learn more about our king and our savior. So what are you learning about God?

Secondly, what or who is guiding you? As you think about your life and how you're living your life and you reflect back on this last week or this last month, something is guiding you in life. It could be yourself. It could be traditions, family traditions, work culture. It could be the latest book or podcast on leadership or family life. It could be another religion. Whatever it is, something is guiding you through life. You are giving your attention, you are giving your thought, your heart, "What do I do?" And you're going to something to say, "What is it? "I'm going to follow that." You know this. I'm going to say it again. It should be God. God not only should be the one that guides you, but He wants to guide you. He is there saying, "Let me do this for you." And He's given us His word as the biggest gift to say, "Look, here's this for you. "Let me help you in life." The NIV commentary says that the Lord's instruction, His law permeates Psalm 119. Almost every verse of this massive psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible, mentions the law or one of its synonyms. So that should tell us that, look, this is how much I value what I have to say. This is God saying, this is how much I value what I have to say. Oh, I'm drawing from my daughter. It's in every verse of this psalm. That's how important it is. God wants to be your guide. He knows what you need. But again, the problem is our human tendency, our sin nature. We think we know how to live this life all by ourselves. We don't think we need the instruction manual. As a kid, I love LEGOs. I think I've mentioned this before. And it was easy. There is no-- it's for kids. There's not even words in those instruction manuals. It's pictures. And just as you continue to follow the pictures, your LEGOs look more like the box. And you're like, this is awesome. I love it. And then, so I love LEGOs, I love building it, and I follow the instructions to a T. Because if you were off, your end product wouldn't look like the box. Well, somewhere in my 20s, not with LEGOs anymore, unfortunately, but more with IKEA furniture and things like that, I just got this confidence. I don't know where, but I was like, I don't need the instruction manual. Forget that. There's legs, there's a top, and there's a couple other things. And I'm just going to put it together. And that worked out 50% of the time. And then other times, I was left with a copy table that didn't stand up or shelves that didn't stay on. Didn't go well. And then now in my 30s, I've come back to following the instructions. I don't have energy to rebuild things three times anymore. And so I've come back to following page by page, following the instructions. Usually I will read the instructions because now there's words. But sometimes I don't and I get in trouble. But I think this is true of some of us in life, that maybe we're born or along the way We get this confidence that we can do this life on our own. I get that there's instructions, but I think I got it now. I got the gist, and I'm just going to go forward, and I'm going to do my thing.

But we can't do it all by ourselves. We just really can't. And if we think we can, then that's the enemy lying to us, giving us this false confidence, just like he did to Adam, and he was saying, "Do you really need God? Do you really need God to live this life?" But by the grace of God and because of the sacrifice of Christ made on the cross, we can have salvation, we can experience the transforming work of the Spirit within us, and by the grace of His Word, we can better understand the way in which God is leading us and guiding us. So what, who or what is guiding you? And if it's anything other than God, have some course correction in your life. Turn to Him, open up this Word, get to know what you you should be doing. And lastly, the last question, do you believe and live by the power of God's word? I wanna share some statistics with you. A recent study in America was done, actually just this last year, so this is 2023, and it says the following. 159 people agree that the Bible has an impact on how they interact with others. That's good. 159 million people think that the Bible It has an impact and influences how they treat other people. 146 million agree that the Bible has influence on how they treat people who are of a different race. Another good thing, Bible addresses that. 130 million, we're getting smaller, I don't know if you noticed this, 130 million agree that the Bible has influence for their support for refugees and people displaced by wars and conflicts. Again, something else addressed in the Bible, but we see that trend now, the number getting smaller of what the Bible has influence over. The last one I wanna share is this. Only 47 million are regularly engaged with scripture. Regularly, they define regularly, they have the series of questions for this survey and had to do with frequency, impact, and the centrality of God's word in their lives. But the study commented, it says, "Apparently people are using the Bible "as a guidebook for life as about the same level "as they did in previous years, Yet, for millions of people, the Bible is not leading to greater connection with God or more loving behavior towards others. So here's the point. Somewhere along the way, and this is backed up by studies, there's a disconnect in people's minds. That the Bible has some place in life, but not in a place that it should affect all of my life. It might offer some good advice, It might be something to reference when I'm in a really tough situation, but the rest of it, people are feeling pretty confident that they can do by themselves. They don't think of the Bible. They don't understand that the Bible is the ultimate truth. It's God's divine word, and it can change us from the inside out. When we read Psalm 119, just that first section, It was overflowing with the belief and the conviction that the law of God truly transforms the heart and life of a person.

So the question is, do you believe that? And do you live like that every day? And I say this with myself feeling convicted. If we did, we would read our Bible with that hunger and that thirst to say, how can I change more? How can I be more like God? Let me open this up and see what God has to say. and trust that through his spirit and his word, I will be transformed to be more like him. So, in closing, Psalm 119, we'll probably return to Psalm 119 in years to come in the summers, and as the worship team makes their way back up, I wanna say this, so be curious, be a lifelong learner of the God that you serve. Just continue to learn. That may mean opening your Bible and reading something randomly, but however it is, ask questions to people, Chris, myself, others around you. Be a lifelong learner of God. And then let God guide you, seek His guidance. Don't do this life on your own or by any other standard, but follow Him with everything that you have. And do so because you have the conviction and the belief that his word is necessary to live a life that is God-honoring. Because you believe that scripture is a part of that transforming work. Oftentimes, when Pastor Chris and I meet with people who ask, you know, I wanna know God more. The very first, have you read your Bible? When was the last time you opened up your Bible? This is gonna be the best way to get to know God. Same when they ask, what should I be doing in life? I wanna know what the Christian life is about. First thing, open this up, read this. And for those of us who have been walking with God for years, it doesn't change. It doesn't mean that we come to the end, like I read it, I read it through a couple times, so I think I'm good. And the rest I'll just hope that I remember what, no. Daily, often, open this up and enjoy and read the law, the word of God.

Let's go ahead and pray. God, we thank you so much for the gift of your word, a word that has power to change, to transform us to be more like you. God, I pray that you would cultivate in us a spirit of learning, just for us to accept that we don't know everything. For some of us, that's very hard. But I pray that you would grow in us this desire to wanna know more about you, know how to live this life in a way that honors you. And God, I pray that it would be fun, it would be enjoyable to learn and to be more like you. And God, we also just pray that we would live with conviction day by day that we need this. We need you, we need your word. And we pray for your guidance. We seek your guidance and direction, God, all of us, whether now, today, and this week, or in a different season of life, We face challenges, we face difficulties, and we don't know what to do, but we can take comfort and rest assured that you do. So please make your voice loud. May we be attuned to your spirit as you guide us step by step through life. God, we trust you, we need you, and we praise you. We pray this in your name, Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 10

Psalm 86 - Praise Him Anywhere

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

It's going to be an awesome, awesome day. And so thanks so much for being here, joining you. I'm Pastor Chris, part of the team here. And we are in our summer of Psalms, week 10. Can you believe it? You've been 10 weeks in Psalms with us. We got one more week next Sunday. We're gonna wrap things up and then we're gonna head into Nehemiah, which we're really excited about that one. It's gonna be a great book to study together. But summer of Psalms, we've been all over the place in the book of Psalms from the beginning to the end and all around in the middle. We tried, we've done this a couple different summers before We've made sure not to double dip. So this is all fresh stuff for you guys this summer. We're really looking forward to it. And this Psalm today is one that's really, really unique and interesting. And we're gonna be in Psalm 86 today. This is another Psalm of David. And what's really cool about this one is, I call it the Oreo cookie of Psalms. And it is sandwich. So you think of an Oreo cookie, you got your cookies on the outside, you got your cream in the middle. And so on the outside, the beginning and ending of this Psalm is actually prayer and petition to God. But in the midst of all of his prayer and petition for God to save him from what he's going through, he actually gives praise and honor to God. So the Oreo, the stuffing, the good stuff in the middle, is all praise to God. And so if you want an illustration this morning, go grab some cookies after church and you can praise God together. So it'd be a good time. No, Psalm if you have a Bible, feel free to turn there. We have them under the chairs where it's gonna be on screen. But Psalm 86 is in, I believe, it is the third book. So the Psalms is actually divided up into four different books, five books. And each book has kind of its own theme and structure within it. And this one is kind of out of place. This one is more of a prayer of praise to God where this isn't seen usually in this book, this section of Psalms. of Psalms. And so it's somewhat out of place, but I love because in, even in this, of where it's at and what the other theme is, there's a breakout of praise. And I think that's, there's a bit of a theme to that today as we read this together.

So Psalm 86, starting in verse 1, it says, "Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to You. Save Your servant who trusts in You. You are my God. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love all who call to you. Hear my prayer, Lord. Listen to my cry for mercy. When I was distressed, I called to you because you answer me." Here's the Oreo stuffing. Among the gods there is none like you, Lord. No deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord. They bring glory to your name, for you are great and do marvelous deeds. You alone are God. Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart. I will glorify your name forever for great is your love towards me and you have delivered me from the depths from the realm of the dead. Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God. Ruthless people are trying to kill me. They have no regard for you. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. Turn to me and have mercy on me. Show your strength in behalf of your servant. Save me because I serve you. Just as my mother did. Give me a sign of your goodness that my enemies may see it and be put to shame. For you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

There's three main sections in this Psalm 86. If you guys picked up on that. The first part of the Oreo cookie is in Psalm 86, verses one through seven. And David here is saying he's petitioning for God to hear him and to answer him. And then in verse eight, it shifts to this middle stuffing goodness of praise and thanksgiving to who God is. And then verse 14, we have the other side of the cookie that are petitioned for God to act. It's unique because there's only a few other times in the Bible do we find a psalm like this or a set of a writing that it is parallel in its beginning and ending with petitions in this middle section of almost a song like a hymn like praise and thanksgiving to be given to God. It's not truly known what David is going through at this time. It's very common for David to have foes coming after him, if you know any of his story, even before kingship and after kingship. Somebody seemed to always be coming after him. But there is this prayer that I think affirms for in us kind of a cyclical theme and nature of our lives, ourselves we see. that often praise comes even in the middle of our cries to God. That sometimes we struggle with this idea of sorrow and fear and angst in our lives. But David here shows us that we can still have praise even in the midst of that. This first section, verses 1 through 7, there's this central idea and image of King David asking for God to listen to him, to answer his prayers, to move on his behalf. And this pattern fluctuates between other prayers and petitions and his asking for God. Asking God to guard his life, to be gracious to him, to make him glad. And this last petition is not only to hear and save, but also cause joy to return to his heart. This beautiful idea of restoration, this image of new life in him. This Hebrew root, there's a Hebrew word in here for life or soul that I find interesting. It's called nep̄eš. And it's this idea that David isn't writing this psalm lightly. Sometimes we can read Psalms and say like, "Oh, save my life, Lord, or protect my soul, or restore to me new life." And it's just a simple prayer. But the reality here with the Hebrew word, an nep̄eš, means that David is fearing death. When he's asking for his life to be saved, for his soul to be protected, He is literally pleading with God to keep him alive. He's facing death, he's staring out, and he sees his enemy coming, knowing what's gonna happen. If God does not move, David will no longer live on earth.

There's a massive urgency here in the scripture. And yet at the same time, David is putting his full trust into God. He's declaring that God is the God above all gods. That God is Lord over all. God is victorious. And I find it interesting that He declares this even before He is saved. That should strike us a bit. Because I don't know that we're like that, right? I don't think that that's our natural bent here. But what a testament that David here is saying that even in the midst of what I'm going on, I am declaring God's victory. I'm declaring God's restoration. I'm declaring God's safety. Even in the midst of what is going on with him, he is giving praise and victory to God as if he has already been rescued. But where does this come from? This comes from who the character of God is. And David here being an Israelite remembers the first time that his people cried out to God. All the way back near the beginning of the Bible we read in Exodus chapter 2 verse 24 that God heard their cries and remember his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelite people were in captive slavery to the Egyptians. They were being beaten, they were being killed, they were being used for slave labor to build whatever the king, Pharaoh, wanted to build. And they cried out to God and God heard their cries. So David, you're crying out to God going, "I know who you are, God. You are the same God that saved my ancestors in Egypt under complete slavery and oppressive control. You acted and moved in a miraculous way and you saved us. Please God, do this again.”

Then in verse 8, we have this shift without warning from this prayer petition, and they break out to a moment of praise. I love what it says. "Among the gods there is none like you, Lord. No deeds can compare to yours." It continues on in verse 9, talking about this echo of praise, but declaring that God made all the nations and they all will bow down before God the Creator. 10 again declares that God's deeds are great and God is God alone. This is a amazing picture of all the nations gathered together worshiping God. Verse 10 again declares that God's deeds are great and that God is God alone. that there's nothing that God does not deserve praise for. And that one day, all the nations will gather and they will worship God Almighty for who He is. This isn't the picture of life today, is it? No. When we look around the world, this isn't the case. People are fighting. From the beginning of time, people have hated other people. Nations have hated other nations. People and kings and rulers have tried to control other people. People have been in slavery. People have been killed. People have been beaten down. People have been manipulated, controlled, oppressed. But this picture here that David is talking about saying, this isn't always how it's going to be. God's doing something great here. God is bringing the nations together to being praised. This is just a beautiful image that I'm reminded of the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a giant teaching sermon from Jesus that he gives. He talks about all aspects of life. And one part specifically in there, he talks about how to pray. And he says to do this and don't do this and don't worry about that and don't think about that, but pray to God in this way. And it's commonly what we've known in the church as the Lord's Prayer. And it says in Matthew 16:10, "Your Kingdom, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus is praying that the kingdom of heaven, God's perfect will, God's perfect grace and worship and love and unity would come to this earth. And to have all the nations gathered together, worshipping God. But we know this won't fully happen until heaven. But this doesn't stop the psalmist from praying for this incredible picture of true, united worship to take place here and now.

But the question is, how does this even begin to happen? David says in verse 11, "Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name." It starts with us. It begins in our heart and in our lives to have an undivided heart and soul for Jesus. I love what another translation says. It says, "Lord, teach me your ways that I will live and obey your truth. Help me make worshiping your name the most important thing in my life. I love that That's where it starts It starts with us choosing to say Worshiping you God is the most important thing in my life And when we live our lives like this in this way of this prayer of David making worship the number one thing our lives look different, right? We will live as a transformed being. The old has gone, the new has come. That this new life we have in Jesus is where our worship comes from. An undivided heart solely focused on our Heavenly Father. And when we have this heart of worship or praise, there's a restoration of ourselves that happens. creating us, changing us, molding us into the image that God has for us, not ourselves, but the image that God has for each of our lives. He says, verse 12, 13, "I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart. I will glorify your name forever, for great is your love towards me. You have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead. This is a prayer for restoration of our heart and of our soul, down to our deepest being. David here is saying, "Save us. Restore us. Make me whole. Bring my life to a completion that I will give everything I have and worship and praise to you.

You ever been in that place where you just felt, "Blah? Maybe you felt that this week. Maybe you woke up that this morning. I don't know. But you just feel that just like, "Ugh, ugh." There's not even words to express, it's just a groaning noise. This is where David's at. He's got the pressure of the world around him pushing on so hard. And he just feels like he's just going to crumble under it. And he cries out for God, "Save me. me." And at the same time, he says, "You are God. I believe that you can do this. I remember when you did it for my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa when he was stuck in Egypt. He felt even worse than this, and yet you created a--you made a miracle happen. You parted the the Red Sea so that he could be restored to have life to give you praise and yet here I am in my life I know you can do this for me and I think there's something supernatural that happens in our lives When even when we're in the midst of that, "Ugh." That we give praise to God. I know there's times when life just seems so heavy. Where that literally, sometimes I can't even have words. And all I do is I just go and I put worship music on. Because I'm like, "God, my soul aches right now." And there's, I can't even pull the words together, but I know that this song resonates with who I am and what I'm going through. And I'm just gonna let this song speak for me for a little bit. I'm just gonna let the words of this worship from someone who wrote this song who has no idea who I am, but knowing it is a gift of grace from God. I'm just gonna let this pour over me, like cool water on a hot day. And sometimes in life, that's exactly what we have to do. Well, you're like, "Ah, well, Chris, I just, "I don't feel like it." Yeah, I don't think David felt like it either. And yet he chose to praise God. See, God just isn't this impersonal big guy in the sky or big man upstairs. He's a personal relational God that wants to know how our soul is doing. Actually, he already knows how our soul is doing. He just wants us to tell him. It's like if you have kids, you know when they're having a bad day as a parent. But sometimes you just want them to share what they're going through in that day. To just have a relationship with them. Why? Not for the sake of yourself. Not for the sake of, "Oh, I got all this time to kill. I just want to hear your story." No, because you love them. You care for them. It's the same way that God loves and cares for us.

Verse 14, as the other side of the Oreo cookie, again, David shifts back into from this praise to giving back to fear and worry about what's happening on, but has this different tone than the first half of the cookie, right? There's this tone of asking God to move and to act, but there's more faith behind it. And we get a little bit of a glimpse of what's going on here with the offer. There's some sort of group of people that don't like God, that despise God, and are coming after David. We still don't know why, but he's facing imminent death. All is not well in David's life right now. He's not posting on Instagram a happy picture from the past year going, "All is well out here." Like, he is stressing to the max. prayer and praise doesn't always work out the way that we want, right? God isn't just this magic genie where we can rub our hands together and pray and poof, He shows up and says, "What's your prayer for the day?" And we give it to Him and He goes, "Okay." And He turns around and He runs off and He does it. That's not who God is, right? God asks for us to act in obedience to the with Him and that our faith and belief in God must stand with praise even when our world is broken. It says in verse 15, "But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." If that's not an incredible image and picture of who God is, I don't know what other verse shares that with us. Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, thank you, Jesus, abounding in love and faithfulness. I do find this verse a little strange at this moment. When reading this psalm, you would think at this point, David would be more focusing on praying for God to, "Hey God, people are coming. "I need you to do something, they're getting closer. "Okay God, now they're really closer. "They're getting closer now, what are you gonna do?" But David goes, "No, you're compassionate, "you're gracious, you're slow to anger, "abounding to love, faithful." David goes back to who he knows God is. Yes. Under the greatest pressure, under the greatest stress, David says, "You are an unchanging God." Because the reality is, God's the same. It's us in life that has ups and downs and twists and turns and things that change in our lives in an instant. God is the faithful, steady one in our lives. And sometimes we just need to press into that steadiness when our life seems to be spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And we don't feel like we can barely hold on to anything. We just gotta reach out and to hold on to dear life for God.

I think of this image of like barely having to reach on to hold on to something. You're being swept away, whether it's waves or wind or something, you're barely holding on. And you're so focused and worried about where your hands are holding on to something. And the whole time you don't realize is that you have a full safety harness, five point harness on. All the locking carabiners and strength of a rope in the world and God's holding on to that rope. And we think we're holding on there that we have to hold on for dear life. God's like, "I got you locked in, man. I got it taken care of. Just let go and let me." Is what God's asking us to do. This message is a message that only God can rescue us from our trouble. that there's no promise of the world. There's no other person in our lives. There's no political leader. Can I say that? There's no nothing else that can rescue us the way that God can. And David here, in the midst of it all hitting the fan, just puts all his chips in on God. on God and says, "You're my redeemer. "You're my rescuer." Verse 17 ends with, "Give me a sign of your goodness "that my enemies may see it and be put to shame "for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me." I read that and I thought, oh, that's a little aggressive, put to shame? But what David here is saying, His rescue isn't about himself. David already knows that he's locked in with God. David here is actually asking for God not to necessarily rescue him, but asking that God's glory would shine through his rescue so that others may see and believe. That others would look in on his situation and go, man, his back was against the wall. There was nothing left. He was at the end of his rope. It was all but for sure gone. And God came through. And David wants even his enemies, the ones that are coming after him, to see this rescue from God, not to put them down or to embarrass them or to make them look foolish, but for them to be able to see in that moment that God rescued him, that they may turn and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone. It's more about God saving and helping David rather than us, 'cause mostly what we do in life, right? Most of us in life will go like, hey God, get me out of this jam, man. Like I will be, my butt is gonna be in church on Sunday. Promise you. If you get me out of this jam, God, I will love you. I will serve you. I'll become a pastor for the rest of my life, God. Just get me out of this situation, please. That's not how it works, right? God here is asking for us to step in faith and trust in Him in obedience. And then He moves.

As we close, I got three truths for us today from this. One, praise no matter the circumstances. We are to praise God. No matter what we're walking through, no matter what is happening in our lives, no matter what is coming at us, we are to praise God. This ain't easy. But when I see people who have followed Jesus for decades, this is their mindset. They've learned, they've gone through it. They have been to H-E Double Hockey Stick and back, and they still give God praise. It blows my mind. But there's this foundational truth they understand who God is, how much they were blessed by His love and His grace and His mercy in their lives, they go, "There would be no place I'd rather be." Praise is a language of the heart that speaks at all times. It's not dependent on circumstances or happenings in life. It is a soul language that that we are to give praise to God. And sometimes all we can do is believe that the joy is coming in the midst of it. David says that, he says what? Verse four, "Bring joy to your servant, Lord." Sometimes we just have to believe that the joy is coming so that we can even take another step forward. Greatest advice, second greatest advice I've ever been given in my life is in my marriage and in parenting and in just life in general is a statement that it won't always be like this. Good times and the bad times. The good times won't always be like this. It's just life. Reminds us to be present where we are. And on the flip side, the hard times, it won't always be like this. Hard times will come. Storms will come. Storms don't last forever though, right? Sometimes they last a long time. I look around this room and I see people who have gone through seasons of storms. But the storm never lasted forever. And David here is reminding us that we can praise God no matter our circumstances because it won't always be like this.

Number two, our praise is amplified in in community. Sure, can we praise God on our own? Absolutely. Can we pop on some headphones, crank it up in the car, listen to our worship music, read God's Word and our quiet time, our one-on-one time with God? Absolutely, yes. And this should be your rhythm in life. But a rhythm that you cannot miss out on is worship in community. This. See, this here takes our praise that is great on our own, but it comes in here and it cranks it up a thousand percent. Praise in community is a rhythm that is necessary for our life with God. Psalm 86, 9, David all the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord. They will bring glory to your name. Sometimes we need the church family to remind us why we praise, to remind us who God is, remind us of those who have gone before us and survived and got the t-shirt, those how to praise even in the midst of heavy life, lean on to others for their praise to echo in our hearts. Sometimes we need the praise of others to hold us up. Just like this picture of Moses with Aaron and her holding his arms up in the midst of the battle of Joshua and the Amalekites. When his arms were up the Israelites were winning but when they fell down they began to lose. And so this beautiful picture image of Aaron and her literally holding Moses's arms up so that the victory through God would happen in that battle is a picture and image for us of when we can't even raise our hands in worship. Sometimes we need people to come around us and just raise our hands for us knowing that joy is coming. This is how our praise is amplified in community. Sometimes coming to church isn't about you. Sometimes coming to church is for the person you're sitting next with, the person in the row behind you. The person who pulled into the parking lot and was about to leave but then saw you and got out of their car and came inside. Sometimes church ain't about us. Now does God speak to us and give us something when we're here? I believe it, absolutely. Absolutely, every Sunday, let's have open hearts, open minds, open souls. But sometimes coming to church and getting your butt out of bed in the morning, say it in the most lovingly way, it's not about you. Sometimes it's for the person here at church. I've had those Sundays, guys. I'm the one in charge, I'm probably not supposed to say that. I've had those Sundays where I wake up and I'm like, "God, I'm tired." And you know what happens? and I have a conversation that blows my mind. And God goes, "That's why you got out of bed this morning. "It's not about you, Chris. "It's about me.”

The final thing we see, this truth, is there will always be victory in Jesus. No matter what happens, we have victory in Jesus, either this side of heaven or the other. Christ has overcome. David knew that. David knew that. David understood that. David saw that. And so I honestly, I see his prayer at the end of 86 here, and I don't think he cares if he lives or he dies. He just wants people to see God. Wow. Why? Because he knows there's always victory in Jesus. Verse 5, "You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you." We know that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. It says right there in Romans 10, 13, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." So my question for you today is have you called on the name of the Lord? Have you truly, with your heart and your soul, called on the name of the Lord? And if you haven't, right now you can bow your head, you can pray, you can say, "Jesus, I need you. I'm sorry for trying to figure this all out on my own. I've messed up. I've sinned. I need your grace and your mercy and your love to come into my make me right, and I need your saving and redemption, and your perfect, perfect love for eternity. It's that simple. Doesn't have to be complex. And if you make that decision, if that's something you're doing today, or you've done recently, or you wanna have a little bit more conversation, see Pastor Andre or myself, please, he was the good looking guy up here earlier, please talk to him. Talk to myself. Talk to anybody who got a green name badge. They'll find us. I promise. We want you to know that. I love this psalm. It's just a powerful example of prayer and praise united together. That no matter what we're going through, no matter where we are, we can give praise to God. God has offered this incredible gift to each of us when he died on the cross. That the saving isn't not only for our enemies, but it's also saving from us and ourselves. Just because you've called on Jesus, you've prayed the prayer, doesn't mean it's life's daisies and roses and unicorns. There's still gonna be bad days. David, one of the people on earth who walked so closely with God, still had those days. We're going to have those days.

But the question becomes for us, how do we need to increase our praise? I think each of us probably has maybe an idea of what that might look like. Maybe it's coming to church when we don't feel like it. Maybe it's putting worship music on when we just feel like, "Buh." Maybe it's praying for our enemies. Maybe it's just trusting in God deeper, that God's got it under control, that we don't have to fix it. I like to fix it. I'm a fix-it guy. I fixed a chair, a reclining chair in a microwave yesterday. I feel like a boss. Only cut two of my fingers. Sometimes we just need to just trust in God and just let him fix it, rather than us try to make a bigger mess out of it, right? 'Cause that usually what happens, let's be honest. Just gotta trust in him. This isn't a natural flow for us, praise in tough times, right? We're reactionary. We don't take the right action of praising God. It's a habit a rhythm that has to be learned and Then it'll begin to more naturally flow from our lives Something you have to work on be reminded about kind of practice it just doesn't happen and to another question.

How will your praise be a witness to others I first wrote this, I was typing this out. I was like, how can your praise be a witness? I was like, no, there's too much space in there for maybe if not. We're called to be witnesses. And a big portion of our witnessing to others should be in how we give praise to God, no matter what's happening. So how will your praise be a witness to others in your life? Maybe it's your family. Maybe it's that neighbor that just, ooh, that neighbor. We all have them, right? Maybe not, I hope you don't. I've got a couple of those. How will we actively think about giving praise to God as a witness to others? David sets an incredible example for us. In this way of giving praise, even the midst of what's going on, he's pointing to Jesus. Say that's why I'm here. That's why I exist. This is my calling. This is my purpose. David says to give praise to you God, no matter what's going on around me. May we be a people that give praise no matter what.

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you, God, for your servant David, for his word and his example for us. Jesus, I pray that you would speak to our hearts today. God, you know who's heard this in this space. God, we know who's heard this online. Maybe listen to the podcast later this week, Jesus, that they would hear the words of your servant David and his praise that was given no matter what. Whether you rescued him or you didn't rescue him, he gave you praise. So, Jesus, I pray that we would be in the same heart, in the same mindset, same rhythm as David to give you the praise no no matter what's happening in life. God, we've... We're in the midst of some hard times. Different things happening in life. Grief, loss, struggle, financial burdens, loss of jobs, unknown future, pain, physical pain, hurt, emotional brokenness, relationships, disasters. God, I pray that that wouldn't stop our praise. I pray that our hearts would still eke and groan the praises of you, God. And that in that we may be a witness to those in our lives, maybe people we don't even know are watching us, might see us and go, "There's something different about them." They shouldn't be happy right now. They shouldn't be giving praise. They shouldn't be worshiping. They should have walked away from the church by now. They should be so angry at God and yet they're still there giving praise to you. God, may our praise be amplified in community worship. May we make it a priority to be here each and every Sunday, community groups, different events. God, to give you praise and glory in our community. God, help those around us to lift us up, to hold us up. That we know we won't be there forever, but then we may be able to share with others when they are going through similar situations, how you, God, saved us and pulled us through. Jesus, may we just be an incredible witness of praise and honor and glory to you, Jesus. We love you. We thank you. Everybody said, amen. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 9

Psalm 67 - God's Blessings For All Nations

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

For those of you who have done missions work and served various people groups, you know what it's like to see God's work around the world. And for me, one of the greatest takeaways that I've taken from missions trips that I've been on, aside from just appreciating different cultures and a reminder of just how big the world is and how different people are, is you spend time with believers overseas and you see so clearly that God has a heart for everyone around the world. They may live life differently, their day to day may be different, they may go through different challenges and different struggles, but when you get the chance to praise God alongside them and serve God alongside them, it's amazing, and it really is a taste of a world where God's reign and lordship is perfectly recognized and desired, it's a taste of, it's a glimpse of heaven, being with people from all around the world, praising God. It's what scripture foreshadows over and over and over again, a time and a place where all voices, people of every tongue, are praising God for being Lord over all. And today we're gonna be in one of those scriptures that talks about that.

So if you wanna turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 67, I'm gonna go ahead and read this passage. You can follow along on the screen. It says, "May God be gracious to us and bless us "and make his face shine on us, "so that your ways may be known on earth, "your salvation among all nations. "May the peoples praise you, God. "May all the peoples praise you. "May the nations be glad and sing for joy. "For you rule the peoples with equity "and guide the nations of the earth. "May the peoples praise you, God. "May all the peoples praise you. "The land yields its harvest. "God, our God blesses us. "May God bless us still so that all the ends of the earth "will fear him." Theologians say that this psalm, no other psalm captures more clearly and simply the grand vision that God is the God of all people and nations, that he wants all of them to embrace him, and that he wants his own people to mediate that blessing to the nations. This psalm sums up what has been God's heart from the very beginning. From before creation began, God's desires that the entire world, all of humanity, know and love him. But as we know, sin entered the world and drove a wedge between humanity and God. And then a plan was formed. And instead of doing everything all by himself, he provides opportunity and prefers that his own people partner with him in carrying out this mission to rescue people for him. This morning, as we continue in this Psalm, I want us to have the image of concentric circles and God's blessing and love starting from this epicenter of him. And as time goes on and through the work of his people, his love spreads farther and farther and farther out. That's what he had in mind. When he invites his people to partner with him, that their influence and work would make waves in this world for his kingdom.

We see this plan and heart reiterated throughout scripture, specifically through various covenants that God makes with his people. God had a rescue plan and he wanted his people to know of his plan and to keep hope and to keep faith, knowing that it's gonna take time, but I am doing something and I'm saving my people. One of the first covenants was with Abraham in Genesis 12. He says, "I will make you into a great nation," speaking to Abraham, "I will bless you, "I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. "I will bless those who bless you, "and whoever curses you, I will curse, "and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." speaking about his descendants of Israel, and even farther down to Jesus himself. Again, think of those concentric circles. He then continues that promise generations later with Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19, when he says that Israel is gonna make them a kingdom of priests. The nation of Israel itself as a whole will function as intermediaries, as examples of holy righteous living between God and the rest of the nations. And then in the New Testament, Paul will again repeat God's heart in Romans one when he says, through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name's sake. So throughout scripture, we see God's heart is for all people to know him. And because we strive to have a heart like Yahweh, we also should have a heart to see all people come to know him. And this Psalm speaks to that heart. We see in verses one through two, the people asking for God's blessing. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. They are asking for God's blessing. The first part is taken almost word for word from Numbers, the book of Numbers, one of the oldest poems in the Bible, where God gives the priests of Israel a blessing to speak over the nation. And while it's short and beautiful, it can be easy to take for granted the complexity and profound meaning of this poem. This blessing back in Numbers is linked to regulations of purifying camp. We have to remember that at this time, Israel is in the desert, having escaped Egypt by God's power and is heading towards the promised land. And God is making them into a nation. They're new to this. They're like, we've never been a nation before. We've just been in slavery. And so God gives them guidelines and directions of how to be a people. And this blessing, this poem, reminds them of their purpose, to be a light to the world, that they are holy and separated for God. This blessing invokes God's protection on his people. shows that God's permanent purpose is to bless the earth.

There's a phrase here that I love, the Psalmist beautifully write, "Make his face shine on us." Today, in today's culture, we miss out on the context. If we were living where we had kings and we would have to ever make an appearance in front of a king, there was a lot of power that that king held. And if you were to walk into that room and the king would not look you in the face, it would mean that you don't have the king's favor. And you're facing some kind of punishment, possibly even death. But if the king were to lift his head and look at you, then you knew that the king's favor was upon you. And that you would even possibly have blessing. So the people are asking that God look at them, bless them, God, we want your favor. They're likening God to light, shining mercifully and powerfully on the people. 'Cause when God smiles on his people, they can be sure that he will be gracious to them. He will deliver them from their troubles. He will answer their prayers and he will save them from their sickness, from their enemies, and from their sin. So we pray that same prayer today. We sing that same song. We desire for God's face to shine on us and we ask for his blessing, not just for us, but for the entire world. Verses three through five, we see the people envisioning God's blessing over all the world. May the people praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. We see a peoples whose heart are aligned with God, desiring that all the world know who God is and to have saving faith in him.

What the psalmist right here is also what John sees in Revelations, describing what he sees from people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, praising God. And what unites everyone is their love for God and being under his reign, that God is their king. And we see the psalmist acknowledge that only God can rule justly. Only God can perfectly reign with complete fairness and guide the nations to peace and prosperity. Again, think of those concentric circles. God blesses his people. His people represent him and bring others to God. Others come to know him and are blessed by God. And they in turn represent God and bring more people to him. And more and more as more people are blessed by him and experience God's love and salvation and realize God's lone ability to rule perfectly, they are led to praise God. In Hebrew, when things are repeated, it means it's very important. And so we see in this little section here, may the peoples praise you, may all the peoples praise you, God. God is repeated because he is the only one who can do this. And may all the peoples praise you is repeated because that is the most important and primary response that we have to receiving God's love and being under his rule is to praise him. So we see them praise him for who he is and what he does. In the last couple of verses, we see the people recognize God's blessing. It says, "The land yields its harvest, God. "Our God blesses us. "May God bless us still "so that all the ends of the earth will fear him." There is evidence that God does bless his people, and it's abundant. Israel was an agricultural people and so the abundance of food being such a clear, it was such a clear sign of blessing. Think of the Promised Land, what they're heading to in Exodus and as Israel's, they know that it's a land flowing with milk and honey. Now growing up in the church, I literally thought that it was like lava, like there's honey is flowing in the land and milk is like there's rivers of milk. And then as some time it clicked, I was like, oh, it's just a land full of lots of cows and bees. It's just tons of cows and bees and it's amazing. and it's great and God is plentiful there.

We're reminded throughout scripture that God blesses his people in small and in vast ways. And on the most basic level, we know that he sustains the very world itself. It says in Acts 17, "Life and breath and everything, Yahweh holds it together." These last couple verses are also a promise of better things to come. One scholar writes, "This psalm encourages us to pray, 'Let God who brings much out of little and distributes it in love bring such blessing on us as to make us in our turn the blessing of the world.'" Again, those concentric circles. You got to realize that you are a part of that. Somewhere along the line, God reached you, and he wants to bless you, and he wants you in turn to bring other people to him so he can bless them. This is a part of God's plan, part of his rescue plan to save the world. And we have the chance to partner with God as he brings salvation. This is why missions are so important. We can partner with God here and abroad around the world. Jesus commands his followers, which includes you. And really it's a command, but it's also an invitation. He says, as Vivek mentioned in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." This is Jesus speaking. "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you, and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Repeated throughout Scripture over and over and over again is God's heart for the nations. And what we read this morning in Psalms was meant to be sung, was meant to be a blessing over Israel that serves as a reminder of who God is and what He does and therefore who we are and what we are to do.

So as we close today, I just have one question for you to consider this week. How is God inviting you to partner in His kingdom work around the world? How is God inviting you to partner in His kingdom work around the world? I'm going to give you a couple numbers here. There are 195 countries in the world. There are 17,281 people groups. 7,000 of them are unreached. There are also 7,000 languages spoken in the world, also not spoken, including sign language. God has a heart for all of them. To hear his truth, hopefully in their native tongue, and to be rescued from sin and death. So have those people in mind as you hear that invitation by Jesus and the great commission to join in Yahweh's rescue plan, how can you get involved? Are you able to give your time? Are you able to give your resources? Are you able to actually go abroad and serve and meet these people and bring Jesus to them? Great thing about living here in America is that they're here too. Are you able to just go outside in your neighborhood in the city and meet them and bring Jesus to them. And can you pray for them? Will you pray for them? How are you going to be a part of the outward movement of those concentrant circles of God's kingdom? God wants your participation in the glorious redemptive work that he's doing. And so will you join?

Would you guys pray with me? God, thank you for sending your son, for rescuing us. And for the fact that we have your scriptures to show us that that's been your plan all along. You've been working that plan and that plan is still ongoing to rescue people from their sin. And God, thank you for that invitation that we could join you in that by prayer, through resource, through giving our resources, whatever it may be. But I gotta pray that through your spirit you would speak to us, you would guide us in how we can work with you to spread your kingdom. to have other people know you. We wanna be a blessing to others. We've surely received your blessing and we wanna give you all the praise and in turn, we wanna turn around and bring people to you. So guide us through your spirit how to do that. In our day-to-day lives, who to partner with to do that all around the world. Thank you God for reaching us, for saving us. We love you God, we give this to you. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 8

Psalm 63 - A Longing That Leads to Confidence

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I've been learning recently more and more about parenting, which is just, I think the de facto state of mind that I have as she grows up, I'm learning more and more. But one thing I'm learning is I really want her to know, I have one daughter by the way if you don't know, she's five years old, I want her to know how capable she is. I think some kids are out there and they just are more confident than others and so maybe parents are saying more like, "Hey, they're trying to bring them back, rein them in a little bit, those kids are fearless and they just go with it and they're just, it's fun for them." Our kids a little different, she's a little more timid and I find myself often saying like, "You can do it, you go ahead, like try it out, and and she has to be given that confidence. And so I'm sure you can remember a time where you you did more than you initially thought you could, and the kind of accomplishment that you feel, and the surprise that you might have felt like, "Oh my goodness, I did do that. That's great. I was capable. I didn't know." Sometimes that happens in fun situations. Lauren, Pastor Lauren and I have had the privilege this summer to take the youth students on a couple outings where we students or leaders are finding out that we're capable of doing more. So we did high ropes course a couple weeks ago or last month up in Tahoe and you're 60 or 70 feet up in a tree walking across a wire you're harnessed in. Don't worry we didn't is all safe and everyone came back alive and uninjured. But it was terrifying and students are learning on the fly in that tree I can do this and they don't think they can but then they once one step at time and they're able to. This past Monday we went to Six Flags as a youth and I learned, this was my lesson, that I can do roller coasters. I do not like roller coasters. I've never liked roller coasters. Becky will attest that I am the one that says I'll stay I'll stay back with Kinsley. You guys go and do that fun stuff. I'll stay on the ground with two feet. But high school students are different and there's a pressure that they put on you and I feel like I couldn't say no and so I found out that I was able to and it was fun. There I won't go back and do them all ever again. There's maybe one I'll do again. But it was a great time, but I found out that I was more capable than I initially thought. And so sometimes, again, we learn that we're capable in fun scenarios. Other times, we learn that we're able to do more in difficult situations. Sometimes in the midst of pain and suffering and loss, on the onset of that tragedy or that sorrow, we think we can't do this. I can't go on, I'm not gonna be able to make it. I don't wanna go through this situation. And yet, we do. Those feelings are very real, the thoughts of I can't do it, I can't make it. But by God's grace and by his provision and through the Holy Spirit sustaining us, we're able to do more than we initially thought we could. And through the power and mercy of God, we're able to move forward, to get through a moment after moment after moment, day after day, turns into weeks after weeks, months after months, and God has helped us get through so much of life in the midst of challenges or after something happens.

And as that, as God does that and as God sustains us, it builds a confidence that we can have. That out of something so challenging and so hard, out of lament, God can help and can make us stronger, can make something beautiful happen or can help us learn something beautiful. But that initial moment seems hopeless and we're left wondering, can I do this? I know we've all gone through a situation like that, some of us more recent than others, maybe some of us are in that right now. We're gonna talk today about what to do moments like these and why our soul should pray and yearn for God in these experiences. We're in a Summer of Psalms series and again the purpose of Psalms is this massive invitation to pray and commune with God in any situation that you're going through. The book of Psalms served as the prayer book for Israel and many Christians even today still pray through a Psalm a day. The scholars over at Bible Project, they say this, it says, "Hoping for the Messianic Kingdom, as the book teaches us to do, will create a lot of tension as we look at the tragic state of our world and our own lives. The Psalms teach us to neither ignore pain nor to let it determine the meaning of our lives. Biblical faith and prayer is always forward-looking, anticipating the day when God will fulfill his promises and praising him for this ahead of time. The Torah and Messiah lament and praise faith and hope this is what the book of Psalms is all about. So one of our focuses this summer as we go through Psalms is to develop healthy biblical God-honoring rhythms in our lives to help us in these moments of tension that we face. And today we're going to focus on a rhythm of longing for God in the good times and the bad. Because when we have this rhythm of longing for God present in our lives, we can do more than we think we can. David, the author of our Psalm today, learned this firsthand and from a few experiences. He writes about it on multiple occasions and there are several Psalms where he is longing for God out of desperation.

So David teaches us how to have a rhythm of longing for God that leads to a confidence in God. Before we get to reading our psalm, we're gonna be in Psalm 63 today. I want to explain what David is going through as he writes this because it's a lot. This could, this, it's not found in Psalm 63. So if you're trying to read, it's not there. It's somewhere else in the Bible and I'm gonna tell you all about it. But it could be a movie, this what David's going through, and it would not be rated PG. It would be an epic. It'd be worth watching because it's from the Bible. But it would, there's a lot of, a lot of tension in here. So, buckle up for this. All right, David is king at this time and he's king over Israel. We know that David isn't perfect, which is why we love him, right? He's relatable. He's king and he's the man with the heart after God, but he also messes up and his messy life is comforting to us because our lives are messy. So David is king and he has three sons at this time. Amnon, Kiliab, and Absalom, as well as a daughter Tamar. And at some point in life, Kiliab dies. And so he's left with his oldest Amnon, the youngest Absalom, and Tamar the sister. Now, Amnon, the oldest, commits an awful atrocity against his own sister, and it leaves the family very divided, and King David knows, the brothers, and everyone knows, and it's awful, and Absalom takes in Tamar after that tragedy, and says, "You can stay with me," and never speaks to Amnon again. He's just so mad and fed up with what happened. He's like, "I'm done with you." Two years go by and this is festering in Absalom. He's getting, he's still angry, hasn't talked to his brother, and ends up killing his brother Amnon over this issue. After he kills him, he flees. He's like, "I don't want to face the consequences of my actions." So I, he leaves. Absalom leaves and he's gone for three years. It's a long time. And during this time, we know that David is longing to see his son. David, we have to reckon, there's so much happening in his eyes. His own, in his own family, his oldest brother did something wrong to his daughter, or yeah, the oldest son did something wrong to the daughter, and then his other son killed his son, and now he's just left with Absalom, who is fled out of the country, and a daughter who's been hurt. So David has got, he still wants, I mean, he's mad, but he also doesn't want his son to be gone. So he's processing all these emotions and finally he says to his most trusted man Joab, Joab can you go get my son back, bring him back. So Joab brings Absalom back to the royal residence, the palace, and he's there for Absalom, he's back for two years, but he doesn't see David. So he's back, I don't, again this is a lot of tension here in this family, so he's back in the house but they're not talking and they're not seeing each other. And it's like that for two years.

So he's gone for three years, fled, comes back. He's living in the same palace as David, but has not seen his father or the king for two years. And finally, Absalom wants to do something about it. And so he goes to Joab, who David's most trusted man, says, "Joab, can you arrange where I could see the king/my father?" Absalom sent a messenger. He didn't do this himself, he's kind of above that royalty life. And Joab doesn't respond. So Absalom sends another messenger, says, "Hey, I would like a meeting with my father/the king." And Joab doesn't respond. So then Absalom does what anyone would do. He lights Joab's field on fire. And he says, "Will you answer me now?" And Joab comes out of his house, and he's like, "Why'd you do that?" And Absalom says, "You weren't texting me back. You didn't say anything." I needed to know if I wanted to go see my dad. And so Joab arranges it, and so after five years of Absalom and David not talking to each other, not seeing each other, they meet. And Absalom bows before David, and David embraces him. But soon after that, it was not a happy ending. That was not the end of the story. During this time, while Absalom is away, while he's fled and then while he's in the palace, not seeing his dad, something has stirred within him and has grown inside of him and it's the desire for him to be king. And so soon after he's welcomed back, Absalom begins to incite rebellion among the people and turn people's hearts from honoring and seeing David as king to, wouldn't it be nice if I was the king, people? Wouldn't it be better if I was king? And if you're noticing, this sounds familiar, This is a common thread of sin throughout the Bible of, that's what God wants, but wouldn't this be better if I had it my way? And also, if you're getting tones of prodigal son, the first half of the story, it's very much it where Absalom the son says, I want my inheritance. He was gonna be king after David, but he wants it now. And he's thinking, it doesn't matter if it means treating my father like he's dead. I want what I want and I want it now. So rather than quelling the rebellion and killing his own son, King David leaves the royal city, and he heads into the wilderness. And he brings his entourage, his royal, his faithful men, and he keeps to make some arrangements to keep up to date. And he's like, "I'm heading out, but you messenger, just keep me up with what's going on with Absalom, what he's doing.”

And And David leaves. And he's gone through something similar before, having fled Saul and heading into the wilderness, having been said that you are going to be king, you're not king yet, back when he was doing this with Saul. And so this is a familiar thing for David, to be heading out into the wilderness, to trust God, saying this is getting pretty crazy, and I'm gonna go out here, and I'm gonna have to depend on you and wait on you as you figure this out, God, because I don't wanna have to do what may have to be done. I don't wanna have to kill my son. I don't wanna have to go through this whole rebellion, so I'm gonna come out here into the wilderness and I'm gonna rely on you. Absalom makes this royal procession through the city now that his father's left and he says, I'm king. It's me now, guys. And he assumes his father's throne. He does some other terrible things to convey that he is king. Again, it would not be rated PG. But meanwhile, in the desert, Yahweh ensures that the needs of David and his entourage are met, so God is sustaining David, and this is the point where Psalm 63 is written. David's out in the wilderness with his men, Absalom is king, and nothing has gone well. Now I'm gonna finish the story just so we know how it ends, but our Psalm is just in this moment.

But in case you don't know the story, Absalom realizes that to seize full control over king, he will have to kill his father David. And so they go to battle and God gives David the victory. And in that battle, Absalom dies. And David comes back to Israel with every emotion that you can think of. It's not that he didn't want to be king. I'm sure there was joy in the fact that he gets to be king again or recognized as king. But he also lost his children. He lost his sons. So there's so much tension and and grief and emotion in David's life. And I wanna come back to that quote from Bible Project where it says that Psalms teach us to neither ignore pain nor to let it determine the meaning of our lives. But in that tension, to find God, to be with God. And so we wanna talk about having that rhythm of turning to God. And again, we'll see in David's longing in the wilderness, he develops a confidence in Yahweh. So now, with all that in mind, let's go ahead and read Psalm 63. You guys can follow along as I read aloud. It says, "You, God, are my God. "Earnestly I seek You, I thirst for You. "My whole being longs for You "in a dry and parched land where there is no water. "I have seen You in the sanctuary "and beheld Your power and Your glory. "Your love is better than life. "my lips will glorify you. "I will praise you as long as I live, "and in your name I will lift up my hands. "I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods. "With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. "On my bed I remember you. "I think of you through the watches of the night. "Because you are my help, "I sing in the shadow of your wings. "I cling to you. "Your right hand upholds me. "Those who want to kill me will be destroyed. "They will go down to the depths of the earth. "They will be given over to the sword "and become food for jackals. "But the king will rejoice in God. "All who swear by God will glory in him "while the mouths of liars will be silenced." David went through a lot.

I think sometimes when we read a psalm and we know that there's categories of praise psalms and lament psalms, and we just think it's just lament or it's just praise, and sometimes that's the case, but there's other psalms that it's got a little bit of everything. There's some praise, there's some lament. And I think this is one of those where there's a lot of emotion here. And now understanding the story of what David is going through, we understand where there is joy in Yahweh, there's also mourning over what's happening around him. So I wanna go line by line and see David's longing for God and how it leads to confidence in God. Verse one says, "You, God, are my God." David begins by affirming his relationship in God. With all that's going, I'm sure, I'm projecting a little bit, but I'm sure David has his own frustrations, being back out in the desert. God already did this one time with Saul. Now I'm back here again. I am the king, why am I not on my throne? Why is this happening to my family? Why can't my son be like those other good Israelite sons? Why is he trying to kill me? Thankful to not have that thought. He says, earnestly I seek you. "I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you "in a dry and parched land where there is no water." I mean, you can imagine him out in the wilderness. He's using the physical setting around him to say, "This is what I know what it's like to thirst, God. "I'm living it right now, and that's how I feel about you." Have you ever been in a hot, dry place with no water for a long time? Longed for your thirst to be quenched? I not like David. This story is not at all like David, but it's just small.

I was thirsty one time. Okay, I was in Boy Scouts long ago and we went to, it was advertised, my Boy Scout troop, we're going on a five mile hike. It was a great five mile, we all packed for a five mile hike. Well, around mile 10, we're wondering, we're not bad. It's supposed to be a loop. We're farther away than we've ever been, and it doesn't look like we're going back. And we all ran out of water. And I don't remember where we were, somewhere here in the foothills. But we're far away. We started at Folsom Lake. We were far away from the lake. And so there is no water out here. It's hot. It's a summer day. And all of us, we've all shared water. And we're just out of water. And we were all so thirsty. And it must have been like 10, 11 years old. And I remember heading back, we finally, someone figured out, one of our troop leaders figured out where we're supposed to be going. We saw civilization again because we started being behind people's houses. And we saw, we're on the fence line, just heading back to a parking lot. And we're Boy Scouts, so we're, you know, very honor, Scout's honor, we're great. But all of us had never been more tempted to just jump someone's fence, grab a hose, and just like guzzle down as much water as we could. And they had all the fences where you can see through. It's just like the bars like that out there. And we're just like, there's a hose. There's a hose. There's a hose. That sprinkler's on. And we're just like, we're thirsting for water. And so that's like, we got water, and we were fine. Nothing happened. No one had to go to the hospital.

So I don't even have an experience of being dehydrated to the point of hurting. But I see David's words here, I thirst for you. And it brings me back to that point of like, that was one of the thirstiest times I've ever been. And he's saying that physical feeling of thirst, that's what he has inside for God. David is longing to be in God's presence. Because we have to remember that God's presence was tied with the temple back in the city. David's palace was in the city, and in the same city was the temple, the tabernacle. God's presence was, and so he's far, he's out in the wilderness now, and he's like, I'm no longer near you, God. I wanna be near you again. Verse two says, "I've seen you in the sanctuary "and beheld your power and your glory." David's writing from, he's like, "I know what you're like, God. "I've been near your presence." And he knows that nothing is of greater worth. And so the message to us today is, if you are in the good times now, then take note. Be present, remember what this is like. Take to heart what being in a good place in life, in a good stage of life with God is like. So that you have a foundational memory so that you can be when you're in the wilderness, when you're going through something hard, you can, these words will be true for you too. God, I know what it's like to be near you in the good times. I know what you're like when life is good, when you've blessed me. I witness and experience your presence, your power, your provision, and I've beheld your glory, God. We want that to be our prayer. So take inventory, take mental note. Remember what it's like to be in God's presence.

Verse three says, "Because your love is better than life, "my lips will glorify you." Because your love is better than life. This word that David uses for love is the Hebrew word hesed. It means steadfast love, faithfulness, loyalty. It's a love that is merciful and kind, yet covenantally attached to people. It's an essential part of God's character. It's the word that God uses in describing himself to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. It says, "Moses, I am," and he uses the word hesed. It's a covenantal love. God remaining faithful to Israel despite everything that Israel does to rebel against him. It also speaks to God's mercy. When Moses appealed to God to pardon the sins of the people, he appeals to God's hesed. When Israel confesses their sins to Nehemiah, they remember that God did not forsake the people in the desert because God abounds in hesed. John Berry, a theologian, points out that hesed is a characteristic that God desires of his people. It's something that in Hosea he desires over sacrifice. He desires us to have hesed. Zechariah instructs the people to show hesed to one another. Micah explains that God requires justice, hesed, and humility. The psalmist shows that God takes pleasure in those who trust in his hesed, his covenantal love. Proverbs often encourages hesed along with wisdom. God's hesed, his covenantal love, is so important, so vital, so primary to who God is. And David understands that God's hesed is better than life itself.

David shows confidence in God by trusting in God's hesed and it leads David to praise. says in verse four, "I will praise you as long as I live, "and in your name I will lift my hands." David's confidence in God's steadfast love leads him to worship, and not just for a moment. Not just, hey, I had this moment in the wilderness and it looked really beautiful and I thought of you, and I'm just gonna praise you right now, God. I mean, he's out there for a long time, and through it all, he is praising God. Our praise and worship of God shouldn't be temporary or momentary, but it should be ever-present in our lives, no matter what's happening. And really, if we think about it, as believers, we're going to be praising God for the rest of our lives into eternity with Him in heaven. And that holy perspective is beautiful, and it should bring hope and courage to whatever situation you're going through. that the praises that you're singing in the hardest of times will be the same praises that you're gonna say when you're with God in his presence in heaven. And that perspective is only possible having been loved by God and received his mercy and grace. And once you have received, once you've felt God's love and you've received his mercy and grace, there is no other response than to praise him, to give him your worship. We wanna be able to look at the present, however difficult, and also look forward and realize that God is worth praising now and in the future. We wanna have a posture and a rhythm of praising God during all times, just as David did.

Says in verse five, "I will be fully satisfied "as with the richest of foods, "with singing lips, my mouth will praise you." This now contrasts with his current situation. He's in the desert with limited food and resources, but he's saying, "I'm gonna praise you "as if I had all the food and the best food "like I did when I was king back at the palace." Also, good food and singing, this sounds like a party, right? These are key elements of a great party. And David's saying, by the way, God loves parties. There's a lot of parties and celebrations in the Bible. It's also why we have rhythms of family meals and morning blends, 'cause we wanna have that too. It's good times with each other, celebrating what God is doing. And so he's saying, this is, I'm in the desert right now, but I still have reason, still have reason to praise you. Just like I do when we have these big celebrations. David is recognizing a truth that we might say, but given his circumstances, he is living it. And that is that God is all he needs. We say that sometimes, like God is all I need. But then, you know, you go on a 10 mile hike, you're like, I also really need water right now, along with God. But he's saying out in the wilderness, God is truly all that I need. Because God will provide for any of my physical needs, my spiritual needs, my emotional needs, God will provide for everything. Even when we don't necessarily have it right before us, in front of us, we can trust that God will provide.

Verses six through seven read, on my bed I remember you, I think of you through the watches of the night, because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. Again, this is just reflecting a situation. His entourage are on the run, so they have night shifts, making sure that no one's coming after them. And he's saying, even in those moments, full of stress, moments of anxiety, God, I'm praising you, and I can sing about you. He's comforted by remembering God's faithful protection.

Verse eight, it says, "I cling to you, "your right hand upholds me." And this is speaking to God's power and authority. This is speaking to God's power as creator and the savior. David knows that the only one who can save him is God. And being at the right hand always speaks to the power of the leader, it symbolizes power. And so you think of another passage in the Bible that talks about the right hand of God is in the New Testament when the disciples are arguing, hey, who's gonna be at your right hand, Jesus? We wanna be at your right hand. And so we just know that being at the right hand or God's using of his right hand with you means you're in a good place. You are experiencing his power and his authority.

Verses nine through 10 read, "Those who want to kill me will be destroyed. "They will go down to the depths of the earth. "They will be given over to the sword "and become food for jackals." If we didn't know the background of the story, we may think, yeah, David's enemies, you're gonna die. Terrible, and we're just like, we're so Team David when we read Psalms. Like, yeah, David's mad at someone, we're all so mad at them. But this is David's son. He's writing this about his own son. And I, honestly, I can't begin to fathom the tension that David's writing this with. That he's recognizing that God, God is the one who's gonna exercise his justice. He's confident that God will deliver him and destroy his enemies. And he writes, "Those who are eager to the sword," His own son. And I think, he thinks back to his time with Saul, who's also in this mindset of being power hungry and selfish and no longer walking with God. And he knows, he knows from Saul, he's like, "Son, if you are gonna continue down this path, "it will lead to your death." That mix of emotion, the tension in this verse, the heart of David. Confidence in God and yet sorrow and mourning for what it may mean for his own kin. And maybe you've experienced something similar with a friend or a loved one where they are going down a path that will lead to their destruction. And you have confidence in God's truth and the fact that God will have judgment and will uphold the consequences of their sin. And yet at the same time, your heart is breaking for that person. It's more complex than that, but we recognize that God is still God in the worst situations, even with people that we love. And even when it means that, yeah, they're going into something that may lead to their death. God is still God. He ends in verse 11 by writing, "But the king will rejoice in God. "who swear by God will glory in him "while the mouths of liars will be silenced." David is saying, "I'm the king, and I will rejoice in God." By destroying the wicked, God protects his people and his anointed. Remember the context of Absalom lying to the nation saying that he's king. So David's saying, "The liars are gonna be silenced." But David recognizes that God will do the silencing. He doesn't have to do anything. This is in God's hands. God will take care of it. I think that tells us that we don't have to worry about the judgment coming for those who are doing wrong against us or against God. God will take care of that. He is more than capable. He has the authority and the right to handle those situations. And in the midst of that we can rejoice and praise God.

So at the end of our Psalm, Psalm 63, we see David in his longing to be with God, to be in God's presence. He's also led to a confidence in God in what God can do and what God will do. And again, it's a psalm that comes from deep inner turmoil, psalm of David that was a personal journey of reaching for God, expressing deep, deep longing, and David exercising a necessary rhythm of longing for God that lands him in a place of confidence in his Savior. And so as we end our time this morning, I want us to consider our own rhythms, Especially the rhythms that we have once we enter into seasons of struggle, of being in the wilderness, of pain and sorrow. And it wants to contemplate how can our own rhythms be improved. So number one, first thing, encouragement to us all. First rhythm is to long for God daily. Do not wait for the bad times to come, to start longing for God. It's important to have a daily rhythm of longing for God. If you think of it like a muscle, right? If we expect to just, or sometimes we find ourselves in the wilderness, but we haven't been longing for God, and so how to do that is foreign to us. You haven't used that muscle in a while. If we stay consistent with longing for God, when the bad times come, we'll know exactly what to do. We know how to long for Him. We need to be in a regular place and have a posture where we are desperately in need of Him. and we need to know what it means to truly depend on him. One of the best ways to do this, you're not gonna like it, is to fast. Yeah, I know, it's tough. I struggle with it, I don't like fasting. We did a community group on fasting recently, and it is annoying at times to go without food and to do that regularly, but it is so good to be in a regular position of struggle and to have to rely on him. even if just for a few hours of a day where you're really hungry, if your attention is turned to Him in that moment, you build up this reaction of as soon as something causes tension in your life, you turn right to God. God, I need you right now. I need you to get me through this. I need you to sustain me. And so from that spiritual practice of fasting, that rhythm in our lives, we'll be more ready to long for God in the worst seasons of life because we have exercised that spiritual muscle. So long for God daily. I would encourage you to think about fasting for him regularly. Not every day, if you don't want to, maybe just once a week. If you want to talk more about fasting, come see me afterwards. We can talk about maybe doing it together, because I'm struggling with it right now.

Number two, waiting on God, another rhythm that we should have. David shows incredible patience and trust in God by going out to the wilderness and saying, "God, I need you to help me with this." He could have taken things into his own hands, killed his own son and said, "I don't want to deal with this anymore. I'll take care of it." We need to have a rhythm of waiting for God. So often we're quick to take matters into our own hands, to take control, to trust in our own strength. We have to be more like David, where we need to wait on God to see if God will affect the situation, change people's hearts, convict others, and transform other people. But waiting is difficult. Ask any kid. Waiting is tough. It's really, we don't like to do it. As an adult, maybe we have more patience, maybe, but also we're just more capable of, you know, fixing whatever the situation was. I'm hungry, I can get my own snack. And so as adults, yeah, maybe we're more patient or maybe we just, we just take control. Waiting can be uncomfortable because it means you might be desperate at some point. We don't like being desperate. But here's what's great about being desperate with God. When we are desperate, it's when we are so aware of our limitations and the consequences of our limited strength or capacity. And in desperation, when we wait on God, we better appreciate God's provision, which He gives in His perfect timing. The Bible is full of people who have had to wait on God and who have been desperate for God to intervene.

Matthew Henry says this about people in hard situations. "As the sweetest of Paul's epistles "were those that bore, date out of prison, "so some of the sweetest of David's Psalms "were those that were penned as this one," Psalm 63, "was in the wilderness." In moments of desperation, God can bear such great fruit, can make something beautiful. So don't doubt that God might be doing something incredible in your waiting in difficult season. So have a regular rhythm of longing for God, of waiting on God, and lastly, desire God, not status. David, while on many levels, wanted to be king again. He's out in the desert, he's away from his palace, he probably wants like some nice food and all the things that come along with being king, But that's not what he seeks most. He didn't write a psalm of, "God, make my life better. God, restore me to where I should be and have everyone look at me again." No. He's desiring God and not his own status. What does it look like to long for God's presence without making personal demands alongside God's saving power? "God, can you make my life better by doing this and making me seem like this in people's eyes. I wanna make sure that people see me in a certain way. God, I've been in a rut. Bring me back to this level, whatever this was in your mind where God's doing great things. David's prayer isn't about being king again. His desire is for God. And this is hard for us because the world values status over God. Our work, whatever you are employed, probably values your status more than it does your relationship with God. We may value our status more than we worship, than we value God at times. And so it's tough when we're in a season where our status is compromised. It can be easy to want to get that status back. That can become the biggest need in our minds, but what we really need is to desire God first and foremost to long for his presence. And if we do this, we'll be in a place of confidence because our confidence is in the one, the only one who can save. So start these rhythms now, whether in a good season or in the midst of the toughest season you've ever been through, like David, long for him, wait on him, and desire him.

Let's go ahead and pray together. God, thank you for your word. Thank you for stories like this with David that teach us how to have a rhythm of longing for you. And I know that for everyone in this room, we can all relate to having moments in life that are so tough, where we don't think that we are capable of moving forward, of making it, of getting through whatever situation. But God, then we look to you, and it's not by our own strength, but it's by the strength that you give us, by the love that you provide, by the mercy and grace that we are able to continue. So we praise you for that. We recognize that we can't do it without you. God, I think of those in our church family who are going through very difficult situations, and we pray that you would sustain them in their season of wilderness right now. Your presence would be with them, that you would comfort them, bring them peace. And God, for those of us who are in the good times right now, I pray that that would bring us joy and that we would be able to encourage others. That we would lock this memory away and say, "I know what it's like to be in God's presence. I know what it's like to have a life that is good because of Him. God, we give you all the praise and all the glory. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 7

Psalm 133 - Church Unity in Christ

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Thanks for being here today. We are in our Summer of Psalms series. We're on week seven. We already had seven weeks of Psalms. And we have a handful more, but we are just really enjoying diving into these different Psalms. And the Psalms are ordered very intentionally in the Bible, but I kind of like that we're just jumping around and we get to, keeps us on our toes a little bit, but we get to explore these different topics and these different characteristics of God through prayer and poem and lament. And it's just a beautiful picture of the Bible and of the gospel. And so I'm really, I've been enjoying it and I hope you guys have too. Today, we are gonna be in Psalm 133. Super long guys, it's a whole three verses, okay? But actually what I would love for us to do to start us off is if we could all just stand, if you're able and read this Psalm together. Pastor Chris mentioned this is a psalm of ascent. This is something that was sung by the people. So stand with us, it'll be on the screens. You can look at it in your Bible if you would like, but it'll be on the screens. “How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew, ermine were falling on Mount Zion, for there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. Amen.”

You may have a seat. Now, if you're like me, you might say, oh, hey, that first verse, that was really good. I like that one. What is going on with the rest of this chapter? We need some context, all right? So we'll get there. But I promise this chapter is actually really, really rich when we dig into it and just so hang in there, stick with me here. But just kind of as a little aside, if you are in your own Bible study and you're reading something like this, and you're like, what are they talking about? It's okay. Dig a little deeper, take some time. I had to Google a lot, all right? I had to look at commentaries and dig further than what was just on the service. The Lord is good and the Holy Spirit can speak to you with just a Bible. I believe that it is alive and it is active. But if you do come across something that you hear, just like, I don't know, take some time, read some commentaries, look at some credible sources, look at maybe the original meaning, 'cause sometimes things get lost in translation as we get to English. But take some time. Studying the Bible is not reserved for pastors and Bible scholars. We do not have the market on this. You guys have so many resources. I just really encourage you to take that time. And even as you hear us talk on a scripture, go home that week and dig in for yourself. We want you to own your faith and your Bible study. So I encourage you to do that as you come across things that maybe aren't as clear or you're struggling with. The Lord is so good. And if you ask Him, He will respond. He will speak to you and meet you where you're at. So for a little context of our chapter today, this is, as mentioned, a song of ascent. there's 15 Psalm of Ascent or Song of Ascent in the Book of Psalms. And these were meant as pilgrim songs or praise songs that the Jews sang as they went into Jerusalem for the festivals throughout the year. And Jerusalem is actually on a hill. So they were literally ascending to Jerusalem. And some traditions even say that the priests would sing them as they ascended the steps into the temple as well. But this idea was that they were praising on their way to praise God. They were worshiping even before they got to the temple and as they were ascending up to Jerusalem. So there's a variety of authors of these. They weren't all necessarily written together or at the same time or even by the same people, but they have been compiled in the book of Psalms together. It's Psalms 120 through 134. Those are the Psalms of ascent. So we're gonna look at a little bit closer here at these, at Psalm 133.

So let's just look at the first verse. How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. Some other translations say how delightfully good when brothers and sisters live in harmony. Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It's good. It is a good thing when God's people live in harmony and unity with one another. We live in a world and a culture where people make money off of divisiveness. between headlines and clickbait, they thrive on dividing us. But we are called to unity. Now, this doesn't mean we're going to agree on everything. Right? The church is made up of unique individuals, different personalities, preferences. And I would argue that actually lends to the beauty of the body of God and to our unity. So that's not a problem to have differences. but it can create some friction at times. The Bible says that iron sharpens iron, meaning we make each other sharper and better. But what happens when you sharpen iron, you get some sparks sometimes, right? So sometimes there might be some sparks in the body of Christ, but we still are called to unity. And it is good. It says it right here. It is good and pleasant. Now verse two and three need a little bit more context. We need to dive in a little bit deeper what David is talking about here.

All right, so let's look at two. It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down on the collar of his robe. The purpose of oil in ancient times was often to welcome people into your home or into just to be welcoming. It was also meant to refresh or revive. It was a very dry climate, And so the oil literally helped to make you not so dried out. It was a welcoming act to anoint someone. And here, this particular verse is talking about Aaron, who was the first priest of the nation of Israel. He was the high priest. So when it's referring to the oil on Aaron, this was a special kind of oil. This was anointing oil. It represented holiness. It was used in atonement and sacrifices and to be put on the priest. And it was not to be replicated. It was unique, it was special. It was set aside or made holy for the purpose of the priest. So it is rare. And David here is comparing unity to this oil. Unity is precious and holy. The unity of the body of Christ is precious and holy. Theologian Charles Spurgeon said, "What a sacred thing must brotherly love be "when it can be likened to an oil "which must never be poured on any man "but on the Lord's high priest alone." That's how special it is. That's how important it is. It's different. It's set apart. It's holy. It's more than just getting along or putting up with each other. It's being unified in Christ. We also see here that unity is certainly good and pleasant.

We talked about that with verse one, but here David talks about the oil running down. And he says it three times, running down, running down and down. And the number three in the Bible is usually pretty significant. It gets your attention. It represents along with the number seven, perfection. And it wants you to know the importance or the certainty. It will happen. It is certain. And so this statement, it's validating, him repeating this is validating the claim that unity is good and pleasant. Certainly, for certain, unity of believers is good and pleasant. The oil is also really abundant. So we see that unity is an abundance from God. It talks about how the oil runs down from his head to his beard, to his collar. That's a lot of oil. (laughs) Right? And when we're talking about Aaron specifically, and the atoning oil and how special and rare it was, that would be a lot to use up of this really significant oil. But it is abundant, and it represents that it's a gift from God. So unity, it's an abundant gift from God. Lastly, unity is a sweet aroma. Have you all ever smelled essential oils, like pure essential oils? They're strong, right? They put off a strong scent. So imagine a drop of oil versus a covering of oil, literally dripping down. They would have smelled air and come in from miles away. Right? A couple of years ago, I think our scent, Oaks, is probably about two. I found, or I realized one of our essential oil bottles was missing. It's like finding a Sharpie without a cap on. It's a little nerve-wracking, you just never know what's happening. And so I'm like, "Okay, got to find this bottle of oils, we don't have oils, what's going on?" So I'm looking around the house, and I walk by one of the kids' rooms, and I smell it. And I'm like, "It's in there." So I go in, and I'm literally just sniffing, following my nose, trying to find this bottle of essential oil. And thankfully, I found it, and it wasn't a huge mess, and the Lord provided. we were able to find it, but I had to rely on this scent in order to find it. Unity of the body of Christ is a sweet aroma. When we are unified in Christ, we put off a scent to the rest of the world. It's an aroma to God as an offering to Him, but it also lets the world around us know that we are different. Now the inverse can be true. If we are divisive, if we are causing problems, if we are creating division, we are going to be a stench to the world. But if we live in Christian unity, if we follow the biblical way of living with each other, It can be a sweet aroma to those around us. It'll get people's attention. It'll be inviting, it'll be welcoming. And hopefully, ideally, it'll point people to Jesus. Now, just to be sure that we know that unity is beautiful and good, David gives us one more analogy.

Verse three, it says, "It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion, "for there the Lord bestows His blessing, and even life forevermore. Had to Google Mount Hermon and Mount Zion, it's fine. You know, it's okay. But what I found is Mount Hermon was actually really known for its dew. It produced a lot of dew to the point where they would wake up with wet tents in the morning. So it was a lot of dew, lush greenery. But Mount Zion and a lot of Israel in general, it's just dry. And so David is likening the dew of Mount Hermon of Mount Hermon to the unity, as if it were coming down and refreshing the rest of Israel. Dew is meant to refresh and revive. It's meant to encourage growth and life and vegetation. And David is saying that's the same as the unity of believers. The dew of Mount Hermon didn't literally come down and water Israel or water Mount Zion. But it's this metaphor of the abundant-ness, of the impact of surrounding areas that our unity as believers can have in our own lives, in our families, in our communities. It goes far and wide. And if the church isn't unified, we will bring chaos. We will bring discord. And I would argue we will bring spiritual death to the world around us. But our unity can bring life and refreshment to ourselves, to our own souls, and to those we encounter. The end of verse three says, "For there the Lord bestows his blessing, "even life forevermore." This word bestows also can mean commands or a point. So it's not a recommendation. It's not a suggestion. The blessing of unity is a command. There are many reasons that we have to live in community. Some more obvious than others, but he lays one out here, life forevermore, eternity. We are going to be unified in eternity forevermore. So why not start now? If the church is a picture of heaven, then we should be practicing unity now. We should be unified in Jesus right now. It's just a taste of what's to come, and it's gonna be so much better, but it can be good now too. So how do we practice Christian community, or Christian unity? We know that it's good. The Bible says it is. It's good, it's pleasant, it's commanded, it's desirable, we should want it. but how do we actually practice it? Well, I came up with a few ways. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but you're gonna want lunch.

So we're gonna try to keep it to just a minimum here. But these are what I feel like are pretty foundational, that in order to have unity within the body of Christ, we need these. We need to have these things in order for us to practice Christian unity. The first one is we have to abide in Christ. We have to abide in Christ. And I mean that more on an individual basis. Obviously, communally, we can do that, but if we are individually, in our own walks with Jesus, abiding in Him, that is going to lend itself to Christian unity. In John 17, Jesus has a very extensive prayer where He is lifting up His disciples, And then he prays for all Christians, all those that are coming in the future. And in verse 20, starting in verse 20, he says, "My prayer is not for them," meaning the disciples, "alone. "I pray also for those who will believe in me "through their message," that's us, "that all of them may be one, Father, "just as you are in me and I am in you. "May they also be in us so that the world may believe "that you have sent me. "I have given them the glory that you gave me, "that they may be one as we are one, "I in them and you in me, "so that they may be brought to complete unity. "Then the world will know that you sent me "and have loved them even as you have loved me." The Bible says they will know us by our love and that involves unity. The Trinity is one. And just like that, we are to model, the church is to model that we are to be in Christ, abiding in Him. And through that, we are one, just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. A few, or a couple of chapters earlier in John 15, he talks about being the vine. Starting in verse five, it says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit apart from me, you can do nothing. He goes on to say in verse nine, "As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. When we are abiding in Christ, we will bear the fruit of the Spirit. Because we are one with Him, He can work in our lives to move and transform and to produce really good fruit. When we are producing or experiencing the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control all laid out in Galatians. When we are producing that fruit, unity is not only possible, but I think it's actually even easier. When we abide in Christ, we make ourselves available for the Holy Spirit to produce that fruit in our lives. And when we are loving, when we are peaceful, when we are patient and self-controlled, we get to be unified with other believers.

The second way that I think is really foundational to this is to be an active and humble part of the body. Romans 12, Paul talks a lot about this in Romans 12, This idea of being the body of Christ. Verse four through five says, "For just as each of us has one body with many members, "and these members do not all have the same function, "so in Christ, we, though many, form one body, "and each member belongs to all the others." Did you catch the last part? We belong to each other. Body parts have to work together. If you got one leg walking this way and one leg walking that way, you're gonna have problems. We have to work together. We have to be a unified body. Now that doesn't mean, again, we're not all doing the same thing. We can't all lead worship. We can't all be in children's. We can't all run tech. We all have different gifts. But we have to work together. We're gonna have differences. We're gonna have struggles. We're gonna have different disagreements and conflicts. That's expected because we're human in a fallen world. But if we are truly being active and humble in the body of believers, it will create unity. Verse nine and 10 of Romans 12 says, "Love must be sincere, hate what is evil, "clean to what is good, "Be devoted to one another in love. "Honor one another above yourselves." We have to be humble in order to love and honor others. It's really hard to love other people and honor other people when we are not humbling ourselves enough to do so. Paul is encouraging believers here to be devoted. Be devoted to brotherly love. Be devoted to Christian unity. be devoted to friendship within the body. Use your gifts, use the unique gifts and abilities that God has given you, but do so humbly and with the intent of loving your brother and sister in the Lord.

Lastly, I believe we're called to choose peace. As with any family, we're gonna have struggles. we're gonna have conflict. But when we handle these things biblically, when we assume the best in others and trust the Holy Spirit in each other, unity will be maintained. Choosing peace for the purpose of unity requires things of us. It requires that we, like I said, are assuming the best in others. It requires that we have healthy conflict resolution, not that we're just avoiding it or pushing it to the side, so that we're actually addressing it in a healthy and biblical way. We have to take issues directly to the person, not gossiping, not getting everyone on our side, but directly dealing with the problem or with the person that we have a problem with. It's listening to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And sometimes that means he's telling you, calling you to a holy hush. We just gotta shut our mouth sometimes, right? Sometimes we need to say something. And sometimes we need to shut our mouth. Amen? Amen. Okay. But it's listening to the guidance of the Holy Spirit on how He wants us to navigate conflict, on how He wants us to be peace bearers in our churches and in our communities and in our homes. It's understanding and knowing that we can disagree and be unified at the same time. They do not have to be, those can co-exist. they are not mutually exclusive. I can still love Jesus and have different preferences than you. I can still love Jesus and have different political views than you. I can still love Jesus and fill in the blank. And same goes for all of us. We're not always going to agree on everything, but if it is not sin and not going against the word of God, we can still be unified within the body. And I think we also, in order to choose peace, we have to be open to accountability, the iron sharpening iron. This can be tough, again, requires humility to be corrected, to be held accountable to what you say you're going to do or not going to do. But that is going to facilitate peace within the body of Christ.

Again, back to Romans 12. Paul has a lot to say about this. Verse 18 says, "If it is possible, "as far as it depends on you, "live at peace with everyone. "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, "but leave room for God's wrath, "for it is written, it is mine to avenge. "I will repay," says the Lord. "On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. "If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. "In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. As far as it depends on us, live at peace with everyone. You can't control anybody else. You can control yourself. You can choose to live at peace, to choose peace in a situation, not avoiding conflict, that is not what I'm saying, but doing so biblically will promote peace in your own heart, in your own life, in your relationships, and in the body. It's our responsibility to be peace bearers. That when we enter a room, a space, a group of people, that we are bringing the peace of Christ. Again, there's going to be conflict. There's going to be disagreements. There is going to be struggles. Well, we're in an election year, and we all saw what happened yesterday. There is evil in the world. There is differing opinions. But if people are on the outside looking in, which they are, we have to be unified, because people are looking for something. They are looking for acceptance and love and an answer and a savior, I promise you there is not a presidential candidate on the face of this earth that is our savior. They are looking for people to accept them and to love them and to show them the way, to show them what peace looks like, what true peace that passes understanding looks like. And if they look at the body of Christ and they see discord and division, You're not gonna come looking for Jesus. So we have an obligation, we have a responsibility to choose peace, to choose unity, to choose healthy, biblical, conflict resolution because it is good and it's pleasant. It is abundant. It is so beautiful. This chapter may have only been three verses, but we learned that it is an abundant gift from God. It really certainly is good and pleasant. It's a sweet aroma to the world around us. It refreshes ourselves and our spirits. It glorifies God. And it's a picture of heaven and what's to come in eternity. So let's practice unity together, friends. Amen? Amen, pray with me.

Jesus, we thank you for this truth, for this command to be unified in you. God, I pray over the church, both Spring Valley and the church globally, that you will unify us. God, that we will choose unity in Christ over division, over personal preference, over affiliation with certain groups or peoples. God, you have created us uniquely with different gifts and different abilities, and we praise you for that, and we honor you with those things, God. But may we choose unity over our individual personal preferences. May we seek you. May we seek your peace. God, you are the king. You are the prince of peace. You are on the throne. Through you, unity is possible. And Lord, as people struggle with the world around them or with mental health or feelings that they don't belong, God, I just pray that as they seek answers, that they will see a unified body of believers who are doing their best to bring glory to you and point people to Jesus. God, we thank you for this body of believers, for this Spring Valley family. We are so grateful that you have given us these people to worship you with, to do life with, to sharpen ourselves with. God, I just pray for unity in our church and in the church globally. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 6

Psalm 139 - The Art of Living Well

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well good morning, my name is Phil Stevenson, I'm friends of the pastors here and every and then they give me a very wonderful, gracious opportunity to come and share with you. So it's a privilege to do that. We're in Psalms, there would be doing a series of Psalms and we'll be in Psalms 139, and we'll be there in a moment, but there's one thing I wanna make sure I point out to all of us this morning that I know for a fact, everyone here this morning is living. Now, you may not feel like you are, but you are. I know it's warm outside, we're all alive. So that's beyond dispute. What could be disputed, however, is how we live the life that we have. And sometimes, of course, when we live our lives, there's things that encroach upon us. There's frustrations, there's challenges, there's surprises in life. There's all kinds of things that we may not have planned on, but we, instead, have to kind of navigate our way through that. But when we look at Psalm 139, and of course it was written by David, as most of the Psalms were, And he helps us understand in the first 12 verses of this passage of scripture of how he lived his life. The life that he lived, that he had to navigate, all kinds of things, it went through all threads of his life. His life was not always the way that maybe he had laid it out. To be honest with you, he started his life, obviously, as a shepherd. He was challenged to become king. He hadn't planned to become king. I don't think he did. Scripture doesn't seem to indicate that. So he's a shepherd guy, and that's what he probably expected he would do, how he would contribute to his family over his lifespan. And he knew how to live with the Lord as a shepherd. He also went through a season of his life where he was a fugitive. King Saul, who was the king before him, wanted David dead. And the reason is, is he knew that David was the next anointed king of Israel, And so even though his son, Jonathan, was the best friend of David, he wanted David dead. And then of course we know he became king and he was kind of experienced as probably one of the greatest kings, if not the greatest kings in the history of Israel. So as a shepherd, as a fugitive, as a king, David learned what life was about as he lived it with the Lord.

And I want us to take a look at this passage of scripture, Psalm 139 verses one through 12. If you have a Bible with you, turn there. If you use your phone like I do or your iPad for scripture, turn there. And we're gonna take a look, kind of walk through this passage of scripture and look about how we can live our life fully with the Lord, no matter what our situations. Because again, David had to navigate his life as a shepherd, a fugitive, and also as a king. The first thing I want us to see, we're gonna go five things that we how we can learn to live well the art of living well and Really life frankly is more of an art than is a science People may try to give us formulas for certain things for the most part life is an art because we have to respond Navigate come across and deal with things that we have maybe never planned that doesn't mean we shouldn't plan our lives out it just means that we'll have surprises as I've already mentioned along our life as as we go after things. This month, I should say this year, December, I'm gonna turn 70 years old. I know you're probably thinking, you don't look a day over 68. Okay, but anyway. And I've learned in my 70 fact, it's funny, with my granddaughter who's seven, and she's, they call me Pappy. She's a Pappy, how old are you gonna be on your next birthday? I said, well, Brielle, I'm gonna be 70 years old. And she looked at me like she couldn't even fathom that number. And I said, "You know about this whole thing of being 70, Brielle, is that not everybody gets to be 70." And that's true. And so even in my 70, almost 70 years, I'm learning things all the time. Understanding new things about God and trying to navigate what the challenges of my life at 70 have been and probably will be over time. We never know. But But David gives us some good guidelines. And the first one is this, the art of living well. The first thing is this, live in the acceptance of God. If you wanna live your life well, live in the acceptance of God.

Psalm 139 verses one through four says this, "Oh Lord, You've examined my heart. "You know everything about me. "You know when I sit down or stand up. "You know my thoughts, even when I'm far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home, catch this, you know everything I do. That's not very exciting, is it? Or is it? Verse four, you know what I'm going to say even before I say it, Lord. Wouldn't that be good if even we knew what we're gonna say sometimes before we're gonna say it? Have you ever had that situation? Oh baby, I should not have said that. And you probably have had this experience that I've had and simply said, "It's not so much what you said, "it's how you said it." And so we know that we have to live in the acceptance of God. And you probably have had this situation. Have you ever found out something about somebody, maybe just unexpectedly found it out, you weren't looking for anything, but you found out something about somebody and boy, it kind of changed your perception of them 'cause you never saw them that way. or maybe you are like most people who have some things in your life that you're not overly proud about. Maybe something you did as a younger individual. And if at all way possible, if you could steer conversation on that kind of thing, you'd be more than happy to do that. But yet God knows all that stuff and He still accepts us. We have to live in the acceptance of God. There's something freeing about knowing somebody knows all about you, I mean all about you, and they accept you anyway, warts and all.

Tommy Walker, who is a worship leader and an evangelist and a songwriter and a singer, all these things, he's been on staff at a church down the LA area, I think it's Assembly is God Church, down the LA area for about 30 years. And he told the story about when he went on a missions trip, and he was out there on this missions trip, and this kid ran up to him. And he said, "Hi, my name is Jimmy." And Tommy Walker said, "Hi, Jimmy, my name is Tommy." The little kid smiled and ran away. That was the end of that interaction. Later in that same day, the same little kid came up to Tommy and said to him, "Do you know my name?" He says, "Well, yes, you're Jimmy." And he just beamed that Tommy had remembered his name. Turns out, Tommy found out that this little boy had been orphaned at a very young age. He didn't have much of a family around him. Very few people really knew his name. And so when Tommy remembered his name, It struck him as so exhilarating for him. In fact, it impacted him so much, Tommy Walker wrote a song. It's an older song. I've not heard it in a long, I know it. I mean, I've heard it, but not in a long time. I don't think it's hit the list, the hit list for the 2000s here. But it's a song, it's called "You Know My Name." And the chorus goes, I won't even try to sing the tune because I won't get it right, but if you've never heard it, You might think that bad tune is the tune, but it's not. But it goes, he knows my name. He knows my every thought. He knows every tear I cry. He hears me when I call. The power of having acceptance, the power of someone knowing your name, and the art of living well begins right there. Our ability to live our life well has to be foundational in that we are willing to live in the acceptance of God, that God accepts us. Exodus chapter 33 verse 17 says this, "The Lord replied to Moses," the Lord and the Moses were having a conversation, "and the Lord says to Moses, "I will indeed do what you have asked, "for I look favorably on you, "and I know your name." Wow. God knows our name. There's a statement, I think it'll be on the screen, maybe not, but I don't know who said it, it's just powerful. It says this, "Satan knows your name, "but calls you by your sin." "God knows your sin, but he calls you by your name." Wow, that's powerful. And when you grab ahold of that, then you begin to live in the acceptance of God.

The next thing that we need to do to live, to develop the art of living is to live in the blessing of God. To live in the blessing of God. Verses five and six, you go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand. You see the laying on of hands is a sign of blessing. It's a sign of support. It's actually a sign of sending. I'm sure you've done that here before where you just lay your hand on someone, maybe a missionary couple, or maybe just someone that needs some encouragement and strength and you lay hands on them and you pray for them because that laying on of hands is a sign of blessing, a sign of support, a sign of sending. And if we can just picture that, that God blesses us, that we can just imagine the hand of God laid upon us, blessing us, encouraging us, sending us. God blesses us. And then he goes and he stays with us. I have here this morning an actual $20 bill. Now it's not crisp, but it's pretty good. Bob wants the $20 bill. OK, maybe later we can talk. And the thing about this $20 bill, is you know what this is worth? It's not a rhetorical question. You know what this is worth? $20. Absolutely worth $20. Now, if I put this on the ground, it's not too dirty. Whoever cleans up here is scrubbing around a little bit like this, and then finally pick it up. You know how much this is worth? You're screwing the illustration up. Okay, it's worth $20. Now, if you're like I am, and sometimes you take your bills and you fold them up, maybe in half, sometimes maybe in thirds, and you keep them in your pocket, and it gets to get creases in it after a while, pretty soon you have to kinda unfold it, have some creases, but still, you know what, it's worth $20. And then, however, if you got, try to crumple up like a little piece of paper, just kinda crumple a little bit like this, and you undo it here a little bit. Let's see if I can get this uncrumple here. crumpled, crumpled, whatever. This crumpled, somewhat dirty, crinkly little, it's worth $20, still worth $20. It'll spend like $20. And that's what I want us to see when we talk about the blessings of God. No matter how dirty sometimes you may feel or how creased you may feel in your life or crumpled up that you may feel in your life, You are still valued by God. He values you. Our mistakes do not take away the value God places on us as his people. When we live in the blessings of God, we live in the value that God has placed on us. Not the value someone else has placed on us. Not even sometimes the value that we ourselves kind of place on ourselves because we've gone through a difficult, challenging, feeling like a faithless time. God still values you and me. We are still worthwhile in His eyes and we need to live in that blessing.

The third thing that I think David teaches us is we need to live in the presence of God. We live in the acceptance of God, we live in the blessing of God, and then we need to live in the acceptance of God. verses seven and eight, "I can never escape "from your spirit, I never get away from your presence. "If I go up to heaven, you are there. "If I go down to the grave, you are there." We know one of the characteristics of God is that he is omnipresent. So word simply just means all present, he's everywhere. And we need to live in the understanding that God is present with us. Again, back to Exodus chapter 33, where Moses is getting ready to leave the children of Israel and he's concerned about his ability to do this. And in verse 14, excuse me, verse 15, he says this, "Then Moses said to God, "If you don't personally go with us, "don't make us leave this place. "I want your presence, God." That's what Moses is saying. I know what you called me to do, but if you don't go with me, I just shouldn't stay here. I need your presence. God, as I go to my workplace and navigate the challenge that are there, if you don't go with me, I want your presence to go with me, then I just assume not to go to work. If I have to navigate the challenges of my family, then you're not present. I would assume not to navigate those challenges. If I have to find only encouragement in myself in times of discouragement, I need you to be present with me and God is present with you. I don't know your situations or your issues, but I know this, God is present. I don't know your fears or concerns, but God is present. I don't know where you are, where you're going, or how you plan to get there, but God is present. A good friend of mine named Ron McClung wrote these words. He says, "We can't change the past." Now, it doesn't mean we wish we couldn't change the past, but we can't. He said, "We can't change the past. "We can only address the present "and move toward the future." And that's what we're talking about here. Try not to worry about changing your past, you can't. Oh boy, you can start right here in your present. And know that God is present and move toward your future.

The fourth thing I think David teaches us about the art of living well is this, live in the opportunities of God. verses 9 and 10. "I ride the wings of the morning if I dwell by the furthest oceans even there your hand will guide me and your strength will support me." Dawn is always, and that's what we were talking about, the wings of the morning. The psalmist David is talking about dawn. And dawn is typically a metaphor for for what? A new day. I was sharing with some of the folks here that we finally, and our family, kids and grandkids, we've been planning to go on a family cruise since 2020. We had it all set up and ready to go and I don't know if you can remember 2020 most of us would choose to forget it, something called COVID hit. So the cruise lines felt it wasn't a good idea to continue on so that guy shut down. That's okay, we were resilient, we came back and then this 2023, we decide we're gonna do it again in November. We're gonna go on a cruise, a family cruise November of 2023. All set to go, excited, literally one week before we're supposed to leave. The ship had propulsion issues, shut it down any cruise on that ship was shut down for the rest of 2024 into two times 2023 and into 2024 and we finally the week of the 22nd through the 28th 29th got to go on our cruise and the first morning out I sat on our our little balcony and I watched the sunrise our side of the ship was pointing east At least the sun came up there, so I'm assuming it was east. We're pointing east and the sun was coming and it had some clouds around it. It was beautiful. Knew a new day was coming. Didn't know all that was gonna be a part of that new day, but we knew a new day was coming and that's what the psalmist is saying right here.

It's a new day. It's new opportunities. We need to live in the opportunities of God. See, we can't get so caught up in making a living that we neglect and miss the living that we make. See, we get so caught up in just simply getting by and making a living instead of saying, well, let's not neglect how we can make the living that we have. With each dawn, by that I mean with each opportunity, we can choose to rise on those wings of those opportunities. Each dawn brings the potential of new opportunities, opportunities to encourage others, opportunities to fully embrace your circumstances. You say, "I don't like my circumstances." Embrace them anyway, because you know what? They're your circumstances. Opportunities to be renewed in your spirit, opportunities to encounter God, opportunities to the possibilities of God. That's what it means to live in the opportunities of God. A new day, a new dawn, God provides for us. And every day we should look at it from that perspective. On most mornings, and I gotta be honest, not every morning, I will pray this prayer. Father, help me to live this day to the full, being true to you in every way. Jesus, help me to give myself away to others, being kind to everyone I meet. Spirit, help me to love the lost, proclaiming Christ in all I do and say. And for me, that helps me encounter and go into the day anew and afresh and looking for these things that are out there. Am I living in a way that expresses my relationship with God? Am I serving others? I have that opportunity. Am I being kind? I gotta tell you, I don't know how you are, sometimes it's hard to be kind. So I'll be in a line someplace and they'll be thinking the person just, Pam, and move. And then the Lord says, be kind to everyone you meet. I'm thinking, well, I don't know if I want to meet that person, much less be kind to that person. Now you probably don't do that, but that's just some of the things that I have to hang out there with. But the idea being that we need to live and the opportunities of God.

And then number five, live in the encouragement of God. Verses 11 and 12, I could ask the darkness to hide me in the light around me to become night. Kind of discouraging, huh? But even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. We need to live in the encouragement of God because whether we want to kind of pull the darkness around us, we kind of want to hide from situations that are happening to us, God is still there and he wants to encourage us. Makes no difference to him if it's dark or light, he wants to encourage us in those situations. And our encouragement from God is simply engulfed And the fact that we talked about His presence is always with us. Romans chapter eight, verses 38 through 39. Here's what it says. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love, no power in the sky above us or in the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. But what about nothing? Yeah, but except have this one, nothing. Well, let me tell you about this one, nothing. Let me talk about this choice that I made that nothing. Nothing can separate you and me from the love of God. Nothing, nada, zero, zilch. And when you start to come back with some kind of a reason or excuse why you cannot be under the love of God, I want you to be reminded again of this passage, nothing. Some may say to you, but you look at what you are and how, nothing, nothing. I messed up again, I blew it. Nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God. In fact, if you leave here later on this morning and you say, what did you learn from what the message was? I learned nothing perfect. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.

And undergirding those principles that King David lived and that he shared with us in Psalm 139, there are two promises I want us to see before we wrap up here. They're in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. And the first one is this, we have the promise of newness. Revelation 21 five says this, And the one sitting on the throne said, "Look, I am making everything new." And then he said to me, "Write this down, "for what I tell you is trustworthy and true." We have the promise that God is gonna make everything new. That includes you and me because we're part of everything. He's gonna make everything new. And the second promise we have is the promise of grace. Revelation 22, 21 says, "May the grace of the Lord Jesus "be with God's holy people." We have the promise of grace. Now they're a fitness club, Planet Fitness, you've probably seen them around, we got a few here in the Roseville, Rocklin area. And a purple, I don't get the color. But anyway, they call that the no judgment zone. In fact, one of their tag phrases is this, in the judgment zone, excuse me, in the judgment free zone, you always belong. And what they're trying to do from a physical fitness perspective is that if you go in there and you haven't been in a gym in forever, they're saying, there's no judgment about how physically fit you are, how strong you are. Everyone belongs in the judgment-free zone because we're not gonna judge on where you are. Instead, we're gonna help you be where you want to be. And that's what we're talking about when it comes to grace. And God's graciousness in His kindness, in the grace that we hear about, He embraces us where we are. And then he wants to walk alongside of us to take us to what we want to become under his canopy of love and of grace. But see, we tend to, sometimes we approach God with like some of my approach to gym. I'm not gonna go to the gym 'til I get in shape. Well, you idiot. You go to the gym to get in shape. Don't wait, you go. Even if you're just a slog and you gotta get in there. And then you start where you are and you go from there. And that's what God is saying to us. It's where newness and grace reside. You're accepted where you are. And God then provides you the roadmap to where he would like you to be and where you'd like to be.

2 Corinthians 5 verse 17 says, "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ "has become a new person. "The old life is gone, a new life has begun." See, grace remind us that our desperation, that in our desperation, we have deliverance. Grace allows us to discover the wonder of God in our weakness. Grace is the full embrace of God. Grace clears away any misconceptions that we are alone in this. Grace keeps us moving forward in our doubt, discouragement and despair. Grace is a great equalizer. Grace reminds us, this is so important. Grace reminds us that without God, we are a hot mess. And even in our hot mess, He is there with us. Wow, that's what grace is. Ephesians 2 chapter eight through 10 says this, God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this. It's a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God's masterpiece. I love that. We are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, "so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago." Wow. If you are here today and you have walked into a relationship with Jesus Christ and He has saved you from your sin and your old way of life, I want to remind you, that was by grace. You didn't do that. None of us are any better than any other of us. That's God's grace. And if you put off trying to grapple with the relationship with God and what it means in real life, and you say, "I just can't figure it all out." Well, that's okay, because it's by God's grace that He embraces you and touches your heart and your life. He can't do anything except for, except what? The grace of God. Accept it, live in it. It's a promise that He's given to every single one of us. And I hope that if you've experienced that grace, you are so grateful for that. And if you have not yet experienced that grace, I wanna encourage you to do that. Understanding that you are accepted as you are. Ask Jesus to come into your life and by grace accept Him and allow Him to move you in your life, in your relationship with Him.

Father, I am grateful for how David could share with us throughout all of time principles and living well, things that I think he learned as a shepherd, as a fugitive and as a king. And Father, I thank you for the promise that we have, especially that one of grace. And I would ask God, I would just ask that everyone here today will realize that it's your grace that makes all the difference in our life. And there's nothing, nothing anyone can do. And there's nothing that can be done to us that will separate us from your love. And we ask it in Jesus name, Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 5

Psalm 27 - The Goodness of God

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm really excited to be with you guys today. As you know, we're in our Summer of Psalms series, and so we are continuing that through summer. And we're kind of just jumping around to different Psalms. And I like this series a lot because it allows us to dive into scripture and see what the Bible says and talk about that and study it and learn it. But it also allows us to talk about different topics. Because we're looking at different Psalms, we can hit different topics, and we can even dive into characteristics of God, of who God is and really just learn more about his character. And we are gonna focus on that today a lot. We're talking about the goodness of God and a variety of things, but that's really our focus today. Have you ever noticed the confidence level of most children? You know, they are unreasonably confident in a lot of things or in like one thing in particular, They are just so certain that they are the best, that they are so good. And I just wish we could bottle that confidence up, right? Because adults, we kind of lose some of that. We, maybe through experience or something someone says, or even just reality that we know that someone's better at it than us, or we could grow in that. And maybe we're confident in some areas, something we're an expert in or have developed a skill in, but we maybe don't quite have the confidence like a kid. Like when they come up and they're like, "I wanna show you my trick," right? And they are just so confident. And even when it's not executed technically correct, they just, they nailed it in their mind. And they are just so confident in that.

Well, in Psalm 27, we are seeing David in his confidence, but different than kids. His confidence is in God, not in himself. And so my hope today is that we will learn from David in this and develop our own confidence in the Lord. So again, we're gonna be on Psalm 27. This is a Psalm of David. You can go there, it'll be on the screens, but you can look it up, your phone, the Bible's under your seat, whatever works for you. But we are going to just break it down section by section. And we're gonna start with verses one through three. So if you would just read along with me. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. Though an army besieged me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then I will be confident." David knows that he can have confidence in God. He has this the sureness of who God is and that he can be confident in him. You can even see it in the way he's writing. It says, "The Lord is my light and salvation." The Lord is the stronghold of my life. He doesn't use wishy-washy language, well, sometimes or when this happens, he is, he is. There's no if, ands or buts. David experienced a lot of attack from enemies. He experienced a lot of hard times and darkness. I mean, he was the king of a nation. So you can imagine the difficult times that he experienced, but he also experienced God's faithfulness. He saw God come through again and again, whether it was saving him from bears and lions when he was a shepherd, or it was from King Saul when he was pursuing him, or from a variety of other enemies and nations coming against the nation of Israel. God was faithful. He fulfilled his promises. He did what he said he would, And David's trust and confidence in God grew. So he can say this with authority. He can say, "He is my light and my salvation. He is the stronghold of my life." And we noticed that David is calling God these three things, light, salvation, and stronghold. So I want us to take a little moment to look at that and what that might mean for us.

So what does light do? Well, it dispels darkness, right? when you have a dark room, even just a candle or a flashlight disperses the darkness around you. So David is saying, he, God is my light. He is the one who is dispelling the darkness in my life. The dark that surrounds me, the evil that is around me. Light also can show us a way, it can light our path. And so it is David saying, you light the way, You show me which way to go. You are my light. Then he says, you're my salvation. And I really think that David here is meaning both now and eternity. He's saying, God, you are my salvation in the immediate moment when I am in immediate danger and I need saving. And also you are the one who will save me for eternity. You're the one who's going to make a way for me to be with you in heaven. He is David's salvation. And then he calls him his stronghold. This is a place of safety, a refuge. It offers protection. I imagine almost like a castle or a fortress, something that is built well. It is built probably with some sort of stone or rock. It's fortified, it's got really thick walls and it is allowing this protection of whoever is in there. And David called God his stronghold. And David asked a couple of questions. He says, "Whom shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid?" And these are meant to be rhetorical because he knows that when he has light and a savior and protection, there is nothing to fear. There is no one he needs to be afraid of. the confidence is built again. Once again, he adds to that trust and that confidence in God. He goes on in the second two verses and says, talks about his enemies and the armies that come against him. And it says, "The wicked will fall." Again, that confident factual language, they will fall. Even though they come, my heart will not fail. David can speak like this because he's seen God show up. He knows that his confidence is not in himself, but that it's in God. And we learn from David that we can be confident in the Lord. When maybe, especially when we don't feel that confidence, when we are struggling, when we're unsure, we can lean in to him and what he's done and His protection, His light, His saving grace. The thing is, unlike David, we have the end of the story, right? We have the whole Bible. We know what happens. We know that revelation, we know how it works out.

So how much more confidence should we have than even David did? At the end of verse three, David says, "Even then I will be confident." I will be confident. This kind of struck me. It doesn't say, but it kind of felt a little bit like David was reminding himself of this. He was saying it factually, like I will be confident when this happens. And also I will be confident. I will be confident. I will be confident. He needed that reminder that he can be confident in the Lord. Years ago, my family went bowling. I remember nothing else about this bowling experience except for this one part. And we still, our family still talks about it to this day. We were getting set up. We were just getting our shoes on, getting our bowling balls. And all of a sudden I turn towards the back and I look, and this little boy, probably no more than five years old, is running from a lane back to the shoe counter. And he has this little pair of shoes And he's going, "12, 12, 12, 12, 12." And I just thought it was the cutest thing. And it was so funny to me. And he was just, his mom probably told him to go tell his dad at the shoe counter, "You need a size 12." And he didn't wanna forget. So he just kept repeating it over and over and over again. "12, 12, 12, 12." So whenever my family and I were talking about needing to remember something, we just say, "12, 12, 12." And I imagine this is kind of what David's doing here. I will be confident. I will be confident. I will be confident. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of the truth in God's word. We are a forgetful people. I think we make fun of the Israelites a lot for forgetting God's goodness, but we do too. We forget how he's come through. We forget his faithfulness, the promises he's fulfilled, the prayers that he has answered. We need to be reminded. We need to remember. And sometimes that just means preaching to ourselves and telling ourselves the truth of what the Bible says. So I think this is a reminder for David. And I think it's also a prayer, a recommitment to the Lord. I will be confident in you. He's reminding himself and he's committing to place his confidence in God. Maybe we today need to remind ourselves of that. We need to recommit to being confident in the Lord.

All right, going on to verse four. David, really this next session, he transitions from these statements of declaring, of declaration to more of a contemplative time. So read along with me in verse four through six. It says, "One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple. For in the day of trouble, He will keep me safe in His dwelling. He will hide me in the shelter of His sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me. At His sacred tent, I will sacrifice with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the Lord." The one thing He would ask is to be in God's presence. This is a king we're talking about. He could pretty much ask for whatever he wants. And that is what he would ask for. How often is that our response? That if we were asked that question, if there was one thing you could have, what would it be? And we would think, be in the presence of God. I pray that God works on my heart so that that does become my response, but it's usually not. But David knew the value of being in God's presence. He talks in a variety of ways about being in the house of the Lord. He says, the house of the Lord, his temple, his dwelling, sacred tent. He was just describing a variety of words for God's house. You see, in David's time, The tabernacle was literally where God dwelled. God had the Israelites build him a tent. I guess it would be more erect a tent, construct a tent. He knew that the Israelites could do nothing to come to him. There was nothing that they could do. So he had to go to them. And the way he did it was he went to them in the way they existed. They lived in tents. When they were wandering in the desert, they lived in tents. So while his was bigger and grander and more ornate, he still dwelled in a tent with his people. He also had them craft the Ark of the Covenant. And this is essentially just an ornate box that had the tablets with the 10 commandments on it, as well as some other things in there. And the cover is also called the Mercy Seat. And that is where God dwelled in this tent. That is where they could go and encounter Him. He wanted to maintain His holiness while also being with His people. And this was His way of doing that. He had His home built and He invited them into it. See, the Holy Spirit had not been given to believers yet. That people were not in dwelled yet by the Holy Spirit. And so this was God's way of coming down. of stooping to their level, to our level. 'Cause the gospel is clear and David knew this too. Humanity could do nothing to get to God. They couldn't be enough, do enough, make themselves holy enough to get themselves to God. It was only by His goodness and kindness that He came to us.

We see in the Old Testament that He dwelled in the tabernacle on the Ark of the Covenant. And then in the New Testament, We see that he took up residence in the person of Jesus, in a physical body, met us where we were, in our shape and form. And then the Holy Spirit, after the death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit came and in dwell believers, he took up residence in a tabernacle, in the person of Jesus and in believers. David was confident in this. Even before half of that happened, he was confident that the best place to be was in the presence of God. We can have that confidence too. In the Lord's presence is the absolute best place to be. What did David do in the presence of the Lord? Well, he talks about, he said, he would gaze on his beauty and seek him. He would be kept safe in the Lord's shelter and he would worship. So gazing on his beauty. Well, God didn't have a physical body. So what did he mean by this? Well, I believe he was referring to his environment, his home, the tabernacle itself, the ark. I think he was also referring to his holiness. God's holiness and his goodness was beautiful to his people. David wanted to just experience who God was. His beauty, he wanted to be in awe of him. He wanted to seek him and be around him. How do you get to know someone? By spending time with them, right? He wanted to get to know who God was even better. He wanted to just be with him. Just spend time with his creator. He sought shelter and refuge in God's presence. Again, David had a lot of enemies. He had a lot of dark times, and he knew that in God's presence was the safest place to be. When we are in God's presence, when we are in His will, when we are following Him, that is the best place that we can be. Even if it's a little uncertain or scary, or we don't know the next steps, it's still the best place that we can be. And in his presence, David worshiped. The tabernacle of David's time is known as a place of worship. They danced and they sang and they played instruments. They worshiped God in new and creative ways. 'Cause what else are you gonna do when you're in the presence of the Almighty? And we get to do that too. We get to come here and worship and be with other believers and hear the word, but we also get to go out and worship with our lives. Paul talks about worshiping as a living sacrifice. We get to just worship by the way we live and act and move and breathe and interact with other people. That is our worship. This is great too. Like be here, I love that. Be, come and participate here. But we also get to worship in how we live. We get to experience God's beauty through His holiness and His goodness. And because of that, we will worship Him. Being in the Lord's presence is the best place we can be.

David goes on to cry out to the Lord. He moves into this time of really calling out to God and asking Him for help. Verse seven, "Hear my voice when I call, Lord, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says, if you seek his face, hear face Lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger. You have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, God my savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Teach me your way, Lord. Lead me in a straight path because of your oppressors. Do not turn or because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations." In these several verses, we see that, although David had a lot of confidence in God, it wasn't all easy. It wasn't all just smooth sailing, roses and daisies. There were times where he struggled. He had difficult seasons and he just cried out to God. I'm sure there's times for us, like for David, that it feels like God is silent. That you're praying and you're asking and you're seeking and it just feels like no one is listening. So in this section, David is actually reminding God of what he told his people. He's saying, "You told me to seek you. You told us, seek my face." He's like, "I'm doing it, I'm here, I'm seeking your face.”

Jeremiah 29:12-13, the Lord is saying, "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your hearts." David is begging God saying, "I am seeking you, please hear me." even kings and giants of the faith wavered in their confidence at times, not because God changed, but because maybe their circumstances changed. Fear got real big in their hearts and it wavered. We know though from other places in the Bible, like in Joshua, it says that he will never leave us or forsake us. And sometimes God's silence can feel like that. I can feel like being abandoned or forgotten, but God will never leave us. So he's asking, he's praying and reminding God of the promises he's given and also asking for more of him. He wants God to lead him and guide him, teach him his ways. He's reminding himself that God did it before, He can do it again. Seeking the Lord reminds us of His faithfulness. Not only do we need reminders of the confidence we have in God, sometimes we just need the reminders of His goodness and His faithfulness. And the way we do that is by getting with Him, by seeking Him, by pursuing Him, by allowing Him to work in our heart and lives. And that takes proximity. That's why we get in His presence. That's why we get in the Word. God is not playing some cosmic game of hide and seek. He wants to be found. Jeremiah says, "You will be found by me." We just have to be willing to show up and pursue that relationship with God, with our heavenly Father, to learn more about Him, about His character, about who He says He is. He's not, David here is not asking for the easy way. It says, later on it says that he asks for the straight path in verse 11. Straight here doesn't necessarily mean easy or without problems. It just means level. It's like a firm foundation that he will be firm. It also refers to uprightness, that he would be on a level ground so he can live in uprightness. And he knows that God is faithful to do that. He knows, David isn't stupid. He knows life won't be easy. He knows there's gonna be trouble, but he also know that God in his goodness can provide a way for him to live upright, live on level ground. So even when our confidence ravers, even when we are facing hard seasons, We can remember that when we seek the Lord, we will find Him and we will be reminded of who He is, of His goodness and His faithfulness.

The last two verses, probably my favorite in this chapter, it is a statement and then it is an encouragement from David. Let's read it together. I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. This phrase land of the living can refer to a variety of things, some think David was referring to Jerusalem, that this is where the people of God were, this is where God dwelled. And so this was the land of the living as opposed to the pagan nation surrounding them where people were dead in their sin. It also something it's just David referring to heaven, that in the kingdom to come, that is the land of the living. And we get to be with God forever in that. And we will see His goodness when we get to heaven with Him. The third option is that David is referring to this world, the here and the now, that even in our broken and fallen world, he believes that he will see God's goodness even here. And honestly, it could be all of them, but I really do think that David is talking about this world, the here and the now, and here's why. First of all, the Hebrew word for land here, it literally means earth as opposed to heaven. It's literally talking about our world. He's saying that despite our troubles, despite our struggles, despite the sin in this world, we can still see God's goodness. The Bible is full of faithful people who had hard times. They struggled, they sinned, they fell, but they still experienced God's goodness. But how could he say, I will see the goodness of God?

How can we be so confident in that? Well, we've said it before, it's because he had seen it before. He had seen God's faithfulness and his goodness in his life before. He had seen God come and dwell among the people of Israel. He saw how God made a way for himself to be with his people and for the people to be near him, even despite his holiness, through sacrifices and rituals and atonement, he made a way and he had saved him. He had saved him from previous difficulties and seasons of hardship. He had seen God's goodness before. So how can we be confident? How can we stand with David and say, "I will be confident and I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living." Well, like David, we have seen the goodness of God. I guarantee you that everyone in this room has experienced the goodness of God, whether you've realized it or not. So maybe we need to take a moment and think back, look back, remind ourselves of the goodness that he has brought in our lives. But also unlike David, in the same way, we have the church. We have the body of Christ. And how many of us have experienced the goodness of God through someone else in the body of Christ? Whether it was through prayer or support, just a smile, accountability, reaching out to you, that God uses his people to show his goodness. So we know that we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living because the church in the year of our Lord 2024 is alive and well. We are alive.

Romans 6:11 says, "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." Believers are alive, we are alive. We, the church is the literal land of the living. We get to be the land of the living. We get to experience life in Christ and be a light to other people of that truth. So despite the world around us, despite the culture that we are living in, that is full of darkness and celebrates death and calls evil good and good evil, despite all of that, we get to be the land of the living. We will see the goodness of God in the land of the living. I promise you. Now, I am sure that there is someone within this sound of my voice, whether here or online or podcast or whatever, that is thinking, how? I can't. Lauren, you talk about this land of the living, but I'm more in the valley of the shadow of death right now. Maybe it's depression or finances or relationships, you name it, but it feels dark and heavy and nothing like the goodness of God. You will see His goodness. Things may not work out the way we're praying for. They may not work out the way we hope. They may not even work out 'cause we live in a fallen world, but he is still good because his goodness is not determined by our circumstances or by our outcomes in life. He is good regardless. And we have to remember that the phrase, the valley of the shadow of the death is from Psalm 23 and it continues on. It says, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me." So even if you are, even if you are walking or maybe you will in the future, maybe you are in that valley. It is dark, it is hard, but He is still with you even then. Even when He feels silent, even when it feels like you've been forsaken, He is with you and that His presence, Him being with you is His goodness. So if you can't believe it right now, hear me and hold on to the words that I'm saying and hold on to the words that God said in His word and ask Him, God, reveal yourself to me. Show me your love, show me your goodness. Walk me through this valley of death so that I can experience your goodness in the land of the living. (silence) We need to seek His face and that will help build our confidence because David goes on to encourage us and it says, "Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." Waiting, the word wait here does not mean just sit around and hope something happens. It's an active participation. It means to look for, to hope, to expect. We're not doing nothing. We are actively waiting. We are expectantly hoping and trusting that God is gonna come through. That's through being in the word, coming to church, being a part of the body, participating in the land of the living, writing down all the ways that he has been faithful as just a reminder for yourself, sitting in his presence, just being still or worshiping him, seeking his face and whatever expression that looks like for you. 'Cause what David knew and encourage us to do is that when we wait for the Lord, we will see His goodness. Amen.

Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your church. You knew what you were doing when you established the body of Christ. And we are so grateful that we get to see your goodness in the land of the living. God, I pray for those who are in a valley right now where it just feels dark and heavy. God, I just pray that you will make your presence so palpable to them that they will know that they have not been forgotten or forsaken. Build their confidence, build their belief as they walk through this difficult season, God. Remind them that they will see your goodness. You are so good, God, and we are so grateful to you. We love you, Father. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 4

Psalm 15 - Asking the Right Question

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I just got back from a trip. It took some time this week to go to visit some of my wife's family up in Washington State. It was a great time. I met some family that I hadn't spent a lot of time with on her side, which was really fun. Part of this trip was getting to her cousin, who works at Disney Studios in Vancouver, Canada. So, we got to take a little trip. She has one set of family that lives on the American border, and then the one set right on the other side and so we spent most of our time in Washington but then we took a day trip over to Canada and he gave us this private tour of the Disney animation studio there's only two there's one in LA and there's one in Vancouver and it was really cool I was overwhelmed with how much we had a sign something that says I won't share about what I saw so I can't do that but I will say I mean it was just so cool to walk around and I was just overwhelmed as everyone in their cubicles working on you just saw characters you're like oh "Oh my goodness, that's that character and you're working on that movie and you're working on that movie. This is so cool!" And it was a really quick tour, but all of it just made me... I just had so many questions at the end and we had to kind of go through and there was a couple moments to ask some questions and I didn't even know where to begin. I was talking with my father-in-law along the way and there's just so much. There's so much that I want to ask. There's so much things like, "How does this process work? How long does it take the animators to do one scene where the person throws their hands up in the air?" You know, that could take weeks. We also obviously wanted to ask, what are the new movies coming out? What are the new shows? And can you give us a sneak peek on any of that information? But that part of the trip really reminded me of how important it is to ask good questions, and how a good question can unlock a big answer or a deep answer. And depending on who you are and how you're wired, sometimes asking questions may be easy for you, and sometimes asking questions can be really hard. My daughter at this point finds it easy to ask a lot of questions. She's five years old, and on the hour-long drive from Washington to Vancouver, it was just one question, I'm sure you can guess it, it was, "Are we there yet?" Over and over again. I think on this trip, her two most frequent questions were, "Are we there yet?" and "I'm hungry, do you have a snack?" Which I think those are just her most frequent questions, regardless of being on vacation.

But asking questions is so important, and I think it's probably a learned skill that we develop in life to ask good, important questions, to be able to discern the context and the information that is known and unknown, and then asking a question to make a person think. In conversation, you probably know this, a good question makes someone pause, makes a person reflect for a while, and go deeper than just a surface-level answer. Maybe you've been asked a good question, You know that experience of like, "Oh my goodness, that's great. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second." Or maybe you've been on the receiving side and you've heard that, and you're like, "Oh yes, that was a good question. They had to think about it for a second." For me, someone who constantly asks good questions is my counselor, my pastoral counselor. Whenever I have coffee with him, I get frustrated because he asks questions and I say, "I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Let me think for a second. I got to process." And oftentimes it means thinking about an experience in a whole new way or discovering some emotions I didn't know I felt about something. And so he just asked really good questions. But we need people in our lives that ask good questions to us, and we also want to be people that ask good questions to others. And not just with the people in our lives, but also in all of our relationships, including the most important relationship, which is with God. If we think about our relationship with God and our conversations with him, our prayers, I want us to do a little bit of a prayer inventory right now. So just in your own heads, you don't have to say anything that's out loud, but I want us to break down what our prayers look like. And so, if you were to give a percentage, maybe you have your pie chart, if you're a visual person, you have a pie chart in your mind, how much of your prayer time is praise to God? Come up with your percentage. Maybe it's 10%. Maybe it is 100, maybe all you do is praise, whatever that percentage is. All right, so you have praise. How much of it is confession and repentance? How much of that pie chart are you asking God for forgiveness? Coming before him and saying, "Hey, I did this wrong. I need... Please forgive me." And then how much of it, of your prayer time, is questions to God? I know for me, that is the largest portion of the pie chart there. And if we were to go further about those questions, How many of them are requests to God? Asking God for things, asking God to do something in my life, asking God whatever it is. How much of those questions that we have to God are more self-interested? And God, I need something. Can you do something for me? What are the quality of the questions that we ask Him? Are they the right questions? Are they self-serving? Do they bring us closer to Him? Or, like I just said, do these questions come from a heart that is more self-serving, self-interested, self-absorbed?

The questions that we ask God are important, and they reveal a lot about what is inside our hearts. You know, there can be this thought that asking questions is a sign of weakness or ignorance with this negative connotation, but I fully disagree with that. I think someone who asks a lot of questions is someone who wants to learn, who understands and has humility that they don't understand at all, and so they are seeking to understand more. We might feel that pressure as Christians to know as much as possible, or to come across as people who know everything about God and everything about the Bible. And while there is good and we should strive to know more, we don't always have to put up that front that we know everything. We often think of the Bible as a book that has a lot of answers, which is true, but do we also think of the Bible that asks a lot of questions? The Hebrew authors wanted readers and listeners to wrestle with the text, to ask more questions about who Yahweh is and what He does. Because they understood that wrestling with the text and asking questions was that invitation to a deeper understanding of God. It's just like in a relationship or a friendship, when you're getting to know someone, you ask a lot of questions. You find out who they are. You find out how they operate and what they do in this situation and how they feel about this. And even though the Bible tells us all those things, we also want to be asking God about who He is.

Many of the questions in the Bible are found in the book of Psalms. And as a reminder for our Psalm series, the first half of the book of Psalms skews more towards lament Psalms over praise Psalms. And today, our Psalm may be somewhere in between lament and praise. I think of it as a reflection Psalm. This psalm informs us of who God wants us to be, but it also holds up a mirror to our hearts to see if we are being the men and women of God that He wants us to be. So we're going to be in Psalm 15, and I'd love to read it for us today. You guys can turn in your Bibles, or you can follow along on the screen. This is a psalm of David, and he writes, "Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart, whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others, who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change their mind, who lends money to the poor without interest, who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken." So there it is, right at the beginning.

David begins this psalm with a pair of questions, and really one question. "Who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?" And as we'll unpack this, we'll just see that this is such a good question. David was king, and so the temple is not around yet. We think of Israel and we think of the temple, but his son Solomon built the temple. And so for David, he's got the tabernacle. And this tent was with Israel for so long. It was from post-slavery in Egypt when God delivered them, and they brought them out into the wilderness, and God instructed them to have this tent, this dwelling place for him. They call it the tabernacle. And so this is the tent in verse 1. "Lord made, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?" And that now that they are in the Promised Land, that holy tent was on a mountain. And so he's really asking, the root of these two questions is, who can live in the presence of God? Or who can dwell with God in his presence? This is David asking the right question. And Christianity has a unique answer to this question. Other religions may have this similar question of who is worthy to be in the presence of their deity or their God. And oftentimes for other religions, it is all about what the person has done. What acts they have done, what are their actions, are they worthy to be in the presence of that deity? But God goes a step further and he looks at the heart, because he understands that someone could do technically the right thing, but be absolutely rotten inside. And so the Christian faith, God puts the utmost priority on the heart. And the answer to this question speaks to a person's heart and what's inside. Now a little bit more about this tent, this sacred tent. We know that God's presence is very powerful. No one has been in the full presence of God and lived. We know that from Moses on the mountain, and Moses was desperate to be in God's presence. He said, "God, I've been following you, we've got a good relationship, we've got a good thing going on. Can you please reveal yourself to me?" And God said, "You can handle it. If I show myself to you, if I reveal my full self to you, you will die." And so even in the temple, in this tabernacle, sorry, in the tabernacle, there was a section called the Holy of Holies, which is where the presence of God was. And only specific people who had done specific things to get ready could go into that Holy of Holies, and if they didn't, they would die. And this person, this priest, there was only one allowed at a certain time, the Bible tells all about these details, but even they would walk in with a rope around their leg, because if they died, they could pull the body out.

So again, the presence of God is powerful and it is mysterious. And this question that David is asking is a heavy question. Who can withstand, who could live, who could be in the presence of God? It's a loaded question and it's a great question because it's not a self-serving question. "God, can you do this for me? God, can you please give me this? Could you provide?" Whatever it is, those are not always bad prayers. I don't want to say that there's a time and place for that, but we got to be careful in how we approach God. We don't want to treat him like a genie or a vending machine. Just always asking God, I need this, God I need this, and I'm expecting this. David's question of who can dwell in the presence of God is such a great question because it addresses the accounts at the very beginning of our Bibles, the rebellion in the garden, and the rebellious heart of sin in all of humanity. And that rebellious thought is the thought that life can be lived for humanity apart from God. That humans could live a life that they know how to live a better life than what God had intended. It's the sin that Adam and Eve thought. They saw that fruit and they knew that God said don't do it, but they thought, "You know what? I think I know better than God. I'm going to take that fruit. I'm going to eat it. And so through that garden experience though, through the fall, we know clearly who is not worthy to be in the presence of God. And it's those who are marred by sin. Example, Adam and Eve. As soon as that happened, God kicked them out of the garden. So you can't be here anymore. So the question, who can dwell in the presence of God, who can be as close as possible with God, It's huge. And David mentions these two places, the holy tent and the mountain, to bring up certain things in the Israelites' minds. Now, we can't go back to life in Eden before the fall, before sin entered the world, but there are places where we are closer to God, and for Israel, physically closer to God. That's that tent, that holy mountain is exactly where God was. And those two places bring up a couple points. One, those are places where heaven meets earth. God, who is God of the heavens, is there on earth. And so that place is where his presence, where God is perfectly recognized as king, and where his reign is existing as it was meant to. And then secondly, that place is a place that stands in stark contrast to the world around it. You think of the tent and the tabernacle, and you think of that mountain, and you clearly see God's presence there. And then if you visualize with me old Israel, you just look around, and I think you would clearly see the effects of sin in the world, and the corruption and the injustice and the sin that would just run rampant. And so the temple or the tent and this mountain provide such a clear picture of life that God intended and the life that reality of sin around it. And so David, in this moment of clarity, asks a very important question, "Who's worthy to be in the perfect presence of God dwelling with Him?" And thankfully, we get the answer, which is the rest of the Psalm. What is God looking for in a person?

Well, verses 2 through 5 give us that. And we know through the teachings of Jesus and the mistake of the Pharisees that we need Jesus to be the person that He lists in 2 through 5. We can't do it on our own effort and our own strength. And so, with that foundation, let's look at what David informs us, what David tells us about who this person is. And so, first, it's a person, a woman, or a man of integrity. Verse 2 says, "Whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous." This is a phrase that is often used in the Old Testament to describe a person who followed God, and often in contrast to the people around them who didn't. So we think of someone like Noah, who at that time the whole world was evil, following sin, "Except for Noah who walked with God and did what is righteous." There's that phrase where we think of Abraham, and as God chose Abraham, it gives the example of the rest of the world who was living in sin, except for Abraham who is blameless, walking with God, doing what is righteous. And so this brings about this phrase here. This is the person whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, someone who is living out their faith in God. And then David writes, "Who speaks the truth from the heart." I love this. This is someone who speaks with conviction, someone who doesn't just say the right thing, but truly believes it. Truly believes it. And I think, I know that this happens within a person who is in the Word of God regularly. When you are reading God's Word, there is power, transforming power in His Word, and it changes us. It changes our hearts. And it has this effect on what we say. There's a prayer by George Herbert, and it's a beautiful prayer that I think we should all pray, and it says this, "Oh, make your word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip in conversation, that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may your word, but accomplish that which for what it was given." I love that prayer. In that prayer there's expectation and anticipation that God's word is going to change us. It's going to have an effect on our lives. We are transformed by his truth. Now through the work of the Spirit and through the reading of his word, a new heart is formed within us. And then And from that, we'll have a tongue that utters no slander, who speaks the truth from the heart. So, so far we have this person who is described as someone who's living a life of integrity. And then David writes, "It's a person who does no wrong to a neighbor and casts no slur on others." We might recognize this as part of the greatest commandment, to love God and to love others, to love our neighbor. It's a reminder that how we treat those around us is a reflection of what's inside of our hearts.

Another way of saying this might be a person who doesn't condescend to other people. Because someone who is constantly condescending others thinks of themselves as better. They speak from a place of higher status thinking, and they're literally, the word kind of, you're looking down on everyone around you. "I know better, I am better, let me tell you how you're wrong, how you could be doing it right." That's not the way that God intended us to speak to other people. It's not a way of speaking out of love. That would be evidence of a sinful heart, evidence of pride and of selfishness. David continues describing this person, "As someone who despises a vile person, but honors those who fear the Lord." Now, this isn't telling us to hate people or to judge other people, but to be forthright with our loyalty for God and his people. It's a declaration of where our loyalty and allegiance lie. And again, this is written to Israel, who had this habit, this bad habit, of being enamored and falling in love with the surrounding cultures and their deities and their gods and their ungodly practices. And Israel would just find a way to start incorporating those practices, even though God had given them strict rules. And so David is saying, "Israel, if you keep doing that, don't expect to be dwelling in the house of God. Don't expect to be in His presence." He continues again and he says, "Who keeps an oath even when it hurts." I love this one, because this is so hard. This is a very God-like attribute, to be keeping your word even when it is hurting you. I don't know if you've ever had to do that, but it's hard. It's really hard. And think of God who honors his covenant to Israel, even when they rebel against him, even when they break his heart over and over again. You think of the covenant that God made with Abraham. He said, "I'm going to give you lots of descendants. I'm going to make them into a great nation. I'm going to give you a land." And God, in that time, making that happen, endures all these rebellious acts. And Israel, again, commits time and time again just sin against God. Yet God remains faithful, just like He promised He would. And so David is saying that God honors a person who makes sacrifices in order to love other people. Someone who is faithful and steadfast, just like God is, that's a person who's going to dwell in the presence of God. And then he writes, "Someone who does not change their mind." So another way of saying this is sticking with the hard things. Not just taking the easy road, but sticking with it even when it gets hard, Even when it's painful, it hurts.

I think a great example of this was the youth last week, on Monday, went and did a high ropes course in Lake Tahoe. And I don't know if you've ever been 60, 70 feet high up in a tree, but it is terrifying. Some of the kids, some of the students were just like... I'm getting glared at right now by one of the students who was up there in the tree. Some of the students loved it, and they were just like... looked like they had been born in a tree, and they're just hopping around. They were in full harnesses, by the way, so don't... I don't take the students up and just they were in full harnesses. They were roped up it was all very safe and some of them were flying around just like you're going on skinny planks or things that Are just like on a wire going from tree to tree And again, some of them was amazing and then others including myself but others had a very hard time and they're facing fears of heights and balance and everything and They could have there was an option to get out of that tree if they really wanted to But I'm so proud to say, Lauren and I were so proud of them, that they all pushed through. They stuck with doing the hard thing. They faced their fears. They persevered. And they did it. And it was incredible to see them in that moment not change their mind. Take some time to take some deep breaths. And they just, one step at a time. They did a hard thing. And I think God, that's an example of the Christian life, right? There are some times where we can choose an easy way just to back out, to not be involved, but there God would desire that we not change our mind, that we stick with it, that we remain faithful to Him through difficult circumstances.

God wants that for His people. He doesn't want us to quit living the faithful life of integrity, to change our minds, and to start serving ourselves, start living for ourselves. The last couple are a little bit specific. He says, "Who lends money to the poor without interest?" This is like, "Okay, David, that's very specific, but what is that about?" Well, David is saying, "It speaks to a person who cares more about others and their prosperity than one's own gain." When someone who is in need, it's not saying, "How can I make a buck off of this? I can help them, and I can also help myself in this. God's saying, do we have a care for people purely for the sense of loving them, and giving them what they need in that moment, and not being selfish at all, and just saying, yes, let me be able to attend to your needs, and trust that God will take care of you, and He'll take care of me. It's evidence of a faithful heart, and one who is living in God's will. And then in that same verse, in verse 5, it says, "Who does not accept a bribe against the innocent?" And this is describing corruption that happens on all levels of life. We think of corruption and maybe we think of bigger corporations and businesses and politicians, but we can also, we can also live a life of corruption, of injustice. And God cares deeply about justice. If you were part of our community group this past spring, we went through a book of the Old Testament that spoke to how much God cares about justice and how upset he was with Israel, as Israel had let these practices creep into their everyday life that were unjust. God said, "You're going to face the consequences for that." And if God's own people are lying and cheating and being deceitful, What kind of reflection is that on God's character, on who He is? So this is not a character trait that God wants for His people who will be in His house. The person who dwells in the presence of God is someone who cares about justice, just as God does. So, there we have it. Easy enough, right? If you want to be in the presence of God, verses 2 through 5, go for it. As we said, we can't do this on our own. We do not have the capacity, the ability, without Jesus to live a life like this. As we take a step back and look at this list, we see a person who embodies the heart of God, someone who encapsulates a heart that cares for what God cares about and lives in a way that is pleasing and honoring to God. the way that God meant for humanity to live, and the way that Jesus did live years after this was written. I love that David asks a great question and we get the answer. In 15, the last part of this verse, David writes, "Whoever does these things will never be shaken." The Bible loves to use this analogy to describe someone who is protected by God, in whatever circumstances they go through. So in the New Testament you might think of Jesus' teachings in the parable of building the house upon the rock. Or Paul's teachings in Ephesians, where he's talking about a person who is not thrown around by the waves. Again, it's not saying that you won't go through difficult, challenging, painful experiences, because you will. But when you do, God will protect you, He will hold you fast, and keep you secure. And you will go through whatever it is in the presence of God. It also speaks to a consistency. You will not be shaken, but you will remain with God through it all. I think that's part of the Christian life, that we often start younger in our faith, and we have moments where we feel really close to God, and we have moments where we feel really far away. And hopefully the prayer is over life, that up and down becomes a little bit less and just consistent, and we just have a constant strong relationship with him. Whoever does these things will never be shaken.

David, the author, again, to his credit, was very self-aware of his heart, of his own shortcomings, and he had some pretty big shortcomings. And he prayed often to dwell in the house of God. And I think he realized it's because of the sin that he committed and those moments where he felt so far away from God, it stirred in him that hunger to be, "I want to be as close to God as possible. I want to be in the house of God, in the Holy of Holies. I don't want to be far away. I want to be as close to Him. I want to dwell with Him." We should have a similar heart. I said at the beginning that this psalm informs us of who can dwell in the presence of God, but it also holds up a mirror to our own hearts. And so now it's time to hold up that mirror. I want to ask a few questions of us, just some things that you can think about today and this week. First is, what kind of questions are you asking God? Are they questions that expect God to do something according to your will? Or are they questions that will bring you closer to His will? Just as David did, it might be a good exercise to ask those burning questions of faith that we have about who God is and what He does. We all have questions about that. And maybe it's a good exercise to write that down and try to answer them, and then go to the Bible and try to find those answers. Whatever those questions may be, "God, why am I going through this situation in life? God, why did you do this? God, why do you tend to..." Whatever it is, I don't know, why is there suffering? God, who's going to be with you in heaven? You can ask the biggest of questions, you can ask the smallest of questions, but ask them. Take time to figure out those answers, and I think that process, I know that process can bring you closer to Him. It will make you wrestle with hard truths and tensions in the faith, but it'll be so good. There's a lot that we're meant to wrestle with.

As I said in the beginning, God, the authors wanted us to be...there's just tension in the faith. There just is. My Hebrew professor told me that there are rabbis who study one psalm for their entire life. And so they'll have 50 years of study on one psalm, and they just continually learn. They never think that they have arrived, and they think that they know it all. They are saying, "Oh, in year 48, here's the new thing I learned from this same passage. And so we should have a similar heart. God, there is more to know about you. I need to ask these good questions to find out these answers." And then secondly, lastly, our last question, do we desire to live in God's presence? Are we taking moments in life to ask God, "How can I be in your presence right now?" And I would say, let's be specific. It may mean praying, "God, in my place of work, how do I work in your presence? God, in my family life, how do I be a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a friend, son, daughter, whatever it is in your presence?" Are we trying to be with God, or are we trying to have God just be with us in what we're doing? And there's a difference. It's important to find out how we're living our lives. We may not have thought about it that way before, but we can, by default, just start to bring God along with us. "God, I'm going this way, please follow, come with me." When really, we need to be asking, "God, where do you want me to go? Where are you leading? Let me follow you." Are you trying to be with God? Are you trying to be this person who can dwell in the house of God, in the presence of God? Is this list of characteristics present in your life? In what areas of your life do you feel the Spirit calling your attention to, to submit and to undergo further transformation by the power of God and his Word? David, like us, didn't always get it right. But in this moment, I'm so thankful that he asked the right question. And so I want to encourage us to be like him and make a habit of asking the right questions to God.

Would you guys pray with me right now? God, we come before you thankful for your word, and the power of your truth to transform our hearts to be made more like you. And that is our desire, that is our prayer, that you would be purifying us, transforming us, taking the sinful habits away, and instantly putting in us godly desires, godly character. So I pray that this week through your Spirit you would help, you would speak to us about areas of our life that need to change, where we are being selfish and self-absorbed. And I pray that you would help us in our prayer life as we converse with you regularly. That I pray that we would take time to pause and think about what we're asking. And while we still may have requests for you, I pray that our hearts would also start to see how we can ask, "God, how can I be in your presence? How can I live a life where I am with you in everything that I do?" Go with us this week. Guide us this week. We trust you and we love you. We pray this in your name. Amen.