Let's start by singing hymn number
12 in the spiral-bound hymnal. I don't have the tune in the
music box marked, so we'll just do this acapella. Hymn number
12. Upon my great and sovereign God,
I cast my soul and rest. My Father's hand controls the
world, and what he does is best. So be still, my heart, and doubt
no more. Believe and find sweet rest. God's wisdom, love, and truth
and power combine to make thee blessed. In raging storms and
fiery trials, He keeps me from all harms. He walks with me and
holds me in His everlasting arms. So be still, my heart, and doubt
no more. Believe and find sweet rest. God's wisdom, love, and truth,
and power combine to make thee blessed. My God with skill infallible
and great designs of grace, with power and love that never fail,
shall order all my ways. So be still, my heart, and doubt
no more. Believe and find sweet rest. God's wisdom, love, and truth,
and power combine to make thee blessed. My life's most minute
circumstance is ordered by my God. who promised that in all
things he will ever do me good. So be still, my heart, and doubt
no more. Believe and find sweet rest. God's wisdom, love, and truth
and power combine to make thee blessed. Be seated, please. Good morning. I was thinking as we were singing
that hymn that the great blessing and benefit of public worship
is that we believe what we just sang while we're singing it. And as I was rejoicing in what
we were singing, I was also lamenting over the fact that there's so
many times I act as if I don't believe that and how I need the
Lord to remind me of that glorious truth more often. That's the blessing of being
able to come together in worship to remember who it is that we
believe and to be brought back in faith to Him. I want us to
have prayer before we begin. I assume everybody here knows
about Joe Terrell's death. And the church in Iowa is meeting
this morning to have a memorial service for their pastor. And
Moose Parks will be preaching that service. And I know several
of the folks, including the pastor of the church in Missouri where
where where Joe was I will be there as well. So I want us to
pray for those congregations. And I have been in touch with
the family members and with the pastors and and it's just amazing
how much grace the Lord has given in such a difficult, difficult
time. I'm just I'm just brought to,
I'm humbled by how gracious our God is and how he
has provided for everybody in their time of need. Also want to welcome Laney Eby
to the services this morning. This is the first time for her
to be in church and so very hopeful that it'll be the first of a
lifetime of gathering together with God's people and worshiping
the Lord with us. I wanna pray for Matt and Grace
and Chris and Ruth, the grandparents, as they seek to raise little
Lainey onto the gospel. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for the blessing of
public worship. Thank you for calling us out
from our homes and bringing us here to this place where we might
join our voices and our hearts together in worship. Lord, how dependent we are upon
thee for that. We need your Holy Spirit to enable
us to worship according to the truth that you've revealed in
your word. We need your Holy Spirit to enlighten
the eyes of our understanding and open up that which only you
can open, open the windows of heaven, open your word, open
our hearts. And Lord, we know that what you
open, no man can shut. Lord, we pray for our brethren
in Iowa and we ask that you would comfort them as only you can
and that you would provide, continue to provide for them the mercy
and the grace that they need in such a difficult time of trial. Lord, we pray for little Laney.
We thank you for the miracle of life. We pray, Lord, that
in your time that you would speak truth to her heart and give her
spiritual life in Christ. Pray for Matt and Grace and for
Ruth and Chris and the rest of us that, Lord, that we might
be an influence on her as she's brought up onto the gospel. We
ask it in Christ's name, amen. Will you open your Bibles with
me to 2 Samuel? 2 Samuel chapter 1. I've titled this message, The
Grace of Mourning. If we are to mourn properly,
and mourning is not just mourning over a loss as we do in death,
but mourning spiritually over our sin before God, that mourning
is a work of grace. It's not something that we can
manufacture. It's not something that we can
produce. If it's to be done right, and
if it is to be profitable, and mourning is profitable, It must
be something that the Lord enables us to do. And David in 2 Samuel
now is lamenting the death of Saul. And he writes in the last
part of this chapter, a funeral dirge. This is a hymn that was to be
sung. It's written in prose, as the
Psalms would have been. David, you know, wrote many of
those. And he says in verse 18, also
he bade them teach the children of Judah, and notice the next
three words, the use of, are in italics. As is often the case,
whenever the translators add words to the text to try to give
it a better meaning, it actually takes away from the meaning.
And this is not David telling the children of Israel learn
how to use the bow as in a bow and arrow. They have been using
that already. They were very trained in using
the bow. He's calling this hymn the bow
in reference to what he's, the comment, the point that he makes
in verse 22 when he says that the bow of Jonathan turned not
back. He's lamenting the death of Saul
and Jonathan and this funeral dirge, this hymn, he refers to
as the bow. And so he tells the people, teach
the children of Israel the bow. And behold, is it not written
in the book of Jasher? We don't really know what the
Book of Jasher was, whether it was a royal ledger of some sort
whereby the king kept a record of things. The word Jasher means
upright or straight and so it could just be a reference to
this book. This book would not have been
called 2 Samuel when it was being written. So here's my point. David writes this hymn and he,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says, teach the children
of Judah this hymn, because this hymn will tell them the proper
way of mourning and lamenting. And so that's, that's, What I
want us to try to do this morning is to learn what the Lord would
have us to learn from this inspired dirge as to what spirit-led mourning,
God-given lamentations are. Because we need that. We need
to know how to mourn. And the means by which the Lord
gives this grace is teaching. And that's always the case. He
says, teach the children of Judah. Notice in verse 11 of this text
of this same chapter, then David took hold on his clothes. David
has just learned about the death of Saul and Jonathan. And David
took hold on his clothes and rent them and likewise all the
men that were with him. And they mourned and wept and
fasted until even for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for
the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel because they
were fallen by the sword." And now David has been given words
from God to teach us how it is that we should mourn. And he
says, write this hymn down. And it has been written down.
It has been recorded in God's word. And teach the children
of Judah. I love how the Lord identifies
who it's to be taught to. Judah was one of the sons of
Jacob and his name translated means
praised. He's a clear reference to the
Lord Jesus Christ and all that are found in him because those
are the only ones they're gonna learn. Those are the ones that
are gonna be taught. When Jacob was blessing his sons
before he died, he said, the scepter shall not depart from
Judah until Shiloh come. And Shiloh means rest and Jacob
was prophesying of the one who would come from the tribe of
Judah. The Lord Jesus is called the
Lion of the tribe of Judah. And so those that are taught
of God are those that are found in Christ. Teach the children
of Judah. Not everybody's going to learn
this but children of Judah will learn it and they will profit
from it and they will greatly benefit from these words that
we are now expressing in light of the death of Saul and Jonathan
but they have such far-reaching implications to the hearts of
God's people as they learn to properly mourn and lament in
their loss and in their sin. As I said, this grace, and it
is a grace, it's not something... When the Lord began the Sermon
on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, We dealt with this a little
bit Wednesday night but he started with by saying, blessed are those
who are poor of spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. And the
second of the Beatitudes is blessed are they that mourn for they
shall be comforted. And, you know, someone might
read these, I've heard the The Beatitudes translated as attitudes
that ought to be. And if you can just develop these
kind of attitudes then you'll receive the blessing. No, the
attitude is the blessing. Don't miss that. Being poor of
spirit is a work of grace. Being Being without anything
before God, dependent completely upon him for everything is a
work of grace and that is the blessing. That's not something
that you can just create an attitude toward. That's false piety. That's religious hypocrisy when
men try to act poor and pious and mourning and all these sort
of things that men put on. It's so fake. You see it, you
know it, you know when you've done it and it's not of God. So the blessing is being made
poor in spirit, is being stripped of all of your righteousness,
being left bankrupt before God, being in abject poverty, that's
what that word poor in spirit means, you don't have anything
to offer God for the grounds of your standing in his presence.
You completely depend upon him to provide to you. And so, coming
before, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those
who have been given this grace of being poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are they that mourn.
And again, this mourning is not something we developed or create. It is a work of grace and that's
what David's saying here, teach this lamentation to the children
of Judah. This will show them how to mourn
properly and this will open, this teaching will be the means
towards the grace that they're dependent upon in order to mourn
because only by God's grace will they be able to mourn properly
And only through that morning will they be comforted. Blessed
are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. If we ever hope to have any comfort,
this morning must come from God. And, you know, think with me
for just a moment about prayer. Prayer is a work of grace in
the heart. Prayer is, you know, not something that we can...
First thing we do when we pray is, Lord, teach me to pray. The disciples ask the Lord, Lord,
teach us to pray. Teach us to pray. And so, though
prayer is a work of grace that God must put in the heart The
means by which he gives us that grace is teaching. In the book of James, the scripture
says, of his own will, of God's sovereign purpose and God's sovereign
will, begat he us, he birthed us into the kingdom of God according
to his own will and purpose by the word of truth. So he uses
the means of the gospel and the teaching of his word in order
to birth us into the kingdom of God. Whosoever shall call
upon the Lord shall be saved, but how shall they call upon
him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe on
him in whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how shall they preach except God send them?
So this This means of teaching, Matthew chapter 18, Matthew 28,
at verse 18. Turn with me there. Let's look
at that verse just a moment. Matthew 28. I want you to see the importance
of God-inspired teaching. These are our Lord's last words
to his disciples in verse 19. Well, he says in verse 18, all
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Now, if he possesses
all power, that means I don't have any power. He's got it all. Go ye therefore. A more accurate verb tense of
those words at the beginning of verse 19 is as you are going. As you are going therefore, teach, teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded
you and lo, I am with you always even into the end of the earth.
So, this matter of teaching. When our Lord came, the scriptures often refer
to him as teaching. The most famous, the most well-known,
I guess, comprehensive message that our Lord that we have of
our Lord recorded in the scriptures would be the Sermon on the Mount
in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. All three of those chapters,
one message he preached. And that passage begins with,
and he opened his mouth and taught them. That's how the sermon begins. And in Matthew chapter seven,
the last verse of Matthew chapter seven, verse 29, and he taught
them as one having authority and not as the scribes. So back to our text, David is
saying, teach this lamentation. teach this morning to the people
of Christ, to the people of Judah, and by... I've always, I guess, in my own mind and heart,
struggled with what is the difference between teaching and preaching.
And I've come to some conclusion that preaching has to have some
teaching in it and teaching has to have some preaching in it.
They go together. Ephesians chapter four, and God
gave to the church some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists
and some pastors, teachers. So this matter of preaching involves
teaching as well. What's the difference? Well,
if all we have learned from the instructions that God gives from
his word, we've learned from the voice of another man, then
it really hasn't served its purpose in bringing about a work of grace
in the heart. You know, I've been given the the responsibility
to stand up here and be the audible voice. But you know and I know
that we need to be taught of God. That a man's voice is just
a means and his voice is only effectual first of all if God
has spoken to him and second of all if he is faithful to what
God has recorded in his word. The Lord Jesus said, Father,
I thank thee that thou hast hid these things from the wise and
the prudent and revealed them unto babes and they shall all
be taught of God. There's our hope. When we come
together, as I speak, and as we share with one another, and
as we learn and study, and we're looking to be taught of God,
that we might be blessed with the blessing of God-given morning. Because only then will we know
anything of His comfort. That's... If teaching only leads to knowledge,
then two things hold true. Number one, we've not been taught
of God. And number two, knowledge puffeth up. If we've been taught of God,
we'll be... will be humbled, knowledge puffeth
up, love edifies. Love edifies. So the evidence
of being taught of God is that the Lord has revealed truth to
our hearts that have humbled us before him and before one
another. Let's read this hymn together. Verse 17, and David lamented
with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan, his son. And he bade them teach the children
of Judah the bow. Behold, it is written in the
book of Jasher, the beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high
places. How art the mighty fallen? Now, David is grieving over the
death of the king and his son, Jonathan, who David had a very
a very special relationship with. But David's greatest grief is
over the circumstances of that death. The humiliation and shame and
fear that perhaps this is a means of God's judgment. The Philistines
had killed them in battle. To die in battle against an enemy
is a great sign of God's removing of his protection and of his
power. And so David is fearing much
like Isaiah did. You remember in Isaiah chapter
6, the scripture says, in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah
goes to the temple that day. And the king had just died and
he died shamefully. He was inflicted with leprosy,
He tried to usurp the authority of the priest and tried to enter
into the presence of God without the help of an intermediary.
And God afflicted him with leprosy and he died in shame and Isaiah
the prophet now is fearing that perhaps this is a sign that God
has forsaken us, left us to ourselves. David's thinking that. That's
really David's fear here. And it was the disciples' fear as
well when our Lord went to the cross. Was he not the beauty
of Israel? Saul here is representative of
Christ going to Calvary's cross. Saul, when he's introduced at
the beginning of 1 Samuel, the scripture says that he was more
beautiful than all the men of Israel. that he was literally
head and shoulders taller than all the men of Israel. And his
name translated means one to be desired, one to be desired. And now he's died in shame. And the Lord has given us a prophetic
picture of what happens when the beauty of Israel The one
who is himself holy and harmless and undefiled and separate from
sinners and higher than the heavens, the one that is to be desired
goes to the cross and dies in shame. He has been, he's been
made a curse. Cursed is everyone that hangeth
upon a tree. The Lord Jesus and the disciples
thought this, who we thought was the Christ, he's been crucified
and he's died and all is lost. And they're genuinely mourning
and lamenting over the death of their hope. Turn with me to John chapter
16. And look with me at verse 20. Verily, verily, I say unto you
that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. And you shall be sorrowful, but
your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in
travail, hath sorrow because her hour is come. But as soon
as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish
for joy that a man is born into the world. The Lord uses the
very common experience of a woman and her travail and childbirth
and the joy that she experiences when that baby comes healthy
into the world and how her sorrow is turned to joy. He's telling the disciples, you're
going to sorrow. Psalm 30 verse five says, weeping
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. There
is a lamenting that takes place in the hearts of God's people
over the shameful way in which the Lord Jesus died on the cross. Let me show you that. Turn with
me to Zechariah chapter 12. Zechariah chapter 12. Verse nine,
and it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to
destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I
will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
the spirit of grace and of supplications. And they shall look upon me whom
they have pierced and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth
for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one
that is in bitterness for his firstborn. And in that day there
shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem as the mourning of
Hadrimah in the valley of Magedon. And the land shall mourn every
family apart, the family of the house of David apart, and their
wives apart, and the family of the house of Nathan apart, and
their wives apart, and the family of the house of Levi apart, and
their wives apart, and the family of Shimei apart, and their wives
apart, all the families that remain, and every family apart,
and every wives apart. In other words, this spirit of
mourning, this work of grace in the heart is an experience
that God gives to every one of His children over their sin. how oftentimes we are more grieved
over the consequences of our sin in terms of our earthly experiences
rather than over the consequences of our sin in terms of what the
Lord Jesus suffered on Calvary's cross. You see, here's the work of grace,
brethren. Here's what you need and here's what I need. For God
the Holy Spirit to cause us to mourn for him, mourn for him
whom we have pierced as one would mourn for his only son. The beauty
of Israel was slain And that word slain means to
be profaned or be defiled. It's in our text. Go back with
me. Go back with me to our text. Look what David says in verse
19. And the beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places. How art the mighty fallen? The Lord Jesus Christ, when he
went to Calvary's cross, bore all the sins of all of God's
people and put them away once and for
all by the sacrifice of Himself. And He suffered the penalty of
that sin, the shame and the sorrow and the separation of that sin
like you and I have never known. When our conscience bothers us,
and even when the Holy Spirit convicts us, of our sin. We have an advocate with the
Father who not only is able to say to us, I sympathize with
the feelings of your infirmities because I've experienced all
the sins of all of God's people, but he's also able to say, I
experienced that sin, that one sin that's bothering you right
now, I've carried it to its fullest length. You don't even know the
full weight of that sin. You don't know the full wrath
of that sin, the full darkness of that sin, the full shame of
that sin. I know that sin. We have a high
priest who is not unable to be touched with the feelings of
our infirmities, but was in all ways tempted even as we are,
yet without sin. So in our mourning over our sin,
may God give us the grace. This is what David's saying here.
Teach the children of Israel this lamentation. Teach them
this song, this funeral dirge. because it was their sin and
their sins in particular that caused the son of God to be slain,
to be sacrificed, to be put to death. And might the spirit of
grace and supplication be poured out upon the house of David and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that we mourn for him. that we could see that our sin
is so much worse than whatever experiences we might have as
a result of them in this world. Our sins are infinitely worse
than that. In that, whatever we suffer,
He suffered to the fullest degree. That's what mourning is. That's what it is to be blessed
with the spirit of mourning. Oh, to experience ourselves,
the full sorrow and weight that he experienced? No, we can never
do that. We can never do that. But to
mourn for him, to mourn after him, to seek him, To believe
that it was my sin that resulted in the holy, harmless beauty
of Israel to go to Calvary's cross and to look upon Him whom
we have pierced and to mourn after Him. That's unnatural. You can't manufacture
that. May God be pleased to use this
teaching to give us a little bit better access to that grace, if you
will. But it is a work of grace in
the heart. All that the Lord would cause
us to look to Christ, to look upon that That brazen serpent
that's been put upon a pole and raised up, they that had been
bitten, when they looked, lived. Oh, have you been bitten with
sin? He's been bitten a whole lot worse than you have. You've had the venom of that
serpent coursing through your vein. He became that serpent. God made him sin, who knew no
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. The beauty of Israel has been
slain. Oh, that's what David what David
was talking about when he said in Psalm 51, against thee. It had been almost a year since
David took Bathsheba and had Uriah put to death and he'd been
trying to cover it up and I suspect that David had been going to
church every day, you know, making his prayers and Providing his
sacrifices and trying to salve his conscience, he was under
the weight and the burden of sin, like you and I have experienced. Until Nathan, the prophet of
God said, oh David, thou art the man and the spirit of God
convicted him. And what did David say in Psalm
51? Against thee and thee only have
I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou might be
justified. You see David, David didn't mourn
over that sin. until God gave him a spirit of
mourning and then he saw his sin for what it really was. Not just something that caused
him and his family and his surroundings a problem but something that
was grievous against a holy God upon whom bore his sin for him
and put it away. And what did Nathan say when
David said, oh, I have sinned? And Nathan immediate said, and
God hath forgiven thee. And God hath forgiven thee. This is the morning. You have your Bibles open to
1 Samuel 1. Tell it not in Gath, publish
it not, verse 20. Publish it not in the streets
of Asculon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice. Let
the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. They can't, they can't
enter into this. Only the people of God, only
the children of Judah can learn this and believe this. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there
be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields
of offering, for there the fields of the mighty are vilely cast
away. And the shields of Saul, as though
he had not been anointed with oil. Here's the Lord Jesus Christ
going to the cross. If he's the anointed one, if
he's the Christ, how could he die? One reason, your sin, my
sin. That's it. That's what mourning is. May
God teach us that. From the blood of the slain and
from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back. Jonathan here being a picture
of the church. Church won't turn back. God does this work of grace in
your heart if he gives you a spirit of mourning in terms of believing
that it was your sin that put Christ on the cross. And that's what we're talking
about here. It's believing that my sin I pierced him, and he suffered
that for me. And though mourning may last
for the night, joy cometh in the morning. And though the Lord
said to those disciples, you're going to mourn and sorrow, but
then you're going to rejoice. And they that mourn shall be
comforted. Why? Because it's only in coming
to that truth, that faith, that Christ died for me, that he bore
my sins, and now we have the hope of knowing that God the
Father was fully satisfied with the sacrifice that Christ made
and my sins have been put away. Isaiah put it like this, we have
sinned and that continually. Is this a one-time experience
that we just, we say, okay, I've settled that with God, let me
just move on? No. We live with this old man
and with this sinful nature every day. This is a realization and
experience that we have to have by God's grace continually. To whom coming? We're always
coming to Christ. Why are we always coming? Because
we've always got a sin problem. This mourning over our sin, this
mourning and rejoicing, this mourning and being comforted
is a continual work of grace. We're never in one place or the
other. We're moving continually from
mourning to comfort, from sorrow to joy. Might the Spirit of God keep
us alive so that Jonathan's bow does not quit. Look at what else it says. Jonathan
turned not back and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul fell on his own sword and
it returned not empty. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the
sword of the spirit is the word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ
went to the cross because he had made covenant promises to
his father to lay down his life for his sheep. And it came back
not empty. The sacrifice that Christ made
for our sin satisfied the law and justice of God. And he did not return to God void.
He accomplished the purpose for which he was sent. The sword
did not return empty. Look at verse 23, Saul and Jonathan
were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death, they
were not divided. Leave it right there. They were not divided in their
death. When the Lord Jesus Christ died, We died in him, crucified in
Christ. We're not divided in his death. When we die the first death, we have no fear of the second
death because we will not be divided from him in our death. Let's take a break.