70 in your hardbacked hymnal,
holy, holy, holy. Let's all stand together, hymn
number 70. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee Holy, holy,
holy Merciful and mighty Holy, holy, holy, all the saints
adore Thee. Casting down their golden crowns
around the glassy sea. and seraphim falling down Holy, though the darkness guide
thee, Though the eye of sin foe and thy glory may not see. Holy, thou art holy, there is
none beside thee. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty
All thy works shall praise thy name With earth and sky and sea Please be seated. If you'd like to follow along
in the scriptures, we'll be looking at the rest of Hannah's prayer
in 1 Samuel chapter two, 1 Samuel chapter two. Ask the Lord's blessings on our
time together. Our merciful Heavenly Father, when you bring us together in
this place, we become more dependent upon you
than ever before. Lord, we depend upon you to reveal
yourself, enable us to worship, to put into our hearts a spirit
of praise and thanksgiving to give us understanding and or to cause your word to be alive
and effectual or to give us the ability to worship
you and the power of your spirit and the truth of your word, enable
us to speak that which is true, Lord, enable us to hear, not the voice of a man, but the
very voice of God, as you speak to the hearts of your people
and speak truth and peace and hope and comfort and correction. Lord, we're in need of all of
those things. And Father, we pray that for
Christ's sake, that you would be pleased this hour to do that
for us. Oh, we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. All right, you have your Bibles
open to 1 Samuel 2. We'll begin reading at verse
three. Well, let's just read the first
two verses. We've already looked at them in detail, but we'll
read them to get them. Hannah is rejoicing in the Lord's
mercy toward her. And Hannah prayed and said, my
heart rejoiceth in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth is enlarged over my
enemies because I rejoice in thy salvation. There is none
holy as the Lord, for there is none beside thee, neither is
there any rock like our God. Talk no more exceedingly proudly. Let not arrogancy come out of
your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions
are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are
broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength. They
that were full have hired themselves out for bread, and they that
were hungry ceased from their hunger, so that the barren hath
born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth. The Lord maketh
alive. He bringeth down to the grave,
and he bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh
rich. He bringeth low, and lifteth
up. He raiseth up the poor out of
the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to
set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne
of glory. For the pillars of the earth
are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them. He will
keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent
in darkness. For by strength, for by strength
shall no man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall
be broken to pieces. Out of heaven shall he thunder
upon them. The Lord shall judge the ends
of the earth and he shall give strength unto his king and exalt
the horn of his anointed. So we'll begin in verse three,
talk no more exceeding proudly and let not arrogancy come out
of your mouth. Lord tells us that out of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. and how oftentimes
our words expose the sin that's in our hearts. And Hannah is
rejoicing in the hope of her salvation. She
said in verse one, for I rejoice in thy salvation. The Lord had done a work of grace
for her And pride and arrogancy and self-promotion
is a part of our nature. It's a part of our old man, part
of our natural man, part of our character. And yet, what a difference
grace makes in humbling and putting a guard over our mouths. I was thinking that in the world,
self-confidence and arrogance is the way to succeed. In the
world, the way up is up. Self-promotion and and taking
advantage over others and demonstrating strength and intimidation is
the way to get ahead in the world. And what the Lord is telling
us in this passage is that my ways are not your ways and my
thoughts are not your thoughts. And as the heavens are high above
the earth, so are my ways above your ways. The way the Lord does
it is just the opposite. The way up is not up. The way
up is down. That's the title of this message.
The way up is down. Hannah had an adversary by the
name of Panina. Panina, the scripture says, provoked
her. and caused her to fret. And in this story, Penina, for
you and I, is a picture of our adversary, our self-promoting,
prideful, arrogant old man. Penina's name translated means
jewel. What does a jewel do? A jewel
draws attention to itself, doesn't it? And that is your adversary and
that is my adversary. It's that natural man that would
try to find his hope of salvation by
something that he does to promote himself. When the scripture says that
Panina caused Hannah to fret, that word fret is also translated
thunder, or to tremble, or to shake. And is not this the conflict
that every believer has between their two natures? The penina
within is always making a noise and always trying to shake things
up and resist. Our old man resists humility. It resists going down. It resists brokenness. It, like a jewel, is always drawing
attention to itself. We think about the arrogancy
of the world and yet the most arrogant thing that a man can
say is to claim some credit for his salvation. Is that not the
height of arrogancy to deny Christ His glory into salvation and
to have any thought that something I do is going to recommend me
to God or that something I have is going to give me an advantage?
that some achievement that I've made is going to be meritorious
and helpful in my salvation, is that not the struggle that
the old man has, the penina within every one of us? And so the Lord is, Hannah is
saying, Lord, you've put a guard over my mouth. You've stopped
me from this speech. She'd already said in verse one
that her mouth was enlarged against her enemy. And And the Lord enables
us to speak the truth about who we are and to speak the truth
about who Christ is. And to, in spite of the fact
that this old man is there, we can, our mouth has been enlarged
against him. We know the truth. And so in
times of praise, we're able to to speak the truth by God's grace. And that's our hope. Hannah, you remember in chapter
one, Eli finds her praying. He thought that she was drunk.
Her mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. And she
was casting her care upon the Lord and opening up her heart
and soul to him in need of his help. And I thought, how often
that's the way in which we pray when we're enabled to pray properly
by the Spirit of God. Truth is we don't really know
what we need when we pray and was thinking about a baby when
a baby cries. It doesn't articulate to its
parents what its needs are. It's up to the parent to determine
what that baby's crying for, what its need is, and how the
Lord enables us to come before his throne of grace. And just,
Lord, I don't know what my needs are. All I know is to cry unto
thee. David said in Psalm 141 verse
one, he said, Lord, I cry unto thee, make haste unto me and
give my ear or give ear unto my voice when I cry unto thee. Lord, the only thing I know for
sure is that I need you. I need you. What you might see
fit for me, I don't know. I don't know what my specific
needs are. I know what I would like, but I don't know if that's
best for me. But I know I need you, and might
God make us, you know, except you become as a little child,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. May the Lord give
us that spirit of faith and grace to just come before him and cry
like Hannah, and be like that child who is not able Not able,
a child is not able to express to its mother and father what
its needs are. And we're really not able to
express to our Heavenly Father what our needs are, except that
we need Him. And we need His grace, we need
His mercy. We need Christ. Lord, give me
Christ. I die. Talk no more exceedingly proudly,
neither let arrogancy come out of thy mouth. There was a time when I thought
that there was something that I could do to obligate God to
save me. And there's an old man in me
by the name of Penina, an arrogant man, a proud man, a man who,
like a jewel, promotes himself for attention. And I'm in a constant
struggle with that old man, constant struggle. Here's what Penina's,
I mean, here's what Hannah's saying. She's exposing her adversary
for what she is and she's saying the Lord has done a work of grace
and the Lord has caused me to be able to speak the truth about how it
is that I can have favor with God and it's not by anything
that I do. We considered this Wednesday
night and I've always struggled with several passages of scripture
in the book of Acts. The first one beginning in Acts
chapter 10, you remember when God sent Peter to Joppa to preach
the gospel to a Gentile by the name of Cornelius. And Peter,
before he is taken to Cornelius, is given a vision of unclean
animals coming down in a sheet. And that vision is given to him
three times. And the Lord says to him, Peter,
take and eat. And Peter says, oh no, not so,
Lord. Nothing unclean has ever, has
ever entered into my mouth. Peter, six years after the resurrection,
is still committed to the dietary laws of the Old Testament, not
knowing or not believing that those laws have been fulfilled
in Christ. And then after that, Acts chapter
10 took place six years after the resurrection. The next year,
Peter goes to Antioch, and in Antioch, Peter knows that there's
no respecter of persons with God, there's no difference between
the Jew and the Gentile, that they're all saved the same way.
when the elders from Jerusalem come up to Antioch to inspect
the work there, Peter separates himself from the Gentiles and
goes over and sits with the Jews as if, and Paul confronted him
to his face when that happened because Peter was compromising
the gospel by what he did. in promoting this idea that we
can make ourselves to differ by our race or our ethnicity
or our religious traditions. Sixteen years after the resurrection,
we have in the book of Acts chapter 15, what we refer to as the Jerusalem
Council, when Paul and Barnabas came back from a missionary journey
and they are reporting on what the Lord has done in saving the
Gentiles. And the scripture says that there
was no small dispute among the apostles trying to determine
which Old Testament laws they were going to require the Gentiles
to keep. This was 16 years after the resurrection. And then to cap it all off, in
Acts chapter 21, the Apostle Paul comes back from his next
missionary journey to Jerusalem. get together and they get Paul
aside and they say, among the Jews here in Jerusalem
that you are telling the Gentiles that they don't have to keep
the Mosaic Law. And so we have some brothers
that have shaved their heads and they have taken a vow and
they're going into the temple tomorrow to make a blood sacrifice. It was a Nazarite vow. And we
want you to join them in doing that. And the Apostle Paul agreed and
shaved his head and was going into the temple the next day.
Now, Acts 21 took place 26 years after the resurrection. The Apostle
Paul had already written the letter to the Galatians and the
letter to the Romans. Is there any portion of God's
Word that is more clearly definitive on the place of the law when
it comes to salvation than the book of Galatians and the book
of Romans? Is there anything more clear
than those two letters? The answer to that question is
surely not. Surely not. And you read commentators on
these passages of scripture and they will say, well, you know,
the Jews were going through a transition period trying to figure out what
place the law had in their salvation. Well, if that's the case, then
Paul was writing blindly when he wrote those two letters because
there was clearly no confusion in his mind about the place of
the Old Testament law when it comes to the salvation of God's
people. And then the Lord showed me something
in light of this passage that we're looking at. in light of
this old penina, this old arrogant, proud, self-righteous old man
that we struggle with every day. And he asked me this question,
or I'm asking you this question, how long have you been saved? How long ago to the Lord reveal
Christ to you and show you that salvation was all of grace, not
of works, lest any man should boast. There's that boasting
man. There's that arrogant man. How
long ago did you come to believe that and convinced of that? Thoroughly
convinced of it. Now, How often are you tempted
to look somewhere other than the Lord Jesus Christ for the
hope of your salvation? Every day, every hour of every
day, every minute of every hour. It seems like as soon as the
Lord begins to show us more clearly the truth of the gospel, particularly
in preaching, we find some hope and comfort. And as soon as we
begin to experience the comfort of the Holy Spirit, we rest in
that comfort rather than resting in Christ. And we find, once
again, the old penina shining forth her jewel and showing forth
her arrogancy and her pride in causing us to try to look somewhere
other than the person and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
for the hope of our salvation. You see, our experience is exactly
as the apostles were. This wasn't a transition period.
They knew the truth. They knew the gospel. And yet,
just like you and just like me, they were tempted to look somewhere
else, to go back to the law, to find some hope of salvation
outside of Christ. Verse three in our text, look
with me if you will. Talk no more so exceedingly proudly. Have you noticed in your own
life and in the lives of your brethren, when God sends an affliction,
a strong affliction, a difficult experience, that you become quieter,
more reflective, less quick to speak, more careful in how you do speak,
not so self-confident. The tongue, the scripture says,
is a fire of iniquity. No man can tame it. No man can
tame it. Out of the heart, out of the
issues of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Only the Lord, only
the Lord by his spirit can tame that old man and expose him for
who he is. And that's our hope, isn't it?
That's our hope. That's why believers are not
offended to have their sinful nature exposed. Believers are
not offended to be told that they're sinners. This sin nature
is something that believers struggle with. Lord, I need him exposed.
I need for the arrogancy and the pride of my lips to be shut. For the Lord God, for the Lord
is a God of knowledge and by Him, and by Him, actions, actions
are weighed. When the Lord, you know, we,
we are tempted to take pride in something good that we do. And yet, what is the Lord saying
here? The Lord is a God who weighs actions. And when our actions
are weighed by God, We're like Belshazzar in Daniel chapter
five. Remember the handwriting on the
wall? And Daniel, one of the words, you've been weighed in
the balance and you've been found wanting. When the Lord weighs
our actions, we are found wanting. We are found lacking what God
requires in order for us to have. acceptance before him. The only
one that is not lacking, the only one that is not wanting
is the Lord Jesus Christ. His actions were perfect and
only in him. You see why I've titled this
message The Way Down? The Way Up is down. The Lord's
gonna humble us. He's going to strip us naked.
He's going to expose our actions for what they are. He's going
to reveal the arrogancy and the pride of our speech and the self-righteousness
of our old man in order to cause us to find all the hope of our
salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a blessing thing that
is. What a blessed thing that is when God brings his children
down in order to bring them up. Look at verse, look at verse
four, the bows of the mighty men are broken. Turn with me to Psalm 76, Psalm
76. Look at verse one. In Judah,
and we are in Judah right now. This is Judah. This is the gathering
of God's people. In Judah is God known. His name is great in Israel,
and that's where we are right now. We're in Israel. In Salem, and that's where we
are, peace. This is Jerusalem, the city of
peace. In Salem also is his tabernacle
and his dwelling place in Zion. So the Lord's calling his church
Judah, Israel, Salem, and Zion. And there, there, Break he the
arrows of the bow, the shield and the sword and the battle,
Selah. Selah. Now that word Selah is
found in the Psalms. The Psalms are poetry and the
word Selah is a poetic pause. And so when the Lord says Selah,
he says, stop right there. And think about that. Think about
that. This is the place where God takes
the sword of our tongue. Scripture speaks of our tongue
being like a sword. And he takes the arrogancy out
of it. He takes the pride out of it.
He causes us to come before his throne of grace and agree with
him, take sides with him against ourselves, take sides with him
against that old man, that penina, that proud, arrogant, natural
man of the flesh that would look to something other than Christ
for the hope of salvation. And he stops that sword. He breaks the bow. He gives the
shield of faith which quenches the fiery darts of the devil.
That's the fiery, you can see the devil shooting these fiery
arrows and God says you have a shield of faith. What is that
faith? Is it some sort of inward strength
of independence and power? No, it's just the opposite of
that. It is the way up is down. It
is our complete dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
our trust in Him. It is looking in faith to Christ,
realizing that only by His strength and only by His grace can these
fiery darts be quenched. And so these things happened
in Judah. It is in Judah, in Israel, in
Zion, and in Salem where the Lord breaks the bow. It's here
where he causes us to beat our swords into plowshares and our
spears into pruning forks. We would speak arrogantly and
proudly. We would hurl the javelin of
accusation against others while excusing ourselves. And here,
here, the Lord puts a stop to that. When the gospel of God's
free grace is preached and Christ is lifted up, we're brought down. were brought down, and in being
brought down, were brought up. Look at the rest of our text,
go back with me quickly. David said, my feet had almost
slipped when I considered the prosperity of the wicked, and
then I came into the house of the Lord and I knew their end.
You see, this is the place where the Lord is pleased to make that
truth known to our hearts. That's why this is so important
because otherwise we're gonna be left ourselves and that old
man's gonna get the advantage and we're going to be arrogant
and proud and self-righteous. Look at verse five. They that
were full, have hired themselves for bread. They that speak arrogantly
against God, claiming that they have something, that they had
something to do with their salvation. Who is this a reference to? Is
this not a reference to free will, man-made works religion? And who's more hired out? You remember when the prodigal
left home and the scripture says that he wasted his inheritance
and riotous living, where did he end up? He ended up feeding
pigs. And the scripture says that he
did eat the husk that the swine do eat. Now, to me, that's, where
I ended up teaching a Sunday school class in a freewill works
church, promoting my own righteousness and eating the husk that the
swine do eat. No one is more busy trying to
prove their salvation than the ones who speak arrogantly about
their salvation. The religious, that's why in
the religious, everybody, as soon as someone comes into a
religious organization, a religious church, and I use that word very
loosely, what do they do? They give them a job. Just give
them something to do. Get a hook in them. Make them feel important. And
everybody's got a job, and everybody's got something to do. Now let's
read this verse again. Look at verse five. They that
were full have hired themselves out for bread. They speak arrogantly about their
fullness, but at the same time, they're hiring themselves out
like the prodigal eating the husk that the swine do eat, looking
for bread, looking for some hope of salvation. And they that were hungry, were hungry. Hunger and thirsting
after righteousness. Only the Lord can give us that
hunger. They that were hungry ceased from their hunger. Why? Because he fed them. He fed them. I hope the Lord's doing that
right now. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord. Feed my sheep. Feed them with the bread of life.
Remind them what they are. Tell them they're grass. Tell
them they have nothing. They can do nothing. They know
nothing. Tell them they're completely
dependent upon Christ. Bring them down. And you know what I mean by that.
The Lord has to do that. But here's what we're doing.
We're preaching the truth about who we are. Because the way up
is down. The way up is down. The broken
and contrite heart he will not despise, David said in Psalm
51. Why? Because he's the one that
made it so. They that were hungry ceased.
So that the barren hath born seven and she that hath many
children is waxed feeble. Lord, I'm barren. I'm empty. Come before God empty. Don't come into his presence
telling him what he needs to do for you or telling him what
you know. A full vessel has got no room for
anything else, does it? We come before the Lord as an
empty vessel so that he can fill us. Let's read the rest of these
verses together. Verse six, and the Lord killeth.
The Lord has to slay us. He has to kill us. The wages of sin is death. That's what God requires. The
death penalty. And he'll settle for nothing
less. And the Lord kills, and then the Lord makes alive. Oh, he makes us alive in Christ. He makes us alive in the one
who conquered death, who conquered the grave, who never spoke arrogantly
or proudly. Everything he spoke was the pure
word of God. The Lord killeth, the Lord maketh
alive, the Lord bringeth down to the grave and the Lord bringeth
up. The Lord has to has to cause us to see that everything that
we have is death. The Lord maketh poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And that word poor means
poverty stricken. Lord, I don't have two pennies
to rub together. I'm dead. I'm naked. I don't have anything. I can't speak proudly or arrogantly
to you about anything. I'm like that baby who can't
even begin to think about articulating to its parents what its need
is. All I know to do is cry out to
thee. Lord, I know I need you. I know I need Christ. He raises up the poor out of
the dust. He lifted up the beggar from
the dunghill. That's where we are by nature,
in the dunghill. All of our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags. The Lord speaks of our righteousness
as as Dung. He raised the poor out of the
dust. He lifted up the beggar from the Dung hill to set them
among princes. In Christ, we are seated in the
heavenlies, but only because of Christ, only by virtue of
our union with him and of his accomplished work of redemption,
not by any contribution that we've made. He gets all the glory. And he sets us up as princes
and he's made them kings and priests. He's adopted them into
his royal family. The way up is down. To make them inherit the throne
of glory for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's and he has
set the world upon them. He's the one that upholds all
things. He will keep the feet of his
saints every single day, every single
day and every single hour of the day. Penina, your adversary,
speaks arrogantly. She speaks proudly. She would
have you look somewhere other than to Christ. And so our feet are always slipping,
aren't they? They're always slipping. He will
keep the feet of his saints and the wicked shall be silent in
darkness for by strength, for by strength shall no man prevail. The way up is down. All said,
I'll glory in my weaknesses for when I'm weak then I'm strong
for his strength is made perfect in my weakness. That's the only
way we can come. We come weak, dependent. The adversaries of the Lord shall
be broken to pieces and they were. Now verse 10 is a reference
to the cross and the resurrection. The adversaries of the Lord shall
be broken to pieces. Out of heaven shall he thunder
upon them. Oh, the rocks were rent. The graves were opened. The dead
came forth out of the grave. God thundered from heaven. What
was he saying? The work of salvation is accomplished. It's finished. Judgment's been
satisfied. Justice has been upheld. Righteousness
has been established. And it wasn't by any contribution
that you made. And he gets all the glory for
it. Out of heaven shall he thunder
upon them. The Lord shall judge the ends
of the earth, and he shall give strength to his king. To his
king. David said this in Psalm 24,
he said, lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up,
you everlasting doors, for the king of glory shall come in.
And then he asked this question, he said, who is the king of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty in battle. The Lord Jesus Christ
is our strength. He's the one that got the victory.
He's the one that defeated the enemy. He's the one that put
away sin. He's the one that destroyed the
works of the devil. He's the one that gets all the
glory. And Penaeta is rejoicing in that
and she's saying, this is what he's done for me. Outside of
him, I have nothing. In him, I have everything, everything. The way up is always down. Amen. All right, let's take a
break.