stand before you and we know
that even as we stand before you today that the only righteousness
that we have is the righteousness given to us in Christ and we
thank you Lord for your mercy and your grace that you extend
to us. We ask, Lord, that you would
help us to hear your word today, that you would help us to understand
and know the message you have for us. Guide us and help us
to understand and hear it, and we ask you this for the sake
of Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Let's turn together in the scriptures
to Psalm 40, as we continue there today. And we'll have about another
week, maybe two, in this text, and then we will continue to
move through some other teachings of the Old Testament as we piggyback
to and fro into the writings of Paul to the elder Timothy. As a way of reminder, we have
been looking at this psalm in the sense of David's point of
view. We understand that when we read
the Psalms, They're music. They are the music of the temple
worship of the days of King David, for the most part. There are
other Psalms that he did not write. And David was not aware
that God was supernaturally inspiring the ones who are these that were
recorded here. These aren't all the songs that
David wrote, but these are the ones that were recorded and kept
and became what we know as scripture. Because God, the Spirit, as David
would pen these things, and as these things were being sung,
David was speaking out of his own experience. That's the whole
idea of poetry. Poetry is, by definition, in
a layman's way, the language of experience. So if I write
a story about what I see, I'm writing about what I'm experiencing
with my eyes. If I'm writing a story about
what I am feeling, I'm writing about the experience of my emotions. And that is what poetry is. Even
if it's not something I've experienced, if it's something that I long
for, something that I desire, it's still the experience of
the writer. And so we need to understand
that that is how David understood these songs. And so that as Pastor
Trey preached last week about the imprecatory prayers, or to
put it simply, the prayers of God destroying somebody, that
we saw in David, while it is not the practice as prescribed
in the Bible, it is the presence of the reality of our humanity.
We are indeed people who feel this way. We can't hide that
from God. I was praying yesterday and pleading
with the Lord about things and praying out loud. And it's funny
because I found myself explaining to God why I was praying what
I was praying. As if I'd pinned that down and
read it out. Oh, that sounds like David. Of
course it sounds like David. But the difference in my prayers
and David's prayers is that God intended for these prayers that
we have, for these songs that we have, to not only show us
and reveal to us the reality of David's humanity that we may
partner with and go, wow, I'm not alone in this, but it has
a deeper significance in that God the Spirit used these Psalms
to show us that Jesus Christ is truly in them, all of them,
all of them. There is not one Psalm that is
not pointing to Christ. David did not know this, but
what David did know is that God the Father was his hope. God
the Father was his power. God the Father's promises. God
the Father is the only one in whom he could trust. And so sometimes
we gather together as the saints. We're looking for some stuff
that we can just put in our little calendar or that we can put in
our our practical shoes in the spiritual sense and go, okay,
I'm gonna walk this way, I'm gonna act this way, I'm gonna
live this way. And there's some of that instruction in the New
Testament as it deals with us relating to one another and to
the world, as we learn to try to understand that we know today
in 2023 about our nervous system. You know, they didn't understand
the nervous system in antiquity. They didn't understand emotions
from the biological or the physiological point of view like we do today,
but it was still the same. And when we look at the Bible
and we start to see the practices of the saints, we start to see
the instruction found in God's word, we will begin to see that
nothing has changed in the prescription of how to overcome life, how
to overcome the world, how to overcome our fears, how to overcome
all the things that the world and everyone in it has always
been struggling with since the very beginning of humanity. And
so we're going to continue in that vein today. We're going
to look at David and how he conceded to trust in the promise of God's
deliverance. So we know that this psalm is
talking about David being in despair. Wanting deliverance
and how he waited for the Lord and he understood that Waiting
for the Lord is as an opportunity for us to do what sit and be
and be happy No for us to sit and fret That's the point. I Don't care how strong your
faith is when things are bad. We are not very secure in our
spiritual walks We're not. And to say that we are is really
just posturing, is pretending, and it's okay to posture, it's
okay to say things, but beloved, you need to understand that there
is very little integrity in that when we're not being honest about
our own fears. We're not hiding from God. And
God isn't going, oh, poor James, he's just so chicken. He's not
even brave enough to tell himself that he's chicken. Give an example. I am passive
aggressive. Do you know what that means?
And do you know, I've never saw myself like that. As a matter
of fact, people have said that to me through the years. I went,
you're crazy. But now that I know what it is,
and now that I can look back and go, oh yeah, that was there.
It's not the mainstay of my existence, but I am. Just like a man told
me one time when he was accused of being a liar. This man was
in his late 60s, early 70s. He'd been in the pastorate for
50 years, 40 years, or somewhere like that. Maybe not 50, but
he'd been there a while. It was almost 50, so that would
tell you where his age was. And he was saying that how sometime,
one day, somebody came to him, and he called him in to the Sunday
school class or something right there, and just looked at him
and said, you're the biggest liar I've ever met. I can't stand
you. And he goes, you know what? I thanked him for that. What? And he's telling me this over
lunch. He said, yeah, because I had not lied to this person. And I had not lied consciously
in any sense in the last years that I could think of. No evidence
of me being a liar to this man was on the table. However, it
wasn't a lie that I am a liar. So I didn't let it bother me.
And then I worked out why he thought I had lied about, and
then we came to understand that it was a misunderstanding. And
we worked through it. You see the difference? So as we're learning the scripture,
beloved, it's the mantra that I've been pounding on the drum
of my soul since I was a child. And I'm realizing that it's not
about eliminating sorrow and stress. or eliminating fear,
it's about letting it do its due, moving through every little
season to see the outcome of God being strong and delivering
us through it. Look at the Old Testament. from
the creation account, to the fall, to the restoration, to
all the promises, to Abraham and the nation of Israel, in
every few seasons, they were back in slavery, they were back
in bondage. Why? Because God the Father said to them, I will
bring your enemies as my rod of correction against you. David understood that. He understood
that waiting for the Lord is a time of great turmoil. But the more we wait, and the
more we see the evidence of God being faithful, the easier it
is to wait, and the lighter the burden is in our suffering. It's
not gone, and it's still hard, but it does get better. And so
today, I wanna focus on verses 11 through 17. Psalm 40, verse
11. As for you, O Lord, and then
in the next few weeks, I will show you the Christological prophecy
of this text so that I'm doing my just duty of why it's written
for our benefit. As for you, O Lord, you will
not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your
faithfulness will ever preserve me. For evils have encompassed
me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken
me and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs
of my head and my heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver
me. O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek
to snatch away my life. Let those be turned back and
brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let those be appalled
because of their shame who say to me, Aha! Aha! But may all who seek you rejoice
and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation
say continually, great is the Lord. As for me, I am poor and
needy, but the Lord takes thought of me. You, oh God, are my help
and my deliverer. Do not delay, oh my God. So you
see this cry. You see this cry. You see what
David is saying here. Beloved, this can be the cry
of our hearts. This should be the cry of our hearts. But we
can't mimic it. We can't just say, okay, I'm
gonna take David's situation. I'm gonna take David's words.
I'm gonna take David. We're not supposed to be David.
We're not supposed to be like David. That's not the point of Scripture.
The point of Scripture is to reveal things. And most importantly,
and most specifically, the point of Scripture is to reveal God
through things. To reveal God. That's what it
means to see God's glory. That means to see for who he
is. God's glory is not a thing that he has, it is him. It's
glorious. And we as the beloved who are
in Christ Jesus and who are standing before the father of righteousness
without condemnation, we are able to stand with the promise
of knowing that we shall share in the glory of Christ. So as
Christ is in all of his wonder and all of his marvel, we shall
to be. It's a little odd to think. But
this promise of deliverance that we see in these latter portion
of this text, and it can be broken down into smaller details, and
I mean we could spend 30, 40 weeks in this text if we wanted
to really get technical But for the essence of the way Scripture
needs to be understood, we don't need to bog down so quickly by
missing the points. We need to get to the points.
And I have a real good habit, and I'm an absolute expert at
missing the point and bogging down. Because it's what I do
in life. Don't laugh at me. I see all
y'all laughing. Everybody's laughing but one of you. You're like,
yeah, I'm sick of it. I can bog down because I get so excited
and then the details get smaller and then the details get even
more smaller and the next thing I know I'm using like nano-microscopes
to look under microscopes. Wow, and it's not the point of
the Bible. It's not the point of the Bible
to continue to run a theological train through the eye of a needle. Can we do that? Yes. But should
we do that? Probably not. We can't individually,
we can in small pockets. But corporately, we need to see
the text as it stands. We need to understand that God
the Spirit is the one who is going to teach us and to affirm
us and to grant us repentance, which means a change of disposition
to rest. to rest in what the Bible is teaching us. So the
overarching story and essence of this text is for us to see
that David, in the midst of all of his trials, was able to trust
in the deliverance that God had promised because he'd seen it
time and time again and even if he had not seen it, God would
come through. I mean, we have platitudes like
that today, don't we? God is good, and all the time, and all
the time, God is good, you know, these little things. We don't really
know what they mean, we just say them in certain circles. Well,
God's gotcha. I mean, how many of you ever
heard or said that? God's gotcha. Or God's got this. Or here's
one that happens really often in the South. If God bring you
to it, he'll bring you through it. You know, that kind of stuff.
I don't want to go through it. That's the problem. Thank you
for bringing me to the entrance of the death forest. where the
monsters eat my legs. No, thank you. God, I want to
go around it. I want to go above it. That's
the experiencing God idea. Let's just go above it. Let's
look down and see God's perspective. I mean, it's not that bad of
a teaching, but these things in and of themselves are not
necessarily doing the work that the scripture promises it will
do. And we can have all A pact full of arsenal of tools and
platitudes and phrases and sayings and mantras and all these things
and positive affirmations which are healthy and they're right,
but they're not going to change us inside. They're not going
to make us labor in resting. I bet I say the word rest and
say the word joy more than any other word but maybe John. And I've realized that what even
I teach through the Bible oftentimes feels like it doesn't even have
power in my life. Are you able to say that? Are
you able to confess that this morning? If you are, you're on
your way of being healthy spiritually. But some people gasp at that
idea, so much so that they would suck my papers off the podium. Don't gasp at that idea. That
is the reality. That is what the psalm can show us. And then
the psalm can show us the perfection of Christ. That it wasn't about
David at all. David experienced these things
that God would have a picture in history of showing us Christ. And what Christ would experience
and what Christ would go through and what Christ would do. No
one has suffered the wrath of God like Christ. Well, there are people that are
suffering the wrath of God. Not yet. But even if they do it, it is
something that is forever. It is something that is permanent.
It is something that is not ending. And most importantly, it is something
that is deserved. Christ did not deserve death. He took it. He laid down His life and He
gave it up again of His own free will. As for you, O Lord, you
will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love
and your faithfulness will ever preserve me. Look at that. I
mean, that in verse 11 alone is worthy of the next 30 minutes
of our time. Because this is the resolve of
the believer. This is the work of God the Spirit in the life
of his people to show us, no matter what the world is showing
us, no matter what things look like, no matter what relationships
look like, no matter what finances look like, no matter what health
looks like, No matter what our own brain looks like or our thoughts
or emotions or feelings. This is the outcome that we're
looking for. Not to say it, but to rest in
it. So it's about resting in it. In what? In the promises and
the power of God. His promise of deliverance. Lord, you will
not restrain your mercy. Your loving kindness, your mercy,
your grace will ever sustain me because it is rooted in your
love for me. You see, I say this often throughout
the years, that God has loved His people. He has loved, and
I will say, I will use this personally, He has loved me before I was. Not just the concept of me, but
personally me, individually me, specifically me. And for you
who are in Christ, the same is true for you. He has loved you before you were.
He has loved you before your generation was. He has loved
you before the decades. He's loved you before the centuries.
He's loved you before the millennia were. He's loved you before He
said, let there be and there was. And in that reality, the steadfast
love of God has no beginning and it has no end and so therefore
everything that he purposes for our lives, that means what we're
going through right now and the pain that we're going through
or the joy that we're experiencing is indeed part of his love for
us because we are his people. Wow. And that's why I stand here every
single week. And that's why I labor And when I say hard, I'm not
mean dedicated, disciplined, and determined. I mean in much
trial. For the Lord in His mercy and
His faithfulness to establish me to stand here and share this
journey with you so that your joy may be full as well. That's
what I want from you. That's what I want for you, rather. And from you. I want to hear
the praises of the faithfulness of God. to tell of the steadfast
love, as David said earlier in verse 10, to the congregation. I want 1 Peter chapter 1 to be
our song. The steadfast love of God is
faithful. What is it that David is experiencing?
We're not going to take a whole lot of time, but it's evil. It's his own sin. It's his own doubt. It's his
own failings. It's his own non-resting. He's laboring terribly over these
issues psychologically and emotionally, and it's causing him strain in
his body. It's causing him strain in his
relationships. It's causing him strain in his rule. It's causing
him strain in his kingdom. I mean, think about this. We
have a lot of responsibility, and when we're not well, when
we're not healthy, and when we're not spiritually sound, and when
we're not doing that which God has called us to do, and trusting
in Him, it affects a lot of people around us. But imagine being
the king or the queen of a nation, and your faith in the faithfulness
of God, or the lack thereof, can change the entire world. And we know the stories. We know
what it did. And so we see the place where
David is not blaming other people for his suffering. He is saying,
listen, I'm the sinner here. I can't count them. You know,
I've done that exercise several times in my life. Sit down and
just really begin to pray about every wicked little thing or
faithless thing that I can think of in my life, in my body, my
mind, or my affections. And do you know that is not a
good exercise? It feels like it's a good exercise.
And after hours, if not days of mulling through this stuff,
you realize that this is an eternal exercise. That has stopped at
the cross of Christ. So I like David, I've got sins,
they've overtaken me and I cannot see because there are more sins
than the hairs on my head. So I'm going to stop counting.
Your grace is enough. Christ Jesus is enough. The death
of Christ is enough. The resurrection of Christ is
my power. I'm alive because He is alive. So then he goes in
verse 13, he just jumps right in. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver
me. This is not a command of God,
this is the reality of the nature of God for those He loves. He
is in the business of deliverance. Now we don't use that word much.
Deliverance here or delivery in our culture is like receiving
a package in the mail. or get in the order of food.
But in the context here, what it really means is to be taken
out and rescued. Rescued from the trial. Rescued
from the pain. Rescued from the suffering. Rescued
from the mire. Rescued from what? The pit. Verse
2 of this text. He heard my cry as I waited patiently
for the Lord. And remember we talked about
that five weeks ago, about what patient waiting is. It's agony.
It's not, oh yeah, everything's gonna be fine. No, it's agony. He inclined, God leaned down
to see on me and heard my cry. I didn't have to get his attention,
he was already inclined, he was already pointing to me. So here,
David is not wrong by saying it pleases the Lord to lend his
mercy and his love toward me because that is the disposition
of who God is in the revelation of the scripture that we have
before us. So because of that, he can say,
make haste to help me, here I am. Lord, it pleases you to help
me, help me, help me quickly. I mean, do you and I pray patiently? Remember the old, the joke, don't
pray for patience. I mean, how do we have patience?
By being in the middle of a God-forsaken mess, that's how. by having to
wait, by feeling the stress, the pull, the tension of what
we want and need and must have versus where we are in the time
between those two things. That's patience. Help me. And because of the suffering
that David was experiencing, let those be put to shame who
disappoint altogether who seek to snatch away my life. There
were people trying to kill him. There are people trying to ruin him.
Maybe that's true for you. It's been true for me. It's been true for me in a great
way in the last three or four years. What a baby. David was a baby. I'm a baby. You're a baby. We're
all baby. We're God's babies. We need him. Bring them to dishonor, who delight
in my heart. Hurt, let those be appalled because
of their shame. They got me. Aha, aha, look at
you suffering. See, that's what they were doing.
They were mocking David. Look at you. Man, after God's own heart,
we've heard that song too many times. The number one hit. Top 10 of Israel. Kingdom Records. We've heard that song. Look at
you now, God's boy. Look at you now, King. You're
wallowing in your own pity. Yep. But look at his last stanzas,
and then we're gonna deal with this with a bunch of cross-references,
with a bunch of proof texts, and with the reality of what
Christ has done to make us more than conquerors. But may all
who seek you rejoice and be glad in you May those who love your
salvation say continually, great is the Lord. This is a difficult
thing to do in the midst of pain. I use this example a lot because
back in the day, you know, when music was getting, when Christian
music was extremely, you know, for the first time ever, didn't
sound hokey. You know what I'm talking about?
And the younger generation, hey, I can groove with this, this
is Jesus music, are you sure? And the older people are like,
we're gonna burn the whole building down in sanctification. So sacrilegious,
either way. There was a song, I don't even
know who sang it, and they might even be heretics, it doesn't
matter, it's an example, okay? Relax. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. He gives and he takes away, blessed
be the, and that's an exciting song, right? You've heard me
say this. But it comes from the book of Job. The Lord gives and
the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord
is what Job says and the context of that is when he receives the
news from his servant that his house just fell in and killed
all of his children at once. So it sort of makes us want to
put away the tambourine, right? I was excited about, bless the
name of the Lord. Sorry, Job, I didn't realize
that was the context. Funeral dirge would be a little
bit better. But it's not bad. Because I think
that our soul can sing and rejoice and be glad in you and say, great
is the Lord in the midst of all these trials. And beloved, I'm
here to tell you right now, I'm here to tell you right now,
as a culture and as a church, we have seen nothing yet. As believers who want to be true
to the Word of God, we've not yet been confronted with things
that the mainstay American church would push away from us for.
Sure, we've got doctrinal differences. Sure, a preacher don't wear a
suit. Sure, you know, things like that. I mean, these are
silly, trivial things to a degree. But when we get down to living
a loving lifestyle, and begin to actually care about those
people around us, even those people who seek to hurt us, we
are going to be maligned. And we have to remember, verse
17, we are poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought of me.
He is my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, oh my God. And
we can say great is the Lord. There's a passage in John's gospel,
see? John 16, I think. I know the text, I'm just not
sure if I'm in the right verse. 33, maybe? Yeah. Verse 29 of John 16. Oh, now
you're speaking plainly. You're not using figurative language.
Now we know that you know everything and that no one needs to question
you. This is why we believe that you came from God. And Jesus answered them, do you
now believe? I hate this. Because I stand in
there and I stand as like a fly on the wall in that circle and
I'm going, no. Because we know, you know, Thomas
is in that number. We know Peter's in that number.
And what's about to happen with both of them, you know? I mean, the only disciple at the
crucifixion was John. Jesus says, Do you really now
believe? Do you now believe? Behold, the time is coming. The
hour is coming. No, indeed, it has already come when you will
be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.
You will abandon me. You will reject me. You will
deny me. You will refuse me. Your faith will be gone. And even though I will be abandoned
and hated and rejected and unloved, I'm not alone, Jesus says. For
the Father is with me. You see how Psalm 40 now is speaking
of Jesus? There's a little preview. I have
said these things to you, Jesus says, that in me you may have
peace. They were at the beginning of
this introduction to this incredibly terrible place. And Jesus told
them that, right? You're about to be scattered.
I'm about to be alone. You're about to abandon me. Not
I! Slash, you know, Peter's zeal
and all this other stuff. Let's go die with him, says Thomas. They wanted a hero. They were looking for a nationalistic
head to undergird their spiritual affections. And what they got
was a king who served best by being quiet and dying. And he tells them of this trial
and he says, but I say this that you may have peace in me. In the world, you will not have
peace, but take heart, I have overcome the world. You see how
easy it is to get platitudes? We've learned already that God's
deliverance and his ability to be faithful And our ability to
rest in his sovereignty is something that we're going to experience.
God's power and purpose. God will deliver us. Psalm 18, David says, God is
my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take
refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
And David knew this from the beginning, right? David understood
this when he went out on the battlefield and the Philistine
army was there and this big giant beast of a man, this 400 some
pound man, standing there at eight feet tall, whose hands were the size of
my chest, you know, that kind of stuff, mocking God. And David, this tiny little runt
of a nothing, is just like, are you gonna do something about
this? He never, he was just stupid faithful, right? He wasn't wise. I wasn't wise, but that's God's
work. It's not David's work. That's God's power and purpose.
It's been in the life, it's in our lives right now. We've also looked over the last
few weeks about God's promises. He will never forsake his people. Deuteronomy 31, 6 is quoted by
Paul in the writing of Hebrews to the Hebrews in chapter 13,
verse 5. It says, keep your lives free
from the love of money and be content with what you have because
God has said, I will never leave you, never will I forsake you. In Deuteronomy, that allusion
there is, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified
because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will
never leave you nor forsake you. I mean, when do we see that in
the life of the Israelites throughout the entirety of their existence,
throughout the entirety of the Exodus? through mighty power
and the promise of God to bring them through the blood of the
lamb, the Passover. This is a picture of Jesus Christ.
It's a picture of the ability of humanity. When we become independent
in our lives and think that we are standing strong is when we
are the weakest, when we are the most isolated, and when we
are the most spiritually inept. But even then, God is faithful. At the same time, we have great
responsibility to do and to be that which God
has called us to be. And ultimately, as we've seen
here in this text, God is pleased to deliver his people through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus, as he says in John
16, as we've seen, is the one who has overcome the world. In 1 John, John writes his letter
there in chapter 4, verse 4, talks about the spirit of Christ
overcoming the spirit of the world, the spirit of not Christ. He even says it this way, you,
dear children, are from God and have overcome them. Who? Your
enemies. Because the one who is in you
is greater than the one who is in the world. We saw last week at the resurrection,
we looked at not Matthew's account, but John's account, looking at
Mary Magdalene. But in Matthew 28.6, I mean,
and other places in the synoptics, we see that people are looking
for Jesus and we know that what? He was not there. Just as He
said He wouldn't be. Come and see. So in conclusion, what is it?
Paul puts it, Romans 8 is probably like the greatest meal we could
eat every day. If you're struggling to be in
the scripture, that's okay. If you're feeling distant, that's
okay. If you're feeling overwhelmed
with everything and the last thing you want is to be bothered
with the guilt or shame of not being spiritually focused right
now, that's okay. because Christ is victorious
and therefore we have, according to the teaching of scripture,
we are more than conquerors in our weakness, in our failures,
in our sin, because Christ is the victor. Paul didn't write
Philippians 4.13. He didn't write that. He didn't
write the words that we call Philippians 4.13 for nothing. I've had good times and I've
had lean times. I've had success and I've had failure. I've been
hungry and I've had plenty to eat. I've been rich and I've
been poor. I've been free and I've been in prison. And quite
honestly, I rather be poor and hungry and imprisoned. Because
when I'm at the weakest, he is the strongest. And I know that
I can endure all things in Christ, who is my strength and thus strengthens
me. And so Christ tells us that we
are victorious over the world. I wrote these things out. There
are about 30 of them. I'll pull them together in about
six themes. We have overcome the world. Christ has overcome the world.
What exactly does that mean? You live in the world. You know
what the world offers? You know what the world gave
you this morning when you got up to get ready for church? I mean, the world includes the
flat tire, the broken toilet, the achy foot, the ringing ears,
the annoying dog, the nosy neighbor, the feelings inside that you
really don't want to tell anybody about. And everything else in
this world is dying and passing away. You know, nothing that
we create, nothing that we accomplish in this world will ever last. There'll be no annals of history.
There'll be no architectural designs. There'll be no paintings
and music and writings. for us to stand up there and
pile next to the Christ and go, wow, look at all the cool stuff
that we did. That's nothing but the Tower
of Babel in the presence of true glory. And that makes me angry
sometimes, because I'm a creative person. But nobody wants to look at what
I've brought. I don't want my trash standing between me and
the most perfect glory. You see? Be honest. It can frustrate us sometimes.
We have an enemy. But the Bible says that we, through
Christ, have overcome the enemy. What enemy? All enemies. Colossians
2.15, having disarmed the powers and the authorities, He made
a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross, as a
paraphrase. We have overcome temptation.
Hebrews 4, talking about the discipline of the Lord, the correction
of the Lord. We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize
with us and our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted
in every way that we have been tempted. Listen to me. Every
temptation, yet sins not. We have overcome fear. We've overcome fear. Since the
children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity
so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds
the power of death, that is the enemy, the devil, the adversary,
and free those who all their lives who were held in slavery
by the fear of death. And if we don't have the fear
of death, what do we fear otherwise? If we go to John chapter 1 and
we see the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has
not overcome it, we have nothing to fear. We don't have to fear knowing
all the right stuff and being all the right things. We don't
have to fear that. Even Christ learned obedience
from what He suffered and was made perfect, it says. He became
the source of eternal salvation for all of His people. We have
overcome in Christ sorrow and grief. The prophet Isaiah writes
of Christ, he was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of
suffering, familiar with pain, like one from whom people would
hide their faces. He was despised. And we held
him in low esteem. Surely he took our pain and bore
our suffering and took our iniquities, yet we considered him accursed
by God, stricken and afflicted. We have overcome the curse of
the law. Paul writes to the churches of Galatia and he says Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for
us. Cursed is all who have been hanged on a tree. We have overcome
the powers of darkness. We see Dr. Luke writing the accounts
of the of the apostles in Acts 26 that This gospel, this Christ,
was sent into the world to open the eyes and turn them from darkness
to light and from the power of Satan unto God so that they may
receive forgiveness of sins and place among those who are sanctified
by faith. The fear of death, the power
of death, the sting of death, the power of the grave, the penalty
of sin, the power of sin. All these phrases are found all
the way through scripture. Paul even says we no longer are
mastered by sin. We no longer are slaves to sin
because we're not under the law, but we're under grace. So when
we do sin, what is it that we are looking for? Condemnation? Absolutely not. There is no condemnation. What are we to do? Hebrews 12,
1, fixing our eyes on Christ, the one that went before us,
the perfecter, the founder of our faith. For the joy set before
Him, He, what? Endured the cross, scorning its
shame, and then did what? Sat down at the right hand of
the Father. See, Christ finished the work. The world is going
to reject us. This life that we live is going
to reject all of our senses and all of our faculties and it's
going to reject everything. Our selves are going to reject
ourselves. And it's not always just about
things happening to us, it's things that we're experiencing.
It's things that are going to happen naturally. God has a purpose
in it. God has a purpose in it. We are
poor and we are needy. And Christ has overcome the world. And that's why it's so important,
beloved, for us to remember, when the Scripture says that
we are not of the world, it does not lie. We are in it, we are
birthed into it, just like Christ was birthed into it, just like
He was not of the world, but came into the world to bring
His people out of the world, who were in the world. This is
the love of God for us. This is the mercy and the grace
and the power of God for us. And I want so bad right now to
close this entire service with this amazing soliloquy of some
kind that will impact you in your minds and will bring your
heart along to a place of emotional response and you're like, wow,
I see, I feel, I know, I experience the grace of God. But what good
would it do for my poetry to have an effect on you if the plain and simple and beautiful
truth of Christ won't do it. If it won't do it. And if it's not doing it for
you right now, it's okay to. Beloved, we live in a shame culture. And there are some things that
should cause us shame. But they're not the things that we typically
fight over in ourselves. Especially the so-called Church
of America. Well, I didn't get to church
on time. Shame. I didn't wear the right clothes. Shame. I drank
wine. Shame. I didn't drink wine. Shame. I dressed up too nice. Shame.
I didn't dress up enough. Shame. I watched a Marvel movie. Shame. I watched a Jesus movie. Shame. Second commandment violation. I used the KJV. Shame. I used
the new KJV. Cursed. I used the ESV. Shame. You can't win. You can't
win with this ideology. You can't win. You'll never be
what anybody else wants you to be. But you are already what God
has declared you to be. And the people who hate that
word right there most of the time profess to be in Christ. Oh, that sounds like some easy
believism. That sounds like this, that, and the other. That sounds
like popcorn Christianity. I don't care what it sounds like.
What other people think I'm saying is none of my business anymore.
I don't care. And I really am not saying that
from a place of apathy. I'm saying that from a place
of security. And what I want for us as a congregation,
as a spiritual family, is to be in unity on these things and
be in unity as we work through them together. We are not all
gonna come on the same place at the same time, but beloved,
we are in covenant. And if the gospel of grace and
the picture of marriage is a picture of the gospel of grace, it's
for good and for worse. And I think the church ought
to take note in that too. For good or for worse, for better
or for worse. We work through it to be closer
on the other side of it. When you feel. When you feel. Like your spiritual life is waning.
Remember. There is no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of
life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death.
For God has done, listen to the word of the Lord today. For God
has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by
sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,
he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according
to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live
according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,
but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds
on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh
is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."
Let me stop right there. And that's my closing thought
and the point of this whole thing. We are where our minds are. I'm gonna say that again. We
are where our minds are. And that's in presence, and purpose,
and everything else. We are where our minds are. And our
minds need to be not in the flesh, not laboring
over the flesh, not laboring how to put to death the flesh,
but on the presence and the promises of the power of God through the
person of Jesus Christ. And if you can't do anything else in
your spiritual life right now because of where you are, just
remember that. Remember verse 1 of Romans 8.
We are not condemned. And just take a deep breath and
continue to work. And one day, and hopefully soon,
God will give you a reprieve and you will rest. And you will
be able to say what Paul says in verse 18 of that wonderful
chapter of Romans 8. For I consider these sufferings
in the present time not worth comparing to that glory which
is to be revealed to us. For the creation wakes with eager
longing of the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation
was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him
who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set
free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom, the glory
of the children of God. Beloved, we can wait with patience
on what we do not see. And that's in everything in life
now and the life hereafter. We can wait with patience because
God's promises will prevail. He will deliver us from these
present darknesses. He will deliver us from these
stresses. He will deliver us because he's
promised to do so. Rest in that. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for the
glory of Your Word, for the beauty of it all. And Father, I pray
that in my own mind right now that You would begin to wipe
away even some of the things that give me reservation. Some of the ways in which I think
too deeply about how things may seem. Lord, the judgment that we put
on ourselves about things that we are working on and trying. And the judgment we put on each
other sometimes because we don't see others look like we think
they should. We thank you for the Psalms.
We thank you for the humanity of the Psalms. We thank you,
Father, that we can see that there are real people just like
us. that you carried through hard
times. And their lives and their significance is ceased. We thank
you for the Psalms and their eternal point. Pointing to Jesus
Christ, your Son. We thank you for the Psalms that
show us that there is an eternality to our presence and being. And
that is, we share in the glory of Christ. that everything that
we experience is an opportunity for praise, an opportunity for
Your power to be manifested in our lives, and Father, an opportunity
for us to know that everything about us as believers points
to Your promises as Your children. And so we thank You for it. As
we take the table today to remember the death of Jesus and the life
of Jesus, let us be mindful of one another to love each other,
to seek the good from each other, to look through the lens of grace
and mercy and forgiveness. And Father, to also look through
the lens of grace and mercy and forgiveness to ourselves. To
see ourselves as your righteousness. Because that's what you've promised
us in Christ and you've made it so. Help us to be at peace. In his name we pray, amen. Come and eat, church.