Well, as Brother Robert said
there, I'll be concentrating on verses 14 and 15 here, but
the title of my message today is The Day of Trouble. Has anybody
here ever had any trouble? We've had plenty of it, haven't
we? To be born into this world is to be born into trouble. The
troubles of this life are abundant. And the book of Job warns us
of these troubles. Listen to Job chapter five and
verse six. Although affliction cometh not
forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the earth,
yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Job
14 and one. Man that is born of a woman is
a few days and full of trouble. All these verses describe the
troubles that we face in this lifetime. They are numerous,
and they can happen any time. I mean, your parents can get
a call from your 14-year-old or from the coach telling you
that your 14-year-old broke their leg on the soccer field. That's
a day of trouble. You can go out and try to start
your car, being late for work, and all you hear is a click,
click, click. That's trouble. We have all kinds
of trouble. Christ warned his disciples against
trouble. At his impending death on the
cross, as it drew near, he warned his disciples in John 16 of the
troubles they would face when he was gone. In John 16 too,
he said, they shall put you out of the synagogues. Yea, the time
cometh when whosoever killeth you will think that he's doing
God a service. And in verse 33, in light of
all that trouble, the tribulation that they were going to face,
because they were going to stand for Christ. They were going to
preach the gospel. They were going to be faithful
in that word. So in verse 33, he gives this
word of comfort to them. He said, these things I've spoken
unto you that you might in me have peace. In the world you
shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome
the world. Well, here in Psalm 50, the psalmist
and prophet David writes of a day of trouble. Look back at the
psalm Robert read there in Psalm 50 and verse 14. He said, offer
unto God thanksgiving and pay thy vows unto the Most High and
call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee, and thou
shalt glorify me." Now, let me tell you what I'm going to tell
you, and then I'm going to come back to it later, but let me
just briefly tell you this. I think the prophet David here
is speaking about a particular trouble, a particular day of
trouble. I believe that this day of trouble
applies specifically to a day that God brings each of His elect
to in each successive generation. He brings His people to this
day of trouble. He causes this day of trouble.
He causes them to be there. And there are two reasons why
I think that, and they're in verse 15. Because to this day
of trouble, there is a promised deliverance. Every sinner who
calls on the true and living God in the day of trouble will
be delivered. That's a promise from God. And
then every sinner delivered from this day of trouble, he says,
if you call on me, I'll deliver you. And every sinner delivered
from this day of trouble will glorify me. That's another promise
from God. And it's another statement from
God that identifies this trouble and those who call on God. Because
those who call on God and are delivered by the true and living
God, both their calling and their deliverance will glorify God. Now, that's what we're gonna
talk about mainly in a little bit. I'm gonna get into those
details there a little bit. But before we do, I don't like
to start out in the middle of a passage and just take off from
there. I like to set the context a little
bit. I'm not gonna reread all these
verses that Brother Robert read here, but look back through these
first six verses of our text, and I'm just gonna summarize
what they say briefly. You can look at them as I read
my summary here. This is a declaration from God
that he is going to gather his chosen people. He's going to
gather his saints. He's scattered them out over
all the nations and he's going to gather them unto himself.
through the generations of this world existence. He's going to
send gospel preachers out. He's going to bring his people
to hear those gospel preachers. He's going to call his elect
out of darkness. And he's going to glorify himself
in their hearts. They're going to call on him
as a just God and Savior. So that's what he's talking about
right here. All that's going to take place
throughout this world until Christ comes back for his bride. Now,
the next verse is 7 through 13 here that will lead me up to
my text. He's talking to the nation of
Israel specifically here first. The first application would be
to them, because he says, here, O Israel, my people. And he said,
I'm going to testify against you. I'm not going to testify
on your behalf right here, but against you. God is chiding the
nation Israel here for their misunderstanding and misinterpretation
of the law of Moses. I mean, if y'all were here at
the 10 o'clock hour, Jim was telling us the purpose of the
law. Well, Israel missed the purpose of the law. They claim
to be keepers of the law, but like Jim said in his message,
they were just keepers of that outward law, not the spirituality
of that law. They didn't realize that that
law went to the heart. In fact, Israel claimed three
reasons why they could be considered eternally blessed of God. They
were descendants of Abraham, they were circumcised, males
were circumcised, and they kept the law of Moses. Now, they thought
that because of those things, things that God did in them,
God did for them, But they thought that all that proved that they
were eternally blessed, when in fact it didn't. God commanded
the nation Israel to sacrifice. He commanded them to shed the
blood of bulls and goats, and for 1,500 years or so, they did
that. But that sacrifice was not an
end in itself. The sacrifice was a picture of
something greater, much greater, infinitely greater. The law was
given to show them their sin, their guilt, their liability
to God's punishment because they didn't keep the law. And so it
was to show them their guilt, and then to show them in picture
and type through the ceremonies, the sacrifice, the priesthood,
the bloodshed, to show them that the only relief from the guilt
and liability of that law is found in the blood of the sacrifice,
which of course pictured the blood of the coming Messiah,
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Israel missed this message. They blew it. they followed after
the law of righteousness. In other words, they sought righteousness
by their obedience to the law. They thought if they could just,
you know, bring those ceremonies and sacrifice plus all those
other laws, dietary laws and multiple laws, over 600 laws,
they thought if they did that, that they would be gaining or
maintaining or improving their acceptance with God. They sought
righteousness by the law, by their obedience, but they didn't
attain it. They didn't reach their goal.
Why not? Because by deeds of law shall no flesh be justified
in God's sight. He can't declare any one of us
righteous based on our law keeping, based on our obedience. Israel
was given the law to show them their sinfulness and to drive
them to Christ, the one pictured in that sacrifice that they offered
day in and day out, to drive them to Christ for salvation.
and acceptance. But it says in Romans 9 in verse
31 that they stumbled at that stumbling stone. They stumbled
over Christ. They didn't see the true purpose
of God's law. Now, how does that apply to you
and me today? Because you and I have never
been under We weren't under the Mosaic Law. We were under the
law as we take up, like they did, the wrong conclusion of
it. But we've never been given a specific set of rules and regulations
and said, this is what y'all need to do. We've never done
that. But we are still, each one of
us, every one of us, born thinking just like national Israel did.
We're born thinking that we need to do something. to be something,
to improve something in order to be recommended to God and
accepted by God. And we stay that way. We remain
in that mindset until God, by his mercy and grace, delivers
us unto the gospel. shows us Christ, shows us his
righteousness as the only ground of salvation and changes our
thinking. Look back in our text at verse
14 and 15 again. Offer unto God thanksgiving and
pay thy bowels unto the most high and call upon me in the
day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will
glorify me. As I stated in my introduction,
I think the prophet David here is speaking of a particular trouble,
a particular day of trouble. It's a certain day. It's a specific
day. I think the day spoken of here
is the day that God brings each one of his elect in each generation
to the gospel and delivers them, just like this psalm says. This
is the day that God commands His people to call on Him, and
it's literally the first day that anyone calls on Him, because
by nature, see, we don't call on the God of the Bible. We think
we do, but we don't. We call on the God of our imagination. Now we want to consider this
day and this calling in particular here in a minute, but let's look
at these first two commands here before we get to verse 14. He
says, first, offer unto God thanksgiving. One of the key things here is
who we offer our thanksgiving to. Who do we thank? Who do we
thank for our comfort in this world? Who do we thank for the
success in this world? Who do we thank for our salvation? The natural man, which is all
of us as we're born into this world, gives thanks. We give
thanks to God. We give thanks to the God that's
in our mind. When I was in false religion,
I gave thanks to a God, a God of my imagination. And of course,
as natural men, we think, we're praying, thanking, worshiping
the true and living God. We believe that we're thanking
the God of creation, the God of providence, and the God of
salvation, but the reality is the natural man never thanks
that God. In reality, the natural man never
thanks the true and living God. We cannot thank a God we don't
know, and we don't know the true and living God by nature. Christ
said in John 17 in verse 4, he said, life eternal is to know
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
So we don't know the true God till God brings us to regeneration
and conversion, till he brings us to this day of trouble I'm
going to tell you about here in a minute. The day of trouble is when God
enables the sinner to see themselves righteous before God based on
Christ's righteousness imputed to them. Until then, the sinner
offers his or her thanksgiving to a God of our imagination. Until then, our praise, our dedication,
our expectation is to a counterfeit Christ. God makes himself known. He distinguishes himself from
all idols by the way he saves sinners. In other words, not
in creation, not in providence, but in salvation, in the way
he saves sinners. Isaiah 45, 21 says, there is
no God else beside me, a just God and a savior. There's none
beside me. Verse 22 says, look unto me and
be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God. and
there's none else. Now, why is it that way? Why is it that we can't know
the true and living God until God reveals himself in salvation? Well, I'll tell you why it's
that way. Because that's the way the true and living God has
determined to make himself known. That's the way the true and living
God has distinguished himself from the idols of men's imagination. And so if we obey this command,
if we offer unto God our thanksgiving, if we offer that thanksgiving
unto the true and living God, a just God and a Savior, there
can only be one reason for that. It's because God has delivered
us unto Him. in the day of his power. He's
brought us to the true and living God and delivered us from the
idol of our mind. So the first command is offer
unto God thanksgiving. And the second command here in
verse 14, pay thy vows unto the Most High. When does any sinner
vow to the Most High? The Most High, of course, is
the true and living God. He's the God of creation, providence,
salvation. He's the God who holds all things
together. He's the most high, so when do
we pay our vows to him? Now the thinking here is very
much like what I just went through in sinners offering their praise
and thanksgiving unto God. The Most High is the same just
God and Savior declared in Isaiah 45. And we pay our vow to Him
when we take our stand in the gospel of Christ, the gospel
wherein the righteousness of God is revealed, the gospel which
is the power of God and the salvation to every sinner that believes
it. We pay our vow to him when we
declare him and him alone to be the only true and living God
and all others to be idols. Now the things I'm talking about
right here are things that the natural man, all of us by nature
or none of us by nature, the natural man will not receive. The apostle Paul describes the
natural man in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, he says, But
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned. The things I'm telling
you, the things I'm declaring here are true. God's Word clearly
declares them. He clearly sets them forth. But
it takes a radical change in our thinking for us to receive
them, for us to bow to them, for us to value them. It takes
God bringing us to this day of trouble. Back in our text in
verse 15, he said, call upon me in the day of trouble. Now, None of us run toward trouble. In fact, normally, we do absolutely
everything we can to avoid trouble, don't we? I do. And by nature,
we'd run from this trouble. Like I said, the natural man
won't come to this day of trouble. But those brought to this trouble
see it as a true blessing from a merciful and gracious God. This is a specific command to
those whom God graciously brings to this day of trouble. This
day of trouble is an inevitable thing for those that God has
chosen in Christ unto salvation before the world began. It's
going to happen. We're going to call upon the
true and living God. We're going to be delivered from
this trouble. I've got to have just a little
bit of water here. Coming to this day of trouble
is an inevitable thing for God's people. And that's because the
day of trouble spoken here is the day when an individual sinner
like you or me is brought to realize that all our efforts
at religion and morality fall short of delivering us from the
wrath we deserve. It's the day that we see that
all our righteousnesses, all our supposed well-doing, is nothing
but filthy rags before God. In fact, we agree with the prophet
Isaiah in chapter 64 and verse 6. But we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we do
fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us
away. In this day, you see, this day
of trouble that God brings us to, in this day, We see ourselves
like God sees us. We see ourselves sinners, totally
undeserving of the least of God's mercies, totally at the mercy
and grace of God to deliver us. This day of trouble is the day
that we're enabled to see what the law could not do. the law
spoken of in Romans 8 and verse 3, for what the law could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh. Now what is it? It says what
the law couldn't do. What is it the law couldn't do?
The law couldn't deliver us from the condemnation that we deserve
by nature and by practice. It could not bring us to that
justification that we need to stand before God in fellowship
and worship Him. Like Brother Jim said this morning,
that law can show us God's standard. It can show us what's required,
but it cannot in any way provide us what's required. We have to
look to Christ for that. What is the standard of God's
law? Christ stated it in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew
5 and verse 48. He said, if you want to be accepted
by God based on your law keeping, here's what you got to do. Be
perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. So then
this day of trouble is the day that our miles are stopped and
we have been brought in guilty before God. That is, under the
gospel, God has brought us to see the true purpose of the law. Romans 3 and verse 19 says, We
know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them who
are under the law. That's anyone seeking acceptance
with God based on their law keeping. Now the law speaks to them that
every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty
before God. He's going to stop our mouths
from justifying ourselves based on our law keeping. He's going
to do that in the lives of his people on this day of trouble.
Verse 20 says, therefore, by the deeds of law shall no flesh
be justified, no flesh declared righteous by deeds of law, for
by law is the knowledge of sin. On this day of trouble, I'm emphasizing
it's a specific day still. God brings us to finally hear
what the law has been telling us all along. We couldn't see
it. We didn't understand it. But
the law said, except you be perfect, you can't find any acceptance
before God in your law keeping. It's the day that we understand
the reality and truth of Romans 10 in verse 4. For Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. We
see that Christ had to come, the God-man had to come, walk
under the law, fulfill the law, satisfy justice, lay down his
life with our sins imputed to him, and establish the only righteousness
by which God could be just to declare us righteous. That's
Christ being the end of the law for righteousness. Now all these
things represent a drastic change in our thinking from the way
we thought by nature. See, we don't start out thinking
like that. In fact, we won't ever come to that unless God
brings us to the gospel and the Spirit works a work of life in
us and gives us faith. None of these things that I'm
talking about are the realizations of a natural man. The natural
mind will never see their efforts coming short of God's mark. of
perfection. First of all, they won't see
that perfection is the standard. they'll move that standard down
so they can find some comfort in meeting some part of it. These
realizations that I'm talking about are only the realizations
of a regenerate mind. In other words, if you come to
this day of trouble, if you come to the realization that all your
efforts come short of what God requires, it will only be because
God has showed you mercy and brought you by the mercy and
grace of God in Christ. It won't be because of your efforts.
It won't be because of your morality. It won't be because of your religious
zeal. It won't be because of anything
found in you, not even if you claim what is found in you, you
attribute it to God. Not even if you claim He did
it. It won't matter. The Pharisee in Luke 18 said,
I thank God I'm not like other men. In other words, he gave
God the credit for not being like other men. Nevertheless,
what does it say? He went down to his house unjustified
rather than the publican who prayed, Lord, be merciful to
me, the sinner. I need your mercy. I need your
grace. I need my salvation conditioned on Christ alone. The preachers
in Matthew 7 said, Lord, haven't I? Haven't I preached in your
name? Haven't I cast out demons in
your name? Haven't I done many wonderful
works in your name? They gave God the credit, but
what did Christ say to them? I never knew you. Depart from
me, you that work iniquity. How does God do this? How does
God bring about this radical change in our thinking? Gotta
happen. How does He do it? How does God
bring His elect to see and understand that our efforts to please Him
always have and always will come short of the righteousness that
He declared? We need to stand before Him and
be counted righteous in His sight. Well, here's how He does it.
He shows us the real problem. our real problem by showing us
the only solution to that problem. What is our real problem? What
problem do we have? What trouble are we in with God
by nature? Well, we've offended a holy God. Not just a holy God, but an infinitely
holy God. We owe a debt to his justice
we can't pay. We've broken His law and offended
Him. We've earned the eternal wrath
that a just God must punish. We stand by nature guilty in
God's sight, and all of that based on our best performance,
our best prayer, our best sermon, our best gift. The wages of sin
is death. It's what we've earned by nature.
It's what we deserve. It's what we're all guilty of
not measuring up to God's standard of perfection. We deserve the
eternal wrath of God. And I'm not just talking about
the natural man now. I'm talking about me. The regenerate,
justified sinner. I still, I'm still just as deserving
of God's wrath as I was the day I was born, and I'll still be
deserving on my deathbed. Now, I've been talking about
a lot of things here. I want to give you an illustration
from the Bible. It's a good one. Go ahead and
turn, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 6. I need you to look
at this, if you will. I'm going to read several verses
here. The prophet Isaiah is a good scriptural example of a sinner
brought by God to this day of trouble, this specific day I'm
telling you about. Look at Isaiah 6 and verse 1.
He says here, in the year that King... Now they say that in... I've always pronounced that Uzziah,
and I'm going to keep on doing that. It doesn't say that in...
in the online Bible. Anyway, in the year that King
Uzziah died. Now, let me tell you what happened.
King Uzziah was a good king in Israel. He was a prosperous king. He had great prosperity in this
land. But the prosperity kind of went
to his head. He got puffed up with it. He
decided that, hey, I'm the king. I can offer incense on the altar. And so he decided to do that. Now, the priests are the only
ones ordained by God were to offer incense on the altar. But
Uzziah said, I'm the king. I'm prosperous. I can do that. And the priest tried to hold
him back, but he wouldn't be held back. He went on in and
burned incense on the altar, and God struck him with leprosy.
And later on, he died. So that's what Isaiah is writing
about here. In the year that King Uzziah
died, here's what Isaiah saw. He said, I saw also the Lord
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled
the temple. Above it stood the seraphims,
each one had six wings, with two he covered his face, and
with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. And
one cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts. A thrice holy God. God the Spirit,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. A thrice holy God. The whole
earth is full of His glory. And the post of the door moved
at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was filled with
smoke. And then said I," this is Isaiah, he said, "'Woe is
me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.'" We need this day of trouble.
We need to see our real problem. What's our real problem? God
is holy. And in the light of his holiness,
I fall way short. I'm not. I'm anything but holy. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips. In myself, I'm a sinner without
hope. That's what Isaiah saw there.
He saw the holiness of God, and in the light of that, his own
corruption. Thankfully, that's not where
this story ended for Isaiah, nor is it where it ends for any
of God's elect. Thankfully, to those God brings
to see this day of trouble, there's a promised deliverance. Call
on me in the day of trouble. I will, not I might, I will deliver
you, God said. God promises to deliver every
sinner brought to this day of trouble. That makes this day
of trouble unique from just any day of trouble, like I talked
about in the beginning. I mean, we can have trouble on
any front, but this day of trouble is different. It's unique. It
has a promised deliverance. Temporally and physically speaking,
God can deliver any sinner from any trouble at any time. Any
trouble we face in this world, He can deliver us or not. Leave us in it. Not deliver us. It's up to Him. And He's just
either way. Why? Because none of us deserve
what we're getting anyway. We deserve the eternal wrath
of God. So if he gives us anything, if
he gives us the next breath, we're getting more than we deserve.
So he can do it either way. But that deliverance there, it
doesn't come with a promise. God doesn't promise. If a loved
one of mine gets sick and I pray for their deliverance, I don't
have the promise of God that they'll be delivered. He might
not deliver them. I don't have a promise there. That deliverance,
physical and temporal deliverance, is all covered in Matthew chapter
5 and verse 45. God says, God maketh his son
to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends the rain on
the just and on the unjust. It doesn't matter if you're justified,
if you're regenerate. God sends the rain to the farmer
no matter what. But spiritually and eternally
speaking, God can and He will deliver every sinner to this
day of trouble. I'm talking about the one David
is writing about here in Psalm 50 and verse 14. When God brings
any of us to truly see that we do not and cannot deserve anything
from Him, but His eternal wrath. It's because He's already planned
and He's already provided our deliverance from that trouble.
You see, if He gets us to that point where we can actually see
this, where He gives us eyes to see our corruption, He's already
planned our deliverance. He's going to bring us to deliverance.
He's already started it. As soon as Isaiah saw his true
sinfulness in the sight of God's holiness, God showed him his
deliverance. Look on there in Isaiah chapter
6 and verse 6. Then flew one of the seraphims
unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
from the tongs from the altar, with the tongs from the altar.
And he laid it on my mouth, and he said, lo, this has touched
thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is
purged. Now, of course, that's a picture
of Christ, the God-man, bearing away the sin of His people, having
their sins charged to Him and Him bearing away their guilt,
being punished in their place. So Isaiah's day of trouble, it
didn't turn out to be a calamity. It didn't turn out to be an anguish
for him, but it was rather a day of deliverance, a day of rejoicing. Such will be the same for every
sinner who calls on the God who justifies the ungodly and expects
to be delivered based on nothing but the imputed righteousness
of Christ alone. Isaiah's and every natural-minded
sinner's real problem is in Romans 3 and verse 18. There is no fear,
no reverence and respect for the God of this word. That's
how we all are by nature. This is a problem we're all born
with. We don't know, nor do we care, whether God is honored,
whether he's glorified in our salvation, or whether he's not.
In fact, it's never even an issue. Where I came from, my former
religion, it was never brought up, whether God is just when
he saves or not. It's never even an issue. Listen
to Matthew 11, 25. At that time, Jesus answered
and said unto thee, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
the prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. God reveals
to his elect that his honor and glory is not just one issue in
salvation, it's the main issue. See, until you get this right,
you don't know the God of salvation. We're brought to understand and
value how God is just to justify the ungodly on the basis of Christ's
righteousness alone. And that's when that certain
end to this day, he said, call on me. I'll deliver you. And
then he said, you'll glorify me. That's when that certain
end is made known in us. That's when we glorify the God
of this word. That's when we glorify God as
the God who justifies the ungodly based on nothing but Christ's
work alone. Bill's been preaching on this
new covenant out of Hebrews, but let me read something from
you here from Jeremiah 31 verses 33. He's already said, Days come when I'm going to make
a new covenant with the House of Israel. The one Robert read
about there in Psalm 50. Those that have made a covenant
with me by sacrifice. The one David spoke of when he
said, the Lord has made a covenant with me that's ordered in all
things insure and it's all my salvation because it's all conditioned
on Christ. Jeremiah 31, 33 says, but this
shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.
He's talking about spiritual Israel here, which includes Jews
and Gentiles, those that God gathers out of this world under
the gospel in every generation. I'll make a new covenant with
the House of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord,
I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts,
and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they
shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his
brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from
the least of them until the greatest of them, saith the Lord. For
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin
no more. God will cause each of his elect
to know that just ground upon which he can forgive our iniquity,
that just ground upon which he can remember our sin no more. He will be glorified in the hearts
of his people, and he will glorify, we will, his people. It says,
and you will glorify me. We will glorify God as a just
God and Savior. Our troubles are many in this
life, but this one day of trouble is one that always has a happy
ending. So God says to you, whoever's
listening, whoever you are, offer unto God thanksgiving, pay your
vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble.
I'll deliver you, and you'll glorify me. May the Lord bless
His word, I understand it.