Good to go. As soon as I got up here, Drew
said, you're good to go. But I'll set y'all's mind at
ease right now. I made a solemn promise to Melinda
yesterday that I would not preach more than an hour. Yeah, yeah. I don't intend to preach for
an hour. If you would open your Bibles
to the 116th Psalm. It is good to be among you. I
thank God for this church, for the pastor here, a dear friend, companion in the labors of God's
kingdom. I just thank God for you all. I always like coming here. Let's start here in verse 15. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of His saints. Now when we think of death, the
word precious is not likely to come to mind. About the only
time we might think to attach any positive word to death is
when death ends someone's suffering, at least the suffering of this
life. There may be dying of an illness that creates a great
deal of pain. And when they pass on, we say,
well, his suffering's over. And certainly the suffering of
this life is over. But that's the only time, about
the only thing that Naturally speaking, we could ever think
positive about death. Rather, we think of death as
the very worst of things. Death brings an end to all in
which a worldling might hope. Everything he hopes in, everything
he hopes for, it puts an end to it. Everything he has gathered
in an effort to make his life better is forfeited at death. When a believer dies, he leaves
behind the worst experiences he will ever have, but when the
worldling dies, he leaves behind the best experiences he'll ever
have. Death is the fear that underlies
all our other fears. What would you What fears would
you have if you knew you could not die? No matter how many times
you mess up, you get another chance. Somebody doesn't like
it? I'll outlive them. The things that we're afraid
of all have their roots, shall we say, in the fear of death. The fear of death is in all of
us to some degree, and this fear brings us into bondage. It says,
and interesting enough, find out where this bondage comes
from. It comes from the devil, who through fear of death holds
people in bondage for their whole life. How does he do that? Well, in Hebrews 9, verse 27,
we read, it's appointed unto man once to die, and after that,
face judgment. And so, in truth, it's not the
death itself that we're so afraid of, it's what all of us knows
comes after that. And the devil uses that. to keep
people in bondage to legalistic, self-righteous religion. Remember,
He's called the accuser of the brethren. And He brings up the sin of people
in their minds and puts them on a path of trying to establish
a righteousness of their own because they know they've got
to give an account of themselves to God. And thus far, it doesn't
look like that's going to work out very well. So I've got to
do better. And they stay in bondage. And
this fear of death is really what drives most religion. It's
what drives all the efforts of religious people. We who are believers, in our flesh, we still have a
fear of death, a survival instinct. You know, we can say, well, I'm
not afraid to die, but it's altogether a different question than when
you go to the doctor and he says, well, you've got about two months.
We're not afraid to die because we don't think it's going to
happen any time soon. But the believer does have within
him a confidence that the judgment will work out well for him. And
that removes a great deal of the fear of death. And if we
were perfect in faith, we would view our pending death, the only
negative aspect would be kind of like, you know, I don't want
to leave the party. I got my loved ones here, you
know, I'm enjoying this, that, and the other, and I don't want
to go home yet. Of course, as soon as you die,
you say, why did I want to stay there? But we're here now and
we think in reference to here. But it's the fear of death that
underlies all our other fears. But here it says that God regards
the death of some people as precious. Now the word precious, quite
often I try to update translations because what words meant a long time
ago isn't necessarily what they mean now. Well, precious is a
good translation here, but there is a little problem. We've added
meanings to the word precious that weren't present in 1611
when King James was done or in 1769 when this edition was last
edited. Because we'll say things, we'll
see a little child, well, you need precious. And just, you
know, All we're saying is we think that they're really great
and they're drawing loving feelings out of us. But precious actually
means things like honorable, valuable, rare, precious stones,
splendid, weighty, precious. One of the words that I believe
it's related to, as I was trying to look this up, is the Hebrew
word for only. Now, you don't get much rarer
than only. And so when it says, precious
in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints, it's saying
that to Him, their death is something weighty, something significant. something honorable, something
of significance. And this implies that these people,
whose death is precious in the sight of the Lord, are themselves
precious in His sight. Certainly, believers are a rare
thing in the world. Here we are in this little group.
And there's a whole lot more than us in this area. Now, it's not in my realm of
authority to judge the hearts of men. But John did say, he
that is born of God, heareth us. He listens to, you know,
and there are not many people listening to what we have to
say. And if they do hear it, they generally reject it. So, you know, I leave it to them.
I don't judge their hearts. I just let them hear what I have
to say and they can figure out whether or not that's what they
want to listen to or acknowledge. But nonetheless, we've got a
couple that lives up in the Twin Cities and they come to our church,
three and a half hour drive. Do you know how many millions
of people live in the Twin Cities? They have looked all over the
place for a church that preaches what we preach. So believers
are rare. They are, according to the scriptures,
honorable in God's sight. And so we could say that this
death is precious to the Lord. because the people are precious
to the Lord. Now, we do not say this as though
the death of the ungodly is inconsequential to us. But God sees His saints, their
death is precious to Him because they are precious to Him, and
the death of others. He brought them into the world
to do something, to accomplish His purpose. They accomplished
it, and He disposed of them. All the nations are as a drop
of the bucket. They are like grasshoppers. And they come and
go, and the brow of the Lord is not concerned about it. He
doesn't do this. He takes notice of the death
of His saints. Who are these saints? The Hebrew
word here is not the one that's normally translated saint or
holy one. You realize that particularly
in the New Testament, every time you see the word, or almost every
time you see the word holy, sanctify, or saint, it's the translation
of one Greek root word. They all mean the same thing. But here in the Old Testament,
there's a word that corresponds to the New Testament word for
holy, which means set apart. There's a Hebrew word for that,
but that's not the one used here. This word actually means to be
pious, godly, even kind or merciful. So these saints spoken of here,
they're described as godly, pious, kind. It is of this sort of person
that it is written that their death is precious in the eyes
of the Lord, in the sight of the Lord. But here's something
to notice, and it's very important. It does not say, precious in
the sight of the Lord is the deaths of His saints. It's not a plural death, singular
death. One death, not many. is precious in the eyes of the
Lord. It is written concerning the
saints of God that their lives, plural, are precious in His sight. But when it comes to their deaths,
it says precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death, one,
of His saints. It does not even say the death
of each saint is precious in his sight. There you could use
a singular word and apply it to a plural group simply because
you've used the word each there. But that's not how it's written.
One death, many saints. The text is not saying, as some
people hold forth, at least I do not believe that it's saying
this, is not saying that each time one of God's people dies,
the natural death of this life, that it is counted as a precious
thing in the sight of God. Now, we could say that the death
of each of God's saints is desirable to God, to our Lord Jesus Christ. You say, why? Well, it's this
life that right now separates us from the full enjoyment of
fellowship with our God. and knowing that our God is revealed
to us in Christ, and that's the only revelation we'll ever get
of Him. I know we have this image of
God the Father on the throne, and God the Son sitting at His
right hand, and we put the Holy Spirit in there somewhere. But
understand, these are symbolic views of God. When we get to
heaven, the only God we're going to see is Christ, because our
God is called the invisible God. It says of Abraham, he saw Him
who is invisible. How is that possible? He became
visible in Jesus Christ. And the Scriptures say, and we're
going through the Song of Solomon in our Sunday School class, and
it's such a blessed study. Do you realize that the Lord,
you believers, the Lord longs for your presence with Him as
much and more than you long to be with Him? So yes, desirable
in the sight of our God is our death. But desirable does not
mean precious. Because let's face it, there's nothing honorable
in our death. We just die. So far as the death that we all,
you know, when we think about it, what we think of in terms
of dying, we die just like the unbelieving world does. The body
gives up for one reason or another. One death. is precious. Turn
with me over to the 16th Psalm. There's a lot of 16ths going
on here in this scripture. I'll try to keep them all divided
up. But we were in Psalm 116. Now we're going to the 16th Psalm.
And we're going to read verses 9 and 10. Psalm 16, 9, and 10, Therefore
my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall
rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul
in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Now here, in this text of Scripture,
on the day of Pentecost, Peter ascribed these words to the Lord
Jesus Christ. It was about His resurrection
and said God would not let His Holy One see corruption. Christ is God's Holy One, singular. In fact, our Lord, and I can't
remember all the circumstances of the story, A demon-possessed
person came up to him, and the demon spoke through this man
and says, we know who you are. You're the Holy One of God. And
the Lord told him, don't say that. Why? The Lord doesn't need
the testimony of demons. But in Psalm 116 we read of a
singular death applied to multiple people, and in Psalm 16 we read
a single individual described by the very same Hebrew word,
just single, holy one, saint, and obviously he's died because
it says he will not leave his soul in the grave. nor allow
him to see corruption. So, going back now to Psalm 116,
and we're going to look at verse 16. Now it says, Precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, His holy ones,
and He will not allow His Holy One to see corruption. In Psalm
116, verse 16, it says, O Lord, truly I am Your servant, I am
Thy servant and the son of Thy handmaid, Thou hast loosed my
bonds. We won't turn to these, but in
Acts 4, verse 27, the saints are praying and they say this,
For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together. Now, when it says holy child,
they should have said holy servant. Yes, the word means child, but
they used the word of servants as well because they were kind
of looked upon who has the same status as children in the household. And so it's talking about our
Lord Jesus in terms of Him being the servant of God. And then, if we read in, let me see here
now. Okay, it says here, I'm the son
of your handmaid. Now, it was not normal for someone
to identify themselves as being the son of a woman. Genealogies are always patriarchal
in the Bible. But this one says, I'm the son
of your handmaid, a feminine noun. So he's identifying himself
not by his patriarchal lineage, whoever is speaking in the psalm,
but by his maternal image. And in Luke 1, beginning in verse
34, you can turn there if you'd like, but I'm going to start
reading as soon as I get there because I've got that one hour
limit. Luke 1, beginning at verse 34, Then said Mary unto the angel,
How shall this be? That is, how am I going to have
a child, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said
unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son
of God. And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth,
she hath also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the
sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God,
nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid
of the Lord." So far as I know, that's the only other time that
anyone is referred to as the handmaid of the Lord. I am your
servant and the son of your handmaid. And then he says, You have loosed
my bonds. In Acts 2, verse 24, as Peter
is preaching on the day of Pentecost, he says this, and the whom, of course, is Jesus
Christ, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of
death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. God loosed his bonds. And so, as we see the description
of the speaker in this Psalm 116, it's none other than our
Lord Jesus Christ. I'm your servant. I'm the son
of your handmaid. You've released me from my bonds."
It's our Lord that's talking here. Now, we will look at this as to why
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is precious. We'll look at that
in just a minute. But first, let us notice that in Psalm 116
it speaks of a singular death and multiple saints. How can
that be? Well, Colossians 2.20. I mean,
you know, The ratio between birth and deaths
in this world is almost exactly one. And you say, why almost
exactly? Well, there's a few that were raised from the dead,
so they died twice. And there's one that didn't die at all. And
then Abraham, Adam and Eve were never born. So you got two deaths
without births. But it's so close to one, we
could say that it's pretty much a one-to-one ratio of people
born and people that die. But we see here in Colossians
2, verse 20, we're trying to figure out now how there can
be one death, but many people included in it. It says, wherefore? If ye be
dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though
living in the world, are you subject to its ordinances? Now, Paul says we're dead. Now, that may be surprising to
you. I guess if someone walked up
to you and said, you're dead, you'd say, wait a minute, here
I am. But that's what Paul says. And I believe it's later in chapter
3, he says, you are dead and your life is hid with Christ
in God. We have died with Him. Now, inasmuch
as this death, this singular death of the Holy One of God,
is described as the precious death of the holy ones of God,
that means that this precious death was applied
to every one of them. And that means that all the value
of that precious death was applied to them, even the very preciousness
of the death. For example, how is the death
of Christ precious? This death is very rare. There's
only one of them. In Christ, we have died a death
that is precious in God's sight. Lazarus died, air quotes. When he died, and the sisters
were talking to him, if he hadn't been here, he wouldn't have died,
which is exactly why he didn't come. You know, and the Lord
said, you know, your brother will live again. And the sister
says, Oh yes, I know he'll rise in a resurrection. He said, you
don't understand. I am the resurrection. And then he goes on to say, he
that lives and believes in me will never die, and he that believes
in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live. Now that really
sounds confusing. But what the Lord is saying is
that believers, in all honesty, never die. And if that confuses
you, because indeed these bodies stop working, he said, well,
even though they die in that sense of the word, yet they go
on living. Why don't they die? Because they
already did. They already did. Now the central event of the
gospel is the death of Christ. Everything that Jesus Christ
did is necessary to the gospel. I mean from the moment he was
conceived in the womb of his mother, even into right now as
he makes intercession for us. It's all necessary to our salvation,
but when the scriptures speak of the gospel, it always points
us to his death. Paul said, may it never be that
I glory in anything other than the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.
We know that when he said that, he was referring to the entire
work of Christ. But everything else Christ did
would have been absolutely useless without the cross. It's the one scene, the one specific
act of our Lord that is used to describe the whole of His
work. Now, why then is the death of
Christ precious? It is the death of God's Son. Now, you can read of many, many
deaths every day. I mean, you know, if you figure,
say about 80 years somewhere, you know, life. That means every
80 years, everybody in the world died. So that amounts to a lot
of deaths every day. We read about them, we're unmoved. Why? We don't know. I don't know
about you, but I read about a disaster, the first thing I want to know.
Well, did it happen in the United States? Now, really, we ought
to see, you know, whether it happens in the United States
or India or Russia or whatever, it ought to affect us, but it
doesn't. Why? Because we hold our countrymen as more precious. than the people from other places.
That's just natural humanity. And then if there's a death in
your family, then it's getting real serious.
And I cannot imagine a death more serious than the death of
one's child. And that's because the lives
of our children are so incredibly precious to us. The loss of them
is almost unbearable. Why was the death of Christ precious
to God? That was his son. Now people try to figure out
God and his emotions and all that. That's over our heads.
Let's forget it. But I do know that God reveals himself to us
as a father. and the Savior as the Son, and
He did that because we understand somewhat the relationship between
fathers and sons. And as any parent would agonize
over the death of one of their children, and it doesn't matter
how grown they get, you know, nobody wants to bury their children.
But God's Son died, and worse yet, He died at God's hand. And so precious was the Lord
Himself in the eyes of His Father that His death held incredible
value. It was truly an honorable death. And inasmuch as this was the
death of God's only Son, I am certain that everything that
was intended or even hoped for in that death will be accomplished. You know, I truly have sympathy
for those who lose children in war. That is, they're sent off
to war and they die. But how much more agonizing must
it be if one of your children dies in war and then your side
loses? They die for nothing. The blood
of my child was spilled for nothing. Now, you imagine how we think
of our children, imagine how the father thinks of the son.
Do you think that he's going to let that blood be shed and
the purpose for which it was shed not be fully accomplished?
I know this, if one of my children died to save someone else's life,
I would do everything I could to make sure that that person's
life was saved. You think the Father would do
any less? Secondly, His death was precious
because it was weighty in the fulfillment of a vow. Verse 14
of Psalm 116, I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence
of all His people. The Lord Jesus made a vow to
the Father. He accepted the responsibility for the people whom the Father
had chosen. He entered into covenant with the Father. And He came
with a work to do. He said in one place, shall I
now pray, Father, deliver me from this hour? It's for this
hour that I came. He promised. Will He not fulfill? He fulfilled
His promise. Isn't a fulfilled promise nice?
They're kind of rare. You know, you go to buy a car,
I'll guarantee it's never going to be as good as the salesman
said it is. Anything, that's just the way it is in this world.
Politicians, all the promises they make, and if you try to
come up with promises fulfilled over promises made, it's a really,
really small number. But not with our Lord. He promised
His Father. And He fulfilled that vow in
the presence of His people. You and I, when we worship what
we do, we behold our Lord fulfill His vow. I determine to know nothing among
you other than Christ and Him crucified. Why? That's the message
of the fulfillment of the vow of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thirdly,
our Lord's death is called precious because it was a satisfaction
of God's righteous nature. Billions of people have died,
yet it's never accomplished anything of consequence. But the death
of this one person satisfied God's wrath. I mentioned earlier
that our Lord's death was rare. In all truth, it's the only death
there has ever been. You say, wait a minute, lots
of people have died. Lots of people are dying. When it says
eternal death, it doesn't mean just a death that lasts forever.
It's a death that keeps going. And why does it keep going? Because
the experience of dying that we... that the ungodly go through
never pays for the sin that they're buried. And therefore, they are
always bearing sin. Therefore, death is always on
them. Our Lord Jesus Christ came bearing sin and He accomplished
death. He's the only one that's ever
done that. He said it's finished. And that word means it's come
to an end. I've perfected death. And He's the only one that's
ever done that. It's precious. It's precious
because it proved Christ's great love for His Father and His church. It proved His righteousness. It displayed His glory. And all
of this is precious to the Father. Now the psalm speaks of the experience
of these Holy Ones who participate in the death of God's Holy One. Just a couple of things to notice.
Who are they? Who are they whose singular death
that applies to all of them is precious in God's sight? Verse
1, I love the Lord because He has heard my voice and my supplications,
my cry for mercy. These are those who have called
to the Lord for mercy. Now, we are Sovereign gracers. We believe that God chose a people
before the foundation of the world and that they and they
alone shall be saved. And we get accused of some awful
meanness for believing that. But I'll tell you this right
now, God has never turned His ear away from a sincere cry for
mercy. Never. I imagine a lot of times people
have asked Jesus into their heart and that didn't get heard. They gave their life to Jesus
and the Lord didn't pay any attention. He was walking down the streets.
He's between Old Jericho and New Jericho. And there's a man
named Bartimaeus over there. Now, people are swarming around
the Lord. And He's touching people and healing them. And people
are crying out, Lord, heal me. And through all of that, Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me. And it stopped the Lord Jesus
Christ. Nobody ever cried for the Lord's
mercy and didn't get it. David, have mercy on me, O God. And he did. It's those who have
entered rest. Verse 7, Return unto thy rest,
O my soul. And what is our rest? It's Christ's
rest. He entered His rest. His job
was done. And we enter His rest. In verse 8, it's those who say,
You have delivered my soul from death. mine eyes from tears,
and my feet from falling." Now these are holy ones. And we've got to get rid of the
idea in our minds that holy means good. Sometimes it does, but
here it just means people who worship God. Believers. And their death is precious to
the Lord. Not their deaths, their death. Because their death is the death
of Jesus Christ. Therefore, they will never die. May the Lord bless His Word. Thank you, Joe.