Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention from the Word of God, Psalm 139,
Psalm of David that we read. We'll read for our text, verse
18. which is part of verse 18. The
whole verse reads, if I should count them, that is the precious
thoughts of God to him, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with
thee. And it is the last words of verse
18, when I awake, I am still with thee. The psalmist had been
with the Lord, had the Lord's full presence in the previous
day, and indeed maybe, as spoken in several psalms, throughout
the night as well, thought of the Lord. And when he comes to
wake up in the morning, he is still with the Lord. His thoughts,
his affections, are still with the Lord. When I awake, I am
still with Thee. Throughout this psalm he speaks
of what he knows of the Lord, the presence of the God of heaven
and earth, who fills all things, who sees all things, who knows
all things, and before whom we stand below, in Him we live and
move and have our being, and before whom we must stand at
last. that here the thoughts of God
seeing David were a comfort to him, a joy to him, and it was
a blessing to him to realise as he woke up in the morning
that the Lord was still with him. When the Lord commissioned
his disciples and sent them out to preach, he gave them the beautiful
promise, Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. But in the word before us this
evening, it is put in the other way. David is saying, I am still
with thee. The Lord has been saying that
he will be with his people. And it is a mutual companionship,
one with another. If two people are together, one
is with them and the other one is with that person as well. But in the scriptures it speaks
of the two sides, the Lord coming to his people, the Lord blessing
them and being with them, and the other side with his people
being with him and wanting to be with him. We think of in John chapter 6
where the Lord was teaching and speaking to his disciples that
there were many of them. After they'd been with him for
a while and he was teaching them, they said, these are hard sayings,
who can hear them? And they went back, they walked
no more with him. And the Lord said to the disciples,
and Peter answered for them, the Lord said, will you also
go away? And they said, to whom can we
go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. And we believe and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And so in
that case, it was the disciples of those who had been with the
Lord that were going away from Him. And so in the words of our
text, the psalmist says, I am still with thee. And it is a
great blessing when God's people, being through many trials and
many troubles in their lives, still can say that they are still
with the Lord. They still walk with Him, they're
not ashamed of Him, they still love Him. And so it is in that
way I want to speak this evening. Three points. Firstly, the blessing
of being with the Lord. The blessing of being with the
Lord. And secondly, the blessing of being still with the Lord,
and the things that come in between, the things that happen, we're
still found with the Lord. And then thirdly, the expectation
of being still with the Lord, and this especially is thinking
of beyond the grave. If the Lord is with us here below,
then when we die, our body returns to the earth, The spirit returns
to God that gave her, and it is a comfort to know that we
will be forever with the Lord. And that is the expectation of
God's people, what they expect. We need to ask ourselves, what
is our expectation beyond the grave? What do we expect when
we shall die? But firstly, I want to speak
of the blessing of being with the Lord. In one sense, we are
all with the Lord, because as in this psalm, David, he testifies
that God is everywhere, he fills heaven and he fills the earth,
and there's no place that we can go where the Lord is not. But what is meant here, the blessing
of being with the Lord, is in a way where we're looking for
the blessing of the Lord and His presence is with us to teach
us and to instruct us and to actually comfort us in the way
of life, in that hope that is beyond the grave. In the Book
of Psalms, David, he speaks of being with the Lord, he says
in the Night Watchers in Psalm 63, that he remembers him in
the Night Watchers. If I turn to it in Psalm 63 in
verse 6, my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, my
mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee
upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help,
therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. And we have very similar in Psalm
119 and verse 148. Mine eyes prevent the night watchers, in other
words, trying hard to stay awake, that I might meditate in thy
word. And I wonder how many of us,
while it is the night watchers, that our thoughts are upon the
Lord and upon his word. So the blessing of being with
the Lord, the Lord promising to his people, I am with thee
always, even unto the end of the world, It is always the Lord
that begins with a sinner, with man. He comes to them, He gives
them spiritual life, He brings them to know their need of a
saviour, He brings them to feel that they have a soul and that
they need His salvation, they need to be saved. They need to
have their sins forgiven and pardoned and blotted out. It
is the Lord that does that, that comes to his people and begins
with them. We have the beautiful word in
Paul's letter to the Philippians, he which hath begun a good work
in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. That good
work is a work of teaching, teaching the way of salvation, teaching
of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's tree, what
he did in suffering in the place of his people, in having their
sins put on his account and his life being taken away, being
crucified and slain in the place of his people, and that blessing
of Knowing what the Lord has done is made known by the Lord
himself to those that he comes to. He uses the preached word,
he uses the Bible. The Bible is our only word from
God. It is the inspired word of God. It is the only way that we know
about God and that God reveals himself to us. So we would think
of in being with the Lord, There are several ways. One is in heart,
not with our fleshy heart that pumps our blood round our bodies,
but in what really is our very being, what drives us, what influences
all of our lives, the heart of man by nature, is averse to God,
it hates God, it doesn't like His ways, it doesn't desire His
ways, and says, depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of
thy ways. But where the Lord changes the
heart, it makes a person willing and teachable, and their heart
is with the Lord, not against the Lord, and wants to be a heart
that the Lord sees. He read in that psalm where our
text is how David was very aware that the Lord saw everything
about him. We might deceive other people
by things that we say and things even that we do, but God sees
our true motive and what we really are doing, what we really are
thinking. in our minds. He can see and
know that. So when David says, I'm still
with thee, he's saying I'm still with thee in heart. My heart
is still with thee, with thy people. It is still after the
things of God. I'm not departed from thee. It
wasn't just a religion I had yesterday and do not have today. It is the blessing of having
a heart to serve the Lord, to walk in his ways and to be with
his people. So also to be with the Lord,
as David says, when I awake, I am still with thee, is to be
with the Lord in thoughts. We read that the thought of foolishness
is sin, and our thoughts and affections are defiled by sin,
they are not towards the Lord by nature, but the Lord will
turn our thoughts to Him, so we think upon Him. The Lord said
that there is a blessing upon those that speak often one to
another, and who thought upon His name. And so David, he knew
what it was, even in the night watchers to think upon the name
of the Lord. He said to the wicked, God is
not in all their thoughts. That is one of the marks of those
that shall perish of the wicked. God is not in all their thoughts. The third way of being with the
Lord is in spirit. When the Lord was on earth with
the disciples following him, And there were those that didn't
receive him. And they said, shall we command
fire to come down from heaven and consume them as Elias did? Elijah did in his day. And the
Lord said to them, you know not what spirit ye are of. The Son
of Man came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And so he directed to them as
to what was a true spirit, the right spirit. and it is to have
Christ's Spirit. Our Lord says, Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest
unto your souls. And it is having Christ's Spirit
to be upon us. Then we have a continuing with
the Lord or the Lord's blessing, a blessing of the Lord, to be
in prayer. Prayer is the way that God uses
for man to speak to God. God speaks to us through His
Word, the Bible, and through the preaching of the Word. But
we speak to Him through prayer, whether public prayer, whether
private prayer, or silent prayer as well as audible prayer. It
is when man speaks to God. And the blessing of being first
brought to pray. Many of God's people can remember
when they first really prayed. The Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus,
as he was, was a Pharisee. And they made long prayers, but
it was just words. It wasn't really from the heart.
He wasn't really in need at all. But when the Lord met him, when
the Lord convinced him as a sinner, when he knew that his need of
a saviour on the Damascus road, then he first began to pray,
first began to ask the Lord things. Lord, what wilt thou have me
to do? And he taught them in that way
through the Word of God how to pray, what to pray for, how to
ask. We're to ask in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Ask the Lord what he would have
us to do. Ask him to teach us. Ask him
to forgive us our sins. And it is in prayer that we have
that fellowship and communion. It is the same as two people
on earth. If they were to be together,
You wouldn't expect that they'd just sit together and all the
time be quiet. But they would speak one to another,
and it was right to do so. And they'd learn about each other
from speaking to each other. And so, that is where the presence
of the Lord with His people, and His people with the Lord,
is because His people hear the Lord speaking to them through
His words. and the Lord hears them speaking
to him through prayer. And so may we know that blessing
of prayer. Another way of being with the
Lord is in understanding. When the Lord rose from the dead,
he appeared to his disciples and he opened their understanding
that they might understand the scriptures. When he opened their
understanding, You might say they were then with the Lord,
walking in a way that they understood what he was doing. Someone might
try and explain something to us, and they explain it to us,
and then they would say, are you with me? Do you understand
what I'm saying? And you might say, no, I'm not
with you. I don't understand what you're
saying. But if it was the other way around, you say, I'm with
you now. my thoughts, I'm running with
your thoughts, I'm going in the same line of thought, I understand
what you're doing. Another way is the Lord's physical
presence. Now we know we cannot see the
Lord with our natural eyes, but He is with His people. And the psalmist knew it in his
day before the Lord came, and his people to the end of the
world will know the Lord's presence with them, sometimes sacredly
felt, sometimes with the peace that he gives them, sometimes
with their thoughts drawn out to him and their affections out
after him. Another way of being with the
Lord is to be with his people. We often plead that word that
where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am
I in the midst of them. And we believe that that is true.
Though we cannot see God, yet he is in the midst of where his
people gather together. And so there are these ways that
are a blessing when we are with the Lord. The psalmist in our
text says, when I awake, I am still with thee. That is, his
heart, his thoughts, his spirit, his prayers, his understanding,
the Lord was still with him and he was still with the Lord. So I want to then think secondly
of being still with the Lord. In the word of the text it relates
especially to another day, after a night's season, in waking up
in the morning, then The Lord is still with him, but especially
he puts it in this way, I am still with thee. Moses, we read, had 40 days and
40 nights in the Mount, at Mount Sinai, receiving the holy law
of God. And you might say each day that
Moses was there, he would say, I am still with thee. We have the case where the disciples
were with the Lord, they continued with him three days, hadn't eaten
or drunk, and they were with the Lord, hearing him preach
and hearing him speak. And he says that they have continued
with me now these three days. So they would stay on their part,
that I am still with thee. We mentioned about the heart.
Well, King Asa, who was a good king of Judah, and he did serve
the Lord well, but at the end of his life, he relied upon man,
relied upon the armies of Egypt, instead of relying upon the Lord. And when the prophets reproved
him of this and told him to trust solely in the Lord, he was angry
with them and even put some of them in prison. And the Lord
then afflicted him, he was diseased in his feet at the end of these
days, and that he did not seek to the Lord but sought unto physicians,
unto men. And yet we read in 1 Kings chapter
15 verse 14, that Asa's heart was with the Lord all his days. Even though outwardly he fell,
outwardly he went wrong. We think of Peter. The Lord said
to Peter that Satan hath desired to have thee and to sift thee
as wheat, or you as wheat, for I have prayed for thee that thy
faith fail not. When Peter was tested in that
way, he denied his Lord three times, and said that he didn't
know Him. But after that time of temptation,
then the Lord met with him, and of course immediately after,
the Lord turned and looked on him, and Peter went out, and
he wept bitterly. But when the Lord had risen from
the dead and appeared to him, then the Lord asked him, Lovest
thou me more than these? Peter had said, Though all men
forsake thee, yet will not I. And the Lord then asked him,
Did he love him more than these? But poor Peter, he just testified
how much he loved his Lord. You may say after that time of
temptation, after that time of denying the Lord, that Peter
could say, I am still with thee. He hadn't given up, he hadn't
denied his Lord, he hadn't turned back as many other disciples
had, but he had come through that trial and still was a Christian,
still was a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, This blessing
of still being with the Lord is especially after times of
trial and after times of tribulation. It is a great blessing to be
able to testify that I am still with Thee. The Lord sometimes
often turns it the other way around. And he will say to his
people, to assure them, to comfort them, I am still with thee. But here is David, here is one
of the Lord's people. When I awake, I am still with
thee. Or after the time of trouble,
after this time of trial, after this dark valley, I am still
with thee. love and union between the Lord
and his people is a very precious thing, a very blessed thing.
Well, thirdly, there is our expectation. Our expectation. The Apostle
Paul, he says that he was in a strait and betwixt whether
to remain with the Corinthians or to depart and to be with Christ,
which was far better. And he spoke of it as to be absent
from the body, but present with the Lord. And to have that expectation,
that though this body is laid in the grave, though our mortal
life perish, yet we shall be present with the Lord, we shall
still be with him. We have the Apostle speaking
to the Thessalonians in a similar way, and he says, so shall we
ever be with the Lord. And so this is the expectation
of the people of God, that they would be still with the still
beyond the grave, with him here, with him in eternity, with him
forever and forever. It is that great blessing that
is really established right through life with the people of God,
night after night, trial after trial, dark season after dark
season, one valley after another valley, and to come through the
other side and still be able to say, I am still with thee. A humble profession, a great
wonder to many of the people of God. They may see like the
disciples did, many go away, but still to realize I am still
with thee. It is by the grace of God, the
mercy of God, that any of his people still abide. They are
kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. It is this wonder that surely
is a reason for praise and honour and glory of the people of God,
that he still keeps them, he still draws them, he still brings
them to himself. They still want to be with him,
he still wants to be with them and he keeps that union. We read in John 10 that the people
of God are in the Lord's hand and they're in his Father's hand
and no man is able to pluck them out of mine hand. And so may
the Lord grant us to know something of the sweetness of this realisation. May He know it as we have our
evening devotions and morning devotions and realise that in
between, in the night watches, the Lord has kept us. We have
had His blessing before and may we really pray for it, long for
it, be diligent for Him, to know His presence, to know that we
are with Him, and that when we awake, that that is our waking
thoughts and affections, I am still with Thee. May the Lord add His blessing. Amen.