Good morning. We'll have no music
box this morning. We'll sing all our hymns acapella.
The music system is over in the new building. Good step and sounds
great, but it's all wired up over there. So when we get over
there, we'll have it again. So let's open this morning service
with number 21 from the Spiral Hymnbook, Gospel Hymns Hymnbook,
and let's all stand together. God the Father and the Son and
the Spirit, three in one. In eternal age is past, made
a covenant sure and fast. God my Father chose his own. in the person of his son, and
ordained that I should be one with him eternally. Let's bring it up half an octave.
God the Son agreed to come in the flesh to bring me home. He would keep God's holy law
and retrieve me from the fall. Christ, in love so willingly,
stood as my grace-duranty. For my price he offered blood. to appease the wrath of God. God, the spirit heavenly dove,
promised to come down in love, bringing life and peace and grace
to the chosen, purchased race. He seeks the lost, heals the
lame, and he brings us to the lamb. By his mighty sovereign
call, God's elect are gathered all. This poor sinner is secure. for God's covenant will endure. It is sealed by God's own word,
by his spirit and his blood. Blessed holy covenant God, I
am yours by tithes of blood. ? Ties of grace and ties of love
? ? Hold me to my God above ? Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to
be back in Psalm 119 this morning. Somebody said they liked me with
earrings. Hopefully next week we won't
have to do this anymore. We'll be in our new building.
Watch your email. We'll know by the end of the
week if we have our CO. And I don't guess it matters
when you get here. We'll either be in this building
or we'll be in the next building. So it'll happen, as I said, when
it happens. I've titled this message When
Hope Is Tested. when hope is tested. Everything
God gives, He tests in order to prove it. And hope is what believers have
given to them by God. And all throughout this life,
He tests our hope in order to prove the sincerity of it and
the source of it, mainly. So I hope that this message will
be an encouragement to your heart. It's a child of God who has a
sure hope, confidence in the promises of God, and yet suffers
the trials and troubles of this world, having that hope tested. And for those who don't have
hope in Christ, you don't have any hope at all. And without
God and without hope in this world, I hope this morning the
Lord will give you a sure hope. Let's pray together and ask God
for his blessings on his word. Our merciful heavenly father,
the covenant of grace, the covenant of love, the precious promises
that we just sang of, Lord, what great hope we have in knowing
that you are faithful to all of your promises. We ask, Lord,
that you would, by your spirit and through your word, strengthen
our faith increase our hope, enable us to rest all our salvation
on the accomplished work and the glorious person of thy dear
son, the Lord Jesus Christ. For it's in his name we ask it.
Amen. You have your Bibles open to
Psalm 119. When hope is tested, and it will
be, it will be. Look with me at verse 81. My
soul fainteth, my soul fainteth for thy salvation, but my hope
is in thy word. Might I fail for thy word, saying,
when wilt thou comfort me? For I am become like a bottle
in the smoke, yet do I not forget thy statutes." Now, a bottle
here is not a glass bottle as we would know it. It's a bottle of skin that would have
been used to hold water or wine. And the picture here is that
wine skin hanging in a chimney covered with smoke. And that's
what the psalmist is liking himself to. This is how I feel. I can't
see. I can't breathe. There's nothing
but darkness around me. I'm like a bottle hanging in
a smoky chimney. But I do not forget thy statutes. Now, as we have seen time and
time again, all of these passages relate first and foremost to
the Lord Jesus Christ. He had perfect faith and he had
perfect hope, even when he was forsaken of God, and he was. For those three hours as he hung
on Calvary's cross and there was darkness upon the face of
the earth, the scripture says that the Lord cried out of agony,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He was like a bottle
hanging in smoke. And Truth is that he was for he was
forsaken, completely forsaken of God. In bearing the sins of
his people, the eyes of the Lord are too pure to look upon sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, as we
just sang, in our opening hymn became our surety. He became
our sin bearer. He became all that God required
to satisfy the demands of God's holy justice. He is our substitute. And so this psalm first speaks
of him. My soul fainteth for thy salvation,
yet my hope is in thy word. What word was the Lord Jesus
Christ hoping in? Well, we just sang about it.
That covenant of grace that God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit entered into in eternity past, when God the
Father promised to give to His Son a bride, His church. God the Son entered into that
covenant promise and agreed to be their surety. Everything that
God required, the Lord Jesus Christ was going to accomplish.
He would be their Redeemer, and He would redeem them by His shed
blood. God the Holy Spirit entered into
that covenant promise. This is before the stars were
made. This is God in eternity, determining in and of Himself
to save a people. You and I didn't have anything
to do with that. chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son,
and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. That was the promise that was
made. And the Lord Jesus Christ, as He's bearing the reproach
of our sin on Calvary's cross and suffering the forsaking of
His Father, is crying out, I feel like a bottle hanging in the
smoke. Yet, my hope, my hope, my trust is in my word. The Lord
Jesus Christ believed that God would reward him for what he
was doing. He believed that he would be
raised from the dead. That's why in his dying breath,
he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. I trust
you to do for me what you promised you would do. All the way back
there in the covenant of grace, the eternal covenant of salvation
that we established before time began. And the father was faithful
to his word. And that's what our faith is
in. Our faith is in his faithfulness. We trust him. And in trusting
him, we have a great hope. We have a great hope. The Lord
gives us this hope in his word. We don't hope. in our feelings. We don't hope in our circumstances. We hope in the sure promises
of God. We hope in His word. My soul fainteth and the Lord
tries that hope and gives us circumstances and situations
that causes us to say, Lord, I'm losing hope here. Things seem dark. I'm having
a hard time breathing and I can't see. But your word hasn't changed. Martin Luther wrote a hymn one
time. He said, feelings come and feelings go. Feelings are
deceiving. My only warrant is the word of
God. None else is worth believing. And that's the believer's hope.
I can't trust in my feelings. I can't trust in my circumstances. God is trying my hope. He's trying my faith, causing
me to come back to that only place that I can go and trust
him for his word. Look what David said. My soul
feigneth for thy salvation, but I hope in thy word. Mine eyes
fail for thy word, saying, when wilt thou comfort me, Lord? When
will you deliver me? Try and become like a bottle
in the smoke, yet do I not forget thy statutes? How many are the
days of thy servant? When wilt thou execute judgment
on them that persecute me?" And here's the Lord Jesus hoping,
trusting the Father to not only reward him for his work of redemption,
but to justify him through the judgment that will come upon
those who have persecuted him. The proud have digged pits for
me, which are not after thy law." They don't have any. Now, law
and statutes and precepts and word are all references. They're
all words to the same thing. And that's the word of God. So
the Lord's saying, they have no regard for your word. Their
hope is in something else. And yet, they're proud and they've
digged a pit for me. and they think they've gotten
the victory over me? And as far as the circumstances
are concerned, it looks like God has lost, Satan has won,
the enemies of God have gotten the victory, but just the opposite
is the case, just the opposite. And just as the Lord turned the
evil deeds of man in the crucifixion of Christ to the salvation of
his people, so he works all things together. all things together
for good for them that love him, those that are the called according
to his purpose. I read a story this week about
a man who was walking aimlessly out in the road at night, and
another man struck him with his car, not seeing him. And as a result, the man that
was hit was injured horribly. He had broken bones and internal
injuries and almost died. But in the process of him being
taken care of by the physicians for his injuries, they discovered
an aneurysm in his brain that was just about to burst, which
is the reason why he was walking aimlessly out in the traffic.
at night. They were able to fix the aneurysm and the man was forever grateful
to the one who hit him in the car for his near-death experience
was actually his salvation. I thought, you know, the Lord
does that for us, doesn't he? He tries our faith. He brings
things out of nowhere. They're not nowhere for him,
but they are for us. and lays us flat in order to
expose the real problem that we might have the great physician
do surgery on our unbelief, our sin, that aneurysm that would
burst if the Lord didn't do a miracle of grace in our hearts. So, Look at verse 86. All thy commandments,
and that word commandment, again, is a word used just like law
and statutes and precepts and word, speaking of the word of
God. This is our warrant. This is
our hope. This is where our hope is founded. It's in God's word. It's nowhere
else. That's why we say about everything, well, what sayeth
the scriptures? What does God say about it? Let's
just believe God. And that's what the Lord's saying,
trust me. When we trust someone, we're trusting them for their
word. And some people, word can't be trusted. But God says, I'm
not like you. I'm not untrustworthy like you
are. When I speak, my words are sure. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
says, all thy commandments are faithful. They persecuted me
wrongfully, help thou me. They had almost consumed me upon
the earth, but I forsook not my precepts. I was almost consumed. Let me say this, the Lord Jesus
Christ was, he was forsaken of God. that his people would never
have to be forsaken of God. Sometimes we feel forsaken. Sometimes
we feel God is nowhere around. Sometimes we cry like this, my
soul fainted, but he hasn't forsaken us. He forsook Christ. And because he forsook Christ,
we have the promise of God. I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee. What great hope we have, that's
God's word. What are we gonna believe? We're
gonna believe our feelings that we've been forsaken of God? The
same thing has to do with our salvation. Sometimes we feel
saved, sometimes we don't feel saved. We didn't feel unsaved
when we were not saved. So feelings are just, they're
not reliable, are they? God's word is, God's word is. Look at how this passage ends
in verse 88. Quicken me after thy loving kindness. Lord, make me alive. That's what
the word quicken means. Lord, I'm being tried, I'm being
trusted, tested. I need to be made alive. I need
the power of your spirit to lift me up. Quicken me after thy loving
kindness. That word loving-kindness in
the Old Testament is the Old Testament word for grace. We
don't read of grace in the Old Testament near as much as we
do in the New Testament, but loving-kindness is His grace,
His undeserved favor. demerited favor, all the gifts
of God that he gives us freely by his grace in Christ Jesus. Quicken me after thy lovingkindness
or after thy grace, so shall I keep the testimonies of thy
word. I will hide thy word in mine
heart that I might not sin against God. Lord, if you give me faith,
If you quicken me, if you enable me to believe, I will believe.
If you turn me, I'll turn. If you save me, I'll be saved.
Lord, I'm dependent upon you for that. Look at verse 49 in
the same Psalm. Remember the word unto thy servant,
upon which thou hast caused me to hope. Where's your hope? There's no hope outside of a
sure promise. And the promises of man aren't
sure. We don't know what's going to happen in this world. God's
word is sure. He said, heaven and earth will
pass away, but my word will never pass away. My word will never
pass away. It's sure, it's steadfast, it's
certain. And the believer says, remember
the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to
hope." Lord, I wouldn't hope in your word if you didn't cause
me to hope in your word, but you've caused me to. That's what
the disciples said. You remember when the 5,000 after
the Lord fed them, he said to them, he said, you're only following
me that you might have your bellies full. And that's what most people
follow their little Jesus for. For their, the belly is a picture
of the flesh. It's a picture of this temporal
life. And the Lord had just miraculously fed this large group of people.
And he said, you're just concerned about the temporal blessings
of life. You're not concerned about the
eternal salvation of your soul. And he said, if you really want to
be my disciples, you have to deny yourself, deny that you
have anything to do with your salvation. That's what it is
to deny yourself, is to deny any contribution that you have
to make in your salvation. that Christ did it all, and he
did it all by himself. Take up your cross, and that's
not just suffering, that's not just burying the trials of life,
that's union with the Lord Jesus Christ, with whom we are crucified
with Christ. When Christ died, we died in
him, the fellowship of his suffering. The Lord said, you follow me
so you can have your bellies full. That's what the religious
world needs to hear. You're just following your little
God so that you can use him as a bellhop. You'd ring your little bell and
pray your little prayer and your God will come down and deliver
you from your temporal problems. And you have no concern for his
word or for his glory or for his grace. And he said, deny
yourself, take up your cross, follow me. follow after me, look
to me, rest your hope in me. And the scripture says they all
departed. They all left. And I'm sure the disciples are
looking at each other and saying, you know, I thought we were here
to gain a great following for God. You just ran off the biggest
congregation we've ever had. And the Lord looked at each of
them and said, aren't you gonna go with them? That's what he
was saying. Will you lead me also? And Peter
said, Lord, we've got no place to go. Where are we gonna go? You alone have the words of eternal
life. We know and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the son of the living God. You're our only hope. We've been shut up to you. We've
got no place else to go. And that's what faith is. Faith
is not making the decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
Faith is when God causes you to put all your hope in Christ
and gives you no other option. You've got no place else to go. What great hope the Lord gives
us for our souls when we find ourselves in that place. That's
what the Psalm, look at, look at Psalm, look at 114 in this
same, in this same Psalm. Verse 114, thou art my hiding
place. Moses, there's a cleft in the
rock here. I'm gonna put you in the cleft
of the rock and I'm gonna cause my backside to pass by. No man
can see the face of God and live. That cleft is Christ, the rock
is Christ. We're hid in Christ. not having
our own righteousness, which is of the law, but that righteousness,
which is by the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so David is saying, thou art my hiding place. I've got to
hide myself in Christ. If I'm seen outside of Christ,
I'll have nothing but the wrath and judgment of God to look forward
to. But in Christ, I'm safe. Thou
art my shield. Thou art my shield. my protector. I hope in thy word. There's my hope. My hope is in
the word of God. Look at two verses down, verse
116. Uphold me according to thy word
that I may live and let me not be ashamed of my hope. How many times have you put your
hope in something and it was dashed? Either someone didn't
come through or circumstances changed or, and you were shamed
that you had such great hope in that happening and it didn't
happen. And that will never happen in placing hope in God's word.
That hope is sure and steadfast. That was the day, hold me according
to thy word. that I be not ashamed of thy
hope. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. We begin reading in verse 6.
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Now,
when did the light shine out of darkness? At the beginning
of creation. In the beginning, God said, let
there be light. And we know that light was Christ.
Christ Jesus himself is the light of the world. And physically
he was the light as well because the moon and the stars and the
sun weren't created till the fourth day. And yet the first
thing we see in creation in Genesis one is light. And the light became
the life of the world. For God who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness path shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
glory of God. He's the fullness of the Godhead
bodily all we will ever see. of God's glory we will find in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what Philip said,
Lord, show us the father and it suffice of us to show us God
and we'll be satisfied. Oh, Philip, have I been with
you so long that you don't know that if you've seen me, you've
seen the father for I am the father of one. All that God reveals
about himself, he reveals in his glorious son. But we have
this treasure in earthen vessels Now an earthen vessel is that
clay vessel. It's kind of like that bottle
that's hanging in the smoke. And that's what the Lord is doing.
He's trying our hope. We have this treasure, the treasure
of the gospel, the treasure of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ by faith in the heart. Look at the rest of this. that the excellency of the power
may be of God and not of us. Lord, I can't find any power
in my flesh. I can't find any reason why you
would save me. I can't find any evidence in
my flesh for my salvation. All I can do is look in hope
to Christ who is revealed in the word of God. It's the only
place I've got to go. We are troubled on every side. Here's the bottle hanging in
the smoke. Here's what David's saying when
he says, my soul is troubled. Here's the trying of our faith
and our hope. And just as the hope is sent
of God, so are the trials. So are the trials. He's proving
what he sent. And if it's not proved out to
be from God, then the trials will expose that. We are troubled on every side,
yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in
despair. persecuted but not forsaken,
cast down but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body
the dying of Jesus Christ, that the life also of Jesus might
be manifest in our body. Lord, there's no life in my flesh. My life is in Christ. Christ
himself is my life. And the Lord by putting us in
this smoky chimney, if you will, and trying the hope of our faith
and causing us to flee back to the Word of God is bringing us
to that place where we are able to relinquish any hope of salvation
based on anything that we see in ourselves. Our hope is in
Christ. It's in the revealed Word of
God. which reveals Christ. You know
that's the whole message of this Bible, is the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. And beginning with Genesis, with
the prophets, the Psalms, He spoke unto them those things
concerning himself. And that's what he does. He speaks
unto us those things concerning himself as he breaks open the
bread of life. Where's your hope? In your ingenuity? In your intelligence? In your
ability? In someone else's promises? In
the promises of the politicians? I hope not. I hope not. Faith is trusting God's word
for all our hope. This word hope means to wait
with expectations based upon a promise. That's the definition
of hope, to wait with expectation based upon a promise. What great
faithful promises we have in God's word. And we will not be
disappointed or ashamed to put all our hope in Him. Turn to me to Hebrews chapter
six, Hebrews chapter six. Verse 16, for men verily swear
by the greater and an oath for confirmation is to them an end
of all strife. In other words, a man makes a
promise and then he commits himself to that promise with an oath
and that settles the controversy. wherein God, willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel. You see, men in their promises
and in their oaths are still mutable. They may fall short of the power
to fulfill their promises or circumstances may come up that
were unexpected and change their promises. That can never happen
with God. He never lacks the power. He never lacks the power.
and he never lacks the knowledge to know what's gonna happen for
he's ordained all things according to the counsel of his will to
accomplish his purpose and his oath. Our God is immutable. He cannot mutate. You think of
one other thing that that word can be applied to? Nothing. Nothing. Everything else changes.
Everything else changes. And the Lord said, you sons of
Jacob, the only reason you're not consumed because I am the
Lord and I change not. There's our hope, brethren. Our
hope is in a God who cannot change. And now he's made a promise and
he's confirmed it by an oath. What is that oath? He's speaking
here in the context of this passage about that sacrifice that Abraham
made of the animals when he divided the animals and God was making
his promises to Abraham. But that sacrifice foreshadowed
what the Lord Jesus Christ would do on Calvary's cross. So the
promises of God in his word are confirmed by the oath that God
made at Calvary's cross in Christ when he became the sacrifice
for the sins of his people. God willing, more abundantly.
You see, God, He knows how slow of heart we
are to believe. And so He just continues to confirm
again and again and again and over and over and over again
His promises and say to us who are so unbelieving and so full
of fear and so doubting. He's saying to us, trust me. My promises are immutable. I am immutable. Look at verse
18. He confirmed it by an oath, verse
17, that by two immutable things, that's his promises and his work. The work that the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished was a yay and amen and confirmation of
all the promises of God. So by these two immutable things
in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong
consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope
that is set before us. What more evidence do we need?
What more proof can we have? Our God has made immutable promises. He's confirmed it with an oath
that we might have a strong consolation, a hope that will not be disappointed. Which hope? Look at verse 219,
which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,
and which entered into that within the veil, with the forerunner
is for us entered even Jesus, made a high priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. Now, you know what that's a picture
of. When the Lord Jesus Christ bowed His mighty head on Calvary's
cross and said, it is finished, the veil was rent from top to
bottom, the veil that separated the holies of holies, where the
high priest was only allowed to go in once a year on the Day
of Atonement and put the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the
mercy seat. And God said all throughout the
Old Testament to Moses and Aaron, here, I will meet with you. And
when the Lord Jesus Christ shed His blood on Calvary's cross,
the veil was rent. for all those types and pictures
and all those sacrifices that were made for all those years
in the Old Testament, foreshadowed, pointed toward what the Lord
Jesus would accomplish when he, by his flesh, his veil, the veil
was rent. In the Old Testament, no one
would dare go into the holies of holies. Even the high priest
had to go through so many preparations before he went into the Holies
of Holies in fear that if he didn't do it right, God would
kill him. Matter of fact, they put bells on him and they put
a rope around his ankle in case when he went in, he did something
wrong and they could no longer hear the bells ringing. They
wouldn't have to go in to get his dead body out. They could
pull him out by his feet. That was the fear that they had
of not applying the blood properly according to what God had ordained.
When the Lord Jesus Christ died, he did it perfectly as God had
purposed it. And the veil was rent. And now
you don't have priests stationed outside the Holies of Holies
warning the people to stay away. Now you have the prophets of
God crying to the people of God, come! Come, all you that are
labor and heavy labor, come, come. And the Spirit and the
bride say, come. You don't have to fear not coming
properly if you come in Christ. Christ came properly. You look
unto Jesus, who himself is the author and the finisher of your
faith. You don't have to worry about how you did anything. He did it all. He did it all,
and we come in Him. And He's the anchor. He's the forerunner. He's the
one that went before us, presented Himself to God on our behalf.
And we have a sure hope in Him, for He Himself is the living
Word of God. The Word became flesh. And the
word dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as the only begotten
of the father. He's the one that's full of grace
and full of truth. Oh, we have a sure hope. A sure
hope. Can't be. Paul said in Colossians chapter
one, verse 27, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in
you, the one who has shined in our hearts in the face of the
Lord Jesus Christ, is our hope of glory. Proverbs chapter 10
verse 28 says, the hope of the righteous shall be gladness, but the expectations of the wicked
shall perish. The righteous are those who are
hoping in Christ. The wicked are those who are
hoping in something else. And the Lord said, the hope of
the righteous shall be gladness. The expectations of the wicked
shall perish. There is a way that seems right
unto man, but in the end, that way leads to death. First Timothy chapter one, verse
one, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of
God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
is our hope. To know that one day we'll see
him as he is. We'll be made like him. We'll
no longer have any unbelief. This mortal will be made immortal
and this corruptible be made incorruptible. What a glorious
hope we have. In the meantime, brethren, in
the meantime, if your hope is of God, it will be tried. You will sometimes feel like
a bottle hanging in the smoke. But say by faith, my hope is
not in my feelings. My hope is in the Word of God. My hope is Christ, and He will
never disappoint me. Amen? All right, let's take a
break.