Good morning. Would you turn to number 10 in
the blue hymnal, number 10, to open up our service. Oh God,
our help in ages past. And if you would please stand.
Number 10. O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne,
still may we dwell secure. Sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure. ? Before the hills in order stood
? ? O'er earth received her frame ? ? From everlasting thou art
God ? ? To endless years the same ? Time, like an ever rolling
stream, bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten as a dream,
dies at the opening day. A cappella. O God, our help in
ages past, our hope for years to come. Be thou our guide while life
shall last and our eternal home. May we sing. Good morning. I love that him. Isaac Watts was inspired by Psalm
90, which we looked at last Sunday and this past Wednesday night
when he wrote that him. The days of our years are three
score in 10. And if by manner of strength
that before score those. Are full of sorrow. And labor. And then verse 12 in Psalm 90. We're gonna
be in Psalm 91, by the way, if you wanna turn your Bibles there
with me. So teach us to number our days in light of the fact
that this life truly is a vapor. Teach us to number our days that
we may apply our hearts to wisdom. God has made the Lord Jesus Christ
to be our wisdom. And so applying our hearts to
wisdom is looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of
our faith. Might the Lord be pleased to
enable us this morning to do just that. We've been praying for Judd Jensen
and he got a good report this week. So that's a very, very
thankful for that. Um, also, uh, Bob coffee I understand
is at home recovering from a stroke and Tim James is recovering from
a heart attack. Many of y'all know both those
men, they've been here and preach for us in years past. Uh, so,
um, And then I'm sure most of you
all know that Jennifer Dunbar's father passed away Thursday of
this week. And so our sympathy goes to Jennifer
and her and their children. I have a very encouraging hope
that that the Lord was pleased to be merciful to Jerry in his
last days. Gave a gave a good confession.
I'm thankful for that. Alright, let's let's ask the
Lord's blessings. On our time together. Our merciful Heavenly Father. Thank you for. bringing us here
to this place today. Thank you for calling us and
enabling us to come into thy presence. We come, Lord, trusting the shed
blood and righteousness of thy dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
for all our acceptance before thee, and how hopeful we are
that you would be pleased this day in this place to send your
spirit in power and to reveal to us more of the glory of Christ. Enable us to find our refuge,
our resting place, our hope, and all our salvation in him. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. you have your Bibles open to
Psalm 91. This psalm is all about finding
a place of refuge, a place of safety in time of fear. Now fear is an emotion. that
we all experience very, very early in life. Maybe the very
first emotion that a small child experiences. And it's very powerful
and it's very pervasive. It enters into many area of our
lives. Fear causes men to do a lot of
foolish things. As a child, we attempted to escape
our fears by hiding. And things haven't really changed
much. Men still find a place to hide when faced with fear. The problem is that the hiding
places that men choose are no more safe than that blanket was
when we were a child covering our face thinking that, well,
if I can't see them, they can't see me. God sees through that
blanket that men use. This psalm reminds us that the
Lord Jesus Christ himself is Our hiding place, the only safe
place to be found in time of fear. Let me say this about fear. A person says, I'm not afraid. You know what we say about ignorance? Ignorance is bliss. Uh, I would
say a person who says, I don't know anything about fear. I'm
not, I got everything under control. I'd say you're ignorant. I'd
say that. You're ignorant of the circumstances
as they really are. You're ignorant of your, your,
your, your need for grace. You're ignorant of the, of the
omnipotence and holiness of our God. So now Romans chapter eight
makes it clear that we've not received the spirit of fear unto
bondage. So that fear is not a fear of
bondage, but we've received the spirit of adoption whereby we
cry, Abba, Father. So I'm not talking about a cringing
fear that holds one in bondage. I'm talking about a fear of God. There's an article in your bulletin
this morning about what it is to fear God. And in essence,
the fear of God is the fear of any thought of standing in the
presence of a holy God without a sufficient advocate. That's
what the fear of God is. It's to believe God. It's to
worship God. It's to trust Christ. It's to
run as a desperate man to that city of refuge and find your
only place to hide. Oh, I don't know if Hugo's door
is not closed, but I know if I can hear him, everybody else
can hear him. Could somebody go back and try to fix that? Huh? Oh, it's coming through
the speakers. OK, that's the problem. All right. Can we fix that, Jeff? Ego is
coming through the speakers. I know what I can hear, everybody
can hear. The other tactic that little
children use to escape their fear other than hiding is to
lie. It's to lie. The threat of punishment causes
a small child to say very quickly, very confidently and yet sheepishly,
no, I didn't do it. You can catch them with their
hand in the cookie jar and they'll say, no, I didn't do it. We don't change much in that
regard either. Men confronted with the reality of truth will
deny their responsibility and they will believe the lie of
a false gospel. The scripture says in 2 Thessalonians
chapter 2 that because they had no love for the truth, that truth
is Christ. Therefore, God sent them a strong
delusion that they should believe the lie. Men lie to themselves. They lie to God. They lie to
one another in order to escape this powerful, pervasive feeling
of fear. Might God give us a place of
safety, a place of hope, and more importantly, a place of
truth. Truth. No lie is of the truth. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come unto the
Father but by me. Let's read Psalm 91 together. Let me say this, even Satan knows
and knew that Psalm 91 was about the Lord Jesus Christ, primarily. You remember in Matthew chapter
4 after the Lord was driven into the wilderness to be tempted
of the devil for 40 days and 40 nights and he fasted and at
the end of that temptation the devil took our Lord up on the
pinnacle of the temple and he said, cast thyself down for the
scripture says that the angels will catch you and you will not
so much as dash your foot against a stone. Where did Satan get
that from? Well, look at verse 10. There shall no evil befall thee,
neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, for he shall
give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways,
and they shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy
foot against a stone. So even the devil knew that this
psalm was first and foremost about the trust that the Lord
Jesus Christ had in his father. All his safety, all his satisfaction,
all his happiness, all his hope was due to the fact that he trusted
wholly and completely on God. He had perfect faith, perfect
faith. That's the real mystery of the
cross. the real mystery of the cross.
You and I can go minutes, hours, days, sometimes weeks, maybe,
without really having any meaningful fellowship with God and not be
too bothered by it. The Lord Jesus Christ was in
perfect fellowship with the Father all the time. It was all he knew.
It was all he had. One day it's going to be all
we know, and it's going to be all we have. But right now, we're between two natures, aren't
we? So when the Lord cried from the
cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's the
real agony of the cross. Not that, it wasn't even the
wrath of God. It wasn't even the punishment. It wasn't even the pain and the
horrors of crucifixion. It was the broken fellowship
that the Lord Jesus Christ had with his father when God made
him to be sin. We can't really enter into that.
We just have to believe it. That was the cup that he prayed
would pass from him in the garden. Father, if there be any way this
cup can pass from me, the bitter dregs of sin that was going to
separate him from his father. And in Psalm 91, we have a declaration
of the Lord Jesus Christ, trust in his father. Now here's the
glorious truth for us, is that by virtue of our union with Christ,
Everything that's true of him is true for us. What he accomplished, we accomplished
in him. And that perfect faith of the
Lord Jesus Christ is God's people's faith before God. And to whatever
degree he enables us to enjoy that fellowship in this life
will be by virtue of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. So,
yes, this psalm is about Christ, and it's about those who are
found in him. Now, a good analogy of being
found in Christ is a woman who's carrying a child in her womb.
Everywhere she goes, that child goes. Everything she eats, that
child eats. You can't separate the two, can
you? You really can't. And so, there's
our hope that what he did, we did. Look at verse one of Psalm 91. Do you know something about fear?
Do you? Yeah, you do, don't you? These proud, arrogant liars who
declare that they have no fear. They're just, well, like I said,
they're ignorant, aren't they? They're ignorant. What are we
going to do? Well, here's what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He
that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide
under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, He is
my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him will I trust. You
see, the escape of fear is not bravado. And the escape of fear
is not the things that the world runs to, to find their happy
place, to escape the fear that everybody experiences. And it's
not the hope that our circumstances will change or that, you know,
somehow, it's running in faith to Christ. Just like the Lord
Jesus Christ found his father to be the shadow. The fortress,
the hiding place, the safe place, everything else is in fact no
more secure than that foolish child who pulls a blanket up
over its face and hides its eyes from reality. Nothing else. That's all those other things
are. They're no more different. Surely, surely. Let me ask you this. Do you believe
God's word? Do you believe God? I was telling somebody recently,
he said, I just don't know what to do other than just believe
every word of God. I can't not believe it. And here's
what the Lord says, Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare
of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee
with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust. His
truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Oh, run to Christ. Run to Christ. He's the only safe place. He's
our refuge. He's our hiding place. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
28. Isaiah chapter 28. Look at verse
16. Therefore, thus saith the Lord
God, Behold, I lay in Zion a foundation." Now, what's Zion? That's the
church. This is Zion, where we're sitting right now. And God says,
I'm going to lay a foundation, a place for you to stand when
all the circumstances of your life seem as shifting sand. This
is a rock that does not move. You can stand here and be safe. That's why the Lord finished
the Sermon on the Mount with, if any man hear these words and
do them, he's like the man who builds his house upon a rock. And when the storms come and
the winds blow and there's a storm coming, it's worse than all the
storms of this life. In one place, the Lord says,
you can't keep up with a footman. What are you going to do when
the horses come? You know, there's a judgment
that's coming. And it's our fear of God that
drives us to Christ, that rock. He says, and this foundation
is not to be found anywhere else. This stone, you're not going
to hear about this stone anywhere else. except in Zion, a stone,
a tried stone, a precious stone, a sure foundation. And he that
believeth on him shall not be ashamed and shall not be afraid. You see, it's like I said last
Sunday, the opposite of fear is not courage. The opposite
of fear is faith. Faith is the solution for fear,
not anything else. This is the stone which the builders
have rejected, which has become the head of the corner. God's
made it to be the head of the corner, a tried stone, a precious
stone. It is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Now, where do most men hide? Where do most men hide? I'll
tell you where they hide. They hide at Mount Sinai. They go back to the law. They
hide under the law. They convince themselves that
they're keeping the law, at least to the sufficient degree to satisfy
God and get their soul into heaven. They hide in false religion,
in works religion, in free will religion. They hide under a covenant. And this passage, previous to
what we just read, talks about man making a covenant. Said,
you know, they've made a covenant with death, with hell they're
in agreement. It's a covenant that they made and God says,
I'm going to disannul that covenant. Look at the next verse. Judgment
also will I lay to the line. God has a standard of judgment.
It's a plumb line. That plumb line doesn't move.
And he says, I'm going to test everything by that. Everything's
going to be measured by Christ. He's the line of judgment. If I'm going to be measured by
Christ, I better be found in him because there's nothing in
me that's like him. Nothing. When you see Christ,
that's the conclusion you come to. Woe is me, for I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I
live among a people of unclean lips. There's nobody I know that's
like him. And if he's the standard of judgment,
then he's going to have to stand in my stead and present himself
on my behalf. Judgment also will elate to the
line and righteousness to the plummet. And the hail shall sweep
away the refuge of lies and water shall overflow the hiding place. So all these lies and all these
false hiding places that men create in order to escape their
fears, the Lord says, I'm going to sweep them away. I'm going
to, I'm going to expose them for what they are. And your covenant
with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with hell
shall not stand when the overflowing scourge shall pass through. Then
you shall be trodden down by it. Oh, child of God, flee again
to Christ. Listen to what David said in
Psalm 32. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt come pass me about
with songs of deliverance. You see, we go, when God takes
us from fear to faith, he changes our weeping into laughter and
rejoicing, delighting ourselves in the Lord. Psalm 119, verse 14, thou art
my hiding place and my shield. I hope in thy word, in thy word. God, whatever you say, that's
my hope. I've got no place else to go.
You know what the Lord asked? I know I quote this a lot. The
Lord asked the disciples, won't you lead me also? What'd they
say? Where are we gonna go? Where are we gonna go? You alone
have the words of eternal life. And we know and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. You've shut
us up to yourself. And that's what David said in
Psalm 119. He said, thou art my hiding place and my shield.
I hope in thy word. Look at Isaiah chapter 32. Isaiah
32. This is what the Lord Jesus,
this is what distinguishes him. His perfect faith, his perfect
union with the father, all the contradictions of centers
and all the trials and troubles, he rested his hope in the father. And he's saying to us, you do
the same, do the same. Look at chapter Isaiah 32. Behold,
a king shall reign in righteousness. Now that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the only righteous one. We don't have any righteousness
outside of him. Our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags. What are we going to present
to God? The king shall reign in righteousness and princes
shall rule in judgment. The judgment of God, the justice
of God. was only satisfied one time,
one time. The punishment of God will be
seen in lots of different ways, but God's justice and judgment
was satisfied one time. And a man, look, look at verse
two, a man, who is that man? It's the man, the God man. the one and only man between
God and man, and a man shall be as a hiding place." He didn't say a man's going to show
you where to hide. He said the man will be the hiding
place. He'll be the hiding place. from
the wind and a covert from the tempest as rivers of water in
a dry place and a shadow in a great rock in a weary land and the
eyes of them that see shall not be dim and the eyes of them that
hear shall hearken." Or the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
Oh, Lord, give me ears to hear. Give me eyes to see. Cause me
to come. Unto thee, turn me, and I will
be turned. The man. What are the two things children
do to try to mitigate their fears? What do they do? Try to hide,
for they hide and they lie. Oh, this lying game, it's been
going on a long time. And the first lie is to blame
someone else for your circumstances. You know when God's made you
to be a sinner, when you have been forced to take full responsibility
for all your actions and all your sin, you can't point to
your circumstance, you can't point to anyone else. What did
Adam say when God asked him, Adam, what have you done, Adam? The woman that thou gavest to
me, she gave me to eat, I did eat. What was Adam doing? He's
blaming God. He wasn't blaming the woman,
he's blaming God. And anytime we blame our circumstances or
anyone else, we're essentially doing the same thing Adam did.
We're pointing our finger at God and saying, God, this is
all your fault. Let no man say when he sins that God made me
do it. We sin when we're drawn away of our own lust. When lust
is conceived, it bringeth forth sin and sin bringeth forth death.
Lord, this is all on me. All on me. Don't you love the picture of
Aaron trying to keep the people together down at the foot of
Mount Sinai and Moses comes down and finds out that they're worshiping
a golden calf? And Moses confronts Aaron. Aaron,
what have you done? Well, you know, the people gave
me their gold and I threw it into the fire and out popped
a calf. That's what he said. That's about how foolish we are
when we lie against God, isn't it? You see, lying is not a hiding
place. Children do that. And we keep
doing it, don't we? When Samuel confronted Saul about
making a sacrifice before he got there, he said, well, you
know, you didn't show up. People were leaving. I had to.
Oh, you didn't, which you had to do. Samuel told Saul, he said,
this is the sacrifice that you believe God and obey God and
trust God. Don't you know that for those
nine months to a year, nine months at least, not a year, but when
David was hiding his sin with Bathsheba and going to the temple
every day and making sacrifices, David's spirit was exposed when
Nathan confronted him and gave him that scenario about a rich
man who had a visitor and he took his neighbor's only ewe
lamb and slaughtered that lamb and fed it to his neighbor. That
was David. And David enraged and in hypocrisy
said, you know, justice against that man. And what did Nathan
say? Oh, David, thou art the man. Thou art the man David. And then Nathan went on to say.
But God has forgiven you. God is forgiving you. David,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote Psalm 51.
All the bones that thou has broken. Lord, it made him miserable.
David was miserable. Blaming everybody and everything.
till the Spirit of God convicted him. No, lying is not a safe place
to be. And we're so good at it that
we can convince ourselves that what we're saying is true. We can convince other people.
Oh, you can convince other people that what you're saying is true.
Tell a lie long enough and hard enough, everybody's going to
believe it. And the amazing thing is that we convince ourselves.
But you know who's not convinced? You know who's not convinced,
don't you? God's not convinced. What are we to do? Well, there's
one other thing that small children do when they're afraid. Besides
finding a false refuge of a hiding place and telling lies about
themselves, there's one other thing that children do. They
cry. And a wise parent knows the difference
between a manipulative cry and a cry for help. You show me a
parent that won't leap to their feet and rush immediately to
a child who expresses their fear in a genuine cry of need. And if you being evil know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will
your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
him? Oh, would God not respond to the cry of a scared child? Do you not respond to the cry
of his own son? All he cut him off for just a
little while. And then and the Lord knew that
he was going to be cut off and he knew he was. That was that
was what he that's that's the sweat. that dropped like blood
from him in the garden. He knew what was about to happen.
Cut off from the father to be made sin, but he also believed
that God was gonna reward him and that he was going to raise
him from the dead and that he would be brought back to his
rightful place, seated on his throne in glory, fellowshipping
with his father. He cried. And we're to cry. Turn to me back a few pages of
Psalm 18. Psalm 18. Or six. In my distress, are you
distressed? Have you found that blanket of
false refuge to not be sufficient to hide under? Has God revealed
to you the lies that you've told in order to try to hide from
the guilt and shame of sin? In my distress, I call upon the
Lord. And I cried unto my God, and
he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before
him, even unto his ears." And the book of Exodus, when
the Lord was speaking to Moses at the burning bush, you remember
what the Lord told Moses? Moses, I have heard the cry of
my people by manner of their taskmasters. And I'm sending
you to deliver them in response to their cry. You see, those false refuges
are nothing more than taskmasters. They don't really relieve us. Psalm chapter five, verse two,
hearken unto the voice of my cry. Here's a cry. Lord, hearken
unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for unto Thee
do I pray. Psalm 9 verse 12, he forgeteth
not the cry of the humble. The humble. What is a person
who's humble? He's dependent, completely dependent
upon God. Oh Lord, attend unto my cry. Give ear unto my prayer that
goeth not out of feigned lips. Bartimaeus cried, didn't he?
Oh Lord, have mercy upon me. I'm so sorry about this. We're
going to fix it between the services. And it's, uh, the, but please
listen, Bartimaeus, all son of David have mercy upon
me. Bartimaeus shut up. Oh, and he
cried all the louder, all the louder son of David have mercy
upon me. We have been given the spirit
of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Luke chapter 18, the Lord tells
a parable about a woman who's in need and goes before a judge.
And he concludes that parable with this. Shall not God avenge
his own elect which cry day and night unto him though he bear
long with him? Though he bear long with him.
What's the Lord saying? God hadn't answered you to cry
yet. Keep crying. That's what he's saying. Keep
crying. In fact, the truth is that the
Lord is answering our prayer while we're crying. Because the answer to our prayer
is to increase our faith. Not to deliver us from our trials,
but to increase our faith. So the very process of crying Is the Lord answering our real
need? Our real need. Let's go back to Psalm 91 and
I just want to read these verses quickly. Verse five. Thou shalt not be afraid. for
the terror by night, nor by the arrow that flyeth by day, nor
for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction
that wasteth at noonday, a thousand shall fall at thy side and 10,000
at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh unto thee. Only with thine eyes shall thou
behold and see the reward of the wicked. What's the Lord saying
in verse eight is, only as a spectator are you gonna see the wrath and
destruction of God. You're not going to experience
it. You're gonna stand in a safe place and see it. Verse nine, because thou hast
made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high, thy habitation. How do we do that? By faith.
By faith. That the Lord's saying, here's
the reason why you're not going to be destroyed. Because you've
made the Lord, my Lord, whom I trusted, your safe habitation,
your refuge. There shall no evil befall thee. Child of God, believe God, just
believe God, there shall no evil befall thee. Neither shall any plague come
nigh thy dwelling, for he shall give his angels charge over thee
to keep thee in all thy ways. And that doesn't just apply to
Christ. Scripture, I don't. I don't know much about angels
and I don't want to delve into something that the Lord is left
mysterious, but but I know that they're ministering spirits. They shall bear the up in their
hands, lest outdashed by foot against a stone. Now shall tread
upon the lion and adder the young lion and the dragon shall now
trample underfoot because he has set his love upon me. Oh, there's our hope. There's
the first cause. He has set his love upon Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ prayed
and said, Father, as you've loved me, even so you've loved them.
His love for his people. You see, they're in Christ. All
these things that are true of Christ are true of those that
are in Christ. Therefore will I deliver him.
I will set him on high because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me and I will
answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor
him. With long life will I satisfy
him and show him my salvation. That's God's promise to his son. and all those that are found
in him. The only safe hiding place and
the only truth. Does the scripture not say, if
you know the truth, the truth, truth will set you free. Christ
is that truth. Amen? All right, let's take a
break.