Before I forget, brethren, Brother
Ravi offered graciously to open their home Saturday after the
morning meetings, after lunch, sometime that evening or afternoon,
where we can go over and have a time of fellowship like we've
done in the past. So just get with him if you want
to know a time or what have you. And so I know some of you have
asked me about that. Psalm 41 verse 3. Psalm 41 verse 3. The Lord will strengthen him
upon the bed of languishing. Thou will make all his bed in
his sickness. This verse keeps coming to my
heart. Sometime in the past year, I
don't remember if I said it or Brother D. Park said it, but
when we were talking, he mentioned this verse. And I've thought
of it many times since then. Brother D. has been on a bed of languishing,
the bed of sickness. what it's called, the bed of
sickness. I got a update last week from Sandy that she had
sent to a friend who sent it to me and they moved his bed
into the living room and the children had moved their beds
in there so they could be beside him and And they're just waiting for
the Lord to take him home. And could have already been. I don't even know it's that close
in the time I last heard and preaching now. But this verse,
when I got that update, it came to my heart again. When Ravi
and Debbie told me about Debbie's cancer, I thought of this, I
thought of one other verse I'll refer to a little later. And
yesterday when Ravi gave me an update on what the surgeons and
the doctors had planned to do over the next year, I sent Ravi
this passage or this verse. Now I don't intend to preach
the whole psalm verse by verse. I've preached it a few times,
and if you want to hear it, it's available. But I want to just
focus on this one verse. But for the context, This psalm
is Christ speaking. Pre-eminently it's the word of
our Lord and we see this as Christ speaking because He speaks of
Judah's betrayal down there in verse 19. He said, Yea, mine
all familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my
bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. Christ quoted that
verse in when He walked this earth, referring to Judas. So this is our Lord Jesus speaking. The Lord Jesus is He that considereth
the poor. He considereth the poor. That's
how it begins. Blessed is He that considereth
the poor. That's our Lord Jesus. The Lord
will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and
keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth, and
thou will not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. It may
appear as though the Lord delivered him to the will of his enemies
when you look at the cross, but the will of his enemies was to
destroy him forever. And the Lord God did not deliver
him to the will of his enemies. The Son of God, Christ Jesus,
is he that considereth the poor. He that considereth the poor.
And the poor that he considers are the elect of God that God
chose and gave to him to save. This is the description when
we saw it whenever those that came to David in that cave of
Dullam, this is the description of our Lord's people, the poor.
This is the description. Everyone that was in distress
and everyone that was in debt and everyone that was discontented
gathered themselves unto him and he became captain over them.
That's a good description of the poor that Christ considers. We were rich in Adam. When we
were in Adam, when Adam was created upright, we were rich in Adam. But we became poor in sin by
Adam's disobedience. And being born into sin, we are
poor, bankrupt, in poverty by our sin. The Son of God was rich
in glory. He was rich in glory. And He
considered His poor people. rather than beholding us in our
fall and beholding us fallen in sin, rather than forsaking
us and condemning us, he considered his people and he came to where
we are. And the scripture says he remembered
us in our low estate for his mercy endureth forever. You know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, Yet
for your sakes he became poor that you through his poverty
might be made rich." It was just the opposite. We were rich and
we became poor. He was rich and he became poor
to save us from our poverty. So when he came to minister to
his poor people and he suffered on our behalf, verse 3, was God
the Father's promise to him. This was the Father's promise
to Christ. But David penned this psalm, and David suffered many
of the things that our Lord suffered, though in a far less degree.
But when the Lord gives you a new heart in the new birth, he makes
his people love mercy because you see how Christ considered
you in your poverty and continues to consider you and deliver you
by his mercy, and it makes you consider the poor. We once just
had aspirations to live our lives for ourselves and accomplish
our goals and get wealthy or whatever our dreams were and
just live for ourselves. The Lord, when he called you,
he made you start considering the poor. He made you give your
life to serve Christ to be a minister to poor, needy sinners by preaching
this gospel. That's what we're together doing,
sending this gospel forth. You do it on a day-to-day basis
as you speak with poor sinners. I want nothing more, we want
nothing more than for poor sinners to know and believe the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's the heart that Christ
gave us, to consider the poor. And whatever temporal things
we have, if I have it, it's yours. If God gave it and we were willing
to do anything we can in temporal things for the poor. But the
main thing and the most important thing is to speak the gospel
of Christ to them. to speak the message of Christ.
This is what it says, blessed is he that considereth the poor,
the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. This was so
of Christ and it's so of his people. The Lord will preserve
him and keep him alive and he shall be blessed upon the earth
and that will not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.
When you read that, he'll be blessed upon the earth. It's
not like the world says it. The world tries, they speak of
the blessings that God gives in this earth as carnal, temporal
blessings. Health, wealth, prosperity, and
if you don't have it, it's because you don't have enough faith.
That's what they'll tell you. But it's not like that. You see
how our Lord was blessed upon this earth and he suffered like
no man ever suffered. But he was blessed above all,
our Lord Jesus. And he blessed us above all.
And even when the world speaks of heaven's blessings, they speak
of it in temporal ways. The same as they speak of earthly
blessings. You're gonna have a bigger mansion
on the richer side of glory and those kinds of things. It's not
like that. These are spiritual blessings
the Lord gives. That's how he blesses us and
delivers us not to the will of our enemies. The Lord will strengthen
him upon the bed of languishing. Thou will make all his bed in
his sickness. The metaphor here is of a nurse
giving medicine to strengthen the poor, sick, bedridden patient. to strengthen it. The medicine
is given by the great physician. The medicine is the gospel of
Christ. The medicine he gives is his grace, cleansing us and
teaching us more of Christ. That's the medicine he gives.
It's Christ our strength. And it speaks to the second part
of a nurse who turns the person who's bedridden so that they
can give them comfort. You know when you lay in a bed
a while and it just becomes so uncomfortable to you and a nurse
will come in and if a person's in that position they will turn
them on their side or turn them on their other side or just to
give them a little bit of comforting, comfort. The bed of languishing
is the bed of illness. It's the bed of sickness. The Lord will strengthen him.
The Lord will. The Lord will strengthen him
upon the bed of languishing, upon the bed of sickness, upon
the bed of illness, or upon the bed of sorrow. Now, the psalm
describes this bed of languishing as twofold. It's twofold. One, it's from the rejection
Christ received from his enemies. That caused this bed of sorrow
for our Redeemer, the rejection he received from his enemies.
And number two, it was from bearing the sin of his people on the
cross. Our Lord knew no sin, he committed
no sin, but when he was made sin for us, he owned our sins
to be his and truly they became his. And when you hear him confessing
sin here, he really did that. Because our sins were made his
sins. He didn't commit any sin, but
he was made sin for us. And even our confession of sin
is not, it has sin mixed with it. He's our righteousness even
in our confession of our sin. He's our righteousness through
and through. A confession of sin is part of obeying God. And
Christ had to obey God in every way, and that's part of His obedience
in place of His people. And both of these caused our
Redeemer great sorrow. They caused our Redeemer to suffer,
and He experienced bodily sickness on the cross like nobody ever
did. His visage was so marred more
than any other man. His form more than the sons of
men. It says, he said this in Psalm
22, 14, I'm poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. You talk
about a bed of languishing. You talk about a bed of sickness.
He said, it's melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is
dried up like a potsherd. My tongue cleaveth to my jaws. Thou hast brought me into the
dust of death. So our Lord suffered the bed
of languishing. Now, our bed of languishing is
the same too. It's from both of these that
we just saw, from the rejection of enemies who hate Christ, That's
due to sin. Both of these are due to sin.
And then we have our own remaining sin nature. We fall and sin,
or we become puffed up that we haven't sinned, and that's sin. Or our bodies get sick. That's
due to sin. All of this is due to sin. And
one day, because this body is sin, our old nature is sin and
this body is sin, one day we are going to draw our last breath
on this earth. It's coming. It's coming. But in both cases, whatever our
bed of languishing is, whatever caused this bed of sickness,
God's saints never get beyond verse 4 right here. I said, Lord,
be merciful unto me. Heal my soul, for I have sinned
against thee. This is what God the Father did
for our Savior. This promise, when He bore our
sin, when He suffered in the room instead of His people, this
is what God the Father did for our Lord. He strengthened Him
upon the bed of languishing, and that's what Christ will do
for you who are His people. He will strengthen you on the
bed of languishing. Thou will make or turn all his
bed in his sickness. If you have a marginal reference,
you probably have the word turn there. He will make or turn all
his bed in his sickness. In the eastern countries, they
slept on a mat. That's it, just a little mat.
And so when they would be bedridden and it got hard, they actually
would just pick the whole mat up and turn it over like that,
so that's why it speaks of turning all my bed. But for us, in our
culture, we have our kinds of beds, and so we turn the person. We turn the person. But the promise
here is this. The Lord will strengthen and
comfort his child upon our sick bed. We're not just talking about
when you have the flu. although he will comfort and
strengthen you then. We're talking about this bed
of languishing caused by rejection from enemies, caused by our own
sin, many different things that cause it. It's just when you're
in that place where there's no comfort, no strength in you,
Our Lord promises He will strengthen and comfort His people. Our Savior
experienced this by the things which He suffered. He experienced
this from God the Father by the things which He suffered. And
having accomplished the redemption of His people, He will do the
same thing for you that are His. That's our Lord's promise. I
pray tonight, I pray God would give us faith to believe Him
and hear this and really enter into this in our heart, in spirit,
and really, really enter into what the Lord is teaching us
right here. This is so very important, brethren. This is salvation. This is Him saving us continually. Now, first of all, each of us
have been told by our Lord that due to sin, these bodies shall
return to the dust. We've been taught that by the
Lord. That's what our great physician
has given us this news, that due to sin, our bodies are going
back to the dust. The Lord sent Isaiah to Hezekiah
over in Isaiah 38 and 1, and he said to him, thus saith the
Lord, set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live. Now brethren, we dread getting
that kind of news. If you go to a doctor and like
Debbie got this news, you dread getting that kind of news. But
brethren, every single one of us have already gotten this news
from the great physician. Every one of us have. You know,
it really shouldn't surprise us when we get that kind of news
physically. But it does, but this is the
news we've all already received. We have a disease, all of us
do, the disease of sin. And when you're conceived in
your mother's womb and you come forth, you immediately begin
to die. You know, you can eat right,
you can exercise, and still your body's gonna get more wrinkled
with time. You're going to grow weaker.
Your hair is going to turn gray and fall out. Our minds are going
to become forgetful. You just become weaker and weaker.
These bodies and what we are as we come into this world is
no help to us whatsoever. Our sin nature and the old man
that we came from, Adam, is no help to us. It is dying. It is just dead and dying. And
God is, he has sanctified us by his spirit. But brethren,
your sin nature is still your sin nature. and these bodies
are still gonna die because of it. Our physical death, though,
is not the end. That won't be the end of it.
We are all going to glorify God for eternity because we have
a living soul. That's the difference between
men and beasts. God's given us a living soul, and we're gonna
live and glorify God after we die. All are. We're either gonna
glorify God for his mercy in saving us, or we're gonna glorify
God by bearing the just judgment being cast out forever. But we're
gonna glorify God. All people on this earth will
glorify God. So the great physician says to
me and you, to each of us sitting here, thus saith the Lord, set
thine house in order for thou shalt die and not live. Now when
Christ makes his child know this for the first time, When He makes
you know this for the first time, or any time thereafter, it's
a bed of languishing. At first, it's a bed of languishing,
just like when you get that kind of news from a physician physically. It's a bed of languishing. We
sorrow, and the reason is He will not permit us to find comfort
and strength anywhere but the Lord Jesus Christ. When he first does this, he'll
leave you there for a while and to show you, you cannot find
strength. You cannot find comfort anywhere
but Christ alone. And for a believer, he'll do
this for us when we need to be corrected or whatever it is that
when we're persecuted by our enemies, he'll use that. And
he will do it to let you be on that bed of languishing a while
to see there's no strength in you. no strength in Him anywhere
else except Christ alone. That's the whole purpose. But
the Lord, by this promise of His grace, will strengthen His
child upon the bed of languishing. Thou wilt make, Thou wilt turn
all his bed in his sickness. He'll comfort you in whatever
your sickness is. Now secondly, this is the day
of grace. Right now is the day of grace.
We've been in the day of grace and we'll be in the day of grace
until Christ calls the last elect child that He redeemed. We're
in the day of grace. And by strengthening us on our
bed of languishing, our Lord is going to bring His people
to cry out to Him. This crying to Him is by Him
strengthening us and teaching us Him. Teaching us He's all
our strength and all our help and all our salvation. That's
how we're going to call to Him. This is the cry, verse 4. I said,
Lord, be merciful unto me. Heal my soul, for I have sinned
against Thee. This is how we set our house
in order. Right here. And it's by the Lord granting
us repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's by God granting you this. Repentance toward God and faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ. And any time the Spirit of God
makes us know we're the sinner, Any time he does it, from the
beginning thereafter, that we've sinned against God. That's true
repentance. To come to God owning that I
have sinned against God. That's what sin is. It's sin
against God. And when he grants you repentance,
you come to God confessing, Lord, I have sinned against Thee. and I need mercy. I need mercy. That is a bed of languishing
when you see your sin and in between him making you know that
he's shown you mercy and you seeing your sin in between that
time. That's a bed of languishing. That is the true sick bed right
there. And this repentance is not one
time. You know that, who've been called
by Him. You know this, it's not one time. David was a sanctified child
of God right here, and he's calling for mercy and confessing he had
sinned against God. That's how He is a sanctified
child. That's how we're sanctified at
the beginning. Is God teaching you this and
teaching you He is the one who separated you out and that's
how He's going to keep you sanctified. He's going to keep us beholding
our sin. There's nothing in us to trust.
and He's going to keep you beholding the Lord Jesus Christ, that He
is the salvation of His people. That's how He keeps you sanctified,
separated from the world and from all the falsehood and from
our own sin and unbelief. That's how He keeps you sanctified
in Christ. He won't let you find any confidence,
any reason to have confidence in the flesh. He's going to keep
you having all your rejoicing in Christ in spirit. But until
God makes you know this, until He makes us know in our heart
that we've received mercy, it's a bed of languishing. It's a
bed of languishing. But He promises, the Lord will
strengthen you upon the bed of languishing. Thou will make all
His bed in His sickness. Now the holy, just God of heaven
and earth. He's holy, He's just. The God
of heaven and earth. None beside Him. Holy and just. He has never turned away one
sinner that came to Him, sincerely confessing he needs mercy because
he sinned against God. He's never turned one away. Never
turned one away. Well, why wouldn't He turn us
away? Well, it's the Spirit of God
who made us spiritually alive in the first place. A dead sinner
doesn't confess this. He made us alive in the first
place. It's God who granted us the understanding to see we're
the sinner. It's God who granted us repentance
and faith to come to Him. It's all of God. So if you can
come to Him and you truly own yourself to be the sinner, the
only way you can be saved is God being merciful to you. God
did that because men just won't do that. God did that. And if
he strengthened you and taught you this and brought you, drew
you to him to confess this to him, he will strengthen you on
that bed of languishing and comfort you to know all your sin has
been put away. He has made you forever righteous
in the Lord Jesus Christ and he'll do it for the sake of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's why he will do it. He
strengthens us because Christ Jesus has made His people the
righteousness of God. That's His promise. And that's
why He fulfills that promise. Listen to this. Let's go look
at it in Micah. Can you find it there? It's right
after Jonah, Micah 7. Who is a God, verse 18, Micah
7, 18, who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity
and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage.
He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have
compassion upon us, He will subdue our iniquities, and Thou will
cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou will
perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which Thou
has sworn unto our fathers from the days of old. God delights
to show mercy, and not only does He delight to show mercy, and
that's what's strengthening us on the bed of languishing and
comforting us, that's what it is, it's Him showing you mercy
and making you know you have forgiveness in the Lord Jesus.
And He not only delights to do it, but He delights to do it,
He's faithful to do it, and He's just to do it because of Christ's
righteousness. If we confess our sins, He's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. Now don't ever start thinking
that you have to meet some qualification before you can come to Christ
confessing I've sinned against God. The qualification is to
be the sinner. That is the qualification. It's
not the bed of wellness that he comforts us on or strengthens
us on, it's the bed of sickness. There's one qualification and
the Lord Jesus gave it to us. They that behold have no need
of the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. David's declaring
that he confessed his sin when God performed this promise to
him. That's what he's confessing.
Read it again. Psalm 141. He's saying, God did this for
me. This is what I said to God, and this is what He did for me.
And you, child of God, They've been called by His grace.
He's done that for you, hadn't He? When you called upon Him
and confessed your sin to Him, He did this for you. He gave
you the comfort of knowing Christ Jesus is your perfect righteousness
with God. But what about something like
rejection by enemies? What about sickness? What about
when we come to our deathbed? What about those kinds of things?
God promises upon every bed of languishing to strengthen and
comfort his child. He did so for our Lord Jesus
Christ. I hope you'll go home and read this Psalm. Go listen
to those messages I preached. I don't know when they were,
back in, I don't know, 2016 or 17. But, and go listen to those
messages. He did this for our Lord Jesus
Christ. And he's gonna do this for his
people for the sake of his son. The Apostle Paul suffered greatly
at the hand of enemies. He was beaten. Many times. And then he was arrested and
he was put in a chain and he was under house arrest at Rome.
You hear Paul a lot of times talk about his chain. And he
was arrested. And wrote three-fourths of the
New Testament from there. And Paul didn't know what would
come next. He had no idea what would come
next. He didn't know if the Lord would work it to where he would
be set free and go on preaching the gospel and live, or if at
any time they would come in and execute him. He didn't know what
was going to happen. Go over to Philippians 1. This
is the other verse that kept coming to my mind. This is what
the Lord gave Paul to say. This was his heart right here.
Philippians 1.21, he said, for me to live is Christ and to die
is gain. How was Paul able to say that?
because the Lord strengthened him upon this bed of languishing. When he was in prison, when he
didn't know what tomorrow held, the Lord strengthened him upon
that bed of languishing, and the Lord made all his bed in
his sickness, so that he knew, he knew this, Christ is my life. Whether I live or I die, Christ
is my life. Physical death will not change
that. Sin will not change that, and physical death will not.
Nothing will change that. Has Christ been made wisdom to
you? Now listen, is He all your wisdom with God? Do you trust Christ to deal with
God on your behalf? Is He the only reason you have
discernment and know Christ? Because of God, Christ was made
wisdom to you. Has God made Christ righteousness
to you? Do you see that there's absolutely
nothing in you that you have ever done that could contribute
to your salvation. It has all come short of the
glory of God. Do you truly see that the only
righteousness you have is the Lord Jesus Christ at God's right
hand? And your desire is to be found
in His righteousness alone. Has He made Christ's righteousness
to you? Do you believe that in Christ you're righteous? Do you
believe has God made Christ's sanctification unto you? Has God made you see that in
Christ, at God's right hand, all his people are perfectly
holy? All his people in Christ at God's
right hand are perfectly holy. Has he made you believe there
is my perfect holiness at God's right hand? Has He made you to
know that when Christ enters into His people in spirit and
that new man is created, the new man is holiness unto the
Lord by Christ our holiness. By Christ our holiness. Any good
thing we do is the fruit of Christ making us holy. Any sin is the
fruit of our sinful nature. But the good that He works in
you to do, that's not what makes you holy. Christ is what makes
you holy. And by the same token, the sin
that you commit, we hate it, we sorrow because of it, we come
crawling to God begging mercy because of it, But that sin,
brethren, does not change the holiness Christ is at God's right
hand and the holiness he is in that new heart. It does not change
it. Christ Jesus is that holiness
without which no man shall see the Lord. That's why he gave
the same promise when that thief was on the cross. That was his
bed of languishing. That was his sick bed. He's there
sorrowing. He's there hanging. hanging there
being crucified and the Lord gave him, he fulfilled that promise
to him. He comforted him and he strengthened
him. And he said, today you'll be with me in paradise. Why?
Because that thief on the cross had the holiness without which
no man shall see the Lord. He had Christ Jesus the Lord.
Has God made Christ's redemption to you? Is the Lord Jesus the
only reason you're delivered from the curse of the law? The
only reason you've been delivered from condemnation is Christ alone. Is he the only reason that you've
been delivered from the unbelief of your sin nature so that you
actually can believe Christ? It wasn't your will, it wasn't
any strength in you or power in you. It was Christ alone who
redeemed you, delivered you. Do you believe it's Christ alone
who's going to deliver you from every trial you go through the
rest of these days? Do you believe it's Christ who's
going to redeem you into that glorious liberty of the sons
of God into heaven one day? Has Christ been made redemption
to you? Christ had been made all to Paul. Christ was the strength
where God strengthened Paul when he was in that bed of languishing. And he was in prison, he didn't
know if he'd live or if he'd die, but having Christ and having
this assurance that he was accepted and beloved, he could say, for
me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Brethren, that is such
a good place to be where you know, if I live by the power
and grace of God, I'm gonna go on ministering to the poor. I'm gonna go on preaching Christ.
I'm gonna go on trying to tell poor, needy sinners what Christ
has done for his people. And if I die, I'm gonna be with
my Lord. That's a man that's untouchable. If he suffered at the hands of
men, Christ was the strength by whom he would be strengthened
on that bed of languishing. He said, for this cause we faint
not, though our outward man perish daily, our inward man is renewed
day by day. Our light affliction, which is
but for a moment, works for us a far exceeding eternal weight
of glory. And if Paul died, he knew Christ
was his life. Physical death. All that we could
get this physical death is the believer finally getting to put
off this body of death we've been wanting to put off forever.
We're like a fish in a fishbowl. We have been in sin all our lives
and sin's been all about us all our lives and we just don't realize
the burden of it and the pressure of it and what it really is.
I just believe in that day when we drop these bodies of death,
we're gonna just, there's gonna be a release that we just can't
even imagine being freed from this body of death. And death
for a believer is God just opening the door and bringing you face
to face with your eternal inheritance. The Lord Jesus Christ. Where
you'll be with Him forever and ever. It'll be the first day
of our life when we really and truly worship God in perfection
like we've always wanted to. A believer on his deathbed is
a good illustration of how God strengthens us on this bed of
languishing from the first hour all the way through, all along
the way. Let me give you this and I'll be done. A believer
on his deathbed. I've been with two believers
when they died. They were on a bed of languishing.
Their bodies were slowly dying. With one in particular, his body
was almost without strength. It was a labor for him just to
take a breath. And we're sitting there, and
all of a sudden, all he could really turn was his head. But
all of a sudden, it was like he just had some strength. And he turned his head toward
me and the other sitting there. and it wasn't real audible, it
was strange to hear it, but he said, this is gain for me. It's called dying grace. Now,
I've never experienced it, but it has to be like God's grace
in every bed of languishing that we have experienced. When we're
in sorrow and there's no comfort and there's no strength in us
at all, when you're in a place where you know, there's nothing
I can do, and you just have no strength and no comfort whatsoever,
and the Holy Spirit bears witness with your spirit, secretly hidden
in the unseen place of the heart, and bears witness with your spirit,
you are a child of God. That's how you're strengthened.
That's how you're comforted in that bed. And that's how He's going to
strengthen and comfort. I believe that's what I witnessed
that day with that believer. Just like you experience as you
go through your life in different times when He just makes it so
clear to you that you're accepted in the Beloved. I believe this is exactly what
the psalmist is talking about. Psalm 73, 26. My flesh and my
heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion
forever. He makes you know that within
your heart. So brethren, what I'm saying
to you, no matter what is in store for you that are His, this
is God's promise. The Lord will strengthen you
upon the bed of languishing. Thou will make all His bed in
His sickness. That's God's promise, and God
can't lie. Trust Him. Believe Him. If you're
His, you will. He'll see to that. I pray that's
a comfort for you. Amen. Thank you.