Alright brethren, let's go to
Psalm 102. Psalm 102. I worked some of last week and
most of this week on another subject out of Psalm 102, but
I kept coming back being drawn to these words and I know we've
looked at Psalms 101, 102, and 103, and we looked at some larger
portions of Scripture, but I just want to look at this one verse. I just kept being drawn to this
one verse. Psalm 102, 17. He will regard the prayer of
the destitute and not despise their prayer. This is what David experienced
repeatedly. This is what the children of
Israel experienced. This is what God's people today
experience. And in fact, at the time this
was written, it was written to us. It says there in verse 18,
this shall be written for the generation to come. That's us. And the people which shall be
created. We've been created now and there's going to be some
more the Lord's going to create. And this is for them and for
us. He says, and the people which shall be created shall praise
the Lord. So our subject is for the destitute. Now, toward the end we'll see
a little bit more of the context here. We'll be reminded of it
again, but for now I just want to focus on this one verse. What
is it to be destitute? It says he will regard the prayer
of the destitute. Secondly, what do the destitute
do? What do the destitute do? He
said they pray, they pray, they beg for mercy. He said he will
regard the prayer of the destitute, not despise their prayer, their
calling on the Lord. And then here's the assurance
that the Lord gives to the destitute. He will regard the prayer of
the destitute. He will not despise their prayer. So I want to look at those things
in this message. First, what is it to be destitute? Well, this is one in whom the
Lord has revealed that we are truly the sinner. The Lord has
revealed to us that we are truly the sinner. The word means one
the Lord has stripped, one the Lord has laid bare. You remember
when Adam sinned and Adam and Eve fell and they made fig leaves
to cover themselves. And that's what we all tend to
do as we come into this world in various ways. And the Lord
came to them and called them out of the trees, called them
to Him. And one of the first things He
did was He stripped. He stripped off the fig leaves.
He laid them bare before themselves, before their own eyes. And that's
what it is to be destitute. That's how we're made to be destitute.
And that really is what it is to be made destitute, is to have
yourself revealed to you by God. So we see what we are. The destitute
is one the Lord has made to know, or it's one the Lord has once
again renewed to know, that we have no merit in us. Sin is what we are and God is
going to keep His child beholding our sin and knowing that in ourselves
we are destitute. We are destitute in ourselves.
He has to work this in us because nobody naturally will see themselves
as destitute and certainly won't confess this from a destitute
heart. No natural man will do that.
compare ourselves with others and say, you know, I'm not as
bad as that one. And we'll say that, we might
say we're sinners, but we're not as bad as some sinners, and
really think we're better than most sinners. And by nature a
man thinks his good will outweigh his bad. He has some sins but
he thinks about his religious deeds and his religious activity
and he takes some refuge in that and thinks that well this good
is going to outweigh the bad. But to confess he is destitute.
Confess he is destitute. A natural man just can't do it.
A natural man can't confess he's destitute. But when God is gracious
and He creates life in us, and He brings you to see Christ,
or He comes to you and He renews a believer and He begins to correct
us, He's going to make us behold the Lord Jesus. He's going to
make you behold the Lord Jesus. This is how we're going to be
made destitute ourselves. He's going to make us behold
the Lord Jesus, make us hear the gospel of Christ and Him
crucified, and hear all about Christ, and hear what Christ
did and the necessity of what He did. We have to see that it
took the Son of God coming to this earth. It took Him taking
the body God had prepared for Him, holy, sinless, harmless,
without sin. That's what had to happen. That's
what had to happen. He had to come down to do for
His people what we couldn't do. And the Lord makes you see what
it took to put away our sin. what it took to make us righteous.
It took our Lord Jesus living in place of His people, walking
this earth for us to establish a righteousness for us and we
see that His obedience, where we see His obedience shine forth
and His righteousness is when we see Him obedient unto the
death of the cross. I hope the Lord will keep that
new in our heart and keep us seeing what that is. I mean,
our Lord laid down His life. And it was not just any, you
know, laying down. It was Him taking our sin and
bearing our curse that we deserved. And suffering that ignominiate
shameful death of the cross, despising the shame. And this
is what it took. This is what it took to make
His people righteous. This is the only righteousness
God will receive. This is what it took to put our
sin away. And it's this sight, it's God
coming and giving us life and faith, and it's Him continuing
to turn us from everything else to Christ and see what it took
to put our sin away and make us righteous. That Christ had
to do this for all His people. And not only that, but then for
Him to make us see. that he was doing this for his
people and we're one of those people. Make us see he was doing
it for us personally. To make us see that our sins
put him there and make us see that we're the one that pierced
him. Make us see it personally about
ourselves. It was for my sins he was dying. It was for my sins
he suffered. It was my sin. It was what I
had to undergo that he underwent in my room instead. The Lord
said, then they'll look on Me whom they have pierced. And that's
when we look on Him whom we have pierced. And that's when we become
destitute. That's when we stop talking about
our love and what we've done and we start boasting in His
love and what He's done. This is when all our religious
deeds and all our sins and everything that we think that commends us
and makes God receive us, that's when we see ourselves as being
absolutely, thoroughly, totally destitute in ourselves. That's
what it took and that's what it takes to make our sin exceedingly
sinful. Then again, when he does this,
we find again all over, we just don't have confidence in ourselves. You know, I know that a natural
man would hear this and say, well, why do you want to hear
that? Why do you want God to do that for you? Because it is
the most painful thing, but it is also the way He gives you
the most joy and the most assurance and keeps you walking after Him
and keeps you looking to Him. It's how He makes us destitute. It makes us find that we can't
have confidence in any of our outward morality. We can't have
confidence in any of our religious profession or any religious works
we've done. There's nothing we've done that
is the righteousness God requires. The righteousness God requires
is the man Christ Jesus, and it's Him laying down His life
in perfect faith to God, perfect love to God and His people, bearing
the hell that we deserve. Bearing the hell God's justice
demanded had to be poured out on His people. That's the love
by which we're saved. And that's when we... You know
it does two things. It makes you not have confidence
in you because it makes you destitute and it makes you have all confidence
in Him. All confidence in the Lord. So
the destitute is one the Lord is made to know that He is a
sinner. And not only that we are the
sinner, but also that we don't have any power. We don't have
any power. We don't have any ability. We
couldn't make ourselves be birthed again. We can't make ourselves
be renewed again. We thought we had some power.
When we were natural men, we thought we had power. When we
were in religion, we thought we had power. We could stop and
start anytime we got good and ready to. And the Lord has to keep showing
us and keeping us destitute to make us keep knowing Him more
and trusting Him more. We have to be destitute not only
to see that we don't have any power, that we're in a prison.
And you know, like it was in the first hour, you were in a
prison. You could not free yourself from that prison. And the Lord
still brings the believer in a situation where it's like you're
in a prison. And you can't free yourself from
the prison. And the Lord is showing us we don't have any power except
His power. We don't have any ability except
the ability He creates in His child and the power by which
He exercises grace in us and makes us willing and gives us
strength to believe Him and walk after Him and follow Him. And
also, He makes you see, He makes you destitute, making you see
your sin, He makes you see your inability, and He makes you see
there's no other man that can help you. There is no other sinner
that can help you. There is nobody else that can
free you from the prison. Nobody. I mean, we're talking
about being destitute. We're talking about being laid
bare before ourselves so that we don't have any ability. Is this really necessary to keep
preaching? You know, I'm going to try to preach on this. Maybe
I mentioned this, I don't think I have, but when the Lord sent Ezekiel and
he said, go and make the children of Israel know their sin. We
always look at that baby cast out in the field and see what
the Lord did and how that's a picture of God's grace to us and that
is. But here's the sin he was making
them to know. He did all that for them and they trusted in
the adornments and the graces He worked in the children of
Israel. And they started worshipping those things rather than the
Lord who came to them and found them and adorned them. And so
the cure for that, this is the cure for that, is the Lord sent
Ezekiel and said, teach them their sin, make them know what
their sin is. And here's how he began, he started
describing what we were when God came to us. You were the
baby in the field, cast out and abandoned. And I found you, and
I washed you, and I clothed you, and I swaddled you, and I put
the earrings on you, and I did all this adornment for you. And
he said, now here's the sin, you trusted in the greatness
of your own way. Do you see what I'm saying? This
is how the Lord sent Ezekiel to deal with that. He sent Ezekiel
to declare to them, you were destitute. You were destitute. And He made them see by teaching
them this, that it was the Lord who did all this for them. He
made them see they were destitute right then to free themselves
from the bondage they were in, the bondage of looking at how
good they had done in serving God. And he said, and it's all
idolatry. He called it Sodom and Gomorrah
is what he compared them to. And so this is why we have to
hear this message and why he works in providence and works
to teach us in spirit and our heart to keep us knowing we're
that destitute, infant, helpless child in that field. And He keeps
on being gracious to us and recovering us, and when we get to look into
the greatness of our way because of what He's done for us, He
shows us all over again. Keeps showing us this. So what
does the destitute do? What does the destitute do? Well,
He says they pray. He will guard the prayer of the
destitute and not despise their prayer. When we're destitute,
the destitute are beggars. The destitute are praying to
the Lord, begging mercy from the Lord. They're beggars. They're
beggars. When the Lord makes us destitute,
that's when we start crying unto the Lord as the sinner. When all we can cry is for mercy. It's for God to be merciful to
us. begging for mercy. The publican, our Lord describes,
stood afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven. He's just looking at the dust
he is. He wouldn't even look up. He couldn't even bring himself
to look up. He didn't have the confidence to even look up. That's
somebody that's destitute. And he smote upon his breast
and he said, God be merciful to me, the sinner. This is what it is to be destitute.
It's when we start crying for mercy. The tribe believer in
this psalm, remember how he started out? This is the cry of the afflicted
when he's overwhelmed. And how did he start out? Verse
1, he said, let my cry come to thee. Hide not thy face from
me in the day when I'm in trouble. My days are consumed like smoke.
My bones are burned as a hearth. My heart is smitten and withered
like grass so that I forget to eat my bread. That's the cry
right there of the destitute. When you don't have any strength,
you're smitten in your heart. You just can't lift your head
up. You can't commend yourself at all. And God makes us no longer
contented with anything about ourselves. You just can't find
deliverance in anything about yourself. We beg mercy from the
only one who can save us. David prayed in Psalm 51.1, Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. This is a beggar. This is somebody
begging mercy. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity.
I don't need to just be washed out with the Lord. I need to
be washed throughly from mine iniquity. Cleanse me from my
sin. I acknowledge my transgressions. My sin's ever before me, and
it's against thee and thee only that I have sinned. Against thee
and thee only have I done this evil in thy sight, that thou
mightest be justified when thou speakest and be cleared when
thou judgest." And like David prayed, it's not just what we've
done, it's what we are. David said, I was conceived in
sin. I came forth from my mother's
womb speaking lies. Lord, I need you to undertake. I need mercy. The destitute beg
God for mercy with the same desperation that a starving man begs for
bread. Now, you put yourself in the
place of somebody that has not had anything to eat, has not
had water, and you know somebody has bread, they have water, How
are you going to ask them for that? They don't owe it to you. And there's nothing you can give
them. You beg them. You just beg them,
please give me a crumb. Please just let me have a drop
of water. That's the kind of begging that's
going to go on when the Lord makes us destitute. If you ever
begged God for mercy, I mean begged Him because you were such
a wretch that you had to have mercy. The only way you'd be
saved. Spurgeon said, all God's children
go rich one way, by begging, by begging mercy from God. And
you know, when we're too proud to beg by nature, but not when
the Lord makes you see how destitute you are. That overcomes your
pride. You're not ashamed anymore. You're
like those, remember, that were in the famine, and they said,
let's go into this city. And they said, well, that's the
city of the enemy. They said, if they kill us, we're
just going to be dead. Let's go in, maybe they'll have mercy
on us. And as you just come to the Lord, begging the Lord, if
you don't have mercy on me, Lord, you're just not to. If it wasn't
for Christ, if it wasn't for your eternal purpose, if it was
just based on me, you're just not to have mercy on me. If any are destitute, if you
feel you only deserve the wrath of God, You see, you don't have
any reason in you that God should show you favor right here, right
now where you sit. You have no ability. The only
thing you can do is beg God for mercy. Then here's the good news. You're the very kind of sinner
this is written to. The very kind of sinner this
is written to. And you wouldn't know that about yourself. If
that really is where a person is, they wouldn't know that about
themselves unless God's teaching them this. This don't come to
us naturally. You can't educate yourself into
this. God has to reveal this about us. Strip us. Bring us
out of the trees. And say, tell me what you are. Well, here's the assurance He
gives us. He will hear the destitute. The
Lord will hear the destitute. Look there. He will regard the
prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer. You know, we're so accustomed
to how we're dealt with and how we deal
in this world and what's commonplace in society, just getting on in
the world and things that are taking place. We try to take
that to God and apply the same thing to God and it's just not
how God is. You know, if you had a beggar
coming to you and he just keeps coming to you begging and begging
and begging, you might get to a point where you despise that
begging. But not God. Not God. This is what He's working
in His people. And He will not despise this
prayer of begging Him. Now, at first, the destitute
are usually afraid. Afraid God will not hear. Afraid
that He won't hear us. He will not answer us. Why would
we be afraid of that? Because we know He's made you
see something of the fact that He's holy. He's perfect. And you wouldn't be calling out
for mercy if you didn't see something of that. And He makes you see
something of that. The more He makes you see it, the more we
see how destitute we are. When He makes you see how holy
it is, then our fellow man stops being the standard. Then how
well we've measured up stops being the standard. Then the
standard becomes God. And we see, I hadn't even come
close. and you're destitute. So you're
a little fearful at first that he won't hear me. I'm too great
a sinner. He won't hear me. Well, what's the qualification
to be a beggar? What's the qualification to be
a beggar? Utter poverty. Utter poverty. What's the qualification
to be received by the great physician of mercy? What's the qualification?
Sick, diseased from the top of your head to your toe. No soundness
in you. Destitute. What makes us qualified
to be filled with the riches of Christ? To be empty. To be absolutely empty. To have
nothing to offer. Nothing. Nothing. So God promises,
He will regard the prayer of the destitute. He will not despise
their prayer. This is somebody who is utterly
poverty stricken. They are sick from head to toe. They don't have any fullness. They are complete, total emptiness. The Lord says, He will regard. That's the destitute. The Lord
said, He will regard the prayer of the destitute. He will not
despise their prayer. Now we can be assured He'll hear
the prayer of the destitute because this is how the Lord keeps His
children, knowing we're grass and we're saved by His immutable
grace. That's as immutable as God is.
Now look in connection, in context here in verse 11. My days are like a shadow that
declineth, I am withered like grass. And remember now, the
psalmist is writing this about affliction he suffered, being
overwhelmed, and what the Lord taught him. My days are like
a shadow that declineth, I am withered like grass. but thou,
O Lord, shall endure forever, and thy remembrance unto all
generations." This is how He keeps Himself in our remembrance. It's how He keeps us seeing and
knowing that He's immutable, He doesn't change, and His grace
and His mercy and all His promises never change. This is how He
makes... How are you going to see that?
How are you going to know His grace never changes? When you have
so thoroughly demerited any favor and you know it so clearly and
see it so clearly that God does, God there's nothing about me
that would make God have favor on me. And yet he's gracious
to you. That's when you know he does
not change. He said he doesn't and he doesn't.
He said, I'm the Lord, I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. And he said to Israel, even from
the days of your fathers, you've gone away from my ordinances
and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I'll return
unto you, said the Lord of hosts. That's grace. That's why we're
not consumed. We can be sure He's going to
hear us and have mercy on the destitute because when He makes
us sick, that we're destitute. He did it. He's the one that
did it. And this is why He did it. That's
the purpose of why He revealed the gospel to you. It's the purpose
of whatever the providence was to make you see you are the destitute. And when He makes you see you're
the destitute, He's brought you to the end for which He sent
it all. That's why He brought you there.
And that's the set time He set to show you favor. Look at there
in verse 13, Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion for
the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. When He brought
us to sea, we're destitute in ourselves. Our Lord brought us
to that. And at that point where He brings
you to the end of you and the end of self and the end of confidence
in you to see you're destitute and you cry to God for mercy,
that's the time He set. He brought you to that point
because that's the time He set and it's the time He'll be favorable
to you. Think you're going to miss that appointment? Not at
all. Not at all. This is a word for those who
already are His servants. Look here in verse 13. Thou shalt
arise and have mercy upon Zion for the time to favor her, yea,
the set time is come, because thy servants take pleasure in
her stones and favor the dust thereof. The Lord made Jerusalem
a heap of stones, and the children of Israel were
carried away as prisoners into foreign lands. And yet His saints
in Israel took pleasure in Jerusalem even when it was a heap of stones.
And they favored the dust of Jerusalem even over wherever
the Lord had taken them. They wanted to be there. That's
where He promised His presence. That's where He promised His
favor. And that's what they regarded. And what that picture is, brethren,
the Lord has made each of His people living stones. And when
he's done that, he gives you a heart for his people, a love
in your heart for his people and for his church at large. And he's made you to see that
in yourself, you are dust. You are weak as dust and just
as apt to do anything as anybody else. And so he makes you favor
the very least among his people. And in fact, the more dusty we
are, the more we'll favor those least dusty brethren. The more we see we're dust, the
more we'll be compassionate towards others that are dust. But because
of that, he said, this is why he's going to rise and have mercy.
Because his people love his people and they love his church and
they want to see him do this for his church and save his people
and keep his people together. We need the gospel. So for, because
thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust
thereof, he said, I'm going to rise and have mercy. You get what I'm saying? Because
you put a love in your heart for His people, and for His church,
and for His gospel, He's going to do this for you. And this
is how He makes us know His name, and this is how He keeps us praising
the Lord alone. He says here in verse 18, This
shall be written for the generation to come, the people which shall
be created shall praise the Lord. This is how He created us anew. This is how He makes us praise
Him and Him only. because he shows us we're destitute,
and then he shows you his mercy. And we're brought to praise him.
He says there, this is why, because he looked down from the height
of a sanctuary. From heaven did the Lord behold
the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoner to loose those
that are appointed to death. Just like we saw the children
of Israel were prisoners in Egypt, they were destitute, they were
groaning, and they could not do one thing to free themselves
from that. But the Lord looked down and He heard them. Again
later, when Israel had brought them out, He brought them into
Canaan and years later, when Israel began to look to their
renown and look to what He had adorned them with and worship
the work of their hands rather than the Lord who gave it. The
Lord let the enemy come in and chastened the whole nation, made
Jerusalem a heap of stones, took them away prisoner. He did that to correct them and
they became destitute prisoners. As the margin says, they were
children of death. Children marked for death. And
like they were prisoners on death row. No ability to free themselves
from that prison. Right now, there are some of
the Lord's people, right now, who are just beginning to be
taught the gospel and they're in a prison. And the Lord's teaching
them they're destitute. Right now, there are others who
believe on the Savior who are full of doubts and fears and
they can't free themselves from it. You ever been there where
you're just feeble-minded and you can't free yourself from
doubts and fears? There are some saints who have
sinned and have cried the cry of the destitute because they
see what sinners they are. Some have experienced some great
and heavy losses and there's just an aching void. And you
can't feel that. You can't make that stop hurting.
You can't even describe it. Others are bearing heavy crosses
of various kinds. And any of those things we suffer,
brethren, it's a prison. It's a prison. Why would the
Lord let His child suffer something like that? To keep us knowing
we're the destitute. We need Him constantly. We need
Him constantly. And He will answer. He will hear
the prayer of the destitute. And He will come and He will
answer us. But the entire time Israel was
in that bondage, the entire time they were in that bondage, the
Lord had His eye upon each chosen child the whole time. And that's
so now. That's so now. Behold His faithfulness
on the cross. Will He hear me? Look to Christ
on the cross. When Christ was on that cross
suffering what we deserve and He cried to the Father, the Father
heard Him. And at the set time, when justice
was accomplished, the Father raised Him and He sat down at
God's right hand. And right now, another time we're
going to see this Psalm 102 is God speaking to His Son. And His Son has been given the
glory of being the one who's going to set the prisoners free. He's already did that by His
grace, justifying us on the cross by His blood, but He's going
to be the one who's going to come and loose us at the set
time from our prison when we're going through whatever it is
He's making us see how destitute we are. He said in Isaiah 49.9,
He gave him that thou mayest say to the prisoner, go forth.
To them that are in darkness, show yourself. He's the one that
gets the glory for this. And so by loosening the children
of Israel and delivering them back to Jerusalem, you know what
they did? They praised the Lord. They declared His name that He
did it all. He did it all. Imagine if your
nation was taken and you were taken captive by a foreign nation
and put in prison and on death row. And you cried out to God. And God did it in such a way
that you knew God worked all that and brought me out of that
prison and brought me back to my homeland and planted me in
my home. Well, that's what He did for
Israel. And that's what He's doing for us. That's what He
keeps doing for His people. And He does it right here, verse
21, so that you declare the name of the Lord in Zion and His praise
in Jerusalem. He's declaring His name to us
by what He does. It makes us declare His name
to others and sing His praise. And this is not just going to
be your song right now. This is going to be our song
for eternity. We ain't going to stop singing this song. Look
here in verse 22. When the people are gathered
together in the kingdoms to serve the Lord. You know, when John
looked to heaven, and the Lord showed him the saints in glory,
it said in Revelation 15 verse 3, They sang the song of Moses,
the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and
marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are
thy ways, thou King of saints. What was Moses' song? What's
he talking about? Well, it's the Song of the Lamb.
Whenever God brought them through the Red Sea and destroyed Pharaoh
and his army, this is what they sang. Then sang Moses and the
children of Israel this song to the Lord, and spake, saying,
I'll sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord's
my strength and my song, and he's become my salvation. He
said, thou in mercy led forth thy people. In mercy you led
forth your people, which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided
them in thy strength to thy holy habitation. So there are many
trials for each of us to pass through, and we're going to pass
through a bunch of trials between here and that day when we enter
with that host. Our Lord said you must through
much tribulation enter the kingdom, and we must. But when we see
our sin and how destitute we are, and the Lord keeps showing
you this, our gracious Lord teaches you this. He says to you what
He said in Hosea 14.2, what He said to Israel, take with your
words and turn to the Lord and say unto Him, take away all iniquity
and receive us graciously and so will we render the calves
of our lips. I know that once He's done this
for you, you're going to render thanksgiving to Him. But this
is also how you're rendering the caps of your lips, is coming
to Him and saying, I'm destitute. Lord, I need You to save me by
Your mercy. The whole thing is offering up
the cap. This is the sacrifice He's pleased
with, to be brought to the place where we don't have one thing
in us to commend us. And see, it's all in Christ,
and confess it's all Christ. And so for all these reasons
we've seen here, we can be assured He will regard the prayer of
the destitute, not despise their prayer. And by this, He's going
to keep us singing His praise, declaring His name. And here's
what we say. This is our message right here.
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. We're not just, we're going to
sing that now, but we're going to sing that for all eternity. That's the song that Moses, that's
the essence of what Moses was singing and the children of Israel.
That's what his people are going to sing. We're going to sing
this forever. Amen. Father, we thank you for this
word. Lord, how gracious you are to
hear us. We thank you for our great high priest. We thank you
for his precious blood that's opened the way for us to be able
to call on you. Thankful for your mercy to show
us what we are, to make us see Christ high and lifted up, make
us look only to him. Lord, thank you for this mercy
that you've given each of our brethren. And Lord, by your grace,
we do delight in your people and we want to see the very least
and the weakest and all of your people. Lord, we want to see
you bring praise to your name and cause each one to be turned
and give them this understanding of how destitute each of us are
Make us see how fully You have saved us by Your righteousness
and put away our sin. This is what will make us want
to prepare a habitation for You, Lord. This is what will keep
us loathing our sins and wanting to honor You and trying everything
with all Your strength to give us to honor You. Lord, we do
thank You for Your mercy. We praise your name, give you
all the glory. Thank you, Lord, for forgiveness.
Thank you, Lord, for righteousness in Christ. It's in his name we
ask it. Amen.