Alright, brethren, Psalm 80.
Thank you, Ravi. Now the Lord here had cast the
heathen out of Israel, and He had planted His children, cast
the heathen out of Canaan, and He had planted Israel in Canaan
like a grapevine. He describes it here as his vineyard
and he had planted it with choice vine and the children sinned
against him and didn't keep the law, didn't keep the commandments. And they went back and the Lord
took the hedge down from around the vineyard and he allowed the
nations to come in. Like he describes it here, it's
like a wild boar coming into a vineyard and they're rooting
up the vineyard and tearing everything up. And so the psalmist here,
as a child of God who has himself been awakened to see this and
being chastened by the hand of the Lord, he does what God brings
his people to do when he wakes you up. You know, you can go
a little while as individual sinners or as a local church
or as the church at large. You can go and have great peace
for a little while and get lulled into slumber, lulled into sleep. And the Lord will do what He
did here and wake His people up and make you see your need
of Him. And He does what He did here.
He began to cry. The psalmist said in verse 1,
Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like
a flock. Give ear to us, O Lord. He's the shepherd and His people
are the sheep. He's going to bring us to call
on Him to be delivered. Most of these psalms are prayers.
And as prayer of God's people, we're going to pray to the Lord
and ask Him to save us, ask Him to shine upon us. The Lord said,
whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.
For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the
Lord has said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. That
remnant is His elect. And He's going to bring His people
to call on Him. And He said, Whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that's going to go on and
on through the rest of our life. And here's what His people are
going to call on Him. They're going to call on Him
who first called us. Because the Lord said this remnant
shall call on Him. And we cry, verse 1, Give ear,
O shepherd of Israel! Thou that leadest Joseph like
a flock, Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, Our mercy seek. Shound forth. Have you called
on the Lord to save you? Are you calling on the Lord right
now to save you? As a believer, are you calling
on Him? Only sheep call because the Lord
only calls His sheep. He has to call us to bring us
to call on Him. And He said, I'm going to call
the remnant. He's the shepherd. We're the sheep. You know, sheep
are always in a field and you hear them. They're bleeding all
the time and calling out. And the shepherd, a good shepherd,
hears the sheep. And He's always attending to
the sheep. He's our great shepherd and His
people are the sheep and He's leading His elect like a flock. So we cry and give ear, O shepherd. You that lead Joseph like a flock,
give ear. You're the one that dwells between
the cherubims. You remember the cherubims on
each side of the ark and in the middle was the mercy seat. Underneath
was the law. The law, that second law put
in that ark wasn't broken. Christ came. He said, Father,
thy law is in my heart. That high priest went in there
and he sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat. And the Lord
said, I'll meet with you right there, propitiation. Our Lord
washed away the sin of His people. He made atonement for His people.
And the Lord said in Christ, that's where I will meet with
you. Nowhere else. We can't come to God apart from
Christ. I'll meet you in that mercy seat. So His people, right
here you have a believer calling out in time of need, saying,
Lord, Shepherd, You that lead us like a flock, You that dwell
between the cherubims, our mercy seat, hear us. He says, Before Ephraim and Benjamin
and Manasseh, stir up Thy strength and come and save us. He's asking
the Lord to wake up. But you see, the Lord's not the
one that's been asleep. But when He wakes you up and
you begin to call on Him, sometimes the Lord doesn't answer you to
draw you nearer to Him and to make you need Him more and see
your need of Him more. It appears to you like He's asleep,
but He's not asleep. He never slumbers nor sleeps.
He's the one that worked this to bring them to call to Him
and say, Lord, hear us. Stir up thy strength and come
and save us. We don't have strength. We need
you to come in your strength and save us. And he said there
in verse 3, Turn us again, O God, cause thy face to shine, and
we shall be saved. How long wilt thou be angry against
the prayer of thy people? This is just like the other.
The Lord is never asleep. He never slumbers in sleep. And
because He poured out His anger and His wrath on His people in
Christ, the Lord is not angry with His people. He is angry
with the wicked every day. Anybody out of Christ, not trusting
Christ alone, he is angry with the wicked every day. But He
does chasten us for our sin. And He is going to bring us where
He brought Him here to call on the Lord. But it's from our perspective
that we think He's angry. It feels like He's angry. It
feels like. But He saved us from His wrath. That's what He saved us from.
But in our text here now, He's taken His hedge down. Do you
need God to hedge you up? Do you need Him to put a hedge
about you? Do you need Him to have His walls around you and
to be guiding you and keeping you? That's what I need. That's what His people need.
We need Him continually keeping us so we don't stray. That's what Paul needed. He said,
I know whom I have believed and have persuaded. He's able to
keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. We
need to be kept by the power of God all the way to salvation. Kept by His power. And the believer
here sees that the Lord has taken the hedge down and made him a
seed. Now the Lord's people are never
in any danger. They weren't in any danger in
that day. The Lord is going to keep His
people. Nothing is going to separate His people from the love of God
in Christ. But when He makes you feel like He has taken that
hedge down, And you see the enemy coming in and you see your need
of Him. That's what He's going to do to cause you to call on
Him. Lord, keep me. Help me. I can't save myself. Stir up
Your strength to come and save me. And that's what He's doing
here. He's going to keep His child
crying and crying with urgency. Now I want you to notice something
here. Three times, three times He prays the same but it changes
a little bit each time. But these three things He cries,
I want you to see how the urgency increases and how He increasingly
gives God the glory. Look here in verse 3, He says,
in verse 3, He says, Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face
to shine, and we shall be saved. And then in verse 7, He says,
Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause Thy face to shine,
and we shall be saved. And then in verse 19, He says,
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause Thy face to shine,
and we shall be saved. We shall be saved. You notice
in verse 16, He talks about men being rebuked by His countenance. All our Lord has to do, there's
a lot in our Lord's countenance, there's a lot in His face. If
He turns His face and makes you feel like His face is turned
from you, that's where rebuke's coming. That's how, you know,
you ever just wonder what makes you feel rebuke in your heart
and really experience rebuke in your heart? It's when the
Lord is from the rebuke of His countenance. What is it that
makes you know His presence and know communion with Him and know
you've been forgiven? It's Him shining His face upon
you. In the heart. This is a real thing. You that
know Him know what I'm talking about. This is the Spirit of
the Lord that will either make you feel rebuke in your heart
or make you feel like you are received and accepted and have
communion with Him. This is all about His face shining
upon you. Well, I want to look at these
words here, these three places, but I just want to kind of just
really take the main words in each phrase and look at it just
one by one. I want you to see the first thing
he says here, verse 3, he says, we'll use the last one because
it's got everything in it we're going to look at, verse 19. But
look first, he says, turn us. Turn us. Now the first word there
is turn. The true sinner. We've been made
to really know our sin and know what we are. You know the only
way you're going to be turned is the Lord turned you. He has
to turn you. We wouldn't turn to Him in the
beginning. We wouldn't turn to Him. He called
on us and told us to turn to Him, but we wouldn't turn to
Him. And it's the Lord continually that has to keep us turning to
Him. Now this is a believer crime.
This is a believer crying out. He wouldn't be crying out here
if he didn't believe the Lord. And he's crying out here, turn
us. Now he's not saying, well now
I've got strong faith. I've got a strong will. I can
turn to Him when I'm ready. I'm strong in my ability. I'll turn myself. No. That's
not where we're going to be when the Lord has brought us to the
place He's brought this psalmist right here. God's going to get
the glory. The psalmist wouldn't pray to
turn us if he could turn himself or if he could turn anybody else. He's praying to the Lord, Lord
turn us. Turn us. In our sinful flesh,
in our sin nature, the whole head is sick and the whole heart
faint. From the top to the bottom. Christ is the strength of His
people. Christ is the strength of His people. The Spirit of
our Lord is the strength of His people. Even the ability to pray
this prayer right here and say, God, turn us. You know why He's
praying that? Strength of the Lord. The Lord's
already started turning him. You won't pray this unless the
Lord's already turned you. You can't pray this unless the
Lord's already turned you. This is what the Lord meant in
Isaiah 65, 24. Now listen. It shall come to
pass. Before they call, I will answer. Before they call on me, I will
answer. What's that? That's Him working
this to make you call on Him. He's already answered you. He's
already turning you to call on Him or you wouldn't be calling
on Him. Before they call, I'll answer. And then while they're
yet speaking, I will hear. If He brings you in spirit to
cry out and say, Here, O Shepherd of Israel. If He makes you cry
out to say, Here, He's already heard you. He's already turning
you. We get so despondent. And I get
down and I get despondent. And this is the thing about this,
brethren. When you're in a dark place,
in a low place, in a place where you You see your sin, you see
your righteousness, you see what you are, and you're praying to
God to hear you and praying to God to have mercy on you. I can
guarantee you this, you wouldn't be calling on Him. I'm saying
that you that are calling on Him with a true need and a true
knowing of what you are and knowing Christ is the only righteousness
you have, you wouldn't be calling on Him to hear you unless He
is already working in you. The sinner won't do this in spirit. We're dead by nature. But look
at this next word. He says, turn us. Turn us. Prayer to God is not selfish.
Prayer to God is for us. Remember how the Lord taught
us to pray? Now when we're praying alone, we say, I, me. But when we're praying for our
brethren and praying in public, Our Lord taught us to pray, Our
Father. He said, Our Father. Turn us. Forgive us. The Pharisee prayed about the
publican and he excluded himself as being a sinner. But you see
the psalmist here, he's saying, I need to be turned just like
my brethren need to be turned. Turn us. turn us. Christ teaches His child to include
ourselves as the sinner. He said pray this right here,
forgive us our sins. Forgive us our sins as we also
forgive everyone that's indebted to us. Lead us not into temptation. Don't you want the Lord to keep
you from trial? If it's not for Him we won't
stand. I pray, Lord, please don't lead us into temptation. But when He does, who do we need
to keep us turned to Him? We need Him. Turn us. Turn us. You know when God turned Jacob's
captivity? When he prayed for his friends.
When he prayed for those friends. It says God turned his captivity. Now look at the next word there.
Turn us again. Turn us again. Are you thankful that God does not
turn you only once? I'm so thankful God doesn't turn
us only once. Turn us again. When God first
brings you to cry, and you're a sinner, and you know that you
were dead in your sins, and dead in your trespass, and had no
heart for God, you hated God, and He turned us from ourselves
to trust Christ alone. You know He did that. You know
He did that. He gave you faith. But every
believer has a sin nature. We all do. And every believer
knows our strength is Christ. We are constantly crying, O Lord,
stir up Thy strength. Stir up Thy strength, O Lord,
and come and save us. We need the Lord continually
to turn us again. Turn us again. So many different
ways we get, he's not going to let you turn away from him so
as to go away into apostasy. That's not going to happen for
his child. And the way that's going to be proven, you may look
like you are for a little while, but the way that's going to be
proven is if you hold fast your confidence from the beginning,
that confidence you have from the beginning, That's how it's
going to be proven. He really did turn to you. You're
going to be found trusting him in the end. So he's not going
to let his child turn away from him in apostasy. But he has to
continually turn us again to him. From ourselves, from our
sins, from our will, from our works, from our bitterness and
our All the different ways we've become enamored with ourselves. I think we can stand. You know
in Romans 6, the Spirit moved Paul to instruct us, to you that
are born of God, to account that you really died with Christ,
and you're really risen with Christ, so that your body of
sin is dead, and you're risen now with Him. And He says, therefore,
yield your members unto righteousness, not unto sin. Don't yield our
members to sin. He is saying, do not sin. We
were once the slaves of sin. He says, now you are the servant
of righteousness. Yield your members to righteousness,
He said. Do you remember why He said that? Why would He give us that instruction? He said, because of the infirmity
of your flesh. Because of the infirmity of your
flesh. Because in your flesh, your total
weakness. How shall we that are dead to
sin live any longer therein? Yield our members to righteousness,
not to sin, but know this. Our flesh is the weakest thing
there is. Our will is the weakest thing
there is. We need the strength of our Redeemer. And when you
have sin, you need Him to come and turn you again. If we ever get puffed up, it's the hardest thing in the
world to turn us. He can turn us. He can turn us. But He's
going to make us see our sin and our lewdness, and He's going
to turn His child. And He never stops. He'll turn
you again. He'll turn you again. He'll turn
you again. Paul said in Romans 7, when I
would do good, evil is present with me. Evil. Is that true of you? Evil? Not just... I just... Evil. And sometimes you see it worse
than others. The bad thing is when we only
see it in others. And not see it in ourselves.
Only the Lord can come and turn us again from that. And He has
to keep turning us again. We mean the words we sing. Do
you mean the words we sing? Prone to wonder. Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Our prayer is verse 17 in our
text. Let thy hand be upon the man
of thy right hand. The Lord Jesus. upon the Son
of Man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself." He was saying,
see us in Christ, Lord. Look upon Christ. Behold us in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember we accepted in Him.
So will not we go back from Thee? Quicken us and we'll call upon
Thy name. Turn thou us unto Thee, O Lord,
and we shall be turned. Renew our days of old. You know, when He first comes
in spirit, He regenerates you. From then on, as somebody born
of His Spirit, our spirit is continually renewed. is continually
renewed. He continually quickens us and
revives us and keeps strength in the inner man. He's the only
strength we have, brethren. The only strength we have. Let me read this to you from
Jeremiah 31. Verse 18, He said, I have surely
heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, Thou hast chastised me,
and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn thou me, and I shall be
turned. For thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned,
I repented. And after that I was instructed,
I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed, yet even confounded,
because I did bear the reproach of my youth. Is he from my dear
son? Is he a pleasant child? For since
I speak against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore
my bowels are troubled for him. I will surely have mercy on him,
saith the Lord. He's going to keep his child
turning to him. He's not willing to ever cast
off one of his elect that he chose, thankfully. It's pure
grace consistent with his justice. In fact, his justice demands
he keep us because he satisfied it in Christ because his son
bled and died for his people. It's immutable love and it means
it's never going to change toward his people. Well, who is He? Look here now at this third thing.
Who is He? He's our Lord. He's our Lord. Turn us again, O Lord, as Jehovah,
the existing One. He's God Elohim. He's the Lord God. Turn us, O
Lord God, that covenant God, the One who made the covenant
and fulfilled the covenant and who is the covenant. By His precious
blood, He is the one who bore the lash of justice. He came
down and He satisfied and fulfilled everything fully for us. He laid
three days in the grave and He came out of that grave and He
is reigning now and He is not going to lose one that He purchased
with His blood. Look who He is, the Lord God
of hosts. That means He rules everything.
He rules everything, the army of heaven and in earth, the angels,
the moon, the stars, the wind, things great and small. He's
omnipotence who made the seven stars in Orion. He's not going
to lose anybody. He holds the waters in the hollows
of His hands. Isaiah 40, if you want to look
there, that's always a good one to read concerning who this one
is and what He promises to do. He doesn't just tell us He's
sovereign for the sake of telling us He's sovereign. He's telling
us here, it begins with a command to everybody that preaches in
His name, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. And look here what He tells us
in Isaiah 40 and verse 15. He says, Behold, the nations
are as a drop of a bucket. They are counted as a small dust
of the balance. Behold, He taketh up the isles
as a very little thing. Lebanon is not sufficient to
burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
Nothing you and I could do. If you took all the most splendid
faithfulness of all the men in all ages and imputed that to
you, it would not save you. And we couldn't offer God everything
there is. Everything belongs to Him. Nothing
sufficient to bring us into God's presence. Only the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him alone. The inhabitants, he says, are
grasshoppers. The nations are a drop of the
bucket. Now look at verse 28. He says, Has thou not heard that the everlasting
God, thee Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth
not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his
understanding. Now why did he tell us all this?
Here's what he's saying. He giveth power to the faint. You know who that is? That's
people who have no strength. If you're strong and you can
do it, he'll let you do it. But if you're faint and you don't
have any righteousness in yourself, He'll be your righteousness.
If you don't have any holiness, He'll be your holiness. If you
don't have any strength, He'll be your strength. But it's only
those that He gives power to. He gives power to the faint and
to them that have no might, He increases strength. Even the
youths, Doug. The strongest naturally, they'll
faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they
that wait upon the Lord, they that look to Him only, those
that are turned by His chastening hand and they cry out, Turn us
again, O Lord! And they don't stop, they just
keep crying, Turn us again, O Lord! Lord, Lord, God of hosts! They shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and
not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
How does He do this? How is He going to do this? Back
in our text, the prayer is, Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts,
cause Thy face to shine. Cause Thy face to shine. Go with
me to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. It's in Corinthians chapter 3.
Paul was talking about that ministration of death, the law, and he was
talking about how it had glory. And you know, we can still come
under the bondage of the law. Now we're not before God spiritually
going to be under it because Christ has redeemed us from it,
but in ourselves, we can put ourselves under that bondage. and be veiled, have the veil
on us and on our heart and be in bitterness and we can bring
others under it. And it's bitter. It's bitter. How are you freed from it? There's
only one way to be freed from it. A man can't do it. I can't
do it for me, you can't do it for you, and we can't do it for
each other. There's only one way that bondage is taken away.
There's only one way that strength he's talking about comes. All
the blessings He has to give. He said, there is a glory that
excelleth. And it is the glory of the ministration of righteousness.
Think about ministration of righteousness. Having righteousness ministered
to you from another. Who is that glory? It is Christ.
Look here in 2 Corinthians 3.16. Nevertheless, when the heart
shall turn to the Lord. When we are crying, Lord turn
us again. That's what He's going to do.
He's going to turn you to the Lord. When you turn to the Lord, the
veil should be taken away. That darkness, that veil, be
taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. But we all
with open face, not with a veil, beholding as in a mirror the
glory of the Lord. There He is. Cause your face
to shine. The glory, the light, the glory
of His countenance. That's when we're changed into
His image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord. From
the glory of that old covenant to the glory of the new, from
the glory of our bondage to the glory of liberty, from the darkness
of our flesh to the glory of His righteousness. From the glory
of being in bondage after you know
him to the glory of seeing him more clearly and seeing him again
being renewed. Look down at 2 Corinthians 4
and we can't make it shine but he does. He says there, Verse
6, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And when He
shines that face into our heart, and we behold Him in His glory,
and hear Him, and just that light, that's the health. That's the
strength. That is when everything is well
with your soul when that happens. Let me show you that. Go to Psalm
42 and look at verse 5. I am going to be brief. I am
just about finished, but I want you to see this. Psalm 42 and
look here in verse 5. Here is where we are when we
are in this place. Why art thou cast down, O my
soul? Why art thou disquieted in me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of
His countenance, for the help of His shining face. That's how
I'm going to praise Him. Now look down at verse 11 of
that same Psalm. Why art thou cast down on my
soul? Why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health
of my countenance and my God. You get what he's saying? I'm
made healthy. I'm made well by His countenance,
by His face shining on me. And when His face shines into
your heart, that's going to be the health of your countenance.
That's when you're going to have rejoicing. That's when you're
going to not be so gloomy anymore, not be despondent anymore, when
he shines his face and makes you know it's well with your
soul. It don't matter what's going on around you. It don't
matter how gloomy other folks are. It don't matter if people
are giving you the stink eye or what they're doing. You're
going to have health in your countenance because he's shining
and you know it's well. And you know what you're going
to pray? You're going to keep praying, Lord, turn us. Turn
us. Turn us. You know, when the sun
shines, you think about this. It's shining on you. And you
feel it. And it warms you. And it lights
your way. And you feel it. But those rays
that are coming from that sun, they're not your rays. They're
still the sun's rays. They're still connected to the
sun. You're getting the benefit of it. Well, that's the Son of
Righteousness. He rises with healing in His
beams, that means healing in His rays, and when He shines
His face, you get the benefit of it. And that's really what
holiness of heart is, is when He's shining in your heart and
He separates you from whatever it was that was separating you
from Him. And that's what keeps you separated from Him, partaking
of His holiness that's coming to you. And that's what purges
the conference. And what happens when he does
that? Look at our text in Psalm 80. Immediately, we shall be
saved. That's it. There's no waiting.
There's nothing else to be done. There's nothing that, when he
shines, immediately all is well with our soul. When he shines. Now this is what he says to you
and me. Look unto Me and be ye saved. No matter where you are
in the world, all the ends of the world, just like the sun
can reach anywhere in the world, Christ is the light. And we pray
in here, Lord, turn us again! And He's going to do that. He's
going to turn you and say, now look unto Me. Who have you been
looking at? Where have you been looking? His command is, look unto me. That means I'm going to have
to look away from me, I'm going to have to look away from you,
I'm going to have to look away from us, I'm going to have to
look away from everything else. I'm going to look to him. And be saved. He's going to do it. And when
you look to Him, that's when you know, He is, He has saved
me. He is saving me. He sure has
saved me. Brethren, when light comes on
in a room, the darkness is gone. Immediately. When He shines this light in
the heart, the darkness is gone. And I tell you what, He'll let
you go a little while if you don't believe this word I'm speaking.
He'll let you see you need him to turn you again. And it's painful. It's painful. But oh, it's needful. And it's a blessing because it
makes you know, I need him constantly. I need him for everything. He
is all. I need him for all. Father, we
thank you for these words. We pray you bless it to our hearts.
Shine now, Lord, and make us truly, truly look only to you.
And make us have this light in our heart. Know that you are
working your will absolutely to perfection and not at things
out of order. And Lord, make us wait on you
and know that you're omnipotent and you're able to do whatever
we can think, whatever we can imagine. Make us wait on you. Make us know that what you work
is going to be right. It's going to be good. And make
us pray for one another. Oh, Lord, turn us again. Cause your face to shine. Lord
of hosts, we shall be saved. Thank you, Lord. In Christ's
name, amen.