I just want to read the first
seven verses. Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul. O my God, I trust in Thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on Thee
be ashamed. Let them be ashamed which transgress
without cause. Show me Thy ways, O Lord. Teach me Thy paths. Lead me in
Thy truth and teach me. For Thou art the God of my salvation. On Thee do I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, Thy tender
mercies and Thy loving kindnesses, for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth,
nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember
thou me for thy goodness sake, O Lord. Now brethren, the grace of God
working in our hearts, a grace that gives us a brand new heart,
that spirit that new spirit that God puts in you. It causes, by
God's grace, it causes us to lift up our soul to God. He says there in verse 1, unto
thee, O Lord, not to anybody else, but unto thee, O Lord,
do I lift up my soul. That means you pray unto God
You're casting all your care on God with all your heart. From the very depths of your
soul, you're praying, Lord, I'm looking to You. I'm looking
to You and You alone. Now, there's a lot of things
that distract us. There's a lot of things that
come between us and God. And when troubles come, we usually
try to go to somebody to help us and talk to somebody because
it's good when you You like to talk to somebody that knows where
you are, somebody that knows what you've gone through. But
brethren, the one that we should go to, the one that we should
lift up our heart to is the Lord. Our Lord knows the feeling of
our infirmities. Our Lord has been where we have
walked. When you look at the life of
the Lord Jesus Christ and you think about what He suffered
as He walked this earth, I guarantee you whatever you're going through,
he was touched with the same feeling. He knows what it is
that his people suffer. And he's one we can pour out
our soul to in a way we can't pour out our soul to anybody
else. There's things you'll pray and say to God that you won't
say to your spouse. And that's what he's saying here.
Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. And look at this
now. This is the first thing he asks
for. Oh my God, I trust in Thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not
mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on Thee
be ashamed. Let them be ashamed which transgress
without a cause. The first thing that he prays
for here is not to be ashamed, not to be confounded. He says,
God, You're my God. Isn't it a blessing to be able
to know that God is my God? Can you say that? God's my God.
He's made Himself so to His people. He's made Himself my God. That's what He's done to His
people. Now, it's a blasphemous thing for men to go around using
those two words as a figure of speech. I hate that. And you hear it everywhere. You
hear it all the time. You hear from the least young
people. You hear them going around taking
the Lord's name in vain. And the man that does that can't
pray what he's praying here. What he's praying here is, he's
really my God. He's really my God. And he says
here, I trust in thee. Now when you trust somebody,
true trust is to put your care into their hands. It's to trust
them. As Peter said, cast all your
care on him. That doesn't mean trust him a
little bit. That means trust him with everything. Lock, stock
and barrel. He's, Lord, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. So when you
trust somebody, the last thing you want is for them to betray
your trust. To have your trust betrayed is
one of the most painful things there is. To trust somebody,
to give them your trust, entrust yourself to them and they betray
you. And so what the psalmist prays here is, Lord, let me not
be ashamed. I trust thee. Let me not be ashamed."
Now, this is the promise of God. Now, I know some of you sitting
here that don't believe on the Lord. And one of the things that
you think about is, I just don't know if all this is true. And
I don't know And your thought is, what if I trust in Him and
none of this is so? What if I trust in Him and I
just end up being ashamed for doing it? I end up and my enemies
conquer me. Well, look at Romans chapter
9. Romans chapter 9. This is the Lord's promise to
His people. All that trust Him. Romans chapter
9. Verse 33, as it is written, and
he's quoting here from Isaiah, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling
stone. That's Christ. He's a stumbling
stone to those who do not believe. To those who are trying to come
to God in their own righteousness, by their own works, they stumble
over Christ. And he says, and he's a rock
of offense, and whosoever believeth on him,
shall not be ashamed. They shall not be confounded.
There is one, there is one in this world, there is one eternal
that can be trusted. That one is the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's God our Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our triune
God can be trusted. He's too pure to fail, too holy
and too righteous to err. And He will not lie. He cannot
lie. Our God will not lie to His people. Whatever He says, it's so. And whatever He says can be trusted
by His people. So when we pray and we are in
these moments of unbelief and we begin to pray and say, Lord,
let me not be ashamed. you can be sure God's people
are not going to be ashamed. God's people will never be confounded
for trusting Him. When we get to glory, and we
see everything clearly, and we understand the Word of God perfectly,
and we understand everything God has ever done throughout
history, and we can see it all now perfectly and understand
what God was doing in it, you know what we're going to say?
Not only was God true, but the half hadn't even been told. I
know now things that had never entered to my heart or my mind.
And I tell you, you can trust God. He can be trusted. Now,
like I said this morning, friends will betray you. Your dearest
loved ones will betray you. The Lord said, will a woman forsake
her suckling child? And He said, yes, they may. Yes,
they may. But God will never forsake His
people. He'll never forsake His people. Why would He choose His
people? Why would He give them to His
Son and send His Son into this world, and send His Son to that
cross to bear the sin and shame of His people, and to bear the
fury of His wrath for His people, and then call you to trust Him
and give you the faith to trust Him, to put all your care into
His hand? Why would He do all that just
to betray that trust. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He'll
never betray his people. He says here to us, he says,
let none of my enemies triumph over me. Look over at Romans
and look at chapter 8. None of our enemies will ever
triumph over us. And you know, when you think
of enemies, you think of You know, somebody that's out to
get you or something like that. We got a lot worse enemies than
that. The devil is our enemy. We're
not wrestling with flesh and blood. We're wrestling with powers
and principalities. We're wrestling with unseen forces,
brethren. And the Lord... Look at Hebrews
2. Go there with me just a minute.
Hebrews chapter 2. The Lord came into this world
to conquer all the enemies of His people. And the gospel, the
good news of the gospel is He did that. He conquered them.
He conquered all our enemies. Look at Hebrews chapter 2. Look here
at Hebrews chapter 2. He says here, verse 14. For as much then as the children
are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took
part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that
had the power of death, that is, the devil." He has the power
of death. What's the power of death? The
power, the sting of death is what? It's sin. The venom of
death, the poisoning death Stroke of death is sin. And that's the
power that the devil had, was sin. He could accuse us to God
because of our sin. But he can't accuse God's elect
of our sin. Because this is the truth, verse
15, Christ came and delivered them who through fear of death
were all their lifetime subject to bondage. He conquered the
devil. He did that by putting away the
sins of his people so that now the devil's got no more ammunition.
He's got nothing to charge his people with. Christ Jesus the
Lord stands between God and his people and says, you've got nothing
to charge my people with. There's no accusation that can
be made against God's saints because Christ has redeemed us.
He's put away sin. In doing so, he conquered the
devil. He's on a chain so that he can't
harm God's people. And the only way he can do anything
to God's people is if God gives him permission, just like he
said to Job. Have you considered my servant
Job? And if God does that, it's for our good to chasten us, and
correct us, and teach us, to prove us, all of those things. That's the only way. So that's
our first enemy is the devil and then sin. And then I'll tell
you this, the law of God is holy and it's just and it's good.
But the law of God was the enemy of His people at one time. That
law was our enemy because that law never said anything good
about us. That law said, this do, this
do not do. But it gave no power to do it.
The law's purpose... Go to Romans 3. The law's purpose
is this, brethren. It's not to give you life. Never
go to this book and go to the law and try to look at the law
and figure out, well, I need to do this, I need to do that.
This is going to make me accepted with God. No, it's not. That's
not what God gave the law for. Romans 3. Here's why God gave
the law. Verse 19, Now we know that what
things soever thou sayest, it saith to them who are under the
law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God. You come into this world under
the law, under the curse. because we all sinned in Adam.
And so you come into this world under the curse of that broken
law. And this law that God gives speaks
and says, you're guilty. You're guilty. You're guilty.
Try to come to Him in any of the commandments and it says,
guilty, guilty, guilty. That's why He gave it for. Verse
20, Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh
be justified in His sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. That's what it was good. So the
law was our enemy, brethren. It was our enemy. But see, the
Lord Jesus Christ came. Look at Romans chapter 8. Romans
chapter 8, verse 3. What the law could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh. That means the law
couldn't justify us because we couldn't keep the law. The only
weakness in the law is you and me. We're sin and we could not
keep the law. No man, listen to me carefully,
no sinner has ever kept the law of God. None. There's one man,
the God man, who kept the law of God. He's the only one. Look
at this now. What the law could not do in
that it was weak through the flesh. God sending His own Son. in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit." Now, I've told you this before.
That doesn't mean that Christ came and did something so that
now you can fulfill the righteousness of the law. No, sir. Christ came
and fulfilled the righteousness of the law. That's exactly why
Christ said He came. He said, don't think that I come
to destroy the law. I didn't come to destroy the
law, He said. I came to fill the law full. I came to fulfill it. I came
to give the law everything the law demands. I came to to work
out a perfect righteousness for my people. I came to go to the
cross to lay down my life for my people so that justice could
be poured out in full, so that God might be just and the justifier
of him that believes in Jesus. This is what the Lord Jesus came
for. And because He accomplished that work, now the law is no
longer our enemy. Now the law is the friend of
God's people. Because the law looks at Christ,
and the law says of Christ, perfection. The law looks at Christ and says
of Christ, righteousness. And so, with his people being
in Christ, the law looks at his people and says, I find no fault
with him. I find no fault with him. That's
an enemy that Christ conquered for his people. and made the
law our friend. Now justice, that very justice
that condemned us, now that justice demands that we be brought into
God's presence. Because God will not punish for
sin twice. He's already poured out justice
on His people when He poured out justice on Christ, and He
won't do it again. He won't do it again. So the devil's conquered. Sin's conquered. The law's conquered. And we saw this morning, death
is conquered. Death is conquered. God has given
us the victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ, because
He fulfilled all righteousness for His people. I've told you
this, righteousness is life, brethren. Life and righteousness,
they're just synonymous. If you have no sin, And there's
no death. If Adam had never sinned in the
garden, Adam would have never died. But God said, the day you
sin, the day you disobey me, you shall surely die. And that's
where sin entered. That's where death entered was
because he sinned against God. He transgressed against God.
But if a man's righteous, in which all God's saints are by
the work, by the doing and dying of Christ, that's life, brethren. There's no death in righteousness.
And so, this body that is of Adam, and this sinful nature
that's of Adam, is going to die. But this new man that's created
of God will never die. He's conquered death for his
people. He conquered the devil, he conquered sin, he conquered
the law, and he conquered death for his people. So when he says
here in our text, he says, let not my enemies triumph over me.
They won't brethren and I go back to Romans 8. This is what
I was originally gonna show you Romans 8 Look at this Verse 35 who shall
separate us from the love of Christ. I'll tell you what. Let's
go back up here to verse 33 Who shall lay anything to the charge
of God's elect It is God that justifies. You'd have to lay
a charge to God to lay a charge to one of God's elect. It's God
that justified us. To lay a charge to God's elect,
you'd have to say to God that He didn't complete the work.
He didn't justify His people. Anybody want to be that brazen
to blame God? for not justifying His people.
It's God that justifies. Look here. Who is He that condemneth? It's Christ that died, yea rather,
that's risen again, who's even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword,
as it's written. For thy sake we're killed all
the day long. We're counted as sheep of the
slaughter. We have no strength in ourselves. We have no ability
to ward off our enemies. That's why we lift up our soul
and say, Lord, in thee do I trust. Let me not be ashamed. Lord,
don't let my enemies conquer me. But why? Because he's the
only one that can Do it. We're just sheep, brethren. Helpless sheep. Sheep don't have
a defense. The only defense a sheep has
is their shepherd. That's the only defense we have
is our shepherd. Look here. Nope. In all these things, we're
more than conquerors through Him that loved us. We're more
than conquerors over all our enemies, brethren, through Christ
that loved us. Oh no, they'll never conquer
us. Now look here, Psalm 25. He says, verse 3, let them be
ashamed which transgress without a cause. Now I want to talk just
a minute to those who do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you realize that without being born of the Spirit of God, the
Scripture says of an unbelieving sinner, that the thoughts of
his heart are only evil continually. Take your very best thought,
your very best deed. Outside of Christ, it's only
evil continually. Everything that an unbeliever
does and says and thinks is transgression against God. Everything. Ephesians 2 talks about we were
children of disobedience. We were following the prince
of the power of the air. Every thought, every word, everything
we did was a disobedience to God. Transgression against God.
Everything! Do you know how easy it is to
die and meet God? Do you know how quickly you could
die and meet God? And if you died and met God,
you would meet God, having done nothing from the day you took
your first breath until the day you took your last, having done
nothing but transgressed against God. And this is the sad thing. It's transgression against God
without a cause. God's never done anything to
cause anybody to transgress against Him. God's never done anything
but that which is good, that which is right, that which is
holy. And yet, all and only, all that we've ever done, and
the only thing we've ever done, outside of Christ, is transgress
against God without a cause. Without a cause. And He said
this, I will by no means clear the guilty. I'm telling you,
you would do well, The sad thing is, is we're so hard-hearted,
we're so stiff-necked by nature, we'll hear that word and shut
our ears up, harden our heart against it, put it out of our
mind, and just go on transgressing against God without a cause.
My prayer is God would give you a heart so you can hear. so that you can really enter
into what God is saying there and realize you need God right
now. This is the day of salvation.
Don't put it off. Don't wait. Don't say, well,
I got tomorrow or the next day. When I get older, I'll consider
those things. What is your life? It's a vapor. It could be over just like that.
Just like that. Today, I wouldn't rest until
I found out God's salvation. That's your need above anything
else. You don't need the sports. You
don't need the entertainment. You don't need all the different
things that fills your mind and fills your day. You need Christ. The one thing needful is Christ. Alright, look here now. And that's
going to be the case. Those are going to be ashamed
that transgress against God without a cause. They're going to be
confounded. You know, you won't trust in
God, but you trust in this earth, you're going to be ashamed. It's
going to vanish. Won't trust in God, but trust
in uncertain riches, you're going to be ashamed. They're going
to perish. They're not going to support
you in the day of judgment. Man can't buy his way into heaven.
Man won't trust God, but he'll trust his works and his righteousness
and his doing. That man's going to be ashamed.
All the works that a man does trying to earn salvation is just
transgression against God without a cause. Every bit of it. And
that man's going to be ashamed. But those that trust Christ,
never. Never ashamed. Alright, let's get to the next
thing he prays for. Show me thy paths, O Lord. Teach me thy paths. We don't
want to be left to our own way. There is a way that seems right
unto man, and the end thereof are the ways of death. It's destruction
and misery. There's a broad way, and many
there be that go go in there. There's a Broadway. And you're
hearing about it every day. This world is working harder
and harder and harder to get everybody going in that Broadway. And that's the way the majority
in the world have always gone. the broad way. And that way leads
to destruction. It's like that, it's like those
pigs that, that came out, that when that spirit came into that,
that demon and those spirits came into those pigs and they
ran and they just ran off that cliff. That's, that's that way.
It's just going to end in going straight over the edge. It's
going to end in death. But we need this. Lord, show
me Thy ways. Teach me Thy paths. There's a
narrow way. How narrow is it? It's as narrow
as Christ. As narrow as Christ. One time
Brother Paul Mahan and I were talking and I said, I'm just
trying to preach this thing as narrow as I can preach it. And
he said, just preach it as narrow as Christ. As Christ only. Christ only. He's the way. He's
the straight gate. No man comes to the Father but
by the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way. He said,
I am the way. And there is no other way. Teach
me thy way. Teach me thy path, Lord. And
when you read about paths, plural, Everything that we read throughout
the Scriptures, when you come into the epistles and you read
those epistles, the things that this world preaches and spends
all their time on teaching men to be moral. And that's all they
do, teaching men to be moral. Nothing wrong with morality.
It's good to be moral. But if you don't have a foundation
and you don't realize that Christ Jesus the Lord is our perfect
fulfillment of all the things taught in the epistles. And the
purpose of those paths, the purpose of heeding what God teaches you
in the epistles is not to make you righteous. It's not to make
you more holy. Our righteousness and our holiness
is Christ alone. It's not to... Here's the purpose
of it. It's to make it so that you don't
draw any attention to you. but that Christ has all the glory. So that I don't draw any attention
to myself because I've gone out and sinned in this horrible,
lascivious sin or something of that nature, so that the world
looks at me and says, ah, I see there he claimed to believe on
Christ. It's so that that doesn't happen and it's so that the world
doesn't look at me and say, Oh, look how wonderful He is. Look
how He walks and look how holy He is. No, I don't want that
either. I don't want the world looking
at me at all. The way that we're a light set on a hill and the
way that we're a candle that's not under a bushel but is set
out for all to light up the room is this. Christ our light. It's so men don't see you, but
you can preach the gospel to them and bear witness of Christ
when God opens the door so that they behold Christ and not you.
That's the path He's leading us in. It's not to teach you
to try to become so holy that folks can't stand to be around
you. That you're so pious and look down your nose and say,
don't come near me, I'm holier than thou. God said, folks like
that are a stench in my nostrils. It's like that fire they burn
out there where they took all the dump and all the refuse and
all the things from the city out there and burned it in a
fire and the stench from that. You know, if you were downwind,
it just was a horrible smell. God said, those folks, that's
what they are to me. No, it's to make it so that Christ
gets the glory. Christ is the focus and Christ
is one of you I don't care what it is whatever it is in the in
the New Testament and all the epistles That's what he's teaching
us brethren. Those are the paths his paths
And he look here verse 5 lead me in that truth and teach me
for thou art the God of my salvation The only way you're going to
know God is the God of salvation is for God to lead you in the
truth. I take you by the Spirit of God and turn you from a false
way, turn you from lies, turn you from liars and bring you
into Christ the truth and show you the simplicity of the Gospel,
the singleness of the Gospel is Christ Jesus the Lord Himself. Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. That's what we keep preaching.
Christ, Christ, Christ. Christ is the Gospel. The truth
of God, the Gospel of God is, He hath made Him who knew no
sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. This is the Gospel. This is the
truth of the Gospel, brethren. Christ Jesus the Lord come and
became the substitute for His people, to put away the sin of
His people, to redeem His people, to make His people forever the
righteousness of God in Him. That's the truth. that thou art
the God of my salvation. Don't you love that? The God
of my salvation. Salvation is of the Lord. He's
the God of my salvation. You think there's anything that
can prevent God from saving His people? Nothing. God created
this world to save His people, to show us His glory and power
in saving His people. He's the God of my salvation.
On Thee do I wait all the day. Do we do that? We wait on God
all day. On Thee do I wait all the day.
If you don't know what to do, you know what's the best thing
to do? Wait. Wait on the Lord. If you wake up in the morning,
That first thing, the best thing to do is wait on the Lord. Call
on the Lord. That word, wait, means you're
calling on Him, you're trusting in Him, you're looking to Him.
It means, lead me in thy truth. That's what it means. You're
trusting Him to lead you in every way. I'm waiting on you, Lord.
If He moves, we move. If He doesn't move, we don't
move. waiting on the Lord. Now, that's the first thing.
The first thing was this. The first thing was, let me not
be ashamed. The second thing was, show me,
Lord. Show me. Lead me. Teach me. Here's the
third thing. Remember. Remember. Remember,
O Lord, Thy tender mercies and Thy loving kindnesses, for they
have been ever of old. What I want the Lord to remember
I want him to remember His mercy. Aren't they tender mercies? The
Lord takes this hard, calloused, rebel sinner and deals with him
in tender mercy. You know, it's the goodness of
God that leads you to salvation. It's not God making you bow. It's God giving you a heart to
want to bow. because He makes you see His
tender mercies. His tender mercies and His loving
kindnesses. Everything God does to His people
and to His people alone is His loving kindnesses. That's what
God's doing for His people. All the days that I was running
from God and rebelling against God and I had wanted nothing
to do with God, all that time He was being merciful and showing
me His loving kindnesses. He was putting corn at my door,
and oil, and wine, and wool, and flax, and all the while I
was praising myself and patting myself on the back. I was worshipping
my idol, the idol of self. And it was God doing it all along.
He was doing it all along. And I want them to remember then,
when I sin, and all my sin is, it's a horrible thing. I lay
in bed at night sometimes and just think about the day and
just think about my sin. Sin of just thoughts and sin
of just sins of commission and sins of omission. Things I should
have done that I didn't do. But you know where peace is?
You pray to the Lord, Lord remember your mercy. Remember your loving
kindness. And I tell you something, He
don't ever forget it. He says here they've been ever
of old. From before the foundation of
the world, God was having mercy on His people. choosing us and
putting us in Christ. Giving the whole work of salvation
into the hand of Christ was mercy and loving kindness. And that's
where all His mercy and loving kindness is. It's in Christ.
He's been merciful to us from old, brethren, from eternity.
And then look at the next thing He prays to remember. Remember
not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. You know, there are some people
who have sins in their early life and that's all they can
think about to where they can't get any peace because they're
constantly remembering the sins of their youth. And I'd say to
young people today that the sins of today, of your youth,
They're going to be the sins that you're going to remember.
They're going to stay with you. They're going to stay with you. But it's not only those sins,
it's also my transgressions right now. The sins of my youth and
my transgressions now. All my sins. Lord, remember them
not. And you know what he says? He
says, they're cast out, behind my back, never to be brought
up again. They're cast into the depths
of the sea. They're as far as the east is from the west. They'll
never be brought up again. God that knows all things says
of His people, I have no record of sin. No record. That's how thoroughly our scapegoat,
the Lord Jesus Christ, took the sins of His people and carried
them away. When He laid down His life at
Calvary, He took those sins into death to that land not inhabited
so that the law cannot say a word to His people. When a man's dead,
the law can't say anything else to him. And God says now of His
people, I don't remember sins in you. because they're not there. I wish we could get there. It's
not as if He doesn't see them. It's not as if they're not there.
God says His Son so accomplished putting away the sin of His people
that we don't have any sin. Read Romans 7. That's exactly
what He's saying. You reckon yourself to be dead
indeed unto sin and alive unto God. That's so. And so he doesn't remember them.
But he says this. I'll be inquired of for these
things. He says, you'll ask me. You'll ask me to forgive you,
to remember my mercy, and to not remember my sins. That's
why when we pray, every time we pray, you know what we pray?
Lord, forgive us our sins. Because he said, I'm doing it.
I'm going to not remember them, but I'll be inquired of by you.
You'll ask me. And we ask him. Look at this.
Why does he do that? Remember thou me for thy goodness
sake O Lord Who is God's goodness God is good? He is good in himself. He's good, but the goodness of
God Is his son and all the goodness of God toward his people is in
his son his son is is the reason God does everything
He does for His people. It's for the sake, His goodness
sake. It's for the sake of His goodness,
His Son, the Lord Jesus, that God does everything He does towards
His people. Now here's what He says to you
and me, brethren. Turn over to Ephesians. We'll close with this. Ephesians. Ephesians 4, verse 32. He says,
Now be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. There's the goodness sake for
which the Lord remembers our sins no more. as where he remembers
mercy. That redeemer who's at the right
hand of God, whoever lives to make intercession for us, his
presence there with God causes God to constantly remember his
tender mercies and to never remember the sins of his people. He looks
at Christ and there's where he beholds his people. Isn't that
a good petition to the Lord? I pray the Lord give us grace
to call on Him in truth and lift up our soul to Him. Everything
we have, everything we are.