Well this evening, as the Lord
may be pleased to bless us, we'll meditate just on the first four
verses, which is verses 49 to 52. And I'll just read those. Remember the word unto thy servant,
upon which thou hast caused me to hope. This is my comfort in
my affliction, for thy word hath quickened me. The proud have
had me greatly in derision, yet have I not declined from thy
law? I remember thy judgments of old,
O Lord, and have comforted myself. Well, the psalmist here, as he
begins this section, really, he's praying to God. And he's
praying in this way, as he says, remember the word unto thy servant. That means the word that God
had spoken to David, and he tells us, upon which thou hast caused
me to hope. Well, it's a great blessing if
God has spoken to our hearts so that we have cause to hope
that it will be well with our soul. And we want to be reminded
of that. We want to remind the Lord of
his promises toward us. I thought perhaps I would just
mention and experience what I have told you before, but I'll just
tell you again. And that's when I was a teenager,
perhaps 16 or so. And it was a time when they were
electing prefects. and I thought I had a very good
chance of being elected a prefect. Well, there were only eight prefects,
and when they were all names called out, my name wasn't there.
And I remember my friend who was sitting next to me, or one
of my friends sitting next to me, and he'd been elected, and
he turned and said to me, oh, bad luck, Steve. And right at
that very moment, the Lord spoke into my heart Words which caused
me to hope, and they were these. Words of a hymn. Trifles are
theirs, a kingdom yours. Now, I didn't know where those
words came, and I remember going home and hunting in the Bible
and couldn't find them. I thought, that's very strange.
Anyway, I was happy that they emanated from God because I wasn't
thinking about anything particular like that at all. and the Lord
dropped those words in and it was some long time afterwards
we actually sang hymn 257 and I realised that was one of the
lines in that hymn. Trifles are theirs, a kingdom
yours. And really it was a great blessing
to me through that year because my two principal friends were
both prefects and I wasn't but I was really very content because
I realized the truth of those words. Those things which they
were enjoying were really just trifles. And yet, what a blessing
it was if God, therefore, had given me a place in his kingdom. So there was a great difference
between those two positions. And it was that which caused
me to hope. And many times since then, I
found it a great encouragement. Encouragement to me, believing
that the Lord spoke very mercifully, very wonderfully, very gloriously
to me. And it's a word which I have
had cause to believe is a good hope that it will be well with
my soul. It's just a very little illustration
of my own life and I do pray that all of you and you young
people especially might have from God a word given to you
upon which you will be caused to hope that you have a good
hope and a hope of spending eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, what I've just
said isn't an isolated position. In actual fact, there's a number
of occasions in the Word of God where the children of Israel
are reminded and remind God of the situation. And in Deuteronomy,
Chapter 16, verse 3, we read, Thou shalt eat no leavened bread
with it. That's with the lamb that was
slain, of course. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened
bread therewith, even the bread of affliction. For thou camest
forth out to the land of Egypt in haste, that thou mayest remember. the day when thou camest forth
out of the land of Egypt, all the days of thy life. And I'm
sure the Israelites would have looked back upon that day and
would have remembered. And that was a cause for them
to have a hope that the Lord would bring them safely into
the promised land of Canaan. And of course, he did. And again,
David himself in the 20th Psalm, he says, some trust in chariots,
the things of time, some in horses. But we will remember the name
of the Lord, our God. And so that's the confirmation
that the Lord would have spoken to him the name of the Lord,
our God, confident that the Lord was his God and therefore to
be reminded of it and to remember it before the Lord. It's a great
blessing to be able to speak in that way. And then in the
Chronicles, we read this, the first of Chronicles in chapter
17, verse 23. Therefore now, Lord, let the
thing that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his
house be established forever and do as thou hast said. You see this was coming to God
and praying that he would indeed remember what he'd said and would
not forsake his word and would bless them. What a mercy that
was and then just one final word from Genesis where the Lord said
through Jacob and Jacob said, Oh, God of my father, Abraham,
he was praying to his God. Oh, God of my father, Abraham
and God of my father, Isaac, the Lord, which said unto me,
here he was, you see, confirming what God had spoken to him. Return
unto thy country and to thy kindred and I will deal well with thee. So Jacob had a difficult time,
but he was able to come and plead this promise with his God. What a blessing that is for us
today. The Lord does speak to us and
give us his word as a word spoken into our heart. We can remind
God of it and we can pray that it may truly ever be made blessing
to us and then he goes on to say this is my comfort in my
affliction we do walk through this world
and this world is not our home the Word of God tells us it is
polluted and it's polluted because sin has entered into the world
and as we walk in the world we will find There are times of
affliction. They may be bodily affliction.
More importantly, they may be spiritual affliction. And when
we come into those situations, we need to know that the Lord
is with us. The Lord will bless us. And so
he says, this is my comfort. And that's wonderful, isn't it?
If we can look to God's word, Look to his promises. Remember
how he's spoken to us. So although we are in a difficult
time and a time of affliction, that word is a comfort to us
and how wonderful that is for the people of God. And as he
goes on to say, for thy word, God's word hath quickened me. And that very simply means made
us spiritually alive. If God has spoken a word into
our hearts, which has made us spiritually alive, we won't forget
it, because it emanates from Almighty God. And what a wonderful
blessing that is. He goes on and says, the proud
have had me greatly in derision, yet have I not declined from
thy law. We should expect in our life
opposition. We should expect people to speak
against us, people who will deride our religion, people who will
tell us that the word of God is not true and they'll mock
it, and try and turn us away from it. And so he says, the
proud, because they're proud in what they believe, although
it's of no benefit, yet they're proud with it. The proud have
had me greatly in derision, yet have I not declined from my law. It's good, isn't it, to be steadfast
in the truth, steadfast in what God has spoken to us, to be strength
for us. You might remember the Apostle
Paul reminds us in his life in the 20th chapter of the Acts
and he comes and he tells us after listing a lot of opposition,
but none of these things move me. It's good you know when we
may be mocked and humiliated and yet none of these things
move us. He goes on, neither count I my
life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with
joy. How often is the Apostle Paul
looking ahead? He's looking past the things
of this world to that eternal state. So that I might finish
my course with joy and the ministry which I received of the Lord
Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. Yes, he wanted
to tell people of the grace of God that he had received, the
free unmerited favour. And it is a wonderful blessing
and it is a very humbling blessing when we think the Lord has chosen
us, called us, and to the vast multitudes in this world, to
hear his voice and to follow him. What a mercy, how humbling
that should be. And then he finally says, I remembered
thy judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself. Again, he looks back and remembers
the many occasions which are recorded in the Word of God.
Of course, he didn't have all the Bible like we do, but he
would have had the books of Moses, which very clearly spoke of God's
dealings with his ancient people and probably most of the writings
of David and Solomon, etc. So there were plenty of things
there to encourage him and to comfort him. What a blessing
it was. And you might remember that Daniel,
of course, didn't obey the king. And because of that, he was thrown
into the lion's den. And the enemies who hated him
because of his religion, they said this. Then said these men,
we shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we
find it against him concerning the law of his God. Well, Daniel
was faithful. Daniel continued to pray those
three times a day in his house with his windows open. Everybody
could see what he was doing. He didn't hide in a corner. He
declared plainly and how wonderful it was that God stood by him. And as we know, he was thrown
into the lion's den and they didn't touch him all night. And how relieved the king was
to find he had not been touched. when he went to go and release
him in the morning. So therefore we have just a few
examples and it would be good for us tonight to therefore remember
the word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to
hope. And I suppose we ought to just say this, if we haven't
got anything that has caused us to hope. And we always need
to be honest about these things. We don't want to pretend that
we possess something when we don't. But we should remember
this. God is faithful. As we spoke
on Sunday evening, God is faithful and he will hear our prayers.
He will hear our cry and he will come if we cry to him that he
will cause us to hear his voice and to hope in his mercy and
to hope in his grace and to hope in his love toward us. Well,
there's just a few comments tonight to ponder and to think upon,
but it's wonderful that the Lord has so ordained these things
so that we can meditate upon them and find comfort to our
own souls.