No, I didn't give you two. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know, I wanted to ask
you, because it doesn't matter to Ron and me. Would you prefer that I put that
into the church and the church give it to you? Or... I think
it's okay. Yeah, I think it's fine the way...
The way we're doing it? Yeah, I think it's fine. All
right. I just happened... I don't know. I just thought
about it this morning. I guess because I was doing taxes yesterday.
And so I thought about it. I thought, well, you know, now
that we're going... we're members, I said, I just don't know how
to... Yeah, I'll talk to you then about
it after. I mean, maybe not today, but
let me just... Yeah, I just wanted to tell you,
just to let you know. I just want to make sure I understand fully
what you'd like, and then that way I would... Because I still,
you know, I still put some in there, so it's no, that isn't, but I
just, I got to thinking about, well, maybe you would rather
have it then and then, so it would be kept on record, but
whatever you decide to do. Okay, alright. I don't want it. I don't want
it. I think we can get started. All right, brethren,
let's go to Psalm 71. Psalm 71, and we'll pick up in verse 3. We
were looking, we noted last week that David is the one who authored
this Psalm, Psalm 71, and he did this when he was well advanced in
age. He was getting up there, and
likely Solomon was beginning to take over the duties as king. But even though these are the
words and the prayer of an aged saint, one who's lived many years
in the grace of his God and the knowledge of the grace of his
God, These are suitable words for any saint of any age, right? This is true of all the brethren. And Paul, you know, when he was
getting up there in age and actually coming to the end of his time
here in the flesh when he was jailed under, I believe it was
the emperor, the Roman emperor Nero, and he was going to be
put to death, penned that letter to Timothy, 2 Timothy 1 verse
12, he said, I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against
that day. And that's true of any of us,
regardless of the time that our God has grace and mercy upon
our souls. When he reveals the salvation
of Christ to us, it's a good thing, right? The aged saint
maybe realizes that and understands that more and more as they've
grown that, Lord, it's not my righteousness. It's not the things
that I've done that recommend me to you. But Lord, I'm trusting
that you've provided everything for me and your son, Jesus Christ. You know, we say that, and we
believe that, when we first believe on Christ, but we sure do grow
to understand that more and more, just how much we need Him. And he gives us that grace to
just keep committing it all to him, leave it with the Lord,
give it all over to him, because we see more and more our own
incompetence and unworthiness to think anything of ourselves
as it being of ourselves, but it's all of his grace and mercy.
So I've titled this, The Prayer of the Aged Saint, part two,
part two. And I just want to go through
a quick reminder of what we saw last week, and then we'll pick
up in verse three. But we were looking primarily
at the first two verses of Psalm 71. And they go like this. In
thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be put to confusion. Deliver me in thy righteousness
and cause me to escape. incline thine ear unto me and
save me. And we saw that as we read through
this psalm, as we're going through this psalm, it begins here with
this prayer, with this heartfelt prayer of this aged saint. And it becomes more clear to
us that our voice is really the voice of our savior. We're speaking
by the spirit of grace and the words that we pray to our God,
according to the grace that he gives us. It's according to what
he's worked in us and so it's made more obvious to us that
the voice that by which we speak is really the voice of our Savior
himself. In verse 5 we saw this where
it says, For thou art my hope, O Lord God, thou art my trust
from my youth. And There's not a one of us that
can speak those words the way Christ, our Savior, our Lord
is able and does speak that word. That's true more than any of
us. It's true of Him. verse 6 by
thee have I been holding up from the womb thou art he that took
me out of my mother's bowels my praise shall be continually
of thee right and so our Lord is in all things pleases the
father well and in all things he gave God thanks and he gave
his father the glory for for all things right he he he relied
he trusted and committed all things to the father to his will
right when he was in the garden of Gethsemane he said not my
lord not my not not my will be done, Lord, but Thy will be done."
He committed everything to the Father because He desired His
will was to His sustenance, His meat. As we'll see later in John
4, His meat is to do the will of the Father. That's what He
came to do, to fulfill the will of God the Father. So, our Heavenly
Father, when we come before Him, He's already been propitiated. His wrath has already been appeased
by the Son. It doesn't matter how flowery
our words are, how kind and gracious and thankful
our words are, He's already propitiated. And the reason why we're able
to come with a thankful heart and a heart of understanding
is because of what our Savior has accomplished for us. And
that's because Christ, His praise is always of the Father. When
we come, He's already praised the Father on our behalf. We already speak according to
the Spirit who who with groans and words that cannot be uttered
has already propitiated the Father. All right, and so our Lord is
speaking because He's the one who reconciles us. He's the one
who's established this fellowship. He's the one that's reconciled
us to the Father in whom now we stand and come to Him and
hope in Him and have peace with God the Father, our Creator.
2 Corinthians 5.18 God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation so that we
now stand here together as a body, as a local assembly preaching
this, we've been given the ministry of reconciliation, whereby now
we proclaim it through the word of reconciliation, which is the
gospel of Jesus Christ. Okay, so now in this next verse,
verse three, we're going to hear the same voice in verse seven
in response to our prayer or to to show us that which undergirds
that prayer and is really at the foundation of where we're
praying from, how it is that we're praying in the Spirit.
All right, verse three, be thou my strong habitation, whereunto
I may continually resort. Thou hast given commandment to
save me, for thou art my rock and my fortress. You know, When
he speaks of our habitation, I was thinking, as we age, as
we grow older, there's times where sometimes the elderly,
they're unable to continue living on their own. It becomes increasingly
difficult at times for some, and that might be at sixty or
seventy or eighty or ninety or over a hundred but there's times
where it does happen it just gets more difficult and so it
requires us to make other living arrangements that we could be
properly cared for in our years but in Christ when we look to
Christ he's the one in whom we dwell he's the one in whom we
have our habitation for all eternity, and it shall never change. Be thou my strong habitation. Lord, let me dwell in thee safely
and securely as one who dwells safely and securely in their
own home. Provide for me. Let me dwell
in you. Lord be my habitation in whom
I continue to dwell for all eternity. It says where I may continually
resort. I'm always going home in Christ. We're always going home to the
same place to the one who loves me and cares for me and loves
to see me and rejoices over me and has provided all things for
me and he says I know and we know this because he says thou
hast given commandment to save me. God's commanded that we shall
be saved and his word goes forth in power and it shall not return
unto him void. Our foreheads are marked. as we are the Lord's. Our foreheads
are already marked, and the angels see it and know, and all those
evil forces that stand opposed to Christ, they know that we
are the Lord's. We are his children, we're his
people, and he is ours, and we are his, and they cannot pluck
us from our Father's hands. For thou art my rock and my fortress,
And what God the Father wills, what He wills, that is what shall
come to pass. And you will not be moved. You
saints that hope in Him, that have no strength of your own,
that's okay, because He's our fortress, He's our refuge, He's
our strong rock to which we fly. He cannot fail, the scriptures
say in 2 Corinthians 6.16, as God hath said, I will dwell in
them and walk in them. I will be their God and they
shall be my people. And so the hope of the believer
is founded upon the fact that God is our refuge. He's our strong
rock, right? He's our hope and our comfort
to which we fly. And these words, they're confirmed
for us in Christ himself. Look at verse seven. Psalm 71
verse seven. He says, I am as a wonder unto
many, but thou art my strong refuge. You know, our, our Lord,
we're told he he's, he dwells in the bosom of the father. He's
there fixed in the bosom of the father and dwells with him eternally. And where are you and I brethren? Where are we? We're in the arms
of our Savior. We're leaning and resting in
His bosom. And so we're in Christ, and He's
in the Father, and so we're safe and secure in our Lord. In 1 Peter 2.9, he says that
we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation,
a peculiar people. He's a wonder unto those that
know Him not, and so are we. We're a peculiar people in our
Lord that we should show forth the praises of Him who hath called
us out of darkness into His marvelous light. So our Savior, He's our
strong refuge. He is the rock, right? To the
rock, let me fly, right? To the rock that is higher than
I. We flee to Him. We run to Him
because nothing can touch us there. We cannot be, we're shielded
from. the heat of the sun, we're kept
cool and in the shade of our Savior, and no harm, no evil
can touch us there. We're safe from all danger. Now, remembering that the voice
we speak with is one with the voice of our Savior, we read
in Isaiah 52, verse eight, where we're told that the watchmen
of our God, they shall lift up the voice with the voice. They're going to lift up their
voice with the voice. Together shall they sing for
they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. And so we speak according to
the words of our Savior. We speak according to our Lord
and our Adonai. He's our Lord. He's our God and
Savior. And that's how we speak. All
right. You know, sometimes, you know,
you hear some nothing sounds more vile than when when a wife,
if you will, just speaks contrary to her husband all the time when
she just contradicts everything he says and puts him down before
her friends. And like it sounds ugly and it's
not becoming even when we hear it of others. And so the same
thing with us. Right. When we're When we're
angry or upset or complaining all the time, we're setting ourselves
opposed to the will and the providence and the good pleasure of our
Savior. And so He speaks to us gently
and kindly, and in love He turns our hearts again to to cause
us to love him and to speak kindly of him, to see, to know what
he is, not under bondage or under commandment, but in love. We
speak and declare his glory and his praise, right? And that's
so that we begin to speak not according to our own will, but
we speak according to the will of our husband. the Lord Jesus
Christ. We speak according to His glory
and His praise and what He's seeking to accomplish in the
earth and does accomplish. All right, now then, we come
to these verses here, verse nine. Look at Psalm 71, verse nine.
And here we read, cast me not off in the time of old age, forsake
me not when my strength faileth. And that that means something
to us, right? Because I would imagine, you
know, when, when we get older and, and, you know, maybe, maybe
your kids don't call as much as you'd like them to call, or,
you know, maybe you feel like you're being overlooked or passed
over. Well, you're never going to be
passed over by the Lord. He will not forsake you. He loves
you as much today as he ever loved you in the beginning when
he, when he saved you. All right. And, even if our old
mind, our mind should forget, right? The foods we eat have
so many metals in them now and the stuff they spray in the air,
there's so many metals. A lot more people have Alzheimer's
and are growing forgetful, but though we should forget, our
Lord will never forget us and he'll never forsake us or leave
us behind. And so, He says in verse 18 again,
Now also, when I am old and gray-headed, O God, forsake me not, until
I have showed thy strength unto this generation and thy power
to every one that is to come. Now, how is it that Christ speaks
these words? How is this our voice uniting
with the voice of our Savior? How are these words true or so? of him. You know, the Jews, they
thought that Christ was maybe, you know, somewhere in his 40s,
right? They thought he was in his 40s
and we know he was cut off around 33, right? And they thought,
they looked upon him and thought, this man is old and worn out. He must be at least in his forties,
right? They said unto him, thou art
not yet fifty years old and hast thou seen Abraham? So when they looked on Christ,
they were looking at a man who looked weary and tired and and
burdened with many cares. So in a sense, perhaps, that
could be said of him in his own flesh, which looked aged and
that he used his body intensely to labor for the church. But
that wouldn't be a stretch, because the scriptures say that there
is no beauty in him that we should desire him. came upon him, they
didn't see the body Adonis. They saw a man weak and small
and in the appearance of the eyes of people. One who was probably
not very good looking to look upon, but looked wearied and
wiped out. In one sense, the elderly, they
get to the point where they feel aches and pains and feel the
infirmity of the flesh. I remember one time, I think
I was bringing my aunt to a kidney place, and I was waiting in the
waiting room for her to go through her dialysis. I think I was meeting
her there to pick her up. And as I'm sitting there, I'm
listening to two elderly people in there for a good half hour.
And the whole time, all I heard was each one going back and forth. Well, I had this thing now just
happen to me, and this thing just broke. And today I'm here,
tomorrow I'm going to this doctor's office, the next day on Thursday
I'm going to this doctor, and then I'm going back over here
to this one. And the whole time they're just shooting back and
forth the whole catalog of everything that's ever gone wrong and broken
in them. You know, when we're young, we
feel certain aches and pains and we think, oh, this is what
my mom or my dad or somebody, you know, my grandparent has
said. about me, about what would happen, and we think, this is
it. And then the next decade comes, and we think, oh, no,
no, that was nothing. This must be what they're talking
about. And then the next decade comes, and you think, oh, I had
no idea. This is what they must be talking
about. And every decade, it grows increasingly more painful and
more stiff, and just things happen that you never expected or knew
could happen. Our Lord, he did suffer. We're
told in Hebrews 4.15 that we have not an high priest which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. And so our Savior suffered every
blow. He suffered every insult against
himself for you. He bore all that. He bore the
infirmities. He bore the diseases, right? When he took those, when he cleansed
people and took away their diseases, He bore that. He suffered that. He suffered that defect, that
blemish, that spot, and that weakness in Himself and took
it to the cross. And He bore it all before our
Father. He bore great, terrible agony
for His bride. He laid down His life for His
bride. And Isaiah 53, verse 4 says, And as we age, I think we increasingly
understand this more and more. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God and afflicted. And that means that when in the flesh,
when we looked upon Christ, we've said he's just, it's just, God
is punishing him. God is pouring out his wrath
upon him. justly. And we know that our Savior didn't
die on the cross for any sins that He committed. He did that
for His people in love. He could have taken Himself down
and He didn't. He did it in love. He stayed there. And, you know,
when I say increasingly understand, you know, sometimes I say before
you, that I feel myself to be more a sinner now than when I
first believed. And, you know, I think, you know,
as, as we, we, we saints, you know, all of us, as we grow in
the Lord, It's true that our outward behaviors, they modify
and we subdue the flesh to a certain degree and change those things
for which we've been chastened and know are egregious to the
Lord. And so the outward things, they're
not practiced the same way they were practiced in our youth in
many, many ways, but we know in our heart, we see in ourselves,
in our heart, we see that, Lord, there's things that I've sinned
against you and done against you that I didn't even know were
sinful, right? You just see more and more just
how unbelieving we are. how unfaithful, how untrusting,
how forgetful we are to the Lord, how unthankful we can be. And we see those examples more
and more. You may not be doing all the
same vices you did when you were young and you don't desire those
things or want to do those things the same way but you still see
in your own heart just how cold and indifferent we can be to
the Lord and yet all he is is kind and faithful and just and
patient with us and draws us with cords of love and peace
and to know him and to rest in him So how is it that these words,
nine and 18, are true of our Lord when he speaks of his old
age and gray hairs and failing strength? I think it's through
our weariness and it's through our weakness that he is bearing
us up in his arms. He's the one carrying us. He's
the one teaching us and leading us in paths of righteousness.
And so he's sustaining us. He's bearing with all of our
infirmities. He's bearing with all those sins
of coldness and indifference and forgetfulness. And he's teaching
us and showing us so that we don't forget him and that we
do see our need of him and his grace more and more and are made
more thankful for what he has accomplished for us by the death
of himself. apart from any works, apart from
any works of righteousness, apart from a harsh yoke of religion
and bondage under the law, he delivers us from that and deals
with us so kindly, so graciously. You know, the way it sweetly
is when you deal with your parents or grandparents, how patient
you are with them and how you deal with them and how you want
to be dealt with by your children and your grandchildren. In that
same way, our Lord is kind and gentle and a gracious Savior
to us. And so He's bearing our weariness
and our weakness and He's providing all things for us. He keeps us. He doesn't grow tired of us and
get angry and abuse us. He's very gracious to us. Listen to these words in Isaiah
46 verses 3 and 4. It says, hearken unto me, O house
of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which
are born by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb,
and even to your old age I am he. And even to hoar hairs, or
frosted white hairs, will I carry you. I have made, and I will
bear, even I will carry and will deliver you. And so your Lord,
He feels your infirmities. He bears you up in all your infirmities,
right? And in all things, He's bearing
you up. He feels your aches, your pains,
the worries that you have, right? The fears that encroaching upon
our mind and the concerns that we have. And those things that
trouble us, when we cry to him, he hears it. When we're lonely,
he hears it. He draws near to us to comfort
us and to let us know that he helps us. And I know that there's
times where we forget, but when we pray, when he brings us to
cry out to him and say, Lord, I just, I feel alone. It's in those times where I find
that He will always gently, kindly show you, you're not alone. There's
people that do love you, that do think of you and help you. And we see that fellowship and
the friendships that we have here with one another in the
body. And the Lord does that and He
stirs us up so that we do remember one another. And those words
of comfort always seem to come at the right time. when we need
them. And we're reminded, wow, I thought
I was in a dark place and I thought I couldn't remember any goodness.
I couldn't remember any fruit in me. I couldn't remember anything
that would tell me the Lord loves me and that I'm his. But then
he reminds us in those moments, he brings us out of that darkness
and says, look at how I've provided for you and done all things for
you. And he keeps us and he settles us once again in him. So believer, we're helped by
Christ and we're helped by Christ because he didn't help himself,
right? He didn't defend himself. He
didn't protect himself and keep himself and deliver himself from
the enemy. He allowed himself to be taken
and brought to that cross, right? To be brought there to be crucified
for you, that you and me that have no righteousness of our
own, that we should an inheritance in him and know that we're safe
and secure and everything's taken care of he's providing everything
and will never let us he'll never let us go all right listen to
Psalm 71 or look there at Psalm 71 verses 10 and 11 for mine
enemies speak against me and they that lay wait for my soul
take counsel together saying God hath forsaken him persecute
and take him for there is none to deliver him When the hour
had come in which they took your Savior, the Lord, in which they
took him and they charged him, right? They brought him in before
their court and they charged him with false claims and they
tried to provoke him to get some kind of a confession. Well, eventually
they had enough and they brought him to Pilate that the Gentiles
should crucify him according to the death of the Romans there. And so they seized upon the opportunity,
believing that God had delivered Christ into their hands, that
for their righteousness, for their place, God had done this. And it wasn't, it was for your
good that the Father determined this to be done, right? To do
whatsoever thy hand, O God, and thy counsel determined before
to be done. And so in his time of suffering
there, in which he went to the cross, There is where He delivered
you. That's where He redeemed His
people, where He shed His blood as the Lamb of God, the sacrifice
to the Father to make atonement, to make a covering for your sin,
so that when we stand before the Father, He's propitiated,
He receives us Christ and he did this all he did that not
for his own sins but for ours to put away our sins and to make
us righteous before the Father for by grace are you saved through
faith and that that faith is not of yourselves it is the gift
of God and so brethren Christ is your refuge against the enemy
and they can't the enemy cannot harm you there in Christ. You look to Him, you flee to
Him, and you trust in Him. And perhaps we'll pick up this
next time, but I pray the Lord comfort you, whether you're young
or you're old, that you be comforted in Christ and that you be encouraged
as you've seen the aged saints before you to commit all things
to Christ and know that he's taking care of everything and
you're well provided for. And you shall never be left alone
or out in the cold or in the dark. You shall have a sure dwelling
place, a sure habitation in your Lord. Amen. All right, let's
close in prayer. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your grace, for your kindness, for your generosity,
Your unspeakable gift toward us and your son, Jesus Christ.
Lord, we thank you for this word. We pray that you would indeed
encourage us and teach us to commit all things into your hands,
into your keeping. Lord, help us, for you know our
weaknesses. And Lord, we need you in every
way to bear us up and to carry us and to bring us home to that
sweet habitation where you dwell. that we may dwell forever with
our God for all eternity. It's in the name of our Lord
that we pray these things. And if there is anyone suffering
or troubled or weary, Lord, help us as brethren to be a help to
them and a comfort and to show them the love that you've shown
to us in your son, Jesus Christ. It's in the name of our Lord
and savior that we pray. Amen.