Psalm chapter 54, we're looking at this psalm in its
entirety, verses 1 through 7. The title of the message is,
The Cry and the Joy of Christ. The Cry and the Joy of Christ. Now, if you read the title here,
it says, To the Chief Musician on the Negelov, Michel, a psalm
of David, when the Zephyms came and said to Saul, Doth not David
hide himself with us?" This psalm, this title, gives us reference
to when this psalm was written. Now, this could have been either
time, because they told Saul concerning David's hiding place
twice. They betrayed David twice. David had come to the wilderness
outside of Zephan, and he was peaceful. He came to rest from
running from Saul. He did nothing to these people.
And yet, because these people desired the smile of the King,
because they desired favor with Saul, they betrayed him and told
Saul where he was. These wicked men, these wicked
men who betrayed an innocent man. David was innocent. He didn't do anything to these
people. And yet they traded him, they betrayed him to die. This sin is seen in the smallest
of children, isn't it? The smallest of children love
to betray one another, don't they? I see this in my children,
just for my attention. One of them will come up and
say, hey, you know what this one did? Hey, you know, this
person did this and this and this. They're ratting them out.
They're ratting them out because they want that feeling. They want that feeling of accomplishment. They want to be elevated above
the other. And friends, this nature is in
us all, to be elevated above another. Was this not true of our Lord's
betrayal? Was this not a picture of our
Lord's betrayal by Judas Iscariot? The blessed, anointed King of
God came and dwelt among men, being innocent, an innocent man,
worthy of only praise. Scripture says that he came doing
good, healing the sick, Imagine that if someone, if he came to
Louisville and he went to the hospitals and healed all of the
sick, what would you have against such a man? He came into the world as a man
to fulfill the scriptures for one purpose. to glorify God and
by glorifying God to save his people from their sins. That
was his purpose. That was his mission. But in order to save his people,
he must first go to the cross. He must first cry in suffering
anguish. Jesus told his disciples that
he would be betrayed. He said, you know, two days in
the Passover is coming and the Son of Man shall be betrayed
and crucified. You see, God, before the world
began, purposed to redeem an elect people for himself. God purposed. He purposed. that Jesus Christ would be betrayed
and die for our sins. And even the price, even 30 pieces
of silver, was foretold. That's in Zechariah 11, verse
12, he says, what is my price? And they weighed out his price,
30 pieces of silver. What is Christ's price? It's
infinite. What did Judas think about him?
Thirty pieces of silver. That's all he was worth. Judas was ordained by God to
be the son of perdition. But Jesus said unto Judas, Woe
is he who betrayeth the Son of Man. It would have been better
if he had not been born. Glory to God. who has ordained
all things after the counsel of his will. Is that not worthy
of infinite glory? I'll tell you what, I'm pretty
proud of myself when I say something and actually do it. I get pretty
proud of myself. That's nothing to glory in. God
determines all things and does all things after the counsel
of his own will, even the wicked. God uses all men for his own
glory. Judas Iscariot, God used for
his own glory. The scripture says that the wrath
of man shall praise him. and the remainder of wrath he
shall restrain." In other words, when a man's wrath will praise
him, he'll let him have it. And when it won't, he'll stop
it. Woe is the man who refuses to
submit to God's holy King. This is nothing less than a crime
of treason against the Lord and his anointed to refuse to believe
on the Son of God." Is that not what Judas did? He refused to
believe on the Son of God. He was there. He saw the miracles. He heard the Word. And he refused. And the Pharisees said, what
is his value to you? Oh, thirty pieces of silver.
He's not worth anything else. He refused to believe. Any man
who hears the gospel of Jesus Christ and does not believe,
woe, woe unto you. If anyone in this building dies
in their sins, You will hear my voice for eternity. Woe is
you who have not believed on the Son of God. Why? You've betrayed him. You've turned
your back on the Son of the living God. Scripture says, Kiss the
Son lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way. If
any man refuses to believe the gospel, Well, what is the gospel? Well, the gospel is summed up
in this, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even
so must. Must the son of man be lifted
up and when he is lifted up, he will draw all men to him. This is the gospel. This morning,
I'm pointing you to a person. I want you to see a person. I
want you to know a person. I want you to see Christ. I want
you to behold the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's God's anointed, perfect
and righteous Savior. And this righteous Savior was
to bear the image. of the serpent. Is that not strange? These Hebrews were being bit
by these serpents. You know, it really didn't matter
if you were bit one time or a thousand. What was the result? Death was
imminent. There was no cure. And God said to Moses, take a
serpent. Make a serpent of brass. and put it on a pole, lift it
up, and everyone who looks will live. Everyone who looks will live.
This is the message of Christ who was made sin for us, who knew no sin. He was made in the very image
of the thing that was destroying us. God hath laid on Him the iniquity
of us all. He bare our sins in His own body on the tree. Friends, all men are sinners. All of us are rebels and haters
of the living God. And we've all been bitten by
sin. It doesn't matter if you consider
yourself a good sinner or a bad sinner. It doesn't matter if you're bit
once or a thousand times, you're still. Dead. Dead. But God. I love those two words. Because if it has not been for
those two words, I would have died in my sins. But God, who
is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us, He sent His Son to be the remedy
for sin. The remedy. And when He laid on Him the iniquity
of us, who is the us? That's important, isn't it? Isn't
that important to know? Do you desire to know? Was your
iniquity laid on Christ? Was He bearing your sins? You see, He was bearing the sins
of God's elect. I know that. He bore the sins of all those
that God had chosen from before the foundation of the world.
I know that. But how am I to know if I am
one of those elect? Have you believed? You see, because
every one of the elect will believe, they will trust in Christ. Why?
Because He's already paid for their sins. He had laid on Him
the iniquity of us all. There will not be one of God's
elect that will be missing in glory. Not one. Why? He paid it all. Oh, not one of Christ's redeemed
shall be lost in eternity, but all will look to Christ and live. I beg you this morning, please,
please, if you don't hear anything else, please, hear, hear this. Look and live. Look and live. Believe. And He will heal your soul from
all your sin. Look to His righteousness. You
don't have any. I don't have any. He is righteousness. The Lord shall send a righteous
branch, and His name is Jehovah Tiskanu, the Lord our righteousness. Look to His righteousness. Look
to His blood. Don't look to your works. Don't
look to what you can do. Look to His blood. Look to what
He did. He did it. It's finished. The
work is done. Why will you not believe? Why
will you not trust? The man will not believe and
will not trust is because of his own wicked sin and hatred
for the Son of God. Some of you will not look. It pains my soul to know that
maybe somebody in this building will die in their sin. Because they continue to look
to their own flesh and works, still trying to heal themselves
of the bite of sin, rather than just looking and living. Sinners take heed. Judas gave
up Christ for 30 pieces of silver. What are you going to give him
up for? What is he worth to you? I tell you, many sinners will
repent. You know, when Judas, he repented,
didn't he? Scripture says he did. He went
and took that thirty pieces of silver, went back to those Pharisees,
and he cast it at their feet. And he said, I have betrayed
innocent blood. And he wept and went out and
hung himself. Scripture says that Esau, when
he had forsaken the birthright, which was Christ, he betrayed
Christ for a bowl of soup. And the Scripture says he repented
and sought it carefully with tears. You see, many people will start
to feel guilty, and they'll try to change their ways. They'll
say, well, I'll just turn over a new leaf. I'll just start doing
this and stop doing this. I'll become a good Calvinist. But unless you repent and believe,
you'll hang yourself in your own righteousness, your own self-righteousness,
and you'll die in your sins. Lost men may want to be free
from the conscience of sin, but I'll tell you this, they don't
want to be free from sin. Any man who has been loosed to
sin has never been freed from sin. Do you get that? A man, any man
who has been loosed to go out into sin, feel comfortable in
sin because he's made some decision. Because he's made some reformation
in his life. Because he's become faithful
in certain things now. And he's stopped doing other
things. And so he says, oh, everything's
alright with me. I can just do what I want to
now. Yep, you'll do exactly what you want to. If you're lost,
you'll see it. And you'll not think twice about
it. But if we've been loosed from sin, it's altogether different. We abhor ourselves. We abhor our sin. And we love
righteousness. This psalm this morning is truly
the cry of David for being betrayed. He was betrayed. Have you ever
been betrayed? Have you ever been turned over
by someone that you considered to be your friend? Well, David
considered these people his friend. He didn't do anything to them.
And yet they betrayed him. And truly, he cries out to God.
He says, save me, O God, save me. He's in trouble. Save me. Saul is after me. Saul will kill
me. Save me. Deliver me. Truly, David was in great need
of deliverance from Saul and these treacherous people. But
friends, if we look at this book, if we look at these psalms and
we just see David, we are missing what the Holy Spirit intended.
Friends, these psalms are of Christ. There's a greater and
higher view in the Word of God. Whenever you read something in
the Scriptures, run to Christ. Run as fast as you can and find
Christ in it. If you can't find Him, move on
to something else. Move on to something else. There's
a greater and higher view in this Scripture to see the suffering,
the cry of Christ who was betrayed. He said, Save me, O God, by thy
name, and judge me. by thy strength." Friends, Jesus
Christ, when he cried on the cross bearing our sins, he cried in faith. He cried believing God to save
him. This baffles my mind. It's a
very deep thought that the Lord Jesus Christ was in such darkness, was so immersed in our sins that
God Himself forsook His Son. I'll tell you, there was a time
when God revealed my sin to me. And I'll tell you, each time
He does it, it just seems lower and lower. But the darkness that I felt,
I felt like He had left me, like there was no hope for my soul.
How much more infinite was Christ's darkness? God forsook Him completely. I'll tell you this, I was sinner
by birth, a sinner by choice, but God has never forsaken me.
He's never left me. I can't imagine the darkness he
felt, the great agony he suffered. And yet he still said, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Friends, no man is saved without
faith in Christ. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. Yet man is incapable of such
faith. Therefore, faith must be produced. It must be obtained by another. And Christ, in His greatest despair,
still believed God. Still. Can we say that about our faith?
In your greatest despair, have you always believed God? No. We haven't. But praise God, He has. Scripture says, no man can come
unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. Faith
is impossible for us to have unless God give it. And what
faith does He give? He gives the faith of the Son
of God to us. And we believe. Therefore, this
cry of Christ was a cry of faith to God in order for us to have
the fruit of the Spirit, faith, He must accomplish it. We fail
to believe in God, yet behold, our substitute has believed God
perfectly. When the iniquity of all of us
was on him, when he was made to feel our guilt as his own,
he still cried, God save me, God save me. And when God delivered Christ,
sustained Christ by His faith, He sustained me. Why is it that believers never
stop believing? Why is it that true believers
will believe unto the end? Because Christ believed unto
the end. And His faith is my faith. For by grace you are saved through
faith, and that faith is not of yourself. It, that faith,
is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." Faith
is a gift, a sovereign gift, a holy gift. Praise God that he cried in faith.
Second of all, Christ cried for the glory of God. He said this
in verse 1, he said, O God, save me, O God, by thy name. Do you realize that all things
are for the glory of God? I'll tell you what, if we don't
recognize that, we're going to live in a very sad place all
the time. We always think everything's
about us. It's all about me. It's all about
him. He does all of this for himself,
whatever it is, whatever happens in time. God did it for himself. He said, behold, I am God and
there is none else. I kill. And I make a life. I wound and I heal. You can tell a person who has
no idea who God is when they start putting out questions like,
well, how can a good God let any one of us live? You see, God does all things
for Himself, for of Him and through Him and to Him are all things
to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen! Amen. Did we do all things for the
glory of God? Have we done all things for the glory of God? No, we tried to rob God of His
glory, just like our Father, just like Adam. We, by nature,
tried to rob God of his glory. God, here, you just help me alone
in this matter of salvation. You just do your part and I'll
do my part. You have your glory and I'll
have my own glory. No. I didn't save anybody like
that. We have failed to glorify God.
in all things. And God said, I will not share
my glory with you. I'll tell you, simpler words
have never been spoken. God will not share in this matter
of salvation. It is either all of him or you
will be damned. There is no middle ground. Either
he will receive all the glory. Or you'll suffer in hell forever,
trying to rob God of His glory. So Jesus Christ, in great faith,
came to glorify the name of God. He said, Save me, O God, by Thy
name, for Your own glory. Save me! Deliver me! For Your own glory. God the Father had elected a
people for his own glory. Isn't that what it says in Ephesians
1? That he has accepted us in the
beloved. Why? According to the praise
of the glory of his grace. That's why. Not because we were
special. Not because God saw anything
in us. But any difference between you
and me centers both of us. The only one that made the difference
was God. God made the difference. It was for God's glory that Christ
died. It was for God's glory the Holy
Spirit called us. It was for God's glory He gave
us His faith. It is for God's glory He will
receive us again when He comes back. to himself. He'll receive
us in glory forever because of his own namesake. He said, I'm God. I've blotted
out your sins for my own namesake. I'm so thankful for that. I'm
so thankful because I'm not worthy of God doing anything for me. But he did. for his own namesake. Believers in Christ stand constantly
in need of forgiveness. Do you need forgiveness? Do you stand in need of mercy? Daily I stand in need. We stand
in need daily of mercy. How can we know we have it? because
Christ glorified God in his cry. He glorified God in his death.
He said, I, even I am he that blotteth out thy transgression
for mine own sake. How can this be? How can God
be holy and just and still forgive me of my sins? Because Christ
glorified God. Notice this in that next section. It says, Judge me by thy strength. Now, who in here would dare to
say that to God? Any one of us? God, you judge me in the strength
of your justice. Who could say that? Scripture
says if God were to mark iniquity, who could stand? Who could stand
against God? This could only be Christ. This
could only be Christ saying this, judge me in the strength of your
righteousness. He was the spotless son of God. And he endured our sin and sufferings
for our sins, and he came out pure on the other side. And he ascended. to the hill
of the Lord. Who shall ascend to the hill
of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." When
Christ died for our sins and paid the debt and went into the
grave, that's where our sins went. And when he came out, he
left them there. He left them there. Our sins are paid because he
cried for the justice of God. And number three, Christ cried
to God and was heard. This is a comfort and joy to
us that he was heard. His cry was heard. I'll tell you, there's many times
I don't feel like my cry is heard. I cry to God. And sometimes he
hides his face from me. But I know this. He always hears
me because he heard my Savior. Hear my prayer, O God, and give
ear to the words of my mouth, for strangers are risen up against
me, and oppressors seek after my soul. They have not set themselves
before God. Believer in Christ, he cried
and was heard And because His blood was found
perfect, He had access to God's ear. So do you. If you ever need,
you have the ears of God to listen. When nobody else will listen, He does. He hears our cries only
because of our Savior cry of agony. As Christ was rejected of men
by this world and betrayed, don't expect much else. I think we make ourselves miserable
by expecting too much of this lost world. We expect men, just by reason,
to somehow understand what's right. And when they don't, we're
all in a tizzy. We get spun around. Why would
you expect this world to treat you any different than it does
Christ? We shouldn't expect that. But
know this, when they treat you wrong, when they betray you,
we have the ear of God and he'll hear our cries against him. And lastly, the rejoicing of
Christ in hope. Notice this in verse four, he
said, Behold, my God is my helper. The Lord is with them that uphold
my soul. He shall reward evil unto mine
enemies, cut them off in thy truth. I will freely sacrifice
unto thee, I will praise thy name, O Lord, for it is good,
for he hath delivered me out of all trouble, and mine eye
hath seen his desire upon mine enemies." There is no doubt that the Lord
despised the shame of the cross. Thus, sin is natural. To Him
it was not. He despised the shame of the
cross, but for the joy that was set before Him. What joy? You. He endured the cross for the
joy to have you. I can't understand that. I tell you, sometimes I don't
want me. But I'm His joy. I'm His joy. He suffered and endured all my sins so that I might have
all His blessings. In the book of Revelation, it
says that there is no more sin. No more separation between us
and God. No more death, spiritual or physical. No more sorrow. No more crying. No more pain. No more curse.
No more night. Why? Because of the joy that
was set before Him. It is the Father's good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom. Have you meditated on that? That
it's God's good pleasure to give you the kingdom? His joy is our joy. His rejoicing is our rejoicing. God was his helper. God saved
him. God is our helper. God will save
us. He will deliver us from every
trouble, every trial. He said, when you're in the fire,
I'm there with you. The water won't overflow you. Sometimes we feel like the water's
going to overflow us and all the things sticking out our lips. But I guarantee you it won't
go over your lips. God said it won't. He will sustain us, and this
should be our rejoicing. And as Christ freely offered
himself as a sacrifice to God, should not we also? Has Christ not done great things
for us? How is it then that we would
not offer ourselves a sacrifice unto God daily? Paul said, I
die daily. How free was Christ's sacrifice?
What did it cost you? Nothing. That's exactly how we're to sacrifice
all things for Him. Freely. Gladly. I read this just last night.
It said, they were pricked in their hearts. Acts chapter 2
and verse 38, Peter said, repent and be baptized, every one of
you, in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins. And these
people were pricked in their hearts. And they said, what shall
we do? And when they told him, they
gladly received. What has our Savior done for
us? He was betrayed. He suffered the justice of God.
He believed God in our stead. He accomplished righteousness
for us. And he did it freely. This morning he forgives you
freely. This morning his grace is fresh
and new as it was in eternity. I'm still amazed that he loves
me. I stand amazed in the presence
Jesus, the Nazarene, and how he could love me, a sinner
condemned unclean. Oh, how marvelous. Oh, how wonderful. Trust on Christ. Believe Christ. And friends, we will receive
all his joy. I pray that God would bless this
to your hearts. I stand and be dismissed in prayer.