Good evening. If you would, you can open your
Bibles to Psalm 9. Psalm chapter 9. We'll come to this scripture
in a minute. But this evening, I have a very
particular message for a very particular people. This message
this evening is for you. This message is for you. This message is for you. It's for you. It's for you. It's for you and you. And you and you. And if I keep going, you and
you. And you. This message is for the kids. And because I kept going, we'll
say young people as well. If I didn't point at you, please
stay. As everyone knows that any gospel message, which I pray,
that's what this is. Anyone whom the Lord gives ears
to hear will benefit greatly from. But this message is for
those who I pointed at. And I plan to be as simple as
I can. I plan to try to be as brief
or short as I can. And I pray that the Lord would
give you just a few moments to listen, to hear what I have to
say. to listen to me and listen to what the Word says and what
the Lord teaches us. And I'm going to start with a
story. And the reason you'll want to
listen to this story is because this story is about you. You
are the main character in this story. It's about you. So when you listen to this story,
realize you are the main character. Everything I say, I want you
to imagine you're the person I'm talking about, because that's
who I am talking about. And every time I ask a question,
every time I give a scenario, I want you to think in your mind,
what would I do in this situation? What would I do? Not, what would
someone else do? Not, what would my parents do?
Or someone else, what would I do? If I was in this situation, what
would I do? And so let's start with this story. You decide that
you are gonna go for a walk. And you're gonna go for a walk
by yourself. And on that walk, after a few
minutes, you fall into a pit. This is not just a regular hole,
this is a deep pit. What are you going to do? You fall into a deep pit, a hole. What are you going to do? Well,
let me tell you some of the things I think you're thinking. If you're
strong, you think to yourself, I'm going to climb my way out
of this pit. If you're fast, you're going to think, I'm going
to pick up my speed and I can run my way out of here. If you're
smart, you're going to think to yourself, I can figure a way
out of here. If you're clever, you think,
I'm going to find something no one else is going to be able
to find, and I can get myself out of here. And on and on. Some of us, some of you, like
to pretend you have superhero abilities. If I could just shoot
a web up there, I'd be able to get myself out. No matter how many things you
try, you can't get out of the pit. Nothing works. Nothing works. And when you realize
that, no matter how long it's been, there's only one thing
you can do. So think about it. You've tried
everything you can to get out of the pit. You realize, I can't
get out. What are you going to do? You
can't get out. There's no way for you to get
out. What are you going to do? Now, whether it took you just
a couple seconds to get to this place, it took you a few hours
to get to this place, or even if you're really persistent,
you try really hard and it took you days to get to this place,
this is what you're going to do. Help! Help! I'm stuck! I can't get out! Somebody,
anybody, please help me! That's what you're going to do,
right? If you figure out I can't get out, you're gonna cry out. Now, that means that you can't
do it yourself. Now, everybody's walked outside
in front of our church, and on the side of the porch, there's
a little fall there, just a foot or two, depending on where you
are. If you walked out after church and you fell off of that,
would you immediately start screaming for help? No, of course not. You'd be more embarrassed. You're
just gonna walk around and get out yourself. So the only time
we cry out for help is when we can't do it ourselves. Now, you're
in this pit, and you can't get out. And you're yelling, you're
screaming, you may even be crying, help please, somebody, anybody
help me. And all of a sudden, at the top
of the pit, you see a face peek over. And you try to see who
it is, and you recognize that face. And do you know who it
is? It's little Lydia Ruth. Just
learned how to walk. She's come over there and she
looks over there. Now what are you thinking? All
you've been doing is saying, anybody, somebody, please come
find me in this pit. And you see this little girl
come to the edge of the pit. Well, maybe you're thinking to
yourself, she can't get me out. Maybe you're thinking to yourself,
I hope she doesn't fall in. She's more likely to fall in
than help me. Maybe you think to yourself, I wonder if her
mom or dad or brother or sister are there, and you start hollering
their names. But what you realize is you're
in a situation where you're asking for the wrong thing. You kept
yelling, help, anybody, somebody, come to me. You realize you need
to add something to that. You don't need to just holler
help, you need to say help, and you need it to be someone who
is able to help you. Okay, so now we start yelling,
help, help, and in your mind you're thinking, please, it's
somebody who's able to help me. And so, I don't know how long
it's been, but you're desperate, and then all of a sudden, a big
shadow comes over the pit. And you look up, and someone
who's huge is looking down into the pit. They've got a big rope
wrapped around their shoulders, huge rope. And they look down,
and you see them, and you get so excited. Someone who is able
to help me get out of the pit. And you holler at them, help
me, I'm stuck, I can't get out of this pit. Will you please
help me? And they look down at you in the pit, and they acknowledge
you're down there, and then they back away from the pit. And you
think to yourself, I bet they're gonna go tie that rope to a tree,
and they're gonna get me out. But after a little while, you
don't hear anything else. And you think, maybe they went
to go get someone else who can come and help get me out. And
the longer you wait, you come to another realization. You didn't
just need anybody to come help you. You didn't just need someone
who was able to come help you. You needed someone who was able
and willing to help you. Because someone who is able to
help you and aren't willing, that doesn't matter. And someone
who's willing to help you but not able to help you, that doesn't
matter either. So we're stuck in this pit and no one seems
able or willing to help us. So let me move off this story
for a second and let me explain something. Throughout the scriptures,
over and over and over again, the Lord uses this scenario,
this illustration of a pit, of a description of our spiritual
situation. But spiritually, our sin has
put us in a situation that we can't get out of. Our pit is
our sin. We are stuck in our sin and we
can't get out. Our sin is our problem. We're
stuck. And if the Lord is gracious to
us, he makes us to realize that we're in a pit. What's worse than being stuck
in a pit? Not knowing you're stuck in a
pit. There are so many people in this world, and some people
may be in here, that don't realize they are stuck and lost in their
sin. And if the Lord doesn't reveal
that to you, you will spend all of your days lost in sin without
a care in the world about it. But if He's gracious enough to
show you your sin, and He's gracious enough to let you realize, I'm
stuck in a pit, what we naturally do is we try to get ourselves
out. We try to figure out any way
we can, how can I save myself from this sin debt? The wages
of sin is death. We need someone to save us from
our sin. So we try everything we can.
If we're strong, we try to push our sins down. We try to control
it. If we're fast, we try to run away from our sin. If we're
smart, then we think we can outsmart it. We just figure this out.
If we're clever, we spend all our days tricking other people
and even ourselves that we don't have sin. And if we believe in
superheroes, if we think of crazy things, That's what so many people
in religion are doing. They come up with the most comical
ways, the most ludicrous way that they are gonna save themselves
from their sin. In the same way that if we're
stuck in this pit, to imagine I could shoot a web out of my
hand and pull myself out. That's what it's like to think
that I can save myself from my own sin. That's what it's like. And if the Lord is gracious enough
to then teach us that we can't save ourselves, He makes us to
cry out. He makes us to realize we need
a Savior. And then He makes us to realize
that there's not a woman, a man, or a person who can help us.
No one can do that. Nobody on this earth can help
us. We can't save ourselves. No one can help us save ourselves. And nobody can save us for us. You can't do it. It's impossible.
The scriptures describe it as the blind leading the blind.
I do not like the word hate, and we try not to use it in our
house. There's plenty of words we can use instead, but I'm going
to say that word right now. I hate it when any man or woman
tells another man or woman, any sinner tells another sinner there's
something they can do for their own salvation. It's the worst
advice anybody could ever get. And in the Lord's grace, He will
show us all of these things. He will show us our sin. He will
show us what comes from our sin. He'll show us we can't save ourselves
and no one else can save us. And that's when we hit rock bottom.
That's when we find ourselves in this pit, in a place where
we've cried out, we've hollered, we've yelled, no one seems able,
nobody seems willing to save us, and we just sit down in the
pit. Maybe we lay down, we're tired,
we're gonna give up, we've got nothing. And I said, there's
no man that can save us from this pit, but there's a God man. There is one who is able and
willing to save. There is one. And we'll get more
into this. But turn, you're over here in
Psalm chapter 9. Let me ask you a couple questions,
kids. In this pit, something you might ask yourself is this,
whose pit is this? You just went for a walk. Whose
pit is this? Well, do you know whose pit you're
stuck in? Your pit. You're stuck in your own pit.
The pit I'm in, it's my pit. I'm stuck in my pit. I'm in my
own sin. It's not someone else's, it's
mine. Now, when did I fall in this pit? Well, you fell in the
pit when Adam fell in the garden. died in his sins in the garden.
He fell. He was made perfect, but he sinned
and he fell. And we were born into sin. How
many ever generations it is, we were born into sin. And do
you know when else we fell? When we sinned. We were born
in sin and we're born just sinning over and over again. Now what
about this one? How did the pit get there? You
know, that's a pretty good question. Why is there a huge hole here?
Look at Psalm 9, verse 15. Listen to this. How did the pit
get there? Verse 15 says, "...the heathen
us are sunk down in the pit that they made." Look at Psalm 7,
across the page, verse 15. "...He made a pit and digged
it and has fallen into the ditch which he made." You know how
the pit got there? We dug the pit. I dug my own
pit. Now if you got up one morning
and walked outside and your next door neighbor was digging in
his front yard, and he digged all day long, and he kept digging,
and he kept digging, and he kept digging. And at the end of the
day, when you got home that night, he wasn't digging anymore. You
didn't see him anywhere. And all of a sudden, you walked
over to the hole, the pit, and he was in his own pit. Would
that not be hilarious? He dug himself into a pit. That's
what we did, is all we do is sin. We dug our own pit, and
you know what we're doing right now? We're just digging some
more. We just keep digging. You know, the scriptures actually
call it in other times, this pit, a bottomless pit, a hole. We're so bad that we actually
could never get to the bottom of our sin. We commit sins faster
than we're falling. We just sin and sin and sin. That's all we do. Now, you're
stuck in a pit, and you're worried and you're scared. And you might
ask yourself this question, is this pit I'm in, is it dangerous? Is this pit dangerous? Turn with
me to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. Now we understand we're stuck. We're stuck here. We can't get
ourselves out of the pit. And we realize that we're in
danger, but how dangerous is this pit? Psalm 69 verse 15 says,
Listen to this. Now hold on a second. Now I'm trapped in a pit, and
that's not a good situation. But does that right there say
that the pit can swallow me? In our sin, death is the punishment. The wages of sin is death. But
we all just think that that cord is going to run out at some point.
No one thinks that they're about to be swallowed up in their sin.
At some point it'll happen, at some point down the way. but
sin could swallow us at any moment. Any moment. That's how urgent
this is. Now I said we're stuck in a pit
and you were hollering, right? I'm not sure if I was in a life
or death situation. If you were in this pit, how
long do you think you could yell? Non-stop. The whole time. Help!
Help! You gotta keep yelling because
what if somebody comes close and you aren't yelling? Help!
Help! I could yell for a certain amount
of time, but you know what would make me yell longer? If I was
scared that that pit was going to swallow me up at any moment. Now I said we were crying out.
Do you think we would cry a little harder if we were scared that
this was our last chance to cry? Do you think we would pause and
take a breath? In the flesh, in our sin, We
are made to cry out to our Lord. We are made to cry out for help.
If we realized that this could be our last moment, what do you
think we should be doing? If in that pit you realized,
I've got one minute until that pit swallows me up. I got one
minute, 60 seconds. Do you think during that 60 seconds
you are going to stop crying out? If we thought that our time
was almost up, would we not spend every single moment begging and
crying out, Lord, save me, help me, please, come to me, just
over and over. Repeat it as much as you can.
This pit, this sin that we have is a death sentence. It's going
to kill us. It's going to kill the flesh. It is. But if we cry
out, if we cry out, if the Lord makes us to realize, if he makes
us to realize, we'll understand that it isn't how hard we've
tried to get out. It isn't how loud that we yell. It isn't about how bad we want
to get out. The only thing that matters is
will the one who is willing and able actually save us. That's all that matters. Will
he save us? You spent so much effort crying
out, but it's all a waste unless you're crying to the Lord. There
are a lot of people who think that they're crying out, and
they may be crying for a lot of things, but if you aren't
crying out for the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a waste of time. There is only one place, one
person that we can ever be saved. There's only one Savior. We have
to cry out to him. He's the only one. Turn with
me to Psalm 143. Psalm 143. Look at verse 7 of Psalm 143.
Listen to this other scripture in Psalm 31. Make thy face to shine upon thy
servant. Save me for thy mercy's sake. Let me not be ashamed, O Lord,
for I have called upon thee. Let the wicked be ashamed, and
let them be silent in the pit." This verse here says, let me
not be ashamed. And for a second, I'll talk about
myself, but this is something all of you need to hear. There
will be plenty of times in your life It doesn't matter if the
Lord has saved you or not. There will be plenty of times
in your life where either in the moment or looking back, you
will realize that you were ashamed to cry out to the Lord. Whether
it is in a moment of self-righteousness, whether it's in a moment of fear
of earthly things, whether you're with someone that you're scared
how they'll react. But as this verse says, let me
not be ashamed, oh Lord. There's no reason to be ashamed
because he is the one who can save. If you were stuck in the
pit with someone else, or let's say they were stuck in their
own pit, would you stop hollering or yelling out for help because
they weren't yelling out for help? Would you do what someone
else does if your life's on the line? You're going to do what's
best for you. Now, we don't cry out unless
the Lord makes us to cry out to Him. We don't even know who
He is. We're completely lost without
Him showing us who He is. But once He does, in His grace,
don't ever let there be a moment where we're ashamed to cry out
to Him, where we stop crying out to Him. Cry out to the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will get the only possible result. If you cry to Him, I promise
you there is only one possible result for this. Turn to Psalm
40. There is only one possible result Psalm 40, verse 1 and 2. I waited patiently for the Lord,
and He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also
out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet
upon a rock, and established my goings. If you cry unto the
Lord, this is the only thing that can happen. Now, you won't
cry unless He makes you cry. But if He makes you to cry, if
you're one of His, that's the only possible thing that can
happen to you in the pit. He brought me up also out of
a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a
rock and established my goings. Listen to this. Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless
the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. He who
forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases,
who redeemeth thy life from the pit, from destruction, who crowneth
thee with loving kindness and tender mercies. He is the only
one who can redeem us from our sin. He is the one who can do
that. He is the only one who can do
that. Now I've just got a couple more things to say. So try to
stay with me. We're almost done. Just a couple
more things. Turn with me to Psalm 30. Just a couple more things and
try to stay with me and listen. Now if we're to understand that
if we cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ, if we cry out to him
that he will save us, the question that needs to be asked is, when
will he take me out of the pit? When's he going to save me? When's
he going to do it? Well, if you are one of his chosen,
then I can turn and read what our pastor read this morning
and listen to this. For as much as you know that you were not
redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your
vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers,
nothing of this world, nothing of this earth can save you, but
redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you. He took you out of the pit before
the foundation of the world." Now, that would make you feel
really comfortable in the pit if you knew you were going to
be saved. He saved us before. And then the last verse of that
says, "...but was manifest in these last times for you." Remember
that it wasn't long ago we didn't even know we were in a pit. let
alone that someone could save us and would save us. Just because
we're in the pit in this flesh does not mean that spiritually
we're in the pit. Our Lord Jesus Christ, it says,
with the precious blood of Christ, we are in the pit. We are in
our sin. There is one, the God-man, who
was made a man and lived perfectly. He never sinned. He was not in
the pit. Because we sin, we have death.
We get the pit. Because he was perfect, he has
righteousness. And what he did was he gave us
his righteousness in exchange for our pit. In the flesh, we're
in the pit. But he has redeemed our souls.
He has done it. He has already saved us from
this pit. It's His blood that redeems us.
Now in Psalm 30, let me ask this question. If I were to be saved
from the pit, now in our story, I don't know if we fell asleep,
I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden we realize that
we're not in the pit anymore. He has saved us. Someone has
saved us from the pit. Not only did He not help us,
did we not do anything ourselves, we didn't even realize that we
had been saved. All of a sudden we woke up, or
we came aware, and we were sitting on the rock. We were sitting
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in the flesh, what is the
first thing that you are going to do when you realize that you're
not in the pit? What's the first thing? Think
about it. If you had been stuck in this pit, let's say for days,
and all of a sudden you came in, I'm not in the pit, what
are you going to do? Well, I'll tell you what I would
do. I would look for the pit. I'm scared I'm going to fall
back in the pit. If you get out of a bad situation,
you want to make sure you don't go back into it. So look in Psalm
30 here. Because if it's me, all the bad
situations I've been in my life, any kind of reprieve or safety
I've found is very short-lived. If I'm safe for a moment, I'm
right back into it. If for some reason I feel like,
man, I've done really good, In that very moment, my pride gets
me. Our sin is ever before us. Look at Psalm 30, verse 1. I
will extol Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast lifted me up. So here
it says He's lifted us up. We're not in the pit anymore.
And has made my foes to rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried
unto Thee, and Thou hast healed me. O Lord, Thou hast brought
up my soul from the grave. Thou hast kept me alive that
I should not go down to the pit. The Lord Jesus Christ will not
ever let us go. It is amazing to find out that
you have been saved from the pit. But what makes it so much
more glorious is to realize that the pit is no longer there. He has accomplished the work.
Your pit, your sin has been paid for. He died for your sin. You can't be punished for it
because He already was. It's gone. His blood has covered
it. The pit is no more. We don't
have to be scared of that. How glorious is it when someone
saves you that they can then forever in the future to know
that not only did He save me, but He's my Savior. And finally,
in closing, turn with me to Job 33. We're almost done. This is the last place we'll
turn. He took our pit and he put us
on the rock. So one more question. After all of this, we've been
saved from this pit. We're safe. The pit is no more. There's only one question left
to be asked. Who gets all the credit for saving you? Another word is who gets the
glory for you being saved from the pit. Our pastor read that story of
the woman at the well. This woman, her whole life centered
around this hole, this pit, this well. Her life was completely
dependent on it. She did not have water apart
from that pit, that hole. And she kept coming back to it
in the same way that we just come back to our sin over and
over again. And the Lord intentionally went that way and met her there.
And he told her that he had a different water. And it's all she could
think about. And I understand this. She looked
at him and said, you don't have a bucket. You can't give me any
water. We will keep coming back to our
well, to our sin, to our bucket, the works that we think we're
doing. We will keep coming back to this until he shows us, I
have something you need. And it went on through that.
And at the end, she said, I know the Messiah is going to come.
And he said, I'm him. I'm the savior. And he makes
us to realize he did it. It's all of him. And in Job,
we just have a couple of verses we'll read here. Job 33, look
at verse 18. The he here, the Lord keepeth
back his soul from the pit, keepeth our soul from the pit, and his
life from perishing by the sword. Look at verse 28. He will deliver
his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the
light. Verse 30. to bring back his soul,
to bring back our soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the
light of the living. And finally, verse 24 says this,
the Lord is gracious unto us and saith, deliver him from going
down to the pit. I have found a ransom. I have found an atonement. We
have found someone who can take his place, someone who has died
for them. The Lord Jesus Christ gets all
the glory and salvation. We play no part in it. He has
done everything. And I hope that we realize, we
pray and we ask, that He'll make us to understand our sin, that
we are sinners, that we need someone to help us. And by His
grace, please make us to cry to Him. That's what we must do. I already said there's only one
result. Only one thing can happen for
a sinner who says genuinely to the Lord Jesus Christ, I am completely
dependent upon you. You are my only hope for salvation. I'm a sinner. You're the Savior.
Please, if it be thy will, up to you to save me. He gets all
the glory for everything in salvation. All right.