Turn back to Psalm 116. Psalm 116. I titled this message, I Love the Lord. I love the way
it starts out. I love. I'm going to attribute
this to David. There's no name written on it.
Most attribute it to David. Some to Moses. But I'm going
to attribute it to David. And I can just hear him as he
writes this. I can hear his heart, his thoughts,
as he muses upon the Lord. the Lord. This is the very thing
the Lord asked Peter after he denied the Lord. Peter, lovest thou me? But he also asked him this, lovest
thou me more than these? Whatever these are, do you love
me more? What we love or who we love is
where our heart is. It's who has our heart. It is one thing to believe the
gospel intellectually like Simon Magus did, and yet not love Christ. I don't want that. I don't want
to come up short. I don't want to believe a system
of doctrine and not love the Lord. See, that's the relationship
part. Love is the relationship part. To love Christ is to be saved
by Christ. To believe savingly is accompanied
by love. If love is absent, the grace
of God is absent. The work of grace is absent.
The work of God is not there. Listen to what Paul said in 1
Corinthians 13, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or
a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge,
and though I have all faith, this is amazing, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. You take these people, these
televangelists, they make so much of this thing of faith to
remove a mountain, faith to do this, faith to do that, and the
love of God is nowhere to be found. Paul said, if I have not
love, I'm nothing. And though I bestow all my goods
to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not love, it profits me nothing. And now by the faith, hope, and
love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." The greatest is love. Why is
the love of God here, love for Christ and His love for us, why
is this the greatest? Because it's the bond that bonds
us together with the Father. It's that paternal bond. You
love Him because He's your Father. He loves you because you're His
son and you're daughters. He loves you as a family. That's
the bond of the family is love. And then what makes it great
is to be like our Father which is in heaven. God is love. God is to be like Him. And then
it's the greatest evidence of salvation. Faith is not the greatest
evidence of salvation. Love is. By this, John said in
John 13, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples,
if you love one another. First John 4, 7, Beloved, let
us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that
loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He didn't talk about faith
at all here, does he? We know faith is a gift of God,
and we know you're not gonna be saved apart from faith. But
love, the grace of love, my soul, if it's absent, everything else
is absent. 1 Corinthians 8.3, But if any man
love God, the same is known of him. The same is known of him. Now I know this, I know in light
of Christ's love for us, our love for Him is very puny, isn't
it? You call it anemic. Very anemic. Yet we do love the Lord. We do
love Him. We love the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we are not to be ashamed or afraid to say, I love the
Lord. It's not unmanly to say, I love
the Lord. I love the Lord. I love Him. I'm not afraid to
say, I love my wife. How much more the Lord, who loved
me and gave Himself for me, who redeemed me by His blood, purchased
me, delivered me from death, how much more should I say, be
willing to say, ready to say, I love the Lord? I do love the
Lord. Now the reason for the Lord loving
me and you is found in Him. It's found in Him, in Him alone. But we love the Lord, He says
here, because And that word because means reason. That's what because
means. Reason. We have reasons. We have reasons to love the Lord.
More than I can number tonight. More than I could number in a
lifetime. We have reasons to love the Lord. And these reasons are not mercenary
reasons. They're spiritual reasons. We'll
see this as we go along. But this psalm also is a Messianic
psalm, and as I go along, I'll apply this to Christ here and
there as we go along. Now in verse 1, Christ as a man
could say and did say, and did say, I love the Lord. As a man, he loved the Lord.
Sometimes I have to sit down and I think of Christ as a man. A man, a real man. I think of him as God, and I
think of him as the God-man, one person, undivided. But as
a man, he says, I love the Lord. And he did so perfectly. And
this is our righteousness, his perfect love, his perfect obedience,
his perfect faith. He believed God, you know that?
He believed God perfectly. You know, it's written in the
Law, and I've been reading this. Deuteronomy 6, 5, And thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
with all thy might. He did. And that's our righteousness. He did. And He loved His neighbor
as Himself. He did. And everyone born of God loves
God. Everyone born of God loves God.
It is not possible to be saved and not love the Lord, and not
love the Lord who saved you. For the love of God is shed abroad
in the heart. It's shed abroad in our heart.
You can't help but love Him. And you can't help but love one
another. As Henry used to say all the time, it's going to leak
out on you. It's just going to come out. Love has to express
itself. If it's there, if it's there,
it has to express itself. It's going to. You may not know
doctrine as you should, but you know this, you know you
love the Lord who saved you, don't you? There's a lot of mystery in this
Bible I don't know, but I know this, I know by God's grace I
love the Lord. Peter said this, Lord, you know
all things. You know I love you. I know I
denied you here just a little bit ago. I know I've not been
what I ought to be as a disciple. But you do know I love you. You
know that." And that gave him some comfort that the Lord knew
that. Now, as I said, the word because
means reason. And here are some reasons why
we love the Lord. I'm going to give them to you.
The first reason is this, He first loved us. It is written
in 1 John 4,19, we love Him because the reason is this, He first
loved us. And He first loved us with an
everlasting love. So we can't go back and say,
well this date or this date He loved me. He has always loved
me. I can't explain that. He's loved
me with an everlasting love. And then I know this, the reason
we love Him is because the love of God has been shared abroad
in our hearts. We've experienced that love. That love is in you. When we say, I love the Lord,
it's a response. It's a response of the love of
God in us. Love responds to love. And then we love Him because
He chose us. That's so precious, isn't it?
Isn't the doctrine of election so precious? He didn't leave
us alone. He chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world. And listen, He chose us before
having done any good or evil, just like Jacob and Esau. He
chose us. That's amazing. And then we love
the Lord because He made a covenant concerning us. There is actually
a covenant, a real covenant made between the Father and the Son
concerning everyone God's elect. And they don't operate outside
that covenant. And everything in that covenant is for me and
you who believe. And we love the Lord because
He came into this world to redeem us from our sins and make us
righteous through His work and present us blameless, faultless
before God Almighty. All the reasons for, I love the
Lord, are found in the Lord. Not one
of them is in us. They're all found in Him. Now
in the first verse it says, Because he hath heard my voice and my
supplication, every believer... Now we know this, the Lord said
this, I know you always hear me. And we can apply this to
the Lord Jesus Christ because He said, you always hear me.
He always heard the cry of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And
He hears Him now on our behalf. He hears His intercession for
us. He hears us. He hears Him on our behalf. But
every believer can look back and say, the Lord heard my voice
and my supplications. Can't you? I know you can. If you're His,
you can. And every child of God is heard because their surety,
their mediator, their high priest stands on their behalf. And there's
a high priest right now, as I'm preaching, and you're sitting
there listening. The Lord Jesus Christ is making
intercession for us. That's what makes this worship
service acceptable, is Him, Him and His intercessory work. Our worship right now is far
from perfect. Our minds will drift. You gotta arrest them, bring
them back. They'll drift, you gotta bring them back. His mind's
not drifting. He's making this worship service
of some sinner saved by grace acceptable. Let's not lose sight of that. And then it shows, listen, it
shows something else here. This phrase, He hath heard my
voice and my supplications. God Almighty, the Lord, capital
L-O-R-D, Jehovah, He's heard my voice and my supplication.
It shows the respect God has toward His Son in hearing His
voice. Not only for Himself at that time He was on earth, but
for us. It shows respect, reverence for His Son. Then it shows how
aware God is of our miseries. David said one time, he spoke
of the heavens being like brass, and is the Lord clean gone? No,
He's not. That's how exaggerated we get
when we get in trouble. But He's aware of our misery.
Then it shows how willing God is to listen to our prayers.
He heard, He hath heard my voice and my supplications. It shows how condescending is
our God to hear poor sinners like us. I'm a dead dog, who
am I? Did God hear me? Have you ever
stopped and just think how insignificant, and this is the way I feel about
myself, I think how insignificant I am. When you look at the universe,
you look at all that of creation and all the hosts. I mean, who
could number that? The host of heaven, the angels,
the ones that kept their first estate and the fallen angels
and humanity and everything that exists. Who am I? That God would be in
his ear and listen to me as if I were the only one existing.
Who am I? And then David said, who am I
and what is my house that you should bless me so? And how merciful he is to tell
us to cast all our cares on him who cares for us. He says, do
so. Cast your cares on me. You don't even tell your own
children that. You don't tell your kids every
day, well, just tell me all your troubles. We don't tell our kids
that. We don't tell them that. He says
to every one of His children, you cast every bit of your cares
on Me. All of them. All of them. And notice it does
not say, because I love the Lord, He hath heard my voice. It doesn't
say that. That would be God loving me for reasons outside of Himself.
And that can't be. You know what it reads in the
original? In the original, it reads like this, I love. The
Lord heard my voice. That's how it reads in the original.
And then he says in verse 2, now I don't know how far I'll
get in this, I'll just go till I run out of gas. Because He has inclined His ear
unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live. I'll call on Him in praise. I'll
call on Him in worship. I'll call on Him in time of need.
You know, it would be useless to call on someone who won't
listen to you or hear you. That wouldn't be any different
and it would be no better than those who whittle out an idol
that have eyes that see not, nose that smell not, mouth that
speak not, hands that handle not, feet that walk not. We don't
have a God like that. We have a God who hears our prayer. He inclines his ear. He bends
his ear down to us. You ever have a little child
to try to speak, and you just kind of stoop down? You know,
when Dad's at the end, he mumbled. We struggled to try to hear him,
and we'd just get right down next to him, trying to hear what
he was saying. Well, God's not trying to hear
what I'm saying, but he's he puts his ear right down, right
down to my lips and he hears my voice. He hears my voice. That's the voice of John. That's
a voice of Doug. Well, no, with Isaac, Isaac said
he said it's the voice of it's the voice of Jacob. He said,
yeah, you smell like Esau. You feel hairy like Esau, but
it's the voice of Jacob. You know, you could stand in
a crowd, and I could be standing there. Let's say this whole room
is full. One person in here could say my name, and I'd know exactly
who it is. It'd be Jason. He knows the sound, the voice
of his children when they call. He is so great, we can't comprehend
it. But in all of his greatness,
he stoops down to listen. He stoops down to listen. Oh,
I'll call on him as long as I live. I will call, I will praise the
Lord all my life because he has given attention to my voice and
my trouble. He's worthy to praise and worship. And in verse three, we get a
glimpse of what brought on this prayer. The sorrows of death. You know, there's a lot of sorrow
that surrounds death. Some of you buried loved ones,
I have. I know the sorrow that surrounds death. Death is just,
it's the last enemy to be destroyed. I'll be glad when we quit dying.
I said at my dad's funeral, I said, I'll be glad when I never do
this again. I know if I live to be older,
I'm going to do it some more. But I'll be glad when I don't
do that no more. I'll be glad when the sorrow is gone that
surrounds death. The sorrows of death compassed
me. The sorrows that death brings
were surrounding me. And the pains of hell or the
grave got hold upon me. And I found, I found trouble
and sorrow. This can surely be applied to
the Lord Jesus Christ and His sufferings in the garden and
on the cross. He said, the sorrows of death
have surrounded me. He felt the pain of it. He felt
the sorrows of the death that you and I deserve. He felt every
bit of it. The Scripture says He tasted
death for every man. That's every man He represented,
that's every person He represented. He tasted death for them. He
tasted the sorrows of death. He tasted it. Death, listen,
death without God is sorrowful death. My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? Death without God is a painful
death. Death without God is troubling
death. And this is the death that the Lord Jesus Christ tasted
and put an end to. You see, now for us, for us,
for the believer, the sting is taken away. The sting is taken
out of death. There's no sting in death for
us. But that does not mean we will not experience some sorrow
Now, when a loved one dies, we sorrow. We sorrow not as those
who have no hope, unless they're lost. But we still
don't sorrow excessively, because we know that it's in the Lord's
hands. We know that. But the believer
experiences a measure of sorrow in these things, and it may be. It may be that the Lord will
take a believer to the brink of the grave, and let them experience
some real sorrow, and let them experience some fear, and then
bring them back. You don't need dying grace till
you're dying. And sometimes he'll take us to the grave. He knows
we're not gonna die. He knows what he's gonna do. He knows
he's gonna bring us back. But he lets us experience it. I'll
never forget when I was in my early 40s, I thought I was like
Fred Sanford. I had to be, I was having a big
one. I mean, my chest was about to split. I rose up in bed and
I thought, oh man. And it just struck me how quickly
life was over. And it just struck me that I
was about to die. I mean, I literally, I mean,
it was hurting that bad. I thought, this is it. This is
it. But it wasn't it. It wasn't it. I believe if it had been it,
I'd have had dying grace. But the Lord let me experience something
of what it is to come right up and look at it. And boy, you realize this is
sobering. Dying is sobering now. To die
for the soul to leave the body is very sobering. Very sobering. You know, Henry said this in
a message I listened to this past week. He said, A believer
is not afraid to die, but it doesn't
mean there's no anxiety in it. that there's no anxiousness in
it. There can be anxiousness in it. I've seen it. I've seen
it. But when the Lord gives that dying grace to really time to
go, it is all well. It's well with my
soul. But he says here that the sorrows
of death compassed me. And here's something else. I
didn't get to write this down before coming out here. I think
this is also, and I know this is something
by experience. And I'm hesitant about using experience because
everybody starts measuring their experience to your experience
and don't do that. Paul said, if you measure yourself
among yourselves, you're not wise. But this is my experience. When the Lord began to work on
me, for the first time in my life,
I was scared to death of dying. I thought for sure I was going
to die. I thought for sure I was going to die and go to hell.
And it scared me to death. The sorrows, the fear, fear,
pains of hell, the grave, of dying and perishing, I had never
experienced that in my life. I've never experienced that kind
of a fear. And I believe when the Lord saves
sinners, and to a measure now, depending on how the Lord deals
with the person, in a measure, there's the work of the law,
the condemning work of the law. You're guilty. You are guilty. Have you ever been guilty? You
ever been guilty? I tell you what, if you ever
been guilty, and you know you're guilty, God has made you to know
you're guilty, and He could strike you dead right now. There's fear
in that. There's some fear in that. And I believe that could be applied
to when the Lord is saving a sinner, that they can experience these
things. But here's the relief. Here's the relief. Here's the
believer's relief. And it's the relief. And when
the Lord is saving you, here's your relief. Then called up on
the name of the Lord. No place else to turn. No one
else to turn to. You shut up to Christ. Then called
I upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver
my soul." You see, this thing that he's struggling with here
is not a physical problem. He didn't say, deliver my body
that's aching. It's my soul, it's soul trouble.
It doesn't matter what happens to this body, really. I don't
want sickness and pain and that kind of suffering. I don't want
that. But that really doesn't matter. I need God to deliver
my soul. My soul. One day my soul is going
to leave his body and go before God. Deliver my soul. He says here,
He called on the name of the Lord, that name is so full of
majesty and glory, that name is above every name. Deliver
my soul. Oh, that God would Put that in
the heart of every one of us. Deliver my soul out of sin, from
the power of Satan, from eternal death, from this deadness and
this darkness I was born into. Deliver my soul. Deliver it. My body's not important. My soul
sure is. My soul sure is. And here's why we call upon the
Lord to do so. In verse five, gracious is the
Lord and righteous. Yeah, our God's merciful. Our
God's merciful. In time of trouble, every child
of God turns to the Lord and finds Him to be gracious and
merciful. Gracious and merciful. Every
time. It was in Psalm 107, we went through, they got in trouble,
they cried, He delivered. Every time. Every time. This is His character. Gracious
is the Lord. It's His character. And listen,
and He's righteous. He's just. He's just. You see, He delights to show
mercy. He will deliver us and He'll
do so in a just way. And Christ is that just way.
Now, because He's gracious and merciful, the Lord preserves
the simple. I was brought low and He helped
me. Can I say this without offending you? I want to say something
without offending you. He continually preserves stupid. That's what he does. That's part
of the meaning of that word simple. Stupid. He continually preserves
stupid. And he has to bring us low to
help us because we're so stupid. If we weren't so stupid, he wouldn't
have to bring us so low, would he? He wouldn't have to strip
us like that. But he does. Now he gives some advice here.
And he says here in verse seven, return. Where'd you go? You had to go somewhere for him
to say return. David here is speaking to his
soul. You know, he says sorrow's death got a hold of him. The
pains of hell got hold of him and he was in sorrow and trouble.
Then he called upon the name of the Lord and he asked him
to deliver his soul. He said, the Lord preserveth
the simple. He's like, that's why I'm still
here. Because the Lord preserved the simple. That's why I'm still
here. And this is the king saying this.
Now he's saying to himself, he's saying to his soul, return. Oh, my soul, return. How many
times does our soul in a day leave the Lord? How many times? How many times does your soul,
your heart, wonder after something else? How many times does it
do that? How many times does your heart set upon something
else besides things above? How many times? Well, every time
it happens, say to your soul, return, return unto thy rest. I was reading through Exodus
here, a couple of weeks ago or so, and it just, this was so
beautiful. And I believe Spurgeon, at that
same time I was reading it, Spurgeon had in his morning and evening
about the dove returning to the ark. And he says here, return,
in verse 7, returning to thy rest. And I wrote down here,
like the dove returned to the ark. And you know what? In Spurgeon's
Morning and Evening, he made this beautiful point. I believe
that's where it was at. I was reading. He made this beautiful
point that Noah stuck out his hand and drew her in, pulled
her into the ark. He reached out there and just
pulled her in. Lord, do that for me tonight. Just pull me
into Your bosom. Pull us into Your bosom and make
us tonight, when we go home, to rest, to really find rest. I want to find rest for my soul.
I want to lay down, even if all my so-called world is crumbling
around me, I want to be able to do like our Lord did when
He laid down in the boat in that storm and He slept. He fell asleep. The disciples were pulling their
hair out. They were screaming like schoolyard sissies. And
He's back there asleep. He's back there asleep. That's rest. And that's the rest
you and I have in Christ. We need to take advantage of
that. We need to grow in that. We need to grow in that rest.
Oh, that dove, just put that in your mind, that dove flying
back to the ark. That dove wouldn't light on all
those dead bodies. It didn't feed on death. It had to go back
to the ark. And every time we are troubled,
it's usually because we have gone somewhere and we've left
our rest. But return, listen, return unto
thy rest, O my soul, O my soul. You see, this is a spiritual
problem here. For the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee,
like the prodigal son. Return home, return home. My father is bountiful. He's
got plenty. He's got plenty. And then, listen
here, he speaks of past mercies. He remembers past mercies. You
know, remembering past mercies helps you in present trials.
Remember that. When you're in present trial,
sit down and remember the past mercies of God. Because he says
in verse 8, For thou hast delivered my soul from death. You see,
he was talking about the sorrows of death had encompassed him
about. And you know, those sorrows can be a real problem. But death
itself is a greater problem. It's a greater problem. But he's
delivered my soul from death, eternal death. He delivered my
soul from eternal death. Mine eyes from tears and my feet
from falling. You know, there also comes a
time. in this spiritual resurrection, this spiritual life, when God
gives it, there comes a time, there comes a time when you have
this turmoil, this turmoil within, this fear within, and then there
comes a time when you find rest. You really find rest in Christ. You let go of everything else,
and you just have Him. And you really find rest, and
you really find some peace. And He delivers you from your
tears. You've cried over your sins.
You ever cry over your sins? Not many have. And my feet from
falling, from stumbling and falling away, falling away. But now listen, for thou hast
delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from
falling, can also be applied to the resurrection of Christ.
It's over. He'll not deal with death and sin and suffering no
more. It's over. And someday, someday you and
I will rise. We'll leave this world and we'll
be delivered from tears. It says there in Revelation 21
or 22, that there'll be no more tears,
no more sorrows, no more crying. Never happening. You'll never
feel. Can you imagine what it is? Never feel sorrow. You know, you never feel when
you hear bad news. You know, you get the phone ring,
the phone rings and you're like. You know, I keep going back to
Dad, but every time the phone rang there for the last probably
two weeks, every time it rang, I thought, from when my brother
and sister called me, I thought, that's it. That's it. You'll
never hear that's it again. You'll never fear that fear that
jumps on you. The kind of fear that makes you
break out into a cold sweat. Have you ever had that one? You
ever had a fear of something happening that makes you break
into a cold sweat? Gone. Gone. It's all gone. I want to close with verse 9.
I will walk before the Lord in
the land of the living. Because He's delivered my soul
from death, I have spiritual life, I have deliverance, Now what am I going to do? The
captive has been set free. What am I going to do? The bird
has been let out of the cage to fly freely. What am I going
to do? Serve myself? I'm going to walk before the
Lord. I'm going to walk before, like Enoch did. Enoch walked
with God. Enoch walked with God. You know, we think Enoch was
some kind of person up on a pedestal that he really had this super-duper
faith. No, you know what he did? He
just believed God. Every day he got up, he went to work, did
whatever he did, he believed God. He believed God. When something happened, he believed
God. I will walk. You know, that shows
a steady pace, doesn't it? That's steady. That's just a
steady pace. Oh, I love that thought. Just
a steady pace with God. You know, I might live to be
as old as my parents. I don't know. I might not live
past tomorrow, but I might live another 25 years or so. I mean,
I could. You know, I just want a steady
pace to walk with God day by day. I'm not going to try to
run. I'm just going to walk with Him.
It's just a steady pace. My concern, listen, I'm going
to walk before the Lord, not men. My concern is with God and
my concern is before God. It doesn't matter what men think
of me. I tell you what, a right fear of God and a right understanding
of the gospel, of course, if you have a right fear of God,
you have a right understanding of the gospel, will go a long way
in you losing your this fear, this peer pressure. It doesn't
matter what men think of me, does it really? Paul said that
one time, he said, it doesn't matter to me what they think.
It doesn't matter at all. I will walk before the Lord in
the land of the living. I walk before the Lord and before
this church. I walk before the Lord out there
in the community, out there where you work, you walk before the
Lord. When you realize that, that'll
change your whole outlook on where you work and where you
live and what you're doing. God put you in, God put you there. You're in the ministry. You're
in the ministry. Somebody said something I was
listening to this week. He always talked about this.
He always said, you know, I used to work a secular job. This man
made a statement. He said, there is nothing secular
but sin for God's children. He said, the only thing secular
is sin. He said, you're working in God's vineyard. You're in
the ministry. I'm not the only one in the ministry
here. And I thought, that's a good statement. I'm not the only one
in the ministry. You're in the ministry. You're
working in God's vineyard where he put you. where He puts you. There's no place where God puts
His children that is insignificant. Period. I will. That's a resolution. We ought to, by God's grace,
be determined to walk before the Lord in the land of the living
wherever we are. I'm going to close with this
verse.