Psalm 63, let me read from verse
one through verse four to begin. Oh God, thou art my God, early
will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee, my
flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water
is. to see thy power and thy glory,
so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving
kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. And
verse four, thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift
up my hands in thy name. And then we will get to verse
five in a minute. So this psalm is a cry from the
psalmist, a cry for God. calling him my God. It's a very
personal dependence upon God and a relationship that God himself
has made. And he tells the Lord that he
is without water in a dry and thirsty land. And as I mentioned
last time, the water in scripture frequently represents the word
of God, or it represents the message of the word, which is
the gospel of Christ, who is the water, the fountain open
for sin and uncleanness, and who gives us his own spirit that
we might know him as our fountain, the fountain of living waters.
in us, the spirit of God in us, by giving us faith in Christ,
enlightening us to know him and to know what he has done and
his greatness and all that he's done for us. And that is this
water that comes to us from the Lord. And that's what the psalmist
is saying here. He thirsts for the Lord. In verse two, to see
thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.
Now, the sanctuary, as I mentioned last time, is the holy place.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Word. The Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us and he tabernacled among us. He is himself the dwelling
of God. God himself is in the Lord Jesus
Christ in all of his fullness. But the Church also is called
the Temple of the Lord. And in 1 Corinthians chapter
3 and verse 17, it says, you are the temple of the Lord and
you are holy because you are the temple of the Lord. God has
made us holy. He made us holy by the blood
of Christ. God the Father first made us holy when he separated
us out of all the world, choosing us in Christ, and then by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving us to him and then by
his spirit sending him into our hearts to make us know that by
Christ and by his precious blood we have been sprinkled and made
holy. So the church itself is a congregation, a group of believers
in whom God dwells by his spirit. And so they're called the temple.
The temple because God dwells in them and they are holy. And
where do we see God's power and God's glory? Where do we see
God's power and God's glory? Well, we see it in Christ, because
1 Corinthians 1.24 says, He is the wisdom of God and the power
of God to those who believe. And we also see God's glory in
the gospel, because we know from 2 Corinthians 4.6 that God has
shined the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Christ, and that is through the gospel. And so the gospel
is preached in the church. And so it is in the body of Christ
where the gospel is preached that we see God's power and glory. And so David is saying, I want
to see the Lord. I want to hear from him. And
hearing of the Lord by faith, we see him. We see him. When
we hear and we believe, we see. We are like blind men whose eyes
have been opened to see the glorious things of Christ. And that's
the light of God's glory. That's the light of the knowledge
of his glory. And then in verse three, he says,
because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall
praise thee. And as I mentioned last time,
the loving kindness of God is just the love of God. And it's
his kindness out of his love. In scripture, everything flows
to us in our salvation, in our life, in everything from the
love of God towards us that is in Christ Jesus. And to emphasize
this, for example, in Revelation chapter one and verse five, the
Lord says that God's people in glory will sing this, unto him
who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. Why
did he wash us? Because he loved us. What did
it cost him to wash us from our sins? His own blood. So we're
washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ from our sins, and
it was his love. So it shows how everything comes
to us because of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, just
like it says in Hebrews chapter 3 that the builder of the house
is greater than the house, so the love of God towards us from
which all of our salvation and blessings flow is greater than
the life God gives to us from which it flows. So everything
is measured by the one who gives it. Gifts are no greater than
the giver. The giver is much greater than
the gifts. And it's the love of God to us in Christ that is
the spring of everything else. It's His everlasting love. And
so not only is that the case, but the knowledge of God's love
to us is better than life itself. Life springs to us from the love
of God. When we were in our sins, we
were dead because of our sins. Sin brings death, and how can
we live? Well, our sin has to be removed.
And what do we need to live? Well, we need righteousness. How is our sin removed? God removes
it. How does He do that? Through
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, because He gave His life for
us. And how do we receive righteousness? Through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ, because He gave Himself in obedience, out of
love to God, and fulfilled all righteousness for us. And therefore,
because God has removed our sins by Christ's own blood and given
us a righteousness, then he gives us life. And that life is given
to us out of the love of God. So you see, the spring again
is the love of God. And it all comes to us through
Christ. He himself is our life. And it is His love that has joined
us to Him and given us this life. Alright, the next verse, in verse
4, it says, Thus will I bless thee while I live, I will lift
up my hands in thy name. Now, I talked to you about this
last time, lifting up the hands in scripture signifies the fact
that we are ascribing, we are attributing to God all of the
credit for all that we have, especially our salvation. Clearly
God is the one to whom alone we can credit with our creation. We weren't here. God was by himself. God called all things into existence
by himself because of his own desire, his own will. And so
that was nothing we contributed to. We weren't there to advise
God or to influence him. God is independent of us. He
doesn't depend on us. But He, of His own will, not
only created us and gives us life, but sustains our life,
and most importantly, He gives us salvation. And so he says,
when he says, I will lift up my hands in thy name, he's really
ascribing to the Lord. He's giving all of the credit,
all the honor and glory to God for all that he has, especially
this life, this salvation, this righteousness, this faith in
God. And the Word God gives to us, by which we know this, everything
comes to Him. And so He, as it were, He's lifting
up His hands and saying, it's all Him. Like a little child
lifting up his hands to his mother or father, I need something that
the child is saying. By lifting up their hands, we
are saying, I need, and God has given everything and has given
it in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's what this lifting
up the hands has to do with, and this is the way he's blessing.
He's blessing by faith, he's giving credit to Christ for everything. All right, and then in verse
five, now I'm getting to the place, closer to where we left
off last time in verse five. It says, my soul shall be satisfied
with marrow and fatness. Now, marrow is that part of the
bone or the animal that has the most nutrition in it. And fatness
is where the greatest taste is. So marrow and fatness is the
greatest satisfaction because of the greatest benefit. And
so he's saying here, I will be satisfied with marrow and fatness. Now, think about it in your own
life. What satisfies you? What satisfies you? I know it's
satisfying to eat a fine meal when you're hungry. That's satisfying.
But really what satisfies you, I'm talking about that need that
we have that is greater than just food or water or even sleep. It feels better to sleep. It
feels much better to drink water and to eat and all those things
in our body. But we have a soul that needs
satisfaction. And that's what he's talking
about here. My soul shall be satisfied. What gives satisfaction
to our soul? Well, we have to ask, what gave
satisfaction to the Lord's soul? It says in Isaiah 53, he shall
see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. Now,
when a woman gives birth, when a mother gives birth to a child,
the woman labors to give birth. And when she is done laboring
because the child is born, she's satisfied because she sees the
child that she has labored so hard to give birth to. And so
the Lord Jesus Christ labored to give birth to his people by
going to the cross. He took away their sins, established
their righteousness before God. He made them holy according to
God's will that He do that in order that they might be given
the Spirit of God since they were chosen by God the Father
to be His sons and Christ was given for them to make them holy
and to take away their sins, to redeem them from death and
from sin and everything. Then God sent His Spirit into
their hearts so they might know they were the children of God.
So that satisfied Christ, his labor. his life's labor and his
death that brought us into a relationship with God as those who were chosen
to be holy. And now he made us holy by his
own blood. All right. So that gave him satisfaction. So what gives us satisfaction
in our soul? Well, the only thing that can
give us spiritual satisfaction, because that's what this is talking
about, it's not talking about satisfaction that comes through
a natural part of us, not our flesh. The flesh profits nothing,
Jesus said. It's not our flesh, our fleshly
mind, our carnal mind, or anything about us that we received from
our natural birth that gives us satisfaction. We might be
satisfied in our natural mind or in our body. But nothing can
satisfy our soul because our soul is dead in sin until we're
raised from the dead and given life. And in that life that we've
been given, when we partake of Christ and him crucified as all
in our salvation, that gives us satisfaction. In other words,
only what satisfies God satisfies our spiritual soul. And that's
what he's talking about here. My soul shall be satisfied with
the most nutritious and the most delicious part of God's blessings,
which of course is the Lord Jesus Christ. There's nothing greater
than him. And he says, my mouth shall praise thee with joyful
lips. We praise God because of the complete accomplishment of
our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ when he by himself Historically,
not in our lifetime, but in his lifetime, gave himself for our
sins and washed us from our sins. He took away all of the wrath
God's justice required and he made satisfaction to God and
that satisfies our hearts and minds. We're put at peace when
we learn that in Christ, we are complete before God. I was thinking
about this today. Christ has so taken away the
sins of his people that there is nothing of our sin that is
left before God. Nothing of our sin remains. There's no barrier between us
and God. The way has been cleared. No
sin on us. And God sees no sin about us. He only sees the perfections
of the Lord Jesus Christ. the perfections of His obedience,
the perfections of His offering, the perfections of His risen
life. He sees the Lord Jesus Christ for us. And that gives
God satisfaction. As in creation, God said, very
good, so much more. In the offering of Christ for
us, God says, very good. God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit, all join together. This is very good. And them, our triune God, speaking
to us from scripture concerning Christ, tells us to be satisfied
with him. Our sins have been taken away.
They've been completely removed. They've been all taken from us. Christ bore them and the Lord
Jesus Christ took our sins in his own body into the judgment,
the fire of God's judgment, and our sins were consumed. God buried
them in the grave with his body and put them out of mind. He
remembers them no more. He says, where there's remission
of these, there's no more offering for sin. And therefore we have
this standing before God, it's called Christ has made us perfect
by that one offering. And this is the gospel. And that satisfies us. It satisfies
our spiritual self, our soul. And so he says this here, when
my soul is satisfied, I will delight myself with his marrow
and fatness, Christ crucified. Delight yourself in fatness by
hearing the gospel of what Christ has done and knowing that this
is all that God requires. What does God require of me? All that he did in Christ. He
requires nothing less. He can require nothing more.
And he gives us faith to know this. So we're persuaded of it
and we're satisfied. Satisfaction with Christ is the
result of God-given faith. All right. And then he talks
about praising God. Of course he praises him because
he's completely satisfied. Nothing can surpass this. Then
in verse six, he says, when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate
on thee in the night watches. Now, a bed is a place where we
rest when we are weary. And night is the time where we're
sleeping, the sun is down, but there's a lot of enemies also.
At night is when men do wickedness. And when we're sleeping, we have
no defense against their wickedness. We have little defense against
them anyway, but even less when we're asleep. So, what do we
do in this time of vulnerability and this time of quiet and this
time of rest when we're on our bed at night, physically, what
do we do? Well, we think. And how great
is the blessing when what we think about when we meditate
on our bed at night, when we meditate, is on the Lord Jesus
Christ. how great a blessing it is when
we think on what God himself ministers to us from his word
by his spirit. He says that the spirit itself
tells us, he ministers to us the things of Christ. In Romans
chapter five he says that Let me read that to you, just recapping
what the Lord is ministering to His people now in our lives,
by faith, in every trial. This is what God says the Spirit
of God is doing. He says, The love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us.
For when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ
died for the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one
die. Yet perventure for a good man,
some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward
us. He made known. That's what commendeth
means. He is like a resume. This is
God's love. that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. All right, just let that sink
in. Let that be your meditation in the night watches. If God
is for us in this way, who can be against us? Who? Let them
make themselves known. They would be opposing God. Well,
what about the enemies who come against us because we're sinners?
Well, let them read this scripture. When God, when we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. And this was the result of God's
love. Okay, so God loved us before we knew him, when we were in
our sins. And therefore, his love is unchanging. God doesn't change. He doesn't
think one way one day and change his mind the next. He's not a
man. God doesn't change his mind. His love doesn't change. He doesn't
turn from his purpose. He doesn't fail to keep his promise. He doesn't do a work that's not
successful. Everything God does is always
brought to completion and perfection. And so, if God loved us while
we were enemies, if He loved us when we were sinners and gave
Christ for us to die for us, then we can meditate on that
in the night watches, can't we? In the watches of the night,
when we ought to be watching out for enemies, we trust ourselves
to the Lord. We trust Him to watch. Right? And those enemies that come against
us are from within our own sin, even when we sleep. I so often
think of how crazy the thoughts that pass through my mind are
when I'm trying to sleep. I have no defense against them.
It shows me that it just bubbles up from what I am. I need someone
to save me. And so I can think on that in
the night watches. And so he says, when I remember
thee, When I remember Thee upon my bed and meditate on Thee in
the night watches, this is where He's going to praise Him. This
is where with joyful lips He's going to do that when He remembers
Him in the night watches. And when we remember the Lord,
then I remember this, what the thief said on the cross, Lord,
remember me. We remember that we remember
Him because He remembers us. And there's nothing more comforting
than to know my prayer to God is given to me to rely on Christ's
prayer for me. My desire for Him is given to
me to know that my desire comes from His desire for me. And my
faith is a result of His gift of faith. And so my trust in
Him is because he's faithful and everything flows from him,
the Lord Jesus Christ. So we flee from that bed of our
own wickedness in ourselves and flee to Christ where all of our
righteousness is. We trust him. All right, then
in verse seven, he says, because thou hast been my help, therefore
in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. God has helped us. God has helped us. When I used
to read this word, help, in the Psalms, I always thought, that's
not right. Why does it say help? I need
more than just help. I need more than someone who does, you know how it is, if
you're lifting something heavy, and you've reached the maximum
of your strength, and that weight that you're trying to lift is
falling back on you, and someone comes along and they help you,
and you're pushing on it, or pulling on it, and they're pushing
or pulling on it, and together you get it done. That's not the
kind of help we need. That won't work. When a lifeguard
goes out to save someone who's drowning, the lifeguard swims
out to them. They don't say, now look, you
see, there's the shore, there's the direction. You go in that
direction and you'll be safe. No, they don't do that. They
tell them, you stop moving, stop moving. You hold still, relax. And they put their arms around
them and they save them. See, that's not help where we
contribute. That's help where God does everything.
So help in scripture, when it comes from God, is all of God's
strength. The Lord is my strength. Remember
Psalm 27 and Psalm 62? The Lord is my strength. So here
he says, because thou has been my help, therefore in the shadow
of thy wings will I rejoice. You know what babies, baby animals
do, or baby birds especially. My daughter has animals on a
little farm in Tennessee and she was describing what they
do. One of their pigs had, I think, 13 little pigs. And they went
out there to look at the pigs to see if they could pick them
up and see how they're doing. And the mama pig would not allow
that. They were protecting. And the
baby pigs ran to their mama and snuggled up to their mama. And
the same way with birds. Little baby chicks, when danger
is near, the mom gives a little sound and those birds just run
right under that mother's wings. I've seen this myself. We were
at my son's house and there was a turkey, a mother turkey, and
there were all these baby turkeys. And there was another enemy to
these babies and the mother turkey made a little sound and the turkeys
would run to her. So this is the way God is saying
this. The Lord's people run to Christ
for refuge. The Lord is our refuge. We run
to Him. But we run to him because he
is our help, because thou hast been my help. Therefore, in the
shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. I'll rejoice because they're
safe. I'll rejoice because they're strong. They're able to protect
me, able to save me. And how has he helped us? Well,
this help the Lord gives began before time. The help the Lord
gives is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I could go on and on about
examples from scripture, but the Lord Jesus Christ, according
to scripture, the Lord Jesus Christ engaged with his father
to stand for us in a way that made him responsible for everything
God required of us. If you commit a crime, in our
country and they put you in jail, sometimes the court will allow
you to get out for a while on bail. And bail is something that
you give the court some money because they expect that you
don't want to lose your money. You can get out free and you'll
show up when it's time to appear in court. But you usually can't
afford the bail that the court posts. So you ask someone to
help you. You borrow money from what's
called a bail bondsman. Now, a bail bondsman is in the
law, in the eyes of the law, they're a legal surety. And if
you hire a bail or go to get help from a bail bondsman, they'll
give money to you to give to the court. They'll pay the court
for you and the court will require that money from the bail bondsman.
If you don't show up at court, they'll take that money from
the bail bondsman. So the bail bondsman is a surety
and the courts look to the bail bondsman to provide the money
for you. You're the one that was supposed
to appear in court and they make sure you're there. If you don't,
if you don't show up, the bail bondsman is going to hunt you
down and they have certain laws they can use to enforce you paying
them back. And it's pretty serious, so you
don't want to be the object of that. Before time, the Lord Jesus
Christ stood for his people. He obligated himself for them
so that everything they owed to God because of their sin,
death, death is the wages of sin, everything they owed, Christ
promised to pay. And he argued, didn't argue,
but he pleaded with the court of heaven. He pleaded with God's
justice on behalf of his people. And what he pleaded with to leverage
to gain our freedom was himself. He said, take me instead of them.
And so he promised to pay for his people with himself. And
therefore God allowed us to go free. We were redeemed by the
payment of Christ's own blood. And it says in Revelation 13,
verse eight, that he's the lamb slain before the foundation of
the world. It also says that in first Peter
chapter one, verse 20. So Christ stood for his people
to guarantee their payment before time. He helped us. And then
in the course of time, at the appointed time, God sent him
into the world and he helped us again. He came according to
his pledge and promise to God to pay for us. He came and he
took a body. God prepared him a body, a human
body and soul. And he came in that human body.
He joined that body and soul to himself as God forever. the
Son of God and became the Son of Man. And when He became the
Son of Man, He didn't come to be served by people, but He who
was the God of glory and the Lord of heaven came to serve.
He helped us. He said, I came to give my life
a ransom for many, for their freedom, for their payment, the
redemption of these people. And that's what he did. He helped
us when he gave himself. He lived his life perfectly.
He fulfilled God's law that we were under. He came under it.
And then he bore our sin after fulfilling God's law. And he
and he bore our sin before God and answered God. For every demand
God had on us, he answered with himself. He is our answer to
God, to God's justice. And he satisfied God and his
justice and took away his wrath by his own blood. And this was
all done by Christ in love to God and in love for his people.
So he fulfilled all righteousness for us. And then, having done
all that, he put away our sins, God remembers them no more, and
he rose from the dead because God justified him and those with
him, those he stood for, those he stood as a surety, as a representative. All that he did, he did for them.
And he ascended after he rose from the dead. He ascended back
up to glory. He took the throne. He sat down at God's right hand
and he makes intercession with himself on the basis of his shed
blood for his people. He never stopped serving his
people. He still now serves them in heaven,
praying for them. And God hears his prayers and
answers his prayers and gives them all that Christ earned for
them by his precious blood. Do you see how the Lord has helped
us? And he not only helped us that way, but he sends his spirit.
He causes us to hear the gospel. He brings us in our life to hear
these things. You weren't looking for this.
You weren't looking for the truth of the gospel. Before you heard
it, you didn't know there was such a truth. Until God made
it known through someone preaching it, you didn't know about it.
Neither did I. God had to bring us to it and
give it to us and cause us to understand it and believe it.
And this is the Lord helping us. And he helps us even now
after we first believe. He continues to give us faith.
He upholds our faith through his own power and his intercession
for us. And he's going to help us when
he brings us from, when we die in body, he's gonna bring our
souls to be with him. And he's going to make himself
known to us. And he's gonna raise our body on the last day and
make our dead body then alive again and like His glorious body.
He's gonna help us. So the Lord has helped us, hasn't
He? He has helped us. God the Father has helped us
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ helped us by His own precious
blood, His life and His precious blood and helps us now by His
reigning power and His intercession for us. God helps us. And therefore
we trust His wings. Can we not trust God who has
so helped us from eternity? Our life is a puny, infinitesimally
small microcosm of God's eternal will and power and word and work
and glory. How can how can that not comfort
us and give us assurance that God who did all this for us will
help us? We take refuge in the shadow
of his wing. All right. The next verse says
in verse eight, my soul followeth hard after thee. You see that? And then he says, thy right hand
upholds me. Now, let me jump to the last
part of that, thy right hand upholds me. What is God's right
hand? Well, it turns out that most
people are right-handed. And right hand refers to the
most skillful, or the hand that has the most strength. It also
refers to the place of preeminence. On the right hand of God is the
Lord Jesus Christ. So when we understand that God
is speaking about what the one who is at his right hand, which
is Christ, then we can say, when he says, thy right hand upholdeth
me, we know this is speaking of Christ. Christ upholds me. He says in the first part of
the verse, my soul followeth hard after thee. Why? Why would we follow hard after
something? Well, because our life is there.
If we don't, we're gonna lose our life. Or because we have
blessings in following that one that are beyond all the value
of our life. So we have a desire, not only
a desire, but a love. When Ruth, and who was the daughter
of Naomi, when Ruth heard Naomi say, now Ruth and Orpah, you
stay here in the land of the Moabites and you go back to your
family and you go back to your family and to your gods, the
gods of your family. And Ruth said, no, I will not
leave you. I will not leave you. Don't ask
me to leave you. Entreat me not to leave thee,
nor to depart from following after thee. That was Ruth saying,
I hold fast. My soul follows hard after you. Ruth said, don't ask me to leave
you or depart from following after you. Wherever you go, that's
where I will go. Your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God. Where you die, that's where I
will die, and I will be buried there. You see, she followed
hard after Naomi because Naomi had told her of the God of Israel. She had told her of the Lord
Jesus Christ and our inheritance in Him, and she would not have
anything but Him. In John chapter 6, the Lord Jesus
Christ told the people there that He is the bread of life
and they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood, which meant
they had to trust Him and His broken body and His shed blood
as all of their salvation. And most of them were offended
and most of them left. And Jesus asked His disciples,
will you also leave? And Peter said, no, to whom shall
we go? You have the words of eternal
life. His soul followed hard after
the Lord Jesus Christ. You see that? I'm not going to
leave you. I'm not going to let you get
out of my sight. I won't let you get so far away that I can't
hear you. Now, in our own practical way,
this means that we give attendance to the word of God, don't we?
We can't live without it. We need and can't live without. the declaration to us of what
God has said concerning his son and our salvation and life in
the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't get away from that.
We want to hear it. We want to know the love of God, which passes
knowledge, don't we? Yes, we do. We want to know the
love of God. We want to know that in Christ
we have a refuge, that no enemy can hurt us in him. We want to
know that not only are we protected, but we have eternal life. We
have this communion with God, this common union with Christ
and with God, this disclosure of God's own heart to us in the
most intimate love and revelation of the hidden things of God.
He's made this known to his people. This is that communion we have
with God because of the blood of Christ. In fact, it's the
blood of Christ that is our communion. It says in 1 Corinthians 11,
verse 6, or maybe it's chapter 10, verse 6, it says that our
communion is in the blood of Christ. We have this common fellowship
with one another and with God through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so our soul follows hard
after him. He must give us his word. He must give us faith. He must
preserve us. He must give us grace to endure
trouble. and give us this faith to trust
Him in trouble, and to call on Him, and to call on us. And so
we stick fast to Him, don't we? If we need all this from Him,
then with purpose of heart, we're going to cleave to the Lord. In Acts 11, verse 23, Barnabas
told the believers there, he said, he exhorted them, with
purpose of heart, cleave to the Lord. That's what he was telling
them, and so they did. Of course, it was the Spirit
of God who was instructing them to do that, but he did it, and
he revealed it in Barnabas, telling the believers then. All right,
verse nine of Psalm 63. He says, but those that seek
my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
Okay, so it turns out that there are those who God has saved.
and has given them an understanding that salvation is in Christ alone
and in Him alone. Therefore, it doesn't depend
on them. Therefore, this salvation is
not only not dependent on them, but it's a complete and perfect
salvation because Christ has saved them and will save them
to the uttermost by His own precious blood and life and His righteousness. It doesn't depend on them. Christ
is everything and they're complete in Him. They hear that. There
are those who hear that. God has given them that grace
to hear it and believe it. And then there are those who
hear that and find no need. The seed of the gospel falls
on that, their hearts, like stony ground or like ground where the
birds take it away, the seed away, or like where thorns are,
it grows up and is choked. That's what we all are by nature.
We all have a heart that will not receive God's Word, but there
are those God doesn't give a heart to receive His Word, so they
hear it and they don't like it. They don't want to hear about
Christ's humility. It doesn't interest them. They
don't want to hear about how God's love is in Christ and is
everlasting, is immutable, unchanging. and we'll save those to the uttermost
that he has love from everlasting. They don't want to hear that.
They want to hear about God who gives them an option, who gives
them a decision, who causes them to do something so that they
can earn their salvation and take some credit for it. They
want a God who they can manipulate. They can tell how things are. They can sit in judgment over
and decide whether his word is true or not. And these are those
who hate the gospel. They hate Christ, they hate the
Father, and they hate Christ's people. And how that hatred is
made known is not by them sticking out their tongues sometimes,
or by doing things overtly, but it's this There's an attitude
towards the true believers of accusation. They accuse them
of being sinners and they accuse them of depending on Christ to
save them from their sins without warrant because they're such
bad sinners and they have no strength in themselves. How could
they claim to be a Christian and be such bad people? And yet
a believer says, I am what I am by the grace of God. Yes, I'm
a sinner and nothing at all. Jesus Christ is my all in all.
That's true. I believe that. And I don't have any other defense.
And even if you accuse me, my only appeal to God is look to
the Lord Jesus Christ for me. And they mock that. They mock
that. When we claim justification by the blood of Christ and that
God is going to answer for us, religion mocks that. No, it's
only for those who make a decision or God has done this for everyone
and they have to decide. They have to make the difference.
That is not true. That is not what the gospel teaches.
And so there are those who seek our soul to destroy it, just
like they did Christ. They accuse him falsely. They
spit in his face. They hit him with a reed. They
put thorns, a crown of thorns on his head. They whipped his
back until his bones stuck out. They nailed his hands with nails
and his feet with nails to the cross and they pierced his side.
They parted his garments by gambling for them and they said, if you're
the son of God, then come down from the cross. If you truly
trust God, let him save you. They just did all sorts of things
because they hated him. And this is what we are by nature,
but God has chosen us and given us grace to seek Christ and has
changed our hearts to depend on him and to love his salvation
and to love the one who saved us. And so those that seek our
soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
What is the lower parts of the earth? It's hell. It's hell.
And in this, he's showing us that the enemies of Christ and
of his people, the enemies of God's purpose of grace and salvation,
the enemies of God's work, are all opposing the glory of God.
They're opposing God the Father to lift up his people and they
will go into the place of the damned to the lower parts of
the earth. In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus
says that they will go into everlasting punishment. This is also echoed
in Revelation 14. In Revelation 14 it says, if
anyone worships the beast in his image, The same shall drink
the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture
into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the
presence of the Lamb." So these are those who hate Christ. When
the Lord was on the earth and those people spoke against him,
he didn't do anything. But when he sets judgment and
he calls people to stand before him in judgment, those who trusted
in their own works and therefore hated Christ will be made to
answer for their own disobedience. Meanwhile, all of the Lord's
people who were made to trust him will be given the reward
of Christ's obedience. And so this is echoed in Isaiah
chapter 45. Let me just read this to you
in Isaiah 45 and verse 24. Surely shall one say, and this
is a believer, this is what a believer says, in the Lord have I righteousness
and strength. And then it says, Even to him,
and then it says, even to him shall men come, and all that
are incensed against him shall be ashamed. To be incensed means
to be extremely angry, hostile. And that's what we are by nature.
But God has changed us. He has made us not hostile towards
Christ. Now we want Christ. We pray for
him. Our soul thirsts for him. And
we are never delighted until God gives us Christ in the gospel. But those who don't trust him,
who don't say, the Lord is my righteousness and strength, they're
incensed against him because they want the glory that God
only gives to Christ. Isn't that the problem? Pride
demands attention. Pride demands honor. But Christ says, no, there's
only one who's worthy of honor and glory. And the believer says,
amen to that. But here it says that all those
who are incensed against him shall be ashamed. And that's
what it's talking about in Psalm 63, verse nine. They that seek
my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
Okay? So this hatred against Christ
applies also to Christ's little ones. If we've done it to one
of these little ones, Jesus said, you've done it to me. And that
causes us to treat one another. This realization that God has
treated us with great grace and mercy for Christ's sake, it causes
us to treat one another with great grace and mercy for Christ's
sake. All right, verse 10. They shall
fall by the sword. They shall be a portion for foxes. A portion means meat. It means
that that's the food that God will give the foxes. And foxes
are those little creatures that eat dead things or kill small
things, but mostly they eat things that other animals have killed.
And in scripture, in the book of Luke, in the New Testament,
for example, Jesus called Herod, King Herod, a fox. He said, go
tell that fox that today I do miracles, tomorrow, and so on. He was telling him what he's
going to do in going to the cross, but he called him a fox. The
reason he was a fox is because it was evident when he took John
the Baptist and had him beheaded. He opposed God, God's minister
and Christ. And he would have been happy,
he was happy to crucify Christ. It says in Acts chapter four
that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Jews and the Gentiles
were against Christ. So Herod was in there too. So
he was a fox. And God is saying here that those
who hate Christ and his people shall fall by the sword and they
themselves will receive they will receive the punishment
that they wanted to come on the Lord's people. They wanted them
to be held to judgment. Judgment will come on them. They
wanted to hold them to a standard where they would be measuring
them by their works. God will measure them by their works and
hold them to that standard. Jesus said in Matthew chapter
7, take heed how you judge because with what judgment you judge,
you shall be judged. And so the Lord's people know
that they've been judged for Christ's sake, and they can't
judge anyone. Let us not judge one another
anymore. It says in Romans chapter 14, I think, or chapter 12, I
can't remember which one. Anyway, so these who attack Christ
with their words, with their attitudes, or by the things they
do to oppose the gospel, or to accuse them falsely, or to accuse
them legitimately, See, that's the problem. The woman taken
in adultery, she was guilty. Jesus said, go sin no more. So
she was a sinner. The woman at the well was a sinner.
But did Christ condemn her? No, he says, neither do I condemn
thee. How can we condemn one whom Christ has cleared, one
whom God has justified? That's the lesson of the gospel.
We treat one another, not as men judge, but as God judges,
and he looks upon Christ for his people. He looked on, we
trust that he looks on Christ for us, don't we? Then we look
on Christ for them too. We receive one another for Christ's
sake, because Christ received us to the glory of God. And that's the teaching of scripture.
All right. To be a portion for foxes is
to receive the wicked mischief that the enemies of Christ imagined
against him. I don't want to be the object
of the cruel, merciless treatment of man or devils. I don't. But that's what those
receive who are the enemies of Christ. All the cruelty that's
pent up in the heart of wicked men will come upon those. In the book of Esther, for example,
in chapter seven, verses nine and 10, it says that the king's
man, the king's servant said to the king, Ahasuerus, he said,
oh look, there's this gallows of 50 cubits high that Haman
built for Mordecai. And the king said, go hang Haman
on those gallows. And they did, and then it says,
and the king's wrath was pacified. You gotta be pacified when the
enemies of his son are hanged on the gallows they intended
for him. All right, and then in verse
11, the last verse of Psalm 63. He says, but the king shall rejoice
in God. Everyone that swears by him shall
glory, but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.
To speak lies is to deny the truth of the gospel. Okay, do
you understand that? That's to speak lies. When we
believe Christ, we are agreeing with God. We are taking God's
word as the way things are, and the way God is glorified, and
we're in total agreement with it by faith. Faith establishes
God's law because faith says Christ has done it all, and only
He could, and only He did. And so that's what faith does,
and so we glory. And it says, the king shall rejoice
in God and everyone that swears by Him, to swear by the Lord. is to confess that Christ is
all in all of my salvation, that he paid my sins with his own
blood and he's the Lord of all to deliver me from all my sins
and to bring me to himself for his glory. It's confessing Christ,
depending upon Him for all righteousness. And these things are set side
by side in contrast in the book of Romans in chapter 10. The
Jews trusted their own righteousness. They refused to submit to Christ's
righteousness. And based on that, Paul said
that they weren't going to be saved. He says, but Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And
then he goes on to show that even Moses testified in the law
that it was by faith that we're saved. Faith in Christ's righteousness,
not in our own. So that keeping the law is actually
sinning against law. Attempting to get righteousness
by keeping the law is sinning against God. You see, that's
what the gospel says. If you hold to the law, then
Christ profits you nothing. If we try by our own obedience
to bring a righteousness to God, then we are workers of iniquity. Matthew chapter 7, verse 21 through
23. Jesus says to all those who did
that, he says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never
knew you. But those who understand that
Christ is all in salvation, that He accomplished all by the will
of God and is seated in glory because He did that, and this
is the salvation of His people, they believe Him in their heart
and they confess Him. They confess that He is Lord,
that He is their salvation. And this is the swearing here
by the King. He says, everyone that swears
by Him shall glory. but the mouth of them that speak
lies shall be stopped. All who oppose Christ, who trust
in their own righteousness are speaking lies in their heart
and with their lips, and they will be stopped. All right, next
time, we will begin Psalm 64. Let's pray. Lord, Lord our God
and our Father, according to the instruction from your word,
we ask, Lord, that you would look to your Son for us, that
you would plead your own name and your own glory for our salvation,
that you would find a way, according to your word, to exalt your righteousness
in the forgiveness of our sins, that you would exert your mighty
power to forgive our sins by doing so in the Lord Jesus Christ. and that you would take away
not only our sins and make us clean and holy in your eyes by
his precious blood alone, but you would clothe us in his righteousness,
that obedience of his unto death out of love by which he gave
himself for our sins and fulfilled the law and established our everlasting
righteousness and now gives us everlasting life. in reward of
that righteousness. Thank you, Lord, that you have
placed us in and looked upon us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We trust that you will do so not only at the cross in our
conscience now from your word, but also in the day of judgment.
The Lord Jesus Christ is all of our hope, and he is our only
hope. We have nowhere else to go. We
have no one else who would take us, no one else who is able to
save us, no one else who is trustworthy. And so we trust Christ alone.
And we see your word echo these things to us, and teaching us
to think this way and to pray this way. And so we glory in
your salvation, and we praise you according to this psalm.
In Jesus' name, amen.