Alright, we're in Psalm chapter
31 and I want to look at verse 1 tonight. Let's read this together. It says in Psalm 31 verse 1,
In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in thy righteousness. Now, the word that first strikes
us here, of course, is in thee, O Lord. So it's in the Lord that
we are to put our trust. And the psalmist here is saying,
I put my trust in the Lord. That's where his trust is. And
then he asks the Lord to never let him be put to shame and to
deliver him in his righteousness, in God's righteousness. So let's
think about this matter of trusting God tonight. Trusting God is
perhaps one of the most fundamental things that we are exhorted to
do in scripture. But we tend not to think about
how much we are dependent upon God in our lives. In our daily
lives we can get busy, we can get distracted, we can neglect
prayer, we can neglect the reading of God's word and the
hearing of it being preached. But all of these things tend
to distract us. And so that the basis of our
need to trust God and the reason that we have the warrant from
God for trusting him, all become somewhat distant until something
very practical happens in our lives that causes us to be interested
in trusting God. So that drives us to this heightened
need to know the basis that God has given us to trust Christ.
You know that you are in need when you find in your soul a
desire to know, can I trust the Lord Jesus Christ? Will he have
me? Will he receive me and can I
put my trust in him? And so actually trusting him
becomes of utmost practical importance when the Lord causes us to have
this trouble in our soul. And it can come in many ways.
It can come through physical distress because of our body
is sick or failing, or our loved ones are undergoing all sorts
of trouble. And we find ourselves at our
wits end to try to help them or comfort them. And even the
comfort that we give seems to fall short of whatever they need.
And so this matter of trusting God becomes very, very practical
in trouble. It becomes practical when God
afflicts our soul and when we have any kind of need, especially
as it says here in the Psalm that we're considering tonight,
Psalm 31, when there are troubles without and troubles within.
and we're left at our wits end and we have to find out, is God
going to hold me up? Will he hold me up? And we find
ourselves with nowhere else to go and having to trust God. We
find ourselves in helplessness. because of our circumstances,
which may be very severe, and we find ourselves in helplessness
because of our weakness. And those two things together,
usually the severity of our circumstances makes it evident that we're utterly
weak. And our weakness and our circumstances
combine together to put us into a frame of mind where we're very
interested in help from God. And then we come to this point,
can I rely on his word? What did God say? What promise
has he given to someone like me? Can I trust him? And then
we may even ask, and if we do so, ask honestly, am I able to
trust in the Lord? And if not, how can I possibly
trust him? How can I expect anything from
him if I cannot trust him? So I want to consider these things
with you tonight. We know this from scripture that
every child of God knows or shall at some point in their life learn
this and learn it over and over again that we ought to want more
than anything, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to do this. In Matthew 5 it says, blessed
are the poor in spirit, blessed are they that do hunger and thirst
after righteousness, blessed are they that mourn, blessed
are the meek. All these things indicate a great
and deep need, and that need can only be met by Christ. And
so it's a blessed thing, and yet it's a It's a condition of
our soul that drives us to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so every child of God knows their need is to learn this and to
trust in the Lord continuously. And they want to rest on his
almighty saving power and his grace. They want to rest on His
accomplishments. That's what the child of God
wants to do. And yet, when trouble comes, and I'm just talking about
practical things, I've experienced this myself, I've heard other
people express it to me, and you come to the point where you
have nowhere else to go. And you cannot point someone
anywhere else except to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's where
we have to come to in order to trust God. We have to come to
the end of ourselves before we'll rely on the Lord to help us. And so that's just the nature
of our sinful selves. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
one who gives us faith, and he is the one who upholds our faith. He's the one who points out that
unbelief is sin. He says this in John chapter
16 in verse 10, that the world doesn't believe on him, and this
is sin. And so you can read that in John
16. And he had to pray, he had to
intercede that Peter's faith would not fail. And he told Peter
he would deny him three times before the morning. And Peter
was confident. He said, no, I will never deny
you. And then he did exactly as Jesus said. So it shows that
we are utterly dependent upon Christ not only to give us faith,
but also to uphold it and to strengthen it and to increase
it. So knowing these things, therefore, every believer ultimately
cries out to the Lord Jesus Christ to save him or her. That's our
cry. Lord, save me. Give me this grace
to believe on you and to trust you. Now, consider what trusting
Christ is. If I make a promise, let's say
I promise my son or my daughter or my wife or somebody I know
to do something for them, they're going to depend upon me to keep
that promise, aren't they? So by extending a promise to
them, I obligate myself to them. And by trusting me, then they
are depending upon me. They relinquish their own... into whatever I've committed
myself to do. And so that's the nature of trust. And when we're born, we're born
with this nature that trusts. We trust our parents and it's
just inbred in us. We depend on them for food and
for care and comfort. And we cry as babies and we receive
what we need, that comfort and that nurturing. and the food
that we need, everything that we need comes from them. And
so we become dependent upon them and we're comfortable in that.
We're happy to depend upon others. In fact, trusting is not just
a spiritual thing. We trust people all the time.
We trust them that when they say something, it's generally
true. If you say that your name is Bob, I generally expect that
your name is Bob. Or if the bank says, I'll keep
your money for you, I expect that they will. So we have this
sort of inherent inclination to trust people and
things. And in fact, it's to our discredit
that we trust the wrong things. And that's the difference between
saving faith and faith that doesn't save. It's not how strong our
faith is, it's the one we trust that makes the difference. We
may consider our own faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we
may wonder at times if our faith is only unbelief, that we have
no faith at all. We're so weak in faith that we
think, how can I even claim to be a believer? My faith is so
small. And sometimes we wonder if we
understand as we ought to. But the difference between saving
faith and faith that doesn't save is not how strongly we believe,
but the one we believe. And so that's the real issue
here. And that's why these first two
words or four words in this Psalm are so important. He says, in
thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. We don't trust another. And that's
what we want to look at here in this psalm tonight. Trusting
Christ begins here. Trusting Him to take away our
sins. That's where faith in Christ
begins. We believe that He is as God
has revealed Him in His Word. And how has He revealed His Son?
He has revealed Him as the Savior of sinners. Isn't that the very
first thing that as a believer in Christ, you came to trust
that God would save you from your sins for Christ's sake? And you went to the Lord Jesus
Christ in your heart. And you confessed in prayer to
Him in your heart that He is the Lord and that He alone can
save you. And you put yourself in His hands,
as it were. You ventured upon Him. You depended
upon Him to save you from your sins. That's what we do as believers
daily. We ask Him to save us, to have
mercy upon us, to be gracious to us, to continue the faith
that He once gave us, to continue and grow that faith in Him, to
know our sins are forgiven for His name's sake. And so this
matter of trust is fundamental, but it's so sweet, it's so endearing
to us. We find the Lord Jesus Christ
has obligated Himself To all those, he says, trust in me. And all those who trust in him
have relied upon him and depend upon him to do and be all that
he has said he is and would do for sinners. That's the essence
of trust, isn't it? It's a simple thing, and yet
it's a very profound thing that we would be given this text of
scripture here and so many to teach us to trust in the Lord. First of all, he says, in the
Lord, in the Lord Jehovah, in the Lord Jesus Christ, He is
Jehovah God. He is God with us, Matthew 1,
23. He is the Lord Jehovah, our righteousness. These are things from scripture,
plainly showing that Jesus Christ is Jehovah God. Psalm 23 says,
the Lord is my shepherd. And we know that's the Lord Jesus
Christ. He said, I am the good shepherd in John chapter 10.
We could go through the scriptures and correlate the statements
of the Old Testament that give the name of Jehovah. We would
find those names apply to the Lord Jesus Christ in the New
Testament. So there's no question about
it. Jesus is Jehovah God. He's the one we trust. And how
sweet it is to hear these words from God's inspired word, Scripture. In the Lord, in thee, O Lord,
in the Lord Jesus Christ, do I put my trust. Now, Jesus Christ
is worthy of our trust, and Scripture tells us to trust in Him. In
John chapter 14 and verse one, Jesus told his disciples, you
believe in God, believe also in me. And by that statement,
he was telling them, I am God, I am God. I am the one you are
to trust. You can hear my word, you can
believe my word, because this word is true. I am the truth. So Jesus Christ claims to be.
the one we are to trust. And then the Apostle Paul in
Acts 20-21 said this, we that he was by the Spirit of God he
said that he testified both to the Jews and also to the Greeks
repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now faith itself in the word faith is also the word trust. Faith means that we understand
what God is telling us to trust that we're persuaded the one
who said it is true, and that his word is therefore true, because
if he is true, then whatever he says is true, and faith is
understanding what God has said, and the persuasion that it's
true, because God is trustworthy, and then in that faith is also
include this reliance on, this dependence, this trusting the
one who said it. And so we find this shown throughout
scripture. It says here in that verse I
just read that the Apostle Paul, when he preached the gospel,
he testified both to Jews and Greeks repentance toward God
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it clear? Faith
is in Christ. Jesus told Nicodemus, whoever
believes in me has eternal life. Believing in Christ is eternal
life, and that includes trusting Him. We don't have to try to
psychologically analyze all of the emotions and our will and
all these things involved in faith. All we have to know is
that faith comes to us from God. It's His gift. He gives it to
us out of His grace, not for what we've done, not for anything
in us, and that faith that He gives directs us to the Lord
Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Lord to put all of our reliance
upon Him to save us from our sins. That's what these words
are saying here, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. In Romans
chapter 10, uh... the lord is spoken of as jesus
christ whoever shall call on the name of the lord he says
in romans ten nine if you shall confess with your mouth the lord
jesus and shall believe in your heart that god raised him from
the dead you shall be saved for with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation for the scripture saith listen whosoever believeth on
him shall not be ashamed God is saying from Scripture here,
and he's pulling it from the Old Testament, whoever believes
on Christ shall not be ashamed. We know it's speaking about Christ
because in Romans 10, the Apostle Paul is speaking about Jesus
Christ as the Lord, the one we call on, the one we confess,
the one we trust. And so he goes on in verse 12
of Romans 10, he says, there's no difference between the Jew
and the Greek. The same Lord over all is rich unto all that
call upon him. Whosoever shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be saved. These are the words of scripture.
And so we read these things in Scripture throughout, but one
dear and precious place is in Psalm chapter 62. You want to
turn there with me. Look at Psalm chapter 62, and
I want to read the first eight verses there. It's a very powerful
and comforting and endearing text of scripture about trusting
in the Lord. The Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the object of our faith, our trust, our confidence, and
our expectation. Look at this in Psalm 62, verse
1. Truly, my soul waiteth upon God. From him cometh my salvation. So what is he waiting for? Well,
he's waiting on God because his salvation comes from God. And
then in verse two, he says, he only is my rock, not another
and not another plus him, but him alone. He only is my rock
and my salvation. Now, when Simeon in Luke chapter
two and verse 30 saw the Lord Jesus Christ as a baby, do you
know what he said? He said, mine eyes have seen
thy salvation. This is God's salvation, the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah chapter 12, he says,
the Lord Jehovah is become my salvation. And his name is Jesus
because Jesus means Jehovah is salvation. That's his name, Jesus'
name. And so here we see that fundamental
claim by the reformers and so many other believers who held
to this tenaciously against all opposition, even unto death,
that salvation is in Christ alone. There is only one name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, and that name
is Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. So Jesus Christ is not only the
object of our faith. He's the only object of our faith
insofar as our salvation goes. We can't get to God except by
Him. He's the way. He's our salvation. So the psalmist says here, God
only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not
be greatly moved. How long will you imagine mischief
against a man? You shall be slain, all of you,
as a bowing wall shall you be, and as a tottering fence." You're
going to fall. Verse 4, they only consult to
cast him down from his excellency. They delight in lies. They bless
with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. Look at verse 5 of
Psalm 62. My soul, wait thou only upon
God, for my expectation is from him. Wait, it means to you just
be still. You give the reins, the controls
over to God. You don't let him, but you wait
on him to do what he has promised. You don't get up and try to make
it happen. You let him do it. And this is
speaking about our salvation. He's talking about his defense.
How can he save himself? The Lord's got to do it. And
his expectation, that means his hope. A believer not only trusts
Christ, but in trusting him and depending on him and relying
on him to do his word, They expect him to fulfill what he obligated
himself by his word to do. That's the expectation here.
My expectation is from him. Verse six, he only is my rock
and my salvation. He is my defense, I shall not
be moved. In God is my salvation and my
glory. The rock of my strength and my
refuge is in God. Trust in him, notice, Trust in
him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before him.
God is a refuge for us." So, you people, who is that referring
to? Everyone who is burdened and heavy laden. Jesus said,
come unto me, ye that are burdened. burdened and are heavy laden.
I don't know if I'm getting the words just right in Matthew 11,
28, but he's obligating himself to unburden and to receive those
who come to him who are burdened and heavy laden. Let me read
that verse to you in Matthew 11, 28. He says this, He says, come unto me, all you
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. There
you have it. Christ will take the burden of
our sin, the burden of God's requirements, the burden of our
condemnation, the burden of our judgment, the burden of our obligations
to fulfill the requirements of God. He'll take all of that.
He'll take everything that causes a burden on us, and He will bear
it. That's the promise here. What
an obligation He put Himself under for those who trust in
Him. Notice in Psalm 62, where we
read, it says, you people, trust in Him at all time, you people.
And here He says, to all, come unto Me, all you who labor and
are heavy laden. If you're poor in spirit, If
you mourn because of your sin, if you are bowed down and made
meek so that you submit to God's hand and His pleasure and your
salvation to do the whole work, You're burdened and heavy laden.
You've been made so by God. And he says, come to me. And
the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who would unburden us. He's
the one who would fulfill that promise to do all that. So we
see in these words how precious it is that the Lord Jesus Christ
directs sinners to himself to bear their burden and take their
sins from them and to trust him for that. And that, therefore,
coming to Christ is trusting him. That's what it means. We're
coming to him, asking him in trust. Because we're trusting
Him to do what He has said. We're asking Him by our dependence
upon Him, by our calling upon Him, whosoever shall call on
the name of the Lord, by our crying and praying to Him. What
are we doing? We're asking Him to fulfill the
obligation He put Himself under to save sinners like us from
their sins. Sinners who can't help themselves.
Sinners who can't do it for themselves. They need someone to do everything
for them. The Lord Jesus Christ has done
that for us. And then I want you to consider
this in Isaiah chapter 45. In Isaiah 45 and verse 22, consider
these words. Jesus said, I like this verse,
which is why I referred to it. So often the Lord Jesus Christ
is actually speaking in this verse. He says, look unto me,
look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For
I am God and there is none else. Sometimes we wonder, am I too
great a sinner to look to Christ? Am I too great a sinner to trust
Him to save me from my sins? Would He even consider me since
I'm so foul and so helpless and so have no potential to do anything
of profit in the kingdom of God? He doesn't need me. Now, I don't
have anything to contribute here. In fact, I have everything to
disqualify me. Is he really giving me warrant
to trust him? Here he says it. Look unto me.
Look. And when we look to Christ, we're
considering his worthiness, his ability to save sinners, aren't
we? And Jesus says in Hebrews 7.25
that He is able to save them to the uttermost who come to
God by Him. And that's coming to Him in trust,
relying on Him, depending upon Him, looking to Him, calling
on Him, Lord save me to the uttermost. I need to be saved in every part
to the uttermost. And so this is His words right
here in this verse of Isaiah 45 that promises He would do
that. In Revelation chapter 19, I want you to see this too, because
a lot of times people betray our trust in them. They fail,
don't they? But in Revelation 19 and verse
11, it says, I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse and
he that sat upon him was called, listen now, faithful and true. and in righteousness he doth
judge and make war." Faithful and true. You can trust Christ
because he's worthy of all sinners' trust. He's worthy of everyone's
trust. But no one will trust him of
themselves because faith in Christ is the gift of God. And we can't. In fact, it's only in our new
nature, that nature born of God, that nature that's created in
Christ Jesus by the work of God, that we're a new creature in
Christ Jesus. It's only that nature that's
been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life that is able
to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not until Christ comes to
live in us and gives us life that we're able to believe on
him for that life. And so when we receive Christ
by faith, he's already given us life. Jesus says this in John
chapter 1 and verse 12 and 13. You can see that this is the
case there in John 1, 12 and 13. Let me get there. I'll read
this to you. It's another familiar text. But
he says, as many as received him, now think about what receiving
him means. It means we hear his promises,
we hear his word, his doctrine, his truth, we hear what he says,
and we embrace it. We see it, we're persuaded of
it, and we lay hold upon it, as it says in Hebrews 11, 13.
Those who live by faith, they saw the promises of God, although
they were far off in their fulfillment. They were persuaded of them because
God persuaded them. and they confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, but they laid hold
on them, they embraced them, and they were glad to embrace
them. This is receiving Christ. It's that persuasion that God
gives that what he said is true because he is true, and this
is all my salvation, and we embrace it. We're persuaded of this.
And so he says here, as many as received him, God-given trust
in Christ, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name." Now listen, it sounds like, right
there, that because they believed, then God gave them new birth.
But listen, "...which were born, not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." How were
they born? God did it. Did He look at their
will? No. Did He look at the will of
some other person, like their parent? No. Were they born into
the family of God by physical birth? No, not of blood. It came
because God had a will. And God's will, because He had
a will, because He ordained them to eternal life, gave them to
Christ, and then gave Christ the power and the authority,
as the son of man to give them eternal life, therefore they
believed on him." See Acts 13, 48 and John 17, verse 2 and 3. Here he's saying those who received
him were born of God. They received him because they
were born, and he gave them the authority, believe in Christ,
to be called the sons of God. That's what he's saying here.
And so it is throughout scripture. Our faith comes from God. There's
no question about this. I've read so many commentators
who deny this, but this is as plain as it can be in scripture. So never doubt it, that faith
comes from God and it's his gift, not our production, not what
we do, all right? Okay, back to Psalm chapter 31.
So Christ is worthy of our trust. He's the Savior of sinners. The
first thing we realize when we trust Christ is that He is the
Savior of sinners, therefore this is the first if you will,
the first dependence that a sinner makes on Christ, and it's a dependence
that's the result of spiritual life, because we can't produce
it. God has to give it, and it comes
out of that new nature God has given to us. In Romans chapter
6 and verse 17, it says, you were the servants of sin. But
the next part says, but God be thanked God be thanked. Not you. Thank you for accepting Jesus.
No. No. God be thanked that you were
the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that
form of doctrine which was delivered to you. You believed Christ.
You believed the gospel. That's what that form of doctrine
is, and obedience to it is believing it. So, believing Christ is the
work of God, so therefore God be thanked that you were the
servants of sin. You were in unbelief and you
couldn't get out. You were in darkness, that's
what unbelief is, in darkness, and God gave you light. You were
dead in sins, you couldn't believe God, God gave you life to see
Christ and to know and believe Him. So in the Lord, I put my
trust. And I want to go on and on with
this, but I don't want to overtax you, and I've tried to commit
myself to reduce the time here to under an hour on our Bible
study. So I'm going to cut this short
tonight, and then I will get back to this the next time, and
to get into more of what this trust in Christ really is. And
hopefully in seeing that, we will have a greater appreciation
for what the Lord has done in telling us to trust Him. I think that's the most wonderful
thing of all, when the Lord of glory tells a sinner to trust
Him. I want to read one scripture
to you in closing. Look at Psalm 32. Psalm 32, we're
not there yet, it's the one after this psalm, but look at Psalm
32. This is a confession, a confession of David after he had sinned. It says, blessed is he, verse
one, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed
is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no guile. Okay, so you can see this. Obviously,
the man was a sinner, right? He was a transgressor. He was
a man of iniquity. Otherwise, he wouldn't need forgiveness. And how could he have a spirit
without guile? Well, that's a question we'll
try to answer later on. But it has to do with the fact
that, as we're gonna see in the verses that follow, that a true,
a pure heart is one that knows its own sinfulness and knows
Christ to be the only righteous one and trusts on him. So it
says, verse three, when I kept silence, David said, my bones
waxed old through my roaring all the day long. When we don't
confess our sin, it lays on us like a heavy stone. For day and
night thy hand was heavy upon me, God's chastening hand. My
moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledge my sin
to thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity
of my sin. And look at verse six. This is
a puzzling verse. It's an amazing verse. For this
shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when
thou mayest be found." You see that? Those who confess their
sins, God says, are godly. But this seems like a contradiction,
doesn't it? How can a sinner be godly? Well, the common interpretation
of this would be, well, because they used to be sinners, but
now they're not. But we know that can't be true because the
apostle Paul in Romans 7 confessed the fact that he did the things
he didn't want to do and he didn't do the things he wanted to do.
And sin was always with him. So he was a sinner. And he even
said in one place, he said, Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners of whom I am chief. So we know that it's not because
he is not a sinner anymore. But the fact is, is that faith
in Christ begins with a sinner trusting Christ for salvation.
And that to me is the most comforting thing of all. Because that same
faith we exercised when we first heard and believed the gospel
is the faith we exercise now. as old believers, as fathers,
if you will. As it says in 1 John chapter
2, I write unto you fathers, I write unto you little children,
I write unto you young men. He writes to them because their
sins are forgiven for his namesake, he says in chapter 2 of 1 John. And this is what they believe.
They believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. In Revelation 12, those
who overcame, overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the
word of their testimony, their faith in Christ, the gospel.
And so they didn't love their lives even unto death because
they trusted in Him. And so when we fall into trouble,
whether it be sin or whether it be affliction from within
or without, persecutions, mockings, scourgings, are turned away,
everything seems dark, remember God's promise. He will not forsake
those who trust in Him. Job said, though He slay me,
Yet will I trust him. And the Lord Jesus Christ, it
says in scripture, trusted on the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ
trusted on the Lord. Now think about that, and we'll
look at it more next time. Let's pray. Father, thank you
that we have been exhorted and even commanded to trust in the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Psalm 2, verse 12, you said,
blessed are those, all those who put their trust in him. What
a blessed word this is, because we find ourselves so much of
the time overburdened with our own sinfulness. And we cry with
the Apostle Paul, who shall deliver me from this wretched man that
I am? And then we are reminded through
scripture that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one that we trust,
the one we trust to deliver us from our sins. And so we also
join the Apostle and say, I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord. What a blessed thing this is that we can trust Christ for
everything. everything in our salvation,
everything in God's creation, everything in providence, while
we're under persecution, while we're under the fading symptoms
of our body, whatever it is, whether it be life or death,
things present or things to come, principalities or powers, famine
or torture or any other thing, all these things are unable to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord. We are depending on you, Lord Jesus, to fulfill your
word and save us to the uttermost. You have brought us to yourself
through trusting you, and you've said in your own words, you will
not cast out any who come to you. Thank God, thank you, Lord
Jesus, for your word that you are so faithful and true that
we can trust you at all times. And you've told us, trust in
him at all times, you people. What a blessed word of comfort
this is. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.