Thank you, Bill. Let's go back
to that wonderful psalm that he read to us, Psalm 115. Psalm 115. A little bit warm
up here, so I'm going to take care of that as best I can. All right, Psalm 115. Now, this
is my subject. Where is God and what is he doing? That's the subject for today. Where is God and what is he doing? Look at Psalm 115, and I'm gonna
just focus on the first three verses this morning. Psalm 115, verse one, not unto
us. Oh Lord, not unto us but under
thy name, give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. He begins the psalm by saying,
not unto us. There's no credit or glory due
to us for anything, is there? Have we ever done anything, accomplished
anything, just by ourselves? Is it not the mercy of God, due
to the daily benefits that God gives us, that we're ever able
to accomplish anything? Therefore, no glory should go
to us. Do you have a mind that thinks
and reasons? Are you able as you sit there
now to listen to the things that I'm saying and to focus in upon
the Word of God? Here is God's Word. Nothing is
more important than focusing on the scriptures. Are you able
to do that? Are you able to read? Are you able to listen? Are you
able to hear? Are you able to speak? Are you able to move? Well, obviously,
the answer to these questions is yes. Now, maybe we don't see
as good as we used to, and maybe we don't hear as good as we used
to, but we have these natural abilities. Well, the glory for
those things is not due to us. Not unto us, O Lord. Not unto
us. We didn't give ourselves these
temporal gifts. The emotional gifts that God
gives us, are you a relatively even keeled person? The emotional good health that
you have, where you don't go all to pieces all the time and
have highs and lows and that sort of thing? The emotional
stability that you've got, is that due to you? What about your physical well-being? Is that due to you? And I know
that we're to take reasonable good care of ourselves, but here
we are this morning and we're reasonably in good health. I
know there's some issues that many of our congregation have,
but whatever physical wellbeing we enjoy, it's not due to you. You say, well, I've taken my
vitamins and I exercise and I do this and I do that. But look
at others. who are not nearly in the kind
of condition you're in. It's due to God. If you're able
to exercise, God gave you that ability to do that. See, all
of these things are due to God. You've got to trace all of these
things back to God. Do you have a job? Did you have
a job from which you now receive a pension? Well, who gave you
the ability to work the job? to do the things that you needed
to do. You children, you're in school. Well, school's out now for most
of them. But the ability you have to read,
to write, to do math, to think about things, to reason things
out, to come to solutions about questions and problems that your
teacher or your professor set before you, do you naturally
have that ability? No, God gave them to you. And
then we go to a much greater elevated subject, spiritual gifts. Spiritual mercies and graces. There's no glory due to us for
any of those things. As you read the Word of God and
as you worship, as you seek to honor God, is that something
you just decided to do yourself? The comprehension you have, the
understanding of this salvation by grace, through the doing and
the dying of the Lord Jesus, is that something you came upon
yourself? It was God who sent you a preacher. It was God who gave you His Spirit
to understand these things. To understand and comprehend
to some degree how God can be just and justify a sinner like
you. A sinner like me. It's God who sent the truth our
way. He didn't have to send us the
truth. He could have done to us like He did to many people.
The last couple of Lord's days, we've been studying Acts chapter
16. He ordained the gospel wouldn't
be sent to some places, and it would be sent to other places.
Well, why did God send the gospel to you? Why did He send the truth to
you? You weren't out in pursuit. You
weren't looking for God. You and I were just like Adam
and Eve. After Adam had violated God's
commandment, he and Eve, realizing their naked condition, that they're
in trouble before God, they heard the voice of God calling in the
cool of the day, Adam, where are you? And we're like Adam
and Eve. They were hiding from God. And
that's where we were. It was the Lord who came after
us. The Lord is the seeking God. He seeks the lost. He seeks the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. You weren't doing anything except
being on the broad road that leads to destruction. He found
you. He sought you. He went after
you. So that's the way it is. So no
wonder David begins this, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
but unto thy name give glory. And we didn't redeem ourselves. We didn't put away our sins.
We have no ability to do that. Only the one whom we had offended
by our sins could do something about our sins and remove them,
and he had to do it in a just way through the Lord Jesus Christ. And this salvation is all of
grace. Therefore, not unto us, O Lord,
not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. This is all for the
glory of God. Who saved us? God saved us. Why did he save us? Because he
would. Well, what is the result of this
salvation? As far as God's concerned, everlasting
glory. As far as we're concerned, everlasting
joy and happiness. And therefore, all glory goes
to God. You see, those who are saved
by God's grace, We wanna glorify God, we do. We wanna ascribe
to Him all the perfections of His nature. And those of you
who know the Lord, those of you who are known of the Lord, those
of you who have been brought to see something of the worthiness
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greatness of our Savior, the
worthiness of His bloody death, the value of that death, the
great power of that death, in which he satisfied God by burying
all the sins of his people in his own body on the tree and
then suffering the wrath of God in our stead and removing our
sins. We attribute all glory to the
Savior. And we don't take any to ourselves.
We understand His blood washed our sins away, not our works,
not our baptism, not our church membership, but the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. And therefore
we give Him all the glory. And the fact that we have an
interest in the gospel, that we love this Savior, that we
believe the message of grace is due to the greatness of the
spirit of Christ Jesus. He came and he did a work within
us. You didn't do that work. You
didn't open your heart. The Lord opened your heart. You
didn't give yourself a new heart. The Lord gave you a new heart.
a new heart to believe him, a new heart to love him, a new heart
to lay hold of Christ Jesus. Yes, David who wrote this psalm and
all of the people of God who believe the Lord Jesus Christ,
we glorify God, we magnify his mercy and we join in with David
and we say not unto us, Oh, Jehovah, because that's the word Lord,
whenever you see Lord in all capital letters, that's Jehovah. If you took all of the Bible,
and if you could somehow compress it into one word, it's this word
Jehovah, God who saves. It's a book about God who saves. And the God who saves is the
Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer, our surety, our
substitute in God's sacrifice for sin. So it says, not unto
us, O Jehovah, O God who saves, not unto us, but unto thy name,
O great Jehovah, give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's
sake. David singles out the mercy of
God or the grace of God as a reason why God should receive glory. And this grace is certainly displayed
in the salvation of his people, in our election, in our predestination,
in our justification, in our redemption. in our reconciliation,
in our regeneration, in our conversion, in our preservation, and in our
glorification, all glory goes to the Lord. Look at the second
verse. Wherefore should the heathens
say, where is now their God? It's very interesting, and then
the psalm which precedes this. David wrote about the greatness
of God in delivering Israel from Egyptian bondage. And he wrote
this to remind the Israelites of that. And of course, this
is a psalm that they would, of course, sing. Look at Psalm 114. Notice what he says. When Israel
went out of Egypt, And all of us know the story of the Exodus,
Israel's Exodus out of Egypt. When Israel went out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob, they were a people of strange language. Judah was his sanctuary and Israel
his dominion. In other words, God dwelt with
his people. That's what that's saying. And
he never forgot them. Though they were in Egyptian
bondage 400 years, he never wrote them off and he never forgot
them. God never forgets his people. Judah was his sanctuary. All
along, when they weren't thinking of him, he was thinking of them. And then I had a wonderful thought
for you and me. When we weren't thinking of him,
he was thoughtful of us. And even now as believers, people
who trust the Lord Jesus, people who are Christians. There are
lots of times when He's not on our minds. You've got a multitude
of things to think about. We do love the Lord Jesus, we
do believe Him, but we also have to be honest. There are times
when you're not thinking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't
that right? You gotta be honest about that.
Was it Barnard said, honest people don't wind up in hell. People
who are honest with God don't lie to yourself. There are times
when the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is not on your mind, but
you're always on His mind. You're always in His thoughts
before He made the world. You are on His mind and on His
heart. When He's hanging on the cross
of Calvary, suffering your wrath, your shame, bearing your awful
reproach, bearing in his own body your sins, your guilt, your
transgressions, your iniquities, before you were ever born, you
were on his heart. You were on his heart. And when Israel was in Egyptian
bondage for a long time, Not many of them gave God thought. But God considered them to be
his house. That's where he dwelt. He dwelt
with them. He didn't dwell with the Egyptians.
He dwelt with his people. Judah was his sanctuary, Israel
was his dominion. In other words, from there, he
likens himself to be as an earthly king who dwelt among his people
and from the midst of his people, he dominated the world. And it's
that way now. Our God, He dwells with His people. He lives among us. He walks with us. He abides with
us. And He'll never forsake us. And
from the midst of His people, He rules the world. Isn't that
a wonderful thought? Just read on, verse three. The
sea saw. The Red Sea, it fled. It just
split wide open. And the Jordan was driven back
when Israel went into the promised land. The mountains they skipped
like rams, and the little hills like lambs. And then he asks
in a very poetic way, what ail thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest,
and thou Jordan, that thou was driven back? Ye mountains that
ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills like lambs, tremble
thou earth at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of
the God of Jacob, which he turned the rock into a standing water. Israel was thirsty. God said, smite the rock, smite
the rock. And the Lord sent forth water. said the flint into fountains
of waters. So all that has just been said
by David as he recounted the wonders that God did to his honor
and to his glory. And now we get to Psalm 115.
And this is what the heathen is saying. The heathen is saying,
Where now is their God? Okay, He did those things back
then. We don't see any miracles now.
We don't see any actions of your God. Where is your God now? Here your kingdom is in trouble.
Here there's division among you. Yeah, you talk about what God
used to do. Where is your God right now? That's the question. Where is
he now? Where is now their God? That's not a new question. Job. Virtually asked the same
question in Job 23 in verse three, oh, that I knew where I might
find him, that I might come even to his seat. Where is God? Where is God? You remember, you
remember all the great deeds of Elijah, a great prophet of
God. Well, he was about to leave this
world. He left in a fiery chariot pulled
by fiery horses, horses of fire. He went up in a whirlwind. But before he left, before he
left, he had his mantle, kind of like a jacket made of goat's
hair. Elijah wanted that mantle. He
prayed that mantle fall on him. And it did. Elijah was taken up into heaven. Elisha picked up the mantle that
fell from Elijah, the mantle with which he smote the waters.
And Elisha said this, where is the God of Elijah? And when he also had spit in
the waters, they parted hither and thither and Elijah went over. Where is the God of Elijah? Where is the God of Elijah? The God of power. The God who acts on the behalf
of his people. The God who saves. The God who
is almighty. Elisha is saying, I want the
power of God. It's not enough to have the preacher's
garment. Oh, he had the preacher's garment.
You can put on the preacher's clothes. And that's what Elisha
did. But just being robed as a preacher,
that doesn't mean you're gonna have any power. And so Elisha
looks up to heaven and he said, oh, where is the God of Elijah? I need his power. I need his
grace. I want him to make himself manifest
through my ministry. And that's what every preacher
of the gospel prays. Oh, we come before you dressed
like preachers. Ever how that is. But I'll tell you, if we don't
have the God of Elijah, everything we do is useless. Our Lord Jesus looked at his
disciples and he said, without me, you can do nothing. You can
go ahead and get dressed up and you can go to church. And all
of you, you can bring your Bibles. and you can have your Bible opening
right before you right now, and you can read the Scriptures with
me, as you ought to do, and as you do. And so do I. But unless the God of Elijah,
unless the God of Elijah is among us, to awaken dead sinners, to
do for us what we can't do for ourselves, to open up our hearts,
to receive the Word of God, unless He's with us to open our ears
and open up our eyes, unless He's with us to cause us to be
born anew by the Spirit of God, all that we do is useless. I'm telling you the truth. Where
is the God of Elijah? Elihu, when he was speaking to
Job and after he had been listening to Job's three friends, he said,
I'm going to tell you, here's your problem, boys. None of you said, where is God
my maker? That's your problem. You've been
going back and forth. You've been arguing. Here are
these accusations being made against Job, but none of you
is interested in the presence of God. None of you is interested
in the glory of God. None of you asks, where is God,
my maker? What about God? What about God
in all of this? And I say to you in your life,
in your day-to-day activities, where is God in all that? In all that you do, where is
God? Where is God? Look, here's a
reference I want you to turn to. Look at Isaiah chapter 63. Isaiah chapter 63. Isaiah 63. Look in verse nine, Isaiah 63,
nine. And of course the passage is
talking about the Lord and Israel. Isaiah 63, verse nine. You're there? Okay. I'll even give the children time
to find it. I know when I was in grade school,
my mom had a Bible in front of me and she'd help me find that
reference. Some chapters are kind of hard to find. Give you
time to find it. Okay, here we go. Look at verse
nine. Isaiah 63, nine. In all their
affliction, he was afflicted and the angel of his presence
saved them. Who is that? That's Christ Jesus.
He's the angel of their presence. And in his love and in his pity,
he redeemed them. And he bared them, he carried
them all the days of old, but they rebelled and vexed his Holy
Spirit. Therefore he was turned to be
their enemy and he fought against them. Then he remembered the
days of old, Moses and his people saying, where is he? Where is
the God that brought them up? Brought them up out of the sea
with the shepherd of his flock. Where is that God? Where is he that put his Holy
Spirit within him? Where is that God that sends
his Holy Spirit? Because we got to have his Holy
Spirit. Where is that God? I'm not interested
in this no count God today who can't do what he wants to do.
I'm interested in the God of the Bible. Where is he? Where is he? Keep reading. The God that, verse
12, led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm,
dividing the water before them to make himself an everlasting
name. The God that led them down through
the deep as a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble
as a beast that goeth down into the valley. The spirit of the
Lord caused him to rest, so thou didst lead thy people to make
thyself a glorious name. Where is that God? Where is that
God? And Isaiah says in verse 15,
look down from heaven and behold from the habitation of thy holiness
and thy glory. Where is thy zeal, O God? Where is thy strength? The soundness
of thy bowels. Where is thy mercies toward me? Are they restrained? Where is
God? Where are your mercies, Father?
Well, I'll tell you what, he has an abundance of mercies. He says, asking it shall be given.
And he said, you have not because you ask not. So back in our text, David, he
quotes the heathen who say, where is now their God? Well, let me answer that. Number one, he's in the heavens. David answers it in verse three,
but our God is in the heavens. Our God is in the heavens. That refers to his majesty. That
refers to his sovereignty. Isaiah said, in the day the king
Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. I saw him on his
throne, his throne. He saw him in heaven. I read
this morning just to begin the service. God said, heaven's my
throne. The earth is my footstool. And
being in heaven, he does his will. As Nebuchadnezzar said,
he does his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth and none can stay his hand or say unto him, what
doest thou? The Lord is in heaven ruling.
He's sovereign in creation, providence and salvation. He's everywhere. He's everywhere. Where is God? There is in any place you can
go, but what God isn't already there, because He fills all things. David said in another Psalm,
if I ascend into heaven, you're there. He said, and behold, if
I descend to the depths of the hell itself, You're there. God's everywhere. Where is God? He's everywhere. He's omnipresent, good word to
know. Where is God? He's in heaven,
he's on his throne, he's everywhere. I'll tell you where he is. He's
with his people. He's with his people. He says,
we're two or three gathered together there, I'll be in the midst.
Where is God? Where is your God? One day, he
walked on this earth. That's where God, you know where
God was? Over there in Bethlehem, in that
feed trough? Where is God? There he is. There
he is. A little infant. hanging on his
mother's breast. Where is your God? Bethlehem's
manger. Where is your God? 12 year old
boy teaching in the temple. Where is your God? Being led
of the Spirit of God down to the river Jordan to be baptized
by John the Baptist. Where is your God? Led by the
Holy Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil 40
days and 40 nights. Where is your God? Walking on
this earth in his public ministry for four years, preaching the
gospel, first thing he did, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the
good news of redemption, reconciliation and righteousness through himself
by his death. Where is your God? Look on Calvary's
mountain. You see that cross? See that
middle cross? You can see it in your mind's
eye. See that cross? See that man nailed to that cross?
Blooded, beaten, gory looking. You see that man? There's God. That's God hanging on the cross.
Why does he die? That God might be just and justify,
that's why he died. Where is God? He's on the cross. Where is God? His body is being
prepared for burial by Joseph and Nicodemus. Where's your God? See that tomb over there in Israel?
He's in there. That's his body anyway. Where's
your God? Roll away the stone. Our God's
coming out. He rose from the dead because
he did everything God told him to do. He finished the work that
God assigned to him in the covenant of grace. 40 days later, where
is your God? I see him ascending back to heaven.
Where is your God? Sit here at my right hand to
you. I make you enemies your footstool. Where's your God? Where is your God? He's in the
Bible. Yeah, it's a book about Him.
You know that. Where is your God? He's pictured
in all the offerings and types and ceremonies of the Old Testament. Where is your God? He's set forth
in the four gospels. Where is your God? His gospel
is set forth very clearly from Acts through the book of Revelation.
Where is your God? Where is your God? He's in the
scriptures. wherever the scriptures are preached,
he's in the gospel. He's in the message of his ministers. That's where he is. His name
fills the message, fills the sermons. It doesn't matter who
the preacher is, doesn't matter what his name is, the names of
the preachers don't even need to be remembered or made known.
It's the one that they preach, that's the one that needs to
be remembered. May our names perish and his name live on forever. And it will. It will. Where is your God? He's in every
gospel sermon being preached. And it doesn't matter who the
preacher is or where the preacher is preaching. They're preaching
Christ Jesus. They're his servants. And he's
there. That's where he is. What is he
doing? Watch this. The rest of verse three. Whatsoever
he hath pleased. That's a short answer. Where
is he? Several answers. What's he doing?
Whatever he wants to do. Whatever he wants to do in creation,
that's what he's doing. Whatever he wants to do in providence. What is providence? I've defined
it. God directing all things to the
end that he has ordained already. The end that he has ordained
for his everlasting glory and the good of his people. What
is God doing? He's reigning in creation, in
providence, and in salvation. He rules the world, we sing at
Christmas time, with truth and grace. He always rules. What's He doing? Whatever He
wants to do. Whatever He wants to do. And
I hope and pray that He's pleased to show mercy and grace to you
and me. And I'll tell you this, He's
more willing to show mercy than we are to receive it. If that
wasn't true, none of us would receive any mercy. No, no. Let's sing a song.