Chapter 10. I want to say a few things about
understanding how to read the literature of Scripture. Yes,
the Bible is comprised of many I don't want to debate the criticisms
of things, but the Bible is comprised of many different writings of
many different types. A type of writing is also known
as a genre or a type of literature. You have poetry, you have prophecy,
you have instruction or didactics, teachings. You have all manner
of narratives And in those narratives you have explanations, narratives,
just a story, this happened, here's a historical record. You
have proclamation, you have praise, hymns, songs, and everything
in between. And in all of that, like if you
read the letter to Ephesians and you see Psalms, and doxologies,
and instruction, and narratives, and all sorts of, but it in and
of itself is a teaching. It's something that is taught
for us. And so the scripture then comes together supernaturally,
purposed by God, that we may know him as he has revealed himself
in his love for his people through Jesus Christ his son alone. Hebrews
chapter one teaches us that. among other things, but explicitly.
God, in many times, in many ways, has spoken to us, taught us,
instructed us, revealed himself to us through the prophets, to
our fathers, and through other means, in many ways, through
the prophets. But in these days, in these last days, he speaks
to us through his son. So then when we look at the Old
Testament, we see, for example, like the life of Joseph, we see
Moses, we see David, we see Noah, we see Ruth, We see the judges,
we see Samuel, we see all the things that take place and we
understand them in their context as an experience given to us
historically of people who by God's purposes have been recorded
concerning their lives. But once we see the revelation
of the apostles in the New Testament, once we see the illusion, and
what that means, not illusion, but allusion, of referring back
to the Old Testament writings and the Old Testament people
and the Old Testament prophets and the Old Testament happenings,
and see how the apostles and even the Lord Jesus himself ascribes
these things and the details and the outcomes and the pictures
and the types and the shadows, the metaphors to himself, to
Jesus. Then we begin to realize just
what providence is. We begin to understand sovereignty.
We begin to understand revelation and prophecy. We know that when
God spoke to Abraham and he said, I will make you a father of many
nations, that your children will be greater than the sands on
the seashore. But beloved, I've had infinite
amount of sand in my car coming from the beach before. So I can't
imagine how much more sand is there. It's a picture of God's
infinite purposes in the life of Abraham explicitly to show
him the nature of his power and promises for he and his wife,
period, so that they would trust in God's promise to bring them
a son whose name was Isaac. And in that son, it was literally
fulfilled in time for a purpose to establish some nation who
was not a nation, who were no people, Chaldeans from Ur, pagans
of the world, to become a people who were not a people so that
God in the picture of humanity and human history could reveal
the reality of the depths of the spiritually unknowable. redemption through Jesus Christ.
So we know that the true Isaac is Jesus, but there was also
a real Isaac. So when the Old Testament writers
spoke and wrote and existed in their history, they were not
coming out being creative and saying, I'm going to write this
story about me, but it's really about Jesus. They had no idea.
And they're not myths and legends, they're not stories made up so
that we can have Aesop's fables to relate to Jesus coming. They are about Christ. Always. But they are also about
these people and God's purposes in these people to point to Christ.
So we learn what God did with them, and in them, and through
them, and for them, and then we learn the temporal blessings
that came from that, and that all of the outcome, even the
fall of humanity, is an attempt to show us the sufficiency of
the Savior, Jesus Christ, the God-man. So let me warn you in two ways. I want to warn you, church, to
be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, and can I say
that again, very leery of someone who insists that there is no
historical purposes in the Old Testament. And I want you to
be very, very, very, very, very, very, very leery of someone who
says that there is no Christological purposes in the stories of the
Old Testament. You see what I'm saying there?
When someone hammers a nail into one of those at the cost of the
other, they are in error. So when someone says you need
to live like David, that's not why David was written. You need
to pray like David, that's not why, I don't wanna pray like
David. I don't wanna complain like David. I do better than
David in the complaining area. I'm better than David. I don't
wanna be like Moses. I don't want to be like Paul.
I don't want anything to do with what these men had to deal with
in life. God, give me the life I have a hundred times and all
of its pain. Don't give me this. I don't want
the experience to be a poet like David. You see? But the point
is for us not to see and go, okay, how can I transform my
life to be like David? We can learn from David. And
we can learn in Psalm 40 where David in his own voice and through
the heartache of his own tears, cried out to the Lord and gives
us a picture of God working in his life so that we can say,
aha, God worked in David's life, God can work in my life. And
then ultimately, as the Lord teaches us through the apostles,
only through the apostles, We can look at Psalms, we can look
at the Psalms, we can look at Samuel, we can see the life of
David, we can see the poetry of David, and we can go, wow.
You know the only true David is Jesus? You know the only true
blessing is Jesus? You know the only true life is
Jesus? You know the only true treasure is Jesus? You know the
only true wealth is Jesus? You know the only true healing
is Jesus? It's the point. So we bring, and that's what
the Psalms do. The Psalm talks about a tangible problem, a tangible
solution, a tangible request, a cry to God. God hears the cry.
He says, okay, that's my son. I'm going to heal his land. I'm
going to heal his purse. I'm going to heal his problems.
Or maybe I won't, but I'm going to give him joy in the midst
of them. And then we can stand on the promises of God. That's
why they're written. And then we step back and we
go, But ultimately, that's all temporary because it points to
Jesus Christ. So I want you to be aware of
that because I get a lot of that. I get a lot of questions concerning
that. Am I supposed to look at this as a Christological prophecy
or as a real event and principle that David had? Yes, you are.
There's no or there, it's and. Just like Abraham's prophecy
by God, all Abraham understood it was about a boy he was gonna
get from an old woman who didn't believe it herself and so Hagar
got involved and Ishmael was born. You see? And we see Paul in Galatians,
and it's right into the Galatians, we see him expressing what that
really ended up becoming, what it was all about. So understand that. Understand
that as we go through these psalms, I'm going to teach a few psalms.
I want to teach some more of the Old Testament in the months
to come and get back into Genesis a little bit. And so, you know,
I just I want you not to get called up in this either or idea. I'm not gonna teach you principles.
At the same time, there are a lot of people in the world today
that think there is nothing spiritual to be gained out of the New Testament
except learning some cognitive exercises and say, hey, we got
understanding. You know what? Salvation's not about having
the brain knowledge of understanding the literature. Salvation is
knowing God through Jesus Christ, and that's a divine work. It's
not something you can muster and choose to do. It's something
that God grants you. Faith is a gift of God that's supernaturally
working in us every second of the day. Because of my faith rests in
my understanding and comprehension and apprehension. And then I
say, oh, God, thank you for giving me the understanding. I'm no
different than the Pharisee. It says, thank you, God, that
I'm not like the publican. I almost said the republican. Thank you, God, that I'm not
like the tax collector. No. Thank you God for your grace,
for your mercy, for your life, for your son, for Jesus, for
the cross. Thank you God for saving me in
spite of me and keeping me in spite of my faithlessness. You
see how faith rests? There are brothers and sisters
we have in the faith that live in absolute turmoil every single
day because they're constantly trying to work out their salvation
in their own comprehension, in their own way. And they know
the truth, but they still fight the flesh. Beloved, we are gonna
fight the flesh. And so there is a need for us
to learn how to live in the flesh and that's one of the reasons
the New Testament is written to us so that we may understand
what is prudent and profitable and praiseworthy that we may
live it out. That's why I read Romans chapter 12 today. Romans
chapter 12 is not a Christological treatise. What I mean by that
is it's not this long and dragged out metaphorical expression of
who Jesus is. We've already got that. It's an application thereof.
Because of Christ, who made reconciliation through His death, as long as
it is up to you, be at peace with all people. You see? Have
this attitude. They're a force. They're not
salvific. It has nothing to do with salvation.
You spend $1,800 on a new carpet for your house? You take your
shoes off the first few months, right? The first few days, maybe.
I don't walk on my carpet. We've got a new rule. You buy
a shoe rack, you know? Six months in, shoe rack's broken.
Mud stains all over it. Cat's pulled up all, I mean,
you know. Ah, we tried. You still got carpet. It just
looks like crap. And sometimes that's what our
faith looks like. We're still beloved. We're still elect. We're
still saved. We're still born again. We're
still sealed by the Spirit of God because Christ bought us. He doesn't do refunds. He doesn't
do exchanges. We're not on layaway. He purchased
us. And so there's nothing that can
take us away from the love of God. Nothing whatsoever. But boy, does our, sometimes
our lives look like we don't care about that grace. And if
we examined it very closely, we would all say, you know, I
think I purposely messed up this flooring. That's what Paul talks about.
Should we sin that grace may abound? Absolutely not. That's blasphemous in its ideology,
but it's not deathly, except in the temporal sense. And why? Psalm 40 gives us the
essence of that. We are weak, broken, helpless,
needy, emotional people. I don't care who you are, you
can put on the airs, you can stand up and project yourself
as this confident, together thing, but you are not. We are not. Training takes over. We can be
stoic on the outside, we can fight against the things that
we think and feel and desire and fear on the inside, but ultimately
we are people as it teaches us in Psalm 40 verse 17. As for
me, I am poor, I am needy, but the Lord takes thought of me.
He, you, Lord, are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, oh
God. Jesus Christ is also Psalm 40, 17. The God of glory coming
into humanity, laying down, being subject to be like the creation,
became poor and needy. But the Father took thought of
him. You see this in Hebrews, right?
This text, I mean, it refers to Paul, the writer of Hebrews,
uses this text to refer to Christ in Hebrews. So then we can say, wow, now
we can see a little bit deeply. So we can learn and be encouraged
by it. Now we can rejoice in it. Now we can be equipped in
it. Now we can begin to see. So it is about studying Christ.
It is about knowing Christ at every turn, isn't it? But it's
also about discipline. Not to prove, I mean, I know
a lot of people who are living an incredible Christ-like life,
but are far from it. If your assurance is set up in
the context of how well you're doing certain things and how
well you've put away certain things that you think are bad,
I'm here to tell you that I could biblically sit down with you
over a couple of hours and show you that probably 90% of everything
you've given up is not sin anyway. But the biggest sin is the fact
that you think you're better off by not having these things in
your life. Because I can prove to you that you have this disdain
in your own unconscious life. You see somebody doing what you
used to do, you go, man, it ain't like that no more. Thank you,
God. You think it's a praiseworthy thing, but that very example
is an example of condemnation in the context of the New Testament. And then when we really do see
the sin in our life, we go, oh, no. I must be lost. You're not lost. Christ saved
you. And so we we need to know that
our assurance is in the solid promise of Christ. He paid for
the sins of his people. It is finished. And how God works
out his doing in the life of his people to bring them to the
knowledge of their redemption and to give them faith. Concerning
their justification, concerning their eternal hope, concerning
their redemption, concerning their adoption, and everything
else. It is God's business. And then
we work together and we walk together and we live together,
serving one another, loving one another, putting up with one
another, confronting one another, as we keep our relationships
intact for the sake of Christ, who has bought us with his blood.
So we take the table at the end of every service, every single
week, as much as we're able, to remind us of whose we are
and what we are as the body. Psalm 40. Last week we got, I don't know,
did we get through verse five? Let's read some. I waited patiently
for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my
cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry
bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put
a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will
see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man
who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after a lie. You are multiplied. Oh
Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us,
none can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them,
yet they are more than can be told. In sacrifice and offering
you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt
offering and sin offering you have not required. But then I
said, behold, I've come. In the scroll of the book it
is written of me. I delight to do your will. Oh my God, your
law is within my heart. I've told the glad news of deliverance
in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained
my lips, as you know, O Lord. I have not hidden your deliverance
within my heart. I've spoken of your faithfulness and of your
salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your
faithfulness from the great congregation. As for you, O Lord, you will
not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and faithfulness
will ever preserve me, for evils have encompassed me beyond number.
My iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are
more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails me. Be pleased,
O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let those who put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek
to snatch away my life, let those be turned back and brought to
dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let those be appalled because
of their shame who say to me, aha, aha, I gotcha. But may all who seek you rejoice
and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation
say continually, great is the Lord. As for me, I am poor and
needy, but the Lord takes thought of me. You are my help and my
deliverer. Oh, do not delay, oh my God. I added some oh's
in there, I think. This is good stuff. And we got
through, I think we just got through verse three last week.
But we're looking at this text and these themes that I talked
about, remember Psalm 37, 38, 39, talking about how we wait
upon the Lord, we wait upon the Lord. And then we look inside as we're
waiting upon the Lord, we start to think, what have I done to
get here? Look how bad I am. Look how good
I am. Oh, if I could just do this,
God would do this. Like there's some quid pro quo garbage. And
there is some obedience that brings blessing. There are some
conditional things that are required. If you wanna live at peace with
people, you gotta treat people peacefully. If you're always slapping her,
how you doing? You know, we're not slapping people and expecting
them to wanna hang out with us. And then Psalm 40 begins this
theme of knowing the power of God as we wait, he does answer. But isn't that the way it is?
I mean, we don't want to wait at the drive-thru. We don't want to wait at the
dry cleaners. We don't want to wait for our driver's license
or any other drip that I could come up with. We don't want to
wait. We don't want to wait. We want
it now. We want it yesterday. It's already
too bad. We want to walk up to the counter
at whatever store we're at, and they just hand us what we came
in for. Yes, I'd like a, well, thank you very much for having
it. Thank you very much. We don't want to wait on God.
I've confessed that to some people over the last few months. I don't
want to wait on what I can't see. I don't want to hope in
what's not here. I want to fix this now. I want
to take everything I can in my power with these amazing, talented
hands. Oh, what hands? Well, now I have
no hands. Well, I'll use the nubs. What
nubs? And God will continue to take
away from us until we realize that we are not in control, but
He is. That's what it feels like sometimes
to wait upon the Lord. Well, I really need this in my
life, or I really need to make this plan. Okay, then do it,
have some prudence, use some wisdom. Oh, it didn't work out?
Such is the Lord's purpose. Pain, suffering, disease, disaster,
it's all in the Lord's purposes. And that doesn't make me feel
good when I go, blessed be the name of the Lord. I hate it. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend
that I'm some spiritual, I'm on some spiritual gummies or
something. Yeah, please give it up! I'm not, I mean, this is not,
this is ridiculous. This is one of the reasons that
the church is in such bad shape as it is in America. First and
foremost, false gospels. Secondly, this overbearing burden
of pretending to be what we're not. Be honest. It's okay to say,
I'm not trusting the Lord right now. It's obvious. Quit lying
about it. We know. And the good thing is,
is when we're not trusting the Lord and we finally wallow out.
Like I made a comment last night, you know, the UFC championships
and stuff, you know, I don't follow that stuff anymore. I
don't have time to follow that stuff. But it came up in discussion with
some folks and I'm thinking, The bout was decided by decision. I mean, I can see boxing is a
striking game. Okay, you got 20 points here, 20. How do you,
I mean, I held you down longer. And what is this? No, just keep
going until somebody gives up, gives out, can't do it anymore.
Just fall. Hey, he won. Why? Because he
passed out. From what? Just tired. That's what it is
in our spiritual lives. We can keep working and trying
and harpering on how we're going to handle it. We worry about
everything. We borrow trouble. We put everything
we can in our head. David was the king example of
anxiety and emotionalism. And nobody would call David a
wimp. Nobody would put their finger
in the face of David. lest they wanted it bit off and
served to them for breakfast. Nobody. That's why he got away
with what he did. David's a little whiny. You tell
him. I'm not telling him. You tell
him. I guess we're singing this Psalm
51 then. Crud. I wonder what he did. I don't
know. Bathsheba's over there crying. I don't know what's happening.
Can you imagine a church service like that? Would you come? Why's
Bathsheba crying? Because David's singing a song
about what he did to her. In the church service. Nobody's
going to tell. David wasn't a weakling, but
he was a weakling. Because in all of his power,
in all of his authority, I mean, what does it mean to be anointed
by God against every logical and legal means to become a king? He was not qualified, nor would
anybody agree that he was qualified, nor would anybody put him in
the place, but God did it anyway. And David, every man, gosh, I
wish I was as strong as David. Yeah, he's on his underwear at
the altar crying. I guess David's a little sissy.
Shh! Boy, don't you talk about the
king. You see? You get the point that I'm driving
home? Weakness. It's the essence of
our human condition. And the strongest of us are the
weakest of us. But the weakest of us are the
strongest of us. And that stinks. I don't want
to be weak. But in order for me to be strong,
I have to be weak. In order to have confidence,
I have to have insecurity. In order to know the right way,
I have to go the wrong way. In order to rejoice, I have to
suffer. The theme of this psalm is just
that. We see these divisions in the first 10 verses is the
fact that we can praise God. David praised God for his past
power, for fulfilling his promises, and personally. This is a review,
first three verses. David is speaking personally
out of his own heart. waited, anxiously, labored horrendously. Remember we talked about patience?
Patience is not just being okay. Patience is fighting and resisting. Patience is not, yeah, it's good. Patience is, I'm going to kill
somebody, but I won't. Patience is like, I can't take
this anymore. Have you ever prayed? I've been praying out loud when
I drive in the truck. And one day I'm gonna butt dial
one of you all and you're gonna think, pastor has lost his mind. And it's true, I have. I've lost
it. And I prayed yesterday, I was
driving back from the grocery store and I was just, I was excited
and terrified at the same time about something. And I'm like,
oh my God. I said, God, please, Father,
you, why am I even trying to tell you what you need to do?
You know what you need to do. I'm talking to him just like this.
I said, this is, I just need you to do it now. That's patience. But whenever, Lord, you're going
to do it, you're going to do it. So now would be good. Last
week would be good. Just right now, not now, but
now, before I get home. God, I need wisdom. I need hope. I need strength. I need it. And
it's like, as I'm doing that, I'm going, and that's the point.
I need him. You pray like that? If you don't, I suggest you start.
If all of your prayers are like, oh, dear God, we thank you, Father,
for all of the wonderful blessings of life. You ain't listening to your life.
It's like the comedian said one time, the King James Prayers,
you know, oh, Lord, God, we come to thee before thy God, before
thy throne, and all this other kind of stuff. He said, that's
when everything's great, but when things are bad, it's just
like, ah! You're awake now, aren't you? Crying out unto the Lord. Cry out unto the Lord. David
personally cried out unto the Lord. Jesus Christ cried out
unto the Lord. And if Jesus cried out unto the
Lord, then David can cry out unto the Lord. Verses 4 and 5, David knew the
personal reality of God's promises and knew what it meant to put
his trust in the Lord. How did he know it? Because he
was such a stoic, solid man after God's own heart. No, because
he was an example of depravity. Great responsibility, great power,
great purpose. What did he do? Just like the
son in Luke 15. He kept going to the pods of
the pigs when he had the banquet of the Father. That's what we
do. That's what we do. That's why
we approach each other with grace. We don't stick our nose into
everybody else's business. You know what I'd be doing? I'd
be checking to see if you washed your hands before you ate. That's it. You do that,
I'm fine with anything else you do in life. Come see me when
you need prayer. Just wash your hands and brush
your teeth. Don't use a towel twice. Especially if it hits the floor. Verses four and five. Blessed
is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn
to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie. Now I know
how some people like to put that, yeah, see there, false doctrine
and all that. Yeah, that's included in there, but most importantly,
the lie of self-reliance. Most importantly, the lie that
tells you that the reason that you're in this job is because
you're not doing like you should be doing. The lie that tells
you, well, you just must not be called to the ministry because
you're not happy. Well, if that's the case, I've
never been called. That's like saying, well, you just must not
be called to eat if that food didn't taste good. I just, I'll
find something that tastes good later. This is nasty. Be honest. Life together with other people
is nasty. You live with people, you know what I'm talking about.
Don't lie. We all look and smell a little
better than we normally do when we come here and we get together. But we're gross. We just confine it to that restroom
area, that bathroom area, that sink area. It's gross. I got a blue light. I got one
of them little things like CSI. You want to look at it? I'll
loan it to you. Where's Luke? Oh, no, he can't
even be here today thinking about it. We're gross. We're spiritually
in need. And so here, David is understanding
and expressing his understanding that God's present providence
is going to come forward. He's exposing this. He's saying,
hey, look, this is something that all of us can do. It's not
just me. It's all of us. This is a song
that was sung and it teaches something, doesn't it? It teaches
about who Christ is. It teaches the individuality
of redemption and teaches the plurality of redemption. It teaches
the promises of God are not just for this one man, the king, but
for all those who sin. There's no difference in David
as the king and the guy that's holding the towel to wash the
dew off the whatever. Or the person that's standing
in the back that didn't bathe. There's no difference. Blessed
is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the
proud, to those who are self-sufficient, to those who think they've got
it all together, to those who are walking around with the posturing
of spiritual elitism, with the false humility that they themselves
are self-deceived and saying to others unspokenly, you just
got to have faith. I don't know if that was Wham
that said that, but it's not worth it. to live in those platitudes. You just gotta have faith. You
just gotta trust God. You just gotta, I don't know,
stop overeating, stop undereating, stop lying, stop yelling, stop
smoking, stop speeding. What have you gotta do? You gotta
just know. Don't go after your self-sufficiency. You multiplied, O Lord my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can
compare with you. That's a doxology, a praise.
Nothing can compare with you, God, Father. So therefore, David's
like, I will proclaim and tell of you, tell of them, what? Your wondrous deeds, your promises,
your power, your providence for your people. And I will proclaim
and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. So I'm
going to continually always be praising God in the context of
the assembly. We are to be doing that. But
what do we do as humanity? See, this is where people get
upset with me. Well, James, you're making an application here that's
not necessary. Yes, it is necessary. It's necessary for me to make
application for us as a church. When we complain about everything
in the world and when we ponder and fret, rather than praise
and pray, we have an imbalanced spiritual experience. It's an
imbalanced spiritual experience. It's a decaying spiritual experience.
Yet, there are times where there's nothing else we can do but the
negative. So together, then, we have the
encouragement. It's not to rebuke. James, you
need to just hush. No. I understand. I've been there.
Remember what David said? I waited patiently for the Lord.
Read Psalm 40. This very thing that I'm talking
about right now is how I came to this text and God did His
work through it for me two weeks ago. Yeah, maybe three weeks
ago. So here, God can be praised. Personally,
he can be praised corporately, and he can be praised in practice.
Romans 12, I read it this morning, look at verse 6. And sacrifice
and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open
ear. Now this is extremely Christocentric. I'll show you in a minute. But
a personal practice. You've given me an open ear,
you've allowed me to hear. And there's some contextual,
there's some linguistic variations there that a lot of you who might
be students of that might go, what? Just trust me. It's like
you bored open my ear and caused me to hear, okay? That's sort
of the essence of what's being said there. Burnt offering and
sin offering, you have not required. Then I said, behold, look, I
have come and the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight
to do your will, oh my God, your law is written in my heart. So here we see the outcome. God's
practical instruction being lived out, God's power being lived
out, God's power being having having teeth in the life of David. We see the outcome of God's power
and the resolve of David, David's issues have not been fixed, but
David has come to a resolution. And the point here. in this text
specifically is that this greatest, this great few verses, six through
eight here, are specifically discussing Christ. You remember? Look at it. In
sacrifice and offering you have not delighted. Go to Hebrews 10. Yeah, we're
not gonna get through this. For instance, the law has but
a shadow of good things to come instead of the true form of these
realities. It can never, by the same sacrifices
that are continually offered every year, make perfect those
who draw near, those who practice, those who come, those who seek.
Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered since the
worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have
any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices, so Paul
asked that question, and he's like, no, of course not, because
it's forever. So then he explains, but in these
sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins. Every single year. What? So when Israel would do their
festivals and do their thing here in the context of the annual
Offering for sin it was every year the priests the people everybody
came together to remind them of their sin Not cleanse them
from their sin For it is impossible for the
blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, it's impossible. What
is the bull? What is the bull and the goat done? What worth
do they have What is God so low on the pole
of highness that these people are sinful? Oh, you killed a
goat. Nah, it's all right. You stepped on a roach. By all means, you're clean. That's not clean, that's nasty. Consequently, when Christ came
into the world, he said, now listen, Sacrifices and offerings
you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In
burnt offerings, in sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. Then
I said, behold, I've come to do your will, O God, as it is
written of me in the scroll of the book. Isn't that amazing? I find that absolutely amazing
that here We see the words of Christ, the words of David, being exactly
the same. So remember how I started the
sermon this morning talking about we see David's experience and expression,
but we also see Christ and His perfection? There it is. And yet there's an addition here.
A body you have prepared for me. Not my will, but yours be
done, Father. When Christ was in the Garden
of Gethsemane and He knew that His death was imminent, He knew
that the wrath of God would be poured out, that it was not just
a death, it was an undeserved death, it was an anguish which
He would feel emotionally and spiritually and physically, biologically
and physiologically. It had a purpose that there would
be no watering down of the suffering. There would be no reluctancy
on his part to go, but he wasn't a fool. He knew that if there
was a way, his desire would be to avoid that pain. However, he also knew the promises
of God the Father in the past and the power and the promises
of God the Father in the present, and he could hang on to the power
and the promises of God the Father for the future. And Jesus Christ taught David
that thousands of years before. Hundreds. Think about it. Psalm 40, a delight. You've opened
my ear. You've given me the law. You've
given me the truth. You've given me the gospel. You've
given me revelation. You've given me understanding.
Whatever you want to say in any sense, we know now that Jesus
Christ is the point of that. Delight. It's gratitude. I mean, look back over that Psalm
40 real quick. God is not delighted in sacrifices,
burnt offerings, or suffering, I mean, or sin offering, but
He has delighted in His will being done. Two things to think about there.
The will of God is done in the suffering of His people. The
will of God is done in the suffering of His Son. Paul would say, these words, he would say, I
am suffering, I'm going to paraphrase here and then I'm going to quote
him, and in my body, and I'm in prison, and I'm in anguish,
I have this thorn in my flesh, I have this problem going on,
it's not for us to understand the pit or the mire or the despair
or the thorn, it's for us to know that in any sense that we
have any of those things, God is our Deliverer, in Christ above
all. Paul would say, therefore, I
delight all the more in my suffering, rejoice in my suffering, that
in my suffering, this is Paul speaking, I will fill up what
is lacking in the suffering of Christ for your sake. It's a
problematic text for us if we're not in the context. So let me
unpack it in the light of this, Jesus Christ, comes to do the will of the Father
which is to, in all righteousness, die as a substitute for His people
to carry their wrath upon Himself that His righteousness will be
credited to them as their sin has been credited to Him. So
He did the will of the Father and in His suffering, He makes us righteous. How? By satisfying the debt. Not personally, not even experientially until
glorification, when there's a new creation, but judicially, under the courts,
under the law, it's righteous. So now Paul says similar things. Poor Paul, he's suffering. Let's
help him. Okay, they helped Paul. The Philippians
helped Paul. A lot of people helped Paul.
You meet needs as you can. But you can't always take suffering
away. And when you're not experiencing
or witnessing someone's rejoicing and suffering, when you're not
there with them and they tell the story, it's always a little
bit different than when you're there with them. The same thing
is true in the death of Christ, in the life of Christ. Remember
we making mention of the fact that it's hard for me to want
to really hold on to something that's not here? When everything
in my logical mind wants tangible, concrete, manipulatable, malleable,
programmable things. I wanna make it work. It doesn't
work that way. A lot of times there's so much
distance between the death of Christ and his suffering that
it just becomes this journey of like a story we read about
rather than something that we are really empathizing with.
But when we suffer, and Psalm 40 becomes our psalm, And we see Christ in it, we all
of a sudden go, there's a purpose in all this. Just like there
was a purpose in the suffering of Christ. So when Jesus says,
my body, but a body you have prepared for me, why did Jesus
come? to be crushed by the will of
the Father, to be destroyed, to be despised by men, to be
hated by the very ones that supposedly held the banner of His name and
coming, to be loathed, as the prophet Isaiah would say, to not even look like a human being,
to be unrecognizable as human in His passion. It was the will of the Lord to
crush him. I am yours, David resolved. My body is yours. My suffering is yours. I am yours. I give myself to you. I quit.
Lord, I just, just do whatever you're going to do. You see how
you pray? Isn't that what Jesus says? And now we see this points
to Christ. So no matter what, the seasons of life are going
to be like this. These too blessed to be stressed, too anointed
to be disappointed people are lying. And I'm not mocking them. I'm sad. Because there used to be a day
when people like that would come around me. How you doing? And we always say, I'm great.
How are you? The Lord is good. It's like this Broadway musical,
like The Clothes. You thought all the people were
gonna die, they almost got swept away by the flood, they almost
got lost in the fire, and then they survived, yay! There's no
business like show business, and there's no greater show business
than Christian people. And we're to be about the Lord's
business. And part of that is being honest about the suffering
of Christ and its place in our life and our suffering. Open
my ear, let me hear, let me know. I am the servant who hears and
does your will. And what is the will of the Lord
for David? That he rejoice in his suffering. What is the will
of the Lord for Jesus Christ that he let on his life for his
people? Hebrews 10, eight. When he said
above, you've neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices
and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings, because these
are offered according to the law. He added, Behold, I come
to do your will. Behold, I come to do your will.
He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
And by that will, by the will of Christ, by the will of God,
Christ, we have been set apart, sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. So when every priest
stands daily in his service, offering repeatedly the same
sacrifices which can never take away sins, but when Christ had
offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down
at the right hand of God, waiting for that time until his enemies
should be made a footstool under his feet. For by one single offering,
verse 14, he has perfected for all time those who are being
set apart. The Holy Spirit also bears witness to this for us,
excuse me, to us, for after saying, this is my covenant that I will
make with them and after those days, declares the Lord, I will
put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. He
then adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds
no more. Where there is forgiveness of
these, there is no longer any offering of sin. Beloved, there's
no longer any offering of sin. And the psalmist knew it, but
did not truly apprehend it. One of the reasons David was
so mired in depression and fear and anxiety is because he was
persecuted and hated so badly. And he was highly emotional and
sensitive to the needs of people. and highly self-centered. You don't find that concoction
in one human being often. But in the midst of all of that,
David sought to try to find solace in all sorts of things. He provided
substitutes in his life often, rather than resting. And every
time he would substitute this Missing need with something else
he found it wanting so he'd go to something else and he found
it want to sound familiar Solomon Moses Peter Us And then we come to the place
we go wow I am full of unbelief I That's why our assurance has
to be in the solid rock of Christ. Not our obedience. Not our working
out. Has to be in Christ. Or we will
always labor over our sin to such a degree that we will never
feel assured of Christ's work. And so when we get to verse 9
of Psalm 40, We see what David has decided. God's promises for his people.
He gives a public proclamation. He gets in there and he's talking
about a public proclamation. Beloved, this is not God is good
all the time and all the time God is good. This is being real
about our testimony concerning Christ's testimony. Because at
the end of the day, There's always going to be some suffering that
will not be taken from us. It's not going to be taken from
us. We're not going to escape everything. We're not going to
escape it. We're not going to be able to
over... We're not going to be able to be glad in spite of it
because it's changed. I mean, we're not going to be
able to be glad because the circumstances have changed. We're going to
have to be glad in spite of it. And that's ridiculous when the world
comes along and there's always a self-help option, right? I'm huge in thinking differently
because the scripture teaches me to think differently. The
scripture is not in odds with psychology or biology. They just didn't use those terms
in that day because there weren't experts that had a lifetime to
dedicate to thinking about one topic. We are so rich and blessed
and lazy, it's ridiculous that I can become an expert in
applied theology, metaphysics, quantum physics,
Isn't that weird? I think about the crap that I've
got in my head and how it intertwines and overruns everything and going,
I've got a lot of time on my hands. And freedom. But the Bible isn't
at odds with these things, it explains them correctly. So that
as the philosophers and the scientists and the brains of our day who
don't see the gospel because it has not been revealed to them,
they come up with the solutions, but they're empowered. These
solutions are empowered by our ability, rather than the resolve in God's
ability. And I believe a majority of believing
people by profession in the world that we live in today presently
alive, are saying they believe in God's ability, but they're
truly resting in their ability. So our proclamation has to be
the testimony of Christ, not the testimony of James. Why have
you had a good day today? If I have followed the truth,
my first response is going to always be, I thank God for it. Because if there's something
else that I can say first, guess what happens when that answer
is taken from me? I've had a good day because I
got a new pair of shoes. And then you step on my shoes
by accident. and you scuff them up. Or my dog who ate a brand
new bag full of gloves yesterday morning that I just bought to
replace the one she ate the day before. Any dog burgers for lunch? Then my joy is gone. I got new
gloves. I've had a good day. My gloves are chewed up. Ah,
my day's over. Remember me telling you last week about tearing up
my glasses? The day's over. Life's over. The world's over! Well, have you had a good day?
You know what? I just got up with the right attitude. And
then cans fall down on your bare feet in the kitchen when you're
cleaning up. Seven cans of beans that I put
in wrongly because I'm too tall to see the bottom shelf. So I'm
like standing on my head. When I close the thing, it falls,
it hits. Guess what? My attitude was bad Friday night
during that 45 seconds of bean pain. So if my day is good because
I have a better attitude about it, boom, there's some beans,
boy. How's your attitude now? See? And the Broadway show goes on.
It's ridiculous. Christ is on the throne, and
He's on the throne of my life, and He's on the throne of my
beamed foot, and my chewed gloves, and my broken glasses, and He's
on the throne of every problem that you have. Deeper than that,
and I got a lot of bad, deep problems. You don't wanna hear
them. Because then they'll be your problems. Beloved, the Lord's word is sufficient
for our joy. It is sufficient. Not even my
preaching is absolutely good all the time, nor is it right
all the time, nor is it sufficient all the time, but the promise
of God through preaching says that if I stick to the text and
we hear the word of God, even when the explanation is a rabbit
trail to nowhere, He will fulfill His promises to teach us and
give us joy. You know what a load that is
off of me? You know how I got there? By God taking my ability
to even study the Word for a season. As for you, O Lord, verse 11,
I mean, excuse me, verse 9, I skipped it. I have told the glad news
of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained
my lips, as you know, O Lord. That's what I just did. You see? I have not hidden your deliverance
within my heart. I'm not pretending like you didn't work. I'm not
telling everybody, I just got it together. Brushed myself off,
pulled myself up by my bootstraps. There's no self-made man in the
world, especially spiritually. I've not hidden your deliverance
in my heart. I've spoken of your faithfulness and of your salvation.
I've not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from
the congregation. Do not hide the truth. Do not hide the truth. Christ
did not hide the truth. He did not hide the truth. of
Him coming to redeem Himself by the will of the Father. He
proclaimed it. He proclaimed the Father. He
taught it, and they hated Him for it. Beloved, we are not going
to win friends and influence people by telling the truth of
Christ. Covey got it wrong. You can tell how old I am now.
The gurus of my day. I don't know, it might still be
a thing. I don't know. We're not going to do it. And it's just a repurpose of
Carnegie anyway. We're not going to do it. We're
going to just exist for the sake of Christ, for the sake of one
another. We're going to love each other. We're going to invest
in each other's lives. And we're going to do so with much trepidation
and many trials. And we're going to have small
seasons of absolute celebration. We weep with those who weep,
and we rejoice with those who rejoice. And beloved, we will
do well to be honest about what Christ has done. so that our
joy will be found in Him alone. Let's pray. We thank You, Father,
for what You've shown us thus far in this text. And as we continue
here, Lord, I thank You that... I thank You, Lord, that You're
faithful, that You're glorious and powerful, and You've purposed
in Christ the rejoicing And so, Lord, as we continue
to unpack this text in the next few weeks, Lord, help the perfect
picture of Jesus be simple and easy for us to see. And as we
revisit, Lord, this thing in a fully Christological lens,
Lord, help us to truly be at peace, to truly see Jesus, to
truly know and understand that there is purpose in our pain.
Father, also teach us not to forsake your promises, to know
that together we are stronger than being alone. Lord, that
you have called us to be a people. Lord, help us to be sensitive
to each other's needs, help us to be sensitive to how we relate
to one another, Lord, and how we pray for each other. So, Father,
help us to pray boldly. that you would help each of us
rest in brokenness and humility and weakness so that we can say
to the world, Christ is my strength. And truly mean it. And when called
upon, truly explain how. So as we take the table, as we
continue to worship through song, Father, we thank you for your
amazing grace and your love toward us. And we pray these things
in Christ. Amen.