in Psalm 40 and then Hebrews
chapter 10. I've got Psalm 140 here, that's
not going to work. We'll just start there and go
backward. And I do believe that you heard
this text last week read. to the choir master, a psalm
of David. 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 have multiplied, O 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. Then I said,
behold, I have 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 have told the glad news of
deliverance. and 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 have spoken of your faithfulness and of your
salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast
love and your faithfulness from the congregation. As for you,
O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast
love, your faithfulness will ever preserve me, for evils have
encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken
me and I cannot see, and they are more than the hairs of my
head. My heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver
me. O Lord, make haste to help me. Let those be 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. 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 for me. You are my help and my
deliverer. Do not delay, oh my God." I did not read this until Monday, and it was given to me Sunday
as an encouragement to a very difficult week, difficult month,
difficult year, difficult Four years. And when I read it, it did exactly
what it was intended to do. It was to delight my soul in
the righteousness of Christ. Beloved, we talk from this pulpit
a lot. Over the last three to four months
has been the longest season of not teaching that I've ever had
in my adult life. We used to be five to 10 hours
a week, went to two hours a week, went to one hour a week, went
to several months, maybe here and there. And it was refreshing
at times, but debilitating at times. We come here and while
we have this formality of separation between this elevated platform,
this acrylic podium, this sound system for the sake of your hearing
and you all sitting down there as if you're about to see me
dance, it is not indicative of the intimacy
that's required nor taking place at this very moment. We don't
go to church and come to church and do church things. We are
the body of Christ that gathers. Ecclesia, the gathering. It's
a word that means just like container. You have a container for gas,
you have a container for water, you have a container for soda,
you have a container for tea, you have a container for whatever
it might be. Nuts and bolts and pickles and peanuts. We have
gatherings, we gather at family reunions, we gather at home,
we gather at the food market, we gather at the grocery store,
we gather at the polling place, we gather at a sporting event.
The word Ecclesia goes with all of them. Anytime more people
than one are gathering together, it is an Ecclesia, it is an assembly,
it is a church, according to the language, simply put. The
word church is not even the right word. It's a transliterated expression
of antiquity that has come to mean something that it doesn't.
It comes from the idea of Kirk, which means institution, which
is why the church feels institutional, which is why the church can exist
without the faces remaining the same. So like the comedian that said
years ago that the reason that they dress all the men the same
in the wedding is if something happens, they can just all take
one step to the right. And that's why they say this man, any old
man will do, you know. That's how we've become in our
mind regarding ourselves as the body of Christ. We're just part
of the church. And it means very little anymore
in our society. And beloved, I'm telling you
as hard as I have tried over the last 20 plus three, four,
five years of teaching and 23 years in the pastorate and going
on 12 years as a congregation, we still aren't getting it. We still aren't getting it. We look at our obligation to
the assembly as either guilt-ridden, oh, I didn't make it, oh, poor
me, bad me, or either frivolously, eh, grace, grace, grace. And either way, it's not a law,
it's not a condition of our salvation. It is a promise tethered to our
joy. And so much so that the roles
in the body of Christ are so covered up and smothered by our
cultural ideologies. And keep in mind, beloved, that
we theologically and doctrinally have come exponentially far from
the status quo of how the world views it. Yet we are wanting. The roles within the congregation
are still such as, you know, what's my job, what's my duty?
Okay, we have jobs and duties at home too, right? We have jobs
and duties and responsibilities and obligations in our community. But we've lost the sight and
we've lost the experience of knowing intimacy as a body. I want you to think for just
a minute. It's important to where I'm going to be going in the
next few weeks. I'm taking some time out of Timothy. I'm going
to preach some from the Psalms. Then I'm going to talk about
the life of Joseph. But my body is not me. And I don't want to get into
Philosophy and I sure as heck don't want to start barking up
that tree and everybody lose focus and then zone out and go,
oh, it's time to go home. And then what was it about today?
Because that's what happens with me. I zone out and then it's
time to go home. Don't zone out. Just be with
me. But my body is not me. My body contains me. My consciousness,
my person, my thoughts, and I'm not even going to go there. But
when this body is dead and gone, I am still a person. And the promise of the Word of
God is that one day God in His promises will recreate a body
for me that will not suffer. And part of me is my mind. Part of me is the systems of
the functioning of my biological makeup. And everyone under the sound
of my voice is absolutely identical in that. So when I broke my foot two years
ago because of my new bifocals, and I just threw myself off of
a tractor, thinking the ground was there. And then I ended up
with an infection. And then I ended up with a whole
sort of stuff. And then last year, I ended up with three and a half months
in the bed in severe pain with more infection and all sorts
of things. I was not in a good place emotionally,
physically, spiritually, psychologically. The fourth, fifth, sixth dimensions
were a little foggy. You laugh. I think about that
stuff when I'm hurting. And all of a sudden I realized,
you know what? I am broken, I am sick, I am diseased, I am not,
so all of a sudden my person became my body. You ever been
there? We identify with the experiences there. But let me tell you what
could have happened. Oh, it was just your GI, it was just your
foot, it was just your shoulder. Well, you tell that to the rest
of your body when one part hurts and you just need to get that
part to just simmer down now while the rest of it does its
job. Is that how it works? No. Remember the years and seasons
of debilitating migraines? By God's mercy, I don't have
those anymore, but they could come back any given minute, where
I go blind, I can't see anything, like I'm going through a trip
kaleidoscope. And then the pain starts, and
the pressure starts. That's my head hurting. But if
you start looking at the scientific reality of what pain is, it's
a perception from receptors telling your body to feel, but it's not
physical. It doesn't exist. It's just,
you're experiencing that which is intangible. It's like downloading
content that you can never hold. And when the Xbox dies, oh well,
money gone. I mean, it's just garbage. But
yet, that's what it is. You can't go to the ball game
and play softball when you have a migraine. You can't make yourself
do what your body won't allow it to do. Beloved, the point
I'm making is when one part of my body is hurting, I am hurting. Though I am not my body, my body
controls me. The church is the same way. You
are not me and I am not you and this is not our identity. Our
identity is that we are the bride of Christ. We are the beloved
of God, we are the royal priesthood, we are the elect, we are the
chosen, we are those whom God has blessed, we are those before
the foundation of the world that God has loved eternally. And we just need to keep in mind
that we are all that body, but we are individually members of
it. And when one of us is hurting, we all feel that pain. When one
of us rejoices, we can all be glad and beloved in life and
the multiplicity and the manifoldness of having critical mass. The more families that we touch,
the more opportunity that we're gonna be weeping, hurting, crying,
rejoicing, and partying simultaneously. And the world looks on and goes,
these people are on drugs. And if you were a teenager in
the 80s, there were a certain subsect of Christian people that
called that drug the Holy Spirit. And we won't even go there. The
Spirit of God is always a spirit of order. He does not speak or
point to himself. The Spirit of God in the Bible
only and always, ever, ever speaks of Christ. Anytime someone's saying God
the Spirit is doing this and it's not about revelation of
Jesus and His finished work, it's not the Spirit of God. It's
what 1 John teaches us, chapter 4. Moving right along. We are the body of Christ. Imagine
David for a minute. We're in the Psalms. Imagine
David in this perspective. He is in the assembly as part
of the body of Christ. Remember, I mentioned roles.
And so here's David worshiping in the assembly. A bunch of rules. We've got no rule except that
the air better be running and the heat better be working. I
mean, that's about the only rule. Internally speaking. And we may
have a lot of other things that we think need to be. And we've
had people in our congregation who thought there should be a
lot of strictness in the context of worship. And they're not with
us anymore because they made those an issue of righteousness. And we plead with those people
to listen to the gospel and succumb to the truth of being a body
redeemed by the Lord's body. Nope! There's nothing we can
do about that. So here is David, who is part
of the assembly, who is part of the nation of Israel, who
is prophesied to be the king, and he was the king. And we know
the life of David. We see David's example. We have
David's words. Before many of us even know the
context of the Psalms and what they mean and why they're there,
when we are children, we are singing the Psalms of David in
our religious circles. We see the Psalms of David. There's not a person that I've
ever met who's never heard the 23rd Psalm. And if you ask them,
do you know the 23rd Psalm, they go, no, I've never heard of that.
And you say, the Lord is my shepherd, ah, they can just about quote
the first few lines. Just like there's not a secular
athletic team that's ever existed in the country since the 19th
century that hasn't said the, quote, Lord's Prayer at some
time or another in history. We have disconnected. the popular
idea of pluralism, which America is a pluralistic society and
it's a religious free society. That's why we exist. That's why
we escaped England to come over here so that we could never be
told or pressured by any social means or governmental means to
worship or not worship in any way. So this pressure from the evangelicals
to make America Christian is unconstitutional and sinful,
according to Romans 13. Christians are Christians and
non-Christians are not. Just like I have a bride and
children and those are my family and there's no one else that
could be part of my family unless I adopt them in. You are my church family. And people all over the world
can say, well, I'm part of that family. No, they're not until
they come and be a part of our family through whatever means
we say is necessary. Beloved, think about these things. I don't
want to side rail. Here's David, who is the king. These are his people. He has
authority to rule them rightly. And we know the life of David,
right? We know the story. We go to Samuel, we can look
at the story of David. He was not even on the table
to be anointed as king. He was the small one. The not so masculine one. The
firecracker. Little man syndrome, as a lot
of folks call it. And David was a whiner and a
poet and a warrior. A musician. He killed lions and bears. Tigers. Okay, I know y'all were
thinking it. Except that goes in the middle,
right? Oh my. He stood up against Goliath.
taking food to the war, and heard this loudmouth Philistine blaspheming
his God. And it riled up in David, and
David's like, y'all hear this idiot? Saul, go get that dude. You know, Saul was the greatest
warrior of the army. Saul hated David, and loved David, and hated
David. David's sin caused him to have
great enemies. David's calling caused him to
have great enemies, and yet he was still the leader of his people. And so when he went to the assembly,
he was not just a worshiper. But let me tell you what David
did. I'm going to tell you, this is something that's been speaking to me. David
worshiped how he wanted to worship. With integrity. And there were a lot of rules
in the assembly of Israel. You had to dress this way, and
eat this stuff, and burn this stuff, and sing this song, and
pour this water, and hold your nose, and do the hokey pokey,
and all the other different things that you had to do. There were
so many regulations, and they all pointed to one thing, and
that is that Christ alone can save His people. And every type
and shadow in the worship, in the assembly, every time they
spoke, every time they stood, every time they sat, every word
that was spoken, every psalm that was sung, it was to point
to the reality that only God in His absolute grace and mercy
and loving kindness and His eternal decrees after the counsel of
His own will for the sake of His own name would put the law
of His righteousness in the hearts of His people that they may know
that they are forgiven because they cannot do it. And Jesus
Christ became the law breaker when he was the righteousness
of God. And David had no clue. Remember
what he told his wife when she was embarrassed that he was just
pulling off all of his clothes in worship? Remember that story? And that's not prescriptive.
It's descriptive. It's a narrative. It's not something
the Bible says, now go do likewise. Paul never said, be like David.
Matter of fact, David got it wrong. 90% of the time. Don't be like David. Matter of
fact, there's nothing in the scripture taught about a character
that we should emulate but Jesus Christ. Who when he was persecuted, maligned,
mistreated, he kept his mouth shut. He submitted himself to the one
who was faithful. And David's wife was like, hey,
you are embarrassing the dog doo out of me in worship yesterday.
I mean, you were down to your underpants. Crying and praising. I mean, snot running down your
beard. You looked a mess, dude. You
were embarrassing. And what does David say? He says, Oh, dear woman, I will
become more undignified than this. How do you become more
undignified than your boxers? I guess you take them off. I
don't know what the threat was, but point taken, David. Worship
as you may. Just keep it up. Good job. I mean, I don't know. I'm not going to speculate, but
there is something to be said about understanding the context
in which David writes these songs. They're out of despair. I want you to look at verse 17
of Psalm 40. Because this has to be the meat and the potatoes
of this entire thing. It holds it all together as a
perspective. As for me, I am poor. and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me. And then David says to the
Lord, you are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay. Oh,
my God. Weakness. There's a holistic
and comprehensive description. Of our human condition. We are perishable product. Yet we live as though we are
building an eternal kingdom. An eternal body. An eternal mind. Beloved, I have wiped the slate
clean of every intake in the last 12 days. Everything that
I take into my head, I have wiped. I literally have wiped it clean
and started from scratch. social media feeds, email lists,
blogs, readings, subscriptions, prescriptions, whatever it might
be, I just stopped and started. This is good, this is good, and
you know what I'm doing? More than anything, and I wanna
sound super spiritual right now, but I am putting the word of
God in my head first and last. Every day. First and last. Even when I don't feel like it,
even when there's something else more pressing, first and last. And if I don't do that, I'm shaken. But I am absorbing things that
are stimulating my thoughts as they relate to filtering this
world through the gospel of grace. And I'm reading some garbage
that would not be biblical in and of itself. I'm reading some social commentary. from people who are unknown.
If I said their names, you probably couldn't Google them and find
them. But yet they are thinking in ways that I have been thinking
and I am seeing that I'm not alone in my thinking. This is
not the first time I've had this happen in my life. It's probably
the eighth. You ever been there? You come up with a great idea
or this great epiphany and you write it down. I write. I've
written over 400 pages in the last six weeks. Just journaling,
rambling, expressiveness. You get to see some of it when
I throw it up on Facebook. Nonsense. They go, wow, I have
discovered this idea that will help the world focus. Type it, search it. Look, some
dude in the 1600s said the same thing. Nothing's new under the
sun, no idea is unique. Technological advances, yes,
they expand, but the ideas underneath them are all the same. There's
no debate that's going to win a new argument that hasn't already
been applied. That's why we don't even have
to, I mean, you know, for the lawyers in the room, we don't even have
to go and come up with an argument. Let's just look at the last hundred
years of court cases and argue that they already argued, that
somebody else already argued. Case closed! When it comes to
the gospel, it's even simpler. It's even simpler. God has promised, period. God has promised that in the
assembly, We will know him. God has promised that together
in the discipline of being his people and learning the word
and applying the word, we will rejoice. God has promised. David
has a whole lot of problems and he's always crying about his
problems. And we're always saying, I got
no problems. We're always saying, I can't share my problem. We're
always saying, my problems aren't as bad as others. I mean, there's
something to be said about that. That's a good perspective, but
it can sometimes be dismissive of pain. And dismissing the reality
of suffering is sinful. I mean, if our children, when
they're toddlers, come into our room crying, blood-curling screams,
there's a monster under my bed! Oh, go to back to bed, you dummy!
You're so stupid! Oh, now my daddy hates me! I
mean, you know, and there's a monster under my bed. My life is terrible! It's perspective. We don't dismiss
our own feelings. We don't dismiss our own pain
because God's Word has promised that we're going to have pain.
Let's get into this text. Weakness is not what makes us
valuable. What makes us valuable is that
we are loved by God. And even those that aren't. According
to the word of God taught to his people, we must value them
with dignity. Respect. Honor. We are to honor and respect those
who hate us. That's another sermon. In the
Psalms, we often learn them and think of them as individual units,
but if you read them and read them and I read several Psalms
a day lately, it's just been on the days I read when my mind
is weak, I sometimes don't even read anything. But in the Psalms, they're collected
in such a way that they're put together in themes. And I wish
that the publishers would put them in those themes. So, for
example, the themes of Psalm 37, 38, 39 and 40 is a compounding,
progressive teaching. And they're ordered such in Scripture
to display these themes. Psalm 37 exposes the need to
wait upon the Lord. that He will not leave and forsake
us. So wait upon the Lord. Be patient,
the Lord is at hand. Sound familiar? See, because
the apostles teach this same stuff. Jesus teaches this same
stuff. In Psalm 38 and 39, talks about how we wait for the
Lord. Let's look at ourselves. Let's think for ourselves. Let's
contemplate ourselves. See, the world of spiritual elites
tell you not to do that. I want you to think about it for
a second. Now, that's just descriptive. But if David expressed it, it
shows the nature of humanity. It shows the nature of a righteous
man. It shows the nature of a sinful
man. It shows the nature of one who is beloved by God, who has
incredible responsibility and he destroys everything he touches
because he's so emotional. And he's trying to reach out
and tag and tether himself to some concrete way of overcoming
the fear of his life. The constant rejection, the constant
persecution, the constant fear of death and pursuit. The constant
fear of seeing his kingdom crumble. And just like everybody else
in the world who breathes air, He tried to find some way of
distracting himself from his own thoughts and feelings when
the scripture would say we arrest those things and we filter them
through the righteousness of Christ and the word of God. That's
why the assembly is paramount. Because this pulpit, through
exposition, can press us to think. Psalm 38, Psalm 39, Through introspection, self-examination,
and being vulnerable teaches us how David waited upon the
Lord in his thoughts. And then Psalm 40. He gets pulled out of the mud. One of our vehicles needs some
rear shocks. Yesterday we're pulling into a parking lot and
it did like this and my coffee spilled all over my pants. And
it burned me backwards. It burned me backwards. So much
so that I had to apologize for my attitude. And I thought, you know, this is
how life is. I hate being wet. I hate being
dirty. I can't stand it. I will get dirty, and then it's
time to clean. I cannot stand it. If I fell
in mud, I'm done, you know? Slip and fall, get into a rainstorm,
we've been there. And so we think about what the
text says here about being pulled out of the mire, out of the pit,
out of the mirey bog, out of the mud. A lot of us just go
to this, you know, oh yeah, this is hard times. dirty stuff or
sort of gross, like when our house flooded several times through
rain in Virginia, our first bottom floor, our basement floor, finished
basement, you know, four to six feet of water one time. You don't think about it, you
just get out there in it and then afterwards you go, I'm going to dive a flesh-eating
fungus. So you lay in bleach for a few
days and you're fine. Put it on tap. I'm clean. That's not what's at stake here.
It's not about unpleasant things. It's not about dirtiness. The
very idea of this psalm is broken into two basic divisions. The
first division is that God can be praised for his power and
providence in the past. And there's a lot of P's that
will come out of my mouth today. And the second division, that's
verses one through 10. The second division is 12 through 17, is
this practical pondering on the promises of God's power for his
people. How do you like that? I could write a book on alliteration. But all the while, as he's writing
this psalm, he's poor and needy. And his focus is that the Lord
thinks of him. Would you think about that for a second? The
Lord thinks of you, beloved. I mean, the writer of Hebrews says
it. And we have a Savior, we have a Lord, we have a God, we
have a Redeemer, our Christ, Jesus Christ, God the Son, who
is able to sympathize with us in every weakness. He's able
to understand what we've gone through in part, yet he has not
sinned, so he doesn't understand that and experience. That Jesus Christ, the God-man,
in his humanity, complete human condition, He has been tempted
in every way to not trust the promises of the Father. He's
been tempted in every way to take control of his own circumstances.
He's been tempted in every way to vindicate himself and had
the power and the authority to do it, yet he submitted to the
will of the Father to become obedient unto death as an innocent
human being, to die as a criminal. And by the way, Jesus did not
take the Murray did not take the numbing agent. He wanted
to receive the fullness. The Scripture in Isaiah talks
about that, and then the Gospels talk about that. He received
the fullness of the pain, of the physical suffering of crucifixion
as a way of aligning with the consequences of sin, which is
death. So when the Word says that he
poured that he drunk the full cup of the wrath of the Father.
He does so in physical and spiritual ways and emotional and mental
ways. And you can blame Trey for this
sermon because months ago when he said, it is OK to not be OK. And I wasn't OK that day. And
I was laying in my bed listening to Trey preach that. It's OK not to be OK. And his proof was that Jesus
anguished. So because of that, let's stop
saying to one another, it's going to be OK. It's not going to be
OK unless the father wills it to be OK. Psalm 38, 39 teaches how David
through much anguish and frustration and fear and not to make little
of this reality, but almost psychotically waited on the Lord. He says in
Psalm 40, I waited patiently for the Lord. And it's so weak.
That's not what the text is supposed to really imply. But when you're singing, Oh Lord,
I pulled my hair and I beat my face and I threw myself down
in this place. I mean, that's not something
we want our children to sing. Hallelujah to beat my face. I mean, you know, there's no
kids song for that. Tore my clothes, beat my face. I'm depressed all
over the place. Praise God. He's here. I'm patient.
I mean, that's not the way it works. Just not the way it works. So poetically, we have translations
here. I waited patiently. We wait patiently
sort of in the line at McDonald's. We wait patiently a little bit
at the red light with a guy with the left blinker turning right.
And we wait patiently when our kids come in and say, yeah, I
have a question. You remember the time? Tiny little emotional strokes.
That's patience. Sorry. David's being a little bit. That
should say this should communicate, and if you want to get to the
Hebrew, go ahead. I labored immensely. Painfully waiting for the Lord. That's what patience looks like,
isn't it? So you don't need patience when
it's not bothering you. That's not patience. That's empathy. I don't care. People think, oh,
you're so patient. No, I just don't care. Patient
people are on the edge of, ah! You see? That's patience, not
going, ah. But it's right there. That's
patience. Get it right, church. Get away
from this stupid Norman Rockwell cover of Christianity garbage.
Oh Lord, it's got it. God bless. Too blessed to be
stressed, too anointed to be disappointed. Why don't you take
a road trip with me? So I waited patiently for the
Lord. This is David. praising the past promises of
God personally. This is a personal testimony
of David talking about what he's experienced and what the Lord
has done for him. I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to
me and heard my cry. Remember verse 17? He takes thought
of me. Now let me stop right here. David
had no idea whatsoever that this would be used as a Christological
prophecy. We know in Hebrews 10 and other
places that there's allusion to this related to Christ. Christ
himself speaks these words. David didn't know. David was
talking personally. But God was working prophetically. Two more Ps. The Lord 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. We may not get through much more
than these first few verses today. Because a lot of commentators
like to contemplate what was going on in the personal life
of David at this time, what character issue he might be working through,
and then create this caricature of David and, well, this was
happening and then that was happening and this was happening. But because
we're so silly and because we're so quick to forget that this
is an expression of David's experience, that's what poetry is all about,
and implied a desire or an actual experience, to be short. That if it said, oh, he drew
me out of this terrible headache that I had, then we would only
use this psalm when we had a headache. Or, my children were so mean,
they tracked mud on the floor, we would only use this psalm
when we were frustrated with dirty carpet. It's like when Paul talks about
the thorn in his flesh. His imagery, he says, a messenger
from Satan. See, I know some people like
that. Satan Graham, I mean, you know, devil delivery. I mean, can you see him? But
there's a reason Paul never says, it was my eyesight. It was my
spouse. It was my children. It was my
animal. It was my legs. It might have just been his emotions.
It might have just been his constant nagging fear. It might have just
been his overwhelming sense of dread that was juggled with a sense
of peace. At the same time, read 1 Peter
1. Joy is inexpressible in the midst
of fire. Oh, I'm loving this fire, at
least I'm not cold. It's not like that, y'all. Stop
it. We are in a prison of performance
in the church. Folks, we gotta stop it. It's nearly killed me. It's nearly killed me. The Lord leaned into me and heard
my cry, David says. Now, we know Christ has the same
cry. We'll talk about that as we move
through this text. We know that Christ can be applied
as the true and final son of David, right? The great and true
and perfect David. The king. and out of the Miry
bog and out of the pit of destruction can be anything. It can be the
monster that you think is under your bed that's not under your
bed because it doesn't exist. It can be the overwhelming sense
of dread. It can be the pain and the anguish
of not wanting to face pain and anguish. It could be hunger. It could be heartbreak. It could
be cancer. It could be divorce. It could
be anything. And as a beloved child of God,
God inclines His ear toward us in everything. Some six to eight weeks ago,
my bifocals, I was cleaning them with Dawn dish detergent. It
gets it off. And I was rinsing them with the
warm water. And the contemplation of my mind
and where it was going was such that instead of dabbing the paper
towels on the thing, I sanded the glasses. I cannot see out
of them. So I have these long distance
glasses, which is why I sort of have to back up here to see
what I'm looking at. And then yesterday I'm looking for some
magnifiers and these fall and the lens breaks and falls out
on the floor and scratches. So now I've got all sorts, I
got an appointment Thursday, so maybe we'll get it all square.
But in those two moments, it wasn't that big a deal. But
when you can't see and you can't read, And you can't tell if the
sign above that toilet paper says extra soft or extra absorbent
or flash paper for magician's fire. And you buy the wrong thing,
you're gonna be in trouble. So for those few moments, my
life was done. I want you to think about this
for a second. A few years ago, I scratched
my glasses. Oh, well. For 45 seconds yesterday, I felt
like I had busted my head open on a concrete slab. The only pair I have left? Great. It's a pit. That's no real big deal, man.
Why are you letting that stuff bother you? Okay. Dismiss it if you want to. Next time you're feeling a little
off, and life's just not going your way, and it causes you to
pause and feel bad for yourself and take pity on yourself, remember
that that's the advice you give people. That's not the advice
the Bible gives us. The Bible tells us, the Lord
inclines to you and sets your feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure. I didn't wake up this morning
with both pairs of my glasses healed. It's like I have a glaucoma,
you know. You know what I'm talking about when you've got a scratching
glass, it's like, it's the effects we like to see in pictures. not
when we're walking around. Whatever your pit is, sometimes
God takes us out of it and removes it from us, and sometimes God
reminds us that He's our rock in the midst of it, and He will
not remove it. He did not remove David's problems, and He did
not remove Paul's thorn. He refused it. He says, my grace
is enough. I don't need grace, we say. I need the grace to get away. We don't need to get away. Weep into the pain with tears
of joy. David was good at that. Where
do you get all that from? Verse 3. God heard and listened and drew
him out. God is in the business of drawing
us out of our despair. If you have five pairs of glasses
and you break one, you're like, no. When you have one left and
you break it, it's like, oh. There's a difference. But he put a new song in my mouth.
I mean, listen to that. It was a song of praise to our
God. And many will see, and many will
hear, and they will put their trust in the Lord. Beloved, this
psalm is doing that for you this morning. And this psalm did that for me
Monday. So now I get to share it with
you. It's just that simple. Because
God is mighty. And some of us are thinking,
well, how am I gonna manage these thoughts? Well, if your thoughts
are all-encompassing and overwhelming, see a therapist. I just don't
believe in that. Then by all means, don't you
ever go to the doctor for anything else. Let me make a side note
here that's going to really ruffle some jimmies. Anyone who tells
you that your mental health is not real, medicine worthy, doctor
worthy, therapy worthy, you should flush them down the nearest toilet.
Especially if they say to you, it's just a spiritual problem.
That is the most demonic thing that's ever come out of the mouth
of a Christian. Your brain can get just as sick
as your stomach. because it is an organ. And the
difference is, when we think, we stink. And some of you may have that
sentiment. Please do me a favor, and don't ever let me hear you
say it. Because I will rebuke you with the greatest love I
can muster. I have untold disasters in my mind. Countless. I can't. I wrote names
down last week of the number of people who refused mental
health care and who are no longer with us. And the number of people who
have said in those times, well, they just probably weren't right
with the Lord. I'm telling you right now, Sometimes the Lord won't heal
those things either, but he will put a new song in your mouth.
And when you sing it, other people will trust in the Lord that you
are singing about. Think about it for a second.
I've got a friend whose parent is going through the last stages
of dementia. They don't know their own children anymore. Well, if that person had just
trusted the Lord. You see how silly that sounds?
Be careful when we dismiss things too quickly. So in this psalm,
this personal praise of the power of God in David's past, and now
we'll see in his future, David is expressing the joy of the
Lord, God leading us out of death, out of mire, out of whatever
it may be, by saying, my grace is sufficient. The reality of
this, beloved, is that there is nothing that we can experience
in this life, emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially, relationally,
anything, there is nothing in this life that God cannot give
us joy in the midst of. Nothing. So stop letting the
world of so-called Christians tell you otherwise. And stop
listening to the inner voices of the devil's delivery service
that tell you that it's your fault. It's not our fault. It is the
fault of a fallen world. Verse 17, I am poor and I am
needy. Amen. It is so. Let it be. Let's stop trying to be these
strong, ridiculously dumb warriors in the image of what the culture
has said a warrior is. The greatest warrior that has
ever walked the earth is Jesus Christ. And He fought with humility.
He fought with passion. He fought with truth. And He
stood before men who He created to give glory to Him and to worship
Him for His absolute divine essence. And He sat quiet while they said,
You are going to die because you're Our presence here is destroying
our prosperity, and our power, and our position in this world.
And we are the gods of our domain, and you, oh Jesus of Nazareth,
born of infidelity, will not stop us. And Jesus says, take this cup
from me, Father. But not my will, but yours be
done. And we are. You see. And that oratory, because of
how I talk when I'm excited, angry, mad, upset or indifferent,
it can get you feeling things. I don't want you to feel things.
I want you to hear it. I want you to know it. I want
you to see the song of praise. And as David moves out of these
next few verses, he goes into a proclamation about generally
speaking. It's not just because some people
say, well, that's just David. That's just you, Tippins. But
he segues, doesn't he? They will see and hear and they,
many, will put their trust in the Lord. Look at verse four.
He talks about they. Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust. Blessed is the man who does not
turn to the proud. What is the proud? I can do it.
I got it. We can say I can handle it because the Lord our God is
our fighter. We are more than conquerors.
And we can handle much more than we think we can by the grace
of God. Blessed is the man who does not
turn to those who go astray after a lie. So David has turned this
introspective, I wait on the Lord and He's giving me joy now
to the congregation. He's like, generally, you who
are the children of God, you are blessed. Make the Lord your
trust. What does that mean? Trust in
Him. It's not saying that you do something to make God something.
We need like third grade grammar in America. Like when somebody says, let
the joy of the Lord or let the word of God, it's not giving
permission And then in verse 5, He praises
the Lord again. You have multiplied, O Lord my
God, Your wondrous deeds and Your thoughts toward us. Again,
this theme, God is inclining His ear, inclining His love,
inclining His gaze. This is the God of the cosmos,
and He is looking at you. He's looking at you, beloved,
not so that He can catch you in some dirty deed. He's looking at you because He
loves you and He killed His Son for you. He's looking at you
because He hears the cries of your silent moans. He loves you
because His Spirit indwells you and He has sealed you for His
glory one day to be just like Jesus Christ in splendor. To
share in the crown of righteousness. And He's saying there, You've
multiplied Your wondrous deeds and thoughts towards us. None
can compare to You. None can compare to You. Paul
understood this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 when he talks about
being crushed and perplexed, but not driven to despair. Be
downed, but not destroyed. All these things always given
over in the body and the flesh to death, but in the spirit life.
Though I die, I live. Though I die, I live. Though
I've been destroyed, I'm alive. Though I am unable to walk, I
stand. Doesn't it sound crazy? It sounds
crazy. And beloved, I have fought this
my entire life, off and on, off and on, off and on, and you have
too. and I'm going to fight it tomorrow,
and I may have a couple of more weeks of extreme bliss and focus,
but I will fall into the rut of giving in to the mundane. I will put down my focus on what
is divine, and I will devour the good things of the world
and sprinkle along the ends my steadfast resolve to look at
the cross. And then I'll find myself tripping.
Not a 1980s, 90s tripping, but I mean literally falling. None can compare to you. I will
proclaim and tell of your deeds, yet they are more than can be
told. See, these aren't platitudes, beloved. Let me stop right here.
I'm not gonna be able to get through the rest of this. I'll finish
it next week. These are not platitudes. These are not little, God is
good all the time, all the time. These are not these silly little
colloquialisms. This is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ tells of the good
of the Father, points to the Father, proclaims the Father's
work in His life, in His death, in His resurrection. David knew it, but didn't understand
it. You and I know it, and we do
understand it. How much more so should we proclaim and tell
of them? But in social circles of Christians,
it seems so much easier just to talk about all the bad stuff
and all the false stuff and all the stuff. It's nonsense. I'm
tired of it. I'm exhausted with it. I don't
want to hear it. If I get another article about some heretic, I'm
going to Throw myself in a pyre. You see? I don't care. I literally
read my lips. Do not care about the false teaching
of the world. God ordained it. Hoo-yah! I am fine with what God has ordained. I do not care. about all these
grievances everywhere else. You know what I care about that's
going on in the world? The suffering of people. The marginalization
of people. The dismissiveness of people. I no longer care about my rights
or my privileges or entitlement. Beloved, this is not the way
of Christ. It's the way of the father of lies. We have to, as
God's chosen, understand there is a strict divorce requirement
when it comes to worldly ideologies. Why? Because the reason we can't
celebrate and proclaim the good deeds of the Lord is because
all we're doing is looking at the trash in the world. I'm not saying we don't pay attention,
because like I said, when we see people being dismissed and
undermined and maligned and marginalizing the world, we must do what we
can. But we don't stop proclaiming
the gospel. And we certainly don't make it
something that it's not. For some of us, we're in the
pit of being that person. For some of us, we're in the
mire of being bogged down with the evangelical cult ideologies. For some of us, we are, our pit
is being marginalized, is being unheard. And we're so victimized
that we can't even celebrate the joy of Christ. Beloved, the
church ought to be a place of healing, ought to be a people
of healing, ought to be a family of focused intention that we
may celebrate the gospel of grace together. And it is the answer
to every one of our despairs. It's not about doing or being
better. It is not about becoming more
like Jesus in every sense. And I'm not saying we dismiss
those ideas, but that's not what it's about. Very quickly in verse
6, look, in sacrifice and offering you've not delighted, but you
have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required. Then I said, Behold, I've come,
and the scroll of the book, it was written of me. I delight to do
your will, O my God, your law is within my heart. He just says,
I delight to do your will, but then in the will of God and the
law to do all these things, but it's not the things that God
delights in. It's going to take me 30 minutes to go through those
three verses. So it's going to have to be next week. Because
this is where the Christology, this is where the example of
Jesus, this is where the prophecy becomes to unfolding. So the
Christian life is not about becoming more grounded in a social structure
of Christian living. It's about rejoicing in the midst
of all type of crap and pain and suffering while
caring for others and their suffering even if we don't understand why
it's really that bad. Could you imagine if I couldn't
preach today because I broke my glasses? And how ridiculous
that would sound to most of you? It could happen. It could happen. Why is he so upset about that?
I don't know. Why are you so dismissive of
it? No matter the relative idea of
how we gauge other people's suffering, it's real for them. It's real for them. People whining about their bank
accounts and whining about their grass growing and whining about
everything else, all the while ignoring real suffering from
their neighbor. You see? That's just an example
pops in my head because I've done that. I'm not reading your mind. I'm
just sharing mine. Beloved, we're poor and needy.
Great is the Lord. Greatly to be praised. And I
want you to hold that, I want you to hold that. Because he
goes on to talk about proclaiming the goodness of God, proclaiming
the gospel, proclaiming we proclaim to ourselves, we proclaim to
our households, we proclaim it's OK. Just proclaim. If nobody listens,
that's okay. Just proclaim it. But learn to
sit and wait upon the Lord. And sit and wait until next week
and we will continue in this song. Let's pray. Father, I thank
you and I pray that you would use my just disjointed things
that I say for Your purposes, that it would not distract from
the Word that You have given us, Lord, that Your Spirit would
do the work that I think sometimes I have to do. Father, we thank
You for freedom. Lord, I thank You that You've
put in my heart things that as a church family that we need
to address in time, Lord. And Lord, I pray that You would
help me be patient and that You would protect us from my dogma,
The way I may say certain things or announce or pronounce certain
things, Father, has often in my life gotten me in trouble
with other people's emotions. So Lord, help me to be sensitive
to that and to receive that correction as it comes. Lord, help us all to hear and
to desire the word. If we just could read this Psalm
every day this week, Lord, put in our hearts to do so that we
may rejoice. Start to put ourselves in the
place of others. Start to teach things that aren't
necessarily culturally acceptable in the confines of customary
Christianity, Lord. These are things that we need
to address. And you know what they are because
you know my heart and you know where I've been anguishing for
so long. So we thank you, Lord, that your
grace is sufficient in all of this. Father, help us to quit being
heroes. You are the God of all things and you incline your ear
to all of your people. Through the giving of your son.
Through the sacrifice of his life, through the resurrection
of him from the dead and father, you also incline your ear to
our prayers and to our cries and to our moanings. And we thank you for it. So incline
your ears to us, Lord, as we grow and as we learn and as we
live this life by faith in the one you have sent, who loves
us and who gave himself for us. Father, most of all, empower
us with joy. Empower us with hope. We thank you for it in Christ's
name, we pray. Amen.