Well, good morning, everyone.
It's good to see you guys here today. Give us just a second
here to see if we're all working. Looks like
folks are starting to come in. Good to be with you again today.
We're coming to you live from the Smith compound once again.
For some of y'all that may not follow our church page very much,
or may just be joining in for the first time, We have a very
small church. Besides my family of seven, my
immediate family of seven, my wife and five kids, we only have
two or three other people that attend our church. And one of those ladies, Sister
Louetta, she is in the hospital or has been in the hospital and
has just recently had a hip surgery because of a broken hip, but
last week had a stroke. And anyhow, so she's been unable
to come. We've kind of give that up. Please
remember her in your prayers if you would. And then we also
have another gentleman that lives over in Oklahoma, and he drives
over for the meetings. He's also an elderly man, Brother
Ed Bart, and he comes as well. And then we have a couple of
other ladies that come. Haven't been in a while, but
we look forward to them coming back, Lord willing. But anyhow,
we have a very small congregation, and so because of that, For us
to kind of maneuver through all this COVID-19 stuff with a lady
that's not able to come and then a man that drives quite a while,
we decided just to not meet and go ahead and carry things out
here from the house. And like I've said the last couple
of weeks, not because the government told us to so, cuz we were meeting
even after the government told everybody to stay at home. they
have no authority over the Lord's church. So we were still meeting,
but whenever Sister Louetta wasn't able to come and everything,
and Brother Ed driving the distance that he drives to come, we just
decided that we'll just go ahead and do it this way. And that
would definitely make sure that everybody stayed safe. And so
that's why we're here today. But it looks like several folks
started to roll in already here. So This kind of introduction
was kind of waiting for everybody to show up. So it looks like
everybody's just about here. So we'll go ahead and get started
this morning. Turn with me, if you would, over
to Psalm 102. Psalm 102. I want to talk this morning a little
bit about, as you can probably see from the title, want to talk
this morning about affliction. Um, I know with what all is going
on with the COVID-19, you know, many people, uh, having
to adjust their lives and things that's going on with all that.
And that's surely a part of, uh, uh, some of the things that
we're dealing with right now. But, um, All of us at one point or another
has encountered affliction and this psalm that we're going to
be looking at this morning is a psalm that came from the psalmist
whenever he felt this great affliction and For the child of grace, affliction
is brought on by the Lord for our good. The Bible says that
for those who are the called, that all things work together
for good. And so we know that the affliction that he brings
us through is for our good. That's nothing new to our understanding,
to our hearing. We've all heard that before.
And I know sometimes it's not easy for us to hear that whenever
we're going through affliction and we hear somebody say, well,
it's all for our good. Yeah, that's easy to say that
if you're not going through that affliction. But for those who
are going through that affliction, while they may know the truth
of that, it still doesn't remove the heaviness of the affliction. And for those of us who are on
the outside looking in at somebody on affliction, you know, we want
to give them comfort. We want to, you know, help them
come alongside of them and help bear their burdens. But oftentimes,
you know, whenever we come, especially like when we come with this passage
encouraging them, hey, all things work together for good. You know,
our heart and our motive for that is to encourage them and
to be there with them and to help ease their burden. And for
the child of grace, I will say that whenever they hear the Word
of God and the comforts that come from Scripture about their
situations like that, it does come as a comfort. But sometimes
the affliction is so heavy that even the Scripture, at that point
at least, is not bringing the comfort. And so now that's not
to say that it doesn't eventually, but it doesn't at the moment
seem to really bring any comfort. And even though we're trying,
our motivation of our heart is to help our brother and sister
by giving them scriptures. And I think we ought to do that.
That's a great practice to do. And what better thing to give
them than God's word? I mean, We don't want to give
them our opinions and we don't want to give them our philosophies. You know, we don't
want to go to, you know, Dr. Spock or anybody, psychology
junk, you know, Dr. Phil or anybody like that and
give them a bunch of psychology junk from the wisdom of man. We want to give them God's word.
That's really what they need to hear. But sometimes that affliction
is so heavy upon them that, you know, right there in the moment
that it might not be received, it might not be... it might not be comforting to
them at that point. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't
do it, but just to let you know that not everybody's just gonna
say, oh, well, thank you very much for that passage of Scripture. I feel so much better now. My
affliction seems to be gone. Don't feel bad whenever your motivation to encourage isn't
met with immediate joy and cheerfulness, okay? But I said all that to
say this, the children of grace, excuse me. The children of grace, they find
comfort in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They find comfort in
the God of creation. And although in our natural man,
our mind sometimes will lose sight of that. Sometimes in the
natural man, we begin to look at the things in front of us,
what we're going through. But in the end, the Lord, as
he brings us through this affliction, and don't be deceived, the afflictions
from the Lord. Whenever the Lord brings us through
that affliction, He brings us to a place that causes us and
brings us to look upon Christ and upon God and to glory from
that affliction, glory in our God. And I think that's very
prominent throughout many psalms that we read, but here in particular,
Psalms 102. And so this morning, I would
like to basically go through this psalm and the first half
of the psalm or first, you know, third of the psalm is basically
the psalmist detailing the affliction that he's going through. And
but through that affliction, something begins to form. It
begins to come out and they begin to display something that wells
within them. that this affliction has brought
them to. It's not in this passage of scripture, but there's another
passage of scripture in the Psalms where David speaks of his affliction.
And he says that it is good that I be afflicted, that before I
was afflicted, I went astray. But now that I've been afflicted,
I do mind the commands of God. I listen to the things that God
has said. And so affliction, one of the things that God purposes
in affliction, especially for His people, is that when we go
through these times of affliction, these times of sorrow and pain,
of darkness in our lives, He does that not as a punishment
for us, although as sinful people, we are very deserving of that,
but he does that, that chastisement that he brings us through, he
brings that to us because he loves us, and in doing that,
that not only is bringing conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ, but
it's also bringing us to a place where we are depending and looking
to Christ more. It reminds us of our inadequacies,
and it reminds us of our frailty, it reminds us of our inabilities,
and it It presses us further and further to look at Christ
alone for everything. And as all of you know, all of
us who have come to know the Lord and has been given faith
in Him and have been brought to believe upon Him, we all still
battle with sin, with our Adamic nature that is plagued with sin. And we still We struggle day
by day with temptation and we struggle with the fact that we
often come short of doing what we would love to do. We want
to glorify God. We want to obey God. We want
to think rightly, act rightly. And so we come short of that
every day, often. And whenever we lay down at night,
the thoughts go through our heads of how much we've missed the
mark and we've not been perfect in our ways. And that seems to
just overcome us. But it's a reminder to us. Now,
when affliction is added on top of that, and we come through
and we see just how lowly we truly are compared to
our Creator, and how unrighteous that we are compared to our Holy
God, and how enabled we are in front of our God who can do all
things, we find that this affliction presses us to trust more upon
Him and be thankful for grace and for mercy. And to also, another
reason for affliction is it keeps us looking for the day for our
Lord to return. And so I thought I would read
through this 102nd Psalm this morning and would also give some
points on this. Let's bow and have a word of
prayer before we begin this though. I'd also like to read a hymn
to you this morning. We've not been singing any hymns
since we've been here, but I'd like to read a hymn, one of my
favorite hymns that deals with this very subject, but let's
have a word of prayer. Our gracious Father, we come to you now and
we just thank you so much for Christ Jesus. And we ask now,
Lord, that you would be with us this time of preaching and
teaching. Father, I truly need your help
to explain the Word of God and to preach it. Lord, we truly
need your help to hear it and understand it and to find its
application in our life by the Spirit. And so, Father, Lord,
I pray right now that each person that's watching, listening, Lord,
I pray that you just might minister to their needs right now, whether
it be spiritual, whether it be physical. Lord, we pray that
you might minister to that as your purpose and will have determined. Lord, we ask that you would Give
us understanding today. Let our hearts and our minds
be fixed upon You, and that we might bring glory and praise
to our Savior Christ Jesus today, for He's saved us from our sin. He has saved us from our unworthiness. He has given us redemption. He's
purchased us with His blood. And Lord, we have been forgiven
of our sin and we have been reconciled to You because of our substitute
Christ Jesus. And Father, we just give Him
praise for that. We can never repay Him for the
debt that we owe. Lord, we are truly children of
mercy, children of grace. We only are here because of what
you have done in your love to us and towards us. And so Father, Lord, I just pray
today that all your people might find comfort and edification
in this. Lord, I pray for those who are
afflicted out there. Lord, I know many personally
right now, several of my good friends and family. who are going
through things of affliction, whether it be physical health
issues or whether it be mental things that's going through that
they're dealing with, Lord. But Father, I know that as the
sovereign of all things, you are in control and that you have
purposed these things for your own will and for your own glory. And I pray, Lord, that those
who are going through this, who are your people, Lord, we pray
that you just might give them understanding of these things
and that they might be encouraged through those and strengthened
through those things. But Lord, that they might truly
be a testimony of your praise and your grace and your mercy
through all of this. Lord, I pray now that you just
might take the words of Scripture, and Lord, that you might make
them come alive into our understanding even now. Lord, help me as the
preacher in my frailties and in my inability to be faithful
to the Word of God and to preach the things of truth. And we ask
these all in Christ's name. Amen. Well, brethren, before I get
started here, going through this psalm, I would like to read you
a hymn by John Newton. And for you guys that have tuned
into our live streams or been listening to my preaching for
any time, you know that my favorite hymn is written by John Newton. And no, it's not Amazing Grace.
Oh, that is a great hymn and one of my favorites. This is
a hymn that was written by John that speaks of another side of
the Christian life, why we know of His grace and His mercy and
that fills our heart with joy and we sing of amazing grace.
We all know that there are two rivers. There are two men. There is the natural man and
there's the spiritual man. And these are always at battle
with each other. And we always feel the struggle.
Paul talked about it in Romans 7, the struggle between that
natural man and that spiritual man, where the natural man wants
his way and wants to continue in walking in sin, and the spiritual
man, he wants to do the things of God, he desires. obedience. He desires those things which
are spiritual, and yet there's this conflict, this contradiction
that we have in us where we see the things of the natural man
being played out, but then there's also the things of the spiritual
man that we see glimpses of as the Lord brings us to and enables
us in. Well, John Newton went through
those struggles just like the rest of us do, and he wrote of
that, while we can easily stand up and sing Amazing Grace, how
sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but
now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. There are many times
in our lives in the dark of night Whenever we feel the affliction
of our souls, when we feel the affliction, even of infirmities
in itself, whether they be physical or whether they be spiritual.
Uh, we feel these afflictions and we're brought low and we
begin to question things. We begin to ask the Lord and
we run to the Lord because we know that that's the only place
where we can find the answers. You know, nobody can tell us
the reasonings of anything and nobody can give us comfort like
the Lord can. And so we run to the Lord. Well
John Newton, he wrote this song in the heat of this. And whether
or not this is something he experientially went through himself or that
he's seen from somebody else or just from reading the scriptures
and knows that this is what men go through, the fact remains
is you cannot help but be drawn to how connected we are to this. Whenever I first heard this song,
whenever I first read through the lyrics as it was being sung,
Immediately, it brought me back to places in my life where I
have fallen short, that I have been disobedient, where I've
been vile and evil and even withdrew back into a lot of worldly things
and done so many worldly things. And my mind wasn't upon the Lord. It didn't care for the word of
God. It didn't desire spiritual things
like I used to. And so I found myself in these
places, and whenever I heard this hymn, and especially the
end, and if you're watching and listening, please wait till the
very end, but all of us has prayed this prayer and has experienced
what this is saying. And I pray that it's an encouragement
to you. And I think that it mirrors exactly what the Psalmist is
writing in this 102nd Psalm that we'll be reading here in a moment.
But let me go ahead and read this first. It starts out and
it says, I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love
and every grace, might more of his salvation know and seek more
earnestly his face. Now, haven't we all prayed that?
Don't we all desire to grow in grace and faith and in love towards
our God? Haven't we all desired to seek
his face more? And we've prayed, Lord, increase
my faith. Lord, help me to be more like you. Help me to overcome
these sins that I continually fall into. Help me to overcome
these temptations. Help me to desire the Word of
God, desire the people of God, the meeting of the fellowship
of the brethren, to come to church and to serve and to minister
others. You know, help me in all that. That's been our prayer,
hasn't it, brethren? I asked the Lord that I might
grow in faith and love, and every grace might more of his salvation
know and seek more earnestly his face. Verse two, t'was he
who taught me thus to pray, and he I trust has answered prayer,
but it has been in such a way as almost to drive me to despair. That usually tends to be the
case, right, brethren? We pray to the Lord and it doesn't
seem like an answer comes, or we pray to the Lord and the answer
is not what we thought we wanted, or isn't what we even asked for.
He's brought us something else. Now, we know that the Lord is
faithful. The Bible says that He is faithful. He is faithful
to His people. and He is gonna fulfill every
promise that He has made to you. He's gonna fulfill the promise
that He has made to His people in every area. Every jot, every
tittle of promise will be fulfilled. Not one thing. God is not a man
in that He lies. He is the one who taught me to
pray for grace and faith and love and seeking his face more
earnestly. He's the one that taught me that
through the word of God, he has taught me to pray those things
to him. But now in the time that I'm
coming and praying those things, it's been in a way that he's
answered it in a way that it wasn't what I was expecting,
wasn't what I was wanting at face value, it wasn't what I
was wanting. It says, "'Twas he who taught me thus to pray,
and he, I trust, has answered prayer, but it has been in such
a way as almost drove me to despair.'" Verse three, "'I hope that in
some favored hour, at once he'd answer my request, and by his
love's constraining power, subdue my sins and give me rest. There again, I can feel that
experientially, I can feel that, you know, Lord, hurry, quickly
come to my aid, answer this request to make me more spiritual, make
me more like you, to think things more rightly, to trust you more,
to look to you in all things that through these trials, through
these tribulations, that I might give you praise and not complaint,
that I might be thankful and not ungrateful. Help me, Lord,
to be more like you." And so I prayed that he would answer
that request quickly, you know, because my flesh is taking over. My flesh is overcoming me. My flesh is bringing me up to
a place where I don't want to be. I want to be right, but the
flesh is taking me to a place where I don't want to be. And
it says, and by his love's constraining power, subdue my sins and give
me rest. See, that's what we pray, Lord,
subdue my sin. If you don't, by grace, subdue
my sin, I am gonna be replete with sin. I'm gonna walk in sin,
continue in sin. Unless you constrain my sin,
I will indulge in my sin. And so he's appealing to God's
love. You know, if you love me, Lord,
keep this sin, the thing that you hate and the thing that I
don't want to do, keep this thing from happening. Keep me from
sinning. Now, we talked last two weeks
about God's sovereignty over sin and evil. God has the power
at any point in time to keep you from sinning, to restrain
your sin. He has the power to keep you
from sinning. We saw the examples of that in
the Old Testament. We saw the giving or the restraining
of our sin. He can either give us over to
our sin, where we indulge in that, and that's for his purposes,
or he will restrain that. The wrath of man shall praise
him, the remainder of wrath he shall restrain. And so this is
what the psalmist and this is what this hymn writer here is
both realizing in their experiences that they desire to come to God,
they desire these things, but yet They're appealing upon God's
love. Lord, if you love me, if you
love me, and isn't that how you are? If I'm your child, if you
love me, you will, you know, we try to back God into a corner
sometimes and try to hold him to accounts now. Whenever we
pray and the word of God has declared something about himself,
and we see this all through scripture, I mean, Moses did it. He said,
hey, Lord, if this takes place, what about your name? You've
made a promise to these people. Be good on your promise. Now,
we're not reminding God of anything, and he is definitely not gonna
go against something that's gonna bring shame to his name or be
a lie or go against what he said he's gonna do, okay? But whenever we pray and we pray
what God has said and what God has told us, then brethren, we
know that if we pray what God's will is or what God has revealed
His will to be, if we pray that, then we know that God will answer
those prayers. And see, so the psalmist here
is bringing in the love of God,
that you say that you love us as your people. Well, if you
love us as your people, subdue these sins and give me rest. But yet the Lord, while He does
do that for us, and He eventually brings us through those things,
however, As the sovereign, he can choose the timeframe, how
long or how short that we experience that. He goes on in the fourth verse,
he says, now remember verse three, I hope that in some favored hour
at once he'd answer my request and by his love constraining
power, subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead of this, he
made me feel the hidden evils of my heart and let the angry
powers of hell assault my soul in every part. You know, I'm
reminded of Job. The Bible says that he was an
upright man who loved God and he stewed evil and that he was
making sacrifices for his children in case that they had done anything
before the Lord. You know, he was making sacrifices
on their behalf. And so, you know, this was a
man who loved God and stewed evil, but yet God allowed Satan
to assault his soul. He not only allowed it, but sent
Satan to assault his soul. You know, Satan didn't just come
up with this all on his own. You know, the Lord said, have
you considered my servant Job? You know, and then he's the one
who told Satan, you know, go do this, but this is as far as
you can go. Don't go any further than this. But he did give the
command and give the allowance for Satan to go so far in assaulting
the soul and the physicality of Job. And here I feel this,
hymn writer, John Newton, is feeling this. He's saying, you
know, I poured out my heart to God that he might restrain my
sin, restrain my evil, and that he might make me more like him.
But instead of that, he made me feel the hidden evils of my
heart and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every
part. Man, this is not what I prayed
for. This is not what I thought. This is not how I thought this
was gonna turn out to be. In verse five, he says, yea,
more with his own hand he seemed, intent to aggravate my woe, crossed
all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds and laid me
low. That blasted my gourds, I looked
that up, it means my plans, okay, what I had planned. He blasted
my gourds or he laid waste my plans and my desires and he laid
me low. And so we see here that not only
did God allow Satan to assault the soul of this person, but
even God himself directed the paths to a place
where that person wasn't wanting to go. All the designs, all the
fair designs, he says, that I had schemed, all the plans and thoughts
that I had, you know, I had plans to do this or to do that, you
know, and we all have those, don't we? You know, hey, we're
gonna do this and we're gonna go here and we're gonna go there.
You know, I'm going to start this job or this business and
I'm going to do this or that. Or, hey, I'm going to move to
this place or I'm going to move over to this place. And then
all of a sudden, what was our desires seems to come up against
a brick wall. And that's because the Bible
says, you know, it's not in man to know his way. The Bible also
says that man devises his steps, but God directs his paths. We come up with the plans that
we want to do, but God doesn't dictate in where we actually
go and what we actually do. Our plans may be wasted, like
we see in this song, that he may blast our designs or our
gourds and lay us low. And some may say, well, does
God do that? Would God do that to his own children? Brethren,
the Bible says those that the Lord loves, He chastens. And
nowhere in scripture does it say that chastening only comes
because you've done wrong, because you've sinned. It isn't just
because of a direct result of sin. Chastening is something that
the Lord does, even though we may not have immediately done
a sin, He may be chastening us to teach us some things. Like
here, is the Lord teaching us anything? He's letting all this
stuff take place. What's going to come out of this?
Verse six, it goes on to say, Lord, why is this? I trembling
cried. Isn't that how we normally come
to the Lord? And we ask, you know, why is this? A trembling
cried. Wilt thou pursue thy worm to
death? Tis in this way the Lord replied. I answer prayer for grace and
faith. You know, we come to the Lord
and we say, Lord, I wanted to be like you. I wanted to have
my faith increased. I wanted my, I wanted to know
more grace, uh, to seek your face more earnestly, but you've
brought such a strain upon me that has caused me to go into
despair. It's caused me to, um, uh, be
aggravated in my situation. It's caused me to sin in my heart
or maybe to even sin outwardly. Sin towards you, wondering, doubting,
mad at you. And you've brought me to this
place between Satan and your own work and not letting me be
where I want to be or go where I want to go or accomplish what
I've wanted to accomplish. You've brought me to a place
now where I just feel the utter sinfulness of who I am. The aggravation
of my soul, he says here. He says, why is this a trembling
cry? Will thou pursue thy warm death?
Are you just gonna keep on going this until you just rub me right
into the dirt? Just kill me out? Might as well just kill me on
out. I mean, you brought me to a place that's so hard, that's
so tough, that's so unbearable that, you know, might
as well just kill me. Just kill me on out, Lord. And
brethren, I know there's many brethren who are true Christians,
that they have these feelings. They come to that place. I've
had those feelings. And to think that we're removed
from that, to think that we can't have those thoughts and those
feelings, That's ridiculous for us to think
that. We, like any other man, still battle with the flesh,
and the flesh will bring those feelings on upon ourselves. I
know that a lot of people say that, well, if you're a Christian,
there ain't no way that you could ever commit suicide, because
if you're a Christian, you can't commit murder. Well, I'm also a Christian, and
Christians have committed adultery, and Christians have committed
greed in their heart, and Christians have coveted the things that their
neighbor owns and has, and they've had other gods before God. There
are other things that Christians can do, and murder is definitely
one of them. Murder is definitely one of them.
We still have that sin nature that if we're not restrained
by God, that sin nature can do the most vilest things. And to
think that a Christian cannot be brought to the place of killing
himself And no, committing suicide is not the unpardonable sin. That's a Catholic belief. Committing suicide is not an
unpardonable sin. Now, do we condone that? No, we don't. We
try to encourage everybody to look to Christ in those situations
whenever you're at your lowest look to Christ look to Christ
find out find some brothers and sisters in Christ who can encourage
you and Don't try to just go through all that on your own
But anyway, this, I keep saying psalmist, this hymn writer, he
says, will thou pursue thy worm to death, tis in this way the
Lord replied. I answer prayer for you're the
one that you prayed that I might increase your grace and increase
grace and faith towards you. Well, this is the way that in
my infinite wisdom, I've chosen to bring it. I've chosen to teach
you grace by bringing you to a place where you need grace.
where you can see that you have a need for grace. That's one
of the reasons that, remember in our study, why the law was
brought in. The law was brought in so that the offense might
abound. God brought the law in to show us that holy righteousness
of Him, to show us that we can't keep these things, that there's
an inability in us to be able to keep the things of God. Well,
what does that do if we're always pushed against the fact that
doesn't matter what I do. Everything I do is tainted with
sin, and there is no way that I could ever measure up to what
God demands in righteousness. Then what's my only hope? There's
only one hope, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my only
hope. Not in making me able to keep
those things. That's not the hope. The hope
isn't in Christ conforming us to a place where we now keep
all those things. No, it's being conformed to the
mindset that I will never achieve those things, but Christ has. and He has substituted for me,
His righteousness has been imputed to my account, and my sin was
imputed to His. He took all of my sin, and I
now have received all of His righteousness. So whenever God
looks at Christ, He sees my sin. Whenever God looks at me, He
sees Christ's righteousness. And so now I'm brought to a place
to remember it's not about my law-keeping. It's not about my
righteous walking. It's not about me doing everything
just right, although we should strive for that, brethren. We
should strive to do right. We should strive to obey the
Word of God and to do what God's Word says, but it's not about
that. It's about what has Christ done
and God bringing us to the place where our hope is not in us and
our self-righteousness, but our hope is in the Lord and Him only. And so this is how the Lord increases
our grace and faith. We see grace more whenever we're
brought to a place where there is no hope and of a place where,
look at the evils of my heart. Unless this man would have been
brought to the evils of his heart and see how evil and vile he
was, he would not know how much grace has been extended to him.
And whenever we look and see, how bad we are in keeping the
law of God. We'll never know how much it
is that grace is given to us. Whenever God says not guilty,
we know in our heart we're guilty. That's grace. That is grace. And then for Him to increase
our faith, well, there's no more thing that increases our faith
than whenever we're brought to a place to see that God delivered
us from this and we can trust Him. And that even though we
know what the depth of evil is in us, He loved us. And while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. That even though we were children
of wrath as others, hating God, despising God, rebelling against
God, desiring our own righteousness, even though that nature was ours,
He set His love upon us and He gave us a righteousness that
we didn't deserve. He forgave us our sins when God
is holy and righteous and He cannot acquit or He cannot justify
the guilty, but yet He did so because someone took our place
in that. And so Christ gave us that. How,
if we want our faith increased, we need to know that's how we
are. And so sometimes God brings us to these points of despair
so that we reach out knowing Him, trusting Him alone. Lord,
without you, I am nothing and I have nothing and can do nothing. Lord, why is this, I trembling
cried, wilt thou pursue thy worm to death? Tis in this way the
Lord replied, I answer prayer for grace and faith. And here's
the last verse of it. These inward trials I employ
from self and pride to set thee free. See, whenever God does
these things, when he brings us into affliction, it's to set
us free from pride. and from self. See, we're depending
upon stuff. We become self-righteous. We
become proud of what we've accomplished, what we are, what we deserve. Oh, we think we deserve a life
a lot better than this. Don't we all think that? Now,
brother, if you're true with yourself, you know, you know
that's to be true. You think, hey, I don't deserve
to live like this. I don't deserve to have to experience
this. There's a level of life that
I, you know, listen, we Americans are really bad about this. I
wonder why the whole world calls us proud Americans, prideful
Americans, arrogant Americans. It's because of that. We have
such, we've been given such grace here in the United States and
have been blessed so much here in the United States to not really
ever be without, to not ever be restricted, to not really
be pressured, to really not Um... be without things, you know,
without food, without water, without clothes, without housing.
Yeah, are there segments of our society where there is that,
and a lot of that is self-inflicted, but is there that here? Absolutely
there is, but for the most part, it's very, I mean, even the poorest
among our people are rich compared to some other people in this
world, and we become so prideful. You know, we don't deserve, you
mean I should live without internet? You know, I seen the other day,
there were people protesting because they believe that their
Netflix should have been given to them free during this time.
Well, why? Why now than any other time?
You know, why should somebody give you something for free?
I mean, you know, we've become so entitled that we think we
deserve. And listen, that's because that's
our nature. Our nature thinks that we deserve something. Remember
Cain when he came before the Lord and he brought the labor
of his own hands. Well, he thought he deserved
to be praised for that. He deserved to receive some praise
for that. And when God didn't give him
that praise, he became angry to God. And God showed him the
evil of his heart. And every one of us have these
same things. We have self and pride that just
lift us up and think, hey, you know, I shouldn't have to be
in this situation. I shouldn't have to be in this
situation. Now, brethren, listen, the finger isn't just going to
you. It's coming back at me. I have
to deal with this all the time. You can ask my family. You know,
I'm a complainer. I can easily start complaining
about stuff. I can get upset when things don't
go right. You give me any kind of home
improvement task to do, not only does it mess up, But it brings
me to a place where you do see the natural man really quick.
And you can ask my family, you know, I don't exhibit grace and
faith a lot of times in times of pressure. And so, you know,
I continue to pray, Lord, increase the grace and faith that I might
seek more earnestly your faith. And guess what? The Lord brings
it. Sometimes he brings it. And I
fail, and I fail, and I fail again, and I'll fail some more,
and I'll fail until the day that I die. But it's through those
things the Lord brings me to himself. There's an ebb and flow. There's an ebb and flow. He releases
me into myself so that I might see the, because I now have spiritual
eyes, I now see the unworthiness of myself, the evilness of myself.
And then whenever I do that, the inward man, the man from
above, the one that's created in righteousness and holiness
that's inside of me says, puke on that man, I don't want that.
And that man then begins to desire the things of God. And then we
have that inward draw to us, to look to Christ, to look to
God, and not be looking at ourselves. Because every time we glimpse
ourselves in who we are, then we are revealed for who we are. He says, these inward trials
I employ from self and pride to set thee free and break thy
schemes of earthly joy that thou mayest seekest thy all in me. See, God brings us through affliction,
brethren, so that we might seek Him. He brings us through affliction
and chastisement, not just to pound us down because He's a
mean old God. He does that to set us free from
looking at self. He does that to set us free from
our pride. And he does that, as he says
here, to break us from earthly joy. We become so enjoyed with
the things of earth that we forget about spiritual things. And I
know I'm just as guilty as anybody else. I often do that. And I
pray that the Lord would change that. I pray that the Lord would
keep me from that. Well, I just shut my laptop off
accidentally here. Hang on, there it comes. Sorry
about that. All right, so we went through
a hymn, and while that is great, and I believe that hymn bears
out the truth of scripture, let's look at what the psalmist said,
and we'll see if it does not, and matter of fact, this may
have even been what John Newton was reading through whenever
he come to this hymn. Psalm 102, it says, verse one. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let
my cry come unto thee. Hear my prayer, O Lord. Again,
we mentioned it a while ago. Haven't we all been there? Been there alone, hurting, needing
to hear from God, needing something, and we come, earnestly before
God. God, please hear my prayer. I
think in this verse, whenever I look at that, the first thing
that comes to my mind is automatically when affliction comes upon us,
we are brought to a place of humility. We realize The only
place I can go for help is God. There's nowhere else I can go.
If I go to my brother and sister, can they give me some encouragement?
Yes, but ultimately, the help has to come from God. God has
to remove this from me. God has to bring me out of this
situation. God has to bring me out of this place in life. He
has to bring me out of this habitation where I'm at, this place where
I'm living, this job that I'm working, this family that I'm
in, this situation that I'm part of. Whatever the case might be,
whatever the affliction might be, we come to a place to realize
that I can't fix it. I can't do it. There's nothing
I can do about this. I'm brought to despair. I'm brought
to a place where I cannot help myself. And so the first thing
I see in affliction and why the Lord gives us this affliction
is to humble us. It's to bring us to a place of
humility, knowing that our only hope is in God and knowing also
that he is in control. Look what he says, hear my prayer,
Lord, and let my cry come unto thee. Why would we say that? Why would
we come to the Lord? Well, because we know that he's
our only hope and that if there's any way of fixing this, If there's
any way of getting out of this or coming through this, whichever
way it is, whether God removes it or whether God lets it stay
and just brings us through it until it's over with, He's the
one that's in control. So again, we are reminded of
God's sovereignty in affliction. We're reminded of God's sovereignty
in the calamity that we must go
through. And brethren, if you don't think
you deserve to go through that, you've probably not been born
from above. You're probably still in your sins. You're probably
still unconverted. And I pray that the Lord would
bring spiritual understanding to your heart and mind in that. Whenever we're given spiritual
eyes, we see that we are unable to do and understand spiritual
things. The carnal man, the natural man,
receives not the things of the Spirit of God, nor can he for
they're spiritually discerned. And so whenever we're given spiritual
eyes, we're able to understand the spiritual nature and the
position that we are in in our natural nature that can't do
anything towards God. Verse two, he says, hide not
thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble. Incline thine
ear unto me in the day when I call. Answer me speedily. That goes
right with this hymn. Hide not thy face from me. Whenever
I come and pray to you, God, don't hide your face from me.
God is sovereign, has the right to hide his face from us. Now
listen, the Bible says that God will not forsake us, okay? The
Bible does say that he will not forsake us. However, just because
the Bible says that God will not forsake us, it doesn't mean
that He won't for a time hide His face from us. That He might
not, as we just talked about, let us experience the weight
and the guilt of our sin. the depth of our depravity, that
God would allow us to go through that. God does not forsake us,
but he does turn his face from us, from hearing us, and I wouldn't
say from hearing us, because of course God does hear us, He
turns his face from us in the fact that he doesn't answer right
away, or he doesn't give us that desire right away because of
his purpose in bringing us through this affliction. He says, hide
not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble. Incline
thy ear unto me in the day when I answer. Whenever I call, answer
me speedily." And boy, that's how we always are, right? Lord,
answer me now. I want the answer now. Whenever
I ask, you answer. There again, shows the folly
of who we are, why God needs to bring us into humility. It's
because we make our claims to God and we demand an answer right
away. Job learned that really quick.
Hey, I'm just going to go to God and if I can make my case
before God, he's gonna say, well, I shouldn't have done that. But he was brought through it,
wasn't he? He had to endure through that and the Lord humbled him
through that to the place where Job knew that God was sovereign
and in control of all things. Look at verse three, it says,
for my days are consumed like smoke and my bones are burned
as a hearth. This affliction that's coming
upon this person here, In this passage, the psalmist, he says,
my days are consumed like smoke. It's just, you know, it's become
clouded. My days have become clouded. Just like this smoke
has covered the whole inside of the house. You know, every
now and then we'll be cooking in here. And now my wife doesn't
burn stuff very often. She's a great cook and she doesn't
burn stuff. But sometimes something gets
burnt or something might fall down onto the burner and start
to burn. and it causes a lot of smoke
or she may be cooking something that just creates a lot of smoke
and man it smokes up the house and it becomes a little hazy
in the house and everything but the psalmist is saying you know
this is what it's like my days Have become clouded to the fact
that you know, I don't see I can't hardly see where I'm going It's
just it's it's like smoke. I'm it's consumed like smoke
and it's just choking me out the days are beginning to to
Be so much that I can't hardly stand it anymore. I don't know
what to do. I don't know where to go I don't
know how to get past this. I don't know how to get out of
this and so you can really feel the depth
of the affliction that this person is going through. He says, and
my bones are burned as a hearth. He feels like he's in the fire. He's being just constantly tormented
by what's going on in this affliction. Look at verse four, it says,
my heart is smitten and withereth like grass. so that I forget
to eat my bread. He says, man, my heart is just
overwhelmed. And it's just, you know, I don't
have any heart left in me. You know, whenever we talk about,
you know, heart, you know, we've talked about like boxers, you
know, that boxer is staying in, he may be the small guy and he's
fighting against the big guy or something. And, you know,
he doesn't quit. He keeps on and I go, boy, that
guy's got a lot of heart. That means he's got a lot of
stick to power. He's got a lot of stay in there,
keep going. But whenever you lose heart or
your heart withers and fades, whenever you begin to lose heart,
then you either like one, you become disinterested. Whenever
I lose heart in something, I just become disinterested in it. All
of us probably play games on our phones, one game or another.
Man, there's been a lot of games that I've got, had on my phone
at one time or another that I've played for a short time. Then
after playing that, I just kind of, I lose heart in it and I
don't want to play it no more. Okay. Uh, and I, so I quit playing
it and I'll eventually delete it off my phone and all that
kind of stuff. Well, what's happened is, well, I've become disinterested
in it. It just doesn't fulfill anything anymore. It isn't accomplishing
anything anymore. A lot of times I'll play games
just for entertainment or just to buy the time. Sometimes to
get my mind off of other things, I'll play a game and everything
for fun. But whenever we lose heart, we
become disinterested. We're just not interested anymore.
Another thing in losing heart, is a kind of a akin to or similar
to losing hope. I can lose heart because I've
lost hope. Man, there's just really, it
doesn't look like this is gonna come out good and might as well
just give up. The affliction can be so hard for us that we
begin to lose hope and our heart begins to wither, that there's
no way out of this. It's not gonna change. I'm not
getting any better. The situation's not getting any
better. It's just all gonna be my demise. And so the psalmist
here, you can really feel the depth of this. He says, my heart
is smitten and withereth like grass. And it's to the point
where he's lost his appetite. He says, so that I forget to
eat my bread. Have you ever been in affliction
so hard that you forget to eat that you really just don't feel
like eating? Now, brother, I can tell you, I've been through a
lot of affliction, but it's never been to the point where I've not wanted
to eat. I mean, look at me. It's not
to that point. I have never been so afflicted
by God that I say, you know what, I just really I can't eat. Now,
there's been times that, you know, maybe I don't want to eat
right now. I'll put it off a little bit, but know that I'm going
to eat at some point, you know. So I'm thankful that the Lord's
not taking me to that place that deep. But here the psalmist,
you know, it's deep to the point where you don't even feel like
eating anymore. By the way, my coffee is not
clabbered. My wife makes an excellent Chantilly
cream that we put on the top of our coffee. It's very good.
Anyway, after it starts to get cold, it kind of hardens up.
So I don't have clabbered milk in my coffee. That's nasty. Look at verse five. It says,
Let me read four again. So here the affliction has become
so great that this person not only has quit eating, but has gotten and began to lose
weight. And I know people that they can
become so anxious or can become so worried about things that
there's so much trouble and tribulation to the mind that they lose weight
and that they're going through some things and they may not
eat. And because of that, they become emaciated. But it says,
how did they become this way? By reason of the voice of my
groaning. The groaning of this person having to go through this
affliction and bearing the burden of this affliction has caused
this pain so much that I've lost my appetite to the point where
I'm even now losing weight. I'm losing who I am, not only
inwardly as my heart withereth, but outwardly as my body withers. So this person is becoming body
and soul brought low by God. Look at verse six. It says, I
am like a pelican of the wilderness. I am like an owl of the desert.
That kind of doesn't make a lot of sense to us in nowadays times.
Whenever we think of pelican, we think of this big bird with
this big old long jaw underneath its beak that goes and scoops
up fish and things like that. Whenever I looked at this, this
word pelican here is a, is a, is a bird that basically vomits
to feed its young. While most birds do that, but
this bird will vomit to feed its young. But the other attribute
to this bird in the Hebrew is that this bird is normally, and
if y'all know, if you've ever been around pelicans, whether
the big jaw kind or the smaller kind, you know, when we go fishing
up on the river in Oklahoma, there's a lot of pelicans there.
But if they're not this big old giant pelican with this big old
thing hanging down, they're a little more shallow, but they still,
you know, can hold a lot of junk in their, whatever that thing
called, the pouch or the, bag or whatever but yeah whenever
we go up there those pelicans are in hordes I mean there's
matter of fact there's one place on the river that we used to
go fish at it's called Pelican Island and that's like I mean,
there is like all kinds of pelicans there. If you go to Grand Lake,
you'll see there are all kinds of pelicans all over the place
gathered together. So they're like a bird that likes
to be around people. But here it says, I am like a
pelican of the wilderness. I'm out all by myself. I'm all
alone. I feel like I'm all alone. There's
nobody else here. I don't have any like me here. And of course, again, the pelican
in Hebrew is a vomiting bird. You know, I'm out here sick within
myself and nobody's around to be with me. Nobody's around to
help me. I'm all alone in my sickness. He says, I'm like an owl of the
desert. Now, we know that the owl is
also another bird that's usually a loner. How often do you see
a flock of owls? I've never seen a flock of owls.
Matter of fact, I rarely see owls. We have an owl here in
our neighborhood, and once in a while, you'll catch a glimpse
of that thing. Now, we can hear it quite often, and you can hear
that thing howling in the nighttime. as it were, belting out its misery,
you know, being alone and in the night. Most owls, they're
active at night. They're up at night, sleeping
during the day, whatever. But that goes to show you what
the vivid picture is that the psalmist has given to us of this
affliction is the fact that I feel like I'm all alone in my sickness.
I don't feel like anybody else is with me in this. I'm all alone
in the way that I am sick in this misery or this affliction
and I'm like an owl. I'm going through in the darkness
and I'm howling in the darkness and nobody is here to hear me.
Nobody is here to know what's going on. He says in verse seven,
I watch and I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. My enemies
reproach me all the day, and they that are mad against me
are sworn against me. Of course, we know David had
physical enemies in these nations that he was against, but then
there are also enemies that we experience in a spiritual way.
Things like pride and self that we talked about in this hymn.
He says, my enemies reproach me all the day. They come against
me daily. I feel the struggles of these
enemies every day. There isn't a day that goes by
that I'm not struggling with these things. And they that are
mad against me are sworn against me. These very things, they've
sworn allegiance against me. They're going to attack me. They're
going to be against me. There is no comfort from them.
They're going to always be against me. Look at verse nine, it says,
for I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping. Of course, you know, in the Old
Testament, a lot of times whenever someone would be in mourning
over things, they would, the Bible uses the phrase they
repented in sackcloth and ashes. They would put on sackcloth,
kind of like a, you know a burlap sack or something you know something
that's scratchy and they would sit in ashes and they would roll
themselves in ashes and this would portray to everybody that
they were in in deep mourning inwardly in their heart and that
they were struggling or mourning of something. And so they would
cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes. And basically what
that was doing is basically saying, you know, I'm not going to let
any, I'm not going to take any comfort, anything at this moment. Okay.
I'm going to, I want to let this, this, this affliction take its
course. Okay. And in verse nine, The
psalmist here says, for I've eaten ashes like bread. He said,
instead of eating physical bread, like he was talking about a while
ago, I've not been eating. I forget to eat my bread and
my bones cleave to my skin. I'm not eating and I'm physically
leaving that. However, yet this Affliction
that I'm going through this mourning period that I'm going through
I've eaten it like ashes. It's consumed. It is consuming
me and I'm consuming it I am feeding off of it, you know and
listen brethren we can be like that We can come to a place that
whenever we get into our affections We can have I remember this saying
from my childhood somebody bringing this up. I can't remember. I'm
going to attribute it to to John White, who used to go to a church
that I attended back when I was a young kid. I want to tribute
to him because he's the first person I remember saying it,
and then my family has said it a lot because of him, I think,
but pity party. We like to have a pity party.
Whenever we come in affliction or we come in trials and tribulations,
we can get to such a place where not only is it just an inward
trial that's employed upon us, as the hymn said, but now it
becomes an outward trial that now is pushed upon others. And
we become so engulfed in that, that we begin to eat this affliction
like bread. It's consuming us and we're consuming
on it. We're feeding off of it. And
that's all we know. That's all we can talk about.
That's all we can deal with. It's all we can. And listen,
brethren, I'm not saying I'm not saying that we don't truly
feel that way. And it becomes a hard struggle.
And sometimes, you know, we can't. The Lord doesn't give us release
from that. And we continue in that. Listen,
you're not alone in that. We all go through that. And there
may be some that's watching today that's listening to this at some
point in time that is going through these afflictions. And it becomes
so much that you're consumed with it that you can't think
of anything else. Listen, last night, we had some burritos that
I made. And listen, we were eating those
things, and I was consuming that thing like nobody's business.
While I was eating that, I wasn't thinking about the yard. I wasn't
thinking about my sermon. I wasn't thinking about my job.
I wasn't thinking that about anything. I was thinking about,
I'm eating this. I'm eating this burrito, man. It's good. I want
to eat it. I was consumed with it and it
consumed me. Well, sometimes our affliction
can be like that, like a good burrito or a good steak or a
good burger or good... side of ribs or whatever you
put in, fill in the blank there, whatever you want to eat. Sometimes
our affliction can be like that to the point where we're feeding
off of it and it consumes us to the point where we don't think
anything else is going on. We're so wrapped up in that,
that nothing else is able to be mitigated in our life. And so he says, for I have eaten
ashes like bread. This morning is what I'm constantly
being, I'm feeding off of it. And mingled my drink with weeping. You know, I'm just in bitter
tears over all this to the point where I could fill up a cup and
use it as drink. Look at verse 10. Because of
thine indignation and thy wrath, for thou hast lifted me up and
casted me down. I think sometimes that's where
we get to in our affliction. We feel, well, Lord, you've lifted
me up. You've taught me about grace. You've taught me about
mercy. You've told me of my salvation in Christ Jesus, and you've lifted
me up, told me all these things, and now you've cast me down.
Now you're letting me feel the hidden evils of my heart. Why is this? uh you've lifted
me up now you've casted me down says because of thy indignation
and thy wrath for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down my days
are like a shadow that declineth and I am withered like grass. My days are like a shadow that
declineth." What is that talking about? Well, if you've ever been
walking out in the sunshine and you've seen your shadow down
on the sidewalk or something, when the sun's up high, the shadow
is real short, right? But as the day progresses, then
the shadow gets long. Why? Because the sun has now
moved over in the sky where it's hitting at a different angle.
And now whenever it hits you, your shadow casts further away
other than whenever the sun is right above you and it's shining
down, there's not as much shadow there. But whenever the sun,
what is it talking about? It's talking about the days are
about over. My day is about over. It's almost
nighttime. Complete darkness. Whenever the
shadow begins to decline, that means it's going from daylight
to dusk to darkness. Darkness is about to happen here.
And what is this saying here? My days are like a shadow that
declineth. My day is about over. It's about
to become complete darkness here. I am withered like grass. I'm about dead. Now, whether
or not that means physically, and it could be, he's talking
about how he's been so worried about this affliction or been
involved in this affliction, whatever the affliction is, to
the point that he doesn't eat and has been emaciated in his
outward body. But we also see that his heart
is being emaciated, is withering like grass. And so whether he's
talking about spiritually or whether he's talking about physically,
to this point, the affliction has brought this person to think,
hey, I'm either gonna die or I'm spiritually gonna die. I'm
about to lose it. I'm about to give it all up,
Lord, or I'm about to be done. I'm about to be done, and I'll
be pushing up daisies, okay? Something's gotta take place.
Something's got to happen. Now, here we see in verse 11,
he has come to the end. He's talked about the affliction
and how hard it is being to the very place where now he's brought
to say, life can't go on much longer. I've seen that my shadow
declineth. It's going away. I can't see
it anymore. Why? Because the sun's going
down. It's about to be dark. I can't see my shadow. It's stretched
out far and now it's about to decline and be gone. Now, you
can't tell me that there is not Christians who come to the place
where sometimes they think this is the end. And they may want
it to be the end. They may be praying, Lord, take
this, take me out. I've heard Christians pray that.
I'm ready to go. I'm tired of dealing with this
affliction. I'm tired of this sickness, this
cancer that I have. I'm tired of this arthritis that
I have that's so debilitating that I can't even hardly walk,
or this heart trouble that I have, or whatever the case might be. I'm just ready to go home, go
to be with the Lord. I see now. This affliction is
so heavy upon me, I'm ready for the darkness to come. But I've
also seen Christians on the spiritual side that their day is about
over. They're almost to the point,
now we know, brethren, that the Bible says that God is faithful
and he will keep us from falling. So we know that the true child
of God will never become an apostate, apostatize. We know that to be
the truth of scripture. But that doesn't mean we can't
come to that place and feel that. And here, this guy is saying,
here, I'm coming to the place where I'm spiritually ready to give
up. I'm about ready to give it in. God ain't gonna do anything
for me, and I ain't gonna do anything for God. I'm about ready
to just give it up. This is the place where the psalmist
is in verse 11. But look what happens. And brethren,
this is what it all comes down to. This is what it's culminating
in. Why is affliction? Why did the affliction come for
the hymn writer, and I asked the Lord that I might grow? These
inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee free and
break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou may seekest thy
all in me. The point of affliction is that
we might look to Christ. The point of affliction is that
we might honor and glorify our God. and that we might be shown
who we are for who we are, and that we might turn away from
ourselves and turn to God. And look what happens. That's
why affliction comes. Affliction leads to exaltation
or extolling God, okay? Look what happens in verse 11.
He comes to the darkest point that he could ever come, physical
death or spiritual death, one or the other that he feels. Now
again, I'm not saying that spiritual death can happen after one's
been spiritually given life, but the fact that he feels this,
this place where my heart's about to wither, I can't go on anymore
in this. Then what happens? He begins to think of the Lord.
But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever, and thy remembrance
unto all generations. Now, a quick reminder, brethren. You
remember two weeks ago, when I was preaching on God's sovereignty
in sin and evil, at the very beginning, I talked about an
exodus where God showed his name to Moses, and his name was Jehovah,
and he said that I am that I am, that word means I am that I am,
I will be who I will be, and how that talks about God's sovereignty. that God is sovereign in control
of everything, that nothing moves God, changes God, can get around
God. God doesn't do anything because
somebody made him do something or because he was influenced
by anything. He is who he is. He's self-existent. Okay. And
he said, and I want that to be a memorial or a remembrance to
every generation. I want every generation to be
reminded of the fact that I am God and that I do what I want
to do, how I want to do it, when I want to do it. that I am God
and there's none beside me that can tell me to stop. There's
none of my creation that can ask me, why do you do that? There's
nobody that can do that. I am God, I'm sovereign. And that's how I wanna be remembered
in every generation. I want that to be reminded to
every generation that I am sovereign. Okay, that's what the psalmist
remembers. That's what the psalmist remembers
whenever he's going through this affliction. But thou, O Lord,
shalt endure forever and thy remembrance unto all generations. The Lord is the Lord forever. He endures forever. He doesn't
faint. He doesn't fail. He doesn't fall
short. He doesn't forsake. and thy remembrance
unto," what's his remembrance? His sovereignty unto all generations.
He endures forever. He is in control unto all generations. So the psalmist has reminded
himself, I'm at wit's end. I'm at life's end. I can't go
on any farther. And the Lord brings him to remember
that he is the Lord who is in control of all things. This affliction
is not coming upon you, psalmist. without my hand." This is not
coming upon you without effect, without a purpose. This is just
not cavalier affliction that God does. God always has a purpose
in His affliction, and His purpose is always right, by the way.
His purpose, He has a purpose in affliction. It's not a chaotic
thing. It's not a fatalistic thing that's
happening to you. It is a purposeful thing to you.
You are being afflicted and coming through affliction because God
has purpose to you that affliction. I could easily say to Mike Smith,
Mike Smith, God is afflicting Mike Smith because of a purpose,
a specific purpose, not only in God and glorifying himself,
but a specific purpose in Michael Smith. And put your name there,
okay? Put your name there. You are
going through affliction because God is sovereign and has a specific
purpose in your affliction. You know, we hear these stupid preachers on TV and radio,
the T.D. Jakes and the Guy Smiley, I can't
think of his name right off the top of my head, the Your Best
Life Now guy. You know, we hear these guys
and they're all the time talking about all this stuff, you know,
and they're talking about how everything's always going to
be good and great and wonderful. And, you know, this is your best
life now and God has a wonderful plan for your life. All that
kind of stuff and it's true. God does have a plan for your
life. He does have a purpose in all things You are made either
a vessel of honor or a vessel of dishonor one for glory or
one for dishonor So, yeah, God does have a purpose
and a plan for your life But in this ooey-gooey way of always
seeking out this good thing Well, have you ever? Realized scripture bearing witness
to this as well as life, that sometimes God's purpose in your
life is that you go through affliction? See, these guys don't want to
tell you that. Those guys want you to think that you should
never go through affliction. But yet the Lord here is saying,
hey, remember this. This affliction that you're going
through, that I am the Lord and I endure forever. And I'm sovereign
over all of this. It's not happening by chance.
Look at what he says. He says, he goes on, he's praising
the Lord here. Thou shalt arise and have mercy
upon Zion for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. See, the psalmist is reminding
himself that he is one of God's children. He's remembering that
he is one of the Lords, and the Lord shall arise and have mercy
on Zion. He's not going to put off forever.
He's not going to afflict forever. He's not going to cause grief
forever, the Bible says. He brings grief for an amount
of time, for a small time, and then He gives grace and mercy. in that. He has a purpose in
that time, but then he gives mercy. He will not forsake us. He will not leave us nor forsake
us. He will keep us. And so the psalmist has reminded
him of the things that is revealed about God. God is sovereign over
all things. He endures forever. He will not
fail. He has mercy upon Zion and will arise and show that
mercy. Verse 14, for thy servants take pleasure in her stones and
favor the dust thereof. What does that mean? Man, that
don't sound like it even fits in this passage. What is that
talking about? Well, the Bible says that all
of us who are in the church, we're servants, right? Those
of us who have become members of the local church, we are now
servants in that, in the kingdom of God. And in that, we are given
parts of service. Well, one of the things is that
is what I'm doing today as a pastor and as a preacher. I preach the
word of God. I teach the word of God. And
it becomes a a place where the pastor, especially over time,
is given a heart to love the people that he preaches to. that he is pastor over. Jesus
told Peter, he said, you know, take care of the flock that I've
put you in charge of. Feed my sheep, feed my sheep.
And that's reiterated in other places of scripture as well.
we are given a heart to love those people and to care for
those people. And one of the ways that we do
that is by teaching them the truth of God's word and not hiding
it, not softening it, so to speak, okay? We tell it to them as they need
to hear that. And so here it says, for thy
servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof. You remember that each one of
us, as we are gathered in the church, are called lively stones. We're called lively stones, and
the servants take pleasure in the stones. We take pleasure
in those that are building up this church here. Sister Louetta
and Brother Howard and Sister Beth and my family, those who
are members, we make up that lively, we are lively stones
that make up this house, that tabernacle here in Joplin. And
we take pleasure in each other. We look after each other. It says, for thy servants take
pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof. So the heathen
shall fear the name of the Lord and all the kings of the earth,
thy glory. What's he mean by all this? Well,
whenever the Lord comes and arises in Zion and shows mercy and favor
in Zion, One of the ways he does that is through his brothers
and sisters in Christ. How does he bring grace and mercy
to one who is in affliction? By another brother or sister
in Christ. Sometimes we may not even know
that we're the hand in which God is using to do that. But God is bringing comfort to
one another through the brothers and sisters in Christ. And there
have been many times that someone has preached something that I've
listened to on the internet or on Facebook or something like
that, and that person doesn't even have a clue how they've
helped me in some area. Or some brother or sisters come
actually in the church and has given us an encouragement of
some kind. And it's been at the time that
I needed, they didn't know something was going on, but all of a sudden
the Lord brought them to come and encourage us somehow. And
it came right at the time that I needed it. And it's amazing
how the Lord is faithful to do those things. Has He always done
it when I needed it right away? No, but it has come. And sometimes
it does come right when I need it, exactly right then, but not
all the time. And so what he's saying here
is that the Lord, whenever he arises in Zion to show mercy
and to give favor, a time of favor in this affliction, that
sometimes that the servants will take pleasure in the stones and
he'll do that through the servants one towards another. So that
even the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord and all the
kings of the earth, thy glory, to the place where Even the heathens
see the way that we love one another. Doesn't the New Testament
say that they shall know that we are His disciples by our love
for one another? How we love each other and take
care of each other and have compassion upon one another and how we provide
and take care of each other. What a beautiful thing that is
whenever you see members of a church who are so invested in the lives
of their own church members that they look after each other and
are always concerned for what's going on in their lives, whether
it's keeping them from going astray or just the physical things
of life. Are they helping you in times
of need? Are they thinking about you and
encouraging you in other ways? There's a plethora of things
that they could be doing. Look at verse 16. It says, When the
Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory. He
will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their
prayer. So the psalmist, even though
he got to the place where he thought all hope was gone, he
began to think upon the Lord and what's he remembered? He's
remembering that God has given some promises, that he will not
be cast off forever and that the Lord will regard the prayer
of the destitute and not despise that prayer. He goes on to say,
this shall be written for the generation to come, and the people
which shall be created shall praise the Lord. And that came
true, right? We're doing it today. He is writing
about his struggle with his affliction and how the Lord has brought
him through that or is bringing him through that. and he's wrote
that down and it has been written for a generation to come and
the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord. Listen,
we praise the Lord for given us this. Why? Because if we didn't
have this in the Word of God, we would feel hopeless. To think
that a man after God's own heart, David, and I'm assuming this
is David, it doesn't say it was from David, but I'm assuming
it's from David because the psalm before it, the psalm after it
is from David, and this right here sounds exactly the way that
David has written of his afflictions. So I assume it's from David.
And if I'm wrong, that's okay. It still has bearing on what
we're talking about. But that a man after God's own
heart was afflicted by God in such a way that brought him to
despair that he didn't think he was even going to be able
to go on with life or spiritually go on any further. But yet whenever
he began to think upon the Lord, he was reminded of the promises
of God that God would remember his prayer and that he would
now take this and he would write this down for every generation
to remember. And brethren, listen, that's
why we should praise and honor and glorify God in our afflictions
because that has an impact on others' lives. When others see
us go and they think, man, there is no way that person should
be feeling happiness, and joy, and thanksgiving, and rejoicing,
and gracefulness, graciousness to the Lord in that situation. Man, if that was me, I would
be cursing God and wanting to die. Matter of fact, that's how
Job's wife, she looked on at Job, and when Job wouldn't curse
God and die, she was like, why don't you just curse God and
die? Basically, she was telling on herself. Listen, Job, if I
was in your place, you know what I'd be doing? I'd be cursing
God and just dying. But see, the child of grace is
reminded of the Lord. And that's what Job was reminded
of. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. You know, in all these things, you know, Job talked
about what God had done to Job, and in all that, Job didn't sin
in saying that. So Job knew God had done that,
even though it was with the hand of Satan, God did it. God did
it. And Job said that, and Job wasn't
saying that God was being sinful, and Job didn't sin by saying
God was the one who did it. He knew who God did, who did
it. David now is saying, I know that it is God who does these
things, who brings this affliction. And when God brings affliction,
it's good that I be afflicted because it's for his purpose,
even if it's not good for me. But yet we have the promise that
God says it is for our good. But even if it wasn't good for
us, because God is worthy and because God deserves all praise
and glory, Even if it isn't for our good,
we deserve it, and He can do it if He wants to do it, because
He's God. And so the praise should be given
to Him. And so when people look at us
going through affliction, if we have that testimony of graciousness
and everything, it affects how other people look, and they give
glory to God in that. Man, I don't know, there's so
many examples that I could bring up right now in my lifetime of
seeing people that have gone through hardships and turmoil,
but yet in that, praise God and continue in all of that. And it caused me to praise the
Lord for that. And so God's word is not lying
whenever it says here that whenever we see these things that we will
bring glory to the Lord and praise him for that. Look at verse 19.
It says, for he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary.
From heaven did the Lord behold the earth. God sees all that's
going on, brethren. He's not hidden his face and
isn't in a corner somewhere reading a book, not knowing what's going
on. Verse 20. to hear the groaning of the prisoner,
to loose those that are appointed to death." Now, we were never
appointed under wrath or to death. That's not what that's talking
about. This is talking about physical death, those who are
being persecuted, and their appointment is to come to death, to hear
the groaning of the prisoner. You know, Paul Peter, John, all
these men that experienced in their lifetime imprisonment,
they were thrown in imprisonment and everything like this. The
Bible says that there is a day that's appointed each man a day
to die. But until that time, nothing's
gonna happen to us. You know, COVID-19's not gonna
get Michael Smith unless God has determined that COVID-19's
gone. And if that's the case, then there isn't, listen, I can
live in a bubble. but if God has determined before
the foundation of the world that Mike Smith's appointed day is
going out by COVID-19, somehow a molecule of COVID-19 will appear
inside that sterile bubble and get Mike Smith. Quick example
of this. I remember this from a... The
guy that was telling me this one time when we were talking
about a tornado that came through Joplin. You know, this guy, him and his
family, they were like always scared. My family, we've not
really always been scared of tornadoes. We grew up in Oklahoma
and right in Tornado Alley, and we've lived around them all of
our lives. And so we don't have quite the fear of tornadoes as
most people do. And even to this day, I still don't have, even
though I've lived, we have that big giant tornado that come through
that took a third of Joplin out. We were living here whenever
that happened. And matter of fact, we hadn't lived here very
long after that, whenever that happened. And so we lived through
that and helped our community to clean up and rebuild and all
that kind of stuff. And we've been a part of that.
And so we know the heartache and we know the devastation that
they can be and go through that. But still to this day, I'm still
not as afraid of tornadoes at all. Matter of fact, I'm really,
whenever it comes down to it, there's not a whole lot of things
that I really get too anxious about as far as major things
like sickness, death, peril, you know, things like that. I'm
not quite afraid. I'm definitely afraid of heights,
though. There's not a lot of things that I'm afraid of, and
I think that's because the Lord has given me some sort of a calmness
in trusting Him on most things. But there isn't a whole lot of
things that I really worry about. You know, and to the point where
a lot of people, I guess, would say that, you know, I'm just
kind of too lackadaisical about things or that I'm not too mindful
of things. But and that may be to my detriment. I don't know. And it may be truth. I don't know. But I know one
thing, I do trust the Lord and I do know that I'm not going
to go and I'm not trying to be presumptuous on the Lord and
just say, well, if the Lord wants me to die walking out in front
of that bus, then I can walk out in front of that bus and
I'll die. You know, I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. I'm
talking about living life and not worrying about everything,
just like this whole COVID-19 thing. You know, I'm not concerned. Am I going to try to take you
know precautions if I need to yeah I need to do that especially
working in the medical field where I'm around where that might
be a lot more you know I want to take precautions in that not
bring it home to my family and stuff but again at the end of
the day I know that again can live in a sterile bubble and
if that's the way the Lord wants me to go out but anyway back
to this illustration I'm not afraid of tornadoes but anyway
I was talking to the guy this one time and he was definitely
afraid of tornadoes I mean definitely afraid of tornadoes And he said,
you know, I'm going to build a cellar at our house because
this tornado comes through. And he said, that's it, man.
I'm building a shelter so I can get underground where these tornadoes
can't get me. And I'll, you know, and so he
did. He put in a he put in a storm cellar. where they could go,
storm shelter, where they could go during tornadoes. And he started
going down there whenever storms come through. And he said, listen,
man, whenever I got down there, I quit worrying. I quit worrying because
I was now in this shelter that was made to keep out, you know,
keep the tornadoes out. And I know that if I stay in
this thing that, you know, God can't kill me or I'm not going
to die in a tornado and everything. And he said one night they were
down in that cellar during the tornado time and they had these
benches where they were sitting. These, I guess, had made concrete
benches in there and they were sitting on this concrete bench
and as this tornado was coming over their house, this, I think
he said a tree or a tree limb or something, a board or something
like that, something made out of wood, but I think he said
it was a like a tree limb or a tree. He said, came driving
down through the ground, through the top of that storm shelter
and came and buried itself in that concrete block between his
legs, where he was sitting and had his legs spread apart, it
came and buried itself in that concrete bench between his legs. Now that went through the ground,
it went through that concrete slab above him, and right in
and right through a concrete bench that he was sitting in,
and lodged itself there. And he said the Lord really showed
him at that point, because see his trust was in that in that
storm shelter. And he said, now that I'm in
here, nothing can touch me. And God reminded him, if I want
you to come out by a tornado, it don't matter how far down
in the earth you dig, I can get there. And so we're often reminded
of those things. Listen, if the Lord is going
to take us out, he's going to take us out. But brethren, listen,
if the Lord is going to deliver us, he's going to deliver us
as well. He hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary
in heaven. Did the Lord behold the earth?
to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed
to death, to declare the name of the Lord in Zion and His praise
in Jerusalem. When the people are gathered
together in the kingdoms to serve the Lord, He weakened my strength
in the way, He shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not
away in the midst of my days. Thy years are throughout all
generations. Of old hast Thou laid the foundation
of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. So
he began to talk about the majesty and the glory and the sovereignty
of God in this, in his affliction. And he says, they shall perish,
but thou shalt endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old,
all of them who? Who's he talking about there?
Well, he's talking about his enemies, he's talking about Specifically here, he's talking
about the foundations of the earth and the heavens. He said,
they shall perish, but thou shalt endure forever. Yea, all of them
shall wax old like a garment. As a vesture shalt thou change
them, and they shall be changed. We know that the Bible says that
whenever Christ comes back, that all this is going to be destroyed
in a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness
is going to appear and going to be, and that's where we'll
be with Christ forever. And so this is what this is talking
about. It's talking about whenever the Lord comes again. And so he's
thinking not only of God and his personage, but he's also
thinking about the return of Jesus Christ, the very end, whenever
we dwell with Christ forever. He's thinking about that. What
is his motivation? He's thinking about God and he's
thinking about the return of Christ. Listen, brother, there
isn't anything better to get you through your afflictions
than to think about who God is and about his soon coming Christ.
That is always, throughout scripture, is always given as comfort for
God's people. And that's why I said at the
beginning of this, if you don't find comfort in these things,
then it's probably because you've not been born from above. Those
who have been born from above have been given to comfort in
who God is in truth, right? Not who God is in our mind that
we've made up, as Romans says. God, who we've made in our own
mind, who is like us. No, he's talking about God. as the Bible claims him to be,
the I am that I am. I will be who I, the sovereign
of all things, including your salvation. The sovereign God,
that's who he's talking about. to think on Him and who He is,
and to remember that there is a Christ that is gonna come.
Now, for David, Christ had not come yet. He was coming at some
point in time, as Messiah. But specifically,
when Christ comes in the end, here in verse 26, whenever all
things shall wax old like a garment, and as a vesture, shalt thou
change them, and they shall be changed. We're going to be changed. This vesture, this sinfulness,
the thing that David was dealing with, the natural man is going
to be done with. See, he's saying Paul, when Paul
said this, all he was doing is saying the same thing that David
said. Paul was saying, you know, I look forward whenever I get
rid of this tent that I'm in, this body that I'm in and put
on that new man. whenever I'm able to put on that
new body to go with that new man that's in me. I'm ready to
do that, you know, so that the outward and the inward would
be one together. That's what David is saying. David is saying, hey, listen,
this affliction that I'm going through, it's because of the
natural man. God's doing that because of the
natural man. But one of these days, all things are gonna be
made new, including this man that is going through this, this
man that has these thoughts, this man that was almost to the
place of despair where I wanted to give up and cash in everything.
One of these days is gonna be a day when Christ comes again,
when we're gonna put off this old body and this sin and all
the suffering and all the sickness that it endures. We're gonna put that off and
have a body that is different, that's changed. It's like His
glorious body. And we're going to be like Him.
And we're going to be with Him. We're not going to be amongst
this curse. We're going to be where Christ
is. And we're to think on these things. The Bible tells us that
we are to think on these things. And so whenever you're in affliction,
brethren, Think upon Christ. Think upon God and His sovereignty
over all things. He says, but thou art the same
and thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants
shall continue and their seed shall be established before thee. What's he mean by that? Thou
art the same. God doesn't change from year
to year to year to year. He is always going to be sovereign.
He's always going to be God. And He's always going to have
a coming Christ until He comes, at least, you know, that is going
to be motivation for us to look forward to, to be that that gets
us through our affliction. We look at those things and it
brings us through our affliction. Our hope is in Christ. Our hope
is in Him, who He is as God, and His soon return. Thou art
the same, and thy years have no end. God isn't ever going
to fail. Men are going to come and go, but God is never going
to die. He's never going to fail. He's
never going to go away. Okay. And he's constant. He doesn't change. And he says,
and thy children of thy servants, those who are, listen, God's
people in every generation. are going to continue. There's
never going to be a time when God is not going to have a people
upon this earth. The family of God is always going
to be upon the face of this earth here in every generation. That's not the same as the church,
by the way. But anyway, the family of God
is always gonna be here. His children are always gonna
be here, and it's gonna carry this hope from generation to
generation, and it's gonna, through the church, it's gonna be teaching
that from generation to generation. The children of thy servants
shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee. The Bible says that a seed shall
serve him. That's how we're gonna serve
him, by bringing to remembrance who God is and what God has done
in Christ Jesus. The psalmist here, in deep affliction,
remembered the Lord, who He was, what He accomplished, and His
soon return. Let those things be your comfort
today in your affliction. Let those things be what motivates
you. We can be motivated by a lot
of things, but for the child of grace, we ought to really
be motivated by who God is, what God has done, and that God is
soon coming back to be with us. So I hope you enjoyed that, brethren.
I hope it brings comfort to you. Know that you're not in this
by yourself. when affliction comes, that all of us go through
these things. And I pray that the Lord would
bless you in these things and keep you. And until next week,
we pray the Lord bless you.