How many times has some preacher
stood up and said, thank you, Mike. Y'all take the time to thank
Mike. Next time you see him, he's faithfully served us a lot
of years, hasn't he? Psalm 30. I titled the message
this evening, joy cometh in the morning. This psalm was written
by David to dedicate the time he was gathering together the
materials to build the temple. It's a song dedicated to the
house of David. Really, it's a dedication to
the house of the Lord. This was written after the Lord
had delivered David from a time of great personal affliction.
More than likely, he wrote it after the time he decided against
the Lord's commandment to number Israel. The Lord said, don't
You don't need to number Israel. You don't need to count them.
They're not your people. They're my people. I know how many there are. But
David wanted a matter of pride. He counted the people. The Lord
gave David a choice between three things. He gave him a choice
of seven years of famine in the land, fleeing three months before
his enemies, or three days of pestilence in the land. And you
remember, David wouldn't choose. He said, let's not choose. Let's
fall into the hand of the Lord. For his mercies are great. The
Lord sent a plague upon Israel, but that plague stopped. When
David went, he bought Arunah's threshing floor. A man named
Arunah had a threshing floor there, and David bought it. He
offered burnt offerings to the Lord, and the plague stopped.
And that site that David bought, remember, that was the time Arunah
told him, David, take it. Take the land, take the oxen,
take the material, the wood and the things to offer the burnt
offering. And David said, no, I won't offer
to the Lord that which cost me nothing. That was done as a picture
of redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord didn't offer
that which cost Him nothing, did He? No, that which cost Him
everything. And that's what a picture happened
there on that threshing floor. And that site became the land
on which Solomon would build his temple. And after that incident,
that's when this psalm was written. But we need to always remember
this. If we're going to get a real blessing from the psalms, To
get the true meaning of it, we've got to find Christ speaking,
not David. The plague in Israel stopped
when David offered a sacrifice that pleased the Lord. And that's
the point of this psalm. The sacrifice that pleased God
is a sacrifice of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's that
sacrifice, that same sacrifice, that brings God's people great
joy. But first, I want us to see Christ
speaking at the beginning of this psalm, speaking of the success
of His sacrifice. Now, this is written, dedicating,
gathering together materials to build the house of the Lord.
Well, the message of the house of the Lord is this, that salvation
has already been accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. The
sacrifice of Christ stopped all of the effects of the sin of
his people, just like David's sacrifice, which pictured Christ,
stopped that plague. The sacrifice of Christ stopped
all of the effects of the sin of his people because the sacrifice
of Christ satisfied the holy justice of his father. But verse
one, this is the Savior speaking. He says, I will extol thee, O
Lord, for thou hast lifted me up and has not made my foes to
rejoice over me. He says, I will extol thee, O
Lord. Our Savior, you could read or
can tell this from reading the things that he said and the way
he went about things. He was always very zealous to
seek the glory of his father. And he never just sought to meet
the bare requirements of his father. He didn't seek to meet
the bare requirements of the law. No, he magnified the law,
made it honorable. He sought not to do the bare
minimum, but to glorify his father. He sought to glorify every attribute
of his father, his holiness, his justice, his mercy, his grace,
his love, his wisdom, his justice. He sought to glorify his father
in every way. And we know that the Lord Jesus
Christ was successful. Everything He did, He was successful. He never failed at anything.
So He did extol. He did glorify His Father. And
because of that, because He glorified His Father, the Father glorified
the prophets. He lifted Him up. He lifted Him
up from death to life. He lifted Him up from shame to
glory. He lifted Him up from being the
servant, from being the sacrifice, from being humiliated, of being
the King of Lords. He extolled the Lord Jesus Christ,
His Son, because His Son extolled the Father. Look over at John
chapter 12. Our Lord knew He was going to
do this. He said something about it in His high priestly prayer
in John 17, but let's look at this in John 12, verse 27. He says, Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father,
save me from this hour. Save me from going to the cross.
But for this cause came I into this hour. Father, and this was
his prayer and going to the cross not to be delivered from shame
and suffering and sorrow. His concern was this. Father,
glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from
heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. He's speaking there of Christ
being the sacrifice for sin at Calvary. That's how Christ glorified
his father. Every attribute was glorified
at the cross and his bloody sacrifice. And because that sacrifice was
successful, the father glorified the son. The death of Christ
as a sacrifice for the sin of his people gave him the victory
over every enemy. He emerged from that as the mighty
victor. At the same time, he glorified
his father. So the Father has exalted the Lord Jesus Christ
above everything, giving Him a name which is above every name
because He satisfied and He glorified His Father. But don't ever forget
that came at great personal cost to the Savior. The suffering
that it cost Him to glorify His Father and to save His people,
we can't enter in to how great a suffering that really was.
Look what He says in verse 2 in our text, Psalm 30. O LORD my
God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. Now before Christ
could be exalted above all, He had to suffer real pain, real
suffering, real sorrow, real punishment for real sin. When
He was made sin and torment, He cried, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? How His soul suffered at Calvary,
being made sin, how He suffered being a sacrifice for sin, so
that he was separated from his Father. He cried to his Father.
But when the sin was gone, because the sacrifice of Christ blotted
it all out, the Father healed him. Now this is not healed in
the sense that like a wound is healed. We put a band-aid on
or we put medicine on and something's healed. It means to be made whole. When the sin of God's elect was
gone, under the blood of Christ, That union between the father
and the son was restored. The father no longer turned his
back on him because the sin that caused the separation was gone
and their union was healed. And the resurrection of Christ
is the proof of that. He suffered and died. That's
what we have pictured in the elements of this table. We'll
observe in just a moment. He died. But he didn't stay dead. His resurrection proved his sacrifice
was successful. It did exactly what it was supposed
to do. Completely remove the sin of his people. Verse 3, O
Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave. Thou hast
kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit. Now Christ
couldn't stay in the grave. He couldn't stay in the grave
because there's no sin left to demand his death. He had to come
out of the tomb. The tomb's no place for the living.
Why seek ye the living among the dead? And he couldn't go
to the pit of hell for the same reason. His blood made the sin
of his people. did not exist anymore. And you think of that, that because
of the blood of Christ, there is nothing left to punish. In a few moments, the men are
going to pass out this wine. We take this cup to remember
our Savior. Take a moment to think about
that while you're waiting for them to pass all those cups around
and come back. That cup represents the blood. Christ shed for you. So your
sin no longer exists. There's nothing left to punish. And when you take that cup, this
is what you're saying. The only hope I have is the blood
of Christ. That's the only hope that my
sin can be gone. The only way it can be paid for is the blood
of Christ. If that's your only hope, brother,
you've got a good hope. You've got a good hope. Because
that blood made the sin of His people to not exist anymore.
That's why the Father raised Him from the dead. He died for
the ungodly, didn't He? But He was raised again for our
justification. Christ was raised from the dead as the proof that
Christ is all we need to have our sin forgiven. All we need
to be justified. All we need to have life is the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's Him speaking of the success
of His sacrifice. The second I want us to see,
what does the Lord tell us to do? What does He tell His people
to do? in response to his sacrifice. Verse four. Sing unto the Lord,
O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of
his holiness. Sing praises unto the Lord. I love when we get together and
sing these hymns. Sing praises to our God. I just,
I love it. Doesn't He deserve our songs? Doesn't He deserve our thanksgiving,
our praise? He saved His people by His grace. Not because we deserve it. By His grace. Undeserved. We do not deserve it, yet God
saved His people by His grace. Just as He did His Son, how He
lifted Him up. The Lord has lifted up His people
because of the sacrifice of Christ. He lifted his people up from
the dunghill of sin. He lifted his people up from
the dunghill of our nature and set us among princes. The Lord
has defeated all of our enemies so that we are more than conquerors
in Christ. He's lifted his people up from
death unto life, from shame to glory, from being in Adam to
being in Christ. Oh, how he's lifted his people
up. And He's healed us of all of our diseases, all of our spiritual
diseases. He cleansed us, made us whole
from all of our wounds, our bruises, our putrefying sores. We're covered
with them from the sole of the foot to the top of the head.
There's no soundness in us by nature. But in Christ, all those
wounds are healed. We've been washed in the blood
of Christ. He poured in that sweet balm
of Gilead, His own blood, and made His people whole. And he's
restored us back to fellowship. He's healed us and restored us
back to fellowship. The fellowship with God that
Adam lost. It's been restored to us in Christ.
I believe we can sing about that, can't we? Oh, what a glorious
theme to sing. The Lord's delivered his people
from going down into the pit because he found a ransom. He
didn't just find the ransom, he provided the ransom for sinners. His own beloved son. I want to think about this for
a minute. This is true. There's nobody, nobody, nobody I would
even hurt one of my children for. Nobody. Much less kill him. Much less put him to such shame. I did. He did that for the likes
of you and me. I believe we can sing about that,
can't we? One day, we'll have a funeral
for each of these bodies. Unless the Lord comes first,
we're going to have a funeral for each one of these bodies. We're going
to put them in the ground. For those of you who are left
at mine, I want somebody to sing that song, Mike the Sun. What
a day that'll be. But that body's not going to
stay in that grave. The Lord's going to raise the bodies of
each He's going to raise them in perfection, in a body just
like the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. And at that moment, all
this morning, it will be turned to joy. What a salvation because
of what a Savior. But notice what he says here
specifically, give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Now we know God's holiness. God's
chief attribute is His holiness, isn't it? Every other attribute
of God depends upon His holiness. God is sovereign. That's one
of His attributes, isn't it? God is sovereign. That means
that God does as He will. Nobody can stop His will from
happening. He's sovereign. He doesn't have
to ask anybody. He doesn't have to take a vote.
He does what He will because He's sovereign. You know, God's
sovereignty is holy. always does what's right. God's
love, God's mercy, God's grace. That's attributes of God in there.
Everybody likes to talk about God is love, Jesus is love. Well,
that's true. God is God's merciful, God's
gracious. But don't ever forget this. It's
a holy love. It's a holy grace. It's a holy
mercy. It's given in such a way that
God's still holy. And God's justice is holy. God never punishes somebody that
doesn't deserve it, ever. God can never clear the guilty,
ever. But He can also never condemn
the innocent, can He? Because His justice is holy,
it must be right. And God's salvation is a holy
salvation. It's perfect. Nobody can ever
take it back because years down the road they find some flaw
in it. No, it's perfect. It's holy. And every time you
remember that, you sing and give thanks. his holiness. It was
God's holiness that moved him to send his son to be the sacrifice
for the sin of his people. Abraham told Isaac that how many
years ago, my son, God will provide for himself a land for the sacrifice. God has a people he chose and
he loves those people, but their sin must be taken away. It's
got to be put away or else the holy God can't accept them, can
he? So God sent the only sacrifice that would make His people holy.
The sacrifice of His own Son. And the sacrifice of Christ satisfied
God's holiness by taking those sins away. God said, their sins
and iniquities will I remember no more. Now God sings everything. God does everything. If God doesn't
see or remember those sins anymore, it's because they're not there.
The blood of Christ removed them. The sin of God's elect is really
gone. It's not like it's gone. It's
really actually gone under the blood of Christ. So there's no
reason for God to reject his people. Their sin's gone. It
was the sacrifice of Christ that enabled God to show mercy and
still be just and still be hopeful. It was the sacrifice of Christ
that enabled God to be both just and justifier of everyone that
believed within Jesus. Now, just and justifier, that's
one of my favorite phrases, that's a favorite phrase of many preachers
that you hear, just and justifier, just and justifier. You want
to tell you what that means? It means this, that the sacrifice
of Christ, let God justify his people, justify sinners and still
be holy and still be just by actually putting their sin away
through the sacrifice of his son. That's what just and justifier
means. The justice of God is holy. I told you just a minute ago,
God can never condemn an innocent man. And God can never let a
guilty man go free because he's holy. Well, that didn't change
at Calvary. At Calvary, listen to me, at
Calvary, God did not condemn an innocent man and let the guilty
man go free. He did not. At Calvary, God put
a guilty man to death by making His Son sin for His people. And God let the innocent man
go free. He let His people go free because He made them innocent.
He made them righteous in His Son. And every time you remember
that holy salvation, you sing and give thanks. That's what
we're remembering tonight. The sacrifice of Christ satisfied
His Father. So He doesn't have any of His
holy wrath left for the sin of His people. because it's already
been poured out on the person of our substitute. There's no
sin left to draw God's wrath to his people. Verse 5. For his
anger endureth but a moment, in his favor is life. Weeping
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. David says God's anger endureth
but for a moment. Now when he talks here about
his people, God's anger is not wrath. against sin that punishes
sin. That anger was already poured
out on our substitute. That anger has already been satisfied
in the person of our substitute so that God said there's no fury
left in him. No fury left in him for God's
people because it is fully satisfied by Christ our substitute. I hate to say a moment, but in
a moment, just in a matter of hours at Calvary, All that wrath
was extinguished on Christ, our sacrifice. So God's never going
to punish his people for their sin, because he already punished
Christ for their sin. God's not angry with his people
because Christ satisfied his justice, so there's nothing left
to punish. But God will correct his people. He will correct them, but he'll
never punish them for their sin. David may be referring to two
different times, in his life here when the Lord's anger endured
for a moment. You remember when David took
Bathsheba to be his wife. First he committed adultery with
her and tried to cover it up by having her husband Uriah killed.
Now the Lord knew. The Lord saw what went on. And
scripture says the thing that David had done displeased the
Lord. Then we talked about this a moment
ago when David numbered the people against the commandment of the
Lord. Scripture said, and God was displeased with this thing.
Now, in both of those instances, and the same thing is true of
you and me, God saw the sin and He was displeased with it. But
He didn't punish David. He corrected David. Then it was
over. Punishment is going to last until
the sin is paid for. Sin has already been paid for.
This is a correction. David killed David's child with
Bathsheba. And he sent three days of that
plague upon Israel for that census. And then it was over. And when
the dark night of that trial was over, joy came in the morning. God hides his face for just a
moment. There's darkness, there's sorrow,
there's mourning. Nothing will cause a child of
God more grief than when God hides his face for just a moment. That's all it takes, just a moment.
When God turns that smiling face back upon His child and we can
see His face again, there's light and there's joy. Just humanly
speaking, we can understand something about that. Sometimes sit up
all night with a sick child or sick loved one. Sit up all night
worrying about some trouble that just will not let you sleep.
In the dark of night, boy it always looks bad doesn't it?
It looks like there's no hope. It looks like this situation's
hopeless. But when the sun comes up in the morning, get it? Going
in the day. Things look a little better in
the light of day, don't they? Well, that's the way it is for
the child of God. In those times of darkness and the trial, it's
dark and it's deep and just everything looks so hopeless. You can't
see a way out. You cry unto the Lord and you
get no answer. You search for him, you can't
see him, you can't find him. But when he turns his smiling
face back upon his child, joy cometh. Joy cometh in the morning. David sinned. You know why God
didn't send David to hell? Because God's wrath against David's
sin had already been poured out. His substitute already suffered
hell for him. Christ was David's sacrifice,
but David didn't need another sacrifice. when the Lord was
correcting his erring child. The father is pleased with Christ.
That's where his pleasure is. He's pleased with everyone in
Christ. In his favor, in God's favor, there is life. There's eternal life in Christ
because there's no sin left to cause death. So God will correct
his child, but he'll never punish them. So no one who believes
Christ ever has to fear facing the judgment. No one who ever
believes Christ has to fear facing God in judgment. Because when
this life with all of its trials, all of its troubles, all of its
heartaches, all of its dark nights and dark days and all of its
corrections are over, we're going to have perfect eternal joy in
the morning. And that's the point of this
whole verse. There's joy coming in the morning,
in the morning of eternity. There's joy coming in the morning
when the trial's over, but that sun's going to set and there's
going to be another trial coming. This is talking about the morning
of eternity. Joy comes in the morning. I've
made this statement to a few people when they were on their
deathbed and I felt confident I was saying goodbye. You know, you go into a hospice
room, a hospital room. And, you know, people expect
the preacher to have something smart to say, you know, something
that'll be good to say. And I never do. I usually read scripture. That's
the only thing I know can comfort anybody's heart. So I don't know
what to say. I feel like I'm saying goodbye
to a dear brother or dear sister. And I don't know what to say.
So this is what I've said. I'll see you in the morning.
I'll see you in the morning. Good morning. of eternity, we're
going to have joy. There can't be any more of this.
We're going to have joy. Joy will come in the morning
when the Son of Righteousness arises. Joy is coming in the
morning when we awaken His presence. We were over at Jonathan and
Stacey's the other day. Jan and I dropped by. Rosalie
was asleep for a nap and they finally woke her up. She wasn't
real happy about it. She just couldn't wake up. She couldn't do this. And I thought
of her the next morning. That's kind of the way I felt.
That's not the way we're going to feel in that morning. Tomorrow
morning, I'll probably feel that way. Not this morning. Not this
morning. We awake in His presence. There'll be perfect, eternal
joy. Weeping will endure, not may,
will endure for the night of this life when we're in the valley
of the shadow of death. But joy is coming in the morning,
in the morning of eternity. And now all that is the result
of what this table represents, the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus
Christ, what he bought for his people. And that's what we remember
every time we preach the gospel. That's what we remember when
we observe the Lord's table. And we need to be reminded. Our
Lord told us this dude, in remembrance of me, to be reminded. This is
why we preach the gospel, to be reminded. And we need to be
reminded, don't we? Oh, we need to be reminded. Because
we get into all sorts of trouble when we forget who we are and
who God is. That's what happened to David.
Look at verse 6. In my prosperity, I said I shall
never be moved. Lord, by Thy favor, Thou hast
made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide Thy face, and
I was troubled. David got strong. Before he counted
Israel, before he numbered Israel, David had gotten strong. He was
the mightiest man on earth. All of his enemies had been defeated,
and he was just gathering in just staggering riches from all
across the world. that David was just like King
Uzziah. Just like our flesh, we do the
same thing now. When did King Uzziah get in trouble?
When he got strong. Same way David, and same way
we would. When David got strong and Uzziah
got strong, he made a serious mistake. He began to trust in
his own strength, in his own self, in his own situation, instead
of trusting in the Lord. David here likens himself to
a mountain. Virgin said a molehill would have fit better. Molehill
would have been more like it. We get in a whole lot of trouble
when we make a molehill, a mountain out of a molehill. A molehill
out of a mountain. We get into problems. We start thinking too
highly of ourselves. And that's what happened to David.
Now, David didn't think he made his own self strong, did he?
Now he said, the Lord made me strong. The Lord made my mountain
strong. But this is what he's saying. Now that the Lord's made
me so strong, I just don't need him like I once did. I'm just
so strong now. I'm just so strong in the faith,
so firmly planted that I just don't need the Lord like I did
the first time I ever came to him. David quit depending upon
the Lord. You know what happened? The Lord
turned his face from him for a time. That's why Solomon wisely
prayed, Lord, don't give me poverty, lest I stoop. But don't make
me rich, lest I forget you. Now, all it took to correct David
was for the Lord just to hide his face from him for a moment.
And the Lord hid his face, the darkness came, and that made
David realize just how dependent he was on the Lord. Verse 8,
I cried to thee, O Lord, and unto the Lord I made supplication.
What profit is there my blood when I go down to the pit? Shall
the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth? Hear,
O Lord, and have mercy upon me, Lord. Be thou my helper. Be thou my helper. Now David's
crying for help. Now he's not so strong, is he?
He's crying for help. And that's the very reason the
Lord sends His people to Christ. So that we'll see our need of
Christ. So we'll see how dependent we are upon Him and call upon
Him and learn to depend wholly on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not
in our own strength, not in our own knowledge, not in our own
anything, but just depend upon Christ. And that's what David's
pleading. He's pleading Christ. He said,
Lord, what profit is it to your glory if I die the second death?
After Christ already died for me, what profit would there be
in that? What profit would there be if you just let me die and
let my dust decay and be dust and that be it, that be the end
of it? What glory, what redemptive glory would there be for you
and I? If I go down into the pit of hell after Christ already
died for me, you're going to lose all your glory. You're going
to lose all of your honor. So Lord, hear me for Christ's
sake. Don't cast me off for Christ's sake. Don't keep your back turned
upon me for Christ's sake. You turned your back on my substitute
so you wouldn't forsake me. That's what he's praying. And
eventually, never as soon as we'd like, but eventually, the
Lord will always hear the cry of his needy child, especially
when we're crying, Lord, hear me for Christ's sake. Accept
me for Christ's sake. And when he does, morning's coming,
and there's going to be joy. Verse 11, Thou hast turned for
me my mourning into dancing. Thou hast put off my sackcloth
and girded me with gladness, to the end that my glory may
sing praise to Thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will
give thanks unto Thee forever. Now I know the Lord had to turn
His face back to David, because David went from mourning to dancing. He went from being girded in
sackcloth to being girded with gladness. And David knew why
the Lord had turned his face from him for a moment. So that
David would always learn to depend upon the Lord and not to depend
upon the flesh. And so David would praise the
Lord so he'd be thankful for everything God had done for him,
for everything God had done in him. And that's why David closed
this psalm. He says, I'm not going to make
that mistake again. I'm going to give praise and
thanks unto thee forever. Well, we've all been there, haven't
we? Well, I'm not going to have to
learn that lesson again. I'm going to thank the Lord always.
I'm going to praise the Lord always. Well, this flesh being
what it is, we're going to forget again and the Lord will remind
us again. But thankfully, He will remind us. He's not going
to let His people go. But I'll tell you one thing to
help us remember and not make this mistake is to remember our
Lord Jesus Christ. to remember him in the preaching
of the gospel, and to remember him in the observing of his table.
And that's what we're getting ready to do right now. So Wayne,
you men distribute the bread, if you will.