Let me get you to turn with me
to Psalm 101. It's good to be back with you
again. And Brother Rex is right. You've been my friend for a long
time, been so kind and gracious to me and to our folks in New
Jersey. And I love you and I'm thankful
for you. It's always good to be with you.
My subject this morning is our life in three Psalms. The believer's
life in three Psalms. And I don't want to scare you,
but I'm going to preach this morning from Psalm 101, Psalm
102, and Psalm 103. But I'm not going to go verse
by verse, I'm just going to touch on some things in each one of
these Psalms. The Lord put these Psalms in the Word of God And
the order he put them in is instructional for us because they show us what
the Lord continues to teach us throughout our life. And that's
the case in Psalm 101, Psalm 102, and Psalm 103. David begins
in Psalm 101, he's entering his reign as king. This is the beginning
of his reign as king. And he begins in verse 1, he
says, I will sing of mercy and judgment unto thee, O Lord. will I sing. Now David will sing
of the Lord's mercy and judgment. He certainly will sing of the
Lord's mercy and judgment. And it will be a lifetime to
teach him this song. And it will be a lifetime to
teach us this song. The Lord's judgment's not condemnation. That's not what the word means
here. It's not condemnation. The Lord Jesus settled justice
for His people on the cross, bearing the condemnation that
His people deserved. This morning there will be some
preachers preaching on the resurrection, the first and only time for 52
Sundays out of the year. The Lord's preachers preach the
resurrection every time we preach because we preach Christ. And
Christ said He is the resurrection and the life. There's three things
preeminently that the resurrection declares. It declares, number
one, Christ conquered death. If He conquered death, which
is our worst enemy, that means He conquered all our enemies.
But more than just declaring He conquered death, He's declaring
Christ is our life. He's our life. That's why He's
conquered death. He's our life. And number two,
the sting of death is sin, and it tells us Christ purged the
sin of his people. He put our sins away. But more
than that, the resurrection declares Christ is our justifier. He's
the one who did it. He's the justifier. And number
three, it declares to us the strength of sin is the law. And
so it tells us Christ satisfied the law. He made himself under
the law, obeyed the law, went to the cross, bore the justice
of the law, and he honored the law and satisfied the law for
his people. But more than just telling us
that, it means Christ himself is our righteousness. He's our life, our justifier,
our righteousness. That's what we learn by the resurrection.
He made mercy and judgment meet together in harmony on the cross. And therefore, this word judgment
doesn't mean condemnation. It means the Lord will deal mercifully
with His child. With all God's elect, He will
deal mercifully with us in judgment. That means doing for us what
is best and right and good for us in this world. And that itself
is mercy. That itself is mercy. And He's
teaching you and me by this, the just thing. Because He satisfied
justice, because He honored the law and justified His people,
the just thing is to show us mercy. And He's teaching you
and me because He satisfied justice for your brethren. Anytime, whatever
they're going through, the just thing. is to be merciful. That's the just thing. And that's
what He's doing for us, to teach us His mercy toward us, His wise
judgment toward us, to teach us to use spiritual judgment
with one another and be merciful to one another. And we're a lifetime
learning this. But we're going to sing of His
mercy and judgment, because He doesn't fail to teach it. And
we're going to sing of it. In the beginning of His reign,
the Lord spoke to David. And you can find this in 2 Samuel
23. Let me just give it to you. But the Lord spoke to him by
the Spirit of God. And the God of Israel said, the
rock of Israel spake to me, David said, he that ruleth over men
must be just, ruling in the fear of God. So David's entering his
reign, and David's determined. He hears that word. And just
like us, when we begin in the faith, we hear the Word of God,
and so we determine we're going to be just. We're going to be
that just king, and David was determined he's going to be that
just king, he's going to rule justly. That was his resolve,
and we read here through Psalm 101, I'll read some of it, but
he says, I will, I will, I will, and he's saying what he will
do, and what he will not suffer, and all the things he will do.
But what we have to be taught, and what David was taught, was
that the Spirit gave him the words, and he wrote these words,
but he was writing the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. This
is what Christ will do. Christ can say, I will, and work
his will, and never fail to work his will, and make us see it
and understand. And this is what we have to be
taught. And David speaks here about not tolerating the proud
and the wicked, and those that are deceitful, and cutting them
off. And what the Lord teaches us is the proud and the wicked
and the deceitful is this old man of sin that we have in us.
And the Lord will successfully bring him down. And the perfect
man that will walk before the Lord is that new man he's created
that's perfect in him that he's going to keep and sustain and
grow by his grace. And so all these words of Psalm
101 is the Lord speaking. But let's see how the Lord taught
David some of these things. First of all, David's resolve
was, and this is every believer's resolve, he said, verse 3, I
will set a wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of
them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. A
froward heart, a perverse heart, shall depart from me. I will
not know a wicked person. Verse 7, he said, He that worketh
deceit shall not dwell within my house. He that telleth lies
shall not tarry in my sight. I will early destroy all the
wicked of the land, that I may cut off all the wicked doers
from the city of the Lord. Now in the beginning, When we
begin in this life of faith, the Lord comes to you, He quickens
you, He gives you faith, He makes you behold what He's done for
you, and He tells us, He reveals to us that by His precious blood,
He's made us kings. He's made us kings and priests
unto God. And as a king, just like David,
entering into his reign as a king, we want to honor God, we want
to serve the Lord, and we want to do what's honoring to Him.
But we start out depending way too much on self and way too
little on the Lord Jesus. We begin thinking the proud and
the wicked and the deceiver is somebody else. When you read
this psalm, that's usually our first thought. The proud, the
wicked, the deceiver, that's those vile, wicked people out
there. And so we tend to be quick to
judge others and easy on ourselves. So Christ, our King, exercises
mercy and judgment toward us. He keeps exercising mercy and
judgment toward us to teach us the truth. Soon, just like David,
David said, he said there, I will set no wicked thing before my
eyes. I hate the work of them that
turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. A forward heart shall
depart from me. I won't tolerate the deceitful.
And soon, The Lord worked everything out, took the restraint off David,
and David sees Bathsheba, calls her to himself, commits iniquity,
commits sin, works deceitfully, kills her husband, tries to cover
the whole thing up, and the Lord showed David mercy. He brought him to cry for mercy,
and the Lord showed David mercy, and the Lord worked judgment,
He reminded David, David's old man of sin is the wicked man,
that's the proud man, that's the deceiver, is the old man
of sin that's with us. And Christ is the king, he's
the justifier. And it showed just David mercy. He was showing David mercy. He
was showing David, I've satisfied judgment for you, David. I'm
not going to destroy you. When Nathan came to him, and
he brought David to see it was him that had sinned, and he said,
I've sinned. And Nathan said to him immediately,
and the Lord has forgiven your sin. And every time you experience
that, it teaches you a little more to depend on self less and
trust Christ more. Christ increases and we decrease.
Well, David said, verse 5, whosoever privately slanders his neighbor,
him will I cut off. David's own son did this. David's
son Absalom went around and slandered. Everybody told the children of
Israel that David wasn't a just king and turned the people's
heart against David and turned them for Absalom. But that was
David's son. David didn't cut him off. David
didn't want to cut him off. He wanted to show him mercy because
that's his child. And then David's leaving Israel,
he's going up the hill and he's down, he's cast down because
this is taking place. And he meets Zabba, you remember
Zabba? Zabba was the servant, him and
his sons were the servants of Mephibosheth. And David had given
all his mercy, all his shown grace to Mephibosheth for Jonathan's
sake. And he meets Zabba and Zabba's
got some donkeys and he's carrying all this fruit and all these
gifts. And David said, what's this? And he said, this is for
you, David, and for your men. And David said, where's Mephibosheth?
And Ziba said, he's in Israel and he's not coming out to join
you, David. He thinks the kingdom is going to be returned to him
now and he's going to be the king, his family. And David believed
the slander and didn't inquire and gave everything that belonged
to Mephibosheth to Ziba. Just like that. And the Lord
had mercy on David, showed him what he had done, Mephibosheth
was brought to him, and David, you know what David did? Because
he saw the Lord's mercy to him, and saw the Lord dealing justly
and wisely with him and showing him that he was the slanderer,
and he couldn't put down the slanderer. That's what our flesh
is, and only the Lord can put him down. And he showed David
this, and you know what David did? David had mercy on Ziba. He sure did. He said to Mephibosheth,
he said, I've given my word to Ziba, he'll get what I've given
him, and you'll get the other part. Of course, Mephibosheth
said, give it all to Ziba, I just need you, David. And that's a
picture of us saying, give it all to the other, we just need
Christ. But that's the Lord showing us,
it's His will, it's Him working judgment in His kingdom. He's
the King, And He's working judgment in His kingdom and He's showing
us mercy the whole way by showing us we're not the king. We're
not the one who can work our will and make everything that
we will to come to pass. We depend on the Lord. And then,
one more thing that we see in David, verse 5, he said, second
part, he said, Him that hath a high look and a proud heart
will not I suffer. And you know how we start out. You're saved through some of
these trials, and you see the Lord, and you learn a little
more to trust Him, a little less to trust yourself, and a little
time goes by, and we start thinking we can stand. We start thinking,
well, I'm not as weak as I used to be. He was proud. There's no doubt
about that. David was proud in his heart.
He'd been through a lot of trials, suffered a lot of things, but
just like you and me, David still had a lot of pride in his flesh.
And the Lord knew that. And the Lord also knew that there
were some children in Israel that he was going to judge that
were not his people. He was going to cut them off.
But in the process of working that, this is how wise Christ
our King is and how he can work judgment. In the process of cutting
those off that were not his, he's also going to teach David
about his pride. And the scripture says the Lord
moved David to number Israel. And you know how he did it? It
also says the Lord took his hand off the devil and the devil put
it in David's heart to number Israel. How does that play out
for you and me? About like this. You know what
I think I'm going to do? I think I'm going to number Israel.
just came into his heart one day. And you know what the sin
of that was? The sin of that was, was David trying to draft
men to be in his army and make men be in his army. David put
pride in his army and trusting the strength of his army rather
than trusting the Lord to add to the army and trusting the
Lord to be the strength of him and his army and trusting the
Lord to win the victory for him. It was pride. And so the Lord
came to David and revealed this to David, showed him what he
had done. That's the Lord's judgment. He came and made David see, David,
the proud man is you. And David saw this about himself.
And the Lord said, and to show us that the Lord had humbled
David, the Lord said to David, I'll give you three choices,
David, of how I'm going to destroy these men in Israel. And David
wouldn't choose. David said, the Lord is merciful. He saw that all over again. The Lord is merciful, let us
trust the Lord. And the Lord sent a famine and
He destroyed 70,000 people in Israel. To show David mercy. To show David mercy. Everything
the Lord's doing in this world with the wars and the trials
and the sufferings and the things men are doing and the evil and
the wickedness, every bit of it is to show me and you the
same wickedness is in our flesh and the Lord's being merciful
and saving us from us. We can't ever be lifted up in
pride and think we're any better than anybody the Lord's teaching
us about ourselves. He's the King. He's our righteousness. He's our holiness. He's our preserver. He's the one that's teaching
us and keeping us and saving us. We entirely depend on our
Lord. Entirely depend on Him. Well,
now let's go to Psalm 102. It shows us examples of where
David was brought in each of these tribes. And it shows us
here what the Lord's teaching His children in each of these
tribes. These are the things we experience individually, When
we suffer these different things we go through in this life, now
the Lord Jesus experienced this more than you and I will ever
experience it. And you can read this and hear
Christ speaking in all the things He suffered, especially the cross,
and know He suffered it worse than we'll ever suffer. But He's
going to let you and me experience these things just enough to teach
us our need of Him. We see, verse 1, this is called
a prayer of the afflicted when he's overwhelmed and pours out
his complaint before the Lord. Is there anybody here afflicted
and overwhelmed? You get that way, don't you?
You can't breathe. You can't catch your breath.
You're just in such sorrow and you hurt so bad that you just,
it's overwhelming. That's on purpose. That's the
Lord being merciful and using His wise judgment for us. It's not against you, child of
God, it's for you. It's for you. Here's what happens. Verse 1, Hear my prayer, O Lord.
Let my cry come unto thee. Hide not thy face from me in
the day when I'm in trouble. Incline thine ear unto me in
the day when I call. Answer me speedily. Where's that
strong I will that we saw in Psalm 101? I will, I will, I
will. That man's gone. Now you have
a humble child begging the Lord for mercy. Saying, oh Lord, let
my prayer come to you. That's Christ's work in mercy
and judgment. Make us see our constant need
for Christ to hear us and to save us. That's where we're brought,
right there. That's the best place you can
be. When you suffer, and you're going
through something, and you're at that place where all you can
do is cry out, Lord, please let my prayer come to Thee. Please hear me. Please save me. I'm telling you, that's the very
best place we can be. The very best place we can be.
That's the purpose for which he sent the trial, is to bring
you to his feet, to cast it all on his hand. Sending the sore
trial, the Lord makes us truly fast from all our worldly cares
and all our lusts of our flesh and all the things that we think
we need and so desperately depend upon. And this is what a true
fast is. Look at this, verse 3. My days
are consumed like smoke. My bones are burned as a hearth.
My heart is smitten. It's withered like grass so that
I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my
groaning, my bones cleave to my skin. This is a true fact. This is the Lord making us see
our need for Christ our bread, bringing us to where the trouble
is so hard and we're so helpless that you can't even eat. You
don't even, you're not even hungry for bread. And the whole day
will go past and you realize, I haven't even eaten anything.
But all day you've been crying out to the Lord and asking the
Lord to help you and to save you and to show you mercy. It's
Him, a true fast, it's the Lord making us to be starved from
all the cares and the things that so take up our thoughts
and our hearts and our minds continually to where That's not
even what you need right now. You need Christ the bread. It's
to keep you knowing Christ is your life. He's your one need. He's the one thing needful. Out
of everything that was taken from Job, there was one thing
the Lord didn't take from him. The one thing the Lord will never
take from his child, the one thing needful, the Lord Jesus
Christ. The one thing needful. But we
have to be brought to this place of just starving and just hungering
for Christ to see that and to know that. This is why He works
mercy and judgment to bring us there, to see and keep us knowing
our need of Him. is to wean us from this world,
is to wean us from it, to show us this world's not where our
peace is, it's not our righteousness, nothing in this world done by
our hand is gonna save us, it's Christ alone that's the Savior. I was talking to somebody just
the other day and I was talking about how, we were talking about
how when we go through these different trials and things and
the Lord's weaning us, that's what He's doing, He's weaning
us. And we talk about how we kick against it and how difficult
it is for us and how much trouble we are to be when the Lord's
so graciously weaning us from these things. And I told him,
I said, it makes me want to call my mama. I want to call her and
say, thank you for weaning me when I was a baby. I must have
given you all kind of grief when you was weaning me, because I
see what I do now when the Lord's weaning me from these things.
But the Lord's going to succeed, and it's needful. He's teaching
us our need is to dwell in Christ. He's our dwelling. We need to
be together with His people. We need to be under His gospel
because He's our dwelling place. Look at verse 6. I'm like a pelican
of the wilderness. I'm like an owl of the desert.
I watch and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. The thing
about all three of these birds is they're out of their habitat.
This is not their dwelling place. The pelican dwells in a swamp.
He don't dwell in the wilderness. He don't dwell upland in the
woods. The owl doesn't dwell in the
desert. This is not this kind of owl that he's talking about
here. And the sparrow doesn't dwell alone. The sparrow has
to be with other sparrows. That's a tiny little bird, and
there's only safety when they're all together. It's not safe to
be alone. And the point here is in his
mercy and his judgment, the Lord is continually reminding us Christ
is our dwelling place. This world's not our dwelling
place. This world is a wilderness. This world is a desert. It's
not our habitat. It's not our dwelling place.
Christ is. And if it wasn't for Him, you know what we'd do? We'd
end up in the wilderness. We'd end up in the world, but
Christ's going to keep His people abiding in Him. And we, like
the sparrow, we need to be together with God's other sparrows. We
can't be out here alone by ourselves. We need to be with His people
under His gospel, dwelling in Christ together. And the Lord
brings you through these trials and these things you suffer to
show you that and He's the one keeping you in Him and keeping
you dwelling together with your brethren. These trials are to
humble us. Before we had that proud spirit
of, I'll cut off, and I'll cut off the proud man and the wicked
man, what have you. Well, when you experience this
trial yourself, and you experience God's mercy and judgment to keep
you, then when a brother suffers these things, and he's out alone,
and he's He's not with the Lord's people, and he's not in his habitat,
and he's in the wilderness. Rather than making you want to
cut him off, it makes you compassionate and merciful. Because you've
experienced the Lord's mercy and compassion to you, and he
used a brother or sister to be compassionate to you to do the
same for you. And it's the Lord's mercy and
judgment to you, and it makes you want to do the same to them
and encourage them. Come back to the Lord's house.
Come back into the fold. Come back with His people and
dwell with us in Christ. Don't go out into that wilderness. The Lord lets us experience the
reproach of enemies. Why did enemies reproach Christ
when He hung on the cross? Now get this, I want you to get
this because, now listen, you and I are sinners and everything
the Lord is doing, He's put us together with sinners on purpose. We don't want to sin. We want
to honor the Lord, but you're going to sin. And if you don't
think you are, that's your sin. That's what your brethren are
putting up with right now, because you don't think you're sinning
and think you've done a pretty good job. And the Lord's people
are putting up with that. They're bearing that with you.
We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And look,
Paul said, that which I would do, I don't do. And that which
I hate, that's what I do. The Lord's people are never satisfied
we've done as we want to do, because we want to be without
sin and we want to be in Christ and honor Him and be with Him
fully. And we see that in this flesh
dwells no good thing. But I'm going to tell you something,
when a brother sins, this is where we believe grace, we trust
grace, we preach grace. We preach forgiveness, we preach
reconciliation, but you let one of us fall, and our knee-jerk
reaction is to say, well, I can't believe they did that, and start
talking about them. And that hurts. You've experienced
that. Every one of us has experienced
that. You've been in a place where you've fallen, and you've
heard that people have spoken about you, and that hurts you.
Why does the Lord let you go through that? Why did enemies reproach Christ
when He hung on the cross? Verse 8, My enemies reproach
me all the day. They that are mad against me
are sworn against me, because I've eaten ashes like bread and
mingled my drink with weeping, because of thine indignation
and thy wrath, because thou hast lifted me up and cast me down.
God lifted Christ up on the cross. Christ bore the sin of His people.
And God cast him down. God poured out his wrath and
indignation on Christ, which his people deserved, and he bore
it and put away the sin of his people. But when self-righteous
religious folks saw Christ bearing that, saw him cast down, he gave
them boldness to say, ah, he's smitten and afflicted of God.
He did something wrong. He's not who he said he is. And
they reproached him. So when the enemy A believer, by his saving grace,
when the Lord's lifted you up, given you grace, and then along
comes the trial, and the Lord chastens you, and you're down,
and you're falling, and the Lord's teaching you, He's correcting
you. But in His mercy and His judgment, sometimes the Lord
will permit the enemy to reproach you and speak against you. Why? Why would the Lord allow that
to happen to His child? Our Lord Jesus bore that. We'll never
bear it like He bore it. And He won't allow you to bear
it like that, but He will give you just a glimpse of it to keep
you seeing what He bore on your behalf, number one. And when
you suffer anything that you suffer, use that suffering to
remember, I'm not suffering anything like what my Redeemer suffered.
And use your suffering to look to Christ and see how much He
suffered in your room instead. But here's one reason the Lord
lets you suffer that. It's hurtful. Remember Job's
friends? Job's friends came and they blessed
Job and cursed Job with the same tongue. In other words, they
said a lot of true things, but they said them with the motive
of cursing Job. They're saying, you did something
and God's getting you. Christ might be chasing my brother
for his sin, but Christ is his master. And Christ will make him stand.
And that's why Christ lets you suffer these things to teach
you. He's your master. He'll make you stand. And when
he does that for you, he saves you through that. When your brother
suffers, it doesn't make you want to reproach him. It makes
you want to trust him to your master, to his master, and pray
for him and help him to the master. It's not my business to climb
into the judgment seat and say, well, You've done something,
God's getting you, God's cutting you off. And I know there's a
lot of Scripture men that go to and try to support themselves
for cutting people off. If you read the Scriptures, that's
who God cuts off. If man continues in that spirit,
God will cut that man off. The spirit God puts in His child
is to break our heart, is to bring us down to Christ's feet,
to make us merciful and gracious and forgiving to one another,
to help one another to Christ. James said this, James says,
Speak not evil of one another, brethren. He that speaks evil
of his brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law
and judges the law. How's that? Because Christ fulfilled
it for my brother. He honored it for my brother.
Who is he that condemneth? It's God that justifieth. It's
Christ that died. And if I'm going to speak evil
of one for whom Christ died, I'm speaking evil of the law.
But if thou judge the law, you're not a doer of the law. You're
a judge. To be a doer of the law, How did Christ do the law? He loved God and his brethren
so much that he bore our sin, to bear all the judgment of our
sin, to put away our sin, to cover our sin, to make us righteous. That's the love of the law. And
James says, if we're judging the law and judging our brother
and condemning him, we're not loving them and bearing their
sin and covering their sin like Christ has done for us. There's
one lawgiver. who's able to save and destroy.
Who are thou that judges another? But we only learn this when the
Lord lets us experience it and the Lord keeps showing us mercy.
And the Lord keeps us looking to Him and seeing that He's satisfied
the law for us. That will make you merciful.
That will make you want to show your brother mercy. And so when
your brother suffers and they go through this fall, We're taught,
brethren, if a man's overtaken in a fault, you, with your spiritual,
restore one another in the spirit of meekness. Considering thyself,
lest thou also be tempted, bear ye one another's burdens, and
so fulfill the law of Christ. For anybody that thinks himself
something when he's nothing deceives himself." And I want you to get
this, that's exactly what James was saying. Just what Paul said
in Galatians 6, to restore one another, bear one another's burdens,
That's exactly what James was saying. He said, is any sick
among you? He's talking about sin sickness. Let him call for
the elders of the church, let them pray over him, anoint him
with oil in the name of the Lord, and a prayer of faith shall save
the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he's committed
sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one
to another, and pray one for another that you may be healed.
Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth and one convert
him, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the
error of his way shall save a soul from death and hide a multitude
of sin. James' epistle, I'm going to
tell you this, James' epistle, James, he tried to tell Paul,
Paul, they all think you're against the law. Now if you go be at
charges with them and enter this vow, they'll see you're not against
the law. It's just too much flesh in that. And James' whole epistle
is what the Lord taught him from that. The Lord taught him that
when you're in that trial, your brother has erred, or you're
waiting on the Lord to grow him in grace, or you're struggling
yourself with the fact that you want to make them do what you
think they ought to do, that's trial. And you've got to wait
to the end of it. Wait on the Lord. Remember, every
good and perfect gift comes down from above, comes from Christ.
Remember, we were by forgotten of the Word of God. Use the Word
of God. To be a doer of the Word, not
a hearer only, is to visit the orphan and the widow in their
affliction, your brother who's helpless and fallen in sin, and
to visit him with the Word of Grace, pointing him to Christ,
and not to be spotted with the spots of this world by yoking
him and banning him and whipping him like the Pharisees do. It's to not be many masters. It's to remember there's one
lawgiver. And this thing of confessing
your faults one to another, it's not going to a brother and standing
up in front of the church and confessing all the details of
your sins. I don't want to know that. It is having the opposite spirit
of what Job's friends had. It's having the opposite spirit
of what Christ's reproachers had. It's having a spirit of
humility to where we say, brother, I've been there. It might be
me tomorrow. Let me help you to Christ. And
those that bear the burden of their brother's sin, and cover
their brother's sin, and point them back to Christ, the only
way you'll do that, the only reason you do that is because
you have fallen, and you've seen your fall, and you've seen your
sin, and your wretchedness, and how you deserve nothing from
the Lord whatsoever, and yet He came to you in mercy and grace,
and He restored you. Usually, He uses another brother
to remind you of it. And that makes you want to do
the same for one another. You're going to mess up. You're
not going to do that at times. You're going to be too strict
at times. The Lord brings us right into these trials again
and shows us. He's going to keep His people
being merciful and loving and gracious to one another, trusting
the Lord to work these things in one another. He just is. Now
lastly, let me get to the end. I said this is our life in three
Psalms. Why does the Lord keep us knowing
these things? Here's why, verse 11. My days,
Psalm 102, 11. My days are like a shadow that
declineth, and I'm withered like grass. That's all I am. But thou,
O Lord, shalt endure forever in thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou shalt arise and have mercy
upon Zion for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come.
Verse 17, he'll regard the prayer of the destitute, not despise
their prayer. Verse 19, for he had looked down
from the height of his sanctuary from heaven, did the Lord behold
the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those
that are appointed to death. Our Lord came, it was the second
time. Our Lord suffered the cross until He satisfied justice, and
it was the set time. And God delivered Him, loosed
Him, set Him free. He's the prisoner set free, and
He loosed all His people and set us at God's right hand when
He raised Him from the dead. And brethren, whenever you're
going through your trial, just like He came to you in that first
hour when it was the set time, and He revealed Himself and gave
you faith to believe Him, when you're going through the trial,
when it's the set time, He'll come and He'll show you favor.
and He'll set you free. And here's why He's doing it,
verse 21, to declare the name of the Lord and sign of His praise
in Jerusalem. It's so we give Him all the praise
and all the glory and keep telling one another, look to Him, look
to Him, look to Him. I was going to have you turn
to 2 Samuel 23 and hear David's last words. And I encourage you
to go hear those last words. Because David found out Christ
is the King. In my house, it's not so. It's
not so in my flesh, not so in my kingdom, not so in my earthly
family. David said that. But He's made
with me an everlasting covenant. It wasn't my covenant with Him,
it's His covenant with me. It's ordered and sure in all
things. This is all my salvation and now that's all my desire,
that's all my resolve. I trust Him. Trust Him. But I
want to show you The third Psalm, Psalm 103. And I'm not going
to read this whole Psalm. I'm just going to read some of
it. But I want you to go home and read it. Because in every
one of these trials, this is where the Lord brings us right
here. And this is our life, brethren. We're either strong and saying,
I will. And the Lord brings us into this
trial, make us suffer Psalm 102 and cry out to Him. And then
He shows you mercy. And then we sing Psalm 103. Bless
the Lord, O my soul, all that's within me. Bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul. Forget not all his benefits,
who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases,
who redeemed thy life from destruction, who crowned thee with loving
kindness and tender mercies, who satisfied thy mouth with
good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. The
Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel. In other words, this
is the only way He saves. He saved Moses and Israel the
same way He's saving me and you. The Lord's merciful and gracious,
Lord of anger, and plenteous in mercy. He'll not always chide,
neither... And the word here is not really
anger. It means He's not going to show...
He's not going to chasten you forever. That's what He says.
He's not going to do that to you forever. He's not dealt with
us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy
toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the
west, so far have He removed our transgressions from us. Like
a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that
fear Him, for He knows our frame. He remembers that which does.
As for man, Our days are grass as a flower of the field, so
we flourish. Wind passes over it, it's gone,
a place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him and His
righteousness to the children of men. This is our life. This is what He's teaching us.
We get a little too strong, He sends us to trial and He points
us to Him again and shows us His mercy and His wise judgment
to keep us looking to Him. And we praise Him and say, oh,
thank you for not doing with me according to my sin. And He
makes you a little more trusting in Him and a little less trusting
in yourself. He increases and you decrease.
And He also makes you a little more ready next time your brother
falls to show mercy. and go to them and pour them
to Christ and not climb up in that judgment seat. Because you
know you need mercy. When you know you need mercy,
you'll be merciful. Amen.