Will you open your Bibles to
Psalm 144? We'll read the last verse as the theme of this morning's
message and look at the other verses as we go through the message. I've entitled this message True
blessing. True blessing. Verse 15, Psalm 144, Blessed
are the people of whom this is true. Blessed are the people
whose God is Jehovah. Now we can learn a lot about
a man if we know what he considers to be true blessing. You can
learn a lot about a church if you know what they consider to
be true blessing. The world has its blessings.
And we don't despise the blessings of the world, the blessings of
this life. Things like health. I'd rather
be healthy than sick. Wealth. I'd rather be wealthy
than poor. Nothing wrong with having that
attitude. I'd rather have a pleasant life
than a life full of turmoil. These are blessings that this
world has and that many in this world enjoy. And there's nothing
at all wrong with that. These blessings don't have to
be despised in order for you to be considered spiritually
minded. But the blessings of God and
those blessings which are upon our spirit are much to be preferred
to any of those blessings. I would rather be, I don't want this to sound like
a boast, maybe I can't avoid it, but I think you'll understand
what I'm saying here. Maybe I'll put it this way, it would be
better, it would be better to be sick, but alive to God, than
healthy, yet dead in trespasses and sins. You've got to make
a choice. Better to suffer in this flesh,
than suffer forever in the Spirit. It would be better to live in
abject poverty and want, yet be rich in grace with the unsearchable
riches of Christ, than to have all the world's treasures, and
yet live in spiritual poverty. It would be better to live a
life of trouble, a life of pain, A life devoid of any real enjoyments
of the things of this world. Yet have Christ and all spiritual
blessings that are in Him. It would be better to have that
than to breeze through your three score and ten years with nary
a worry than die and face God in your sins. We should be glad however God
is pleased to bless us, but let us with all our hearts seek those
blessings which are from above, and not those which are down
here below. If God is pleased to give us
health, wealth, position, comforts, well and good. But let our hearts be set not
on the things of this world, but on the things above. where
Christ is seated. Let us seek for, be zealous for,
spiritual blessings and assume that God will give us whatever
natural blessings we need to make our way through this world.
Sometimes, true blessings seem to go against natural reasoning. Our Lord is speaking in what's
called the Sermon on the Mount. What kind of things does He say?
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Well, that sure runs contrary,
not only to what the world thinks, the irreligious world, even the
religious world doesn't understand that concept. Because they're
continually trying to make people happy. And they seem to give
people the idea that if really you were a believer, Your life
would be one smile after another. And then inwardly, you would
just be bubbling up with this overwhelming joy and everyone
could see it on your face. And yet our Lord said, blessed
are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness. If you are in Christ Jesus, you
lament your sins. You hate them. You despise them. They grieve you. They bear you
down. I can't remember if I told you
this story or not, but I was listening to a preacher online,
and he was talking about the believer and how he just has
that feeling of wretchedness that Paul spoke of. And he said
when he was going to Bible school, he went to one of his professors
one time, He just said, I don't know what I'm going to do. He
said, I'm just so bowed down with a sense of my own sin and
my own unworthiness. It seems like it eats me from
the inside out. I just hate what I am. And he
said his professor came over to him and put his hands on his
shoulders and says, in the name of Jesus Christ, I pronounce
you blessed. And the fellow said, what? And
his professor said, the Scriptures say, blessed are those who hunger
and thirst after righteousness. If you are in Christ, I know
this, you are not pleased with what you are. You are pleased
with what He is, but you are not pleased with what you are.
And even if you never show it to anybody else, in your own
heart, you are grieved at what you do. You are grieved at what
you think, and you sometimes tremble at the thought of what you might
do if the restraints on you were ever let go. You hunger for righteousness.
You don't want to be that way, do you? I think so often of things
I've said to people. Even if I didn't mean them to
come out like they did, they came out unkind. Unloving. And that's the stuff
that actually gets out. If you knew the things that I
felt like saying and didn't say. Hateful. Spiteful. And a host of other things that
run around in this mind. And things that have, for lack
of a better way to put it, leaked out. I don't like being that
way. You don't either. We hunger and
thirst for righteousness. That's the blessed man. The man
who aches within his own heart about what he is. How about this? Blessed are you when you are
persecuted for righteousness sake. Now I do not want to give up
the peaceful existence we Christians can have. in this country. I hear people on the internet
or the news organizations and the conservative politicians
that are of a religious bent, they talk about the war on Christianity
and how tough it is. And they do it in terms of this,
we're not allowed to say Merry Christmas. And I'm thinking,
that's it? You feel persecuted because they
won't let you put up a manger scene out in the city square?
That's persecution. Brethren, we have it so easy
here. I think of our brethren right
now in Muslim lands, and I know not everybody over there claims
to be a Christian is, any more than everyone that claims to
be a Christian here is, in this country. But some of our brethren
are being butchered for Christ. They're being butchered because
they will not recant their faith in Christ and claim Mohammed
to be God's prophet. That's persecution. And I read
about those things, and I'll be honest with you, I get mad.
There's a part of me that wants to say, alright, we need to send
a military contingent over there, and hire me, I'll go. We'll show
those folks what it is. You can't do that. And then,
it occurs to me. They are among the most blessed
people on this earth. That they should have been counted
worthy to suffer for the cause of Christ. On one occasion we
read in the book of Acts that some of the apostles, disciples,
were arrested and beaten and then kind of kicked out in the
street. And you know what they did? They went out rejoicing that
they were worthy to suffer for the name. Oh, we got this thing of blessing
all backwards, don't we? Do I want those things? No, I'll
have to admit. I don't want them. And yet, if
God were pleased to visit real suffering on us because of our
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we would have to say, we
are blessed. David wrote, happy is that people
whose God is Jehovah. No matter what their position
in this life is, no matter what their present circumstances in
this life happen to be, whether they are sick or healthy, rich
or poor, whether their lives are going the way they wanted
them to or just one disaster after another, whether they live
in comfort or in constant state of persecution, whatever their condition in this
world, If Jehovah is their God, they are blessed. How wretched is that man whose
God is anyone else. Look over here at the 135th Psalm.
Psalm 135. If your God is not Jehovah, Well, what a wretched condition
you're in. What a wretched condition we
are in if Jehovah God is not our God. Beginning in verse 15,
in the psalm we read this, The idols of the nations are silver
and gold, made by the hands of men. Now, every god but Jehovah
was made up by man. Whether he's actually made, out
of silver or gold, we know this, he came out of man's mind. Notice, they have mouths, but
they can't say anything. They have eyes, but they can't
see. They have ears, but they cannot
hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. In other words, These gods are
utterly useless. Utterly powerless. And while you and I may never
confront actual idols in the physical sense of the word, we
confront them regularly in this world, in this nation, in the
United States of America. And we confront many of them
who have the name Jesus attached to them. But they are not the
God of the Scriptures, they're not the Jesus of the Scriptures,
they're not the Lord that you find in the Scriptures. Because
like the idols, they have mouths but they cannot speak, they have
eyes but they cannot see, and they have ears but they cannot
hear. There's no breath in their mouths and no life in them. Even
their preachers will say, He has no hands but your hands,
and He has no feet but your feet. What kind of pitiful God is that
that's dependent on my hands and my feet? Isn't that the way
these idols were? The only way they could go from
place to place is if a man used his hands to pick them up, and
used his feet to transport him someplace else. This is not the God of the Scriptures. And look, verse 18, oh, what
a wretched situation these believers and false gods are. Those who
make them will be like them. And so will also those who trust
in them. What is it? What does it mean,
like them? Well, they'll have mouths, but they can't say anything.
Prayer can't be done by them. They have nobody to pray to.
They have eyes, but they can't see. You go to these people that
trust in false gods and you can preach the gospel, you can tell
them about the true God, they can't see what you're saying.
They can't perceive it or understand it. They have ears, but they
can't really hear it. There's no life in them. No breath
in them. It says they're like their gods.
Everybody is going to end up just like his God. Yeah, for
those whose God is Jehovah, this is a glorious thing. Our God
is Jehovah in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we
die, and when we go and see Him as He is, or when He comes and
we see Him as He is, we shall be like Him. Look at verse 1 here. I'm sorry. Look at the 96th Psalm. The one who has Jehovah for his
God, he is blessed because his God is the one who made the heavens
and the earth. Verse 5, Psalm 96. For all the gods of the nations
are idols. But the Lord made the heavens. Here is God's, one of his badges,
if you will, his badge of divinity. Do you know why this world is
so in love with the doctrine of evolution? Because it takes away God. I am not a scientist, though
at one time I thought I might pursue a career in science, but
I ended up as a preacher instead. But I took a lot of science in
high school, took a little bit in college, done a lot of reading.
And you know something? There never was a more faith-based
system than that science that sets forth evolution as a description
of how we got here. what is set forth as evolution,
and by that I mean that doctrine that says that life arose out
of non-life and progressed over millions and millions of years,
getting ever more and more complex until you arrive at us. And we
are marvelously complex. Our doctors, look how many years
of schooling they have to go to just to understand the basics
of how we operate. And they say all of this arose
out of a set of random mutations that managed to stick. That's preposterous. That doesn't
make any sense at all. Nothing gets better. Everything
gets worse. Everything in this world is falling
apart and yet they want to say, however, this thing called life
managed to arise out of non-life by accident. Isn't it amazing? We do all we can to stay alive
and we can't do that for very long. You know, the three score
and ten. We put all this effort into staying
alive and we can't do that, but they think somehow, by accident,
life arose from death. Here's how we know that this
is the God of the universe. He's the one that made it. He
spoke and it was. He commanded. It stood firm. These laws which scientists learn
and think that the more that they learn, the less they need
God, they are the laws that God put in place. They say that God is for primitive
cultures, childlike cultures, and they needed God to describe
or to explain the unexplainable. And so they learn a few things.
You know, they're like teenagers. Have you ever noticed how teenagers,
most of them, and by most I mean all, at some point, they think
that they're smarter than their parents? We all did. At 15 years old,
we thought we understood everything. And the older we get, the more
we realize we still don't understand much. But the scientific world
learns a little bit and thinks with the little bit of knowledge
they have, they have removed the need for God. They're too
grown up for God. Well, if there's such a thing
as being too grown up for God, God forbid that I should ever
grow up. He made the heavens and the earth. He spoke them into existence.
And when he was done speaking, the world was very much like
what we see right now. If Jehovah is your God, your
God's in control. Look at Psalm 115, verse 3. The first thing that God claims
as proof of His right to be God, is the fact that He made the
heavens and the earth. The second thing is this. The 115th Psalm,
verse 3. Our God is in heaven. Now what
does He mean by that? He means He's above this creation. He's beyond it. He stands outside
of it. He's not subject to it. Quite
the opposite is true. It says, He does whatever pleases
Him. But their idols are silver and
gold made by the hands of men. And he goes to that whole thing
about they have mouths and can't speak. Have you ever noticed,
it almost keeps going back to that. These idols, these gods
made up by men, they can't do anything. But God could speak
a universe into existence, and He still controls it in every
aspect. Everything that's happening right
now in this world is happening exactly as God ordained that
it would. I've heard people say, well,
I can't worship a God that let children starve to death. Maybe you can't, but that just
means you think you're God and that you have the right to tell
God how He ought to act. All these wars and all the disease
and everything, I just couldn't worship a God that allows that.
Brethren, He didn't just allow it, He ordained it. And it may
trouble us, we may think to ourselves, why would God do it that way?
But what we ought to think is, is how come there's not more?
In fact, what really ought to astound us is that this creation
made it one second past Adam's sin. Why is it that when Adam took
that fruit of the tree, which was essentially to shake his
fist in the face of God, and say, no, I'm going to be my own
master, I'm going to be my own Lord, I'm going to say what I'm
allowed to do. Why didn't God come down and
just scorch the Garden of Eden and everything in it? Say, okay,
we're doing this over. Why didn't He? We ought to be
amazed that Adam lived past his sin. Every human being alive
on this world, no matter what his condition in this life is,
but the very fact that he is here is a testimony to the amazing
grace of God that He did not destroy this creation when the
first sin was committed in it. And if you draw breath today,
if you're alive, it's because God is amazingly gracious. to let you live. Why does God let children die? Brethren, why does He let them
live? Is that real to you? I mean, I know that can be hard
on us to think of that, because, boy, we dearly love our kids,
don't we? And we love them so much we're
willing pretty much to cover up all the things they do wrong,
we do not want to perceive them as sinners and rebels against
God. But I tell you, if you and I
could see ourselves and our children and all our loved ones the way
a holy God must see them, we would wonder that He allowed
them to come into the world at all, much less stay here for
any length of time. He does what He wills. in the
armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and
no one can stop Him, or say to Him, what in the world do you
think you're doing? Shall the thing made say to Him
that made it, why did you make me like this? Shall we complain
to God about how our lives are? Shall we charge Him with injustice? We can't. He's God. He's allowed to do
what He wants. He actually does what He wants
to do. And our great relief is this,
that there is a multitude which no man can number, whom He wants
to save. And we're among them. Oh, it's good to have a God who's
in control. Moreover, Blessed is that man
whose God is Jehovah, because his God is reconciled to him.
Psalm 77. Verse 13, Psalm 77. The psalmist says, Your ways,
O God, are holy. There's a better way to translate
that. It's, Your ways, O God, are in the holy place. What was
he talking about? That holy place in the temple. That holy place where God dwelt
between the cherubim over the Ark of the Covenant. Now you say, You might think
to yourself, what's this got to do with reconciliation? Because
the holy place was where God was reconciled. This is all symbolic
in the days that this psalm was written. There was a real temple
made out of stone and an altar. A holy place and a most holy
place and all this furniture. You're familiar with the temple.
But all of this spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. But several
times a year, a Jew would go and offer a sacrifice. And that priest would take that
spotless creature, lamb, goat, bullet, dove, whatever, and kill
it, and spill its blood. And on the day of atonement,
he would take that sacrifice from the altar, collect the blood,
and walk all the way back to that most holy place, and pour
that blood out right there on that atonement cover, that mercy
seat between the cherubim, where it was said that God existed.
That's where he was enthroned, between the cherubim. What an
awesome situation that must have been for the high priest. He
only went in there once a year. Must be careful that he went
in the right way, with the right sacrifice, because if he didn't,
the presence of God would kill him. But all the way from that
altar to that most holy place, the sanctuary, was a trail of
blood. And that's the way of the Lord.
God's way is from the altar to the holy place. From the sacrifice
to His presence. And the blood poured out on that
mercy seat would make an atonement for the house of Israel. And
whatever sins Israel had committed against God were put away. Now we know that no real sins
were ever really put away by the blood of bulls and goats.
They can't take away sin. But the time came when all that
was pictured in that temple with its altar and holy place and
most holy place. All of that was brought to reality
in the Lord Jesus Christ, fulfilled by Him as He became the Lamb
of God, as He became the sacrifice of God, as His blood was shed
and His blood was poured out there in the presence of God.
Without spot, without blemish, He offered Himself to God. And
God accepted it in God's real holy place. The Bible says the
holy place that wasn't made with human hands. Not one that you
could ever go someplace and say, there it is. No, it's in the
very presence of God. And He offered Himself, and right
there, and right then, reconciliation was made between God and His
people. The cause for wrath was put away.
Justice put its sword back in the sheath. Why? Because it had
been satisfied in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've heard of people saying,
I have no time for a bloody God, such as the God of the Bible
is. And once again, they try to relegate that to unsophisticated
and infantile religion. Well, then let me remain unsophisticated
and infantile. This I know, my sin deserves
death, and a just God cannot let my sin go unpunished. I want a God whose way is in
the holy place. A place where a substitutionary
atonement can be made. A place where someone else paid
for my sin. Blessed is he whose God is Jehovah.
because blood's been poured out for Him. Justice has been satisfied
with Him. God is reconciled. Going back to the 144th Psalm,
I'll make a few comments and finish up. Blessed is the man whose God
is Jehovah, because his God is a rock. Verse one, praise be
to Jehovah my rock. Now when the Bible sets forth
the Lord in the picture of a rock, there's normally one of two things
or both of them that is being put in view for us. Number one,
a rock of foundation. The Lord Jesus Christ made a
parable of a wise man who built his house upon a rock. And it may not have been much
of a house, who knows? But when the flood came, the
house didn't move. Why? Because it was built on
a rock. But another man built his house on the sand, and it
may have been a very beautiful house indeed. And it probably did fine for
a long time, but then the flood came and undermined it. And it fell because it wasn't
on the rock. But our Lord is a rock, a foundation
on which we can build. And we shall not be moved. We
shall not be overwhelmed in the day of God's judgment. It is
a rock that has endured judgment already, and can endure any other
judgment to come, and the house upon it will not be moved. Another
thing that is pictured when it speaks of a rock is a high and
lofty rock. Back in those days, it was really
important in warfare to take the high ground. And if you could
get yourself up on a high rock, likely you'd win the day. And our Lord is a high rock. And from there we may see all
our enemies and know that none of them can reach us. For it is written here in verse
2, He is my loving God and my fortress, my refuge, my stronghold. How many, worshiping today, feel
that they must defend their God, must make excuses for Him, who
feel they must help their God? Boy, that would be a pitiful
situation, wouldn't it? A God so weak, you have to help
Him? David said, my God is where I run for help. He protects me,
I don't protect Him. He cares for me. I'm not the
one caring for Him. Verse 3, it says, Oh Lord, what
is man that you care for Him? The Son of Man that you think
of Him. Man is like a breath, his days
are like a fleeting shadow. Isn't it so? I hope you'll forgive my morbid
fascination with the passage of time. At the end of next month,
I'll be 60 years old, and I can hardly believe that. That just kind of blows me away,
and I realize some of you here are older, some of you are a
lot younger. You younger ones, let me tell
you something, you're going to get where I am a lot quicker than you think
you will. You'll think you'll turn around
twice and suddenly, well, if you're a guy, you probably might
have the hair kind of like mine. Not much there. Guy or gal, it'll probably be
the same color as mine. And you'll find out you're not
so strong anymore. Not so easy to stay healthy.
And your mind doesn't work as well anymore. And you'll realize
it isn't going to be long. I'm going to be gone. Why does
God care for creatures like us that are here for a moment? That
are no more substantial than a breath? that have nothing more to them
than a fleeting shadow. But David asks this, not because
he questions whether it's true, he's just amazed that it is true,
that God cares for him. That there is a people whose
destiny is of concern to God. Oh, blessed is that man whose
God is Jehovah. God cares what happens to him.
In fact, he cares so much, he arranges everything in the universe
for his good. My understanding is that in the
White House, they've got a book, and everybody that visits the
President, they write his name down. And they do this, I think,
primarily because they want to know if anybody is getting special
attention from the president. Is anybody getting an undue access
to the president? Because, you know, he's got such
power. Child of God, you have access
to the God of the universe. What's more, you don't have to
go in there and convince him to have a care for you. He already
does. You know that your prayers and
desires will not fall on deaf ears. And while His wisdom may
say, that's not a good idea, we're not going to do that, understand
this, God will never withhold from you something just because
He doesn't like you. Or just because He's upset that
you did something naughty. He's not going to say to you,
well, what are you going to do for me before we talk about what
I'll do for you? That's not God's way. His care
for us preceded any concern we had for Him, and it's never been
affected by any rebellion on our part, or any failure. Well, I wish I could face every
day in the full confidence that God actually cares what happens
to me. And He cares so much, He took control of what happens
to me. And that whatever happens to me came from His loving hand,
not from fate. No. Not from the malice of evil
men. But from the hand of a loving
Father. From the same hand that gave
me Christ and everything in Him. How much better can your life
be? than to be in the hand of one who gave his Son for you. Blessed is the man whose God
is Jehovah, because his God came down. Let me just read this. Verse 5. Part your heavens, O
Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains, so they
smoke. Send forth lightning and scatter the enemies. Shoot your
arrows and rout them. Reach down your hand from on
high. Deliver me and rescue me from the mighty waters, from
the hands of foreigners whose mouths are full of lies, whose
right hands are deceitful." Come down! He did. He did. Bless His name, He came down. He came down and condescended
to come here looking just like us. Wrapped up in a body just like
us. Suffering like we do. Suffering
more than we do. For He suffered death, even the
death of the cross. And He has gone back on high.
And He is seated at the right hand of the Father. And there
He waits till His enemies are made a footstool for His feet.
And He will come down again. In fact, in some respects, doesn't
He come down again and again and again? How many times, child
of God, have you from the depths of your heart cried, Oh God,
save me! I'm in a mess! Deliver me! And He has come and
He has delivered you. And someday He will come. And
He'll scatter all your enemies, whatever form they take. And He will gather you to Himself. And you will be utterly and completely,
irrevocably saved by His grace. There's much more to be said.
We just don't have much more time. Read the remainder of this
psalm and see how he describes the blessedness of him whose
God is Jehovah. And how blessed it is to be among
those that have that kind of blessing.