Well, it's good to see everybody.
I just want to welcome our visitors, who aren't really visitors, but
just sort of visitors. Also, Matt and his family from
up in Ashland. I'm glad to have them with us.
How you doing? It's fine, thank you. I remember
those who requested prayer. How's Tracy doing? Moving along,
sort of? Yeah, well, I can guarantee you
that. Yeah, OK. And the Crow family, the loss
of Roland, also the gauge smith family stand those grandfather
back he's only fourteen years old that's the gate smith family
if you know worship services six come now the almighty King, help us, I
name to sing. Help us to praise. Father, all glorious, for all
victorious, come and reign over us, ancient of days. Come thou incarnate word, gird
on thy mighty sword, our prayer Come and thy people bless, and
give thy word success. Spirit of holiness, on us descend. Come, holy comforter, thy sacred
wings in this glad hour. Thou who almighty art, in every
heart, and there from us depart spirit of power. to the great one in three, eternal
praises be. Hence, evermore, his sovereign
majesty may we in glory see, and to eternity love and adore. After scripture reading and prayer,
we'll sing hymn number 186. If you have your Bibles, tarot with me, Psalms, 138th
Psalm. I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise
unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy
temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy
truth. For thou hast magnified thy word
above all thy name. In the day when I cried, thou
answered me and strengthened me with strength in my soul.
All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they
hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways
of the Lord, for great is the glory of our Lord. Though the
Lord be high, yet he hath respect to the lowly, but the proud he
knoweth afar off. Though I walk in the midst of
trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine
hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall
save me. The Lord will perfect that which
concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the work of thine
own hands. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven,
merciful and gracious, full of loving kindness and truth, we
thank you for all you have done for your children and continue
to do. We thank you for the salvation
wrought by Jesus Christ when he finished the work on Calvary's
tree. We thank you that the Holy Spirit
has taken those things of Christ and opened up the hearts and
minds of your people, giving them life, that they might receive
the truth and hear the good news of what Christ has accomplished
on Calvary's tree. We pray for those who are sick.
Pray for this young man who's lost his grandfather. We pray
you'd be with him. For the others who requested
prayer, we ask Lord your help for them. We're thankful for
those who are recovering well. We continue to uplift those who
need. Father, we pray that you'd be merciful and kind and near
to those who are in trouble. Help us, Lord, to realize the
trials and tribulations come our way, or by appointment, and
they attend the salvation that is ours in Jesus Christ, and
serve a particular purpose of bringing us to the feet of Christ,
to say with David in another place, who have I in heaven but
thee, and whom on earth beside thee? Help us, Father, to worship
you this day, to sing the praises belong only to you, to give glory
to your name, to honor and magnify your son. Help us to do it, Father,
we pray in Christ's name. Amen. The church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water
and the Word. From heaven he came and sought
her To be his holy bride With his own blood he bought her And
for her life he died He left from every nation Yet one or
all the earth ♪ A charter of salvation ♪ One Lord, one faith,
one birth ♪ One holy name she blesses ♪ Partakes one holy food
♪ And to one hope she presses ♪ With every grace endued and tribulation and tumult of
the war. She waits the consummation of
peace forevermore. Till with the vision glorious,
her loving eyes are blessed, and the great church be the church at rest. Yet she honored that union with
God the three in one, that mystic sweet communion with those who Let us pray. Father, again we
approach in the name of Jesus Christ. the blessed name that is above
every name, the only name under heaven given among men, for thy
we must be saved. He who is that perfect gift that
you have given to your children, and with him freely given us
all things. We thank you for your kindness.
Let our giving reflect our understanding of what you've given us. We pray
in Christ's name. Amen. You. I invite your attention back
to the 138th Psalm. This psalm, As we can see in the very first
verse, it's a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. And being such,
it is at its core a psalm of thanksgiving. Praise is never
without reason and is not seen as such in scripture. When men
praise God, they do so because God has done something for them.
That's why they praise Him. and because they see his glory
and understand who he is. His glory, according to his own
words, is what he has done and will do for which his people
are overwhelmed and full of thanksgiving when they are able, by God's
grace, to consider it. When men truly praise God, it
is not ever generic. It is particular and it is always
for some specific reason. The reason for praise is thanksgiving. That is why we praise God, because
we are thankful to God. And that word means to be thankful
for what you have been given. We are given the Spirit of God
according to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 or chapter 1. We are given
the Spirit of God that we might know and understand. what has
been freely given to us in Jesus Christ. That's why we have the
Spirit, not to make us act like fools or run to the back of pews
or speak in tongues or some other silliness. We're given the Spirit
of God so we'll know something. We'll know what has been freely
given to us by God Almighty. It stands to reason, then, that
the heart of thanksgiving is the heart that attributes glory
to God alone. And thanksgiving is singular
in that it is never and can never be toward God and toward self. It can only be in one direction.
It can't be toward God and also toward some panoply of other
deities. Those who believe that God is
the co-author of salvation, that he cannot and does not act apart
from man's affirmative vote or decision or will, have no real
reason to thank God at all. though many of them say praise
the Lord. But praise is not a religious
punctuation mark that we put at the end of religious brattle.
Praise and thanksgiving are not some glassy-eyed trance that
men enter into where they lose control or give themselves over
to some flailing spirit that only brings attention to themselves. Praise is an act of the will,
an act of the will whereby men and women in full possession
of their mental and emotional faculties, determined in their
heart and mind to give all glory to God and no one else. This
is one of the reasons that praise is called a sacrifice, because
you get sacrificed when God is praised. The word sacrifice means
victim. you're the victim when God gets
praise. You don't get any praise in any
thanksgiving at all. He gets it all. It'll cost you
yourself to praise God and to thank God. It'll cost you yourself.
The first three verses of this passage or this psalm, David
determines to praise God alone, nobody else but God, and he's
praising God the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the praise
that he determines to render to God, he said, I will praise
Him, I will with my whole heart praise Him, is offered in the
face and in the midst of and in the discounting of all other
gods. He said, I'll praise Him alone among the gods. He discounts
all other gods. He's the one that gets all the
praise. Praise is distinctive and in a sense is rendered in
a militant posture. Those who have praised God singularly
have experienced that religion sees the praise as fighting words. If you don't believe so, just
narrow all of salvation down to the Lord Jesus Christ when
you talk to people, and nowhere else. Him alone is all of it,
justification, sanctification, rule of life. He's every bit
of salvation, and just tell it over and over again, and that'll
become fighting words because religion wants other things to
be involved in salvation. The gospel, the true gospel,
the gospel of sovereign grace in Christ glorifies God alone
and at the same time is the complete discounting of all other gods. All other gods. The need not
be spoken in the manner that openly disregards other gods.
The gospel does not need to be spoken in a manner that continually
slams other gods. if the gospel is spoken clearly, it'll do its business. And when
men hear it, they say, wait a minute, there's gotta be more to it than
that. When you tell men and women who God is, I've heard this many
times when I've told people, that's not my God. And to that,
I usually agree. I don't fuss with them. I say,
you're right, it's not. You're right, it's not. Praising
God is the heart of worship. we come here to worship god worship
comes from the heart of thanksgiving for the loving kindness of god
we rehearse in our minds over and over again i've been doing
it for forty six years here same old message same old words over
and over again may be told in a different way but it's always
the same worship comes from the heart of thanksgiving for the
loving kindness of god toward us worship is praising god for
the truth that's what david said i praise you for your loving
kindness And your truth, and your truth, there is only one
truth, it is THE truth. I know people like to talk about
this being your truth and that being my truth, but there is
only one truth, and that truth is found in the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and
the life. That singular thing, that absolute
and alterable thing, that majestic thing that discloses every lie
and puts all things in their proper order and place is the
truth. Worship is thanking God that
we do not have to flail about in this world looking for the
meaning of every rock and twig, having to decide what's best
for us, selecting one motto to live by among the list of many
possibilities. There is one way. one truth and one life, and that
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that settles matters forever
if you're a believer. It settles matters forever. The
last phrase of verse 2 is an astounding sentence. Our Lord
says this, that He has magnified His Word above all His name. I have magnified thy word above
thy name." That's a wondrous statement. Magnified the word
above His name. Whatever the meaning is, it surely
places a high and profound value on the Word of God. But who is
the Word of God? In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. And the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. And the Word was made flesh. and dwelt among us, and
we beheld his glory as the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth." We know that Christ is the Word of God. Peter at Pentecost said that
Christ's name was above every name, was the only name under
heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved. I used to say
we might be saved, but old Wayne Land, he said, that ain't right.
He said, don't say we might be saved, say we must be saved.
It's the only name, and I looked it up, and he sure was right.
Peter said in another place, after having viewed the glory
of Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, when his robes did shine whiter
than the noonday sun, glistening more than any fuller could make
them, when everything stood still in the presence of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He said, I was there on the mount.
I'm telling you, I saw it face to face. And when we have those
firsthand accounts, we've got to put some confidence in them.
We do. People say, well, I never saw
that. Well, I seen it. You did? I seen
it face to face, you see. I saw him on the mount. I saw
him transfigured. I saw Moses. and Elijah, who
had been dead hundreds of years, come across time and stand and
face Jesus Christ when he was glistening like the noonday sun
and talk to him about the decease that he should accomplish at
Jerusalem. I saw that. Then he said, but we have a more
sure word of prophecy. Even then seeing it, the more sure word of prophecy
is this word, the word of God, the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He said, That'll shine on you, it'll come out of you
like the noonday sun, like the noonday sun. God's word is the instrument
of the realization of salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ.
When you hear the good news The Gospel of Jesus Christ. You do
not hear that you have something to do, or that something CAN
be done, or something MIGHT be done, or something SHOULD be
done. When you hear the GOOD NEWS, first of all, it's NEWS,
so it's already taken place, and now it's being recorded,
and now it's being published. When you hear the GOOD NEWS,
you hear that two thousand years ago Jesus Christ actually redeemed
your soul. That's good news. It ain't good
news to tell a poor, old, wretched sinner, dead in trespasses of
sin, if you'll do this, God will do that, because you can't do
nothing to start with. It's good news to hear that Christ has
saved me, and that's what the Gospel does. God's Word is the
instrument there of His own will begatting us with the Word of
truth. Back in our text in verse 3 it says, In the day when I
cried thou answerest me, and strengthened me in the strength
of my soul. It shows us that praise and thanksgiving has a
basis. He said, I'm praising you and thanking you for your
good love and kindness to the Jews, because when I cried you
heard. When I cried you heard me, and answered his cries, and
strengthened him inwardly down in his soul. I mean in verses
4 and 5 reveals that this psalm, as all psalms are, are messianic
psalms. I remember I took a course in
Old Testament studies years ago from the last doctor who was
a sovereign grace preacher in the Southern Baptist College
somewhere down in Texas, I believe it was. He was the last one who
was Sovereign Grace. I can't remember his name. It
might have been Bullman, but I can't be sure. He wore an old-type
Texas hat and he wore a long coat. He went halfway down his
thighs and he always had a bolo tie on. He was a very astute
fellow. He had a nice, beautiful beard.
he said some people get up and tell you this is a messianic
psalm this is a messianic psalm it says in verses four and five,
all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they
hear the words of thy mouth, they shall sing in the ways of
the Lord, for great is the glory of God. You say, all the kings
of the earth? Well, most of the kings hate God. How come they're
good? This is talking about when He
comes again, they're all going to sing His praises by bowing
to Him and saying, He's Lord to the glory of the Father. That
phrase, the kings of the earth shall praise him, is not an uncommon
phrase when our Lord speaks. Look at Isaiah chapter 49. In Isaiah chapter 49, verse 23, it says, And the kings shall
be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers, and
they shall bow down to thee. with their face toward the earth,
and lick up the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that I am
the Lord, and they shall not be ashamed that wait for me."
It sounds like these folks are bowing to a sovereign, don't
it? Lick the dust off your feet? The kings are going to be your
nursemaids? The queens are going to be your nursemaids? Look at
Isaiah chapter 52 talking about the introduction of the sovereignty
of God as the basis for the gospel in verse 7. And in verse 13 it
says, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. And that word
there is a double word. My servant shall prosper prosperously. How's it going to work out for
Christ? He's going to prosper prosperously. The pleasure of
the Lord, it says in chapter 53, shall prosper in his hand.
He shall be exalted, lifted up, and extolled, spoken of in high
terms, and be very high. And many were astounded at thee. Speaking of how he looked on
the cross as a slain beast, but he was king of kings, and Lord
of lords. His visions were so marred more than any man, and
as formed more than the sons of men. They were astonished to look
at Jesus Christ on the cross. He says, So shall He sprinkle
many nations. The kings shall shut their mouth
at Him, for that which they had not been told them shall they
see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. Over in chapter 60 of Isaiah
in verse 3, And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and
kings to the brightness of thy rising. everybody's going to
bow. I think it's in Habakkuk. He's
called the desire of all nations. The desire of all nations. In Psalm 72, back in the Psalms, Psalm 72, verse 10 and 11, it
says, And the kings of Tarshish and the Al shall bring presents,
and the kings of Sheba and Sheba shall offer gifts, yea, all kings
shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him." Back in our text, David says, Yea, they shall sing
in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of our God. Kings are there. Everybody's
going to worship Christ. they're going to worship him
because he's absolute lord over all and they're going to glorify
him either in his wrath or in his grace but they're going to
glorify him. I've said this many times and
I'll say it again, nobody in this world is useless. They're
all used. Every creature that God has made
is employed in a particular purpose that will either glorify God
in His grace and in His mercy or glorify Him in His wrath.
When God destroys Babylon and all the churches and religious
folks that have bowed to her and taken of her delicacies and
her fornication, when some people you know and some of your family
members and my family members are cast into the lake of fire,
our words will be, Glory to God, Hallelujah for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth. The kings of the earth shall
bow to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the remainder of the psalm,
the Lord declares the salvation of the elect. Verse 6, Though
the Lord is high, He hath respect unto the lowly, but the proud
he knoweth afar off. He who is high, holy, dwelling
in a light where unto no man can approach, has left his glory
to dwell among men, to take on the likeness of sinful flesh
without sin, and destroy sin in the flesh. He has come to
save his people from their sin, and though he is no respecter
of persons, it says he has respect to the lowly. There is no contradiction here.
His respect for the lowly reveals that His salvation is not because
of respectability. It is about His choice of whom
He saves. To exalt and glorify His grace,
that choice must be of someone lowly that has no merit whatsoever
before God. Respect here does not mean that
the lowly have qualities that recommend them to Him. It means
they have no qualities that recommend them to Him. Respecting the lowly
assures us of salvation, assures us that salvation is for those
who are without hope and without help and without merit in this
world. His respect of the lowly is diametrically
opposed to that which is highly esteemed of men. He came not
to call the righteous, but to bring sinners to repentance.
This is the Declaration, and this is declared in the last
phrase. Those who think themselves worthy of any attention from
Christ will receive no attention. He does not do well toward the
proud. He knows them afar off. He knows
them afar off. Verse 7 declares the repeated
theme of the salvation of the leg. He said, Though I walk in
the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch
forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy
right hand shall save me. The very concept of salvation,
if you understand the basic word, look it up. You understand the
basic word of salvation. It is deliverance from trouble. This lays the axe to the root
of salvation being an offer or an available commodity to be
taken at the whim of men. Such a notion exalts the ridiculous. No man, no one in the prison
of despair would ever reject you ever been in jail i was in
a jail in atlanta when i was a young man twenty one years
old nineteen years old maybe eighteen and i was a kid did
something stupid in a pool hall guy pulled a gun on me called
the cops and put me in handcuffs and put me in jail glad i had
some cigarettes the cons would be too mean to
me. Someone came up to me and said,
I got the keys and I'm gonna let you out. I wouldn't have
said, well let me decide on that. I don't know, I may reject that
offer or take that offer. I'd say throw open the doors
and let me out of this home. To think that Salvation has to
do with an offer is just the stupidest idea that's ever come
down the pipe. Those who feel that they can
choose deliverance or refuse it do not see themselves as in
trouble. But those in trouble do. They see God as in trouble. Those people do. Trouble of not
maybe meeting His quota of saved people and they feel that it's
within their power to give Him a leg up in the situation. Find
me a lowly man, a man in trouble of soul, plagued and burdened
with sin, and I'll show you a man God will save." Every preacher who preaches the
gospel is looking for that sinner, one old sinner. Also in these words we find the
fact that salvation is a violent thing. to deliver his elect,
our Lord must destroy the enemies of his people. He said, He'll
destroy mine enemies. That's true throughout the Gospel,
throughout the whole book of the Gospel, from Genesis to Revelation. God saves His people, He delivers
His people, but the first thing He does is destroy the enemy,
because it's the enemy that's holding His people captive. In order to take you out of the
strongman's house, out of his palace, which you're quite happy
to be there, not knowing your condition he must destroy the
strong man bind him and take from him that which he believes
he owns to deliver his elect our Lord must destroy the enemy
of his people and the wording of the general suggests that
the Lord slaps the face of the enemy that's the way it's worded
in the original he says thou shalt stretch forth thine hand
against the wrath of mine enemies and thy right hand shall save
thee in the original, especially in some of the Jewish writings,
says that he will slap the face of the enemies with his left
hand while gathering his elect with his right hand. Verse 8 is a passage that is
full of glory. The Lord will perfect that which
concerneth me. If you want a motto, you're a
believer, that's a good one. The Lord will perfect that. which concerns me." This verse may be applied in
many ways. It may be applied to the principle of continuous
growth and grace of the believer. It can be applied to the work
of the Spirit within the believer as he wins the believer from
the breast to the meat of the Word. It may be applied to the
promise of glorification as Paul states in Philippians 1 and verse
6 when he says, Be confident of this very thing, that He who
began a work in you will continue to the day of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It may be applied to the God working in a person to
will and to do of His good pleasure, it speaks of in Hebrews chapter
13. And I see in this passage the
declaration that the saints of the Old Testament were saved
the same way as in the New Testament saints were saved. They were
given faith to look to Christ alone. There is but one dispensation
in Scripture, and that's the dispensation of grace. David is as much as saying that
Christ will come to this earth and by His work will perfect
His people. Perfect His people. The Lord
Jehovah will perfect that which concerns me. What concerns me? My sin concerns
me. My inability to do anything about
my sin concerns me. My lack of righteousness concerns
me. My bent toward self-righteousness concerns me. My inability to
produce any acceptable righteousness concerns me. The wrath of God
against sin concerns me. The exacting nature of the law
of God concerns me. The fact that it offers me no
help but only condemns me for my sin and places me upon the
just sentence of death, that concerns me. My wanton lack of
love for Christ and His people concerns me. My impotence to
change concerns me. My patent and blatant imperfection
concerns me. The requirement of faith concerns
me because I can't produce it. My knowledge that God will accept
nothing that is to any degree less than perfect, that concerns
me. And in one fell swoop, all my
concerns are allayed. all my thirst is assuaged. It
is the Lord that does my bidding. It is the Lord that has undertaken
my cause. My concern is a waste away by
Him that cannot fail. The Lord will perfect that which
concerns me." You believe that? I believe that. Sometimes. He will accomplish this magnificent
feat by His mercy and by His grace. He will show mercy on
whom He will show mercy. It is not of Him that willeth
or of Him that runneth, but God that showeth mercy. And having
shown mercy, He'll never retract, because His mercy endureth forever.
The believer understands and gladly averts that all his salvation,
the entire process of his perfection, is of no part accomplished by
himself. The Lord will perfect that which
concerns me. The believer knows that if God
would forsake that work, there would be no hope. So David says,
please don't forsake your work. You'll perfect me. Don't forsake
that. Please don't forsake that. The
Lord perfected that which concerns me. he's done it he did it on Calvary Street over
in Hebrews chapter 10 you know this we've quoted it so many
times we'll read it one more time because it's worth reading
Hebrews chapter 10 speaking of Jesus Christ's sacrifices in
reference to all other sacrifices offered in the Old Testament
that never took away sin and the priesthood was never set
down now we talk about this man verse 12 of Hebrews chapter 10,
but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever,
sat down on the right hand of God. Why did he sit down? Because
the job was done. From henceforth expecting, or waiting till his
enemies be made his footstool, for by one offering, read it,
underline it, memorize it, for by one offering he hath, past
tense, perfected, past tense, forever, that's how long it's
going to last, them that are sanctified. If you want to know
how they're sanctified, verse 10 said they're sanctified by
the will of God. That's how they're sanctified. Wherefore the Holy
Ghost also is a witness to us that before he said, he said
in Jeremiah 31, this is where he said it, this is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I
will put my word, my laws in their heart, and in their minds
will I write them. Every child of God has the Word
of God written in his heart and his mind. You say, well, I don't
know it all. Well, you will when you hear it. That's it. That's the Word of God. That's
the truth. I know that's the truth. That's
what you'll say to your heart. You'll say, well, you didn't
even know what it was going to say. It's already written there. Already
written there. And glory be to God and their
sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. David said, ìThe Lord will perfect
that which concerneth me.î Paul said, ìHe hath perfected
forever, and they are sanctified.î Father, bless us to understand
and we pray in Christís name, Amen.