Psalms 131 Finding the Right Altitude

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Well, good morning, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm glad to be back.

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I had an excellent week away last week at a pastor's conference in Chicago. Is this on?

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Yep, okay, awesome. And I'm really thankful for Bill Smith being willing to fill in for me in my absence last week and bring the word.

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I can't express how grateful I am that God has blessed us here at this church with others who can step up in my absence and be here and bring the word to bear and I would,

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I just, I commend them to you and I'm grateful for the work of God in their lives of bringing the word alive to us.

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God has blessed us as a church and so I'm grateful for that. And I do wanna point out that I'm gonna be preaching obviously today and then next week and then

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I'm gonna be gone for two weeks again and Bill is gonna be able to wrap up that message that he started last week and so he got two of four points in last week and he's gonna finish that up the first week that I'm gone which is two weeks out and then

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Rob Knoll is gonna be opening the word. And I would encourage you, please come out and hear and learn.

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The word of God is the word of God regardless of who is preaching it. It has the power to transform and to change lives and so I ask that you would please don't allow your tendons to flow around when

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I'm preaching but please be here to hear God's word when they're there as well. Be sure to fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in and turn that in in the black box.

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Remember that you can put prayer requests, suggestions, thoughts, comments for the leadership on that card at any time.

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We love to hear feedback, we love to pray for you. We pray for you whether we do so informed or not and so we are praying for you but we would love it to know how best to pray for you and so that helps us when you fill that card out.

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If it is your first time with us this morning or you've never taken, maybe you've been here for a while but you've never taken a free coffee mug back there, we'd ask that you do that.

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Just our way of saying thanks, we're glad that you're here and giving us a chance and so you can take one of those coffee mugs back off the table there.

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Any offerings that you would choose to give, we don't pass an offering plate but we do have the black box that's back there on the table.

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The same place you put those connection cards is the same place we would ask if you choose to give this morning, to give. I don't talk about giving here very often and you guys can testify that other than to say that it's available but I do wanna point out something that I believe that some people could see me as being shy of saying that giving is a spiritual thing and yet it really is and so I wanna be abundantly clear that it is an act of God that we give.

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One of the reasons we don't pass an offering plate here is that we don't want you to give because you feel like you have to but at the same time, if God has grabbed a hold of your life in a significant way, then

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I think you will want to and so we provide that opportunity with that black box, recognizing that that is a spiritual act, it is not just strictly a financial act and so we wanna make sure that it's between you and God and at the same time, the

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New Testament indicates that God loves a cheerful giver, that he is delighted when we recognize how much he's given to us and we in turn give back to him.

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So that's why we have that black box back there and obviously you know that our ministry is run off of the generous donations of individuals.

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God has blessed us. We are in the middle of a budgeting cycle where we're starting next year. Next year's budget, we go from July to June and so starting in July will be our next fiscal year and so that budget will be made available for you.

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You can see that and identify where the money is going and what ministries we get an opportunity to bless as a result of your generosity.

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So grateful for that. As we dive into the message this morning, kind of just as an introduction,

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I wanna point out a Greek myth. I don't talk about Greek mythology very often and it's certainly not the center of our faith, right?

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You guys know that, right? And at the same time, we use illustrations from all over the world.

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I could invent an illustration for this right now and we'd be okay with that and so in a sense, I'm just using a

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Greek myth as an illustration. This is not our text this morning but there's a Greek myth that I was very unaware of up till just a few weeks ago and then it just has been, or a few months ago and it's been brought to my attention multiple times and I don't know if you've ever had that happen where something keeps being reiterated.

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You read it in a book and then somebody says it to you at work and somebody says it over here and you're thinking, maybe somebody's trying to teach me something here.

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Maybe there's some kind of, maybe God has a message for me in this that he's trying to communicate to me.

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So I've had that happen recently. I heard the Greek myth of Icarus at my conference last week.

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One of the pastors that was talking there used that as an illustration. I read about it in a commentary about my text this week.

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They talked about the myth of Icarus, the Greek myth and then also, a book that I'm studying with a group of men on Saturday mornings is using that as a major part of the illustration for that book as well and so it's like, hey

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God, maybe you're trying to tell me something here and then this text, then this text that this myth of Icarus helps to snap into focus and helps to bring to our attention this morning.

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Icarus was a man in mythology who struggled to set his altitude.

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He struggled to set his altitude. You might have read, when you first read the front of the worship folder that you received, you might have read it set your attitude but it's not a misprint.

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As a matter of fact, when I gave that over to the office staff to actually print it, the original printing was, they thought it said attitude and that's what it was gonna say.

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No, no, no, it's altitude. As the story goes, Icarus was born to the best craftsmen in the world on the

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Greek islands but both he and his father, Icarus and his father were imprisoned on the island of Crete by the king

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Minos. But the father of Icarus was such a fine craftsman and as they were imprisoned in the top of this tower, he was able to take the things that were available to him in that tower and construct an escape.

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Anybody ever hear of the show MacGyver? A few of you have heard of the TV show

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MacGyver. That's what I thought about when I heard this myth explained. A guy who's in jail or is locked up and is able to take what's available to him, he's able to craft a key and get out or whatever.

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He's like bobby pins, shoelace and a coat hanger and he's able to craft a bomb that blows out the back of the jail and he's able to escape, you know what

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I'm saying? So I'm gonna just call his dad MacGyver, Icarus's father, I'm gonna call him

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MacGyver because I can't really pronounce the Greek name very well. Anyways, so Icarus's dad MacGyver built a set of wings, they're trapped on the top of a tower and he builds them a set of wings out of wax that he finds in the candles and feathers.

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So he finds feathers and wax and he's able to craft wings for them. Don't try this at home, right?

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We know that you're not gonna be able to make some wings for yourself and fly away. But before takeoff in this

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Greek myth, he has a little pep talk with his son about the right altitude.

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He says, son, don't fly so low that you skim the waves and the waves wet down and soak your wings and pull you down into the water.

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And the interesting thing is in the Greek myth, the word for flying too low is actually the word complacency.

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So don't be complacent, don't set your eyes too low. Don't fly too low.

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He feared that the water of the Aegean Sea would splash up and ruin their wings and they would clog up and draw them down.

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Equally though, he warned his father, warned his son rather, of flying too high.

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He said, these are made out of wax. If you fly too high, you'll get too close to the sun and your wings will melt and you will fall to your doom.

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So he looks at his son and he says, set your altitude at the right place and we will escape and we'll get over to the mainland and we will be fine.

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But after takeoff, Icarus, who was immediately enamored with the thought of flying, any of you ever have a dream that you're flying?

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You ever have that happen? Any of you ever have a dream that, how many of you think it would be cool to be able to fly? And then others are kind of like, flying sounds great, but the idea of falling, you're not so sure about heights or whatever.

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But the words of his father in that process.

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And not only did he soar too close to the sun, but actually at a point in the myth, it says he set his gaze at the sun.

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He set his goal up to the heavens and he said, nothing is beyond me, now I can fly.

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And so he set the sun as his goal and as he approached closer and closer to the sun, his wings melted and he plunged into the ocean to his doom.

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And that is the fall of Icarus. He aspired to greatness and ambition to reach the sun and he was, that was the cause of his downfall.

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Now we didn't gather together this morning to hear about Greek mythology, we gathered together to hear a word from God's revealed scripture and yet this is an illustration that I think you're gonna see why

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I'm telling this story in this context. It's a strong picture for us this morning that I believe illustrates this text well.

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I'm increasingly amazed at the way, by the way, that God often draws out text for us. You know that I'm going through these

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Psalms of Ascent and this is the next one in line and it also happens to be the

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Sunday morning that we are gonna be honoring in just a few moments our graduating seniors. And I'm amazed at how well this text ties in with a message for all of us.

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All of us need this message but equally and significantly our graduating seniors need this reminder as they are figuring out their altitude.

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They are going to be going about their next few years determining what God has for them, what level is he setting them at and what is it that he's created them to do.

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And I hope this text serves as an excellent reminder to our graduates to be mindful of their altitude. All of us, of course, need to be mindful of our altitude.

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So let's open our Bibles to this very short Psalm, Psalm 131. If you're not already there, you don't have a

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Bible in your lap or a device to navigate to a Bible on your lap, if you could do me a favor and just raise your hand, one of these guys back here will be able to bring you a

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Bible, we've got a couple up front here. And then if you don't own an English Standard version of the Bible, which is the one that I happen to preach from, it's not magical or mystical, it just happens to be my favorite translation, but if you don't own one, you can take that home with you.

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We want everybody to have a copy of the word of God and I think that it's good to have the Bible sitting at home where you can read it yourself.

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Obviously, you can download it on an app as well. Follow along, recast, this is God's word for us, this is what he desires for you to hear, this is a word from God this morning.

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Psalm 131, a song of ascents of David. Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up.

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My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

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But I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

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Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

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Let's pray. Father, I recognize that as we gather together this morning that there are all different kinds of thoughts, all kinds of pressures, all kinds of things that have happened to us this week.

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Father, for some of us, even as we read the words about calm and quiet for our souls, that seems so distant and so far for us.

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That those might be the things that we zero in on this morning and say, that looks like something my soul is hungry for.

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I want peace, I want quiet, and I want calm, and it doesn't seem like I can find it. So Father, I pray that you would speak through your word this morning to provide us a way to find that place of quiet, calm in our lives.

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Believe it is your desire, and I believe it is possible through you. And Father, as we have an opportunity to lift up our voices before you,

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Father, we have gathered together to hear from you. We have gathered together to exalt you, to lift you high.

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Father, I pray that you would protect us from exalting ourselves, from lifting up our hearts high, but instead that we would lift you high with the words of these songs this morning.

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Thank you for the band that has prepared them. I know that it is not their desire to put on a show, but it is their desire to lead us in worship this morning.

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So Father, I pray that all else would fade into the background as we recognize you and your glory and your majesty seated on your throne, high and worthy of all of our worship this morning.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Well, thanks a lot to the band for leading us.

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I'm very grateful, again, for what they do. And I just love worshiping God.

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I mean, it's awesome to be able to come before him with song and I encourage you to get comfortable, keep your Bibles open to Psalm 131, short passage, northbound.

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131, again, I'm sorry. Oh, I couldn't help but think that every single time I opened up to this passage, 131, that's a highway right over there.

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So, but feel free to get up and stretch out or if you need more coffee or juice or donuts during the message, you're not gonna distract me.

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I've mentioned this before, probably anything shy of coming up and giving me a hug in the middle of the message isn't gonna distract me. So once in a while, like maybe the power going out would do that too.

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That happened a few weeks ago. But this is surely one of the shortest chapters in all of the

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Bible and certainly within the Psalms, it's one of the shorter ones as well. And yet it packs an amazing punch, particularly regarding our current culture, particularly regarding,

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I would say even, I say our current culture, but the culture of mankind, the culture of humanity that is always surging forward, always trying to take on more, always trying to shoot.

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Ultimately, in one sense, our curse is to follow after Satan and surge towards the glory of God, right?

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Ultimately, a movement towards dependence, not independence. And that's the nature of the fall was to say, to doubt who

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God is and what he has done and his awesomeness and his glory and his rightful place as creator and ruler over us.

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But instead we kick against that. We say, we've got this just fine, God. If you just step out for a second, we could manage this.

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We could run it. And we do that at a human level, quite a large scale, we do that.

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But then we do that as individuals quite well in our own hearts, right? Some of you maybe could identify times where you've kicked against God in such a way that it's like,

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I'm kicking against you so that I can get my own way or so I can do my own thing. So this packs a lot of punch in what we're gonna see here, particularly in verse one.

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But it leaves a lot up to us to determine for ourselves. It's not gonna spell out for you how you avoid setting your gaze too high or how you avoid occupying yourself with things too great.

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It's gonna leave a lot up to us. And I would suggest to you that for each one of us, as an individual, we're gonna have a lot of application for ourselves here this morning that we're gonna have to work through.

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Our psalm this morning is written by David, a man that we can really get to know in Scripture because a lot is written by him, a lot is written also about him.

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And so we get a pretty good handle. If you read the Old Testament, you're gonna get a good view of who this guy is.

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And he's writing one of these psalms that happened to be, remember this is a compilation, so how many of you have a

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Christmas song maybe in your Christmas by Bing Crosby? Or you have something in your

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Christmas list by a certain artist that you like. And so you have those in there and it's just a compilation.

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Well, this happens to be one by David that was incorporated in this playlist of psalms for pilgrims.

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And so it's important for us to remember that this is one of those psalms, one of those 15 that we're studying that is about the journey of life.

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Think about it as a metaphor that these are picked out and chosen. They were actually literally used for a pilgrimage towards God, towards the temple, a literal pilgrimage annually for the

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Jews. They would pull these out, put in their earbuds, and listen to these on the way. These were the traveling tunes of the day when you were going up to meet with God and sacrifice in his temple.

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One place designated for the Jews to worship God in that era and that time. Not multiple churches all over the place, but in the ancient era you were to go to Jerusalem to make your sacrifices.

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You're not supposed to make your sacrifice in your living room. You're not supposed to make your sacrifice in the backyard or in the high places or in all these other places.

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You were supposed to bring your sacrifice to the temple in Jerusalem, and that's why they were journeying there. And these are songs that are metaphors for our life.

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So the first two verses are a prayer to God, and you can see that just in the wording, in the phrasing, who is being addressed?

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Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up and on it goes. So it's a prayer. Verse one basically defines the humility of David before his

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God. We must remember that David was an extremely, I think you have to set who David is in the context of the humility that we see in this verse.

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The more that you understand David, the more that this is a stark contrast to what he's gonna write for us here in this first verse.

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We remember that David was an extremely successful warrior. The text tells us that he was handsome in appearance.

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Songs were written and sung about his exploits on the battlefield. He was a hero, the hero of a nation, having slain

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Goliath just as a young boy. He was eventually crowned the king over his entire nation.

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He was a Renaissance man from every indication. He was skilled with a sword, skilled with a harp, skilled in poetry.

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This guy seemed to have success follow him everywhere that he went. Have you studied the life of David? Have you read any of his stuff?

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It seems like he was very blessed of God. And even despite what you might think in the back of your mind, well, yeah, he had that moral failing, pretty significant.

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But even despite that, he was called a man after God's own heart. And hear me carefully that, yes, he fell morally, and yet he demonstrated deep repentance.

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He shows us through his writings wisdom and patience and a desire to do what is right.

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He's a model and example for us to some degree about what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, even though he was not perfect.

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And in that sense, he does stand as a good model for all of us, in that we have failed, we have fallen, we have sinned, and we have broken

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God's commands, but we can be a people, we can be individuals who hunger and thirst for righteousness like he was.

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And the only reason I'm saying this, kind of building up David in our minds and helping us to think through this, is the contrast of all these accomplishments with what he writes in these three short verses.

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If you or I had accomplished all of these things, if you or I were raised up to the office of president after leading our nation to military victory, destroying the secret weapons of the enemy like Goliath, I mean, disarming all the nukes in the world or something like that, and then you're raised up,

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I mean, how many of you think that you might begin to have some thoughts of pride in your heart?

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You think so, maybe? A little bit of, like if you had the gauge of pride, the needle might register a little bit if we had accomplished the things that David did.

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We might actually be moved to believe some of the songs that they were singing about us, right?

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Isn't that true? And so we recognize in our own hearts a tendency to do that. And in verse one, we find this man, this extremely accomplished man, this victorious man, this man raised up with the crown on his head, giving us four keys to setting an altitude of humility, an altitude of humility, setting our flight at the right level.

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First, to set our altitude correctly, we must start with God, start with God.

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If you're taking notes, that's number one, start with God. Notice that David turns to the

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Lord. God is the place that we turn to to figure out our right altitude, the place that we should be flying in life.

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And we're gonna be defining that throughout the course of this message. But he begins with an address to God himself.

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And let me suggest to you that our goal in this text is gonna be to avoid complacency and to avoid hubris, arrogance, pride, but to also equally avoid complacency, this setting low standards for yourself, and they're equally problematic for our lives.

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I think we can recognize times where we've been complacent, maybe even avenues or areas of our lives. How many of you know that there are ways that you can have pride and arrogance and ambition and completely surging forward in one area while you're neglecting another?

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While you're complacent as a father, but man, you are the hero of the office. Or vice versa, you could be doing the opposite, right?

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And so there's a sense of not setting our goals too low and equally not setting them too high, and that's gonna be the nature of this message.

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There's a genuine risk in life, however, that without coming to God for our calling, not coming to God for our vocation, not coming to God and saying, what do you want of me?

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What have you designed me to be and do that we might actually fly too low?

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That's a real risk, right? We might settle. We might settle for things that God wants more of us, and we settle for less.

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I would suggest to you that none of us were designed and brought on this planet to play video games. None of us.

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That's not why we're here. I would suggest to you that none of us were made by God so that we could watch six hours of TV a day, right?

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In our modern culture, complacency is a real risk because we could get by with doing little, right?

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We live in a culture where it's fairly easy. I mean, you can get by and scrape and just act like your life is all for you.

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Just like Icarus, who was warned to not fly too low, there's a genuine risk of squandering our calling.

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But if you follow the myth of Icarus, it informs us a bit about what is the more common problem for us, because Icarus didn't fly too low, right?

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That's not the way that the myth goes. The myth goes, hubris, arrogance, pride, fly too close to the sun.

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Set your gaze and your goals at things, as the text is gonna say, are too great and too marvelous for us.

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If our quest for our altitude is not rooted in the God who made us, the God who designed us, and the

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God who calls us, we more often, I would suggest to you, humbly, that more often we will tend to fly too high.

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I think that's more often our problem. Not saying, I mean, there's a risk of complacency. I mentioned that earlier, but I would suggest to you that probably our ambition is more the problem.

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We bite off more than we can chew. We give ourselves, does this sound familiar? We give ourselves more credit than we deserve for the things that we accomplish.

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And many a leader has raised themselves up higher than their wings can carry them, right?

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Isn't that real? So David starts in his song with an appeal to the

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Almighty, to God, and we should as well. Where do we go to find our purpose in life?

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Where do we go to find what he has designed us to do? Oh, I just said it, right? He's designed you for something.

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And it is for us to go to God and discover that. And certainly he can use a multitude of different avenues to define for you what your calling is.

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He'll use your studies, he'll use successes, he'll use others in your lives to say, when you do that, that works well.

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And to identify, and particularly for those of you that are graduating or going off to college, this is a season of discovery.

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Make sure God is a part of that discovery process for what he has made you to be.

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We have a common saying in our culture, you can be whatever you want to be, and that's very popular to say to the seniors here today.

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But why would you wanna be? Be whatever you want to be, or be what

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God has designed you to be? Do you hear the difference in that? You could be anything you want to be, and I'm fairly convinced that that's fairly accurate.

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But why would you want to be a doctor if God wants you to be a teacher? You are gonna be a miserable doctor.

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You're gonna be a miserable doctor. If that's not what God has designed for you, and that's not what he's called you to, and that's not what he desires for you, man, that's gonna be a rough road.

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You getting what I'm saying in that? Be, you can be anything you wanna be, but why would you wanna be?

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Be what God desires for you to be. The second thing, so we start with God, that's our first point, start with God.

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The second that David leads us into is to set our altitude correctly, we need to subject our hearts.

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Start with God first. Second, subject our hearts to him. To the ancient

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Jewish mind, the heart is so much more than just an organ that pumps blood in our chest.

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They didn't have the distinction that we have in our culture between the head and the heart, so we talk about that a lot, and we can actually really muddy the waters of this word when we talk in those terms, when we're like, well, you know,

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God got my heart, but not my head, or God got my head and not my heart, and that's not, scripture knows none of that in the

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Hebrew understanding of what the heart is. Think like mini command center, where all the decisions are being made, where everything is happening, that's your heart.

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As a matter of fact, it wasn't, in ancient cultures, they didn't even know what the brain did, they thought it was a throwaway organ, they were like,

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I think this is kinda like the appendix. I'm serious, they didn't have the methods of measuring, you know, brain activity or electrical impulses, kinda like,

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I don't know, there's this big gland in your head, I don't know what it's producing. So everything was centered on the heart in that ancient culture, so when, in the ancient language, when they say,

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I do not lift my heart up, they're not talking about an organ that pumps blood, but they're talking about their whole essence, they're talking about themselves, their being, their essence, their will, their emotions, their thinking, all of those are a part of the ancient heart.

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Let me carefully explain that when David says his heart is not lifted up, we sing songs about lifting our hearts up, right?

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Lifting our hearts up before God, I think it was in the lyrics, wasn't that a line in one of the songs we sang this morning about lifting our hearts to God, and so it's like, wait a minute,

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David said he doesn't lift his heart up, and then we're singing about lifting our hearts up, and is that a good thing, is that a bad thing?

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He's saying it like it's a good thing. God, I haven't lifted my heart up. But he didn't say,

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I don't lift my heart up to God, he is here speaking of personally himself lifting up the center of his will, the center of his emotions, the center of his thinking.

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So when David says his heart is not lifted up here in verse one, he's saying, I have not exalted myself.

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When they put the crown on my head, I didn't do that, that wasn't my aspiration. When I killed the giant,

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I didn't wake up that morning and say, you know what, I'm gonna go kill me a giant, it's on my bucket list, and it just happened to work out today that I got the chance, so I'm gonna kill a giant today.

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He was faithful to do what was right in front of him at the time that it was given to him, and he was just faithful to honor

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God in the moment. David was not a giant killer, he was given an opportunity by faith and he took it, and was honored by that for sure.

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But are you getting what I'm saying in this? He says, I haven't exalted myself, I didn't walk over the backs of people to get to this throne,

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I am not self -exalting, but man, did God exalt

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David? He did, time and time again, it's a beautiful thing.

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When you think about the humility that's expressed in this psalm, the humility of just being faithful, and that's what we're gonna see, faithful in his heart and his being, faithful in his goals, to not even set those too high, faithful in his actions to streamline his life in a way that was honoring to God, and then opportunities floated his way and he took those when they were there.

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I have to pause and sit on this point for a minute about subjecting our hearts. We live in a culture that is primarily made up of many individuals who are regularly and routinely practicing the art of lifting up our own hearts, right?

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We work at it, we practice it, we set our goals at it, when we post to Facebook only the things that make us look good, we are practicing the art, honing the skill of lifting up our own hearts.

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Everybody look at me, everybody look at how good I am, everybody look at how great my kids are dressed, everybody look at the great arts and crafts that I can produce, or whatever it might be that we might say, but you know,

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I'm not making a case for you to share all the crud either, right? Because I mean, that's a bit annoying on Facebook as well, right?

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Everybody knows that Debbie Downer who everything that they post is like negative and angry, but obviously we need to be cautious about our

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Facebook, right? That's something, I mean, can you imagine a pastor 30 years ago,

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I mean, that wasn't even an issue, that wasn't gonna come up up here, but now we're talking about what you share to people you barely know that you call friends on Facebook, but it's important for us to think through.

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So when we make ourselves look better than we are, we're lifting up our hearts. That's when we say, God would never say no to something that makes me happy.

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What we're saying is my heart is high because he wants me to be happy, and so we're lifting up our hearts.

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Whenever we put our needs above our neighbors or when we place our priorities over God, we are lifting up our hearts.

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But David is saying that he was not in a state of self -exaltation.

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He was not in a state of exalting himself, and that helped him to set the right altitude for his life, cruising at the sweet spot of his calling.

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The third thing that David says helped him to set the right altitude, I'm sorry, confused myself here, the right altitude, is that he has suppressed his gaze.

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So he subjected his heart, that was number two. He started with God, that was number one. Number three is he suppressed his gaze.

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This is where I expect the gloves of our flesh to come off a bit. And I expect our hearts to wanna come out swinging at this point.

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And I would encourage you that if you feel convicted as I talk about this, where we set our gaze business, that let some of that feeling that you have result in conviction over your life and where you have set your goals because America is the land of opportunity.

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I wanna be clear that when David is talking about his gaze, it's quite clear in the Hebrew language that what he's talking about is his goals.

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He's talking about what he sets his eyes on to accomplish. And we live in the land of opportunity where there is no such thing as a goal too high for you.

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Isn't that what we're told? Isn't that what our, am I, is this registering with you? Are you guys hearing this?

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Do we live in a culture where we are told that there is no goal too lofty for you? We are told that, we are taught that.

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We are taught that from the time that we are little kids. Everybody is just, you can do, again that phrase, you can do anything that you want.

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And our culture says there is no goal too lofty. To set your eyes on anything that is above you is a noble thing in America.

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It is worthwhile to surge forward in ambition. How could it be possible for any of us to, as this text says, to raise our eyes too high?

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How dare you, Don, especially on Graduation Sunday. How dare you suggest that there could be a goal too high for my child, or for me for that matter.

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Let me just suggest to you that setting your goals too high isn't gonna harm

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God. It's not gonna hurt him. It's not gonna break him.

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But it's a recipe for disaster for you. You can set your goals too high.

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It's not a popular thing for me to be saying, but it's what the text is saying. And David said, as king, he says, there is temptation for me to take on more than I can chew.

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There's a temptation for me to set my goals higher than I can reasonably accomplish. There's a temptation for me to set my goals too, says in the text, too high.

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Let me remind us all that as we started with the God who has made us, that's where we start. And as we start with God and we subject our hearts to him, we also must suppress our gaze.

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Just like the sun was off limits if Icarus desired to keep flying, could he set his mind at the sun?

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Could he set that as his goal? Could he put his eyes on the sun? Yeah, he could set that for his goal. But to his detriment, there is a height for each one of us that is too high for us to raise our eyes to.

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There is such a thing as too much ambition. And I believe that that's gonna be, there's gonna be a handful of unpopular quotes in my last few paragraphs.

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But according to this scripture, David, the warrior poet king, the champion and hero of Israel, identified that there was a temptation for even him to set his eyes above his proper altitude.

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That cruising here, he could be living up here, not doing a good job here.

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Why? Because his mind and his thoughts and his heart is always up here. And I think all of us in this room know exactly what he's talking about.

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I think we have been in stages at times in our lives. And some of us are wrestling with complacency and we're okay and we're settled down here.

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And then that's not necessarily your struggle. But for some of us, we recognize that, man, what it is like to be given these tasks and not be satisfied and know that we're worth so much more than these tasks.

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Man, we should, man, it's just that our boss hasn't figured out that we're supposed to be up here. Right? God doesn't realize

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I'm supposed to be the pastor of a church of 1 ,000 right now. Get it? And so we could easily set our minds on things that are always out there in the future, always ahead of us, always out there.

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At the minimization of the things that what matter most right now is faithfulness in the here and now so that a graduate could leave here and go out to college and not do a good job at their studies because they're so focused on the future outside after graduation that they're not even paying attention to their studies.

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They're not doing a good job here and now. That seems unlikely. But we know how that works in business, right?

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We know how that works when you're looking for that promotion and you've already got your office picked out, your next place or your next promotion or whatever.

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And all that you're thinking about is that next level, that next thing. How many of you, raise your hand if you've experienced that kind of expectation or that kind of ambition that says there's this thing out here and I'm losing focus in the here and now.

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That's what I believe David is getting at right here. Arrogance, ambition, and pride are so woven into the fabric of our society that I'm gonna confess it actually feels dirty for me to suggest that there are goals that you could set your eyes on that are just too high for you.

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Feels almost inappropriate to say it, but I believe it's true. And I believe that if we can live in that and we can understand that, that we will find that the things that are coming up in verse two are things that we want and they're available for us if we would humble ourselves and say we're not all that.

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The fourth thing, so far David has addressed the source of our altimeter, go to God to help set your altitude.

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And then he's addressed our hearts, our very being that we should subject our hearts. He's addressed our goals by talking about suppressing our gaze, suppressing our eyes, not lifting them up too high.

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And lastly, we set the right altitude by streamlining our actions.

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So that the text goes in verse one here, it addresses our very essence, our being, our heart is not lifted up.

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Second, it addresses our goals, where we think we're going. My eyes are not raised too high. And lastly, it addresses our day to day.

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I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

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Another translation, by the way, of this phrase, occupy myself, is exercise.

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It's an extremely strong doing word. It is not just primarily about the way I feel about myself or being humble before God, but it's about our day to day activities, the things that we actually spend our day doing.

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And David says at the end of verse one that he chose to not occupy himself with things too great and too marvelous for him.

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This last gauge on our instrument panel about what altitude we're flying at can be difficult to set, difficult to figure out, because so much of this last one is left up to our own discernment.

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I would suggest it's different for each one of us. Certainly different from David. Was I called to be king of Israel? I was not.

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Was I given opportunities to slay giants? I was not. And so we recognize that each one of us has different opportunities that will even present themselves today and this week and next month and next year.

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And we have a bunch of different, and so it applies to the point where you're at right now in your life.

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It's a difficult gauge to set. We must ask ourselves, what kind of things did

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David have in mind that were too great and too marvelous for him? I've heard this verse used, by the way, as an excuse for avoiding theology in general.

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As if David was saying, hey, don't waste your time studying God. He's too great, he's too marvelous to understand. What a waste of your time.

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I don't believe that that's what he's saying. But David is speaking more about how he spent his day in and day out time.

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And in the immediate context, I believe that he's saying that he allocates his time according to a humble heart and reasonable goals.

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I believe that David is saying that he aligned or streamlined his daily activities to correspond with his own calling.

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Not clamoring for more, not clamoring for the next level, not clamoring for a promotion, not clamoring for more territory, but as opportunity arose, he was faithful in the moment of every day.

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In other words, I believe he encountered God and came to realize his place in life.

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He allowed his heart to be satisfied with that place in life. He refused to become distracted by raising his eyes too high.

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And then he set about being faithful to the calling of the place that God had placed him.

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And it's very important to recognize the last two words in verse 11. Look with me at the text.

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The last two words, for me, he says, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

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This is an introspective look of David into his own heart. This is not telling you to prescribe for each other what's too high for each other.

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Okay, that's not what this is about. It's not about looking outside of yourself and looking at others and judging them. Oh, they're just way out beyond their capacity.

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They're not even competent for what they're doing, but they're way out there and they're too far ahead. No, it's for me.

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David isn't prescribing a no -fly zone for all people. Man, if you go over this spot, then 30 ,000 feet, your wings are gonna melt off.

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That's not what he's saying. He is simply saying that he recognized his own limits to his betterment, to his blessing.

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He recognized limitations. In a world full of people that compare themselves incessantly to each other,

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I'm almost convinced that that's the primary use of social media now. Almost the primary reason it exists and has continued to be successful is a comparison game.

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We live in a world that compares itself to each other and then we wonder why we lack peace, why we lack calm, why we lack quiet for our souls.

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Raise your hand if you felt that pressure to compare to others.

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Have you felt that pressure? I think it's a pretty common problem for us in our culture. But David came to a place of settled satisfaction with his own place in life.

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Now, some of you might actually say, but wait a minute. So settled satisfaction, but man, this is a guy who just at every turn was moving ahead.

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It almost looks like he was surging ahead in his success and he killed giants. Is killing a giant too high and too lofty for David?

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Is that too great and too marvelous? How would anybody ever get to the point of killing giants? How would anybody get to even the point of a promotion?

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How would you get to the point of taking another job or knowing that God has called you to Indonesia or how would you move on in life?

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How would you know something like that? And I want you to contemplate and consider the morning that David killed

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Goliath or that week or whatever, however long it took him to get there to the battlefield because he was in the fields with the sheep.

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Dad comes to him and says, hey, son, the youngest, one of the runts of the family.

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He says, son, I need you to go on a food run, food delivery and put the little thing on the top of your car and drive and take some food to your bros.

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They're hungry and they're in a stalemate with the Philistines and so I need you to take a food run up to them and just check in on them and see how they're doing.

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Again, I don't think David woke up that morning and thought, you know what? Today's the day I kill a giant. Get it?

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Did he fashion himself, as I said earlier? Did he think of himself primarily as a giant killer and man, that's the way

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I roll. That's what God has designed me for is to kill giants. He didn't have that but he knew that faithfulness in the things that God had right for him right now, faithfulness like God has put me in a place where I'm supposed to protect the sheep and a lion came and attacked him so I killed the lion.

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Was he a lion killer? No, he was a sheep protector. That was his job, that was his role so that's what he did. A bear came upon his sheep and he killed the bear too and then now he's able to identify that in the faithfulness of those things,

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God has given him another opportunity to kill a giant. Okay, that's what you want from me, God. I'll do that too, all right. Where's my sling?

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Let's do this. It wasn't on his bucket list. It wasn't an aspiration. It wasn't something he raised his eyes up and said,

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I can do this. I'm a killer of giants. Faithfulness, faithfulness.

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Faithfulness that looked like in David's life, spending years on the run when he knew he was the next king of the nation.

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Samuel had already anointed him and said, by the way, when Saul's dead, you're king and then he spends years in the wilderness running from Saul, unwilling, unwilling to exercise the ambition to kill the current king and take that throne but instead in his humility saying, you know what?

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This is gonna happen in God's time. Satisfied, settled to live where he was called for the time until the time that God called him to the crown.

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I mean, that's pretty significant. I mean, we might even look at that as complacency to some degree.

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We might dumb that down in America and go, man, David had no ambition. He's just wandering around out in the wilderness.

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When he's called to be king, man, he should just be taking that thing. That's the American way, humility.

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Humility that starts with God and says, your way, what do you want of me now? Not a haughty raising of the eyes at lofty goals, not a raising up the heart saying,

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I'm worthy of this, I deserve this, I deserve this promotion, I deserve to be CEO of the company,

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I deserve, let that come to you. Don't promote yourself. Do not promote yourself.

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Humbly do what you're called to do, and man, I believe that you'll see God raise you up in his timing, not in your timing.

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You might have to go through some dark waters in there in that process. David came to a place of settled satisfaction in his own place in life, and he arrived there by starting with God, by subjecting his heart and suppressing his gaze and streamlining his actions in the here and now to be faithful to the things that God had right in front of him.

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There are things that God may call some of you to that are too high for me, but he's called you to it, and you should accomplish it.

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There's a lot of room for self -deception, and some of you have already figured out a loophole here. You've been called to greatness, you know that.

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You have an excuse for your own heart being lifted up. You have an excuse for why your gaze is set so high, and why you have so much ambition and such lofty goals, and why you're spending all of your time and energy day in and day out moving and pushing and forcing towards that promotion, because you just are that important, right?

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We can excuse that in our own heart and say, well, but I am called to greatness. Sorry, Don, but I am. I am,

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I'm pretty good. I mean, I'm actually great. Great would be a good word. And so I'm glad that David goes on to verse two to describe then what is true of you, because verse two is gonna express what

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I know of your heart if that's you. If God has called you to do great things, and you're just chugging away, and you're doing those great things, and you're completely centered at the right altitude that God has placed for you, look at verse two.

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This is what I can say is true of you if you are at the right altitude. Calm, peace, a quiet, a restful, peaceful.

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Dependence upon God is what you feel inside. That is what it means to ride at the right.

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God granting a sense. Not that everything works out perfect at that altitude. There's gonna be some turbulence. That is

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God -fashioned turbulence to grow you in your role, to grow you in the places that you are weak and that you need to be strengthened.

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And so sometimes you're flying at the right altitude, and it's kind of like there's some bumps, there's some rocks, but in your core, you feel this peace and this calm resolution that this is what

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God has for me, and I will be faithful in it right here, right now. To many of us, including me, that description of calm, quiet, peaceful rest in our hearts seems great.

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Does that sound great to you? Raise your hand if you, that calm, peaceful rest sounds really good.

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Not gonna ask you to keep your hand up if you're like me and you find that at times that feels unattainable. Sometimes it does.

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And yet I would suggest to you that the degree that that isn't true of us in the core of our being in our hearts is to the degree that we may be off in our altitude.

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It's possible. Maybe we are owning things that are not ours. Maybe we're shooting for goals that are too high.

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Maybe we are occupying ourselves with things that are too great and marvelous for us. And if we're honest, many of us occupy ourselves with things that are better left to God.

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That's a major part of this text is not usurping the role and the place of God. We kind of usurp

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God's role when we stress and when we're anxious. We borrow trouble from tomorrow.

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We worry about provisions. We worry about if we're gonna be taken care of in our retirement. We worry about getting ahead in our jobs.

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We worry about our kids and how they're gonna turn out. We worry about whether or not we will get a job after college and we haven't even take a single day of college classes yet and we're worried about getting a job afterwards.

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And Jesus is there to faithfully remind us that all these worries accomplish.

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They amount to wasted hours and wasted days occupying yourself with things that are too high, too marvelous, too great for you.

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David, the mighty king of a nation, the battle -hardened giant slayer, the poetic author of many of the inspired

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Psalms, that very David considered himself reduced in his humility to a weaned child in the arms of his mother when he started with God.

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The contrast between the proud person who has exalted their own heart, who has raised up their eyes too high, the person who has occupied their time with things above their calling is like an unweaned child.

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They're like an infant. What do infants do when they are hungry? Three, scream and cry and throw fits.

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They complain, they whine, they fuss until they get what they want. They are tiny tyrants.

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They are adorable, precious, little kings and queens over their own households, right?

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Some of you are living it. You know exactly what I'm talking about. When they cry, they get everyone's attention.

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Everybody knows when there's a baby crying in the restaurant, right? Confession, there have been times

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I've been annoyed. And there's times when I've really felt bad for the parents.

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But that is not the lifestyle of the one who has found their right altitude.

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Significant calm and quiet in their soul over being in the right place. A child that has been weaned has learned to trust their mother.

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They are satisfied with her presence, often fearful in her departure, but they want her close.

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And they have learned that they do not have to employ desperation and wailing to get their needs met.

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Isn't that a beautiful stage in life when your kid finally realizes and able to say, mom,

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I'm hungry, versus explosion, right?

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And that is like the humble person in the arms of their father, and in this case, mother.

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It's one of the only times that God is referenced in motherly terms, but he is.

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And we are like a weaned child in the arms of God. How much of our desperation in life is brought about by our own ambition, by our own surging ahead for our own causes and our own purposes?

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I can't answer that for you, but you should answer that for you. You should answer that question this morning.

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I believe that we may find that quite a lot of our stress and anxiety comes from our own ambition and our own desire for more, more, more.

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So I'd like to let verse three rest on all of us, and especially our graduating seniors, but again, this is a message for all of us, and that is hope in the

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Lord. Start with him. He is your creator.

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He has designed you for a purpose, and as you embark on this journey of discovering what he has made you to be, keep checking back with him.

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Keep going back to him. Don't stop asking him. Don't stop pressing into God and saying,

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I trust you, I trust you, what do you have for me?

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Secondly, subject your heart to him. God opposes those who exalt themselves. God opposes, did you hear me?

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Anytime you see those two words together, you ought to pay close attention. When you think about the one who made it all in opposition to someone,

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I don't want to be that someone. And he says, I oppose those who exalt themselves, but I give grace to the humble, and I will exalt them in their due time.

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Don't exalt yourself, man. It'll be so much better if God exalts you. Be faithful, be faithful.

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Third, suppress your gaze. Be satisfied with the calling to work hard at what is right in front of you right now.

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There are many problems in life that come about by our tendency to always be looking forward to the next thing. We struggle to endure the difficulties of studying well, the difficulties of marriage, the difficulties of a tough job, because we aspire to better or to different.

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And often we miss out on the lessons that God wants to teach us through the tough times, because we are a culture that bails on the tough times.

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We don't put up with pressure well anymore. We've got a lot of mobility in our culture to be able to just squirt out from underneath any problem that we have.

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And that's what we seek to do. Lastly, streamline your actions.

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Consider how you spend your time in honing the purpose for which God has made you. Occupy yourselves with the things that he has for you right here and right now.

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Hope in the Lord, as the text says, from this time forth and forevermore.

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Our time is almost up, but some of you are wondering, if I spend all of my focus on doing a good job now, how will

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I ever know it's time to move on? God may be calling some of you to move on, and how would you know that?

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Well, let me suggest that it's often those who are being faithful now that God calls to move on and gives more to.

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Those who are squandering their talents and wasting their gifts in the here and now, always thinking that they deserve better or even in complacency, often they are not doing their best for God now, and therefore they are not entrusted with more.

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But those who faithfully invest their gifts and their talents and their abilities in the here and now are the ones who will indeed be called out to do more.

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Honor Him. The optimism in this Psalm, from the humility of verse one to the calm and quiet of verse two, they snap into focus in light of our

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Savior, Jesus Christ. Without His sacrifice, it would be hard, and it would be impossible to rest.

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How could we rest without Christ having done it for us? I know that times in my life when

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I felt like my own works were feeding into my salvation or had something to do with it, I was nowhere near calm and quiet.

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You know what I'm saying? Times when you've thought that you were working or trying to earn your salvation, there's very little rest for that kind of a life.

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But those who have been rescued by the cross of Jesus Christ, those of us who have peace and have placed our trust in that sacrifice, we have a shot at that quiet and peaceful rest that comes from the right altitude.

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Nobody saved by Jesus Christ will be okay with complacency. You're not gonna be okay with flying too low.

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It's hard to fly too low when you're truly reflecting on what Jesus Christ has done for you. But equally, nobody at the foot of the cross who really understands what happened there beats their chest with bravado and thinks that they're all that.

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The cross is the place of hope, and as we come to communion this morning, let's reflect on the awesome sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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He has done it. He has done it. Praise God that we are not left to make it happen for us.

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We are not left to earn our own salvation, but God has provided it free and clear as a gift to anybody who would come to him by faith in Jesus Christ and trust in him.

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We can rest in this calling on his lives and go out and serve him with joy. If you've not asked

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Jesus Christ to save you, I encourage you to sit back and take in this song that the band is gonna come to lead us in.

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But if you've asked Jesus to save you, then you can feel free to come to one of the tables to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that gives our souls the calm and quiet rest that we need.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the rest and the calm and the quiet that is available to us.

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Father, I pray that as we recognize the tendency in our own selves towards ambition and towards arrogance and towards pride and a tendency to wanna take on more or to believe that we deserve more or to set our goals in such a way that we don't do a good job in the here and now because we're not focused on our actions and our behaviors of faithfulness now, but rather thinking forward to the future.

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Father, I pray that you would allow conviction to settle on our hearts where we need it, that you would allow encouragement to settle on our hearts where we need it.

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Father, that you would remind us. This is a remembering of what Jesus Christ has done for us and it's at that place that our quiet and peaceful rest has been purchased.

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I thank you for joy. I thank you for delight in our Savior and it's in his name that I pray. Amen.