The Lord Delivers

The Lord our vision, the Lord our wisdom, look to his word for the vision of God for us, for the wisdom of God they have for us in his word.

If you would turn please to Psalm 34. The first three verses were read in the call to worship, and I'm going to read the last four verses, which are what we're going to look at this morning in Psalm 34.

So when you're there, please stand for the reading of God's word. Psalm 34,

I'll begin at verse 19 and just read right to the end. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the

Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.

The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. Once again, let's pray for illumination, for hearts to hear, and be conformed by this word that we're about to hear.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this time we have together to worship our risen

Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, that we know by the faith you've given us, by the testimony of your word, that he is now in heaven interceding in this moment for us.

So pray his intercession for us. I pray that the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart will be pleasing in your sight, oh

Father, and that by this word you will transform us closer to the image of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen. So it's 34th Psalm. It was written by King David, and it was written about the time when he was taking refuge with the

Philistines, who were under the rule of a king named Abimelech. And your superscription there at the top actually says something in Hebrew like, that was the time that David disguised his understanding before Abimelech.

So he was in great affliction at this time. He was in exile. He had been chased everywhere around the land by King Saul, who was trying to kill him.

He found refuge in all places with the Philistines, the enemy of Israel, and the enemy who

David so handily defeated that that's how he rose to fame. It was against the

Philistines, it was because of the Philistines that the people of Israel sang that song, David has killed his ten thousands.

So here's this king, Israel's poet and warrior, in refuge from Saul with their enemy.

And so fearing he would become a hostage, a token by which they could negotiate better terms with Israel, he pretended to be a madman.

Abimelech eventually said, you agreed this in first Samuel, said I have enough madmen in my country.

I don't need another madman. Get him out of here. So he's chased away from the Philistines, ends up in a cave.

And wherever he went, whichever way he turned, he was in danger. He could only expect rejection.

If King Saul found him, he'd be killed. You see, the psalm has much to say about affliction.

And David was in much affliction at the time. And these afflictions that David was in have much relation to what we go through in our lives.

And the answer to these afflictions is given in the last four verses of this psalm, that many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the

Lord delivers them, him from them all. It delivers them from that event, that greatest event of all time.

That event that is on the minds of people, whether they believe in Jesus Christ or not, it is here, it is out there, it's ubiquitous at this time.

It's the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that seals and completes and confirms all the promises of God and the promises that we have in the last four verses of this psalm.

That many are your afflictions, but the Lord delivers you from them all.

Afflictions in this world are many. Afflictions in this world are difficult. We're afflicted by cancer, by COVID, by Alzheimer's, by layoffs, by many more things.

And many of us have friends and loved ones who suffered, even perished from some of these diseases that I just listed, and there's many, many more.

And some of us have been afflicted by these ourselves, and of course have not perished because here we are. And yet we felt this affliction, we felt this law of sin and death coming upon us in so many ways.

We might have been afflicted as David was, by evil men who hate, evil men who hate those whom the

Lord loves. We live in a land that is economically ruled, if you will, by capitalism, which

I believe, in my opinion, is closest to the biblical economic model. And yet even here, there could be an affliction because business priorities could be set over human dignity.

And all these things are those which God's people often do and should call out to God for deliverance.

You might ask, when I read those four verses at the end, that the Lord delivers him, the righteous, from them all.

If the Lord delivers the all from the many, then why haven't I been delivered from my affliction?

The one I've cried out about, for example, why do I still have cancer? Why does my sister suffer from COVID?

Where is my new job? Why don't I have a husband or a wife? Because I'm afflicted about these things.

And the promise that you just preached or read from the scripture is, the Lord will deliver me from it.

And here I am, still afflicted. Now, if that's your question of that psalm, let me tell you that many are afflictions.

The promise of the Lord, though, stands firm. He delivers from them all. He has delivered, and he will deliver.

Let's go through this psalm, just these verses, and see what this means to us on this day that we come together as God's people to worship our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and he as our great deliverer. You see,

David starts out here with, many are our afflictions. It's a statement that experience confirms.

Can't you look at this, those few words, many are the afflictions, and just stop there and say, yes, we are afflicted by so many things.

And pastor, in that beginning, you just made a thumbnail sketch. There's so many more we could list.

Many are afflictions. How many is many? It's just as many.

It means much. Well, there is no number given to it. It's just as many. It's like when Peter asked

Jesus, how many times do I forgive my brother's sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven.

Can I make a list and have seven times? Check it off, and at the eighth time, I get to get angry. I get to get revenge.

Well, no, Jesus says, no. Seventy times seven, you are to forgive. So many are the sins that will come against you, and many must be your forgiveness of them, is the idea there.

Well, that relates to the psalm here, because it says many are our afflictions without giving a number, the same way the

Lord delivers without limit. If many has a limit, if many has a number that we can put to it, that means that God also can be numbered or limited, which he can't be.

We might as well say, as many as are the afflictions we face, the Lord delivers us from them all.

And sometimes it seems like it's just all too much, doesn't it? I can barely keep track of it myself. It's just overwhelming.

But what does Jesus say about our Father in heaven? He says our Father in heaven knows what you have need of before you even ask him.

It's as if he's got his hand cupped over his ear, and he's just waiting to turn that ear towards you to hear the prayer that he has preordained because of the afflictions you have, which are all in his decreative will.

God knows what we have need of before we pray. He knows these afflictions become us, that come upon us.

He's counted every hair on your head. Not one hair will turn gray or fall to the ground and join the sparrow falling to the ground, except by his direct will.

So how much is many? Many are your afflictions. Well, many is less than the storehouse of God's goodness and his power to deliver us.

As Jesus said, in this world you will have tribulation. So how many and for how long is up to him?

You will have trouble in this world. It doesn't mean that all the anxiety goes away. It doesn't mean that all the tribulations go away.

It means that we're delivered from them. So how many is many? How many of you suffered?

How many of your friends suffered? Your loved ones suffered? There's no number given to it.

But we do know as much as many can be, God is bigger than that.

God is larger than that. God is more powerful. So many just means much.

It just means it's the experience of us as we sojourn on this globe. Who is the subject of this deliverance?

So many are the afflictions of the righteous. Now, of course, the righteous are those who are in Christ.

The righteous is God's people. And the things that we suffer, the kind of things I mentioned, are common to everyone, are they not?

We had the big layoff in this area, what was it, four or five weeks ago when

Google laid off 12 ,000 people? Well, some Christians suffered that affliction and some non -Christians suffered that affliction.

So the particular subject here is the righteous. That is who David has in mind.

Verse 15, the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.

Verse 17, when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

Verse 19, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all.

See, the Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made, says the psalmist. That's called common grace.

It's that grace which extends to all humankind. Just as the tribulations are common to the

Christian and the non -Christian alike, so common grace, the rain that falls, that brings food from the ground so that we all can eat is something that every human being can enjoy, whether they give praise to God or not.

They should give praise to God for it, but whether or not, it's a blessing from God. That's God's.

The other kind of grace is what we call particular grace, and that's what David has in mind here. He says, many are the afflictions of the righteous.

Of course, we could say many of the afflictions of the unrighteous, that's true, but he has the righteous in mind. The righteous are the ones for the

Lord delivers. That's God's personal grace. That's particular grace. That's kind of grace

Paul writes about in Ephesians 2, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God. This faith is the gift of God, and this faith is how we can put ourselves in this category that David says is the righteous because of saving faith, because of something you have that's foreign to you, something you never would have reached out for.

Faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, in his death, his burial, and his resurrection is a saving grace.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Many of the afflictions are the unrighteous, but the deliverance is for the righteous, those who know the saving grace of God, the grace that came in Jesus Christ, the grace that the apostle

John wrote about, and he said, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only

Son from the Father, full of grace and truth, grace personified in the

Lord Jesus Christ, and by that grace, because of that grace, by grace alone we have the righteousness of God.

As Paul writes, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, a righteousness conferred upon sinners by grace, a righteousness by faith and faith alone, a righteousness that brings

God's ears to bend and eyes to be attentive to your cries, to deliver you.

So many just means much. It means a lot of afflictions, and the subject of this is the righteous, those who

God has made righteous, those who God has pulled out of the world, placed in his Son, given faith to believe, and then the righteousness of God conferred.

So what are these afflictions from which this deliverance is promised? Well, I gave my short list, but the scripture gives four terms, or excuse me, three terms.

In verse 4, he's delivered from all his fears. In verse 17, his troubles, and in verse 19, his afflictions, and these encompass, if you will, everything that we encounter in life.

God is faithful to deliver us from them all, and these fears, these troubles, these afflictions that David writes about are the same things that come upon us.

In verse 4, he says, I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

Well, fears translates a Hebrew word that's a little more intensive than the word we have, fear. You might fear something happening, but you might fear something happening knowing that if it did happen, it's not the end of the world.

Okay, so personally, I've never broken a major limb. I've never broken an arm or a leg, and I would fear that.

I've known people who've broken arms and legs, and it looks like a fearful thing, but if it did, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I would have pretty good confidence. I could go to a doctor. He's going to set my arm, set my leg. If I follow his directions and take it easy for several weeks or months or whatever it takes,

I'd be healed. You see, fear in the Psalm is about something worse than a broken arm, something worse than a temporary situation.

Fear in verse 4, I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from my fears, is something that is a terror, is something that is dreadful, something horrible from which recovery is improbable.

See, I fear breaking an arm, but you know, it's just me personally. I'm terrified of drowning.

I think that would just be horrible. So there's a difference between the English word we have here, fear, and the

Hebrew word that's really behind it. It's much deeper than just being fearful of something. You see, when

David wrote this, he had gone to the Philistines. He had gone to the enemy of Israel for refuge from King Saul, the king of Israel.

You can imagine how intense then his exile was or the persecution he was under from King Saul.

So it wasn't just fearful of King Saul. It wasn't like just something that we could get over in a day. It was something horrible.

It was something terrible for him. Seeking refuge from Saul at the

Philistines was more than fearful. It's just the worst thing that could have happened to him, and it seemed like, okay,

I'm with the enemy of Israel, and now if I go outside the camp, I die. He says he sought the

Lord. I sought the Lord, and he answered me. He sought the Lord. This is intensive prayer.

He was delivered from his terrors, but notice first, I sought the Lord. Diligent prayer, the sort of prayer

James talks about. He says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask. Let him ask

God, but let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways.

I think David, understanding something of this, though it came many centuries after him, he sought the

Lord diligently and constantly to get relief from his situation, this fear, this horrible, this terrible situation he was in.

You see, the Lord delivers you from your fears. He delivers the righteous from their fears, even those that turn to horror, even those that are of our own making.

Look at verse 17. Just so you know, I'm looking at verses 4 and 17 and 19 because these have the same idea of the righteous crying out and this deliverance being the same type of deliverance, and we'll come to that in a few moments.

But verse 17, when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. Now, troubles here has the idea of being constrained, of being tied up in a box.

You remember in the old insane asylums, I just saw this on an old movie we were watching a week or so ago, they had the straight jackets.

They would constrain a person so he couldn't do damage to himself or others. What's sort of the idea here for troubles in verse 17?

He hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. This tight spot, no solutions to the left, no solutions to the right.

There's danger on one side of the road, and there's only more trouble on the other side of the road. You're confined to this narrow straight.

So, you know how bull constrictors kill their prey? They wrap themselves up in a tight ball.

Now, a bull constrictor is a big, heavy being. It's a snake. It wraps itself in a tight ball.

It reminds me of a cannonball. It drops on the head of its prey. It stuns it. Then they wrap around the rib cage.

You know, they don't squeeze you down. What they do is when the victim exhales a little bit, they constrict a little bit.

And when he exhales again, they constrict a little bit more. It's a horrible way to die. But this is the way

David seems to look at his troubles in the

Philistine camp, and what might happen if he went outside of it. He's in a tight spot. He has nowhere to go.

It's like every time he exhales, it just comes down a little bit tighter, so he can't even breathe. Sometimes we feel like that.

With the walls closing in, we have so many afflictions. We have job troubles. We have health troubles.

We have relational troubles. We feel like we're just on this road where there's no solutions, and I can't get off this road.

I have to keep going further and further and closer and closer to the end, whatever that end may be.

Troubles are what Jesus meant when he told the disciples, in this world, you will have tribulation. He said, if they hate you, know that they hated me first.

Know that these troubles that we get into often is part of that never -ending conflict between good and evil.

It's the rage of the serpent seed world exposed and magnified by close contact with those of the woman's seed.

This takes us all the way back to Genesis 3 .15, where the seed of the woman is going to be in constant conflict with the seed of the serpent.

And what brings out that rage? What exposes that hatred more than anything is being near the righteous, being near those who are with God.

This is verse 14. Society is getting wrapped up and constrained, like having handcuffs on.

You just can't maneuver. You can't move. You don't see anywhere to go. Yet the promise remains, the

Lord delivers from them all. The eyes of the

Lord, verse 15, are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

The righteous, that's God's people by faith in Christ. You think of this idea of where God's face is and who he's looking towards and where his good favor is.

Think back to the Aaronic blessing, which is usually how we close our service. That blessing asks

God to make his face to shine upon us, to lift up its countenance towards us. You see, the evil can make no such claim because his face is against them.

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, toward their cry, and it's against those who do evil to cut off the memory.

Many people would hear something like that and say, well, I'm not evil. I'm not that bad. Let me be plain.

Let me just tell you the truth that's in the scripture. If you're not in Christ, you're evil.

We're born by nature, children of wrath, deserving God's wrath. If you're not in Christ Jesus, it doesn't matter if you committed the big sins or the small sins.

If you kept away from the biggest ones and you only did a whole bunch, so it doesn't matter. We don't rank them that way.

Neither does scripture. If you're not in Christ, the face of the Lord is against you, and it says it will cut off the memory of them from the earth.

So only those in Christ can make this claim of God's face in a favorable way being towards them.

Why is that? It's because God's face is against the wicked.

Psalm 11 5 says his soul hates the wicked. This is why he's against those who are not in his son,

Jesus Christ, because if you're not in his son, Jesus Christ, then all your sin is still on your account as opposed to Jesus Christ paying that penalty, your sins being poured out upon him.

There will come a day when the memory of that will be cut off. The face of the

Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth. There's going to come a day when his people, when the church, will one day say to one another something like this.

What was it that caused all that distress? What was that affliction that made me feel like I had nowhere to turn for relief?

What was that that made me feel so hemmed in that I thought I was choking, I couldn't even breathe? And the brother, sister, and the

Lord in the church redeemed is going to say something like I can't remember. I have no memory of anything like that.

It's a trace. It's like trying to grab a bunch of steam coming out of this teapot.

You can't do it. You remember what it's like, sort of, but it's not even quite a deja vu feeling.

The memory's been cut off. We're speaking the end of history, really, where Jesus says, or the apostle

John says, of those in heaven, there'll be no more tears. There'll be no more sickness. There'll be no more death.

I can't remember that. The memory has been cut off. And dear ones, if you are here and your faith is not in the

Lord Jesus Christ, you are among those who will be cut off. And the memory will be gone.

They'll be trying to get a whiff of steam, but you won't be able to grab on to it. It's a day yet to come.

It's a day when all the memory of the persecutions you've endured, when the world's hatred of your faith, their hatred of our

Savior Jesus Christ, with all their mockery of your efforts towards holiness and growth into the image of Christ, when all that memory is cut off like a tumor under a surgeon's scalpel.

And that's going to be a glorious day. That's a day of final and complete deliverance.

It's a day yet to come. But it's a day that will come. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the

Lord delivers him from them all. Now this word for affliction translates a different word.

It's the Hebrew word ra 'ah, which means evil, misery. It means distress.

So you could say much as the evil encountered by the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from them all. There's much evil around us as we live in this world.

And it's that difference between us, the righteous, the redeemed of God, this church, and the difference between us and those outside becomes more and more apparent.

The afflictions are going to become more. And I would argue God's deliverance becomes all the more glorious.

So when I was driving here to help with the food pantry yesterday, I was listening to KCBS radio.

And it was almost eight after. You know, on the eights, they have traffic and weather. That's what

I turned it on for. I wanted to hear the traffic. Well, on Saturday, that doesn't matter that much. I want to hear the weather. So I know if I need to put the top up or down on my car.

And after the weather, they had a little segment about an Easter celebration happening in San Francisco.

I wasn't listening closely to this, but it was getting through. And then I heard that it was the

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who were putting it on. And they were having a Jesus lookalike contest.

And they had a buff Jesus, which I guess was a weightlifter type. And then they had, and this is where I turned it off,

I couldn't take anymore, Jesus in high heels. I was thinking, this is the affliction that the righteous feel.

And I got angry. I thought, well, you know, as perverted as your way of life and the things you purport and bring to us, as perverted as those are,

I don't mock you. My brothers and sisters at my church, we don't mock those others.

Why must you mock our Lord like that? And this was as I was preparing this message.

I think, is that not one of the many afflictions of the righteous from which we will one day be delivered?

That we feel those insults against our Lord as though they're ours? Deliver. Deliver in verses 4, 17, and 19.

It's the reason I chose those four verses to focus on, on this Resurrection Sunday. I sought the

Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears, verse 4. Verse 17, when the

Lord troubles, and in verse 19, where I've been focusing most of our attention, many of the afflictions of the righteous, but the

Lord delivers him from them all. This word deliver means to pluck away.

It means to snatch somebody from something, generally from danger, to pluck, to reach down and say, you're in a bad place here and I'm going to pull you away from it.

You're going to be delivered from it. You know, my favorite use of this word for plucked, the same word we have delivered in the psalm, is in Zechariah chapter 3, verse 2.

Let me set this for you very quickly. You recall, it's the prophet Zechariah and he has a vision in heaven.

And standing there in heaven is this angel, the angel of the Lord. And as I'll show you in a moment,

I believe that's Jesus. And there's Joshua, the high priest of Israel, the exiles who come back from Babylon.

And he's standing there in his priesthood clothes and he's just, it's filthy. His clothes are covered with the worst kind of filth you can imagine.

And there's Satan there also, and he's accusing Joshua. And he's saying, you're full of sin.

And splat, there's something on his clothes. And the people that you represent are full of sin.

Splat, there's more stuff on his clothes. And yesterday you thought this, Joshua. So he gets more stuff on his clothes.

And in time, he's just filthy, carrying his own and the people's sins.

Everything Satan said against him was factually correct. And if he accused you, would it not be correct?

Would not the fact of the matter be right? For most of us, for all of us, yeah, we have to say yes.

And then it's Christ. It is Christ in that vision that Zechariah has.

It's Christ who looks at Satan and watches him accusing and throwing this stuff upon Joshua. And sees

Joshua was supposed to be the beautiful priestly garment. It's covered in filth.

And it's Jesus who then says, is of Joshua, is this not a brand plucked from the fire?

And there's our word. Delivered from the fire. And the angel who is

Christ, this angel is Christ. For only Christ can say what is about to be said. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him.

Not thus saith the Lord. On his own authority. So this is Christ who says, remove the filthy garments from him.

Excuse me. And to Joshua, he said, behold, I have taken your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.

This is Christ who called Lazarus out of the tomb. He says, Lazarus, come forth.

And I love those men who first came up with this idea that had Jesus not said, Lazarus, if he had just said, come forth from the grave, all the graves would have opened.

But he made it just for one, Lazarus. So only Lazarus came up. But what did Jesus say? As soon as Lazarus came out, unbind him and let him go.

Just as he clothed Joshua, the high priest, in clean garments. So he said, unbind him, let him go.

The grave clothes were no longer appropriate for him. Because Lazarus had been resurrected. He'd been plucked away, delivered from the ultimate affliction, which is death.

It's like Joshua, wearing on himself the sins of his people, and his own sins. He's this picture of the affliction of sin.

And who can take it away? Who can deliver from that? Who can deliver from all the many afflictions that assail us in this world?

It's just as in Zechariah 3 too. It's just as in Psalm 34. Jesus Christ, the resurrected

Lord Jesus, alone is at deliverance. You might be asking, so when will

God keep his promise and deliver me from my afflictions? When is he going to pluck me away?

Why do I still have the affliction of cancer? Why do I still have multiple sclerosis?

Why do I have arthritis? Why am I blind? Why must my body deteriorate? When is this promise deliverance?

The answer is that our deliverance is an event. Our ultimate deliverance is an event.

Our deliverance is a person also. The person of whom the psalm really speaks.

The person of this psalm, the person of this event, the person of your final deliverance is

Jesus Christ and him alone. It's Christ who said, I am the resurrection and the life.

He's the event and he's the person. He says, I am the resurrection. He's like the resurrection personified.

And he's the only one in whom there is resurrection. I am the resurrection and the life.

So he's the person and he's the event. He is how God delivers and will deliver.

The many afflictions of this world are going to be with us as long as we are in this world. Jesus warned us over and over.

He told the disciples in this world, you will have tribulation. But what happens after that?

But behold, I've overcome the world. That by his cross and the seal of his cross is his deliverance from death, which is the resurrection.

It's Christ who is that person. Christ who is that event. While we're here, he may well deliver you from cancer or you from COVID.

He may well deliver you through everyday means like doctors and medicines and surgery, or he may well deliver you through miraculous means, a touch upon your body from Christ, our great physician.

But the thing to keep in mind is as long as we are here, deliverance, total, final, eternal deliverance awaits us.

Now, Jesus, who is the person and the event, is deliverance now. I said before, he does deliver and he will deliver.

Colossians 1 .13 says he has delivered us from the domain of darkness. Now, delivered there is the same

Greek term that would translate the Hebrew term we have in the Psalm. He's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This is, of course, accomplished on the cross, the one planted at Golgotha, the one on Calvary's hill, the cross where he suffered for your sins and for mine in order that our sins might no longer afflict us, that we would know that we have peace with God, that God is no longer angry at us, that we could look at this

Psalm and say, yes, he's got his face turned in goodness towards me, favorably towards me, because of Christ and Christ alone, because of my faith in him and faith alone.

So are we stretching things to say that this Psalm is about the Lord Jesus Christ? Now, if you look at verse 20, it says, he keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.

That's the disciple whom Jesus loved, that was John, he saw this towards the end of Jesus' suffering.

It's in John chapter 19, the apostle John writes, but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

What he's referring to is the Roman practice of basically, it's time to go home, my shift is over, this guy's still alive,

I can't leave him that way, they break the legs, so the shock will bring the final death. So they came to Jesus, he's already dead, and they did not break his legs.

But when the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water, he who saw it has borne witness, his testimony is true, and he knows that he's telling the truth, that you may also believe.

For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, and here's Psalm 34 verse 20, not one of his bones will be broken.

So understand this, as Jesus was on the cross, he gave up his spirit, I was just talking to a brother who says, you know, the cross didn't kill him, he gave up his spirit when it was all done, when he was able to say, it is finished, meaning that God's fury at your sins had been exhausted on Jesus Christ.

Why did they not break his legs? Was it Roman efficiency? Was it because they didn't want to take an unnecessary step?

No, no, none of that. It was the Lord's will that Christ's legs would be whole when he went to the grave.

When the apostle John saw this, and saw him skip this step that the Romans so often did to victims of crucifixion, he noted they didn't break his legs.

He says that Psalm 34 not one of his bones will be broken. Many are your afflictions.

There's one deliverance. The Lord will deliver him from them all. There's one deliverance, it's the

Lord Jesus Christ. He leads the way for us as our elder brother. He sought the

Lord, did he not? He sought the Lord before that cross. In the days of his flesh,

Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

So who's him who could save him from death? That's God the Father, and God did hear him, and God did answer him, and God did deliver him from death, just as he will hear and answer and deliver you if you cry out to him in faith, if you would seek him with all diligence.

And how is this deliverance accomplished? How was Jesus delivered from death? He cried out to him who was able to save him from death, and it says that God did do this by the resurrection, that God raised him from the dead, for Christ is risen.

It's as the disciple Cleopas told the apostles, he is risen indeed. So here lies the promise of deliverance from all our terrors, from our tight spots and constraints, and from the evils that permeate this world.

It's the resurrection. Jesus rose from the grave on that Easter Sunday. The women found an empty tomb.

Peter and John found an orderly exit. Remember it says that the grave clothes were set aside and neatly folded, but Jesus wasn't there.

The Emmaus disciples found a friend on the road, and they talked with him, and finally they recognized the

Lord, and we'll go back to the apostles say he was risen indeed. Christ was delivered from death.

Christ was plucked from the grave, if you will, by the resurrection, and it's the same way that we are delivered.

We're delivered from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his marvelous light. It's the same way we will be delivered, because the scripture promises

Christ was raised from the dead, so we will follow in a resurrection like his. Do you believe in this

Lord Jesus Christ? The deliverance is now, and the deliverance is yet to come.

The afflictions that you feel as one who does not believe in him, you might look upon us and say, well you suffer the same things

I do, you've got the same job layoffs, you suffer from COVID, you've got cancer, you all the things are all the same.

Well no, because I've got the Lord Jesus Christ, and I know that whatever

I suffer, be it physical, I can look at the scripture and say that's the apostle Paul. When he had cried three times for the thorn to be taken from his flesh,

Jesus Christ said, in your weakness my strength is made perfect, because the weaker you are, the weaker you appear, and the greater things you do through me, the greater my strength is manifested and portrayed to be for everyone else.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all. The deliverance is now, your deliverance is this day that salvation is proclaimed to you.

Your deliverance from this domain of darkness in which you are if you are not in Christ Jesus, is when you in faith cry out to Jesus for forgiveness of your sins.

And how do you know that this forgiveness is real? It's not just some concept, it's not something we made up, it's by the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's what turned the apostles from shaking scared children into brave king -facing men.

It's a transformation. If anyone is in Christ Jesus, behold his new creation, says the apostle 2nd

Corinthians 5 17. You and I might suffer many things in this life, afflictions without number, but by the resurrection, the

Lord will deliver you from them all. He will raise us up and bring us to our eternal home, and all disease, all terror, all trouble, all affliction is going to be just a distant memory.

And all this by that which we proclaim this day, which is the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is risen indeed. Amen. The Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you,

Father, for his death on our behalf, on my behalf. Oh, Father, for the resurrection of our

Lord Jesus Christ, for that sure and certain historical event that confirms all your word to us and makes us able to know and proclaim and believe that we will fall in a resurrection like his.

So for this deliverance that we have now, this day we give you thanks and praise, and we wait in all faith and hope for that resurrection yet to come.