Delights, Desires, and Dependence (Psalm 37:4-6)

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:05

You're listening to the expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church located in Kootenai, Idaho We pray that Christ is exalted and your spirit is blessed by the teaching of God's Word For more information about Kootenai Church, please visit us online at Kootenai church org

00:31

The first eight verses of this psalm are a prescription for fretting. They are filled with imperatives

00:37

Commands exhortations and encouragements all of which are oriented toward the

00:42

Lord verse one tells us that we are dealing with the wicked which is a perennial problem for the righteous that we face in this world and The focus of this psalm is not on the wicked and what they do on what they enjoy

00:55

So much as it is upon the righteous and the promises that await the righteous

01:00

The focus of the psalm is on what the Lord does for the righteous the things he has laid aside for the righteous

01:06

The way that the Lord sustains the righteous and most importantly what the Lord has promised for the righteous in the age that is to come

01:13

It focuses on God's goodness and his promises and tells us in the first eight verses how it is that we are to respond to the wicked in this world describes the peace that God provides for the righteous and tells us that we can be at peace in this world if we will do certain things and The emphasis of these first eight verses is on that peace the righteous can be at peace in this world if we will

01:37

Refuse to fret verse 1 remember they fade verse 2 and respond with faith in verse 3.

01:43

That was last week today We're looking at verses 4 5 & 6 of this psalm and we're going to add to that list of things that we are to do

01:51

So let's begin reading at the first verse of the psalm We'll read through the first eight verses and then

01:58

I'll give you our outline for today Beginning at verse 1 do not fret because of evildoers be not envious

02:04

Toward wrongdoers for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb

02:09

Trust in the Lord and do good dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness

02:14

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart Commit your way to the

02:19

Lord trust also in him and he will do it He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgments as the noonday

02:28

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who carries out wicked schemes

02:37

Cease from anger and forsake wrath do not fret it leads only to evildoing

02:43

Now four of those commands in those first eight verses four of them are directly tied to the name of God to Yahweh Indicated by capitals all capitals in your translation where it translates the word

02:55

Lord those four commands verse 3 trust in Yahweh verse 4 delight in Yahweh Verse 5 commit your way to Yahweh and verse 7 rest in Yahweh And there is a natural progression to each of those four commands and you cannot have rest

03:11

Which is the fourth of those four commands unless you first at the very beginning of that have trust It all begins with trusting in Yahweh coming to the settled conclusion that our

03:21

God is Trustworthy worthy of our trust and that I can trust him and then having trusted him and his word what he says

03:29

Then I can delight in him as a person as he as he is has he has revealed himself to me

03:35

Committing my way to him and it is only after I trust and delight and commit that I can rest

03:42

Many Christians just want to skip to the point of rest in that progression and say I am disturbed by life in this world

03:48

I am vexed by the by what the wicked do and I just need to calm down. I just need to rest

03:53

I just need to settle my heart down a little bit and they focus on the trying to rest But it begins with trusting after first know that what

04:01

God's Word says is true that he is trustworthy and having committed my trust to him I find my delight in him not in the things of this world and then having delighted in him

04:09

I commit my way to him I entrust my entire course my my life my conduct to him and then

04:15

I can rest having trusted delighted committed then I rest so you can see that there's a natural progression in those four and Our text today has two of those commands verse four delight and verse five commit

04:28

And that's going to be our outline for today We're going to sort of organize our time and our thoughts this morning around those two commands first that we must delight in Yahweh for our

04:38

Satisfaction that's in verse four and then we have to depend on Yahweh depend on God for our vindication

04:44

That's verses five and six So let's pick it up in verse four notice the command delight yourself in the

04:50

Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart That is a very gracious command

04:57

That is a very gracious offer I want you to see that right at the beginning before we even begin to consider what it means to delight or what it means to receive the desires of our heart

05:06

I want you to notice just how gracious that is that God would offer himself to us as the source and Substance of our delights that is a gracious thing

05:17

To sinners who are not deserving of any delights all we deserve is damnation.

05:23

No delights whatsoever We deserve damnation and yet God offers to us unworthy sinners

05:29

Himself as the source of our satisfaction and delight that is a very gracious offer

05:35

That is God coming to the sinner and saying delight yourself in me find in me the source of all of your joy your

05:43

Satisfaction your fulfillment and your delight in this world because he is he is worthy of Delighting in and he is certainly a most delightful

05:52

God It is a gracious thing for God to offer himself to us And then that indicates something as well about the the nature of God that he is a being and a person able to be delighted in which means that if he is if he is offering himself to us as the source of delights and he

06:10

Promises us that we can find our satisfaction in him It must mean that he is greater and more glorious than anything else in this world in which we might find our satisfaction

06:22

God himself is a Delightful God those things that make for true and pure and holy and righteous delight in this world

06:31

Those things are found in God In fact, those things were described in Philippians 4 verse 8 where Paul says finally brethren, whatever is true.

06:38

Whatever is honorable Whatever is right Whatever is pure. Whatever is lovely

06:44

Whatever is of good repute if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise dwell on these things

06:49

And every adjective in that familiar verse describes God and it describes

06:55

Christ He is altogether lovely and excellent. All of those virtues are possessed by Christ That is why we can look upon the face of Christ and behold the glory of God and in doing so we see those things which are of Excellent purity those things which are worthy of praise that which is most satisfying

07:15

Most excellent and most delightful and that above anything else in this world or anything else in which we could find delight and satisfaction

07:25

Jonathan Edwards in his sermon titled the excellency of Christ said this quote the person of Christ brings together infinite highness and infinite condescension infinite justice and infinite grace infinite glory and lowest humility

07:43

Infinite majesty and transcendent meekness deepest reverence toward God and equality with God infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience under suffering evil exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven and earth absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation

08:04

Self -sufficiency and entire trust and reliance upon God Christ himself is true honorable right pure lovely reputable excellent and worthy of praise and So Peter says as God's people chosen for God's own possession

08:20

We are to proclaim the excellencies of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light

08:25

God's nature is altogether lovely and altogether admirable and therefore it is gracious of him and right and appropriate for us

08:33

To delight in him and it is gracious for him to invite us Yea to command us to find our delight and our satisfaction in one as excellent as he

08:44

He is most worthy of adoration and yet sin has blinded the eye of the sinner

08:49

So that we are prone not to find our satisfaction and delight in him That is the cursed part of our existence

08:57

That someone something our God so worthy of our delight and our satisfaction and and finding joy in him is

09:08

Clouded by our sin by our iniquity our darkened mind and our hardened hearts So much so that the unbeliever is utterly incapable of fulfilling the command in verse 4 to delight in God The unbeliever cannot do this because he has no capacity to find any delight or joy in any of God's perfections whatsoever

09:27

His holiness his righteousness his goodness his truth His majesty his sovereignty.

09:34

All of these are an affront to the unbeliever These are the things that as believers we are to find our joy and satisfaction in and in delighting in this person

09:43

This is what as believers we are to strive to do but the unbeliever has no capacity to do that whatsoever

09:49

The natural man is at enmity against God and all of God's Glorious attributes are to him the unbeliever most distasteful and unattractive

09:59

This is why the unbelievers issue is not that he cannot be convinced that God is and that God Is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him the unbeliever cannot be convinced that God is in any way

10:12

Admirable or excellent or attractive or worthy of his time and attention? He has no taste for God whatsoever

10:19

Fallen man places himself in his own attributes on the throne and utterly detests all of God's glorious excellencies

10:28

So what is necessary then for a believer to delight or for a person to delight in God?

10:34

Regeneration is necessary. The heart must be renewed It must be changed from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh an individual must be given a new will new

10:42

Affections new mind new desires a new nature so that that new nature then will find as the object of its

10:50

Satisfaction and the source of its joy and delight will find that in God Yahweh himself becomes the source then that satisfies the cravings of the new believer

11:01

But before anybody can have those cravings or even even able to find delight in God He must first have his heart changed.

11:09

He must first be given a new nature and be regenerated This command to delight in God in verse 4 also tells us that God is not opposed to pleasures and delights

11:18

He's not opposed to those things that God is a big fan of pleasures and delights

11:24

The Trinity delights in its own being and its own relationship and has from all of eternity past God the

11:32

Father delights in the Fellowship and the person of the Son and the Holy Spirit the

11:37

Son delights in the Father and the Spirit the Spirit Delights in the Father and the Son and then out of the overflow of that abundant

11:44

Love God has determined to share those delights with an unworthy creation so he creates us then to have these longings for joy and delight and then he offers himself to us as that which is

11:57

Intended to satisfy those longings cravings for joy and delight in fact Psalm 16 verse 11 promises us that God is going to lavish us with pleasures delights and joys for all of eternity

12:09

Psalm 16 you make known to me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy in your right hand

12:15

There are pleasures forevermore God has promised to reward his people with everlasting joys and delights

12:23

Because joys and delights are not sinful realities Heaven is not the absence of joy and delight heaven is infinite joy and infinite delight as It is intended to be found that is in God and God alone

12:38

It is sinful when we seek our joys and delights in illicit things or in illicit ways

12:48

And when we do that the problem is not that I desire joy not that you want to delight in something

12:53

But that we choose to joy and delight in the wrong things Now what do we mean when we say delight delight yourself in the

13:01

Lord? What does that mean the word that is translated delight here means to pamper or refresh oneself?

13:07

to pamper or refresh oneself Pamper yourself in the Lord Refresh yourself in the

13:14

Lord. It means to take pleasure in or to find one's pleasure in it's actually a word that describes something delicate or dainty something elegant graceful refined and exquisite

13:28

And you can see why that is because we tend to delight in things that are elegant excellent

13:34

Delicacies delicacies you might say like you might delight yourself in Table full of crab legs or shrimp scampi or an endless buffet

13:46

Somewhere you would take delight in those things you delight yourself in the finest meats the finest drinks

13:52

These are dainties and delicacies. That's what this word delight means It means to pamper oneself or to enjoy as a delicacy the

14:01

Lord himself That's the idea God himself is the most refined and exquisite elegant Graceful and expensive thing that he could offer to his creation and he encourages us commands us to pamper ourselves in him

14:20

To find pleasure and satisfaction in God the way the world finds pleasure and satisfaction in things in Reputation in power in money in security in things of this creation

14:33

That is our desire for joy and our desire for delight Turned a wrong direction and found or sought after in illicit things

14:43

We instead are to find our joy and delight and direct them towards the thing Which is most desirable most excellent and that is

14:52

God himself So in the same way that unbelievers pursue and chase after Satisfying their joys and delights in the things of this world

15:00

So the believer is to pamper himself not with the things of this world But instead with the creator of this world finding our joy and delight in God himself

15:11

Wisdom Proverbs 2 says delivers us from delighting and doing evil and instead directs our hearts doing what is right

15:17

Proverbs 2 13 and 14 from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of wicked unbelievers delight in doing iniquity believers delight in Yahweh the fundamental difference between the wicked and the righteous

15:34

Psalm 34 verse 8 says Oh taste and see that the Lord is good How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him

15:40

God is good and he invites us to taste that goodness Which we do in the moment of salvation and certainly we grow in our delight and our tasting of that goodness throughout our lives

15:52

Psalm 73 the other psalm that deals with the prosperity of the wicked Verse 25 says whom have

15:59

I in heaven but you and besides you I desire nothing on earth my flesh and my heart may fail But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever

16:07

For behold those who are far from you will perish you have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you

16:12

But as for me the nearness of God is my good That's Psalm 73.

16:18

I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works so the

16:23

Lord commands us to delight in him and to come to this conclusion that whatever the wicked enjoy and whatever the wicked have the

16:30

Nearness of God is our good This by the way is the answer to envy verse 1 says we are not to be envious of the wicked or the wrongdoer

16:40

How can you be envious of the wrongdoer if what you are delighting in and finding joy in is in fact?

16:47

The greatest being in person the greatest joy and delight offered to the soul of man if you have that and you are

16:55

Pampering yourself with Yahweh as your source of joy and delight How can you envy the wrongdoer who does not enjoy any of that?

17:03

That's one of the cures for envy Our human problem with sin is that we are caused by that sin to find our joy in cheap

17:12

Substitutes that are not worthy of our time and our attention We're envious of the wicked when we are not satisfied with Yahweh Which is why he says in verse 1 don't envy them and then in verse 4 delight yourself in Yahweh I will cure your envy problem

17:26

Now, how is this done? We can only delight in our God to the extent that we know him

17:32

Scripture says he Yahweh is revealed to us in the face of Christ We see God in the face of Christ 2nd

17:39

Corinthians 4 6 God who has said light shall shine out of darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ So we can only delight in God to the extent that we know him having come to know him by salvation

17:53

Obviously that is where that begins with trust and faith in in our God as our Savior faith and trust in Christ turning from sin now having come to Come to set saving faith in Jesus Christ.

18:04

We grow in our understanding of who God is we see in Christ the glory of God Which becomes to us very attractive and we see

18:11

Christ revealed to us in the pages of Scripture and Scripture gives to us this Longing for the

18:17

Word of God and to know more of Christ So we see Christ revealed in Scripture we see in the

18:23

Christ revealed in Scripture the glory of God So the more we know of the Word of God the more we know of the

18:29

Christ of God and the more we know of the Christ of God the more we see of the glory of God in the face of Christ and Thus the pathway to delighting in Yahweh is to delight in his word

18:39

To know his word so that we may know his son and in knowing his son we take delight in those attributes that we see revealed to us of God's nature in the person of Christ that is the pathway to delight and Growing in faith over the course of your

18:54

Christian life will make you delight more and more in the person of God but do not think for a moment that you will be able to satisfy the longings of your soul and Delight in God and his nature if you do not know the

19:06

Word of God and you cut yourself off from that it begins With a face -to -face Understanding of God as he's revealed in Scripture so that you may see the glory of Christ You may see the nature of Yahweh and find your delight and your confidence in him

19:22

Now notice the second half of verse 4 if we are to delight ourselves in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart

19:31

Now that seems kind of like an open -ended promise doesn't it? Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart

19:38

When I was a teenager before I got saved There was a family a couple doors down from me that got my sister and I involved in a

19:48

Bible memory program It wasn't a wanna it was some little booklet I don't even know what the program was, but we were to memorize

19:54

Scripture and and it was their attempt to save to evangelize my wicked and corrupt soul and Psalm 37 verse 4 was one of the verses that I memorized and as a teenager

20:08

I thought to myself that that's a good promise delight yourself in the Lord and he will give me everything

20:14

I want That's that's you buried the lead. You've been trying to sell me your religion and you didn't this wasn't your first pitch verse 34

20:23

This seems like this is where you would begin you begin with this if you delight yourself in the Lord He'll give you whatever you want.

20:29

You want to add people to your your religion? This is you lead with this you people are the worst marketing people in the history of marketing people

20:37

There's the whole list of horrible ad campaigns at the bottom of this is the people who produce the

20:42

Jaguar commercial then the people who came up with the idea for New coke in the 80s and then there's you people who don't lead with this if you just delight yourself in the

20:50

Lord He will give you anything you want Where was that verse? You mean I can have a house on the lake a well -paying job

20:59

I Can marry Cindy Crawford all I have to do is delight myself in the Lord and he will give me whatever

21:06

I want That's a good pitch. Of course. That's not what this means at all And it's not that God has failed and broken his promise by not giving to us whatever we want

21:17

Let me give you two statements that kind of give to us what this is describing number one What this is saying is that God will give us our hearts proper desires

21:27

It's the desires that God gives to our hearts that is promised here It's not delight yourself in the

21:34

Lord and he will give you whatever your corrupt heart desires It's delight yourself in the

21:40

Lord and he will give your heart its proper desires In other words when

21:45

I delight in the Lord my heart is changed So that I delight desire all of the right things he gives to my heart

21:54

What my heart should desire when I delight in him He changes my heart so that it desires the right things

22:03

So that I am them like Moses in Hebrews 11 26 Who consider the reproaches of Christ as greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt?

22:12

What did Moses desire? Wasn't the treasures of Egypt, but instead it was the reproaches of Christ delight yourself in the

22:20

Lord and he will give you what your heart should desire so if your heart is desiring all the wrong things and You are fretting and anxious and envious and vexed over not getting what you want

22:31

This is the solution to it. You delight yourself in the Lord and the Lord will give you Your heart's proper desires.

22:37

He will give your heart It's true and right desires so that your heart desires the right things Second this promise means that he fulfills that appropriate desire by giving us himself

22:48

If I delight in the Lord and then he gives me the desire that he wants me to have Then here's the best part then he doesn't leave that right and proper desire unsatiated

22:57

But instead he satisfies that desire by giving me what it is And that I knew now do desire the right and proper thing namely

23:05

God himself Since it's not a promise for a better job or a nicer house or more stuff

23:11

It's not a promise for ease of life or convenience or comforts and security Instead it is a promise that when we delight in Yahweh he gives us right and proper desires and then he fulfills those desires by giving to us himself and Commanding us to delight in him

23:29

So that then we can say like the psalmist in Psalm 73 like a staff verse 25 whom have

23:34

I in heaven? But you and beside you I desire nothing on earth Obviously, that's the right and proper desire not the nice house in the car and the well -paying job

23:43

I desire nothing on earth But instead I find my satisfaction in who God is and what he has appointed for me

23:49

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart my portion forever Samuel Rutherford in his

23:56

Letters of Samuel Rutherford said this quote Oh my Lord Jesus Christ if I could be in heaven without thee it would be hell

24:02

And if I could be in hell and have these still it would be heaven to me for thou art all the heaven I want close quote.

24:08

That's a man with rightly ordered desires That is a man who delights in the

24:13

Lord Matthew Henry said this he has not promised to gratify all the appetites of the body and the humors of the fancy But to grant all the desires of the heart all the cravings of the renewed sanctified soul

24:27

What is the desire of the heart of a good man? It is this to know and love and to live to God to please him and be pleased in him close quote

24:37

What has God promised to do he has promised to satisfy all the cravings of the renewed and sanctified

24:43

Soul, your soul is holy. Your desires are Holy your affections are holy and God's promises that he will satisfy all the desires of those holy affections

24:55

Now contrast this with the wicked the wicked also have delights and the righteous have delights

25:00

The wicked and the righteous both have a desire to delight in things and we both delight in things

25:05

But wicked men delight themselves in craven things Carnal objects and passing pleasures that righteous are called to delight themselves in our highest and greatest and most

25:17

Transcendent and loftiest and most excellent person Yahweh himself So we get what is the greatest thing because God gives us himself in the gospel

25:26

And that is not our final delight in this world As I said earlier we have the promise that in heaven in the age that is to come

25:33

We will have endless joys and endless delights and it will be God's delight To make us to delight in all of the delights that he has for us for all of delightful eternity.

25:43

That's the plan Randy Alcorn said this in his book heaven Nothing is more misdiagnosed than our homesickness for heaven

25:52

We think what we want is sex drugs alcohol a new job a raise a

25:58

Doctorate a spouse a large -screen television a new car a cabin in the woods a condo in Hawaii Or to marry

26:06

Cindy Crawford. He didn't say that I added that in What we really want is the person we were made for Jesus and the place we were made for heaven close quote

26:17

So we have desires in this world. We have longings in this world All of them are reminders that in the world that is to come

26:27

Every desire and longing will be holy sanctified and Yahweh centered and God himself will delight in satisfying that every desire and every longing

26:39

So what we have to look forward to is an eternity of joys and delights Delight yourself in the

26:44

Lord and he will give you your hearts desires and then he will give you himself to satisfy those holy desires second not only do we

26:54

Trust in Yahweh for our satisfaction, but second we depend upon Yahweh for our vindication.

26:59

This is verses five and six We have two verses and less time Verse five commit your way to the

27:06

Lord trust also in him and he will do it He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday

27:13

The word commit there doesn't mean to sort of hand it over in prayer like okay. I'm just gonna commit this

27:18

Lord Here's my plan. I'm doing this and this and this and this and so I just want you to know

27:23

I'm committing to that to you and now I'm going to endeavor to do that that's not the meaning of this word this meet with this word commit means to to hand it over its

27:32

It's literally means to roll To roll like you roll a stone in fact 12 out of the 18 times that this word is used in the

27:40

Old Testament It is translated as roll Genesis 29 10 Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the flock of Laban Joshua 10 verse 18

27:49

Joshua said roll large stones against the mouth of the cave and assign men by it to guard them

27:54

It is translated here commit. It's also translated commit in Psalm 22 verse 8 where the psalmist

28:02

Reports the words of those who were jeering him fulfilled later in the cross of Christ When it he says commit yourself to the

28:09

Lord, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him because he delights in him There the psalmist is speaking looking forward to Christ hanging on the cross and those who drove by and Walked by said that let him commit himself to the

28:22

Lord. He trusted him. Let the Lord deliver him It's the word that means to roll So it's translated as commit a few times in the

28:29

Old Testament, but most often to roll And so what is the sense of it? What does it mean to roll your way on to the

28:34

Lord? To roll your way on to the Lord It kind of has the same idea of what

28:40

Peter said in 1st Peter chapter 5 When Peter said cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

28:46

That's the idea you you You roll it on to the Lord this burden this stone.

28:52

I'm getting rid of it. I'm committing that to the Lord I am rolling that on to him. It literally has the idea of Dislodging a burden from your shoulders and laying it on God In fact it is believed that in 1st

29:06

Peter chapter 5 when Peter says cast all your burdens on him that he has that Peter has in mind the background here of Psalm 37 verses 5 and 6 in mind as he writes that and if that is true it is certainly possible that that is true given that this psalm discusses the perplexity of the righteous living under the shadow and oppression of the wicked and how to deal with that and 1st

29:29

Peter is written to Christians who are living under the persecution the shadow of the oppression of the wicked and Peter is saying how to deal with that and so it's not

29:37

Surprising to us that Peter would have been spending some time in Psalm 37 thinking about how it is that the righteous respond to the wicked and that he would borrow this same imagery you cast your

29:48

Burdens on to the Lord you roll that stone on to him. You don't carry it yourself So I mean taking your delight in him then you roll your burden on to the

29:55

Lord commit your way to him the way of the righteous which is described in the psalm as Refusing to fret and not envying the wicked trusting in Yahweh doing good dwelling in the land

30:05

Cultivating faithfulness and delighting in him. That is the way that the righteous are told to take and so Having done all of those things then we cast our burdens we cast our anxiety on to the

30:18

Lord Rolling it on to him the burden that we feel and waiting for him to do what is right in his time

30:24

Psalm 1 verse 6 says the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish and so we're reminded that the

30:30

Lord is intimately Acquainted with the way of the righteous and here the psalmist is saying you roll that burden

30:35

Which the Lord is intimately acquainted with you roll that on to the Lord cast your anxiety on him knowing that he cares for you

30:42

Commit your way to the Lord Trust also in him and he will do it verse 5 says he will do what verse 6

30:48

He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noon day The imagery there of light means that with the psalmist is saying is that God himself will bring forth and display

31:00

Reveal to everybody your righteousness and your vindication Verse 6 he will bring forth your righteousness.

31:08

He will he will usher it out He will display it in front of everybody like a light your righteousness and your judgment like the noon day unoccluded

31:18

Brilliant plain Demonstration of your righteousness your vindication will come from the Lord and it will come for the

31:24

Lord and it will be as plain as day so those of you who have trusted in Christ for your righteousness and His righteousness has been imputed to you and your sin has been taken away from you and you have been forgiven of that You stand as righteous in the sight of God forgiven holy

31:42

Justified set -apart Adopted into his family, but in the eyes of the world, it doesn't always look like that Sometimes the world looks at us and sees these are the people who have the favor of God I don't think so instead the people who are wealthy have the favor of God the people who have it easy have the favor of God the people who

32:00

Are not being persecuted They have the favor of God you can't possibly look at these people who are the foolish and the weak and the ignorant and then and the

32:08

Ignoble amongst the world and think that they are the ones whom God has favored Well, there is coming a time when your vindication will come from God himself and your righteousness the declaration that you are

32:20

Justified in his sight and that you are not under his curse that righteousness will be

32:26

Displayed as the noonday Sun for everybody So there is coming a time before all of the angels and all of creation and all of the wicked

32:34

That God will say of you that is my child He is just and justified and righteous and it is only in the end

32:43

God's assessment of you and me that matters not what the wicked think not what they say about us

32:49

Not how they feel about us. None of those things matter well, the only thing that matters is what

32:54

God says of us is true and Someday that will be

32:59

Revealed before all of creation He will bring forth your righteousness which now in the eyes of the world does not look like much

33:08

But on that final day when the righteous inherit the land and the wicked are cut off and are no more

33:13

Your righteousness will shine like the noonday Sun We have to depend upon God for our vindication

33:20

Matthew Henry said this it is implied here that the righteousness and judgment of good people may

33:26

For a time be clouded and eclipsed either by remarkable rebukes of Providence think of Job's Great afflictions darkened his righteousness or by the malicious censures and Reproaches of men who give them bad names which they in no way deserve and lay to their charge things which they know not

33:46

Close quote and what Matthew Henry is saying is that in the eyes and the words of the world and worldlings?

33:52

It doesn't always appear the righteous do not always appear to be what they really truly are And so their their righteousness their vindication

33:59

God's judgment of them is sometimes clouded by the Providence's the righteous experience suffering and affliction and illness in this world and things do not go the way for the righteous that we might hope or Might want and so in the eyes of the world from the perspective of time not eternity but time it appears as if the the the righteousness and the justice of God is clouded over by those

34:24

Providence's and Sometimes people themselves step in and say of the righteous. Oh, this is true of them.

34:30

This is true of them This is true of them and they censure and reprove and rebuke And the promise here is that having committed our way to the

34:37

Lord we can trust that God will do it That is that in good time He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment the true vindication of you as the noonday

34:46

Sun And therefore we are called to trust him to be anxious for nothing But in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving Let a request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus I Think it is this very same thing that Paul is describing in 1st

35:04

Corinthians chapter 4 verse 5 when he says do not go on Passing judgment before the time but wait until the

35:09

Lord comes Who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and to close?

35:15

Disclose the motives of men's hearts and then each man's praise will come to him from God In other words on that day your vindication and your righteousness will shine forth

35:26

And until then we are to wait for our praise from God for he will bring forth our righteousness in the end

35:31

For his judgment concerning you is the issue and friends. It is the only issue It's the only thing that truly matters is what

35:37

God says about you and what God thinks about you and someday in spite of all the curses and calumnies of the wicked that will be displayed for all to see and Understand that this is not promised in this life

35:49

So don't walk away from here thinking okay, is that like next Tuesday Jim's talking about is that March? 2025 is that my year of vindication?

35:57

Sometimes that vindication comes in this life But we are encouraged here to wait until that time when the wicked are cut off and they are no more and the righteous inherit

36:04

The land we wait for that Thank you for listening to the latest podcast from Kootenai Church If you'd like to learn more about Kootenai Church or to donate to our church ministry

36:15

You can do so online by visiting Kootenai Church org We hope you enjoyed this podcast and pray you'll join us again next time once again.