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Psalm 119:65-72
And I just came up with the sermon outline while we were singing Psalm 119, beginning in verse sixty five, would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word? You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. And before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart, I keep your precepts.
Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Father, I pray for grace tonight and Lord, that I would preach rightly and well for the glory of Christ. Let us meditate and think deeply upon this truth that we learn here tonight. We pray in Jesus name.
Amen. OK, you can be seated. And I really wasn't joking. So so I have an outline and I'm not going to preach that outline. I don't think I'm going to preach a different outline because we're just going to stay on verse sixty five.
And that is something I guess sometimes it just happens. But the Lord has seemed to put in our minds and hearts this evening about thanking him. Maybe it's because it's so hot about thanking him for how good he has been to us.
And so I think about verse sixty five and I have I have an outline tonight. And it really goes with this morning sermon to thinking about the word of God, about learning the word and leaning on the word and loving the word.
And we'll get to that. But I think what I want to do tonight is just camp out on verse sixty five for just a moment and think about what it has to say. And we'll just keep the sermon title the same, which the sermon title coming in was just verse sixty five that you have dealt well with us.
Yahweh has dealt well with us. There's not a person in here. Children, I need you to listen to this tonight as well. There's not a person in here tonight who can say that God has not dealt well with them.
There's not a person before the founder or at the end of the world. There's not a person who will stand before God, be able to point their finger at him and say, you have treated me unwell. They'll not be a person that can say that God has been well, except the redeemed, we can say God has been unfair to us.
Right. We could say God is instead of showing us fairness, he's shown us grace. But the reality is we live in a world today of complaining, of whining. I was talking to my dad. My dad reprimanded me a little bit.
He's like, dude, you talked about the 70s. You don't know how bad the 70s were. I was like, yeah, but but in my defense, in the 70s, when a student got in trouble at school, they went home. And who also who also got in trouble?
The student. Right. Today, when a student gets trouble at school, who gets in trouble? The teacher or the administrator or the coach or whatever the case may be. Right. We're a big group of babies. We're a big group of whiners.
And so let's let's push against that tonight and think about verse sixty five. You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Now, the word the Hebrew word for well, there is the often we translate it good.
It's Tov. It's it's the same word like in Genesis one. God saw that it was good. And it was evening and morning the first day and on and on. This is the Hebrew word for good. So God has dealt good with and the text says your servant.
That's the word that sometimes you could translate it slave. But the idea is those who serve God, God has been good to them. But let me start out tonight with the first point, and that is God has been good to us.
God has dealt well with us even before salvation. God has dealt well with us in common grace. Now, some theologians push back on this language of common grace. But let me just explain to you tonight what I mean.
What I mean by common grace is that God has been good to us. Whether a person is converted or not, God has displayed his goodness to them in this glorious creation. Let me put it this way. Things went really bad in Genesis three.
You got me. Things went really bad in Genesis three. That is Adam and Eve. We don't we don't appreciate the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the garden. They essentially join hands with the evil one, looked up at God, shook their fist at him, spat in his direction, as it were, and rebelled against our triune God.
And yet God could have wiped them off the face of the earth. God could have destroyed everything right then and there. And yet he continues, Jesus says, to make his sun rise, sun, sun rise on the evil and the good.
And the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. You know, you look around today in the world and you have a situation like last night, unexpected tornado and Rogers. And you think, where is God?
Why did these things happen? Do you know why people ask these things? Let's let's be kind. Let's let's try to understand where people are coming from. But let me also give a biblical critique here. People ask these kind of things because they don't understand how evil and wretched mankind really is.
If if we understood, if we could really wrap our minds around the concept of total depravity, that means not that we're as sinful as we possibly can be, but that every part of us is tainted with sin. The way we think is sinful.
The way we feel is sinful. We use our feelings today as the arbiter of truth. But our feelings are sinful. They're tainted with sin. Everything that we do is is sin. Apart from faith, without faith, it's impossible to please God.
Right. So we're we're full of sin. We're full of rebellion. And if we understand that, the question would not be, where is God in these situations? The question would be, why does why is more of this not happening?
Right. Why are there not more tornadoes? Why are there not? Why doesn't the ground just open up? And let's just talk about Perryville for a minute. Why doesn't the ground split open in Perryville and everybody just fall in?
Right. Because there are people who are sexually immoral and in love with with drugs or in love with greed or or just following after the flesh or committing idolatry. This is happening not in L .A. Yes, it is in L .A., but not just in L .A., not just on the East Coast or the West Coast.
It's right here in Perryville, Arkansas. Perryville, Arkansas, is just as wicked as anywhere else in the world. The difference is we're just a little smaller. So the evil doesn't seem so prevalent at times.
And I'm telling you tonight, the verse 65 is true. You have dealt well with your servant just in terms of common grace. And I'll push this even further. Think about the area that you live. You can live anywhere in the world today.
And God in his sovereignty has brought you here in this place. And I'm not saying that Perry County, Arkansas, is the best place on Earth. But I am saying there are a lot of places on Earth that are worse than Perry County, Arkansas.
And I'm saying tonight that we can give God the glory for his kindness to us and his goodness to us and treating us well simply in his common grace. If there is someone in here who who refuses God the rest of their life and perishes and goes to hell, the reality is that God has still been good to you simply in his common grace.
Does that make sense? Now, secondly, let me say this, and this is more in bearing with the point of the text. God has not only been good to us in common grace, God has dealt well with us in saving grace.
The text says you have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Now, let's just back up. So so I'm preaching to complainers tonight, which means I'm preaching to myself. Right. It's hot.
I want it to be cooler or whatever the case may be. We got, you know, I don't want this food. I want that food. Yeah, I'm pointing a finger at myself. We're complainers. And God has been so good to us in common grace.
But he's also been dealt well with us, dealt good with us, dealt gracious graciously with us in in saving grace. Now, you think about think about your answer. You know, we do the DNA tests and stuff, which I haven't I haven't done that.
But but I'm sure if you did the DNA test and you trace your lineage back a thousand years, if you could do that. Right. A thousand years ago, there were probably people in your ancestry who were just absolutely wicked pagans.
They had no idea about Christianity. Right. They were worshiping some made up God or they were worshiping idols. Right. That's just a thousand years ago. It's not it's not that long ago. Right. Because we think about just our our our our ancestry and and where we come from.
And yet here we are today and we're here today and we know Christ. Right. I'm assuming most of us were on a Sunday night crowd. We know the Lord Jesus. Why is that? Why were we born in the time period?
Why were we born in the 20th century or the 21st century? We could have been born in the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh century. We could have we could have lived a very short life. We could have been 30 years old and and we're the old people in society.
Right. But here we are born now and God has been good to us. Why is that? It's because of his sovereign grace. Why is it that before time began, God looked at the fallen mass of humanity and all of us were were were deserving of his wrath.
And he could have left all of us given all of us over to our own desires and our sinfulness and our rebellion. And yet he chose to save out of the mass of fallen humanity, a group of people and give them to Christ.
Why were you included in that?
Why? It's only by God's grace. It's only by his saving grace. He has dealt well with you.
Why did he choose you and pass over another? I have no answer for that other than that God has dealt well with you. He has been good to you. Not only that, but he's brought you into this covenant of grace.
In time, that is, he has applied the covenant of grace to your wretched soul. What Christ has done, remember the gospel, God has been good to us in the gospel. Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, who is truly God and truly man.
Jesus Christ, who fulfilled all righteousness. Jesus, who never complained about the heat, right? And he didn't even have an, he didn't even have AC, didn't complain about the cold, loved God perfectly.
And all these ways that you failed and all these ways that you've been miserable and all these ways that you've sinned, Jesus succeeded. Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life. And then he took our sins, right?
That's the gospel that on, on, on the tree, on Calvary, he became a curse for us.
You understand tonight?
He wasn't just, he didn't just die for us, but we've used the other, um, the other way to say that he died as us, that God treated. What was Jesus being treated like on the cross? Not just like sin, but like sinners like you, he treated Jesus like you deserve to be treated.
And on the cross, Jesus was punished. He was crushed. It was the will of the Lord to crush him, Isaiah 53 says, and then he died and then he rose again. And you don't deserve this, but in time, the blessings of this covenant have come to your wretched soul, the blessings of union with Christ.
That is the Holy Spirit united you to Christ, this mysterious, mystical union, whereby your soul is tied neatly to Christ in a mysterious and glorious way. He is the head of the body, the church that's been given to you.
What do you got to complain about? He's been good to you in regeneration. John 6 63 says it is the spirit who gives life.
Listen to this.
The flesh is no help at all. How much help? I'm going to look at the kids, make sure they're paying attention. How much help is the flesh? What is the flesh? Our own selves, right, our own thoughts and will and desire.
It is the spirit who gives life, Josiah. The flesh is no help at all. How much help is the flesh? How much help is the flesh?
No help.
That is, you didn't decide one day. You did not just decide one day. You didn't get out of your bed one day and just say, I'm going to follow Jesus now, right? Because if it was left up to you, I'm just going to wake up one day and follow Jesus.
What would have happened? You would have never chosen Christ. We love because He first loved us. We choose Christ because God first in Christ, before the foundation of the world, chose us. And the spirit of God brought us from death to life.
What a glorious reality that regeneration has been applied to your soul. And you look to Christ, the blessing of conversion is brought to your soul. Even faith and repentance are gifts of grace. In fact, just turn with me real quick.
I'll just make a point. Acts 13 in Acts 13, verse 48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
Now, what does that mean? Did they believe and then they were appointed to eternal life or were they appointed to eternal life and then believed? I'll let you decide. No, I won't. I'll tell you the answer, but you can try to decide at first.
And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. So think about that for just a moment. Which came first?
They were appointed to eternal life or they believed. They believed first and then they were appointed to eternal life or they were appointed to eternal life. And as a result of that, they believed. Which was it?
What's the second?
Right.
They were appointed to eternal life. And because they were appointed to eternal life, they believed. Now, God does not treat any person as far as unjustly. Let's say unjust. God doesn't treat any person unjustly, meaning he leads to their own desires, their own choices.
It's not that they want to believe and God says, no, you can't believe.
It's that they don't want to believe. They don't want God. They go their own way. They reject God.
They reject grace. They continue to go headlong into sin and rebellion. Is God unkind to them to say, go ahead and go your own way?
No, it's what they deserve.
But yet you, for some reason, in the mind of God, only in the grace of God, you were appointed to eternal life. And therefore, not only were you united with Christ and regenerated, you believed, you repented, you looked to Christ.
Why?
Because God has dealt well with you. What a glorious reality.
What do you have tonight to complain about, to gripe about, to put out on Facebook how frustrated you are? Even as we look at our country and all, there are many things I think we should be righteously indignant about.
But sometimes can we not just step back and say, God, you've been so good to us. God, in his saving grace, has bestowed upon you sanctification. Not just your conversion. But you're not who you used to be, even as a Christian.
Think about that. You know, there are Christians who are in weaker states, maybe weaker theology, but they truly are born again. They truly are Christians. But God has been good to us not to leave you in such a state.
Right?
Like, I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but like, we believe being a Reformed Baptist is the biblical way, right? So why is it that God, why is it that you're that? Just simply because God has been good to you.
God has dealt well with you. Why do you not believe all the, remember when you were a Christian, like, aren't you glad? Didn't you used to believe some silly things? I'm talking about as a Christian. Didn't you used to believe some silly things?
And you used to sing some silly songs? And you used to have an erroneous view about certain things? And you didn't love the church like you needed to? And you didn't love the Lord Jesus like you needed to?
And you didn't love sound theology like you needed to? But yet God has been good to you in that he hasn't left you in that state. How good is God to his people to deal well with us in sanctification?
To grow us by grace?
Oh, I didn't have these notes typed out. So I missed justification, right? So we'll go backwards in time. God has been good in justifying his people. You understand justification. Jesus rose again for justification.
That means when God looks at us, listen to me now, this is the heart of the gospel. When God looks at us, when he looks at his people, he sees the righteousness of his son. The righteousness of Jesus is credited to our account and we are justified in him.
That's the song that we just sang, glorious exchange on the cross. Jesus took our sin and our wretchedness and God punished it. And by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, we receive where he was treated as us.
Now we're treated as Christ. I can't measure up.
I can't do it.
I can't meet God's demands.
But Jesus has.
And by grace, through faith, we're justified. We are declared righteous. The father freely bestows the righteousness of his son upon our account. And this is all. Listen to me tonight. This is only received by faith, not by your baptism, not by Lord's Supper, not by giving in the offering plate, not by trying your best.
You must lean all that you are upon all that Christ is. The reformers talked about that saving faith was just opening up that we can and receiving all that God is for us in Christ. How good has God been to us in our justification, in our sanctification?
Listen, let me tell you tonight that the blessings of God, you have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. These blessings, they're not finished. God is not done with you yet. You're still going to grow in grace.
By the way, is there not an exhortation tonight to be humble then? Sometimes I know we look and I've got people that I know really well, family members and such, sometimes that I look at and different churches and they they believe weird things or false things sometimes.
And I get so frustrated. But if they are true believers, then we need to be patient. We need to be patient. We don't need to take the grace of God and beat them over the head like a club. Hasn't God been kind to us?
Can we not extend that kindness to others? I'm not saying compromise. You understand? I'm not saying allow others to to go headlong into sin and to believe false doctrine. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying we need to we need to remember the grace that God has shown us and extend that to others and be patient with them in their sanctification.
And let me just mention this finally in this point, God will be good to us in our glorification. We sat down and we we talked recently to Miss Brenda. And what I couldn't get out of my mind was that picture in Pilgrim's Progress.
Do you remember how Pilgrim's Progress ends or the first part of it ends? That is Christian has the one final thing that he has to do before reaching the celestial city.
Do you remember what it is?
He has to cross the river. And what does that river represent? Death, right? And he has to cross the river. And there's just that that heart wrenching scene. As you're reading, you're thinking through like he doesn't think he's going to make it right.
He keeps falling and tripping and going under the water. And he he doesn't think that he's going to make it across that final river. But guess what? He does. And he enters the celestial city. And I'm telling you that every person who is born again is going to make it across the river.
You are going to make it. God has dealt well with you. Right. God has dealt well with you. And he's going to continue to deal well with you. And there is a glorified state waiting. That is this old body and all the wrinkles and all the the bad thoughts and the and the sinfulness and all these things that we want to be free from.
One day you will be free from these things. And these are all these are all bestowments of the sovereign and wonderful grace of God to his people. He's not done with you yet. We can keep going. And remember again that the text says you have dealt well with your servant.
Can we gladly and boldly say that we are slaves of God? I understand that every person is a slave of something. You're either a slave of sin. You're either a slave of self. You're either a slave of the fear of man.
You're a slave of the culture today. You're a slave of peer pressure or you're a slave of Christ. Which do you want to be? Do you want to do you want to bask in all of these blessings that we've talked about tonight with union with Christ and regeneration and conversion and justification and sanctification and glorification?
And you want to you want to bask in those blessings and and behold your God in those ways and be a slave of God? Or do you want to trade all of that and be a slave of peer pressure? A slave of your own flesh, a slave of sin, a slave of man, a slave of the culture.
Friends, remember tonight that God has dealt well with his servants. I commend you. I exhort you. I implore you to be a servant of God. Before I move to the last point, let me give a gospel call here.
Look to Christ.
I see young people writing. I don't know what you're writing. You could be drawing a picture of SpongeBob. I have no idea. But let me say this, I hope you're listening well enough to consider that even tonight the Lord holds Christ out to you and says, if you will believe on Christ, you will be saved.
Repent of your sins and believe the gospel. Don't you want to know this benevolent God, this good God at a young age and not put off Christ until you're older? You don't even know if you'll make it to be older.
Look to Christ now, repent and believe the gospel. If it's a Sunday night crowd, understand maybe there's a hypocrite among us. If there is tonight's the night to forsake all that and to run to Christ and know that God will receive you in Christ for those who trust him.
Why? Because he deals well with his people. What a good God. And then I have a final point. This will be more personal. There's God has been good to us in common grace and in saving grace. And forgive me, I had to come up with this.
Well, I didn't have to, but I came up while we're singing. He's been good to us in ecclesiastical grace. I don't know if that's the best way I could have said it. But the thing I want to say tonight is God has been good to Providence Baptist Church.
I want to be careful tonight. I know this is going on the interwebs. Thank you, Al Gore, for the Internet. But I want to be careful tonight. That's a joke. I want to be careful tonight because I don't want to come across in any way proud.
Let us give all glory to God. And I don't want to come across as trying to disparage anybody else. I'm not trying to do that. But let me just say to you tonight, there are a lot of places that you could be in tonight.
And God has been good to you in bringing you to Providence Baptist Church. And I say the same to me as a pastor of this church. God could have put me in any number of churches. I could not even know you people.
I could live in a world that I didn't know Alex Osborne or Gunnar Madewell or Jacob Robinson or Kermit Garsoffi. I could live in a world that I didn't know these people and you ladies as well. I could live in a world I didn't know Marianne Majors.
I could live in a world I didn't know Virginia Yielding. I don't want to live in that world. I'm grateful that God has brought me to this church to pastor these people, these 18 families that are in our church.
Praise God how good he has been to us in the grace of Providence Baptist Church. Think about all we've been through in eight years. Some of you, you haven't been here eight years. Some of you have been here longer than eight years.
And think about how good God has been to us. Think about all the changes that we've gone through as a church. Think about the heart. Think about the tears and the anxiety and the frustration and the pain and all these things that's that's happened in our church.
And then reflect on that and say, but through it all, God has been so good to us and praise God for what he's doing and has done in this church. And listen, I pray and I get concerned and I'm like, God, I want to see more people.
And I want to see more people get saved and more people join the church and more people come in. And we can disciple more people. But at the end of the day, we absolutely cry out with the psalmist in verse 65.
You have dealt well with your servant. How good has God been to Providence Baptist Church? He could have left us. Listen, let me just say this, there's not a person in this room, your pastors included, there's not a person in this room.
Who deserves the reformation that we've seen at this church? There's not a person, not Pastor Jacob, not myself, not the ladies here, not not sweet Miss Marianne, not Miss Tony. There's not been one person who is merited, who is deserved, who has earned God to turn our church around to be a faithful, healthy congregation.
And yet God has done it to us. Why? Simply out of his grace. I'm not I am not minimizing responsibility. Of course, you're exhorted to faithfulness. Of course, you are exhorted to holiness. Of course, you're exhorted to sound doctrine.
Of course, you're doing all those things. But even in all those things, on our very best day, there's enough of remaining sin in us for God to say, look, I'm closing the door of Providence Baptist Church.
And I'm moving on to another group. He could have done that. But instead, he's been so gracious to us and kind to us and patient to us. What a great and glorious and wonderful God we have. And he's been good to us in common grace and saving grace and ecclesiastical grace.
He has been good to us in this church. Hey, don't take that. Listen, don't take that for granted. Don't take it for granted that you are today in this wicked world, part of a healthy church, not a perfect church.
We need to grow. There's so many areas we need to grow in. We need to grow. We need to be better. We need to be more sanctified.
Amen, amen, amen.
But God could have placed you anywhere in any type of situation. And I know I've been in some situations and you have to places that you're like sometimes you've even been in a place before where things were missing.
And you didn't even understand what was missing. You're just like, this just ain't it, right? Like I've been in places before and the songs we sang and the superficial smiles. And it just seems like, oh, God, there's so much missing.
But I don't even know what I don't know. Will you help me?
And here he is in 2024. And now I'm a pastor of one of these kind of churches, a church that cares about doctrinal commitment, a church that cares about being confessional. A church that cares about being evangelistic, a church that prays together, a church that loves one another.
I hear things all the time.
People like you, you guys over there, y 'all really like to hang out.
Like, I don't know what else. I don't know who else I want to hang out with.
I want to hang out with you. You're my family.
What an amazing thing God has done. And I know at the drop of a hat, any one of us could mess it up. We could, you know, be foolish or whatever the case may be. But I also think it's not wrong to say that we can be confident in God's continued grace in this place because Jesus Christ loves his church.
There's not a person that loves healthy churches more than Christ. And so I want to say to us, really in a way of application, that we need to think well about all the ways that God has dealt well with his people and that we need to, we need to make a good return on investment.
Does it make sense? Maybe that's not the best analogy, but let me say this. You know, those those parables where Jesus says that the rich man would give one person 10 talents, one person, five talents, one person, one talent.
Now, I don't know how many talents you would say that God has given us as a church, but I for sure know it's not just one. God has blessed us. And so let me ask you tonight, are you making a return on that?
Don't be the wicked servant that just says, yeah, this is good.
I like the song we sing. I've got a good church, right? I'm going on my life.
I'm going to bury the talents in the sand. And when Jesus comes back, I'll give back what is his. Or are you saying, you know what? God has blessed us in an amazing way. Let's press on in the work. It's hard sometimes.
I get tired, physically tired, emotionally drained. Sometimes it's hard.
It's difficult.
I understand. But I'm saying God has blessed us tremendously. Can we not press on in his blessing for this grand purpose to make Christ known? To bring glory to Christ, to say that our Lord Jesus, who has dealt well with us, is worthy of our glory and blessing and honor.
And if no one else is going to do it, we're going to do our best by the grace of God to raise the banner of Christ here at Providence Baptist Church. And we're going to say Christ is worthy of a healthy church.
Christ is worthy of being proclaimed. Christ is worthy of being shared. Christ is worthy of a church that cares about holiness. Christ is worthy of these things. Oh, and the reality is he has is the very one that has given us these things.
He is the very one who has dealt well with his servants. According to his word. I don't know if that encouraged you tonight. But I was just overwhelmed with those thoughts as we were singing and I was listening to the prayers.
God has been good to us. Let us be a people who reflect that in this world. Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for dealing so well with us. We pray that Christ would be exalted through the preaching of the word tonight, that we would respond rightly.
Forgive us for being complainers. We pray, not presumptuously, I hope we pray that you would give more grace. Your Bible, your word says that you will. Your word says that you draw near to those who draw near to you.
Help us, God, give us grace to draw near to you and give us more grace. Help us to grow. Help us to be a better church, a more healthy church. Help us to be a church that cares more about lost souls around us, about biblical marriages, about the home, about about fellowship, about mission and evangelism, about sound doctrine.
Let us be that kind of place. Jesus is worthy of that kind of place. Jesus shed his blood for that kind of place.