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Bible Study & Prayer time
Well, good evening. I trust you're doing well in this middle of the week. Oh, what a wonderful week, a beautiful week it's been, hasn't it? I don't remember the last time we had a nice warm Indian summer in the first of November, but I'm grateful for it.
Enjoyed being able to walk to the church today, both in the morning and then again after lunch. And so we got a couple of miles of walking in, just going back and forth to church. And did so without being cold in the process.
So that's a great blessing. I hope you were able to get outside and enjoy sunshine today, get some of nature's vitamin D infusing, and help you ward off the COVID infection. But anyway, glad you can join us for our midweek service time tonight.
So some prayer requests I want to share with you after you have a word of opening prayer, and then we'll spend a few minutes looking at these prayer requests, and then praying for them, and then going to the 39th Psalm.
So, our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity in the middle of the week to turn our attention to you, to your word, to pray for one another, to pray for some of the needs of our church, our family, and beyond.
And pray that you'd bless the time we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. So, some prayer requests. We want to continue to pray for Jerry Saylor's family. If you were able to tune in to the funeral service yesterday, it was a blessing if you were able to hear it.
A little challenge in the audio portion from the funeral home, but nevertheless, the message was good and appreciated the emphasis in that funeral. But pray for Jerry's daughters and loved ones as they continue to mourn the loss of Jerry.
And then Bob had another round of chemotherapy today. Slept through it, so handled it well. And just pray for it to be effective, and that he doesn't have any negative repercussions from that. Word of rejoicing, Timothy.
We've been praying for him. He's out of the hospital and back at his home, so we're thankful for that. Continue to pray for Timothy and his family. Pray for Harold. Harold has had some frustrating news.
He was thinking that he would be done with that antibiotic and then be able to get back to physical therapy on his shoulder. He got word that he needs to continue the antibiotic for another week, and that's very disappointing and frustrating for him.
So pray for him and for his wife, who is being a good faithful nurse, taking these days one at a time. And of course, we want to pray for our country as, you know, everything's up in the air with the election, and of course, charges about fraud and all that kind of thing.
And it's one of those things I think that we have to consider where we sit, and that is, do we really know? Do we really, are we ever really going to be able to get to the bottom of it? I don't know. But what I do know is that our nation is in a state of unrest and anxiety, and that's not healthy.
So we want to pray for our nation and the outcome of this election. And then if you would pray for the family of Tim Challies. Now, if you were here, let's see, when was that? Last, in the spring, we watched this video series from Tim Challies entitled Epic, where, I guess it was over the summer, where Tim took us to different places around the world looking for artifacts of Christian history, church history.
So if you, you would know who I'm talking about if you were there able to see those. But Tim Challies and his wife, Eileen, they live in Toronto, Canada, and their son, their only son, was a student, first year student this year at Boyce College down in Louisville, Christian College.
And they just got word yesterday that their son had suddenly passed away. And you can't imagine the devastating news that that was for Tim and his family. Tim's a blogger, and he writes, you know, several articles a week, posts something every day in his website.
And his post this morning was, he said it's the hardest thing he's ever had to write to inform his readers that his son has suddenly passed away. Can't imagine the grief. So I want to pray for Tim and his family.
So let's take a few moments and pray together, shall we? Our Father and our God, we are grateful today for the fact that we know you are in control of all things. We know you are sovereign. And we know you care for your children.
You care for those who name the name of Christ. You care for your faithful children in this country. And as we are living in a time of upheaval and tension and anxiety, even over the routine of an election, there's nothing routine about it this year.
And we pray that by your grace, you would bring clarity in that election. We again pray for you to be merciful to our land and deliver us from those who would enact laws and encourage legislation that would be unrighteous and unjust.
And Lord, I pray that you would preserve our freedoms through the outcome of this election. We also pray, Father, for your people who are hurting today. Pray for Harold. Just encourage him. Got to be frustrating and disappointing to have gotten the news.
He's been struggling for a while with just this recovery on his shoulder. And I'm sure is longing for the day that it would be healed. We pray for Bob as well. And just thank you for his ability to handle the chemotherapy.
Pray that there wouldn't be any negative reaction from it in the next couple of days. Continue to pray for Kathy and ask for the strengthening of her knee. And I pray that you would give her flexibility.
Father, we pray for Jerry Saylor's family as they all undoubtedly make their way home to the various homes. And now there is this void in their life and their family as far as their earthly family. Thank you for the confidence, the hope, the joy of knowing that Jerry is with Christ and is enjoying the splendors of his presence.
And then, Father, we pray for Tim Challey's family. And Lord, what a heartache. What grief. This must be to have lost this young son. I pray that you'd give comfort to him and Eileen and their family, even as they journey to Kentucky and have to deal with the grief of emptying a dorm room.
Oh, Father, we pray. Be merciful to them. Be gracious to them through this time. We thank you for your word and pray that you would encourage our hearts from it tonight and help us to see even the answer to some of this anxiety over the uncertainty of life.
Father, we also want to pray tonight for Jim Linda Stroop. Thank you for the minister, the law and grace ministry that Jim leads. Pray that you would use him and bless him, even in this time when he can't get to the jails.
I pray that he could get back soon, that they would open up for them soon. Bless that work, we pray. Now, Father, we ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Just a word of announcement about Sunday, the Lord's Day. Again, we are tentatively planning a Sunday morning in-person service only. We will not have a nursery and not have children's church. So we're trying to be responsible and ease back into things.
And it's the current surge of cases in COVID in our area. I don't know if you saw it. I saw yesterday a video from the mayor, Skip Lee, and other, you know, Dr. Koons and some others in our community who were really emphasizing the severity of the outbreak that's going on right now and how many more cases there are now than there were back in the spring.
And just the encouragement to be responsible and careful. And we want to do our part with that. We don't want to forsake the worshiping together. But at the same time, we do want to be responsible. So tentatively, as of right now, we'll plan an in-person service Sunday morning at 1030.
And if you can join us, that would be fine. If you have any uncertainty about that, you just don't feel comfortable, that's certainly understandable. We will be live streaming, of course, and join us on Facebook or YouTube or the church home page.
So quite a juxtaposition of individuals who went to be with the Lord in those prayer requests,.
Right?
Nick Chalice, Tim's son, I'm not exactly sure how old he was, but a college-age student, suddenly, unexpectedly, passed away. And in contrast to that, there's 90, almost 96, Jerry Sailors, who will be 96 years old tomorrow, lived a full life.
Her health, of course, had been deteriorating for a few years. It was almost two years ago that we thought she was going to pass away, and she rallied and continued on and finally succumbed. But a full life, and even we were expecting her to go home to be with the Lord at this particular time.
And that contrast, that juxtaposition of those two individuals at two completely different stages of life, reminds me of a time I sat with my mom. It was a Christmas day that I sat with my mom several years ago now and looked through a scrapbook that had been my grandfather's, so her father's scrapbook.
And in that scrapbook, you know, we go page after page, and there's all these different entries, and there were four particular clippings that stood out. One of them was my mom's 14-year-old cousin.
So on one page, it showed her standing in front of kind of a welfare housing unit, they would call it at that time. And she was describing in this post in the scrapbook how she decorated it when she was 14 years old.
And then you turn the page, and it showed another picture of that same cousin less than two years later. She wasn't even 16 years old yet, a picture of her lying in a coffin. She had apparently succumbed to a flu-like disease, and like Tim's son, died pretty unexpectedly.
A second clipping in that scrapbook was a clipping of Lou Gehrig, who died in his 38th year of what has become known as Lou Gehrig's disease. And then a third set of clippings was about a famous war correspondent, who in the prime of his life and in the prime of his career was, as the clipping said, quote, ambushed by the Japs.
And then the fourth clipping was an obituary for an aged relative of ours who passed away at a ripe, ripe old age. Now, with all that discussion about death, you may think, well, this is a pretty bleak Bible study time tonight.
I don't intend it to be like that. I simply want these varied incidents of individuals at different stages of life who entered into eternity, I want those to remind us that life is uncertain. Now, I know that's something we know up in our heads, but when you look at those different instances, and they stare you in the face, it shouts at you, doesn't it?
That life is uncertain. And this is a reality that has plagued man for millennia. And we can even look in the Psalms, and David, the most prolific Psalmist, actually penned a Psalm, Psalm 39, where he is grappling with this whole issue of the uncertainty of life.
Now, we don't know what it is that prompted David to write this Psalm, but nevertheless, we see in the Psalm, what we've also probably experienced, is the anguish over life's uncertainty. We see that in the first three verses.
David says, I said, I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. This anguish over the uncertainty of life can affect your very tongue.
Where you see this, how do you grasp the heartache and the perplexity of a 19-year-old young man who one day seems to be perfectly healthy, no known health problems whatsoever, and the next day he's gone.
How do you deal with that? And one of the things it can do is it can cause us to lash out with our tongue, saying things like, well, you know, what in the world is God doing? Why would God do this? You know, and that kind of a thing.
Well, David says, you know, I'm going to take heed to my ways that I don't sin with my tongue, because the anguish over life's uncertainty can cause us to sin with our tongue. It can also create a great deal of turmoil within.
As he says in verse 2, I was dumb with silence. I kept my mouth shut. I held my peace, even for good, and my sorrow was stirred. My sorrow was stirred. There was this turmoil that was boiling within me.
And that anguish over life's uncertainty can also lead to some rather uncontrolled outbursts as David expresses here in verse 3. He says, my heart was hot within me while I was musing. The fire burned, and then I spoke with my tongue.
So there was this temptation with the heart burning as he's musing over this. There's the temptation to blurt out in outbursts. But he spoke with his tongue, and instead of sinning with his tongue, he then expressed four areas of life's uncertainty that you probably are quite aware of.
You've thought about them. You've been confronted with them, I'm sure. One of those areas of life's uncertainty, you see in verse 4, is just its end, the end of life. When will it come? So he says in verse 4, Lord, make me to know mine end.
Make me to know my end. Now, there are certainly some physical alternatives to the end of our lives, aren't there? We could enter into eternity suddenly, inexplicably, like this young man. I also read today of a college girl, a girl at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, who also went to be with the Lord, I think yesterday.
I think she was 19 years old, and she had apparently contracted COVID, and she was self-isolating in her dorm room. And then she was found, she had died. She passed away. Well, our end can come suddenly, unexpectedly, at a time of life that would seem out of the norm.
But then it can also come after a long, lingering illness. Our end can. So we get this. It can come from some kind of a calamity. What we would look at as an accident that would take our lives. I have a friend, had a friend who passed away rather suddenly.
He was, he seemed to be in good physical health. He was actually working out on a treadmill, and all of a sudden had a massive widowmaker heart attack, and entered into the presence of his Savior. So we just don't know the end of our lives in its physical, and in terms of the physical alternatives.
But there are also, of course, spiritual alternatives to the end. Make me to know my end. Where am I going then? Am I going to heaven? Am I going to be absent from the body and present with the Lord? Or am I going to be, am I going to be cast into the eternal lake of fire?
You know the answer to that question. If you're a child of God's, if you have by grace, through faith in Christ, put your trust and called upon Him to save you. Well, you know the answer. To that question of the end of your life.
You who are Christ's, your end is to be with Christ. Well, one of the areas of uncertainty is the end of life. How it will end. Another area of uncertainty is the length of your life. He says, make me to know my end and the measure of my days.
The measure of my days. The length of my life. And just how uncertain that length is, isn't it? The scripture is interesting in having several different expressions for the brevity of life. Take for example in Job 14 verses 1 and 2.
Job says, man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers. He flees like a shadow and continues not. Or in Psalm 90 verses 9 and 10. Says, all our days are passed away in thy wrath.
We spend our years as a tale that is told. A story that is told. What a description. What a poetic and figurative description for the measure of my days. For the length of life. We get to the end of it and we're facing eternity.
And it is as if I just read a story. I started it. I finished it. And it went so quickly. Psalm 103 verse 15 says, as for man his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. James picks up that same theme and he says, you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
What is your life? For you are a mist, a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes. And 1 Peter 1 24 echoes what the psalmist wrote. He says, for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like a flower of grass.
The grass withers and the flower falls. We are certainly uncertain about. We are certainly uncertain about the length of our life. The measure of our days. The only thing we can know is that it'll seem so short.
It'll seem so brief. But then the third area of uncertainty is the frailty of your life. It says in verse 4, make me to know my end. The measure of my days. What it is. That I may know how frail I am.
How frail I am. We don't always have a good idea of that, do we? A good grasp on just how frail we are. But let's pause and think about it for a minute. Realize that you and I are incapable of guaranteeing our health.
We can't do it. We can't do it. We can try to do things. We can try to eat well. We can try to get exercise. Maybe take supplements and so on and so forth. But we can't guarantee what's going to happen with our physical health.
We don't have that capability. You're also incapable of knowing what a day may bring. You've known situations like this. Where you're cruising along, doing fine, seeming to be fine. And then something happens.
Some tragedy. You don't have any control over it. I have another friend of mine. We were in college together. He has since gone to be with the Lord. And it was just a couple of years ago. I got a call from a mutual friend that lived in the same area.
And he said, pray for Bill. Bill has had a stroke. And it doesn't look like he's going to survive. Maybe at that time he had actually passed away when I got the call or I got the notice. And the day before, he was okay.
We have no control and capability of knowing what a day may bring. We don't have the capability of even foreseeing the ultimate impact of a decision we make. We get all the facts. We work through things.
We do the pros and cons and so on. We make a decision that's going to take us in this. It's a right decision. It's a good decision. It's a proper decision. But we don't know what the impact of that decision is going to be.
We may think we do. But how many times have you found you simply did not? We are incapable of even preserving our life. We don't have that control, that authority. We are incapable of protecting against every danger.
Sure, we take reasonable precautions. I mentioned a minute ago about the precautions we want to take with the COVID virus and so forth. But when all is said and done, we really can't protect against every danger, no matter how hard we try.
And we're incapable of changing the true nature of things, the true nature of life. And that, by the way, brings up the fourth area of uncertainty. We are uncertain about the frailty of our life, the length of our life, the end of our life.
And we're also uncertain over the real nature of our life. What I mean by that is what comes out in verse five. He says, Behold, thou hast made my days as in handbreadth. So from the standpoint of time, I am uncertain about just how broad my life is going to be.
You've made my days as in handbreadth. From the standpoint of time, my life is just a mere handbreadth. And specifically, that breadth is from, it's the palm breadth, from one side of the palm to the other.
It's not even the breadth of the extended hand, from thumb tip to little fingertip, which is far broader than the handbreadth. What's the point of that expression, that figurative expression of the handbreadth?
That I don't really have any certainty about how long my life is going to be. And from the standpoint of eternity, he goes on to say, He says, Mine age is as nothing before thee. It says nothing before thee.
So from the standpoint of eternity, my life is like nothing. Psalm 90 verse four talks about in the vantage point of eternity, from God's point of view, a thousand years is like a day that has passed.
A thousand years is like a day that has passed. What about my four score and ten? How quickly does that go by? This is the real nature of life, and yet we don't have a good grasp of it, do we? And then the real nature of life involves its impact.
And we don't really have a good grasp or certainty about the impact of our lives. The psalmist says, Verily or truly, every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Altogether vanity, meaning empty or poof.
What is the impact of my life? What is the legacy of my life? I may do my best to leave a great legacy, a good legacy behind, but 200 years from now, who will know? What will know? What will it be? We don't really know.
That's the uncertainty of the real nature of our lives. Well, you've also, as the psalmist has done, probably grappled with the agonies over that uncertainty of life, haven't you? So look at verse six.
He says, Surely, here are the agonies of life. He says, Surely, every man walks in a vain show. And that may need a little explanation of what he's talking about there, a vain show. I have a little marginal note in my Bible that says, the literal translation of that would be in an image.
It's like a mirror image or a phantom image, a ghost. The point being that's here and gone. Now you see him. Now you don't. What the psalmist is referring to here is the, and I know this sounds terribly depressing, but the apparent meaninglessness of our existence.
I mean, think about where you are from the standpoint of history. How many millions and millions of people have lived before you on this planet that you know absolutely nothing about? I mean, from the standpoint of your everyday life, they mean nothing to you.
It's not that they were, there is no meaning to their existence. There certainly is. They're made in the image of God and God had a purpose for their existence and so on and so forth. But from our perspective, from the standpoint of the uncertainty of life, one of the agonies of it all is what does it mean?
What does it all mean? And then he goes on to talk about the purposelessness of life as he continues. He says, surely they, man, are disquieted in vain. They're disquieted in vain. And what he means by that is we get all worked up over stuff that, well, does it really matter in the end?
Usually we get worked up over stuff that in the end doesn't matter. We got, we're all in a turmoil over acquiring the bigger, the newer, the greater, the more expensive, the latest, the hottest, or whatever, or making this happen or making that happen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
What is it over the last several days that you have gotten disquieted over and how much of it in the end really matters? I'm sure there were some things, but everything? He says, surely we are disquieted in vain.
And then the third expression of the agony of life's certainty is its profitless existence. He says, he heapeth up riches and he doesn't know who's going to get them. He knows not who will gather them.
This, you know, David's son, Solomon, when he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he spent much time talking about that. How a man may give his life and his labor to accumulate and so on and so forth. And, but then when he dies, he leaves it all behind.
And then what's going to happen to it? And what's going to happen to it? The profitless existence. Well, you've undoubtedly grappled with some of those, with some of those agonies of life's uncertainty.
But aren't you glad the psalmist doesn't leave us in the agonies and the uncertainties of life. He gives us some answers. He gives us some answers. And those are answers we must discover. And we find them in verses 7 through 13.
One of the answers to the struggle over the uncertainties of life is to accept the convicting work of the Lord. We see this in verses 9 through 11. He says, I was dumb. I opened not my mouth because thou didst it, you did it.
Remove thy stroke away from me. I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct a man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. And what the psalmist is getting at here is he sees the discomforts of his life that is making, that is throwing up in his face the uncertainties of life.
He sees those discomforts as the gracious work of God wooing him to himself. Drawing him to himself. Compelling him to turn away from himself and to God the Lord. So accept the convicting work of the Lord.
And then secondly, the answer to life uncertainty is simply to accept your condition before the Lord. He says at the end of verse 11, surely every man is a breath, is vanity. That word vanity doesn't mean, you know, like vanity fair.
It means literally wind, a breath. We need to accept that reality. And then we also need to accept the reality of verse 8 as to our condition as sinners. He says in verse 8, deliver me from all my transgressions.
David acknowledging here that he is a sinner. Which will then, should then lead us to call upon the Lord. Ask the Lord to save us. And here's where I'm going with that. In verse 7, he says, now Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope, my hope is in thee. There is no hope anywhere else. Oh, that it would that everyone who grappled with the uncertainty of life would come to this conclusion. That yes, my life is a breath. And I am a sinner that needs a savior.
Where else can I turn? My hope is only in the Lord. There is no hope apart from him. The only hope is found in him. See this in verse 8, where he says, deliver me, deliver me from my transgressions. And here is the grace of God working in the heart of one who, one who has sinned, transgressed.
To bring him to his knees and to call for deliverance. Verses 12 and 13, he says, hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were.
Oh, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. What's he doing here? He's appealing to the only source of hope in the uncertainties of life. Where else could he go? Where else can you go?
Where else can I go? We go to the Lord. Is he your savior? If he's your savior, you've trusted Christ as your savior and God in his grace has reached down from heaven and he has convicted you of your sin and you called upon, you turned up him and called upon him.
Well, you did so in the midst of the uncertainty of life and the uncertainty of the end of life where you would spend eternity. Well, as you still, as a believer, a follower of Christ, from time to time, you come to grapple with these realities of life's uncertainty.
Return to the only hope that we have in this brief life, our Lord, our God. Go to him, cry to him as he does, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Oh, that God would so work in our hearts that we would go to him frequently and beseech him to restore our strength, to restore our strength before we go away and are no more.
Our Father and our God, we thank you again for this psalm tonight that helps us to grapple with the uncertainties of life, to face them, to face them honestly and forthrightly. But then as we must always do, to turn to you, not in despair, not in a sense of foreboding and as if life is just nothing but dark and despondency, but to turn to you in hope.
Our hope is in thee, may that be so. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well, I trust the Lord will bless those thoughts to your heart tonight and that he will give you a good rest of your week.
As you go about your routine, your responsibilities each day and then if you can gather on the Lord's day in person, fine, if you're not comfortable with that, join us on live stream and we'll worship the Lord together.
We'll be looking at Jeremiah chapter 27 this Sunday, this Lord's day as a follow-up to the election and however, if there is a follow-up at that point, anything certain decided by then. Nevertheless, that's where we'll be this Lord's day if the Lord be willing.
So trust we'll see you then. Have a good night and God bless.
