Psalms 124 The Holy Hypothetical

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Don Filcek, The Psalms of Accent; Psalms 124 Psalms 124 The Holy Hypothetical

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.
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This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsack. Let's listen in.
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Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. We're going to go ahead and get started.
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So if you can find your seats, that would be helpful. So we kind of kick things into gear here. I'm glad that you have gathered together with God's people.
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And if it's your first time with us here, we welcome you. A special welcome to you. And I just want to say there's a free coffee mug over on the table there.
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You can just grab one of those on your way out the door. Again, just our way of saying thanks and glad that you have joined together.
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We recognize that visiting a new place for the first time can be a little bit of a stretch. So just thank you for being willing to give us a shot here and check us out.
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Remember that any of those offerings that are given that are marked expansion fund will go towards our eventual goal of building a building on the property that we purchased.
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And so this is obviously a temporary situation for us. We're very grateful for this space for us to meet in that the school has provided for us.
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And at the same time, hoping to, again, keep this temporary and eventually get into a building.
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How many of you had a chance to read my blog this week? Just curious about I think probably a handful of you.
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I would encourage you to go when the e -cast comes out this week to pay special attention to that blog.
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It's almost kind of a little bit of a state of the union of our church in a sense. Just kind of like where we're at and how things are going right now.
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And so I'm kind of in the midst of all this transition with Kyle's departure and different roles and things all going on.
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What that looks like. And I would ask this morning just by way of announcement, again, that gives more detail. So read the blog.
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I'm not going to re -read my blog to you up here. I don't know if I'm cutting out here or if you're cutting out back there.
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Okay. All right. Perfect. Please pray with us as we consider as we're looking and currently seeking an administrative assistant.
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That position has been posted. Part of the rationale and the reasoning for that need is to help us shore up processes to aid in what
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I think has been kind of weak. Honestly, I mean six years as a church and I mentioned this in the blog, but I think we've been weak in communication.
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And I think that hiring somebody for that specific position would shore up some of my weaknesses and help us keep more administratively organized.
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And so that's the goal in this position. In other words, part of that position is to help us get more stuff done.
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And that's one of the things that we've identified needs to happen. Resumes can be submitted to me and we're taking them from inside the church as well as outside.
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So if you know somebody who is administratively minded that's looking for a position, we're looking at about halftime as a part -time job.
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And so if you know somebody or if you yourself are interested, be willing to pray and ask
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God if it's his will that you might submit a resume for that. To clarify a couple of points on that new position, this does not replace
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Carissa as our office manager. It's a different type of role. Carissa has done a fabulous job for us in the office and will continue to do that as long as she's willing.
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And so that is not a replacement. Some people have asked that in the follow -up to the posting of that position.
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It is not to replace Carissa at all. Other positions that we are considering that do not yet have job descriptions is a director of children's ministry, a director of technology, and a director of youth ministry.
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None of this is set in stone, but this is what we're considering moving forward. And I want you to be aware of these things down the pipeline.
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There's a couple of other positions that might be worked into there as well. And again, these are all part -time positions.
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None of those are, I mean, it sounds like, well, I'm going to hire five full -time people. How's that going to work? That's not the case. So all right.
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With all that out of the way again, check out the blog that's going to give you a lot more detail than what I just said. And you can come and ask me questions.
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Some of you are a little bit more face -to -face, and you'd like to talk about those things. I'd love to talk with you more.
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Shifting gears to introduce the text this morning, Psalm 124. And I just want to ask you a question, a terrible, dire question.
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One that the text kind of smacks us in the face with right up front. And so I think we need to just consider it at its bare, ugly reality of the question.
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What if God were not in your life? What if he wasn't guiding you?
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What if God was not guarding you? What if God was not protecting you?
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I've heard many people say, and I think I've been guilty of actually this, something very similar to this phrase, if God wasn't in my life,
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I don't know where I would be. Have any of you ever said that? If God wasn't in my life, I don't know where I would be.
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And sometimes I think that we're just saying that. Sometimes I think we don't really think about the implications of that statement.
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Because the reality is, for most of us, what would life look like if God were not in it?
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We'd probably live our lives in the burbs. Maybe here in Matawan even. Our lives would be up and down.
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We'd seek to pay our bills, struggle with selfishness, get upset with our kids and our spouses from time to time, maybe shipwreck our family to some degree or another, take pride in our work, overeat and overspend.
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And my point is that if we're honest, what I just described doesn't sound too different than our lives today.
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If we're honest, it's just not that far off of where we live.
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When a person says, I just don't know where I'd be without God, do they think they'd be living out episodes of Breaking Bad?
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Is that what we mean when we say that? We'd be living that out. We'd be cooking meth. We'd be murdering people.
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I don't believe that the majority of the people in the room are murderers. I don't think that's the intent of your heart, that you'd be out slaying people if God wasn't in your life.
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Would you instantly be the dregs of society on Skid Row or on Death Row? Or, but our text this morning challenges us to think in terms of what
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I'm going to call in my title of my sermon is a holy hypothetical. The hypothetical of what if God wasn't for us?
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What if we were not kept in his care? But fortunately, the psalm doesn't linger there.
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It doesn't end there. But by the second half, it breaks free from considering the, what I would call the hypothetical darkness of our lives without God.
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And what breaks through in the second half is the reality that God is with us. And he has indeed provided deliverance for his people.
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Praise God that the story of God in history is moving from the darkness toward the light.
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From the fall of humanity into darkness, into brokenness, into sin. And from that place toward redemption, towards glory, towards majesty, towards an eternity with him.
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And this psalm is a psalm of rejoicing by the end. So listen to the joy and thankfulness of this psalm as we read it together.
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Psalm 124. If you're not already there, you can navigate in your app or your Bible or whatever.
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If you don't have a Bible or a device on your lap to read the Bible, then just please raise your hand. We're not trying to call you out.
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We just wanted to give you a Bible. So you can take advantage of that. Guys, thank you for being willing to pass those out.
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And you can take that home with you as well. We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. And I specifically like this translation. It's not magical.
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It's not mystical. It's not the only good one. But it happens to be my favorite. And if you don't have an English standard version of the
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Bible, then take one of those. There'll be a stack of them sitting on the table at the end of the service. You can have one. Psalm 124.
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Recast. This is God's Word to us this morning. This is what he designed for us to hear. And he has you here for a reason.
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And he wants you to hear this text. Psalm 124. A song of ascents of David.
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If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let
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Israel now say. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive when their anger kindled against us.
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Then the flood would have swept us away. The torrent would have gone over us.
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Then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the
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Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers.
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The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the
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Lord who made heaven and earth. Let's pray.
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The band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Fathers, we go through these psalms of ascent.
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We go through these psalms about a journey towards you. We are constantly, constantly, constantly being bombarded with the reality that our help comes from you.
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And that we are to turn to you in times of difficulty. Turn to you in times of stress. Last week's just very abundantly clear that we should come to you first and foremost with our problems.
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Then we come to this text and we get a backwards glance. An opportunity to having been delivered multiple times to look back at the blessings of our lives where we sit here right now because of a chain of events of your grace.
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A chain of events of your mercy. A chain of events by which you have helped us.
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So Father, I pray that we would lift our voices together as your people here this morning in gladness.
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Father, that you would speak to us through your word. You would speak to us even in the chosen songs this morning as we have an opportunity to reflect back on your praise and worship.
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Father, that we would have glad hearts before you. And that we would offer these songs up to you as worship this morning in Jesus' name.
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Be sure to have your Bibles open to Psalm 124. It's very helpful for you to have that open as I'm going to reference it.
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It's really my outline. I'm going to walk through the text verse by verse and thought by thought as every week. And so I'm having that available just to glance at from time to time is helpful.
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And then remember that if you need any more coffee or juice or donut holes, if there's any still left over there, you can take advantage of that or stretch out as I often say.
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Whatever it takes to keep our focus here on God's word is the main point. We think in all terms of all types of hypotheticals.
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I think the human mind can't help but process hypothetical questions from time to time. You know, some of these types of questions like, what if you didn't come to church this morning?
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Then what? What if you had been born to different parents? You ever thought that? I mean, you ever thought just that?
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It's a bizarre question, but just what if? What if you were born in a different country? What if you went to a different college?
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Or what if you went to college if you didn't? What if you, getting more serious, what if you never heard the gospel?
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Or what if you had heard the gospel and not believed it? Then further and deeper, what if God wasn't even for you?
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All of these are hypothetical questions and they have some common theme in that they're all past hypothetical questions.
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There are some types of hypothetical questions that are more future, and I don't mean to just kind of parse this out and try to get a little crazy on you, but there's a difference between asking past hypotheticals, what if I had done something different or something different had happened, versus the future is a little bit different.
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Those are things that we still have to work through. So what if I sell my house or what if I just add on? What if I stay in my current position or if I go?
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And so those are the types of hypotheticals. You don't know the answer. The point of a hypothetical question is you don't really know the answer to the question, right?
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You have some guesswork involved in it. And so there's a difference between past hypothetical questions and future ones.
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You might, for the future ones, you might weigh the pros and cons, right? They're decision -making questions. What if this happens, then this?
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What if this happens, then this? And we're kind of guessing at it, but you kind of think, well, I think it'll probably lean towards better for my family if we do this or worse for my family if we do this.
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And so you work through that. And my point being that there's all kinds of hypothetical questions that vary significantly in their importance and value for human life.
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It's all different kinds. I recognize that some of you work in the realm of hypothetical questions. Like, that's what you're hired to wrestle through and work with.
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Maybe there's something that we could do better in this process. And so you're, I mean, some of you are literally process engineers where you're going, well, this process doesn't work this way, but if we tweak it or change it here, then it's going to get better down the road.
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And so there's a hypothetical involved there. Like, I think if we make this decision in this process and take a turn here and do it different next time, it'll work out better.
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But for most of us who process these types of past tense hypotheticals, they're often whimsical and not very productive if we're honest.
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Sometimes they're born out of a dissatisfaction with our lives. What if I had done something different? Or what if something different had happened to me in a passive sense?
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And we can have a bit of a longing involved in these questions where we can kind of get nostalgic about past decisions and go, man, it would be so different right now if, if something was different.
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If, if, if. Some of us in the room are more concrete thinkers and we may find hypothetical questions to be silly and childish even.
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As if all hypothetical questions amount to, what if Bilbo Baggins never left his hobbit hole?
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What then? Or what if Darth Vader didn't destroy the Emperor? And, I mean, we're talking no balance to the force, people.
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I'm sure that somebody out there has blogged or written or has a, a website dedicated to this out in geekdom.
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I'm, I'm one of them. But there's somebody out there who's written on this, you know, just kind of what, what if? What if?
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And that would be a great book, you know. That's a serious question. But the first five verses of our text propose an actual answer to a hypothetical question from the past.
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A question that you and I don't have the skill to answer. And only God Almighty Himself can answer these questions.
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What if things were not this way? Think that through.
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Only God Himself can really answer that question fully and He's going to propose to answer a past hypothetical question.
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And although the question is not stated with a question mark at the end of the sentence, it's implied significantly all throughout this text.
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And the question is simply this. What if God wasn't for you? What if God wasn't with us?
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What if God was not on our side? What if He didn't care about you and me? What then?
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I call this question a holy hypothetical because in the answer, the text of Scripture shows us that not all hypothetical questions are worthless.
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Because this question results in praise. It results in an emotional outburst of gratitude.
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It is a hypothetical question that is worth asking and further, is worth answering. Verse one of our psalm begins,
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If it had not been the Lord who was on our side. It had not been the
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Lord who was on our side. And then the songwriter interrupts himself. He literally like just steps out of the song for just a second and interrupts us.
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As if you can imagine Josh getting up to sing and he begins to lead us in a song and nobody's singing.
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Hold on a second. Let's go back to that line and let's start over again. Recast. Sing with me now. Sing with me.
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Say it with me. Sing with me. And he interrupts himself.
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The pause at the end of verse one is dramatic. It's intentional. In a time when scroll and parchment and paper and ink, all of that was extremely valuable.
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He took the time to write it twice. He said, repeat it with me. So the pause is dramatic because what he has just said in the opening line needs to settle on us with a heavy weight.
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And I fear that oftentimes we can hit the beginning of a psalm. We can hit the beginning of a verse and we can skip right over and move to the meat of the text.
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And so it would be very easy for us to brush these, this question, this, this concept or this hypothetical off to the side.
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If the Lord, what if the Lord wasn't for us? What if he wasn't with us? But don't brush those words aside.
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The psalmist starts our text this morning with what ought to be a devastating thought to all with an earshot.
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It ought to be a weight on our shoulders. It ought to be heavy on you when you hear that. When you, when you begin to process the question that he's asking, it should be heavy and difficult.
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We're brought to the place of considering what is implied in the text. Certainly says, what if God wasn't on our side? And the flip side of that is equally valid in the text.
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What if he was against you? What if he was against you? You see, we might only think in terms of, about the psalm in terms of God is on our team, right?
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But the reality is that God is on the side of truth. God is, hear me carefully.
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God is always on the side of truth. And we, either we are with him in the truth or we are opposing the truth and therefore on the opposite team.
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As unpopular as that is to say, and I would even suggest to you a step further that there are areas in your life and mine where we are indeed opposed to God.
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Because we are not on the side of truth there yet. So it doesn't just cut down the room.
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We could divide the room in those who are on the side of truth and those who aren't. What's in our hearts. There's a division in our hearts about areas that we've yielded over.
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Where areas of our lives where, how many of you have ever identified a lie that you have believed that's caused sin in you?
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I have. I've seen it. I've seen it within the last 24 hours. Lies that I believe that have led to sin.
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And so I, you know, you have these, this side of truth and the side of untruth or lies.
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And some would like to think that God is not taking sides. Many in our culture would, would, would just completely wretch at the thought of what
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I'm up here preaching right now. God is on a side. It's on the side of truth.
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And yet I would say that when people would, would be, would, would kind of reject or kind of recoil at the notion that God is on someone's side.
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I understand where they're going with that. It is strictly true that God isn't on my side or God isn't on your side.
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God isn't looking around for those who are mostly right. Well, I guess, you know, I got to pick the
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Christians because they're the closest. Because if he's looking for a team to join, didn't get selected.
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So he's picking, you know, he's like, well, I got to find a team for myself. Hear me carefully.
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God is always true. And only those who are being transformed by the truth are with God.
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So this notion has to be dealt with in the text where it, where it literally says, if the
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Lord was not on our side, I want to be careful and clarify. God is not an ace pitcher that we can add to the rotation during a key start.
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Boy, we got a key start coming up. How many of you are going to be watching that key start? Okay, Tigers. Anybody even know what
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I'm, a couple of you? Nope. Wow. Sorry. It's, it's written in here.
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So I'm going to stick with the baseball illustration. But maybe I'll just kind of edit that out later. And, and note to self, baseball doesn't fly very well.
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It does with my wife. She's, she's up there. Yeah, good feedback. Yeah, eye contact. It's like, it's like looking at, looking at the roster, looking at the team.
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And, you know, we're going to be opposing some teams this, this year, the Tigers. And they're going to be looking and they're going to be like, you have
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Scherzer. Okay. Some, did you guys know that somebody else has Scherzer now? And at the same time, it would be like me saying, well, yeah, you've got
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Scherzer. But wait till you see who my ace pitcher is. God's on my team. He's not on my team in that way.
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He's the inventor of the game. He's the owner, the manager. And by his grace, he invites us to join with him.
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If we will humbly set down our own equipment. And accept his invitation to play his sport according to his rules.
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By his grace, he invites us in. So just to clarify the use of the phrase that the
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Lord is on our side. I want to suggest to you that that's often a criticism of Christians out in our culture. Oh, you just think, you know,
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God's on your team. That's what you think. And it's a significant criticism.
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And it is indeed a genuine issue if we're out in the community. If we're in our workplace espousing and putting forward the air of arrogance.
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That well, you know, well, you can do whatever you want. But you're on, you know, think about who your team manager is.
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The evil one. How many of you think that that might be a stench to our culture and to our society around us?
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As if God's my buddy. He signed, you know, he signed the contract. He's with me. But I do think, as much as I'm pulling back from that.
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That this is an internal conversation to be had here within the confines of the church. And here within the body of believers.
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And those who are called by his name. And those who indeed are his children. That he is for you. That he does love you.
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That he is indeed for you. And wants what is best for his children.
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In a way that is intended to give us hope and courage for the future. Even in dark times and difficulties.
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He does indeed love his children. You see, if God were not for us, the songwriter says.
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A lot of bad things would have happened to us by now. Now the context of this song is obviously
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Israel. And we need to snap our minds into focus here. And think about who specifically was this written about in its original context.
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And it's, it's Israel. And it's easy to tell from the
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Old Testament. That there were plenty of situations. Plenty of times in Israel's history. That there were significant threats posed to them as a nation.
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You can go through the Old Testament and read a lot of them. You have that whole Exodus Egypt Red Sea thingy.
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Where they're up, their back is against the Red Sea. The Egyptians are pressing in. Anger, rage, wanting to annihilate the
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Jews. And then the Red Sea opens and they walk through. Were it not for the Lord on their side, what would have happened?
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They would have been crushed. Destroyed. They had no means to defend themselves. And yet God proved himself to be for them.
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You have famines that occurred. Where God led people in the patriarchs to Egypt for a season.
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And for a time to be preserved from famines. You have the whole Esther with Haman's decree. To extinguish all the
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Jews from the face of the planet. And saved in the last moment. You have the exile and deportations to Assyria and Babylon in Israel's history.
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Which could have meant, spelled the end of them as a people. Not to mention
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David and Goliath. And all the running battles with the Philistines. And times and decades where they were subjugated by the other tribes around them.
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Many, many times where it looked like they were going to be thoroughly and completely wiped out. So to nail down a specific context that the songwriter has in mind.
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It isn't really very helpful. It's very difficult to tell. And I think maybe intentionally he's generic about this.
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Certainly the types of situations the psalmist is writing about were pretty dire. Because the terminology he's going to use here is significant.
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He goes into great detail with a lot of picturesque language. To illustrate the danger that he, that has been averted.
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He in general refers to it as mankind that rose up against them. Look at verse 2. Go ahead and look down at your
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Bibles for a second. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us.
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The word people in verse 2 is a translation of the word Adam.
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It means humankind. Mankind. It's the actual name of the first dude that God created.
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And then equally it is used as a collective word for all of people or humanity.
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If the songwriter had wanted us to think more specifically. Or had wanted to key in on a specific time of history.
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He would have easily said when the Philistines rose up against us. Or when the Egyptians rose up against us.
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Or when the Persians rose up against us. But I think in his desire for, it's his desire for us to apply this to our situation.
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And therefore he kept it general. He wanted to make sure that we weren't thinking too narrowly about this notion. Of people rising up against the people of God.
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But he just said you know when people rise up against you. When mankind rises up against you. If God were not for us.
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The text goes on to say they would have swallowed us alive. One gulp and we'd be gone.
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Interestingly in poetry this author is speaking about enemies. And I don't think it's a stretch to turn our mind to the enemy of God's people.
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The evil one Satan himself. In first Peter Satan is called a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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That's the Greek word for swallow alive. Swallow whole. Here we have the Hebrew word for swallow alive.
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Swallow whole. And I believe it's intentionally similar in the text. Who is our enemy?
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Who is it that rises up against us? Some of us may look at our lives right now and say.
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Don this is an interesting bit of history. I can read the psalm. I can read the song. We can understand the poetry.
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We can dissect it to some degree. Try to get the feeling of it. Try to get a sense of desperation or a sense of gratitude.
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But Don I don't have any enemies. Thankfully I don't have anyone rising up against me.
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I don't have anyone whose anger is kindled against me. There's nobody seeking to devour me.
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And you would be deceived. You would be believing a lie if you are sitting there thinking
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I have no enemies. You have one. At least who would love your demise?
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Who would love your moral failure? Who would love you to destroy your family?
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Who would love to destroy your career? Who would love to bring you down and sink you in a mire of your own sin and corruption?
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You have an enemy. You see at the end of verse one, go back there for a second.
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Look at it. The songwriter tells God's people, he says join in. If it had not been the
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Lord who was on our side, let, let, pause. Let Israel now say. Come on guys repeat it with me he says.
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Join in with this. Because the songwriter wants to lead us in a way of thinking.
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The people of God are told by the word of God what to say and even think about their circumstances.
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Did you hear me? Scripture is telling you how to think. Scripture is telling you how to process and think through what's going on in your life around you.
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That's a lot of gumption to tell you what to think. I mean you can see, you're like I can see. I can hear. I can smell. I can taste.
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I've got these five senses. I can take in. I have a pretty good idea what's going on at my workplace. Scripture's saying there's something else going on at your workplace.
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Scripture says there's something else going on in your neighborhood. Scripture says there's something else going on in your relationships with people.
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And if it were not for God, you'd be destroyed. That's what he is saying.
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He's saying say it like this. Say it this way. If God wasn't for you, you would be toast.
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Say it that way. Or we might, in the weaker moments in processing lies and thinking through the way that we perceive our life, man, you know, if it wasn't for my people skills, yeah
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I'd have some rough life if it wasn't for my skills in interacting and social situations or if it wasn't for my savvy and my ability to kind of get the boss on my team or whatever or to smooth that over with my neighbor or whatever you think you are doing in that situation.
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God says no, say it this way. It wasn't for me. You'd be toast.
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Be over. He's leading us in a way of thinking.
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Sometimes we desperately need to speak reality to ourselves and that's what this Psalm is purported to do.
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Say it with him. Speak it with him. We indeed have enemies and they would destroy you and me.
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Were it not for God's merciful presence with us. And the text gets detailed. They'd destroy us in every which way.
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Every which way. They would swallow us up alive. They would have swept us away like a flood.
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The torrents would be so deep that you would have no hope of resurfacing like your ears would pop.
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You'd be so far down there under the waves and under the water that there would be no hope of rescue. You couldn't get to the surface before your lungs would expire.
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You'd be so buried in life. You'd be so far right over your head you would never recover.
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We would be battered by the rage of the waters, the text says. Obviously the songwriter is piling on pictures from verses three to seven.
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Just piling on picture after picture. Metaphor after metaphor. Even mixing some metaphors in the process.
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Some that we have a hard time connecting with. Even this concept of waters we might struggle with to some degree.
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But the illustrations serve a purpose beyond just saying that we'd be toast. Beyond just saying we'd be busted.
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Beyond just saying that we'd be down for the count. But in these metaphors the enemy snaps further into focus.
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Who is this enemy? The waters were a terrifying thing in the ancient world. They were a metaphor for unseen forces of chaos and darkness.
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One thing that you need to understand is something that maybe is missed on us to some degree. You probably haven't heard much mentioned about it.
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But the fact of the matter is Israel lived next to a massive body of water. Have you ever thought about that?
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The Mediterranean Sea is a huge body of water. They have a coast. We don't think about that in terms you think about the maybe when you think of Israel you think of the desert.
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You think of the high place. You think of the Judean wilderness and dry places or the
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Salt Sea or something like that or the Sea of Galilee. But very rarely I think my mind doesn't often turn to the coast.
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But all of my point being that they had an understanding in their culture and in their history in this ancient context of the deep waters.
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So that at times I mean imagine in the history of this again unscientific ancient culture.
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How many of you think that there were times when somebody got pulled under the water by something and never returned? And they would have no way of processing whatever that thing was under the water.
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It'd be a little terrifying to you. Would that make a trip? What if all that you knew was that once in a while somebody goes to South Haven and disappears and never returns?
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Would that make a trip to the beach different for you? So that you understand this culture to be a fear of water was significant in this time and in this place.
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You really think about it with their technology and what they had available to them they only knew the first few meters under the water.
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Maybe. No idea what else is under there. So the trip to South Haven.
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I've never once swam in South Beach over there and in South Haven and thought man
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I hope they're watching out for sharks. I hope that there's none there's no great whites in here today and scared of man you know
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Portuguese man of war jellyfish I'm gonna get stung by one or whatever. How many of you are grateful that you have a pretty good taxonomy of different life aquatic life in the
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Great Lakes? Pretty good understanding. Wouldn't like to see you know one of those lamprey things whatever
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I but now I gave you something to think about. But by and large you just don't have a whole lot to worry about over there do you?
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Not alligators, crocodiles, none of that business in the water you don't have a whole lot. So our trip to the beach is kind of pleasant compared to some.
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So the images of water indicate forces of darkness to this poetic the culture of poetry in this era in this time.
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Fear and chaos would all be a component of this discussion of water. Without God they would be easy prey to forces both mankind stated as well as the unseen forces of darkness and evil and chaos and fear.
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So in these first five verses we see the reality that scripture gives us of a life without God and it is not a pretty picture.
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It is that you both have unseen invisible forces of darkness against you as well as seen forces of darkness against you.
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Mankind, humanity we gain a language to use for the mercy of God as we talk about the darkness as we talk about that which we've been rescued from it gives us some language to communicate his mercy and to think about what he has lavished upon us.
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And as dark as these first five verses are we are not left wondering is there any hope because the hypothetical nature of the verbs in verses one and two should have clued us into what's coming.
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If it had not been the Lord, if it had not been the Lord. We only talk about the darkness in these first five verses as if to talk about what would have been if it had not been the
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Lord who was on our side. And then the turn is expressed in verse six.
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It's a turn in the text from the darkness towards the light. Blessed be the
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Lord, he has not given us up to their teeth. He has not given us up to be devoured.
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God could have let their enemies triumph over them and even at times in Israel's history he he did.
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And so we know that this psalm is to be uttered in the good times when we can sense and see the hand of God's deliverance in our past.
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Last week we saw a psalm of fixing our eyes on the Lord seeking mercy when we are experiencing scorn and contempt.
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But now this psalm is a song expressing gratitude and thanks for deliverance by the hand of God.
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Verse seven uses a strong metaphor for the escape that we have been granted. Like a bird caught in a net, the net has been broken and we have flown free.
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Now to those of us in the room, I'm guessing it's most of us, most of us wouldn't have a clue how to catch a bird without a shotgun.
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Okay, they didn't have shotguns then. Some of you are like, yeah, with a shotgun, no problem. No shotguns. So how do you catch a bird?
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How do you do that? Okay, not your pet. Talking about a wild bird outside. The illustration might be a little underwhelming to you like it is to me at first glance.
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Seems a little unfair. Seems like the, I'm gonna go with one of us trying to with our hands out in the parking lot catch a bird.
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I'm gonna go with the bird 99 times out of 10. Maybe one of you has a specific skill
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I don't know about. But majority of the time I'm gonna put my money on the bird. It's getting away from you. Okay, so when he gives this illustration, like a bird escapes from a fowler, a person who's trying to catch it.
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I'm going, yeah. So you're saying it's easy to escape. It's easy to get away from our enemies, right?
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Is that what the illustration is? Well, I think we have a notion that that's probably not it. So we need to understand a little bit about what in the world is this business of a fowler.
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What was, what did that mean in ancient times? So a quick explanation of ancient fowlers is in order.
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A fowler being someone who's in the art and the craft of catching birds. Because I know you came this morning with a burning desire in your heart to better understand ancient practices of fowling.
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I'm gonna, I'm gonna oblige you and help you out with that. So I know some of you are like rapt attention, like your pen's ready to take notes.
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Egypt, ancient Egypt had fowling down to a science. Remember, Israel comes out of ancient Egypt and so a lot of the practices would have rubbed off on them and they would have had some knowledge of this.
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But they had it down to a science. They were very efficient at catching birds, the ancient Egyptians. They had all kinds of, and we have pictures and documents and even on, even on some of the tombstones of, he was an excellent fowler.
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And here's a picture of his practices and things like that. And so it was a very big deal then. Of course, why would you be wanting to catch birds?
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Yum, right? I mean yum, that's the point. And so there was a big business in birds.
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So one of the traps that, one typical type of snare was a spring -loaded trap laid on the ground about five feet wide in a circle.
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And by pressure it would actually enclose. A net, independent of that trap, was then laid over the top of that, corn sprinkled in the middle.
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As soon as birds like to eat the corn, the trap underneath the net snaps and the birds are caught in the net.
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An ingenious thing. I mean some of you are like thinking through, engineering -wise, like how would that work? You know, no batteries necessary.
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No, not electrical, just wood that's actually taunt and bent so that it's got some pressure there.
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So when the bird lights, snap. And then what happens as the bird, the bird gives some assistance at this point in the trapping process because what does it do?
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It tries to escape. And as it tries to escape, it gets more and more and more entangled in the net to assure that it's not going to escape.
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A bird in this state, a bird in ancient times caught in a snare was toast or fried.
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Extra crispy, I don't know. Or you know, the colonel's special recipe in a pinch, kind of go extra extra crispy when
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I can. What time is it? It's getting close to lunchtime here.
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I only say any of this to demonstrate that what the text is trying to say is it's indicating our status when
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God set us free. What was your status? A bird in a snare. You've been caught.
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You're trapped. Our status when
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God came to us and offered rescue was hopeless. God, our only hope of escape.
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I guess I could probably say fairly, our goose was cooked. But the snare is broken.
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The snare is broken and we've escaped, the text says. And to make it clear that we don't get credit, it's not like we were savvy enough, we were trapped, we were stuck in the net and boy did we just, you know, our beak was sharp.
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We had sharpened it for just a moment like this so we could bite right through the net and get out. Wow, we're so awesome.
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Or man, I've been pumping iron, you know, I've been fighting. Flying a lot. Man, my wings are so strong, just tore the net in half, man.
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No, what does the text say? It concludes by giving credit for his freedom to the
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Lord. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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How did we get out of that net? Our help is in the name of the
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Lord, the creator of everything. We've been set free. God, the maker of all things, ran a jailbreak for us.
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He's kept us from the teeth of our enemies. He has kept us from being devoured. He has kept us from being overwhelmed by the flood that would have swept us away.
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If it had not been for the Lord who was on our side, let recast now say, if it had not been the
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Lord who was on our side, we'd be in a terrible place without hope.
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So I have three points of application for us to consider from this text. Three things that have struck me.
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You may have something else that the Holy Spirit is laying on your heart. Maybe it's just simply, and it's not necessarily on here, but one that I thought of after the fact was just, what's the corn look like for you?
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What's the corn that attracts you into the snare? What is it that grabs your attention? What is it that brings you back to go to that place where you get trapped again?
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I think all of us have those kinds of things. But these are the three applications. Acknowledge how bad it would really be.
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Text tells us it would be bad for you and me. Were it not for the Lord, it would be terrible if the
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Lord was not on your side. I hope you've been around scripture long enough to know that things don't always go peachy and rosy for God's people.
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You've been listening to my preaching. If you've been actually hearing it, then you know that that's not the case, especially as we went through 1
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Peter. There are times where we experience floods. There are times when we experience contempt.
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There are times when we experience the anger of our enemies. There are times when we are caught in the snares of our enemy.
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But where would your life be without God? I suggest to you that the Christian doesn't avoid more trouble than the average person.
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But when in the midst of trouble, they have someone to turn to. And when the trouble is resolved, they have someone to thank.
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Someone to thank. Without the Lord, it's my testimony.
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Here it is in a nutshell. According to the text, it is my testimony. You can borrow it because it's true of you.
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Without the Lord, I would be hopeless. I would be helpless. I would have no purpose or foundation upon which to base any decisions in my life.
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And I would be trying to do this life alone. I don't think
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I'd be a criminal. Maybe. I don't think so. But I would certainly be overwhelmed by the flood.
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I would be swept away towards destruction. I would be swallowed by the enemy.
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I'd be given to the teeth of my enemy. And the only thing on the horizon would be the just and righteous judgment of Almighty Holy God.
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And you know what's worse? I think that probably in that state, were it not for God, to the rest of the world,
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I would probably look fairly successful and happy. I think that's the reality for most of us.
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It'd be very few of us that would completely be in the gutter. Few of us that would be completely on skid row.
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Few of us. But what would we be doing? Spinning our wheels. Just spinning our wheels in life.
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Trying to get ahead. Trying to climb the corporate ladder. Trying to do it all in our own strength.
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And all that would be real and true of us is that we're destined for destruction. That's the miserable state of many people in our society.
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Many people in your neighborhoods. Many people who you work with. Recast, are we sharing?
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Are we declaring that as we watch people, you watch them in your workplace, you hear their testimonies of how they are caught in the net and they are swirling around and they're telling you what they did last
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Friday night and they're telling you about the nasty divorce they're going through and they're crying out for help and they're saying, this net is getting tighter and I keep trying and I keep working and I'm not getting anywhere.
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And you know the answer. You know Jesus is standing by saying, I can break this snare like that.
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You have the answer. You've just heard it from me. Maybe some of you are here and you're saying, that sounds like my life.
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I'm the one caught in the snare. I'm there and I haven't received freedom and I haven't found, and I keep trying and I keep striving.
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Getting ahead of myself because that's coming up. The first point, acknowledge how bad it really would have been.
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How bad it would be for you. The second, is that our help is in the name of the
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Lord. Our help, if it had not been for the Lord who was on our side.
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I've said this many times, but there are so many places that we could turn for help. But our help, the text says, is in the name of the
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Lord. And so, as I've said multiple times during the sermon series, this week, turn to the
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Lord for your help. If it had not been for the Lord, if it had not been the
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Lord who was on our side, what if it had been alcohol that was on our side? What if it had been pleasure that was at our side?
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What if it was our financial means that was on our side? Or any number of silly things that people turn to and hope, all the while caught thrashing in the net.
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But the songwriter ends with a solid emphasis. For the people of God, where is your hope?
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Where is your help? Our help is in the name of the Lord. And lastly,
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I'd like to make explicit the connection between Jesus Christ and this very psalm of deliverance.
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One day, we will stand before God on a final day of justice and judgment. And on that day,
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I'm sure that we will see more clearly than ever that if the Lord Jesus Christ was not on our side, none of us would stand on that day.
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We would be swept away in judgment. We'd all be in over our heads.
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We would be handed over to eternal judgment. The condition of our hearts as broken, sinful humans is like a bird caught in a snare.
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And I think the most devastating reality of all is that the more we try to rescue ourselves, that is, the more we turn to religion and doing good things and we get tangled in our ways.
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And that makes it harder. To see that the solution is standing by, just waiting for us to turn to Him in faith and ask
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Him, please set me free. Jesus can break the snares that are binding you.
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If you're here and you feel trapped and ensnared by sin, maybe you're trapped by your own self -improvement projects.
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Maybe you're trapped by your own attempts to get out of the snare yourself. Maybe you're just trapped by trying to fix it all yourself.
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Maybe you've taken, just taken the bait that your evil and cunning enemy has laid out for you and now you feel helpless and hopeless.
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If that's you, I'm going to ask you to take a bold step and come and talk with me this morning. Come up and talk to me at the end of the service and let me know if you're here and you're saying,
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I don't have that kind of freedom. I mean, the idea of a bird flying away from a snare does not sound like my life.
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Struggling and wrestling with the net, that's where I'm at right now. If that's you, I want to talk with you. I want to pray with you.
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I want to help you work through that together. We come to communion each week to consider the freedom that was purchased for us at the cross.
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Jesus was ensnared for you and me. He was given over to the wrath that we had coming for us so that we could indeed be truly free.
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The ultimate snare of the enemy, by the way, is sin and death. And Jesus Christ broke that snare through his sinless life and resurrection, which we'll be celebrating next week.
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And in the sacrifice of Jesus, we have escaped the clutches of evil. But Jesus told his followers to take some wine and some bread and to drink it and eat it as often as they gathered in remembrance of him.
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So let me remind you that as we take communion and come to the tables, Joshua's gonna come and lead us in a song here in just a moment, that this is a remembrance and it's for those who are truly remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their behalf.
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If you're here and you do not believe Jesus is Lord and you haven't asked him to save you and you haven't been granted that freedom yet, then please skip communion and just take in this song.
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If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let recast now say it.
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If it had not been the Lord. Let's pray. Father, all kinds of bad things would be reality.
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Certainly not the most wicked things we can imagine and the most wicked things we could conceive of would be true of each one of us were it not for you and simultaneously we recognize that our destiny would be far different.
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Our lives would be lived vastly different. Our purpose would be non -existent were it not for you.
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Father, I pray that if there's any in the room who are doubting that statement that you would convict them in their heart of the pride that they are experiencing right now of saying, no, that's not me.
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I'm actually a pretty good person. Father, even that is a snare that the evil one would use in our lives right now to wrap us up in pride and help us to walk out of here without the point.
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The point being that you love us and that our only hope for freedom from the snares of the evil one, the snares of our enemies, is you.
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Father, I pray that you would provide victory for our congregation, for us as individuals. Father, there are some here who are just wrestling significantly against the nets that are holding them.
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Father, I pray that there would be a yielding in our hearts even this morning as we come to the table of communion recognizing that this is a faith of submission to the work of Jesus Christ and I pray that that reality would be true for all of us, that we would take a rest from our striving to overcome and we would turn our eyes to the overcomer,
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Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. I pray that that would be reality for us this week, in Jesus' name, amen.