A Message For The Heavy-Hearted - [Psalm 6]

Bethlehem Bible Church

1 view

April 24, 2016

00:00: It is a pleasure for me to be with you to be speaking from this pulpit. I consider your pastor to be a friend, of course, a co -laborer in the gospel of Christ.
00:10: And I am very grateful for the work of Christ that goes forth from this church.
00:15: And so as I step into this pulpit, I feel like I'm stepping before friends, fellow believers in Christ.
00:22: And it's a delight for me to be able to open God's word for you here today. It's interesting, and you never completely know exactly what the
00:31: Lord is going to do in the preaching of his word. But soon after Mike extended the invitation to me, my heart was drawn to preach to you from Psalm 6 this morning.
00:42: And I invite you to turn to Psalm 6. It's not a particularly familiar psalm, but I believe that by the time we're finished here today, you are going to be very glad to be acquainted with it, because it is one of those psalms that echoes and resonates with the believing heart that is going through times of sorrow and difficulty, that find difficulty in giving expression in word.
01:09: And certainly even in being able to express them to others, because sometimes the difficulties of our spiritual lives and the longings of our heart are so deep that it's hard to even put them into words, let alone to be vulnerable enough to open them up to other people.
01:28: Well, what we find in Psalm 6 is that which gives us voice before the throne of God, voice before the throne of grace to be able to navigate our way through those kinds of deep waters.
01:42: And so I'm delighted to be able to open God's word for you. Psalm 6, I'm going to read it as we begin.
01:50: Here is Psalm 6, beginning in verse 1. I preach out of the new American standard, as I'm doing here today.
01:56: For the choir director with stringed instruments upon an eight -stringed lyre, a psalm of David.
02:03: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath. Be gracious to me,
02:10: O Lord, for I am pining away. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are dismayed, and my soul is greatly dismayed.
02:19: But you, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, rescue my soul, save me because of your loving kindness.
02:28: For there is no mention of you in death, and she, O, who will give you thanks? I'm weary with my sighing.
02:35: Every night I make my bed swim. I dissolve my couch with my tears.
02:43: My eye has wasted away with grief. It has become old because of all my adversaries.
02:49: Depart from me, all you who do iniquity. For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.
02:55: The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord receives my prayer. All my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed.
03:03: They shall turn back. They will suddenly be ashamed. I don't mind telling you that I have lived through the spirit of this psalm on multiple occasions, and so I sympathize with those, and I have a particular longing in my heart for those of you who may be going through periods of deep discouragement or grief.
03:28: And it's with that sense of pastoral longing for your well -being, that sense of hopefully sympathetic understanding with the difficulties that can come to a believing soul, that I stand before you to preach to you this morning.
03:44: Psalm 6 is a prayer of deep sorrow. It is a psalm that applies to anyone who is seeking relief from the
03:54: Lord, regardless of the circumstances of what may be prompting the depths of your heart here this morning.
04:03: Psalm 6 speaks to that and transcends the circumstances that engender those difficulties with eternal truth about God that gives us the confidence and the willingness and beloved market closely, gives us the trust to come to Him and to open our hearts before Him in believing and grieving prayer.
04:26: And there's two principles that I want to draw out of this psalm for you, not by way of command to tell you this is what you must do in your grief, rather by way of invitation to say this is who your
04:40: God is. This is what your God is like to you in your sorrow and to invite you to approach
04:46: Him in trusting, believing, outpouring of your heart before Him in prayer.
04:54: First of all, what can we say about this psalm? This psalm teaches us that God hears cries of grief.
05:04: God hears cries of grief. As David opens this psalm, his suffering is more than he can bear.
05:12: His soul is overwhelmed within him and there is no relief on the horizon that would give him cause to think that something circumstantial would change in order to bring about the relief that he needs.
05:27: Look at verses 1 and 2 with me. He opens his prayer, Now, some people treat this, some commentators will treat this as a penitential psalm, saying that David here is confessing sin and that's what's provoking the outpouring of his broken heart as he opens the psalm.
06:01: I respect those men, but I disagree with them as they interpret the psalm in this way because in this psalm,
06:08: David, there is no confession of sin that follows. There is no acknowledgment of iniquity or transgression or,
06:17: Lord, I have strayed in this particular way in what we see. Rather, what you find is a man who is in grief with a deep, chronic problem.
06:28: He is deeply discouraged. And while sometimes that may be engendered by unconfessed sin in the life, that's not what we really see here laid out for us in Psalm 6.
06:40: David is simply profoundly discouraged as he comes before the Lord in this prayer.
06:47: And what he's saying here in these opening verses is, God, don't deal with me in displeasure.
06:54: God, don't deal harshly with me here as I come to you now because I'm broken,
07:01: I'm discouraged, this is beyond my strength. And so he opens the psalm with an appeal to grace to say,
07:12: Oh, God, deal with me gently, deal with me kindly as I come to you.
07:19: Use your grace to soften this situation because I am at the end of my rope.
07:27: God, I'm broken. He's beside himself to such a point that his body aches with the emotional anguish that he is feeling.
07:37: Look at verse 2 with me again. He says, Lord, heal me for my bones are dismayed.
07:44: You know what that's like, don't you? You've felt that in times gone by, where the sorrow of grief, the sorrow of a broken relationship, maybe the sorrow from sin, and it just aches and you just feel the weight of it inside so that it almost affects you physically.
08:03: This is the kind of depth of emotional sorrow that David is describing as he opens his psalm.
08:10: God, this is shaking me. This drives down to the marrow of my bones and,
08:17: Oh, God, I need you to be gracious to me, especially right now. And that's how he opens and he appeals to him.
08:25: He feels the physical weight of it, but he especially highlights the inner struggle of his soul without giving us really any idea of what the specific background of it is.
08:38: Look at verse 3 with me. He says, And my soul is greatly dismayed, but you,
08:45: O Lord, how long? He says, God, I feel this in my bones, and my heart is broken and it's overturned, and my soul is greatly dismayed within me as I come and as I approach you, as I'm writing this psalm, as I open my heart before you,
09:04: O God. I'm here not in a very impressive condition. I'm not here to proclaim,
09:13: Look at how great my soul is, God. I am shattered as I come before you.
09:20: I know that some of you have felt that, probably some of you going through it. I'm not in that time of life right now for which
09:29: I'm grateful, but I've been in those times, and I remember times where I fall down on my knees and all
09:35: I could do was weep because of the sorrow that was gripping my heart at the time.
09:41: Well, beloved, sooner or later, some level of that experience comes in even to the life of believers.
09:49: It is a detestable aspect of charismatic theology to promise people health and wealth and prosperity when sorrow and trials are bound to come to every believing life.
10:04: And when you have empty promises of prosperity that don't prove to be true, where do you turn then?
10:10: Where do you go to God when that was your expectation? Well, first of all, you discard and you abandon that kind of false theology, and then you come and you see what
10:21: Scripture says, and what you find is that God is a God who is willing to hear cries of grief from His people.
10:28: He graciously, kindly, sympathetically receives us in those kinds of times.
10:37: Look at verse 3. There's a grammatical aspect of the text here that just gives you a sense of what
10:45: David is describing. He says there in verse 3, My soul is greatly dismayed, but you,
10:52: O Lord, how long? He doesn't even complete his sentence.
10:58: He is so overwhelmed that he doesn't even finish the thought. His emotions are so intense as he gives this prayer before God that even his words fail him.
11:14: What does he do? Notice something very significant about it.
11:19: This is not about, this text is not about putting human emotions on display so much as pointing to what the answer to that kind of human despair is.
11:30: And look at how David addresses God here in these opening verses.
11:36: You'll see it five times in verses 1 through 4. He addresses Him with what the text here has,
11:42: O Lord. In other words, the Hebrew name Yahweh, that name which calls forth the covenant -keeping, promise -keeping, faithfulness of God to His people.
11:54: He appeals, O God, my covenant -keeping God, my faithful God, the
12:01: God who promises to bless His people, I call out to You, I apply to You in the midst of my sorrow.
12:10: And he says there in verse 4, look at what he's asking for. He says, Return, O Lord, rescue my soul.
12:17: Save me because of Your lovingkindness. He uses that five times.
12:23: He uses that name five times in the first four verses. Be gracious to me.
12:30: Save me because of Your lovingkindness. What's he saying? What's he saying when he prays this way?
12:41: God, my bones are broken. My heart is overturned within me. Faithful covenant -keeping
12:47: God, return and help me. What's he saying? He's saying, God, this is urgent.
12:55: God, God, I need help right now. I need You to remember
13:01: Your loyal love. O God, O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, O God of Moses, I need
13:10: You to use Your power to restore me to that position of spiritual strength
13:17: I once knew before. And I need You to help me. I need
13:22: You to alleviate these circumstances for my good. Now, beloved,
13:27: I want you to notice something as you think about how you would pray this way in your own sense, in your own circumstances.
13:36: How is it that you would pray this way in the midst of your own sorrow? Well, I want you to notice what
13:41: David does not do here as he's praying in this Psalm 6.
13:48: He's not saying, God, I don't deserve this. He's not saying, God, this is unfair.
13:55: He's not protesting, in other words, he's not protesting his own righteousness in this
14:01: Psalm and saying, why is this happening to me? It is a God -centered prayer where he says,
14:09: God, the basis upon which I appeal to You to help me in this dire circumstance is this.
14:16: I appeal to who You are. You are a gracious God full of loyal love.
14:24: You are the Savior to Your people. You are kind and merciful to Your people in their distress.
14:32: And here I am as one of Yours, belonging to You, O God. I appeal to You and who
14:39: You are as the basis upon which I ask You to respond. God, I know
14:46: You see my broken self. I know You see the difficulties that I face.
14:52: I know You see inside and see the despair of my heart. I know that, Lord. I know that because that's who
14:58: You are. That's what You do for Your people. You know them.
15:04: You sympathize with them. You're faithful to them. Lord, on that basis, I ask You, turn
15:10: Your eye to me now. Here in the midst of my own sorrow,
15:18: David is appealing to the promise -keeping God. And when you study through the
15:26: Psalms systematically, as we're having the privilege of doing at our own church, you start to notice something interesting, is that David is repeatedly teaching us to keep the glory of God central in our prayers, keep that focus central in our mind, even as we're appealing for help in our circumstances.
15:48: Look at verse 5 here. This is so common to the way that David prays. He's always tying it to the character of God and tying it to a passion for the glory of God.
16:00: Look at what he says in verse 5. After saying, Why? He gives
16:11: God the reason that He wants Him to act. Even in his sorrow, he says,
16:16: Lord, verse 5, He's saying,
16:24: God, when people die and go to the realm of the dead, they no longer have a living tongue to declare
16:31: Your praise. And he says, God, when people die, they lose their capacity to give verbal testimony, to give verbal thanks to Your glory to men who are alive.
16:49: He's not denying the reality of the afterlife. He's simply speaking to the capacity of the living to give thanks that the dead forfeit when they exit this life.
17:00: What he's saying is, he's saying, God, God, You know my heart.
17:06: You know that I want to give glory to You. You know I want to give thanks to You. I will give
17:12: You thanks for deliverance before the living. But if You let me die in this condition,
17:20: I'm not going to be able to declare Your praise before men. I'm not going to be able to offer thanksgiving for the deliverance that You are able to give if You don't help me.
17:32: And so, God, I appeal to Your character because I want to give glory to You in the midst of my despair if You would only exercise
17:42: Your power to help me. But meanwhile, in his pain, in his difficulty, he repeats the difficulty that he finds himself going through.
17:55: Look at verse 6 with me. He says, Lord, I'm weary with my sighing.
18:02: Every night I make my bed swim. I dissolve my couch with my tears.
18:09: He's using hyperbole. He's exaggerating the situation to give emphasis to the weeping that is going on in his soul and the tears that are literally coming out of his eyes.
18:24: Verse 7, he says, My eye is wasted away with grief. It has become old because of all my adversaries.
18:30: Father, there's human opposition. My soul is broken. I've cried myself out.
18:36: I don't have tears left to shed, O God. My couch is now drenched.
18:45: God, wouldn't You look on me with covenant -keeping, faithfulness, loyalty, and mercy and show me some kindness here?
18:57: I'm drowning in my grief and there's only sobs to express what
19:02: I'm feeling. Do any of you know what that's like?
19:09: Do you know what it's like to have words that when words fail you, like they're failing me now, when your heartache is so severe that you can't even give words to describe it to God, let alone to men?
19:28: And to men, you wouldn't even dare to open up that inner core of vulnerability to say this is how much it hurts and this is what's throbbing inside of me at the moment.
19:45: Some of us know what it's like to only moan as again the tears start to flow.
19:54: O Beloved, what I want you to see is that David, when he is like that, feels the freedom to come to his
20:03: God and lay it all out before him. He knows that God hears cries of grief and he trusts
20:11: God to lay that open before him. Now what I want to do right here is
20:16: I want to stop for some practical instruction for those of you that may be going through some difficulty and if you're not, to take careful note in case this wave comes to your shore as well.
20:34: I just want to give you a few little practical points of instruction before we go on with the rest of the psalm. What do you do when you're in that kind of despair?
20:42: When you're facing that kind of difficulty? First of all, what does David teach us? First of all, don't wait to pull yourself together before you go to God.
20:52: Don't wait until you've gathered it all up. The whole point is that you're not able to gather it up, that your heart is shattered and you can't put the pieces back together again.
21:02: Go to God just like you are. That's what David did. He says,
21:08: I'm pining away, my bones are dismayed, my soul is greatly dismayed. Save me, rescue me,
21:14: I'm weary. I dissolve my couch with my tears. My eye is wasted away with grief.
21:21: There's no pretense, in other words, in this prayer. I like that word. There is no pretense that we need to bring before God in those times.
21:32: We simply come and present ourselves to Him as we are. Why? Because He's a
21:38: God who hears cries of grief. Secondly, a word of encouragement to you.
21:47: Don't waste your time saying, I shouldn't feel this way. That's a waste of time.
21:54: Do you realize that? It's a waste of time to rehearse that kind of thought in your mind.
22:00: Here's the point. Here's what David is saying. I do feel this way. I am like that.
22:07: And so what David shows us is simply humble yourself before God. Ask Him for His mercy and say,
22:15: God, in the midst of this sorrow, just be merciful to me. I'm not trying to impress you here.
22:23: One of the things that your trials do to you, one of the things that severe hardship does to the believing heart is it breaks you.
22:34: It purges you. It puts its finger on the core of your pride and self -sufficiency to such a degree that you have to abandon it.
22:44: You have to humble yourself before God and say, God, I'm nothing before You. I know that I once thought that I was somebody special in the spiritual life.
22:53: I'm speaking biographically here from many years ago. Oh, God, I thought I was somebody special.
22:59: But here I am. I'm shattered. I'm broken. One of the reasons that God brings trials of that kind of severity to you is to break you of that pride, to break you of that self -sufficiency so that you would go to Him in a humble dependency that gives
23:19: Him the platform to put His grace to you on display. And one of the reasons that you and I have to go through those deep waters is the fact that it has to be that deep to touch us and to break us to that extent.
23:37: It gives us a sense of how deeply rooted pride and self -sufficiency is in our hearts.
23:44: You have to be badly broken in order to abandon that. And it's painful.
23:53: But it's the hand of a surgically precise God operating on your heart at that time.
24:03: And so don't wait to pull yourself together. Don't waste your time saying, I shouldn't feel this way.
24:09: The fact that you feel that way is already known to God. It's not as His omniscience sees that.
24:18: And then you turn the corner. Then you find the way forward in this and you remember the grace of God.
24:28: You remember the grace of Christ. You remember the one who hung on a cross, who felt
24:34: His own suffering, His own sorrow on your behalf. You remember the grace of God.
24:40: And then you remember this. Oh, this God of mine, this
24:45: God of the Bible, this God revealed in Scripture, this God revealed in the person of the
24:52: Lord Jesus Christ is a God who is one who deals gently with the brokenhearted.
25:02: When the woman who had the hemorrhage for many, many years reached up and touched the fringe of Jesus' garment,
25:09: He turned and He said, Daughter, go your own way. Your faith has saved you.
25:15: Your faith has made you well. And when Zacchaeus turned to Him in repentant faith,
25:23: Jesus looked at him and said, Today this man has become a son of Abraham. Christ receives sinners just like you.
25:34: Christ receives sorrowing children of God like some of you and receives them sympathetically, not to rebuke them but to help them, not to chastise them as to break a tender twig but to display
25:57: His grace, His mercy, His kindness and say, Yes, in that position that you find yourself in,
26:04: I will display my strength, my grace, my power, my kindness, my mercy, my faithfulness, my truth in a way that long term will generate the strength of your soul that you're asking for.
26:18: David shows us all of that. Remember the grace of God. Ask for His mercy.
26:23: It's not enough to simply cry out but to humble yourself enough to say, God, would you please be merciful to me?
26:32: You do not have because you do not ask. And so we don't blame unfair circumstances.
26:37: We don't say I don't deserve this. This is too hard. You abandon all of that unprofitable nonsense and say,
26:47: God, my heart is broken. Let me just be really simple and plain here before you, God. My heart is broken.
26:54: You're a gracious God. Would you please display mercy to me like you have displayed to the saints over the course of the centuries, over the millennia of you dealing with your people?
27:06: You have shown yourself kind and gracious and merciful. Oh, God, wouldn't you please deal with me like that too?
27:17: And so don't complain. Get out of that realm and put your trust in God alone.
27:24: Finally, we're just a little bit of application here. Beloved, I just encourage you.
27:31: I really do. I have to say this in pastoral ministry so often to people.
27:38: Don't be ashamed of your tears. Don't be ashamed of your broken heart as if that's something to be embarrassed about before the throne of God.
27:50: Look at Psalm 6 and you see David wept. Look at the life of the
27:57: Apostle Paul. He says, I weep in Philippians 3 over those who have become enemies of the gospel.
28:07: Look at King Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus.
28:13: Look at King Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Oh, I would have you come, but you would refuse me all along.
28:19: And in tears, weeping over the emotional response to the hard -heartedness of the
28:27: Jewish people to his ministry. The preeminent people in Scripture can be found at times in tears.
28:39: Why would we be ashamed to go before God and let our tears out before Him?
28:47: Beloved, you're in good company with that because God hears cries of grief.
28:57: Now, if it was just a matter of a human offering of the sorrow in prayer, that might stop short of giving you real comfort.
29:13: But David didn't stop there. He goes on in verses 8 through 10 and we see the second aspect of God that calls forth our trust.
29:22: It's not just that God hears cries of grief and He hears them sympathetically, people just like you.
29:30: It's this. God gives compassionate relief. He gives compassionate relief.
29:38: And you see that in verses 8 through 10. Look at that text with me as I read it here.
29:45: Verses 8 through 10, David says,
29:51: Depart from me, all you who do iniquity. For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.
29:57: The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord receives my prayer. All my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed.
30:06: They shall turn back. They will suddenly be ashamed. Do you see?
30:14: Do you see the sudden reversal of tone in this psalm from the first seven verses?
30:23: Notice the contrast. David had just been talking about drenching his couch with his tears.
30:32: My soul is dismayed, he said. And now as you go to verse 8 through 10, it's a total reversal of tone.
30:41: It's a statement of confidence, of trust, of assertion, of spiritual strength that is now replacing the spiritual sorrow that he had just been expressing a few verses earlier.
30:57: What's the difference? What's the difference? And oh, beloved, watch this.
31:03: I love to tell people this. I love to tell Christians this. Your circumstances do not have to change one bit for you to move from that kind of sorrow to that kind of confidence.
31:25: Your circumstances do not have to change for you to move from fear to faith.
31:33: Your circumstances don't have to change in order for you to enter into a sense of this biblical joy and confident hope that marks the people of God as shown in Scripture and as shown in subsequent centuries of church history.
31:51: You don't need a change of circumstances. I know you think you do. I thought
31:56: I did too. But you don't. That's not the key to Christian joy.
32:02: That's not the key to what turns David's heart in the midst of his sorrow here.
32:10: Look at it with me. Notice what he says. There is a simplicity.
32:19: There is a purity. There is a unity to what drives his spiritual response here that you cannot miss if you are to receive the full benefit and impact of Psalm 6 in your life.
32:33: What is it that he says? Verse 8, he says, Depart from me, all you who do iniquity. Those of you who are challenging me, those of you who are opposing me, those of you who are making my life difficult, mocking my faith in Christ, get out of here.
32:56: Depart. Why? Why can he suddenly speak with such boldness and confidence?
33:04: It's not because his circumstances had changed, beloved. Why was it that he could go from sorrow to security?
33:13: It wasn't because whatever was troubling him had changed. If that was the case, we would never know the next time the circumstances were going to change back and we were subject to the sorrow all over again.
33:27: No, no. David says exactly why he has this confidence. Look at verse 8.
33:33: He says, Depart from me. Why? For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.
33:39: The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord receives my prayer.
33:47: Beloved, I know that no one naturally thinks this way, but you have to see in this the key to your spiritual confidence as you walk with Christ.
34:02: You have to see that right here is all that you need. This is all that you need as a blood -bought believer of Christ, as one whose sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ at the cross, one who has a security forever because your hope in heaven will never be taken away from you.
34:26: What you need to see as you go through that veil of tears here in this life is this one simple thing that David finds sufficient.
34:36: His tears had no words, but they had found a voice with a sympathetic
34:43: God. He says, This is all I need. My God, my
34:49: Lord, my covenant -keeping, faithful, promise -keeping God has heard my prayer. It's enough for me to know that the
34:58: God who is like that, the God who is my Christ, the God who shed
35:03: His blood, I'm now speaking in New Testament terms, I realize that, this
35:09: God who has redeemed me, has shown such grace to me, He's heard my prayer.
35:15: That's all I need to know. Because this God is faithful, because He's merciful, because He's gracious, it's enough that He's received me.
35:27: Whether He leaves me in my sorrow for another period of time, whether He acts to relieve it immediately is a matter of indifference to me.
35:37: It's enough to know that this covenant -keeping God has placed His love on me and receives me favorably.
35:45: He knows my sorrow. He knows what's best for my soul.
35:51: And He will most certainly, because He is faithful, He will most certainly show kindness to me in the end.
35:59: That's all I need to know. That's all I need to satisfy my heart. Is that this
36:05: God is my God. He's heard my prayer. And He will deal with me according to the perfect attributes that mark
36:17: His character. I can rest in that. That's all the grounds that David needed to move from grief to relief.
36:26: That's all the grounds that you need to simply to remember who your God is.
36:34: And we have a benefit that David didn't have when he wrote a thousand years before the time of Christ.
36:40: We have a benefit that is ours now three thousand years later because we can look back and see just how sympathetic this
36:49: God is. We can see more clearly than David could just how fully he is committed to the well -being of his people.
36:58: We can see the nature of who this God is displayed where? At the cross of Calvary.
37:07: In the midst of our sorrow. In the midst of our sin. In the midst of the unanswerable questions of life and having no idea where it goes next.
37:18: The cross shines forth like a spotlight saying let me show you. Let me display to you emanating out of the cross.
37:28: Let me display to you how great the faithful love of God is. That that God was the
37:39: God who undertook to carry your sin in his own body. It was that God who bore the wrath of God on your behalf.
37:51: It's that God who was taken off the cross buried and came out three days later now ascended on to high where he intercedes for you in the presence of the throne with his own shed blood.
38:10: Do you see beloved? Do you see how the person of Christ answers every possible concern that your soul could have?
38:22: Do you see that if he's done the greater thing of purchasing your redemption with his own blood and his own sufferings at the cross that it's impossible to think that he would abandon you to your present sorrow?
38:36: Do you see the inevitability of that? David saw it in shadows.
38:42: We see it fully in the light of New Testament revelation. That's who God is. That's who
38:47: Christ is. We belong to him. We belong to a God like that. And if a
38:54: God, if our Christ is like that reigning in supreme power and glory if he has his eye on the sparrow and he has his eye on us then do you see the inevitability that for him to hear your prayer favorably is all you need?
39:15: That's what David's saying here. That's why the reversal of his attitude.
39:22: He's come back to who his God is. He's heard my prayer. That's enough. All I need to do now is wait to see how he manifests his faithfulness to me because his faithfulness is an inevitable consequence of what is to come.
39:40: In a room of this size I know there are some of you here that don't know Christ. Do you realize that your first cry of grief to him would be a cry of mourning over your sin and calling out that he would save you from your sin?
39:54: That that's just what he did to the thief on the cross? Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
40:00: You're a Christ like that? Oh, remember me and my sin. Christ would say to you today, you can know today that you'll be with me in paradise.
40:12: That's what he does. Instant, full forgiveness of sin for sinners just like you.
40:21: Fellow Christian, brother and sister in Christ, walking with stones in your shoe as it were and the constant chronic irritations of life or maybe the despair of severe unexpected grief.
40:38: Don't you see that you're Christ, new affliction himself?
40:46: Don't you see what a sympathetic Savior he is to you? Don't you see that you can come and apply to him and know for certain that he'll receive you sympathetically, kindly, with understanding?
41:02: It's what the writer of Hebrews said. Look over at Hebrews 4.
41:09: Hebrews 4. I understand your pastor is preaching through Hebrews.
41:17: It sounds like you'll get to this passage in maybe 2022, something like that. I don't know. It'll be a sweet time when you do
41:28: Hebrews 4, verses 14 through 16. I know you're familiar with the passage.
41:35: Hebrews 4 .14 says,
41:42: Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the
41:48: Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Cling to what you know to be true, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
42:07: Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
42:18: Time of need. Time of profound sorrow. Surely, surely, beloved...
42:25: Think about it this way with me. Surely, if this verse is true, surely, if God can be believed in His Word, surely, if Christ is truly a sympathetic high priest, then, surely, the greater the depth of your need, surely, then, this great, infinitely worthy high priest will meet you with a level of provision, a level of comfort, a level of grace, a level of mercy that surpasses even the depth of that.
43:05: That's how great your Christ is. Do you see that you can come to Him in full confidence that He'll receive you well?
43:17: That if men mock and despise and turn you away, men don't understand, there is one ear that will hear.
43:25: There is one ear that will care. There is one that you can trust.
43:33: And He's the only one you need. Bow with me in prayer, would you? Oh God, we thank
43:43: You that You are a God who hears the prayers of the heavy -hearted among Your people.
43:52: Help us to draw upon that hope of who You are in our sorrow.
44:02: Help these beloved brothers and sisters in Christ to go to You in times of discouragement, to lay their woe before You and find that You have strengthened their inner man just as You did
44:16: David in Psalm 6. For the unbelieving amongst us, oh
44:22: Father, I pray that You would open their eyes to the Gospel, open their hearts to Christ. Father, as they sit under the preaching of the
44:31: Word from this place, week after week after week, I pray, oh God, that Your Word would penetrate deep into their hearts and that Your Spirit would take that Word and apply it and open their eyes so that they would turn in saving faith to our
44:45: Lord Jesus. In the meantime, oh God, we thank
44:51: You for Your tender mercies and Your faithfulness which is new every morning.
44:57: By the power of Your Holy Spirit, communicate the grace of Christ to the specific need of each heart that's with us today.
45:07: And we ask these things to the praise of the glory of Your holy name.