Our Hope Is In The God Who Reigns Forever - Psalm 146

God Centered Theology

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One of the best -loved hymns of the faith, It Is Well With My Soul, written by Horatio Spafford.

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Mr. Spafford was a wealthy businessman in Chicago. He lost much of his real estate holdings in the

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Great Chicago Fire. After the fire, he sent his wife and four daughters on a ship to Europe, intending to join them later, but the voyage was struck by disaster, and Spafford received a message from his wife with the painful reading,

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Saved Alone. Spafford quickly made arrangements to join his wife, and when they reached the spot where his daughters had drowned,

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Spafford marked that sad event with words of hope. When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

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See these powerful words, written in the midst of such pain, are a reminder to us today that even though we may at times endure great suffering and hardship, it is not the end of God's plan for us.

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Sometimes God's children get discouraged, because it appears that life may be going better for those who are doing wrong.

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We certainly seem to live in times like that, don't we? Yet the end result of both paths are already settled.

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Those who fear God will be able to say it is well. Those who oppose God will quickly find that the end of their path is death and destruction.

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Keeping the end result in mind helps keep us doing right. I have probably heard that example story read in some capacity 50, 60 times in my lifetime.

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It's one of my favorites. It's a good reminder of who God is and who we are.

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Psalm 146, our hope is in the God who reigns forever.

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It says, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. In the Legacy Standard Bible it says, praise

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Yah, or praise Yahweh, O my soul. This first line, praise

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Yah, or praise the Lord, is literally hallelujah. For the word praise here means shine, or to make to shine.

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To praise something, to praise someone, or praise something, we are boasting in it.

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We are making it shine. We are celebrating it. Is it no mystery then why

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Paul talks often about how he boasts only in Christ? The Old Testament authors and the

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New Testament authors are in agreement. Praise Yah, praise

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Yahweh, praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the

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Lord, I will praise Yahweh, throughout my life. Meaning this phrase here, throughout my life, means throughout the duration.

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It literally means age. In other words, it's saying throughout the age of me.

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We talk about generation and generation. We talk about this age. We talk about what is your age?

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The years of life you've had on this earth, whether it's 20, 40, 60, 80, 120, I don't think

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I'm going to make it that far, but I was always hoping. So that's what it's saying. I will praise Yahweh throughout all the ages of me, throughout all my life.

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I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

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What he's saying here, when he says while I have my being, he's saying while I persist, while I am alive, while I have breath in my lungs.

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Should make you call back to this morning, one of the songs our song leaders led us in.

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It says, it's your breath in my lungs. Never make the mistake that when you inhale and exhale, you do that on your own.

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You persist and you live because the great God of the universe puts breath in your lungs.

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That's what he did with the first man, Adam. He creates him out of the dust of the ground and he breathed life into him.

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So I need to remind myself at times, you need to remind yourself at times, that we need to be praising, celebrating, shining light upon the revelation of who

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God is and who we are and that we will praise him in our lives, throughout our lives, and we sing praises to him while we persist, while we live.

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Now notice here, there is no exception clause. There is no, well,

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I'll praise God as long as things are going well for me or as long as he is doing that which is approved by me.

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Now I say that semi -sarcastically because I know there was a time in my life where that wasn't said in sarcasm by me.

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It was, you're not doing for me, therefore I won't do for you. Oh, the arrogance of the sinful heart that would think we know better than God.

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So we praise him, we sing praises to him because our hope is in him.

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Now I want to look tonight, this evening, at two types of people found in this psalm.

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Now the first type of person is only talked about in verses three and four, while the other person is talked about in verses five through ten.

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The first type of person you're going to see in this psalm is the one that puts their hope in man and in false gods.

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Notice in verse three, after he says I'm going to sing praises to God throughout my life, he has the negative here, do not trust in nobles.

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Some of your translations might translate this princes, nobles. Do not trust in nobles or princes, in a son of man or it's literally saying merely a son of man in whom there is no salvation.

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So what it's saying merely a son of man here, what it's referring to is a man of the dust, a man of flesh.

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This term here where it says a son of man, it's not in the same way when Jesus would refer to himself as the son of man, which was a title for himself.

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This is literally saying don't put your trust in a son of mankind, meaning flesh and bones.

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You say, well, you're saying I'm not supposed to trust my parents or trust my friends or my preacher.

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No, that's not what he's saying here. It doesn't mean that you don't have a level of trust in your spouse or in your pastor or in your boss at work or in the bank teller or whoever it is you're working with or in front of.

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There's going to be a certain level of trust that may be higher with some, lower with others. What we're talking about here is this trust that we're not to put in nobles or princes is our ultimate trust.

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Our trust in hope that gets us up every morning, that keeps us moving forward.

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We are not to put our trust in just a son or daughter of mankind.

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Notice it says in whom there is no salvation. In Psalm 118 verse 8 and 9 it says, it is better to take refuge in Yahweh than to trust in man.

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It is better to take refuge in Yahweh than trust in nobles. You are better off trusting the

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God of this universe than you are trusting any man. What this means is ultimately we are not to trust any person or any created thing equal to or above Yahweh.

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It says here there is no salvation found in this man or in mankind.

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That's what's being saying here. You don't put trust in son of man or in mankind because they cannot save you.

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This word translated here says there is no salvation. It means there's no deliverance. There's nothing that can deliver you from your sins in mankind because mankind himself is sinful.

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That's why when we speak topically about how we are not works based salvation. There's nothing

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I can do to earn my salvation. There's nothing I can do to earn it for you. Your works cannot overcome my sin.

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My works cannot overcome your sin. The only works that can save a man is the works of Christ.

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His death, burial, and resurrection on the cross which is why we are saved by the grace and mercy of God through faith and not through works lest any man should boast.

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We're not to boast in our works, we're to boast in God. Where it says there's no salvation in man in Psalm 6011 it talks about how the salvation of man is useless.

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It profits nothing. Why do you think it's so interesting?

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If you look at every single religion on the planet minus Christianity, the

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Christian worldview, every single religion has some element of works based salvation to it.

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Every one of them. The Roman Catholics, Rome's gospel cannot save.

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The Mormon gospel cannot save. The Islamic gospel cannot save. There is no gospel found in any religion but the religion that comes from the pages of scripture.

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The one that says you are a sinner and you need to be saved, you need to be delivered, and you will not find it in man.

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But this type of person that puts their hope in man and their false gods, they think that the mortal, the finite, the dust can save them.

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And well, it says in verse 4, his spirit departs, he returns to the earth.

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You're going to put your trust in a man who's not eternal. Our lifespans are but a vapor.

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They're finite. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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Some people's end comes far younger than others. We call this tragedy.

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Some people's end comes really late in life. Death should not shock us, but it does.

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It seems to shock us more when it happens to the younger versus the older in some cases. But death as a rule should not shock us.

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One out of one people, this is the most tried and true statistic in the history of statistics, one out of every one person dies.

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There are no exceptions. It is appointed unto man once to die and then judgment.

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So why would anyone put their faith and trust and their hope for their future in anything that has an expiration on it?

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It'd be kind of like if you had a milk jug in the fridge and it had no expiration date on it. And you go to get some, it's all right, and of course the intelligent, wise wife behind us is saying,

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I wouldn't drink that, I wouldn't drink that. I'm sure if you see the date on it, it ain't got a date on it, so you're just going to trust it's okay.

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It smells all right. It passed the smell test. And she's like, all right. And then you're sick three hours later because you drank bad milk.

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Didn't listen to your wife. We tend to put so much trust in things. People get on airplanes all the time.

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Don't even think about it. We get in our cars and drive down the road. If you're on a two lane highway, you've got one coming the other way.

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You're about 13 to 24 inches away from death every time they pass you.

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One little slip of the wheel, you're done. And yet the one that deserves our trust, we don't often put it fully in him.

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The spirit of the one, these nobles, these princes, this mankind, this son of man that you want to put your trust in, their spirit departs and when it does, they go back to the ground.

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From dust we came, to dust we return. And it says in that very day, his plans perish.

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All the cult leaders in the world. I'll give them this much. They are very persuasive in some cases.

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You always wonder, don't you, if you're anything like Gina and myself, we like to watch these documentaries and Netflix stuff on cults and things like that.

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Almost every time, inevitably, we pause at some point and we're like, really? How do you not see it?

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There are none so blind as those that refuse to see, right? If you don't have the spirit of God residing in you, it's very easy to get caught up in stuff.

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And they have plans, they have desires, they have determined what they're going to do. And what's interesting, they'll suck you in and think, oh,

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I'm following this person. They're great. They're all these things and they'll always be here.

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They'll always be like this, and then he's dead. This type of person that puts their hope in man and false gods will always be disappointed by mankind and by these false gods.

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But the second type of person, the last type of person we're going to talk about this evening is never disappointed because their hope is not in themselves, it's not in mankind, it's not in anything created, because it's in the

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Creator. Their hope is in the one true God who reigns forever.

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Notice it says in verse 5, how blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.

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Psalm 1 has the contrast of the blessed man and the unblessed man. So many places throughout the

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Psalms you see talk of blessed is this person. This person is not blessed. This person is blessed.

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This person is not blessed. It's a constant theme running through it, and the psalmist always gives you a definition of who is blessed.

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And they do it here. You are blessed, meaning you are happy, you are content, you have a positive outlook, you have hope that does not make you afraid.

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Why? Because your help is in the God of Jacob. Your hope is in Yahweh, his

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God, who, notice here, made the heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever.

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Now let's pause there just for a second, because there's a little bit of a clunky translation here. Some translations will say he keeps faith forever.

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Some will say, like in Legacy Standard, will say keeps truth forever. The word here that's translated either truth or faith, it just simply means faithfulness, endurance, being firm and faithful.

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So when you look at Psalm 117 verse 2, it talks about how the faithfulness of God is everlasting.

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This verse here, when it says that the God who created the heavens and earth keeps truth or keeps faith forever, it is a qualitative statement of the eternal nature of the faithfulness of God.

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If you want to read a psalm that is completely dedicated to the faithfulness of God, it's Psalm 118. It repeats a line over and over, your faithfulness endures and lasts forever, your faithfulness endures and lasts forever, or something to that effect.

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It's a repeated theme in many of the psalms. So what he's saying here is, the God who made heaven and earth, the

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God who made the sea and all that is in them, who is faithful and remains and keeps faithful, keeps true, remains true forever.

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There's never a point in time which time is a created thing. God exists outside of time and space, but He created time.

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There's no point in the timeline where it can be said that God is not faithful or true.

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That is what's being said here. Think about the contrast. You have a God that is permanently faithful and true versus mankind who may display faithfulness at times, who may conduct himself in truth at times, but ultimately is a finite creature who will go back to the dust of the ground.

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He cannot do it eternally. And it isn't just that God is able to be faithful and true as He engages in those things.

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Qualitatively, it's part of who He is. It's His attributes. It just simply is who

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God is. He is faithful. He is truthful. He is all things.

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He created all things, and He is these things. He is who He is eternally. Notice also the contrast of the mankind, these princes, nobles that were told not to put our trust in.

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Don't put your trust in mankind. There's no salvation in them. It's useless. Contrasted with God, He created everything.

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We've spoken before about how with idol worship, they're having to rely on created materials like wood to fashion an idol that they fall down and worship.

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In Isaiah, the great discourse on idol worship, at the end of it, around verse 20, I think it's Isaiah 44, it talks about this person that's made this wood for the fire to heat himself, heat his food.

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He has some to make his idol, and he's like, I'm falling down before a block of wood.

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Like, yes, you are. It's wood. It's not anything to be worshiped.

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You should be worshiping the God that made the wood, and that's what's being said here. You want to worship man, you want to worship golden calves, you want to worship money, you want to worship your job or your children or whatever it is.

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God made all that. Cut out the middle man, go straight to the source.

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Notice here verse 7, the one, this God who does justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry.

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Notice here these categories. We got two different sets of things I want to look at. First I want to point out to you, notice the categories of people that benefit and are blessed from God.

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We have the oppressed, we have the hungry, we have the free, or the prisoners that were set free.

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Verse 8, you've got the blind, those that are bowed down, those that are righteous, the sojourners, the orphan, the widow, all the way down.

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Why do you think the psalmist here takes all these categories of what we would call weak people, not weak in the sense of they don't have any faith or hope or strength.

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Weak in the sense they're in a weak position. So you think about a widow, she's lost her husband, that'd be a weak position to be in because you don't have your helper with you.

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An orphan with no parents, it's a pretty weak position. Why is it there's so many weak categories and positions listed here that Yahweh the

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Lord is raising up, loving, keeping, giving, helping? Because in 2

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Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 9, after Paul pleads and begs

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God to take his thorn in the flesh away, I don't know about you guys, but I pray a lot, but I don't think

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I've ever prayed like Paul can pray. Maybe I can one day, but he prays and pleads and begs and God says,

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I'm not going to do it. He says my grace is sufficient for you because my power is perfected in your weakness.

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People all the time say, why evil, why bad? Now look, take this lightly and I don't mean this as literally as I could, so don't get your pitchforks out, but if everybody was running around perfect, it'd be a little boring.

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Why do you think movies are so interesting? Because there's good guys and there's bad guys.

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There's drama, there's contention, there's mystery, there's something that has to be figured out. But in this world we have all that and God is glorified by it.

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Now yes, there will be a day when all sin is done away and no, it will not be boring. I'm just using that as a plot device here of sorts to make a point.

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It will not be boring, it will be great and it will be wonderful, but in this lifetime we have all these things because God is glorified in all things that occur and it is in the weakness of human flesh, it's in the frailty of human beings that God is most glorified.

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So a better example than the one I just used would be, anybody ever gets, I use this example all the time, anybody ever gets, you think about the example, the testimony that Garrett gave this morning.

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That's great, but if you take out all the drama, all the,

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I thought I was saved but then I was still sinning and he goes to his friend to play the worship music, all the details of that, it doesn't impact you as much.

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Somebody gets there to give you a testimony and says, man I ain't never had a problem, all my bones work, got plenty of money in the bank, yeah

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I put faith in Jesus, but hey I just kind of got around to that. Yeah, it's not going to move me very much.

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Somebody gets up here and they tell you about all the trial and struggle and hardship and they're still faithful even in the midst of it.

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That will change lives and God is glorified by it. People that are not prisoners have no need to be set free.

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People that are full have no need of food. People that can see have no need of someone to open their eyes.

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That's why it says here, this one that does justice for the oppressed is the God who gives food to the hungry.

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He sets the prisoners free. He opens the eyes of the blind. God raises up those who are bowed down.

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The Lord loves the righteous. He keeps the sojourners. He helps up the orphan and the widow. God does all that.

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Yahweh does all that. Not mankind, not leaders, not presidents, whoever it ends up being in a couple weeks.

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My friends, there's always a president every four years. Sometimes you'll like them, sometimes you won't.

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Sometimes you won't like either one of them. Sometimes you'll be like, this is the best person since sliced bread. That can change.

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God doesn't. And I don't care how powerful anyone is. I don't care how bad things may seem that they are in the headlines.

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It does not change the fact of who's in charge, who is reigning, who is king.

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It does not say mankind does justice for the oppressed. Mankind does and gives food for the hungry.

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Man sets prisoners free. Man opens the eyes of the blind. It says Yahweh does these things.

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The Lord does these things. And He deserves our respect. He deserves our reverence.

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He deserves our faith. And He deserves our hope. He alone is worthy of the praise that we see in verse one.

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Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord of my soul. I will sing praises to God. I will praise

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Yahweh throughout my life. That's why you see when

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God talks about how He is a jealous God, it's not talking about a sinful jealousy, but it's talking about a jealousy that as God, He deserves glory.

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He doesn't want to see His glory given to anyone else, and He takes it seriously. The type of person that puts their hope in the one true

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God is a safe person. It is a kept person. And we cannot, as some of our

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Christian friends may do, misinterpret this and think that God always opens doors or makes things better, necessarily, in your view.

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What's being said here is not about, you know, you'll see prosperity gospels say, well see, you know,

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He feeds the hungry, He gives justice, you know, things are always going to work out, and you're always going to have food, and you're always going to have plenty of money.

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That's not what's being said here. Remember the context. Context is vitally important to biblical interpretation.

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This psalm starts out with praising the Lord for who He is, and then it talks about how we're not supposed to put trust in man, ultimately why?

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Because there's no salvation in man. That's the context. So everything that's said after that about who

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God is and what He does is in the context of how He saves and He delivers and man doesn't.

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So when it says He does justice for the oppressed, the oppressed sinner, justice for me, justice for my sin was done at the cross.

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We talked about how He gives food to the hungry, the spiritually hungry are always fed. He sets prisoners free.

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Can you think of any worse prison than the prison of the bondage of sin?

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He opens the eyes of the blind. There are none more blind than the spiritually blind.

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Raises up those who are bowed down. You think about, you don't literally have to bow down and pray to be saved, but if you think about someone that were to be bowed down or to be humbled before God, I'm a sinner,

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I repent, I need you to save me. God says, I raise you up in salvation.

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He loves the righteous. He loves His people that work righteous. He loves, He keeps us sojourners.

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He helps orphans and widows. You say, well yes, literally yes, He does and helps orphans and widows, but spiritually speaking we are dead in sin, we're orphans.

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We are very literally adopted into the family of God. We are sin orphans before salvation.

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No family except sinful family, and then we're adopted. There are no orphans of God.

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There are only adopted sons and daughters, and He says all this about who

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God is and what He does and why His salvation is profitable and man's is useless, and then right here at the end,

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He throws in one last reminder, but He bends the way of the wicked.

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This word bends, it might be translated in your translation, made crooked. The word means to, you take a straight line in your mind, and you think about a straight line, point

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A to point B, now put a zigzag in it. This way, that way, this way, that way, this way, that, you know they always say the straightest point between two, shortest distance between two lines is, pause, back it up, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

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That's what I was going for. If you're going from here to Raleigh, you take every back road imaginable, it goes this way, that way, this way, that way, it's going to take you much longer.

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So the wicked thinks, oh my path's straight, and they can sell you a bag of goods, man

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I'm telling you, you just go right down this way, you do this and that, and everything comes up roses, and God says, you're going to try to take glory from me, let me throw a little bit of crookedness in there, let me bend you out this way a little bit.

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God raises up nations, He takes them down, He raises up rulers, He takes them down, whoever is elected on November 5th is there because God wants them to be there.

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Yes, God uses means, M -E -A -N -S, means,

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He uses creatures voting in our country, He uses other means in other places,

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He uses all sorts of means to accomplish His purpose, but ultimately make no mistake, people are in power because God wants them there, either as a measure of blessing and righteousness on that country whose

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God is the Lord, or as a means of judgment. Because God bends the way of the wicked, they will not prosper.

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If someone in your life at your job over you is wicked or not treating you right, if there's some situation you're dealing with, even if it isn't dealt with in this life, it will be dealt with in eternity.

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And the reason God may not deal with it now is because He's getting a lot of glory out of your reaction to it.

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Why do you ever wonder why He doesn't just heal everybody with cancer? Because some people with cancer are used for His glory by how they spread the gospel in hospitals or with their helpers, their comfort care and people that come to see them.

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There's a whole number of reasons for these things. And that subject of suffering would be a sermon for another day.

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So then lastly, notice here verse 10, as we draw to a close here, it says, Yahweh will reign forever.

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The Lord will reign forever. Isaiah 9 says of the increase of His government, there will be no end.

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First Corinthians 15 says that Jesus must reign until all His enemies have been defeated.

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The kingdom of God that's spoken up in the gospels, you talk about it as the mustard seed that's small and grows gradually, but then it grows very large.

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Every single word in scripture that talks about the kingdom of God is about the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty over His kingdom, and how it is reigned in righteousness and the rule of truth.

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Says your God, O Zion, from generation to generation, praise

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Yah, praise Yahweh, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Two types of people.

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Exodus 15 is a very interesting chapter. You know, they escape Egypt, cross the

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Red Sea safely, it's one of the first things they do.

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In Exodus 15, verses 17 and 18, it says, You, Lord, are the one that is going to put us in the land that You have marked out for us.

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You reign forever, ever. So, I leave you with this, my friends, whatever happens to you, whatever you face, whatever man or woman, mankind, generally speaking, can do to you is under the sovereign watch of your

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King and your Lord. Satan never put a finger on Job without God's permission.

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Nobody can take your life unless God has decreed it. Nobody can stop you if you're obedient to God and He makes that pathway straight.

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God bends the path of the crooked, what does it say? Trust in the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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He will direct and make your paths straight.

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From the onset or the onlookers of the world, they're going to think your life is complete disarray because it isn't working out the way they would work it out.

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But as you live it, you'll say, I praise the Lord throughout all my life.

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I sing praises to my God as long as I have being. Easy to do on a mountaintop, very hard to do in a valley.

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George and them's taking the stuff up to Western North Carolina tomorrow, aren't you? There's a lot of people going through some valleys.

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I want to be around the one that say, praise the Lord in season, out of season.

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I hope that I can. I don't always do that that well. Don't anybody look to my wife, you don't need to ask her.

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I'm telling you. But I pray that as I mature in righteousness, I will increase in my ability to say praise the