From The Ash Heap To The King's Court - [Psalm 113]

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If you would, take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 113. Psalm 113, if you have one of the, what we call
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Pew Bibles, the new ASV blue ones, it's on page 510, 510, top left,
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Psalm 113. I'm going to do something a little different this morning other than this being a different title than what might have been anticipated.
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I'm going to read just to set our minds in the right direction. I'd like to begin by reading a story that was written in the 1980s by a friend of mine.
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It is in an allegorical type style of like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. And in it, you will see pictured
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God, our Heavenly Father. You will see Jesus Christ, the Son, and you will see a sinner who's been redeemed by grace.
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I want you to pay particular attention to where this woman is found, where she is found and what takes place in her life through, it's a picture of grace.
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It's entitled The King's Bride. Before the sands of time began to fall from eternity's hourglass, a great and mighty prince loved a fair young maiden.
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The young woman did not know the prince, but he knew her and loved her with the greatest of all loves.
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She was the lowly daughter of a born slave, but the prince so loved her that he was willing to give up everything to redeem and marry her.
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The king loved his only son, the prince, with a perfect love and spared nothing to please him.
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It was at this time that the prince approached the king to formally ask for the hand of the one his soul loved.
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The king was exceedingly pleased with the proposal and a marriage contract was agreed upon to secure his son's chosen bride.
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The king insisted that the bride be purchased by the royal family prior to the marriage in order for the king to lawfully give her to his beloved son.
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With joy set before him, the prince sent his servants to tell his bride the king's good news, only to discover that his fair one had fallen captive to a wicked king from a far country.
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His lovely bride was among a great number who were taken captive by the wicked king. Many of the captives were slaughtered.
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The others were rendered helpless by the putting out of their eyes and cutting off of their ears. The prince's bride was defiled by the king and his men and left fallen in the wilderness to die alone.
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A citizen of that far country found the fallen woman, who was half dead, naked, hungry, and afraid.
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He did not clothe her nakedness, nor did he satisfy her hunger, but instead feigned love, using and abusing her.
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At first, she served him in fear and shame, but afterwards, she willingly remained enjoying the pleasures he provided for her.
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She never thought of the prince who loved her with an unquenchable love, for the only love that she knew was lust.
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The years came and went. Her beauty now wasted and spent. She was sold to another. She labored day and night, but her only wages were loneliness and misery.
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It was misery that consumed her mind, while loneliness gnawed continually away at her soul.
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Gripped in mind and body, she was declared unprofitable by her master, and not willing to be burdened any longer with this unprofitable wretch, her master put her up for auction in the marketplace, where curious passers -by could view her.
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She appeared to be half woman, half animal. Many of the children of the far country were frightened by her grotesque appearance.
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Others mocked and jeered at the poor old blind woman who sat on a dung pile, filthy and unkept, hair disheveled and dressed in rags.
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No buyers could be found. No one pitied her. There were no words of comfort for her deaf ears.
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Helpless, hopeless, and forsaken by all, she waited for death to come.
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But one day, the king of a better country came through that marketplace of that far country and noticed this poor, needy woman wandering upon a dung pile.
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He ordered his royal coach to stop, and he got out to see the woman. The king could not see her face, for her head was hung low.
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The people were astonished that the king was so interested in this wretched woman, this wretched woman, that they were even more amazed to see the king descend from the dung pile with the woman.
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Stooping, he whispered into her ear, my love, my lost love, arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
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Then as she took his outstretched hand, he swept her up into his arms. And with tears in his eyes, the king proudly announced to all, this is my bride whom my soul loveth, whom my father has given me.
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She has been lost, but now I found her. Then turning to her master, the king said, you have no part with my bride.
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And after paying an exceeding precious ransom for her, he carried her in his strong arms to a better country that is, and heavenly, it was not a shame to call her his bride.
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This allegorical story sets the stage for us as we are going to look in Psalm 113 this morning.
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I have preached this message before, but reworked it, and just so fitting with all the songs that have been sung, and the testimonies that have been given, that it just seems appropriate for us to look at the
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Psalm this morning. Because I believe that in order for us as believers to be able to praise the
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Lord, as the Psalmist will encourage us in this text, we must have a proper understanding of who we were, where we were, and what
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God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and who we have become. And I want to offer up this morning some reasons why you and I must praise the
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Lord, given to us here in Psalm 113. Now the first one will be quite evident.
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It will be quite easy for us to see it, because we see it in verses 1 through 3, where it just comes right out of the gate.
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The Psalmist says in Psalm 113, Praise the Lord! Praise, O you servants of the
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Lord! Praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting.
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The name of the Lord is to be praised. We see in these three verses here, and particularly as the
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Psalm begins, that there is a reason for us to praise the Lord is because it is commanded.
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This is not optional. This is not something that we can take or leave, but we are commanded here in verse 1 to praise the
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Lord. And what does it mean to praise the Lord? Well, it means to express one's delight in the
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Lord. And we're going to find out why it is that we are to express our delight in the Lord. It also means, praise means to speak well of the
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Lord. We have all kinds of people. Don't we hear people, and maybe even ourselves, speaking well of others, expressing a delight in others?
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But that's not what this is talking about. It's not about talking, it's not about tooting a human horn. It is talking about using our vocal cords and from our hearts, praising our
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God. How long must we praise Him? Well, it says in the verse here, from this time forth and forevermore, in verse 2, and in verse 3, it speaks something about it ought to be a daily practice, from the rising of the sun until its setting, the name of the
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Lord is to be praised. And we need to consider this morning if we are a praising people, if we are praisers of God, what it is that we use our vocal cords for.
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And that is the exhortation for us this morning, to see how well we do as commanded to us first here as the first reason why we must praise the
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Lord. The worship of God is not particularly alone for Jews. It is not just for the writer of this psalm.
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It is not just for Israel or the people dwelling in Bible times. The call and command to worship and in that worship to praise
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God is universal and it is to be done by all saints for all time from the rising of the sun until its setting.
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So the first reason, and we could go to other verses like Psalm 150 and in verse 6 where it says, let everything that hath breath, what?
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Praise the Lord. Everything that has breath. Do you have breath? I can hear you breathing. I could hear you breathing while we were singing.
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Do you have life? Are you saved? Are you a child of God? Then let everything that hath breath praise the
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Lord. We have every reason to be praisers of God and first and foremost we are commanded to praise the
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Lord. But there is a second reason here and the second reason why you must praise the Lord is because he is worthy to be praised because God is exalted above the nations.
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And we see that here in verses 4 and 5. The Lord is high above all nations and is glory above the heavens.
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Who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high? There is no
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God like our God. In 1 Samuel 2 verse 2 the word of God tells us there is none holy as the
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Lord for there is none beside thee. Neither is there any rock like our
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God. In Exodus chapter 15 and verse 11 the writer there says who is like unto thee oh
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Lord among the gods? Who is like thee? Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.
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Just a couple of weeks ago I had some folks knock on our door. We live in northeast Connecticut and they came to speak to us about their
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God. And that is exactly what it was. It was another God. It was another Jesus. It was another way to be saved.
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It was another whole character and description and attributes of the person that they called
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God. But it was not the God of the Bible. And this morning we have declared before us or shown before us in these verses that God is high above the nations and his glory is above the heavens.
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There is none like him. There is none to be compared to him. And what is so absolutely incredible as we are going to see as we move through this psalm is that the
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God that is so highly exalted, the God that is exalted above the nations cares for you and for me.
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There is a song that I do not see. It is not in our hymnals, but I like it.
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It is entitled No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus. I do not know if you know that song. I would love to tell you what
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I think of Jesus. And it goes on to speak of him. It is incredible that our
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God who is high and lifted up and as Isaiah 6 says, his train filled the temple in Isaiah 57, 15, for thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity whose name is holy.
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God who needs nothing for he is all sufficient and he certainly does not need us.
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And yet being high and holy and none like unto the one, he humbles himself or he condescends.
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And that is a great, great motivation which should drive us to praise our
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God and to speak well of him this morning. And I trust that when you came here this morning, you came to praise the
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Lord. It was just incredible to me that the songs that we sang fit so well.
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Praise him. From the lips of the weak and from the shouts of the strong, we ought to be a people who praise the
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Lord. What is the doxology all about? Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
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Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
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We ought to be a people who should be marked. We should be noted for. We of all people on the face of the earth who have our
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God who is so highly exalted and yet he has condescended to do something for us. And we're going to see that in just the next few verses.
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We have every reason to praise him. So first, we are commanded. Second, it's because he is
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God and there is none like him. He is exalted above the nations. I don't know if you've ever just been captivated by the thought of one of God's attributes, maybe his holiness, maybe his righteousness, maybe his justice, and you've just been melted.
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You've just been in awe and you've just been stopped. I remember one time in a grocery store parking lot,
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I got out of the car and I am just humming the tune, oh the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless free.
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And the tears just started rolling down my face just to consider that God would love someone like me.
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The love of God of which we will not be separated from. Those types of moments are moments when we can lift our hearts and lift our hands and lift our whole being in praise unto him.
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Thirdly, you will see here in verse 6 that there is another reason we ought to praise the Lord. We must praise the
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Lord because this high and lofty God who is above the nation condescends and looks with interest on the things of heaven and earth.
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Notice in verse 6, it says in verse 5, God who is like our Lord who is seated on high, verse 6, who looks down, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth.
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He looks far down, or your translation might say, he beholds. He looks, he humbles himself.
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He looks below to meet our need and come to our rescue. He stoops down to lift up the fallen.
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The Word of God tells us in the New Testament that Jesus, the Son of Man, has come to seek and to save the goody goodies, right?
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He's come to seek and save the religious ones that have it all together. No, he comes to seek and to save the lost.
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He comes to save liars and thieves and murderers and boasters and those who've been running away from God all their lives, the covetous, the greedy, the whisperers and back biters, the crooks, the slanderers, the sexually perverted, and the supposed clean self -righteous religious person.
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But not only does God condescend, look with me here in verse 6, as I said and I've emphasized the word, he beholds or maybe as you see it in the
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ESV here, he looks. He looks. He didn't have to look, but he looks.
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He looks at the things that are in heaven and in earth. And this means that, and I like the ESV here, it says that he looks far down from where God is highly and exalted, even for him to look down on heaven, he lists to look down to heaven.
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When we consider heaven, we always look up, but when God is to look down, to look down upon any of his creation, it is a direction of down.
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And when God does that, it is amazing because he does not have to do that. He never had to do that, but he did.
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He humbles himself even to behold the things that are in heaven. What a wonder of wonders that God would do just that.
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He looks far down, it tells us here, in order to meet our need. He never had to do this.
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He doesn't owe it to anyone, yet he shows mercy to whom he desires to show mercy. And the picture we are going to see is where he's looking down on is the same phrase that we saw in that story that I read.
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He's going to look down and he's going to see his creatures in a particular place, and we're going to see that in verse 7.
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It is the dunghill, it is the ash heap. And that dunghill is the emblem of the deepest poverty and desertion a person could ever find themselves in.
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It is a picture of being defiled and in bondage to and ruined by sin. If you are here today and you are not a believer in or a follower of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, you are still on this dunghill, and that is how God sees you.
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If you are a Christian here this morning, you are a believer, you understand based upon reading this text that there was a day when you were on the dunghill and you are no longer there because God has rescued you and redeemed you from that place.
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You look at this person who is on a dunghill like this and you say, there's no hope for this person, and you'd be right if they had to do something about it for themselves.
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The person can't will themselves out of it because their will is bent towards sin.
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They can't work their way out of it because God does not accept works that we do in order to be approved by him.
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They can't reason themselves off the dunghill because their reason is darkened. They can't do anything to help themselves spiritually because they are spiritually powerless, they are spiritually dead.
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Their mind is carnal. Their reason is gone. Their heart is wicked, the scripture says. Their way is corrupt.
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Their eyes are blinded and their ears are deaf, and by themselves they will never seek after God. They will never desire to get off that dunghill.
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There's only one way for the situation to change, and someone must come from the outside and deliver them off of the dunghill.
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This wonderful psalm tells us plainly of the only hope for those who are in the dust and for those who are on the dunghill.
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Help comes from the outside of that person. We see this in verses 6 through 8 in this text.
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God is looking down from far down from the heavens and the earth. God is the one that raises, and we see that so on, and I'll make mention of that.
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God humbles himself. God beholds. God comes. God visits. God breaks in upon our lives.
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God raises. God lifts up and God sets, and this is so amazing. This is the Lord our
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God who dwells on high, and with New Testament revelation we know this to be Jesus Christ himself.
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Jesus is the only hope for Adam's fallen race. It is Christ alone who is able to save the poor and needy who have been left on the dunghill to die and to be forgotten forever.
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So for this reason here we ought to praise the Lord because God condescends.
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God looks down. Not only is it commanded, not only is he exalted, but God looks down upon us, and this should give us a reason.
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If he had never done that, we would still be on that dunghill, and I'm going to get a little bit more into this in the fourth reason why we ought to praise him, and we're going to see this in verse 7, because it says,
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He raises the poor from the dust, and he lifts the needy from the ash heap, or from the dunghill.
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You might see it in your translation, the ash heap or the dunghill. You must praise him fourthly because God is so kind and loving towards sinners that he delivers them out of their deplorable condition.
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Or if you just want it in short, God saves us from dunghills, and that's a reason for us to praise him.
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Not only were we poor and needy, but we had a place that we would call home. Compared to the majestic God being mentioned earlier who is enthroned on high, we are found way below.
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We have all fallen short of the glory of God. God puts a name on the place where we used to live figuratively in this language, and God calls it the dunghill or the ash heap.
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That ash heap or that dunghill was a heap of rubbish, and that day we could call it a dump today.
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We could call it the ash heap. It could be a mound of animal waste also, that when dried was used as fuel for fire.
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We may not like this description of our former dwelling place, or if you are not a Christian here this morning, this could be your current dwelling place.
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If you are not a believer right now, you could still be and are on this dunghill.
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But we cannot argue with God's description, this figurative language of the condition of a person outside of Christ, unforgiven, not a believer, graceless and hopeless and helpless sitting on a dunghill.
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We can't turn a blind eye to the Word of God. God's Word speaks very plainly to us. This is very much in our faces, isn't it?
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And we need to look at our lives to see them as God sees them. In the former days in Palestine, if a man was cut off or shut off from society, he was poor and he was helpless, we would call them a homeless person today.
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He would sometimes go and live on these dunghills or ash heaps, and by the day he would beg, calling upon those passing by and looking for handouts and for donations.
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And then by night he would hide himself in the ashes that had been warmed by the sun. And I want you to try to picture this person and what they would look like living upon the dunghill day after day and night after night.
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This is the description of a beggar, an outcast. Physically it's bad when we consider this, but spiritually it's even worse when we consider that this is our condition before a holy
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God spiritually. Someone who is needy, lacking the basic necessities of life. We see this here in verse 7, where it is that it describes us as being on a dunghill.
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Destitute, unable to change our deplorable condition. And I want you to equate that picture with a life that is lived without God, in rejection of Jesus Christ.
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The person on the dunghill physically is like someone who is spiritually is a person who has never experienced a visitation of God upon their soul.
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They do not know what it means to be graced, to be loved by God, to be forgiven.
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They've never really known what it means to have all of their sins washed away. This person is a person who is in rebellion and living in sin, is in the dust of sorrow and sitting upon the dunghill of sin and shame.
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And the longer the person sits on the dunghill, the more disgusting and deplorable the condition becomes.
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People, because of sin, are not only brought to a low estate, but before God a loathsome estate.
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And because of sin, they are an abomination in the sight of God. We have a hard time getting our brains and our hearts around speech like that.
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But as soon as we enter into and understand and bow before what
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God says about the description of our lives, the sooner off we'll be able to see what our need is and we'll be able to lay hold on the
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Savior and then we'll be the ones who'll be able to praise Him. If the person stayed on the dunghill, that would be horrible, all of their lives.
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And the story does not end here. Aren't you glad for that? There is good news.
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There is great news. Not everyone will be left on the dunghill.
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Many, a number that no man can number will be delivered from the dunghill, from this ash heap, from this deplorable condition.
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And for that, many of us here this morning can give all the praise to God. God alone will make the difference.
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God does something for us we could never do by any infinite amount of effort. God comes.
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The Lord Jesus Christ changes the situation. Once we thought we were okay, but God the
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Holy Spirit opens our eyes to show us that our sin offends God. God reveals the awfulness of the dunghill and He lovingly draws us to Jesus.
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And what does it say in verse 7 that God does? It says, He raises the poor from the dust hill and lifts the needy from, or your translation might say, out of the dust or out of the dunghill or out of that ash heap.
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God raises the poor out and the needy out. When God saves,
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He gets us out of the mess. When God saves, He delivers us from the dominion of sin.
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And it's so sad to hear of an easy -believism type message that is being preached today that just says that people can have
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Christ and you can have your sin too. And just live the way that you were living before.
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No change in your life. Carnal Christianity is okay and that is totally foreign to the
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Word of God that we see here this morning. God saves you but leaves you in the dunghill. That would be just like someone drowning in a lake and the lifeguard comes to rescue you, throws you the life preserver and leaves you there.
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No, the job is to get you out, to spare your life. And God saves souls.
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Jesus Christ came to save our souls, to deliver us away from and out of and away from the penalty of sin and the power of sin over our lives and one day the presence of sin.
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Take these words in, my friends. He lifts the needy out of the dunghill. Oh, we would never have gotten ourselves off the ash heap but God can and does.
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And if you're a Christian, He has lifted you off of the ash heap. What might and what power and what mercy and what glory.
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What a great salvation. As the hymn writer says, what a wonderful Savior is
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Jesus my Lord. He takes my burden away. What a great reason to give
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God praise. And get this phrase, please. If you don't have a proper understanding of where you were before Christ and where you are now in Christ and where you will be in Christ, you will not have a proper motivation to praise
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Him. And that's why I think the psalmist is giving us this focus to just let us to look at what our lives were and what our address was and where our zip code used to be so that we can understand the mighty work of God upon our souls and in our lives so that we can, what?
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Praise Him. We can be a people who use and offer up the sacrifice of our lips, even praise unto our
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God. God's goodness and kindness, though, doesn't end there.
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There's more to be done as we will see in the next reason to praise the Lord. And that reason we see in verse 8 where the
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Word of God says to make them sit, in verse 7 He lifts them up, right?
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He raises them from the dust and lifts them out of the ash heap. In verse 8, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of His people.
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After we've been raised out of the dunghill, again I say the Lord doesn't leave us there. We have the picture here, this figurative speech here of our
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Lord desiring to place us someplace else. He gives His children a new home.
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Yes, we are saved from darkness into light and we are translated out of Satan's kingdom and made citizens of heaven.
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We who were once dunghill dwellers are one day going to be heaven dwellers. And that's glorious.
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And that's wonderful. And it's not by our effort, it's by the effort, it was by the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross.
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His death, His burial, His resurrection on our behalf. Purchasing us with His precious blood.
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In Christ we have a new position. In Ephesians it says that we're seated, already seated with Christ in heavenly places.
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It is a place of honor. This psalm tells us that God sets us with princes. What does this mean?
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It means when the Lord Jesus lifts up the fallen, His desire is to place them among the subjects of God's kingdom and He will not be content until He does just that.
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God is the great King of heaven and earth and when He saves us in Jesus Christ we become
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His sons and daughters. The sons of the King are princes and princesses.
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My wife Debbie and I have four children. And three of them, as many of you may know, are adopted and one came by natural birth.
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We always say that three were hand -picked and one was home -grown. Of course, by the Lord. God did it.
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The fruit of the womb is from the Lord. As Pastor Mike says, you need something to kind of break it up every once in a while.
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Children are an heritage from the Lord. They are our sons and daughters, all four of them. Our adopted children, the same as biological.
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Our adopted ones though came from some poor and needy situations but now things are different. They now bear the name of Jeffreys and they are heirs to all their father owns.
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They are loved, they are cared for and they are blessed by their earthly father. Speaking to somebody last week about adoption,
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Deb and I were not unkind to all the other children at that time in the 1980s that were needing adoption.
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We were not unkind to them to look upon the three that we did adopt. God moved our hearts to do just that.
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And yet the ones that He moved our hearts to adopt were brought into our family from their condition that they were in and some were very, very, very bad and things are different in their lives.
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And I want to encourage you as a child of God, your condition before as being dwellers upon a dung hill, living away from God, living in the muck and mire of sin and as John said, men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil,
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John chapter 3, that was our former life. But God did something about that.
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God saved us from that condition. Listen to the words of John Pulseford on how God treats
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His children that He not only pulls, that He pulls out of the dung hill. God pardons them and receives them into His house.
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He makes them all His children and all His children are heirs and all His heirs are princes and all
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His princes are crowned and that's what God does. How wonderful. God changes our address from number zero dung hill court to number one palace of God beautiful.
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How undeserved we are and yet this is God's eternal purpose, to redeem a people that He would call for His very own.
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Imagine that, God loving us, saving us through the blood sacrifice of His son
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Jesus upon the cross, electing us, calling us, looking with interest upon us, adopting us into His very own family, raising us up off the dust of sorrow and lifting the needy out of the dung hill of sin.
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Hear me this morning, only God can do that. Only God can do that and He is pleased to do that and when
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He does that, He makes us sit with princes of His people. God exalts the poor.
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God changes us from being outcasts in society to a position of prominence and because of that, your tongue and my tongue should never be silent when it comes to praises.
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Now some of you, as I know that you are at BBC, you've read on. You've gone to verse 9 and you're looking at that verse and you're thinking, what's
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Brother Dave going to do with that one? Well, I don't have to do anything but read it and try to just define it just a little bit, describe it.
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I can't go into great detail, but it almost seems like it doesn't fit. Look at verse 9. We have all this talk about the blessed and high and exalted
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God and how He lifts us up off the dung hill and then we have this verse 9. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.
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He gives the barren woman a home, making her a joyous mother of children. Really, this is just another example of what
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I've been talking about all along. Here we see God exalting even a barren woman to a place of honor where she will abide in the house as a joyful mother.
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You see, a barren woman in this culture and in this day and age in Bible times would be considered an outcast in society.
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She would be a disappointment to her husband because she had provided no children. She was one who would probably be considered unfavored by God.
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There's something wrong with this woman. She's in sin or something was not quite right in her life and God was not blessing her.
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She was a target of mockery by other women. Do you remember someone in the Bible who went through this? 1
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Samuel chapter 1, a lady named Hannah. Peninnah, the other wife, was just bugging her, just pointing the finger at her.
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The other wife was having all kinds of children, but she had none. She was barren and she was being mocked and taunted.
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A barren woman, it was a blotch upon your life to be barren. But God opened
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Hannah's womb. God changed that situation. We see that as we read that text.
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God opened Hannah's womb and gave her a baby. She exalted
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God in the verse in 1 Samuel 2, for there is none holy as the Lord, when she found out that God had given her a son.
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I think you get the point here of this example from an outcast to a blessed place of honor as a mother in Israel.
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Just like the person on the dunghill who is an outcast and then like Mephibosheth in 2
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Samuel chapter 9, I believe, who is in Lodibar living in this faraway land and David says to his servants, are there any left of the household of Saul that I might favor them and bless them?
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They find out that David's friend, Jonathan, had a son and in that lineage there is
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Mephibosheth, a son or a grandson, I can't remember, and David says, go get him. He fetches
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Mephibosheth and brings him out of Lodibar into his palace and makes him do what?
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This is a man who is lame on his feet because he had gotten injured as a young baby and he is to be put at David's table from Lodibar, this low living, this much less deplorable condition, he is brought into the king's court and he is favored and he is numbered among the king's own and provided for by the king.
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We have this spiritual wonderful picture here from being an outcast to being honored and being an outcast as sinners to be honored children of the
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Most High. I want you to consider that, dear brother and sister in Christ. He makes us sit with the princes of his people.
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Just listen to this awesome truth. Christians, you know that in and of yourselves you don't deserve this, you could never earn it, but God who is infinitely rich in mercy and his great grace exalts us to a place of honor of being the apple of his eye, his special people.
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I can remember the day when we brought the little ones home and we adopted them and just being able to hug them, just to be able to be used of God, to be able to provide them a place and that is what
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God has done. We confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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And through faith in Jesus Christ we have been called the children of God. Behold John said what manner of love the
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Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God. That is what we are.
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It is amazing, totally undeserved. We are in the royal family. I remember not too long ago we watched the movie, and I don't recommend too many, but I think this one is recommendable,
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Blindside. Many of you may have seen it. Michael Orr, a destitute child, no hope, no future for him.
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Most of his friends over 50 percent of them dead by the time he was into college.
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His life was changed when Sean and Leanne Tui opened their hearts, opened their home and opened their family and brought him in.
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And he experienced things he had never experienced before. I think one of the most touching parts of the whole movie is when she was giving him his bedroom and a bed and he had said, oh
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I've never had one of those before and I think she said, what a bedroom? And he said, no a bed. He had never had a bed.
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And he got more than that, education, just the love of that family.
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He got the Tui name. He was just as far as being brought into that family and they just lavished their love upon him and changed his life.
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Changed his life radically. He ended up going to college and playing football and I believe he,
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I don't know if he still is, the Baltimore, it's not the Colts anymore, it's the Ravens I think. Baltimore Ravens is where he went first.
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What a tremendous change in this man's life. And we look at that and we say, isn't that wonderful? And we get all excited about that and we would look at the
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Tui's and we would praise them and rightly so for what they had done but yet we'll sit back and there's no praise for our
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Savior who has lifted us up the dunghill. There's no praise for Jesus who has redeemed us with his precious blood.
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What no praise for the Christ who hung on the cross and bore your sin and my sin so that we would not suffer hell for all eternity, not be separated from God.
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He was separated on the cross from his father when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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And he became sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
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And there's no praise. I mean we look at the blind side, I don't know about you, but sometimes we watch a movie like that or we go to the stadium and we watch the ball game.
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We'll go to the school and watch the play or the event and we're clapping and we'll stand up.
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How many of you, I want to ask you to raise your hand, have ever stood up and given another person a standing ovation?
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I know I have, but have you ever as it were in your heart given
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Jesus Christ a standing ovation? And like the psalmist, what do you think all that clapping about is in the
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Old Testament? It wasn't just to keep beat to the music. It was to show praise and thanksgiving to God.
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Oh, clap your hands, all you people. If the trees of the field will clap their hands in praise to God, shouldn't we who have been lifted up off the dunghill of sin praise him?
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Please, shouldn't we? Yes, we should be praisers of God. Shame on us for not being generous with praise towards God as we are towards people.
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When we consider what God has done for us, for our souls, we will and want to praise him more.
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A low view of God and a low view or a taking lightly of God's mighty works towards you will result in low volumes of praise.
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When the kids were little, I can remember driving around in the van. We used to have one of those Toyota bullet vans.
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It was a silver one. We used to call it the silver bullet. And we would pull up to a stop sign or we might be in a parking lot and another car would pull up.
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This music is playing. This secular music is playing. And the kids do exactly what dad was going to do.
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He wasn't going to let our music which was playing to be outdone because our music was giving praise to God.
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So up went the volume. And I'd turn it up and the kids would do this in the seats.
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I don't know that guy in the front seat. But it was my desire for my children to hear
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God being praised more than some worldly stuff being pumped out of some other car.
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And I'm not saying all music is bad. Don't send me the emails and letters at all. Music is bad. But God ought to be praised.
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You know, I could say it as our brother Paul Moran put it in Sunday school. If you miss Sunday school, everything is just dovetailing today.
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He has a quote in his Sunday school. Forgiven sinners are thankful to the same degree that they acknowledge their sinfulness.
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And that's what this depiction of this dunghill is all about. Forgiven sinners are thankful to the same degree that they acknowledge their sinfulness.
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And he was talking about and discussing in Luke chapter 7 where you have that woman who knew she was forgiven much.
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And because she was forgiven much, she loved much. She just didn't give
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Jesus just the time of day and just, you know, thank you Lord. She fell at his feet and kissed his feet, washed his feet with her tears and the hairs of her head and kissed his feet.
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Where are we when it comes to praising him? Are we willing to be uninhibited like this woman in our day to day life?
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When is it where to praise him? From the rising of the sun until its setting. How long of our lives ought we to be praising him?
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Forever and forever we ought to be praising him. And yet we'll find some excuse not to praise him.
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We'll praise others. We'll praise the other leader or spiritual leader maybe, another person, another sports figure.
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We'll do that. We'll jump up and down and praise them. But where is our praise for the
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Lord? I think it can be because we have a low view. We don't have the right view of how much we've been forgiven and the place where God delivered us out of.
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We just don't see that. We don't understand if this piece of paper was an envelope.
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We don't understand the gravity behind this. If this is a letter, up here is the return address.
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And our return address of our lives used to read, the filthy dunghill of this earth below.
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And now the picture has been changed or the letter has been changed. And God by his matchless grace, it reads now, seated with Jesus Christ in heavenly places.
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We're in the courts of heaven. Wow, from the dunghill to the palace, from being outcast to becoming part of God's special family, from picking through the garbage heap to feasting at the king's table, from sinners to saints, from helpless to the helped ones, from dunghill court to the court of heaven, from enemies to friends, from lost to found, from loathsome to being loved of God, from the broad way that leads to destruction to the narrow way that leads to Jesus Christ.
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All of it, all of it, all that we're hearing this morning should cause us to be people who praise his name.
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If you're lost here this morning, you are still on the dunghill. And you are a million miles from the place where many are enjoying the sweet fellowship with God their
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Savior and King. If you do nothing, you will remain there, miserable, hopeless, filthy and ruined, unforgiven, graceless, and you must repent of your sin and turn to Jesus Christ.
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He alone can save you. He died for sinners like you and me. He was buried and rose again that you might be completely forgiven and lifted off the dunghill and brought into the family of God, into God's palace to sit at his table forevermore.
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But that's not your case. You are on the dunghill. And you will die there unless you repent and receive
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Jesus Christ as your Savior. You need to call upon the name of the Lord. And if you do, you will be saved because the
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Bible says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
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And if you do it now, if you do it today, he will save you now and today. You need to put your trust in Christ.
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And I assure you that once you do, you will understand what it means to be saved, what it means to be rescued from the dunghill, and what it means to be a person who is a praiser of God.
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And for you, in closing, that are believers here this morning, how are you doing with your daily praise, this area of your life, this ongoing, heartfelt, continuous praise of the
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Lord? Are you thinking too low of God or what he has done for you? Have you taken too lightly that God has rescued you off the dunghill or the ash heap, that God has visited you with such great salvation?
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Let me ask you, don't you think you've been silent too long? Isn't it time to loosen your tongue and praise him?
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Some of you have been so burdened by the cares of life or maybe it's sin, maybe it could be some excuse, but no excuse is good when it comes to say why we are not praising the
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Lord. None will do. Today is a day to change all of that. And may your Lord be praised from this time forth and forevermore with your lips and with your tongues and from your grateful hearts every day and in every way that others around you may hear what great things the
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Lord God has done for you. This psalm begins, verse 1, praise the Lord.
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It ends in verse 9 with praise the Lord. We are commanded to praise him.
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We are to praise him because he is exalted. You and I are to praise him because he condescends and looks with interest on the things of heaven and earth.
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And we are to praise him because he has rescued us, hasn't he? He has rescued us from the dunghill.
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He is so kind towards us that he delivers us from this deplorable state. And not only that, he exalts us as his princes and princesses.
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We are his very own. The psalm begins and ends, I said, with praise. And from the rising of the sun until its setting, may we, as is extremely important blessed people, be known to be a praising people.
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We're going to close this morning and we're going to sing a song. I don't even know what the song is, but I trust that you'll be able to sing it with all of your heart, praising the
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Lord. But before that, let's just have a moment of silent before the Lord. And maybe it is that we've been silent too long with our tongues.
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We have not praised him as we should. Maybe we have focused a lot of attention and time on praising others here below.
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And maybe it's a time for us just to think and to commit ourselves to be a people who heed this psalm, who live this word.
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It's not hard. It doesn't cost us any money. It just costs us our heart, our time.
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And I encourage you to do that. This week, look for opportunities where you're by yourself, plenty of time driving in the car, maybe washing the dishes.
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Anytime where you're waiting in line, you're queued up in a bank or something or grocery store to take that time and just to look around at what
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God has created. Maybe you're driving through a street and you see the great creation of God. Praise him. Think about where you were in the past, your zip code and where you are today.
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Praise him. Think about what God's done in your life and in your family, your friends. Think about the word of God, just the riches in Christ Jesus, and make it a part of your life to be known and identified and a mark of our lives to be those people.
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We are people who are Christians who are so glad, so thankful, and we will praise him. Let's bow and just kind of think along these lines and I'll pray and then we'll sing our last hymn together.
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Our Father, as we look past in our lives, even this past week and maybe this past month or year, and maybe there's been more coming off our tongues of murmuring and complaining and whining or maybe nothing.
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Maybe it's just been silent and silence where there ought to have been praise.
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We ought to think about what it is that you've done for us as the psalmist said, oh, that men would praise the
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Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men.
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Lord, you've been good to us, far good, lavishly good, lavishing your amazing love and grace upon us.
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Lord, we've been silent and for that we ask your forgiveness. Lord, we don't want to go away as it were beaten over the head with a burden upon us, but we've confessed the sin this morning and we're thankful that you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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And we would ask you, Lord, to loosen our tongues. We're reminded of the other psalmists who said that you had brought us out of an horrible pit and out of the miry clay and you set our feet upon a rock and you established our goings.
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Many shall see and shall fear and they shall trust in the Lord. And in that psalm it also says there's something that they will hear from our lives, even praise unto our
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God. Oh Lord, we praise you and we adore you and we magnify you and we lift up your holy name this morning.
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We pray that in our lives this week we may not be afraid, that we would be uninhibited, that our tongues would be loosened and that we wherever and however would be a people who will praise you for you are worthy.