Psalm 79 From Problem to Praise

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Jesse Hill; Psalm 79 From Problem to Praise

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. All right, please open up your
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Bibles to Psalm 79. If you look in your
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Bibles, there's probably a heading over that psalm, and they probably vary, but I'm curious what yours reads.
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Heading over my psalm read, How long, O Lord? And that's taken from verse 5.
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When we get to that point, we'll look at why the psalmist said these words. But as I read those words initially,
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I found myself wondering, how many times, How long, O Lord?
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How many times has that statement been uttered? I can't even imagine.
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From the minimum polling in my own life, I'm really curious. I know
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I probably have uttered that more times than I could count. So I'm just curious from that minimal polling, even if all the data could come in,
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I bet it'd be nearly impossible. We're continually, as people, we're continually asking
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God, How long, O Lord? Can you almost hear the cry from the
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Israelites as they're in bondage in Egypt? How about the countless saints that have been imprisoned and persecuted over the years?
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Can you imagine the unbelievable cries of all the believers that were in Hitler's camps as they awaited their death?
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How long, O Lord? What about those in the book of Revelation that had been slain?
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Revelation says they cried out, How long, sovereign Lord? Holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood.
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Again, what about the repeated question in our own lives? How many times have we asked,
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How long will I struggle with this sin? How long do
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I have to endure sickness? How long, Lord? Until you give the answers.
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How long, O Lord? The thought of countless cries from every person who has ever lived is very heavy stuff to think through.
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Yet so is the psalm, especially on an initial reading. See, there's many different styles of psalms.
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This psalm here, this is a psalm of lament. But it's not just a psalm of lament.
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It's lament for an entire group of people. This communal lament. It's not just that. It's also an imprecatory psalm.
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Now, imprecatory, if you've never heard that word, it's a psalm containing direct prayers for harm against people.
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That idea can be very hard to deal with. And psalms like this can actually make us a little uncomfortable and maybe wish we were back in a psalm of thanksgiving or a psalm of praise.
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But Church, God providentially has us here today. And I think if we can avoid the knee -jerk reaction to potentially struggle with the idea of a
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God who could send judgment, and if we can avoid the idea of struggling with a psalmist who could directly pray against other people,
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I think if we can see past those hard ideas, I believe there's a lot of amazing truths in the middle of this lament.
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See, psalms like this may just help us understand prayer even more. Psalms like these may just help us in a time of desperate need.
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See, Psalm 79 is not just a lament. It's not just an imprecatory prayer.
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Psalm 79 is a prayer for deliverance. And that's an amazing thing.
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What better place to go than to our sovereign God? See, this entire psalm, and it could be argued this about every psalm, but this entire psalm is a prayer.
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It is a prayer that goes directly and completely to God throughout the whole thing from start to finish.
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So as you follow along, as I read at the beginning of this introduction, as you follow along in Psalm 79, listen for these splits in the text.
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If we were going to do a kind of a layout, this would be it. I didn't separate out and put it up.
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Poetry's funny that way. It's hard to lay out. But verses 1 through 4, we'll notice that there's pain and there's problems, and they're taken to God.
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Verses 5 through 12, there are confessions, requests, and pleadings.
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And they're entrusted to God. And in verse 13, there is praise, and it's focused to God.
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And in my title, From Problem to Praise, there's going to be some low points in there.
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There's going to be some dark things in this. Don't lose sight of the praise that comes at the end.
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I think we'll see as we go through this, the psalmist never forgets God. He's going to God, and he ends in praise.
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So let us do the same. All right, Psalm 79. Please follow along. Starts as a
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Psalm of Asaph. O God, the nations have come into your inheritance.
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They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
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They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of the faithful to the beast of the earth.
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They poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem. There was no one to bury them.
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We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us. How long,
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O Lord, will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?
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Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name.
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For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste to his habitation. Do not remember against us our former iniquities.
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Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us,
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O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for our sins for your name's sake.
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Why shouldn't the nations say, where is their God? Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes.
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Let the groans of the prisoners come before you. According to your great power, preserve those doomed to die.
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Return sevenfold into the laps of our neighbors, the taunts of which they've taunted you,
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O Lord. But we, we are people, the sheep of your pasture, we will give thanks to you forever.
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From generation to generation, we will recount your praise. Let's pray.
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Lord, we, we praise, we praise you. We thank you that we can come to you. Where else do we have to go?
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We thank you that you hear our prayers, you hear our cries, you hear our pleas. And Lord, this is a, this is a hard psalm.
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This is harder maybe for some of us than others. Maybe for some of us, the sky is blue, there is money in the bank, and we are doing just fine.
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For others, we may be closer to what the psalmist is crying out over.
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Lord, either way, wherever we're at, we're thankful that you are our God, that you are sovereign, and that we can come to you with our cares and our worries and our anxieties.
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And I pray, Lord, just that today you will, after our time of worship here and after a time of fellowship, when we come back and open up these words,
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I pray you will speak clearly to us, that you will help us to understand, even through lament, even through pain, even through trial, that we can come to you, we can trust in you, we can rest in you, and ultimately we will, can, and we'll enjoy the praise of you forevermore.
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Pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, please find your spot in Psalm 79 again.
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And brothers, sisters, it's so important that you can see these words as I'm reading them. You need to be able to see that these are
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God's words and not my ideas. It's always important. I feel at times with heavier text, it can,
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I'll say it's equally as important. All right, as you turn there, I do wonder, what's
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God been showing you in the Psalms over these last few weeks? We've been in them for five, six weeks. It's been awesome.
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Some people have been reading through them. And at the bare minimum, if you've been here for Sunday mornings, you've been hearing the
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Psalms proclaimed, at least a sampling of them, right? One of the things that I personally love about Psalms is so many of them begin with, or contain at least, some sort of a problem, some immovable issue, be it an enemy, an invading army, some sort of hardship.
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And as a Psalmist raises this complaint or this issue to God, we start to see somewhat of a reoccurring theme.
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They almost inevitably, almost every time, they recall God's powerful works,
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His amazing grace. They'll recall things such as deliverance from bondage in Egypt.
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They'll recall how we crushed a nation or an enemy in the past, how we fulfilled a promise.
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And the next thing you know, you can almost feel that initial, immovable problem or issue. You can almost feel it fade away, fade into the background.
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And so many times, the Psalm will conclude with the Psalmist's focus no longer on that problem, right?
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No longer on that issue, but rather on praising their awesome and their powerful and their sovereign
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God. What may have began in anxiety and pain and fear, so many times ends in praise unto
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God. And as Psalm 79 begins, we already heard the problems abound.
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The Psalmist laments over the state of God's people, the state of the temple, and the state of Jerusalem.
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Listen and follow along as I reread verses one through four. It may be slightly unpleasant to our ear, but these verses are likely easy enough for us to read through as we sit in these comfortable, relatively comfortable chairs, right, in this climate -controlled structure.
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We're free from persecution, free to congregate, and we're blessed, but may
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I use the word even privileged to the point where we can skim some of these hard verses.
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And we can scarcely, so many times, we can scarcely even feel an ounce of the pain that they were experiencing.
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But I ask, what if this was our life? What if other nations came in and invaded our country?
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What if all of our churches and our homes and our cities lay in ruin? What if the countless deaths listed in here, in this
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Psalm, were your friends, your parents, your spouse, your children?
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Take a moment and put faces to this atrocity. Are you beginning to feel the true lament that the
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Psalmist was crying out against? Possibly, but if you're anything like me, you're probably still relatively numb to the weight of this painful cry.
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Listen, listen along to these verses, and as much as you're able, hear and feel this complaint taken to God, this is heavy stuff.
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Again, verse one through four, he says, oh God, and notice that, notice that starting point right out of the gate.
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Where did he go? Oh God, the nations have come into your inheritance.
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They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
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They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, and the flesh of your faithful to the beast of the earth.
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They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one, there was no one to bury them.
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We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by all those around us.
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These problems were real. His pain was real. There wasn't a soul alive that did not feel that pain.
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Can you feel that? Now we could ask, and we should ask, who were these nations, and when did this event take place?
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That's important, but unfortunately from everything I've read, we can't know for certain.
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We can't be completely sure. Scholars and theologians do not completely agree on the timing and details surrounding these words and events.
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Now you can take peace and rest, and most of them do conclude in one event.
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Most of them concluded that the defilement of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem as described in the psalm, they were likely speaking of the invasion of the
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Babylonians in, what was it, 586 BC. And as I studied through and everything
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I read, it seems very likely to me. That's where I would land if you cared and asked. Yet some have really concluded that this event was a future event, or at least future to that time.
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Others have concluded it's a different event altogether. And at this point, we really could,
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I could have put together charts and graphs and proofs, and we could have put them up on the screen, right?
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We could have weighed the options, looked at the possibilities, and attempted to conclude the matter.
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But I feel like doing so may not be necessary in order to get to the heart of this lament. It's important.
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It's important when that happened. And I don't want to lose track of the flow and the weight of this prayer.
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These problems, they did resolve around an event. No doubt about that. It most certainly involved around a place, right?
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The defiling of the temple, the laying of Jerusalem in ruins. So it's important. But it also includes
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God's people getting ravaged. And as I read this psalm, the events, as I was reading them and taking them in, the events appear to be very fresh in the psalmist's mind.
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I personally believe that he observed these events. He appeared, as I read it, to be in the midst of the destruction.
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Did you guys feel that too? And there's an undeniable desperation as he's sharing these words that led him to go to the only place he knew, and that was to God.
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I do want to, as we skim these verses one through four again, notice the tense in these verses.
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Okay, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple.
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They have laid Jerusalem to ruins. They have given the bodies of your servants.
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They have poured out their blood. There was no one to bury them.
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And as a result, what did the psalmist say? We have become a taunt to our neighbors.
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Asaph, the writer of the psalm, had nowhere else to go but to a sovereign God. He looks around and they had already been defeated.
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The temple had already been defiled. The city had already been laid to ruins. They have already become a taunt to their neighbors.
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Nation Israel could do nothing to prevent these things from happening the first time. And I think he can see that there's nothing they can do in their strength to repair this devastation.
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His only place to go is to God. And that's exactly what he does.
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I found myself asking the question, is this possibly a good reminder for us?
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It was for me. How many times do we try to fix our own problems while never even lifting our cares and concerns of the
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Lord? Good reminder. As we move from the problem to the plea section of the psalm, notice the transition in verse 5.
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Again, Asaph says, How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?
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Your jealousy burns like fire. And on an initial reading, to me, this seemed like an odd transition.
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In light of the struggles and the pain that we just read through in verses 1 through 4, it felt like to me, verse 6 through 7 would have been a more accurate way to transition this plea from pain to plea.
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At least on initial reading, that's the way the psalm hit me. There in verses 6 through 7, he said,
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Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name. For they have devoured
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Jacob and laid waste to his habitation. And although this plea is imprecatory, that is, it's praying against people for their destruction, even that aside, this seems like a more natural transition than the question of,
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Will you be angry forever? It appears like, coming out of a painful situation, a state where he can turn nowhere but to God, it seems like, seems like, if God would just simply answer this verses 6 and 7, which seems to give a solution, then they could begin to heal.
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They could begin to move on. They would no longer be under this, this bondage and this, this, this torture and whatever was going on.
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But church, listen, to jump from verses 4 to 6, as I did on my initial reading, it misses the heart of the matter.
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Again, verse 5 says, How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?
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Will your jealousy burn like fire? Angry at what?
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Jealous for what? Weren't these conquered exiles battered and ravaged, bruised, left without a place to worship?
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Why would the Lord be angry at them? Aren't they victims? We could ask.
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But in verse 5, the psalmist assumes the why. He appears to conclude that the result of verses 1 through 4 in all of that pain, was a direct judgment from a sovereign
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God. It was a judgment for the way that his people had sinned against their God.
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And God is very jealous for his name and his righteousness. And as I opened up this text, as, as I started to dig into this text,
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I found myself asking, can I be sure, can we be sure that this is what
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Asaph concluded? Can we be confident that he concluded that the events of verses 1 through 4 and the anger from God in verse 5 was directed at his people for judgment?
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Look at verse 8 with me, please. Consider the psalmist words. In it, he shares the communal confession and repentance as he pleads for God's mercy.
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Verse 8 says, speaking to God, of course, do not remember against us our former iniquities.
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Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.
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Notice his confession. Before Asaph goes from complaint to plea, he pauses for reflection.
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And in his reflection, he realizes the need to repent for their sinful disobedience. Their verse 1 through 4 hardships led to the reminder of their own sin and God's anger towards it.
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And that led them to repentance. See, this all led to a plea for God's compassion.
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And the Israelites were, as he said at the end of verse 8, they were brought very low.
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Maybe this is a lesson for us. Every trial we face may not be a direct result of our own sin.
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And that's important to remember. But it might, it just might be foolish to imagine that unrepentant sin in our life could not play into these troubles.
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Do you ever pause to check where you're at with God? The state of your soul? Do you ever check?
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Where are you at? Is it possible, speaking in the context of a believer's life, is it possible that God could be sending a trial or a trouble into your life as a direct result of your sin?
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And your unrepentance? See, I wonder on this side of the cross, knowing that Jesus died in our place,
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I wonder at times if we, if we may almost limit, if that can limit us from taking a serious and strong look at our sin.
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Do we ever take sin serious? Sin is serious.
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Do we ever presume upon the Lord's grace without considering the weight of our sin? I guess that's my question.
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See, I have a lot of hobbies. I have a lot of things that I love to do.
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And one of them, anything that has wheels or moves. And I love engines. I love anything mechanical.
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And maybe a silly illustration, maybe helpful, maybe not. I don't know. An engine that goes untended, it never has its fluids checked or changed.
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It'll run. It'll run for time. I found that out. Sooner or later though, it'll reap the reality of its neglected state.
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See, engines need oil to lubricate their vital components, aids and other things too, cooling to whatever else.
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But they need that for proper lubrication. And if an engine, if it continues in neglect, right, if that oil runs low, if that oil breaks down and degradates over time from not getting changed, it will have catastrophic consequences that lead to its demise.
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You know, and again, maybe this is helpful. Maybe this comparison, maybe not. If not, throw it out. We'll move on.
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Similar to the neglected engine, our unrepentant sin, right, if there is unrepentant sin in our life, that unrepentant sin may be left untended.
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Okay, not by God. He sees everything. He knows. It's not untended by God, right?
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But it could be untended by us. If we neglect our spiritual state and stay in untended, unrepentant sin,
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God, hear me, God may, God may use trials and troubles and tribulations to bring us back to him.
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And why? It's a grace, church, because he loves us. Is there anything, is there anything you need to take to your
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Lord? Maybe this, maybe this is a good reminder for us to ensure we've not been dabbling in unrepentant sin.
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There are no closets with God. God sees what we think, what we say, and what we do, even when no one else does.
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God is jealous. He's jealous for his glory, his righteousness, and his name.
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And he will not share his glory with any false idol or false God, being an idol of stone or an idol of self and sin.
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Remember that, church. God takes sin seriously. And as we see the transition from complaint,
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I guess, to repentance now, now we can look at how the psalmist pleads to God.
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Let's take a closer look at verse 6 and 7. Again, he says, Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name, for they have devoured
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Jacob and laid waste to his habitation. See, if we paraphrase verses 5 through 8, and I think that's important to do.
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I think it'd be helpful from time to time. Maybe not so helpful if you're trying to dig into the depths of a verse, but I think we've kind of taken a look at these verses.
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Now, if we paraphrase them, I think we basically see the psalmist saying this, Lord, please remove your hand of judgment from your people.
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We have sinned and we know it. Since the jealousy for your name's sake will continue, would you turn the wrath from your people to wrath to people who do not know you, acknowledge you and call upon your name, towards those who mock you and taunt you?
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Would you turn it towards those who have destroyed your people? Asaph cried this out, pleading for compassion from God to come speedily among them.
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You can understand that. You could understand I'd want God to answer that prayer instantly.
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Can you feel the need for God and his mercy in this plea? It appears that these realities that had come upon them in verses 1 through 4 has led
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Asaph and this remaining lot of Israelites, however many where there were, it led them.
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These pains led them back to the Lord in repentance. And as he shared in verse 8, they were sobered up.
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They were indeed brought very low. And from that humbled, crushed state, that is where the psalmist cries out.
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Verse 9. Look with me. He says, Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name.
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Deliver us and atone for our sins for your name's sake. If there's going to be deliverance, it will come from God.
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Asaph knows that. Notice again, look at verse 9. Notice the beginning of his plea.
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His plea is based solely in the glory and honor of God's name. Do you see that? He cries out,
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Help us, O God of our salvation. Why? Look at verse 9. For the glory of your name.
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Asaph continues, Deliver us and atone for our sins. Why? Look again at verse 9.
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For his name's sake. See, he's not crying out to God to be saved and delivered based off anything they deserved.
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He already admitted they deserved nothing. They deserved, there's no way they deserve to be reconciled to the
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God that they disobeyed. Nor did he cry out out of entitlement. Their sin -stained hands were not entitled to anything but judgment.
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The only reason he gave in this prayer, in this cry, in asking for God for deliverance and atonement, what was the only reason he gave?
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What'd you see? It was for God's name and glory to be made great. And again, maybe it's just me, but maybe a lot of lessons for us here.
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What am I basing my prayers and pleas upon when I come to the Lord? Are my prayers primarily and specifically for the end goal of my comfort?
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See, God tells us, bring your cares and anxieties for me because I care for you. And it's so true and we should.
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We should take them to him. But I wonder, is it for my end goal of my comfort?
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Or are my prayers for the end goal of God's glory and his name to be made great? See, the answers to those questions, they can be very revealing in our lives.
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Can we truly pray this way? Even if we're in pain, even if we are defeated as the
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Israelites were. Speaking of defeat, and in that sense, and especially if you've read ahead to verse 10, in ancient times, we can read, you can read all over the place on how it was believed if you defeat a nation, you don't just defeat that nation, you defeat their
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God. And here we find the Israelites in ruins and they knew the taunts of their enemy.
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And as I was thinking through this week, it reminded me of the almost, I don't know if I should use the word comical, but the almost comical story of 1
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Samuel 5. It's where God displayed his power to the Philistines after they defeated the
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Israelites and they captured the ark. I don't know if you guys recall the story, but if not, the Philistines, basically they come in, they defeated the
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Israelites and they placed the ark into the temple of their false God.
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In their mind, they defeated the God of Israel in that story. They set their trophy, this, the ark of God, which represented
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God, right? It was to them their picture of, they set this trophy before Dagon, their false
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God, this statue that stood. But our God, our
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God had other plans in mind. See, the next morning, I'm guessing as the men walked into the temple, high from the defeat and the victory and the trophy they brought in, they entered, they entered the temple.
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And as they entered, probably much to their surprise, they found their false God, Dagon, fallen on the ground right before the ark.
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So what did they do? They, they took this, this, the statue of their God and they had to lift it up back to a supposed rightful place over the ark, which represented the
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God of Israel. And to that, I laugh and I say, what a weak God. If the followers have to lift that God, if the followers have to do something for that, quote,
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God, possibly they thought it was a fluke, right? So the next morning they go into the temple and I'm guessing with not as much spring in their step, they went in though.
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And what did they find? There was Dagon, their false God, this statue, same on the ground, but this time with his head and his hands broken off.
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So I love how, how God, even in this story, in the Philistines' victory, thinking they defeated the
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God of Israel, I love how God defended his name, how he showed to these
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Philistines, he was indeed God. And the Philistines, of course, quick finish of the story, they take this, we don't want this thing, they send it to another town, problems, send it over here, problems, they finally send it on a cart and send it back to Israel, right?
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So all the trouble. See, I share all that, I share that story, I think it's worthwhile because like the
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Philistines in that first Samuel account, the nations and the people from this psalm, they were boasting of defeating the
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God of Israel. These crushed Israelites, they're defeating and they're saying this in verse 10.
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They said, the psalmist says, why should the nation say, where is their God?
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Remember in verse 9, the plea was based upon God's holy name, right? We remember that, we just went over that.
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He said, help us, why? For the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for us, why?
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For your name's sake. Well, similarly here in verse 10, we see the psalmist plays back upon God, okay?
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See this, puts it right back on God. This time only though, it's to prove
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God's name in how? By avenging the people's blood. He continues in the latter part of verse 10 and he says, let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes.
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He says, Lord, show the nations your God. Avenge your people.
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Avenge your name. But Asaph didn't stop with merely avenging the blood of the slaughtered.
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Oh, he pleads in verse 11 that God will mercifully preserve the captured prisoners who are awaiting certain death.
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Verse 11 reads, let the groans of the prisoners come before you according to your great power.
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See where that focus is? According to your great power, preserve those doomed to die. Protect and defend your people, he cries out.
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Defend your name. And in verse 12, as the psalmist hones in this lament -filled imprecatory prayer, he says this, verse 12.
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This is important. He says, return sevenfold into the lap of our neighbors, the taunts of which they have taunted you,
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O Lord. Church, notice Asaph's final plea here. By using the term sevenfold, he calls for God to judge this godless nation, these peoples, in perfection and completion.
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He's calling for God to judge without any mercy, without any lifting of his hand.
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Yikes. Another imprecatory prayer. See, I had a friend ask me this week, they asked, how do imprecatory prayers apply to us today?
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And again, if you forgot, imprecatory prayer, praying directly against someone for their harm.
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They asked, how do these apply today? Is it okay to pray against our enemies? Well, I would start with this, right?
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John 15, Jesus quoted an imprecatory prayer from the Psalms. There's a lot of them.
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He quoted one. So did Paul in Romans 11. So does that mean we can pray judgment against the annoying co -workers now?
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Because Jesus prayed them, right? Does that mean we can, person who cut us off or whatever that is, or maybe a little more serious, can we pray against someone who did us great harm?
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Can we pray directly against them that God would crush them for what they did? I'd say not so fast, right?
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I thank God for the continued revelation of his word. And if we look in Matthew 5 and in Luke 6,
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Jesus told us, pray for your enemies. And that's what we saw our
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Lord do on the cross in his prayer. Remember that? Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.
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So again, the question, didn't avoid the question, what do we do with these imprecatory prayers?
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Glance with me again at verse 12. I trust there's some insight in there for us. He says,
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Who? Look at the text.
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Taunted you, O Lord. If we look at what
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Asaph's plea was focused on, I think we have a clue of how these prayers apply.
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Notice, Asaph was not just praying against that nation to judge them because they're our enemy.
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What was he doing? His plea was for God to judge these enemies. And that is based on the taunts of which they have taunted you,
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O Lord. Not the taunts of which they have taunted his people, even though they were laying there dead in the streets, getting eaten by animals.
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Do you see that? I think this is key. The enemies in these prayers were primarily enemies of God, even though they sinned against Israel.
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And that can be hard to understand for us, but I think if we survey scripture and we see, we probably don't have a better example of maybe
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King David. He wrote a majority of the imprecatory psalms, by the way, and some of them get way worse than what is up here.
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Some are hard to read. I think he understood that well. How else do you think he could have prayed something like this?
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And you'll probably remember these words. He prayed this in one of his psalms. Against you and you only have
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I sinned, O Lord. And do you guys know when he prayed that? Do you know when he said those words?
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It was after he had killed Uriah, which was one of his mighty men, one of his right hand men.
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He killed him after he had taken his wife and had an affair with her.
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And he can pray against you and you only have I sinned. Do you guys see that? There's a horizontal sin, but David understood his primary sin was against them.
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And we can see Asaph in here, in this psalm, pointing out that the primary enemy is against the
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Lord who is taunting them. And see, church, at this point, Asaph is so appalled in this psalm.
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He is so appalled at the wickedness of sin. He hates how it's an affront to God's glory in his name.
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And if we look at any, and there's again a lot, if we look at any of the imprecatory prayers in the Bible, they all have the same focus.
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The authors of these prayers are not necessarily praying for personal vengeance. Yeah, they want delivery.
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I understand that. But rather, they're calling for God's justice and the protection of his name by judging these enemies.
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Even if, even if it means crushing their heads and returning their taunts.
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Friends, I think we can and should pray that God will protect his name and stop evil.
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I thought of a lot of examples where this could be prayed. Even from some of the early examples when
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I was asking how long, Lord, and from the camps, can you imagine the way they would have been praying? We can think even in today, ways we could pray against godless organizations that are screaming against God's glory, that are fighting against him continually.
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We can think of ways that we could pray, God, stop them at all cost. And maybe we should.
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But when it comes to our, our quote, personal enemies, I think
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Jesus was clear telling us instead, pray for them, right? Pray for them. The focus of these prayers, and don't miss this friends, focus of this prayers is on God in his glory.
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The focus is not on our enemies in our comfort. And I think Asaph saw that, the writer of the
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Psalms saw that as safe ground. And I think we can base our prayers in the realm of God's glory and justice as well, by his power, for his praise, and for his name's sake.
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If my observation of this is correct, and I believe it is, but if it's correct, I would ask, do we have this filter over all of our prayers, right?
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Do all of our prayers pass through this idea that all of our prayers are for the glory of God's name, for his name's sake?
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I thought of, I guess I ask a lot of questions in my own life, and maybe that's why I ask them up here, right? But I thought this as I was studying through, when
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I pray for deliverance for sin, or from an enemy, or lousy situation, is it solely for my comfort in my desires and my ends?
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Or is it based, are these, when I'm praying, are these based primarily for the glory of God, and the glory of his name?
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And we really could ask that about anything we lift up to God, and they're good things. We ask a lot of good things, right?
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When we pray for a wayward child, or the salvation of a loved one, or maybe pray for healing, or for finances, times when we don't have enough money to pay bills, or a job, we can pray all of these things.
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But are we praying our cares and our worries to God in order that his name would be made great as a result of the answers, even if he doesn't answer it the way that we want?
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Are we praying in that way? In this psalm, I believe Asaph showed us that whatever we pray for, pray it all by and for the glory of God, not just for our ends.
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Pray your cares, pray your anxieties, but are you praying it again by and for the glory of God?
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And this is crazy, right? The people who do not know the Lord do not understand this.
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The nations who do not acknowledge God cannot understand that idea of not having a me first mentality.
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But can we pray that? Can we pray with our greatest focus on God and his glory, even if this prayer isn't answered?
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Church, unlike the world, if you belong to the Lord, and again, if you belong to the
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Lord, you've been given eyes to see past yourself, past your sin.
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If you're his, your heart will pray along with this, what Asaph's been saying here, and your heart will pray along with these concluding remarks.
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In verse 13, look with me, verse 13, he said, but we, your people, we, your people, the sheep of your pasture, we will give thanks to you forever.
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From generation to generation, we will recount your praise. And church, that's exactly what
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God's people will do. And you know, on the here and now for today,
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God delivers us from some, right? From some of our trials and troubles. He does every time he answers our prayers, and we praise him.
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I think you could all say, we praise him for those daily mercies. And it's cool, because even those, those mercies, those, those prayers that I lift up, that probably a week from now,
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I will forget, let alone my kids. And when they're adults, they won't recall these, and their kids will certainly not recall these daily immovable battles.
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But when I lift them up and they're answered, and I praise God, it's so cool how over the centuries of us retelling
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God's goodness and his faithfulness, how that produces praise. And that's cool.
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But I think here, I think Asaph has even a deeper, a deeper view maybe on what he's trying to say.
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I think the primary praise in verse 13 that will be on the lips of every believer from generation to generation, from the moment of eternity to forevermore, will primarily be the redemptive work that God did on the cross through our
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Do you know
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Jesus? Do you know Jesus? If you have no other application, ask that.
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Do you know Jesus, our God and Savior who came to this earth? See, he lived the perfect life that you could not.
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He died on the death, taking your place, taking the wrath that you deserved for your sins.
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And even though verse 13 was written many years before Christ would die and come to this earth, even though it was written long, long before that, the salvation that God completed on the cross is what
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I believe verse 13 ultimately proclaims. See, God has praised from generation to generation for his redemptive work on that cross that we will, church, we will spend an eternity praising
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God and learning him more and more and more based upon that gospel.
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And in a few moments, we're gonna take communion. Okay, speaking of gospel and remembering of that, we'll be taking communion.
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And I would just ask, please, if you know, if you go to this church regularly or not, if you're a member or not, if you know our
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Lord, if you sing these praises, if you are his, would you please join us?
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There's stations on the sides, in the back. Would you join us as we remember the body of Christ broken for you?
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Would you join us as we remember the body of blood, the body, I'm sorry, the blood of Christ poured out for you?
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And would you please join us in the anticipation of a day when we will see him?
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Church, we will get to see our Lord face -to -face. We'll sing praises and glory to him forevermore.
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And we'll be free of struggle, free of sin, free of sickness, free of pain. But most importantly, most of all, free to finally see him without sin -stained eyes, free to finally know him without a sin -stained mind, and free to finally worship him in perfection and clarity.
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Church, do you know him? Let's pray. Father, we praise you for countless things.
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We praise you for your mercy, your compassion, your grace. Lord, we praise you that we can bring hard things to you.
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We praise you that we can bring praises to you. Lord, I don't know where everyone is at in this room.
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I'm sure we are somewhere between complete wreck of where Asaph was all the way up to, again, the sky is blue, bills are paid, things are good.
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I don't know where those are, but I do know that if we are at our lowest or we are our highest, if nothing else, we know that the law does its job and it reminds us of our need for Christ.
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Our daily failings, we're reminded that we need Christ. We can't and he has. Lord, we thank you for your gospel.
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Thank you for your grace. Thank you that we can know you forevermore. And as we take communion, take these elements, help us,
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Lord, to remember all that you did for us on the cross. We praise you in Jesus' name.