God. Will. Deliver.

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Rusty Hernandez; Psalm 40 God. Will. Deliver.

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Thank you for letting me have the opportunity to stand here behind this pulpit and bring the word of God to you.
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It is a privilege for me to be able to do that. Uh, God will provide was last time.
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God will deliver is the point of this sermon this morning. Okay. So, uh, both very true.
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God will deliver. Okay. So, uh, I'm going to keep this introduction a bit short one, because I want to push some of this time to the preaching portion of this.
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Okay. A little bit more time to preach to reason. Number two, the nerves are real, man.
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Okay. Uh, last time it had been three years since I preached only three months this time, but I'm nervous as all get out.
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Okay. So just bear with me here. Uh, but this morning, what we're going to do is look at a need that all of us share.
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Okay. Whether you're young or old, rich or poor man or woman, there is a common need that we all have.
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Okay. The need to be saved, the need to be delivered. Okay. Uh, so we're going to look at that, that need this morning.
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Um, we're going to look how God delivers us in the midst of that need.
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Uh, there's sort of a big overarching need of salvation, right? The need to be saved from the penalty of sin, what
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I'll call the penalty of sin. We'll look at that a little bit, right? But the, the sort of the main focus of this
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Psalm is the daily deliverance from the power of sin, right? All the effects and consequences of living in a fallen world.
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I thought the heartache, the suffering, the loneliness, the sadness, just the burden of going through life in a fallen world.
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Okay. And sort of the questions that are being posed by this text of scripture is what will you do when suffering comes?
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Because it will come to all of us. The Bible talks about suffering, not to be a killjoy, not to be a, you know, a stick in the mud, but to prepare us in grace for the times when suffering comes.
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So what will we do when suffering comes? How will we react? Who will we trust?
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Where will we go when suffering comes? Okay. Those are the questions that we'll be dealing with this morning.
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And maybe you would say today, well, that's not me. I don't, I don't have any suffering in my life, any sadness, any heartache.
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Good. Great. But I would, I would ask you to continue to listen because maybe you can be an instrument of grace for somebody else, shepherding them through times of heartache and doubt and struggle.
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Okay. And if I can be honest with you, if I can be honest and be vulnerable and share with you a little bit here this morning, there, there are many times, there are many days, especially in these last several years where I feel like I'm just crumbling away under the burden and the weight of discouragement and disappointment.
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And I need to be reminded of the words of Psalm 40. I need to be reminded that God is good and he is faithful and he is loving and he is gracious and he is merciful and that God will provide, but that God will deliver us from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin.
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So turn to Psalm 40 with me, if you would. Psalm 40.
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I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry.
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He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
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He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the
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Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, those who go astray after a lie.
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You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you.
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I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear.
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Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
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I delight to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart.
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I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained my lips.
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As you know, O Lord, I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation.
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I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. As for you,
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O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me, for evils have encompassed me beyond number.
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My iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see they are more than the hairs of my head.
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My heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me.
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O Lord, make haste to help me. Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek to snatch away my life.
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Let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, aha, aha.
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But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say continually, great is the
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Lord. As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me.
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You are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, O my
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God. Father, thank you for the opportunity to come together this morning, gathered together as your church, the church of your son,
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Jesus Christ. I pray that you would prepare our hearts right now to offer you worship.
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You are deserving of worship. You are worthy of worship. You are worthy of our praise.
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Even in the midst of hard times, even in the midst of suffering and struggle, you are worthy of praise.
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We praise you for who you are. We praise you for what you've done through the cross of Jesus Christ.
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We praise you for what you are doing, sanctifying us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Father, we love you.
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We love you. We love you. Cause us to love you and your son more and more every day.
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Change us into the image of your son, Jesus Christ. Put a new song in our mouths,
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Lord, as we shepherd one another through this fallen world, rejoicing, rejoicing that we have been saved from the power, the penalty of sin, and that you are bringing us to one day where we will be saved from the presence of sin altogether.
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So in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, Church, that song hits me right here in the heart.
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I'm sniffling a little bit. This is a little bit off topic, but when I was young, my parents got divorced. So we would go from Missouri to Texas all summer.
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When we'd come back, my dad would drop us off and leave us for until next year.
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And so I would just weep when I was dropped back in Missouri. The older that I got,
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I thought, you have to kill that in yourself to be a man. You can't weep and cry like that.
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So that's what I did. I tried to kill every bit of emotion in my heart. When I was saved,
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God gave me the ability to cry again. So that song hits me right there. That might not have been the best one for me to hear before I get up here and preach because I'm sniffling a little bit, but I'm the one who asked for it.
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So that's on me, I guess. So we're going to talk about life this morning. OK, all the facets of life.
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OK, our lives are full of ups and downs. Would you agree with that? Highs and lows.
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Life can sometimes feel like a roller coaster. One day you'll be on the mountaintop experiencing amazing highs.
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But then seemingly the very next day, it all comes crashing down and you're faced with terrifying lows.
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We can go from exhilaration to darkness in the blink of an eye. And that reality is one of the reasons why
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I love the Psalms so much. In the Psalms, we come face to face with the whole spectrum of life's experiences from unbounded praise to the darkness of depression.
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And that's because the Psalms were written by real people, people just like us, with real triumphs, but with real problems, with real confidence, but with real fears, with real joy.
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But my friends, with real heartaches. And so for us who are walking the ever changing road of real life, the
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Psalms should be an oasis to the weary soul, an encouragement to us not only to pour out our praise to God, but to pour out our pain to him as well.
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But too often we relegate that portion of God's word to greeting cards, or we simply forget it or ignore it altogether.
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Because one of the traps that many Christians fall into is pretending. Pretending that everything is okay.
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We believe the lie that says if we admit and give voice to the reality of our struggles, then we are somehow less spiritual than everybody else.
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Maybe not a very good Christian. But what we see in the Psalms is brutal honesty.
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We see real people with no concern for keeping up appearances, crying out to God, pouring out their heart to God.
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And these heart cries have not been sanitized or sterilized. They are honest cries of desperation and doubt and pain.
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But listen, time and time again, in the midst of the brutally honest reality of life, the refrain of the psalmist is always the same.
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He is able to rejoice. Rejoices. A response that seems nearly impossible, for me at least.
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And so I have to ask, how? How can the psalmist rejoice? How can
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I rejoice, not just during times of great prosperity, but in the midst of our crushing suffering?
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Well, friends, the only answer to that question is God. God is the source of our joy and our peace and our hope and our faith.
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God is the only answer. Not our situation, not our circumstance, not our possessions, but the work of God in Christ, in the all -satisfying
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Savior, in the message of the cross. And we rejoice. We rejoice that through faith in Christ, we have been set free from sin and from death and from guilt and from condemnation.
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And we wait in hope for faith to become sight. We wait in hope.
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But my friends, that can be a long, hard wait. And so the answer isn't to deny the reality of our suffering, but to be confident in the reality of who
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God is. And we know that God is good and holy and faithful and righteous.
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And because of who we know God to be, we can take confidence in one more thing.
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God will deliver his people. God will deliver his covenant people.
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This morning, what we're going to do is examine a perfect example of God's grace and faithfulness in the midst of life's ever -changing circumstances.
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And to do that, we're going to look at Psalm 40, which is divided into three sections, okay, verses 1 through 5, which will be the bulk of our morning, okay?
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Verses 1 through 5, you're going to get a lot of time. Those are called the Song of Thanksgiving, where we encounter the psalmist responding to God's marvelous acts of salvation by breaking forth into praise.
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God has delivered him, and so he praises. Then in verses 6 through 10, what we'll see is the song of praise transformed into action, into dedication, into a life of praise.
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But then interestingly enough, verses 11 through 17, we see a prayer of lament, where we encounter the psalmist responding to his present circumstances by praying for deliverance.
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Though previously delivered by God, he needs to be delivered again, okay?
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And so turn to Psalm 40, if you haven't already, let me get this. One thing about nerves is it gives you a dry mouth, at least me.
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Okay, and so as we begin, we're going to look at that section labeled the Song of Thanksgiving. And what's being clearly proclaimed here is that God delivers his people in order that they might declare the praises of his glorious name.
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Okay, one of the most misunderstood truths in all of scripture is this,
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God's ultimate concern, his ultimate purpose in every single thing that he does is the praise of his glorious name.
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And so first, we're going to listen to that praise, okay, the praise of the delivered one. But what we see as our psalm begins is a situation that all of us should be able to relate to, okay?
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How many of you have ever felt trapped in a pit from which you couldn't imagine escaping?
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Maybe, maybe right now, this morning, depression is smothering you.
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Maybe right now, this morning, your marriage is failing. Maybe right now, your hopes and dreams are fading.
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Or maybe right now, you are caught in a web of sin and you don't know what to do. Well, the psalmist feels your pain.
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You see, we're never told exactly what he's dealing with here, right? It doesn't tell us the exact situation, which is probably a good thing since we can more easily see our own struggle in his.
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But what we do know is that the psalmist says he is entombed in a miry bog, in a pit of destruction.
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My friends, it's as if he's been buried alive. You see, the imagery of mud and mire in a pit suggests complete helplessness, darkening doubts, spiritual affliction.
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This is the dark night of the soul that so many of us have experienced. This is the reality of the broken hearted, the one who cannot climb out himself, who cannot save himself, who does not have the ability or capacity to escape, whose only hope for deliverance is someone else.
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Someone else. You see, we need to be delivered from the penalty of sin, the wrath of God and from the power of sin, the effects that we all experience living in a fallen world.
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And what we see from our psalm and from the rest of the scriptures is that our deliverance from beginning to end is dependent upon the grace and mercy of God.
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Listen, the entire message of the Bible can be summed up this way. We are all great sinners and God is a great savior.
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God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin. And while our sin runs deep and reaches far,
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God's grace reaches even farther. It reaches right down into the pit.
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And this happens as the sinful heart of man and the gracious heart of God intersect at the cross.
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At the cross, Jesus Christ absorbed the wrath of God meant for you and me and our sin so that we could be delivered from sin's penalty.
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But you must repent and believe. That is God's wonderful gospel. But friends, let's listen to me here.
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Once God rescues sinners from his wrath, his plan isn't to steer them beyond the gospel to something more meaty.
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Oh, no, we're not. We're not moved into something, something else. We're moved more deeply into the gospel.
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See, Christ's substitutionary atonement justifies us. It declares us right in the sight of God, saving us, delivering us from sin's penalty.
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But we are still in daily need of deliverance from sin's power, all the effects of sin's destructive consequences that we face because we live in a fallen world.
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And the only antidote for sin is the gospel. Paul says in Romans in the beginning of Romans, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.
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The gospel saves us, delivers us from sin's eternal penalty. It saves us, delivers us from sin's temporal power, and it will one day bring us to glory where we are finally free from sin's presence altogether.
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And so the gospel of Jesus Christ is necessary and relevant because salvation and sanctification and glorification do not and cannot come independently of the gospel.
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Only the gospel can save you. And listen, listen to me. The beauty of the gospel isn't that it makes bad people good.
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That's not the beauty of the gospel. It's that it makes dead people live. Dead people live and you will be made more and more alive as you comprehend more fully and clearly
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Christ's incredible work on the cross and then live in an awareness of that grace every day, day by day.
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You see, the main problem in the Christian life isn't that we aren't trying hard enough to be good, you know, good little boys and girls.
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It's that we haven't thought out the deep implications of the gospel and applied its transforming power to every part of our lives.
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So, friends, let me tell you, all of your fears and burdens and broken relationships and doubts are a gospel need.
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And so if you want to find joy and contentment in the midst of suffering, you don't need me to preach a sermon on the seven secrets to happiness.
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You need the power of the cross transforming you into the image of Jesus Christ, changing your affections and desires, causing you to view
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Jesus as more beautiful and satisfying than anything sin in the world can ever offer you.
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If you want to know how to escape from whatever pit you find yourself in, you don't need me to preach a sermon on the power of positive thinking.
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You need the gospel working in your hearts and lives. You need the word of God washing over you and changing you, growing you in faith and worship, enabling you to believe that in his timing,
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God will deliver you, trusting that as you wait to be delivered, that God is doing something extraordinary in your life, something miraculous in your life.
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Even in the midst of hardship and pain, he's breaking down your pride.
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He's eliminating your appetite for sin. He's implanting within you a heart prepared to pursue reconciliation and forgiveness.
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And so in the midst of our struggle, in the midst of our suffering, we must put into practice the words of Psalm 40, which begin with a strong sense of hopeful expectation.
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OK, turn to verse one here. This is how it begins.
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I waited patiently for the Lord. We joyfully endure the trials of life, waiting patiently for God's deliverance.
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But listen to me, let's get one thing clear here. Waiting doesn't imply passivity.
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Certainly, our deliverance is dependent solely on God. But what we see in verse one is an expression of active, living faith, which manifests itself through arduous, persistent prayer.
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You see, implicit in this entire passage of Scripture is a person committed to prayer.
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The psalmist's testimony to us is that through his own difficult and seemingly hopeless circumstances, he is able to endure because he is confident in who
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God is and therefore confident that God will deliver him.
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But he must wait on God. He must wait on God.
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And here, wait is synonymous with hope, with trust, with belief, with faith.
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I wait in hope in you, O God, that one day, even if it's my last day, that you will deliver me.
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So the question becomes for us, are we waiting patiently for the Lord? Are we praying with confidence and desperation and expectancy and persistence that God will intervene?
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Or do we seek our own way out? Or even worse, simply give up and give in.
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The active, dependent faith is what God is calling us to. The ongoing liberation from sin's power and life's burdens are undertaken as we actively wait upon God.
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And eventually what we see is that God, in his faithfulness, in his love, in his grace, he intervenes.
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And our psalm recounts this intervention, describing five ways the psalmist knows that God is acting to deliver him.
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First, it says, he inclined to me, which simply means
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God has turned his face to the psalmist and has taken notice of his plight. How many of you have experienced a child desperately trying to get your attention?
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Right. They'll repeat your name or the word mommy and daddy over and over and over and over again until you turn and look at them and then they'll stop and wait because they know that you've noticed them.
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Well, that's what the psalmist is describing here, OK? He is beseeching heaven with his prayers, persevering in prayer, never losing hope, even as it appears that his prayers are going unanswered.
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He continues because he is confident that the almighty God will not forget him.
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God won't forget him, but will hear the cries of his child. That's just what happens.
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Not only does God take notice, he also hears him. Second, it says, and he heard my cry, which simply means
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God has listened and is thinking of the psalmist. And as we'll see, the majestic God of creation thinks of him in such a way as to deliver him.
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Church, listen to me, God has fastened his affection on his beloved children. On his beloved children, he loves you, which means you can be sure of this, your pain is not arbitrary or accidental.
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It's purposeful. God is using it for your good and for his glory.
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And so as you endure and pray and wait upon God with active faith, please never forget this.
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God knows you. He knows you. He's aware of your plight.
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Your weight may be short, OK? Your weight may be short, but it may also last a lifetime.
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But understand this. God is with you in the way he loves you in the way he acts in grace towards you in the way.
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He's shepherding you in the way. The very air you are breathing this morning is
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God's grace. The fact that you woke up this morning is God's grace. The fact that you are sitting in that seat right now is the grace of God.
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But of all the grace that God has shown to us, his most gracious act is the deliverance offered to us through the cross of Jesus Christ.
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God is gracious to save. Third, it says he drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the mirey bog, which simply means
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God has delivered him. God noticed him, God heard him, and now
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God has set him free by lifting him out of the pit. And the language here of being drawn up, you see that he drew me out of the pit that's used intentionally to emphasize that God has done this work of deliverance.
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The psalmist, he could desire it. He could be told to do it. He could try for it all he wanted, but only
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God could cause it to happen. Then, stand at the edge of the well, lower a bucket into the water and then stand there waiting for the water to come back to you.
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Right? It won't. The water comes only when it is drawn up with someone with the power to pull it out of the pit.
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And that is just what God is doing for you. But not only did
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God set him free by lifting him out of the pit, he also made him safe and secure by setting his feet on solid ground.
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Fourth, it says, he set my feet upon a rock. No matter who you are, no matter who you are, trials will come.
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Heartache will come. But my friends, we can stand safe and secure, weathering the storms of life if we are standing on the solid rock of God.
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You see, the basis of our salvation and our ongoing deliverance is God, the finished work of our
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so we can stand confidently, trusting in God's deliverance because of the rock upon which we stand.
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Right? Not our own resources, not our own strength, not our own pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, but because of the rock on which we stand.
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You see, and that is the message God expects his ransomed and redeemed children to proclaim.
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You see, the effect of such an amazing deliverance is public praise. Fifth, it says he put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our
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God. Church, listen to me. One of the most beautiful, the most beautiful and comforting realities of the
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Christian faith is that our God is in the business of making things new.
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Understand that that's the great testimony found in Revelation chapter 21.
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Listen, describing the new heaven and new earth, this is what Revelation says. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
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And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.
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God can and he will redeem all of your heartache, all of your sadness, all of your loneliness, all of your shame, all of your hurt.
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He will make all things new, starting with the new song that he gives you to sing.
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You see, God delivers us in order that we might praise, so that we would praise him.
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Praise is the natural and necessary response to God's grace. And in fact, an act of deliverance is never complete until it has led to the worshiper offering praise to God.
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And if you see, our psalmist is eager to attest to the fact that he did not keep silent.
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Verse 5 says, You have multiplied, O Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us.
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None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.
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You see, in the face of God's deliverance, God's gracious deliverance, the psalmist can't contain himself.
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He's exploding. God's wondrous deeds and his thoughts may be more than can be told, but the psalmist is determined to tell them.
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And that's because rescued people are thankful. People who have been saved are quick to praise their savior.
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And so, church, let me ask you, is your life one characterized by praise to God?
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Have you experienced God's marvelous grace and then been compelled to offer praise that can't be contained?
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Or are you silent? Let me tell you, silence isn't an option.
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Divine intervention without the response of declarative praise destroys God's design because, you see, the psalmist knows full well why
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God wants him to praise. Verse 3 says, Many will see and fear and put their trust in the
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Lord. You see, in God's design, the redeemed, praising sinner becomes an instrument of God's grace and salvation.
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We are all ministers of God's glorious gospel. And the psalmist, seeing the great spiritual need all around him, has determined to not be silent.
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By praising God, he is a teacher. He's teaching that there is no help to be found by turning to the proud or chasing after a lie.
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Church, listen to me. The devil offers everything. He promises everything.
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But what he is actually able to deliver will not satisfy you, will not save you.
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It will not deliver you. It will enslave. It will kill. It will destroy.
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You have the message of hope, the only message of hope to offer a world that is perishing, which means the world can't afford our silence.
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We are surrounded on all sides by those in great spiritual need. And when they hear your praise, they will learn the true source of salvation.
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You see, you have been saved for the purpose of worshiping and praising your God, because through your praise, others will hear the truth and be changed.
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They will be delivered and then they will worship and praise
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God. All right. So in verses one through five, we see praise offered in response to God's amazing deliverance, right?
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God delivers and we praise. But what we see in verses six through 10 is that God actually desires more than words of praise.
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Our gratitude in the face of God's deliverance must be accompanied by a dedication to serve the
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Lord in obedience. And so what we see is words of praise, followed by a life of praise, followed by words of praise.
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So turn to verses six through 10. OK, we were working our way through those, especially nine and 10 here at the beginning, because this section, verses six through 10, this section ends in verses nine and 10 with another example of praise exploding from the psalmist's lips.
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OK, let me just summarize what he says is, I haven't hoarded in my heart the love and mercy and faithfulness that God has shown me as a secret for me to keep to myself.
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But I have joyfully shared those truths with anybody who would listen.
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He delights in praising God, and that's because he delights in the will of God.
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But these present words of praise come on the heels of a life of obedience offered to God, a life dedicated to God.
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You see, in our verses, the psalmist says something amazing, something amazing here in verses six through 10, that our right relationship with God isn't established through ceremony or rituals, but is rather an expression of a heart fully surrendered to God.
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He says, in sacrifice and offering, you have not delighted. Burnt offering and sin offering, you have not required.
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Israel's history was one that included an intricate system of sacrifice, a system where man could offer sacrifices to God, and through those sacrifices,
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God could communicate to man the horror and consequences of sin. But these sacrifices were only effective in their symbolic representation of Jesus Christ, the one true effective sacrifice to come, a sacrifice that would go beyond ceremony and capture the heart.
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You see, ritual sacrifice doesn't make us acceptable to God. These ceremonies were a shadow pointing to a greater sacrifice, a sacrifice that would redeem sinners and serve as the means by which their dead hearts could be resurrected.
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Friends, here is the bottom line, OK? This is it. God wants your heart.
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God wants your heart. All of our rituals are meaningless unless God has our heart.
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Psalm 51 says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken, contrite heart.
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God doesn't need sacrificial animals. He wants a contrite heart.
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God doesn't need you to give him a gift. He wants you, every single last bit of you, your heart dedicated to him in love, obedience and service.
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So what we see here in Psalm 40 is that, yes, indeed, God wants praise and gratitude, but our sacrifice of praise must lead to dedication because the natural response of someone who has experienced divine deliverance is dedication to serve the
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Lord. And we see that in a vow kind of throughout verses six through eight,
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OK, the psalm dedicating himself, the psalmist dedicating himself to God. Listen to what he says here.
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But you have given me an open ear. I desire to do your will,
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O God. Your law is within my heart. See, this vow acknowledges that God has made us to do his will.
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God has prepared our bodies and our souls with his loving intentions in mind.
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He has given us ears ready to listen and obey. And because of Christ's work on the cross, every single believer has been led by Jesus beyond the curtain and into the presence of God.
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You see, we have become a holy, royal priesthood of believers, a priesthood that willingly and joyfully presents their bodies to God as living sacrifices.
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The Lord has saved us on to obedience and the psalmist explains to us how disobedience is even possible.
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OK. He says, I desire to do your will.
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I desire to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart.
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You see, one's willingness to obey is a hard issue. Our obedience is not, listen, understand this, our obedience is not a means of gaining
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God's favor or earning God's love. God's favor and God's love are extended to us on account of the work of Jesus Christ.
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Our obedience is the means by which we celebrate God's faithfulness and express our love to God.
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And this life of obedience becomes a reality, not by making checklists.
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OK, not by just white knuckling it and trying harder, but from an internal compulsion.
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You see, a heart truly raised from the dead, a person truly born again, desires
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Jesus to know him more fully, to love him more deeply, to see him more clearly.
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When your surrendered heart yearns for Jesus, you will naturally live in worshipful obedience.
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The question now becomes, obedience to what? Obedience to what?
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Obedience to God and his word. See, God has revealed in his word what he approves and what he appoints for us.
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And that is exactly what the psalmist means in verse 7. OK, look at verse 7. This is what he says, sort of a weird little phrase.
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In the scroll of the book, it is written of me. So the scroll refers to scripture.
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And to say that something in scripture has been written of me or concerning me is to say it was prescribed for me.
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It was written for me to obey. See, God's will isn't a secret. He has prescribed in his word how his people are to live and what they are to do with their lives.
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And so when true believers receive the word of God and then live by it, God's law is said to be written on their hearts.
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And so now with a psalmist, all believers, you, me, all believers must accept that in the scroll of the book, it is prescribed for each of us.
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Deliverance leads us to praise God, but it also leads us to dedicate our lives to God.
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Listen, it's God's word that must give direction to our dedication. OK, God's word gives direction to our dedication.
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Dedication by itself isn't enough. We can be dedicated to many things, even good things that are actively separating us from Jesus Christ.
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See, all the praise and all the dedication in the world will be empty and sometimes dangerous if you don't know what
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God's will is, if you don't know who you are praising and why. And it's in God's word that he has prescribed his plan of blessing for all of his people in the word of God.
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But here we come to the end of our psalm, OK? And lest we begin to think that a life following God exempts us from the realities of the world, our psalm comes full circle here.
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You see, just as quickly as his transformative praise and dedication begins, the psalmist is faced once more with a crisis.
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So listen to verses 11 and 12, OK? As for you,
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O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me, for evils have encompassed me beyond number.
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My iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head.
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My heart fails. So what's going on here?
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What in the world is going on? Is the psalmist really having to ask for deliverance again?
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Right? He has just shared a situation so hopeless that he could only describe it as being trapped in a muddy pit.
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But in the midst of that situation, he waited on God in faith and God delivered him, lifting him out of the pit and setting his feet on a rock.
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And yet now, even though he's been previously delivered from great trouble, the psalmist still continues to have trouble and needs further deliverance.
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Friends, can you relate to that? Have you been delivered, praised, only to find yourself in need of deliverance again?
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Well, it's times like those when our past deliverance becomes the basis of our present dependence on God.
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You see, God has delivered before. And so what the psalmist expects is to once more experience the
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Lord's compassion, loyal love and grace. And he needs this now more than ever because his mountaintop experience has once again given way to the valley.
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He's been overtaken by the evil of others. But also, listen, also by the evil that still resides in his own heart, with the result being that he is surrounded by darkness and can no longer see.
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His trouble is so intense that he says his heart fails him. Which means he's at a place where his will to resist and his desire to keep on going isn't there.
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His emotional and spiritual resources have abandoned him. He wants to give up, wants to give up.
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Brothers and sisters, how many of you have been in a place just like that? How many of you have grown weary of the fight and have said,
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I just can't do it anymore? Well, it's in times like these when we realize just how totally helpless and dependent we really are.
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Helpless and dependent is who we are. Now, if that describes you this morning, what
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I want you to hear is that you aren't alone. You are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who are there with you right now or who have been there before or who will be there again one day.
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And that includes the psalmist. And so instead of giving up, you and me and everyone else must follow his example.
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He has come to the place where he knows God is his only hope.
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And that's where we need to be. We need to come to the place where we understand that God is our only hope.
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And so he cries out to God in prayer. And in his prayer, the psalmist does three things.
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First, he appeals to the will of God. That's in the verse 13. He says,
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Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. You see, the psalmist is a faithful member of the covenant.
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And so he expects God to keep his promises. And so basically what he's saying there is
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God, not on account of me, but for the sake of the glory of your name, act in grace and covenantal love.
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Because through my deliverance, your name will be made great. Your name will be praised.
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Second, the psalmist appeals to God's justice. Asking that his enemies be defeated.
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You see, they have taunted him by saying, Aha, Aha. You see, and what that means is.
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Where is your God now? Why has he left you to be defeated?
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And so in verses 14 and 15, the psalmist prays that they be put to shame, that they be turned back, that they be brought to dishonor.
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And again, this is not on account of himself, but for the sake of the glory of God's name.
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And finally, the psalm ends in the same exact place that it began, with the psalmist waiting patiently on the
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Lord for deliverance, appealing to God's loyal love. You see, he is completely spent emotionally and physically and spiritually.
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He has nothing else to draw upon, nothing of his own to draw upon. But as a faithful member of the covenant, one thing he is assured of, he has the
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Lord. He has the Lord. And so as one who loves
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God's salvation, he cries out to God in faith, asking once more for a reason to rejoice and to praise, asking once more for deliverance, knowing and trusting and believing that God will deliver, believing that God will deliver him.
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And so as we close this morning, I want to change metaphors a bit here, right? Changing metaphors at the end of the game.
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We talked a lot about being in a pit this morning, but another way the Bible talks about suffering and trials is by using the imagery of a storm, going through a storm.
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From a distance, storms can be beautiful, the colors and the light.
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But watching a storm and going through a storm are completely different experiences.
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And although the storm will eventually pass, we shouldn't allow the calm after the storm to cause us to forget just how powerful and frightening those storms can be.
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And so last question here, let me ask you, will God prevent all the storms in your life?
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No, that's that's not the promise. The promise is that he will be with you in the midst of all your
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God ordained storms. Those caused by your sin, by the sin of others, by the fallen creation or by the evil one.
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God will be with you in the midst of those storms. But listen to me, here's the hope that one day, one glorious, beautiful, marvelous day, all the storms and all the pits will be banished by the word of Jesus Christ.
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And so you can trust Christ now in the middle of your storms and praise him that one day they will be no more.
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And so with confidence, we say with the psalmist, God, you are my help and my deliverer.
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But with brutal honesty, we admit that life can be painful, that we are still anxiously awaiting our final deliverance when
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Christ comes again. We wait in hope for that day, we wait in praise for that day, we wait in obedience for that day.
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The day when we see Jesus, touch Jesus, hold
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Jesus. That is the one great hope of every single
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Christian's heart. And so with the psalmist, we say these words, do not delay.
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Oh, my God, do not delay. Amen. All right, we're coming to the time that we get to celebrate the work of Christ together.
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OK, not just together, but with 2000 years of Christian tradition and faith, we join in communion this morning, brothers and sisters.
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All right. But like we said this morning, there's nothing about this ceremony or ritual that will save you.
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This has meaning only if God has resurrected your heart to life. So if you are a believer, if you've been saved, you've been rescued, delivered from the penalty of sin, then please join together and take communion with us.
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If you are a believer, what a better way than to cry out to God and ask for forgiveness and deliverance and then join us in communion as part of the
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Church of Jesus Christ. Father, we love you. We love you. We love you.
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Thank you so much. For who you are, for your faithfulness, for your grace, for your mercy.
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That we can have confidence that we can trust that you will deliver us, that you will save us.
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That you will walk with us, shepherding us through the valleys, that you will lift us up, raise us up.
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So that we can praise and worship you, that we can explode, that our lips and our lungs and our hearts can explode with rejoicing and praise.
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And then you will be there with us again, shepherding us through those valleys. Change us,
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Father, with the power of your spirit. Help us. Allow us to love you, love one another, love a world that is dying and lost without you.