Knowing God Truly

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Please enjoy the following sermon. And so I'd like you to turn with me to Psalm 63.

Psalm 63 will be our passage we'll consider this morning. Psalm 63.

And we are told it is a psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

And so verse 1, and I'll just read down to the end of the psalm, verse 11. O God, you are my

God, earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live, in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food.

And my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.

For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me.

But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword.

They shall be a portion for the jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exult.

For the mouths of liars will be stopped. And so let us just go to Lord in prayer for a moment, asking his help and blessing as we consider this passage.

Father, we come before you. And Lord, we acknowledge that apart from you,

Father, we have no good. And we acknowledge, Lord, that apart from you, we can do no good.

That it is only as we abide in Christ and receive from his fullness, as we experience the filling of your spirit, even as those early apostles experienced,

Lord, it is then that we see a true fruitfulness in your kingdom. Lord, a true honoring and glorifying of your name.

And so we just come to you this afternoon asking for your help. I pray that you help me to preach clearly, to be faithful to the text of scripture.

Lord, to provide an encouraging word to your people. Lord, a comfort to the brokenhearted and heavy laden.

Lord, a word of warning and rebuke to the hard -hearted and the drifting father.

A word of salvation, we pray, to the lost and the unbelieving. Lord, and I pray that you would grant ears to hear and receptive hearts in each one here,

Lord, that they may receive from you this rich and nourishing food that David experienced, even in a dry and weary land,

Father. We pray that would be true of your people this morning to the glory of Christ. And we ask it in his name with confidence that you hear us and will indeed answer according to your will.

In this we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, I suppose you're maybe like me in that for a long time,

I sort of assumed that the psalms were just kind of haphazardly tossed together.

And so we often sort of treat them that way, that there's no real flow or intentional way in which the psalms have been structured.

And I had a chance to take a class with Dr. Jim Brenahan of International Reform Baptist Seminary on the book of psalms, and realizing that the psalms are very much put together in a careful and intentional way.

And a wonderful book by Opama Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, he pointed out that there are actually five books.

You could think of it almost like we have, you know, we have two various song books that we sang from this morning.

Well, the psalms are sort of constructed into five books. And so we have them, obviously, you know, all of them put together in our

Bibles for us, but there are five distinct books that have been arranged carefully, and they have unique characteristics.

Even the fact that we have at the beginning of psalms, a messianic psalm, and then a psalm of the

Torah, a psalm of the word of God, and those coupling of this messianic psalm with the psalm of the word, and you find that pattern within each of the book of the psalms.

You think, of course, of Psalm 119, the longest psalm on the word of God, but we also often forget

Psalm 118, a messianic psalm. And so there are these wonderful patterns that have been designed and put together in the construction of the psalms.

We're not even exactly sure who was responsible for this. I tend to lean, you know, maybe

Nehemiah or Ezra, as they are working to bring together again the people of God and re -institute the order of worship, possibly, even writing in the superscripts at the start of the psalms.

And so, Opalma Robertson, in his book, he gives the argument that with each of the books, there is also a building of various themes.

And the first book of psalms, the first collection, is that of confrontation.

And then we move to the second book, the second collection of psalms, of communication, and then to devastation, and then moving on to maturation, and finally in consummation.

And as you consider, as a possible way in which these are constructed, you see that sort of building crescendo as you come to the final psalms and this overwhelming worship of creation as God's glory is manifest in all the earth.

And we also realize that while David is the one who writes many of the psalms, he serves as a messianic figure.

And so David, while he is speaking of himself, is also pointing us forward to the reality of Christ and to the one who would be the true king of Israel, the true deliverer of God's people.

And one of the comments from the class was that God gave the psalms as a prayer book for his own son who would then come after David.

And so the psalms, yes, speak to specific needs that David himself went through that we ourselves experienced, but they primarily point us forward to the reality of Christ.

And so as we consider this psalm, let us keep some of those things in mind. Now, we're told at the beginning here that this psalm was written when

David was in the wilderness of Judah. And so we have an immediate context as to what was going on when

David wrote this psalm. Now, there are numerous times in which David had fled into the wilderness.

Possibly this was when he was running from Saul, his own father -in -law, who was hunting him like a wild animal.

Possibly something, maybe even when he was fleeing from Absalom. You remember when David's own son had sought to take over the kingdom, and David fled.

And so either way, David is obviously in a very difficult situation. Everything externally would seem to scream that David is without hope, that he's without resources.

He is alone, he is destitute, and he is hungry, he is thirsty.

And yet in the very midst of this wilderness, David demonstrates for us what it means to be a child of God.

What it means to truly know God, the God of heaven and earth.

And as you think about that theme of God revealing himself in the wilderness, there are so many different times in which this is the case.

Whether it was Hagar, who was sustained by God after being kicked out from Abram and from Sarah.

And God met her there and she named the well that she came to in God's provision.

Or we see Moses as one who is in the wilderness, tending sheep, and there Moses meets

God and is called to go back to Egypt to deliver the people.

Elijah saw God in the wilderness. As we see here, David sees God in the wilderness. And even in Revelation 12, 6, the offspring of the woman is, as the people of God, is presented as being in the wilderness where God sustains the offspring of the woman.

Those who hold fast to the commandments of God and will not bow to the beast. Charles Spurgeon said of this psalm in his well -known

Treasury of David, He said, what we say to be true.

And we know that we live in a culture of abounding words. There are so many words.

Now we have artificial intelligence adding innumerable words to the great already collection of words, whether that's spoken words or words online, words typed, written.

And we understand that words apart from true, genuine action can mean very little.

And when we consider this theme this morning of knowing God truly, we know that it's one thing to say,

I know God. You may even know many things about God, true things about God. But do you experience the sort of things that David is describing here in this knowledge of God?

And that is what I want to consider together as we can look at this psalm. To truly know

God results in a transformation of life that can flourish even in the wilderness.

And maybe we could say, especially in the wilderness. And so therefore we too must know

God truly. We must examine ourselves and we must consider, is this true of me?

Can I identify with some of the things that David is describing that flow out of this knowledge of God?

And so I want to consider some of the evidences in David's life of a true knowledge of God.

You see, we must know God personally as David did.

And we must begin to see in our lives the evidences of that communion, the spirit of God within us producing the very things that we see in the life of David.

Look at how David begins here. Oh God, you are my God. He is not simply saying, though he could have said, oh

God, you are the God of Abraham and Isaac. You are the God of my fathers. That is true.

And David understood that very well. But here David is identifying God, the all -powerful

God, Elohim. He is identifying him as his God, his own personal

God, a God who he knows. And we must understand, and especially for you young people and you who have grown up in the church, it's a wonderful blessing to grow up in the church.

It's a wonderful blessing to grow up hearing the things of God. But you must understand that it is not enough for mom and dad to know this

God. And you sort of coast along on the basis of their knowledge of God.

You must know this God, even as David himself knew him.

And I grew up as a pastor's kid. And so, you know, I never really went through a terribly outwardly rebellious season of, you know, drinking and drugs and partying and all of that sort of thing.

But perhaps my rebellion was more dangerous in that I had begun to convince myself that if I maintained the externals of this

Christian religion, then God would be pleased with me. And as long as people around me thought that I was a good

Christian man, the pastor's kid, then that was essentially the same thing as knowing

God. And God had to bring me to the end of myself in realizing that what

I was doing was the same thing the Pharisees had done. And that God loathes that sort of religion.

In fact, Jesus was far more vehemently angry with the hypocrisy of the

Pharisees than he ever was against the prostitutes and the drunkards. And so I had to come to a place of realizing

I need to personally know this God and begin to cry out to him. Lord, help me to understand you.

Help me to hunger and thirst as I should, knowing that I did not.

David knew God personally. And this was what

Paul preached on Athens in Acts 17. That God is actually not far from each one of you.

Paul said that God has, yes, created all things in Acts 17 .24.

Made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth and delotted the periods and boundaries of our dwelling place that they should seek

God, Paul said. And perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he's not actually far from each one of us,

Paul said. For in him we live and move and have our beings, have our being. And so you see, it is not as though we have to go on some pilgrimage or cross the

Rockies in order to find God. But rather we must humble ourselves, acknowledge that it is us who have departed.

It is us who have been indifferent to this God and cry out to him and repent of our sin and plead with him to help us see him who is actually very near.

And so from this true knowledge, Paul says that in Galatians 4 .7,

the Spirit of God, when he is poured into our hearts, it is then that we begin crying out,

Abba, Father. That this communion and knowledge of God is like a child who knows their mom and knows their dad.

And this becomes a reality in the Christian's life. And then we begin to see evidences of this great work of God in the life of the believer through regeneration.

And so we consider then some of these effects. First of all, I want to consider the fact that to truly know

God is to desire to know more of God. To truly know

God is to desire to know more of God as our first evidence of this knowledge in the life of David.

What does this look like? Well, consider David's words here. He says, Oh God, you are my God, earnestly

I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in the dry and weary land where there is no water.

Now, how many of you have been extremely thirsty before? I think we could all raise our hand and say, there's different points where I just,

I didn't want anything else. I just wanted a cool drink of water. And children have a way of setting aside all other things around them.

When they need a drink of water, they will make sure to communicate with mom and dad, I need a drink of water now. And sometimes you're in the middle of a conversation and the little one is tugging at your leg and they start off kind of quiet like,

Dad, I need a drink, I'm thirsty. And if you don't begin to acknowledge them quickly, they just sort of get louder and louder until it's like,

Dad, I need a drink of water, right? And a child understands even these basic needs and desires and will express that to us.

I remember playing basketball in high school and depending on the coach, sometimes you're pushed very hard in practice and you're not allowed a water break until you get this drill right.

And everything in you, once you're finally allowed to go out and get water, just wants to get to the water fountain.

You don't want a chocolate bar. You don't want an ice cream cone. You don't want a pop. You just want nice, cool, refreshing water.

And this is what David is expressing here. He knows God and yet he is also desperate to know more of God.

It always strikes me when we have six boys actually and we just have a little one in the house, five months old right now.

And for some reason, I always forget how clear this is in a newborn. And of course, Paul and Peter both pick up on this imagery that a newborn, they have one central need, which is of course milk to nourish them and to sustain them.

And when that little one feels the need for milk, they will begin crying and they will begin making themselves very known that, hey,

I need milk and I'm going to continue crying until I get milk. And I might, you know, in my...

It's like, oh, well, I'm a good father. I can, you know, help little junior here be content and I'll just walk him a little bit and I'll pat his back and I'll get him to quiet down.

And it's not until he gets mom and he's able to finally get the milk that that baby is content.

Well, this is the picture. There is nothing else that will satisfy. David says that,

I thirst for God, his very flesh fainting for God as in a dry and weary land where there's no water, which

David is in. We're told he's in a wilderness. He's physically experiencing these things and yet in his hunger and thirst, it reminds him and illustrates for him his ongoing need for God.

He needs more of God. He is a man who is desperately hungry to have more of this

God. And we need to ask ourselves then, as children of God, do we experience this hunger and thirst for God?

Is there something within us at times where there is an overwhelming need to draw near to God, to be in his word, that you come to the preaching of the word of God and you want to be nourished, you want to be fed, you want to know this

God. And there is this insatiable desire and thirst within you until you can draw near to him.

Perhaps if we're honest, we say, well, many times I know that I do not desire

God as I ought. I am too easily contented with other things, lesser things.

But like the father who was struggling to know if Jesus could heal his sick child or not.

And Jesus said, what do you mean if I am able? And the father cries out and says,

Lord, I do believe, but help my unbelief. And many times that should be our prayer as well. Lord, I do hunger for you, but help my easily satisfied appetite to be directed towards you as I ought.

Father, help me in this, in my weakness. But definitely don't be content to feel no hunger pains.

We know that if our bodies stop feeling hungry for food, if you stop thirsting for water, that is extremely dangerous.

And that is a very serious problem to begin experiencing. But how much more spiritually when we no longer feel a hunger for God, feel a thirst for God, and we become content with lesser things.

It is detrimental. There was a very famous quote that I'm sure many of you heard.

If you listen to, you know, reformed teaching, it's a quote that comes up quite a bit, but I think it fits so well here by C .S.

Lewis from the weight of glory. He said, it would seem that our

Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half -hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

We are far too easily pleased. We often assume that our desire is the problem, that if I just had less desire, if I was less intense about things, then

I could be a better Christian. But to Lewis's point, the problem is actually our desires are too weak.

We're too quickly satisfied for the things that don't satisfy, like Israel. In Jeremiah 2, we hewn out these cisterns that actually don't hold water, and yet we have rejected

God, who is the fountain of living water. It is not that our desires are too strong, but they are actually too weak and too easily satisfied by things that cannot satisfy.

A little book that was recommended at the conference we came from in Calgary by Nick Thompson, he said, holiness does not entail the suppression of desire, but the reformation of desire.

And it just really struck me. Again, it's not that my desires are a problem, but they are often misinformed and misguided, and they need to be reformed and informed by the word of God, reformed to the word and informed by the word.

My desires are often broken and misleading. God, help me as David to hunger and thirst for you.

And then secondly, we see also that to truly know God is to prize his steadfast covenant love above life itself.

Consider verse three, David said, two and three, so I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

As David considers the steadfast love of the Lord, as he considers this

God who is looked upon in the sanctuary, beholding the glory and power of God, he says, your steadfast love is better than life, and so my lips will praise you.

This is why many willingly die for Christ. Even today, many brothers and sisters around the world experience horrendous suffering and persecution because of their faith in Christ.

And to avoid persecution, all it would take is a small bit of compromise and that suffering could end for them, but they will not because like David, they acknowledge that this

God whom they have looked upon in the gathering of the saints through the means of grace, this God, his steadfast love is better than life.

It's better than anything this world has to offer us, and so how can we then forsake it?

We cannot. As Jim Elliott said, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

And of course, Jim Elliott willingly died as a martyr taking the gospel to people who otherwise had no gospel witness.

We realize that actually it is no loss at all to forfeit life for the sake of Christ, for the sake of his kingdom, for the sake of having this

God. It is all gain for the Christian. Even as we sang earlier that in him we cannot die and we speak of death and death is physically still a reality for us, but it's not really death.

We do not go out of existence or cease to be. It is really more of a transferring from this temporal life to that of the eternal in the presence of Christ our

Lord. And this should move us to worship and praise even as it does for David, this reality of God's covenant steadfast love.

I unfortunately do not know Hebrew and I'm feeling like as I hit 40, my brain is decreasing in its ability to take on new things.

I would love to still learn Hebrew, but maybe some of you younger folks would take up that challenge. But I do know that this word here that David used, the word chesed is this covenant steadfast.

It's a word that is often difficult to translate in one word. And so often it has multiple words to try and communicate the beauty, the richness of this covenant love of God.

And so we have it as steadfast love. God's love that is unchanging, unwavering.

It is steadfast. It is covenantal. It is committed to us. This reality for David in God, he says, is better than life.

This is what Paul testified in Philippians 3, 8. You recognize the verse as well. Paul says, Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.

Paul says, That I, in order that I might gain Christ. Is your knowledge of God having that sort of effect in your life where things that you once prized, things that you once found great contentment in and joy in, sort of begin to diminish in their value in your life, diminish in their importance in your life.

And the beauty and the glory and the wonder of having Christ increases in its wonder for you.

Just before coming, visiting with Pastor Shane and his family, we're talking about, oh, if we had just invested a little bit of money in Bitcoin back in 2015, we'd be millionaires right now.

And wouldn't that be wonderful? And yet at the same time, you're like, well, I don't know if that actually would be wonderful.

Like how would I actually manage that sort of wealth? And really to even have invested thousands in Bitcoin back then when it was worth pennies and yet to not have

Christ would still be to lose everything. And you need to come to that point if all of your investments fail, if all of your financial planning comes to ruin and our economy completely goes down the toilet and we're left like many in the early church having to depend on the kindness of those selling their land in order that I can eat, we still have the great treasure of knowing

God which is better than life. And so knowing

God truly means that we prize his steadfast love above life itself.

And thirdly, knowing God truly means to be nourished and animated by dwelling upon him.

David says that he is nourished by God as he considers who God is.

He says in verse five, my soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. My mouth will praise you with joyful lips when

I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. For you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings,

I will sing for joy. David, you can imagine sitting in the wilderness not sure where his next meal's coming from, not having a great source of water.

I mean, for us, we may be in a situation like that. You begin thinking of a big, juicy cheeseburger with all of the bacon and tomato and lettuce.

Like, oh, to have a cheeseburger with this juicy meat and the bun with the sesame seeds on it, this rich food that would nourish my body.

And David says that his communion with God, his love and dependence upon God, it nourishes his soul, it satisfies his soul as with fat and rich food.

And as a result, it animates him to worship and praise God, joyful lips.

And how does he do this? What does he mean by dwelling upon God? Well, he considers

God's past protection in his life. He considers God's present protection. He says that in the watches of the night, no doubt, if in fact this is while he is running from Saul, it would be difficult to sleep.

What was that noise? What was that shuffle of sand? Is that the soldiers of Saul ready to kill me and probably experienced many sleepless nights?

And as David is lying there awake, he doesn't give himself over to anxiety and to panic and to worry as we are often prone to do.

What does he do? He sets his mind upon God. He remembers the provision of God, how

God has carried him through. He maybe remembers standing before the giant and realizing in his flesh how utterly foolish and suicidal this would seem.

And many of you children can remember what happened with David and the giant. Did David scream and run away in terror?

Or what happened with David and Goliath? He killed the giant, didn't he?

With a sling and a stone. And maybe David thinks about that moment of God giving him great boldness in the spirit and provoking his spirit at what this man was saying of his

God. And God using his meager effort through the sling and stone to slay this enemy of Israel.

And David would think about these provisions of God. Maybe he would think about how Saul stood up at the dinner table and hurled his spear at David and it sticks into the wall behind him.

And David realizes if that was simply an inch over, I would have been dead and God preserved him.

And David remembers these things and it encourages him. He said it is like this rich food that nourishes his soul.

But he also considers how God is his present help. He says, in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy.

Your right hand upholds me presently right now where I am in this wilderness. God has not forsaken me.

He is sustaining me. He is upholding me. And we need to do both. This is one of the reasons why

I think it's so helpful, even if you're not naturally a writer, which I would not say I'm naturally one who writes.

I'm still quite bad at spelling and I'm grateful I live in a day where there are such things as spell check.

And so I have to work at it. But one of the wonderful things of journaling and writing down things that God has taught you, answers to prayer, is you're able to go back and review those things that God has done.

And you tend to forget the ways in which God has provided you, the ways in which God has sustained you and provided a friend to come along in a difficult hour or provided some provision that you didn't know where it was going to come from.

And we do forget those things. And you need to remember them. You need to tell them to your children. And in that way, you are stirring up your heart.

You are nourishing your soul. And then considering God's present protection, reminding yourselves of the promises of God right now that are over us as his children, these wonderful things that we sing about.

We have to preach those to ourselves as well. This should nourish us.

It should animate us to worship and to wonder at who this God is, even in the wilderness.

Again, children do this so well in simple ways where they consider something they think is wonderful or exciting and it moves them to action.

It moves them to exclaiming what they are witnessing. And again, one of the wonderful things of having little children around is many things that you sort of just take for granted, that they've sort of lost their wonder.

All of a sudden, you're reminded of how actually amazing this world is that we live in. And I love it when a child, they're just kind of taking in the world and suddenly they realize there's these little creatures outside the window that are flying around.

And they just keep saying, Dad, bird, bird, bird, Dad. And you're like, bird, yeah, it's a bird. So what?

It's a bird. And then you think about it. No, actually, it's a bird. God made these little creatures out there at 40 below and they're flying around.

Like, this is amazing. Or they look up at the moon and they just sort of exclaim with wonder. Like, wow, the moon.

Look at the moon, Dad. They're like, no, no, I know the moon is there. I'm working on something. And we sort of lose the wonder and the beauty of it, right?

And David has this sense as he thinks about what God has done, as he thinks about who God is and God's present help, he has moved to worship the

Lord. And we need to cultivate that as well. Are you moved to worship as you think about God's provision in your life?

And even if you're not a great singer like myself, sometimes I wander off key, but you can't help but sing the praise of God and worship him.

And so David demonstrates for us what should be a reality, not perfectly, but in part in our life and by God's grace growing to be animated by him as we meditate upon his goodness, to be nourished by him.

Maybe you are struggling right now to make ends meet and you're not sure how you're going to make the next mortgage payment.

Or it's like every time I get into my vehicle, some random noise or some random light comes on.

You're like, oh, great, another expense, another what's going to happen now. And you take your car and you get the oil change and you're kind of just cringing when you go to talk to them because what else did they find that's wrong with it?

And you can begin to despair and think, God's not, he's not going to see me through this one. But you're reminded

God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Is his arm short? Has he run out of resources because our economy is struggling?

No, he is with me. Maybe your job is not all that enjoyable and you find that you are very discontent and you don't feel like there is any purpose to what you're doing.

And yet you remind yourself, I'm a servant of the King. I work for the King of the universe.

And even in this menial job of changing this toilet

I used to work as a plumber. And sometimes, you know, it's the worst of the worst.

And you're like, even in this, I can glorify God. I am his ambassador.

Maybe your health is failing and you feel the groanings of sin within your own flesh and you're tempted to despair and think,

God has forsaken me, this will take me. And yet you remind yourself that in Christ, I cannot die as we just sang.

In him, I have a great hope of a resurrected body. Even as he rose from the dead, so I will rise with Christ.

I cannot despair in this wilderness. God is our present help.

And then fourthly, to know God is to hold fast to him while knowing he holds fast to you.

And David uses such strong imagery here. If we know God, we have this sense of desperation and clinging to him, but also knowing that he holds us.

And David says in verse eight, my soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me. This desperate sense that I must stay near to this

God. I must hold fast to him. But at the same time, it's actually his right hand that's upholding me like the small child who is holding fast to mom or dad in the midst of a crowd.

In their mind, maybe they are holding fast mom or dad, but actually mom or dad's arm is underneath them and carrying them through the crowd.

And that's sort of the picture that David has here. He is clinging to God. There's a desperation to hold fast, but he also understands it is

God who upholds him. Sort of like Peter, when

Jesus preached in John six, a difficult sermon. People came for another free fish and chips buffet, and they were hungry.

And then Jesus begins saying things like, unless you eat my flesh, unless you drink my blood, you have no part of me.

And people are like, this man is disturbing. What's he talking about?

Many begin walking away. And then you see the 12 standing there, and they're obviously struggling too.

They're not quite sure what just happened. And Jesus turns to them in John 6, 66.

And Jesus says, do you want to go away as well to these disciples? And Simon Peter answers him,

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and this sense of holding fast to God, as Peter demonstrated.

Lord, I don't understand what you just meant there. That didn't sit well with me. But I know that you have the words of eternal life, and I am holding fast to you,

Lord. And I remember, I'm sure as many of you have, growing up,

I didn't hear anything of the doctrines of grace. I didn't hear much of God's sovereignty, though my dad, you know,

I believe is a Christian and loves the Lord. We just didn't talk about those things. And so some, when

I was in my early 20s, initially coming to some of these doctrines, like I know some of you, even through ministries like Paul Washer and such, and hearing this view of God, of his great sovereignty, a

God who sovereignly calls us out of our depravity and our sin and brings us to himself without any aid from me, and something that I actually couldn't even contribute to, that even my faith was a gift from God, not something that I could produce, and thinking to myself that that doesn't sound like the

God that I grew up knowing. It seems almost like a different God in some ways, and there's a temptation maybe to turn away.

But as you hold fast to the word, and you continue studying, and you continue reading, and you think, no, no, that's actually, that's actually what

Paul is saying. That's actually what Jesus is saying. That's actually the implication of this. And we do not turn our back and run, even when it may seem like everything in us would like to.

We sing the hymn, he will hold me fast. I could never keep my hold through life's fearful path, for my love is often cold.

He must hold me fast. And that is our song, is it not?

As much as we cling to him, it is him who holds us fast. And then finally, I want to just consider as we come to a close, that to truly know

God is also to rest in his perfect justice. We see at the end of the psalm. To truly know

God is to rest in his perfect justice. David says in verse nine, those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.

They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be a portion for jackals, but the king shall rejoice in God.

All who swear by him exalt, for the mouths of liars will be stopped. And David had a confidence, a resting in the justice of God.

The pursuer would be driven down into the depths, he said. The one who was hunting for David would soon be the hunted and the slain.

The one who deprives God's children of food will themselves become food for the jackals.

It is a horrifying picture of the judgment of God against those who have set themselves against the

Lord's anointed and against his children. And David rested in this justice of God.

It was a great comfort for him. He would not personally take the life of Saul though it was offered to him multiple times.

David continually trusted that God will deal with Saul in God's way, in God's time.

And that is not for me to do. He learned there in the wilderness to rest in the justice of God.

But you just to turn for a quick moment over to second Thessalonians on this point. Because this truth, you know, sometimes maybe we associate it with the

Old Testament of yes, well, in the Old Testament, God was a God of wrath.

God was a God of justice and that was a source of comfort for his people. But we are in the new covenant and so God is loving and gracious and patient, which of course he is, but he is also a

God of wrath and justice. And Paul uses this truth to comfort the suffering

Christians at Thessalonica, second Thessalonians chapter one. And I'll just pick up at verse five and listen to how

Paul relates the justice of God to the Christians in encouraging them and enabling them to persevere in the midst of great injustice and darkness.

So second Thessalonians 1 .5, he writes, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering.

Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us.

When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know

God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the

Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed.

So Paul is not saying, listen Christian, I know there is injustice. I know you've been persecuted. I know you've been slandered and misrepresented, but you need to just forget about all that, you know, forgive and forget and just don't let it bother you.

That's not what Paul tells them. He reminds them that the God who has saved them will himself vindicate them, vindicate his own glory on the day of Christ's coming and it will be with such fury as he describes it, this flaming fire,

Christ descending with mighty angels, vengeance on those who do not know and obey God or the gospel and this picture of eternal suffering.

It is not wrong for us to desire justice. It is not unchristian to find comfort in the fact that God is just.

He is a good judge and you see, either our sin and our wickedness will be atoned for in the death of Christ, which is

God's justice on display, or if we reject the gospel of God, then we will stand under the fury of God's full wrath against our sin and we will abide in that wrath forever and ever and ever.

And David understood this and he did find comfort in knowing that God would be the one to set the record straight.

And this, as Paul would tell the Romans in Romans 12, you don't avenge yourself, leave it to God.

You can do good and show kindness and in that way heap coals upon their head knowing that this is

God's prerogative. This is something God himself will tend to. And of course,

God has given the sword to the magistrate. They are to, in a way, carry out the justice of God in a temporal sense and we should desire that as well and pray for that.

Pray for those who are in those positions, but we look ultimately to God to be the one who vindicates his people and therefore we rest in his perfect justice.

And we are comforted by him. Now, you may look at all of this and say, well, that's a wonderful picture of one who knows

God, all of these traits that we see David describing, but I don't feel like that's me at all.

And what should I do about that? Does this mean that I'm not a Christian? If none of these things are true of me,

I don't have a hunger for God. I don't find that I am filled with joy as I meditate upon the things of God.

I don't rest in his justice. I'm always avenging myself. Does that mean I'm not a Christian? Now, if I told you immediately that, well, of course that doesn't mean you're not a

Christian. Of course you're a Christian because you prayed and asked Jesus to save you or you walked down the aisle somewhere.

Of course you're a Christian. I would be a failure of a pastor, a preacher if I didn't warn you that you do need to examine yourself.

If none of these things are a reality to any measure in your life, that is problematic and you should question, do

I know God? Have I been born of the same spirit that David was walking and living in here?

The same spirit that Paul made his profession in. Have I come to truly know

God? And not despairing if you conclude that I don't think

I actually do know this God. Rather, flee to him, plead with him, get on your face before God, open the word of God, wrestle with him in prayer even as Jacob would wrestle with God and say,

Lord, I will not let you go until you bless me. We must wrestle with the Lord in prayer until we have that inner assurance of the

Holy Spirit and the evidences of his grace. But at the same time,

I don't want to say that that you are definitely not. We know that there are seasons for the

Christian of uncertainty and doubt. And so we need to return again to the word of God.

I think 1 John, Paul says that he writes these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life in his name.

John wrote the letter so that we might have assurance and he doesn't say, well, tell me the date and the hour that you believed upon Jesus.

And did you write that in the back of your Bible? Because then you'll have, no, that's not what he does. He says, look at your life.

Do you love the Lord? Are you walking the light? Do you repent of your sin? Do you have love for the brothers? Are these things true in your life?

Because if they are true, know for sure that it is God who dwells within you because those are not natural responses.

Our flesh in and of itself will not produce anything like that.

Only the spirit of God. And so even in our confessional, you guys are working through the confession, which we have also done.

And in chapter 18, which I love on this issue of assurance in speaking about insurance in chapter 18 and then the second paragraph, speaking of insurance, it says, this certainly is not merely or inconclusively or likely persuasion based on a fallible hope.

So this assurance that we desire, it states, it is a infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.

It is also built on the inward evidences of those graces of the spirit about which promises are made.

It is further based on the testimony of the spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are children of God.

As a fruit of this assurance, our hearts are kept both humble and holy.

And I think that I would encourage you, go to the confession, read through that chapter 18. I think it's a wonderful help on a biblical understanding of Christian assurance.

And it is something that is cultivated and grown and developed in our life as we walk with the

Lord that you can exclaim as David did. And there is also a hint at the end for us.

David says, but the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exalt for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

And as I said at the beginning, remind yourself that these Psalms point us primarily to Christ and where we find in ourselves a lack, inconsistencies, a lack of fruit, a lack of hunger, a lack of comfort in God.

Christ lived out perfectly. The king shall rejoice in God.

All who swear by him shall exalt. And so it is again a reminder for us that our salvation is not based on the extent to which we demonstrate these very evidence that David did, but rather it is knowing that Christ perfectly hungered after the

Father. Christ perfectly praised and prized

God. Christ perfectly was nourished by God, animated by the Spirit.

He perfectly held fast to God. He perfectly rested in the justice of God, even as he was unjustly crucified.

And it's in him that we have our righteousness, that we are adopted. And so we don't turn our salvation into a mortgage by then saying, well, now that Christ has done this and clothed me in his righteousness, taken from me my filthy rags, now let me somehow pay him back by doing these things.

No, you begin walking and living as a child of God in the finished work of Christ, rejoicing in him, resting in him, and worshiping

God through the Spirit of adoption. And so let us close there this morning, afternoon, sorry, and we will conclude.

Bow with me. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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