Reasons Why The Lord Is To Be Praised - [Psalm 113]

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I'll tell you what I like about that song. It's so foreign from what you hear in this world.
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It is not about us. It is not about us. It is all about the great
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God whom we serve, the one who has broken in upon our lives, and we have the privilege to be able to be before him this morning, to be underneath his word, and to hear what he would have for us this morning.
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If you would, please turn to the same passage that I read from, Psalm 113, for the text this morning.
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In the past, when I had attended services many, many, many years ago, one of the thrusts was for the service to be successful, and particularly for the message to be successful, was that afterwards, when they had the altar call, there would be some activity in the building, and people would come forward.
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But we do not practice that here because it is unnecessary and unbiblical to do that.
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And it is all about, as I said, it is all about the Lord. It is all about a focus upon our humbling ourselves before him to worship the
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Lord. And the way that we best do that, of course, is in song. We do that. We do that when we give.
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We are worshiping. You realize that when you give, you're worshiping. And when we sing, we are worshiping the
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Lord. And when we sit before God's word, it is an essential part of the worship service.
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And it is my desire, not for me to be successful, but for God to do his work through his word to us this morning.
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In Psalm 113, the word of God opens up here in verse 1, Praise ye the
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Lord, praise all ye servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the
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Lord from this time forth and forevermore, from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof of the same.
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The Lord's name is to be praised. And there will be some who will say, the Bible was passed from this person to this person to this person, and it is very unclear.
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Or there are other people who need to translate or interpret the scriptures for us because we just cannot understand them.
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But I put it before you this morning as this text opens up, particularly in verse 1.
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Is it unclear? Is there any doubt what we are to do? Do we need a search?
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Do we need an interpreter? Of course, we need the Holy Spirit to interpret the scriptures or to give us the meaning of the scripture.
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But it is so clear to us, praise ye the Lord, praise all ye servants of the
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Lord, praise the name of the Lord. And there is a call in this psalm. There is an exhortation for God's servants or for believers, for the people of God to praise our
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God, to express. To praise means to express our delight in the
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Lord. And here it says that we're to do it and when we are to do it, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun.
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The Lord's name is to be praised. And we are to praise him from this point forevermore.
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And, of course, on earth we will praise him. And, of course, for all eternity in heaven we will praise the
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Lord. We who have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ. Now there are some in this room who do not praise the
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Lord. There are some in this room who have no reason to praise the Lord because there's been no spiritual life given unto them through Jesus Christ.
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I look around sometimes when the service and when we are singing, when we're just at a point where we are lifting up our hearts in praise.
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And you can tell the people that are not in it. You can tell the people who are not praising.
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And you can tell the people who have not had a visitation from on high, so to speak.
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They've not been regenerated. They've not been born again because they didn't do what the psalmist says here, to praise the
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Lord. And I want to give you some reasons this morning. Some reasons, well, as I don't want to,
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I want to bring to you what the psalmist says here are good reasons why the servants of God ought to be praising the
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Lord, speaking well of the Lord, and expressing our delight in the Lord. For God's servants to be able to praise the
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Lord, as the psalmist encourages us to do, we must have a proper understanding of who we were, where we were, what
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God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and what we have become. And that's where I hope to go this morning.
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The first thing that I'd like to show you, and I'll zip right to it because this is the point I'm going to get to. I'm going to kind of go there, and I'm going to back up a little bit.
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But if you'll look with me in verse 7, the Word of God tells us that God raises up the poor out of the dust, and he lifts up the needy out of the dunghill.
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And before Jesus Christ, if we would be honest with ourselves, without God we were poor, destitute of the knowledge of the
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Holy One. We did not know God. And isn't it an amazing thing with all the information that we have today, with all the ability that we have to study, with man's professed knowledge, with scientific research, with mountains of data, with the
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Internet, psychological studies, educational reforms, sociological programs, government projects, millions of dollars being spent, millions of books have been written, and still with all of that, man left to himself is still a fool because he is no closer to God and no closer to the knowledge of God.
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Before God looked toward us, as it says in verse 6, and we'll get there, before God looked down upon us, we did not understand his
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Word. We knew nothing of the glories of heaven. Our lives were earthly. We lived, no, we groveled here below in the dust, sunken in the muck and mire and the dirt of sin, as we'll look at in a moment.
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We also not only were poor, but we were needy, helpless, lost, castaways.
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We see that description again in verse 7. He lifts up the needy, not only poor, but needy, pitiful creatures, helpless beings, hopeless, vulnerable, and as the hymn writer says, frail creatures of dust and feeble as frail.
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Not only were we poor and needy, but we had a place that we called home. No matter how great we thought it was, our vision, our sight is faulty.
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Compared with the majestic God mentioned earlier, who is enthroned on high in this verse, and we'll touch that also, we are found way below.
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God puts a name to the place that we lived in, in verse 7, and he said it is the dunghill.
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God lifts the needy out of the dunghill. A heap of rubbish, a dump, an ash heap, that's the description of our former life.
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This could be a mound of animal waste also in the past that when dried would be fueled for fire.
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We may not like this description of our former dwelling place, but whether or not we like it is the description that God gives to every sinner outside of Christ.
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Our dwelling place, our former dwelling place, and we cannot argue with God's description.
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In former days in Palestine, if a person was cut off from society, poor, helpless, they would sometimes go and live upon the dunghill in town.
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By day they would beg, calling on passerbyers to give them a handout, and by night they would hide themselves and warm themselves by the ashes that had been worn by the sun during the day.
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And I want you to consider this picture because that's where we'll end up there. I want us to see what it is that God has done in our lives so that we, as exhorted by the psalmist, will have no shadow of doubt of how it is that we ought to praise the
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Lord. We will know exactly why we are to praise the Lord. And this is an aside.
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If you're wondering when you get on your knees and go in your closet how to pray, open up a psalm like this and read through it and just pray through it.
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And you can be thankful and you can say, God, I'm so thankful that you have done such and such to me according to your word here.
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It's good for us to have this type of picture. This description in the dunghill, of course, is the description of a beggar, someone who is needy, lacking, necessities of life, destitute, unable to change their deplorable condition.
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And sinners, people, you and me, because of our sin, are not only brought to a low estate, but we are brought to a loathsome one because of our sin.
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Those sins are an abomination in the sight of God. We find ourselves on the dunghill. So the first point, the first reason given by the psalmist to praise
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God is here. And I believe I'm just going to back up now. The first reason, because we're going to head to that one.
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That's where we'll finish up. The first reason that we are to praise the Lord is because God is exalted above the nations.
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And we see this in verse four and five. God is exalted above the nations and there is no one like unto our
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God. You'll remember Hannah in after she had been given her son Samuel.
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As her heart was rejoicing, in 1 Samuel 2, she says,
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There is none holy as the Lord, neither is there any rock like our
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God. And you remember back in Exodus chapter 15, it says, Who is like unto thee,
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O Lord, among the gods? Who is like the glorious and holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
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The first point is here, and look at verses four and five. As the psalmist at the beginning opens up and says, we need to praise the
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Lord. Well, for this first reason, verse four, the Lord is high above all the nations and his glory above the heavens.
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Who is like unto the Lord, our God, who dwells on high? He is the
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God of heaven and earth. The God of which Habakkuk wrote, Thou art of pure eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity.
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The picture of natural man is just the opposite. Before salvation, as I said earlier, here we are sitting upon a mound of garbage, which is really a picture of the awfulness of our sin before God, the awfulness of our plight before God, so unlike God.
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And you would think there would be no escape. You would think there is no hope. You look at this picture and you think that we would die this way.
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But oh, we look in verse six and we see that God does something about it. Who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in earth.
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But first and foremost, we must remember that it is a God who is high and holy and sits upon his throne.
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The one that Isaiah saw in the throne room of heaven in Isaiah chapter six, and all he could do was just to bow before the thrice holy
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God. God does the unbelievable, verse six.
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God does the unimaginable. God does what no other God will do. Do you realize that those, the millions that follow in Islam, Allah is so high,
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Allah is all by himself that there is absolutely no way to approach him and there is no way that he is going to approach man.
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And all you have is a list of do's and don'ts. You are trying to please a God like that.
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Many religions are like that. There is absolutely no visitation from their God. No help.
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Eyes have they, but they see not. Ears have they, but they hear not. Mouths have they, but they speak not. Hands have they, but they handle not.
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Feet have they, they cannot walk. And when the people cry out to their God, there is no one to answer.
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But the Lord, our God, as it says, and we will get into in more detail, comes down to the dunghill.
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The mighty God bows down to look at our poor condition. And then out of love and mercy and compassion, he does something about it.
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It says in verse 7 that he raises and he lifts. In Adam we have all fallen.
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I mean, in order for us to be lifted, we had to have fallen. And in Adam we have all fallen. For by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners.
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We have fallen from the state of honor and glory and landed on a heap of filth and rotten debris.
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Consider the great mercy of God. Consider this God in verse 4 and 5. And for this first reason why we ought to praise him, because he is exalted.
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There is no one else like him. A God who is highly exalted, a God who needs nothing.
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He doesn't need you. He doesn't need me. He's all sufficient in and of himself. He who has no pleasure in wickedness, our holy
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God is pleased to do something about the condition of unholy and unclean sinners.
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None like him. And yet he humbles himself. Or he condescends.
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And that's the second reason why we ought to praise him, as we see in verse 6, as I've already read.
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It says, about God he humbles himself. Or he looks far below. He humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and earth.
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He condescends. That's the word that we put to this. He looks below to meet our need and come to our rescue.
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He stoops down to lift up the fallen, to lift up those that live on the dunghill.
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The smell and the filth and the sight of our deplorable condition does not stop him.
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And we know that as we have the New Testament revelation, we think of the Lord Jesus on the pages of the
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Gospels. He is God who has come, God who has come in the flesh, and God who is living amongst sinners,
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God who loves them, God who is going to do something about him, the person who the religious leaders would not touch, the leper, he reaches forth his hand to touch
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Jesus, and Jesus touches him, and he is healed. He condescends. But not only does he condescend, but look at the other word in verse 6.
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It says, he humbles himself to behold, to behold the things that are in heaven and in earth.
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And in my studies this week, and I can't elaborate on this, but it says that God looks down from his throne, and he not only looks down upon the things of earth, and he's interested in the things of earth, but God is so high and so holy that he looks down to look at the things in heaven.
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That's what it says in this verse. God dwells, he beholds the things that are in heaven and in earth.
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When we think of heaven, we always think of that's the place where God is, and that is true. But God is so far above it all.
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God, all the descriptions as Brother Lewis is teaching in the book of Revelation in Sunday school, all of that that we see in the book of Revelation is something that we look at, and we say, this is wonderful, this is marvelous, this is the throne of God, the elders worshiping, and all this that's going on, and yet God, from his throne, looks down upon all that that is happening in heaven and in earth.
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He looks down from his gloriously majestic throne to take notice of us.
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What a wonder of wonders. You can hold your place here. I mean, if you want to look with me, fine, if not, just stay right there.
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Psalm 138, in verse 6, notice what the word of God says, Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knows afar off.
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Though the Lord is high, he has respect to the lowly. I mean, I've dealt with a lot of people at work and outside of work, and there are some people who have come down off of their stool, so to speak, to talk to me.
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And you know what I'm talking about. They're just on a different plane than all the rest of us. But this is not what this is speaking of.
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This is God in his nature, God in his essence, holy, high and holy, lifted up above us all.
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And yet, though being high, and though being holy and majestic, he stoops down.
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He comes, and it says, we have it in Philippians chapter 2, that Jesus took upon the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and he dwelt among us.
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God visiting mankind. This is something that is totally foreign to most of the religions of the world.
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But according to the Bible, it is true. God did not have to do this. He owes no man anything, and yet he shows mercy to whoever he desires to show mercy.
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And this dunghill is the emblem of the deepest poverty and desertion a person could ever find themselves in.
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That's the picture of a person defiled in bondage to their sin and ruined by sin. And you would think there's no hope for this person.
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I mean, this person can't will themselves out of that situation because their will is bent towards sin.
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This person cannot work their way out of this because God will not accept any human effort. This person cannot reason themselves off the dunghill because their understanding is darkened.
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They can't do anything because they're spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. And there's only one way for this situation to change.
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Someone must come to them and deliver this sinner out of that poor condition. Humanism will say to them, well, you're the center of the universe.
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I mean, everything revolves around you. It's all about you, as I said earlier. That's what humanism will say.
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I mean, you are the person who is a god, and you can create with your own abilities. You can change things.
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Religion will come and say, get busy and do something to please God, and maybe the situation will change.
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Morality will come and will say, just clean up your life, reform, look good. I mean, turn over a new leaf.
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But the problem is when you turn over the new leaf, it is just as corrupt on the other side. Worldly wisdom will say, get some education.
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When you're wiser, you'll be more equipped to help yourself. Philanthropy will say, just throw money at it.
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I mean, that'll fix any problem, but each one of those solutions will leave the person right where they started off, poor and needy, living on the dunghill.
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And our text tells us of the only hope for those who are in the dust, for the only hope for those that are in the dunghill.
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And we see it in verse 6. God looks down. God beholds. God condescends.
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He humbles himself. He beholds, it says in verse 6. He raises and he lifts up.
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And with the New Testament revelation, as I said earlier, we know this to be the Lord our God, Jesus Christ.
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Jesus is the only hope for Adam's fallen race. It is Jesus Christ alone who is able to save the poor and needy who have been left out on the dunghill to die and be forgotten forever.
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Sinful man is accustomed to the sight and smell. For even as the Apostle John wrote, we love darkness rather than light because our deeds were evil.
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That's where we were living, and we grew accustomed to that. We took pleasure in our sin and thought that the only normal way to live was to wallow in the pigsty of iniquity.
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We were sinners and we were guilty before God, and because we were guilty of breaking God's law, the wrath of God was upon us, and everlasting punishment was awaiting us upon our death.
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Yet here's the good news. God comes. God makes the difference.
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God visits. God breaks in upon our lives. That is the only hope for us, and it is
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Christ Jesus that changes our situation. You'll remember the Gadarene demoniac bound by demons, and when
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Jesus visits. I mean, there's a guy running around naked. He's unclothed. He's crazy, and he's cutting himself, and he's running through the tombs, and Jesus comes and delivers him, and the next thing you see, this man has changed because God has visited him.
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He is clothed. He's sitting at the feet of Jesus, and he's in his right mind. That's the power of God.
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That's the good news. He came in mercy, in love, and stooped to our lowest state.
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He took, as I said earlier, the form of a servant made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and became obedient unto the death of the cross on our behalf.
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Then God the Holy Spirit opened our eyes to show us how our sin offends
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God, and God revealed the awfulness. I mean, I don't know if you remember this day, but the awfulness of us sitting upon the dunghill, the awfulness of our sinful life before God, and he lovingly drew us to Christ.
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He raises the poor, notice what it says there in verse 7, out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the dunghill.
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God's salvation is complete. God's salvation is so amazing. I mean, it is not that we are left in our sin.
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God saves and leaves us there. But God saves. He gets us out of the dominion of sin.
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And an easy believism message will give a person a false hope, a powerless savior who cannot deliver them completely, and produces so -called carnal
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Christians who still wallow in their sin. And no wonder they have no reason to praise him, because they have not been delivered from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and from the pleasure of sin in their lifetime now.
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But a person who has been delivered from the penalty to our sin, from the power of that sin over us, its dominion, and from the pleasure of sin, can do what the psalmist here says, to praise him, to speak well of the
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Lord, to delight in the Lord, and to express that. God looked beyond the filth and the disgusting abominations, and saw our great need, and came to our rescue.
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Jesus came to die in the sinner's place, to take our sins upon himself, to die so that we might be delivered from the mess of the dunghill, the shame of that dunghill, the deplorable situation.
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He came to suffer our judgment on our behalf, so that we might be lifted up and brought to God, reconciled.
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Jesus, the risen Savior, who raises us up out of our spiritual death, and he is able to completely save us.
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And yes, he did the lifting, and no man will ever be able to boast. This is the gospel.
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We see the gospel here, this good news here in this Old Testament Psalm. God has a special eye towards the poor and the needy.
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Psalm 72, I believe, I was just thinking of that verse. Psalm 72, in verse 12,
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For he, speaking of the Lord, shall deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him that has no helper.
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God shall spare, verse 13, the poor and the needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in his sight.
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It is God who delivers us. Psalm 72, 12 to 14. What might, what power, what glory, what a great salvation.
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The hymn writer is right. What a wonderful Savior is Jesus our Lord. But God's goodness doesn't end there.
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There's more to be done. The Lord isn't pleased just to do half the job. He's not satisfied unless the whole work is done.
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Grace must be completely effectual and salvation must be complete. God brings a full salvation.
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The salvation that God dispenses must accomplish that which it has set out to perform, what
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God desired for it. And thirdly, this final reason I'd like to share with you, and of course we're going to spend the most of our time here, the final reason to give
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God praise. Not only are we to praise God because he is exalted among the nations, there is no
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God like him, verses 4 and 5. And not only that God humbles himself or God condescends, and he takes interest in the poor and the needy, and that, my friends, ought to just thrill our souls.
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Brothers and sisters in Christ, that ought to cause us over and over and over again to say, oh, thank you
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God for coming and visiting me in my great need. But thirdly, here we see that God is to be praised because not only does
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God rescue, but God exalts the poor and needy to a place of honor and to a place of influence.
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And we see this in verse 8. It says in verse 7 that God raises the poor and needy out of the dust, and he lifts them out of the dunghill, but it says that he sets them, in verse 8, he sets them with princes, even the princes of his people.
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After they have been raised out of the dunghill, our Lord desires to set us someplace. He gives his children a new home.
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He gives us a new position. He says that that place is with princes.
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What does this mean? I believe it means that when the Lord Jesus Christ, when our great God lifts up the fallen, his desire is to place them among the subjects of his kingdom, and he will not be content until he does just that.
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He does something we could never do for ourselves, and he not only changes us, but he exalts us to a position of sonship.
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Now, I'm just going to take a little diversion here and just ask you to remember this. Do you remember in 2 Samuel, chapter 9, there was a man called
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Mephibosheth? Do you remember Mephibosheth? Hard to pronounce, but great story. We have a man who was, when he was a child and there was a need to flee away, the nanny dropped him and became lame on his feet.
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So here he is, a man living in Lodibar, and he is lame on his feet, and he is a descendant of Saul.
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And David promised Jonathan that if there were any in of his family, that he would take care of them.
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And sometime later, David is on his throne, and he asks, are there any of the descendants of the house of Saul remaining?
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And someone brings to mind Mephibosheth. And what
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David does is he dispatches people to go get Mephibosheth and take him out of Lodibar.
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And you can read it there in 2 Samuel, chapter 9. And he brings this man into his palace and says that he is going to sit at his table, at the king's table, and be protected and to be watched over and to be cared for all the days of his life.
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And you can see the picture, can't you? You can see those of us that are in Lodibar. You can see those of us who are underserving.
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And even when Mephibosheth comes before King David, he just really just bows himself and he says, you know, what are you dealing with me for,
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King David? I am just a nothing. I'm a dog. He understands that basically as I'm bringing this message, he is living and sitting on the dung heap, and he doesn't deserve the favor of the king.
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But King David favors him and brings him into this place of honor.
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And I want us to understand that when we go through this, that that is exactly what is being spoken of here.
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I believe this means that God in his mercy,
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God in his grace, when he condescends, when he sees our need and he does something about it, he does a complete blessing.
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He brings a full reward to his people, and he looks with favor upon us and he gives us that which we do not deserve.
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John Pulseford wrote this on how God treats the wayward people.
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He says, God pardons them and receives them into his house. He makes them all his children.
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And all his children are heirs and all his heirs are princes and all his princes are crowned.
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And I would like to say to that that it is only God in his power who can change our address from zero dunghill court to number one palace of God's boulevard.
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Only God can do that, and God has done that for we as people here this morning. It gives us reason to rejoice.
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I mean, you think of the prodigal son too, a great account in the Scripture. The loving father puts a robe on him.
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I mean, he doesn't just give him a hand -me -down. The father puts a ring on his finger, not just a piece of string.
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He puts shoes on his feet, not just the shoeboxes. And he puts a feast before him and celebrates, signifying a place of sonship.
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And when God saves a sinner, he elevates us to a place of honor, and we become part of the royal family.
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Just this past week or two, there was a 2020 special on the royal family in Great Britain, and it gave the whole expose of the queen and of the family.
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And I was considering that, and I'm thinking from an earthly perspective, I mean, to be born into that family, you are set for life.
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And I can't remember what it was. I think the total cost for all of that is involved in the royal family.
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The budget is about $74 million just to do all the things that they do to take care of the royal family.
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But when we speak of what God does for sinners, when God visits us and humbles that word to look with favor, come down and look below and do something about our situation and raise us up out of the dust and lifts us out of the dunghill so that he can set us with princes, what
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God does for the sinner to make us his dear children, like the apostle John wrote,
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Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we might be called the sons of God.
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We are the sons, the children, the little dear ones of God. Being God's beloved children makes, and what
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God does for us in Christ, in the honor, the rank, in the position there, the privilege there, makes
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Prince Harry and Prince William look like paupers. God is great.
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You see, God has an eternal purpose to redeem a people for his own. Our Lord foreknew his elect ones, and he predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his
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Son. So there has been a calling, Come to me. Come away from this dunghill. Repent of your sin.
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Flee from the wrath which is to come. Come and follow me. And those who he has called he has justified.
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The dirty beggars are no longer filthy. Their sin stains have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.
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They've been declared righteous through faith in the Savior's shed blood. God sees us as sinless now in the perfect righteousness of Christ.
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And Romans 8 .17 says that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
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Ephesians 2 .6 says that God has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
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And as I mentioned before, if I had an envelope here, I would hold it up and I would say that the return address on that envelope before Jesus Christ used to be the filthy dunghill on the earth here below.
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But now by grace, by now by the power of God, that return address says seated with Jesus Christ in heavenly places.
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I mean, can I get an amen on that? Praise the Lord. He is so good to us. Those who have been lifted up together with Christ, as far as God is concerned, in Christ are seen as his dear children.
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And I'm just going to kind of touch on this just in a different fashion because there are some of us here this morning saved, children of God, on our way to heaven.
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We believe that God has saved us, but we don't live in the light of this truth. We live in such a way that we're not blessed by this divine truth and divine perspective.
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I knew a man in church that we had attended once. He did not have anything good to say about the present position of any believer.
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To him being saved meant, yeah, we're saved, but we're still worms. We're still useless, meaningless, less than dust.
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And he thought he still, and with him, I mean, his problem was that he was still stuck in Lodibar.
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He was still back there, and he had not realized what God had done, as with Mephibosheth, that God had brought us into the palace, and God had put his name upon us, and God had made us his dear children.
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And everything to him was, woe is me, and we don't mean much of anything. Brethren, I don't know if you're caught in that type of perspective.
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I really feel it's just a false humility. But I know what God thinks and says about us. We no longer live in Lodibar, but we're in the palace of the king.
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We're no longer upon the dunghill, but we are in the royal family of God as his dear little ones.
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Brethren, we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. I mean, we sang it this morning.
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Heirs of salvation, purchased of God, born of his spirit and washed in his blood.
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And that's exactly what God has done for us. Think of the inventory of just the inheritance that it is so unbelievable that we are heirs of.
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The Scripture says we are heirs of eternal life. We are heirs of the promises.
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We are heirs of the grace of life together. We are heirs of God's righteousness. We are heirs of the kingdom.
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Brethren, we need to be transformed. And sometimes I believe we hinder ourselves and paint this cloudy picture of who we really are.
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We need to understand and we need to look at it that as it says here, that not only does God raise us up and what a wonder of wonders that is, how amazing is that, that God would lift us up out of the dunghill.
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He would take us out of the dust. The dust, it says there in verse seven, he raises up the poor out of the dust, that sorrowful condition and lifts the needy out of the dunghill, that deplorable condition of sin.
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And he sets us around his table. I remember one time in about the 1980s, there was a preacher, an evangelist that used to come to the church when we visited another church.
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And he preached the message on 2 Samuel 9 on Mephibosheth. And he painted this wonderful picture. I mean, this guy had a vivid imagination, and yet it was a sanctified imagination.
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And he painted this picture of Mephibosheth being carried to the table of David and sitting there, lame on his feet.
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I mean, he cannot walk, and his legs just dangling underneath the table. And you get this picture, and yet David has done everything to provide all that he ever needed all the days of his life.
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And isn't it true, Psalm 23, a psalm to live by, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the
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Lord forever. That's the God whom we serve. And I would implore you not to, I mean, I know that we need to humble ourselves.
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I know that we need to be careful that we don't lift ourselves up in pride. And we want to be careful that we know our right position before the
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Lord as his servants and bow before God and confess our sins. But the psalmist here is saying that God is doing such wonderful things in the life of his servants that there's reasons to praise him, and he lifts, and he raises, and he sets.
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He puts us in this wonderful position, and that's his intent to do so. God has purposed to have children, and you and I, who are recipients of his grace, are his dear children, and we need to live that way.
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And we need to have our hearts warmed and stirred to think that we, like Mephibosheth, are not deserving this, and yet God in Christ Jesus has brought us into the family.
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Glory to God. Praise his name. And that's why the psalmist says, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the saying, the
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Lord's name is to be praised. We need to understand our rightful position, who we are.
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As I said earlier, and give God all of the praise for what he's done in our lives.
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Well, I believe that it is so important for us to know that we are the apple of God's eye, his chief delight, and he sees us in Christ, his beloved son.
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We are accepted in the beloved. And this type of truth, this truth in this psalm, where we have the reason to praise
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God because he is the Lord on high. He is above all nations.
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He is to be exalted because there is none like unto him, firstly. And secondly, we are to exalt him and praise him because he takes note of our state.
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He looks down into heaven and upon earth, and he has interests in the poor and the needy.
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And not only does he have that condescension, but he does something about it.
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He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts the needy out of the dunghill, and then he sets us among princes.
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I'd like to close this morning by, I did not know if I had time to do so, but it looks like I'm doing pretty good.
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There is a fourth point in this psalm, and I cannot get to it. If you read the very last verse, God even makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children.
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I mean, God gives us the joy and the delight of family relationships and even the barren woman who has no child, and yet when
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God gives her that child, there's great joy there. There's something that, and that would be a whole other great message maybe for the women, a woman's gathering.
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But just as she is joyous in what God had done, and that's what really, if you remember earlier in 1
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Samuel 2 .2, that's what excited and rejoiced Hannah's heart, that she had been blessed with Samuel, and she said there is none as holy as the
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Lord. There is none like unto him. Same thing, as much as the barren woman who receives that child after all those years of desiring and wanting a baby, and God gives her the desire of her heart, she praises, and as much as she praises like that, we ought to be a people who praise
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God for what he's done in our lives too. We see the example here. That is another point that I would not want to overlook because, you see, the psalm begins with praise, this exhortation to praise the
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Lord, and it's at the end of the psalm, like many others, it ends with driving us to that place where we see that we have so many reasons to praise the
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Lord, and it's concluded that way. But the one that I really wanted to bring this morning was this idea of God lifting us up off the dunghill.
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For God to do that, I mean, that is something that took the power of God to do so because we would still be there if God had not.
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And a friend of mine who is a pastor in southern Florida many, many years ago had written a story that's related, and you will hear about the dunghill in here, and I am just going to conclude with the story that my friend had written back in the 1980s.
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It kind of fits. Before the sands of time began to fall from eternity's hourglass, a great and mighty prince loved a fair young maiden.
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The young woman did not know the prince, but he knew her and loved her with the greatest of all loves.
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She was the lowly daughter of a bond slave, but the prince so loved her that he was willing to give up everything to redeem and marry her.
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The king loved his only son, the prince, with perfect love and spared nothing to please him.
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It was at this time that the prince approached the king to formally ask for the hand of the one whom his soul loved.
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The king was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and a marriage contract was agreed upon to secure his son's chosen bride.
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The king insisted that the bride be purchased by the royal family prior to the marriage in order for the king to lawfully give her to his beloved son.
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And you're going to see in all of this, this whole picture of God saving sinners in this whole picture of this.
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With joy set before him, the prince sent his servants to tell his bride the king's good news, only to discover that his fair one had fallen captive to a wicked king from a far country.
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His lovely bride was among a great number who were taken captive by the wicked king. Many of the captives were slaughtered, and others were rendered helpless by putting out of their eyes and cutting off of their ears.
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The prince's bride was defiled by the wicked king and his men and left fallen in the wilderness to die alone.
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A citizen of that far country found the fallen woman, who was half naked, half dead, naked, hungry, and afraid.
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He did not clothe her nakedness, nor did he satisfy her hunger, but instead with feigned love he used and abused her.
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At first she served him out of fear and shame, but afterwards she willingly remained, enjoying the pleasures he provided for her.
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She never thought of the prince who loved her with an unquenchable love, for the only love she knew was lust.
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The years came and went, and her beauty was now wasted and spent. She was sold to another, she labored day and night, but her only wages were loneliness and misery.
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It was misery that consumed her mind, while loneliness gnawed continually at her soul.
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Gripped in the mind and body, she was declared unprofitable by her master.
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Not willing to be burdened any longer by this unprofitable wretch, her master put her up for auction in the marketplace, where curious passerbyers could view her.
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She appeared to be half woman, half animal. Many of the children of the far country were frightened by her grotesque appearance.
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Others mocked and jeered at the poor old blind woman who sat on the dunghill, filthy and unkept, hair disheveled and dressed in rags.
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No buyers could be found. No one pitied her. There were no words of comfort for her deaf ears.
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Helpless and hopeless and forsaken, by all she waited for death to come. One day, the king of a better country came through the marketplace of this far country and noticed this poor, needy woman wandering upon a dunghill.
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He ordered his royal coach to be stopped, and he got out to see the woman. The king could not see her face, for her head was hung low.
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The people were astonished to see the king so interested in this wretched woman. They were even more amazed to see the king descend to the dung pile with the woman.
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Stooping, he whispered into her ear, My love, my lost love, arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
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Then as she took his outstretched hand, he swept her away in his arms.
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And with tears in his eyes, the king proudly announced to all, This is my bride, whom my soul loveth, whom my father has given me.
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She has been lost, but now I have found her. And then turning to her master, the king said to him,
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You have no part with my bride. And after paying an exceeding precious ransom for her, he carried her in his strong arms to a better country that is in heavenly and was not ashamed to call her his bride.
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A wonderful and lovely picture of what God did when he condescended, when he came down to save us.
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We used to be in darkness, brethren, but now we are light in the Lord.
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And since this is so true, and God sees us so differently, may we also have eyes to see it and live in the light of this blessed truth.
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An unknown author said, Praise is the honey of life, which devout hearts suck every bloom of providence and of grace.
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Now I think we can understand a bit more clearly why the psalmist would say to us,
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From the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof the same, the Lord's name is to be praised.
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Praise the Lord. And I will conclude with a writing of another unknown writer, Wonders of grace to God belong, so repeat his mercies in your song.
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And as we sing our last hymn today, may that go through our minds. Wonders of grace to God belong, so repeat his mercies in your song.
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Shall we pray? Father, a short psalm, and yet a very potent one, one filled with your truth, one which we can take note of and take inventory of, that we have so many reasons, and this psalm just tells us of a few, that you are high and holy and exalted, you are our
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God and we worship you, that you condescend, that you did not have to but you came down and you took interest in the poor and the needy.
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And not only took interest, but you did something about it, you lifted us up out of the dust and off of the dunghill, delivering us by the power of the cross of Jesus Christ, his death and burial and resurrection on our behalf, that we would be delivered from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin in our present life, from the pleasure of sin, and one day we look forward with a great hope, we're going to be delivered from the presence of sin and live with you for all eternity.
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We can praise you this morning, and we ought to and we desire to, and so we say, all that has life and breath, praise you the
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Lord. Jill, listen to our hearts, oh God, may we be stirred this day to reflect upon this truth that we've heard and give you the praise and the glory and the honor that is due our precious