Studying The Psalms (part 2)

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Studying The Psalms (part 3)

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So we're going to continue this study in the psalms. We started it last week. And today, we'll be looking at still some introductory matter before we actually begin with looking at a specific psalm next time.
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So those of you who weren't here last time, we looked at the personal nature of the psalms and how it relates to all circumstances of life that we go through, all these things that the
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Lord did work in their lives. And then through the psalms, they sing and worship and praise
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God and glorify him. Today, we're going to begin by looking at some of the attributes of God that just come through the psalms.
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Last week, we began by looking at how God is merciful and how he covenants himself with his people in order to be loving and loyal love, as we saw last time.
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This time, we're going to begin with the other. So if you have your notes from last time, please feel free to use it.
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But if not, that's OK. This is easier to follow than last week. Before I begin the second attribute,
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I just have a couple of some of you asked me some questions. I just want to respond to that.
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And then we'll get into this second attribute of God. I use the word covenant with God being merciful.
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And I think it triggered a question for one of you, which was, we are looking at the
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Old Testament here. And there's some specific promises to Israel. And so when we look at the
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New Testament, we know the commands and the promises are given very explicitly to Christians.
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Should we be a little more careful when we look at the Psalms? And I said, that's a great question. Because if you look at the
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Psalms, some of them are actually messianic, which means they apply only to Jesus Christ.
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So you read Psalm 222. There are things that are meant for a certain.
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You need to interpret them according to what they pointed to. But when you look at, and you have other
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Psalms that talk about sacrificing the temple. That is talking about walking up to Jerusalem, the last few
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Psalms. And there are contexts in the nation of Israel. But you don't normally see the type of laws that you would see, for example, in Leviticus that talk about what was expected of Israel.
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What you see come through the Psalms instead, as we saw last week, it is a genre of poetry. It actually brings together the character of God that ministers to the people of God in their various circumstances in life.
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And those examples and those words that are used to express the beauty of God are just as applicable to us today as it was to the
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Israelites so many years ago. And we will be picking a few examples in terms of how do we look at these texts?
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How do we look at the life of David, for example? And how does that relate or apply to our particular need?
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So that's one. And the second is the
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Psalms sometimes can tend to be a little different than what we are typically used to. We are more used to, for example, like the
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Epistles. And even this morning, those of you who were here for the Book of Romans, you see how it walks through these points of who
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God is and what he has done. And sometimes when I tend to think this way,
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I think of it as here is my transcendent God who is above all the earth.
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And I think of his attributes in a transcendent way.
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I sometimes don't really relate to my God in the way that he also is, which is imminent.
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He is with us and he is so, all these truths that we see about God are not just out there up in heaven, but he actually lives with us in our lives as we go through this.
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I'm kind of messing up when I get out of my notes, but let me just take a few minutes just to explain what
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I mean. Sometimes when I used to read the Psalms, and this is very true for me, I look at some of these things that talks about God.
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And we know it's poetry and it's sometimes anthropomorphic, which means it brings God almost to a human level because it is using analogy, just as a father loves his son.
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There are things that seem to be almost too human. And the liberals would scoff at us by saying, oh, look at your
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Bible or look at the Psalms. Is this the kind of God you have? And I can tend to think, oh, you know what?
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I ought to go to a transcendent God who is above all the fray of getting involved in these petty human events.
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That is not necessarily true. We have a God who got really dirty. I mean, we have a God who died on a cross on our behalf.
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He is completely with us in a way that is shocking, that this
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God, the governor of the universe, would actually be with us. And the Psalms actually bring that out, that the
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Psalmist is not just isolated in his events, but God of the universe is with him.
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And it portrays him in a way that we ought to let our minds be washed by, that we understand that this
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God is extremely personal. And when it uses anthropomorphic language, we want to be careful that we learn from it rather than have a view of God that I don't want to look at things differently.
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So with that one last point, and then we'll get in. The Psalms use two aspects because it's poetry.
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One of them is denoting, which means it says explicit things, literally.
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And then there's another aspect which is connoting, which means it will allude or refer to things in a more broader way.
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And that's the strength of poetry that we have in the Psalms and we will try to bring both of these together. So when you actually look at some of these statements about God, which is what we'll be spending most of our time today, those will be denoting statements.
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But along with them, you will also see these things that connote about who this God, or how it is that this
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God relates to us today. So with that, let me stop. We'll now get into the second attribute.
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We saw God is merciful. And today we're going to be looking at, we're going to look at 10 attributes in total.
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And then once we do that, we will look at how the believer ought to respond. Now, I mentioned this last week.
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We looked at the attribute of God from the Psalms for a reason. Firstly, because the
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Psalms is filled with it. So it's good for us to know about this God. But last week
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I said that we want to use the Psalms as a means of soul ministry, of counseling.
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And here we are going to be looking at the attributes of God. Now, why do you think you would want to know about the attributes of God when you counsel someone?
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Is there a reason being, I mean, a guy is depressed and shouldn't I be talking to him about his problem rather than going in a study of God?
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Is God is perfect? Is justice isn't so that it's transcendent
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God where there's no flaw? In one sense, we are looking at the perfection that who
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God is and in contrast to our own weakness. Yes. I want to take over your class here.
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I mean, to me, it's just, this screams out at us. Our problem and when people, when they have issues in their lives, their problem is they're too focused on themselves and their issues and they forget who
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God is and how they ought to be just thinking, I'm much better than I deserve.
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I can't believe that God would be this gracious to me. And instead they flip the ground and it's blind me, poor me.
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I need somebody to give me a big hug. Exactly.
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Not if you have an eternal life, you don't. No. And that is the universal problem of man.
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In the world, we have a problem and I just have to somehow get deeper into myself to resolve it.
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As Christians, we have a much vaster resource that is God himself. And one thing it does is when we turn our eyes away from ourselves in the midst of a problem and look at God, which all the psalmists will do.
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You'll see many examples of this. It just blows their mind away. They thought they were stuck in a mire that they just cannot escape out of.
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And then they start to look at God and who he is and what he does and his relationship to them.
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And then they're like praising God by the end of the psalm because they have been counseled by God by looking at him.
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So for us, the first chief source of counseling when you go through your own trial is to look at God because we have this very
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God in our lives today. So let's now get into the second attribute and this is a sure help for those who need counseling and that is
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God is wrathful. God is wrathful. Helpful attribute of God.
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Let's look at a few verses. Like last week, we're gonna be going to different verses. Please open to Psalm six, verse one.
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There's many other verses. If you're taking notes, there's Psalm 27, nine, Psalm 38, one and two,
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Psalm 74, one. But for now, we'll just look at Psalm six, verse one. Whoever has it, please read it.
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You don't have to wait for me. Oh Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.
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And here is the psalmist and if you just keep going further, he explains why he is asking that.
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He is in verse six, weary with mourning, flooded with tears and then in verse eight, he has workers of iniquity who are dealing with him and then he completes by saying, the
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Lord has heard my plea and his enemies shall be ashamed. But right in verse one, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.
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There is a certain type of chastisement that believers, children of God can expect and you want that to be tempered, not with a wrath of God because we're gonna see very soon,
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God's wrath is a very real and present truth in the character of God.
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You know, when I think of the wrath of God, I think of sinful, maybe dad, maybe myself, the way in which
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I respond in anger or wrath. I think of wrath itself as a unpleasant attribute but when we look at the wrath of God in holiness, in justice, there is a purity in the wrath of God.
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We're gonna be seeing that in the next few verses but the psalmist is aware of this attribute of God, a terrible thing to fall in the hands of an angry
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God and he says, Lord, when you chastise me, may it be so in your loving kindness and we'll be seeing verses to that effect.
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I am always aware of my sin that I deserve these things but because of your common love to me, may your relationship to me be not in this sense but rather with something else which you will see.
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So now let me pick a few other verses so we can see how this wrath of God exhibits itself.
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How should we think of the wrath of God? We've just heard in Romans one to three, the wrath of God revealed against ungodliness but what are some of the other ways the psalmist talks about this?
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If you can turn to Psalm 79, verse five and read it aloud, this has to do with, go ahead, whoever has it, please read.
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How long, O Lord, will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? And if you just scan
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Psalm 79, you see the beginning of that verse. Here, the nations, which is the non -Israelite countries have come into and occupied
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Jerusalem, left it in ruins and this is actually the judgment of God that has come upon Israel through these other nations.
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And so here, the psalmist is reflecting upon God's anger, just anger that has come upon Israel and then he says, how long,
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O Lord? He knows that God's anger toward Israel is not eternal.
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He has placed the covenant upon Israel and he will indeed refrain from his wrath once his judgment is accomplished.
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But on the other hand, we will see this, actually, it's the next verse, so I'll do this together.
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In verse six, pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name, for they have devoured
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Jacob and laid waste his habitation. There is a manner in which the wrath of God is revealed.
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The wrath of God against Israel was terrible because these people, despite God's unconditional love that was placed over and over again and God's repeated warnings, had walked away and rejected their
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God and God was going to bring a just compensation to them. So this psalmist here, as he is seeing all that God's anger has done, he says,
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Lord, we're getting it, we understand and please refrain from your anger.
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And on the flip side, those who do not trust in God, Israel needed to be reminded that they needed to act in accordance with their trust and to come back wholeheartedly to him, whereas these nations that would neither acknowledge nor trust in him, they will face the wrath of God eternally.
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And so those are the two sides of God's wrath. But then in Psalm 86, you don't need to turn here, 86 verse 15, we see this balance of this attribute of wrath with something else, which we will see in a minute.
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The Bible constantly refrains, the Lord is slow to anger. Because one of the things that we think of wrath is, you know, someone who flies off the air handle, you know, something goes wrong and I just get mad.
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That's not the God that we're talking about here. He is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness.
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So that's one attribute. Now, the one being counseled needs to know that God is a
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God of wrath, because many a time when I need counseling, there's probably some element of sin that I am actually dealing with, but I just don't wanna acknowledge myself with.
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And I need to know that there is a God in heaven who is watching over me, and we will see that as well in a minute, but he is a
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God of justice and of wrath. And I need to be aware of this God while I do business with where I am today.
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So the counter attribute that I wanna look at is the third one. We've seen merciful, wrathful, the third one is loving.
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And whoever has this, please turn to Psalm 30, verse five. When his anger is but for a moment.
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His anger is but for a moment and his favor for a lifetime. It is a contrast of how
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God deals with his people. He is, while God's anger is just and very necessary for us in our times of disobedience, he is not a
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God who stays in his anger or revels in his anger, but his favor, his loving kindness, his mercy is for a lifetime.
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And this love of God is a dominant theme in the scriptures. You know, the problem in our society is we just take love of God and then exclude everything else.
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But the Psalms and the rest of the scriptures balance this attribute of the anger of the wrath of God and the loving kindness of God.
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And we already saw the anger of God is dispensed in certain ways toward those who are his, upon whom he has placed his favor, and then those who reject him or who will face the wrath of God forever.
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So sometimes you counsel people who are unbelievers and you need to warn them of the danger that they are in.
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It is not just the particular problem that they are facing, but rather an eternal punishment. But by trusting in God, they can see this favor of God that lasts a lifetime.
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I have a few other, so now let's think about this. What kind of, what are some of the objects of God's love?
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We say God is loving, God is love. What are some of the objects of God's love? Let's take a few, give me a few objects that you can think of.
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The elect. The elect, he loves his own, his children, whom he has called. Anything else?
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That God loves? His creation. His creation. Yes, he loves all, he saw everything that he made, it was good, and he's gonna restore his creation in the end.
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His son, yes, because in Psalm 2, we see that the love that the father has for the son.
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Let me just give you a few verses as we wrap this attribute. The first one,
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Kober has it, 47 verse four. Please read. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves.
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The loves comes right at the end of the verse, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. Again, it's talking about Israel, and if you look at that entire
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Psalm, this is a Psalm of God's sovereignty, how he rules over the nation, and then he shows how he has guided the nation
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Israel, and that particular verse is he chose his heritage, our heritage for us.
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So the love of God that he has placed upon Israel brought about the inheritance, the heritage that they currently have.
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And this is one of the things you're gonna start to see as we move forward. This love and all these attributes that we see are not just gonna be in the abstract, but they're gonna be very concrete examples of how
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God shows his love to his people. So the object here is Israel, but the way in which he has demonstrated his love is by giving them an inheritance, an heritage, a kingdom, that he has drawn them, as other
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Psalms would say, is the borders have fallen very well for his people, whom he loves.
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The next verse is Psalm 33, verse five. And here we're gonna switch a little in terms of what
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God loves. And here is a
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Psalm that actually extols God's steadfast love. And as it does that, if you just go look, scan a little bit earlier in the
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Psalm, God just does great things and we ought to praise him.
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And here, one of the things that you praise him for is that he loves righteousness and justice. It, again, talks about his character.
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And because of his character, it says the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. Think about that for a minute.
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What, do you think that the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord? Maybe in Psalms time, but not anymore.
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Yes, yes, I do, realistically.
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It depends on what word you're emphasizing. You know, when you think of the full of the steadfast love of the
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Lord, you're right, the God is everywhere and his attribute is demonstrated in all different ways.
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And when I think of exclusively, then, you know, the challenge you have is,
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I see things that are troubling and is it really true that God's steadfast love is filling the earth?
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That's one way, I think, the natural way of looking at it. Yes? If you think of the common grace, he shows the world in general, who has, in general, rejected him.
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And I think that's one of the things we want this verse to remind us of. Because while we look at the world, there is a lot of evil, there's a lot of suffering, a lot of pain.
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And those tend to dominate my mind when I look at the world. When I look at the news and I see, you know, children being killed or those things,
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I think, you know, this is difficult. But I so often forget everything else against which these wicked deeds and evil is framed against.
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It is because my mind is so filled with all the other things that I enjoy. Not just me, but like you said, common grace, the unbelievers enjoy, family, provision, and to enjoy this beautiful creation that has been made.
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God is demonstrating his loving kindness and his patience toward all these, to the world.
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And it is in the context of that, that we see all these other anomalies, if you will, the problems that tend to narrow my mind down.
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But now that I know this bigger picture, is God's loving kindness any less in the midst of these problems?
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If you just look at a few verses before and a few verses after, you just see how
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God has made this world and how he demonstrates his loving kindness because of his love for justice and righteousness.
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You can see verse eight, let all the earth fear the Lord. Verse 10, he brings counsels of the nations to nothing and frustrates the plans of the people.
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There are things that God does in his loving kindness that we may not obviously see, but the
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Psalmist does this work of just demonstrate or bringing out what things which don't normally come to a forefront.
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So when I get discouraged by looking at the world and here's where I need to come and see, this is how my God operates.
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Even if I don't like some of the sins and things that are going on, my God is still in control and his loving kindness endures forever.
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Let me move now from, we've seen wrathful, loving, and now we're gonna look at sovereign.
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And this is very powerful because sovereignty is a word that we use extensively here.
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Many of you are familiar with it. Give me quickly, what are some of the things you think of when you think of sovereignty of God? What is he sovereign over?
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Everything, yes. Let's break it down a little. It is true, he is sovereign over everything.
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Governments, yes. The running of the universe, it's physical laws, he's sovereign over.
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Salvation of his people. Salvation of his people. Nature. Church.
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I'm sorry, what was that? Physical safety. Physical safety, yes. I'm gonna be looking at one of those verses myself in a minute.
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Let's now just, yes. Disaster.
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Even the unpleasant events that we see, God is fully sovereign in control of all those events.
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So let's look at a few categories under the sovereignty and then look at some, what the psalmist has to say.
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Let's look first under the providence of God under his sovereignty. The verse
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I have is Psalm 65, verses 10 through 14. Yeah, whoever has it, please go ahead.
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You water its sprues abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers and blessing its growth.
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You crown the year with your bounty, your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
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This can't be the right one. Oh, it is, it is. Please go ahead. Okay. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy.
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The meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain.
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They shout and sing together for joy. Yeah, let's just do a verse 14. Sorry. That's why
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I thought it couldn't be right. And as we saw, one of the aspects of sovereignty is the provision of God.
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And it's one thing to say, my God provides for all my needs. And here, and keeping up with what you said,
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Amelia, is here is one of the ways in which God richly provides for the day -to -day needs of the people in terms of giving rain for its fields to grow, for the wagons to be filled with the grain, and for the pastures and the meadows.
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Here, the psalmist is just walking through, if you will, the manner of provision for this agrarian society.
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God had given them rich harvest, he had given them good cattle, and here is the specific manner in which he has provided.
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Now, what the psalmist is doing is very important for us, because sometimes in my fast -paced life, I just like to go to the facts and then kind of forget to connect the dots that get me there.
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Here, the psalmist is actually reflecting on God's sovereign care in his particular life.
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And then he just says, here are all the things I observe, and I know that this is not just chance, that I just got a good rainfall today, this year, we had a lot of snow, so our fields will be giving us food.
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Here, he is actually walking through, reminding himself of, and in the process, reminding you of how you ought to be thinking of God's provision in your lives.
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So, you may not be super thrilled about our harvest, we should be, but whatever else in your life that you rely on for your food, for your sustenance, for that daily blessing, the common grace that we have received, the psalmist is explicitly going back and saying, well, this is not just happenstance, this is my
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God, who is sovereign, who has provided. Come back to counseling again. What does this do to your soul?
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Instead of, you know, I just had a good day, it's like, this is a day that my God has blessed for me in these specific ways, and the more,
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I mean, the song, Count Your Blessings, named them one by one, here is a practical example of how the psalmist does.
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So, what you do is, when you look at the psalm reflecting upon God's bounty in his life, his provision, you come back and reflect upon your own.
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Moving on to Psalm 121. Someone said, God is watchful over us, and here is a classic psalm.
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In fact, this one we will be looking at in more detail next week. Psalm 121, let me just point out a few things, and then, so,
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I should probably say this right here. Never mind.
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So, if you just turn to verse three and verse four.
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Can someone read that, please? You know, the first thing that normally comes to my mind is, yeah,
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I know God doesn't sleep. We all know God doesn't sleep. But, is that the way
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I live every time that I go through a trial? I can tell you, the last time
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I had a major trial, it took me a few days before I could remind myself of this particular truth.
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The trial was so big, it was in my face, that I, you know, like all men do, just try to somehow bang against the wall and try to break it on your own, and then, quickly, you realize, uncle.
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And then, you need this psalm. This psalm reminds you, you know this truth, but you need that in your own life.
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Like, if you look at the verse one, I lift my eyes to the hills, where from will my help come? This is a psalm you ought to memorize.
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Desperate need, looking up for help, and the source of help is one who is ever watchful.
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I may think that I'm all alone, crushed by this trial, but there is a God who never sleeps, never slumbers.
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His eyes are always upon me, and he is sovereign over my trial.
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Like I said, we'll pick this up more next week. And then, I have a few more.
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Let's quickly read them. One or two, verse 19. Don't be shy.
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Whoever has it, please read. Now, he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the
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Lord looked down. And I think this is one of those things that connects transcendence and eminence.
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You know, I know my God is up there in heaven, but he is not just there by himself.
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He looks down on this little tiny planet called the earth, and on every single detail, looking down from above, down on earth.
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And I think, you know, that one thought should be enough to just fill your day with just the greatness of my
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God, that he is looking down on earth from heaven. Again, you can look a little bit before, look a little bit after, just to see the context of what's going on.
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Verse 20 is, to hear the groan of the prisoners and set free those who are doomed to die. He's not just watching, but he is actually intent on acting upon the lives of those whom he has placed his affection.
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Next verse, verse 66, verse seven. Chapter 66, verse seven.
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He rules by his power forever. His eyes observe the nations. Do not let the rebellious exalt themselves.
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His eyes watch over, observe the nations, all these other kingdoms that are setting up things against themselves, like Pastor Mike even talked about today, prayed for.
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God is on the throne. He is sovereign. He is the one who decides what kingdom will be repaid with justice and equity in his own timing.
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And you can be assured that no matter what happens here, you think of the Psalmist. Here you have Israel surrounded by all these nations that want to crush them.
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And the Psalmist has complete confidence because God is watching over every single nation.
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And the rebellious, he is the one who is going to take care of. And knowing this about God gives you great confidence, even as whether it is
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Assyria or Babylon, that's right at your door about to crush you because God will pay for all these nations.
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And likewise, today, you can get very discouraged when you look at the government, see what's happening across the world.
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The currency is falling down, the state of values and models just down the tube.
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But there is a God in heaven who is watching over all these nations. So when you get discouraged, here is a
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God that you serve. Here's a God that you need to fix your eyes on just as the Psalmist himself did because he is sovereign.
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A few more, Psalm 32, verse seven. God is sovereign over each individual person.
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If you look at verse six, it's talking about those who are godly and who can pray to God in a time and will be found by God.
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And I mean, this is one of those, I don't know if any of you have read the book, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.
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That's a modern day example of how God provides. You'd wish you didn't have to go to prison and suffer all those things.
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But God's hiding place is not just that little crack in the wall, which kept him safe for a little while, but it is he himself.
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No matter what trial you go through, God is his hiding place and will preserve. And then 33, verse 18.
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Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love. Again, it connects the who are the people upon whom his eyes are, which is those who fear him, who trust him, who follow him.
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And on them, again, a very personal imagery of God's eye.
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We talked about anthropomorphic. God doesn't have an eye, what kind of a
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God do you serve? We have a God who sees everything. And for us, for me, the imagery is this.
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When I'm a little child and I'm surrounded by things, I'm so glad if I know my dad is out there watching over me.
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And that's the exact image that the psalmist wants us to have. I don't want to be just this intellectual who says, you know,
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God is up there. But this God is a personal God who has his very eye, figuratively, if you will, upon me.
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And I think that's what the psalmist wants us to do as we have our devotions with the Lord, is just to remember this is the nature of my
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God. He is personal, he is looking down upon me, again, in this context, to deliver.
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I think the biggest psalm for sovereignty in the psalms is Psalm 139. Let's just turn there, but we won't read that in detail.
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Because I think if you are not familiar with this, this is one of the psalms you want to meditate on as you think of God's sovereignty.
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In verses one and two, God has searched me, known me. When I sit down, when I get up, it's almost scary.
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If it was anybody other than God, I'd run away from that person if they knew all these things about me. But it is my loving
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God who knows all these things about me. And he's also a wrathful God. So if there's a right balance of knowing that this
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God, I cannot really run away from, I can't go to Sheol, I can't go to the depths of the ocean, because my
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God knows wherever I go, and I ought to worship him in all circumstances of life.
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But at the same time, my God is also, he hedges me because he is sovereign over all my life.
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And again, it goes on to talk about how God makes me as well. So let's stop there for sovereignty. And the next one is
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God's glory. And I think the one attribute that you would just get reminded over and over again in the
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Psalms is the Psalmist wants to give glory to God. In all the circumstances that he goes through, in all the different attributes of God, his chief aim is that God would be exalted,
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God would be glorified. And that's one of the things that, if you read through the Psalms, you just come back and say, I ought to glorify
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God explicitly even more than I do today implicitly with my life.
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So let me give you a few verses. Verse 79, chapter 79, verse 10.
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Why should the nation say, where is their God? Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes.
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Yeah, and the context here is it may look like, the first time
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I read this verse, I was like, you know, is he like him, trying to say, God, you need to do this for you so I get taken care of in the process?
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No, this, I'm sorry, the context of this, if you just go up to verse nine. Help us,
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O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for our sins, for your name's sake.
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Here he is speaking about God's work to redeem his people in order to glorify himself.
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And then, this is the relationship between you and God. And then in the context of the unbelievers, the nations around, he says, we want your name to be exalted among the nations.
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As you redeem us, we want the rest of the world also to glorify you by seeing what a great
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God you are. And that's a theme throughout the Old Testament. But in the Psalms, you will see this over and over again. Let me take a few more verses.
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Psalm 115 verses one to three. Not unto us,
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O Lord, not unto us, but to your name, your glory, because of your mercy, because of your truth.
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Why should the Gentiles say, so where is their God? But our
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God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases. And again, this is one of those things that I think all of us as believers in the process of sanctification need to be constantly reminded of.
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Not to us, not to us, but to your name be the glory. And again, this is not just a private relationship, but it is
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God has you here on this planet for a purpose. And we want him to use us in whatever way he chooses in order to glorify his name.
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So often when I go through life, I look at things more in the narrow sense of, here's what
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God has done for me. Thank you, Lord, and I'm done. But there is a grander purpose. I mean, I have two people right here who just gave great testimonies in the midst of something that the
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Lord blessed them with. And we should not be ashamed of glorifying God in our goodness.
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And we had a couple of emails this week about people who went through trials and then the Lord redeemed, and then they just sent this
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BBC announcement saying, glory be to God, whether it was coming out of a job and all the events that, getting a job and all the goodness of God before that led up to that, or sickness and how
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God was strong in those trials. And that's basically the framework of the psalmist.
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As he sees things, he's like, it's not about me, it's all about you. And especially when you go through trials, those become even more intense because in the redemption of God, we want to extol and glorify
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God. Let me take a few more, and then we will probably be done with this.
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You know, let me actually give you a few other verses, attributes, very quickly and we'll finish. The next one I have is a
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God who is alive. Why would the psalmist say something so obvious as we have a living
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God? Is that something to praise God for? Why would we want to praise
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God for living? They were raised in a midst of a idolatrous kind of society where gods were made out of stone and they had funny looking features.
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And, you know, so many times, even when Elijah was on the mountain and he said, you know, call to your
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God, you know, tell him that you want him to do these things, you know, with the animals that are on the altar and they soaked around the, you know, altar to show that their gods were not powerful.
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They weren't alive. No matter what they did, they couldn't get this God to respond to their prayer.
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And yet when he prayed, God not only, you know, consumed what was there, but he made it so obvious that it was something that was heard that you couldn't deny what you saw because it was right in front of him.
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Absolutely. Yeah, here the contrast of this true and living God who is not just alive, but active in the lives of his people, in contrast to all the idols and false gods that actually do nothing.
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And for us as believers, that's another area that we want to grow in as we trust
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God more, is sometimes I know that my God is alive, but I act as if, you know, he is not.
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He is not. And the psalmist reminds, here is a living God. You know, you think of Hebrews 4. But there's also another element to this, which is that he is also the source of life.
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He is life himself and from him, we receive life. I think the psalm you want to think of, we won't turn there, is
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Psalm 42, as a dear plan for water. And that's the, my God is a provision of this waters and I am thirsting and hungering after him because he is life.
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I delight in his life as well. So that's the two elements. And again, there's another
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Psalm 36 verse nine, if you want to take it down. Yahweh is the fountain of life and we gain life through him.
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The next one I have is, God is eternal. The eternality of God is necessarily to contrast against man's mortality.
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You know, when I go through my trials, I'm like, you know, woe is me and here's my three score at 10 years.
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But God is unchanging. It's always connected with his immutability, but he is not transitory like we are.
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And some of the verses we have are, God is forever and ever. The most high forever.
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His name endures forever and he protects his people forever. Now, these are attributes that, obviously the
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Psalmist just draws them out as he reflects upon the eternality of God. And especially in contrast to man and his frailty, because this is the
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God that we worship and this is the God who has his eye upon you. The next one is,
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God is holy. And I just want to say one thing about this, which was kind of new to me. We always think of holiness as an attribute of God, almost like, you know,
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I have the justice of God, wrath of God and love of, God is love. But the
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Psalmist actually uses holiness, let me just read this, synonymous with his divine name.
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You can take these down, these verses, Psalm 89 verse 35,
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Psalm 71 verse 22. And if you look at the parallelism, it will talk about the divine name of God and then the holiness of God.
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God swears by his holiness. Holiness and deity are kind of put together. If you think of the meaning of holiness, how apart, different, separate from everything else, that should give you an idea of, you know, this is why holiness is one of those things that just talk about the divinity of God himself.
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And again, one of those things that we want to just say, my God is far above everything else and he's holy in all his works.
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And then he goes on to talk about the other two attributes I have, God's works are wondrous.
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I have Psalm 86 verse 10, because God's greatness is not just a philosophical fact.
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I'm not just sitting like Plato and saying, you know, here is my ideal abstract, but rather God is a
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God who works and demonstrates his power in the day and life that we can very obviously see, which in Romans one, the unbeliever still rejects.
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But we as believers with our eyes open can see these hands of works of God, whether it is in the creation or in my personal life, and then give glory to God because it is a wonderful work that God does.
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And the last one I have is Psalm 86 verse 10, and this is that God is above all gods.
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You alone are God. And I think that's that one framing, and we will pick this up next week.
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When I live, even though I trust in my God, I can sometimes tend to make idols for myself.
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You know, sometimes my work, a beautiful blessing, if I give it more priority than I ought to, then my heart gets tugged away from the center of having my
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God as my, whom I ought to worship to down to this little idol.
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And the Psalmist just says, reminds us, not just in the cross worship of idols, but rather also in the way in which my heart is worshiping
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God, that He alone is God. He alone is the object of my affection.
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The Psalmist would normally contrast against not just idols, but also the fallen angelic hosts.
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But for us, we want to take that from the scriptures, I mean, from the Psalms. As you study them, as you look for counsel from God, you want to remember that He alone is our
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God. I went a little over today, but we'll stop now. Let's pray. O loving and gracious Father, we thank you,
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Lord, for your word. We thank you for who you are and for your loving kindness that extends to each of us through your
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Son. Help us, O Lord, to fix our eyes afresh on you, to see every event in our life as coming from your gracious hand.
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And help us, O Lord, to glorify you every moment of our lives. In Christ's name we pray, amen.