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Praise the Lord for songs, psalms, and spiritual songs. Today's scripture reading is
Psalm 30. I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol.
You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. As for me,
I said in my prosperity I shall never be moved by your favor, O Lord.
You made my mountain stand strong. You hid your face. I was dismayed.
To you, O Lord, I cry and to the Lord I plead for mercy. What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me.
O Lord, be my helper. You have turned for me my mourning into dancing.
You have loosed my sack cloth and clothed me with gladness that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. Bow your heads and pray with me, church.
Father, we thank you so much for your scriptures. We thank you that you would deliver us Peter today to bless us with a message from your word.
We ask that you would encourage him and that you would give him clarity. We thank you for his faith and we thank you for the encouragement to come.
In Jesus' holy name, amen. It is a joy and a privilege to be with you this morning and share
God's word. But before I do, I talked to Josh and he issued me a challenge that I want to turn right back around on you all, particularly the men.
As Corey mentioned in the announcements this morning, we do have a men's retreat coming up here in April that has been a joy for us to have
CBC with us at this retreat. But Josh mentioned that he thought he could get more men from CBC there than Living Hope could get there.
And so my challenge is bring it. If you guys think you can do so, challenge is accepted and we will see how that goes.
But seriously, it is a joy to have you men at our retreat. It is a blessing to be in fellowship with men from other churches and we are grateful as I am this morning to also have the privilege to serve you this morning through Psalm 30.
So if you would, turn with me to Psalm 30. We just had that read.
We will read it again. But before we do, if you don't mind, let us pray.
Lord, if your spirit does not show up this morning, I have nothing to say. So I pray,
Father, that your spirit would meet us this morning through your word, that we would be instructed, that we would be encouraged,
Father, that we would be strengthened and turned more into the image of your
Son. For we ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen. It is said that when it comes to the kinds of people that exist in the world, there's, you've probably heard the joke, right?
That says, you know, there's three kinds of people in the world, those who can do math and those that can't. But that's not the kind that I'm thinking of this morning.
The kind that I'm thinking of this morning is there are indeed three kinds of people.
There are those who have gone through suffering. There are those that are going through suffering.
And there are those who are about to enter suffering. In my case, a particular season that I am thinking of happened for us in 2009.
January 2009, I was an associate pastor at a church in Indiana.
And it was going well. We'd been there about a year. We'd gotten to know the congregation.
We'd had the joy of seeing people welcome home, their first child. We'd had the opportunities to weep with saints who laid their loved ones to rest.
In short, we'd begun to knit our hearts with the congregation. We'd begun to fall in love with the people that God had given us to care for.
Little did we know that what would come in the next few weeks would initiate a season of suffering unlike any that we had experienced in our entire lives.
My family and I, this was our first opportunity in ministry, and we were all in.
But very abruptly, things began to change at this church. Doctrine began to shift.
Practices began to move. And after much wrestling and counseling and much heartache, it became clear that we could no longer stay.
And so I approached my senior pastor and began a conversation with him that led to me tendering my resignation.
I thought that would be the hard part. What had been a very, very friendly and familial relationship, he was a mentor like a father to me, very quickly turned cold and bitter.
Our home had been the parsonage. And within 24 hours, we were asked to vacate, that they did not want to see us again by the end of the week.
Heartbroken. We loaded up our moving truck and left. I thought that was the hard part.
What followed was three years of emotional, physical, and spiritual depression.
A season that was dark, a season that was painful, a season that would not let up.
I remember crying out to the Lord over and over and over for deliverance, for rescue, for help.
And it just felt as if all I was met with was silence.
Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever been in a position where the night was so long and the darkness such that you did not think you'd ever see the light again?
If you are in that season right now, if you have been in a season like that, you are not alone.
You are in good company. No, not mine, David's. The company of King David, who wrote
Psalm 30, because he had been through a season like that.
Psalm 30 captures the lesson for us this morning, that God's praise is unceasing, even in the midst of suffering.
Friends, I want us to anchor our souls together this morning on three truths.
Three truths from Psalm 30 that will provide you an anchor for your soul in the midst of suffering, that will give you instruction for your soul when you come out of suffering, that will prepare your soul before suffering.
Those three truths are these. They are also the main points of our message this morning.
The first is that God's rescue of you is certain. The second is that God's favor on you is permanent.
And the fourth, I can't count either. The third is that God's praise from you is forever.
So friends, before we dive into these points, let us refresh our mind a little bit about this
Psalm and read it together again. Psalm of David, a song of dedication of the temple.
David says, I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help and you have healed me.
O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol. You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. As for me,
I said in my prosperity, I will never be moved by your favor,
O Lord. You made my mountain stand strong. You hid your face.
I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cry and to the Lord I plead for mercy.
What profit is there if I go down to the pit? What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me. O Lord, be my helper.
You have turned from me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness that I might sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
First truth that anchors our soul this morning is that God's rescue of you is certain.
David begins this psalm saying, I will extol you, O Lord. That is, that he,
David, says, I, I will exalt you. I will worship you.
I will make your name high. This is not a declaration of fact. This is a declaration of intent.
David's intent, David's commitment is that what he will be doing is to make the name of God exalted at all times and to all who come within the sound of his voice.
David lifts his voice so that all might know and worship
Yahweh. Says, I will extol you, O Lord.
He defines exactly who it is that he will worship. David is worshiping
Yahweh, the personal name that God gave to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3.
Yahweh is the covenant -keeping name of God. It is a covenant -keeping name, and he has never broken his covenant with his people, nor will he ever.
So David says, I will extol you, O Lord, my covenant -keeping
God. Why? Because you have drawn me up. You have rescued me from an inescapably deep well.
You have drawn me up, David says, by whose hand? He's been drawn up by God himself.
And if not, let my foes rejoice over me.
Friends, no one gets the last laugh on those whom God has redeemed.
No one gets to mock those who God has rescued because God's rescue is such that it will silence them.
It will leave them speechless. David continues on in verse 2 and says,
O Lord, my God. Not only does David invoke the covenant -keeping name of God, David invokes the
Adonai of God, the lordship of God, the one who follows no one, but rather determines everything.
This is also his personal, relational name. This is not just the covenant -keeping
God. This is the God who has a deep affectionate care for his saints, his care for you.
The best way that I can explain this is the way that Tim Keller did when talking about this.
He says, the only person who dares to wake up a king at 3 a .m.
is his child. And we have that kind of access.
David makes clear who he's addressing. Yes, it is the covenant -keeping
God, but it is also the personal God. This is the king of Israel addressing the king of kings.
But David's approach is not a fearful one. It is one of joy and absolute dependence.
While he is a king, there is a king that is much higher.
There is nothing in the status of David as a king that will save him, but he has every confidence that the king of kings will rescue him.
So what does he do? He says, I cry to you for help.
This is not a calm, collected request. This is a desperate and passionate plea from a man who knows he has no other choice.
He has no other source of help. He has no other source of rescue. It is complete dependence.
This is like the cry of a mountain climber whose rope has been cut, clinging to the face of the rock, crying out for help, knowing that if someone else doesn't come to his rescue, there is no hope.
Friends, the ears of the king of kings were not shut.
The ears of the king of king were not indifferent. How do
I know that? Because David says, I cried to you for help and you healed me.
David's God was not indifferent to his cry. He not only listened, he healed.
God took personal action on behalf of his child.
He rescued David. Just as he rescued
David, he has no less affection for you and he will rescue you.
David continues on in Psalm 30 saying, O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol.
Scholars debate whether the healing that David talks about was physical or spiritual.
There's a good case for both in what we know of David's life, but that's irrelevant.
Whether it's a metaphor or whether it's an actual sickness, doesn't change the situation at all.
David was helpless and God came to his rescue. But why does
David compare this to going to Sheol? Sheol was the place where the forsaken went.
Sheol was the place where those whom God abandoned ended up.
And David says, you have brought up my soul from Sheol. You did not forsake me, is what
David is saying. As a matter of fact, he says, you have restored me to life.
If David were talking today, he would probably say, you drew me out of the pit, you rescued me from Sheol, and then you did
CPR. I was flatlined. No heartbeat, no life. No, you restored me to life.
Not just life, but a fullness of life. While Sheol is the place where the forsaken go, the pit is where everyone goes.
The pit could be translated here as the grave. Every one of us will go to the grave.
What David says is, you rescued me from among those who go down to the grave. He spared his life.
Brothers and sisters, there is no time or place where your
God will leave you or forsake you. It's not possible.
It's not possible because at one point, the Son of God hung on a cross and cried out, my
God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He cried that so that we would never.
We'd never be able to because the promise from God to us is,
I will never leave you nor forsake you. Your rescue is certain.
Between verses three and four, David might seem to be making a weird transition. Talks about rescue and healing, about being raised up from the pit, rescued from Sheol.
In verse four, he says, sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
This is not an abrupt or weird transition. This is the right response of a soul that's been rescued.
Sing praises to the Lord means to use your voice like an instrument of thanksgiving in the same way that you raised it in a cry for help.
The voice that lifts up in desperation for rescue should be no less loud and intense in worship.
In essence, what David is saying is that his experience has been suffering. It's also been rescue.
And because his experience has been suffering in rescue, his practice will be worship continually.
And notice very carefully that David addresses this command, sing praises to the
Lord, to a very specific group of people. He says, sing praises to the Lord, O you, you, his saints.
Just as he invoked his covenant -keeping name earlier, he now addresses the covenant -kept people.
Those who have received his covenant mercy are now addressed and commanded to worship.
David says, lift up your voice and sing. He doesn't say, lift up your voice and sing.
He says, lift up your voice and sing. And if I may, I think the intent of the text is, sing loud because you've been rescued.
Psalmist does not leave us wondering what to sing either. He says, and give thanks to his holy name.
In his kindness, the spirit gives us instruction as to what to say in our worship.
Our worship is spiritual thanksgiving. God's holiness gives us guidelines to stay within.
We worship a God whose holiness, even in our suffering, means that we cannot receive from his hand anything that is not good.
He will not allow us anything in our lives that is not good.
How do we reconcile that with death? With grief? With trial?
With tribulation? Charles Spurgeon would say that he had learned to kiss the waves that threw him upon the rock of ages.
God's holiness is such that everything he does is good and perfect.
So when suffering enters our lives, it is not, it cannot be, it never will be outside of his providence, control, and his ordaining.
R .C. Sproul talked about seeing a preacher on TV who had been asked a question by a lady whose son had recently died.
And this preacher, with the best of intents, told her, oh my sweet sister,
I don't know what to tell you. All I can tell you is that God had nothing to do with that. R .C.
Sproul said, I was glad I was alone because that TV heard things it should not hear. Because what that preacher had done is he had robbed that sweet sister of any hope.
Because if God was not in the death of her son, it was meaningless and pointless.
But if God had ordained it, there was hope. Where do you find yourself right now?
What is your season? Are you rejoicing and having come out of suffering? Are you in the midst of it?
Are you experiencing the joy of life without suffering at the moment? Sing.
Sing praise to the Lord because whether you are in suffering, coming out of it, or heading into it, what is currently in your life is from his hand and it is worthy of worship.
Give thanks to his holy name. Saints, you are his covenant -kept people.
His rescue of you is certain. So sing loud and let your songs be filled with thanksgiving.
Why? Because the language of heaven is worship. Its vocabulary is redemption, love, mercy, and grace.
Holiness is its tone. Faithfulness is its refrain.
Thankfulness to the one who rescues us is its eternal theme. So yes, let us join the multitudes in heaven who are singing and let our voices challenge theirs for volume.
You might be thinking, okay, I heard everything you just said, but you don't know. Peter, you don't understand the degree to which
I'm suffering. If you did, you wouldn't make it sound so easy.
My friends, I'm not saying it is easy. I'm saying it is right. You might be thinking, but I have not been rescued yet.
Friends, David's going to correct us in that in a second here. When we look at verse 5,
David says that his anger, that is the just response that we deserve from God, his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime.
He is contrasting the blink that is our life with the reality that is our life.
A friend of mine would have said that our life is a dash between dates. Born on, dash, died on.
Our life is that little dash in between. And yet, that's not our life.
Our life is way longer than that. Thomas Mankton, the Puritan, would have said this, that a man's care should be for that place where he dwells the longest.
Therefore, eternity is his scope. The apostle
Paul would say that we are in the midst of suffering, yes, but it's a momentary affliction.
Maybe this morning you are saying, man, that sounds good for you, but I don't know if I have
God's favor on my life. If I have it. My friends,
I would say this to you. If you are unsure of God's favor on your life, what you need is to put your faith in Christ.
What you need is to repent of your sins, put your faith in Christ and trust him because there is no favor from God outside of Christ.
So this morning, if you are here without Christ, I would encourage you to trust in him alone for your salvation.
David continues to contrast here, not just God's anger being for a moment and his favor for a lifetime, but he gives us another contrast, that weeping may tarry for the night.
The same way that we cry out for help, weeping is a lifting of a voice in suffering.
Weeping is the voice of a voice raised, not just in suffering, but in grief and sorrow, maybe even repentance.
Sometimes our sorrows are the consequences of our sin. Sometimes our sorrows are the consequences of someone's sin against us.
Sometimes our sorrows are the result of a broken and fallen world, but always our sorrows are from the hands of a good father who is doing so for our good.
And David says, weeping may tarry for the night. Weeping comes like an uninvited guest to spend the night.
That word tarry, I am no Hebrew scholar, but I can tell you this, that same word is used today in Israel over a building that would be called a hotel.
That word tarry does not mean that our grief and our sorrows is here to stay. It is not to take up permanent residence.
It is an unwelcome and uninvited guest, and its stay will be short.
Why? Because joy comes in the morning. Better yet, shouts of joy come in the morning.
Celebration comes with absolute certainty, like the rising of the sun.
And just like his angers for a moment, so is our suffering, because our joy is eternal.
This is not happiness. This is not being bubbly.
Joy is what caused Paul and Silas to sing after being beaten and thrown in jail in Philippi.
Joy is what causes us to rejoice in the midst of suffering, because the joy of the
Lord is our strength. Joy is what causes us to rejoice when we have been rescued from our suffering, because we know who has rescued us.
I'm not saying it is easy. I am saying this is the result of knowing that our greatest need has been met, that Christ has indeed rescued us from eternal hell.
Our greatest need has been met. Our greatest suffering has been avoided.
Christ took our suffering on the cross. If you want a real -life example of that, let me tell you the story of H .G.
Spafford. Horatio Spafford was a businessman who was about to head to Wales for business, but he was delayed by business here in the
U .S., so he sent on his wife and four daughters on the Ville de
Havre on the way to Wales. Somewhere in the middle of the
Atlantic, the Ville de Havre was struck by another British ship. In just 12 minutes, the ship sank.
266 souls were lost that night, among them Tanetta, Maggie, Annie and Bessie, Mr.
Spafford's four daughters. He received a telegram from his wife, saved, alone.
Mr. Spafford dropped everything, took the very next ship, proceeded to head to Wales to meet his wife.
1873, no faster way to get there. One night, pacing the deck,
Mr. Spafford was met by the captain. The captain informed him that in just a few minutes they would be crossing over the place where his wife's ship had gone down and his daughters had perished.
Mr. Spafford turned, went back to his cabin and wrote down the following words.
These words will be familiar to you, because he writes,
When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blessed assurance control
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate And has shed his own blood for my soul.
My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, My sin, not in part, but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the
Lord, O my soul. We don't often sing the fourth line, but this is what
Spafford writes. For me, for me be it
Christ, be it Christ hence to live, If dark hours about me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, For in death, as in life,
You will whisper your peace to my soul. Brothers and sisters, whether you find yourself in the midst of suffering or in the midst of deliverance, we have a rescue that is certain we have a favor from our
God that is unwavering. We must give thanks.
How could Horatio Spafford write those words? Only by the power of a
God who rescued him. So weary saints, remember this.
God's favor on you is permanent. It is eternal.
It is certain. David gives us a small warning here.
Maybe you're the one sitting here going, man, I wish I could share with you how good
God has been to me lately. The warning from David is this, as for me,
I said in my prosperity, I shall never be moved. By your favor,
O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong. You hid your face and I was dismayed.
If the Lord is blessing you, remember that it is indeed the Lord who is blessing you.
Do not forget from where that blessing flows, because just him hiding his face for a moment could leave us all dismayed.
David says that's what he did. So while we are enjoying the presence of God, let us worship loudly because it will remind us where and to whom our praises belong.
David continues in verse eight and says, to you, O Lord, this is
Yahweh, I cry.
And to the Lord, Adonai, I plead for mercy. This is again the covenant -keeping
God and the ruler of all things, the King of kings. And he does so again specifically because this is the
God who didn't just hear, but the God who moved. Adonai gives us the understanding that this is not just a
God who knows. This is the God who has the power to effect change.
This is the God who has the power to rescue. And he is not indifferent.
David finishes this psalm with a recap in verses 9 through 12.
What he does here is specific and on purpose. It's not just another chorus.
David says, what profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me. O Lord, be my helper.
David is not just bargaining with God. What he is saying is,
I understand my place. My place is an instrument of worship to the
God who heals and rescues and restores. Dust won't praise you.
So David is not bargaining. He is making a commitment that if God would give him breath, worship would be what he would spend his life doing.
David pleads for his life, yes. He pleads for mercy. But he does so understanding that what he is to do with the rescue that God provides is make him known.
Again, Paul would remind us. We have this light, momentary affliction.
And it's preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comprehension.
I am not making light of your suffering. I'm reminding you that it will end because God will rescue you.
And in the midst of your suffering, you are to worship. When he rescues you from suffering, you are to worship.
Verses 11 and 12 tell us with no uncertain terms that this is not a psalm for someone else.
This is a psalm for us. This is a psalm for you. David says in verse 11, you have turned for me my mourning into dancing.
You have loosed my sackcloth, and you have clothed me with gladness, so that there is no uncertainty or doubt in our minds.
In verse 12, he says, you have done this, why? That my glory might sing your praise and not be silent.
Dear friends, you have been rescued in Christ. There's no reason to be silent.
But if you find yourself in a season of suffering, you must worship.
And I'm not trying to add a burden on top of your suffering. I am trying to show you how to endure through suffering.
Because when we rehearse the praises of the God who rescued us from eternal hell, we will be reminded of his presence with us through the suffering we are in.
David concludes the psalm saying, oh, Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
Do not confuse the wording here. He says, I will give thanks to you forever. That is not
I will one day give thanks to you forever. That is I will now and forever give thanks to you.
We will not wait for the day when we see Christ face to face. As his saints who have been rescued, we will give praise to him now.
We will give worship to him now. Because the only reason you are making it through suffering is because he has sustained you.
The only reason you have made it through suffering is because he has rescued you.
And the only thing that will sustain you when you enter into another season of suffering is the presence of God.
So CBC, will you say with David, oh,
Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
Let us pray. Oh, good and gracious Father, we come to you with thanksgiving on our lips for you have rescued us.
You have rescued us from ourselves, from our sin. Lord, you have delivered us and will continue to deliver us until we see your face.
So we say with David, we will give thanks to you forever. We will not be silent.
Give us the strength, the grace and the wisdom to praise your name forever, because we pray this in the name of Jesus.