Godly Counsel From The Psalms

The title for today's Sunday School is called Godly Counsel from the Psalms and we're going to look at

how to read God's Word, how to apply God's Word,

and how to hear from God when you're in the midst of a particular trial or a circumstance

where you need to hear God's Word speak to you.

I'm going to just pick one particular example and we'll walk through it.

It's going to be a little different in terms of format from our previous Sunday Schools.

I'll get to what we'll be doing in a minute, but I want to give some introductory notes so you have

this right frame of mind before we get into the text.

When you think of counsel or God's counsel,

I think we need to have some context set in place.

You know, in the world we have a lot of counsels, counselors and ideas and plans that

people have in order to have a good life, a successful life, a life that is not wandering around

different paths.

But for a believer, when you come before God and say, I need counsel,

you need to have the context of counsel set well in place.

So let me ask you a question as we get started.

Why are we here on earth?

What is the purpose of individuals?

To glorify God.

And what does that mean?

How do you glorify God?

To serve Him and keep His commandments.

And who is the person who can actually serve or keep God's commandments?

What type of a person can do that?

Only a child of God.

It is impossible for one who either does not know God or has rejected God to be

able to serve God or to keep His commandments.

So when we think of counsel or godly counsel, the first place you need to start from is

who am I or who is this person who needs a counsel?

If a person is not a believer, it is all the counsels that you as a believer

may give to this person or all the counsel that you may try to apply to yourself if you are not a believer.

Those principles and precepts that God has given us will not work because these are meant

for the children of God who have a relationship with God, who know God, that can hear

God and apply it in their lives.

So when we go back to that question of glorifying God, it is actually not just for believers but also for

unbelievers.

Every single person is intended to glorify God.

How can a believer glorify God specifically in our lives?

When you seek to serve Him, when you seek to obey His commands, you are glorifying Him here on earth.

And for an unbeliever, it begins with bowing your knee to Christ.

So the person begins to glorify God when you recognize that there is a great God, a great Savior,

and I am a rebel that needs to come into His kingdom who needs to bow

allegiance to this King.

So that is where the glorification starts.

Now, back to counsel.

God, when He saves us, does not leave us, you know, just figure out what you need to do here on earth.

He has given us His word, He has given us His spirit, and He instructs His children on the

way of life here on earth.

All of you know, after you become a believer, it doesn't mean you just jump one step

and no more sin.

We are perfected here right now and no more sorrow, suffering, trial because we are a child of God and we are in

the kingdom.

There will be a day when that happens, when we are in heaven, when sin will no longer have a place in our lives, when there will be no

more sorrow or suffering, when we are in God's presence eternally.

But while we are here on earth, God purifies us, sanctifies us, and uses these

earthen vessels which are broken and in circumstances that are very difficult in order to

showcase His glory because He is the one sufficient for all our needs while we go through trials.

So when we think of counsel, you always want to think about the bigger picture of God's glory, His

purpose in your life and in the life of the ones you would be counseling.

And then look into God's word, rely on His spirit in

understanding His precepts, in recognizing this power of God that is given unto you here on

earth and being able to apply in the particular circumstance or suffering that you are going through

or someone you know is going through.

One more introductory comment before we get into the text.

There are certain types of accusations that our church receives.

There are many types of accusations.

One particular one, might I say false accusations, but this particular one

sometimes irks me because I don't think people understand what it means to be a Bible -believing or a Bible

-practicing church.

Many a time when we talk about how we exposit or exegete

and preach the word, people seem to think, okay, you guys are those guys that

look at the Bible and say, here are all the things you do, 1, 2, 3, 4, and you just kind of blindly just do these

things and that's all you guys do and you really don't have a relationship with

God or you're not led by the spirit.

Most of the such type of questions come from people who are a little more maybe on the charismatic side who would say that,

why do you just keep talking Bible, Bible, Bible all the time?

Yeah, we know the Bible, but we need to be moved by the spirit.

We need to be dynamic.

We need to be like Elijah and just flying on chariots instead of just

gritting your teeth and reading your word and saying, okay, God wants me to do this and I need to obey him.

No, come on, obey.

You need to just fly along on chariots, right?

And sadly, many of these accusations, the people that will come from you will find are,

I think Pastor Mike has said this before, just lazy because you don't want to sit and

study the word that God has given to you as an instruction, as a light unto your feet, but you

would read the word.

I mean, I wouldn't say that they don't study the Bible, but do not give the sense of

importance, the all -sufficiency that the scriptures have in terms of being a guide to our lives

here and a means of hearing from him.

It's much easier to just say, okay, I have my devotional and then I'm just sitting in my car and all

of a sudden, oh, I should be doing that.

Oh, where did that come from?

Oh, man, I think I know where it came from.

It came from God.

And, you know, it's very quickly, a good idea comes down your brain and then you just go about it and say, you know, God told me and I

go and do this.

And sometimes they may be right because as you read the scriptures, your scriptures come back to your mind and that's what God has promised.

The spirit of God will take the words of Christ and apply it into your lives.

And so it would be God talking to you through the words of scripture, but you need to recognize that the source of

truth, the counsel that we receive ultimately comes from the word of God.

Everything that we need for life and godliness has been delivered unto us and it is in the word and we study the

word diligently, not because like a Pharisee, we are just making a list of things and saying, you know, I do all these things

and God will be pleased or I do all these things and I won't have a financial disaster.

It is more of knowing the mind of God as he has revealed it to us in order to live a life that is pleasing

to him.

And we'll look at, once we finish our study today, we'll look at how to distinguish this

false dichotomy between, you know, rigorously just obeying God's word versus, you know, just being led

by the spirit wherever we go.

And we do need to have the word of God, we do need to have the spirit of God and every child of God has both of these today

to guide us along this path we need to take.

So I said today we're going to look at godly counsel from the Psalms.

I'm going to specifically look at one particular area as an example.

We're going to dig some of these things out in these two Psalms we're going to study today and that

will give you a pattern of how, when you're going through a trial in your life and you want to just get into

this text and you want to just seek the Lord's face in your time of need, how do

you do it?

And it will just give you an example, a template of how you do that, whatever your circumstances might be.

And it will be the same whether it is for yourself or it is for somebody else.

You know, sometimes it seems easier to apply the word to your own life, but when somebody comes and asks you a tough question and you're

like, you know, maybe you want to do this and you need to have the same kind of confidence in

taking the word of God and applying it to the life of your brother in Christ or sister in Christ and say, you know, here's what the Lord says

and here's what you ought to do that would please the Lord and glorify

him in this particular circumstance.

So the topic that I'm going to pick up is called confidence or hope that

we have in God and most of the times you will need this confidence and this hope when you're going through trials.

So you go through a difficult time and it seems like you're ready to sink, things are not going well

or maybe even things are going okay but you really don't have the sense of purpose.

Did I say that word?

Purpose and genuine looking forward to the works of God in your life

and what is it that gives you the ultimate sense of confidence and hope and ultimately even joy

in living your life in the midst of these trials or circumstances or whatever it is that you go through.

So these two Psalms that we're going to look at will focus on those particular areas and one thing I want to say

before we get into the text once again is when you think of confidence and hope it

is different than the sense in which the world uses hope.

You know, when we think of hope in the more common sense it's like, you know,

I did an interview and I'm hoping I get the job you know, did a good job and I need to

so you're just waiting around the phone hoping that it'll ring and you'll get the job.

There is a hope maybe against hope.

You did a bad job and you're thinking okay, I did everything bad but I still hope I get it you know,

they gave me a deadline till 10 o 'clock tonight and I'm going to wait till 10.

Hope against hope or I have nothing else to do.

The only thing I have is hope so I'm hoping because I have to hope I have nothing else to do.

That's not the sense of hope that the Bible talks about.

The biblical understanding of hope is along these lines.

We have a sure hope in heaven.

We have a hope that Christ is coming back.

When we say Christ is coming back and we hope or look forward or we have great confidence in that truth it is not that,

you know, it may happen you know, I really wish it will happen.

It is a sure thing, it is done, it is going to happen.

It is promised to us by God and we can count every single thing that we have upon that

hope.

We can rest assured on that hope that God gives us and that's the kind of confidence and that's the kind of hope that the

Bible is going to be talking to us as we get into the text.

And one last note Psalms are

poetry.

They are very different than your epistles where you have precepts where you just dig in and break out.

Poetry have a slightly different hermeneutic.

How do you study the text?

For most of us it just would come intuitively even if you don't like poetry at all if you are the kind of guy that is

very rigorous and regimented.

When you go through a trial the Psalms have a way of just reaching and connecting to your heart in your

trouble.

You can identify with the person who is writing that Psalm even if you don't like poetry at all.

And the hermeneutic is very simple.

If you look at most of the Psalms there are a few Psalms where it will give you the context saying

David was hiding from Saul.

So you can picture in your mind what actually happened.

But many of the times it's not actually told what actually was going on when that particular Psalm was written.

And the circumstances of trial the circumstances of joy whatever it is that the Psalmist is

talking about you can very easily identify because that's how poetry is.

It's written in a very simple symbolic language which can apply to whatever

circumstance you are in.

So we're going to do two things.

The first thing we're going to do when we get into the Psalm is we're going to look at what the Psalmist is saying.

It's exegeting, studying, exposing what the Psalmist says.

And then we will turn the table around and then look at ourselves.

How do we apply this text that we have learned?

And for those of you who were here for the Whitney Conference he talked about how do you

pray through the text of scripture.

He also talked about how do you study.

And especially to Psalms he gave an example of how you can study many Psalms over a period of time.

And this Sunday School will be kind of building upon that theme of taking a Psalm

and just working it out.

Now before I pass out my handouts I want to actually start us with the Psalm.

I'd like you to turn to Psalm 16.

If any of you don't have a Bible please get one from the pews in front of you.

If there are young ones work with your parents because we'll be going through this in a timed manner and I'd like

you to be able to follow along.

I won't be asking you questions so as we study this you want to study this with the intent of just

studying it as if you were in your home applying this to yourself.

So what we will do is I'd like you to read through Psalm 16 to yourself in your mind from the text

and then you take about a minute or so to do it so you know what the whole Psalm is about.

And once you've read it once I'd like you to take a couple of minutes to actually read it a little more slowly

and try to understand what this Psalm is talking about.

So take a minute read it once through it's a short Psalm and then take a couple of minutes to read it a little more

slowly to understand what the Psalm is saying.

Make like 20 copies.

Maybe Simon can you make a few copies?

Thank you Simon.

Okay.

Some of you have gotten some handouts there will be a few more we will get in a minute.

I always underestimate the number of people in the room.

Before we look at the notes the Word of God is rich beyond measure.

You can read the same chapter or verse daily over your

whole lifetime and the Lord can speak to you the meaning of the text and explain it in greater depth

and then apply that to your life.

And here in my notes here there is a particular direction a

specific truth that this Psalm is talking about that we will try to dig out and apply in

our lives.

These notes are not mine.

I had gone for a class last year and Dr. Borelli who taught this

class brought these questions up.

I was thinking of reframing them but I think he does an excellent job with it so I have retained them the way

he has posed them.

And we will use these questions in order to just engage with the text and

work itself out.

We won't get into the text yet.

We will have the rest of the copies come so all of us can follow along.

Actually what I can do is I will read the questions out loud so those of you who don't have the sheets

you can actually follow with me while we wait for the notes to come.

But before we get into the questions when you read the Psalm the first

time you read it what you should be able to get is what is the Psalm is generally saying.

You read it once through you see he has certain something he starts with

he is asking a plea and then after that he talks about certain aspects

about God that he enjoys in and then he talks about towards the end there

is this eternal aspect of not being left in the grave and then he closes

almost with a doxology of how God is his joy.

And the second time you go through it certain things will stick a little bit more.

You look at certain verses and you say what does he mean?

The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.

And maybe that verse just strikes you as uncommon.

Maybe it doesn't make any sense at all.

What does it mean to be my inheritance?

And you just dwell on that verse a little bit more and say what does that mean?

What does the text mean?

And then you try to draw on the meaning of the verse and how it applies to you.

So that's how we normally study the text.

And today with these questions I'll just show you a way of just digging deep especially when you are

looking for a specific counsel that the particular text is talking about that you want to just

draw on and rest on and have that confidence that God wants you to have

through this particular psalm.

So let me read the first question and as I read the question you want to think to yourself

do I know the answer?

And actually if you do I will ask some of you to speak out your answers as we go through these questions.

The phrase in verse 2 I have no good beside you O Lord is striking.

If the psalmist is speaking with extreme exaggeration understanding that there are other things in life that are good

what do you suppose he means?

I will stop with that question there.

Let's talk about this question again.

He says understanding other things in life that are good.

Can you think of something other than God that is good in a legitimate sense that

we can actually enjoy?

Bruce?

Sun, heat from the sun all the natural bounties that God has given us.

Anyone else?

Health.

We rejoice in good health God gives us.

We are grateful and we enjoy the health that we have.

Relationships.

We are grateful for sound relationships which are joyous rather than bitter

and difficult.

We are glad for good.

We enjoy them.

Those good relationships we have.

One more.

Simple things like maybe just food or clothing or just the things that we take for

granted maybe but those are good, necessary and enjoyable.

We can take joy in those things.

So now let's get to this question.

What do you suppose the psalmist means when he says I have no good beside you O

Lord?

Scott?

Every good thing that we just talked about without the Lord has no significance.

No eternal significance for sure.

And we will find actually even in the temporal sense does not have an ultimate sense.

Let's look at the second question.

What does this say about his priorities?

The psalmist's priorities.

Why can the psalmist say I have no good beside you O Lord?

What kind of priorities and this is David.

It is a victim of David.

What does it say about David when he says I have no good

and actually I think you gave me the answer I was looking for.

See David in one sense had enjoyed a lot of the pleasures and good things in life

and even for one such as he who has already maybe has already experienced many of these joys.

He can come and say no good beside you and the implication is the

negative side.

You know you have all of these things that are good, legitimate, enjoyable but if you do not have God

you have nothing.

He recognizes as and I'll say this here as a believer when you

have God and you have all these things that is fine but without God all the good things that you have received from God's hand

mean absolutely nothing at all.

So in terms of his priorities God is supreme and as Christians in

the church today we can look back as believers without God all the good things mean

nothing.

You can have the best job, greatest home, wonderful relationships all the satisfactions of

life but if you had to give up or deny your Lord in order to have them those would mean

absolutely nothing at all because the right way to enjoy these goodness is always in relation to him.

He is the giver of all these good things and without the giver these gifts mean

no

it does.

You know I can't have any punchline when Charlie is in the Sunday school although that's good.

I'm glad you brought it up because what I wanted to do was once we went through the questions look back at the

actual meaning of the text and yes it is a messianic psalm I think the clue would come from

verse 10 I think and actually there is a little bit more to the text

but it is true whether we look at David as the physical earthly author or Christ

as the more full sense of the psalm in its meaning applying

to the Messiah we can look at someone who is godly and how he patterns his life and that

becomes for us a model whether it is David or Jesus Christ himself we

can say here is the person here is how the extent the limits to which he takes

pleasure in God over any other earthly good so when you read that one very simple

verse here is how you dig into its meaning you say what does it mean?

It's not just a casual poetic word like Wordsworth wrote saying I'm

dancing down these flowers there is a very specific meaning here and it is true

that God is his supreme good.

Now that's your exegesis part, you study the verse you try to understand what it means.

Now let's look at the second question explain whether or not you share

the psalmist sentiments and outlook on life.

There are two ways of answering this question you know if you do

not know the Lord for example you are here in church and you are not sure you have a relationship with him that becomes a

very direct intellectual spiritual fundamental question

for you this psalmist David Christ, they had God as their

ultimate good do I actually have it?

Am I a believer?

Do I have that relationship with God where I can say this is indeed true of me?

So that would be the first way to answer that question.

Am I really a child of God like the psalmist was and if not that would be your first order of

business to deal with because if you do not know this God how good he is how

beautiful he is, how enjoyable he is how he is the chief good of all you know when you start thinking about him and you

just burst out in rapture in your heart and say wow I have a great God whom I serve and I enjoy him

thoroughly and if you can say that you know that you have a

relationship with Christ, you have been washed by the blood of Christ, you have had your sins forgiven, you have great

hope and joy in your moment by moment experience until one day you see him face to face.

And if you don't you want to say why don't I have this kind of a joy or this kind of a

knowledge of this great one whom everyone calls God but let's say you are a believer

and you have actually crossed that line, you are in the kingdom of God, you know who this great God is.

And the question you still want to ask yourself is going through this trial, going through this circumstance,

can I truthfully say to myself that with all of my being I treat my

God as my chief good and that's how I want most of you here to look at this question do

you share the Psalmist sentiments and outlook on life, can you say right now

I have no good beside you oh Lord and

for me I find it always instructive to look at this truth not just as an objective yes I am in the kingdom of

God versus more subjective I'm walking through my life whether it is at work in my family

and am I having this consume my being in the way I think and act and walk

and as you look at the rest of the questions you will see how that works itself out.

Question 3 according to verse 5 to whom does the Psalmist attribute his lot in life.

Anyone who has the answer can just lift your hand,

straight forward to

God.

Anybody want to elaborate on that a little bit.

Yes come.

Ok so what she just said was that

God is the focus of his life so when you look at your lot in life your allocated

portion you know if you think of a physical plot actually verse 5 let's just read the whole thing first

the lot is a portion of my inheritance and my cup thou dost support my lot or in

my ESV version it's you hold my lot and it is God who

ordains what falls to me whether it is my inheritance physically in terms of the land that I'm going

to get, he'll talk about that later or the circumstances that comes into my life, he is the one who supports,

holds, determines, ordains what comes into my path and

when we talked about goodness you want to always connect that with your particular circumstances that you're going through the

good days, the happy days, the pleasurable days you have now or your troubles and difficulties

and unsolicited trials that

are coming your way who is the source of all them all in the ultimate sense and the psalmist very

definitely says it is God who supports his lot, everything that comes to him is coming from God and

you as we heard it just points further to the psalmist mindset of

God being his chief good and God being his ultimate source of everything that comes into his

life and he is always going to be looking to God in what happens in his life.

Question four turns that now to inwardly for each of us so what is your understanding of

God's sovereignty?

How much of what comes your way in life would you attribute to the hand of a sovereign God?

If you are willing to attribute only a portion of life's happenings even if it were the largest

portion to what or to whom would you attribute everything else?

I think one of the biggest troubles that we have in this world is understanding the

sovereignty of God in its practical sense.

We can all acknowledge God is sovereign in the big sense of the word.

We know he is ultimately responsible.

We look at then evil.

We look at problems and we say how can this be?

How can God be sovereign over this despicable circumstances?

This person who is in my life who is acting out the schemes of

Satan himself it seems in my life and how can God be sovereign?

Those are the troubling questions that come as you walk through this life as a child of God yes knowing in

the ultimate sense that God controls everything that happens in your life but in this particular moment in this particular circumstance

when things are just you think unnecessary.

Why for a child of God one who is the daughter or the son of the king do you

have to go through these wicked assaults of the enemy and circumstances that

you have absolutely no control over where you are not the one in mastery but you are the one maybe

steam rolled under.

How can you look at this circumstance and then have an idea or respond to

this question number four?

Very good.

We just got an excellent answer about examples of God's trustworthiness and actually his

sovereignty.

How was God sovereign in the life of people who were extremely under difficult circumstances.

Some of them which I don't think some of us will ever go through where you can now look back at that particular

circumstance and see the end of that person's life.

What did God do and what happened in this person's life as a result of that

particular trial or the circumstance that was troubling to them and then you can see the hand of God that was

overall that was sovereign that brought about those difficult circumstances of maybe Joseph going into slavery

but raising him up ultimately to be the king in Egypt.

If you were thinking about a particular circumstance in your life as you are applying this text, this is what you want to think of.

You can look back at examples of how God was sovereign in a good way for his people and

you can look at this particular circumstance that maybe you cannot really solve.

You cannot really fix.

You are going to have to deal with this problem over a period of time maybe as the underdog.

You can still look at it in a way that you remind yourself that God is the

one who is ultimately in authority.

Satan didn't give a curveball and get around God and throw something at you that you have to somehow

fix it yourself.

That should be the first source of your counsel is that God is

sovereign.

No matter what the circumstance, God is the one who is in control of the circumstance and you need to

recognize his hand before you can actually deal with the problem correctly.

We will pick up the pace a little bit here.

Let's go to question number 6.

According to verse 6, the psalmist understands that his life has been measured out with its boundaries, a figurative way of

speaking how precisely his life has been mapped out even with its limitations.

Do you suppose that he includes here his tragedies as well as his triumphs?

Again, Pastor Dave referred to this verse, Romans 8, 28.

It's listed at the bottom of your sheet.

We already covered that in the earlier question.

When we think of God allocating our portion, our boundaries, he does everything, whether it is the good times when your

natural response is praise or the difficult times where you need to sit down and meditate and consider

that God is the one who brought these days as well as those days of pleasure.

Now, in verse 7, it builds it even further in

question 7.

According to the psalmist's own testimony, the boundary lines of his life have fallen in pleasant places and this is where I want

you to think a little more carefully about God's sovereignty.

If he is convinced that these lines have been drawn by the sovereign Lord through both tough terrain, tragedies,

as well as smooth plains, triumphs, how can he speak of it all as being

pleasant?

And the hint there is to compare your answer with number 3 which is

whom does the psalmist attribute his lot to?

And there is also Philippians 1, 21, for me to live is Christ and to

die is gain.

So the question here comes up as your subjective response to your trial.

So you have a circumstance that you're dealing with.

Instead of saying, I'm bitter, I don't like this

issue, I'm going to just respond in kind to the evil that has come before me,

work out my own machinations, here the psalmist's response is he considers them as

pleasant.

He looks at whatever God has given to him and accepts them as God's sovereign hand

that is for his good.

It may seem very difficult and this is where I think, as Pastor Dave said earlier, as you walk through your life, as you walk through

those trials, it is an exercise where God makes you think and act more and more like

Christ because it doesn't come naturally.

We come from the world when we are saved and our natural response is, you know, I don't like this, I'm going to

run away from it, I'm going to respond sinfully to it rather than say, you know, God is the one who has brought this

and my response and this is where godly counsel begins is to do what pleases God.

You look at the difficult thing that comes into your life and you don't say, how do I solve it?

And that's my chief end is to get out of this problem because that's what most of us will be tempted to do.

And instead of saying, what do I do to get out?

You say, what do I do to please God who has allowed this circumstance in my life?

So a severe injustice comes into your life and instead of saying, you know,

how do I get back at this thing and get out of this problem?

You say, what does the Bible say about a godly response?

And you can do that because, you know, when you do a godly response, in a worldly sense, it may seem that you're going to lose

that issue of justice.

You may get trampled over.

But that is not the chief end of man, is it?

The chief end of man is to please God.

And when we have this perspective of God's sovereignty over my individual life in my particular

circumstance and you look at this response as one of

trusting this Lord who is in control, you don't try to solve your own problems in your own way.

I mean, the Old Testament is full of examples of men and women who tried to do that.

And you see the disasters that they come up into.

Abraham, Rachel, we have tons of people just trying to work out their own

solutions rather than trusting their Lord through the trial that they went through.

And that's our call.

So when you look for counsel in God's Word, when you remember God is sovereign, the first thing you look at in your trial is,

the life God has given me is pleasant.

It is good, even if it is difficult to bear with.

You look at it in the perspective of God putting it there for you.

So let's look at verse 8 now.

What does the psalmist say at the end of verse 6 that would convince you that he is satisfied with life and will

remain so?

He actually says, I have a beautiful inheritance.

He sees what God has put into his life and he rejoices in it.

And when you truly work out the implications of God's sovereignty in your life,

you will recognize that you can take great joy, you enjoy, you revel in the

life that God has given you.

God has put you, Dave or Bob or Nancy, he has put you

in your particular circumstance for his particular purpose and there can be no greater joy than living out that

particular life that you have been given day by day by day.

And that's the psalmist's mindset.

It says both in the question 8 and 9.

He is satisfied and in verse 8, you look at why he feels he will not be

shaken.

In verse 8 he says, I have set the Lord always before me and because he is at my right hand, I will not

be moved.

It is not the circumstance that comes into our life that we say, you know, right now I'm doing well and right now I'm shaken.

It is because the Lord is our ultimate refuge and it is not just a

mental knowledge that just you keep in the back of your mind.

It is a very real present help in the time of your trouble because you know that God is sovereign.

Yes,

absolutely.

In Job 2, when all the trials have just kind of, well, almost all.

He's going to have an extended period of trouble after that but when cataclysmic

events happen, he is able to honestly say, I grieve but I can,

the Lord is the one who brought it and the Lord is the one who takes it away and that's the mindset we need to have when we walk through our trials.

And then back to verse 10.

What does such a stance produce according to verse 9?

Let me read verses 7, 8 and 9 so you have this context for verse 9.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.

In the night also my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand, and I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.

My flesh also dwells secure.

He has joy and he has great confidence in the life that he lives right now because

of this God whom he has put his trust in who is by his side and he is the one who is counseling him

through his life.

And in fact, the night seasons in which he continues to receive his counsel as it's asked,

instructs him.

In fact, the word instruct, when you study it, it talks about a certain element of chastising.

It's not that you just make all your decisions right.

You walk through your day, you come back at night, you examine what you did and

as the word of God just washes over your mind, you say you know, I did wrong

and the next day when I go back to act out in this particular trial or in anything else, I need to do differently

because this is what would please my God.

And God's counsel is ever with you because you have set your God as always

before you.

Two more things and then we'll conclude with verse question 14.

How does the Psalmist's eternal perspective, outlined in verse 10, affect his outlook on life?

And explain how Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4, 16 -18 compare with his outlook.

Verse 10 says,.

For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your Holy One see corruption.

And then in 2 Corinthians,.

Therefore we do not lose heart, though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed

day by day.

And he talks about how trials in the temporal sense do not compare with the

blessings of eternity.

Now, and that should be the mindset of every single believer.

Because if you do not have the eternal perspective, your trial becomes its own end.

If you do not win this trial, you have lost the battle.

And it feels like the Lord has let you down.

So if Joseph somehow couldn't get out of that pit before those people he got sold into slavery,

his whole life was ruined.

And that's never the perspective of the child of God.

The child of God is always looking at the eternal aspect.

I mean, we had the preaching through Peter talking about our temporal sufferings and how the child of God needs to look at

eternity in going through these trials so that we can live a godly life.

And then verse 12 turns that around again.

What is your eternal perspective on life and how does it dictate the way that you live?

You look at how the psalmist did that and then we say, you know, this is a model for me.

Can I?

Do I?

When do I not?

And when should I?

And then you submit your life under God's word.

And then verse 13, according to verse 11, where is the right way to live to be

found?

Where is fullness of joy and where are eternal pleasures to be found?

And verse 11 says, you that is God, make known to me the path of life.

When you are struggling and you can't seem to find what you need to do next, the only source of help you

will find is in God and in his word.

And in your presence there is fullness of joy.

When you go through trials, you come down tired and you, I mean, I remember this week something just happened and I just couldn't

sleep.

And part of it was my own fault.

I had to set right something that I had done wrong.

That's where your instruction from your heart comes in when you meditate on God's word.

But when you look ultimately for joy, you know, even in times when you have messed up, it is

in God's presence that you have fullness of joy.

You don't rest in your victories, you don't suffer, you know, you don't just get dejected in your trials.

You always look up to your God and in his presence there is fullness of joy.

And in his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

And then the last question I have here, or Dr. Burle gave, is helpful when we just

analyze, you know, use the word of God as a mirror.

And when you use the word of God as a surgeon's scalpel in examining your own life when you go through those trials,

you want to ask yourself, where have you been looking for these things?

When you look at things not going right, you know, your response not being godly, you want to look back at

how we have lived out God's word.

And we just took a few steps through this particular passage to say, how do I

understand and how do I apply it?

I can say 90 of you here knew every single thing that I told you before,

because you've heard these truths before.

And I think for us as believers, we want to remind ourselves of this truth, not just in the broad

and general sense, but in the specific and daily sense.

You know, what trials are we going through?

How intentional am I in looking to God's word and letting it guide my path?

Letting it direct my steps?

So when you go back to the earlier question of the dichotomy of just obeying God's word mechanistically

versus being led by the spirit, there is no difference.

There should be no difference.

When you have God as a central focus of your life, when you know that he is sovereign, he has given you his word,

you go and rest in his word, you study his word, you consume his word with great joy.

And then when you walk your life, your circumstances that you're going through, these words of God will impel

you, will strengthen you, and the spirit of God will give you the courage to do the difficult things because your mind

is wrapped around the things of God.

He you have set at your right hand, and he is the one to whom you want to

submit.

And I have two other psalms in this which you can try later.

Psalm 46 is a lot more direct to this particular issue.

You can try that at home.

Question number 4 is for verses 1 and 2.

It doesn't say that.

And Psalm 146 is a different text altogether.

It is actually a praise psalm, and you will see that although the subject is different, the principles are very similar.

As you go through the issues that you deal with and you want to dig into God's word and take it and apply it,

all it takes for a child of God is to sit with the word in the presence of God,

meditate on it, and let God speak to you through that word, and bear on that

particular problem that you need to submit your life to.

And when we do this as a pattern over and over again, you can see the godliness

that God affects in our lives when we are made more and more into the image of Christ.

We are terribly out of time, so I'm going to stop.

Is there any questions so far?

I'll just conclude with one note.

What Charlie said about Psalm 16 being messianic, most of scripture

you can actually read in the simple sense.

You study it, and you should be able to get the plain sense out.

For a believer, you have the spirit of God within you that will illuminate God's word to you.

But that does not preclude study.

If you know your scriptures well, you would have connected verse 10 with Peter and Paul in the New Testament quoting this verse,

and you would say, oh, I've seen this before elsewhere, let me go study that.

And if you spend a little more time, you will get a lot more richness out of the text so you can actually

glean a lot more from the text.

I would encourage you, wherever you are, whether you are just a brand new Christian, you just study the word, or you are a mature

20 -year -old, 30 -year -old Christian, 50 -year -old Christian, that you would spend the time in the word and let

that word wash you and make you clean.

Let's pray and we'll close.

Dear God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your Son, for giving us this new life that we can

live life in confidence and boldness, knowing that you are our great God and Savior,

that you are our Almighty and all -powerful King, and you are our good God

who has your children's interests in mind.

Lord, I pray for every single person here and in this church that as we live our lives, we would be

intentional in setting you in the forefront of our lives, that we will submit

our lives, our own natural inclinations to the

guidings of your Spirit through your word, that we will be children led by the Spirit,

that we will be children who reflect the goodness and greatness of our great God and King.

Lord, we also commit this morning's service into your hand.

We pray, Father, that you would be glorified and exalted in all that happens and

transpires here.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.