The Upward Look - [Psalm 42]

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Well, we have a treat today. My friend Christian Harris is in town and he's going to preach this morning.
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You say, who's Christian Harris? Christian Harris is about my age. Christian is married to his wife,
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Karen. How long have you been married? 22 years, they have four daughters. And Christian and my wife,
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Kim, used to go to the same elementary, middle and high school together. And the first time
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I met Christian was in the gymnasium at Grace Church and he was going to Master's Seminary and so was
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I. And then, oh, you're Kim's husband and we struck up a friendship. And over the years, that friendship has blossomed.
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And I love Christian for lots of reasons, but I don't wanna take away time from the message. So I'll basically say this, and this is a good lesson to the young men here at the church who like to preach.
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Oh, by the way, I have to mention, he's a grandpa too. So this is a very tough time for me because my friends who are my age are grandparents and that's an odd thing.
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He looks like a grandpa compared to me. But Christian was in youth ministry for about 15 years.
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He was a senior pastor for about seven years. And right now, due to all kinds of circumstances, he is not in full -time ministry.
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He's a painter. But here's what I especially like about Christian Harris. If you are called to preach the gospel, guess what you'll do?
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You will preach the gospel. And so every single week down at the rest home, guess who's preaching the
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Bible verse by verse? You say, well, I don't have a church.
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I'm really, I have young men come to me. I like to preach. And I say, there's a rest home right down the street. They're dying to listen to you literally and spiritually.
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Well, I kinda wanna preach at BBC on Sunday morning. You wanna be a preacher?
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God has called you. You have fire in your bones, in your belly. As the Bible says, you will find somebody to preach to.
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They're all around. I was in Harvard Square yesterday. There stands a guy preaching to people.
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And so I love it that Christian, even though he's not in paid ministry right now, he has a congregation. And he has a congregation of men and women who sit and they need the gospel, just like every unbeliever needs the gospel.
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And just like Christians need the gospel as well. So Christian, I'm glad that you preach the word in season and out of season.
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You reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. So I know we don't clap much, but he is my friend.
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So let's just welcome Christian Harris. Ah, it is a joy to be with you.
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I guess I should counter the old joke there by saying that Mike and I, one of our favorite things to do together and not only talk theology and the
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Bible is to cycle. And over the last few years, he has schooled me.
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As many of you know, he's very competitive and he likes to be the first guy to cross the line.
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Well, little did he know that I rode all winter with some Cat One and Cat Two riders and some
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X racers. And so I came as a lean, mean fighting machine and well,
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I'll let him tell you who bested who this week. So, but with that aside, let's take your
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Bibles. And if you have them, turn with me to the book of Psalms, specifically to Psalm 42.
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And as you're finding your way there, I do wanna just say again, what a privilege it is to be with the people of God.
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Somebody asked me today, well, are you nervous? And I gotta tell you, I would only be nervous if I wasn't prepared.
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That's the only thing that causes me fear. And I not only preach the early service at our rest home, and let me make a side note on that.
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The training you receive here and the modeling you receive here will make a great impact in the 70, 80 and 90 and 100 year old age group.
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I came in into this particular situation where we're from and just began to open up the word and I was coming once a month and it didn't take long before they said, can you just do this every week?
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And so as I began to do that, you would not believe the unity of thought.
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Even about a third of my little body is mentally they're out. There's no apparent comprehension.
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Then I've got a middle third that is in and out and then I've got another third that are there the whole time.
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And the growth, the spiritual growth in the mind of Christ that has been happening there in that place when
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I just don't tell them 10 minutes of funny stories, but actually take them to the word of God and raise the standard and the depth of the ministry there.
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It's been phenomenal. So if you are interested in using your giftedness as teachers, look for those spots, look for those venues and don't think little of those opportunities.
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Those are great opportunities and God will bless you richly for those types of sacrifices.
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So I wanna encourage you in that way. All right, Psalm 42. Let's just read it together and then we'll go through it and see what
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God's voice is for us this Lord's day. Psalm 42. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you,
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O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall
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I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, where is your
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God? These things I remember. I pour out my soul within me.
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For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with a voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
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Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?
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Hoping God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.
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O my God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon from Mount Mazar.
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Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have rolled over me.
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The Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime and His song will be with me in the night.
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A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?
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Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me while they say to me all day long, where is your
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God? Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?
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Hoping God, for I shall praise Him the help of my countenance and my
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God. Let's pray. Father, as we continue in worship, really in a pattern that has been set at the dawning of this day for your church, we come into your presence through the finished and complete work of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. And we stand before you and plea no merit in and of ourselves but cry out, continue to cry out for the wonderful mercy and grace found in your faithfulness to us through the cross.
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And I pray, Lord Jesus, as we come here to worship you and to lift your name on high, that you truly will be our strength in our study now.
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Father God, it is with personal experience that the war that we've seen waging in the soul of this psalmist has been a reality.
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Many, many, many times, your children face the dark dilemma of persecution, of death, of sickness, of poverty.
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I pray, Heavenly Father, that as we come before you and in your presence now, you will be our strength and study that we might gain insight from this passage.
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We might be changed for today, but not just changed for today, that you'll expand the bounds of our ministry and our boundaries may go further and further and further as we become people, not just of truth, but of faith.
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We might reflect in humble expressions your faithfulness and our hope, our eternal hope in you.
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I pray you will be now our encouragement and strength in this time of study. And all God's people said, amen.
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There's something very unique to me. When I began to study the
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Psalms, as some of you have when we first become Christians or first become committed to growing in our relationship with Jesus Christ, oftentimes we gather to ourselves different reading patterns and different study plans and schedules and calendars.
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And I remember just the basic one that I remember that I've gone through before is you take a handful of Psalms a day and you read through them through a year to finish the
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Bible in a year. And the Old Testament at that time seemed a little cloudy.
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I couldn't quite understand exactly what was going on. But when I got to the Psalms, there seemed something violent about the
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Psalms, something extremely emotional, something foreign to me. As I read the testimony, the personal testimony of the pens of the
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Psalmist, they were laying out spirit -directed truth for me. There were times when
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I said, that's foreign to me. I'm not sure I could relate to the emotion of the
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Psalmist. I'm not so sure I could relate to the darkness found in the
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Psalmist writings. The tension, the warfare, the struggle, enemies and strife and internal conflict.
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What was going on there? Why hadn't I experienced that as a believer?
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Is that just an Old Testament thing? Is that just something seen in the nation of Israel as Old Testament saints were living out their life before the
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Old Testament God? And yet as I grew in my faith and became involved in pastoral ministry, began to realize that there was a need for the
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Psalms. And as many of you know, they were songs for the nation of Israel. They were sung publicly and sometimes they were sung privately in homes.
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And yet as I would gather together with families as a pastor who were about ready to lose their loved one or in the private counseling session of young men struggling with homosexuality and the periods of sin and the consistent nature of just defeat, defeat, defeat, whether it's in life or it's death, in sanctification, whatever the issue was,
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I realized there was something vivid and real and necessary in the Psalms that we should always hold on to, come close to and own in our own lives.
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And this morning, this Lord's day, we just read a Psalm in which, as you read that and as you began, we see this
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Psalm reflected in a very, I believe a very real and yet lighthearted chorus that we sing sometimes within the body of Christ as the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee.
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And it wasn't until I began to live a little in the pain and the darkness and the suffering and the decay of this life as a pastor and even as a father that I began to see the necessity of understanding the truth that we're about ready to uncover.
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Mike didn't mention, and I'll go into a little bit of more detail tonight, but I stepped down out of ministry to become a painting contractor due to the rebellion of one of my daughters, about a two to three year period of rebellion in my oldest daughter, who began to pursue the idols of this life and began to find much more satisfaction in them than in Jesus.
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It wasn't the way that she was raised. She was raised to see the loveliness of Jesus, His supremacy and His majesty in all things.
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And yet as an artist and someone that has been gifted by God with extreme creativity, she did not like living within the box, within the boundaries of our faith.
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She loved to explore and as she continued to explore, her journey took her in darker and darker and more dangerous places.
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It is what caused us to move to Texas, to give her one last hope of redemption, hoping that removing her from her surroundings, she would somehow see the mercy of God in Jesus.
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And even in the hellacious journey that we went through in California, when we moved to Texas, it only got worse to where we had to let her go.
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We had to tell her she could no longer live in our house as she was covering her body with tattoos and she was exploring and loving drug use and to find her eventually living in a situation in which she became pregnant with her boyfriend to a mother and underneath the care of a mother who was dying of hepatitis
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C because of her choices. And I wanna say to you beloved, that it was during that time,
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I'm not so sure how you would deal with that or how you've dealt with that. But I wanna just say as a husband and as a father,
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I was hard, I had to perform a funeral for my daughter so that I could just live day to day.
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I had to turn her over to death, to God, to her own choices so that I might just function during the day.
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And it was at that time I had to ask myself, what do I believe? Where's my mind going to take me?
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Sure, I had Christian friends and people would give all kinds of nice trite answers.
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We're praying for you. There's nothing wrong with that.
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We're with you, we're standing. I had a second cousin once removed, their daughter went through the same thing.
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And yet I was alone. And I had to stand up and say, what is it?
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Where is my mind? Where am I going to go with these circumstances? And it was in the nature of this kind of psalm that I had to run to.
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So let's walk this through and beloved one last thought. If you never see yourself going through something like that, please, please do not think that way.
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This is a terrible world in which we live. Paradise has been lost.
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And it may be that you're going through these things now or next month or next year, but get ready and be prepared with the right answers.
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Join me in following David's spirit inspired thoughts here.
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Psalm 42, verse one. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, oh
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God. We see really the beginning of just a two section psalm here.
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We've got verses one through five with verse five being a refrain.
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We have a second section beginning with verse six and ending in verse 11. This is a message we've entitled just the upward look.
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First half of it is the upward look through the barren deserts. And we see this in verse one, there are circumstances surrounding the psalmist where he is desiring for the presence of God.
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And look at the way that he describes this. He says, as the deer pants for water brooks, so my soul pants for you, oh
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God. He takes a very common illustration from nature. As a deer would be panting as it was heading toward streams of water.
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I can't really help you with a picture of why that may happen. I know early on as a boy living in the woods, there were wild packs of dogs where we lived that would chase down deer.
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And every once in a while, just in my backyard, I would hear the commotion of just the breaking of the brush and the running of the hooves.
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And I would see these deer just driving through my backyard. And just moments later, big dogs chasing them down.
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I guarantee you that deer, after a quarter mile run, half a mile run, he's looking for sustenance.
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And as you see here in verse one, the psalmist just opens up this psalm and saying, listen, this is me.
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I have an all -consuming desire for God. This is the direction of his thirsting.
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In his deepest display of emotion, in the depths of who he is, he has an insatiable desire for the presence of God.
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God is his life. At the very beginning of this psalm, he's putting his cards on the table. He's saying,
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God is my ultimate refuge. God is my life. He has a driving passion.
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It's a direction. It's upward. He's driving for the presence of God. He's moving. He's calling out.
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He's being honest. He's being humble. He's being broken. And in this singular pursuit, it's not for people.
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The psalmist is not desiring friendships here. He is not pursuing possessions or prosperity or food or alcohol or medication or exercise.
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He's saying in the circumstances surrounding his life, there is only one thing that matters.
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My focus is singular. I must have
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God. Verse two, my soul thirsts for God, for the living
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God. When shall I come and appear before God?
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He was not searching for a trite biblical principle or some kind of theological soundbite here.
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And beloved, don't miss what I'm saying here. This isn't some kind of experiential deal here, but it's not devoid of experience.
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He desires to take everything that he has been taught about God, what he knows to be true in God's revelation, and he needs to go there.
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He needs to be in the presence of God with all that he has learned and been taught.
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In fact, he says it in such a way in the Hebrew, you'll see it translated there just in a question form.
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When shall I come and appear before God? His desire is to leave this earth.
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He has nothing that he is holding onto here. There is nothing of this temporary existence that he's saying, yeah, that's what's going to fill the void of my life right now.
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I'm really encouraged about what I have access to in the here and now.
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In whatever circumstances the psalmist is facing now, he's saying, I wanna go home.
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When will that happen? When will I be able to stand in the presence of God and see him face to face?
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On a side note, men, just as I'm sharing with you, you've had a recent conference, the
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Man Up Conference. Let me ask you a question as men. Now, we might determine masculinity biblically in a number of different ways.
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In fact, we might even say what I think what I'm about to say is being quite feminine if you're drawing those distinctions.
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Where's the direction of your heart right now? Men, is it by the way that you respond to your children, by the way that you're loving your wives, by the way that you work in the workplace, does everyone around you see the reality that you wanna go home?
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Oh, while you're here means fruitful ministry. But you have no concerns, no weighty burdens for the issues of this life that you're saying, listen, for me to live as Christ and to die, that's gain.
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Dying is gain. I can't wait to be in heaven, to be in the presence of God.
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That is a very biblical thing. That is very strong.
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When your kids and your family members see that you care so little about the things of this world and yet they see you going upward, it doesn't matter.
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Who cares what so -and -so says about me? Honey, don't worry about what happens in the workplace.
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Children, I mean, fill in the blanks. You are grasping those people around you and you're pointing that we're just a momentary blip on this screen.
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And how does your life in ministry reflect it? We are ministers, watch this, all of us.
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We are ministers of dying men and women to dying men and women.
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And your lives are marked by a short span. What is the statement of your life now as to what you're pursuing?
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For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Verse three, my tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, where is your
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God? Now, I'm not so sure exactly what was going on here in the psalmist's personal testimony, but he did not grow up or was not serving in or ministering to an atheistic nation.
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And yet what's happening here is that it seems to me that there are times in which people are of little help.
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And here is an individual, again, with some very discouraging things going on around him, some very dark emotional things.
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And the only one that he has at this point to bring him hope are his tears.
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And yet his tears are atheistic in their ministry to the psalmist.
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Look at you. We might put it in modern day vernacular. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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And when you invite Jesus into your life, everything is gonna be hunky -dory. It's gonna be a -okay.
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And yet that whole message, however you've ever heard that or seen that explained to you strikes against what we're seeing in the reality of a man of God dealing with the pain of this life.
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And he just says, they say to me all day long, where's your God? He's finding no hope in his circumstances and his tears are taunting him.
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Verse four, something interesting happens. He begins to respond biblically, grabbing onto something.
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He wants to go in the right direction, verses one and two, but he's struggling. And beloved, listen, it's okay to struggle.
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Verses one and two, if we were to cut it off there, we might say, well, there's your answer. Just pursue
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God, everything will be okay. And yet the reality is, is that in the tension of just the journey of this life, we're just taking baby steps forward and we don't know if we'll ever make it through another day.
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And so something happens, stirs within the psalmist's heart and he brings in, engages his memory.
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Verse four, these things I remember as I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with a throng and lead them a procession to the house of God with a voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
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Here the psalmist is forcing himself to go back when times are good. When they were good.
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Go back to the feast of first fruits or the celebration of the tabernacles,
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Passover. Some joyous occasion in which the people of God would have gathered together.
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But even in the memories of his past, it wasn't enough. He tried to lock into that.
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He tried to say, yeah, I remember the good times. I remember when my daughter was 12 and was setting up chairs at our church plan in the
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Napa Valley. I remember when she was sitting in the front row singing praise songs to Jesus.
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Didn't help much. Didn't help much for me.
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And so verse five, we see the psalmist reflecting. He tries to go there and then he asks the question, why are you in despair,
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O my soul? Listen, isn't it enough to have great memories? Why have you become disturbed within me?
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Now we see a movement toward the right response. Hope in God, for I shall again praise
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Him for the help. Of His presence. Here the psalmist is becoming very openly transparent.
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Now we see an ongoing and continuing struggle between circumstances and his own personal direction.
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And finally, when enough of doing all these other things had taken place, he directs his response the right way.
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And he says, in a commanding way, hope in God.
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His mind raises above the circumstances, commands his emotions to be obedient.
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He just says, no, you can't do anything else. You need to have a vertical response. You need to move and grab onto everything that you know that is true about God.
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His character, His attributes, His omnipotence,
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His sovereignty. Friends, listen, if you were to ask me, and I know you hear this often, and your pastoral staff is shepherding in this way, besides the
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Bible, if you were to grab onto any other set of books at all to begin a library, you need to grab onto the exegetically driven books that point you toward God.
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What you believe about God this Lord's day is the most important really thing, apart from understanding the gospel.
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What you believe about God is the most important thing that you could believe right now.
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Because it's the strength in that understanding and comprehension of the truthfulness of God's word.
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It's that volume of data that will take you through these kinds of circumstances, these kinds of situations.
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And so here we see the psalmist just go vertical and he commands himself, hoping God, specifically direction for I shall again praise
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Him for the help of His presence. On a side note here, please, please be patient in your shepherding and counseling toward one another.
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There is a period, a journey sometimes that lasts for hours and for days where every bit of confidence and security has been stripped from us as believers.
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And sometimes in the process, we don't expect one another to turn immediately like a light switch from being in the places of darkness to being in the places of encouragement.
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Sometimes it's a long journey. I know your pastor and I, Mike, we were talking and when he's speaking for God from this pulpit, when he's proclaiming the word, he can be very, very powerful, intense.
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And yet he was sharing with me just on the flip side in the trenches through deaths and funerals and that, he becomes very, very tender.
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He knows, he understands human frailty and spiritual darkness, weakness, if you will.
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And he, like the many other elders here are committed to you in that way.
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So if you're afraid, if you think this as well, this is just a Bible teaching church and we just put up the
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Bible and we gotta look like the Bible and act like the Bible when we come into this place. Beloved, no, no, no, don't miss it.
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If you are weak, come in here weak. If you are discouraged, come in here discouraged.
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This is a place of ministry, the spirit and the word. This is a place of restoration, of help.
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And so here we see just in the first part of this psalm and just what we briefly walked through, we see the psalmist going into incredibly and through incredibly discouraging times, as it desert as it were.
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But notice just in the last section of this psalm, we see that the psalmist again is driving himself to look up through the crashing seas, starting with verse six.
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Oh my God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the
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Jordan and the peaks of Hermon from Mount Mazar. Here we see kind of a unique thing happening here.
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He goes back to his memory, but this time the memory isn't so much what God had been doing in the people of Israel in different festivals.
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The direction here is to God. He is remembering the worship of the people of God as it was vertical and so he says, therefore
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I remember you. I am not going to remember a celebration. I am gonna remember content driven you.
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Verse seven, deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls.
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All your breakers and your waves have rolled over me. Now here the intensity of verse seven cannot be understated and it cannot be overstated.
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This is a verse that we need to understand what exactly is going on here because what the picture the psalmist is painting here is an incredibly large amount of water.
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Right now in the Yosemite Valley from where we kind of grew up, there's a thing called the snow melt that's going on.
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Yesterday or day before yesterday, Mike and I rode up a mountain and I won't pronounce it right.
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Watch you sit, watch you sit, watch you sit, watch you sit. All I know
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I was in the lead and Mike was in the back. But I get up there, nine feet of snow and we had to literally walk through the snow, cyclocross, you know, put your bikes on your back and get through there, you know.
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So I don't know about the mountain ranges here in Massachusetts. But what I do know that right now in the
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Sierras, one of the most powerful things you could ever see, it's one of the wonders of the world to me.
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You might not be so excited about it. But the Yosemite Valley is incredibly beautiful. And when the snow melts, water flows.
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And some of the most beautiful waterfalls are there. And there's an area which you can walk up, it's called
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Mist Falls, and you can walk up and during this time of the year, just the thundering of the waterfalls and the crashing of the water is just, you could start walking up here a few miles away and the closer you get, watch this, the closer you can get, you can feel the rumbling of the water.
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You don't know it's water, but you feel this. What is that?
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What is that? What's that sound? And the closer you get, the more you not just feel it, but you begin to hear it.
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You begin to hear the water just crashing over the cliffs from the snow melt. And you get to these waterfalls and you can't speak to one another.
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The thundering of the water is so loud, you have to get away, move away from the edge, kind of thing, spray and everything's going on here.
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Okay, that's kind of the word picture. But watch what's going on, look at verse seven again. Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls and your breakers and your waves.
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This intense picture of flooding, of water moving devastation, this has at its source
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God Himself. Now I know in a church like this, where you've been grounded in the word, this may not surprise you.
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But we know for example, from the book of Philippians, that it has been pointed for you not only to believe, but to what?
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But to suffer. That in God's gracious, sovereign design, there are periods of time in which
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He takes you and He'll take me and He'll continue to take me and He'll continue to take you through times of trial and testing, so that what?
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So that God may be most what? Glorified and for your good.
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David, psalmist, get over it. Don't worry about it, it'll be okay.
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No, it wasn't anything like that. He locks into the reality that these, now in the same picture of the dry, desolate, barren situations of the first half of this psalm, now to drowning, now to, whoa, my hope is still you, not in the parchedness of my mouth, but now in just the water that's flooding my mouth.
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And in the context of that, I realize as a psalmist is moving through theologically and is setting his mind right, he's beginning to lock into what he knows to be true, that the trials of this life are from God.
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They have at their source, God Himself. So what we see here is that the psalmist, through again, the inspired spirits, movement and direction, he begins to lay out for us instruction.
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And is not this an instruction psalm? It's a mascal psalm. This is a psalm used for counseling.
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This is a psalm to be used for instruction in the body of Christ. Verse 7, it's too much for me to handle.
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God, you're putting too much on me. I know you're involved. I know you're in control. I know these trials have at their source you.
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Verse 8, and the Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime.
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And His song shall be with me at night. A prayer to the
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God of my life. Begins to wind down this psalm and he begins to say, yes,
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I understand. It's too much for me to handle. You're the source of these things. But in a quick second breath, the psalmist says, verse 8, he has hope in the promised deliverance of God.
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The Lord will command His loving kindness. That in the depths of the darkest times of our lives,
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God's love will reign supreme. And His song will be with me in the night.
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Loving kindness in the daytime. Instead of tears, we see in verse 8, songs.
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Specifically manifested in His personal relationship to God through prayer.
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Here the psalmist says, I'm going to depend on what I know to be true. What I know to be true about you and your character and what you've revealed to me through the prophets, through the psalms, through the law of the
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Old Testament. Verse 9, again, keeping the tension, deliverance is not there yet.
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I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning?
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Because of the oppression of the enemy. As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me while they say to me all the day long, where is your
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God? Again, intensity creeps up again. This is not a quick, easy fix on these things.
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There is a lifetime to learn of what we're speaking of this morning, what we're seeing in the psalm.
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The psalmist realizes now it's not just tears, adversarial tears. We see here in verse 10, just such mocking from the minions of Satan, our greatest enemy.
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Where's your God? Where's your God? Where's your God? And yet, verse 11, why are you in despair, oh my soul?
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Again, psalmist is battling unbiblical thinking with biblical thinking.
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Verse 11, why are you in despair? Oh my soul, why have you become disturbed within me?
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Great questions, why, why? Be strong, why? Next phrase, hope in God, for I shall yet praise
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Him, the help of my countenances and my God.
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Here the psalmist mans up, if you will, and he just says, listen, it may not be seen today exactly what
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God is doing and His purpose is and how He is going to be good to me, but I tell you what,
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I am going vertical, and I'll tell you what, my hope is not in uncertainty, it's not luck, it's not chance, it's a certain expectation.
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My hope is in the certain expectation that God will be faithful in the midst of my circumstance.
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I will chart the direction of my life. I will not be swayed. I want to leave you with three thoughts and then we'll be done.
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From this psalmist that came just to me and I had to pull out of this for my own sanctification, for my own encouragement.
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These are reminders, things you've heard many times, but number one, as the psalmist did, truth must take priority over feelings.
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No matter how dark it is, truth must take priority over feelings.
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In other words, we must submit all our feelings underneath the exaltation and the truthfulness of the
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Word of God. But as I say that, let me say this, a very and real biblical principle is that we must weep with those who are weeping.
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Beloved, don't be quick to judge in the emotional state of a wrecked life that they're just not being biblical.
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Be a shepherd, as Paul would explain, be as a nursing mother in your application to the
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Word, to your wives, to your husbands, to your children. Be gentle, be long -suffering.
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Secondly, the thing that just came out of this for me, and again, very obvious, is that really the cure for all spiritual depression, if we wanna call it that, the cure for all spiritual discouragement really is trusting in God.
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And I wanna encourage you to, again here, don't belittle what is going on here week in and week out.
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This right here is the bedrock for success. What happens underneath the ministry here of this church really will provide the foundation for future victory.
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This is exactly what you need. Don't say, I don't know if I need verse by verse.
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I don't know if I, 1 Corinthians, I don't know if I need seven years through 1 Corinthians. Okay, go six and a half.
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Morning, evening, night, and every time the doors open, you know this right here will be the rudder.
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This is the anchor. This is it. This word right here is
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God speaking to you. This is God's message to you today. This is the word of the living
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God. Trust it. Become familiar with it.
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Use it. May it be your lifeline. Last thing I just came to mind was that really the truth that must dominate our thinking is that really in the
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God who raised Jesus from the dead, He is in control of all our circumstances for His greatest glory and our greatest good.
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So when, and I'll just again, I'll point, I don't know if you, and probably many of you have suffered more than I have.
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There's a happy ending to my daughter's situation. She actually became a
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Christian, praise God. God was good, but there were three years of darkness.
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And yet I know that happened for God's greatest glory and our greatest good.
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And let me say one last thing and we'll close. You may be saying to me, Christian, I don't know.
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You may be saying to me right now, you know, it still seems to be far away.
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Let me ask you one question here. Who modeled Psalm 42 perfectly?
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The beginning of our Lord's ministry, the Spirit of God thrust Him out into the wilderness. And for 40 days and 40 nights,
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He was being tempted by Satan. What man on this earth owned the
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Psalms? Jesus Christ. And I would guarantee you, from my understanding of Scripture, Jesus would have gone to the memory of Psalm 42 often during that time.
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Question, who ended His life and lived perfectly to the last part of this
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Psalm? Jesus said in Luke's gospel, I have a baptism to undergo.
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What was He saying? He was saying, I have the floodwaters of God's wrath to undergo.
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And His gaze was set towards Jerusalem and He went there and then the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.
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But in His humanity, I guarantee you that the last part of this Psalm 42 would have been on His heart.
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As He was faithful to the calling of God in life and in death.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that it is powerful. We thank
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You that it's practical, that it gives us hope for life and for death and for eternity.
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I pray, Lord Jesus, that Your name has been lifted up. That really what
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I've been called to do here today has only been an extension of the faithful teaching and ministry that goes on week in and week out here at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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We praise You that we could come together and look upward toward You. I pray that we'll use this either personally as we are struggling or in our ministry that You've called us to, all to Your glory and praise and all