You are listening to Key Life Fellowship's Pulpit Ministry
podcast. We thank you for tuning in as we
learn from God's Word together. For more information about Key
Life Fellowship, visit us on the web at keylifefellow-ship.com.
You. Have your Bibles, if you would
turn to Psalm 119. I know that's not a shocker to
anyone who's been here any amount of time as we have been
walking through this longest chapter in Scripture, the 119th
Psalm, as we have been on this journey about learning to live
life in the light of God's Word. And I pray that we are doing
just that. Today we come to the 73rd verse
and we'll be looking at verses at verses 73 all the way to
verse 80. It's going to begin as each
section has begun with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet.
And this one today is the letter yot.
And that letter yot is interesting because in Matthew
chapter 5 verse 18, Jesus himself said this, that not one
yot jot in English or title shall be removed from the law.
And so this is the letter that Jesus was talking about yot.
And we know that's after this letter Yot is mentioned, there
will be, as we have seen, this entire but 8 verses under that
particular letter of the alphabet.
And so we come to Yot today and we come here to learn and we
come here to learn about a biblical view of God.
And we need to learn this because we know that we live in
a world full of relative truth, where God is defined by
philosophy, intellect, God is defined by the world views of
man, whatever those world views may be.
God is defined by relative truth.
And it's easy that way because if if God is defined by relative
truth and not the absolute truth of scripture, well, God can now
be perceived as anything that the perverted and sinful mind of
man desires him to be. It stands to reason that in a
culture where men can choose to be women, if they so choose to
be, and others are then demanded to respect that choice, it
stands to reason that this type of wickedness would be actually
looking for a new or unbiblical view of God.
A God of relative truth. One who we can simply choose to
accept whichever way that we want to accept him, to make him
into whatever it is that we want him to be.
Or as many have done, the atheist who just completely
denies his existence at all. That's the easiest way, isn't
it, to just completely deny his existence.
And truth to you is that there is no God at all, which is false
and it's just relative to you. But we're going to see today
that God has revealed in Scripture exactly who he is.
He's revealed exactly how he works, how He loves, how he
afflicts, as we talked about last week and we'll mention
again this week how he judges, how he shows compassion, how he
interacts with mankind. Aren't you thankful that we get
to interact with our Creator and commune with Him?
God's Word is expressly clear on these things.
And so if we're going to have the right view of God, the right
view of God can't come from relative truth.
It can't come from your own intellect, your own philosophy,
your own ideology. It can't come from whatever
indoctrination you received as you came up through school and
then into higher learning that God is just whatever, whoever
you want him or her to be. If we're going to have the
correct view of God, a correct view of God comes from the truth
of Scripture. That is the only place that
we're going to find a correct view of God.
And we are going to see today that the psalmist understood
that. He understood a biblical view of
God, and in looking at what he writes today, we're going to see
that. But the psalmist recognized the
one true and living God, the eternal Creator, the sustainer
of life, the wise counselor, the compassionate Redeemer of
sinners, and the mighty conqueror of the hearts of man.
He recognized him for who he is biblically.
He's going to teach us how to do the same and I pray that you
would adhere to what he is going to teach us today.
Psalm 119, the 73rd verse. He says this under again the
title Yoat. He says your hands made me
informed me give me understanding to learn your
commands. May those.
Who fear you, rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope
in your word. I know, O Lord, that your laws
are righteous. And in faithfulness you have
afflicted me. May your unfailing love be my
comfort, according to your promise to Your servant.
Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for Your law is
my delight. May the arrogant be put to shame
for wronging me without cause. But I will meditate on your
precepts. May those who fear you turn to
me, those who understand your statutes.
May my heart be blameless toward your decrees, that I may not be
put to shame. Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank You that Your word does truly reveal who you are to us.
Lord, we thank You that You have preserved Your Word so that we
cannot be bound by relative truth and humanistic ideology,
but that we can see the one true and living God for exactly who
You say that you are in Your Word.
God, I pray that you would use the Psalmist today who was
inspired by the Spirit to write these things to point us to a
proper and biblical view of God so that our worship would be
what it is supposed to be. So that our lives will be what
they are supposed to be. So that our eternity will be
everlasting life with You according to Your Word.
God, I pray that we would yield to Your Spirit as You change our
views because what we may be skewed and we may be off in our
wicked hearts. God, I pray that You would use
Your word today to bring us back to the center.
Show us exactly who You are and that we would worship You
according to Your word for exactly who You are.
That we would follow You and obey Your commands because You
are the true God. But I pray for the soul who's
here who does not know Christ, Lord, They do not have a
biblical view of God. And I know this because they
have not bowed the knee to Christ.
They have not surrendered to Him as Lord and Savior.
They have not repented of their sin as Your word has commanded
God. I pray today that by Your mercy
and Your compassion, you would open their eyes, change their
view, awaken them spiritually to new life, that they would trust
in Christ as Lord and Savior, seeing you for who you truly
are. Lord, we'll be careful to give
you all the glory and all the praise for it.
Teach us now as we look at Your Word.
Holy Spirit, we ask that You give us enlightenment.
You teach us what it is that You would have us to know.
And we pray these things in Christ's name.
Amen. We see here the Psalmist giving
us an example of someone who has a biblical view of God, and he
begins illustrating this for us and what he says in verse 73, in
the very first part of this verse, he says your hands made
me and formed me. If you're going to have a
biblical view of God, a biblical view of God recognizes God as
sovereign creator. You can't have a biblical view
of God without first recognizing this.
And the psalmist. Psalmist rightly acknowledged
God as sovereign creator right out of the gate, the one who has
formed him by his hands. Horatius Vonner said this.
He said it is nearness, not distance that the name Creator
implies and the simple fact of having made us in the assurance
of his desire to bless us and to hold intercourse with us.
Bonner is saying this, that it's God as our Creator that actually
brings us near to God. It's not as if he's creator than
causing us to think that he's far from us, but that he was
intimately involved in our creation.
The psalmist understanding this when he makes the statement,
your hands again, as Bonner says, assuring the fact that
having made us is assurance of His desire to bless us and to
hold intercourse with us, His desire to commune with us.
It is by His hands that He has created man, giving evidence
that from creation He desired to commune with us.
If you'll go back into creation, you know that He spoke many
things into existence, but not man.
For man, he reached down into the dirt, and he molded and he
crafted man, and he formed him into his own image with that
special creation. We must recognize him as the
sole creator and that is the first step.
That is the first step in being restored to an intimate
relationship. A communion with him is to
recognize him as the sovereign creator that he is, Stephen
Sharnick said this. He said we must first believe
that He is and that He is what He declares Himself to be, and
over and over again in Scripture He declares Himself to be
sovereign Creator. He says we must do this before
we can seek Him, adore Him, and devote our affections to Him.
Charnick says we must believe that He is who and what he says
that He is. Is that not what the author of
Hebrews says in Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 6 when he says without
faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to
Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who
earnestly seek Him. First base is this believing in
the existence of a sovereign Creator.
The atheist in his foolish heart attempting over and over and
over again to deny God is sovereign Creator, not the
psalmist. The psalmist right in the
beginning says it's he who by his hands made me informed me.
Oh, it is the psalmist here recognizing God as sovereign
Creator. If you truly recognize God as
sovereign creator, you can write this down.
You will recognize him as author of a creation.
Again, the Psalm is saying your hands made me.
Now why is that important? It's important because in
acknowledging that we are agreeing with what happened in
Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 and we're agreeing that this is
absolute truth and what does it say there?
The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and
breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man
became a living being. It is God who authored the
creation not of only all things, but especially of man, and He is
the author of that creation. Now we all know this to be true
in a worldly sense. If we were to invent something,
whatever that invention may be, we are the creator of that
something. We would then file for a patent.
We would have this invention patented and we would have this
patented. Why?
Because we are the creator of that thing.
We don't want anyone else coming in and and trying to state claim
that they created what it was that we invented.
God the same in His Word has made it very clear.
He's laid down the patent over and over and over in Scripture
that He is the author of creation.
We need to recognize that. We need to recognize him as that
author of creation according to the truth of the word of God.
Not only do we need to recognize that, we need to Revere God as
Creator. David in the 33rd Psalm says
this. And verse 6, by the word of the
Lord, where the heavens made the story host, by the breath of his
mouth, He gathers the waters of the sea into jars.
He puts the deep in the storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the people of the world
Revere him. Why?
Because He is sovereign Creator over all.
He is worthy to be revered. He is worthy to be praised.
In fact, Jonah, that rebellious preacher there on his way to
Nineveh and he decides, you know what, I'm not going to go to
Nineveh. I'm going to go to Tarsus.
And we know how the story goes, but Jonah understood this.
In Jonah chapter one verse 9, even in all of his
misunderstandings, it says this. He answered speaking to those
men aboard aboard the ship that he was on, rebelling against
God. I am a Hebrew and I worship the
Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the land.
Even in his waywardness, Jonah could not deny the fact that God
is sovereign Creator over all. He is the author of creation,
for all things were created by him and for him and through Him.
And there is nothing that has been created that he did not
create. It's God.
We must recognize God rightfully as author of creation.
In fact, in Isaiah, our scripture reading today in
chapter 41, particular verse there in 28 stands out to me.
The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the
earth. He's created everything, things
you see and things you will never see.
The depths of the ocean, the extent and the expanse of
heaven. He is the author and the
mastermind over all creation. He is the author of creation and
must be recognized as such, even though the atheist denies God as
Creator. And why does he do this?
Because he knows that the Creator is worthy of respect
from whatever it is that He has created the creation and he is
do this as the Creator. That's why the psalmist says in
Psalm 14 that you're obviously a fool when you deny the existence
of God, right? Because a fool has said in his
heart there is no God. He's describing for us an
atheist who's an absolute glittering fool.
Perhaps you're here today and you wandered in under the radar
and you're still an atheist. You are a fool and I am not
telling you that. God is telling you that, and you
are a fool because obviously when we look at the majesty and
the splendor of all that He has created, including ourselves as
humans, when we look at that, it is obvious that there is a
creator and there is an author behind that.
And who does Scripture say that that author is?
It is the one true and living God, Yahweh of the Old
Testament. We see Him as the author of
creation, but we also need to recognize this and recognizing
God as sovereign creator. And he's the authority over that
creation. Just as I mentioned a moment
ago, that person who gets that patent on that invention, guess
what else that creator has? He has the authority over that
invention, whether to mass produce that or not, whether to
sell it to someone else so that they can produce it.
He has complete authority over that which he has created.
The psalmist understanding this, that God as creator and author
of all creation has authority over that creation and he
recognizes that. If you remember with me, in
Psalm 24, verse 1, he says the earth is the Lord's and
everything in it, the world and all who live in it, where He
founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
What is the psalmist saying here?
That the One who created everything is the authority over
everything. Now let me just help all of you
out. You don't have to acknowledge
His sovereign authority for Him to be in sovereign authority.
He is in sovereign authority whether you know it or not.
He is in sovereign authority over His creation, whether you
accept that or not. He's made that very clear in his
Word. And so a person who has a
biblical view of God will recognize God as sovereign
creator, that he is the author of creation and he is the
authority over that creation. And to deny God, who is the
Creator, the authority that he rightfully has is foolish.
This is wicked reasoning, isn't it?
This is the reasoning of the unbelieving, to say, well, maybe
God is Creator, but that doesn't mean He has to be an authority
in my life. No, He doesn't have to be an
authority in your life. Let me make it very clear for
you. He is an authority in your life.
And one day every knee will bow in every tongue.
Confess that He is Lord and there's nothing that you were
going to do to change that. He is sovereign over all.
The person who refuses the right of the Creator to govern his own
creation. Just simply rebels and refuses
to submit to him in governing their life.
He rightfully deserves that position, doesn't he?
To govern our lives, to be our Lord and our Master.
Why? Because He's our Creator, and if
He created us, that we would commune with Him and He did
whatever He had to do, even the unthinkable, in sending His only
Son to the cross to die to reconcile mankind unto Himself,
so that He could again commune with these things, these people
He has. Created who wandered away into
sin. It stands to reason that if He
is the author of creation and He is the authority over creation,
and He has gone to the extent that He has gone to that we
ought to bow to Him as the authority in our lives.
So if we're going to have a biblical view of God, we must
recognize him beginning with the fact that he is sovereign
creator. The psalmist then quickly moves
on verse 73, the second part, not only does he recognize God
as sovereign creator. Secondly, he recognizes God as
wise counselor. Pay attention to what he says
here. He says give me understanding to
learn your commands. May those who fear you rejoice
when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word.
The psalmist here now gives another mark of those who have a
biblical view of God. And this biblical view of God
recognizes God not only as creator and the author of
creation and the authority over creation, but this biblical view
of God recognizes God as an all wise counselor.
Paul expresses this in first Timothy chapter one verse 17, as
he gives a doxology unto the Lord.
Now to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
God. Many of your transcripts say the
only wise God because he is where wisdom comes from.
He says be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen.
And we know this to be true, don't we?
It's from God that we receive wisdom.
It's from God that we receive true, unadulterated knowledge.
We have to trust in this wisdom. We have to trust in the wisdom
from the Scriptures. This is where we find wisdom
from God. People come to me and they ask
me, I need wisdom for this situation and I point them to
scripture over and over and over again.
Why? Because I don't want them ever
accusing me of being wise. God is wise and any wisdom that
I give to someone comes from His wisdom.
And any true wisdom that we gain, we gain it from God.
Everything else, it's just man's ideology.
It's the wisdom of man. It's fleeting.
We can trust in the wisdom from the Scriptures that the psalmist
is doing here. He says, give me understanding
to learn your commands. He said, Lord, I want to learn
your truths. I want wisdom from you.
I want to know what you think about things.
Isn't it interesting that we ask everyone's opinion in the world
except God's on most issues? What is your opinion on blank?
We hear these discussions all the time.
Now I want to say in every one of those discussions, why does
your opinion matter or why do you think your opinion matters?
Because your opinion, my opinion, our opinion as a whole
does not matter. What is God's opinion on things?
Lord, give us understanding in into your wisdom and into your
knowledge. That's what the psalmist is
saying here. Give me understanding to learn
your commands. I recognize that you are an all
wise counselor and I don't want to get my advice from just
anyone on the street. I want to get wisdom and I want
to get direction. I want to get advice from the
truth, from the Word of God. That's where the psalmist is
turning here, trusting in the wisdom that is received only
from the Scriptures and knowing that true wisdom comes from the
truth of God's Word. Deuteronomy 4 verse 5, Moses
says this. He says, See, I have taught you
decrees and laws, as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you
may follow them in the land you were entering to take possession
of it. Observe them carefully, for this
will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations.
Now where were the people of God going to get wisdom and
understanding from the word of God that was given unto Moses
that he's now giving unto them? And he says, then they will hear
about all these decrees and say, this is what the lost world
should be saying. Surely this great nation is wise
and understanding people. They are wise and understanding
people. Why?
Because they don't see human reasoning.
They see the wisdom of God. They see the understanding that
has come through His word. The reason that they're not
saying that about us today. Is because many of us only pick
up his word in our Lord's Day services on Sunday morning,
never gleaning from his word as the psalmist was desiring here.
Give me understanding to learn your commands.
Let me open your word and give me the wisdom and the
understanding to know what it is saying to me.
He's trusting and he's gleaning from the wisdom of God, desiring
wisdom for his life. Are you desiring that same
wisdom from your for your life, from the word of God?
You have it at your fingertips. You have access to it.
Many of you hold it in your hand.
What are you doing as the psalmist is doing here?
Recognizing God is wise counselor saying, Lord, I need
direction from you. I need direction from your word.
He's doing what must be done to acquire wisdom here.
Is that what James says? If you lack wisdom, you should
ask God. That's what the psalmist is
doing here. He's asking God for wisdom.
And we know that James tells us this.
God's going to give us that wisdom.
He's going to give us that wisdom graciously.
But are you asking God to give you wisdom and never returning
to His Word to see the wisdom that it is that He has given
you? His true wisdom is going to come
from His commands, from His Word, just as the psalmist says.
And so one who recognizes God as wise counselor will be trusting
in the wisdom from Scriptures again, not just one day a week,
meditating on scriptures every moment of their life.
So the psalmist recognizing God as wise counselor, trusting in
the wisdom from the Scriptures, but also encouraging others to
do the same. See the next part of this in 74
May. Those who fear you rejoice when
they see me, for I've put my hope in your word.
He's not saying that they can see me and it draws attention to
myself. He's saying that they can see me
and they can see the wisdom and the understanding that I have
from the Word of God, and it draws attention unto the Lord
and to His Word. This is what we ought to be
doing. We ought to be encouraging
others to do the same as the psalmist has done here.
He said, give me understanding to learn your commands.
We ought to be encouraging others.
Go to the Lord and ask Him for wisdom to understand His
commands. Go to the Word, Spend time in
the Word. Find the answers to your
questions, Probably the number one most asked question that I
receive. How can I know God's will for my
life? You know what they're asking
for? Supernatural wisdom.
You know where you find that? Not for me.
Go to the Word of God and there you will see the will of God
unfold in your life as you spend time studying and meditating on
the Word of God. And so we see the psalmist doing
just that, studying, meditating on the Word of God, learning his
commands, seeking God's wisdom and doing that and then
encouraging others to do the same by giving them that godly
example that we all need. We need to be that example of
one who trusts in God's word, who trust in God's word for
wisdom, who trust in God's Word for understanding, who trusts in
God's Word when something in the world happens, right?
We wake up and all of a sudden, man, we're, we're bombing Iran.
Just rest. Trust in the Word of God.
Those people have been the enemies of God forever.
They're going to continue to be the enemies of God until Christ
comes and sets the record straight.
Just chill. Where did I gain that from?
Well, I didn't get it from reading Time magazine.
I didn't even get it from watching Cnni got it from the
scriptures. And in that I have peace and I
have a hope in God's sovereign plan.
And I want to encourage you to do the same thing when it when
all chaos seems to be breaking out in the world.
Let me just ask you this question.
Do you believe the Scripture? God is sovereign, Jesus is
merciful, and he wins in the end.
Let's not complicate this. And so we see that all to be
true when we go back to the Scripture and we do as the
psalmist is doing here, receiving that understanding
from the Lord and then being an example of someone who trusts in
the Word of God. Are you being that in your life?
Are you being that in the lives of your children or not?
A question that we ought to ask. Are you teaching your children
to trust in and to appropriate the Word of God?
Or are you worrying about things all the time?
Are you fearful all the time? Is your anxiety out of the roof?
And we have to teach the word of God by our example.
That's what the psalmist is saying.
May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, when they look
at me and they say, you know what?
Not only does he know the Scriptures, that man lives the
Scriptures. He says, right, put my hope in
your word. They say this, He hopes in the
word of God. Isn't that what the psalmist is
encouraging us to do today, to encourage others by living a
life of hope, by living a life of obedience unto the Word of
God, encouraging other believers to do the same.
We ought to be encouraging one another, as we're doing in this
series, to live a life in light of the Word of God, to walk in
it, allowing it to be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto
our path, and encouraging others to do the same.
The psalmist here giving us the second point, that a biblical
view of God will recognize him as wise counselor.
Thirdly, verse 75, he says, I know, oh Lord, that your laws
are righteous and in faithfulness you have afflicted
me. Oh, no affliction again.
We had a whole message about that last week.
We're not going to stay there long, long, so don't worry.
I think we covered most of it last week.
But he says, I know, oh Lord, that your laws are righteous and
in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to Your
promise to your servant. The psalmist here, yes, is going
to revisit Affliction for just a moment.
He's going to do this so that we can learn a little bit more
about this. We can learn about putting our
trust in God as our loving comforter.
A person who has a biblical view of God will recognize God as
loving comforter. He says, may your unfailing love
be my comfort according to your promise to your servant.
Why is he saying this? He's saying it in the context
and on the heels of mentioning again the fact that God has
allowed affliction into his life.
So the Psalmist here teaching us that a true biblical view of God
will recognize God as loving comforter.
Watch this despite the situation.
No matter what it is that you're facing.
We're all good with saying God is our comforter when we're
comfortable, but saying that God is our comfort is not the same
as we are comfortable. Does everybody understand that?
Because the American Church thinks that being comfortable is
comfort. Now I can tell you this, I have
received comfort from the Lord in the most uncomfortable
situations that I have faced in life, and comfort as far as the
world it defines being comfortable was nowhere to be
found, but it was God with a supernatural comfort that He
gives me from His love internally.
This is what the psalmist is understanding.
This is what he knows. This is what he knows, that God
truly is who He is in regard to His loving comfort.
He comforts us despite the situation.
Even in affliction, in times of trouble, He comforts us.
In fact, Isaiah 49 verse 13 says this.
Shout for joy, O heavens, rejoice, O earth, burst into
song, O mountains. For the Lord comforts his feeble
and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
What does that mean? No matter what you're going
through, you can rest in His loving comfort.
Isn't it good to have a loving comforter, one who constantly
comforts us by his unfailing love?
That's what the psalmist says. It's his unfailing love.
It brings me comfort. It brings me comfort according
to the promise that you've made to your servant.
And where do you think that he found this?
He found it in Scriptures. I will never leave you.
I will never forsake you. And he rested on that, and he
stood on that, and he knew that God's going to comfort him in
any affliction. In.
Fact, Second Corinthians Chapter 7 verse 6, it says, but God who
comforts the downcast comforted us.
This is Paul talking there to the Corinthians about the
comfort that he and Titus received from the Lord.
And it's God who comforts us even when we're downcast.
What is those moments that we feel his love the most?
Many times, isn't it? And we go through the darkest
hour. And His Spirit and the promises
of His word embrace us with the unfailing love of God despite
any situation that we face. He comforts us in our affliction
and He covers us with His affection.
Isaiah 54 verse 10 says though the mountains be shaken and the
hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not
be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord,
who has compassion on you. Oh.
What great promises that we can claim in Christ that he made
through the prophets so long ago, that we can rest, that
though the mountains be shaken and all the hills dissolve, we
can rest in his compassion because of the covenant that
he's made with us through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We see that the psalmist is
recognizing God as his loving comforter no matter what
situation he's in, no matter what he faces, despite the
situation, but also because it's declared by His Word.
The Word has declared it, and it's time we, as professing
believers in Christ, claim the things that the Word of God
proclaims. Stop acting as if God hasn't
said these things. God is our loving comforter.
Second Corinthians chapter one one of my favorite passages on
God's comfort. It says this in verse 3.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us
in all our troubles. Don't you think We didn't say
some of our troubles, a few of our troubles when things get
really, really bad. No, He comforts us in all of our
troubles. Why?
So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we
ourselves have received from God.
Isn't that what the church is supposed to do?
We've received comfort from the Word of God.
That, that, that comfort, those promises that he gives us bring
comfort into our lives. And then what are we to do?
We're to turn around. We're to share that with someone
else who's going through a similar time of trial or
affliction, affliction or sorrow or suffering.
That's how the body of Christ is designed to work.
A group of people recognizing God as loving comforter and
reminding one another of that all the time.
Yes, brother, Yes, sister, I know that you're going through a
difficult time. In fact, I went through that
same thing. I got that same diagnosis.
I got that same phone call. I went through that same trial.
And let me tell you something, what I learned from the word of
God. He is a loving God who comforts
us in all of our troubles because He is the God of all
comfort. Aren't you thankful that He's
the God of all comfort? This morning the psalmist saying
that a biblical view of God will recognize him as that loving
comforter. Fourthly, we move on verse 77.
The psalmist says, let your compassion come to me, that I
may live, for your law is my delight.
Fourthly, I want you to see this that a biblical view of God
recognizes him as merciful Christ.
Now when I say. Christ.
I'm not talking about the last name of Jesus, as many of you
think that that's just his last name.
It's not his last name. It is the title of who he is.
He is the Christ. He is the Savior.
And when we talk about God being a merciful Christ, we are
talking about Him being a merciful Savior.
And the psalmist here is going to turn our attention to the
only hope that any of us have. And what is that?
God's compassion and His mercy. If God did not let His
compassion come to us, and see how He worded that, please let
it come to me. If God had not let His
compassion come to us, we would all be dreadfully lost and bound
for hell. But the psalmist here pleading
with God, let your compassion come to me.
I'm dependent upon you and your mercy and compassion toward this
Sinner. God brought his compassion to
us, didn't He? He brought his compassion to us
Himself. It is through God Incarnate, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Who came in flesh bringing mercy
to sinners. This is why the deity of the
Lord Jesus Christ is so essential to having true
biblical theology. That is God Himself, who
condescended and came to this earth to die in the place of
wicked sinners, to redeem them, and to cleanse them from all of
their sin. Matthew chapter 1 we see this
promise being given and what is it?
The promise that was taken from the prophet Isaiah and it says
this in verse 21 of Matthew 1. She will give birth to a son,
Speaking of the Virgin Mary, and you are to give him the name
Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
Give him the name Jesus, which is Jehovah saves because he will
save his people from their sins. It says in 22.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through
the prophet. The Virgin will be with child
and will give birth to his Son, and they will call him Emmanuel,
which means God with us. The psalmist here saying, let
your compassion come to me, that I may live.
And God in the appointed time, honoring this, coming to this
earth fully God and fully man, offering himself as a
substitutionary sacrifice on a cross, so that all who believe
in Him would be saved from their sin and live.
He says, let your compassion come to me that I may live.
I'm dependent upon this Lord. I need your grace.
I need your mercy. Because a biblical view of God
will recognize God is merciful Christ, knowing that it's he who
brings forgiveness and pardon. And without His compassion,
there is no chance for forgiveness and pardon for our
sin. O may you all hear that this
morning. May that be the cry of your
heart. Lord, let your compassion come
to me, because without His compassion you will never be
forgiven of your sin. Without His compassion, you will
never be cleansed. Without His compassion, you will
never inherit eternal life. But it is in His compassion and
a proper understanding of that that we see he brings
forgiveness and pardon even to the most wicked and vile.
Center the psalmist again using the word let, let, please, just.
He's pleading with the Lord, let it, let it happen.
I'm hopeless without your compassion.
Let it come to me. God did not first will this.
The psalmist knew he did not deserve it.
Aren't you thankful that God has let his mercy and His compassion
come to you? Because I want you all to know
this. He was under no obligation to do
any such of a thing. You were not entitled to His
compassion. You were not entitled to his
mercy. In fact, truth be told, you
deserve justice and wrath and his indignation for all eternity
and hell. But yet He has let his
compassion come to you. Why?
Because He's a God of compassion.
And if He had not first loved you, you would never have loved
him. Oh, let us be thankful that He
is a God of compassion and let us see Him as such.
Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22 says because of the Lord's great
love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.
They're new every morning. Great is your faith on this
Jeremiah there placing faith and a biblical God, a biblical God
who is a God of compassion, bringing forgiveness and
pardoning sin, showing his love. Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says
this. But because of his great love
for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even
when we were dead in transgressions.
It is by grace you have been saved.
So, a Curt are we really going to talk about grace again?
Yes. If you haven't noticed, every
week we're going to talk about grace to some degree because if
God does not grace you with His mercy and His forgiveness, you
will never be. Forgiven.
So we honor Him for that, and we know that it is His grace and
His compassion shown by that grace that allows us to live His
great love for us. Because of that great love, He's
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead, all according
to His grace. So biblical view of God will
recognize God as the merciful Christ, the merciful Savior.
Who brings forgiveness and pardon?
But not only that, who brings new life?
Anyone. You're thankful for the new life
that you have in Christ. Because I can tell you this, My
old life was a pile of trash. My old life was detestable to
the nostrils of God. My old life was blasphemous.
I'm thankful that God has rescued me from that old life
and that He has given me new life.
That's what the psalmist says. Let your compassion come to me
that I may live. God, I need you to
compassionately spare me. Oh, and He has compassionately
spared so many of us, bringing us to a place of new life, life
that, as we've already said, was provided by God's grace.
We know Ephesians 28 and 9. If we if we finish out Ephesians
chapter 2, for it is by grace you've been saved through faith.
And this is not from yourself. It's the gift of God, not by
work, so that no man can boast. There's nothing for us to boast
and we have new life not because we woke up one day and say, you
know what? I want to have a better life.
I want to have a new life. I want to have a good life.
Now you would have said any of that in that you would have
woken up just like you did the day before and said, what kind
of sin can I find that will bring pleasure to my flesh?
But God, in his kindness and in his mercy, through his grace, he
saved us by his work and his work that he did on a cross
through faith. And that work and that work
alone, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, it's in him that we find life.
That's what the psalmist is getting at.
He says, let your compassion come to me, that I may live.
I don't even know life. Isn't it true?
The lost man's a dead man. He just doesn't know it.
His true life is found only in Christ.
In fact, John says this in his first epistle, chapter 5.
He said He who has the Son has life.
He who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
First, John 512 Those who don't have Christ have no life at all,
because it is the compassion of God, it is the mercy of God.
It is that which Christ does for us by His grace.
That makes us alive again. We don't just wake up one day
dead and decide to be alive. Dead people don't wake up, they
stay dead. It is God, through his mercy and
His compassion, who quickens us to life and grants us the gift
of faith to believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of
God who died. On a cross 2000 years ago, who
was buried and who rose victoriously over the grave?
He gives us the faith to trust in Him, to believe that He truly
is the Savior that the Scriptures have described all
the way from Genesis all the way to Revelation, To know that He
is the only hope for man to be saved from their sin and.
But in that we receive new life, this new life provided strictly
by God's grace. Many would ask, well, how do I
know if I have it? Your life will prove it.
New life will be proven by new desires.
We see this in the psalmist here.
He says, let your compassion come to me, that I may live, for
your law is my delight. What has just happened?
Won't I need your mercy? And I know it's dependent upon
your grace. And in that he's changed.
And now the Word of God becomes his delight.
His desire has changed, a desire that desired only himself to a
desire that now desires the will of God.
According to the Word of God. Your law is my delight.
I don't see your law as a burden.
I see it as a delight. Oh, it's proof that He is truly
received in new life. Because those who once delighted
in sin and in the things of this world, and they receive the
mercy of God through the Lord Jesus Christ, they'll no longer
delight in the world, but they'll begin to delight in the
Word. Why?
Because they're a new creation. Just a second Corinthians
chapter 5 or 17 says they're a new creation.
They'll delight in the Word instead of delighting in the
world. Now you have to ask yourself
this question at this juncture. Are you delighting in the Word?
Because that's evidence of new life here.
That's evidence that you have received mercy and you have
received the compassion of the Lord, that you have truly been
saved. And if you have truly been
saved, you will desire the Word of God.
Let me help all of you out. If you're sitting here this
morning and you're saying, I wish this guy would just stop
teaching from this old relic, you have a spiritual issue.
You're not yet born again. Because those who have truly
been born again, they hunger after the word of God.
It is food for their soul. Because they understand what the
word of God testifies, that man cannot live on bread alone, but
every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
So if you don't enjoy learning from the Word of God, studying
the Word of God, being preached to from the Word of God, you
have a spiritual problem. It's one of two things.
You're either lost and not yet born again, or you are starving
as a believer. There's no excuse for you to
starve around here. There's no excuse for you to
starve around here where you have every opportunity to.
Feast from the Word of God, where you at every opportunity
are encouraged to study the Word of God.
Some of you you haven't opened your Bible since the last Sunday
service that you came to. You're not delighting in the
Word of God. You're delighting in the Word of
God only on a Sunday morning. That's not delighting in the
Word of God. To delight in the Word of God
means that you delight in the Word of God constantly, that you
meditate on His commands, His precepts, His law, His promises,
over and over and over and over again to the day that the Lord
calls you home. Why?
Because that's evidence of a changed life.
You used to not do that. All you thought about was the
world and how you can succeed in the world's eyes and how you can
fulfill whatever fleshly desires that you had.
But now, because you have truly been born again, you desire the
Word of God. You crave it like that pure
spiritual milk that the Scripture talks about.
Then after you feast from that milk, that's not enough.
Why? Because when you taste and see
that the Lord is good, you want more of Him.
And now you want meat. And I'm so thankful for a
congregation who can eat the meat from the Word of God
because I've been in so many places where if you preach for
over 15 minutes, they were done because it was just way too much
for them to handle. And I say this to them as kindly
and as lovingly as I know how. You're either lost or you're OK
with being malnourished spiritually, and either one of
them is a major spiritual problem, and you need to turn to
Christ. Today.
You see the psalmist recognizing God is merciful Christ bringing
forgiveness and pardon, bringing new life, and that new life
being evidenced by a new desire for the Word of God.
Your law is my delight because one, when they received mercy
from God, they received new life.
They value the word of God, they value scriptures.
So biblical view of God will recognize God as merciful Christ
biblically moves to the fifth point this morning.
Verse 78 says, May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me
without cause, but I will meditate on your precepts.
May those who fear you turn to me, those who understand your
statutes, may my heart be blameless toward your decrees
that I may not be put to shame. A biblical view of God
recognizes God as mighty conqueror and the psalmist here
is doing nothing wrong. But I want to make very clearly
what is going on here because many people in in our mamby
pamby weak society would say, wow, can you really even do
this? The psalmist is praying to God
against his enemies. Make no mistake about that.
He is turning them over to the Lord.
He is praying against them. And he's doing this instead of
taking matters into his own hands and seeking vengeance by
the sword. And let me just assure you this,
the psalmist knew how to wield the sword.
History proves it. Scripture proves it.
But here he's not because he has been changed.
He's not considering those things.
What he is doing is he's trusting God to conquer his
enemies, just as God has promised to do.
Isn't it true that God in Scripture has promised to defend
the righteous? And this man of God was counting
on that. In fact, Thomas Manton says
this. He said malicious enemies may be
expressly prayed against. Many of us have faced that in
our Christian life, and maybe you haven't.
But if you've ever pastored a church, you have there are
people who just are mean and malicious toward the pastor.
Let me remind all of you, I am just as the delivery boy.
I'm the mailman. Don't get mad at me because God
has delivered something unto you that you needed to hear.
But yet we know there are those people who are malicious and
they, they bring accusations and they say false things.
And again, I know what we covered last week.
Blessed are you when men say all kinds of evil against you.
I understand that, but there's a reality to it that it hurts.
And when it hurts, you know what we can't do?
And I had to learn this. And I am so thankful that I
learned this because I have seen God work in this over and over
and over again since I have learned it.
In my younger years. I thought it was my
responsibility when someone was maligning me to go and verbally
assault them right back, because that's the thing to do, right?
No, absolutely not. Every time that I ever attempted
to do anything like that, I was so convicted and so broken that
it led me to a place of repentance and confession.
But. Now on the flip side of that,
God has taught me what the psalmist understands here, and
that is when people are malicious against you, you pray
for him. And you turn them over to God.
You trust God to defend you, and you stop trying to defend
yourself. You know why?
Because every time I've ever tried to defend myself, I did it
in the flesh. Because when I tried to defend
myself, you know what I am thinking for a second?
That I have rights. I don't have rights.
I died with Christ. I laid my rights down at the
feet of Jesus Christ when I surrendered to Him as my Lord
and Savior. Now He has the right to defend
me anytime He wants to, because when he's defending me when I'm
right, he's defending himself. Because I'm standing in His
righteousness, Not in the righteousness of Kirk Hall,
because I have none. And so I've learned when those
enemies pop up their head, those people who talk behind the
scenes, that you, you're not fooling anyone.
Someone rats on you. When?
Those enemies talk behind the scenes.
You know what I do? I just simply get on my knees
and I turn them over to the Lord, and I say, Lord, if
they're bashing me, rightfully so, I deserve it.
And I could give them a thousand other reasons to blast me.
But Lord, if they're blasting me as I'm standing in you, Lord,
defend your name, Defend your glory.
In fact, during the time of the 16th century, John Knox, one of
the Scottish reformers, encountered a woman by the name
of Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a devout enemy to
Protestantism, and she once said this about Knox.
She said, I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the
assembled armies of Europe. Why?
Because Knox would pray for his enemies.
God would work on his behalf, and God would work for his own
glory. Through Knox, through his
powerful preaching, and through his prayer ministry on this
earth, God used him in a mighty way, but he also defended him
against all enemies that came against them.
It's what was Knox doing? He was simply recognizing,
trusting in God and his promise to conquer the enemies who come
against us. Why would Scripture give us so
much wisdom and insight into trusting God with our enemies
and praying for them and turning them over to Him?
And then we're not to do that. We are to do that.
And in doing that, God will do what God is going to do, and
that is to conquer our enemies. It's the one who biblically
recognizes God, recognizes God is mighty.
Conquer and conquer over our enemies.
Psalmist calling on God in prayer to conquer the enemies
who are coming against them, those who are afflicting him,
those who are harming him. Those who are doing all this
without calls simply because he's following God.
Psalm 3417 the psalmist says this.
The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them.
He delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the broken hearted and save those who are
crushed in. Spirit, a righteous man may have
many troubles, but the Lord delivers them from them all.
Oh, would we cling to that? Would we hold on that?
Would we just shut our mouths? It's not getting involved in
things that we don't need to get involved in.
God is going to take care of us. He protects all his bones.
Not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked.
The foes of the righteous will be condemned.
The Lord redeems his servants. No one will be condemned who
takes refuge in Him. No one.
So I encourage you to do this. When your enemies come against
you, they're blasting you on social media, they're blasting
you in whatever crowd that they run in.
See them for what they are. They're arrogant and they're
proud and they're wicked, and all those are synonymous in
Scripture. There are those arrogant
enemies, just as a psalmist is facing those arrogant enemies.
What is he saying? That they would be put to shame,
that they would be put in their place?
And would you just trust God to put them in their place?
You don't have to do it. He doesn't need your help.
That's one thing I've learned. I God doesn't need my help for
anything. I can simply just take Him at
His word and trust that He's going to do what He says.
And you know what? The truth always comes out.
It doesn't always come out when I want it to come out, but it
always comes out, doesn't it? He's always going to defend
those who take refuge in Him. So in those situations, you know
what you need to do. You need to examine your life
and you need to ask this question by taking refuge in
God. Am I trusting in His word?
OK, I am. OK, I am.
And Lord, I know you're going to defend me and I know you're
going to take care of every bit of this.
And I can tell you this, He does every single time.
Every single time. He is the Conqueror of our
enemies. The psalmist calling on God to
do this. People would say it was he's
seeking vengeance. Not for his name, He's not.
He's turning them over to the Lord.
And the Lord has said this, Leave room for my vengeance.
Don't take matters into your own hands.
He's simply just trusting in God to do what God and God alone can
do. He's applying what we see Paul
teach in Romans chapter 12. Do not repay anyone evil for
evil. Be careful to do what is right
in the eyes of everybody. Chapter 12 verse 18 says if it
is. Possible as far as it depends on
you. Live at peace with everyone.
I do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for
God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge.
I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy
is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him
something to drink, and doing this you will heap burning coals
on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good. David simply turning to a good
God and saying, Take care of this situation for me.
Take care of it however you see fit.
God knows how to do it best. Sometimes he removes those
people from your life. Sometimes he removes their
influence. Sometimes he changes their
heart. Sometimes he takes their life.
That's. All dependent upon God's will
for that specific situation. But what you must do is you must
trust God and not yourself in conquering your own enemies.
That's what the psalmist is doing here.
One who has a proper biblical understanding of God.
We'll do just that, knowing that God has promised to defend US
against our enemies. So we see one who recognizes God
as mighty counselor will know that he's conqueror of their
enemies, but he's also conqueror of hearts.
We can't leave this out, he says.
May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause.
But I will meditate on your precepts.
May those who fear, who fear you turn to me, those who understand
your statutes saying and those who are in that group, or maybe
they're saying the wrong things, but yet they are God fearing
people and they've just been LED astray.
Would you cause them to repent and to turn to me and to see
that I am righteous and that I am noble and that I am not doing
the things that others are accusing me to do and.
Then he says in verse 80, May my heart be blameless toward your
decrees, that I may not be put to shame.
Look at David here saying this. He's saying conquer hearts,
conquer the hearts of others. He's praying.
That those who had had a wrong heart and wrong view toward him,
that they would be changed. Isn't that what we ought to do?
To pray for those who have a wrong heart, that they should be
and would be changed? Luke 627 But I tell you, hear
me, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless
those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you.
David, praying for those who are mistreating him.
And what is he saying? Lord, change their heart.
If it is that they're God fearing people, turn them toward
me and let them see the truth. Let them see that I am righteous
because of you, and I'm standing in that righteousness and
nothing else, but also His own heart.
God is not only the Conqueror of the hearts of our enemies, those
who may come against us, He's a conqueror of our own hearts.
And boy, don't we need that. Why is that so needed?
Well, we know this, that our heart is desperately wicked,
right? Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9.
The heart is. Deceitful above all things and
beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Our heart is wicked and we are in need constantly of God
conquering our wicked heart. Christians so often forget that.
They'll say stupid things like just follow your own heart.
Please don't take the plaque off your wall.
Take it back to Kirkland's. Whatever you have to do.
Don't let anyone in your home adopt that false teaching.
Don't follow your heart. Your heart will trick you so
fast you'll think you're right when you're wrong.
Don't follow after the heart of God.
Trust in God to conquer your wicked heart.
Luke chapter 6 Lord reminds us how wicked our heart is.
We need to remember that. Sorry, that's Mark Chapter 7.
If you're taking notes, you're in Luke 6 going What in the
world? Mark, Mark 7, verse 21.
He says for for from within, out of men's hearts come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed,
malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
You don't want to trust your heart.
In fact, you want that heart to be conquered.
In fact, more than that, you ought to desire a new heart,
that heart, a flesh that replaces your heart, a stone, as
Ezekiel promised the people of God.
You ought to pray that God would conquer your wicked heart.
He. Would conquer your wicked heart,
just as he conquers the wicked hearts of your enemies, and that
he would move you to follow his decrees.
Luke 645 The good man brings good things out of the good
stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out
of the evil stored up in his heart.
For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth will speak.
O may our prayer for ourselves, just as a psalmist prayed for
himself, that God would be our mighty conqueror even in our own
hearts. Oh, it's easy to turn and to
pray for the hearts of the wicked who mistreat him.
But will we? Be honest about our heart.
Will we be honest in prayer? The Lord have turned my heart.
Make my heart blameless toward Your decrees.
Let me walk in obedience to Your word that I may not be put to
shame. Let me walk in such a way that
even if they want to accuse me of doing wrong, there is so much
right that they cannot find an accusation.
I wish that was the heart of Christians in our culture.
Lord, let us live such righteous lives that no one can bring any
blame against us, that even if they were to accuse us of doing
wrong, they have to be ashamed of that because they know that
deep down there's nothing wrong in our lives.
We are living our lives honoring the one who has conquered our
wicked hearts so the biblical view of God will recognize God
as our mighty conqueror. So we wrap this up and we
prepare to close as we've been challenged this morning.
That a true biblical view of God recognizes God as sovereign
creator. Don't forget it.
That's where it begins, Seeing Him for who he is, the author of
creation, the authority over His creation.
Then it recognizes God as wise counselor.
We need His wise counsel. We need His wisdom constantly.
We need His understanding. From His word, every single
moment of every single day of our life.
Then a true biblical view of God recognizes God as loving
comforter. We need His love and we need His
comfort, and thankfully, He brings us His love in the form
of that comfort, comforting us, leading us, and guiding us,
shepherding our soul as that great shepherd that He is.
We can agree with the psalmist in Psalm 23 that the Lord is my
shepherd. I shall not be in one.
I'll recognize God is loving comforter, and fourthly,
recognize God as merciful Christ.
Where would we be without the mercy of Christ had He not let
His compassion come unto me? I would spend an eternity in
hell under the wrath and the judgment of God, and rightfully
so, because I would deserve every single ounce of it.
Or recognize God as merciful Christ.
If you have not surrendered to Christ yet in your life,
recognize Him and surrender to Him today.
And then lastly, recognize God as mighty conqueror.
Stop taking matters into your own hands, shut your mouth and
just trust God to defend the righteous.
He always does and He always will.
So did the believer. I asked you the simple question,
do you have a biblical view of God?
I told the man before we met, before we began the service,
when we met out in the foyer. I actually told them, Some of
you are going to realize that you have some ideas about God
that aren't correct. I pray that God would correct
those ideas and you can actually leave.
You're saying, yes, I do have a biblical view of God.
I no longer adhere to an unbiblical view of God.
No, I no longer desire to have an unbiblical view of God.
Everything that I want to know about God I know I can find in
Scripture and there's where I'm going to find my answers for the
unbeliever. You're still in an unbelieving
and sinful state. And you're proving.
That every single moment of your life.
And you're proving that by that you don't have a biblical view
of God. Because if you did, if you had a
biblical view of God, you would repent of your sin.
Why? Because Christ has commanded
that we repent. If you had a biblical view of
God, you would repent of your sin, and you would turn by faith
to Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Why? Because God commands that we do
so, and a biblical view of God was surrender to Christ as Lord
and Savior. You don't have a biblical view
of God because you don't value His word.
You don't value his commands. You don't have a biblical view
of God, therefore you're not reconciled with God.
You have not been forgiven of your sin.
You do not have eternal life, and unless you repent and turn
to Christ, you will never have either.
My prayer today is this, that you would cry out to God in
desperation, asking Him to let His mercy and His compassion
flow upon you today. That He would wash you and that
He would cleanse you of all of your sin and all of your
defilement. All the things that you've done
in your life and said in your life that are offensive to His
Holiness, and that today you would be restored and reconciled
to your Creator. Would you see God for who He is
today? Would you a God who loved
sinners in such a way that He sent His only begotten Son to
this earth to rescue all who would believe and trust in Him?
Would you believe and would you trust in Him today?
The trust in a Savior who went to a cross and who died to
display the compassion and the love that the Lord has for His
own. Would you surrender to that love
today by surrendering to Christ, the lover of your soul, receive
His mercy and his forgiveness and the eternal life that he and
he alone as promised. Let's pray together.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you now for your word.
We thank you. Thank you for this group of
people who have endured the entirety of this.
But I know that it will accomplish everything that you
have set out in your sovereign plan for it to accomplish.
Lord, I ask that you would draw sinners unto yourself for
forgiveness and eternal life in Christ, that you would quicken
them to new life and to faith that they would believe and
trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior today by that faith that
you've given them. God, I pray for the Saint who's
here who's let all the indoctrination of the world skew
their view of you. God, I pray that they no longer
accept that, but they would wholeheartedly turn to Your
Word, just as the psalmist has shown us today.
They would turn to Your Word and gain wisdom and understanding
into who You really are, and they would worship You properly.
Holy Spirit, we invite you now to do what only you can do.
Convict the hearts of men, transform them into what it is
that you desire for them. And we pray and we ask all these
things in the mighty name of Jesus.
Amen. You have been listening to Key
Life Fellowships Pulpit Ministry podcast.
Join us each week for more teaching from God's Word.
If you would like to speak with one of our pastors, please visit
us on the web at keylifefellow-ship.com.
Thank you again for joining us today.