Where's Your Courage?

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Where's Your Courage?

Psalm 29

July 4, 2021 • Shane Sikkema • Psalm 29

Audio Transcript:

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Good morning, and welcome again to Mosaic, good to see you this morning. If you're new, I just want to introduce myself, my name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we are so glad to have you with us. We mentioned this earlier. But we would love to connect with you, if you would like to connect with us, the best way to start that off is just to fill that little connection card out in your worship guide. You can either drop that in the little white offering box at the back of the room on your way out this morning. Or if you turn that in at the Welcome Center, we have a little gift there that we'd love to give to you, to thank you for being with us today.

Last week, we finished up our sermon series, Jesus in Genesis season two, we looked at the life of Abraham and Sarah all the way up to the birth of Isaac, and Lord willing, we're going to come back to that series, probably do a couple more seasons, to finish out the book of Genesis someday. But today we're switching gears, we're starting up season two of another popular sermon series, Balm Psalms, that is one that we went through together last summer. The Psalms are something that we as Christians should be really visiting on a daily basis. That's how important the Psalms are.

The Psalms remind us that God created emotion, and language and music and poetry and song, that his word is not just for our heads and our hands, it's for our hearts as well. When we have a true encounter with God, we should feel something. We should feel this kind of pressure building up inside us, begging to be released and to do something, to say something, to express God's worth his glory. One of the most satisfying ways to do that is through song, through singing to him and worship the God you are awesome, and you alone are worthy to be praised.

How many of you, you can't wait to come to church on Sunday, because you just love to sing to the Lord? Like one of my hopes for us as a church, and one of the things I hope we grow in during the series is that we would become a church that loves to sing and loves to sing loud, on key, off key, it doesn't matter. Unless you're on the praise team, then it matters a lot. But for the rest of us, just sing because God is worthy of our praise, and it is right for us to praise him. So with all that being said, it should come as no surprise that right in the middle of our Bibles, we have this huge collection of poetry and songs that we call the Psalms. Music is powerful. We know that music, it speaks and it connects with our minds in a way that moves our hearts. It stirs in our hearts, and actually moves our hands to action.

Today is Independence Day. I was thinking earlier this week of like, think of the courage that it would have taken for those small American colonies to say they were going to stand up to the strongest, most powerful empire on earth. A three pence tea tax. Like, "Are you kidding us?" "No, you can find your tea in the harbor and we will see you on the battlefield." I've been living here for eight years. That's still the only word I can say with a Boston accent. But the point is, you don't mess with people's caffeinated beverages. That's the first point. But secondly, if that wasn't enough, music actually played a pretty crucial role in the Revolutionary War.

The colonies they composed entire song books that were meant to inspire courage and people to stand up to the British crown, and one of the most popular songs of this era, it was a song called Chester, it was actually written not too far from here. William Billings wrote it for the 1770 song book called The New-England Psalm-Singer, that's an interesting title. But listen to these lyrics. This is what he wrote. "The tyrants shake their iron rod and slavery clank her galling chains, we fear them not, we trust in God. New England's God forever reigns. The foe comes on with hearty stride, our troops advanced with martial noise, their veterans flee before our youth and generals yield to beardless boys."

That's like some savage right there and you hear that and you're like, "Yep, sign me up. Give me a musket, I'm ready to fight." Billings just ended King George whole career right there. Jump ahead to the American Civil War. Again, one of the most famous songs from the union during that time period is one we're probably a little bit more familiar with the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Most of us know the first verse, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He's loose the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on." It's a picture of God's judgment coming down on the injustices that were happening.
One of my favorite lines, though, actually comes in one of the later verses, and it goes like this. "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, is truth is marching on." You hear that and your heart is like, "Yeah, that is a cause worth fighting for. That is a cause even worth dying for." And historically, more people died for that cause than in any other war in U.S. history.

America's bloodiest, deadliest war, it was fought because young men in the Union they caught a courageous vision that if Jesus had died to make them holy, then they had a duty to fight and to even die to make men free, and hundreds of 1000s of them did just that. To put it in perspective, more men died at the Battle of Gettysburg alone than in the entire Revolutionary War combined. I bring that up because today we are looking at Psalm 29. And Psalm 29 is not a calm, relaxing, meditative, like turn it on and do some yoga type song. Psalm 29 is 150 beats per minute, put your headphones on, the pre workouts kicking in, you're going to the gym, you're going to set some PRS today. That's what we're listening to when we read Psalm 29.

It should get us pumped up, it should get us fired up and inspired, it should fill us with courage to do something, to fight the good fight of faith and to fight the spiritual war that is around us. I like to imagine like, perhaps this is one of the songs that the military choirs of Israel sung as they marched into battle, or perhaps this is one of the songs that Paul and Silas sung in their prison cell after they've been beaten and arrested for preaching the gospel, even better, here's how I want to set this up, just entertain me for a moment.

I like to imagine King David stepping up to the microphone like an ancient rap battle. And he's facing off against the prophets of Baal. He's about to just melt their faces, dropping truth about his God, Yahweh. That's how I'm picturing it. I'm just going to stand up here and try to be the best hype man that I can, if that makes any sense. So, we're going to look at Psalm 29. As is a Psalm of David, if you have your Bibles you can open up or you can follow along on the screen as well. Psalm 29 beginning in verse one. "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord the glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple all cry, "Glory." The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as King forever. May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace."

This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning, would you please join me in prayer over today's sermon. God you are awesome in power, you are sovereign over your creation. Your wisdom and understanding are pure, your judgment is perfect, and in contrast, we are weak. We're often ignorant and foolish, and worse than that, we are rebels against your authority Lord, and we're deserving of your judgment. God I pray today that your grace would teach our hearts to fear and that by your grace, our fears would be relieved in our Lord Jesus Christ, that you are enthroned above all, and you've made a way to show us mercy, to bless your people with peace and strength, and we thank you for this. We thank you for your word. We pray that you'd write these truths of your word upon our hearts today, we pray this in Jesus Christ name. Amen.

Three points in today's sermon, point number one, we're going to talking about idol worship. Point number two, idol worship. See what I did there. Point number three, we're talking about ideal worship. Starting with idol worship. At first glance, Psalm 29 looks like a pretty straightforward Psalm. It's actually one of the more controversial Psalm in all of scripture. Controversial because a while back, some critical biblical scholars actually accused Psalm 29 of being plagiarized. They saw that some of the language used in the Psalm especially verses three and nine, three through nine, was similar. It's kind of reminiscent of some of the same language that the Canaanites would use when they would worship their god Baal.

And throughout most of Israel's history, they were surrounded by the land of Canaan, and they were surrounded by the religion and the culture and the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites. And they were constantly faced with this temptation to be conformed to that culture, and to practice their idolatry, and you see them struggling with that over and over in the Old Testament. The Canaanites, they believed in several gods, but two of their more prominent gods were Yam and Baal. Yam was the god of the sea, the sea represented the chaos of the untamed, uncivilized world, and Yam had an adversary named Hadad, who's also called Baal. Baal was the god of storms and rain, and he represented order and fertility and prosperity.

So, when the storms would form over the Mediterranean Sea, and they would move inland over the land of Canaan, the Canaanites believed that when these storms came that it was literally Baal riding on the clouds, the thunder was the sound of his voice. So, scholars would look at these beliefs, and then they would look at Psalm 29. They see, like verse three, that the voice of the Lord is over the waters and the God of glory thunders, and they would make a connection, that kind of sound similar to Ball, and so they would conclude, obviously, David just took a Canaanite song, and he swapped the names out with Yahweh.

The problem with this is that there's no actual concrete evidence that this was the case, these scholars, they're just purely speculating on this. So what seems more likely, is that David is writing this Psalm, but he's also intentionally alluding to the beliefs of the Canaanites that they had about their god, Baal in order to put them in the context of the Psalm about Yahweh and do two things. On the one hand, he is exposing Baal as a fraud, and he is expressing the superiority of Yahweh, the God of Israel as the one true God. In other words, David says he's writing music, and he's doing apologetics at the same time.

So, let's look at how he does this. We'll walk through these verses together. David starts off in verse one. He says, "Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, and worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." He uses this phrase over and over, ascribe to the Lord, recognize, acknowledge and attribute to Yahweh, what is true of his being that he alone possesses power and glory. But look at who David is addressing this to, it's not merely to human beings, he's addressing this to the heavenly beings. Who are these heavenly beings? Angels, but also Satan, demons and the false gods of Canaan, all must ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, because Yahweh is sovereign, not only over the earth, but over the heavenly realms as well.

Now you contrast this to Baal, who even in the Canaanite beliefs, was not sovereign, he wasn't holy, he wasn't righteous, his power was limited, and much like us as human beings, he was a god who was locked in this endless struggle warring against the other gods. As we move through these verses, we're going to see David over and over showing the supremacy of the God of Israel. But we're also going to notice that what is being said here of Yahweh in the Old Testament, is also true of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. So when you look at Jesus in the New Testament, the heavenly beings, the angels worship, and even the demons tremble at the sound of his voice, they were subject to his command.

Likewise, when Christ returns, Philippians, chapter two tells us that when Christ returns, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and Paul there is quoting from the prophet Isaiah, directly that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Yahweh. He is the God of glory. So, every tongue will confess this. So David sets the stage that the God of Israel is supreme, and then he follows this introduction, and he has a perfect number of seven declarations and they all begin with this phrase, the voice of the Lord.

So let's look at these seven declarations together. Number one, it comes from verse three, says, the voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders the Lord over many waters. The gods of Canaan were finite, they were fickle, they were imperfect, oftentimes petty, and they're always fighting and at war against one another. Now in contrast, what we see is that Yahweh is perfect, he has no rival, he has no equal, he is unmatched in power, and in glory. In the ancient world, the sea, it represented chaos, it represented all of those things that fell outside of the control of human beings and of human civilization.

It was something that we as people, as human beings struggled against, but was something that even Baal himself had to struggle against. In other words, everything that is outside of our control, and outside of even the heavenly beings control is not in any way outside of the control of Yahweh. That he is sovereign over the many waters, he is providentially commanding the forces of nature, both to bring about his blessing and his judgment. So now when we turn to the New Testament, this is why in the book of revelations, we see a picture of Jesus sitting on a throne in heaven, and all around his throne, we're told he's surrounded by a sea.

But unlike a sea of chaos, we're told that it's a sea of glass, that the waves are stilled, they're calmed under his rule and authority. Jesus gave his disciples a glimpse of this authority when he walked on the water, when he calmed the sea and his disciples they marveled that even the wind and the waves obeyed the voice of Jesus. That's the first declaration. Declaration two and three comes from verse four, says the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty, power and majesty. Majesty has to do with ... The majestic, it's talking about a King in power, it depicts a King who is able to accomplish his will, more specifically the language used in Psalm 29. It's describing a King who is undefeatable, unstoppable in battle.

The Canaanites, they believe that Baal was the God who brought rain and fertility to their land. But in order for him to do this, he first had to go to battle against another god named Mot, who is the god of death. And if Baal lost that battle, then the Canaanites would face a season of drought. So what we see here is that unlike Baal, Yahweh is a King who does not lose his battles, that nothing in on heaven or on earth can thwart his purposes, and Jesus proved this to us, that he is the one who went out and faced death himself, he died as our majestic King with a crown of thorns on his head, but then he rose in victory, to show that death could not hold him, that the grave could not defeat him.

In his parting words, on the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished, the battle is now won, victory is secure." Nothing can change that. Declaration four, we see in verse five and six. Says, "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon, he makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox." What we're seeing here, there's a geographic progression unfolding in the text, and the picture that it's giving us is that there's this massive, violent storm that has formed over the Mediterranean, and now it is moving inland over Lebanonites, moving inland over the land of Canaan, and it's showing us that God is not only sovereign over the chaos at sea, he's also sovereign over the order of human civilization. He's sovereign over the kingdoms of man, even the kingdom of Canaan.

The Canaanites, they took great pride in the fact that they built their homes and they built temples to Baal up in the mountains, and they built them out of these great cedars of Lebanon, and David points to these temples. He points to the cedars. He says the very voice of the Lord shatters them to pieces. It even shakes the mountain, the foundation that their source of pride was built on, and Jesus did the same thing. Jesus humbled everybody he came in contact with. He shattered the pride of the rebellious and the self righteous alike and showed them that if they were building on any foundation other than him they were building on sand.

This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand, the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

The last three declarations come in verses seven, eight and nine. Verse seven says the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the voice shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple, all cry, "Glory." And now we see that the storm has moved even further inland. And as it is, it's consuming like a fire. It's stripping the forest bare, and it's showing us a stern warning of Yahweh's judgment, that he is a righteous judge, and that he will ultimately expose what is unseen, and bring down judgment on what is unholy.

Verse nine says, he makes the deer give birth. When I first read that I think that's like a nice comforting picture in the midst of all of this other language and I started looking into this phrase, and I learned that what it's actually describing is describing this phenomenon which would happen occasionally during incredibly violent storms, where pregnant animals would be so frightened that they would actually give birth prematurely. It's showing us God is going to expose everything, and he's going to bring perfect justice to creation. So if I were to summarize all this and put this into my own words, this is how I would say, that the voice of the Lord is sovereign over both heaven and earth.

He has the power to perfectly accomplish his will. He will shatter our idols and pride, has authority to judge his creation and the ability to reveal what is hidden so that nothing will escape his justice. That's the big idea. Almost, nothing will escape his justice except for what? Except for who? Except for those that we see in verse nine, who have found refuge in his temple. The climax in verse nine it shows us that outside of God's temple, yeah, the voice of the Lord is causing creation to tremble in fear at his righteous judgment. But inside the temple, there's peace. Inside the temple there's safety, that the people of God have been sheltered by his mercy and they cry out, "Glory."

Psalm 29, it shows us that God is just and he will not allow sin off the hook. But he is also merciful. He has provided a way for sinners to be saved. For Israel, this was the temple, the sacrificial system. For us, Jesus is our sacrifice. Jesus is our temple. Jesus is the refuge that shelters us from the storm of God's wrath. We see this again, when David concludes in verses 10 and 11. He tells us this, that the Lord sits in enthroned over the flood. We're going to talk about what that means. The Lord sits enthroned as King forever, may the Lord give strength to his people, may the Lord bless his people with peace. That word for flood there, there's only one other place in all of scripture where that word is used. And it's used to refer to the flood of Noah. That is what David is drawing to mind.

Because, again, the flood was a story of God's judgment, but it was also a story of God's salvation. That outside of the ark, God's wrath, it rained down in this cleansing judgment. Inside the ark, there was peace, that Noah and his family were preserved. Now, when we turn to the New Testament, the New Testament tells us that the story of the flood that David is alluding to and bringing to mind here, it is a story of what was, but it's also a story of what is and it's a story of what is to come. This is what I mean, that as it was in the days of Noah, we're told it will be when Christ returns. I get this from Matthew chapter 24. Jesus teaching his disciples about his return, this is what he says.

Matthew 24, verse 36, "But concerning that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. And two men will be in the field and one will be taken and one left, two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one left, therefore stay awake, for you don't know what day your Lord is coming.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what part of the night that thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect and when he does, what we see is that those who are in Christ, just as those who were in the ark, those who are in Christ will be saved, that those who are not will be swept away, taken away for judgment. The flood is a picture of what is to come.

But then, New Testament tells us it's also a picture of what is true right now, and this comes from First Peter chapter three, beginning in verse 18. Peter writes this, he says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patients waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through water, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into the heavens and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him."

Now, first of all, this is one of the most confusing passages in all of scripture, and we're going to have to save a lot of that for like another sermon on another day. But the big idea here is clear that just as Jesus is our refuge, our temple, Jesus is the true ark, and baptism is a picture of this salvation that he's referring to. He says, "It's not that we're saved by the physical act of baptism, it's not the removal of dirt from the body, but an appeal to God for good conscience." And this is why Jesus commands that every Christian should be baptized, the baptism is an outward action, it's a picture that symbolizes and shows forth that proclaims an inward reality that we have appealed to God's mercy, and we have been saved by grace through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That Jesus is our refuge, Jesus is our salvation.

And so what this means is that in Christ, you were saved. The moment that you repented of your sin and put your faith in Christ, you were saved. We call that justification, but also in Christ, you are being saved by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been saved from the penalty of sin, you are being saved from the power of sin in your life. We call this sanctification. And in Christ, you will be saved. Eventually, from the very presence of sin all together and for all of attorney we call this glorification, that we will be raised, resurrected with Christ, to inherit a new heaven and new earth where sin, sorrow, death and decay will be no more. And what the New Testament tells us to do is in light of this, this is why we must run to Christ for refuse, for salvation, without delay right now.

Peter brings this up again in his second letter, Second Peter chapter three, verse nine. And he tells us this, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all of these things are dust to be dissolved." What sort of people are you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God?

Because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolve and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. When we rightly understand God's awesome power and his holiness and when we personally experience God's saving love and mercy, the only rational response is for us to cast down our idols, and to turn to the one true God. We must repent of our idol worship, but that in of itself is not enough. Point two is we must also repent of our idol worship, our vain worship, our, at times, hypocritical worship.

Psalm 29, verses one and two say, "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." And this last phrase here in verse two, it's not referring to God's holiness, although God is holy, it's talking about, we need to worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. It's about how we worship God, it's the idea that we need to worship the right God, and we need to worship him in the right way.

One of the very first stories in scripture was the story of two brothers, Cain and Abel, who were on their way to worship the Lord. In Genesis 4 says, "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain, a worker of the ground." In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at your door. His desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it."

Pastor Jan preached a really great sermon on this in our first Jesus in Genesis season one series, I think it was maybe the fourth sermon in that series, you should go check that out. But the big ideas that Cain came to God, and he came to give him what he thought he needed to do, what was required of him in order to appease God, in order to keep God off his back. Abel, we're told, gave his gift in faith, he gave his first and he gave his best because he trusted God, he loved God, he had a genuine desire to worship God. And a lot of people, they come to God and they want to come to God like Cain, they want to come and they want to ask, "Okay, what's the bare minimum that I need to do to stay on your good side? Or how far away can I go and tiptoe out into sin before I get on your bad side?"

And really, that's the same mindset the Canaanites brought to their god, Baal. Baal didn't love them. He didn't care for them. There was not a relationship there. He was just this force that they needed to appease for things to go well with them, and when we try to worship God like that, it shows that we really don't know him. We've probably heard this illustration before. When you watch a great movie, when you eat in amazing restaurant, like you can't help but to sing its praises. You want to tell your friends about it, you want to tell everybody what a great experience you had, you want to open up the app and smash the five star review, why would it be any differently with God, when you truly experience God, worship, it comes naturally. You can't but help it giving God the glory that he is due becomes our delight when we know who he truly is.

And so the question for us is that how we come to God and worship? Is that how we are approaching God? If not, the lesson ... actually, the warning here is that you might not be worshipping idols, but your worship might be idol. Your Worship might be in vain. It might be hypocritical. Matthew 15, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah to rebuke the Pharisees. And he said, "You hypocrites." Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, "These people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." In vain do they worship me in idleness, teaching his doctrine, the commandments of man.

And Jesus takes a very hard stance against the Pharisees, and this kind of worship, you got to wonder like, "Why is he so serious about this?" He's serious, because he knows where this leads, it leads to sin. And ultimately, it leads to death. Like Cain, when our heart is not properly in the right place, giving glory to God in worship, sin is right there, crouching at the door, waiting for that opportunity to pounce. Jesus in the book of Revelation, he rebuked the church of Laodicea, for this kind of idol, hypocritical, half hearted worship.

In verse 15, chapter three, he says, "I know your works, you're neither cold nor hot. With that you are either cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." It's not just a problem for individuals. He's talking to an entire church here, and we see what a slippery and dangerous slope this is. It becomes clear just a few verses later in verse 20, where Jesus continues, and he says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone would hear my voice and open the door, I'll come in and eat with him and he, with me." But what's going on here?

That lukewarm worship and affection has now resulted in a church that has effectively excommunicated Jesus. He's locked outside the door. They won't let him in. Do you think that this happens today? Like what would it look like for a church to lock Jesus out? It looks like a church that sneers at his lordship, a church that scoffs at the authority of his word. A church that defiantly rejects his teaching on morality and repentance and sin in laughs makes a mockery of his cross, and this is where idol worship leads.

Second Timothy three, he warned his disciple Timothy that these days would come. Said, "Understand this Timothy. Then in the last days, there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God." Look at verse five, "Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power."

I pray that we would never be a church that settles for merely having the appearance of godliness. I pray that we would be a church that is content with nothing less than Jesus Christ. We must not give in to the worship of false idols, we must also not give into the idleness of false worship. Point three is, we must instead pursue ideal worship. David says, "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." What is ideal worship look like? Jesus answers this in John chapter four. He's having a conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, and in their conversation, she brings up the topic of, "How are we to worship God and Samaritans do it this way, and the Jews do it that way?"

He gives her an answer, and this is what he says. Verse 23, says, "Listen, the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Three things that I want to cover here real quick at the end, that what we see like ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth, and ideal worshipers worship incarnate, and I'll explain what I mean by that. But first and foremost, he says, "You got to worship in spirit." So what does it mean to worship in spirit?

Just one chapter earlier, Jesus was having a conversation about the spirit with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a religious teacher and he told him, "Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, you need to be born again." And Nicodemus is baffled by this and says, "Jesus, how can I be born a second time? I don't understand." Jesus replies, and this is what he tells him in John three, verse six through eight, he says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marble that I said to you, you must be born again, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit."

I read that I'm like, I don't think that would have been a very satisfying answer for Nicodemus, it kind of sounds like Jesus is just trolling him right here. But what he wants him to understand is listen, just as the wind comes and goes as it pleases, the Spirit gives life to whomever he wills, according to God's good purpose, we can't control that any more than we can control the wind. So worshiping in Spirit, starts by recognizing God's sovereignty over everything, even our salvation.

Now, at the same time, Jesus is trying to compel a response in Nicodemus, he's not expecting him to be completely passive. He wants them to do something, and so, there's a mystery, there's a tension here that we need to embrace. That we cannot cause ourselves to be born again any more than we caused our own physical birth. Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerates hearts, and he does this through the proclamation of the gospel. But when we hear the gospel, we also have a responsibility to respond. That by our own free choice, we must respond in repentance.

I had a professor in seminary that compared it to the sails on a ship. Sails actually can't move the ship, they have no power in and of themselves to do that. They can't cause the wind to blow. But when the wind does blow, they need to be up in proper position in order to be filled, in order for that ship to move, and it's not a perfect illustration. But in order for us to worship in Spirit, God must act on our behalf, and we must respond in repentance and faith, approach him with humility. It's about coming to the Lord, not on the basis of who we are, what we've done, or what we could do for him, but on the basis of what he has done for us through Jesus Christ.

David put it like this in Psalm 51. He says, "Oh, Lord, open my lips, I need you to open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering, the sacrifices of God or a broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart, Oh, God, you will not despise." When you do come with that dependence, that humility, we need to worship in Spirit, we also need to worship in truth. Isaiah 66, "Thus says the Lord. The Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, what is the house that you build for me? What is the place of my rest? All these things my hand is made, and so these things came to be." Declares the Lord.

But this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble, and contrite and spirit and trembles at my word, a true worship requires that we would tremble at the word of the Lord. It requires a submission and an obedience to God's word. Jesus put it like this in John 10:27. He says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." My sheep hear my voice, and they don't just go off and do as they will. They hear my voice, I know them, and they follow Me. The Canaanites came up with all kinds of perverse ways to worship their gods, they practice temple prostitution, even child sacrifice at time. And in contrast, God's people need to worship in God's way, and they need to worship in Godly ways, according to his truth in scripture.

Just one practical example. There's a lot of songs, modern worship songs out there today, that we're probably never going to sing here at Mosaic. Because there's a lot of songs out there that are rich in production quality, and sadly bankrupt when it comes to biblical truth. The words that we sing about God, the words that we sing to God, those words matter. But this needs to go well beyond just the words that we sing. This has to do with the life that we live, when we hear Jesus voice, we need to submit to it, we need to follow him. What that means more practically, is that when we're reading this book, or reading scripture, and we come across something that offends us, it's not because the scripture is out of line, it's either we haven't understood it, or else we are out of line. And we need to bring our lives into alignment with God's word.

And we do that, because we trust that Jesus is our shepherd, that his word is not only always right, but his word is always beautiful and good. First John five, one through three says that this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So, ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth and finally, ideal worshipers worship incarnate.

Romans 12, one says, "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God." Paul says, "In light of everything that I've just written to you about God's, his justice and his amazing mercy and grace. Because of that, therefore, you have to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds." True worship is not something that we can compartmentalize to the songs that we sing on a Sunday morning, it needs to be incarnate. What I mean is, it needs to take on flesh, it needs to permeate our daily lives in a transformative way.

This is going to take strength, this is going to take courage. I think this is why David prays for this at the end of Psalm 29. He says, "May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace, to truly live our lives, to give our lives as living sacrifices to God, this is going to take a supernatural courage to not be conformed to the patterns of this world." Just to illustrate this, there's a photograph that's gone viral, you've probably seen it making the rounds online, a photo from Nazi Germany.

You see in the photo, a crowd of people, and at first glance, you see everyone hailing, Hitler doing the Nazi salute. But then you look a little bit closer around, if you can see it there, but there's a guy in the middle and he's just standing there like, "No, I'm not on board with this." You can look into this guy, he actually, from what I understand, was arrested because of his resistance, his rebellion to some of the Nazi laws. His rebellion against them costed him dearly. He faced a lot of hardship in his life because he refused to be conformed to the pattern of that age.

I bring this up because this is a good picture for us to contemplate. That takes guts, that takes courage. And more often than not, to give God the glory that he deserves, is going to require the strength and the courage to defiantly refuse to give that glory to anyone, or to anything else. Be it Baal, Satan, sin, government, culture, even our own selves, no matter the circumstances, no matter the social pressures, no matter the consequences we face or the convenience that compromise might bring, true worship, courageous worship says no to the idols, it says no to the idleness and it does so in order to say yes to the Lord.

This is the kind of worship that got Abel killed. This is the kind of worship that got Daniel thrown to the lions. It got Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown to the fiery furnace, that got the apostles martyred for their faith, and this is the kind of uncompromising worship that got Jesus Christ nailed to a cross. See, Jesus is the true ultimate ideal picture of what it looks like to worship the Lord, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself.

He is our strength, he is our peace, he is the reason that we don't need to fear living our lives, giving our lives as living sacrifices, because we know he was willing to give his life as a dying sacrifice for us, he faced Satan, sin and death, he defeated them through his death and resurrection, the battle has already been won. So when we're tired, when we're weary, when we are discouraged and afraid, Jesus is our Battle Hymn, Jesus is what gives us the courage to say, "Wherever you call me to go, I will go, whatever you tell me to do, I will do, whatever you tell me to say, I will say, because you alone are God, you alone are mighty to save, and you alone are worthy of all praise."

We're going to transition right now into time of communion, and communion is a time where we remember Christ and we remember his sacrifice that made this possible. As you came in, hopefully you were able to grab one of these, if not, feel free to just go in the back and grab one or better just raise your hand, one of the ushers will bring one to you. And you can go ahead and open these up. Inside, the bread, it represents Jesus body that was broken. The cup represents his blood that was poured out for our forgiveness, so that we could be saved from the storm of God's righteous judgment toward our sin.

If you are here today, and you're not a Christian, we'd ask you to refrain from this part of the service, it's not going to do anything for you, there's nothing magical about this. And if you're a Christian who is living in unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain as well. Scripture warns us not to partake of communion in an idol, in an unrepentant manner. But better yet, repent right now, put your faith in Jesus Christ, and if you've done that today, we would welcome you to take communion, and we're going to take communion together right now.

So Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. He said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Amen.

Would you please stand, we're going to spend some time in prayer, and we're going to spend some time worshiping and singing to the Lord together. God, you are awesome, you are holy, you are perfect in every way. God, we marvel at your power, we tremble before the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. In his cross, we see the righteous requirements of your perfect justice unfold display. We also see your tender heart of mercy, your tremendous love for us. We thank you for Jesus, we thank you for the forgiveness that we have in his name, we thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit, we thank you that we have peace through his victory over Satan, sin and death. You alone are good, you alone are God, you alone are worthy of all praise.

Jesus, you are the name that is above every name, and we know that the day will come, when every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that you are Lord to the glory of God the Father, and Lord, we thank you that even now we can praise you, even now we can give you the glory due your name, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can stand before your throne together singing your praise and know that you are here, that you hear us, that you delight in our worship. And so God we come as your children, purchased through the bloody of your Son, Jesus Christ, to thank you and to worship you together. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

Holistic Worship

August 1, 2021 • Psalm 95

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. People in the back, if you fill it out legibly, and then just return it to the welcome table, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. Also, we have a connection card online, on our website, or in the app that you can get in the App Store, or on Google Play. Just search Mosaic Boston. That said, would you please pray with me over the preacher of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God who speaks, that you have given us your word. Indeed, all of creation proclaims the glory and the majesty of God. Every time we go into nature, we meditate upon nature. We hear a sermon from you. We thank you for that natural revelation, but we're even more thankful for the supernatural revelation of your son, Jesus Christ, the eternal word. Jesus, we thank you that you were born, that you lived a perfect life, fully God, fully man's son of God, son of man. You lived a life of total sacrifice, a life of selflessness, a life of love toward God and love toward people. Jesus Christ, despite the fact that you had not sinned, not once, you were crucified by a hard-hearted people, people who they thought were doing the right thing, and yet they were committing the most heinous crime in the history of the universe. Lord, we thank you that you did not remain dead, but on the third day you rose to life, and we thank you that you ascended to heaven, you ascended to the Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for the gift of regeneration, that you are a god who takes our hearts of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh, a heart that's tender to you, and we thank you, great God, that you, along with giving us your eternal word, Jesus Christ, the son of God, give us the living scripture, your word inspired by the Holy Spirit. Your word is given to us to teach us and guide us and illuminate our path, but also to warn us, to rebuke us, to convict us, to show us the deceitfulness of sin in our blind spots. So, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures today, and for every person that's not a Christian, save them today. For every person that is a Christian, give them a vision of their commitment to the church, that they are members of a body, and they are to commit to a church, because true worship is holistic worship, entails all of life, and we need our brothers and sisters to help us with that. Lord, bless our time in the holy scripture. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. We are finishing a sermon series going through some of the choice Psalms that we've been calling balm Psalms because they're like balm to our souls. Today we are in Psalm 95, and then next week we are beginning a three-week series about the values of Mosaic Boston as a church, and along with the values we'll talk about our vision for the next season in life, and after those three weeks we will begin our fall series. Today's sermon, Psalm 95, the title of the sermon is Holistic Worship, and I think it sets us up perfectly for the series coming up. You ever hear anything to this effect, something similar where someone says, "Oh, you go to church to worship? That's nice. That's great. Good for you. I don't need to go to church to worship because I can worship God anywhere. I can worship God as I'm hiking Mount Washington. I can worship God as I'm at the beach in Newport, and I can worship God in nature. I can worship God playing golf or swimming. You choose to worship God with Christians at church. I choose to worship God anywhere. That's what I do." Of course, this is true, somewhat. It's true that you can worship God anywhere. We're called to worship God anywhere and everywhere because we're called to live a life of worship. You can worship God in nature. You can worship God at work. You can worship God at home, sitting on your couch. But of course, that can't be the entirety of your relationship with God, because God calls us into a body of believers, into the church. Jesus Christ didn't just die for individuals. Yes, he did, but individuals whom he brings together into the body of Christ, the bride of Christ. So, St. Peter talks about the fact that every single Christian is a living stone built up into a spiritual house, interlocking with one another, interdependent upon one another. St. Paul used the metaphor that we are a body. We're the body of Christ. We're members of one body of Christ. So, we need to have more, a deeper ecclesiology, and ecclesiology comes from Ecclesia, Churchology, knowledge of the church, theology of the church. The church is a covenantal relationship, and to understand our covenantal relationship with the church, we can look to another covenantal relationship, which is marriage. God calls marriage a covenantal relationship, that you make a covenant with one another to love one another sacrificially, til death do us part, and you can't have a healthy marriage remotely, not long-term. I can't go to my wife and say, "I'm moving out, but we can be married on FaceTime." That's not going to work, and a lot of people do that with church. I'm going to have church remote. I'm going to worship God remotely. Well, you don't understand what worship is, not completely. Worship isn't just singing. Worship is all of your life, and if worship is all of your life, we need brothers and sisters in our lives to hold us accountable, to call us out when we're sinning, to point out blind spots in our lives, blind spots that deceitfully pull us away from God. The scripture says, "Take care, less there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." He's talking to Christians. "But exhort one another daily, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." So, if you say, "I can worship God on my couch," yes, you can praise God, sing songs to God, but to life a holistic life of worship, oh, no. For those who think that that's what they should do, I actually have been meditating on a great business idea. If anyone has extra capital, you can invest in this business idea, maybe a patent. I want to create a couch that zaps people, like an electric shock whenever it knows that you're sinning. Christians would buy it and be like, "No, one episode of Netflix is enough. You're on season three," zap. It would zap you out of it. It's like, "Oh, you're watching a sermon at home? No, you can't go to a different tab," zap. So, we can talk about that after. So, couches don't convict you of sin. Mountains don't convict you of sin. Trees don't convict you of sin. The Holy Spirit does, and so do brothers and sisters. So, true worship is holistic, all of life obedient worship, and you don't get all of life obedient worship without conviction, without accountability. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, "Let us consider how to stir up one another, to love in good works, not neglecting to meet together, physically to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day, the judgment day drawing near." This is how I want to encapsulate this Psalm, Psalm 95, because this is how Hebrews Chapter Three and Four interprets the Psalm. It quotes it at length, and it brings it in with a pastoral exhortation. I'm not going to quote Hebrews Three and Four today at length, but definitely go home and meditate. Maybe with your community group you can bring that in as we study Psalm 95. Would you please look at Psalm 95 with me? Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are the depth of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. When your Fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work, for 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest. This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our heart. Three points to frame up our time together, worship God with your lips, worship God with your love, and worship God with your life. First, worship God with your lips. The people of God, Israel, were dispersed at the time of the writing of this Psalm, dispersed hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem, from where the Temple of God was built, from where the presence of God was to be understood to be. So, the people of God, where they lived, they had synagogues where they would gather together on the Sabbath day where the word of God was read, and they would hear the word, they would pray, they would sing worship songs to God, but three times a year God says, "I want all of the people of God to gather together in Jerusalem," and many of them as pilgrims had to travel a long distance. So, for days they would travel. They'd walk 15, 20 miles a day with their families on the way to Jerusalem, and this Psalm seems to be written in order to exhort them on the way because every critical juncture of the Psalm, every breakdown is almost like a stop at a station on the way to worship God. It retraces the major stops, and what they're doing here is in verse one, the first verse says they're encouraging one another. Keep going. Oh, come. Let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Sing and make a noise. So, there's voices that are singing to God, and then the noises are the instruments that they're bringing. They're worshiping God with instruments. In several sermons already we've talked about the importance of worshiping God with singing and with praise, and expressing emotion as we're worshiping. I think we as a church are growing and that. I've even heard clapping recently. People are bobbing and weaving just a little bit. I see a hand go up every once in a while. Tremendous, tremendous. So, that's not what I want to focus on, but I just want to say I had a gal in my community group, and she's from Nigeria, and she's like, "Oh, thank you so much for talking about expressing emotions in sermons. I'm from Nigeria. Let me tell you, we have a long way to go." I was like, "I know, I know, but you should've seen where we came from. A few years ago, we are the frozen chosen. We're not going to express any emotion at all." So, continuing growing in that, but that's not what I want to focus on in this Psalm because this Psalm doesn't just focus on the singing or making the noise. It's focusing on God. It focuses on Yahweh. So, the name of God, the covenantal name of God when he reveals himself to Moses, when God meets Moses through the burning bush, and Moses says, "Look, you're calling me to go and lead the people of God out of captivity, out of slavery in Egypt, but if they ask what's your name, what's your name, at least?" and God says, "I am that I am, and this is the covenantal name. I'm the God of relationship. I'm Yahweh." Three times, in verse one, three, and six, Yahweh is used, but together with the synonyms and the pronouns for Yahweh, he's referring to 26 times. The Psalm is about God, and he calls God the rock of our salvation. For salvation, they meant salvation from captivity, from physical, literally slavery in Egypt, and he's the rock of our salvation because he's a refuge. He's solid, stable. He's a place of safety, but also in the context of the Psalm's reference at the end to Meribah and Massah in the wilderness, the rock most likely refers to the rock at Horeb, through which God provides for Israel water from a rock, and the story is that Israel is traveling from Egypt to Rephidim, and they couldn't find water, and without water, everyone would die, and they say this. They begin to get angry with Moses, and they said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" The Lord told Moses, "Hey, take your staff, the same staff with which you did miracles, with the same stuff with which you parted Red Sea, with all of that, take it, strike the rock," and water came out, and the people were satiated with the water. The rock denotes God's stability, safety, security that he provides for us. He's the rock of our salvation. In the New Testament, the rock of our salvation is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ tells a parable where he says, "Hey, there's a wise builder, and there's a foolish builder." The foolish builder decides to build a house for himself on sand. The storms come, and obviously, the house is taken down. The wise man takes the words of Jesus Christ and doesn't just listen to them, but understands them and obeys them. That's the foundation for his life. Do the storms come to the Christian? Yes, they do, just like the non-Christian. Every single one of us goes through storms. The question is, what foundation are you building your life on? Jesus Christ says that the foundation is Jesus Christ. He's the cornerstone, but the foundation isn't just Jesus Christ. It's also Jesus Christ and his words, and our obedience to the words of Christ. That's the foundation. He is our rock, and he is our rock of salvation. He saves us from the penalty of sin, and he saves us from the deep-soul thirst deep inside, that even leads us to sin. In John 4:14, Jesus speaking to the woman at the well says, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." We have a thirst deep inside of us, every single one of us, a soul thirst, not a physical thirst, and only Jesus Christ can meet that thirst with himself. He is that water. He sends the water of Holy Spirit that wells up to eternal life. So, as the pilgrims, they travel, they enter the Court of the Gentiles, and the temple had three main parts, the Holy of Holies only a high priest could enter into, and then there was the chamber or the Court of the Israelites. This is the people of God who were Jewish, and the people of the covenant, and then there was the Court of the Gentiles. The Court of the Gentiles, everyone could enter, but only people who were part of the covenant people could enter the Court of Israel. So, now they enter the Court of the Gentiles, and this is where they continue to rejoice. In verse two, let us come to his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with the songs of praise. Literally, come into his presence is let us come before his face, and it underlines the reality of the meaning that we are coming before God, and we're going to look in his eyes. We're going to see his smile. We are prepared to meet God. There's an expectation and anticipation that I'm not just here to sing. I'm not just here to hear a person speak. I'm here to meet God. I'm coming into his presence, this preparation here, and as we come into his presence, we must be thankful, can't but be thankful. Thankful for what? For the fact that God made us. We didn't make ourselves. He is our maker. He made us. He sustains us. He provides for us, and the Lord saves us. We need to deepen our spiritual discipline of thanksgiving. We need to learn to thank God for the smallest things. Do you ever cook a meal for someone, and you worked hard at cooking that meal, and you're watching them enjoy that meal, you're like, "Is that good?" They're like, "Oh, that's so good," and what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? The person just gets up, finishes the meal, and puts the dish in the sink, just walks away. Not only did you not thank me, but you didn't wash the dish? You thankless, thankless... We expect that as human beings. We expect, hey, I did this thing for you. Just say thank you. That's all I want. I don't want you to Venmo me for the meal. I don't want anything. I'll even wash the thing if you just say thank you. How much more so the God of the universe just gives us gift upon gift, upon gift, a God who provides for all of our needs? This week I was just feeling a little fluffy. I was like, "I got to go on a diet," and I didn't use the word diet because men don't diet. Men lean out, and I was like, "I got to just lean out just a little bit," and then it just hit me, I'm like, "My goodness. How blessed are we?" Because my dad immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1989, and I remember my dad, as a kid, I look at my dad, he was always in shape, and then all of a sudden he grew a little belly, and he comes up, he's like, "Where did this belly come from? I guess I need to go on a... What's that thing called?" He didn't even know the word. He had never used the word diet in his whole life because of rations, and you go to supermarket, and you're like, "Oh, there's nothing there. All right. I'm going to have to go find a chicken somewhere." That's a completely different life, but God is so good to us in many, many... You got to thank him for his goodness. Then in Psalm 95:3, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods for... Why are we worshiping him? Not just because we're thankful, because of who he is. He is a great God. He's a great king above all gods. In the ancient Pagan world, they had different gods for different people, different gods for different geographical regions, different gods for cosmic regions, in heaven, earth, the netherworld, different gods over different aspects of life, war, fertility, harvest, but Yahweh is a great God. He's a king above all gods. Obviously, there's no other gods. The other nations worshiped other gods, which actually had demons behind them, but God is God over everything. I take solace, I take comfort in the fact that God is a king over anyone in authority. That's what he's saying. We live in a day and age where we look at politicians, we look at people in authority. We live in a nation of checks and balances. How is that working out? Not so well. Who's doing the checking? Who's doing the balancing? I want God to do the checking and the balancing, and he is, and he is, and I take comfort in that. Whatever happens, I know God is king over everything. The Proverbs tells that God takes the hearts of kings, and the hearts of kings or politicians or rulers, it's like water in his hands. He guides it wherever he chooses. God is a great God, a great king. Psalm 95:4 through 5, in his hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are also his. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands, plural, formed the dry land. So, God created everything, formed it with his hands, and he holds it all with his hand. It's just a flex, like, "I created everything with two hands. I can hold everything with one hand." Colossians says about Jesus Christ that in him all things hold together. Here, this a poetic device of Merism, naming a pair of opposites, which obviously includes the whole, the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountain. Obviously, he holds everything, the sea and the dry land. He holds everything. So, vertically, from low to high, horizontally, from sea to dry land, he holds everything in between. Try and imagine God's almighty hand, that wherever you go, you go to the very top, you go to the lowest low, he is there. Nothing and nowhere is beyond the reach of God, and this is a comfort for the Christian, but whose hands are the most meaningful hands in your life? I was thinking of that, and I think it was a Dove commercial, soap, and it was a Mother's Day commercial where they took a bunch of little kids and they blindfolded them, and then they had a lineup of their moms, the moms of all the little kids, and then each little kid, blindfolded, would go up to each mom and touch their hands, and by touching their hands had to figure out who was his mom. I love that. It's a tearjerker. It's awesome because hands are so meaningful to us. Today's my dad's birthday, and I was meditating on my dad's hands. We grew up painting together. Coming home from work, as his hands are just callused with paint all over, I'll never forget just his hand veins bulging. Hands are meaningful to us, especially as children, and here he says that God holds everything in his hand, and we are part of that everything, so we too are in his hand. Finally, the pilgrims arrive at the gate, as close to the holy place as possible. They enter the Court of Israel, and this is the second part of the sermon, worship God with your love. 95:6 says, "Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker." So, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, but loving God is categorically different than loving anything or anyone else. Many of us, when we think that God tells us to love him, that Jesus calls us his friends, that we are somewhat equals. We are not. God is in a category different than us, categorically different than us, and loving God, therefore, by definition, is categorically different. You're loving the God of the universe. Therefore, it's not a whimsical love. It's not just a sentimental love, this is how I feel about God. It's a reverent love, a fearful love, a love with trepidation, a love that includes bowing down physically. Verse six, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. It's a display of submission to the great king, the bodily posture, physically. You bow down. I think we as believers, you got to make that a regular rhythm, a daily rhythm of life where you get on your knees before the king of the universe. Get on your knees. Enter his presence. It reminds you that he is great, and we are not. He is God, and we are not. Jesus did this. This is how he prayed. We too are called to pray like this. Obviously, we can pray without ceasing. You can pray while you're driving. You can pray right before you fall asleep. I think on a daily basis you got to get on your knees before God, say, "God, I humble myself before you." It's a physical act of submission, of humility, of reverence, and ultimately, of love. There's three words in this Psalm in English that are translated. Verse one, oh, come, verse two, let us come, and in verse six here, oh, come, and they're different words in Hebrew meaning different things. Halak means to come as in walking. Let us come into his presence. Qiddem means let us come closer, approach, and then here the word is bo, let us enter. Let us enter. The closer that we get to his presence, the more humility and fear there must be. Verses seven and eight, for he, why are we bowing? Why are we kneeling? He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. So, he brings in everything. He just said God holds everything in his hand, and we are the sheep of his hand, the same hands that made everything that exists, the same hands that holds us. We are in the creator's hand, the same creator, God, elected Israel, who elected Israel, elected us, brought us into his hand, and he guides us and sustains us as a shepherd does sheep, and this is very... It's covenantal language, relationship language. He is our God. He is our shepherd. He is holding us in his hand. We are the sheep of his pasture. At Mount Sinai, God told Israel the following, "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings, and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the nations, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests in the holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel." Well, how'd that go? God said to Israel, "I'm going to save you, and if you obey my word, if you obey my commandments, I'm going to keep you as my treasured possession." How did that go? Well, not so well because they didn't keep his word. They sinned against him. They were stiff-necked against him. They were hardhearted toward him, so God cast them out of the Promised Land into exile in Babylon, and that's the same pattern that we see all throughout the scripture. This is what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sinned against the holy God, and God says, "Go." He banishes them from the Garden of Eden. Then God then recreates a new people, chooses Abraham, creates a covenant of people, makes a covenant with them, and says, "I'm going to give you a Promised Land," and then the people of God are brought out of captivity, free from captivity, and then in the desert they sin against God with hardheartedness, stiff-necked, and then God says, "This generation, you're going to die here in the desert," including Moses, who didn't enter the Promised Land. Then God tells the people a third time, "Hey, you can stay in the Promised Land you if obey me." They did not. So, what hope is there for us? If God says, "Obey my commandments. If you do, I'm going to protect you. Then you will be mine. Be good. Then I will bless you," if that's the pattern for us, what hope is there? Because not one of us is perfect. Not one of us has never sinned. Therefore, we're so thankful that God said the following. He said, "Look. I'm going to make a new covenant." Jeremiah 31:31 through 33, through the prophet Jeremiah, "Behold the days that are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their Fathers. On the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband," declares the Lord, "for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." God says, "A day is coming where I'm going to make a covenant such that I'm going to write, inscribe, emblazon the word of God on the hearts of my people." How does that happen? Through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes as a human being, lives a perfect life, a life of perfect submission to God, holistic worship to God, the Father, and the power of the Holy Spirit, never sinned, was tenderhearted toward God and toward people the whole time, even when people rejected him, even when people were hardhearted to him, and then Jesus Christ, right before going to the cross, he knows exactly what's about to happen. He's about to bear the wrath of God upon himself. At that moment, he has a decision to make. He knows what God's will is. God the Father's will was for him to go to the cross as a substitution or sacrifice for each one of us, and Jesus is wrestling with God as Jacob wrestled with an angle, and Jesus says, "Father, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done," and Jesus remained tenderhearted and says, "Not my will, but yours be done," goes to the cross, bears the wrath of God on behalf of us, experiences God's heart hardening. God turned from his son, banished his son. That's why Jesus Christ cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the presence of God, therefore, the rest of God. Jesus died, and on the third day, by God's grace, he was raised by the power of God and ascended to heaven to send us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives us access to the presence of God through spiritual regeneration, that when we repent of sin, turn to him, our heart of stone is taken out, a heart that's hard toward God, and replaced with a heart of flesh, a heart that beats toward God, a tender heart, a heart that follows Jesus willingly, a heart that responds. So, in the Garden of Eden God says, "Go. You're out. You're out. Get out," and then through the gospel Jesus Christ says, "I was banished on your behalf, so now you can come." The gospel is what turns the get out to come let us worship, come enter the presence of God. In John 10:27 through 30, Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." First two stanzas of the Psalm, they encourage people to worship God with their lips and with their love, and our worship isn't centered on what we get out of church, the edification that we get, the inspiration that we get. No, our worship is centered on who God is, what he deserves, and what we give him. Our worship is turning our lives over to him completely, the service of worship, the service of surrender. So, how do you know that you are truly worshiping God with your lips and with your love? Because Jesus Christ goes to Pharisees in Matthew 19, quoting Isaiah 29, and he says, "These people, they worship me with their lips. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." How does he know that their lips are just giving God lip service, and that their hearts are far from God? How did he know that? Because he just sees their lives. It's your life that proves whether your worship of your lips and of your love is really, really, really true. It's your love. Do you obey God? This is point three. Worship God with your life. The third stanza here assumes the pilgrims are now kneeling in the temple. They're bowing, they're kneeling, and they're listening. They were singing. They were making noise. Now they're bowing and kneeling, and then they suddenly hear the high priest say in verse seven, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. As at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness when your Fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work." The Psalm begins by urging people, "Make noise in worshiping him." Now they're like, "Be quiet. It's time for you to hear the word of God, and by listening to the word of God, if you hear the word of God, it assumes obedience. You listen in order to obey. That's true listening." The historical context here is Israel is on the journey through the wilderness, and they complain to Moses about a lack of water, as we mentioned. The text is Exodus 17:1 through 7. All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink," and Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So, Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me," and the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people taking with you some of the others of Israel, and taking in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of that place Massah and Meribah. Because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us, or not?" Massah means testing. Meribah means contention. They tested the Lord by saying, "Aren't you the same God who saved us? Can you really do what you did before?" They're testing him for a self-centered demand, and they questioned God, "Is the Lord really among us?" From where does this question, this contention, this questioning of the spirit, where does it come from? It comes from a place of suffering. They're experiencing physical suffering, and they think, "God, if you were great, and if you were good, if you can do all things and if you are loving toward us, then why are you allowing us to go through the pain of this suffering?" They didn't understand that God was preparing them to become a people strong enough to go into battle against the people in the Promised Land. They didn't understand the suffering had a purpose. They were experiencing suffering, and from that suffering they got really self-centered, and they said, "God, you no longer love us, and God, you are no longer great." So, yeah, God gives them that water, but then he also punished them. Yeah, you want water? But you're going to miss out on the Promise Land, and this generation who lived in the desert died in the desert. Psalms 78, commenting on this text, in spite of all this, they still sinned. Despite his wonders... They saw all the wonders, all the 10 plagues that God sent against Egypt, everything that God did to save them, miracle upon miracle, despite its wonders, they did not believe. So, he made their days vanish like a breath in the years in terror. When he killed them, they saw him. They repented and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the most high God, the redeemer, but they flattered him with their mouths. They lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him. They were not faithful to his covenant. They saw God's miracles, didn't believe, questioned God. God sends consequences and they're like, "God, sorry. We're never going to do this again," and then they do the same thing. They flatter him with their mouths, and that's really a question. Softness of heart toward God is obedience toward God. If you love God, you obey God. My youngest daughter Milana, she's four, and I noticed this recently. She's a master emotional manipulator. She is. She knows the buttons to press to get whatever she wants, so she throws around the L word all the time. "Daddy, I love you. I love you so much. You're my favorite. I love you." I'm like, "Great. Go clean your room." "Oh, Daddy, I love you." "Go clean your room." "I just want to bask in your love." "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. That's love. Go clean your room." They were saying the same, and this is what a lot of Christians do. It's like, "I'm going to sing worship songs to God," and God's like, "Well, that's nice. I also gave you a lot of commandments, and you're breaking a lot of them. If you truly love me, then you love me with this reverential love that's all life-encompassing," and that's what hardness of sin is. What's hardness of heart? What's hardness of heart? I'm not going to obey. I'm going to obey. I'm going to pick and choose, but it's a decision of the will. Volitionally, I am not going to obey. Either it's too hard to not sin, or I love the sin too much. The hardness of heart is picking and choosing what God said, cutting out parts of scripture, "Nope, that's not for me. Nope, that's not for me," standing over scripture. Jesus Christ gives us a parable of the sower in Matthew 13, and the sower is sowing the seed that is the word of God, so the sower is like an evangelist or a preacher, someone who's proclaiming the word of God, and there's four different levels of soil, so to speak, and he's sowing the seed, and the first one falls on a path, and the path, this is where people walk. It was hard, hard soil, and the seed falls on top. It can't penetrate, and then a bird comes and snatches it, and Jesus said that that's Satan stealing the word of God from a heart. The second one is soil, but it's not deep. There's rocks in it. There's stones in it, and the seed falls and plants, spreads some roots, and then we see that the sun comes up and scorches the plant. The third one falls among thorns, and it begins to grow, and it's doing great, and Jesus said they accepted the word of God with joy, but when difficulty comes, when persecution comes, when battling sin becomes more difficult, the thorn grows, and after a while it chokes out the life of this plant, and Jesus said that those thorns are cares of the world, deceitfulness of riches, but then there's good soil that's produced, that allows the seed to go deep. The root system goes deep, and it produces fruit and grain a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold, and Jesus said that this soil, that this heart is the heart that hears God's word, has ears to hear, understands God's word, and obeys God's word, and that final step, that's really true listening. I wonder, how do you prepare yourself to hear God's word? How do you prepare yourself to hear God's word? There's practical things you can do. Saturday, get a great night's sleep. Sunday, have a great cup of coffee. In a couple weeks, we are moving the time of our services up 15 minutes. I know. I'm sorry, but coinciding with that, we're offering coffee, Starbucks Coffee. It's coming back. Praise God. Hallelujah. No carb, no bagels from Bruegger's because we care about you and your health. But you got to prepare yourself, that you walk in, and I'm not just talking about physically. I'm talking about your heart. I'm coming into the presence of God. I'm coming to hear the word of God. There's different ways of listening to God's word and the proclamation of God's word, or even when you read. The prideful of, "I've already heard this," and the longer you're in the faith, the easier it is to give into the temptation of, "I've already heard this," and then there's the humble listening of, "God, what do I need to be reminded of?" There is a thing where the Holy Spirit, when the word of God is proclaimed, and sometimes I'm listening to a sermon and it's not even what the pastor is talking about, the Holy Spirit just brings something to mind and speaks a word into my mind, into my heart, and I know it's from God, and because of the preparation, that God, I'm here to accept your word. So, how do we prepare our hearts? We say, "God, whatever you say, I want to hear it. I want to understand it. I want to think through, meditate upon it, and I want to obey it, whatever it is, no matter how hard it is. I know if you command it, that your will is good, and I know if you command it, you will give me strength to do it no matter how hard or seemingly impossible it is." This is what the great Augustine said. "Lord, command what you will, and grant what you command. God, command whatever you want, as long as you give me the strength to do the thing that you call me to," and by writing this thing, Augustine of Hippo, he provoked one of the greatest controversies in church history in the fifth century. This prayer provoked or stimulated the British monk Pelagius to write his false or heretical theology. Pelagius heard this teaching, and then he goes to Rome, and he sees the Christians in Rome, and he sees the priests and the pastors in Rome who are living in moral laxity, who weren't living in the commandments of God, and he attributed the spiritual malaise to Augustine, to the fact that Augustine said that people can't be righteous unless God gives them strength to be righteous. What Pelagius should've understood is that these people did not understand Augustine, that they used Augustine's quote as justification to live a life of licentiousness. Well, I'm going to any way I want because God is a God of grace. He's going to forgive me, no matter what. That's licentiousness. So, here Pelagius comes in with legalism, and with legalism he says, "No, no, no, no. If God commands that we do something, it implies the fact that we can do it in and of ourselves, that we shouldn't have to ask for grace in order to be obedient if God tells us to do something," and in order to make this theology work, he had to reject the idea or theology of original sin, that we're born as sinners. So, what he said was, "Adam and Eve, because of their fall into sin, they themselves were the only ones who had the sin nature, but everyone who was born afterwards has a clean, righteous, pure, holy nature, and every single one of us, we can be perfect because Jesus said, 'Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.'" Two problems with this theology. Problem number one is Romans 5, which clearly says... St. Paul says, "No. Every single one of us inherited the sin nature of Adam and Eve. We're all born sinners." That's the first problem with Pelagian theology. The second one is babies. The second one is children. If you know children, and I think Pelagius was probably a single guy who wasn't married, had no kids, because if he had kids, he would not write this false theology. Babies are born as wicked, degenerate, corrupt, evil little beings. They're all Pagan. They're growing up Pagan. They're not born worshiping God. They're not born serving Mom and Dad. No. They're self-centered. They think they're the center of the universe, and the only reason why God makes them as cute as possible is so that we don't leave them at the edge of the forest. That's why. We're all sinners by nature and by choice. So, now we're left with the conviction of if God calls us to do something, can we do it in and of ourselves? This is where Augustine is helpful, and he says, "Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect free will and perfect moral liberty." After the fall, we still have a will. You can do whatever you want after church. You can go have lunch. You can go to the park. You can go take a nap. You got a will, but the moral liberty isn't there, that in and of ourselves we cannot choose the things of God. We cannot choose God himself and the way that God calls us to be obedient. To him, only God's grace can restore our moral liberty, and thanks be to God through the gospel by the Holy Spirit, he does through the regeneration of our hearts. Christianity declares that you can change, that when God calls you to do something, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, God's right there with you. He's the one working in us. He's working the salvation in us to work into will for his good pleasure. So, we can change, no matter how hardhearted, how callous, how insensitive, how desensitized you are. You can be tenderhearted, loving toward God and people through the gospel. Ephesians 4:31 through 31, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let old bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander but put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." He says, "Be tenderhearted, not because your parents were tenderhearted to you, not because if no one has ever hurt you, then be tenderhearted." No. We've all been hurt, but his commandments come with power if you believe in the word of God, that he says, "Be tenderhearted." With that word comes the power of God to do what he said to do, so we need to believe, and then we need to do. What is the power? Where do we get the power to be tenderhearted? Where do we get the power to obey God? He says, "Because God in Christ forgave you." Have you been wronged? Yes. Have we wronged God? Yes. Did God remain hardhearted toward us? No. God remained tenderhearted. He loved us even when we were still sinners, and if God can forgive us, then he gives us the power to forgive others. The command is love. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love people. That's the command. Where's the power? Where do we get the power of love? The power comes from you are loved. The power comes from being loved. When you understand that you are loved by God, so much so that he gave his son to die on the cross for us, that's how much you are loved, and that's the power to then do the commandment of loving. Worship isn't just singing songs to God. Worship is doing what God told us to do, even make the greatest sacrifice. So, what did God expect from the people at Meribah and Massah? What did he expect at Mount Horeb when they're seemingly dying of thirst? What's he expecting from them? He's expecting them to say, "God, you brought us this far, and we don't know how you're going to come through, but we trust that you're going to come through, and even if we die, we're going to be in your presence, and we choose that rather than disobeying you, rather than being hardhearted, rather than questioning or contending with you." That's true worship. God, I'm willing to sacrifice whatever you're calling me to sacrifice. That's true worship. We did the study of Abraham in the Jesus and Genesis series. Abraham, God finally sends him the promised son, Isaac. He waited decades for Isaac, and then Isaac is grown up, God tells Abraham, "Hey, I want you to take your son, your beloved son, your only son, and I want you to sacrifice him," and Abraham obeys. They get to the mountain after a three-day trek. They get to the mountain, and what does Abraham say to his servants? What does he say? He said, "Isaac and I are going up to the mountain," to do what? What's he say? Going up to worship. Going up to worship? He's going up to sacrifice his son. Well, that's worship. God, I'm willing to sacrifice whatever you're calling me to sacrifice. That's worship. That's how much I love you, and it's not just lip service. I'm willing to do it, and I am doing it. The contrast of that is Jonah. God calls Jonah to go preach the gospel in Nineveh. He runs the opposite way to Tarshish, and then God sends a storm, and then all the sailors know it's because of Jonah. It's his fault. They go down, and he's at the bottom of the ship, and they said, "Hey, man, it's because of you. We know it's because of you. What'd you do?" and he says, "Oh, yeah. It's because of me. It's because I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, and I fear God." No, you don't. You're not fearing God because you're not obeying God. You're not worshiping God. The true worship is holistic worship, to sacrifice everything. Psalm 95:10 through 11, "For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said they are a people who will go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest." Strong words. "I loath that generation." So great was Israel's unbelief that rebellion aroused the feeling of revulsion in the heart and mind of God. It's not that they didn't know his ways. They didn't want to follow his ways, and they went astray in their heart. What kept them from trusting in God, it was fear, fear for loss of life or fear for loss of things that they had. In Matthew 11:28 through 29, Jesus says the following. "Come to me, all who labor in our heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." True rest is found in the presence of God. In the presence of God, Jesus offers us, in the mission of God. He's not just calling us to get our sins forgiven. He's not just calling us to come and have everything we've done in our background wiped out. He's calling us to a mission. He's calling us to take a yoke upon ourselves with him, a yoke that actually is work for him that leads to spiritual rest, and this is true holistic worship. Romans 12:1 through 2, "I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Hebrews Chapter Three quotes the third stanza of Psalm 95. That's seven through 11 of Hebrews 3. I'm not going to quote that, but I will close with this before we transition to Holy Communion. Hebrews 3:12 through 13, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you," Christians, he's talking to Christians, "Take care brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." We need to be aware. We need to have brothers and sisters in our lives who also are aware of the sin in our lives because of the deceitfulness of sin. We are to examine ourselves, where we are in terms of worshiping God with our lips, worshiping God with our love, and worshiping God with our lives. This is why God gave us Communion. Jesus Christ gave us Communion as a time for self-examination and a time for renewing our commitment to the Lord. For whom is Holy Communion? Holy Communion is giving for repentant Christians. So, if you're a non-Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. If you do choose to repent of your sin and trust in Jesus Christ today, you're welcome to partake. Also, if you are a Christian who is living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or repent of that sin today, turn from it, and partake. First Corinthians 11:23 through 32, "For I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me in the same way also.'" He took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance for me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread of drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself." That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. If you would like to partake in Communion and have not received a cup and bread, please raise your hand, and one of our ushers will give you one. In the meantime, I'm going to pray as we prepare to partake in Holy Communion. Heavenly Father, we thank you for lavish grace, your love that's not just a sentimental love, but is true, volitional, sacrificial love that you gave your beloved son, and Jesus, we thank you that you love us and it's not just a sentimental or sappy love. It is a sacrificial love, that you gave yourself for us. We pray, Lord Jesus, as we remember your suffering on the cross on our behalf. Indeed, the physical pain was excruciating. The spiritual pain was exponentially so, as you felt, you experienced, you bore the wrath of God that we deserve. God the Father turned from you, banished you. You went through that to give us access, so that you now tell us, "Come. All who are burdened and heavy-laden, come. Find rest for your souls." Lord, we repent of sin and we pray that you remove any hardheartedness. I pray you make us a people willing to obey, willing to hear your word, understand your word, because people are willing to obey, and give us the power to do it. Bless our time in Holy Communion now. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. If this is your first time with us, take the top off to take the little piece of bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread, and after breaking it he said, "This is my body, broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." Then proceeded to take the cup, and he said, "This cup is the cup of a new covenant in my blood, which poured out for the sins of many. Take drink, and do this is in remembrance of me." Heavenly Father, we thank you for speaking to us today through your word. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for impressing God's word upon our hearts. Make us a people who are ready to hear your word and obey your word, and Lord, when we fall short, I pray that you give us a grace, a grace that empowers us to get up and to keep going. Make us a people who love you, and people who love you not just with words and not just with sentiment, but people who love you with our whole lives, with our wills, with our time, with our treasure, with our talents. Continue to bless each one of us, continue to build your church here, and continue to bless us so that we can continue to do your work. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

We’re here. We’re gone. We’re there.

July 25, 2021 • Psalm 90

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we're so glad you're here, we'd love to connect with you. If you'd like to connect with us, we do that through the connection card, either the physical one. You can get in the back at the welcome center and then when you fill it out, just return it at the same place. And then you can also get the virtual connection card in the app, in the app store, in Google Play. Just search Mosaic Boston or on our website, http://mosaicboston.com. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Lord, we thank you for the reminder from the holy scriptures today as we study Psalm 90 written by your servant Moses. We thank you for the reminder that you are eternal from everlasting to everlasting, and that we are ephemeral, temporary. We're here, but for a short time, and then we're gone. And we thank you for the reminder that we do not disappear, that in a sense, we too are eternal. Every single one of us has an eternal soul and we will spend eternity somewhere. Lord, you have written eternity upon our hearts, but for many of us, we can barely see the word eternity, it's as if it's been written in pencil. And I pray today, Lord, and blazing it on our hearts with fire from heaven that we are eternal, we will spend eternity somewhere. And every single person alive, every single person with whom we converse, with whom we relate, they too are eternal. And show us, Lord, that we have been deluded by the evil one to forget eternity, focus on here and now, focus on the material, focus on this world, focus on our money, focus on our families, focus on politics, focus on the economy, focus on stuff which will all pass away. And the enemy does this so that we do not remember what's most important. But there are only three things that are eternal, which is the Holy Trinity, God's word and eternal souls. So with every single ounce of our being, with every single minute of our lives, we are to do everything we can in order to focus on the eternal, further the eternal, to wake people up to the truth of life, the truth of eternity. Holy Spirit, we welcome you now in order to revive us, awaken us, send down that fire from heaven and make us a people who united around this vision, that there is no division in body, that there are not multiple visions. For what we are to do as a body, as a church, there's one vision, and that's to live, to glorify God, to proclaim his word to eternal souls. So I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures, and we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. We're in a sermon series going through some of the choices Psalms. Next week will be the last season there and then we're going to do a three week series on the identity of Mosaic, love Jesus, simple. And then after that, we'll start our new series. Today, we are in Psalm 90. The title of the sermon is we're here, we're gone, we're there. We're here, we're gone, we're there. So we're talking about death today. So just prepare yourself, brace yourself for that. And just to lighten things up just for a bit, before we get really dark really quick, I've got a meme for you. Here it is. Oh, no, didn't show up. Oh no, it's a good one too. Oh no, technical difficulties. Satan doesn't want you to see that meme. Oh man. Could I find it? How fast can I find it? All right. Twitter, Elon Musk real quick because that's where I got it this morning. I was like, "This is from the Lord." Oh man. Okay. So it's a picture, a bulletin board in the elementary school. And it said Halloween on the side and then it's got little quotes from little kids about what they're scared of most. There's a little kid with a backwards hat and it says, "What scares you most?" And he says, "Werewolves, werewolves," by Paul. And then there's Nina. What scares you most Nina? And she says, "Sharks." And I can relate. And then Dylan, to answer the question, what scares you most? He says the unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all towards an inevitable death. And then there's Katherine at the bottom. It says, "What scares you most?" And she says, "Dylan." It's so true. And the reason why it's funny, it's because it's a little kid who's meditating on death. And another little kid seeing the little kid meditating on death is scared of that little kid, because we are conditioned in our culture to not think about death. We live in a world of distractions, of diversions and because distractions and diversions, therefore delusions. And in a sense, we're amusing ourselves to death with social media, with entertainment, with movies, with just content, content, content and we're too busy to find the truth, what's most important to us, what's most important if we made a list. It's our education, our jobs, our housing, our family, our leisure, our entertainment. We work for the weekend. We enjoy the weekend, the Sunday scaries, we're back to work. We do what everyone does, what everyone has done, what everyone will do. How often do we pause? How often do we sit still and meditate? In our lives there's lots of movement and very little progress. So many of us live lives with so little time thinking about what is to come because we live as if life is all there is. And that's the lie that we've bought, life is there is therefore get the most out of life, grab life by the horns. You only live once, therefore get your bucket list and just go down that list. That's what life is all about. And this is one of Satan's most compelling lies. And it's so compelling because it's so chock full of truth. It's so compelling because it's wrapped in so much truth. The more truth in a lie, the more compelling it is. Therefore, the most compelling lies are actually 99.99% truth. And we got to discern where's the 0.1%? Life is short, truth. We die, fact. James says we're mist, we're vapor, we're a transient whisper fog. But what about the 0.1%? Life is all there is. That's a lie. Life is not all there is. There's more after this life. And if you're honest with yourself, you know that. When's the last time you've been at a funeral? At any funeral, they say the same stuff. Any funeral, Christian, pagan, any religion, they say the same stuff. Oh, Joe here, he lived a good life. He's a good man. He loved his friends, he loved his family, et cetera. Joe is in a better place. I've never been to a funeral where people are just honest. Pagans are honest, atheists are honest, agnostics are honest. Joe is dead, he is not. His corpse is underground and he's pushing up daisies because he's warm food. No one says that. Everyone says there is a better place. Oh, there is. Of course, there is. We know this. It's written on our hearts. It comes from outside of us this lie that this life is all there is. If you pause, if you meditate, if you look deep inside your heart and you see what's written there, you'll see the word eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has written eternity upon our hearts. It's an indelible yearning in our hearts for more than this life. And it's true, you will live forever. You will live forever either with God on his terms in heaven or without God on your terms in hell. So the Latin phrase that they meditated upon in the Roman empire is quō vādis, where are you going? And Satan wants you to fix your eyes on the material. And I'm not just talking to unbelievers, I'm talking about believers. He wants everybody. He wants the church of Christ, he wants to immobilize us by getting us fixed on the problems of this world. And he wants us veering off course, either slightly right or slightly left. And God tells us to set your minds on things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Are your eyes set on the things that are above, on true north? Well, if your eyes are set on true north where Christ is, on Christ, then you know where you are and you know where you to go. And only then will you be able to number your days that you may get a heart of wisdom as Psalm 90 verse 12 says. Today we're in Psalm 90. Would you please look at the text with me? Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say, "Return O children of man." For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it has passed or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood, they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning, it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening, it fades and withers. For we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, oh, Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many as you have afflicted us... make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children but the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Before we get into our points, I'm going to set the literary context to understand what's really going on here. This Psalm is written by Moses and you can see the little transcription on top of the Psalms. It's written by Moses. So it's the oldest poem, the oldest Psalm in the Psalter and therefore one of the oldest poems in all of history. And what's important is that Psalm 89 and Psalm 90 are linked. We set this up when we started season one of the Psalter I just gave, the outlines of the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a book of five books that was comprised together and it's put in... Psalms are put in the books thematically. But Psalm 89 and Psalm 90 are linked. Psalm 89 ends book three, Psalm 90 begins book four, which runs from Psalm 90 to 106. So in order to understand what's going on in Psalm 90, you're going to need the backdrop of Psalm 89. Well Psalm 89 verse 46 goes like this. How long oh Lord, will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? And we see the same language in verse 13 of Psalm 90, return O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants? Well, what's fascinating is that Psalm 89, it starts so happy, on a happy note. Some 89 verse 1, I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. With my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. As you start reading, you realize that Psalm 89 is actually a dirge. It's a funeral song. It's mourning, it's a lament, it's solemn commemoration. Psalm 89:38 through 40, but now you, God, have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls. You have laid strongholds in ruins. Psalm 89 begins by remembering God's promises to David. Hey David, you're going to have an ancestor on the throne of Israel forever. And it continues to remember that God made a covenant with Israel that you will be in the land, the promised land forever. And it seems, this is what they say, you've renounced your covenant. This is the deepest and the hardest theological question of the old testament that they're wrestling with here. Have the promises of God failed? Has the word of God failed? If the promises of God and the word of God have failed, then God has failed. And that should be the end. Psalm 89 should be the end of the old testament. That's it, game over. So Psalm 90 is given to us to say, "No, no, no. Hold on. We got to go back." And that's why Psalm of Moses is put into book four as the people are wrestling with these questions about David and about the kings, because it's written and it's comprised here, put in this place at a time when people are wrestling with these truths. So the Psalm 90 of Moses is put in here and it says, "Hold on, hold on. We've got to go back, we got to go back." The problem isn't that God's problems have failed, the problem is that the people of God have rejected God. Second Samuel 7, second Samuel 7, the people of God come to God and say, "Hey, hey God. Hey Samuel, we want a king like everyone else. We want a king to protect us just like all the nations have a king to protect us." And then Samuel goes to God and Samuel says, "I feel like I've been rejected." The word of God, isn't enough and God says, "Samuel, you haven't been rejected, I've been rejected." They wanted a human king and they've rejected God. And Moses here writes this sermon and he's like, "Hey, I want you to understand this. That when you reject God, when you turn from God, there are always consequences to sin. There's always punishment." And the historical context of the Psalm is Deuteronomy 32 and 33 when Moses was punished for his sin. So Moses after finding out that he will not go into the promised land because he has sinned, he sits down and pens the Psalm that we are all ephemeral, that we will all die, that we all experience the wrath of God every single one. It doesn't matter how great you are. Therefore, we need the pity of God, we need the mercy of God. So the people of God here are turning to the oldest truths to help them in their present plight. So that leads me to the four points that we're using to frame up our time. Number one is God is home so come home. Second, God is eternal, we are not and we are. Third is God is just, we deserve justice. And forth, God is gracious, we need grace. God is home, so come home. Psalm 90 verse 1 says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. God, you are our home. You are our dwelling place. And Moses understood this like nobody else. God was his home. He spent the first 40 years of his life in the comforts of Pharaoh's palace. And then he feels called by God in order to free up the people but tries to do it in the flesh so then he's banished to be a shepherd in the wilderness for another 40 years just wandering. And his only home, his only comfort, his only protection is the spirit of God. And then after he's called back into Egypt to free up God's people and then he frees God's people by the power of God, he's in the wilderness, God punished them for their lack of faith pursuing idols. And then for 40 years, we see that Moses and the people wander the wilderness, living intense, camping in the desert for 40 years. So when Moses says that God is my dwelling, he knows. So if you ever feel like you are in captivity, like you are an exile, like you are a sojourner, or a pilgrim, this Psalm is for you. If you've ever said, "Lord, why is this happening to us? Where's the blessing that you promised us?" As the people of Israel saying, "Where's the land you promised us? Why haven't you given our king protection as you promised? Where's our protection?" And God here saying, "Look, you look to a human being for ultimate protection. And how's that going?" God is your dwelling place. God is your home. God is your refuge. God is your city. God is a place you belong. The last king of Israel was taken to captivity by King Nebuchadnezzar. But before he was taken to captivity, his children's sons were killed before his eyes and then his eyes were gouged out. So that's the last thing he ever saw was emblazoned on his heart. And God is saying, "You saw protection in a human being. It's never enough." No matter how strong your king, no matter how strong your political leaders, it's never enough. You got to look to God. God doesn't just provide our home, he is home. God doesn't provide protection, he is protection. He doesn't just provide a shield, he is our shield. He is our refuge, he is our life. That right there grounds us like no one else, centers us like no one else. We're in God, the new testament says, and he is in us. Christians have the... they are the temple of the Holy Spirit so God is in us but we're also in him. God is our dwelling place. And this Psalm was written almost a thousand years before it was placed the start book four to show people. You can't look to circumstances as your refuge, you got to look to God. And Moses here is saying, "You have lost your present home, but you haven't lost God so you haven't lost your true home." And this is exactly how Jesus Christ talks about a relationship with God. And he gives us the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal son runs away. He goes to his father and he says, "Father, you to me are good as dead. Therefore, give me my inheritance now before you're dead because my inheritance is more important than a relationship with you." He runs and he sins, he wastes all the money and then he realizes. He comes to his senses, scripture says, and then he runs home. And his father is waiting there, runs toward him, arms wide open and accepts him into a relationship. That same sentiment going on here. When you realize that life isn't going the way you wanted, are you at home? If not, turn, come back to the Lord. That's what repentance is. The second point here is that God is eternal and we are not, and we are. Verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say, "Return, oh, children of man." For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday, when it has passed or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass as renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed, in the evening it fades and withers. Have you ever meditated on the fact God is everlasting? There was never a time when God was not. There will never be a time when God will not be. God is from everlasting to everlasting. If you look back from he is the vanishing point in the back and just keeps going. If you look forward into time, he is the vanishing point that's in front of us and it never disappears. And here Moses uses that to contrast the ephemeral brevity of life of every single one of us, that for God a thousand years is as one day, as yesterday, as a watch in the night. We're dust. Scripture says we came from dust. God formed us out of dust, he breathes his spirit into us and we will return to dust. I was at the arboretum yesterday with my family and beautiful out and just lay on the grass. I was looking up before my wife yelled at me and said, "I'm going to get ticks and Lyme disease." I had some time to meditate. And I thought, "Look, you're on the ground just lying on the ground. And at one point, you're just going to be six feet deeper." Every single one of us. And what happens with our soul? And scripture says that we are created by an everlasting God. And God breathes his spirit into us, therefore yeah, our body will turn into a corpse and we will turn to dust. But we are breath and God gives us that breath. So yeah, on the one hand, we're not eternal, on the other hand, we're as eternal as God himself because that's how God has created us. Moses doesn't tell us this. Whenever you think about death you're like, "Urgh, this is so discouraging." Moses isn't doing this to discourage them, he's doing this to comfort them. If your hope is in something that dies with you, then you don't have a living hope. The good news is we hope in a God who outlives us. We have a hope that will outlive us. God is eternal. His word is eternal and souls are eternal. And because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of the work of Christ on our behalf, that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and then he went to the cross and he bore the wrath of God on our behalf, he died, he was buried, he was resurrected. Because of that, because of the gospel, all you have to do is repenting your sin and trusting him. And then Jesus says, "You have eternal life. If you believe in me, you have eternal life." So your soul, when you die as a Christian, as a follower of Christ, as a child of God, your soul is transferred into the presence of God. You go from this life to the next life. That's true for every single eternal soul. But if you reject Jesus Christ, if you reject God, if you reject the holy scriptures, if you reject the gospel, you will die and you'll stand before God and you will be judged and then you will be banished for eternity to a place of eternal, conscious suffering in a place called hell. That's a reality, that's a reality. And Satan wants to do everything possible to keep us from that reality, that every single person around us who doesn't know the Lord yet is going to this place of eternal, conscious suffering called hell, every single person. There are three things that are eternal, and that's what we focus all of our time on at Mosaic, all of our time. There are three things that are eternal: the word of God, the God who spoke the word of God and eternal souls who were created by the word of God. Those are the things that are eternal. First, Peter 1:22 through 25, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living abiding word of God. And for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this is the word, this word is the good news that was preached to you. The God who spoke the word, the word is an extension of himself. When people hear that word, the Holy Spirit takes that word and converts... you're born again, now you have eternal life. And that's how it works. So that's what we're focused on. I got an email recently. Now, I've been waiting, I've saved this email. I didn't respond to this email because I've been meditating on this email. There's one sentence said this. There was an event that happened and then mainstream media told us, "Here's what it means for the trajectory of our nation." And that's what mainstream media does, that's what the media does. They take what happened, facts, and they turn your attention from the facts as soon as possible to their interpretation of the facts and the interpretation of the facts was just false. So this is what the sentence, "I am saddened to see." This is in response to my newsletter that I send out every Saturday morning, which if you haven't subscribed, you should. I take a lot of time to craft it. And there's always one typo. Every time whoever responds, it's a game I play. If you respond and you find that typo, chicken wings on me. I'm saddened to see, as I have quite a few times in these newsletters, a lack of awareness in the present world we're living in. A lack of awareness, you say. A lack of awareness. I didn't respond because of disrespect today, and the tone of disrespect. Whoever wrote that, perhaps we haven't met. Perhaps we... I have been trained to exegete information, and I've been doing this for over a decade. And not just in the material realm, but in the spiritual realm. I am aware of a lot of things. And if I don't include information, it's intentional, it's intentional. So that's the first thing. And then on top of awareness, like yeah, material awareness, you have to add the realm of spiritual awareness. And spiritual awareness, let me just give you a few texts. Ephesians 2:1 through 2, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following in the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. So Satan is the prince of the power of the air, that's what he's talking about. And people are walking him. This spirit of Satan is in the sons of disobedience and he's the prince of the power of the air. So if you have anyone who is in any position of power in the world, then Satan is influencing that person. That person doesn't have the word of God. In particular, Satan is the prince of the power of the air waves. He's the one that cultivates the information that is sent out to people. This has always been the case. Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them. The God of this world, the God of this world. I thought God, the Trinity was the God of this world. Yes, yes. But in a fallen world, he allows Satan like a dog on a leash out to rule. We need to understand that this is a reality. And Satan does everything to keep them, people from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, we as the image of God. And the way Satan acts in the church, and I'll tell you this, the way Satan acts in the church, and he's done this, he's studied church history, he's done this all throughout church history, Satan's job is to divide and conquer. Everything we hear in the narrative around us is crafted by Satan to divide. The media gives us facts, politicians give us facts that are questionable, but then the interpretation of the facts is what's even more questionable. And why does he do this? Because Satan knows if we are divided, we are powerless to stand up against him. Satan subtracts, Satan divides, Jesus Christ adds and Jesus Christ multiplies. So at Mosaic, I'm not here to talk about the latest thing that happened in the news. That's not my job. I'm not here to be outraged and get you outraged by the things that the media says, "Care about this, care about this. This is the most important thing." And then two days pass, no one remembers what that most important thing was because it's another most important thing that they're outraged about. It's all diversion and it's all designed delude and to divide. Are current events important? Of course, of course. Yes, of all importance? Of course not. What's of all importance is God, his word and eternal souls. That's what does the most for earth, that's what does the most to change people, change culture, change society, change the world. And we are to meditate upon heaven, that we will spend eternity there. And it's not escapist to think about eternity. Those who have loved having the most do most for earth. And once you know that God is true north and you don't veer off course because you're focused on what's most important. Proverbs 4:25 and 27, let your eyes look directly forward. Let your gaze be straight before you, ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. Jesus Christ didn't call us to be Republicans or Democrats. He didn't call us to walk left or right. He called us to walk the straight and narrow after him. And if you see yourself veering the political issues or cultural issues, societal issues are more important to you than reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is more important than anything, then I would submit to you that you have veered off course. Do not swerve to the right, to the left, turn your foot away from evil. We look strenuous by looking forth because that's when we see everything. And I love the connection here in Joshua 1:7 through 9. These are the words of Joshua to the people of God after Moses had died and Joshua now is in charge. And Joshua says, "We have a war to fight. We have a war to fight. We are here to fight the enemy of God." And Joshua says this, "Only be strong and be courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant command you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success wherever you go. The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you will be careful to do according to all that's written in it for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous? Do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The Lord is with you wherever you go." Now, I say all this, I say all this because I'm praying and I've been fasting. And this past season has been one of the most encouraging seasons in the life of Mosaic, one of the most encouraging. And I've seen a pattern that God sends encouragement. He sends a renewal of strength, he sends just a renewal of spiritual resources right before the fiercest battle. I've just seen this over and over and over in my life. So I don't know what's coming, I don't know what's coming, but the tactic is always the same. The tactic of the enemy is always the same. You study your strategies and you see the tactic is always to create two sides. These are the people who care most about COVID and these are the people who care most about communism. And you know what? I hear both sides and I say, "That's not the most important thing. It's not COVID. COVID's not the greatest problem and your greatest savior isn't the vaccine. And communism isn't your greatest problem. And the solution and your savior isn't a politician. It's not COVID, not communism, it's the kingdom of God." So in this next season, if you want to see the church go a certain direction and you come to us with your ideas, first of all, pray about them, pray about them. Pray, fast, bring them to us. And also understand that when there's unity, if there's true love, there's got to be a sacrifice. So wherever we go, unity is created, true unity when everybody is sacrificing something, that no one really gets what they truly want. Everyone's sacrificing their own personal preferences for the ultimate mission, which is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people who don't know him. It's unspeakably comforting that God is eternal. You will die, your loved ones will die. Your children will die, your friends will die, your parents will die, your favorite people will die. Your dreams will die. Your health will die. Your strength will die. Your money will... Everything, everything will die. So can there be a living hope? Yeah, only if it's in the God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why do we die? And this is point three. God is just, we deserve justice. Moses ties together misery, the death of sin of everything in the world to God's wrath and his judgment. This verse 7, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? We fly away. We use the term time flies all the time. When you're young, it feels like time's going so slow. Well, because the time that you're experiencing now is just such a small proportion of the time you have experienced. So if you're four, if you're four years old, one year of your life is 25 years of your existence thus far. If you take the existence as an hour, if you're four, one year's actually 15 minutes of the hour. So that's long. But if you're 30 years old, one year of the hour time span is two minutes. And if you're 60 years old, it's one minute. So it just speeds. Oh, but it's like we're flying and Moses says, "Why, why, why?" Because of our sin, death is the visitation of God's wrath and judgment upon us. And a lot of people look at the suffering of the world and they say, "There is no God, because I see so much evil because I see so much suffering. It's all injustice so there is no God. If God is good and God is great and God's stop all of it, why hasn't he?" And I would push back first of all and say no, no, no, suffering in the world, evil in the world is actually proof of God's existence. Because when you say this ought not to be, or things should be a different way, how do you know that? If there is no God, the Holocaust just happened. If there is no God, it's not wrong. Because if there is no God, there's no objective morality, nothing is truly right or wrong. And when anyone says, "Why didn't God just kill Hitler? Why didn't God just kill Hitler as a baby?" Well, God is against babies first of all, so you shouldn't have framed up that question that way. When you think lustfully about another person in your heart before committing adultery, Jesus says that same to adultery. Why does God kill you? When you hate another person Jesus says anger in your heart against another person's tantamount to murder. Why doesn't God hate you? It's always about someone out there, it's never about what's in here. But you know that there is a moral standard and you want to be kind of the judge of it and like, "God, why aren't you judging the way I think you should judge?" And God's like, "Hold on. True judgment is coming but it already is here. There is sin and it leads to death." And sin is the culprit. And whenever we experience misery or death, we need to think back to sin and say it was sin that caused all of this, therefore we are to hate sin as much as God hates sin. God is holy, we're sinful, we're deserving judgment. And God is righteous and he righteously appointed death as the penalty for our sin. So as Moses contemplates the current situation that people have got in exile, he meditates on the person and the work of God, that God is just, that people have broken his covenant and sinned against him. God's covenant hasn't failed, it's we have forsaken him and we are bearing the consequences for our sin. And then point four is that God is gracious. And we're so thankful for point four that we do need grace. And after meditating upon God, Moses prays to God with six petitions, the first one is so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Lord teach us to number our days. Help us to realize the brevity of life and when we do realize that, help us live accordingly. I was born in April 10th, 1983, that's 13,986 days ago. There's a calendar on Google, you can put in your birthday and they'll tell you how many days you've been alive, almost at 14,000. Not a bad run. Numbering my days. Is that what he's talking about, to number our days? No, no, no, no. He's talking about... he's saying, "Weigh your days, weigh your days." It's not about days in your life, it's about the life in your days. Weigh your days. Lord, teach us to weigh our days. For some people live a lot of days, but their days are like styrofoam, they're like feathers. They mean nothing. They've done nothing significant. They've wasted their days. God teach me to weigh my days so that every single day of my life, there's a gold. Now, first Corinthians 3 talks about this, that God's fire in the second judgment will burn everything we've ever done. There's different levels of materials, hay, straw, wood, some people have gold, silver, diamonds, and it's all talking about how much have you done for God and for people, how much have you lived for God and for people? And we can never learn this lesson on our own. We need the work of the spirit. So Moses says, "Lord teach us to number our days, to weigh our days." And we have to be more concerned about living well than living long. William Swan Plumer says some die old at 30 and some die young at 90. The second petition is in verse 13, return oh Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. Lord, we are where we are because of our sin. We acknowledge it. And this is repentance here. We acknowledge that we've received the punishment for our sin, but Lord have pity on us. Lord, please have mercy on us. God said in Genesis 3, from dust you came, to dust you will return. And that's the same phrase that's used in verse 3. You return man to dust and say return oh children of God. So Moses says we deserve it. But Lord, we're taking your words and we're turning them around and we ask in the same way that you call us to return to the dirt, we ask that you return to us, restore us. Lord, reverse the curse of the beginning, have pity and mercy on us. And on what basis can God have mercy on us? This is verse 14, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all the days. Steadfast love another translation might say loving kindness or mercy. This is God's covenantal love. God with your covenantal love, because of your covenantal love that's eternal, please forgive us. Give us mercy because of your steadfast love. King David when he sinned, committed adultery with Bathsheba and then killed her husband Uriah. After Nathan comes and convicted of sin, David repents. And in Psalms 51:1 through 2 he says, "Have mercy on me oh God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." So it's not God have pity on me because I'm repenting so hard or because I'm so sad about my sin. God forgive me, not because of me, but because of you, because you are loving, because you have steadfast love. Forgive me oh God and fill my heart with joy. Steadfast love. He says, "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love." Every morning, every morning you got to wake up and pray this. Pray this, I challenge you. Every morning wake up and say, "Lord, I've woken up dissatisfied. I'm dissatisfied. I want things more than I want you. Lord, satisfy my heart with your steadfast..." And the same way that every single morning you need a cup of coffee well, like Dunkin' and Starbucks satisfy me with your caffeine, the same way you say, "Lord, I need a cup of steadfast love, satisfy me with it." The fourth petition in verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. So what he's doing, this is really important because he's saying the logic that he's using is, "Hey God, some days are sorrowful, they're evil, we're being afflicted, but can you just give us as many days are bad, can you give us as many good days just so it's even?" That's what he's asking for. Lord, balance out the sorrow of our lives with God-given joy. But the new testament tells us the Lord answers this prayer better than Moses prays it. And thanks be to God that God often does that, he answers our prayers better than we pray it because often we don't know what to say. Moses asks for balance for sorrows on one side, joy on the other. But the new testament says in second Corinthians 4:17, 18, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. What he's saying is there's purpose in your pain. That's what he's saying. So because there's purpose in your pain, the same way there was purpose in the pain of the son of God on the cross dying for our sin, there's purpose there. And the purpose we'll see later, we see after he was resurrected, in the same way our suffering means something. God will turn it all around so we can take joy in that. First Peter 1:6 through 7, in this you rejoice though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory to honor and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. God is shaping us with that therefore, we can rejoice. James 1:2 through 4 says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. And then St. Paul in Philippians 4:4 says, "Rejoice in everything. My brothers, rejoice, always, but for in supplication, present your request before God and the God of peace which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus." So yeah, when difficulty comes, we need to understand that if you are a Christian, and all things work together for good, that means everything that happens to us is a blessing. Sometimes it's a painful blessing, sometimes it's a pleasant blessing. December 22nd, 1849 Fyodor Dostoevsky was led before a firing squad to be executed. He was convicted and sentenced to death on November 16th of that year for anti-government subversive thought. Huh? It's interesting. Subversive thought. So he's led there with a group of his fellow writers and he's put to the block wall and the soldiers pick up their rifles. And at the very last second, Dostoevsky receives a last minute reprieve and he's sent to a Siberian labor camp for four years. I wonder how Dostoevsky lived the rest of his life knowing that he deserved execution or the government thought he deserved execution. He was about to die and he was given a second chance on life. On The Idiot, he wrote a book called The Idiot years later, Dostoevsky created a character who was facing death at scaffold and he ponders what he would do if he was given more life to live, one more chance. And this is what he says, "I would turn every minute into an age and nothing would be wasted. Every minute would be accounted for." And then Dostoevsky went on after that to write his greatest books, Notes From the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. So this is what Moses is saying, we deserve the wrath of God. And when we understand that, and then we see what it took God to save us and that Jesus Christ is willing to take it, then we understand that every single day is a second chance, every single day to live full tilt for the glory of God and to share the gospel with every single person. We can do everything we can for the kingdom God. The fifth petition is let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. He says, "Lord, we want to see your power. We want to see your magic. We want to see your spirit unleashed and souls getting saved and your church being built up. Lord, show us your majesty." And at verse 17, he doesn't end at, "Lord, show us your work." Then he says, "Lord, bless our work." Verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. And in the old testament, Israel's great work was the construction of the tabernacle, which is transient, temporary and then later they built a temple which was transient and temporary. And what they're doing here is they're saying, "God, we know we're fog. We know we are just vapor. We're just wispy things and in our hands are just the fog. We're bringing you our fog and we pray for your favor to come down." The word for favor is beauty or glory. Lord, everything we do, we do for you, so make our work matter, whatever we do for work. If you do it to the glory of God, God, it matters to you, make it matter. Don't let us do meaningless things. Make our work matter. Prosper the work of our hands. Make our work matter. Basically establish our fog. And that's obviously impossible to do apart from Jesus Christ. Because apart from Jesus Christ, everything dies so nothing matters. But because of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, everyone who believes in him will be resurrected to a new life. So everything that you do in this life, it does matter because this life is not all there is. How did God answer Moses' prayer? Most likely Moses prayed this prayer, wrote this Psalm after finding out that he would not enter the promised land. We're told in Deuteronomy 34 that God takes him up to the mountain and God shows him the promised land of Canaan. Deuteronomy 34:4, the Lord said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will never go over there." Moses has dedicated the last 40 years of his life to getting the people of God to the promised land. And then when they just get there, God's like, "Nope, you're not going to see it." And I've always wondered, isn't that just a little unfair? Isn't it just a little messed up that this guy devoted his whole life to you, he sins once, from what we know of, probably a lot more, he also killed a guy so... It seems unfair if you think that life is all there is. It seems unfair if you think Moses lived up for 120 years, if you think that that's the end. From our perspective, it seems unfair because we're so conditioned with this lie that this life is all there is, it's not. So from God's perspective, he's like, "You're not going to see it yet." Why can I say that? Did Moses enter the promised land? Oh yeah. We see this in the new testament, the mount of transfiguration. Jesus takes three disciples up with him, Peter, James and John in Luke 9:28 through 31. Now about eight days after these sayings, he took with him, Peter, John and James and went up in the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. Behold two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, exodus, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. So yeah, God answered this prayer where both are saying, "God have pity on me. I want to enter the promised land." God answered because of Christ and with Christ and God answered the prayer in a way the Moses could never have imagined, far beyond all they could ask or think. He entered this promise land and into this promised land, land of Canaan, now Israel, Jesus is talking about the next promised land, that's heaven. And the exodus now is from the captivity of sin and Jesus is going to lead us into heaven, into paradise because of his work on the cross. Jesus is the only reason God can answer this prayer of Moses, "God have pity on us." I'm going to close with Hebrews 12:1 through 2 and then we'll pray. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we thank you for this incredible word and we thank you for the words of Moses, the testimony of Moses. But we know these aren't just his words, they're the words of the Holy Spirit written for us to remind us of what's most important, to refocus our attention. Lord, make us a people who care about your kingdom, about the work of the kingdom, the work of the gospel more than anything else. And even our casual conversations with fellow brothers and sisters, may this word of the gospel and of the mission, of the vision be on our lips more than what's going on in politics, what's going on in the economy, what's going on with the stocks. Make us a people who truly, truly, truly see the reality of eternity and live every single day as those who have been given a second chance, been pardoned and shown pity. And give us a heart of wisdom so that we do weigh every day, to live today holy for you. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

A Prayer for Restoration

July 18, 2021 • Psalm 80

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're visiting or you're new, we're so glad to have you join us and we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card, either the physical one you can pick up in the back at the welcome table and then just leave it there or you can fill out the virtual one in our app that you can get in the app store of Google Play or on our website, there's a connection card as well. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word. God, you are a great God and you are a holy God. You are Lord over us. You are the giver of life. We are not own. We all to often forget that and that's when we rebel against you seeking heaven apart from you and that's what leads to hell, the flames of hell, a place where you don't exist, where your faith isn't shining. Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God. Jesus, we thank you that you entered this world to restore it and you did that by coming and loving God and loving people with every single fiber of your being, you did it perfectly and you did it with the power of the Holy Spirit. And then you went to a cross to pay the penalty that we deserve, the wrath of God. You absorbed for our law-breaking and this is the way that you break into the world. This is the way that you bring restoration into a world through your son dying on the cross for us. Holy Spirit, we pray today, focus our attention on Jesus Christ, who sits and rules and reigns at the right hand of God, the father. And Jesus, send us the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit that regenerates hearts and restores people from within, so restore us individuals, restore us as a church, to be the church that you want us to be and restore us as a nation to be the nation you want us to be. And restore us as a world, all of your creation. Lord, we long for complete restoration and the second coming of Christ that you have as a new earth, we long for that day and in the meantime, we have a foretaste of that restoration in the gospel. As we meditate in the holy scriptures today, Lord, I pray that you minister to us and expand our vision of you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. We're going through a sermon series that we are calling the Balm Psalms. We are going through some of the choices Psalms, the Psalms that over church history have blessed the church in a very special, particular way. Today we are in Psalm 80. We're calling it Balm Psalms because if balms were our souls, it's anointing for our souls and also a word play on balm, that God wants to balm our categories of God because they are too small and that's really the problem with the whole world, with all of us, is that God is too small and our vision of God is too small. Every single one of us, we know that things are not the way they are supposed to be. There is something wrong in the world. Something is wrong, something is wrong out there, something is wrong in here. Things are not the way the should be. They are not the way they ought to be because a vision is embedded in our hearts of utopia, of a perfect world with a perfect people and Satan preys on that desire, on that longing, on that vision. He preys on it and he comes in and he presents his own vision of utopia, a vision where there is no God. It's the same tactic, he does it over and over and over. With the garden of Eden, they are living in utopia, they are living in paradise. Satan comes in and says something is wrong with the world, we can make things better. You can be like gods, let's usurp God, lets dethrone him. You can have paradise, heaven without God and that's what led to the fall. That's why we are where we are and Satan tempts us with the same tactic over and over and over that we can build back better, build a world without God and he presents this prototype, he presents these blueprints of a world, of a kingdom without God. And we hear the whispers left and right where God doesn't talk about rebuilding, that's not the theme in scripture. God talks about redeeming and restoring. Restoring to what it was in the very beginning, using not our own blueprints, using God's. I grew up painting with my dad and my dad, Vlad, my dad, Vladimir. He has a painting company called Vlad's Painting. If your house looks bad, don't get mad, call Vlad. My top three things to paint, I'll start with three. Apartments, we paint a lot of apartments in Providence, Rhode Island. I like apartments because there's no thought. It's just one color everything. You slap on a coat of paint on everything. Walls, trim, ceiling, floor, everything. Everything just one color. Not floors. My second favorite was brand new builds, a brand new house. It's a brand new canvas, and you, the artist, you go and you create. But my favorite above all else in painting was restoring old houses. That's my favorite. You walk in and you see the former beauty, you see it. It's built in a way that current ... I don't know why we don't build like that anymore. It's too expensive. Just built solid, it's beauty. And then you see it, dilapidated, and then with your hands, you restore. And that's the vision that's given to us in the Holy Scriptures that created everything and everything was absolutely perfect. Everything was wonderful. And then sin entered the world because we bought into this lie of the enemy that we can have heaven apart from God. And then God wants to redeem and restore everything from within. It's a vision of restoration. We are in Psalm 80 today. It's a psalm of lament. It's a psalm of an anguished cry to God. Israel is in deep despair. Their enemies are mocking them as their attacking them, as they are pillaging homes, farms, towns are being burned. Relatives and friends are dying. God, why is this happening? God, how long will this last? God, restore us. That's the plea. Would you look at the text with me? Psalm 80. "Give ear, oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherub and shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us. Restore us, oh God, let your face shine that we may be saved. Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers? You have fed them with bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, Oh God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. You brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it and it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with it's shade, the mighty cedars with its branches, it sent out its branches to the sea and it's shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, Oh God of hosts, look down from heaven and see, have regard for this vine, the stalk that your right hand planted and for the son whom made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face. But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore, Oh Lord, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved." This is the reading of the God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths on our hearts. The greatest temple that was ever built was built by not King David, but by King Solomon, the son of David. It was the greatest temple that was ever built in Jerusalem. And after it's destruction, they tried to rebuild the temple and it was a such a show. It paled in comparison to the original one that at the inauguration, the opening of the second temple, people wept. They wept. The people that remembered the grandeur, the glory of that initial temple, they wept when it was reconstructed. This moment when Solomon builds the temple for the first time, this is pinnacle of the glory of Israel. And what does Solomon pray at that moment, at the very height, at the moment of glory, what does he pray? In Second Chronicles, he prays for God to forgive the people. He prays for God to restore the people. Why is he praying for that, because in Solomon's mind, the wisest person to have ever lived up to that moment, in Solomon's mind, he knows that this is just a show of paradise. He says, "God, restore. Yeah, we're doing our best, but restore everything." That's why he prays that. And God responds by giving a four-step process. God's word is eternal and the four-step process has unequivocal applications for all people, including us. Second Chronicles, 7:12-14, "Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my faith, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.'" Four-step process to restoration and these are the four points, our time together. Step one to restoration is humble yourself. Step two, pray boldly. Step three, turn from your wicked way. And step four, seek God's face. Step one to restoration is humble yourself. The literary context of this Psalm is, it's part of collection of Psalms called the Collection of Asaph, from Psalm 76 to 83 and it's particularly close to the theme we see in Psalm 79 which concludes in verse 13. "But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever. From generation to generation, we will recount your praise." We the people are your sheep. Psalm 80, verse one, the very next verse. "Give your ear, Oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim shine forth." God, you are the great shepherd and we are your sheep. And then in both Psalms, both Psalms are an appeal to God for help. God, save us from our enemies. They are mocking us, we're calling for vengeance from heaven upon our enemies. How long are you going to make us suffer? And why is this happening? Psalm 79 most likely references the catastrophe that Jerusalem went through, 586 BC. And then Psalm 80, the Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh, the reason they are used is because they are northern tribes of Israel and they were attacked by the Assyrian in 732 BC and for a decade, until 722 BC, when the Assyrians finally destroyed the temple in Sumeria, the people were suffering. Towns were being set on fire. Everything was being plundered and pillaged. The historical background is supported by the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. This Psalm has a superscription that says, concerning the Assyrian. The application is for the people of God when they suffer on a great scale. Why are they suffering? Why are the suffering, and the answer from the Psalm is, they are suffering because they've gone astray, as sheep have gone astray. There's two metaphors used in the Psalm for God. God is shepherd, therefore we're sheep and God is vine-dresser, a gardener therefore we are the vine, therefore we are the garden and God expects us to bear fruit. The first one I'll deal with, God is our shepherd and we are his sheep. That sounds so nice. That's so bucolic. Little sheep, when they are born, they are so cute. They are so incredible. You see goat videos, sheep videos are cute too. And then they grow up and they are not that cute anymore. Have you seen grown sheep? You go to small farms where you can go apple picking in the fall. It's tremendous, but there's also a little farm area with animals. The sheep there are so ugly. They are the ugliest sheep I have ever seen. They are nasty. They are rancid. There is so much stuff in their wool, they look brown. Stuff is stuck in there because they can't clean themselves. They can't clean themselves and they don't care to clean for themselves. Part of the reason why is because they are the least intelligent of all the domesticated animals. They are just dumb. So when God calls you a sheep, that's not a compliment. They are dumb. They are the least intelligent of all the animals. They are completely incapable of caring for themselves. They are dumb. They are directionless and they are defenseless. They are dumb, I dealt with that. I'll show you how dumb and directionless they are with one illustration. This really happened in 2005 in eastern Turkey. I'll read from the article. "Hundreds of sheep followed their leader, a lead sheep, off a cliff in eastern Turkey plunging to their deaths while shepherds looked on in dismay." 400 sheep fell 15 meters to their deaths in a ravine in the Van province near Iran. They are dead, the 400. But because there are so many of them, they cushion the fall for another 1100 who fell on these and those 1100 survived. The shepherds from a nearby village neglected the flock while eating breakfast leaving the sheep to roam free. The loss to local farmers was estimated at $74,000. Dumb, they are directionless and they are defenseless. Sheep, the existence of sheep destroys the theory of evolution. How are they here? How are they here? They have zero ways of protecting themselves. They can't fight. They got nothing to fight with. They've got nothing to fight with. What are you going to fight with? Their teeth aren't even that sharp. Fight, flight? Have you seen a sheep run? Tiny, tiny legs. They can't run. No fight, no flight. And then to scare the opponent, they've got no way to scare the opponent. Even cats at least hiss. They look scary in that moment. You're going to attack a sheep, they are like, okay. That's what's going on. They are defenseless. The only way, the only way that sheep can flourish is if they follow their shepherd. That's the only way. When they follow the shepherd, everything is great. When they stop following him, when they think they are smarter than the shepherd, when they think they can find greener pastures apart from the shepherd, when they think they don't need the shepherd's leadership or the shepherd's provision or the shepherd's protection, things start going bad. And when you start following any ideology, any worldly ideology that contradicts the word of God, that's what's happening. The only voice that we Christians can blindly follow is the voice of God. God, what did you say? What did you say? What did you say in your word? That's the one we follow. Every other voice, we need to say, you know what, is this voice leading me astray? Even your own. You've got to question every other voice and compare it with the voice of God, the word of God. What does this do, recognizing that you're a sheep? It humbles us. We're dumb, we're directionless. We're defenseless. We need a shepherd. And then God is also a gardener, he's a farmer. He expects fruit. Psalm 80 verse eight and nine. "You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land." It's talking about God bringing his people out of Egypt as if he's a gardener transplanting a vine from Egypt to Canaan, prepares the land for it and then it begins to grow. Verse 10. "The mountains were covered with its shade." The mountains are the Sinai Mountain range in the south. "The mighty cedars with its branches." That's the cedars of Lebanon in the north. "It sent out its branches to the sea." The Mediterranean Sea in the west. "And shoots to the river." The Euphrates in the east. God is our shepherd and he expects us to follow him. And God is our gardener, he plants us and he expects fruit to be produced from us. What's that fruit? It's a life to follow him, a life of godliness. He has purposes for his plants. He has a will. We produce fruit by loving God and our neighbors, by glorifying God and serving people in our lives. Meaning he gets to direct how we live and for what purposes that we live. We do not live for ourselves. And that is to humble us. That's the first step. God, we come to you in humility. We are your sheep and we are your plants. Step two in the restoration is to pray boldly. Psalm 80, verse one. "Give ear, Oh Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherubim shine forth." We start off with his grand vision. God, you are on your throne and you are encircled with angels, cherubim. When God instructed Moses to make the ark of the covenant, he said to put two cherubim on the top of the mercy seat. The ark was to represent God's throne on earth and there's angels worshiping. God is the king of everything and he has armies at his disposal, a heavenly army of angels. Psalm 99:1. "The Lord reigns. Let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake." You're saying, "God, I know you're great." That's where he's starting off with. "God, I know you're great. God, I know you're sovereign. And I know you're in control." And then he goes to verse two. He says, "Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us." What's the significance of these names? He's mentioned Joseph. He mentions Benjamin here. And now he's mentioning Ephraim and Manasseh. What's the story with Joseph? Who were the parents of Joseph? They were Jacob and ... Bible trivia ... Jacob and ... yes, mini Mosaic knows. That's Julie, she knows everything. It's Jacob and Rachel. And then there's a story with Leah. I don't have time to get into that. Leah is also Jacob's wife. She has a lot of children with Jacob and Rachel is barren and she's crying out to God. "God, send me a child. God, send me a child. God, send me a child." And then God finally sends her a child in Joseph. Then how does Jacob love Joseph? He loves him a lot. I hate to say it, he's his favorite. He creates the beautiful clothing for him. He's his favorite. And then what happens with Joseph? His brothers, who are enemies, send him into captivity. They sell him. They sell the beloved son. And Joseph is in captivity for 13 years. Joseph also has a brother. What's Joseph's brother's name? Benjamin. Benjamin. So Jacob and Rachel had a second son, Benjamin. Benjamin means son of my right hand. Does Jacob love him? Yes, he loves him so much. And then Jacob thinks that Joseph, his beloved, dies. He pours out all his love on Benjamin and protection and everything. And then he gets Joseph back. Obviously his heart is bursting with love for these sons. It was all part of God's plan. That's their names, Joseph and Benjamin. And then we got the names of Ephraim and Manasseh. Those are the two sons of Joseph. The oldest was Manasseh. The youngest was Ephraim. That's what's going on there. So what they are saying is, God, you are the God who is enthroned, you got the cherubim around you and you are also a God who loves us like Jacob who was then renamed to Israel, as Israel loved his favorite son. God, I know you're great and I know you're all-loving, so God, where are you, save us. The Psalm starts giving God in imperatives. Usually imperatives are from God to people. Here we see imperatives from people to God as if they are telling God what to do. God, shine forth. Stir up your might. Come and save us, which is repeated four times in verses two, three, seven, and 19. Why are you doing ... Do this stuff because we know you want to and we know you can. Psalm 80, verse three. "Restore us, Oh God. Let your face shine that we may be saved." You're our God, you're our shepherd, you love us. Restore us, let your face shine. I call this bold desperation. It's a humble boldness. It's a bold desperation. God, I know you want to save us and I know you can. You're telling the God of the universe what to do. You're saying, God of the universe, I'm suffering, we're suffering, and you're the only one that can help us so please do it. And by the way, this is why I talk about bold desperation. The word please isn't even used here. It's like, I know you're going to do this, and I'm asking and I already know you're going to do this and I'm asking and I'm kind of telling, but please do this, and also, I thank you in advance for doing this. It's a bold desperation. How can desperation be bold? Desperation seems cowardly. Bold courage, that's how we should be talking, or cowardly desperation. But not in terms of theology, not in terms of God, because some of the most powerful prayers we can pray are from a point of desperation. When you hit rock bottom, you have zero reliance on yourself because you got yourself in this situation and the only thing you can do is, like an infant, cry out to God, save us. You've got nothing to lose, because you've lost it all therefore you've got nothing to save. You've got no ego to protect, therefore from that position, you ask for the craziest thing you can. God, give me a second chance. I know I messed up, but God, give me a second chance. God, save me. While we're at it, adopt me as a son or a daughter, by the way, and also give me eternal life, give me heaven and also I want to be Christ-like. I want to be godly, which seems to be like the greatest, boldest thing you can ask for. God, I want to be like you, so save me. It's from this point of desperation, Lord, we're desperate. We're desperate and we're asking you and we're asking for something that we know you want to give us, therefore we know you're going to give it, because it's in line with your will so we thank you in advance. Mark 11:24. "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received and it will be yours." What do you need to be boldly, from a point of desperation, asking for? The greatest things. The greatest things. Ask for it. God, forgive me of all of my sins. Every single sin. Every single one. Please forgive me as if I've never done it and also I want heaven, I want eternal life and also I want to be in your kingdom and also whatever happens in this life, if I die, I'm with you forever. That's what Jesus is saying. Ask for the greatest things. And also in this life, what are we asking for, as a church what are we asking for? God, save more people. We've got so many empty seats. That's a lot of empty seats. Save more people. Save my neighbors. I have neighbors that I look at and I'm like, you're the last person in the world to be saved. You're the last one. Therefore, God, save that guy. Just for fun. Save that guy just so I can be like, God saved you. This is what St. Paul does. St. Paul says I'm the org chart of the world for the kingdom of God. Jesus is the CEO, chief executive officer. I'm the CSO. Chief what? Chief sinning officer. I'm the chief of all sinners. St. Paul looks at himself and says, I can't believe God saved me. I was the last person in the world that I think God would save. This is what we need. We need to ask God to save people. God, build your church because this is how God restores. This is why Israel didn't understand true restoration. Israel thought, and the disciples too, after Jesus was resurrected, they looked at Jesus and they are like, is it time for your kingdom now because they thought it was going to be a political kingdom. Because Israel, the whole time, they said, "You know when we flourished? When King David would make us submit. Jesus, force everyone into submission." And Jesus says, "You don't understand my kingdom. I'm going to get you to submit by changing your heart. I'm going to rule over your heart and I'm going to make you mine from the inside and that's how I want to restore the whole world. I want to restore every single person by sending the Holy Spirit, giving people brand new hearts, brand new desires, brand new affections and they live completely wholeheartedly for the will of God and that's the plan for restoration." We ask for that, Jesus, and we ask you to come back and we ask for the new heavens and the new earth. Point three, step three that restoration is to turn from your wicked way. If you want restoration, you need to know what caused everything to be damaged. What causes it is our sin, it's our wickedness. God, where are you? We feel like you've left us. And God's like, "I'm your shepherd. You're the sheep. You're the one that left me." Turn around. Psalm 80, verse four and five. "Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayer? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure." God is angry at them and they know that God is angry. Is this a category in your mind, a theology of God? It's okay. I like when kids make noise. It's tremendous. It's tremendous, he's worshiping God. Praise God. God loves so much that he hates anything that might actually hurt what he loves. It's just like any father, mother. You hate, in your kids, even in them something that might hurt them in the future and that's what parenting is. I want you to love God. That's what's going to lead to your flourishing. And you walking away from God in this area, I hate that because it's going to hurt you in the future. So God here is angry. Israel knows that he's angry. They've sinned. They worship idols, their food and drink consist of tears. God, the shepherd of Israel, has not led his flock into green pastures. He has not led them beside still waters. He has not protected his flock as a good shepherd should, instead he has abandoned them, from their perspective. Basically he is sovereign and he has allowed these things to happen. He is in control. Why, God, why do you allow these hardships? Why do you allow the suffering? Why are you angry with us, God? And then God's like, "Good. Good. That's why. Because I wanted you to ask the question, I wanted to finally get you to the point where you asked the question, God, why? Why are you doing this?" And I think God's response is because you walked away first. You're the one that abandoned me. Psalm 42, one through three, "As the deer pants from flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall 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 God?" I want you to pant for me, God says. I want you to long for me. I want you to seek me, I want you to follow me. And scripture promises that when you draw near to God, God draws near to you. Psalm 80, verse six. "You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Israel's neighbors scorn the defenseless Israel. They fight over the spoils of Israel. They laugh mockingly, scornfully." What's happened to the good shepherd who prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies? The shepherd gave the sheep what they wanted. You wanted greener pastures without me, that's what it looks like. You don't want my wall of protection. You don't want me cultivating the garden. You don't want me here. It says in verse 12, "Why then have you broken down its wall so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it." It's an image of God breaking down the walls of protection and then the boar, the unclean boar, this gentile nation of the Assyrians ravaging the vineyard taking everything there. The Jewish commentary, the Midrash, explains once a vineyard has been breached, everyone goes into it and plunders it. Also, everyone who rises up, Babylon, Media, Greece, Edom plunders Israel. Come a ruler, he plunders it. Come a general, he plunders it." What's the image here with the vineyard? The image is that God is the one who built the vineyard and Jesus Christ talks about this. Vineyard imagery, it's used all over the Old Testament, in Isaiah, in the prophets. And then Jesus brings in a parable of the vineyard. In the parable of the vineyard he says that a ruler, a king builds a vineyard, beautiful vineyard with a beautiful wall around it and a watchtower in the inside. It's gorgeous and it's huge and then he leaves. Before he leaves, he leases it out to people to tend it, to work there and then every year he would send someone to come and receive his fruit. Yeah, he would give them wages, but then he would receive fruit because it's all his. He employs these people. He leases it out to them. And then Jesus said, "Yeah, okay." He sent one guy and they looked at that guy and said, "We're not giving you anything." He sent another guy and then they beat him. He sent another guy and they killed him. And he says, "You know what, I'm going to send my son because they definitely won't have the gall to kill my son." They look at his son, "This is the one whose supposed to inherit everything. If we kill him, it's all ours." And they kill the son. And what's the story, what's the parable of? And Jesus is saying, this is the story of Israel. He's talking to religious leaders. "I've sent you prophets. I've sent you prophets and the prophets will just say over and over and over, 'You don't own the vineyard. You don't own the vineyard. You're leasing the vineyard. You're renting the vineyard, therefore pay your rent. You pay your rent by giving due to God, over and over and over.'" The killed the prophet, they killed prophet after prophet after prophet and then God sends Jesus and what did they do with him? Same exact thing. The point for us is, you don't own a thing. You're not an owner and if you live in an apartment, you understand, you're renting. You don't own it. On the one hand, that's awesome because when something breaks, you won't have to do anything about it. You sit down and dishwasher broke, you go, "Dear Landlord, I need a new dishwasher." That's awesome. You don't have to think that you are in control of fixing everything. You're not the restorer because you don't own it, God does. The other lesson is, you've got to pay the rent. You've got to pay the rent. Paying the rent is giving God what he is due and that's glorifying him, living for him, worshiping him, serving him, following him, obeying him. That's the point and we do that by recognizing we haven't in areas of our life where we've gone wayward, where we are in wickedness and we repent. You do a U-turn. There's a guy in Fenway who always stands, he's got an A-frame sign, it says turn or burn. But you turn or burn, and that's what repentance means. It's a U-turn from your wicked ways to following God. Step four to restoration is seek God's face. You see this refrain over and over. Verse three. " Restore us, Oh God, let your face shine that we may be saved." Verse seven. "Restore us, oh God of hosts," he adds, "that you are a God with armies. Let your face shine that we may be saved." And then Psalm 80, verse 19. "Restore us, oh Lord, Yahweh, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved." God, you're all-powerful, you're the God of hosts and he brings in Yahweh, the covenantal name of God. God, you're a god of relationship, that you want a relationship with me. Repentance that doesn't lead to relationship is just religion. It's God, okay, I'm going to fix myself. I'm going to restore myself. You tell me where I did something wrong, I'm going to fix that and then I'm going to keep doing that on my own, works righteousness, justification through my own stuff. I'm going to fix everything. And God's like, that's not true repentance. True repentance is you wanted life apart from God, you wanted heaven apart from God. You wanted that lie, that utopia that Satan promises. No, repentance is, I don't want a life apart from God. I want a life with God. I want a relationship with God. You're the God of hosts and you're also a God that loves. And God, all we need from you is your face to shine. We need a smile from you. We need you to turn to us and we want your smile which saves everything, it fixes everything. It restores everything. We just want to see your face. We want to see your image. We want your delight. My youngest daughter, Milana, she senses my moods through walls. I don't know what it is. I've got a connection with all of them, but Milana literally looks like me and she's the spitting image and character, she's my spirit animal. She knows my mood. Sometimes she walks in the room and is like, "Dad, are you mad?" I'm focused, I'm working. She's like, "Are you mad?" I'm like, "No." And then I smile and she's like, "Oh good. You're happy." And she walks away. And that's all, she just needed a smile. Here's what Christianity says, that apart from Jesus Christ, God is angry with you because you turned your back to God. And what happens, you don't experience his face, you don't experience his relationship. You need to repent of your sins. This is called reconciliation with God and we are ministers of reconciliation pointing everyone to Christ, that Jesus Christ is the image of God, the perfect image of God. He is the face of God, he is the one through whom we can be reconciled with God because of his perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection. And when Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptizer, the God the father speaks. The Holy Spirit anoints God the son. You've got the whole Trinity. God, the father, speaks and what does he say? This is my son in whom I am well pleased. I delight over my son. My son has my perfect delight. He fulfilled my perfect will. He did everything that I asked him to. And when you repent of your sin, this is the beauty of Christianity, you're repenting your sin, you trust in the word of Jesus Christ, now you are in Christ and you're in Christ experiencing the delight of God, the father, and that's what they are asking for here. They are asking for Moses, Aaron prayed the blessing in number six. "May the Lord bless you and keep you." And what's the greatest blessing? May the Lord make his face shine upon you and lift up its countenance upon you so that you may have peace, so that you may have shalom, that's a Hebrew word, shalom, like in the very beginning. When you have a relationship with God, face to face, when God speaks to you, when you respond to his will, his face is shining upon you. God's face is either a face of delight or a face of rebuke. And that Psalm 80, verse 16, they ask, these enemies, they burned us with fire, the vineyard with fire. They've cut it down. May the perish at the rebuke of your face. God has a face of rebuke and a face of delight. In Psalm 14, "Turn again, oh God of hosts, look down from heaven and see and have regard for this vine." God is a gardener and they said, "Come look after us again." And then the culmination of the text is verses 15 through 17. "The stalk that your right hand planted and for the son whom you made strong for yourself, they have burned it with fire. They have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face, but let your hand be on the men of your right hand and the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself." Three things I'm going to focus on in verse 17. First, the right hand, then the man on the right hand, and then the son of man. The right hand, when God talks about his hand being upon someone, that's talking about complete blessing, that God is the one that leads this person into places of blessing. It's like the person is a pawn and God is playing chess with that person, putting the person in the perfect position of God's complete blessing. And we see this phrase used in Ezra 7:6. This says, "Ezra went out from Babylon, he was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, that the Lord, the God of Israel had given and the king granted him all that he asked for the hand of the Lord, his God, was upon him." Ezra went to his king, he was like, "Hey, could you please help me restore all of Jerusalem?" Which is absurd, you're going to the enemy king. And God allows it to happen because God's good hand was upon him. The same chapter, verse nine. "For on the first day of the first month, he began to go up from Babylon and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem for the good hand of his God was on him." Ezra goes to the king, he's like, "Hey, I want to rebuild all of Israel." That's crazy. And the king is like, "Okay, do it." And then he gives him the resources to do it because God's good hand was upon him. So in verse 17, you've got let your hand, your good hand be on the man of your right hand. What's the man of your right hand? What's he talking about there? He's talking about the king who is enthroned and you've got someone on your right hand. To understand who that is, you've got to look Psalm 110, verse one. "The Lord says to my lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your foot stool." What's going on there? It seems like King David, who wrote this Psalm, has two lords. What's going on? Jesus gives his commentary on this text in Matthew 22:41. "Now while the Pharisees where gathered together, Jesus asks them a question saying, 'What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said the son of David. The son of David meaning he's going to be only human. We're looking for a human ruler, a political ruler, like King David. The son of David. He said to them, Jesus, "How is it then that David in the spirit," David, guided by the Holy Spirit, as he writes God's word, "In the spirit, calls him, the Messiah, the Christ, calls him Lord, saying the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son and no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day, did anyone dare to ask him anymore questions." He goes, what do you do with that? He goes, what are you saying? They believe that this one god, God is one, God is alone. Yes, God is one. And then all of a sudden, Jesus brings him in and he's like, David, guided by the Holy Spirit, he's bringing the Holy Spirit, and he says David has two lords. What is going on? And what Jesus is getting at is to show, no, the Messiah is not just human. The Messiah is King David's lord, the greatest king in all of Israel has a lord over him. It's the father, God the father speaking to God, the son. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies a foot stool for your feet. This verse, Psalm 80, verse 17, they don't even know what they are asking for. God, send us a son of man. Send us a son of man, let your hands be on the man of your right hand. The son of man, whom you have made strong for yourself. What they are asking for and obviously they are guided by the Holy Spirit, he's asking for God, send us restoration and we know the only one who can really restore everything is not just human. It's the God, the son who is also son of man. And that's the title, Son of Man, isn't just to show that Jesus is human and fully God. It's a messianic title. Daniel 7:13 through 14. I saw in the night visions and behold through the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man. He came to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. All peoples, nations, and languages serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away and his kingdom shall not be destroyed. It's someone who is human, son of man, and God, your absolute eternal. In the Psalm, written centuries before Jesus Christ, may your hand be on the one who is at your right hand, Jesus Christ is also the son of man, fully God, fully human. Where was Jesus born? Where was Jesus born? Bethlehem. The house of bread. Bethlehem, the town of Benjamin. Keep that in mind. Matthew 26:63 through 64. But Jesus remained silent and the high priest said to him, this is Jesus before the high priest, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Jesus said to him, you have said so, but I tell you, from now on, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Jesus connects those two, the son of the right hand and the son of man. He's going to be seated because you're going to try to kill him right now, but he's going to come back from the dead. Jesus Christ is the son of the right hand. How did Jesus Christ get into this preeminent, exalted position, son of the right hand? Jacob and Rachel, Rachel's giving birth to Benjamin and she's dying. And as she's dying, she names her son, Benoni, son of the suffering. And then Jacob says no, that's not going to be his name. His name is going to be Benjamin, Benjamin, son of my right hand. He didn't even know what was going on. It was as if God's spirit just took over. Genesis 35:18. And as her soul was departing, she was dying, she called his name, Benoni, the son of suffering, but his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand. If you want to be the son of the right hand, you've got to be a son of suffering. Jesus Christ is the Benoni, he's the son of suffering, he is the suffering servant. He's the one that comes and he's the one that builds his kingdom through the greatest sacrifice that was ever made, the sacrifice of the son of God. When you understand the gospel, this is how everything was planned and how obedient Jesus was. The son of God was willing to do this. When you understand that he died on the cross for your sins, to restore you, when you understand that, the more you understand that, the more he gets your heart. And the more he gets your heart, the more restoration is going to be unleashed in your life. In Psalm 80, verse 18 to 19, "Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore us, oh Lord, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. God, give us life because we don't have that life on the inside of us. Give us that life." And Jesus Christ is the life. He's the one that came to give the life and he came to give life by giving his own life as the shepherd for the sheep. In John 10:10 through 11, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Why sheep, dear Christian, should you follow Jesus Christ? Because Jesus Christ is the greatest shepherd. He's the only shepherd that dies for you. Every single other shepherd ultimately pretends to protect you from the wolves, and then ultimately that shepherd is the one that kills you. That's every other shepherd. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to give you what you're really looking for and kills you. That's every other shepherd. Our shepherd is the one that says, I'm going to give you life at cost to myself. I'm the shepherd. I'm also the lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the world. And that's what Jesus did. He didn't just come to save us from our situations. That's kind of what the Psalmist is getting at. Restore our situation, restore the kingdom of Israel. No, no, no. Jesus says, it's a lot bigger than that. Matthew 1:20 through 21. The angel says to Joseph, "But as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins." If we want restoration in our lives, this is what we need. God, save me from my sins. Plural, there's many of them. God, save me from my sins. If we want restoration in the church, we want restoration in our city, if we want restoration in our nation and the world, God, save us from our sins. And the only way we can be saved from our sins is through Jesus Christ and Jesus restores God's people by saving them from their sins. The angel says to the shepherd in Luke 2:10 through 11, "Fear not for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people for unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ, the Lord. The king has come, he is Lord and he is savior. In Jesus, God shines his face upon his people." Romans 5:8. "Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men." I'll close with two more things that are really important. John 15 and then Galatians 5. In the Old Testament, Israel is the vine and God is the vine dresser. By the time the New Testament comes, people of God are no longer the vine because we could not produce the fruit from within the fruit that God wanted. So then God sends Jesus Christ. In John 15, Jesus says that he is the vine and the emphasis of, he's the vine and we are to bear fruit through our connection with him, communion with him, relationship with him. John 15:1 through 17. "I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this, my father's glorified that you bear much fruit and so proof to be my disciples. And as the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you, no longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friend for all that I have heard from my father I've made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another." Jesus now is the vine, we're the branches. Through our faith we're connected to him. Communion with him. The more time we spend with him, the more we worship and glorify him, walk with him, follow him, the more fruit is produced by him through the Holy Spirit in us. That's why I look at the Old Testament and I'm like, I feel so bad for them. I feel terrible for them because they didn't have the power of Jesus. They didn't have the Holy Spirit within as we do. As we do. That's why we're so blessed. And I'll end with Galatians 5, which gives us the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit in which we can discern. Are we walking in step with the spirit or are we walking according to the flesh? If we're walking according to the flesh, we produce wild fruit, which is sinful instead of producing the fruit that God wants from us. Galatians 5:16 through 25. "But I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Desires of the flesh are against the spirit. Desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you were led by the spirit, you are not under the law. The works of the flesh are evident. Sexual morality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enemies, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these." That's the heaven utopia that Satan promises us apart from God and it only turns into hell. But, he says, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit, let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Four steps to restoration. Humble yourself, pray boldly, turn from your wicked way, and seek God's face. I'll close with a benediction from Hebrews as our prayer. Let's pray. May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord, Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.