SPEAKER_02: Psalm sixty-three.
SPEAKER_02: A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
SPEAKER_02: O God, you you are my God.
SPEAKER_02: Earnestly I seek you.
SPEAKER_02: My soul thirst for you.
SPEAKER_02: My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
SPEAKER_02: So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life.
SPEAKER_02: My lips will praise you.
SPEAKER_02: So I will bless you as long as I live.
SPEAKER_02: In your name I will lift up my hands.
SPEAKER_02: My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I am remembered upon your bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.
SPEAKER_02: For you have been my help, and the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
SPEAKER_02: My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me.
SPEAKER_02: But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: They shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be a portion for jackals, but the king shall rejoice in God.
SPEAKER_02: All who swear by him shall exalt, for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
SPEAKER_02: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Lord Father God, we are humbly thankful, Lord, for your power, your word that's been set before us, Lord, and been preserved for all this time, Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Your the power that is in this word, Lord, the transformating power of of instructions, Lord, of healing.
SPEAKER_03: Lord, there are those of us, Lord, today that need to hear your healing power of these words, your restoration power of these words, Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Lord, the the hurting, the sick, the those who are just going through trouble times, Lord, help us to hear your word from Pastor Robert today.
SPEAKER_03: Lord, I just pray that you use him as a vessel, Lord, that you prepare the way, you prepare the hearts and the minds of all those who are here today, Lord, these words from you.
SPEAKER_03: And we're so thankful.
SPEAKER_03: We pray in Jesus Christ's name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, brothers.
SPEAKER_01: You guys can be seated.
SPEAKER_01: And if you haven't already done so, let me invite you to open your copy of God's word to Psalm 63.
SPEAKER_01: As Michael pointed out, we're gonna take several weeks to work through several of the Psalms, and we begin with Psalms 63, where we see that the love of God is better than all things, it's better than life, as David describes for us.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna begin this morning and we're gonna end this morning with some questions that I want to pose to you.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to listen to these.
SPEAKER_01: Do you love God?
SPEAKER_01: Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength?
SPEAKER_01: If you lost everything, and I mean everything in this life, would you worship God because He is God?
SPEAKER_01: David, when he pinned the psalm, as we saw at the beginning, he was in the wilderness of Judah, and this was an area that was just limited in resources, it had limited water, had limited plant life, it had limited animal life.
SPEAKER_01: Some seasons of the year there had more of that than others, but in general, it was a dry and it was a barren land as it is described in this text.
SPEAKER_01: And for us to understand the complete totality of what is taking place, the environment that David is in, not just his physical environment, we have to look at verses one, we have to look at verse nine, we have to look at verse 11, and we have to look at 2 Samuel 15.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna breeze through those really quickly.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 1, we see the reality of the physical location.
SPEAKER_01: It was a dry and weary land.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 9, we see David describe the the fact that his enemies were in pursuit of him, not just in pursuit of him, they were in pursuit of him for the purpose of taking his life and of harming him.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 11, we see that he is king when this is taking place.
SPEAKER_01: And if you read about this particular situation in 2 Samuel 15, what you will see is that you will see David is in the wilderness during the rebellion of Absalom.
SPEAKER_01: Absalom is the enemy that sought to destroy him and that sought to kill him.
SPEAKER_01: Absalom, if you don't know anything about the lineage of David, Absalom was his son.
SPEAKER_01: So his own son was in pursuit of him for the purpose of harming him.
SPEAKER_01: So, yes, geographically, he is in a dry and barren land, but his dry and barren land that he speaks of was not just the dry and barren land of his physical location.
SPEAKER_01: And I know and understand, I wanted to make a point to say this that some of you in this room are estranged from your kids.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are estranged from your parents, and that is devastating.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be crystal clear.
SPEAKER_01: I can't even begin to fathom how painful that must be.
SPEAKER_01: That is the type of thing that as a parent I have nightmares about.
SPEAKER_01: So please don't hear me make light of your situation.
SPEAKER_01: That is certainly not my intent, but I do want to call to attention that David was not simply estranged from his son.
SPEAKER_01: His son sought to find him and seek him and kill him.
SPEAKER_01: Let that settle in for a second, the weight of that.
SPEAKER_01: If you walked in this morning and you are hurting and you're not knowing what to do, you are weary and you can hardly find the strength to get out of your bed in the morning and walk out of the front door, not knowing how you're going to go on.
SPEAKER_01: You have come to the right place, and by God's grace, we are in the right psalm for you.
SPEAKER_01: Regardless of what you have going on in your life right now, if you are a follower of Jesus, everything in your life can be stripped away one by one, or all of it in a moment, gone, vanished, poof, out of here.
SPEAKER_01: And according to his word, God's love is enough.
SPEAKER_01: And David points to three realities in his response to this situation.
SPEAKER_01: We see him affectionately worship God.
SPEAKER_01: We see him find satisfaction in the communion that he has with God, and we see him being totally dependent upon God.
SPEAKER_01: You see, David was isolated.
SPEAKER_01: He was isolated, he was discouraged, and he longed for God in those moments.
SPEAKER_01: And it's important for us to set this context at the beginning, excuse me, that this is not some person seeking some arbitrary God, right?
SPEAKER_01: David is not seeking some arbitrary God.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a man who didn't know who God was, seeking to figure out who is God.
SPEAKER_01: That is not who David was.
SPEAKER_01: This was a man who was in the midst of difficulty and knew without a doubt that God was all he needed.
SPEAKER_01: It was all he needed.
SPEAKER_01: Further, we also can pull out of this text that this was a man who not only knew that God was all he needed, he desired to be in the presence of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: He was in a desolate place physically.
SPEAKER_01: He was in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: He was not with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: He was separated from God's people and he longed to be with them.
SPEAKER_01: As I mentioned a moment ago, many of you might find yourself in a similar position this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you know of someone else that feels that way.
SPEAKER_01: They're in that position.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they are completely disconnected from the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: What we know from the context of this passage is David knew what it was like to be in the presence of God's people in Jerusalem at the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
SPEAKER_01: David knew what that was like, yet he couldn't get there because he was in the wilderness and people were seeking to harm him.
SPEAKER_01: He could not get to God's people.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of a double-click on that because I think this is important for context.
SPEAKER_01: The covenant relationship David had was the foundation of this commitment that he had to God and his yearning to be in the presence not only of God, but in the presence of God's people at the tabernacle in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: What does all that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: The likes of that covenant, I wish we had time to dive into that.
SPEAKER_01: The likes of that covenant can be found in Genesis 17.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: David recognizes the promises that were before him.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, in the midst of chaos, David declares, Your love for me, God, is unchanging.
SPEAKER_01: Because he knew the reality of the covenant that he was living under.
SPEAKER_01: We can't overlook the fact that David had an appetite, a hunger to be in the presence of God and to be with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: He longed to return from the wilderness and to worship.
SPEAKER_01: We are a new covenant people, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is where I want to make sure we're clear.
SPEAKER_01: We are a new covenant people, but we can declare the same thing as we have seen God display his totally unselfish love to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We can be committed to God in the same way under a new covenant that is the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We live under this new covenant, and this new covenant provides us certain hope in the midst of certain death.
SPEAKER_01: It provides acquittal from the guilt that is our sin through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It provides us rescue.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: The two things that I want you to think about when you think about the new covenant that we live under.
SPEAKER_01: It provides us rescue from our sin and it establishes the church.
SPEAKER_01: Provides us rescue from our sin and it establishes the church.
SPEAKER_01: So we too, here, some however many thousands of years later, we too long for God and we too long for the gathering because we live under the new covenant that is the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: New covenant worship, it varies slightly from old covenant.
SPEAKER_01: We no longer have to go to the tabernacle, but we do gather with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a tabernacle, but we don't need it, right?
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a temple, but we don't need it.
SPEAKER_01: We have the blood of Christ and we have each other.
SPEAKER_01: That's all we need.
SPEAKER_01: We are the benefactors of this new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: I came across some phrase, a phrasing from a guy in reading and studying this in more detail, in particular in relation to Psalm 63.
SPEAKER_01: And he said it this way: God's glory dwells palpably amongst God's people.
SPEAKER_01: Dwells palpably.
SPEAKER_01: You can't totally disconnect the glory of God and the adoring of the glory of God from the gathering of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: That is the antithesis of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: You can't disconnect that, right?
SPEAKER_01: There are certainly things outside of the gathering that displays the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: We see that.
SPEAKER_01: All of creation declare the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: We see those things in God's word, but we can't miss the fact that the greatness of God's love for us is palpable in the midst of the gathering of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: We can taste it, we can foresee the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: And David had a hunger and a thirst to be in the tabernacle, to worship God and to be with God's people, because he knew that it was a foretaste of God's glory.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, we as God's people living under a new covenant should have a desire to worship God with God's people because of the foretaste of his glory that it provides us.
SPEAKER_01: All that to say, do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength?
SPEAKER_01: I want to look at three specific things that should be evidences in our life that are evidences in David's life, beginning with the pursuit of affectionate worship of God.
SPEAKER_01: We see that in verses one through four.
SPEAKER_01: And I would venture to say that for many of us, we find ourselves in this dry and barren land more often than we like, and more often than we would like to admit.
SPEAKER_01: I want to pause for a moment, and I want you to think about all of the faithful saints that came before us.
SPEAKER_01: Some of them may even be present with us now.
SPEAKER_01: Think about the disciples for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Think about all that they endured for the cause of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Think about Paul shipwrecked, beaten, beheaded.
SPEAKER_01: Think about Cory Tin Boom sitting in a bunkhouse in a concentrations camp, thanking God for fleece.
SPEAKER_01: Think about Bonhoeffer and all that he did for the cause of Christ in the midst of Nazi Germany, some of the greatest persecution the world has ever seen.
SPEAKER_01: Think about the person in your life right now that you have seen and observed endure great suffering, but in the midst of that worshiped.
SPEAKER_01: What do all these folks have in common?
SPEAKER_01: They pursued affectionate worship of God regardless of what their earthly circumstances brought them.
SPEAKER_01: So if you were here this morning and you were in the midst of a dry and weary land, the bad news is that may not be a season of life for you.
SPEAKER_01: That very well may be the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when people check on me over the years, even to this day, my tendency to say is to respond, hey, how you doing, is to respond with something like, Yeah, life is hard right now.
SPEAKER_01: It it stinks, it's really difficult.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: It's just a season.
SPEAKER_01: What if it's not just a season?
SPEAKER_01: What if the thorn in your flesh never goes away?
SPEAKER_01: What if the disease that riddles your body leads to your physical death?
SPEAKER_01: What if the relationship you so long to see restores remains in turmoil?
SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
SPEAKER_01: David gives us the answer.
SPEAKER_01: You notice that his praise isn't dependent upon the dry land being plush.
SPEAKER_01: His praise isn't about the provision in his life.
SPEAKER_01: His praise is directed towards one thing only, and that is the provider.
SPEAKER_01: Not the provision.
SPEAKER_01: The idea is so hard for us in our Western prosperity minds to even begin to grasp.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite quotes from C.S.
SPEAKER_01: Lewis, I think it's from the problem of pain, he says, This we can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to.
SPEAKER_01: God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.
SPEAKER_01: It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
SPEAKER_01: You see, all too often we worship God for the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_01: We worship God not because of our earthly life as everything we desire it to be.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what the Bible calls us to do.
SPEAKER_01: We don't simply worship because our life is what we want it to be and desire it to be.
SPEAKER_01: And where this gets really messy is so often we worship because we have a wrong understanding.
SPEAKER_01: We have a misdirected worship because we have a wrong understanding of many of the promises of God that we see in scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I want to speak to two of those very briefly and directly.
SPEAKER_01: The verse, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
SPEAKER_01: And the verse and the out-of-context verse that we often use, all things will work together for my good.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We take those and we misguide those.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens, what the danger in that is, is if we take those and we misinterpret those and we isogete those and we read into those what we want, I'm gonna be good on this earth and I will get all the things I want.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the source is, we want it, we want it, we want it.
SPEAKER_01: And God's word says, I'm going to get it.
SPEAKER_01: If we take it out of context, it misdirects our worship because we are worshiping because of the provision, not the provider.
SPEAKER_01: Here's some ways we see that.
SPEAKER_01: This is a silly one.
SPEAKER_01: I'm four foot eleven, but I'm gonna make the MBA.
SPEAKER_01: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_01: And Philippians 4.13 doesn't tell you that you will.
SPEAKER_01: I went to church.
SPEAKER_01: I'm an honest man, I work hard, so God's gonna give me a greater and larger paycheck.
SPEAKER_01: He may not.
SPEAKER_01: I live in America, so God is on my side because we pray, or because we read our Bible.
SPEAKER_01: That's not a promise in scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is one for me.
SPEAKER_01: This is silly, but I remember growing up playing baseball, and I would think if I can pray more than the other team this week, or if I can obey my mom and dad better than the person I'm pitching against, then maybe I can strike him out.
SPEAKER_01: That is trash.
SPEAKER_01: That is not from God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Or I pray today.
SPEAKER_01: This is everyone, I pray today today.
SPEAKER_01: So God is going to provide me healing.
SPEAKER_01: The cancer or the disease that riddles my body will go away because I asked God to take it away.
SPEAKER_01: I bring all those things up because the pursuit of affectionate worship, specifically in the West, is often driven by one of those things being taken out of context and therefore our worship being misdirected.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship because we are okay physically.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship because we have plenty.
SPEAKER_01: We worship because he is God.
SPEAKER_01: I praise him.
SPEAKER_01: What happens is we say, I praise him when I'm healed, I praise him when my relationship is restored, I praise him in times of plenty, I praise him when I get the job that I want.
SPEAKER_01: We say praise God to good things, and rightfully so.
SPEAKER_01: But do we praise God in the midst of bad things, in the midst of bad news?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not discounting lament.
SPEAKER_01: I want to make a quick aside here.
SPEAKER_01: Lament is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: It is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: David laments.
SPEAKER_01: It is a good thing, but ultimately lament leads us to praise.
SPEAKER_01: We are to pursue affectionate worship because he is God, not because of what we get out of it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is heavy for me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01: Which means we pursue God of His because of His great love for us.
SPEAKER_01: A love that was displayed for us on the cross as a new covenant people.
SPEAKER_01: A love that grasps their the reality that any sort of earthly gain that we pursue or obtain is meaningless.
SPEAKER_01: It is nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
SPEAKER_01: Because his steadfast love is better than life.
SPEAKER_01: You ever thought what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: I know you've most of you have probably heard that.
SPEAKER_01: His steadfast love is better than life.
SPEAKER_01: It's in song lyrics.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: I want you to dream with me for a second.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to think about something.
SPEAKER_01: Think in your mind, what is the ideal life for you?
SPEAKER_01: The ideal life for you, the ideal job, the ideal house, the ideal car, the ideal kits, right?
SPEAKER_01: The ideal situations, all of it.
SPEAKER_01: What is ideal?
SPEAKER_01: His love is greater than all of that.
SPEAKER_01: All of that.
SPEAKER_01: Set your lips to praise him.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Set your lips to praise him.
SPEAKER_01: Let your his name be lifted high in your voice.
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hands, lift him up.
SPEAKER_01: The name that is above every name, the name that every knee shall bow to in heaven and on earth.
SPEAKER_01: The name that every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Not my stuff, not my health.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we worship.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we see David do here in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the ways that we do that is we find satisfaction in the communion with God.
SPEAKER_01: I think we all know that none of us have an issue being satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: We have an issue with what the object of our satisfaction is.
SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you a trial challenging question.
SPEAKER_01: Do you truly find satisfaction in communion with God?
SPEAKER_01: And I posed this a different way a moment ago and I'm going to pose it again.
SPEAKER_01: Do you truly find satisfaction in communion with God in that if if God were to strip everything on this earth from the grips of your hands, would he be enough?
SPEAKER_01: Would he be enough?
SPEAKER_01: Sit with that question.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let there be awkward silence.
SPEAKER_01: Sit with that question for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Would he be enough?
SPEAKER_01: I know for me I want to verbally shout, yes.
SPEAKER_01: Be enough, but my heart tells me in that declaration, Robert, you are a liar.
SPEAKER_01: You are a liar.
SPEAKER_01: You have greater passion for your kids than you do your savior.
SPEAKER_01: You have greater passion for your wife than you do your savior.
SPEAKER_01: You have greater passion for your job than you do your savior.
SPEAKER_01: I have a grave concern.
SPEAKER_01: I'm including myself in that concern that many of us proclaim in thought or in word that we find satisfaction in the love of God, but in our actions and in our hearts, we lack a passion for that very same God.
SPEAKER_01: This is scary.
SPEAKER_01: One commentator I wrote pointed to two really hard realities.
SPEAKER_01: The first one is James 2.19.
SPEAKER_01: You believe that God is one.
SPEAKER_01: You do well.
SPEAKER_01: Even the demons believe and shudder.
SPEAKER_01: Even the demons believe.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew 7, 21-22 is the other really difficult reality pointed to.
SPEAKER_01: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of the Father who is is it is the one who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?
SPEAKER_01: There will be people who pass from this life to the to the next only to discover that their eternity was not secure.
SPEAKER_01: Do we love God?
SPEAKER_01: Or do we simply believe in God?
SPEAKER_01: Do we simply believe in God, or do you have a passion for Him?
SPEAKER_01: But there is good news in the midst of this, right?
SPEAKER_01: This communion that we see, David, live out, God has invited us into that communion.
SPEAKER_01: He has invited us into a relationship with him, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's invited us into that relationship.
SPEAKER_01: We say all the time, we don't do anything to earn our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: He does it all.
SPEAKER_01: He invites us into that relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And if you are a follower of Jesus, you didn't initiate your salvation.
SPEAKER_01: He did.
SPEAKER_01: And in doing so, what we often miss is salvation is not just about our justification, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not just about giving us freedom from sin.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is part of it.
SPEAKER_01: But when we are invited into this relationship with him, we're not just invited into justification.
SPEAKER_01: We are invited into sanctification and ultimately glorification.
SPEAKER_01: And praise God for that.
SPEAKER_01: Into this daily communion with him, this relationship that is rooted in this passion and this love and this desire to be with him and to commune with him.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay and right to love our kids.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay and right to love our spouse.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay and right to love our jobs, but we can't let those things come above our love for God.
SPEAKER_01: If we do, we should be concerned.
SPEAKER_01: I read this really strong illustration, and I'm going to read it for you guys.
SPEAKER_01: So, so strong.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine you are stranded at sea, drowning in the water, and the ship arrives to rescue you.
SPEAKER_01: Just because you want that lifeboat to rescue you, does uh and you gladly receive his help in order to survive, does not mean you love the captain of the ship.
SPEAKER_01: So also the desire to escape hell does not mean you love God.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not careful, this is what our Christianity can become: a bunch of people who don't want to go to hell and will gladly take the lifeboat to heaven, yet our lives demonstrate no real love for the captain of the ship.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the reasons I love this psalm, but it's also one why when I got into studying it early this week, I'm like, man, this is gonna be tough.
SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be hard.
SPEAKER_01: It points most primarily to a love for God.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't point to a love for him that is rooting, rooted in what we get out of it.
SPEAKER_01: It's pointing to a love for God because he is God.
SPEAKER_01: This passage is evidence of one thing for David.
SPEAKER_01: David needed one thing in his life.
SPEAKER_01: Again, think about being in a wilderness and your child pursuing you to kill you.
SPEAKER_01: And all you can do is say, God, you are enough.
SPEAKER_01: David needed one thing in his life, and that was God.
SPEAKER_01: He was okay if he lost everything else in his life because he knew he had God, and God had steadfast love for him.
SPEAKER_01: He was totally dependent upon God, is the last thing we're gonna look at.
SPEAKER_01: This is in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: As I was prepping this passage, I was struck by something, right?
SPEAKER_01: Part of the reason I was excited to preach this passage before I really dove into it was the reality of man, so many of us are in difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: So many of us are are in the midst of hardships.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that from having conversations with you.
SPEAKER_01: We have relationships that are in turmoil, we have health that is declining, we have kids who are struggling, we have difficult situations at law uh at work, we have jobs that have been lost, there are tears that are being shed.
SPEAKER_01: And then I started reading this passage, and there were multiple times in reading and studying the passage that I just got so heavy that I would just would cry, like tears would fill my eyes, and I would cry.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that would happen to me is I read this passage because if I am honest, I often lack the passion that David has for God's love.
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting in Ornando on Friday watching the storm roll in, and it was like, I apologize if your kids are in here.
SPEAKER_01: It was like the Holy Spirit said, Wake up, stupid.
SPEAKER_01: Wake up.
SPEAKER_01: Of course it's heavy.
SPEAKER_01: If you misplace your passion, you you're your communion is going to be with something other than me.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're communion with something other than me, you're gonna be dependent on something other than me.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what that leads to?
SPEAKER_01: It leads to despair.
SPEAKER_01: If you put your hope and your trust and your dependence in anything other than the God of creation, it will lead you to despair.
SPEAKER_01: I promise you.
SPEAKER_01: Despair everything that you have in this life is God's, it is his, and it can all be gone in an instant.
SPEAKER_01: An instant.
SPEAKER_01: Wealth that took you a lifetime or a whole career to acquire.
SPEAKER_01: Gone.
SPEAKER_01: Kids that have were so faithful and obedient flee from the Lord and flee from you.
SPEAKER_01: Your marriage can hit rock bottom, your closest friendship can cease to be, your health can be eradicated with one doctor's visit and one statement from a doctor that you don't want to hear.
SPEAKER_01: And if one or all of those things happen in a matter of a month or a week or even a day, David says, When the land is dry, look upon his face, and behold, the majesty and glory of God and his steadfast love is enough.
SPEAKER_01: It is enough.
SPEAKER_01: When you have that outlook, you have that passion, watch out, Satan.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Watch out.
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming after you.
SPEAKER_01: There's an old pastor I used to sit under, coming after you with a water pistol, and I'm gonna kick your tail.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out.
SPEAKER_01: This is true within the context of an individual believer, but it's also true within the context of the local church as well.
SPEAKER_01: A guy named Gene Edward V says this when speaking about the passion for the love of God, when it takes root in the life of the church, he says, even when the church seems to be enjoying its greatest earthly success, it is the weakest.
SPEAKER_01: Conversely, when the church encounters hardship, persecution, and suffering, then it is the closest to the crucified Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Then there are fewer hypocrites and nominal believers amongst its members, and then the faith of Christians burns most intensely.
SPEAKER_01: It is the times of the greatest hardship that the church flourishes the greatest.
SPEAKER_01: We see that all throughout the course of history.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: The church in those times has no choice but to look to nothing other than the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: They're not dependent upon prosperity, they're not dependent upon giving, they're not dependent upon how many butts are in the seats, they're not dependent upon having the perfect pastor or the perfect leaders, they're not dependent upon anything other than the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out, Satan.
SPEAKER_01: The gates of hell will not overcome that church.
SPEAKER_01: I firmly believe one of the most dangerous and damaging things in the life of an individual believer and in the life of the church is prosperity.
SPEAKER_01: It is damaging, it is damning to the church.
SPEAKER_01: Satan used prosperity to build into a posture of believers, a posture of conditional worship, which means I will worship if I have all the things I want.
SPEAKER_01: Conditional worship is not worship at all.
SPEAKER_01: Conditional worship is idolatry.
SPEAKER_01: Idolatry is sin.
SPEAKER_01: As individuals, if we are stripped of everything and we have nothing left, we have no energy, we have no job, we have no money, we have no family, we have no relationships, we have no health.
SPEAKER_01: We're sitting in the hospital bed with nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Let's take it a step further.
SPEAKER_01: We are sick and we are dying, and there's no hospital bed to sit in or anyone to care for us.
SPEAKER_01: We're not even sure we're gonna live another day.
SPEAKER_01: You know what remains?
SPEAKER_01: His love for you.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And that love is sweet.
SPEAKER_01: It is sweet.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're here today and you are weary, life has you down for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_01: Take heart because regardless of how dry and barren the land is or how dark the wilderness is, God is on his throne.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is seated at the right hand, and the spirit is praying for you with groaning too deep for words.
SPEAKER_01: God loves you with a love that is unmatched, and that is not changing.
SPEAKER_01: That is not changing.
SPEAKER_01: That is not conditional love, that is an unconditional love for his children, and he's provides satisfaction for you through your understanding of his love, which when we read this passage, it talks about man, it's greater than any liquid that can hit your lips when you are so thirsty.
SPEAKER_01: It's greater than any food that you can consume and fill your belly when you are hungry.
SPEAKER_01: His love is better than that, it is better than life.
SPEAKER_01: And we speak of a perfect love, and we should continue to do so.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to point something out about this passage that is particularly encouraging for me.
SPEAKER_01: I pray you find it the same, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, God's love is certainly perfect, but it is eternal.
SPEAKER_01: It's perfect and it's eternal, right?
SPEAKER_01: We see in Psalms 126, I believe it is, flesh and blood, they will do what?
SPEAKER_01: They will fail, but his love endures forever.
SPEAKER_01: And as we prepare to close, I want to issue a challenge both to believers and non-believers from this passage.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna do that by speaking to some things that are fairly heavy, right?
SPEAKER_01: God's right to give and take away is not a reason for us to reject him, it's not a reason for us to doubt him, it's not a reason for us to discount him.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, it is a reason for us to hope in him, to hope in him.
SPEAKER_01: For nonbelievers, the fact that God gives and takes away is not a reason to be skeptical, it is a reason to turn to him, to live under this new covenant that is the blood of Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_01: Nothing in this life, I promise you, will prove to be eternal other than the gospel message that is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, today the challenge from you from this passage is turn to him so that you can find the same satisfaction that David has in the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: And for believers, I know some of you walked in this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of how some of you walked in.
SPEAKER_01: Let me phrase it that way.
SPEAKER_01: I know the things that you're going through because we've talked about it, or you've talked about it with one of the other elders.
SPEAKER_01: I know how hard it is.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what you feel, but I know your situation is dire.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know how all of you walked in.
SPEAKER_01: But what I do know is that the older I get, the more that I realize that this life that when I was a kid just seemed like all joy and happiness.
SPEAKER_01: It seemed like all puppy dogs and rainbows, as the cartoons put it, is actually riddled with hardship and difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: It's riddled with words that pierce your hearts.
SPEAKER_01: It's riddled with hurtful things.
SPEAKER_01: It's riddled with disease.
SPEAKER_01: It's like we're walking from one difficulty to the next, and sometimes there's no break in between, and sometimes we have about six of them going on at once.
SPEAKER_01: And that gets us down.
SPEAKER_01: It beats us into the ground.
SPEAKER_01: I would challenge you this week.
SPEAKER_01: Communion with God doesn't come by accident.
SPEAKER_01: Be intentional to do the things that David did here, affectionately worship him, find satisfaction in communion with him, be totally dependent upon him, and as you do, be reminded of the biblical promise we see in scripture, and that is his love is better than anything this life can throw at you.
SPEAKER_01: It's better than your life itself.
SPEAKER_01: You worship God because he's God, not because of anything else.
SPEAKER_01: Said I was gonna end with a couple of questions.
SPEAKER_01: Here they are.
SPEAKER_01: Do you prioritize Christ above all?
SPEAKER_01: This is for believers.
SPEAKER_01: Do you prioritize Christ above all?
SPEAKER_01: If God stripped you of everything, would you worship him?
SPEAKER_00: The depths of who you are desire God's love above all else.
SPEAKER_01: See, the temptation is to read this passage and think, man, this is just some over-the-top illustration.
SPEAKER_01: This is some over-the-top illustration by David.
SPEAKER_01: This can't be, uh, no, this is not an over-the-top illustration.
SPEAKER_01: This is a guy who loves God, who is in the midst of some of the greatest turmoil any of us can even begin to fathom.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Your love is enough.
SPEAKER_01: I I want us to feel the weight of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: I want us to be challenged by this passage because the the fact is that you will never reap the glory, glorious realities of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: Those realities being living in the affectionate love of God and that being the source of all things, if you don't understand the devastating weight of it.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You will never be able to grasp those realities of God's love if you don't understand the devastating weight that comes along with this passage.
SPEAKER_01: So it's appropriate to feel the weight of it, but praise God, we have his love to look to.
SPEAKER_01: A love that did not spare his own son, instead gave him up for us, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the life we're called to as a believer.
SPEAKER_01: And may God continue, this is a hard thing to say, but may God continue to strip things away from us until we respond with a ferocious devotion to worshipful communion with God, regardless of our circumstances, simply rooted in the reality and fact that He is God.
SPEAKER_01: May that be our prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we're grateful for who you are.
SPEAKER_01: We're grateful for your word.
SPEAKER_01: God, we're grateful for the example that David lived, the example that in the midst of chaos, in the midst of emotional turmoil, I can't imagine the emotions that would come along with your son, your own flesh and blood, being in pursuit of you for the purpose of harming you, being in a desolate place.
SPEAKER_01: In the midst of that, he declares, if I look to you, your love is enough.
SPEAKER_01: God, may we be a people who declare the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: May we appropriately feel the weight of this passage, and may that spark in us just a desire, a ferocious desire, as I said a moment ago, to be devoted to communion with God above all things, regardless of what our circumstances bring.
SPEAKER_01: God, strip things away from us.
SPEAKER_01: Teach us that you are all that we need.
SPEAKER_01: Remind us that you are all that we need.
SPEAKER_01: Even if that means us walking through difficulty, God, we submit to you and how you are teaching us that, both individually and as a corporate body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray too for the person here who's not a believer.
SPEAKER_01: God, may the reality of David's conviction and commitment to the love of God be something the Spirit uses to prompt a response in the person here this morning who's not a follower of Jesus, so they too can enjoy these glorious realities that we see David so passionately pursue in this passage.
SPEAKER_01: We love you.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.