"My Hope Is In the Lord" (Psalm 39:7)

"My Hope Is In the Lord" from Psalm 39:7 was preached by Dr. Mark McElreath at the City Baptist Church of Atlanta on July 26, 2026.

Find out more about the City Baptist Church of Atlanta at www.citybaptistchurch.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to the City Pulpit. Bible messages from the pulpit ministry of the City Baptist Church in Atlanta. Please take your Bibles with me. Let's go to Psalm 39. Psalm 39. We come to Psalm 39. We have a Psalm of David here, and really through this Psalm, David is dealing with the frailty and really the weakness of our human existence. You say, Boy, Pastor, that's something to talk about on a Sunday morning. Well, I think he finds, even in this, he finds the answer to it. And we'll get to that. But begin reading with me, please, Psalm 39, and let's read verse number one. The Bible says, I said, I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with the bridle while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with silence. I held my peace even from good, and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me while I was musing, the fire burned. Then spake I with my tongue. Lord make me to know mine end in the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as in hand breadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily every man in his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. Surely every man walketh in a vain show, surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions, make me not the reproach of the foolish. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth because thou didst it. Remove thy stroke away from me, I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth, surely every man is vanity, Selah. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were. O spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Would you mark this phrase in verse number seven? We'll take this for the theme of the Bible message this morning. This phrase, My hope is in thee. My hope is in thee. And we'll take for the title of the message, My Hope is in the Lord. We all hope in something. You might be here today and you may say, Oh yeah, Pastor, I'm hoping I hit the I hit I'm hoping I hit the lottery. No, I hope that's not what you're hoping in, okay? But you may be hoping in, you know, I'm really hoping I get this promotion. You know, I'm really hoping I can get this funding. You know, I'm really hoping that this works out. You you fill in the blank. I am hoping in this, and often we understand many times what we hope in, and what we really hope is going to happen does not turn out the way we think it should, or turn out the way we think it will. But if we can say with David in verse number seven, My hope is in thee, then however it turns out, we're going to be okay. And however it turns out, we're going to be just fine because we know that ultimately the Lord is working on our behalf behind the scenes and he is bringing to us exactly what we need. In fact, make note of some things with us this morning. Would you write this down? Number one, we find the opening of this psalm a lesson on our tongue, a lesson on our tongue. Because our hope is in God, it affects how we speak. If people heard how you and I talk about the world, would they truly think we hoped in God? If the words that were coming out of our mouth were weighed in a balance, what would people think? Would they think we're just like everybody else? We're just parroting what all the talking heads are saying on social media and on the news? Are we just, are we just the kind of people that are just, we're so frazzled and we're so overrun by everything going on? They would think, well, I guess they're just like everybody else, right? Look, look here what David says. Look at Psalm 39, look at verse 1. He says, I said, I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. You know, I think many times the quickest way we can sin is to sin with our tongue. He says here, I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. In fact, the psalmist says in Psalm 141 and verse 3, he says, Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips. That would be good in tumultuous times to say, Lord, would you would you just hold back what I think I want to say and let me think about it a little longer? In Proverbs 18 and verse 21, it says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue. You realize we have the power to tear down, we also have the power to build up just by the words we say. And if our hope is in the Lord, we should be speaking the kind of words, not that are bringing death, but that are bringing life. It says in Proverbs 18, 21, death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. You see, whether we are speaking words of death or speaking words of life, it will bring fruit. Everything we say will bring fruit. There is some consequence to the words we use. And you know what it will do? It will either bring hope in the Lord in others, or it will defer hope in the Lord from others. How we speak is affecting other people. I think about, I often give the example in Acts chapter 16, it's when Paul is thrown into the dungeon of Philippi. And there's this little part in Acts 16, it's down around verse, it's in the 20s. In my Bible, it's in the bottom right-hand corner of the page. I know where it is, I just don't know the verse number. And it says that he sang songs and hymns and prayed, and then it says, and the prisoners heard him. Now the Holy Spirit decided for some reason to add that little portion of that verse in Acts chapter 16. Not just that he sang, but that people in the jail also heard him singing. You realize by the way we speak, people are listening, and people are going to judge what we think about the Lord and what we believe about the world by the way we speak. You see, he says in verse number two here of Psalm 39, it says, I was dumb with silence, I held my peace even from good, and my sorrow was stirred. You know, there's something going on in the heart of David here. He is stirred to know that something's not right. It's not going the way I think it should. But my first response is to not spout off about it. We've got to be careful sometimes when we see something online or we see something on social media or we hear something from someone else. We immediately want to give our two cents and think the world needs to know our two cents. The first thing we need to do is just stop and think about it. We need to stop and do what David says here. Look what he says in verse number three. When we think about the tongue, I think this is so key. He says, My heart was hot within me. Okay? There was something boiling inside of me, he says. My heart was hot within me. Look what he says. And while I was musing, the fire burned. Now that's the key part there. He says, I was musing. You ever heard the word musing? We don't use that word very much. In fact, it's an old Latin word for muzzle or to not speak. If we're musing, we're not speaking. There's a word muser in the old French that's for one who ponders or stares blankly. Now, when you add a to this, the prefix ah, it means to not muse. So if musing means to stop and think or ponder on something, what does amuse or amusement mean? To stop thinking, to stop dwelling on something, and to stop not talking. What is ah amusement? It means we just stop thinking. We've got to be careful if we're just so focused on amusement. I don't want to think about it. I just want to be distracted, you know. I'm going to doom scroll, right, and then all my worries will go away. No, they're not going to go away, okay? I just want to be ah amused, turn a TV on, let's binge watch a show. Let me be amused so I don't have to ponder on these things and think about these things. Because here's what it says in verse number three My heart was hot within me. While I was musing, the fire burned. And then the last part of the verse says, Then spake I with my tongue. How often is it turned around the other way? My heart was hot within me, then spake I with my tongue. Oh, I saw something that upset me, and let me tell you what, I let them have it. I heard this and I told them, I told them, I gave them a peace of my mind. David says here though, I was musing while that fire burned within me. I pondered on it and I thought about it. He says in verse 1 and 2, I kept my mouth, I was done with silence, I held my peace, even from good. And then in verse 3, then spake I with my tongue. There are going to be things in your life that you see or you deal with or you have to face, they're going to be difficult things. They're going to be hard things. And the immediate response in the flesh will be, let me strike out and let me say something. Let me respond to this. And yet the psalmist says, if my hope is truly in the Lord, I will stop and I will ponder on it. I will muse on it, I will think on it. And then once I've gotten the mind of the Lord on it, then I will speak with my tongue. You see, if we truly believe in the Lord, our hope is in the Lord, we will use our tongue wisely. Let me give you an example, New Testament example. Go with me, please, to the book of James. James chapter 3. In James chapter 3, we have in the New Testament one of the clearest teachings on the tongue. James is dealing with it here, no doubt, because it was something that needed to be dealt with in the church. James chapter 3, look with me, please, in verse number 3. James 3, verse number 3. The Bible says, My brethren, I'm sorry, verse 3, behold, we put bits in horses' mouths that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. He says, All right, you're a small person sitting on a big horse, and you put that little bit in their mouth, and it turns them left when you want to turn them left, turns them right when they want to turn them right. Then he says, verse 4, Behold also the ships which they be so great and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned with a very small helm whithersoever the governor listeth. Big ship, but small helm, turn it this way, it's going to go this way, turn it the other way, it's going to go the other way. And then he says, even so, verse five, the tongue is a little member. Alright? The tongue takes up such a small part of the body, and yet it boasteth, verse five, great things. Behold, how great a matter a, what are the next two words that describe the tongue? Little fire. Behold how great matter a little fire kindleth. You know, with your tongue, with my tongue, we can either start fires or we can put out fires. Sometimes we like to go around and start fires. Sometimes it's just little fire. I didn't, it was just a little fire. Realize little fires never say little very long. I can remember back in 2016, I think it was the day before Thanksgiving in 2016. There were some boys. They were up in the woods with the Great Smoky Mountains, and they were taking matches and lighting them and trying to flip them into an empty soup can. They played that for a while, they were out in the woods. Well, they left one of those matches, it was still lit. It didn't make it in the soup can. It was just a few moments, and that fire started. They had already walked off and they they didn't realize it, but that started a raging flame in the great smoky mountains. In just a matter of a few days, it would consume about 17,000 acres of protected forest. Over 300 buildings would be destroyed, and 14 people would be dead. We lived 50 miles away when that happened, and we could see the smoke. It darkened the sky. The smoke was so thick. If you know the Dollywood, the uh abusement park there, it nearly burned Dollywood down. It came right up to the edge of it. Why? It was just a little fire. It was just a few little matches, it was just a little spark. That's the power we have with our tongue. Let me ask you, how are you using what you say? That's just not what comes out of our mouth. That's what we put up online. That's what we share, that's what we like. All of that is a matter of the tongue. And it all points to the fact either we are hoping in God or we're not hoping in God. If people looked at our feed, would they say, Yeah, this person has a hope in God? If someone looked at the reels that we were watching, would they say, Yes, this person has a hope in God? If people listen to the way we speak, would they know that we trusted in the Lord? Or would they think they're just like everyone else? If we truly are trusting in God, as it says in the psalmist here in Psalm 39, then it will affect how we speak. It's a matter of the tongue. But not only that, would you make note of a second thing? We see that he continues speaking in verse number four, and he speaks about an issue of time. If we truly hope in the Lord, trust in the Lord, it affects our tongue how we speak, it affects our time, it will affect how we spend our days. Look at verse 4. He says, Lord, make me to know mine. You see, how are we going to know how to live if we don't know where we're going? You see, the psalmist here, David, is saying in verse 4, Lord, help me to look at the end. Where is this path going to lead? And if our hope is truly in the Lord, we're going to say, then how I'm living is going to lead a certain direction and it's going to lead to a certain end that I want to live a certain way. I want to spend my time. And by the way, that's not just time as in the hours of the day and the minutes of the day. It's how I'm spending my life. We're all giving our life to something. He says here in verse 4, help me to know my end and the measure of my days. Now he's not saying, Lord, tell me how long I'm going to live. I'm going to live 72 years and three months. No, he's not saying that. He's saying the measure of my days. He's saying, Lord, help me to know how I'm to spend the time you give me. How am I to meet it out properly? How am I to take it and use it for you? He goes on to say in verse 4, the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am. You know, we may think, oh, Pastor, I've got 60, 70, 80, 90 years. I might be 100 years old. I got, I got, people live long in my life, in my family, Pastor. And yet David says, when we consider how long we're going to live, it shows us how frail we are, how weak we are. You know what that points us to? We need the Lord. It doesn't matter if we're just living a few years or a long life. We've got to depend on and trust the Lord with it. He goes on to say in verse 5, speaking of our time, he says, Behold, thou hast made my days as a handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Would you go with me to the 90th Psalm, Psalm 90? Just a few pages further. Psalm 90. This is a Psalm written by Moses. And Moses says here in Psalm 90 in verse number 1, as we think about our time, he says, Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. And he speaks about the Lord, for the mountains are brought forth, thou hast formed the earth. But go down a little further with me and look at verse 10. He says, The days of our years are three score years and ten. That's 70 years, and if by reason of strength they be four score years, that's 80 years. Yet is their strength, labor, and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. He says in verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Moses is speaking here in Psalm 90 about really how short life is. You might have 70 years, if by strength and labor you make it to 80 years, you've lived a full life. And he says, and then we fly away. It is, he says in verse 10, soon cut off. Now what's interesting is Moses is writing this as a 120-year-old man. And yet he says, 120 years, yeah, but soon it's gone. And you realize Moses trusted in the Lord, and that affected how he lived. It affected how he spent his life. And if we truly trust in the Lord, we're truly depending on him, it will affect how we live. The only way for a short life to matter is to connect it to eternity. That's all that will last. Why do people pay sums of money and give piles of money to have their name put on buildings? Or their family name put on a charity, or they have a foundation that continues on long beyond them. There's a name here in Atlanta, it's a well-known Atlanta name. It's the name of Robert W. Woodruff. And Robert Woodruff in 1923 became the president of the Coca-Cola Company. Before that, he sold trucks. In fact, the year before that, I read a story that he sold 30 trucks to the Coca-Cola Company because of their expansion that was going on. And then a year later, they asked him to be the president. He would be the president from 1923 to 1955. He would see it through the Great Depression. In fact, growth every year through the Great Depression, a mass expansion during World War II, and then post-war. In 1955, he would retire as president and he would become the chairman of the board until he died in 1985. For over 60 years, he pretty much ran the Coca-Cola Company. In his life, he gave hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, if you know where the Emory Winship Institute, that's a cancer institute at Emory Hospital here in Midtown, his middle name is Winship. In 1937, in the midst of the depression, he gave $50,000. That's 1937 dollars. $50,000 to start that Cancer Institute. At one point, he gave over $100 million at one time in 1979 to Emory University. That was three million shares of Coca-Cola stock. If anybody has that and they want to give that, well, we will accept it. I'll just let you know that. He started the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, and they've given away over $4.2 billion in grants. He's been gone over 40 years, and yet his name lives on. Why do people do that? And I don't know why. He was actually known as Mr. Anonymous. He would give millions of dollars, and he actually used, he started a foundation. His name is Robert. And the foundation was called the Trieber Foundation, which is Robert backwards. It wasn't until years later after he died they knew who was giving the money. Anyway, why do people do that? I think they have different, they have different ideas and they have different motives. I don't find any record of Robert Woodruff giving a salvation testimony. But I think one reason people do that is they want something to last. They want something to go on after they're gone. How are you and I gonna do that? I don't have $4.2 billion to give away. Well, how are we gonna leave something behind that lasts? You know, it also shows that people are eternal, souls are eternal. I think that's intrinsic. People know that, whether they will admit it or not, we're going to live on. How are we gonna do that? We connect what we're doing to eternity. And what does David say here in Psalm 39, verse 4 and 5? Help me to know my end. I'm going to end. My life at some point will be over. Lord, help me not to squander the time you've given me. That's really what he's begging God to do. Help me to know. I put my hope in you. Help me to know how I'm supposed to live in the time you've given me. If our hope is truly in God, it affects the tongue, it affects the time. And then will you look down with me? He says in verse number six, I think if you'll make note of this, it's a third thing. It affects our trust. He says in verse 6, surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches, he knoweth not who shall gather them. Now he's kind of going through a tough part here. He says, Look, every man walketh in a vain show. Vain means empty. He uses the word also, he said it in verse number five. He said, Every man at his best state is altogether vanity, altogether empty. He'll say it again in verse number, as he says it in verse 6, he's a vain show. He just heapeth up riches. Surely they are disquieted in vain. He's talking about, there's really only two things we're ever going to put our trust in. We're either going to put our trust in God, and that is not vain and empty, or we're going to put our trust in ourselves, which is vain and empty. We have a choice. We can live a life trusting in God, or we can live a life trusting in ourselves. And trusting in ourselves is nothing but a vain show. It is empty. It is worthless. The Bible makes that very clear to us because we find the Bible teaches there's a sin nature in every person. All have sinned to come short of the glory of God. We've all sinned. And because of that, the Bible tells us in the book of Romans that the wages or the price of Of our sin is death. Because we are not perfect, we have sinned, we cannot come into the presence of a holy, perfect God, and that sin separates us from Him. We are vain, we are empty. So, what is the answer? Put your hope and trust in God. If you're hoping in your good works and your church attendance, my wife was working with someone, they're not a Christian, was working with them this week, and uh was helping them do some things, and this person said to my wife, Oh, you're doing many good things to put them in your backpack and take them with you there. My wife said, That's not why I'm doing that. She was saying, Yes, you're doing all these good works, so you can go to heaven. She said, No, that's not why I'm doing them. I'm already saved, I'm already born again. My trust is not in the good works, my trust is in the Lord. Look, if you're trusting anything other than Jesus Christ alone to take you to heaven, you're not going to get there. It is Jesus Christ plus nothing and minus nothing. And here we find David is saying, look, every man walking his own way is empty and it's vain. In fact, it's he heapeth, here's what he says in verse 6, he heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them. You know what he's saying? You can amass all the money in the world, but when you die, you really have no control over what happens to it. Solomon said this in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2.18, he said, Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Solomon said, I've got all the money in the world. And I'm going to leave it behind to somebody. And then I don't know if he's going to be a wise person. I don't know if he's going to be a fool. I don't know if he's going to squander that money. You can pile up everything, all of it. But what's going to happen to it when you're gone? If you've not sent it ahead and used it for eternity. That is the one thing that we can do in this life is we can send everything we've done. We can send it on ahead of us. At the highest interest rate you can imagine. Living for eternity. And sending those things ahead of us. He says here, He heapeth that riches, he knoweth not who shall gather them. And here's what he says in verse 7. Speaking of our trust, he says, And now, Lord, what wait I for? It's a rhetorical question. It's like when the disciples said to Jesus, Lord, to whom shall we go? If we see that we are frail and we see that we could pile up riches and it's not going to do us any good in eternity, I heard an old preacher say, I never saw you haul follow a hearse to the graveyard. You don't take any of it with you. And he says, What wait I for? Can we ask ourselves that question? What are we waiting for? What are we trusting in? What are we looking for? What are we hoping is going to happen? And he says, you know what? My hope is in thee. God help us to all be able to say that with the psalmist. My hope is in thee. There's nothing else I'm depending on. It's all in the Lord. There's a story in Luke chapter 2 of a man named Simeon that waited. It says in Luke 2.25, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. The same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him. You know what? When Jesus is brought in as a baby to be dedicated there at the temple, you know who's there? Simeon's heir. He's waiting. He's looking for. His earnest expectation is for the consolation of Israel. That means that the Messiah is going to come and set things right. And he's looking for him. And if our trust is truly in the Lord, that's who we're looking to work. That's who we're looking for to do something. That's who we're looking for to come through. Look, if you're looking to anyone else, if you're looking to me, or you're looking to another person, or you're looking to, if this, if this just happens, everything will be okay. No. Lord, my hope is in you. Look, it affects our tongue, it affects our time, it affects our trust. Would you look with me at a final thing? Look at these last two verses of the Psalm. Here's what he says. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry, and hold not thy peace at my tears. You know what it does? It's a lesson of our tears. Because our hope is in God, it affects who we cry out to. When it all the bottom falls out. When we're weeping so heavily we can't say words, who are we going to cry to? Who are we going to call out to? A bank account? Investments? A job? Maybe even family fail us. But Jesus never fails. He says here, hear me, give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears. Here's what he says: I'm a stranger with thee, a sojourner, as were all my fathers were. You know what he says? I realize this this earth isn't everything there is. This is not the last stop. This is not all I have to hope for. And by the way, I would, I'd rather be a stranger with God in this world than a citizen of this earth, depending on everything here and leaving everything here. Just a stranger with him, I'm fine with that. And here's what he says. Oh, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Lord, spare me. I'm crying out to you. The psalmist says in Psalm 56 and verse 8, he says, Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle, are they not in thy book? Now I don't know that I fully understand Psalm 56, 8. But it does say he keeps our tears in a bottle and he keeps them written down in a book. I believe the Lord knows every time we cry. He knows every time we weep. He knows every time we call out to him. And the psalmist here is saying, Hear me when I cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears. Lord, I am trusting in you. The question is, who will we cry out to? Who are we depending on? There's a story of a man named Richard Wormbron. Richard Wormbron, post-World War II, began going into communist countries and preaching the gospel. He was in Romania. He was imprisoned. In fact, he spent combined on about three different prison sentences. He spent 14 years in communist Romanian prisons. Three of those years alone in solitary confinement. There's a story that's given to Richard Wormbron. He would start what we know today as Voice of the Martyrs. Richard Wormbron by himself, solitary confinement, tortured for Christ. He's in this cell and he's calling out to God. And he said, I was asking God, why have you forgotten me? Why have you left me here on my own? He said, in the silence of that moment, God said, I've not forgotten you. He said, in the silence of that moment, God said, I have not left you. Rather, I have trusted you. Richard Werman says, I began to reflect on that and I realized God showed his greatest work of love toward me on the cross. He showed he loved me. And he said, and I was dealing with this hardship because God believed he could trust me with it. God believed that this was something that I could take and I could deal with with him, bearing it in the person of Christ, that I could deal with this. And he said, it changed my entire perspective. It changed from self-pity to a privilege. I was privileged to face this with him. I was privileged to go with him through this. It affected his tears. Why? Because his hope was in the Lord. So this morning, I don't know what all you're dealing with. We have people in this church going through deep waters. Can we say, My hope is in thee? It'll affect how we talk, it affects the tongue. It'll affect our time, it'll affect how we live our life. It'll affect our trust. To whom shall we go? To whom do we wait for? It affects our tears. Who are we going to cry out to? Who are we going to call upon when there's no one else to call upon? We've got to call upon the Lord and find He is faithful and He is good and He is trustworthy. Thank you for listening to the City Pulpit. For more information about the City Baptist Church of Atlanta, please visit www.mycitybaptist.com.