SPEAKER_01: Steadfast love will be built up forever.
SPEAKER_01: In the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: You have said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one.
SPEAKER_01: I have sworn to David, my servant, I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.
SPEAKER_01: Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the Holy Ones.
SPEAKER_01: For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: A God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him.
SPEAKER_01: O Lord, God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you.
SPEAKER_01: You rule the raging of the sea when its waves rise, you still them.
SPEAKER_01: You crushed Rahab like a carcass.
SPEAKER_01: You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
SPEAKER_01: The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours.
SPEAKER_01: The world and all that's in it, you have founded them.
SPEAKER_01: The north and the south, you have created them.
SPEAKER_01: Tabor and Herman joyously praise your name.
SPEAKER_01: You have a mighty arm.
SPEAKER_01: Strong it's your hand, high your right hand.
SPEAKER_01: Righteousness and justice are the foundations of your throne.
SPEAKER_01: Steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face, who exalt in your name all the day, and your righteousness are exalted.
SPEAKER_01: For you are the glory of their strength.
SPEAKER_01: By your favor our hornets exalted, for our shield belongs to the Lord, our King, to the Holy One of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Of old, you spoke in a vision to your godly one and said, I have granted help to one who is mighty.
SPEAKER_01: I have exalted one chosen from the people.
SPEAKER_01: I have found David, my servant, with my holy oil, I have anointed him, so that my hand shall be established with him, my arm also shall strengthen him, the enemy shall not outwit him, the wicked shall not humble him.
SPEAKER_01: I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him.
SPEAKER_01: My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted.
SPEAKER_01: I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers.
SPEAKER_01: He shall cry to me, You are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation, and I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him.
SPEAKER_01: I will establish his offspring forever and his throne at the days of the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish them transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.
SPEAKER_01: But I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips.
SPEAKER_01: Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David.
SPEAKER_01: His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me.
SPEAKER_01: Like the moon, it shall be established forever.
SPEAKER_01: A faithful witness in the skies, Selah.
SPEAKER_01: But now you have cast off and rejected.
SPEAKER_01: You have renounced the covenant with your servant.
SPEAKER_01: You have defiled his crown in the dust.
SPEAKER_01: You have breached all his walls, you have laid his strongholds in ruins.
SPEAKER_01: All who pass by plunder him.
SPEAKER_01: For what vanity you have created all the children of man, what man can live and never see death?
SPEAKER_01: Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?
SPEAKER_01: Saila.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?
SPEAKER_01: Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the Lord forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_03: We're in Psalm 89.
SPEAKER_03: Like I said, it's quite a long Psalm, so we'll uh we'll get going.
SPEAKER_03: Psalm 89 is essentially a psalm about unmet expectations.
SPEAKER_03: When you think that life is going to go one way and then it goes another.
SPEAKER_03: And uh you may be aware of things like uh uh Pinterest fails, uh cake fails, where there's the the expectation of what it is that you're trying to bake, and then the reality of what actually emerges.
SPEAKER_03: And uh I thought it would be I was giggling away this week at uh at those, and so I thought it might be fun just to share some of them with you.
SPEAKER_03: Uh so we've got okay, here's the expectation.
SPEAKER_03: Nailed it, reality.
SPEAKER_03: Next one expectation reality.
SPEAKER_03: Third expectation, beautiful.
SPEAKER_03: Got an octopus on the other side, expectation and reality.
SPEAKER_03: Expectations and reality sometimes differ.
SPEAKER_03: It can be uh the photographs of the Airbnb that you booked don't quite match uh the description, the holiday that you expected uh to have, glorious weather, uh they have a freak typhoon, and so you're trapped in your room.
SPEAKER_03: Expectations and realities don't always uh go hand in hand.
SPEAKER_03: And those are small and trivial things, but what about the bigger disappointments in life?
SPEAKER_03: What about when uh you thought that you uh you knew someone uh that you were friends with, and actually how they turn out to be is rather different.
SPEAKER_03: The expectation of a uh of a long, loyal, life-giving, joy-giving friendship is is disappointed.
SPEAKER_03: You expected one thing and you got another.
SPEAKER_03: How much worse in the context of a serious relationship or a marriage where you expected things to go one way and yet they have turned out quite quite different.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes our life can take a turn in ways that we never saw coming.
SPEAKER_03: The reality can be painfully different from the expectations that we had.
SPEAKER_03: There's a poem, it's quite a long poem.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's basically a poetic uh summary of the book of Job.
SPEAKER_03: You may know the story of Job.
SPEAKER_03: Job is a righteous man, somebody who feared God, and uh who God permitted uh Satan to uh to tempt and to test.
SPEAKER_03: At the very start of the story, uh we learn that Job uh makes these uh sacrifices for his seven sons and his daughters, and saying, if they uh if they had committed any sin, let me sacrifice on their behalf.
SPEAKER_03: And yet at the very start of the book of Job, one of the things that happens is that his children are killed when a great east wind comes.
SPEAKER_03: And in the poetic version, uh written by an American pastor called John Piper, and it's quite in three sections, uh, he comes back to that altar and expresses his disappointment or the mismatch in expectations of reality in these beautiful words.
SPEAKER_03: He says this in the poem.
SPEAKER_03: He says, Oh Lord, what you have dealt me in this day is not what I thought this blood blot red stone would bring.
SPEAKER_03: Oh Lord, what you have dealt me in this day is not what I thought this bloodblot redstone would bring.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes reality confines expectations in painful ways.
SPEAKER_03: Where do you go when you feel like God has let you down?
SPEAKER_03: When he has not met your expectations, when the reality of what you had hoped for never materializes, or it looks like he has failed you or forgotten you.
SPEAKER_03: This is the emotional space that the Psalmist is occupying in Psalm 89.
SPEAKER_03: The crucial section for this comes quite late in the Psalm.
SPEAKER_03: It comes in verses 38 to 45.
SPEAKER_03: He's been rehearsing all of uh these great things of God's faithfulness, and then it turns in Psalm, or sorry, in verse 38.
SPEAKER_03: He says, But now you've cast off and rejected your full of wrath against your anointed, you've renounced the covenant with your servant, you've defiled his crown in the dust.
SPEAKER_03: God had promised a king, and the crown is in the dust.
SPEAKER_03: God had promised safety and security in a long-established city, but the walls are broken down.
SPEAKER_03: It's been plundered and sacked, and the people carried off.
SPEAKER_03: God had promised victory and success over enemies, but now the people are trampled underfoot and left ridiculed and ashamed.
SPEAKER_03: They expected a great kingdom, and what they got was ruins.
SPEAKER_03: And what this Psalm does is it helps us to interact with God when it feels like God has let us down, when the expectations for our life have turned out to be quite different.
SPEAKER_03: So, how does the psalmist respond?
SPEAKER_03: Though he finds himself in this emotional circumstance, how does he interact with God?
SPEAKER_03: Well, the first thing that he does is he comes back and he anchors himself in what he knows about the character of God.
SPEAKER_03: That's our first point.
SPEAKER_03: He anchors himself.
SPEAKER_03: We are to anchor ourselves in the character of God.
SPEAKER_03: Imagine that you're uh you're hiking up a mountain, you're climbing up a mountain, and as you survey from the uh from the foot of the mountain, from the car park down below, as you're getting ready to go, getting your backpack on and looking up, it looks like a fairly straightforward path.
SPEAKER_03: And the the weather's clear and all seems fairly uh fairly easy.
SPEAKER_03: But as you climb, you unexpectedly round a corner and you you hit a patch of uh of shale of loose stones.
SPEAKER_03: And you're gonna have to scrabble up that mountainside on these on these loose stones that are that are moving under your feet.
SPEAKER_03: And as you make your way up, you you slip and you fall forward onto onto all fours.
SPEAKER_03: And what do you grab for?
SPEAKER_03: You grab for the nearest solid handhold to stop you from falling on down the mountain.
SPEAKER_03: You look to grab on to something that isn't going to move, like these tiny shifting stones.
SPEAKER_03: And as you fall forward, you you see amidst the shale, you see a boulder sticking out and it's planted into the rock, and your hand immediately grabs onto that and it stops you from falling.
SPEAKER_03: That's how the psalmist begins.
SPEAKER_03: That in the shifting stones of his circumstances of unmet expectations, he looks for a solid handhold for his heart.
SPEAKER_03: For the Christian, this is to grab onto the unfailing, unchanging character of God.
SPEAKER_03: He begins in verse one by saying that he will sing of God's steadfast love forever.
SPEAKER_03: To make known your faithfulness to all generations.
SPEAKER_03: God's steadfast love is a very particular word in the Old Testament, the Old Testament word chesed, and it means God's promise keeping love.
SPEAKER_03: It's a love that does not disappoint.
SPEAKER_03: Or again, as the Jesus story, but the Bible calls it, it is his unwavering, never-stopping, unbreaking, always and forever love.
SPEAKER_03: And that is the solid handhold for the psalmist.
SPEAKER_03: He begins by remembering whatever is going on around me, I know that the solid handhold is that you are the promised keeping, loving God.
SPEAKER_03: Because that's how his love expresses itself.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 3 and 4.
SPEAKER_03: He says, You have made, you have said, I've made a covenant with my chosen one.
SPEAKER_03: I've sworn to my David, my servant, I will establish your offspring forever, I will build your throne for generations.
SPEAKER_03: He's recalling how God's unbreakable love expresses itself.
SPEAKER_03: It expresses itself in promises, in the promise to David, made all the way back in 2 Samuel chapter 7, that a son of David would always sit on David's throne, that he would establish David's kingdom forever.
SPEAKER_03: It's such a crucially important promise for understanding the rest of the story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.
SPEAKER_03: He is the son of David, who establishes David's throne forever.
SPEAKER_03: That even though it looks like it was failing at this time, God has kept his promise.
SPEAKER_03: He is unwaveringly committed to the kingdom of his son, despite all circumstances to the contrary.
SPEAKER_03: You think, well, how does that help me understand the shifting sounds and circumstances of my life?
SPEAKER_03: Well, if you are a believer in Jesus, if you're trusting in him, you are trusting in that same Son that God the Father is eternally committed to.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, you could push it one level further and say, not only are you trusting in that son, but that you are caught up, wrapped up in those same promises.
SPEAKER_03: That the commitment that God the Father has to Jesus, that because by faith you are united to him, God the Father has that same commitment to you and your life.
SPEAKER_03: That he is committed to seeing you through to eternity, he's committed to bringing you into that kingdom of his son.
SPEAKER_03: That though every other handhold fails, whether it's our work or family or money or success, all of them will shift away.
SPEAKER_03: They all will go.
SPEAKER_03: When the things you hope for do not come to pass, there is still a firm anchor point for the heart, for the heart of the Christian, that saves us from hopelessness and despair.
SPEAKER_03: It is that the believer in Jesus is joined to him spiritually, so that if the Father is eternally committed to Jesus, he's eternally committed to you.
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist begins, therefore, not with what he has lost temporally, but what he has gained eternally, because of God's unchanging character, because of his resolute commitment to his promises, to his love.
SPEAKER_03: How does God show his love?
SPEAKER_03: If I were to tell my wife that I loved her, but never actually did anything loving for her, she might argue that that happens anyway, you would some point question whether or not my words and my actions or my words and my character matched up.
SPEAKER_03: I don't seem to be all that committed to the love that I am declaring.
SPEAKER_03: Is God like that?
SPEAKER_03: Well, no, the psalmist goes on to go.
SPEAKER_03: Not only has God said that he is full of promised keeping love, he has demonstrated it.
SPEAKER_03: That's essentially what this section of verse 5 through to verse 18, we're not going to read it all again, but that's what this section is rehearsing for us.
SPEAKER_03: That the psalmist is remembering God's awesome power.
SPEAKER_03: That's how he expresses his commitment to his people, how he expresses his unbreakable love.
SPEAKER_03: The one making these promises, the one who loves you, is in verse 5 and 6 the incomparable God, the king above all kings, the Lord above all lords, the one who sits enthroned above all of the holy ones.
SPEAKER_03: He is the one who has committed himself to you.
SPEAKER_03: All of the idols of our hearts, the things that captivate us, they all will disappoint, they all will lie to us.
SPEAKER_03: Not so the God who is transcendent above them all.
SPEAKER_03: He has shown his power over his creation.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 9, let me remind you, it says, You rule the raging of the seas.
SPEAKER_03: When the waves rise, you still them.
SPEAKER_03: God's ability to save, his actions, his love is expressed in his power here over creation.
SPEAKER_03: But it's not just over creation, it's over the enemies of God's people.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 10.
SPEAKER_03: You crushed Rahab.
SPEAKER_03: Rahab is an old testament word for Egypt.
SPEAKER_03: You crushed Rahab like a carcass.
SPEAKER_03: You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
SPEAKER_03: How does God show his love and commitment to us?
SPEAKER_03: By revealing his power over the changing circumstances of the world around us, the shifting chaotic seas, and by defeating our enemies.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you're ahead of me, but are you thinking of anywhere else in the Bible?
SPEAKER_03: Are you thinking of anyone else?
SPEAKER_03: It takes my mind to Mark chapter 4, where Jesus is asleep in the boat and there is that great squall on the sea.
SPEAKER_03: And the disciples fear that they are about to be thrown overboard and perish.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus is awakened and he says, Peace, be still.
SPEAKER_03: Be muzzled like a dog.
SPEAKER_03: And it became completely calm.
SPEAKER_03: Such that the disciples look at him and say, Who is this that even the wind and waves obey him?
SPEAKER_03: The one who stills the seas in Mark chapter 4 goes on to defeat our greatest enemies.
SPEAKER_03: Not Egypt and Babylon, but sin.
SPEAKER_03: Death.
SPEAKER_03: Satan.
SPEAKER_03: He defeats them by his death on the cross.
SPEAKER_03: He tramples underfoot sin that would enslave us, death that would engulf us, hell that would imprison us.
SPEAKER_03: He defeats them for us.
SPEAKER_03: So here's where this cashes out.
SPEAKER_03: So when the Christian is tempted to doubt God's love for us, God's commitment to us, where are we encouraged to look?
SPEAKER_03: Well, we're not primarily encouraged to look at the circumstances that we immediately find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_03: No, we are encouraged as Christians, as followers of Jesus, to look back, to look at Good Friday, to look at Easter Sunday, to look at the cross and the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_03: You want to see God's commitment to you, his unwavering, gracious love towards you, his trampling of your enemies underfoot.
SPEAKER_03: You look at the cross.
SPEAKER_03: God doesn't show us his love in some lofty philosophy.
SPEAKER_03: He shows us his love in the grime and horror and muck of the crucifixion.
SPEAKER_03: That is the handhold that we grab onto when we feel like everything else below us is shifting sand.
SPEAKER_03: When we feel our feet slip, that is what we cling to.
SPEAKER_03: And we remember his unwavering commitment to us in Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Secondly, we root ourselves in what God has promised.
SPEAKER_03: So we grab a hold of, we anchor ourselves in his character, and then we root ourselves in his promises.
SPEAKER_03: Imagine you've entered into a contract with somebody else, and over the course of that relationship, the party that you've entered into the contract, it looks like they're not holding up their end of the bargain.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't look like they are fulfilling their obligations.
SPEAKER_03: What would you do?
SPEAKER_03: Well, you would go to that other party and you would say, This is what you promised to do.
SPEAKER_03: This is what you have signed.
SPEAKER_03: These are the obligations that you voluntarily have taken upon yourself.
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't look as though you are upholding your end of the bargain.
SPEAKER_03: In other words, you would go to them and say, This is what you promised.
SPEAKER_03: Keep your promise.
SPEAKER_03: And this is what is happening in verses 19 to 37.
SPEAKER_03: See how quickly we're getting 352 verses?
SPEAKER_03: In verses 19 to 37, the psalmist is coming back to God and saying, This is what you promised to do.
SPEAKER_03: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_03: Because doesn't that at first hearing sound a little bit presumptuous?
SPEAKER_03: How is it that a a follower of God, one of his people, would go and go, this is what you promised.
SPEAKER_03: Keep your promises, fulfill your obligations.
SPEAKER_03: Is that not arrogant?
SPEAKER_03: Presumptuous?
SPEAKER_03: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03: It rather is an expression of faith.
SPEAKER_03: It's a way of deepening trust.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Because you are remembering and rehearsing what God has promised for you, for us, and you are trusting Him still to deliver on His promise.
SPEAKER_03: You haven't gone somewhere else.
SPEAKER_03: You've gone back to Him and you say, This is what you have promised.
SPEAKER_03: I am clinging to those promises.
SPEAKER_03: It is when we come in childlike humility.
SPEAKER_03: Because we're not looking at our own deservedness or our own worthiness, but looking again to his grace.
SPEAKER_03: You're saying, saying, in the sense to God, look, I know I know I don't deserve this.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I failed.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I've not held my end of the bargain.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I have uh not kept faith.
SPEAKER_03: But uh, but in Jesus, he kept faith for me.
SPEAKER_03: And so I am inviting you, I'm calling you to make good on your promises.
SPEAKER_03: This is this is how we ought to interact with him in those moments.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly energetic, which is rare.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I uh I'll go on a bike ride uh with my son.
SPEAKER_03: And the bike ride, it's become unspoken now, but the bike ride is kind of conditional on uh towards the end of the bike ride, about three quarters of the way through, uh, there's an ice cream shop.
SPEAKER_03: And uh Owen has promised to get me out.
SPEAKER_03: No, it's sorry, it's the other way around, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03: Is that I've gotten him on his bike because we're gonna go and get ice cream.
SPEAKER_03: We'll get ice cream about three quarters of the way.
SPEAKER_03: We've already done the we've done the big hill out of uh out of Phoenix Park, and we've come through into Castanon village, and we might be kind of panting up that hill into the village, and he might say, Remember, Dad, you promised.
SPEAKER_03: How do I respond?
SPEAKER_03: I don't shout back at him, how dare you put me to the test, you arrogant swine.
SPEAKER_03: I shout back through my breathlessness.
SPEAKER_03: You're right.
SPEAKER_03: I did, didn't I?
SPEAKER_03: Let's stop.
SPEAKER_03: It is a wonderful thing to have your son remind you of your promises, to hold you to them.
SPEAKER_03: The great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, said that the Christians should sue God on his promises.
SPEAKER_03: God loves to answer the prayers that he has committed himself to answering.
SPEAKER_03: And so that's why we pray his promises.
SPEAKER_03: You have promised that you will never let us go.
SPEAKER_03: You have promised to bring us in the end to your eternal glory.
SPEAKER_03: You've promised the gift of your Holy Spirit to work in our hearts.
SPEAKER_03: Now, Father, please do as you promised to do.
SPEAKER_03: Give us the help of your spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Enable us to persevere until that heavenly city.
SPEAKER_03: Be with us as you promised through this dark night.
SPEAKER_03: It is a reverent boldness that soothes God on his promises.
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist rehearses those promises here.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 19, God has chosen a king for himself to lead his people.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 20, he anointed that king with oil as a sign of his spirit being with him.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 23, he promised to make that king victorious.
SPEAKER_03: He then promised that he would be a father to that king and would exalt him above all kings.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 28 and 29, he said that he would be always committed to this king and to his kingdom, and that that kingdom would never fail.
SPEAKER_03: And in verse 30, he says that even though those who would come after him would fail, he would never forget his promises.
SPEAKER_03: And he has.
SPEAKER_03: He has.
SPEAKER_03: Because in Christ, all of these promises, as Paul says, are yes and amen.
SPEAKER_03: In Christ, we enjoy the blessed shelter of this covenant commitment.
SPEAKER_03: We enjoy the Spirit's help by faith in him.
SPEAKER_03: We experience a foretaste of his victory now that we will now, in that last day, fully see and experience by faith in him.
SPEAKER_03: God is a father to us now because he is a father to his son, his chosen king, his anointed one.
SPEAKER_03: His kingdom will advance, and no power of hell will overcome it.
SPEAKER_03: Because Christ reigns now, over all times and all places and all peoples.
SPEAKER_03: And even though we fail, his word is sure.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Because his covenant doesn't depend on us, but on him and on his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_03: And so it is vital, dear friends, to set every circumstance of shifting sands in the context of God's unshakable, unbreakable, eternal plans.
SPEAKER_03: That whatever befalls us, the hope of the believer is sure and will not fail.
SPEAKER_03: When we feel like our grip is failing or our grasp is loosening, we run to him with his own words, his own commitment to us, and with childlike reverence and humility, say, Father, you promised.
SPEAKER_03: Third.
SPEAKER_03: In case you're wondering, there are four, so penultimately, in the disappointment of expectation reality, we anchor ourselves in the character of God.
SPEAKER_03: He's unwaveringly loving, unbreakably faithful.
SPEAKER_03: We root ourselves in his promises, which means we need to know them.
SPEAKER_03: We need to bring them to God, we need to pray them back to him because he loves to answer those prayers.
SPEAKER_03: But the circumstances that we find ourselves in, the circumstances that maybe you here this morning are in, are still to be lamented.
SPEAKER_03: And we still plead with God in the midst of the darkness.
SPEAKER_03: This anchoring, this rooting doesn't suddenly make the things that you have gone through or are going through just fine.
SPEAKER_03: Don't hear me say that.
SPEAKER_03: Don't hear me say, I just like, just go, well, you know, God's good.
SPEAKER_03: No, the Sama still laments.
SPEAKER_03: He still weeps over the circumstances that he's in.
SPEAKER_03: And that's a good and important uh part of how we navigate this changing circumstances of life emotionally.
SPEAKER_03: The Psalmist is not asking us just to paint on a brave face and just pretend like everything's okay.
SPEAKER_03: Two things can be true at once, and two things in the Christian life happen simultaneously.
SPEAKER_03: We weep the brokenness of this world.
SPEAKER_03: We weep the grief that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_03: We lament the disappointments and sadnesses.
SPEAKER_03: And we hope.
SPEAKER_03: And that hope is anchored and fueled by the character of God and by the unwavering promises of God.
SPEAKER_03: We do both.
SPEAKER_03: It's like the double heartbeat of the of the maturing Christian.
SPEAKER_03: We don't just pretend like everything's okay.
SPEAKER_03: Nor are we so utterly given to despair that we cannot see any of his goodness in it.
SPEAKER_03: Or, let me rephrase that.
SPEAKER_03: Forgive me for those of you who have been at City for any length of time.
SPEAKER_03: I don't think I've kind of used this analogy in a while.
SPEAKER_03: But there's lots of new people here.
SPEAKER_03: There's a um there's a book, it's a kid's book, uh, called The Moon Is Always Round.
SPEAKER_03: I might have said that too northern Irishly.
SPEAKER_03: The Moon Is Always Round.
SPEAKER_03: It's a circle.
SPEAKER_03: And it's written by a dad for his son after the loss of one of his siblings.
SPEAKER_03: And his son is wrestling with where God is in the midst of this grief, in the midst of the tragedy.
SPEAKER_03: And they're in the car at nighttime driving.
SPEAKER_03: And he points his son up in the story and he says, Son, is the is the moon always round?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, daddy.
SPEAKER_03: Do we always see the moon as round?
SPEAKER_03: No, Daddy.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's a crescent.
SPEAKER_03: But do we see the moon every night?
SPEAKER_03: No, Daddy.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's hidden.
SPEAKER_03: But is the moon always round?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, Daddy.
SPEAKER_03: There are circumstances that come in your life where you struggle to see the goodness of God, the roundness of the moon.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you can only see it partially.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it is completely eclipsed.
SPEAKER_03: But the moon is always round.
SPEAKER_03: And God remains steadfastly good, resolutely loving, unwaveringly committed to bringing you to Himself because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: And so we shed our tears and we cling to his promises.
SPEAKER_03: We lament as the psalmist does.
SPEAKER_03: In this veil of tears, there are times when lament is not just appropriate but necessary for the follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: This world is broken.
SPEAKER_03: There is grief and evil.
SPEAKER_03: We know that it won't always be that way.
SPEAKER_03: If you have the hope of eternity, we know that He is making all things new.
SPEAKER_03: And yet we do not have the full blessed reality of that.
SPEAKER_03: And so it is right for us to cry out with the Psalmist in verse 46 How long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever?
SPEAKER_03: The Ps is in a night where the moon is completely veiled.
SPEAKER_03: Can't see any of your goodness.
SPEAKER_03: Will you hide yourself forever?
SPEAKER_03: How long will your wrath burn against us?
SPEAKER_03: All of the promises that the ps has heard and rehearsed here seem to have come to nothing.
SPEAKER_03: The king is now covered in shame.
SPEAKER_03: It looks as though God has abandoned his promise.
SPEAKER_03: The crown lies in the dust, his enemies are exulting over him.
SPEAKER_03: Where is the power of God's king?
SPEAKER_03: And where is that forever kingdom?
SPEAKER_03: All seems to have come down into darkness and defeat and disaster.
SPEAKER_03: But brothers and sisters, this is the way of Christianity, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03: This is the way of the cross.
SPEAKER_03: Couldn't any of the followers of Jesus on that Friday morning have spoken those words?
SPEAKER_03: The cross, in one sense, is the ultimate unmet expectation.
SPEAKER_03: You expected a king that would reign, that would defeat all of God's temporal enemies, and that he would triumph.
SPEAKER_03: That's what they expected on Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: They expected triumph.
SPEAKER_03: They herald him as king.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Hosanna to the king of David, or to the son of David.
SPEAKER_03: And not even a week later, he's murdered.
SPEAKER_03: The cross is the ultimate, unmet expectation.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, and yet, and yet, we know that the cross is victory.
SPEAKER_03: But it's still the greatest evil that was ever committed.
SPEAKER_03: This is important.
SPEAKER_03: When God says that he works in all things for good for those who love him, it doesn't mean that the bad things stop being bad.
SPEAKER_03: And then we just now go, well, that's good, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03: No, no, it's much bigger, it's much richer than that.
SPEAKER_03: How awful would it be to say to someone in the midst of their grief or sickness or those trapped in the conflict of war.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm sure it's for the best.
SPEAKER_03: How heartless.
SPEAKER_03: No, Christianity doesn't approach the suffering of this world with a kind of sentimental, well, every Clyde has a silver lining.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't approach it like that.
SPEAKER_03: Not at all.
SPEAKER_03: It says the evil in this world is evil.
SPEAKER_03: Bad things remain bad.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, our God is such in power, he is so resolutely committed, he is so loving that even through and in and under all of that wickedness, he brings his good and glorious purposes to bear.
SPEAKER_03: And so we lament, but not without hope.
SPEAKER_03: Christian maturity looks like feeling the sadness of this world, feeling the grief of bitter circumstance, and still with tear-stained faces, saying to ourselves and to those around us, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: So lament.
SPEAKER_03: Those of you who are in grief.
SPEAKER_03: Weep your tears.
SPEAKER_03: May we offer you comfort and solace.
SPEAKER_03: But do not weep as those without hope.
SPEAKER_03: Because the moon is always rhyme.
SPEAKER_03: Even when you cannot see it.
SPEAKER_03: Finally.
SPEAKER_03: Through the shifting circumstances of our lives, we praise the one who exceeds our expectations.
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist all the way through is never left in bitterness.
SPEAKER_03: He's perplexed for sure, questioning, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03: But always trusting.
SPEAKER_03: The Psalm actually begins and ends with a note of praise.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 1 and verse 52.
SPEAKER_03: I will sing of your steadfast love.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 52, blessed be the Lord forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: That even in the wrestling, longing, pleading, it's bracketed with praise.
SPEAKER_03: With thanksgiving for who God is.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Well, because he is the great God above all gods.
SPEAKER_03: He is worthy of praise even when we do not understand the bitter providences that he sends our way.
SPEAKER_03: Our praise of him, even and perhaps especially in the darkness, guards our hearts against bitterness.
SPEAKER_03: It deepens our closeness.
SPEAKER_03: It draws us nearer to the bosom of the Lord Jesus who invites us to know his rest.
SPEAKER_03: The man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief, who weeps with us and comforts us with a comfort that cannot be described by words.
SPEAKER_03: Charles Spurgeon again, through his many sufferings and trials, said these words.
SPEAKER_03: He says, I have learned to kiss the wave that dashes me against the rock of ages.
SPEAKER_03: Rock of ages cleft for me.
SPEAKER_03: Let me hide myself in thee.
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist in his questioning at the end could never have imagined the God who would exceed our expectations.
SPEAKER_03: In his questioning, his final questions are this in verse 48, he says, What man can live and never see death?
SPEAKER_03: Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol the grave?
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist looks at God and goes, Where is a sinless king?
SPEAKER_03: Where's a sinless king that no grave can hold?
SPEAKER_03: Where is a sinless king that death cannot take and that can live forever?
SPEAKER_03: And God has replied in history, I will show you one.
SPEAKER_03: I will send you one descendant of David.
SPEAKER_03: And no grave will hold him because he has no sin of his own.
SPEAKER_03: He, when he rises from the dead, will confound and exceed all of our expectations.
SPEAKER_03: He will show my enduring faithfulness to my promises, and he will forgive all his promise-breaking people.
SPEAKER_03: The cross and the empty tomb are how God supremely shows that he is not the one confounded by expectations, but who exceeds them.
SPEAKER_03: That despite all appearances that he would bring his good purposes to bear.
SPEAKER_03: Church, we must remember this in every age.
SPEAKER_03: No matter how marginalized or pressured we become, in Christ, all of his promises are yes and amen.
SPEAKER_03: We similarly, when we face trials and sorrows of various kinds, cast ourselves on his unfailing love and set every grief in the context of eternity.
SPEAKER_03: And we say with Paul that I do not consider the sufferings of this present age worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us.
SPEAKER_03: So praise him today.
SPEAKER_03: Praise him in your weakness, praise him in your sadness, praise him though tears stream down your face, praise him with hope, praise him for his love, praise him for his faithfulness, praise him for his eternal character, praise him for his power and might to deliver you and to bring you to the end to his glory.
SPEAKER_03: Praise him until that day when he brings you into that celestial city and wipes away every tear from your faces.
SPEAKER_03: Praise him.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed be his name forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen and amen.
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