SPEAKER_01: Psalm seventy-one.
SPEAKER_01: Forsake me not when my strength is spent.
SPEAKER_01: In you, O Lord, do I take refuge.
SPEAKER_01: Let me never be put to shame.
SPEAKER_01: In your righteousness, deliver me and rescue me.
SPEAKER_01: Incline your ear to me and save me.
SPEAKER_01: Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come.
SPEAKER_01: You have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
SPEAKER_01: Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.
SPEAKER_01: For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, for my mouth, for my youth.
SPEAKER_01: Upon you I have learned from before my birth.
SPEAKER_01: You are he who took me from my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: My praise is continually of you.
SPEAKER_01: I have been as a portant to many, but you are my strong refuge.
SPEAKER_01: My mouth is filled with your praise, and you and with your glory all the day.
SPEAKER_01: Do not cast me off in the time of old age.
SPEAKER_01: Forsake me not when my strength is spent.
SPEAKER_01: For my enemies speak concerning me.
SPEAKER_01: Those who watch for my life consult together and say, God has forsaken him, pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.
SPEAKER_01: O God, be not fra far from me.
SPEAKER_01: O my God, make haste to help me.
SPEAKER_01: May my accusers be put to shame and consumed, with scorn and disgrace, may they be covered who seek my hurt.
SPEAKER_01: But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.
SPEAKER_01: My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: With the mighty deeds of the Lord, God, I will come.
SPEAKER_01: I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.
SPEAKER_01: O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
SPEAKER_01: So, even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those who come.
SPEAKER_01: Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens.
SPEAKER_01: You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?
SPEAKER_01: You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again.
SPEAKER_01: From the depths of the earth, you will bring me up again.
SPEAKER_01: You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.
SPEAKER_01: I will also praise you with the harp of your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: O my God, I will sing praises to you with a lyre, O Holy One of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: My lips will shout for joy when I sing when I sing praises to you, my soul also, which you have redeemed.
SPEAKER_01: And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the leaders here at uh at the church.
SPEAKER_02: And it's good to be uh back here speaking with you after uh some weeks off.
SPEAKER_02: And uh in the summertime, if you haven't been about if it's your first summer uh with us, uh we we look through the psalms.
SPEAKER_02: We started some years ago uh at Psalm 1, and we just do a psalm a week.
SPEAKER_02: Not quite sure what we're gonna do when we get to 119, but that's a problem for a couple of years uh down the road.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're here in Psalm 71 because one of the things that it's good to do in the summertime is to go into the book of Psalms because what the Psalms do, what they're there in the Bible uh for, is to give voice and vocabulary to the entire range of human experience and emotion.
SPEAKER_02: They are the uh the song book, the prayer book of the people of God.
SPEAKER_02: And when we are uh sitting uh in our in our rooms or uh on our commute and we're struggling to know how to approach God, and we don't really know what to pray, and we can't really give uh voice and verbiage to our uh to our feelings, the Psalms do that for us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh the Psalms help us to know in what sorts of ways we can communicate to this great God who has loved us.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're in Psalm 71 uh this morning.
SPEAKER_02: If you have it on your phone, it'd be great to have it uh in front of you.
SPEAKER_02: Or if you've uh if you've gone old school and uh you have an actual physical Bible to have Psalm uh 71 in front of you.
SPEAKER_02: If you're on a phone app, we're reading in the English standard version that has words like portent in it.
SPEAKER_02: Um a portent just means a sign, a sign of doom or a sign of calamity.
SPEAKER_02: Um, and we'll get to that in just a uh a couple of minutes time.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know if you've noticed, if you've been around City uh for any length of time, one of the things that uh we don't have very uh very many of, though we are increasing in number, is that we don't have very many older people.
SPEAKER_02: We tend to be a young uh congregation, uh mostly uh young professionals at the minute.
SPEAKER_02: We used to be loads of students, then the students graduated and stuck around, but we tend to be kind of late 20s, early 30s, uh young professionals who are who are living in and around the city.
SPEAKER_02: I guess that that kind of makes sense because as as people grow up, they tend to move out of uh of the city because they can, you know, well, they can't afford to live in Dublin, so they uh they want to start a family and so they move further away.
SPEAKER_02: And uh so we tend to be quite young.
SPEAKER_02: And I suspect because we're quite young, uh, we don't really think about what it's like to uh to grow old and to get older.
SPEAKER_02: It's probably been about 15 or 20 years since somebody came up to you and said, What would you like to be when you're older?
SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe you're still working that out.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's uh that's an active question.
SPEAKER_02: What would I like to be uh when I when I grow up?
SPEAKER_02: But grow up we will.
SPEAKER_02: Uh some of us, uh some of you uh started uh City Church as students, and now you're married, or you're buying your first house, you're you're starting a family.
SPEAKER_02: I was uh 28 years old uh when City Church started, now I'm getting grey bits in my in my beard.
SPEAKER_02: And uh we are all feeling the advancing of the years.
SPEAKER_02: You may be starting to kind of make noise as you as you get out of chairs and things like that.
SPEAKER_02: You kind of going doing that.
SPEAKER_02: Growing older is not a guarantee of growing wiser, nor is it a guarantee of getting happier.
SPEAKER_02: We all, unfortunately, probably know older people who are pretty miserable and not altogether fun to be around.
SPEAKER_02: They see the world through the through the darkest of lenses.
SPEAKER_02: Equally, we know, uh, I'm sure probably, that it is possible for you to grow old and still be foolish and to make foolish decisions.
SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming this morning that we don't want to be like that.
SPEAKER_02: If you're like, yeah, I'd I'd rather be a miserable idiot, well, then you can switch off.
SPEAKER_02: Go and see Barbie.
SPEAKER_02: Um uh but assuming that you don't want to be uh unhappy, foolish in uh in your older years, then Psalm 71 has some help for us this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I suspect that many of us, if not all of us, we want to grow in grace and wisdom and respectability and stature and love.
SPEAKER_02: But none of us arrives at our 70th birthday, blows out the candles, and is miraculously transformed into that kind of person instantaneously.
SPEAKER_02: That kind of person is crafted and cultivated over uh over 10,000 little decisions all along the way.
SPEAKER_02: Your future self is sculpted from the marble of who you are today and the decisions that you make.
SPEAKER_02: Don't be like Homer, not the Greek writer, the Simpson.
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a there's a uh there's a great moment, you may remember, where Homer is uh he's sitting there and he's he's eating a jar of mayonnaise with a with a spoon.
SPEAKER_02: Um and he says, and somebody comes up to him and says, You know, isn't that a terrible idea?
SPEAKER_02: Isn't it going to kind of throw throw your blood pressure through the roof, your cholesterol, you're gonna die of a heart attack?
SPEAKER_02: And he says, Yeah, that's a problem for future Homer.
SPEAKER_02: I'd hate to be that guy.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know?
SPEAKER_02: So don't be like Homer making the decisions now and making choices now and kind of operating like, well, I'd hate to be future, Mark.
SPEAKER_02: Sucks to be him.
SPEAKER_02: I'd hate to be future Homer.
SPEAKER_02: No, the the the person that you're going to be is sculpted out of the marble of who you are.
SPEAKER_02: And Psalm 71 sees that.
SPEAKER_02: The single unique thing about this Psalm is not that uh the psalmist is in trouble.
SPEAKER_02: You can't chuck a brick without the psalmist going, oh no, there's many foes around me.
SPEAKER_02: Um or similarly, you can't chuck a brick without going saying, Lord, you are my rock and my refuge, you are my fortress.
SPEAKER_02: You're the one that I'm going to praise all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Those are great things that we're going to dig into, but they're not unique to this psalm.
SPEAKER_02: What's unique to this Psalm are the time stamps.
SPEAKER_02: What's unique to this Psalm are the timestamps that the psalmist uses.
SPEAKER_02: So verse 5, he talks about how he's trusted from his youth.
SPEAKER_02: And so verse 9, he said, uh, they say, Don't cast me off, therefore, in old age.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 17, from my youth you have taught me.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 18, so do not forsake me when my hair is gray.
SPEAKER_02: The unique thing about this psalm are the time markers.
SPEAKER_02: Here's someone looking back at the past faithfulness of God, and then looking forward to the next chapters of his life or her life, and saying, I want to grow up, I want to grow old in God.
SPEAKER_02: I want to be mature and godly and happy and rejoicing and satisfied in God.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to think just in terms of the here and now, of the moment-by-moment existence, but to zoom out and to think in terms of lineage and legacy about impact over decades and down generations.
SPEAKER_02: So this is great, Sam, for us as a young, predominantly congregation to be looking at.
SPEAKER_02: Because it causes us to step back and think for a second, okay, what kind of older person do I want to be?
SPEAKER_02: That might not just be uh, you know, gray hairs and dentures.
SPEAKER_02: That might be what kind of mum do I want to be, what kind of dad do I want to be?
SPEAKER_02: What kind of colleague as I grow up, or what kind of manager as I go through my career, what kind of person do I want to be as I move through the chapters and seasons of my life?
SPEAKER_02: In order to get there, I want to draw out five resolutions that I think you should make this morning in order to become the kind of person that the psalmist is aspiring to.
SPEAKER_02: First resolution resolve to make God your continual refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Resolve to make God your continual refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Verses one to three In you, O Lord, do I take refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Let me not be put to shame.
SPEAKER_02: In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me.
SPEAKER_02: Incline your ear to me and save me.
SPEAKER_02: Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come.
SPEAKER_02: You have given me the command, you sorry, you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
SPEAKER_02: As I said a moment ago, with many of the Psalms, the psalmist finds themselves in distress, they are anxious and oppressed, worried, hurt, there is opposition to them.
SPEAKER_02: And this doesn't just happen at once in a person's life.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering and trial come continually, seasonally to each of us at varying degrees.
SPEAKER_02: Some are light burdens to bear, and some are heavy, and we bur we bear them for many years.
SPEAKER_02: So he says, verse 20, You have made me see many troubles and calamities to revive me again from the depths of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: God has been with them through trial and suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And so the question is where will this person, where will the psalmist, and then where will we take refuge?
SPEAKER_02: Because their suffering is always kind of coming wave after wave, season after season.
SPEAKER_02: There's a question of, well, where are you going to run to?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, sinner man, where will you run to, as Nina Simone saying, right?
SPEAKER_02: What will be your refuge?
SPEAKER_02: You might not realize this, but you all run to something.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you run to bitterness, cutting yourself off from others, wallowing in in resentment and self-loathing.
SPEAKER_02: And that becomes a kind of comfort.
SPEAKER_02: For others, it is the refuge of uh of escape, burying yourself in work because the uh the issues at home are too much, or the forgetful high of uh of a few too many on a Friday night.
SPEAKER_02: You might just dull the suffering slightly, turn down the volume on the issues, even just for a little while.
SPEAKER_02: What you're doing now is you're taking refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Many nowadays seek refuge in victimhood.
SPEAKER_02: Being a victim is a great refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_02: Because if you can claim victim status, you never have to repent.
SPEAKER_02: You never have to say sorry.
SPEAKER_02: You never have to change.
SPEAKER_02: And everyone around you is the one who is who has to say sorry to you and change what they think.
SPEAKER_02: It's a great thing to be a victim.
SPEAKER_02: And so lots of people run to it for refuge.
SPEAKER_02: But as with all of these false refuges, they actually don't lead to health and happiness and wholeness over the long term.
SPEAKER_02: They are short-term fixes.
SPEAKER_02: They leave us feeling more isolated, more empty.
SPEAKER_02: They strain the relationships that we are in even more.
SPEAKER_02: And they leave us unable to face the things that we need to change about ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: So the psalmist saying don't run to these false refuges.
SPEAKER_02: God is a refuge.
SPEAKER_02: And he's not like these other things that we run to, because he can actually change circumstances.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 2 In your righteousness, deliver me and rescue me.
SPEAKER_02: Incline your ear to me and save me.
SPEAKER_02: The chief difference between the refuges that we tend to run to and the refuge that God is is that God can actually change your circumstances.
SPEAKER_02: Our God is a savior.
SPEAKER_02: He is a deliverer, not just a distraction.
SPEAKER_02: Moreover, he is good in your righteousness, that is, your unwavering commitment to goodness and to truth.
SPEAKER_02: Deliver me.
SPEAKER_02: And so he does not let suffering go unnoticed or unacknowledged.
SPEAKER_02: He sees you in your trial and does not let you go uncomforted.
SPEAKER_02: Make him your refuge.
SPEAKER_02: Run to him, cry out to him, tell him exactly how you're feeling.
SPEAKER_02: Cling to the promises of who he is.
SPEAKER_02: What a kinder cultural community we would be.
SPEAKER_02: If we made God our refuge, and not the things that I mentioned, particularly victimhood.
SPEAKER_02: If we ran into the arms of Jesus in times of hurt, rather than taking up arms against one another, if we were so assured of his forgiveness and love for us that we didn't need to cling to victim status, but that we could forgive and apologize and reconcile.
SPEAKER_02: One of the ways that we grow in God is we resolve to make him our refuge, to repent this morning of those false refuges that we have sought and to pursue Him continually.
SPEAKER_02: Second resolution.
SPEAKER_02: Resolve this morning to remember God's past kindness to you.
SPEAKER_02: First, first verse four and six, and then verses sixteen and seventeen.
SPEAKER_02: Verse four to six Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and the cruel man.
SPEAKER_02: For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
SPEAKER_02: Upon you I have leaned from before my birth.
SPEAKER_02: You are he who took me from my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_02: My praise is continually of you.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 16, with mighty deeds of the Lord, of the Lord God, I will come, and I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.
SPEAKER_02: O God, you have taught me from my youth.
SPEAKER_02: And still I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
SPEAKER_02: The Psalmist, in their trouble, is looking back over their life, and rather than seeing their life as a catalog of disasters, they see it as a tapestry of the faithfulness of God.
SPEAKER_02: So what are the decisions cognitively that you need to uh to make?
SPEAKER_02: Will you look back at your life as a catalogue of sufferings and disasters?
SPEAKER_02: Will you focus on those negatives?
SPEAKER_02: Or will you see the golden thread that God has begun to weave through each of those things?
SPEAKER_02: Whichever one you pick will make you a very different person.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist is resolving to look back and to see God's continual work.
SPEAKER_02: And this is what happens, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: That in the moment of trial, in the moment of suffering, it's really hard to see what God is doing.
SPEAKER_02: It feels like it feels like the clouds have kind of covered the face of uh of the sun, of uh of the brightness, of the goodness of God, right?
SPEAKER_02: And and and so it's we can't see.
SPEAKER_02: It's not until we actually are removed from it that we look back at times of suffering and trial and go, gosh, I didn't I didn't realize that you would change me in that sort of way.
SPEAKER_02: And oh, I can see what you were doing there in in that relationship.
SPEAKER_02: And I felt in you taking that thing away from me that you were being cruel to me, but now I actually see that you were being kind.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever had that experience?
SPEAKER_02: Do you think in the moment that God's being mean to you?
SPEAKER_02: But then you look back and go and go, Do you know what?
SPEAKER_02: That's the best thing that could have happened to me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm really glad that God wrestled that thing from my grasp.
SPEAKER_02: You look back in hindsight and you see the faithfulness of God.
SPEAKER_02: And so.
SPEAKER_02: So the trick is, is in the moment when you're in a season of trial and suffering, and you can't see what God's doing in that situation.
SPEAKER_02: You look back and go, Well, I can see what God was doing here.
SPEAKER_02: And I remember that he was kind to me here.
SPEAKER_02: It felt like he was being mean to me, but actually it was kindness and grace and love.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I understand that.
SPEAKER_02: And I can count these blessings here.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I can see all of that.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm gonna believe that that's true for this.
SPEAKER_02: Can't see it now, but I'm gonna believe that God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, hasn't suddenly changed to hating me.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm gonna believe that for this until the time that this situation becomes part of that golden tapestry.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02: Right, good, excellent.
SPEAKER_02: Glad to see you still awake.
SPEAKER_02: That is what he is doing.
SPEAKER_02: He's recalling God's faithfulness from his youth, from the womb, from those earliest days.
SPEAKER_02: I love this little image of from from the womb.
SPEAKER_02: One of the things that you need to know is that God's kindness, his grace to you, flows irrespective of understanding or of strength.
SPEAKER_02: He remembers God's faithfulness even from the womb.
SPEAKER_02: It means that God's kindness flows to us before we ever understand anything, before we have any strength in ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: And that's really good news.
SPEAKER_02: And so the encouragement is to start remembering now.
SPEAKER_02: To think today, even right now, I suspect that in some of your minds, little little synapses are firing, little memories are coming up of you looking back and going, yeah, God was faithful then.
SPEAKER_02: I understand, I understand what it was like to think that God was being mean to me, but actually he was kind.
SPEAKER_02: And it's it's remembering those, it's cementing those things.
SPEAKER_02: That's why in the Old Testament, you know, uh you hear people about people kind of uh erecting stones um called Ebenezer's rocks of remembrance to remember uh God's past faithfulness, because a rock, it's it's a tangible thing you can see as you as you walk on your journey through your day, you can see that rock and go, do you know what?
SPEAKER_02: That rock, that rock's there because of this battle that we won, because God gave us the victory.
SPEAKER_02: And that rock's there because of the of the time that he delivered us, even though we didn't deserve it.
SPEAKER_02: And all the way through, as they meander through the promised land, they they see these totems of God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_02: And I guess by way of application, not to be kind of too corny about it, what's that gonna be for you?
SPEAKER_02: I think I would never do this because Philippa would hate it, but I understand why people get tattoos, right?
SPEAKER_02: At particular moments, or because of particular things, because they are they are permanent totems and and symbols of God's past faithfulness.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's it's keeping a diary, or uh having a having a memento pinned up on your board or on your or on your study desk or on your sideboard at home.
SPEAKER_02: It might be a song.
SPEAKER_02: There are songs that I can think of that if and I'm not gonna sing them for you now, but you can talk to me about them.
SPEAKER_02: There are songs that I can think of that when I listen to them, they take me right back to particular moments, and I remember God's faithfulness to me.
SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna remember God's past kindness?
SPEAKER_02: What stones of remembrance will you erect?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're sitting here this morning and you can't think of a time when you have seen God's past kindness to you.
SPEAKER_02: Things look so bleak that you can't possibly see anything of that golden thread.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you one.
SPEAKER_02: We don't need simply to look at our own subjective past experience.
SPEAKER_02: Every follower of the Lord Jesus has a totem raised in history to look back to to see the enduring and unending kindness, grace, and love of God.
SPEAKER_02: And it's the cross of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We look back in history to Good Friday, and we ask of that day, does God love me?
SPEAKER_02: Is God committed to me in his righteousness?
SPEAKER_02: Is God a savior to me?
SPEAKER_02: Is God a deliverer?
SPEAKER_02: And we look at that cross and we conclude, yes, he is.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, he is.
SPEAKER_02: And so the words of uh of Paul uh in Romans uh 5, uh, eight and nine are true, that if he loved us while we were still sinners, that is, hostile to him, far away from him, if he loved us enough to send his son when we were in that sort of relationship with him, how much more will he be a deliverer and a savior and a father to us now that we are his forgiven and adopted children?
SPEAKER_02: Look back, remember God's past kindness.
SPEAKER_02: Third resolution resolve to speak of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_02: Verse eight, my mouth is filled with your praise and with your glory all the day.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 15, my mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: I love this image in verse eight, where the psalmist says, My mouth is filled with your praise.
SPEAKER_02: It's almost as though their mouth is so full of God's goodness and kindness.
SPEAKER_02: They have so much to recount that they don't have any space for any moaning.
SPEAKER_02: There's no space in there for grumbles because it's just so full of praise.
SPEAKER_02: I wish I could be more like that.
SPEAKER_02: Our words have a profound effect, not just on others, but on ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: We're constantly being spoken to, we're constantly speaking to ourselves complaining and grumbling and moaning.
SPEAKER_02: It act in a perverse sort of way, it can be fun.
SPEAKER_02: And it can be kind of unifying, if you notice that, in like uh on a work team.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of good just to kind of grumble and moan uh about about a project, about a client, about a boss, because it kind of it kind of perversely unites the rest of you in your moaning.
SPEAKER_02: But it ends up being such a shallow display of unity.
SPEAKER_02: As we grow older, we don't want to be people, I'm assuming, who grumble more and more.
SPEAKER_02: Because as Christians growing up and getting older, it actually means that we have more to act to thank God for.
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons why it's good that our years advance is because the catalogue of God's faithfulness and kindness and how he's revealed himself to us rises, we have more and more to thank him for.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, so often it's kind of the opposite.
SPEAKER_02: The people who are who are baby Christians, who've only been Christian for uh a very short time, they're the ones who are just full of how great God is.
SPEAKER_02: And those of us who have been Christians for 20 years now, um familiarity breeds contempt, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: And we kind of give ourselves in to to moaning, we forget how good we've got it.
SPEAKER_02: One of the ways that God uses our past experiences is so that we can speak of it and what he has done to others.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 15 to tell of his righteous deeds to encourage others to keep going.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the ways that we will you will see God's purposefulness in your past suffering, is when some years hence you get to have a conversation with somebody going through exactly the same thing, and you go, here's what I learned, and there is hope on the other side.
SPEAKER_02: And I know what it's like exactly to be where you are.
SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you what God taught me.
SPEAKER_02: Link arms with me and let me shoulder some of this burden because I know what it's like to be there.
SPEAKER_02: As we grow up together as a church, we must be people who who speak in lots of little informal ways of God's faithfulness to us in our community groups and over lunch to speak of kindnesses.
SPEAKER_02: As we've given prayer points for job applications or for uh or for health or for uh or for a parent or a spouse or a child to testify to God's goodness, perhaps even if those prayers don't go answered in the way that you expected.
SPEAKER_02: Let's also uh pray that as we grow up, I mean this is the thing, City Church doesn't have very many old people right now, just give it time.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get there.
SPEAKER_02: And wouldn't it be great, actually?
SPEAKER_02: If we all allow our hairs to grow gray or fall out, whichever is uh is uh foreordained for you.
SPEAKER_02: As we allow our hairs to grow gray, and I want to pray that our church family would be backfilled with people who are our age now, and we get to tell them about God's enduring faithfulness to us individually and as a family.
SPEAKER_02: We get to encourage them and and be it's one of the lamentable things about being a young congregation is it's hard to do the uh older saints mentoring and caring for younger believers.
SPEAKER_02: How cool would it be if in this room this morning there were a hundred mentors in 10-15 years' time who were able to speak of the enduring faithfulness of God who have experienced suffering and trial and loss and grief and yet who have persevered and are able to strengthen the backs of those young people who might come in through our doors.
SPEAKER_02: I think that'd be really wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: But we resolve to be those people now.
SPEAKER_02: Fourth resolution resolve to cultivate an indestructible hope.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_02: But I will continue, sorry, I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons why I suspect that we don't dwell on the idea of growing old is because we tend to see old age simply in the negative.
SPEAKER_02: We think of it in terms of waning strength, limited vitality, slowing down of body and of mind, the uh the increased likelihood of ill health.
SPEAKER_02: But none of this is the end of the story for the Christian.
SPEAKER_02: The advancing of years is also the ever-growing brightness of the day when we will see Jesus face to face, of the end of suffering and hardship, of the end of tears and grief.
SPEAKER_02: We start our Christian life like young saplings, green and soft and full of potential, stretching for the light, reaching higher and higher, but also fragile.
SPEAKER_02: Hope is like bark shielding us in times of trial.
SPEAKER_02: It is deep roots, keeping us stable as the storms rage, and the psalmist is encouraging us this morning to cultivate that hope in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's linked with praise, as we've just seen.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the consequences of having your mouth full of who God is, of speaking of Him continually, of testifying to His goodness.
SPEAKER_02: Because you're not just speaking to the other person, you're also speaking to yourself.
SPEAKER_02: And it deepens our hope and resolve.
SPEAKER_02: Or have you ever had the experience?
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you realize this, but I'm kind of an external processor.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I process by speaking.
SPEAKER_02: Um I don't understand what it what it is for you just to sit there in silence when you're feeling loads of things.
SPEAKER_02: You can talk to my wife about that.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I like to speak things out.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever had the experience of uh of of talking to somebody and then coming to a realization yourself about the thing that you're talking about?
SPEAKER_02: This might be a silly reference, it's just kind of coming to mind.
SPEAKER_02: There's the the video of uh Elon Musk giving somebody a tour uh around SpaceX and talking about the the boosters, and this guy asks a question uh about uh about it being like cold injection versus hot injection.
SPEAKER_02: And as he's kind of talking about it, he's like, oh yeah, um okay, we're gonna change that.
SPEAKER_02: And then they come back a year later and they completely change the engineering system uh of the uh of the thrusters and the rockets because he's verbally processed things.
SPEAKER_02: He's realized something in real time.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever had the experience of realizing, oh, that's what God was doing, or oh, I hadn't seen it that way until I actually spoke it out.
SPEAKER_02: Telling people, praising God, remembering and recounting actually helps to strengthen our own hope and resolve.
SPEAKER_02: This telling others also, I think, by implication means community.
SPEAKER_02: That one of the things that we do is we cultivate hope together, as we hear of and tell of God's faithfulness, as we sing together those great songs of the faith that help to stir our hope, as we sit under God's word, as the psalmist gives voice and vocabulary to our to our suffering and helps us to cry out to him.
SPEAKER_02: All of these things together help to form that bark and to deepen those roots that we might hope more.
SPEAKER_02: That is, as we rejoice together and as we weep together, as we remember what God has done for us, and when we feel utterly hopeless, having others come alongside and bearing us up and sharing just a little bit of their hope with us.
SPEAKER_02: Let us resolve, therefore, to be a community that cultivates hope together.
SPEAKER_02: Remembering our great God and Savior, encouraging one another to keep going.
SPEAKER_02: That's biblical encouragement.
SPEAKER_02: Talked about this in our Wednesday community group.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but people think of encouragement in terms of um that's a lovely, it's a lovely top you've got on today.
SPEAKER_02: Have you got a new hairstyle?
SPEAKER_02: Uh you that sort of compliments.
SPEAKER_02: The biblical encouragement is not that.
SPEAKER_02: Biblical encouragement is it's like doing a hike and feeling weary and having somebody come come alongside you and go, right, summit's there.
SPEAKER_02: The summit's there, and we're gonna go together, right?
SPEAKER_02: We're nearly there.
SPEAKER_02: Look how far we've come, right?
SPEAKER_02: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_02: You've walked all of that.
SPEAKER_02: Don't give up now.
SPEAKER_02: The peak's there, and we're gonna get there just in time for sunrise.
SPEAKER_02: And we're going there together, and when we get to the top, we're gonna pull out a flask of tea and we're gonna watch the sunrise together.
SPEAKER_02: Don't give up now.
SPEAKER_02: Keep going.
SPEAKER_02: That's biblical encouragement.
SPEAKER_02: That builds hope.
SPEAKER_02: Keep going.
SPEAKER_02: Final resolution.
SPEAKER_02: Resolve to be a person of joy.
SPEAKER_02: Decide that now.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 23 and 24.
SPEAKER_02: My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you.
SPEAKER_02: My soul, which you have redeemed, and my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have uh for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist wants to finish their days joyfully, laughing, singing, dancing.
SPEAKER_02: We must resolve to be joyful people as the years advance, because it is not a guarantee that we will arrive at our old age with happiness and with satisfaction.
SPEAKER_02: I want us to be older saints who sing with dentures a clacken, who dance and who shout and who are glad in God, who enjoy the days that God has given us, however long they are, in the world that He has made.
SPEAKER_02: By that time there will be so much for us to be glad in.
SPEAKER_02: We need only look and acknowledge all of the small blessings that God has bestowed upon us each day.
SPEAKER_02: And as we approach our advancing years, we can do so with ever-increasing joy because of the great love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The end of the Christian story is not oblivion, it is new creation.
SPEAKER_02: It's the renewal of all things, it's the renewal of our bodies, of every ailment that has befallen us, of every creak and crackle that we experience.
SPEAKER_02: This is the future hope that Jesus has secured for us.
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons why we cannot simply take refuge in the things of this world is because of what Jesus' life means.
SPEAKER_02: We're not just victims.
SPEAKER_02: We're also victimizers.
SPEAKER_02: We're not just victims, we're also perpetrators.
SPEAKER_02: Life is not black and white.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist here at the start of the psalm lays claim to God's righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: It's an intriguing thing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: He says, In your righteousness, save me, deliver me, in your commitment to moral perfection, rescue me.
SPEAKER_02: If God's committed to being morally perfect, if he's committed to righteousness and utter holiness, how do I lay claim to being rescued?
SPEAKER_02: Because I have no righteousness in myself.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do some nice things from time to time, but even they're tainted with self-seekingness and selfishness and pride.
SPEAKER_02: How do I lay claim to God's righteousness and asking him to save me?
SPEAKER_02: It's only because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You see, before we can say any of the Psalms, we need to hear them on the lips of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Only he can go to his father and go, in your righteousness, deliver me.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because he had no sin of his own.
SPEAKER_02: He was morally flawless, that lamb without spot or blemish.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he goes to that cross that we have spoken about.
SPEAKER_02: And dies the death that we deserve.
SPEAKER_02: So that we might lay claim to the righteousness of God and say, deliver me, save me, give me that continual hope.
SPEAKER_02: It's only because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot enjoy the things of Psalm 71 until you enjoy Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Until you have come to Him and had your sin forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: It is only through Jesus, who lived perfectly from his youth, calling on the name of the Lord, and yet who laid down his life long before old age that we are given this hope.
SPEAKER_02: This is how we grow and mature as believers.
SPEAKER_02: And you don't need to be 60 or 70 years old to be mature in God.
SPEAKER_02: We can be elders and matriarchs of the family of God here at City now, when we resolve to take refuge in Him, to remember His past kindness, to speak of Him, to hope in Him, and to be glad in Him.