SPEAKER_00: The reading this morning is from Psalm sixty-nine.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone needs Bibles, they're down along the side on the white little stool.
SPEAKER_00: And as Ben said, it is a big one.
SPEAKER_00: Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
SPEAKER_00: I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold.
SPEAKER_00: I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
SPEAKER_00: I am weary with my crying out.
SPEAKER_00: My throat is parched.
SPEAKER_00: My eyes grow dim with waiting for my Lord, with waiting for my God.
SPEAKER_00: More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.
SPEAKER_00: Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies.
SPEAKER_00: What I did not steal must I now restore.
SPEAKER_00: O God, you know my folly.
SPEAKER_00: The wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
SPEAKER_00: Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord God of hosts, let not those who seek you be brought to dishonour through me, O God of Israel, for it is for your sake that I have borne reproach.
SPEAKER_00: That dishonor has covered my face.
SPEAKER_00: I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons.
SPEAKER_00: For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
SPEAKER_00: When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.
SPEAKER_00: When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them.
SPEAKER_00: I am the talk of those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.
SPEAKER_00: But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_00: At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me in your saving faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Deliver me from sinking in the mire.
SPEAKER_00: Let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
SPEAKER_00: Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.
SPEAKER_00: Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good.
SPEAKER_00: According to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
SPEAKER_00: Hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress.
SPEAKER_00: Make haste to answer me.
SPEAKER_00: Draw near to my soul, redeem me, ransom me because of my enemies.
SPEAKER_00: You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor, my foes are all known to you.
SPEAKER_00: Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair.
SPEAKER_00: I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.
SPEAKER_00: They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
SPEAKER_00: Let their own table before them become a snare, and when they are at peace, let it become a trap.
SPEAKER_00: Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually.
SPEAKER_00: Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them.
SPEAKER_00: May their camp be a desolation, let no one dwell in their tents, for they persecute him whom you have struck down, and they recount the pain of those you have wounded.
SPEAKER_00: Add to them punishment upon punishment, may they have no acquittal from you.
SPEAKER_00: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
SPEAKER_00: But I am afflicted and in pain.
SPEAKER_00: Let your salvation, O God, set me on high.
SPEAKER_00: I will praise the name of God with a song, I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hooves.
SPEAKER_00: When the humble see it they will be glad.
SPEAKER_00: You who seek God, let your hearts revive.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise his own people who are prisoners.
SPEAKER_00: Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them.
SPEAKER_00: For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it.
SPEAKER_00: The offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.
SPEAKER_00: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 69 is a long psalm, and there's a lot of things in it.
SPEAKER_02: But uh in order to fully get into this, because it is our summer psalm series, we're gonna go slightly more cinematic this morning.
SPEAKER_02: I hope that's okay, because we need a good movie movie poster to get us into this psalm.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I want to take a moment just to get us into the mindset of an action hero.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: We've all seen action movies, right?
SPEAKER_02: We all know what these are about.
SPEAKER_02: We all know what it's like uh to watch an action movie and to and to see the action hero in action.
SPEAKER_02: I will describe a scene to you.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna tell you what movie it's from.
SPEAKER_02: Answers on a postcard if you if you want to make your guess.
SPEAKER_02: But uh this is this is a scene from an action movie not that long ago.
SPEAKER_02: Uh not a particularly uh you know satirical, not uh not a parody, not anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: But when you when you start to describe it, it sounds a little funny.
SPEAKER_02: But let me let me let me just go through it with you here because uh it'll help us as we approach this psalm.
SPEAKER_02: I promise it comes around.
SPEAKER_02: Um so our hero, our action hero, finds himself on a commercial airplane, right?
SPEAKER_02: And he's flying from point A to point B, as all of us have done, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02: He's flying coach because he's an everyman.
SPEAKER_02: But uh but he's there and he's he's on some mission, he's doing some thing there, and he and he comes to realize that on this plane there are some baddies.
SPEAKER_02: There's some bad guys on the plane.
SPEAKER_02: Not only are there bad guys, they're not just random bad guys engaged in random badness, but they are here to take care of him.
SPEAKER_02: So he's he's he's finding himself in a spot of danger.
SPEAKER_02: And so what does he do?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll tell you what he does.
SPEAKER_02: He waits for one of the two guys.
SPEAKER_02: There's two of them.
SPEAKER_02: One of them goes off to the lavatory, which is a very bad guy thing to do.
SPEAKER_02: You've got to imagine he's not even gonna wash his hands.
SPEAKER_02: But um, but while the one guy's in the lavatory, our hero just gets up out of his seat, walks straight up the aisle of the plane, and sits down next to the other guy.
SPEAKER_02: Just sits down next to him.
SPEAKER_02: Guy's kind of taken aback because this is who he's supposed to be watching and who he's supposed to be taking out, or whatever he's doing.
SPEAKER_02: Contract killer kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02: And um he sits down next to this guy and he and he's he delivers a line, a one-liner that's so punchy and so pithy and just communicates defiance.
SPEAKER_02: And then pretty effortlessly, you know, one or two punches maybe, and takes this guy out.
SPEAKER_02: Doesn't even cause a stir on the aircraft, just knocks this guy down for the for the count.
SPEAKER_02: And then as soon as he's done with that, he's getting up and the other guy's coming out of the lab and he takes him out too.
SPEAKER_02: And that's how action heroes deal with their problems, right?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm here to tell you, friends, and I don't know if this is gonna be new information to some of you, but life is not an action movie.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, if that if that shatters anybody's illusions, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a moment to process that.
SPEAKER_02: But uh but life is not an action movie.
SPEAKER_02: And King David, David wrote this Psalm, Psalm 69 here.
SPEAKER_02: King David was more like an action hero than probably any of us will ever be.
SPEAKER_02: But David recognized that life is not like an action movie.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have stunt coordinators, and we don't have script armor, and we don't have, you know, a guarantee that things aren't really going to get tough until we get into the third act.
SPEAKER_02: That that that particular sequence that I just described to you, that was earlier in the film.
SPEAKER_02: So of course he dealt with them easily.
SPEAKER_02: But we don't have that in life.
SPEAKER_02: Life is messy, life is unpredictable.
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to find solutions that work in the real world.
SPEAKER_02: Because the solutions of an action movie won't necessarily work.
SPEAKER_02: If we were to if we were to break down that uh that scene there, we'd see what the action hero is supposed to be, and it they all start with S.
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you're welcome.
SPEAKER_02: But uh an action hero is supposed to be all three of these things, supposed to be stoic.
SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is completely unfazed when things don't go his way.
SPEAKER_02: When our when our hero found his found his life in danger on the airplane, you didn't see any sign that he was scared or that he was concerned about it.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't try to hide away and avoid the problem.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't try to get anybody's help with it.
SPEAKER_02: He just leapt into action.
SPEAKER_02: He was stoic.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, gonna face my problems head on, unfaced.
SPEAKER_02: Action hero has to be smooth, right?
SPEAKER_02: He delivers this line, and the line is really, really the centerpiece of the scene.
SPEAKER_02: You know, it wouldn't have been the same scene if he'd just gone up to the guy and punched him.
SPEAKER_02: He had to deliver this really clever line.
SPEAKER_02: And he delivers the line in a way that he's not just, you know, going to him and his voice cracks in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not something where he stumbles over his words.
SPEAKER_02: It's not one of those lines where it sounds really good in your head and then you say it, and it's like, I kind of kind of sounded stupid.
SPEAKER_02: No, he was extremely smooth, right?
SPEAKER_02: And of course, all of this comes from the fact that our action hero is self-assured.
SPEAKER_02: He knows he's gonna be able to get through this and he will be okay.
SPEAKER_02: But again, life isn't an action movie.
SPEAKER_02: And so instead of these rules, we're gonna see what uh what the playbook of King David, the real life action hero, perhaps, what uh his playbook includes.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna tell you it doesn't include those three S's, has three other S's.
SPEAKER_02: You'll get to those in a minute here.
SPEAKER_02: But uh, if you can keep that psalm open in front of you, if you have it on a on an app on your phone, or if you have a paper Bible, if you want to grab a Bible from over there, I'm gonna pray in just a minute.
SPEAKER_02: That'd be perfect time for you to come down and get it here.
SPEAKER_02: But um, but we'll we'll refer back to this psalm and and and pick some ideas out of it to really see what we can glean from this and how it can impact our lives.
SPEAKER_02: All right, well, instead of being stoic, what can we be here?
SPEAKER_02: If we look at the first kind of 15 verses of this psalm, I won't read them all because Irina did such a good job on that already.
SPEAKER_02: But to but to to sum up those ones there, those those first verses there, we can see instead of being stoic, it's okay in stressful situations to be stressed.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I know it sounds simple, but take a look at how David opens up the psalm.
SPEAKER_02: What are his first words here in Psalm 69?
SPEAKER_02: Save me, O God.
SPEAKER_02: Those are not exactly the words of an action hero.
SPEAKER_02: Those are not acts, and those are not smooth, you know, calculated words.
SPEAKER_02: This is a desperate man crying out to God.
SPEAKER_02: And we see that he goes on and he's got this this imagery going throughout about water and feeling overwhelmed, feeling like he's gonna drown.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you, but there are times in life where we feel this way, right?
SPEAKER_02: We we definitely definitely have these experiences.
SPEAKER_02: And he goes on about it, you know, there's there's, you know, stuck in the deep mire and there's no foothold and come into deep waters where the where the flood sweeps over me, weary from crying out, throat is parched.
SPEAKER_02: All of these things going on for him.
SPEAKER_02: So he's he's he's being he's he's acknowledging his stress.
SPEAKER_02: He's he's engaging in his stressed condition there.
SPEAKER_02: You take a look here, uh, one that's maybe more near and dear to my heart than it should be, verse four.
SPEAKER_02: He says, more in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.
SPEAKER_02: We have to assume David had a full head of hair.
SPEAKER_02: But uh what is he doing here?
SPEAKER_02: More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.
SPEAKER_02: In case you haven't counted for yourself, the human head has about a hundred thousand hairs on it.
SPEAKER_02: So if you've made that people, that's like Croke Park full of capacity, a hundred thousand people.
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't even think of a hundred thousand people that I've met in my life, let alone a hundred thousand people who hate me, let alone a hundred thousand people who hate me without cause.
SPEAKER_02: Probably some of the people who hate me, there's it's well earned.
SPEAKER_02: But what's David doing here?
SPEAKER_02: He's pouring it out here.
SPEAKER_02: And you could look at this and you could say, oh, this is just this is this is poetic license, right?
SPEAKER_02: This is this is hyperbolic language.
SPEAKER_02: He's he's given hyperbole, so he's just trying to illustrate his point.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think that's what he's doing.
SPEAKER_02: I think David is speaking out of his experience.
SPEAKER_02: He's speaking out of how it feels, what he's going through.
SPEAKER_02: And he's being real, not to be literally saying, you know, there's a hundred thousand people out there who hate me without cause, but this is what it feels like.
SPEAKER_02: This is what I'm going through, this is what I'm feeling.
SPEAKER_02: And you can go through all of these, all of these verses here in this kind of top 15 of the psalm here, and there's there's just a continuation of this idea that I am in distress, I'm struggling, I am not doing well here.
SPEAKER_02: David is engaging in this and he is taking it on board, and he's not afraid to say, you know what he's not doing?
SPEAKER_02: He's not sitting around going, gosh, if I say that, people will people will think I'm being a bit dramatic.
SPEAKER_02: You know, if if if if I use this kind of language here, you know, people will think I'm I'm I'm making a big deal out of nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Because you figure David is is is writing this out.
SPEAKER_02: This is a prayer, obviously.
SPEAKER_02: He's he's praying to God.
SPEAKER_02: His first words there, save me, O God.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also, if you look in the superscription, the the heading of the psalm there, that's part of the original text there where it says, To the choir master, to the choir master.
SPEAKER_02: This is for the choir to sing.
SPEAKER_02: This is a song that the choir was going to sing here.
SPEAKER_02: So this is something that would have been shared publicly.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that's not just between David and God, but it's between David and the entire assembly as well.
SPEAKER_02: And he's not sitting there going, gosh, I don't want people to think that I'm, you know, being a drama, drama queen here or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: He's not worried about that because he's engaging in it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, in in stressful situations, that's where I go.
SPEAKER_02: That's where I go.
SPEAKER_02: You could ask me, I could be going through something really, really difficult and really hard.
SPEAKER_02: And if you came up to me and said, you know, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_02: I'd be like, ah, you know, I've been I've been better, but I'm okay.
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: Kind of deflect with that, kind of downplay it, minimize it.
SPEAKER_02: Try to be that action hero myself.
SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_02: And I and I pray that if if we get nothing else from this psalm, then we get the sense that we we should do better as a community because we're called to be in each other's lives, we're called to bear one another's burdens.
SPEAKER_02: And the fact of the matter is that holding back and worrying what other people might think when we're going through hard times, it doesn't get us the help that we need.
SPEAKER_02: Cher from the uh book of 2 Corinthians here, this is one of my favorite passages here.
SPEAKER_02: I just take this on board for what it is here.
SPEAKER_02: This is, you know, a thousand years after David wrote this.
SPEAKER_02: This is in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: These are the words of the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_02: But what does he do?
SPEAKER_02: This is at the top of his letter to the Corinthian church, and he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
SPEAKER_02: So you think about that.
SPEAKER_02: When we face trials, when we face troubles in life, we find God's comfort, right?
SPEAKER_02: And that's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't say we won't go through difficult times, but he says he'll be with us.
SPEAKER_02: And so he is the God of all comfort.
SPEAKER_02: But the the second half of that is so interesting and so beautiful to think about when we think about the church and when we think about Christian community.
SPEAKER_02: Because we see that it's not just for ourselves that we get God's comfort, but when we go through something hard, maybe a few months down the road we find somebody else who's going through the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: And we can help them to experience God's comfort, not only from God directly, but through our relationship with them.
SPEAKER_02: You know, hey, I hear you're going through this.
SPEAKER_02: I've been there.
SPEAKER_02: Let's meet up, let's pray together, let's, let's, let's see if we can encourage each other.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: So if we are not willing to engage, if we're not willing to admit that we are going through hard times, if we're not willing to be stressed in time of stress, then how are we going to do either of these things?
SPEAKER_02: How are we going to take comfort from those who've already gone through it?
SPEAKER_02: How are we going to be able to provide comfort, the comfort of the Lord to those who are going through it?
SPEAKER_02: So that that's my that's my first point there, and that's that's the the first rule that uh King David gives us for facing difficult times, is that, you know, in stressful times, it's okay to be stressed.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: So the second thing here, instead of being stressed, or instead of being smooth, it's okay to be sincere.
SPEAKER_02: You see, David jump into the next little bit here, kind of starting in verse 16.
SPEAKER_02: And he's got some stuff going on here that's not very smooth.
SPEAKER_02: He's not delivering a practiced, polished one-liner.
SPEAKER_02: He's not coming forward with a strong voice and and and defiance and all of this thing here.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Answer me, O God, for your steadfast love is good.
SPEAKER_02: Answer me out of out of your abundant mercy.
SPEAKER_02: Turn to me.
SPEAKER_02: There's a whole section here where it seems like David is asking God to do the things that God has already promised to do.
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like God is David is asking God not to do the things that God has promised not to do.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, God promises to be with his people.
SPEAKER_02: God promises to be near his people.
SPEAKER_02: If you look at verses 17 and 18, you'll see this in here.
SPEAKER_02: But this is this is David just crying out in the midst of his of his uh of his trial here, of his difficulty.
SPEAKER_02: And it we have to ask ourselves, is this is this David nagging God?
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like you think you think of a small child.
SPEAKER_02: It's like, are we are we gonna go to the are we gonna go to the park today?
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we're gonna go to the park, and then five minutes later the child comes back.
SPEAKER_02: Are we gonna go to the park today?
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we're gonna go to the park today, and then five minutes later, child, child isn't, you know, necessarily doubting what you're saying, but the child wants to see this happen.
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is what David is saying here.
SPEAKER_02: David knows that God will be near to him.
SPEAKER_02: David knows that God will be with him, but he wants to see it, he wants to feel it, he wants to experience it.
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is just another example and another way that David is speaking out of his own experience, relaying his own feelings.
SPEAKER_02: He's not being smooth about it, but he is being real about it.
SPEAKER_02: We get to this section.
SPEAKER_02: The section that starts with verse 22, and it's kind of the longest and most coherent part of this psalm where David stays on a thought the longest, and it's the part where he starts to pray for the destruction of his enemies.
SPEAKER_02: And I look at that and I go, ooh, that doesn't that doesn't sit right with me.
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't that doesn't seem like the right thing.
SPEAKER_02: Well, there must be some value in it, there must be some purpose in it because it's in scripture, it's inspired, it's it's it's part of God's God's word to us.
SPEAKER_02: So we need to give this some thought and figure out why, why is this here and what does this teach us?
SPEAKER_02: How does this help us out?
SPEAKER_02: Because there's some pretty hard words in there.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you picked up on them when when Arena was reading them through.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, they sounded very sweet and kind coming from Arena's mouth, but but you know, when we have things here coming out, like, you know, let their own table before them become a snare, let their place of comfort be something that trips them up, right?
SPEAKER_02: When they're at peace, let it be a trap, let their eyes be darkened so they can't see.
SPEAKER_02: Make their loins tremble continually.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: These are not these are not soft and cuddly words here, right?
SPEAKER_02: Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: You skip down to verse 28.
SPEAKER_02: It says, Let them be blotted out of the book of the living.
SPEAKER_02: Let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
SPEAKER_02: Cast them out, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Bring them to the grave.
SPEAKER_02: Now you look at this and you think, gosh, this sounds pretty harsh, pretty rough.
SPEAKER_02: But I've got a few ideas on perhaps why this is in here and how this helps us to view our suffering and our difficulties in a godly way.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, we know David himself, action hero, man of action.
SPEAKER_02: David was more than able to deal with his enemies in very practical and physical ways.
SPEAKER_02: We can we can read stories both of good and bad times when David uh was responsible for killing.
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, so it's not something that he's needing to hide behind God or, you know, he could he could easily go and take his own action here.
SPEAKER_02: But instead, he's inviting God into the matter.
SPEAKER_02: He's inviting God into it.
SPEAKER_02: Anytime we ask God for something, think about this.
SPEAKER_02: Anytime we ask God for something, we're saying, I'm gonna leave this with you.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna trust you to deal with this, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And even though what he's asking for is probably not the right thing or the best thing or the good thing.
SPEAKER_02: He's bringing it to God, which tells us a lot about how we can pray, about how we can bring things to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have to have all of our theology sorted out before we take something to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have to sit and get everything straight in our minds before we can come to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have to do that.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: By bringing something to the Lord, it's also an act of dependence.
SPEAKER_02: It's an act of worship.
SPEAKER_02: And you know what's interesting is by bringing God into the discussion, God can then make changes in us.
SPEAKER_02: We open ourselves up, we invite him to make those changes.
SPEAKER_02: I can think of an example in my own life.
SPEAKER_02: I was not praying for somebody to be killed.
SPEAKER_02: I promise you that.
SPEAKER_02: But I can think, I can think of times in my own life where I have just been at my wit's end and I have asked God for his help with things.
SPEAKER_02: I can think of a time where I had a close friend and I did not understand why this man was my close friend.
SPEAKER_02: And I struggled with him and I had a hard time.
SPEAKER_02: And I was just praying to God.
SPEAKER_02: I was saying, Lord, why is this man my friend?
SPEAKER_02: Why are we even in life together?
SPEAKER_02: Makes me crazy.
SPEAKER_02: What are you trying to teach me here, Lord?
SPEAKER_02: Can you just teach me the lesson and then I can move on from this relationship?
SPEAKER_02: And as God does in his mercy and kindness and gentleness sometimes, he answered me in real time, friends, and it was not a warm and fuzzy feeling.
SPEAKER_02: It was like a smack in the back of the head saying, It's not about you.
SPEAKER_02: Quit making this about you.
SPEAKER_02: Just be friends with the people that I've given you.
SPEAKER_02: So I was like, okay.
SPEAKER_02: So God can do that too.
SPEAKER_02: He can open it.
SPEAKER_02: But I I didn't come to that decision on myself.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't my own idea there.
SPEAKER_02: And so as we as we pray things, even as we pray things that might be selfish, might be, you know, not quite in line with who we are as people of God, he can use that time to draw us nearer to him and to and to change our thinking even in real time.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if we think about this in our in our modern day and our modern time, I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_02: I don't spend a lot of time praying for the physical destruction of people who I don't like.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you do, and God love you if you do.
SPEAKER_02: But are there other ways that we can wish harm on people?
SPEAKER_02: Are there other ways that we can bring harm to people?
SPEAKER_02: I think about, you know, can we can we hurt people uh reputationally?
SPEAKER_02: Can we hurt people socially?
SPEAKER_02: Can we embarrass people?
SPEAKER_02: Can we can we bring them down in other ways?
SPEAKER_02: Can we slay them in those ways?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely we can.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that this this passage here, these you know, kind of nine verses here where David is praying for the destruction of his enemies, helps us to see that differently rather than taking action against people who've done me wrong or who deserve something.
SPEAKER_02: Can I step back and say, Lord, I'm gonna leave this in your hands?
SPEAKER_02: Can I step back and say, I'm not gonna take this action, but Lord, it'd be really cool if you did.
SPEAKER_02: And God is not like some genie that we rub the lamp and we make our wish and he does whatever we say.
SPEAKER_02: God acts out of his wisdom and out of his mercy, and he brings it together the way that he wants.
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, he's making the changes in us.
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_02: So we don't have to be smooth, we don't have to have everything planned out and polished and looking good and sounding good all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you want to be defiant in the Lord, you know, go read Daniel chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: Because you got uh some guys there who are facing some really difficult opposition.
SPEAKER_02: And the king says, Who do you think you are that your God would save you?
SPEAKER_02: And they said, Our God is able to save us.
SPEAKER_02: And even if he doesn't, we're still not going to comply with what you're asking us to do because it violates his stuff.
SPEAKER_02: So that's uh not not really a one-liner, not really smooth, but it just gives us a model for it.
SPEAKER_02: So that's the second thing that we see in here that our times of struggle, it's okay to be sincere.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have to be smooth.
SPEAKER_02: And the third one starts with S also, seeking God's resolution.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have to be self-assured.
SPEAKER_02: I really should have said, we don't have to be self-assured, we should be God assured, but that doesn't start with us.
SPEAKER_02: So, but really, this gives us a great sense of how this pays off here.
SPEAKER_02: You get down to about verse 29, and it's almost like David's run out of words, right?
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever been in one of these things where you're on a rant and you're on a roll and you're like, and now I'm done?
SPEAKER_02: And it's like David takes a breath here.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's like God's intervening in David's thinking in real time, because he says, But I am afflicted and in pain.
SPEAKER_02: Let your salvation, oh God, set me on high.
SPEAKER_02: He's been spending all of his time and all of his energy focused on his problem.
SPEAKER_02: And it's right that he has, because it's occupying his thoughts and it's occupying his heart.
SPEAKER_02: But it's like here he is, he's come to the come to the end of that rant.
SPEAKER_02: It's just like, okay.
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, you know, the old, the old uh Christian adage there that says, don't tell God how big your problems are, tell tell your problems how big God is, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02: But I think there's something to it here.
SPEAKER_02: Because he's he's spent now 28 verses going through everything that's going on with him.
SPEAKER_02: He's been, you know, stressed and he's been sincere in what's happening with him.
SPEAKER_02: And it's almost like here we are now, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I'm in pain, I'm suffering, but what do I see?
SPEAKER_02: What do I know?
SPEAKER_02: Let me rehearse some truth that I know.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe, maybe this is God uh intervening in his thoughts in real time, like I said, but but this is this is David recognizing that God is with him now and that his future is solid.
SPEAKER_02: The stuff, the kind of things that he was praying and crying out to God to help him with in that second session, now he's taking those on board and and declaring them as truth.
SPEAKER_02: So, can we do this?
SPEAKER_02: Can we can we bring all of our stuff to God, but trust and rest that he is at work in all of these circumstances in our lives?
SPEAKER_02: In an action film, you have something called plot armor.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you're familiar with this.
SPEAKER_02: I wish Andrew Woodmartin was here because he's our resident movie critic.
SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, plot armor says, you know, you the the the hero couldn't possibly die, you know, 20 minutes into the movie, even if he's in a very difficult situation, because you know, the plot demands it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you gotta still have this guy around for the for the end of the movie.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have that.
SPEAKER_02: We have something better.
SPEAKER_02: We have a God who loves us, we have a God who cares for us, and who uses all the circumstances of our lives, good and bad, for his purposes.
SPEAKER_02: It's like the verse that I read at the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: God works all things together for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_02: So let's not be self-assured.
SPEAKER_02: Let's not let's not put that on ourselves because let's face it, there's too often in life that we have no call to be self-assured, but let's be God assured because we can trust in him.
SPEAKER_02: We can rest in him.
SPEAKER_02: We can recognize that in all of these circumstances, he is at work and he is getting it done.
SPEAKER_02: Just a lot of great stuff in here.
SPEAKER_02: I love this, I love this uh verse 34.
SPEAKER_02: It says, Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in him, for God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and the people shall dwell there and possess it.
SPEAKER_02: It's like David is looking beyond his immediate circumstance.
SPEAKER_02: He's looking beyond what's happening in his life and seeing, you know, God's still on his throne.
SPEAKER_02: God's not taken surprise by this.
SPEAKER_02: I may be drowning in deep waters, I may be struggling my way through this, and I may be facing enemies that I'm praying their destruction.
SPEAKER_02: But God's still on his throne, and God's gonna make good out of all of this.
SPEAKER_02: So, how does this change our view?
SPEAKER_02: How does this change what we think and how we see our own trials and tribulations?
SPEAKER_02: I think if we lean into that, I think if we if we spend our time in prayer uh digging through this, it's it's really helpful to us in difficult times.
SPEAKER_02: Now, the fourth thing that I want to point out to us is that this psalm points us to the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: All Psalms, all Psalms, one way or another, point to Jesus, some of them more explicitly than others.
SPEAKER_02: But all this Psalm here points us to Jesus, and we see that that David is just a shadow, a shadow of Jesus, a prediction of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And he's bringing out ideas imperfectly that Jesus will later come along and complete and perfect.
SPEAKER_02: First of all, we've got this theme.
SPEAKER_02: David is presenting himself here in the Psalm as the sinless sufferer, right?
SPEAKER_02: Well, not really sinless, because in verse 5 and in verse 19, he says, you know, I'm not perfect here.
SPEAKER_02: I've done my share of bad stuff here.
SPEAKER_02: He's more like, I'm I'm disproportionately suffering here.
SPEAKER_02: I'm suffering more than I deserve.
SPEAKER_02: But we know that when we read the gospels, when we read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the stories of the life of Jesus, Jesus was the sinless sufferer.
SPEAKER_02: He did go through life without without sinning, without doing any of this stuff wrong.
SPEAKER_02: And he still suffered and died from it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, Jesus was, was, was wrongly accused, was hated and overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_02: You read the accounts of the uh the night in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was carried away.
SPEAKER_02: Some pretty stressful times.
SPEAKER_02: And you can also see that some of these, some of these verses are either directly quoted, looking back on Jesus in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: You know, the the uh verse 9 there, where it talks about, you know, zeal for your house has over.
SPEAKER_02: This is this is quoted in the Gospels where Jesus drives out the moneylenders and the and the money changers from the from the temple, right?
SPEAKER_02: Zeal for your house.
SPEAKER_02: But this put him in the in the crosshairs of the religious leaders, right?
SPEAKER_02: Made people uh hate him without cause.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 21, where it talks about you know sour wine and gall, and this is this is reflected, this is echoed in the cross where he was offered uh these things.
SPEAKER_02: But I think probably even more than the circumstance, we see that this this psalm is reflected and ultimately perfected in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Because, like that big section that I was pointing out before, those nine verses where David is praying for the destruction of his enemies, what do we see with Jesus on the cross?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is suffering and he's on the cross and he says, Father, forgive.
SPEAKER_02: Forgive them for they for they know not what they do.
SPEAKER_02: So where David prays for the destruction of his enemies, Jesus prays for the forgiveness of his enemies.
SPEAKER_02: So all of this stuff uh points us to him, and it's in Christ that we have the strength, that we have the ability to be able to do the things that he calls us to do here.
SPEAKER_02: We can be more and more like Jesus as as we grow in him, as his spirit works in us.
SPEAKER_02: I think we got, yeah, this one, Galatians 5, where it says, you know, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: See, in David's day, it wasn't normal for people to have the Holy Spirit with them at all times.
SPEAKER_02: But we on this side of the cross, on this side of the resurrection, we've been given the Spirit, and so we can we can trust that God is with us by his spirit at all times.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus has made this provision through his through his sacrifice on the cross that gives us his presence in difficult times.
SPEAKER_02: We can we can know that he is using these troubles and these difficulties to his purposes for our good, amazing.
SPEAKER_02: And we can know that he is uh bringing us forward into a future that is sure and certain.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever's going on with us today, you know, we we look ahead to a better world and a better time.
SPEAKER_02: Like Mark says all the time, you know, once you become a Christian, the first 60 years are the hardest.
SPEAKER_02: So as we as we wrap it up here, just to think about it here, the world is not an action movie.
SPEAKER_02: I think we've demonstrated that pretty clearly, but I think we see in this in this psalm, there's there's a much better way.
SPEAKER_02: We pour out our hearts to God.
SPEAKER_02: I want to I want to I want to show you one of my favorites here, Philippians 4.
SPEAKER_02: And if you take a look at this, take a look at this, this is again in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: So this is looking back on the cross, looking back on Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: But Paul encourages the readers of his of his letter here.
SPEAKER_02: It says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.
SPEAKER_02: And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So you think about that at its most basic level.
SPEAKER_02: We bring God our anxiety, right?
SPEAKER_02: Do not be anxious, but in everything, by prayer, supplication just means we're we're making requests with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_02: We're coming to God with our anxiety, we're bringing it to him, and we're saying, this is where I'm at.
SPEAKER_02: We're doing what David did.
SPEAKER_02: But what's the exchange there?
SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty favorable exchange rate here, if you think about it, because in exchange, we get the peace of God.
SPEAKER_02: Peace of God which surpasses all understanding.
SPEAKER_02: And if you've been walking with Jesus for a while, you probably have experienced this yourself.
SPEAKER_02: It's a piece that says, I don't really understand why I feel the peace that I feel.
SPEAKER_02: I don't really know where this is coming from.
SPEAKER_02: My circumstances haven't changed, my life hasn't improved, but I know I'm not alone.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what this, that's what this piece that passes all understanding points us to.
SPEAKER_02: And so just as we as we close here, I want us to be reflecting upon that.
SPEAKER_02: Let us be a church community that is willing to share with one another.
SPEAKER_02: If I'm, if I'm, if I'm just gonna close myself off when I'm going through difficult times, then I'm never gonna get the help I need.
SPEAKER_02: You're never gonna know how to pray for me, never gonna know how to support me.
SPEAKER_02: But that means we also have to be a church community that is willing to hear.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: If I start sharing what's going on with me and you're like, ooh, that's a bit much.
SPEAKER_02: A little deep there, um, then I'm not gonna be willing and able to share, right?
SPEAKER_02: So may we, may we be that and may we encourage and support each other.
SPEAKER_02: May we may we point each other to this peace that passes understanding in the deep water of our lives.