Psalm 40 Part 3

Have you ever noticed how, when you’re in the middle of something hard, it’s almost impossible to see clearly? Like everything just closes in, and all you can focus on is what’s right in front of you. Your perspective shrinks. You start questioning everything, your decisions, your direction, even God. Today, Pastor Dr. Timothy Brown reminds us that sometimes it’s not until after the struggle that we finally see where God was leading us all along.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Truth for Transformation with Dr. Timothy Brown. You're about to hear a message from God's Word filled with biblical wisdom, practical insights, and life-changing truths. A message designed to inspire your faith and give encouragement.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

There's a lack of perspective in the pit. But whenever you get out of the pit, it's like the tunnel vision's gone. You now have perspective. So on the other side, your struggle is gonna be significant. It's gonna be direction, it's gonna be destiny. You establish my steps. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to an understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall do what? He'll direct the steps. So that's good. I got direction now.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Have you ever noticed how when you're in the middle of something hard, it's almost impossible to see clearly? Like everything just closes in, and all you can focus on is what's right in front of you. Your perspective shrinks. You start questioning everything: your decisions, your direction, even God. Today, Dr. Timothy Brown reminds us that sometimes it's not until after the struggle that we finally see where God was leading us all along. Prepare your heart, open your mind, and get ready to embark on a journey of faith with Dr. Timothy Brown in the book of Psalm, chapter 40, with today's edition of Truth for Transformation.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

So there are several benefits. I want to give you five benefits on the other side of your weight. These are benefits we see from David's own words. You notice he says that he brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clutch. So the first benefit is deliverance. Dakota feels really good right now that he's out of the pit. It was muddy, it was miry, didn't feel too good, he felt confined, you know, but now there's deliverance. So would you ever need a savior if you weren't stuck in a pit? Would you ever need someone to rescue you if you weren't in a bad situation? So if you're in a bad situation, I got good news. You're a good candidate for the Savior to rescue you. And the first rescue is from our sin. Jesus comes to save us, but that's not the only thing he rescues us from. Whatever situation you're going through, we have a savior that stoops. And not only does he lean into, but he actually comes down. We have the God who came down to earth to be with us. So there's deliverance. The second blessing on the other side of your trial is stability. So notice Dakota, he went from the mud and the mire. And David said, I went from a nasty, slimy pit to now he set my feet upon what? The rock. In the Old Testament, God is known as the rock, which means stability. I went from sinking sand to now I have stability, I have firm footing. In the New Testament, Jesus is known as the chief cornerstone, the picture of the rock. So here's the idea. When you're with God, it doesn't matter what kind of mud you're in. We serve a God who stoops down, he delivers you, and he sets your feet upon a rock. Alright, there's another blessing to have, not just stability, but there's direction, there's a destiny. Look at verse 2, the end of it. Not only did he set me upon a rock, but he established my steps. Have you ever noticed that when you're in a pit, you lack perspective? There's a lack of perspective in the pit. But whenever you get out of the pit, it's like the tunnel vision's gone. You now have perspective. So on the other side of your struggle is going to be significant. It's going to be direction, it's going to be destiny. You establish my steps. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to an understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall do what? He'll direct the steps. So that's good. I got direction now. There's a fourth benefit. So we're talking about the why behind the way. Why God? Okay, look on the other side. They're singing. What kind of song is it? It's a new song. Now I just want to declare I am all about the old songs. I love the hymns. Some of you love the hymns, songs of old. I'm all for them. However, there's something good about new songs. Throughout the Bible, like Psalm 33:3, it says, Sing to the Lord a new song. Well, what's wrong with the old songs? Nothing wrong with the old songs. But the old song represents what God did in the past. But with every new deliverance comes a new song. And it's like you guys follow some artists that they're like a one-hit wonder, they have a song and then they never have any good ones, and they're like, I've lost. But there's other people that stay relevant. Why? They keep having new songs. And those new songs are based upon new experiences. So if all you had was sunshine in your life and no rain, no mud, guess what you'd have? You'd have desert. But the fact that you're going through trials, the fact that some of you you had a hard time during COVID, sometimes some you've had a hard time after COVID. It's been a tough season. Realize that the mud is miracle mud. Realize those tears are growing, those dreams. As you send your prayers up to God and you're crying, the Bible says God's leaning in, He's listening. But then there's another benefit, not just a new song, but a new testimony. As you read verse 3, it says, many will see it in fear and will put their trust in the Lord. So here's a here's a way to reframe the weight. What if what you're going through right now, even though it's a horrible trial for you, outside of that trial, when you come out of the trial, it's going to become a blessed testimony. Pastors have said it like this What if your current test is your future testimony? Think about it. If you haven't gone through anything hard, do you have anything really to talk about? How many of you enjoy talking to shallow people that have really nothing to talk about except the weather and this and that? You don't get much depth, right? But people have been through some stuff. People that have been through some brokenness. People that, like Jacob, walk with the limp, you want to hear from them. Why? Because they've gone through stuff. And if you're going through stuff, you want people that have come out of it so they can relate and say, Me too, I've been through that. And guess what? The same God that got me through it, he's going to get you through it. So whenever you're going through sadness, just know that God can turn your sadness into a song. Right now you may be dealing with ashes, but we serve the Creator who can recreate and who can turn ashes into beauty. Right now, some of you are in a nightmare, right? And here's the thing if you want your nightmare to come true, you have to wake up. God can turn your nightmare into a dream, but you just have to wait on Him. And by the way, the wait is it's worth it. And that brings us to our final truth. The fourth truth that's comforting in the uncomfortableness of waiting is this. The wait is worth it if you stay focused on the goodness of God. If you read verses four and five, you're gonna see this. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. Notice he's focusing on God, not his circumstances. And does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside the lies. So what is David saying? When I'm in the pit, instead of having pitology, I'm gonna have great theology. Pitology is look how bad my pit is. It's muddy, it's messy, it's wet, it's confining. This one is see-through. It's like there's so much going on in the pit. Someone once asked someone how they're doing, and they said, I'm doing good under the circumstances. And the person was kind of savvy. They said, What are you doing under there? Why are you under your circumstances? Because those who wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings like eagles. You're to fly above the circumstances, not under the circumstances. Now keep in mind, this is not a like a self-help guru type talk. David understood his pit. You know, some people say, Don't, don't, don't mention your pit. David talked about it. He said it was muddy, it was miry. So you're aware of your pit, but your focus is not on your pit. Your focus is on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you stay focused on the pit, some of some people will think you've been baptized in lemonade. So you're like a sour saint, right? Part of this just, well, how are you doing? I'm okay, I'm okay. You know, and it's like I'm holding on until Jesus comes. Does he want you to hold on or does he want you to go and make a difference in the world? So I want you and encourage you to keep trusting in the goodness of God. Don't get sidetracked by the sidelines. David's like, I'm focusing on God. Think about the many wonderful works God has done for you in the past. David said, Listen, if I look back at the past, do we have any CPAs or accountants in the house? Raise your hand. We had one in the first service. My wife used to be an accountant. Imagine if you were like a super duper CPA, that you had great counting skills. Verse 5 says, if I could count all the stuff you've done, they would outnumber, I couldn't add a number to it, right? So whenever you're in the pit, I want you to be reminded of this. God's thinking about you. His thoughts about you are so loving, so caring. It's kind of like when my kids say, Daddy, I'm alert. What do you need, right? Usually it's get me out of this tree, I'm falling. Like, you know, I want to rescue, right? So whenever you call upon your heavenly Papa, Father, he hears your cries. He listens to you, and he loves you. I want this to kind of be embedded in your soul. If we could do a tattoo on the soul, I want this to be tattooed in your soul. God delivers those he delights in. The reason why he got you out of the pit was not because you were better than others, not because you were good or great or whatever. Since you accepted Christ, he adopted you into his family. And God delivers those that he delights in. You could say that he delivered me because he delights in me. Isn't it good to know that God not only loves you, but he also likes you? There's a difference. It's one thing to love somebody, it's another thing to also like them. God delivers you because he delights in you. So if you've ever been concerned about that, know that's truth. A beautiful past is the canvas for God painting, a picture of what he's going to do in the future. Your thoughts toward us, think about that. There more can be numbered. God, you care about me so much. If you look at verses 16 and 17, I want to give you a summary. And this on your listening guide, I've titled Helpful Tips When You're Waiting on God. Okay, Timothy, I'm beginning to understand the why behind the wait, but what I still don't understand is how to wait patiently, right? You can understand there's a greater reason, but how many of us are still impatient? How many of us are like, I remember I was in the doctor's office several years ago and like they weren't checking in. It was like a 45-minute wait, and I started banging on the door. Hello! Like, I'm waiting. Have you ever been there? Like, just in case you forgot your patient, I'm still in room three, right? God, are you listening? All right, here's some tips. Keep on seeking God while you're waiting. The wait is not a passive weight, but it's an active weight. Just like I mentioned the story about Jeremy Lynn, he continued to practice and get better during the wait. If he said forget this, he never would have got his chance, right? Faith is not passive. Faith is active. So while you're waiting, you're still loving God. You're still doing good. You're still being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. Don't sit on your blessed assurance while you're waiting. Continue to be about the Father's business. Second tip is focus on your relationship with Jesus. Because what this will do, it will allow you to still experience joy, even though you may not experience happiness. So one of the biggest misunderstandings in the Christian life is God just wants me to be happy. Do you know that's not in the Bible? I don't know where someone got that theology. I think it's in Hezekiah 3.16. You can turn to Hezekiah 3.16. It's not in your Bible, right? There's nowhere in the Bible that says God just wants you to be happy, but God does offer joy.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

You've been listening to Pastor Timothy Brown. We'll be right back with the message, but first, we'd like to share some exciting news with you. We're releasing Dr. Timothy's new book called Go After Jesus. This book is a fresh approach to discipleship and focuses on your identity in Christ as the launching pad for Christian growth. In Go After Jesus, Pastor Timothy paints the picture of the six identities for every follower of Christ. You are a seeker, a disciple, a friend, a fisherman, a warrior, and a lover. We're currently offering two free chapters of this book as a digital download. To get your free chapters, go to Dr. Timothy's website at drtimothybrown.org. Now let's get back to the rest of the message with Pastor Timothy.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And joy is different. Happiness is circumstantial. Joy is relational. It's because I belong to Jesus, even though I'm in this muddy, filthy pit, he's still got a great plan. So that that reframes the why behind the weight. Recognize your need for God's help. If you notice in his Psalm verse 16 and 17, David said, But I'm poor and I need God. You know, I'm lonely. Like he's he's talking about I'm poor and needy, right? What does that mean? You can't get saved until you need you realize you need a savior. A lot of people will not ask for help. And by the way, if you're the type of person that does not want to ask for help, you know the most likely calls for that? It starts with a peak. Anybody tell me? It's pride. What got Satan kicked out of heaven? Pride. So don't be afraid to say, I need help. That's the first step to change, is acknowledging that you need help. Keep on pressing into God until your time of waiting turns into your time of rejoicing. So I remember in youth group, I used to be a youth pastor, and we had all these catchy sayings. You know, you guys remember the WWJD bracelets, right? And there was another bracelet called push. Anybody remember that? Push bracelet. Am I only one? Raise your hand if you remember push. One other person, okay? Maybe there's another ministry background. So push stood for pray until something happens. A lot of us pray. When nothing happens, we stop, but it's like push through until you have a breakthrough. So you may want to write that across it down. It's really helpful. Push. Pray until something happens. Don't give up until. And remember that God is your ultimate deliverer. All of this is gospel saturated, that I couldn't save myself, right? So Jesus is the Savior. He's the one who rescues me. Every text of every scripture, from Genesis to Leviticus to Revelation, everything points either to Christ or back to Christ. And Jesus is the ultimate savior. And he not only wants to save you from your sins, but he wants to enter into your struggles. Isaiah 53 tells us that he was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief. So there's nothing you're going through that he doesn't empathize with you. He cares. And you know what? That mud you're in right now, it may just be miracle mud. That seed that you're sowing and those tears that you're you're pouring out, one day you're going to see some growth. One day you're going to see God do something. It's not in your time, though, it's in his time and his ways. Amen. Anyone ever heard the name Conrad Hilton? Anybody at all? All right, where does that name come from? Hilton Hotels, right? So Conrad Hilton lived during the time of the Great Recession, the stock crash. I think it was 1929. The great all this stuff happened with the economy. And so he was buying up hotels, but he was struggling. He was so poor at the time when the stocks began to crash that he had to borrow money from a bellhop just to get lunch. That's how poor he was at the time. I mean, obviously he had assets in hotels, but so he came across this picture of the Wardolf Hotel in New York City. Anybody say the Word Off? If you have, I want to I want to ask you about your experience. One person in the first service stayed there, but this was like the most amazing hotel. This hotel was so exquisite, just a few snapshots. It had six kitchens, 200 chefs. Can you imagine 200 chefs working in this? 500 waiters, 2,000 rooms. This was such an amazing hotel of its day. Even it had its own private hospital and even had its own railroad. So here's the thing Conrad Hilton cut this picture out in a time when he had nothing. And his mother taught him about the power of prayer growing up, the power of believing in God and praying. So he put this on the top of his desk, and every day, every difficult decision, financial hardship, he just kept circling this in prayer. And he said, One day, I'm gonna have the Word Off hotel. So he kept praying year after year after year after year. And even through the adversity, something amazing happened. It was 18 years later, October 12th, 1949. After 18 years of praying, looking at that picture, dreaming when it should not be possible to dream, praying when it seemed impossible, he became the majority stake owner in the Wardolf Hotel. And he attributes to the power of prayer. And am I saying that if you pray for something big that this is gonna happen? No. But this is an illustration that nothing is impossible if God wants it to happen, right? And you may pray for something and God may not give you what you asked for, he may give you something better. That's typically what he does. So I just want to encourage you the weight is it's worth it if you're waiting on God, if you know that something good is on the other side of the weight, if you believe that God answers prayer. So here's the big idea. It's very simple. We've said it all message long. The wait is worth it if you wait on who? If you wait on God. Alright, so I'm gonna give you three action steps. How do we apply this? Because Timothy, I'm still in the mud. Timothy, I feel like I'm praying so much, it's just like tears, but no, no, no, no, nothing's coming out. You know? My pool party is turning into a pity party. What do you have? What do I do? All right, first action step of this. I want you to trust in God's timing. When you can't trace God's hand, trust his heart. So I gave you biblical stories of people that waited. You know, David had to wait 15 years before he became king. Moses was in the wilderness for 40 years. Joseph got the vision at 17, but it wasn't until he was like 39 when his brothers came and bowed down and showed respect, the vision, 22 years of waiting. Abraham and Sarah, he got he got the call that he was going to have a promised child at the age of 75. Does anybody know when it finally came? 100, right? That was 25 years of waiting. But for Abraham, for David, for Joseph, for Sarah, for you, guess what? The wait is, which brings us to number two, you have to persevere in prayer. You know, there's so many things that will only happen by believing prayer. Because I want you to hold this true to you, something God convicted me of a long time ago, several years ago, is that nobody is your source. God is the only source. Everything else is a resource. Sometimes you'll look to a person, a place, or a thing as a source, like they're my source of happiness, they're my source of provision. There's only one source. God is the source, and he uses all of us as resources. So never confuse that because if you look to anything else, whether a spouse or a child or a job as a source, you're gonna be greatly disappointed. God's the source, everyone else is a resource. And finally, focus on the goodness of who? Focus on God's goodness. Don't get into pitology. Oh, my pit, it's so nasty, it's so horrible. It's okay to identify what your pit's like, but don't let that be your focus. The author of Hebrews says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and he sat down at the right hand of God. What did Jesus do? He focused on the glory of God. What are we to do? We're to focus on the glory of Christ. And so we don't minimize your pit. We know it's bad. And you know what? We love you so much, we'll get in the pit with you to help you. I mean, we're gonna walk alongside of you. We're not like a tortural, hey, why don't you go here, there? No, we're gonna walk through it with you. As Winston Churchill once said, we said a few weeks ago in the close of this, if you're going through hell, what? Don't stop. Don't stay in the pit. Just keep praying. All right, let us pray. Father, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm encouraged by Psalm 40, one of my favorite Psalms. And God, I just want to say, I'm sorry for waiting impatiently. I'm sorry for being like a kid in a pit a pity party, kicking and screaming at times. Forgive me. And those of you in the audience, you're believers, you say the same thing, you're impatient, you don't trust God's timing, you don't often believe that God's gonna answer your prayer. Just go ahead and tell them. Unbelief, God forgive me for the sin of unbelief. There may be one here today that you're in the pit of your sin, that you've never asked Jesus to save you. The first step in being a Christian, the first step in being saved is to realize I'm a sinner. I am in a pit, I cannot save myself. Good works won't save me, baptism won't save me, going to church won't save me, giving money won't save me. The only thing that will save me is calling upon the name of the Lord. So if you're here today and you've never truly, authentically asked Jesus to save you, nothing you bring but a repentant heart, I want you to say this prayer, Lord Jesus, I realize that I'm in my pit of sin. I've messed it up, I've done things I'm not proud of. But Jesus, I heard today that you go down to pits and rescue people. So I ask and pray that you would forgive me of my sins. I invite you to be my savior and Lord, and I pray that you would rescue me. Come into my life. I welcome your Holy Spirit now, and I choose to follow you. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, come see one of us. We want to welcome you to the family. Father, thank you that you turn mud into miracle mud. Thank you that you turn water into nourishing the dreams that you put inside of us.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Thank you for listening to today's edition of Truth for Transformation with Dr. Timothy Brown. We're in a series called Summer in the Psalms. The Psalms is a very interesting book for many reasons. For one, it has many different authors. King David wrote many of the Psalms, but also Astaf and the sons of Korah wrote some of them. Solomon wrote a couple of Psalms, and Moses even wrote one. Psalms is a collection of songs gathered together to use in Israel's public worship. It was the hymnal of the time, the original hymnal. There is so much inspiration to be found in this book. We're encouraged to praise God for who he is and what he's done for us. The Psalms are an example of how we should thank God for our many blessings. Psalms also show us that we're given permission to bring our grief and pain to God. We get a glimpse into the hearts of God's people and their devotion to God. And when we sing our songs that find their inspiration from the Psalms, we follow in their footsteps. If there's something that has touched your heart from today's message, or if you have a question, please reach out to us. Join us in prayer as we strive to live out God's mission for us. You can find us on social media at Dr. Timothy Brown Ministries, where you can share your thoughts or just say hello. You can learn more about what we do at drtimothybrown.org. That's also where you can contribute financially to our ministry. Your giving fuels the mission. Thanks for joining us on Truth for Transformation.