PKLM Sermons
PKLM Sermons
August 10, 2025 - Dr Mark Turman - Four Golden Blessings worth Singing About
August 10, 2025 - Dr Mark Turman - Four Golden Blessings worth Singing About
Translation used: Christian Standard Bible
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:42 Reflections on Life's Speed and Fragility
02:23 Prayer and Worship
03:30 The Power of Music and Psalm 16
10:40 Four Blessings from God
11:20 God's Protection and Provision
16:31 The Importance of Community
25:09 God's Guidance and Peace
32:36 The Promise of Eternal Life
38:48 Closing Prayer and Blessings
[00:00:00] Good morning. I'm glad that you're here and that you've come to be a part of worshiping Jesus Christ as our king and as our saviors. Good to be with you. No listening. Uh, just coming in to the excitement, school starting and. Folks heading off to college. Uh, I have just fond affection of hearing about people going to college was, uh, the best six years of my life.
[00:00:24] No, not really. Um, but I told my kids when they went to college, Hey, enjoy and savor every minute of this. It'll be the fastest four, maybe five years of your life. And oh, by the way, that whole get up and go to work thing last a long time. So make the most of it. So it just reminds me. Uh, of how fast life feels at times.
[00:00:48] Um, you know, when you're raising preschoolers, it feels like the days are never going to end. Um, but they actually turn out to go pretty fast. At this stage of my life, it feels like weeks are passing, like days and months are passing like weeks. Uh, and we just understand that it feels that way at times.
[00:01:06] But we also know that while it feels fast, it also can feel fragile. Uh, just this summer we've had the loss of one life out on the lake a few months ago that we all remember and continue to pray for that family in Abilene. Uh, Jordan's accident is a reminder of that. The Hill Country floods are a reminder of that.
[00:01:26] Uh, I read one of the stories of, uh, one of the families that lost a 1-year-old in the Hill country flood. Very powerful account of a family of six different members. All of which survived except for the 1-year-old baby. Uh, read in the news this morning that George Strait, uh, sponsored a concert down in burning and raised $7 million to support those that have been, uh, devastated by the Hill Country flood.
[00:01:53] It just reminds me that life not only goes fast, it also is very fragile at times. That's why we come to celebrate a powerful and an eternal God and Savior who has come to help us and to provide for us in every way. So as we look at God's word this morning, I have a song that I wanna share with you and no, I'm not going to sing it.
[00:02:17] You should be relieved. But let's ask God to focus our attention on his word for a few minutes. Would you pray with me, God, on this beautiful Sunday in August? We just stop and thank you for your love. And we thank you for Jesus, who we've been singing about who came to be the sacrifice for our sin, and to be the one even today who is giving us life new and certain and everlasting.
[00:02:43] Lord, we pray that our time here this morning will be pleasing to you, and we pray that right now you would just help us to settle our minds, our hearts, our lives. And focus on what you wanna say to us through this beautiful passage of your word. Lord, I pray that you would help me get outta the way, and that your spirit would just be able to take over my mind and my voice, and that you would be able to communicate what you want to say to each and every one of us this morning, and that because of it, we would be stronger, we would be changed, we would be more equipped to go out and to be the salt, the light, the love that you want us to be in our worlds.
[00:03:23] God, we just pray that you come and teach us as we sit at your feet this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. What is your favorite current song? I mean, all of us kinda have one. I don't know if you do that. You just kinda get fixed on and you sing it. You sing it in the car or the truck with the windows up and nobody around, and you sing it with all your heart.
[00:03:48] Not like you were singing just a minute ago. By the way. My goal is to try to get a church to sing together the way they sing in the car when nobody's with them. All right? And I don't know about you, but I sometimes just fixate on a song and I just, I wear it out. I mean, I just play it over and over and over and over again when, especially when I'm by myself.
[00:04:13] And so I'm just gonna tell you what my current. Favorite song is, it's by this guy right here. You may recognize the face. Who is this? Anybody know? Country songwriter and singer by the name of Dirks Bentley Dirks. He's gonna be on in concert here in DFW in a few weeks or months I think. Uh, I have a friend that works for Dirks Bentley.
[00:04:39] I'm hoping to be able to score some tickets. Um. But the song I'm thinking of that Dirks Sings is not new. And if you knew me, you know I'm not the most musically in tune person in a lot of ways, and that means I'm also not the most current. This is actually a song that Dirks Bentley introduced three years ago, 2022.
[00:04:59] The song is called Gold, and I would recommend you listen to it. It's become my 2025 theme song. Part of the lyric of that song goes like this, it ain't a smooth ride life. It's a winding road. Yeah, it might be gravel, but it feels like gold. Or at least it can be. It can feel like gold. I wanna turn your attention this morning to Psalm.
[00:05:30] 16, Psalm 16 In the book of Psalms, uh, you'll see if you turn there on your device or in your Bible that it says, as it introduces this song, it's not actually a part of the formal song, but some of these psalms or songs are introduced to us with kind of a contextual statement. It says that this is a Mik Tam of David.
[00:05:55] So that tells us two things automatically. One is, is that this was written by the great songwriter King David sometime in his life. We don't know when exactly some of the songs that David wrote in the Psalms. We know a lot about their context. We don't know the context of this one, but this word Mick, Mick Tam, is a Hebrew word that we're not quite sure about, to be honest with you.
[00:06:18] There's at least two or three possible interpretations and definitions of this word. One is, is that it means an inscription, something written into the stone or into the depths of your heart, something that you can count on, something that you can bank your life on. Another word, uh, another definition of this word is that it means a treasure, something very, very valuable.
[00:06:45] The last possible interpretation is that it means it is a golden song or a golden treasure. It actually is only one of six different psalms in the Bible that have this title that this came possibly in a rush of inspiration into David's life. He just stopped to ponder how good God is and how, how much God was blessing him.
[00:07:18] And so as we read it, I want you to listen and look for the four particular blessings that David is just overwhelmed by as a part of God's love coming to him. I have a friend in California, his name is Curtis Chang. He's a pastor and also a podcaster. I got to work a little bit with Curtis a year ago on introducing a course that, that we basically shared under the big idea of how do you be civil in uncivil times.
[00:07:51] As we were working through some of that material and trying to share it with churches and believers, Curtis also found some musicians who were willing to write music to support this six. Sessions, uh, course or study that he was working on part of the way through the project. He said, you know what? If I had to choose between the music that teaches these truths and the lessons that I wrote for this course, I would choose the songs every time be so, because songs are powerful ways to communicate deep truths.
[00:08:28] Great. Theology around who God is and what God does. So I want you to hear this this morning. This is not an exhortation about what you're supposed to do today. This is through the life and pen of the Great King David. It is an invitation and a celebration of the greatness of God. So with that in mind, would you stand and let me just read to you the 11 verses of Psalm.
[00:08:59] 16, the Golden Song of David. Here's what it says. Protect me God for I take refuge in you. I said to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have nothing good besides you. As for the holy people who are in the land, they are the noble ones. All my delight is in them. The sorrows of those who take another God for themselves will multiply.
[00:09:29] I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood and I will not speak their names with my lips. Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing. You hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed. I have a beautiful inheritance. I will bless the Lord who counsels me.
[00:09:58] Even at night when my thoughts trouble me. I always let the Lord guide me because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices. My body also rests securely for not abandon me to she hole. You will not allow your faithful one to c decay. You reveal the path of life to me in your presence is abundant.
[00:10:25] Joy at your right hand are eternal pleasures. God's word to us, part of God's people on this really great and very warm August day. Have a seat. Let's look at it for a minute. What are four blessings that God generously wants to pour out on you and that you and I desperately need? Well, I gotta tell you, I am a preacher.
[00:10:50] I actually like being called a preacher, even though Mike thought it was a demotion. I like being called a preacher and one of the things I like about being a preacher is, is I love to iterate. So I did a little work on this. They all start with the letter P. Alright. Four Ps of God's blessing. Why? Because I hope that'll help you remember it.
[00:11:09] The first one is protection, and then God's provision, God's peace, and God's promise. Those are four things that the loving God that we worship today is pouring out on us. One of those, first of all, is protection. Notice in the first couple of verses of this song, he describes God's protection in three different ways.
[00:11:29] He describes it as a place. You can go. He describes it as a power that you can trust in, but he also describes it as people that you can connect with, even the people that you're sitting in this room with today and many others around the lake. I got a call from one of the young men in my church. Uh, I watched this young man grow up from the time he was three years old, and his family moved to my town and joined my church.
[00:11:56] Ben was always a unique individual. Always a a person from the earliest days of his childhood who exhibited deep, deep resonance and qualities of just being honorable and noble. He always sought to understand what God wanted and what was the right thing, and I can tell you now into his twenties. Having performed his wedding and having gotten a message from he, he sent me a text.
[00:12:25] He said, Hey, pastor Mark, can I use you as a reference on a job application because I'm looking for a new opportunity? And then he added onto this, I'm feeling the pressure of my first child coming in September. He shared the name of this little girl that's coming into his life, and we got to talk back and forth a little bit, and I just could appreciate.
[00:12:49] How that pressure and the desire to be a good dad, the desire to do what every parent knows is their first job, which is to keep their children safe. And, and David understands here that God takes that very seriously as his responsibility to keep his children safe. And so David comes to know God as a place, as a refuge.
[00:13:19] That's a word that you and I probably don't use a lot, but when we do use it, we use it in reference to animals. If you drive from here to Graham to go to Walmart or have something to eat, you'll go by one of those ranches that has the really tall fences. Every time we see those really tall fences, what we know is, is well, that means there's some special animals back there, most likely, and that somebody has created what we call an animal refuge, A place where special animals can thrive, where they can flourish, where they can live in safety and not have to be insecure.
[00:13:54] I don't know what you think about immigration policies in our country today, but we know that there's a lot of conversation and often a lot of conflict about places that have dubbed themselves as sanctuary cities where they're trying, in some cases, to exempt certain immigrants from various laws, and we all have various opinions about that.
[00:14:14] But do you actually know that concept has roots in the Old Testament? When the Nation of Israel was being established by God in the days of the Old Testament, that, that if there were acts of, of, of conflict, if there were accidents that happened or there were intentional things that were done, there were certain communities, certain cities set up all over the tribes of Israel where you could go and you could find safe haven until your situation or your trial could be properly handled and adjudicated.
[00:14:47] They were places of at least temporary safety until all of the case and the details could be worked out. You do realize the world is at times a hostile place, and that your life like Jordan Wheatley's or someone down there along that river, your life, my life can change in an instant that we need a God.
[00:15:15] Who will come around us with his presence, with his goodness, and protect us and strengthen us, be the source of power in our lives. I love what David writes here. You are the source of every good thing in my life, this chapel this day, the food that we eat, the air that we breathe, the places that we go, that we enjoy all of these things.
[00:15:41] An expression of God's protection and his power. Not a single heartbeat that you take, or a breath that you breathe can happen without the Lord God making it possible. That is his provision because that is his power. He is the one that we run to. Over and over and over again says the musician, Cody Carnes.
[00:16:12] We run to him as the ever present father who is seeking to bless us with his presence, with his protection, and with his power. But then this first part of the song says that God extends that care, that blessing of his presence. Through his people. It almost feels like when you read it that it doesn't fit that David is inspired to talk about God as his refuge, God as his protector, God as his pro uh, provider.
[00:16:47] But he says verse three, as the holy people of God are in the land. They are the noble ones. All my delight is in them. You sense it, don't you? As a believer, as a follower of Jesus Christ, God gives us a discernment to be able to meet somebody and then with the spirit of God, to be able to start to understand, this is my sacred sibling.
[00:17:15] This is my brother in Christ, my sister in Christ. We start with this kind of spirit inspired. Barometer or radar to be able to discern and to detect those people who are walking after and following after the same good God and Father that we are, and those people start to become a part of that wonderful fellowship circle that makes us stronger.
[00:17:40] That's why gathering in places like this consistently checking on each other, having the conversations. You know when, when I invite some of my friends to come out here and to be with you when I can't be here? My friend Gerald, my friend Bobby, and my friend Keith, who was here last week, I tell him, look, don't get in a hurry.
[00:18:00] 'cause nothing at the lake happens in a hurry. And that means nothing at the chapel happens in a hurry. And one of the most important things that happens here Sunday by Sunday is that you come in, you connect with each other. You check on each other, you remind each other of what's going on in each other's lives, and those become opportunities of caring for each other, of praying for each other, of going away from here and doing even more as the spirit of God leads you to do, to help be that expression of God's fatherly love refuge protection.
[00:18:41] That's what we are to each other because. We know we have options. Just like David realized there were options, there were false gods that others were following. David says, I won't even take their name upon my lips because I know that they're not real, and I know that they're not worthy. But we are tempted to believe in all other kinds of things for our safety, for our security.
[00:19:04] Sometimes we choose money, sometimes we choose position. What we think is powerful. Sometimes we choose to try to protect ourselves because of our nationality. Sometimes we think that it's because our health is better than most people's. We look for all kinds of ways to find this security that only God can bring, which is why in another place the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 20 verse seven, some trust in chariots and some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
[00:19:37] God's first blessing is to be your refuge, to be your protection. But he also says that he wants to pour out provision on here on, on all of us. My pastor used to say it this way. You know, we, we absolutely need God for the sweet buy and bye, but we also need him for the nasty here and now. We all are worried about.
[00:19:58] Having enough, we get anxious about how we're going to take care of ourselves and how we're gonna provide. As Mike said at the beginning, who's gonna take care of us when we are into our eighties or nineties? Who's gonna be there? That's why you take care. Make sure you're nice to your kids. They're gonna be the ones picking your nursing home.
[00:20:18] They used to say, we're anxious about all of this stuff. We have a sense of need from our earliest days. You've heard that statement, right? We are pursuing all the time, get all you can, can all you get, sit on the can. We want to know that we're going to have enough and we're confronted with it multiple times a day.
[00:20:42] Every time that you get hungry. Even like now, if you're wondering when this sermon is gonna be over and you can get onto brunch, every time you're thirsty, you're reminded that in and of yourself, you are not enough. You're dependent. You're dependent on the world. You're dependent on the water supply.
[00:21:01] You're dependent upon groceries, you're dependent. And it seems odd to us when we watch the news and we see modern nations like Ukraine and Russia or Israel, and we see these countries that war and we know that if a certain set of circumstances were to happen, it could happen to us where we could be faced with.
[00:21:24] No opportunity of clean water or groceries in the grocery store. And so David is reminded of God's provision. He says that God has caused his cup to overflow, that he has an overflowing abundance of God's provision in his life that is enabling him to be content now and confident about the future. And I just love this phrase.
[00:21:47] Sometimes they just repeat it to me. The boundary lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. There are boundaries in life and God creates those boundaries as a way of facilitating blessing in your life. Not to restrict you not to be a killjoy, but because God knows what is best and he sets up boundaries so that you can experience the best, and he's extremely creative in doing that.
[00:22:17] Some of you know that I love golf. I was watching a little bit of the golf tournament yesterday and. There was a new commercial I had not seen before advertising. Basically the idea that golf is the greatest of all games. Now, you may not agree with that. My siblings don't agree with that. My brothers are super excited that football started, even though the Cowboys are not going anywhere this year.
[00:22:40] I'm just telling you, even though I'm not a prophet, but they're not going anywhere, even after last night's game. We just know they're not okay. I absolutely believe that golf is just probably the best game. But anyway, the commercial said, you know what? All of these sports play on the same kind of court all the time.
[00:22:58] If you play basketball, it's always on a fixed kind of court. That's always the same size. If you play tennis, the tennis court is always the same size. If you play pickleball, the dimensions of that court are always the same. You play basketball, not so with golf. Every golf course is different. Whether you're playing Fossil Creek or you're playing over the cliffs, every golf course is different.
[00:23:23] The length of the hole, the shape of the green, the width of the fairway, but there are still boundaries. Your life and my life don't ever look exactly the same, but they do overlap with similarities and God creates some very beautiful, very creative boundaries. If we will learn them and honor them and respect them, they will not restrict blessing in our life.
[00:23:46] They will cause it to bloom. And when we ignore those boundaries, we do so to our peril. We forfeit some of the blessing that God intends for us to have. The other thing that can, those blessings that God wants to pour out as his provision. This thing that stalks in our hearts all the time called envy. I heard a friend say it this way when he was talking to a group just like this.
[00:24:16] He said, you know what? I love my car. I think it's a great car. It takes me everywhere I want to go. I love my car right up until the time I see your car. And then I don't like my car as much. I like my house. I like my flowers. I like the way my grass is growing. I love everything about my house until I see your house.
[00:24:36] Then for some reason, my house isn't enough anymore. I feel that way about golf clubs. I feel that way about vacations. I feel that way about TVs. I feel that way about almost anything because envy stalks in every one of our hearts, and no matter how much God wants to make sure that we have all that we need and much of what we want, the devil is always trying to get us to go down this dead end road called envy.
[00:25:03] It'll steal the joy of God's provision that he's seeking to pour out on you every day. The third abundant blessing is that of peace. You know, I've gotten to the point now, and sorry to bring up more commercials, but one of the best things about TV these days is the commercials You ever watch the Progressive Insurance commercials with Flow.
[00:25:26] The one I like that they've been running the last few months is the one where she's speaking to college graduates. She's talking about how wonderful it is that now you're going to be adults and you get to step out into the big adult world and you get to make all of your own decisions, including deciding what you're going to have for dinner for the rest of your life.
[00:25:47] There's a lot of choices to make in life, and we have a sense that we just don't know enough. We need some source of wisdom, some source of direction, some form of guidance because we don't know what we don't know. Had lunch with a friend of mine at the end of this last week. We get to have lunch about every 60 to 90 days.
[00:26:11] When I last saw him a few months ago, he was working through some stuff that really concerned me. He's given me permission to kind of speak back. What I see and what I hear and what I'm concerned about. He sometimes does that with me. And so there were some things going on in his life that I just wasn't really comfortable with.
[00:26:29] And so we talked about that. And then we got together on Friday. It's been, it's been 60, 90 days since we've been together. He was smiling, so I knew he was in a better place and he kind of updated me on what we had been talking about a few months ago. He said, I had this experience, uh, about. Five weeks ago that I've never had before.
[00:26:50] I said, well, what was it? Tell me about it. He said, I had a walking, um, a walking emotional breakdown. And I was like, that's an interesting set of terms. What do you mean? He said, well, when I say walking, what I mean is, is I was functioning. I, I, I was getting through the day, but while I was getting through the day as a small business owner.
[00:27:14] As an empty nester and as a grandfather, I felt myself collapsing on the inside emotionally. I said, well, tell me more about that. He said, well, you know, I just started realizing that, that I've grown my business successfully, and that's been very satisfying. But I now have 3, 4, 5, 6 families that are dependent upon me.
[00:27:41] I just found myself terrified that if I make the wrong decision for our business, it won't just be me and my wife that suffer. It could be these other five, six families that get put out of work and that can't provide for their needs. He said that just kind of overwhelmed me to the point where. He said, I just had to find some time and get some days away and just remind myself that God was near and that God was with me and that God had helped me to get to this point and God would help me get everywhere else he wanted me to go because we know that we don't know enough.
[00:28:20] David knew that kind of pressure. David knew it when he was growing up among his siblings, and he knew probably intuitively, instinctively, that he was not his father's favorite. Even when he was chosen by God to become king, his father and his family weren't particularly happy. He felt that pressure when he was waiting on God's timing to make him king, even though Saul was becoming more and more godless and ultimately tried to chase him down, and he had at one point had to flee into a cave for refuge.
[00:28:51] That's probably where the first part of this song comes from. There was a time when he had to escape into the land of the enemies of the Israelites into the land of the Philistines. He actually pretended to be out of his mind so the Philistines wouldn't kill him, and when they finally found out he was as strange and off of his rocker, they sent him back to Israel.
[00:29:11] He knew what it was like to be under the pressures of leading the nation. He knew what it was like to have his own child rebel against him. He knew what pressure was. And he often experienced it as he mentions here in the middle of the night. Now, if you're a, a fisherman here at the lake, you know that night crawlers, well, they're worms and night crawlers can be a really effective bait, but they can also be a really big burden when you don't know what your next step is supposed to be.
[00:29:50] It's interesting how when we lay our head at night on the pillow and we want so desperately to go to bed, that's the time when the night crawlers of anxiety start to sneak in. David said it was in that moment that he discovered that God would come and counsel him if he opened his heart and mind to it.
[00:30:15] If in those moments of great anxiety and pressure and trouble, if he would learn to bring that fear and that anxiety to God, God would be eager to give him wisdom. God would be give, would be eager to give him direction. And ultimately, verse eight says that because of what he learned in those moments of anxious, night, worry, and fear, he had made an intentional decision to always seek God's direction.
[00:30:44] I'm learning that in a fresh way from one of my coworkers. If you were here a few weeks ago, you know that Dr. Ryan Denison, who serves at Denison Forum with me, he was here. Ryan, uh, has been one of those people, especially in the last few months of this year. He's been the one that reminds us, Hey, before we start this meeting, before we have this conversation, before we try to develop this new idea or this new product, or this new Bible study.
[00:31:08] How about we stop and spend some time in prayer and just ask God to help us? You would think as a Christian organization, we do that all the time. We don't, any of us do that enough that if we would just learn, you know what? Before we start this conversation, make this phone call, send this email, respond to this text.
[00:31:29] Maybe we just should ask this thing called the Holy Spirit that Jesus said we would have, so that when we step into that moment, we do it. The very best way possible with the wisdom of God counseling and guiding us. Can you think of a single difficult situation or normal situation you've gone through this last week that couldn't have been better if you had intentionally asked for God's help?
[00:31:59] What is it that you're facing in this next week? Decisions that you'll have to make? People that you know you're gonna meet or. People you know you're not gonna meet yet. Which one of those things, which one of those decisions, which one of those opportunities could be better handled If you reminded yourself of what David says here?
[00:32:19] My guide. My guide, my God is always at my right hand. The right hand in this psalm is an important picture. It is a place of favor. It is a place of blessing. It is a place of power. The place of the right hand, and he says, I learned that God was always willing to be at my right hand, always willing to bring me wisdom, always willing to give me guidance if I would just simply ask one last thing he says, and that is promise.
[00:32:54] David is so full of joy, so overwhelmed in this moment that all of his anxiety and all of his tension seemed to just drain. Out of him. Even though like all of us, he had plenty of sin to be worried about in his past. And like all of us, the future was in some way uncertain. Which reminds me, have you ever been to uncertain Texas?
[00:33:21] It's about four hours from here, just due east down I 20. When you get to uncertain, you're gonna be surrounded by what is called Cato Lake, the only natural lake, by the way, in the entire state of Texas. Full of Spanish moss. It's more like a swamp than it is a lake in some ways. But if you find yourself in uncertain Texas, you'll be there with just a few people, only about a hundred of them.
[00:33:45] It's a good place to get some great catfish. It's also a really good place to hear some scary stories. Make sure that you wear your alligator boots. You may or may not have ever been to uncertain Texas, but you do live. In an uncertain world in many ways, and we all are anxious to know more and more about what comes next when our lives here are over.
[00:34:15] You know, many scholars believe that David and people like him in the days of the Old Testament knew very little about the idea of everlasting life, of immortality. Well, this Psalm seems to speak against that idea. He is like a, a person, like a young Christian, just discovering some of the fundamental facts of the faith, and it's like it just overwhelms him when he realizes that this is the living God who has always been the living God who is from eternity to eternity, the everlasting God.
[00:34:48] And if you are God's child, if you are God's follower, then you in one way or another, will ultimately live forever with the ever living God. He's just overwhelmed by that, that this God who provides protection now and provision for our daily lives has made an ultimate plan so he can say that he will never, ever be abandoned in she hole, which is an Old Testament word for death.
[00:35:21] One of the ways that we know that this is a golden song is because two of the biggest pictures. Two of the biggest personalities, people in the story of Jesus, Paul and Peter both quote this song under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in their earliest sermons. You remember the story of Peter Wright, the guy who had a gift for putting his foot in his mouth when he was talking to Jesus.
[00:35:50] He goes from. The one who betrayed and abandoned Jesus on the night of the crucifixion, to the one who stands up and preaches the sermon at Pentecost. And in Acts chapter two, if you read that Sermon of Peter, he quotes from Psalm 16, this passage, you will not allow your holy one to see decay because he's witnessed the resurrection of Jesus.
[00:36:17] Turn just 10 or so chapters into the book of Acts a little bit further, and the Apostle Paul stands up for the very first time as a new believer as a young Christian to preach his very first sermon in a church called Antioch of Pisidia. Guess what? He is led by the Holy Spirit to quote this same passage outta Psalm 16.
[00:36:36] You will not allow your holy one to c decay that Jesus wasn't lying. When he said to those early believers in the upper room, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me, in my father's house. There are many rooms and I will go and prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare that place, I will come again and I will receive you unto myself so that where I am there you can be also forever, forever.
[00:37:14] My mom in her own simple faith near the end of her life, in her eighties before she succumbeded to Alzheimer's, she looked at me when she was in one of the several visits to the hospital that she had in the last decade of her life. She said, you know what? I'm not a, I'm not worried about being dead. I'm a little concerned about how you get there, but I'm not worried about being dead.
[00:37:38] She was reminding herself and reminding me of the promise of God that through Jesus there is everlasting life. Now, before we finish, let's go back to that right hand for just a second. Earlier in the song, David said, I learned to rejoice and to receive and to relax, that God was my guide always at my right hand.
[00:38:06] Always there to help to lead and to instruct poor wisdom. But now look what he does as he comes back to the idea, that idea, in the very last verse, you reveal, the path of life to me in your presence is abundant. Joy at your right hand are eternal pleasures. You see, God today wants to be the guide at your right hand and the place that he's guiding you to.
[00:38:35] It's his home and his right hand where there are blessings forevermore, God knows the way. Let's pray. Lord, we want to thank you for these reminders. We take them for granted. We don't lean into them often enough to, Lord, today you've reminded us of what a good, good father you are. There's not a single thing about us that you don't know that there's not a single need or want, that you don't take seriously, and that God, if we will simply make the decision to daily, consistently look to you, there are blessings overflowing for us to receive and to rejoice in.
[00:39:33] So, Lord, I wanna pray this morning if there's somebody with us that is feeling insecure and vulnerable, that God, they would experience you today as their refuge, as their protection. Lord, if there are people wondering if, if this situation is gonna work out, if this business deal is gonna go through, if.
[00:39:55] You're gonna be able to help provide and take care of all of their needs now and in the future. God, I pray you would make that clear for those of us who need wisdom about decisions that we're going to make this week or even this day, for those who will find in one way or another, a confrontation with the fragileness of life.
[00:40:20] God, may we just come back to you over and over and over again and that you would cause us to overflow with confident, joy, and peace and hope because you are the living, loving and ever present God who seeks to bless us every day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God bless you. Have a great day. Have a great start to school if you're in that world.
[00:40:51] We'll see you soon.