SPEAKER_00: We have uh Austin Duncan with us.
SPEAKER_00: He was in town for our men's conference.
SPEAKER_00: It was just a wonderful time.
SPEAKER_00: 550 people or so.
SPEAKER_00: 120 churches were here.
SPEAKER_00: This place was packed and it was an exciting time for that.
SPEAKER_00: Austin came in for that and agreed to stay over for uh Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Austin and I have been friends for a long time, uh, since our college days, uh, which just keeps getting further and further behind us, man.
SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I I I've just learned to appreciate I see friends move away and change and drift doctrinally and just alter over time until your core group of friends get smaller.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thankful, Austin, that you have remained faithful in a tremendous encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: You and your wife Marile are an encouragement to teach your nine.
SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful for you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Austin leads the Doctor of Ministries program at the Master's Seminary.
SPEAKER_00: He is the chair of the pastoral ministries department there, which means that he teaches preaching.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know anything about the way schools work, uh if you teach something, that means you're really good at it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Austin hosts the MacArthur Center podcast.
SPEAKER_00: He's the director of the MacArthur Center for Expository Preaching, uh, which is a podcast, I think it started almost as a hobby, but it has taken off.
SPEAKER_00: It's a podcast on preaching, but it's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's uh kind of on the life and legacy of John MacArthur.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they just crossed their two millionth to download, so I think it's uh crazy in God's providence that something started as kind of a side gig, so to speak, is just taking on a life of its own.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'd encourage you to check that out.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Austin's also the college pastor at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California.
SPEAKER_00: Austin, what I appreciate about you is you have a way to see through cloudy issues, you have a way to see through um kind of the pretense and the fog that can be in uh so much of evangelicalism to see through all that to the core of the gospel and the joy of what it means to worship Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, your life is marked by joy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a joy that is contagious, your family is marked by joy, your pets are joyful in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm so thankful for you, brother, and I'm thankful for you taking time out of uh your schedule.
SPEAKER_00: You've been here many times before, but I'm thankful that you would come back again.
SPEAKER_00: So, Austin, come forward, brother, and bring us the word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: He says such nice stuff when there's all these people around about me.
SPEAKER_01: What an intro, huh?
SPEAKER_01: He's really he's a he's a guy, an expert in preaching, he said.
SPEAKER_01: So that sets me up well.
SPEAKER_01: You know what they say in education, those who can't do teach.
SPEAKER_01: So buckle up.
SPEAKER_01: Jesse, by the way, is a soccer coach.
SPEAKER_01: So I am grateful to be here.
SPEAKER_01: And uh it is a joy always to fellowship and worship with the saints at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: And I bring you greetings from Grace Community Church in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Dr.
SPEAKER_01: MacArthur had a rough week in the hospital, but he's recovering well, and we're still praying for uh uh good outcomes, and and he is uh as always a general leading from the hospital bed and continue to pray for for him.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we're grateful for his his life and ministry and his continued influence.
SPEAKER_01: But we are greatly blessed uh to be together this morning under the teaching of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: So Psalm 123 is the object of our attention, and I'd love to meditate on it with you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 123.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God says a song of ascent, to you I lift up my eyes to you who are enthroned above the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God until he is gracious to us.
SPEAKER_01: Be gracious to us, O Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Be gracious to us, for we have endured much contempt.
SPEAKER_01: We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant.
SPEAKER_01: This is the very word of the living God inspired by his Spirit, and may his Spirit write it on our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: A world in turmoil, constant threats of violence and war, the chaos of political uncertainty, and a society with a complete detachment from the morality it had once known.
SPEAKER_01: In the center of it all, a church culture that is often marked by corruption and defection.
SPEAKER_01: God's people look quite small and insignificant in the face of all the troubles the world knew.
SPEAKER_01: It sounds familiar, but I'm talking about the fall of 1941.
SPEAKER_01: The head of the religious broadcasting department at the BBC, the Reverend J.
SPEAKER_01: W.
SPEAKER_01: Welch, had just recently written a newly published book by a professor at Oxford, A Dawn of Medieval Studies and English Literature.
SPEAKER_01: It was his first Christian book because he was a recent convert to Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: And the unusual combination of a scholar's intellect and wit and a newly found Christian faith came together in this author.
SPEAKER_01: The head of the religious broadcasting wrote to the author and asked if he'd be willing to lecture on the radio to do some brief talks, 15 minutes long, to make a case for Christianity in a society that had already endured the Great War and now was at the beginning stages of the Second World War, a society that was rapidly losing their faith.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, a survey of Royal Air Force men was taken, and only 23% of them knew the meaning of Easter.
SPEAKER_01: England had become increasingly secular and enlightened and rationalistic and scientific in its pursuits, and religion had become corrupted by liberalism and by increasing awareness that they did not have answers to the big problems that were on the world stage.
SPEAKER_01: At the same time, the Blitzkrieg was in full effect.
SPEAKER_01: The BBC had been hit twice by German bombs.
SPEAKER_01: Between September 1940 and May 1941, the German Luftwaffe continued to pound London over and over again, bombs flattening whole districts of London and other cities in the English countryside.
SPEAKER_01: Nine months of continuous bombing raids.
SPEAKER_01: By the end of it, 44,652 people, British citizens, had been killed.
SPEAKER_01: Over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: The horror of the bombings, the loss of life, the destruction of society.
SPEAKER_01: One witness to those days wrote that the cathedral in London was in ruin with melted lead still dripping from its roofs and fragments of charred timber now and then coming loose and falling to the ground throughout the city.
SPEAKER_01: The most common sound was that of broken glass crunching under people's shoes.
SPEAKER_01: One news reporter observed glass so thick that looking up the street, it was as if it was covered with ice.
SPEAKER_01: The scenes of horror, the makeshift morgues, so many victims classified as unidentifiable.
SPEAKER_01: And it was in this scene that Lewis would make his way from Oxford on the train into London on a weekly basis to do his little radio address.
SPEAKER_01: He was to go on the air at 7:45 and talk until 8 o'clock.
SPEAKER_01: It seems like prime time, but the 15 minutes before his program, there was news for Norway in Norwegian.
SPEAKER_01: And after it, a pre-recorded Welsh music festival.
SPEAKER_01: So not exactly prime time.
SPEAKER_01: Those few addresses would be listened to by 1.5 million Londoners and would be expanded into 25 opportunities on the radio.
SPEAKER_01: After C.S.
SPEAKER_01: Lewis was done with his addresses, they were turned into three different books, which would eventually be combined into one book, Mere Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: A book that's had an outsized impact on skeptics and Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Many famously converted by reading the arguments about the existence of God and the reality of good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: And Christians strengthened in their defense of the faith because Lewis had a simple message in those radio addresses to the horrified population of London as they endured such difficulties and such distresses.
SPEAKER_01: He simply sought to make a case that they ought to look to God in their trouble, to see themselves as sinners and to seek grace where it might be found.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the message, the ancient message of Psalm 123.
SPEAKER_01: It's part of a collection of songs called the Psalms of Ascent, songs that were assembled to embody the journey that the religious pilgrims would take as they returned to Jerusalem for the annual feasts and festivals, as they brought their sacrifices and offerings, as they participated in community worship and joined with the tribes from near and far.
SPEAKER_01: They became a unified people of God in God's city at the place that God had prescribed, where heaven and earth touched down on Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_01: And it was there that they would gather for worship and celebration.
SPEAKER_01: And these songs came to embody their journey from home to worship.
SPEAKER_01: And all the aspects of their journey was entailed in these songs, the difficulties and distresses along the way, but also the ordinary problems that worship havers, worshipers have in getting to God.
SPEAKER_01: Songs that are reflective of troubles, songs that are aware of a need to repent.
SPEAKER_01: They've been adopted by Christians in the New Covenant to be a kind of songs for Christian travelers on our journey to Zion.
SPEAKER_01: Believers have found common expressions of faith and prayer in Psalm 120 through Psalm 134 as they sing of the blessing of pursuing Christian fellowship and the struggles of being a faithful disciple as we walk together towards our destination of the Promised Land as we cross over the Jordan River, as it were, as we make our way to heaven, we seek to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's really what they become to us.
SPEAKER_01: Precious and familiar songs.
SPEAKER_01: And this one in particular, though all of them are brief, this one's only four verses long.
SPEAKER_01: And it has in it a powerful message to continue and further make this case that troubled travelers need to look to God for grace.
SPEAKER_01: Troubled travelers can find God in the midst of their troubles and they can seek Him when they set their eyes on Him and pursue His throne and embody this act of service and servanthood, all the while mindful of our need for grace.
SPEAKER_01: So this little song has a powerful message for believers who are beleaguered and trying to make their way to heaven dependent on God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: Sound familiar?
SPEAKER_01: It is.
SPEAKER_01: It's exactly what we need.
SPEAKER_01: So let's dive into Psalm 123, looking at it in three portions.
SPEAKER_01: First, in verse 1, it calls us to see God with eyes of faith, to see God with eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: To thee I lift up my eyes, O thou who art enthroned in the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: This is a clear clarion call to this little gem of a psalm that opens it with familiar language.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 121 similarly says, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains.
SPEAKER_01: From where will my help come from?
SPEAKER_01: My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: This song also is seeking to raise our gaze, to elevate our vision above the fray, above the trials, above the temptations, above the circumstances, and to fix and focus our eyes on God.
SPEAKER_01: It has in it direct address in the Hebrew 2, you I lift up my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And then it further tells us to you whose throne is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: This is a psalm of the eyes, according to James Montgomery Boyce.
SPEAKER_01: It uses the word, the metaphor of sight four different times.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 1, I lift up my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2, behold is the eyes of servants.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2 is the eyes of a maid.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2, so our eyes, there is a metaphor of sight employed as the psalmist seeks to lift up his eyes above the circumstances that blur his vision, circumstances that he details for us at the end of this song, and tries to, with the eyes of faith, fix his focus on God.
SPEAKER_01: And we all understand how difficult it can be to see clearly, both physically and metaphorically with our eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_01: I, like many of you, wear what the Spanish call anteojos.
SPEAKER_01: And every year they get a little more cranked up.
SPEAKER_01: The optopatrist says, which one you like?
SPEAKER_01: This one or this one?
SPEAKER_01: And I struggle because I want to see the golf ball, but I don't want to see everything so clearly.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little too much.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all look great in the back, though.
SPEAKER_01: And as I have been told they could do laser surgery to my eye, and I am hopelessly uninterested in that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want any laser in my eye, I don't want you to poke me in the eye, I don't want a scalpel in my eye, I don't want visine in my eye, I don't want anything.
SPEAKER_01: When something comes near my eye, God gave me an instinct called blinking.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's natural.
SPEAKER_01: I read a news article, CNN fake news, um, but I vetted, I vetted this one, uh CNN Health.
SPEAKER_01: It was a story of a woman who went in for uh preparatory examination for a cataract surgery, routine cataract surgery, and they found behind her eye 27 contact lenses.
SPEAKER_01: She'd been having a hard time seeing.
SPEAKER_01: As they removed them and found out that somehow they had just lodged back there her disposable contacts.
SPEAKER_01: The doctors had never seen anything quite like this.
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's similar to what happens in our spiritual sight.
SPEAKER_01: We accumulate distractions that blur our vision.
SPEAKER_01: And sight in the Bible is the most common metaphor for trusting God.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians 5, 6 through 7.
SPEAKER_01: Always be of good courage, though we're home in the body, we're away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 11:1 reminds us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 1.8, the Apostle Paul prays for the Ephesian believers that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened, opened.
SPEAKER_01: David, King David, in Psalm 26, 3 says, Your steadfast love is ever before my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: These are all things that we cannot physically see, but we have evidences of in God's revelation of Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And so God calls us to apprehend things with spiritual sight.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what faith is.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is seeing the unseen.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is grasping the non-physical.
SPEAKER_01: It's taking God at his word, believing and trusting in who he is and what he promises.
SPEAKER_01: The example of faith is our father Abraham, who in Hebrews 11 is told to go and find a city, but it wasn't an earthly city that he sought, according to the author of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_01: It was instead a city in heaven, a city to come.
SPEAKER_01: And so Abraham was to live his life by faith, trusting and obeying and following God in light of unseen future promises.
SPEAKER_01: And so this psalmist taking that concept and employing it to his troubled times, tells himself and all worshipers who will employ this song to see God with your eyes of faith, to lift up your eyes, and he gives us a further clarification of the directive.
SPEAKER_01: We're not just keeping our heads down into the fray and the distractions and the blurred vision.
SPEAKER_01: We're to raise up to where God is.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 1 says, To you who are enthroned in the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: Enthroned in the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: That speaks of the location of God's rule and reign.
SPEAKER_01: When you read about God's throne, especially in the Psalms, we're talking about an embodiment, a location of God's sovereign rule.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 55, 19, God will hear and answer them, even he who sits enthroned from of old.
SPEAKER_01: Or Psalm chapter 80, verse 1, God says, I give ear, shepherd of Israel, who leads Joseph like a flock.
SPEAKER_01: You who are enthroned above the cherubim shine forth.
SPEAKER_01: A prayer that calls to God to radiate from his glorious throne.
SPEAKER_01: To see God on his throne is to remember that God is in control, that he has throne control, that he is in a place of sovereign ability.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 115, verse 3, God is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: He does whatever he pleases.
SPEAKER_01: And this singer contemplates the reality and the need for him to lift up his eyes and see how things really are.
SPEAKER_01: To counter the spiritual nearsightedness and to fix and focus his gaze on God's throne and to trust in God's sovereign will and to not be fooled and distracted and blinded by his circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Apostle Paul says we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.
SPEAKER_01: The things that are seen are passing away, transient.
SPEAKER_01: The things that are unseen are eternal.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're told to fix and focus our vision on God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Spurgeon loved about this song.
SPEAKER_01: Spurgeon was a Baptist preacher and a student of the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote a book called The Treasury of David.
SPEAKER_01: In it he comments on this word, seeing.
SPEAKER_01: He says, true saints look to their Lord reverentially.
SPEAKER_01: They have a holy awe and inward fear of the great and glorious one.
SPEAKER_01: They watch obediently, doing his commandments, guided by his eye.
SPEAKER_01: Their constant gaze is fixed attentively on all that comes from the Most High.
SPEAKER_01: They give earnest heed.
SPEAKER_01: They fear lest they should let anything slip through inadvertence or drowsiness.
SPEAKER_01: They look continuously, for there is never a time when they are off duty.
SPEAKER_01: At all times they delight to serve in all things.
SPEAKER_01: Upon the Lord they fix their eyes expectantly, looking for supply and safety from his hands, waiting that he may have mercy upon them.
SPEAKER_01: To him they look singly, they have no other confidence, and they learn to Look submissively, waiting patiently for the Lord, seeking both an activity and suffering to glorify his name.
SPEAKER_01: And when they are smitten with the rod, they turn their eyes imploringly to the hand which chastens, hoping that mercy will soon abate the rigor of affliction.
SPEAKER_01: How do we see him with our eyes of faith?
SPEAKER_01: Listen to those adverbs.
SPEAKER_01: We see him reverentially and obediently and attentively and continuously and expectantly and singly and submissively and imploringly.
SPEAKER_01: And it's that kind of sight that moves the focus as we move into verse two and verse three and four.
SPEAKER_01: But the middle section of this song, verse two, teaches us yet another metaphor, maintaining the concept of spiritual sight, but shifting us to understand that not only do we in verse one see him with eyes of faith, but in verse two, we serve him in humble dependence.
SPEAKER_01: We serve him in humble dependence.
SPEAKER_01: The eye metaphor continues.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2, behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God until he be gracious to us.
SPEAKER_01: What a powerful image.
SPEAKER_01: What an incredible comparison.
SPEAKER_01: This upward look now takes focus on not just where our eyes are, but to a bit of a story, a metaphor, an example, an illustration.
SPEAKER_01: And the illustration is clear.
SPEAKER_01: It's a picture of two servants, a male servant and a female servant.
SPEAKER_01: In some sort of royal household, they're servants who are trained and watchful.
SPEAKER_01: They're eager to do the bidding of their master.
SPEAKER_01: They're anticipating every need.
SPEAKER_01: It's a picture of a noble king and a powerful queen, and their attendants are at the ready.
SPEAKER_01: And in this verse, verse 2, the eyes of the servant are looking directly at the hand of their master.
SPEAKER_01: And the hand in the Psalms is a symbol of power, a symbol of ability, a symbol of protection.
SPEAKER_01: When used in the negative, Psalm 140, the hand of our enemies, we pray for the Lord to protect us from it.
SPEAKER_01: But when we talk about the hand of God, we're talking about the place of supply, of provision, and a hand of protection for his people.
SPEAKER_01: And so this servant is looking to the hand of the master in dependence and at readiness.
SPEAKER_01: There's a posture of humility and readiness and dependence and quickness to do whatever the master would have the servant do.
SPEAKER_01: And it spells out the movement.
SPEAKER_01: It's an argument from the lesser, human servants and masters to the greater.
SPEAKER_01: The end of verse 2 says, so, or likewise, our eyes look to Yahweh, our God, until he is gracious to us.
SPEAKER_01: It's an argument of lesser to greater.
SPEAKER_01: Because serving God is radically different than serving a man.
SPEAKER_01: This is essential in understanding the concept of service in our Christian faith, which is so important to how we live and honor the Lord and one another in the church.
SPEAKER_01: But we have to understand that we are not serving God in the same way that a human serves another human.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll transport from the throne room to a more modern illustration.
SPEAKER_01: Think of someone not kingly, but pretty special.
SPEAKER_01: Let's choose the Reverend Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: Let's say that he had a summer intern, a young theological student who wanted to learn to be a pastor, follow him around all summer, and kind of help Jesse.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesse needs help.
SPEAKER_01: And what are the kind of things he would do?
SPEAKER_01: Bring Jesse a sandwich at lunchtime?
SPEAKER_01: Know how Jesse likes his tea?
SPEAKER_01: Make copies for Jesse.
SPEAKER_01: Carry Jesse's Bible when he's tired.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: All the stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He'd anticipate his needs.
SPEAKER_01: He would care for him well.
SPEAKER_01: He would help Jesse by removing obstacles that hinder Jesse's effectiveness.
SPEAKER_01: He would bear his burdens and meet his needs and slug soccer balls to the truck for him.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you help someone.
SPEAKER_01: When we help and serve God, it's totally different.
SPEAKER_01: Serving God is totally different.
SPEAKER_01: Same word, different concepts.
SPEAKER_01: Because serving God is radically different than serving a man, because God doesn't need anything.
SPEAKER_01: There are no obstacles to God's effectiveness.
SPEAKER_01: We can't bear God's burdens.
SPEAKER_01: We can't meet God's needs.
SPEAKER_01: We don't help God.
SPEAKER_01: If anything, our service comes out of this place of dependence and trouble.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think of a helper who is of almost no help to you.
SPEAKER_01: That's us to God.
SPEAKER_01: He accomplishes everything he needs to accomplish through us, not because of us.
SPEAKER_01: Serving God is different because Psalm 100 tells us that the attitude is transformative, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 100, shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Serve the Lord with gladness.
SPEAKER_01: Come before him with joyful singing.
SPEAKER_01: Know that the Lord Himself is God.
SPEAKER_01: It is he who made us, not we ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
SPEAKER_01: Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise, give thanks to him, bless his name.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord is good, his loving kindness is everlasting, his faithfulness to all generations.
SPEAKER_01: That's the servant psalm, and it so clearly teaches that there's something different about serving God because God doesn't need us.
SPEAKER_01: Because God doesn't need anything because he's God.
SPEAKER_01: Acts 17, verse 25.
SPEAKER_01: In the sermon, the apostle teaches us that God is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, but it's he who gives us life and breath and everything.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't an admonishment to stop serving God.
SPEAKER_01: It's the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: It's that we serve God with a full realization of our total dependence on him.
SPEAKER_01: When we serve God, we don't meet his needs.
SPEAKER_01: He meets our needs.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he himself is the one who gives us life and breath and everything.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we are serving God, we are well aware that he is the one who empowers us for service.
SPEAKER_01: That's what 1 Peter 4 says.
SPEAKER_01: We serve him with the strength that he supplies.
SPEAKER_01: And so it reorients our service to never puff out our chest and say, Well, I have a really important job at church.
SPEAKER_01: It humbles us and says, look, I'm willing to do anything to serve my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I owe him everything, and when I serve him, I serve him with his strength, in dependence on him, with devotion to him.
SPEAKER_01: And I offer to him all that I have, and he gives me grace.
SPEAKER_01: That's the Christian's service.
SPEAKER_01: There's a good example of this in 2 Chronicles of all places.
SPEAKER_01: Because this is Emmanuel Bible Church, and your pastor is an old covenant Christian and teaches, he's probably gone 2 Chronicles 10 times on you, but for me, my Bible makes creaking sounds when I go there.
SPEAKER_01: But 2 Chronicles 12, turn over there with me for just a moment, has a great example of this.
SPEAKER_01: How serving God is different than serving a man.
SPEAKER_01: Really the heart of this Psalm's picture.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Chronicles 12.
SPEAKER_01: Rehoboam, verse 1, is king of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He's established and strong, and he in rebellion forsakes the law of Yahweh, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: And God's judgment is listed in verses 2, 3, and 4, because the Lord sends Shishak, king of Egypt, to come against Jerusalem with 1,200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, and they surround the holy city.
SPEAKER_01: God raises up a prophet, Shemiah, who comes to Rehoboam and the princes of Judah who'd gathered at Jerusalem because of Shishak, and he says to them, Thus says Yahweh, you have forsaken me, so I also have forsaken you to Shishak.
SPEAKER_01: And the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, Yahweh is righteous.
SPEAKER_01: He's right.
SPEAKER_01: We deserve his discipline, we deserve this punishment.
SPEAKER_01: But look at the grace of God in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: And when Yahweh saw that they humbled themselves, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying, They have humbled themselves, so I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some measure of deliverance, and my wrath shall not be poured out on Jerusalem by means of Shishak.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they will become his slaves, so that they may learn the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.
SPEAKER_01: What a lesson.
SPEAKER_01: A lesson we should all know intimately.
SPEAKER_01: Because every one of us were slaves to sin.
SPEAKER_01: And because of the gospel that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave, and by faith you can be made right with God, reconciled to your Creator, no longer at war with God, but instead at peace with God and welcomed into his family.
SPEAKER_01: Because of that reality, you've been, a common biblical word, redeemed.
SPEAKER_01: You've been rescued, you've been bought, no longer a slave to sin, no longer fearing death, you've been brought into God's family, and you have a life of joy and purpose and meaning, and you're now united with your Creator, at peace with God.
SPEAKER_01: And in so rescuing, in so redeeming, he has demonstrated to us the difference between being a slave of sin and a slave of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Both are slavery, both are subjugated to the master, but one is joy and thanksgiving and fellowship and freedom and love, and one is dark, dark destiny.
SPEAKER_01: It was a lesson that Rehoboam in Israel had to learn, and it's the portrait of the difference in service as we serve him, not with our chests puffed out, but we serve him in humble dependence, waiting and looking to his hand of provision, knowing that ultimately what we need from him in our service is detailed for us at the end of verse 2 as we move into verse 3, until he shall be gracious to us.
SPEAKER_01: And so we seek him with eyes of faith, and we serve him in humble dependence, and third, we seek his grace, verse 3 and 4.
SPEAKER_01: I dare you to miss the point of this song, verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Be gracious to us, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Be gracious to us.
SPEAKER_01: Combined with the use of grace in verse 2, it's a threefold plea for grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's an unmissable request.
SPEAKER_01: The heart of what the psalmist is asking for is what all of us desperately need.
SPEAKER_01: We need mercy and we need grace.
SPEAKER_01: And then he moves this song as he seeks God grace into its conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: And its conclusion we wouldn't have chosen.
SPEAKER_01: It says, For we are greatly filled with contempt.
SPEAKER_01: Our soul is greatly filled with the scoffing of those who are at ease and with the contempt of the proud.
SPEAKER_01: His agenda unhidden.
SPEAKER_01: He comes to God to get grace, but his circumstances are unchanged.
SPEAKER_01: Around him is ridicule by the proud and the arrogance.
SPEAKER_01: A word in Hebrew unique to the Psalms used only here is that word contempt.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, I'm filled, I've endured to the utmost the contempt and the scorn and the heaping of arrogance that the enemies of God have put on me and on the people of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is so resonant with how we often feel in an unbelieving world, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: It feels like everybody's against us.
SPEAKER_01: To truly be in the minority.
SPEAKER_01: He just feels like he is stuck in Gentileville.
SPEAKER_01: I love to say that too.
SPEAKER_01: It's become a common saying in my house.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the only one that says it, but I'll be watching the news and I'll just kind of mutter, I live in Meshech.
SPEAKER_01: And the kids will go, Dad's doing that thing again, mom.
SPEAKER_01: The Meshech thing.
SPEAKER_01: But we get that.
SPEAKER_01: We get the scorn, we get the contempt, we get the trouble.
SPEAKER_01: And that contempt, it's a powerful word.
SPEAKER_01: It illuminates, according to Kidner, the it's singled out for there are so many other things that can bruise, but this contempt, it's cold steel.
SPEAKER_01: It goes deeper into the spirit than any other form of rejection.
SPEAKER_01: And so what the psalmist needs is what we need.
SPEAKER_01: He needs mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Mercy is the relief of misery.
SPEAKER_01: Mercy presupposes sin.
SPEAKER_01: To plea with God and his throne for grace is to ask for what is undeserved.
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly where we are, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We're in a place where we want to see the Lord with eyes of faith and serve him in humble dependence, but we understand that there is a prerequisite to all of that, and that is to receive in an ongoing way the sustaining and saving grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: One author says it this way: a prayer for mercy is not an attempt to get God to do what he's unwilling otherwise to do, but is reaching out to what we know that he does do, an expressed longing to receive what God is doing in and for us in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: In obedience, we pray mercy instead of give us what we want.
SPEAKER_01: We pray mercy and not reward us for our goodness so our neighbors will acknowledge our superiority.
SPEAKER_01: We pray mercy, not punish us for our badness so we'll feel better.
SPEAKER_01: We pray mercy and not be nice to us because we've been such good people.
SPEAKER_01: We live under mercy.
SPEAKER_01: God does not treat us as alien others, lining us up so that he can evaluate our competence or our usefulness or our worth.
SPEAKER_01: He rules, guides, commands, and loves us as children whose destiny he carries in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: The word mercy means that the upward look to God in the heavens does not expect God to stay in the heavens, but to come down, to enter our condition, to accomplish the vast enterprise of redemption, to fashion us in his eternal salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And though this song breaks off unanswered, and if we were to write it for contemporary Christian radio, we'd move all this arrogant contempt stuff to the middle and end with that sweet part about grace.
SPEAKER_01: But life's not like that.
SPEAKER_01: This song leaves us looking and longing and praying.
SPEAKER_01: But it's taught us something.
SPEAKER_01: It's taught us to fix our eyes on Jesus, to look to the throne of God, because at his right hand is the Son of Man there interceding for us.
SPEAKER_01: And to have that clarified vision to see God and His sovereignty on his throne, and then to see ourselves as humble and dependent servants, and then to move us to a fresh reminder that what we need more than anything else is a fresh experience of God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're asking the Lord to do in us, to lift up our eyes to see.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is exactly what the Apostle Paul had in mind in Romans chapter 12, that very familiar hinge in the book of Romans, where he says, Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your, the King James says, logical act of service.
SPEAKER_01: You know what makes sense?
SPEAKER_01: It makes sense that if we serve an unseen God who is sovereign over all, in humble dependence on Him, seeking grace that we do not deserve, then our entire lives, our whole bodies, everything we do in our work and our worship, in our families, in every relationship, that our whole bodies are our spiritual sacrifice to God, holy and pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_01: Every aspect of our life belongs to him and is our act of service or worship that we render to him.
SPEAKER_01: Because he gives us grace and he gets all the glory.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, thank you for your good promises, for the mercy that rescues us from rightful fear.
SPEAKER_01: May our servitude be whole bodied.
SPEAKER_01: May our entirety be an act of worship to you.
SPEAKER_01: And may it be an expression of the mercy that we've received.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, for the happy and joyful confidence we can have that you are on your throne and that you give us grace.
SPEAKER_01: Lift our eyes above the fray and help us to fix them on Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: In his name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.