Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Gina Fickett: Please stand and join me in the prayer of illumination.
Gina Fickett: Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see the glory of the Father and the love of the Son through the reading and preaching of your word.
Gina Fickett: Through Jesus Christ we pray.
Gina Fickett: Amen.
Gina Fickett: Today's scripture reading is Psalm 131.
Gina Fickett: O Lord, my heart is not lifted up.
Gina Fickett: My eyes are not raised too high.
Gina Fickett: I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
Gina Fickett: But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.
Gina Fickett: Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Gina Fickett: Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
Gina Fickett: This is God's word.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Thanks be to God.
Gina Fickett: Please be seated.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Well, good morning, New City.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: My name is Hardy.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I am the campus minister with a ministry called Reformed University Fellowship out at University of Central Florida.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yeah, and so while I'm not a pastor on staff at New City, I have the privilege of being uh one of the kingdom partners with New City, ministering and serving college students out at campus at UCF.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Um, one of the questions that I've found increasingly important to ask the students that I meet with is what is the good life according to your YouTube feed?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Or fill in the blank with whatever social media they find themselves on Instagram, uh, TikTok, whatever it might be.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But the question is essentially, what's the good life according to your algorithm?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And as I listen to the answers so often, there are a number of good life trajectories being loudly proclaimed over students.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And while the destinations might be different, the way to get there is often the same through self-fulfillment, self-seeking, self-optimizing behaviors, that if they would just submit to this practice, this routine, that they would be able to have the good life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Uh it's been known now as the trend of maxing from the cautiously helpful to the absolutely absurd.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: There is looks maxing, there's money maxing, there's calendar maxing, there is gym maxing, there is fill-in-the-blank maxing that you can submit yourself to.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And while the destinations are different, they all hold out.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: If you would just submit to this routine, this uh this uh development process, you can be free from a life of insignificance, of being unimpressive, a life of mediocrity.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But the definition of maxing is to max out, to constantly be going, to constantly giving all of your effort.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so this is an exhausting path.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so whether or not you're in college, I think we all can fall susceptible to believing that if I just maximize my calendar, if I just maximize my time, if I just maximize my income streams and hit this amount in my portfolio, then I will be free.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But it's exhausting.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And the hope of our passage that Psalm 131 holds out to us is there's good news available, relieving, calming news, that the good life is actually found not in ascending to greatness, but in going low and embracing contentment, the calm and quiet life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And this good life is actually filled with hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so that's gonna be our three points for this morning.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We're gonna see this through the good life goes low, the good life embraces contentment or the calm and quiet life, and the good life is full of hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So you see in the passage we just read, it has a title there.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It says, A song of ascents of David.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Now, the song of ascent is given to 15 Psalms in the Psalter, Psalms 120 to 134, and many commentators will note that these are the psalms that the people of God likely sang as they gathered and went up to Jerusalem for any of the three major feasts in prep in preparation to worship and celebrate God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So this song of a sense kind of has a oxymoronic lesson.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David is in saying, in one sense, people of God, as you go up, have you gone low?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Have you, in other words, humbled yourself?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The good life doesn't have humility as this destination purely for the spiritual elite or those that can maybe one day attain it through effort.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The path of humility is Christianity 101.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It is the path that all of us are called to walk.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: All of us are called to go the low road.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is for everyone.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Jesus says it in this way in Matthew 18.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Again, this is the not only the starting point, it is the path we walk, it is the destination.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: All of the Christian life is to be a life of humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Saint Augustine, in uh teaching and instructing a student, he said, This I wish you to prepare yourself, no other way of seizing and holding the truth than that which has been prepared by God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In that way, the first part is humility, the second, humility, the third, humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So it leads us to ask an important question, then how?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: How then do we go low?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: How do we go the humble path?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Well, I think verse one gives us a couple of hints as to the ways in which we need to go low in humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The first is the audience of David's prayer.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David is addressing his prayer to the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's the great I am, Yahweh, the self-existing one, the holy one.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David knows whose he is.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He knows who he is addressing, and therefore, in light of who he's addressing, in light of whose he is, he knows who he is.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He knows the greatness of the one he's addressing, and therefore, his only option is to go low in humility before the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And David is addressing the Lord in private prayer, but the Lord has chosen to take David's prayer and actually make it public, to teach the people of God what it is to go low.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is by far and away not David being self-congratulatory in his humility, or by any means saying that he is sinless.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That would be actually the height of pride to claim that he is without sin.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Jesus told the Pharisees, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So, in other words, David knows what we must know: that we have to admit that we're sick in order to have any share in relationship with God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We must go low.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Isaiah the prophet gives just a brutally vivid image of the cost of the condition of pride.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Isaiah 1, 6 shows this man walking around with wounds from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, unbandaged, bleeding, ugly, and it's as if he's just whistling on his way to work, saying, nothing's wrong, all is well.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's like, have you seen yourself?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And that is the condition that pride leaves us in.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It blinds us to the true uh heart, our true hearts and our true selves.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so David has known to go low is to know who he is, who he's coming before, and in light of that, who he is.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: To reiterate the danger of pride, uh Augustine, in talking about the first sin, puts it this way: there would have been no evil act unless there had first been an evil will.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And what could have been the beginning of their evil will except pride?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: For pride is the beginning of all sin.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Theologian Herman Bavink says it maybe more succinctly, that the relational rupture that's caused in a heart of pride is a turning away from God, yes, but also a turning to self.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It is a life lived for self.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In other words, we we all have our own version of the theme song of the arrogant striker for the Richmond Greyhounds.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Jamie Tart, do, do, do, do, do, do, Jamie, tart.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yeah, some of y'all know that.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We all have our own version that the life is lived out of self, the prideful life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so we must learn to go low, is what David is saying.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He's saying, I've done that, I've gone low before the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And the way he phrases it is he references that his heart is not lifted up.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Heart in the biblical sense is not just emotions or mood.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He's not saying that he is low emotionally before the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He is saying in the heart, the command center, the control center of all of his life, he is taking that into the place of humility before the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He is not lifted up, he is not prideful.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He embodies this lesson of commentator John Stott has said, at every age and stage of our Christian development, and in every sphere of Christian discipleship, pride is our greatest enemy, and humility is our greatest friend.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So, therefore, to go low, to humble ourselves means that we must fight pride.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We must befriend humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We must live out the lesson of Proverbs 4, 23 that says, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: To go low, to go humble is to refuse to have a high opinion of yourself.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: To go low is to refuse to think of yourself as more than you are or greater than others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David, in essence, is saying that he has given up applying for the job of king of his life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He is no longer looking for that role.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He is saying, You are God, I am not.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: You are Lord, I am not.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I have taken my heart low before you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I have no notes, I have no critiques on how you are running my life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That's different than laments.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He is saying, You are God, I am not, and I am low and humble before you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And because David has a proper heart posture before God here, his perspective is clear.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The way that he views others and circumstances is clear.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We see this in the second half of the verse.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: My eyes are not raised too high.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That phrase, my eyes are not raised too high, it's it's likely a paraphrase or referring to what Proverbs would say is one of the things that the Lord hates, which is haughty eyes, a prideful looking down upon others, contempt for other words for others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so David, he's saying, I don't have contempt for others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And it's important to remember the context of this psalm.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In praying it, in the Song of Ascents, David is addressing the people of God as they go up, as they prepare for worship.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yes, they need to have a proper posture before God in humility and a proper view and perspective of others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Not being contemptuous, not being prideful, not thinking of themselves as greater or above others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Pride must be fought not only in our relationship with God, but also in our relationship to others.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So then how?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: How do we go low?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: How do we follow David in these things?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Well, I think it's at least two things.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: First, confession, admission of who God is, of who you are before him.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He's God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I'm not.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I'm a sinner in need of his grace.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: All my striving for the good life, all my self-efforts actually lead to emptiness.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I must be filled by his gracious gift.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's the only way that I'm going to receive the good life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Second, if our pride clouds our perspective of others, we also need to take the posture not only of a mission and confession to God, but of service, of moving towards others, counting others in um better, counting others' needs as the great as our own, and moving towards them.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Imagine that for a moment, New City, if that's what our church was characterized by.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: A quickness to confession, a quickness to admission of who God is, a quickness to serve one another.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Imagine what marriages would look like, parenting might look like, co-working roommate spaces, what that might look like if you're not fighting over who has slacked on the job, but you're actually fighting to see who can serve more.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Not fighting over who has failed to repent or to apologize most fully, but who can who can beat the other to repentance more quickly?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Imagine if that is what we fight over.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: As one writer said, we fight for the tau.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We go low, we go where Jesus has gone for us, and we follow him there to that place of service.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is what it means to go low.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And I think we think about humility and we're like, yes, of course, that's that's Christianity 101.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It should be easy.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But if you think about the areas of your life that you're called to humility, it's not just a broad, downhill, open gravity just has the inertia of taking you down the path of humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: No, the path of humility often looks like a highway with immediate brake lights, tire shrapnel flying everywhere.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's like if I go that way, I'm gonna be exposed.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I'm gonna be uh, you know, exposed to danger, I'm gonna be exposed to my character.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That is dangerous.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I am not going that path.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That often is the experience of how we view the path of humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Go low anyway.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Humble yourselves.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In his book, Pastoral Confessions, uh, author Goggins puts it this way: the fear of our heart is built on sin's great lie, that the place of healing is the place of harm, that the chalice of confession is filled with poison, that the medicine God has provided cannot be trusted.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We believe confession, repentance, humility, service is not the place where we'll experience the good life, but actually death.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And like all good lies, it is a bit of truth to it.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It will entail death.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But this is a necessary death.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's how we experience the life of Christ.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: John Webster, theologian, late theologian, put it this way: the regenerative life in Christ is not simply a received and completed condition, but it's a summons to actively to reiterate the death of the old nature and to perform the new, to die and to rise again, not only once for all, but also continually.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is a practice of going low over and over and over again.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And until we do that, until we humble ourselves and go low before the Lord and others, we won't be able to experience what's on offer in verse two, the calm and quiet life, the contented life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And that's what David speaks to the good life, embracing contentment.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He says, I've calmed and quieted my soul.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And I take comfort knowing the author of the psalm.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We don't know exactly when David wrote it, but it's helpful and encouraging because we know from his life that his soul was not always calm and quiet, that he was actually full of fear, he often had doubts, he was often full of lust, uncertainty.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And yet he says, I have calmed and I've quieted my soul.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is something he has learned to do.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Paul says it in a similar way in Philippians when he says, I've learned.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In whatever situation I am to be content, I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I can do all things through him that strengthens me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David, he's he's learned and he's embraced this lesson of contentment, not because of changed circumstances or things are just going well for him in this particular season of life.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I think we can we can know that.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But he's learned to be able to turn down the volume of the noise of his soul.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: There are seasons where he was restless, that his soul was proclaiming loud messages over him, and he's saying, I've actually learned to turn down the volume on all those messages to the point where he gives the image, I can be calm with myself.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's this picture of the unweaned child, the one that is still breastfeeding when it's in its mother's presence, it's got one thing on its mind.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: What can I get from your presence?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Milk.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I'm hungry.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I want it now.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: What David is saying is he's learned to actually turn down the volume on what his soul tells him he wants to be able to receive what he most needs.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David has learned this lesson.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Like any mother who's gone through that weaning process knows it's not because of a lack of love for the child that she withholds the milk.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's actually so that the child can grow and mature and to receive what is better, to ultimately grow up into maturity.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so David is saying he's learned to control the messages and the noise of his soul to the point where he can actually say no to the messages.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And any of us in here that have had good mothers know that good mothers know how to say no to their children.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: One of my professors when I was in seminary said, every child is basically asking two questions constantly.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And both of these questions must be answered with an emphatic yes.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: First question, do you love me?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yes.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I love you, I delight in you, I see you, I enjoy you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yes, I love you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Second question, will you say no to me?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Yes, I will say no to you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: You cannot have ice cream for breakfast.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: You cannot stay up till 3 a.m.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: You must go to sleep.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I will say no to you because I know what is best for you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: There's even pictures in in nature of this.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I've heard that that birds, you know, when they're trying to teach their uh their young to fly, if they're slow or if if they're not ready, they'll kind of start flapping their wings and taking up more space in the nest, trying to move them to the edge.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And even if they don't take off then, they'll start dismantling the nest.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: They'll just start taking it out from under them.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Why?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Because they know what's best is if their bird flies.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And what David is saying he's learned is that he has been able to say no to the message of his soul, been able to calm and quiet it.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The question is, how?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Well, he's able to offer himself what he has first received.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He has been calmed, he has been quieted by the Lord, and therefore he can offer it to his own soul.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Mr.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Rogers' famous television personality was giving a commencement speech, and in addressing the graduates as to how they had gotten to this place, he said, He said, This in fact, from the time you were very little, you've had people who have smiled you into smiling.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: People who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And this is what David has learned that he can calm and quiet.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Soul, because he has found the source of calm and quiet in the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That that is what he needs.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That he is able to draw from the presence of God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's not a change of circumstances that his soul most needs, it's the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And if he has that, he can be calm and quiet.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We're in a stage of parenting where bedtime has been constantly extended through every excuse that my four-year-old can think of.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's always one more cuddle, one more back scratch, one more story.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And we have this story box that can tell different stories or actually has the ability to like record our voice.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And, you know, we thought maybe we could just like record our voice telling stories and like just set it and leave.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But inevitably, that might work for a night, but inevitably our daughter is gonna say, but the Tony box doesn't hold me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It doesn't have presence with me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And that's essentially what David has learned is what he most needs is presence of the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This has brought his soul peace.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's said in a beautiful way in Isaiah, can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Even if these may forget, yet I will not forget you, says the Lord.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, meaning it is impossible for the Lord to forget his children.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It is impossible for he has engraven you on his hands, meaning anything he does, he does with you and your good in mind.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He cannot forsake you, he cannot forget you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Psalm 27, 10 says, For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The Lord has drawn his people into the presence.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And David has learned this, and he is so excited that he has to extend it to the people of God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so before we turn to that final point, what does that mean then for us?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: How do we calm and quiet our soul?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We gotta calm down.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Now, that's a risky application in that I've never had success telling my wife, my kids, my students to calm down.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: But typically, if and when I'm saying that, it's because whatever they're concerned with, I'm not as concerned about.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so it's like, chill.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That is not what David is doing to his own soul, that is not what God does to our concerns.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: When David is saying that we're called to calm and quiet our soul, is to remember whose presence we're in, not to forget our circumstances, but remember who is in those circumstances with us.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: So we can calm down, we can breathe, we can rest, we can be at ease.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And because David has experienced this peaceful presence of God, that he's so near and he's so faithful to bring that calm, to bring that peace, he essentially, in the third verse, is like, people of God, you'll have to get in on this.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Come and taste this.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He says, Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth, forevermore.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Hope in the biblical sense is not David saying, like, hey, people of God, just wish and hope that the future will be better than the present.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: No, hope in the biblical sense is a joyful anticipation of God's sure and certain promises.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That's what hope is in Scripture.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so, David, after addressing the Lord in prayer, after addressing his own heart, he's saying, This hope is on offer to you, people of God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: From this time forth, today, and forever.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: You can experience this today.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so, what that means for us, church, is that if you're coming in this morning with a loud and noisy soul, this is on offer for you today.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: For you to be able to receive, for you to be able to receive the peaceful presence of God if you take the path of going low, humility.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: There's a way in which our souls can actually turn this into just something else we need to do.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: A weird soul maxing, if you will, of how, how, okay, I just need to be more humble, I just need to be more quiet, be more calm, and then I'll have hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Is that what David's getting at?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I don't think so.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: David knows the sure and certain hope of God is rooted in the character of God and what he's done and what he promises to do.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so our hearts need to practice that hope, to work it in to our very places that we doubt in the today of does he have my best interest or heart?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Will he care for me here?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We need to remember his character, his faithfulness.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: This is the the call that David is holding out saying, This is on offer for you, people of God.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I was reminded of the importance of hope this past week in my second minivan viewing of Finding Nemo.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: I was my first minivan viewing of finding Nemo was when I was nine or 10, and it was memorable because my dad was driving, and it's the most I've ever heard my dad laugh, I think.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And he is a dentist, and he thought that the scene where the pelican flies into the window and gets distracted by what instrument the dentist was favoring for extractions was the funniest thing that he had ever heard.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And he goes on to say the pelican that is Nigel is flying there to tell Nemo, who has been taken by this dentist off the coral reef to be a fish in his fish tank in his office to ultimately be given to his dangerous Darla that his father has come after him.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That is, has come to find him.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And as he's telling the details of this rescue story, Nemo is saying, No, that's not my dad.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He would never take on a shark, go to the depths of the ocean.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: He would never swim through an army of jellyfish.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That's not my dad.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And as Nigel convinces Nemo, no, this truly is your father, Marlin from the reef, you see Nemo have hope wash over him.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The producers of the movie intentionally cut out all the sound.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Nigel's voice of announcing this news goes quiet, and the only thing you see is hope wash over Nemo.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Because what's gone from just being an impressive story that has caused the other fish and the birds who have heard it say, Wow, that's one dedicated father, if you ask me.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: For Nemo, that is his salvation, that is his story.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And so, church, the hope for us this morning is not for us to simply try harder, to try to be more humble, to try and calm and quiet our souls that we might have hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: It's to receive that there is good news that God has actually provided one greater than David who has gone low for you, who, though was equal with God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, humbling himself even to the point of death on the cross.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: The hope of this passage is not that we just need to get better at calming and quieting our soul, but that there is a greater David who lived in perfect peace and relationship with God, saying it was his very will, his very bread to do the will of the Father, never once deviating from that.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And yet, when he entered Jerusalem and he's in the shadow of his death, in the shadow of the cross, he says in John 12, now is my soul troubled.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: And what shall I say?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Father, save me from this hour?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: No, but for this purpose I have come to this hour.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Father, glorify your name.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Jesus endured a troubled soul in the wrath of God for sinners that our souls might have peace, and we might never have to know God's absence.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We might never have to know his wrath, and we can experience his peaceful presence.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: There's one greater than David that doesn't just instruct the people of God to hope, but he has secured your and my hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Through his death, through his resurrection, he has taken the end of all of our stories that would have inevitably been death, the sting of death, and he's taken it away that we might experience hope now and forever.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That is the good life that is on offer for us to be received this morning.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That's the good life to be lived following the one who's gone low, who has endured a troubled soul for us, and has secured our hope.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: That's an invitation.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Let's pray.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Father, we thank you that you are indeed a dedicated Father that would give your only Son that you might secure us to yourself, that we might never know your wrath, that we might never know your judgment, that if we receive the life you, Christ, secured for us, we might know peace in your presence.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We might know a calm soul, a soul that is at rest with you.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Lord, would you use this time of prayer now to help us work this in to our hearts, this hope that we so desperately need?
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: We pray in your Son's powerful name.
Pastor Hardy Reynolds: Amen.