SPEAKER_00: I am so glad that Webb has introduced that song to us.
SPEAKER_00: If you were not here, that song was sung for us on Good Friday and our service there.
SPEAKER_00: Perfect portrait of the suffering Savior forsaken for us.
SPEAKER_00: But also a perfect portrait of a time in which God's people gather together to celebrate the Lord's table, to remember what he has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why we are gathered here today.
SPEAKER_00: In a little while we're going to participate together in the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: But I would like to get us there by going through Psalm 34 together.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to understand this morning that Christ is in the Psalms, and that God was preparing us for the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible, I encourage you to open it to Psalm 34 or turn your phone on or your iPad or whatever it is you use.
SPEAKER_00: And we will begin there this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You have heard me speak before of William Cooper.
SPEAKER_00: A friend of John Newton, William Cooper struggled with severe depression, and at times he was overcome by something perhaps more akin to schizophrenia.
SPEAKER_00: He was even committed to a mental institution at one time because it was believed that he was insane.
SPEAKER_00: But that commitment to a mental institution was God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: Because it was there in that mental institution that the Lord's grace grabbed hold of William, and from then on Christ never let go, no matter how much Cooper struggled.
SPEAKER_00: Now William was a poet, and the Lord used him to write many, many hymns, some of which we still sing today.
SPEAKER_00: One of those hymns that we don't sing, although it's being brought back a little bit, is a song entitled God Moves in Mysterious Ways.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to share the lyrics of that song with you.
SPEAKER_00: It goes like this God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
SPEAKER_00: He plants his footsteps in the sea, and he rides upon the storm.
SPEAKER_00: Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will.
SPEAKER_00: Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take.
SPEAKER_00: The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.
SPEAKER_00: Judge now the Lord by feeble sense, and trust him for his grace, because behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.
SPEAKER_00: His purpose will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
SPEAKER_00: The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
SPEAKER_00: Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain.
SPEAKER_00: But God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.
SPEAKER_00: That him is the intersection of insanity and the grace of a sovereign God.
SPEAKER_00: The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
SPEAKER_00: Now he didn't always succeed, but William Cooper sought to view his bitter circumstances in light of all eternity, trusting in God's sovereign work, and this hymn is the fruit of that desire.
SPEAKER_00: But Cooper's hymn was not the first song to be the fruit of insanity.
SPEAKER_00: Sometime around 1000 BC, God used another poet to work to give us a song born out of trial and we might even say out of insanity.
SPEAKER_00: And that song is Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_00: It begins telling us that this was written by David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and he went away.
SPEAKER_00: And then David records, I will bless the Lord at all times.
SPEAKER_00: His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: My soul makes its boast in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let the humble hear and be glad.
SPEAKER_00: O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
SPEAKER_00: I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
SPEAKER_00: Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
SPEAKER_00: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.
SPEAKER_00: O taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: Oh fear the Lord you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.
SPEAKER_00: The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Come, O children, and listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?
SPEAKER_00: Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.
SPEAKER_00: Turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
SPEAKER_00: The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.
SPEAKER_00: The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
SPEAKER_00: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles, and the Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.
SPEAKER_00: Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord redeems the life of his servants.
SPEAKER_00: None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: And it is applicable to all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We will all face a moment at least, if not if not many years of times in this sin-cursed world where we will be broken and crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Where we are crying out for help.
SPEAKER_00: So we we recognize that our our hearts and our spirits are in tune with David.
SPEAKER_00: We we get what he's feeling.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we want to see hear what David could not see.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So help us to hear what David has to say, but help us to see Jesus most clearly so that we might bring praise and honor and glory to him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: On the next Lord's Day, we are going to be returning to our study of 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be picking up there in chapter 2 of the Apostle Peter's letter.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we're going to encounter a quotation from Psalm 34, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit later in 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter will quote from this same psalm again.
SPEAKER_00: So I thought it would be good for us to spend some time considering what this song is saying so that later on we'll be able to better understand how Peter uses it and what God expects us to get from it.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd like us to look together at Psalm 34, but to do that, we have to go back further towards the beginning of our Bibles with an account that is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm sure that you are very familiar with this account.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Samuel chapter 17 is the true story of a one-sided battle between a young man named David and a giant named Goliath, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: A young child answered that question for me in the first service.
SPEAKER_00: No adult could, but a young child did.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Holy Spirit ensured that certain details are recorded for us in the pages of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And it's important for us as we put pieces of Scripture together to catch those details.
SPEAKER_00: And one of those details is here in 1 Samuel 17 and verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: It says, There came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
SPEAKER_00: Now you know the rest of the story.
SPEAKER_00: David, the youngest child in his family, was at home keeping the flocks and the herds that belonged to his family, while his older brothers were sent off to war.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, their father sent David to the front lines with some food for his brothers and to bring back some news.
SPEAKER_00: But that just happened to be the time of a standoff between the armies of Israel and the armies of the Philistines, with Goliath himself coming out day after day, challenging the armies of the living God, saying, Send out one person, one person to fight me, just us, the two of us, standing out in the battlefield.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see who wins.
SPEAKER_00: Israel sent no one until David saw that challenge as not a challenge of armies, but a challenge to the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And so David, young David, went out to meet Goliath on the battlefield, doing so armed only with a shepherd's staff, a sling, and five pieces of ammunition, stones from a brook.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come to first Samuel seventeen, verse fifty.
SPEAKER_00: So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him.
SPEAKER_00: There was no sword in the hand of David, and so David ran and stood over the Philistine, and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath, and killed him, and cut off his head with it.
SPEAKER_00: When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.
SPEAKER_00: And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron, so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Sha'a'rim as far as Gath and Ekron.
SPEAKER_00: Of course that made young David a celebrity.
SPEAKER_00: And after that point Saul, Israel's king, grew jealous of David.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see in the next chapter, chapter 18, verse 6, as they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out from all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments.
SPEAKER_00: The women sang to one another as they celebrated, Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.
SPEAKER_00: And Saul was very angry, and this displeased him, and he said, They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands.
SPEAKER_00: What more can he have but the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: And Saul eyed David from that day on.
SPEAKER_00: What happens from here?
SPEAKER_00: Over the course of the next few years, Saul sought to kill David.
SPEAKER_00: He used various means and various methods to try to take young David's life, and David was constantly on the run.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, David was on the run from King Saul, and he went to a small community called Nob.
SPEAKER_00: At Nob there was a little sanctuary there, and there was a priest.
SPEAKER_00: And he got some food from the priest, but something else happened there.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 21, we begin to see that that happened to be the place where for one reason or another Goliath's sword was stored.
SPEAKER_00: The priest there had watch over Goliath's sword.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know why, we're not told the details around that.
SPEAKER_00: But David was on the run, and so he got some food, some bread from the priest, and he also took with him David, I'm sorry, Goliath's sword.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'd like you to look with me.
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Samuel 21, verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Akish, the king of Gath.
SPEAKER_00: Where had Goliath been from?
SPEAKER_00: You got it.
SPEAKER_00: Gath.
SPEAKER_00: David fled from his own king to Goliath's hometown, carrying Goliath's sword.
SPEAKER_00: Now you remember Goliath the giant, right?
SPEAKER_00: He also had a giant sword.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere he went, people would know whose sword that was.
SPEAKER_00: And so he went to Goliath's hometown.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems as though the people of Gath took David captive.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: And the servants of Akish said to him, Is not this David the king of the land?
SPEAKER_00: Did they not sing to one another of him in dances?
SPEAKER_00: Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.
SPEAKER_00: They've been listening.
SPEAKER_00: They've been paying attention.
SPEAKER_00: And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Akish the king of Gath.
SPEAKER_00: So he changed his behavior before them, and pretended to be insane in their hands, and made marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard.
SPEAKER_00: Then Akish said to his servants, Behold, you see the man is mad.
SPEAKER_00: Why then have you brought him to me?
SPEAKER_00: Do I lack madmen that you brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?
SPEAKER_00: Shall this fellow come into my house?
SPEAKER_00: Some think that because of the phrase in their hands in verse thirteen, that David was a prisoner.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the next verse, chapter 22, verse 1, it says he escaped.
SPEAKER_00: So we are well aware that at some point David entered Goliath's city and was taken captive.
SPEAKER_00: Evidently they were not going to kill him, so David did everything he could to make them not want him around.
SPEAKER_00: So he acted as though he were insane.
SPEAKER_00: And then we read David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adulum.
SPEAKER_00: Running from his own king, he ran to a hostile town.
SPEAKER_00: Running from a hostile town, he ran to a dark cave.
SPEAKER_00: From insanity to hiding in darkness.
SPEAKER_00: This is how David felt and thought in the midst of that desperate time.
SPEAKER_00: That setting is important because it helps us understand how we, as the children of God, ought to react to times of desperation.
SPEAKER_00: Did David believe that his ingenuity saved him, rescued him?
SPEAKER_00: What are we to learn from David's experience?
SPEAKER_00: How are we to apply this to our own lives?
SPEAKER_00: Well, William Cooper said in poetic ways, fearful saints, fresh courage take, and trust him for his grace.
SPEAKER_00: But David said, Trust in the care of your God.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the care of your God.
SPEAKER_00: He then shows us in this chapter, verse chapter 34, how to do that.
SPEAKER_00: How the child of God, the desperate, the depressed, the anxious, the worried, the troubled, even the exiled child of God should trust in God's care for his own.
SPEAKER_00: And it all begins, David said in the first three verses, with humility.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the child of God should come before God with humility, seeking to make God great.
SPEAKER_00: I will bless Yahweh at all times.
SPEAKER_00: Even when he's acting insane in Goliath City.
SPEAKER_00: Notice here that the direction.
SPEAKER_00: It's upward.
SPEAKER_00: It is David the man to God.
SPEAKER_00: When we know that we are in the right place, when the focus of our action is vertical, when it is worship, when we, along with David, bless the Lord at all times.
SPEAKER_00: And David could do that because his experience humbled him.
SPEAKER_00: Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Going from the height of celebration, the height of victory, the height of success to being a prisoner.
SPEAKER_00: Makes sense while he was humbled.
SPEAKER_00: And in that place of humility, he called himself in verse 6, this poor man who cried out to God.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't wallow in that place.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't throw a pity party for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he looked up.
SPEAKER_00: And in looking up, he moved his spirit to a place of worship.
SPEAKER_00: His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: My soul makes its boast in Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he calls on everyone who experiences desperate moments to magnify the Lord with me.
SPEAKER_00: That is a call for each and every one of us in whatever situation in life to make God great.
SPEAKER_00: That's what magnify means.
SPEAKER_00: To make someone great.
SPEAKER_00: Now obviously we don't make God anything, do we?
SPEAKER_00: We cannot make God anything.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't become anything more than he already is.
SPEAKER_00: He does not change, he does not grow.
SPEAKER_00: God does not learn, he does not become wise.
SPEAKER_00: He is all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: But when his children are humble before him, and they follow that humility with praise, with worship, with telling of the greatness of God and what he has done, then he becomes greater to us in our spirits, but also in the hearts and minds of others.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a very poor illustration.
SPEAKER_00: You all know how fish stories grow, right?
SPEAKER_00: We go fishing and it starts out like, I got caught one this big.
SPEAKER_00: The next time we tell it, it gets a little bit bigger.
SPEAKER_00: And then a little bit bigger.
SPEAKER_00: That's just too crazy.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way it is with God, beloved.
SPEAKER_00: The more we tell of him, the more we speak of his grace, the more we speak of his mercy, the more we speak of his greatness, the more we speak of his goodness, the greater he becomes in our hearts and minds and in the hearts and minds of others.
SPEAKER_00: Because our response to trials impacts other people.
SPEAKER_00: The way we respond to desperation impacts those around us.
SPEAKER_00: It will either show those around us that our God is weak and not worthy to be trusted, or that he is strong and mighty, good and gracious, worthy of all of our trust and all of our praise, but it is only a humble heart that can make God great in the midst of desperate times.
SPEAKER_00: David experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: And through his own experience, he also goes on to show us that we are to seek God in the midst of our desperation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: I sought Yahweh and he answered me.
SPEAKER_00: He delivered me from all of my fears.
SPEAKER_00: So David experienced God's deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: But don't overlook the means of David's deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: He was not delivered because of his insanity.
SPEAKER_00: Now it wasn't genuine insanity.
SPEAKER_00: He was acting, but he wasn't delivered because of his superb acting ability either.
SPEAKER_00: The power of God delivered David because he saw.
SPEAKER_00: God's power.
SPEAKER_00: Does God use means to deliver?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: He uses parents to rescue their children from their poor choices.
SPEAKER_00: That's me.
SPEAKER_00: He uses firemen to rescue from fire.
SPEAKER_00: God uses medicine and the skill of doctors and nurses to rescue.
SPEAKER_00: But we must never ever forget the two words God uses.
SPEAKER_00: It is God using means in this world, in this life, to rescue his own.
SPEAKER_00: So did God use David's acting like a madman?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: But without God's powerful working through that madness, David would not have been delivered.
SPEAKER_00: But how God loves to respond to his children who cry out to him for help in the midst of humble praise.
SPEAKER_00: He so cares for his own that his angels are like an army encamped around his children to bring them deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: So close and so intimate is God with his humble children that they're like Moses coming down from the mountaintop.
SPEAKER_00: They're radiant, they're shining with joy as in the daylight.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen someone going through a just a wretched experience in life, some trial that seems overwhelming, but somehow, in some way, there just seems to be a calm, restful joy that just emanates from them?
SPEAKER_00: That's what God does for his own people who humbly seek him and make him the priority in their desperation.
SPEAKER_00: David ran from his own king right into the hands of another enemy.
SPEAKER_00: When God delivered him, he ran from there to the darkness of a cave.
SPEAKER_00: David sought God in his desperate times, and God became to him a deliverer and a refuge.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: When God is our refuge, even a dark cave is a place of rest.
SPEAKER_00: When God delivers us from our desperation, it doesn't matter where he delivers us to.
SPEAKER_00: The humble want to make God great, and in their humility they seek his deliverance, knowing that he will hear and that he will provide.
SPEAKER_00: That is what David meant when he wrote, Taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Taste and see.
SPEAKER_00: Now verses 8 through 14 are unique in this song.
SPEAKER_00: They contain a cluster of commands.
SPEAKER_00: So the two sections at the beginning and the two sections at the end are descriptive, but right in the middle, sandwiched in the middle, the author tells us what to do.
SPEAKER_00: He instructs us to use our divinely given senses in order to know that Yahweh is good.
SPEAKER_00: Now he can't taste God, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's not edible.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is to use everything you have been given in life to not wallow in desperation, to not worry about tomorrow, not to stress about provision, but to look at everything around you for the express purpose of knowing that your God is good.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your life's circumstances so that you see God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Have you struggled lately?
SPEAKER_00: Have you been desperate?
SPEAKER_00: Have you been run down?
SPEAKER_00: Have you been anxious or sorrowful?
SPEAKER_00: Look for God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's there.
SPEAKER_00: Have you had success recently?
SPEAKER_00: Has life gone well for you?
SPEAKER_00: Look for his goodness and you will see it.
SPEAKER_00: As a prisoner in Goliath City, David could taste and see that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: And it's through that knowledge of God's goodness that we can begin to rest in his goodness in the midst of desperate times.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: There's blessing in resting in the goodness of God because he hears, he answers, and he delivers.
SPEAKER_00: David could run to the darkness of that cave and rest there in God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't home.
SPEAKER_00: His family wasn't surrounding him with love and affection and care.
SPEAKER_00: But God was his refuge.
SPEAKER_00: David's deliverance enabled him to taste and see that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your own life.
SPEAKER_00: Look carefully at it.
SPEAKER_00: If you are willing to make God great in your own life, if you are willing to humbly see his sovereign hand caring for you and guiding you and providing for you, you will see time and time and time again the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: But so many of us are prone to looking at our lives and our life's work and our accomplishment as something that we did.
SPEAKER_00: When we tell others about our life or our life's work, we tell what we did.
SPEAKER_00: Looking at life that way is sinful.
SPEAKER_00: It's full of pride and idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, reject that thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your life in order to see the goodness and the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's then that we begin to respond to God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Humbly seeking the Lord and resting in his gracious goodness leads us to fear.
SPEAKER_00: The child of God should respond to whatever comes in life by fearing him.
SPEAKER_00: Look at how this works itself out.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints.
SPEAKER_00: There's a command there.
SPEAKER_00: His saints, his holy ones, are supposed to fear him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: For those who fear have no lack.
SPEAKER_00: He there being good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Good thing.
SPEAKER_00: We lack many things, at least from our own perspective, right?
SPEAKER_00: But if something is missing, if we look at our lives and feel as though something is missing, then it is not truly good.
SPEAKER_00: Because God knows what is truly good because he is good, and he knows what is good for his own.
SPEAKER_00: And he promises to provide what is good.
SPEAKER_00: And that promise should lead us to fear him, to be in awe of him, to be respectful of him, and to obey him.
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00: Come, O children, and listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Fearing God is an inward response to who he is.
SPEAKER_00: We fear him when we know him, when we have experienced his goodness in life, and when we've responded in humility.
SPEAKER_00: But that inward response to God works itself out in how we live.
SPEAKER_00: If we fear the Lord in our spirits, it will be seen in how we live.
SPEAKER_00: That's why in verses 13 and 14 we see what the fear of Yahweh looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking deceit, turn away from evil, do good, seek peace, and pursue peace.
SPEAKER_00: When we fear God, that will be worked out in obedience and daily life.
SPEAKER_00: And all of that is based on David's own experience, on the experience of insanity, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: But now in verses 15 through 22, we see two more truths that are applications of the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the goodness of God looks like toward his own people, toward the righteous, as he calls them in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Now in verse 17, we are told that when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, but who are these righteous?
SPEAKER_00: How do we know?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we go back to verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The righteous are the humble.
SPEAKER_00: The righteous are the saints in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: They are the children of God in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the child of God, the righteous one, should respond to desperate times by crying out to God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the cry of the desperate.
SPEAKER_00: This is the cry of a child.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you that there is nothing that moves me to act much faster than my little Joshua saying, Help me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if he demands it, that's a different thing.
SPEAKER_00: But if I can tell it's a cry out of desperate help, I move.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer ought to be our immediate reaction in desperation.
SPEAKER_00: And David, calling himself this poor man, cried to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And that same Lord has eyes that watch his own children.
SPEAKER_00: He has ears that are waiting to hear from his children.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he is actively opposed to evildoers, but he's actively waiting and working to react in deliverance for his children.
SPEAKER_00: The goodness of God is worked out in his hearing the cries of his children.
SPEAKER_00: Cries come from the humble and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Cries come from children.
SPEAKER_00: But God is so good to those who are at the bottom, to those who have nowhere else to turn to Him.
SPEAKER_00: He is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters in Christ, do not ever hesitate to cry out to your Father.
SPEAKER_00: His ears are already tuned to hear your cry.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to run to him, to cry out to him.
SPEAKER_00: He longs to hear you because he is longing, he is waiting to rescue you.
SPEAKER_00: He longs for you to taste his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: But as is often the case in the Psalms, the psalmist has left the best for last.
SPEAKER_00: And he tells us that the child of God should respond to life by taking refuge in his God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19 many are the afflictions, literally the evils of the righteous.
SPEAKER_00: But Yahweh delivers him out of them all.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know about you, but I can come up with plenty of times in which I don't think I was delivered from evil.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel that way.
SPEAKER_00: That was not my perception.
SPEAKER_00: So how are we to view this statement?
SPEAKER_00: How are we who experience evil in this life in many kinds of ways?
SPEAKER_00: How are we to feel and sense as though God has delivered us out of them all?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is found in looking at the ultimate divine intention for this song.
SPEAKER_00: God kept David from harm, from physical harm and condemnation by the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And David used that to point to the fact that God is good and God is trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: That God hears and that he sees and that he rescues his children in his goodness, and that is all true.
SPEAKER_00: But God intended this song not merely to point to a one man's desperate time and rescue.
SPEAKER_00: He intended it to point to mankind's ultimate desperation.
SPEAKER_00: Your desperation and my desperation.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, according to Exodus chapter 12, verse 46, God required the Passover lamb to be a sacrifice whose bones were not broken.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, he keeps all his bones.
SPEAKER_00: Not one of them is broken.
SPEAKER_00: Now that was speaking of David.
SPEAKER_00: David was thinking of himself.
SPEAKER_00: But God was thinking of much more than David.
SPEAKER_00: And John quotes this in his gospel, telling us that Jesus, as the perfect Passover lamb, fulfilled this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Not one of his bones was broken, as our Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: How is it that God is able to redeem the life of his servants?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that God is able to rescue us from all evil?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that those who take refuge in him will not be condemned?
SPEAKER_00: How can we be ultimately rescued?
SPEAKER_00: It is only because a lamb hung on a cross and his bones were not broken.
SPEAKER_00: It is only through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God intended his rescue of David to be an image of his redemption of all of his children.
SPEAKER_00: It is only through Jesus that we are able to fully taste and see that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: If you have not come to faith in Jesus Christ alone, you cannot taste and see that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: But as you lift up your eyes to the cross, you see He is good.
SPEAKER_00: Because it is through Jesus that God has heard our cries for help.
SPEAKER_00: In light of all of eternity, all of the afflictions and the evils that we face in this world will be nothing because Jesus will ultimately deliver us from death and sin.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing can take us out of his protective grasp.
SPEAKER_00: And so David says, Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: David said, This poor man cried, and Yahweh heard him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: David's earthly rescue by the hand of God pictures God's work of rescuing his own for eternity through the sacrifice of his own son.
SPEAKER_00: Look to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Look to the cross, and you will taste and see that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning thanking you that we are not alone.
SPEAKER_00: We are not the first to experience desperate times.
SPEAKER_00: We're not the first to go through trials.
SPEAKER_00: We are not the first to look for help.
SPEAKER_00: But thank you for the great privilege of having a father who hears.
SPEAKER_00: But if we are honest, we do not expect our father to give up his unique son to die a death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: We do not expect to be rescued by the death of God.
SPEAKER_00: That surprises us.
SPEAKER_00: But it shows us the desperate need we were in.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us the depth of our sin and our need for deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord Jesus, as we come now to gather before you, to receive from a table elements that picture you.
SPEAKER_00: We long to see you.
SPEAKER_00: We long to taste the goodness that is there in your death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: We long to see that you are good and to know that because the tomb is empty, you can hear and deliver.
SPEAKER_00: We come to you recognizing our sinfulness.
SPEAKER_00: We confess to you that we have sinned against you.
SPEAKER_00: We have rebelled against your holiness, we have broken your commands.
SPEAKER_00: We have aimed at your target and fallen far short of the glory of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: But we come before you, before the Lord Jesus, claiming nothing but the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And we remember Him as the one who did it all, who paid for our deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: And we come and we worship Him together as delivered children, who give praise to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.