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June 9, 2022 8:00 am
I would prefer to be like David danced exuberantly, even though his wife mocked him for no I don't care what the unbelievers think about it. I want to sing out with my voice.
Why, because I thankful because I'm grateful because he helped me when I trusted were so glad you joined us on the truth with gone green founding pastor of truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio hi Bill Wright, and were continuing Don's message titled, confident in crisis based on Psalm 28.
Last time Don reminded us that God knows who belongs to him and who does not. He showed us how David responded to crisis in his life and how we can learn from his example. Don will bring us the conclusion of the message on today's broadcast will also provide you with some practical takeaways to store in your heart and mind always so friend have your Bible handy. Let's join gone green.
Now, as he continues teaching God's people. God's word from the truthful go back to Psalm one verse six. I want you to see. I could do this with almost every song because we said many many times that the subsequent 149 songs in some ways are simply in outworking of Psalm one verse six says the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Beloved, if you get worked up over what's happening in the world around you are in your personal life come back to this verse repeatedly all over and over again because they are in Psalm one verse six and Psalm one verse six you find the key to the moral universe. You see the outcome of everything that will ever happen. For those of us who know God who trust in Christ who belong to him. We can rest in its enough for us to be able to say based on the authority of God's inspired and inerrant word the Lord knows my way. He knows it all.
He knows that I'm trusting in him and he's the Lord. He is the faithful covenant keeping God. He is Yahweh he is who he is. I am who I am. That's who he is. He is a God of loyal love is a God of loyal to his set his love on me, it can only come out well for me. In the end, there is no other possible alternative ending, but that it comes out well for me. In the end, I rest in that you say to yourself I trust in that and someone says we don't you know anything about the world about what's happening around you. Can't you see that the world is changed and that things are shifting and God is silent. Where is your God now I don't have to be able to answer that question or to explain all the intricacies of God's providence or how he will ever bring this to pass to reverse those who seem to be strong and powerful.
Now I don't need to know there's one thing that I need to know in order to interpret the wickedness of the world around me and that is what Psalm 16 says at the end the way of the wicked will perish if it will end in destruction. It will come to naught. It will be overturned and when you know have that settled in your mind you have the the twin tracks that the train of your life can run on. On the one track. The Lord knows the way of the righteous. On the other track. The way of the wicked will perish.
We go forward in confidence and strength from that. And you know when you remember what the Lord said in places like first Samuel 16 verse seven, the God does not see as man sees for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart beloved.
What you should want is that in your heart when the Lord looks there he finds a settled confidence even in times of crisis that says Lord I'm resting on your promises. I'm confident in your holiness and confident in your power and your faithfulness in your goodness that you will remember me, even as you deal with the wicked Lord that's all I need to know and not be ashamed of having a simple, by which I mean a unified, wholehearted faith, even if the world mocks it how care you you care I don't care. We can we can rest on the promises of God like a weaned child rests on his mother's chest and find our security and confidence in the one holds us in his hands now without certainty of God's justice established in his mind go back to Psalm 28 now and will shift into the second half of the Psalm here you see a new attitude that emerges here in said the first half was David in crisis here in the second half we see David in confidence, and this is going to lead us straight back to our Lord Jesus Christ. In the end, David expressed his prayer and now he has a revived and a renewed demeanor. He blesses God because he anticipates an answer from God. Verse six says, Blessed be the Lord because he has heard the voice of my supplication.
This shows confidence. God is no longer silent what David says is is that his voice of praise rises up, not from altered circumstances, but from a renewed confidence that God has heard his prayer. It is enough for David. It is enough for us to know that the omnipotent God of the universe has heard and received our prayer favorably.
If God has heard us and God has promised to respond to us, then we can rest in that.
Even if nothing changes, there is that confidence that says God is not silent God's character gives me confidence he has heard my believing prayer Christ has intervened at the cross for me and in the language in the argument of the apostle Paul. If this God is for me. If this Christ is on my side who can successfully be against me is trusting God alone in market. Beloved.
It's trusting God alone before we know the outcome of the circumstance. David says he heard my voice.
That makes me want to praise him with verse seven. Notice that the joyful exuberance of his response.
God's heard my prayer and all of a sudden his heart is lifted up as if if on that though the wings of a multiple engine kit and is his heart soars into space beyond the gravity of his circumstances, and moves into an orbit of trust and confidence in Yahweh, says verse seven, the Lord is my strength and my shield my heart trusts in him and I am helped. Therefore my heart exults in with my song I shall thank him. You know, it reminds me reminds me of one of the profits we studied at the very very beginning of truth community and Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 17 you don't have to turn their take too long to find it. Then Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 17 Habakkuk the prophet is praying. He's anticipating a judgment coming from the hands of the Chaldeans are going to sweep in and bring God's judgment upon his disobedient people and Habakkuk praise. He says though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vine. Though the yield of the olive should fail in the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, though there been thing to sustain my earthly existence. He says, verse 18.
Yet, I will exalt in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. God alone is enough to give strength and joy to your heart, despite whatever you're facing. In fact, beloved, I would encourage you to to this extent, and were not revealed, from the clear teaching of Scripture. I would hesitate to say something like this to you but this is where your spiritual life can and should and must go when God seems to have withdrawn every earthly joy and comfort from your life, when sorrow is predominating in your life when there are threats external and internal to your well-being and you don't know where the answer is going to come from when you don't know where the next mortgage payment is going to be made from when you don't know any of those things. When your nearest and dearest has been taken from you in death and everything in life seems to be barren. Beloved.
What I would have you see from God's word here is that that God has presented you an opportunity. I wish someone had been around 25 years ago to tell me this. It would help me and save me a whole lot of trouble God is presenting to you an opportunity in those barren times for you to enter into a new depth of understanding of his complete and utter sufficiency to satisfy every longing of your soul.
He is sufficient to satisfy the longings of your heart to such a point that you can exalt and be joyful in him. Even when the circumstances do not change and what we see and that is we see how great and how lofty and how sufficient our God is how great and how lofty and how sufficient our Christ is how he satisfies every longing of the human heart.
When our hearts are satisfied in him. In those times when we exalt and give thanks to him in those times then God's glorious put beautifully on display through your broken heart. I don't say it lightly say on the authority of God's word says in verse eight, the Lord is their strength and he is a saving defense to his anointed. He said there at the end of verse seven he said with my song I shall thank him with his heart now resting again in God's protection with his heart satisfied once more in the sufficiency of the God to whom he belongs.
He gives exuberant thanks God has answered him in his distress, God, my heart is my heart is uncertain.
I'm in a crisis here. Don't be silent.
To me, verse six God is given them his answer. He's found that inner strength again, what does he do in verse seven he does that which you and I sadly too often fail to remember to do. He goes back and he says what God thank you God. I'm grateful that you've answered my prayer that when I cried out to you from the head and when my heart attempted me to think that you were silent in turning away from me and I cried out to you. You and your mercy reached down and you showed faithfulness to me you renewed my heart.
You restored me. You protected me. You brought me through. Even through the taunts of those who were delighted to see me fail God. I remember that God you say to yourself, God, I remember those times.
I remember those prayers of desperation.
I remember the blackness and silence of which everything seemed to be in. Oh God, I remember how you answered me. I remember how you brought me up out of the pit and oh God. All I can say is thank you, exuberantly, joyfully, gratefully, Lord.
I say thank you for what you've done. That's appropriate. Isn't that what you should do when God shown that kind of favor and faithfulness to isn't it appropriate for us to go back and give thanks to be resolved in heart with my song I shall thank him. Interesting isn't it. He says with my song I shall thank him.
I know sometimes I might sound a little bit like a broken record when were getting ready to sing and I say sing out sing like you mean it. That kind of thing will there's a reason for that. Your exuberant singing unrestrained lifting of your voice is an appropriate way to return thanks to God. We should not be ashamed to sing out with. You've got a good voice or not we should not be ashamed to sing out our church should be marked in the that the joy in the exuberance of our singing should simply be a reflection of the deep inward gratitude that we have an song gives voice to the thanks that we have when we sing and so yes we lift our voice.
No, we don't care what people think about us. We don't care if people come in and from the from the street and think what you know.
Restrain yourself and all but I would prefer to be like David danced exuberantly, even though his wife mocked him for no I don't I don't care what the unbelievers think about it. I want to sing out with my voice. Why, because I'm thankful because you say to yourself because I'm grateful because he helped me when I trusted in him. Our hearts individually and corporately become such that we can't help ourselves.
You're going to give me opportunity to sing how I'm going to raise my voice because my heart is insulting and with my song all thank him the way that I engage my heart and the song will be an expression of the sincerity and the depth of my thanks.
Should we sing that way. Kevin I think will sing I will. I knew Kevin would say yes. Now watch what happens here from this position of personal gratitude. David gradually extends out his thanks in verse eight he says the Lord is their strength and he is a saving defense to his anointed, his anointed here thinking about.
I don't believe not thinking in messianic terms about Christ is the anointed one. That's that happens in the Psalms. But what happens is you go into verse nine. As you see that he's thinking about the people of God, collectively, as his anointed.
In verse nine he says save your people, and bless your inheritance. So where he goes in verse nine makes us think that he's he's thinking about a plurality of God's people in mind in the Lord is their strength, God is a saving defense to his anointed God can be trusted by his people to deliver them in their distress. He is a saving defense. He is like a high walled fortress that you run into and you are safe when you trust in him and look what David does as his mind expands out to the people of God. Now that now that he's confident he's come out of his crisis and is confident he expands.
He's grown spiritually so that now he is interceding on behalf of the entirety of the people of God what he prays for them. Verse nine he says God save your people, and bless your inheritance be their shepherd also and carried them forever. What what a magnificent magnanimous heart. The appointed king and representative of the people of God has just issued on their behalf.
It's not just David who needed God saving protection. He looks out is there as their king is their representative and says says God your whole people need this kind of protection in and help that you've just given to me and so don't just keep it to me Lord, give it to all of your people, spread the blessing around strengthened them in their trials and tribulations because God I want them to have the same confidence with which I pray to you now myself I would have.
He says I would have all of the people of God. Know your sufficiency to this great extent where they just spontaneously burst out with gratitude.
Blessed be the name of the Lord because he is our strength and shield interesting. Save your people.
God looks on us as his own as his inheritance is that which belongs to him.
We the people of God are a precious possession to him, not for our own sakes for the glory of God and for the glory of Christ.
God cares about the well-being of his people and guarantees that he will ensure it until the end. And because God is like that. David could say God draw upon your character and save your people and bless them and he could pray that with every confidence that God would fulfill his request and be good to them. Be there shepherd. He says carry them forever.
Hold onto your hat how fully did God answer this prayer. How great was the fulfillment so great and so perfect that only the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ could exhaust the meaning that the spirit inspired David to pray as he closed out the song. What did Jesus say about himself. I am the good shepherd in Christ Jesus our Lord. We see the fulfillment of this we see God in the person of Christ being the shepherd which laid down his life for the sheep. How fully does God answer the prayer of Psalm 28 verse nine carry them forever.
Jesus said in that same chapter John 10 verse 28. He said no one will pluck them from my so he comes to us as a shepherd as one who guides us and protects us and provides for us protecting us from every enemy providing for our every need, and doing so in a way that secures our permanent and eternal blessing. He carries us forever. He carries us through this life and when this life is over.
He bears us up and carries them with himself into heaven, where sin and death info and taunts separation and loneliness will never strike again. David probably didn't see the fullness of this but when the spirit of God prompted him to write these words, God knew how he would fulfill these words. Jesus Christ save his people at the cross Jesus Christ as their shepherd through life and Jesus Christ will carry us forever.
You see the career of Christ. Even in Psalm 28 verse nine. So Christ Jesus our Lord came to save us came to save you if you belong to him not only from physical peril from spiritual peril as well. His death and resurrection secured our eternal blessing and until we receive that inheritance in full.
He protects and guards assess his sheep with intimate care U in a time where God seems silent to you, take heart from the song David was where you are at now. Don't give up. God hears your cry if he delays in answer. It's only so that you can exercise faith and enter into an even more abundant realization of the glory of who he is, so that your capacity to praise and give thanks to him would be expanded and deepened beyond what it would've been if you had not known this trial find yourself, our God is good always. He is gracious always carries us always trust your rock trust in photograph, leave it to Psalms like Psalm 28 to boost your confidence in God's character and goodness refer to the often even before you face a crisis pastor Don Greene will have another powerful message from Scripture for you on our next broadcast. Join us then you're on the truth pulpit right now though Don's back your in studio with some closing thoughts, my friend.
It's always meaningful for me to be able to preach God's word to God's people and to share with you here on the radio recently I completed a series that is one of my all-time favorites.
It's called the Bible and Roman Catholicism. It was several messages designed to test Catholic teaching by what Scripture says we like to share a copy of that with you a full complete CD album of 10 messages just go to our website and requested or you'll find the downloads we just want you to have this material at no cost as our gift and ministry to you. Just visit us at the truth. Pulpit.com and click on radio offers to learn more. That's the truth. Pulpit.com.
I'm Bill Wright will see you next time on the truth pulpit as Don Greene continues teaching God's people