Speaker: Well, good morning.
Uh, my name is Pastor Marc, and it is a privilege to come before you
this morning and open up God's Word.
If you don't know anything about me, uh, I oversee our kids ministry, uh, along
with a number of other things here at Compass Bible Church, and it is a joy, and
God has been kind to allow me to do that, uh, since the beginning of this church.
Well, I remember many things from my childhood.
Many things, many things.
But there's one thing that sticks in my mind in a unique way, and that is
the hugs that my mom would give me.
I can remember those so well.
I can remember running up to her.
I can remember even the, some of the clothes that she used to have.
I can remember how she smelled.
I can remember how it felt to have her arms around me.
I, I can just picture that vividly.
I can just picture that in my mind.
Of course, she gave me many hugs.
She gave me many hugs, and I, I don't remember every single one of them.
But there are a few, in fact, that I remember very well.
I remember, uh, when I came back from summer camp one year,
and, you know, summer camp as a kid can be, uh, challenging.
It can be very fun, but it can have it, its ups and downs.
And I remember running up to her and giving her a hug.
Uh, that hug was so sweet.
I remember another time I had-- I played trumpet, and I had an
audition that didn't go very well.
And, uh, I remember walking out of the, the classroom where
that audition happened, going to the car, and my mom gets out of
the car and gives me a big hug.
She could tell already that, that it hadn't gone well.
Or I remember a basketball game where my coach was, was super mad at me.
Even in high school, I remember getting a hug from my mom after that,
and I was all sweaty and a mess.
I remember that well.
Why do I remember that?
Why is that something that's important to me?
Well, those hugs represent something, right?
They, they're a thing, but they represented something to me as a kid.
And, and I didn't have some sort of philosophical treaty on why those
hugs meant so much at that time.
But I can tell you, looking back, that those hugs represented so
many different good things to me.
They represented stability, comfort, love, assurance In my mom's hugs,
I could find some of those things.
And in our life, even as adults, there's a lot of uncertainty, right?
You go to work and one day, one day somebody's nice to you
and the next day they're not.
Not too different from summer camp, right?
You have projects at work that, that don't go very well, right?
They, they don't really land and people aren't very happy with it, right?
There are all sorts of uncertainties in our life, and we, even as adults,
have a desire for stability and assurance and comfort and love.
I was looking for something in my mom who God was kind to give me in part, but
I was looking for something in my mom that really is ultimately found in only
one person, and that's who we are going to be looking at today from Psalm 119.
So if you will open your Bibles, we'll be looking at Psalm 119 verse 89
through 96, and we're gonna discover who this person is, and I'm sure you
already know, that provides for us the stability, the comfort, the enduring
love that we desperately need to deal with the challenges of this life.
I hope you have your Bible open in front of you.
Psalm 119 verse 89 says this: "Forever, forever, O Lord, your
Word is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Your faithfulness endures to all generations.
You have established the earth, and it stands fast.
By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants."
We'll stop there.
We'll make our way through the rest of the passage as the sermon
progresses, but let's stop there.
Isn't it amazing that we serve a God who has been forever?
The psalmist can describe him as somebody who has been forever and
who has a Word that is firmly fixed in the heavens, who has faithfulness
that endures to all generations.
And that's our first point for this morning, which is point number one,
marvel at the Word that stands forever.
Marvel at the Word that comes from God that stands forever.
That very first word of this passage is important, the word forever.
What does that mean?
We, we, we can throw that word around all the time.
We c- we can use that word for all sorts of things, but do
we really know what it means?
I, I can think of a time when I was in high school.
It was my senior year, and I had this group of friends.
I was one of four friends.
I had other friends, don't worry.
But I was in this one group of four friends, and we were
really close-knit, really tight.
And I remember there was a point when we were sitting in the driveway of one
of my friend's house, and it was late at night, probably too late at night.
And I remember thinking to myself as a high school kid, "This is just…
This is the best.
There can't be anything better than these guys and this, this situation.
I, I love this."
And I remember talking about how w- as a group we were gonna
be friends forever, right?
We, we…
Yeah, we had to go to different colleges, and we were gonna
move to different places, but we were gonna be friends forever.
Nothing was gonna change.
Well, it took about nine months for all of that to unravel.
It took very little time for none of that to be true.
But we use that word all the time, right?
We talk about our forever home.
It's like, "Oh, we finally found the house that provides all the things we
need and has all the rooms we need and has all the special features that we need.
This is our forever home."
We use that term, and then we end up selling the house a year later because of
whatever reason that comes into our life, or we find out that the house actually
wasn't something that we hoped it to be.
In fact, we even think of our marriages sometimes as something that is forever.
And of course, we want them to last in a human sense forever.
But we think about them, and we can be tempted to make them
something that is a forever that, that isn't actually real, right?
The word forever for us is something that we, we think differently.
And we can be in trouble if we take our human understanding of what it
means for something to be forever and then import it into who God is.
If we take our kind of short-sighted understanding of forever and we
apply that definition to who God is, we're gonna be in, in deep trouble.
Forever for us is not what it is for God.
Think about the fact that in fact God made time.
Time, the seconds and the minutes and the hours and the years that go by in
your life, is part of his creation.
He is the one who authored every one of those moments.
He's not subject to those moments.
He's not inside of those moments.
And we can think of him as somehow inside of it because we are.
Because we are humans.
He created us in a finite way, and we are not like him.
We are not like him.
Uh, Saint Augustine said this question.
He said, "What was God doing before he made the heavens and the Earth?
What was he doing before that?"
And of course, he argues and, uh, gives a, a wonderful answer to that, but it's
a good question to ask because it helps us re- realize that we think about
those sort of things in those terms.
For us, we were before.
There was a before we were born, and then there is an after we die, right?
There is a before and an after for, for almost everything in our life.
But that is not true for God, and we need to make sure we're not thinking of God
as like some sort of timeline and saying, "Where, where are we on that timeline?
Where, you know, where am I in my few moments of life
on that eternity timeline?"
Eternity or forever for God is something different than what we experience.
Yes, we will live forever.
We will live into eternity.
But even that understanding of eternity is based in the fact that we had a beginning.
We had a start, and that is not the case for God.
And so the psalmist can say, "Forever, O Lord.
Forever, O Lord."
And we need to make sure we understand who we are talking about and who
his character is so that we don't misunderstand what the psalmist is saying.
Because he says forever, what forever?
Your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Your word is firmly fixed in the heavens forever.
Let me just begin by unpacking or starting to think about what he means by your word.
You and I serve a God who speaks.
You and I serve a God who speaks, and you see this throughout scripture.
I could go on and on and on about this, but even think about Genesis chapter
one and how everything was created.
God said, "Let there be light."
He didn't use his hands.
He didn't do some sort of mathematical formula.
He didn't do anything e- He said, "Let there be light."
He spoke and all of this was created.
Or think about what the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 1:1-2.
It says this: Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke.
God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days,
He has spoken to us by His Son.
That's an amazing thing that we have a God who not just speaks generically or
somewhere else, but He even speaks to us.
He speaks to us through His word.
Also think about even times in the Bible where He uses His
voice for salvation purposes.
If you've been doing the daily Bible reading with us, and I hope
you have been, think of a recent reading of the conversion of Saul.
Right?
As Saul is on his way to persecute the Christians, Jesus comes to him and Saul
heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
And then Saul responds, "Who are you, Lord?"
And Jesus says, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."
So God even speaks in such miraculous ways as that.
Matthew 24:35 says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but
my words will not pass away."
God's words are fixed in the heavens.
How is that possible?
How is it possible that God's words are fixed in a permanent way in the heavens?
Is that something you've thought about?
'Cause we, we take God's Word and we say this, "We believe God's Word,
we trust God's Word," and we should.
But have you thought about why?
Why is it something that we should trust?
Why is the psalmist able to describe his words as fixed in the heavens with
permanence and unchanging, everlasting truth and reality embedded in them?
Why is that?
Well, it's because God is, is not like that, not like us.
We've already talked about this a little bit, but He speaks differently than we do.
And I don't just mean that we speak with a human mouth and He speaks
with a divine mouth, but He speaks in a way that is different than us.
We speak often because things are changing around us.
We speak in response to things often, if not always, right?
The kids are disobedient, and so we speak words of correction
and help to them, right?
Our boss is wondering about a project that isn't going well, and so we're
trying to explain to him what's going on.
We often are people who are speaking because we're trying to
deal with the uncertainty and the fluctuations that happen in life.
But God is, is not like that, right?
God is different from us.
When He speaks, He speaks not on a dependence of what has happened today
or on what we necessarily think.
He, He's not dependent on the situation to respond to us.
He speaks, and His speaking comes from Himself.
God, in every way, is not dependent on us.
He's not changed by us.
He's not prompted by us in, in a way that determines who He is.
John 5:26 says, "For as the Father has life in himself," the life in himself is
what allows Him to be able to speak in a way where things are fixed in the heavens.
One of the things I have to do as a father is be very careful about when I announce
to our kids that we are gonna go get ice cream Because what always seems to happen?
I say, "Oh, kids, we'll go get ice cream tomorrow."
Well, then, you know, doesn't actually happen because something
went terribly wrong, and there's maybe a mess in the bathroom, or
there is some- something happens, uh, that I need to address, right?
And I promise them we're gonna go get ice cream, and it doesn't happen.
And so what I have to do is make sure that I'm careful to tell them
that we're gonna go get ice cream when I'm pretty certain that we can.
But, but even then, even then, I don't know, are we gonna
have a flat tire on the way?
I can't, I can't say that sort of thing with absolute certainty.
But God is a God who isn't dependent on all of those variables, and when He
speaks, His word is, is a sure promise that is absolute and definitive.
And that is why it fi- uh, that is why the psalmist can say that it is a fixed word.
A fixed word rests on a faithful God, which the psalmist addresses, right?
In verse ninety, "Your faithfulness endures to all generations."
Your faithfulness endures to all generations.
Have you ever thought about how God doesn't wake up and feel anxiety?
He doesn't wake up and go, "Oh, this day, I don't know how it's gonna end.
I don't know if, if it's gonna go well with Marc.
I don't know what he's gonna do.
We'll see how it goes."
He's never, ever felt that.
He's never felt a fraction of that.
He's never felt FOMO.
He's never felt the fear of missing out.
He's never been like, "Oh, man, if I was only invited to that prayer meeting."
Uh, you know, it's not something that He has ever experienced, right?
So His faithfulness is not dependent on anything but who He is.
He's never been tired.
There's never been a time when you have prayed to Him- And he is asleep.
There's never been a time when you prayed to him and he's even,
like, less aware of your prayer.
I, I think, again, of my kids.
There's many times when they say things to me, and I, I, I miss it.
Right?
There's times when you probably are at work, and your boss or your coworker
some- says something, and you need Copilot or whatever AI to go back and look at
what was said because you weren't quite awake, and you hadn't had your Monster
energy drink or your Alani or whatever it may have been to keep you awake.
We're going camping.
Lord willing, we'll even be camping tonight, and the campsite that we
picked is right up against the lake.
It's right up against the lake.
F- from the pictures, we've got a campsite, and then there's
the lake immediately next to it.
And Julia, my wife, and I have already talked about how we're gonna have
to pay really close attention to everything going on because we have
a crawling one-year-old and a crazy three-year-old, and then there's more
of them, too, that are older than that.
But we already are talking about how we're gonna have to pay really close attention.
Why?
Because there's gonna be fights that we have to resolve, right?
There's gonna be, there's gonna be some sort of issue with something
going on with the tent, and it's gonna pull our attention away from watching
the little ones by the lake, right?
Or maybe our tent will blow over.
That's never happened to us before.
It has.
Um, and we'll be waking up tired with everything s- soaking wet, and then maybe
our attention and our guard will be down.
But that's not like God.
Every moment of His faithfulness is identically the same and
maximally faithful, and that is based on His character.
And so the psalmist can describe Him that way because of who He is
and what a good, good thing that is.
But he doesn't end there, right?
He says, in the second half of verse ninety into ninety-one, he says, "You have
established the earth, and it stands fast.
By your appointment, they stand fast this day, for all things are your servants."
We serve a God who is able to sustain and uphold this world.
Everything and everyone is upheld by Him.
It's not as though if He stopped that things would kinda fall apart, right?
And, and we'd have a bunch of problems.
It's not as though, like, if He stopped sustaining us and upholding the w- the
universe that, like, oh, we'd have, like, thirty seconds to say goodbye.
It would be in a moment.
His care and His authority over everything that happens in every atom
of existence is perfectly sustaining in a uniform, consistent way.
Think of Hebrews chapter one.
I already read verse one and two, but Hebrews 1:3 says, "He," speaking of
Jesus, "is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature,"
and He upholds the universe by what?
By the word of His power
Or consider Psalm 33:8-9.
It says, "Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
For he spoke and it came to be.
He commanded and it stood firm."
He spoke into being and he keeps speaking into being.
He's not a watchmaker who started a clock and has let it run
Think about even the chair that you're sitting in.
Look at the chair you're sitting in.
Unless you're, like, wiggling around a bunch, which maybe you are, it's still.
It's, it's permanent.
It doesn't look like it's moving.
But your chair, the one you are sitting in, the plastic chair
you're sitting in, is made up of atoms that are a storm of motion.
And I'm oversimplifying a little bit here, but they're held together by raw power.
The bonds that hold together the atoms in your chair are incredibly powerful.
They are a storm of motion, and if one of those bonds were
to be released, there is…
Again, I'm oversimplifying, but there's enough power in your chair
to rip apart our entire planet.
But you've never picked up one of these chairs and then set it down too
hard and been worried about our planet getting destroyed, because God is the
one, is the one who upholds it all.
He is the God who upholds everything, including the very chair that you sit in.
What an amazing God we serve, and we should marvel at Him.
God's Word is eternal and unchanging because of who He is, who He is.
Well, let's continue to read.
Look back at your Bibles.
I hope you still have Psalm 119, verse 92 and 93 now is what we're gonna look at.
It says there, the psalmist writes, "If your law had not been my
delight, not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.
I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life.
You have given me life."
Well, what do we see here?
The psalmist is delighting in God's words, right?
He uses the word law.
He uses the word precepts.
He is delighting in the law and the precepts.
But what makes him delight in it?
The life, the protection that he can be found, that can be found in His Word.
And that's our second point for this morning, which is point number two,
delight in life from God's Word.
Delight in life from God's Word.
What does that word delight mean?
What does it mean to delight in something?
Maybe you delight in, in…
Maybe you delight in fast cars.
I know there's a couple of you who do that.
Maybe you delight in your grandkids.
Maybe you just love your grandkids and you find delight in them.
Maybe you delight in your wife.
Maybe you delight in Texas barbecue or California In-N-Out.
There's many things that God has given us to delight in, and that's a good thing.
But ultimately, all of those things are a gift from Him, and
ultimately, those things can only be delightful to us if we have life.
Delight.
Why delight?
Well, Pastor Rod has a, a great sermon from last week where he will help you.
If you weren't here, you should go back and look at it.
U-use what he taught last week to build into your life delight in His Word.
But I wanna focus specifically on the life that can be found in His
Word, and the delight that we should meditate, or the, the meditation
that should produce in us delight.
Think about Jeremiah 15:16.
This is such a funny passage to me, but it, it's amazing.
It says, Jeremiah says, "Your words were found and I ate them, and your
words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called
by your name, O Lord God of hosts."
Uh, obviously the prescription is not to eat your Bible.
I, I mean, I guess if you … I, I … If you've got a CSB
maybe, maybe you should try it.
I haven't tried the CSB or the LSB.
Maybe you should try that.
But that's not the prescription, right?
But what, what is the delight that is found, right?
It's the internalization of the hope that is found, right?
And it's also, Jeremiah observes, it's the connection that those
words of God make to him, right?
If the words of God were just out in the abyss somewhere
else, what would it matter?
But we as Christians should be pleased and excited and find delight in God's Word
because they relate to us, because they are words that are spoken to us, right?
Without these words, I would have perished in my affliction
God has brought you His words.
It's an amazing thing.
By His words, you know things.
By scripture, you know things.
We know some of the things that the psalmist knows.
We can share in our understanding of that.
For example, we know by his words that He created the heavens and the Earth.
Think of Genesis 1 and 3.
By his words, we know that God is holy, that He is unlike us, that He is pure,
that He is separate, and we can look at a passage like Isaiah 6:3 to know that.
By his words, we also know that He is just.
He is a just God.
He doesn't overlook sin.
He doesn't just turn away and ignore the evil that is in this life, and
we can see that, and the psalmist can see that in a place like Exodus 34:6.
We also know by his word that He cursed the ground, that He cursed
childbirth, that He cursed humanity because of the sin of Adam and
Eve, and you know that by his word
But you also know by his word something the psalmist didn't know at
that time, is that God sent his son.
By his word, you know that the God man was sent to be a baby, to live
a perfect and blameless life like Hebrews 4:15 helps us understand.
You know by his word that God, that Jesus prays for you, Hebrews 7:25
You also know by his word that a crown of thorns was pressed into
Jesus' head and that his precious blood ran down over his shoulders
and dripped off of his nose for you.
And by his word, you can hear of the nails that were hammered through his hands and
his feet, and of the moment that he was lifted up on a cross to die for your sins.
But also, by his word, you can hear the dec- declaration of victory
that comes from Jesus' own mouth as he says, "It is finished."
And you know by his words that if you believe in him, if you believe that Jesus
is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, you can be saved from your sins.
And you know by his word that there is a promise to come.
There's a promise in eternity to come where you will be called his sons and
his daughters, and you will dwell with God where there will be no more pain
All of this is by His words.
He has given you life by His words.
Christian, do you remember these things?
Is this part of who you are?
Does the gospel make its way into all of your life?
Do you preach the gospel to yourself after you've sinned?
Do you remind yourself of what your sin means?
Of what God has done for you?
Of the forgiveness and the hope that you have in Him?
How about when you experience a period of joy?
Do you tell yourself the gospel?
Does the gospel tell you that you experience joy because of who God is?
And because of His Son, you can experience true and pure and
good joy that is everlasting.
Is that something that is part of how your mind works?
Does it reach into your home?
Do you have conversations at the dinner table with your kids or with your spouse
or with your grandkids about the gospel?
How did the gospel impact the situation at work this week?
Where is the hope in this terrible situation?
Where is the joy in this good news that we have received?
Is that something that happens in your home at your table?
Do you memorize it?
If the gospel is this good news, if the words of God that are based on His
character and who He is are really what they are, then do you memorize God's Word?
You should, because these are the words that can bring you life.
Even the psalmist, right?
"If I had not forgotten…
If I…"
Excuse me.
"If I had forgotten, I would have perished."
Can you present the gospel?
Can you, if I were to ask you right now, give me a robust explanation
based in scripture of the gospel?
Is that something you can do?
If it is indeed the words of life, then that's something that you ought to be
excited to do, and you ought to invest the time and the energy to make the gospel
part of your life, even as a Christian.
The Christian life is not defined by hearing the gospel the first
time and then ignoring it as we go on with everything else.
The gospel remains central to everything we are, to who we are, and to what we do.
Unbelievers in the room, if you are an unbeliever, if you are somebody
who doesn't know, I want you to know that today you can hear and you have
heard from scripture God's words that are sure, that are certain, that
are an absolute promise, unlike any promise that any human could make.
He is offering you life this very morning.
Do not leave this place until you are confident you understand and
have heard the words of His life.
Find another believer after service and ask them about this.
Make sure that you can have the hope that can be found in
the gospel even this morning
Well, that impacts all of our life because God's word is eternal and
unchanging, and through his word, he shows his love for you in the gospel.
Does that matter this week?
Does that change even this afternoon?
Well, of course it does.
But we live in the life that we live.
We live in a fallen world
And it does in fact impact our life this week, and the psalmist doesn't miss it.
Look with me now at verse ninety-four, and we'll finish out this section
of one nineteen together, looking ninety-four through ninety-six.
Verse ninety-four says, "I am yours.
Save me.
I'm yours.
Save me, for I have sought your precepts.
The wicked lie in wait to destroy me, but I consider your testimonies.
I've seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad."
The psalmist here identifies that there's problems in this life.
He is not saying, "I'm not yours.
Save me."
He's saying, "I am yours, and I need saving by your hand."
He recognizes that he needs to be saved, and he identifies a couple areas, right?
He talks about the wicked.
"The wicked lie in wait to destroy me, and I have seen a limit to all perfection."
What is he saying there?
In contrast to the second half of that phrase, "But your commandments, your
commandment is exceedingly broad," what he is saying is that this life has limits.
There are limits to this life.
God provides protection and comfort in this life.
But ultimately, the psalmist's prayer request is gonna be
answered in the life to come.
And that's our third point for this morning, which is crave the
promised kingdom that stands forever.
Crave the promised kingdom that stands forever.
I am yours.
Save me.
So he says, "I am yours.
Save me."
So there is a sense in which all salvation is spiritual.
I don't wanna try to separate them too much, but he, the psalmist, is identifying
that he is someone who belongs to God, and he calls on him to save him, and
he talks about the wicked in this life.
I, I think of Exodus fourteen thirty.
Again, uh, there's a spiritual salvation going on.
But even as we look towards the promised kingdom, there is ways in which God
provides and protects for us today, right?
Exodus fourteen thirty, as the people are leaving the promised land, uh, this
is what is said: "Thus, the Lord saved Israel, saved Israel that day from the
hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore."
God is a God who provides protection for us in this life.
We can go really quickly and fall into the ditch of the health, wealth, and
prosperity gospel, which says if we just do the right thing, we say the
right thing, we give, we pray, we do all these things, then God is gonna give us
health, wealth, and prosperity, right?
We can so quickly fall into that.
But I also don't want us to be so hesitant of falling into that ditch
that we don't fall-- or that we fall into the other ditch, which is
that we deny and reject any of God's promises to care for us in this life.
His care for us is always good.
It's not exactly how we want it to be, but God has promised to care for
us even in this life, and that is a foretaste, a reminder, a down payment,
as it were, of the promise that he will fulfill in eternity for us as believers.
Think about your coworkers.
Maybe you have coworkers.
I know I've talked to several of you who have hostile coworkers
who are aggressive with you.
They, they don't like what you believe.
They antagonize you.
They ask you questions, not really 'cause they wanna reconcile things in their own
mind, but because they wanna get to you.
They wanna convince you perhaps that you're wrong.
I know some of you sit across desks from people like this.
Maybe you don't go home and say, "Oh, these wicked enemies of mine,"
but they are standing in opposition to who God is and to who God and
what God has done in your life.
Maybe you have kids in school, and even here in Texas, there, there
are situations where the authors of textbooks that end up in the curriculum
of our school are pushing hard against things that are not true, pushing
hard against the truth of who God is.
And even in a place like Texas, we can face opposition, we can face enemies, as
it were, even in subtle ways like that.
Or maybe you have family members, and this can be really difficult.
Maybe you have family members in your immediate family or maybe l- your
extended family who are opposed to you, who don't believe what you do, who don't
understand why you're invested in your church and in evangelism the way that
you are, and they are maybe antagonistic.
Maybe they don't wanna talk to you.
Maybe they push you away and you suffer in that way.
It's also the reality that we see in Job chapter one.
If, again, if you've been doing the daily Bible reading, I, I hope you
have read chapter one, and you'll see there that God allows Satan to
go after physical realities for Job.
It could be that you're just bad with your finances.
It could be.
It could be that you Uber Eat too much.
That could be the…
That really could be.
And I don't want you to think all, all opposition when it comes
to my finances is spiritual.
And if you do Uber Eat too much, come and talk to us.
We'll, we'll help you.
But there is a possibility that your finances are constantly under
attack because there's spiritual warfare going on, that you have an…
the enemy after you in that way It could also be that your health is
constantly under attack and you get diagnosis after diagnosis, and it
could be that maybe you do just need to eat better and exercise more.
But it could also be that you have an enemy that's after you in this life
trying to seek you, to destroy you.
So we need to make sure we don't forget that reality.
And we can go to worldly solutions for these things, right?
We can say, "I'm gonna go to HR."
Well, often I don't think we even go to HR because we wonder if it's gonna be
worth our time even for a moment, right?
Or we go to the school board.
Every one of us has gone to the school board, right?
And gone to the meeting, got in front of the mic and said, "I don't like
this and I don't like that," right?
We haven't, because there's a limit to those meetings and their effectiveness
in these things, and we know that, right?
That doctors can care for us.
They can provide meaningful care, but they can't permanently keep you alive.
There's a limit to their ability to care for you Y- your retirement account could
go to zero or run out before you need it.
There is a limit to all of these things, but there is no
limit to who God is, right?
Remember, His character, who He is, is the source of all of these promises.
They're not dependent on the situation.
They're not dependent on your boss saying this or that, or this textbook being
selected, or your retirement account going up in a perfect rate year after year.
When God cares for us, even in this life, it is based on who He is.
It is based on who He is.
Think of Matthew 11:28 and 29.
He-- which Jesus says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls."
Or think of Luke 12:29-31 that says, "And do not seek what you are
to eat and what you are to drink."
Don't seek those things, and don't be worried about them, "For all the nations
of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
Instead, seek his kingdom, and he will add these things to you."
So even in this life, we get a foretaste of what is to come, and
what is to come is the promised kingdom that will last forever.
And that promised kingdom is something that you can be confident in and sure in
because of who God is in His character, because He's a God who's faithful from
generation to generation, because He's a God who's eternal and lasts forever.
Because of that, you can hope in that kingdom.
Have you ever thought about the fact that, at least in theory, what
if you've spent a hundred years in heaven, and then God decides,
"Actually, Marc's kind of annoying.
He's gone."
Oh, what, what a terrifying reality that would be.
But we don't serve a God who's like that.
We serve a God who has made a sure and certain promise to you.
He has made a sure and certain promise to you about eternity, and it is not
based on anything except who He is, and we should find enormous relief in that
Revelation 21, I know you likely know this well, but just hear this in light of that.
He will wipe away every tear from their eye.
Every tear, right?
Not just some of them.
He is able to wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.
Any of those things anymore, for the former things have passed away.
And ultimately, the psalmist's request for salvation comes through the
eternal kingdom that is promised to us.
And don't forget that even into eternity, you are going to need
God to be the God he is today.
You're gonna need him desperately to be a God who is indeed eternal, who
is a God who speaks and is unshaken, a God who is faithful and enduring.
And yes, even in the new heavens and the new earth, he will need to
continue to be a God for our sake who upholds the new heavens and the
new earth by the power of his word.
God's word is eternal and unchanging, and it tells you of a promise to come
Well, I grew up, uh, going back to another childhood memory.
I grew up in Albuquerque.
Uh, everybody knows where Albuquerque is, right?
Big city, lots of things going on there.
No?
Okay.
It's not a big city.
It is a city, though.
It's, it's not just a mountain town, and I say that because Albuquerque,
if you've been there, is right up against the Sandia Mountains.
The r- the city is right up against that, and they're imposing.
They're, they're big.
At sunset, they're beautiful orange and purples and reds.
They're right up against the city.
And as a kid, it was a comfort to me.
It was a comfort to me.
It made it easy to learn which way was east, 'cause the mountains are
in the east, and then I could figure out what north, west, and south were.
But it was, it was a sense of permanence, and we don't have that here.
Do, do you even know which way is north right now?
Do you have any sense of that?
Maybe some of you do, but you don't, we don't know that, right?
We don't have that sense.
Uh, the water towers might help a little bit, but they're not quite the same.
But God in our life should be like those mountains, right?
He is unmoving.
He is unshaken.
He's imposing, and He is a rock for us.
He's should be fixed in our life to s- guide us, to steady us, to provide us
the stability and the confidence that we need for this life and for the next.
God's Word stands forever.
It gives you life, and it secures a f- future for you that is everything
that you can and need to delight in.
Let me pray for us as we close.
Lord, thank you for this morning.
Thank you f- that You are a God who is the God You say You are.
We would be hopeless, we would be lost without You.
I specifically am thankful that You are a God who has spoken to us, that You have
brought the words of salvation to us.
We know of Your history going all the way back to Genesis.
We know of the cross, and we know of the promises that we can rest in today, and I
pray that we will hear Your words, that we will know that they are words that are not
like our words, that we will be confident in them, that You will give us assurance.
And Lord, if there are those here who don't have that confidence,
who, who don't know You, who don't know that You are a God like the one
You say You are, Lord, let today be the day that they hear Your words.
Let today be the day that they see salvation.
I'm thankful for who You are.
Let who You are saturate our lives as we go about this week.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.