Well, I came across a story of a shipwreck this week.
The ship in question is the Central America.
In 1957, the Central America was tasked with bringing back a group
of almost 600 gold diggers from California all the way back to New York.
Well, on the journey, they came up from Havana, Cuba, to
make the journey up through New York City along the East Coast.
And as they were journeying through the Carolinas, they ran into a hurricane.
And as you might assume, a hurricane did to a 1800s era steamship what
you would believe a hurricane would do to an 1800s era steamship.
The waves crashed over the, the ship and the ship eventually sprung a leak.
And even though the sailors on board began doing everything they could to,
to bail and pump and pump and bail, the ship was clearly gonna go down.
And so they turned to the lifeboats that they had.
Unfortunately, the lifeboats that they had could only hold about 150 souls.
And so they took the women and children first and they put them on
the lifeboats, and they lowered the lifeboats down and they sent some of
the men, some of the sailors, along with these women and children in
order to hopefully guide these li- lifeboats to safety after the ship sunk.
But because this was a ship that was bringing back a, a group of
gold diggers, the ship had an estimated 15 tons of gold on board.
One of the men who was in one of the life rafts, lifeboats, as he was watching
the ship sink, he recounted this.
He said, "People took out their gold.
One man holding his leather bag that contained his long worked
for accumulations yelled, 'Here, whoever wants it can take it.
It's of no more use to me.
The ship is going down.
Take it whoever will.'
Others took out their gold and scattered it all over.
'There,' they said, 'Take it.
Take it, whoever will.
We are all going down.
There's no more chance for us.
The gold will do us no good.'"
Think about the lives that were lost.
Some 425 souls perished that day when the Central America
went down with 15 tons of gold.
Gold that they had envisioned changing their lives, gold that they had in
their possession that was theirs, that they were bringing back, and
they were depending upon that gold to change everything about their future.
For many of them, I imagine that that gold was what gave them hope in
life when perhaps before discovering the gold, they were rather hopeless.
This is 1857, so these are the 49ers that had gone out in search of gold and
the great hope, one last effort to see if they could make something of their
lives and, and they had struck it rich.
They had found the gold that they were after, and they were coming
back home, depending on that gold to change everything about their lives.
Until the hurricane hit and the ship began to go down, and then they were left
to look at that gold that they had put so much confidence in, so much trust in,
so much dependence on, and they realized that it could do nothing to save them
from the end that they were facing.
And so they held it out.
They threw it away from them.
They said, "Take it.
Whoever will, there's no more chance for us.
This gold will do us no good."
Depending on anything in life other than the Lord Jesus Christ is gonna leave you
at the end of your life saying of that thing that you've put your confidence in,
your hope and your trust in, "Take it.
Whoever wants it can have it.
It's of no use to me.
The ship is going down."
This morning, I wanna ask you the question: Can you trust God this morning?
Put another way, I wanna ask you the question, which boat
are you in this morning?
Are you in the Central America this morning?
Do you have your confidence, your hope, your dependence in
life on something other than God?
Something that when you come face to face with death, which is the brick wall that
every single human being is hurtling for, when you come to that moment, is what
you've put your confidence in, are you going to be able to say in that moment,
"This is gonna get me to the other side of death and into the presence of God"?
Or are you going to be left in that moment saying, "Here, take it.
Whoever wants it can have it.
The ship is going down"?
Are you on the Central America or are you in the lifeboat?
Can you trust God this morning?
The question is not about the character of God.
As we're gonna see from the text, God is worthy of our devotion.
He's worthy of our dependence.
The question's not about Him, the question's about us.
Can you trust Him with everything?
Have you trusted Him with everything?
Are you trusting Him with everything?
Maybe you're here this morning and, and you're not decided yet.
You would say, "Well, why should I trust Him with everything?"
Our text is gonna answer that.
It's gonna give you at least three reasons why you should trust God with
everything this morning, that He should be your full dependence this morning.
Or maybe you're here this morning and, and you have.
You would say, "Pastor, I know I'm in the lifeboat.
I know I'm gonna be okay."
Well, this morning's gonna remind us of why we depend upon our God,
why He's worthy of our devotion.
And so take your Bibles, if you will, to Psalm 119, and we're gonna
begin in verses 169 through 170.
Verses 169 through 170, the psalmist begins, he says, "Let
my cry come before you, O Lord.
Give me understanding according to your word.
Let my plea come before you.
Deliver me according to your word."
As the psalmist was writing, and if it's David, uh, he had plenty of
places where he could have turned.
He could have turned to his military advisors in a time of, of trouble.
He's lamenting here, I think that's what it means by cry in
his plea, this petition, this appeal that he's making here.
He could have gone to a, a plethora of other sources before going to the Lord.
He could have trusted in Joab.
He could have trusted in, uh, Ahithophel, uh, depending on the time.
He could have trusted in one of the other gods of the nations that used to
be in Israel there, that were still kinda lingering around the perimeter- perimeter.
He could have done any of those things, and yet David rightly
went first and foremost to God.
W- whatever else you're trusting in this morning, I want you
to follow David's lead here.
I want you to see that the first place that we should go when we encounter
a need, when we would sing as we just did, "Lord, I need you," w- when we
find a need in our lives, the first stop in our lives needs to not be anything
other than God, because in the end of it all, God is always gonna be better.
And so the, the first reason why you should depend upon God this morning is
this: depend upon God because He is God.
Depend upon God because He's God.
Now, you're sitting here saying, "Really, Pastor?
I woke up and I got here, myself here to church this morning for
you to tell me that God is God?"
Yes.
It's, it's simple and I, and I admit that and, and I don't apologize for that.
Because sometimes we need that reminder of what it means that God is God.
Deuteronomy 32:39 says this, God speaking, he says, "See now that I, even I, am
He, and there is no god beside me."
And so there God is, is claiming exclusivity.
"There's no god but me."
Psalm 86:8, the, the psalm of praise here says this: "There is
none like You among all the gods."
So this is written from the human perspective, and he's looking out and
he's saying, "Look, Lord, all of the gods of the nations, there's none like You."
And we would say because there's none other than Him.
"Nor are there any works like Yours," he says.
Jeremiah 10:10 says this: "But the Lord is the true God; He is the
living God and the everlasting king."
The Lord is the true God I- in seasons of, of need, i- in, in times of, of
needing to depend upon something or someone, it's good for us to be reminded
of what David was knowing and what David was confident in here, and that
is this: that God alone is God alone.
God alone is God alone.
There is no other to turn to.
And so whatever else you might be tempted to turn to, first you need to understand
the character of God is one of the main reasons why we turn to Him, who He is.
He is God.
And so David in 169 says this: "Let my cry come before you, O Lord.
Let my plea come before you, God."
Uh, the Hebrew there of coming before means to come before your face.
Lord, I want to come into your presence with the things that I need.
I want to come to you and be heard by you.
And the reason is, is because, again, there is no one like God, because
there is no other God but God.
And so when we are in times of need, it's good for us to come to God and God alone.
David went to God, and, and I want you to think about a, a different scene now.
I, I want you to fast-forward to 1 Kings, and, and now there's a
prophet by the name of Elijah, okay?
And Elijah was a, a prophet, and then there was a, a group of other
prophets that Elijah encountered, and these were the prophets of another
quote-unquote "god," lowercase G.
That god's name was Baal.
A- a- and so Elijah and the prophets of Baal, they got together, and Elijah
said, "Hey, let's, let's try something."
Elijah said, "I want you to prepare a burnt offering for your god, and
then I want you to go ahead and, and ask him to, to consume it.
Go ahead.
W- we'll, we'll wait.
I'll wait, and then I'll do the same thing for my God."
A- and so you may know the story.
Well, the prophets of Baal, they, they prepare the burnt offering.
They do everything they can to, to set it up, to be successful, and, and
then they start calling out to Baal.
They start calling out to this quote-unquote "god"
who they're depending on.
And they're saying, "Uh, Baal, we want you to consume this offering."
And, and lo and behold, shocker, nothing happens.
A- and so then they start dancing and cutting themselves, and Elijah meanwhile
is just sitting back here kinda watching his watch and, and observing everything,
and he's like, "No, call louder.
Maybe he's using the bathroom.
Y- you just try to get his attention."
Then once that is exhausted, Elijah says, "Okay, my turn."
And Elijah goes over and he says, "Here's my burnt offering."
A- and so what Elijah does is he, he sets it up and he places the, the
sacrifice on the altar there, and then he takes buckets full of water and
begins to just douse the offering.
Now, water and fire, do those things mix well?
No, and even in the Hebrew, they still don't mix well.
So even in the original language, water and fire are not
compatible with each other there.
And so Elijah's just dousing the sacrifice with water, stacking the deck against God.
And, and he digs a trench around the altar and around the sacrifice, and
so much water goes onto the sacrifice that it runs off the altar and fills
up the trench around the altar.
And then Elijah steps back and says, "Okay, God, do your thing."
And God sends fire down that consumes the sacrifice and licks
up every ounce of water in the pit.
Why?
Because God is God.
'Cause He is God.
Baal's not God.
God is God.
And, and, and maybe perhaps you're, you're sitting there and thinking to yourself,
"Okay, but I don't have Baal in my life."
True, you don't.
But you have money and finances, and you have a career that perhaps
you've thrown yourself into and said, "This is what I'm depending on.
I'm, I'm depending on my 401, and I'm depending on my job, and I'm depending on
my clients, and I'm depending on closing this deal, and if I can do all that,
then I'll be okay and I'll be happier."
You know what you have?
You have a spouse.
You have a husband or you have a wife.
"Well, as long as I have my husband, as long as I have
my wife, then you know what?
I'm, I'm okay.
I'm depending on my marriage to, to be my source of security, my source of
happiness, my source of identity in life."
Or y- you also have your material possessions.
"Look, as long as I have a, a roof over my head, then I'm okay.
I'm depending on my shelter.
I'm depending on my house, and, and as long as I keep making my mortgage
payments, then, then I'm gonna have the house and I'm, I'm gonna be okay."
See, we don't have idols called Baal, but we have plenty of idols
in our lives that tempt us, that say, "Hey, come depend upon me."
You know what the greatest idol of all that we have is, is the one
that looks back at us in the mirror
That says, "You know what?
Y- you're, you're smart enough to get yourself out of this mess.
You've got enough experience to get yourself out of this.
Your systems that you have in place in your life, your routines, your
schedule, that's gonna get you through.
Just depend on those things and you'll, you'll make it through just fine
God is better because God is God.
One author put it this way to identify an idol in our life.
He said this, "If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your
happiness, your meaning in life, and your identity, that is an idol."
If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, your meaning in
life, or your identity, that is an idol.
That's something competing with God.
When, when we say depend upon God because He's God, these are things that
we depend upon before we depend upon God or more than we depend upon God.
And so when you think of, "Man, I need more happiness in my life,"
or, "I need a greater sense of meaning and purpose in my life.
I need to have a greater sense of identity in my life," i- i- if there are things
that you are turning to that aren't God or in place of God for those things, those
things are those idols in our hearts.
Remember Jesus and the rich young ruler.
The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, "Teacher, what
must I do to inherit eternal life?"
And Jesus says, "Well, you know the, the, the commandments.
You're supposed to, to keep the law."
The rich young ruler says, "Done, nailed, dusted.
What's next?"
Jesus says, "Okay, one, one more thing.
Why don't you go home and take all of your possessions, and I want you to
sell it all, and then come follow me."
And the rich young ruler, it says in the text, went away sad, for
he had many great possessions.
For the rich young ruler, when Jesus said, "Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to sell all you have," you know what Jesus was doing?
He was pressing on his idol.
The rich young ruler was like, "Hey, I, I'm, I'm here to
depend on, upon you, Jesus.
Give me the path to eternal life.
That's what I'm here to hear from you.
I'm willing to depend upon you so long as you don't ask me to give up my idol
And so that story isn't anything about money or possessions unless
your idol this morning happens to be money and possessions
But it could have been anything else that that man had put in front of him and God
When we're in a time of need, we need to depend upon God because God is God.
And I just want you to picture the Father being there and ready to come to your aid.
When the psalmist prays, "God, let my plea come before you.
Let my prayer, let my cry come before you."
Yo, we have something David didn't have, and that is we have the Spirit of God
dwelling within us who gives us access to the throne of grace and mercy to find
grace and mercy to help in time of need.
W- we have the Spirit dwelling within us such that the Apostle Paul can
pray, say pray without ceasing.
That there's never a time that you can't enter into the Father's presence, and
He's there, and He's ready to help.
And I want you to consider Him for just a moment here.
When Moses went before the Israelites and said, "Hey, uh, we're gonna go to Pharaoh,
and I'm gonna say, 'Let my people go.'"
And they said, "Okay, but Moses, who sent you to us?"
Moses had already anticipated that because he asked God that question.
He said, "When I go to them, what should I say?
Who sends me?"
God says, "I want you to tell them I Am who I Am sends you."
The divine name Yahweh, and that name communicates so much about God.
That He is living, that He is without source, origin, or end terminus.
Uh, that, that He needs nothing, that He has everything
It's a doctrine that we refer to as this, the aseity of God, A-S-E-I-T-Y.
It, it's from a Latin phrase that just means that God needs nothing.
He lacks nothing.
He has everything.
That he depends upon nothing.
God is God, in other words
There's an argument that is used for the existence of God.
It's called the ontological argument.
The ontological argument for the existence of God says this, that God is
the highest of all conceivable beings.
And it goes this way, the logic is this, if you can conceive of the highest
of all conceivable beings, then that is God, and God must exist because if
God didn't exist, if the being in your head didn't exist, you could conceive
of a greater being that did exist.
And so by nature of the fact that existence is better than
non-existence, God must exist.
For us to conceive of the greatest of all possible beings, that being
would be a being that does exist, and thereby the argument is God is existent.
Let me bring that back to Psalm 119 in our text in what we're talking about.
I- if God is the highest of all conceivable beings and needs nothing,
lacks nothing, has everything, why would you not want to come to Him in dependence?
Why would you wanna go anywhere else?
What better source is there than God to come to with our needs?
Lord, I need you.
Oh, I need you.
Every hour, I need you.
Coming to Him is the right choice.
Depending upon Him is the right decision because God is God.
Look at the passage.
It says, "Let my cry come before you, O Lord."
This is how we come before Him in dependence.
Give me understanding according to your word.
We depend upon God.
We bring our pleas and our cries to Him, and then we look
to the Word to understand.
We look to the scriptures for guidance, for truth.
"Let my plea come before you," 170.
"Deliver me according to your word."
This is why the psalmist could say in Psalm 119 verse 98, "Your commandment
makes me wiser than my enemies.
I have more understanding than all my teachers.
Your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged, for I love your precepts."
We depended upon, or we depend upon God as God as we come to His Word.
We say, "Lord, here's where I am.
I need you.
I depend upon you."
And then we turn to His Word, and He gives us guidance through His Word.
And so the Word of God has answers for the parent of the wayward child.
The Word of God has answers for the hopeless spouse.
The Word of God has answers for the depressed.
The Word of God has answers for the angry because the Word
of God is the Word of God.
It's because of who it comes from
And so we can depend upon God as God because He's God.
And the way that works itself out in our lives practically is we come
to Him, we express our need to Him, and we go to the Word to understand.
The psalmist in Psalm 42:5 says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God."
Hope in Him.
Anchor your confidence there.
Depend upon Him.
"For I shall again praise Him, my salvation."
And so our, our pleas, our prayers may look like this, saying, "Lord, I don't
know what You're doing in this scenario.
Please help me understand, but if I don't understand, help me to trust You.
Lord, I, I, I'm discouraged by life lately.
Help me, please, overcome the discouragement and find
my joy in the blessings that You've already provided for me.
Open my eyes to behold the gifts, the good gifts that I have in my life, rather than
just my heart fixating on the thing that I don't have or the thing that I've lost."
Or it looks like saying, "Lord, I'm, I'm struggling to find hope right now.
Everything feels pretty dark, but please remind me of my secure future
with You and restore hope to me."
Depending upon God because He's God.
This first point about it, His worthiness because of who He is.
Nothing else rivals Him.
For you to depend upon anything else is gonna leave you saying, "Take it.
It's no good to me," 'cause the ship is going down.
But depending upon God is where you find the lifeboat.
This is where we find deliverance, because we anchor our confidence
and our dependence to Him.
Look at verses 171 to 172 as David continues.
He says this.
He says, "My lips will pour forth praise."
So he's bringing a plea, and he's bringing his cry.
He's lamenting, and at the same time, he's praising God.
"My lips will pour forth praise, for You teach me Your statutes.
My tongue will sing of Your word, for all Your commandments are right."
A- and so David is able to worship God in the midst of his plea and
his cry because he's anchoring his worship to the Word of God.
He's coming back to give thanks that he has the Word of God, that he can
trust in the Lord, that God has made Himself known such that David has
some place to turn to begin with.
I thought about it this way.
If you've heard the old Francis Schaeffer, uh, book that's titled He…
God Is Not Silent.
God is there, and He is not silent.
God has spoken.
God has revealed Himself to us, and because He's revealed Himself to
us, that introduces a whole 'nother reason why we can depend upon Him,
and that is because point number two, we depend upon God because He's good.
Because He's good.
God is so good to reveal Himself to us, to give us His guidance, to give
us direction, to communicate with us so that we're not left trying
to feel our way through this life
Technology is amazing for so many reasons.
I, I mean, you can pick up your phone and you can text somebody
across the world right now.
Anybody in here remember the days of AOL Instant Messenger?
Any of the '90s era kiddos, '80s era kiddos?
Yeah.
The door would open, and then you'd look on the, the list
and be like, "Who showed up?
Who's here?
Who can I talk to?"
You don't have to do that anymore.
In fact, my wife and I were talking about, with our kids recently, about having to
pick up the phone and make a phone call.
When you were growing up, you had to call your friend's house to see if they
could play, and the worst thing was when dad picked up on the other line,
and you're going, "Uh, hi, um, hi.
Hi.
Is, uh, Ryan?"
And you just…
That's all you can get out 'cause you just don't know how to talk
to grown-ups when you're a kid.
The worst, though, was when you were a guy, uh, sorry, ladies, you're not
gonna be able to relate to this one.
When you were a guy who liked a girl, and you had to call her
house, and dad answered the phone.
That's just click.
Nope, we're not, we're not having this conversation.
I…
Wrong number, sorry . Click.
And then you call back and think maybe she'll pick up the
next time, and it's still dad.
It's like, "Sorry, wrong number again."
Um, technology's amazing.
We don't have to do that anymore.
You can just slide into somebody's DMs, I guess.
I don't know.
Uh, but the thing about technology that I find myself using the most, and Pastor
Rod talked about it recently in a sermon as well, is, is the, the Maps app.
It's such a great invention.
It keeps us on track.
It keeps us guided.
And it's such a comfort for me when I get a call and I need to go to the
hospital vi- to visit somebody or to pray with somebody or somebody had a baby or
whatever, I'm going over to somebody's house, then I, I know that I can get
there because I have the Maps app.
I can open up the address, I can plug it in, and then boom, I'm, I'm gonna go.
I'm not left to just wander aimlessly and try to hope I can find my way there
God has given us His Word so that we're not wandering aimlessly, but that we can
navigate this life until He calls us home.
God is good because He's given us His Word.
In fact, think about the Word of God.
Peter writes this of it in 2 Peter 1:19-21.
Peter says this, "We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you
will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the
day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts, knowing this first
of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke
from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
There's three things about Scripture that we learn about in this passage
that are so helpful and should cause us to be so thankful that God has
given it to us, and the first is what we refer to as illumination.
God's Word provides light in a dark world.
Notice that He says, "We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed."
Uh, we need to pay attention as to a lamp shining in the dark place.
If you're familiar with Psalm 119, Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a
lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
That God has given us His Word to illuminate the path so that we will know
what He has for us and how to walk, and how to walk the straight and narrow.
Illumination.
But the second thing we see here is the, the concept of revelation.
Notice that.
It says, "Knowing this first of all, no prophecy of Scripture comes
from someone's own interpretation."
Meaning, the Word of God didn't come from humans just sitting there going,
"I wonder what I should write today."
Paul didn't think about Ephesus and think, "You know what?
It's been a while since I've written to them.
Uh, let me just ask Claude for a prompt for what I should
write to the church in Ephesus."
Rather, what does it say here?
It comes from the Lord.
No prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men spoke from God.
So this is revelation.
The Word of God is the Word of God.
It comes from Him But it's not just the illumination and the revelation, it's also
what we've referred to as inspiration, and that's the last part of 2 Peter 1:21.
Men spoke from God, it says this, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
And so God used human authors to write His words to us.
So what we have in the pages of the Word of God is the words of God.
That God, i- i- it's, it's the, the, the idea is 2 P- 2 Timothy
3:16-17, all scripture is what?
Breathed out by God.
I- it's inspired.
That's what we mean by inspired.
It comes from Him, and so the scriptures are His word.
And so they illuminate the path.
It is containing the revelation that is from Him, not from men, and
it is reliable because it is, is exactly what He wanted us to have.
It has been inspired.
We have His word.
God is good to give us His word.
He's good to not leave us wandering aimlessly, trying
to figure our way to Him.
And that's why the psalmist says in verse 171, "My lips will pour forth
praise, for you teach me your statutes."
The, the impetus, the motivation of the psalmist's praise is the
fact that he has God's word.
Verse 172: "My tongue will sing of your word, for," again,
the motivation there is what?
"For all your commandments are right."
David is saying, "I have your word, and that's enough reason for me to
praise you, even as I bring my plea and I bring my cry before you."
God is so kind and so good to bring us His word, that He
hasn't left us without direction.
When we were in Colorado this summer, um, w- we drove up Pikes Peak, and then
we drove down Pikes Peak, and then we went out to dinner, and I walked out
from dinner, and I looked at my car, and the front right tire, the sidewall
was separating, and we'd driven up Pikes Peak with the tire separating.
So I stopped and I was giving thanks to God for protecting our family, but then
I realized I gotta change that tire.
And so having four boys with me, I got them all out of the car,
and I said, "You're gonna watch this whether you want to or not."
And then I prayed, "Lord, please help me remember how to change a tire."
And I did.
But I got everything out, and I started walking them through the process.
Why?
Because I, I know at some point in time, likely, they're gonna have to change
a tire, and I didn't want them to have to call AAA or call Dad and be like,
"Dad, can you come do this for me?"
And so I walked them through the whole thing and, and how you gotta loosen
the lug nuts before you lift the car 'cause if you lift the car and then go
to loosen the lug nuts, the wheel just spins around and around and around.
And where do you put the jack on the car, and then taking the wheel off and
putting the spare on and tightening the lug nuts and making sure it's tight then
after you lower it, and then you put the old tire in the, the back of the
car, and then you gotta control your speed on the donut 'cause the donut's
not meant to go 70 miles an hour.
Um, all of those things, just t- walking them all through that.
Why?
Because I hope one day that they will remember that Dad provided them some
guidance and instruction on that.
What they do with that, not my problem.
Unless then they call Dad and say, "Hey, Dad, I don't remember what you said.
Can you come fix this for me?"
But I wanted them to have the guidance.
I wanted them to have the instruction.
I wanted them to know that I cared about them, I loved them enough.
I wasn't just gonna leave them to aimlessly try to figure
things out on their own.
And so there in Colorado Springs in the, the Bass Pro parking lot,
they learned how to change a tire.
That's a microcosm of the way that we should look at the scriptures.
God has saved us, and then He's given us His Word because He's
so good to us in order that we would have guidance for this life
Think about what the scripture contains.
It contains the solution, right, to our sinfulness.
It contains the good news about the death of Jesus Christ in our place for our sins,
and His resurrection for our eternal life.
And so it contains the gospel.
God is so good to tell us about Jesus in the Word of God.
But beyond that then, it also contains what?
It, it contains the path of obedience for us to walk as believers, as Christians
now, so that we will grow in Christ likeness the longer we are in Christ.
And so God's Word has given us these things, but wait, there's more, to
go Billy May style on us, right?
From infomercials, anybody growing up?
Yeah.
Wait, there's more.
There's more.
God's given us His Holy Spirit to help us with all of this.
And so He's given us the Word of God to illuminate our, our minds and, and
to, to help us and to guide us on the path, and He's given us the Spirit so
that we can understand any of it at all.
And so as I'm up here preaching these messages about, "Hey, we want you in the
Word of God every single day," we do want you in the Word of God every single day.
But we trust that the Spirit of God within you is gonna work that in
your life, that, that it's not about, "Hey, you're, you're falling short.
Do more."
But it's about, "Hey, lean into your relationship with the Lord."
God delights to do these things.
Depend upon God because He's good.
Depend upon God.
Go to God because He's God.
Pray, "God, increase my appetite for the scriptures."
I trust that God's gonna answer that.
We're gonna talk about that more in just a second.
But back here, He's good because He's given the scriptures, and He's given
us the Holy Spirit to understand them.
1 Corinthians 2:9 says this, "But as it is written: 'What no eye has seen,
nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for
those who love him' - these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of
that person, which is in him?
So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is
from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God."
How good is God?
Not only did He give us His Word, not only did He communicate to us, not only
did He speak to us, but then if you're in Christ, He gave you His Spirit to
be able to understand it, to be able to read it and glean something from it,
so that it's, it's not like reading a, a, a textbook and walking away going,
"I don't know what to do with that."
He's given you the Spirit to help you process, to help you understand,
to help you know, to help you grow, to help you in your guidance.
And, and y'all, that's why David is praising God here, saying, uh, "Look,
I, I, uh, uh, pour forth praise," verse 171, "for You teach me Your statutes.
You give me wisdom from Your Word.
My tongue will sing of Your Word, for all Your commandments are right.
God, I'm gonna give You glory and thanks for that, because You
are so good to have done that."
So we depend upon God because He's God.
We depend upon God because He's good But there's another reason why we
depend upon God that's found in the last handful of verses in our text.
Look at verse 173, "Let your hand be ready to help me, for
I have chosen your precepts.
I long for your salvation, O Lord.
Your law is my delight.
Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep.
Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments."
In this final passage, we find that David depended, depended upon God, yes, because
He's God, and yes, because He's good.
But finally, he depended upon God because He can.
Depend upon God because He can.
He's able.
A- a- and this is connected back to that first point, right?
His aseity.
He lacks nothing.
He has everything.
A- a- and so whatever He needs to provide, God can provide.
And so this third point then is about us then now bringing our specific requests,
just like David does here, to the Lord and saying, "Lord, here's where I need you.
I'm gonna come before you.
Let me enter into your presence."
That's point number one.
And, and we do that why?
Because of who He is.
He's God.
And now it's, and here's my specific pleas.
Here's my, the, the, the nuts and bolts of what I'm desperate for, for you, Lord.
And we do that because God can.
Scripture testifies to this over and over again.
Deuteronomy 10:14, "Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of
heavens, the earth and all that's in it."
1 Chronicles 29:14, "Who am I, and what is my people, that we should
be able to thus offer willingly?
For all things come from you."
All things come from God.
Psalm 24:1, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the
world and those who dwell therein."
The earth is the Lord's.
James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming
down from the Father of lights."
God can, in other words.
And so because God can, David brings these three prayers before the Lord, and I think
categorically we can look at it this way.
First, David prays for help here.
David comes to the Lord and he says, "Lord, let your hand be ready to help
me, for I have chosen your precepts.
Lord, I'm, I'm coming to the Word of God, and in the Word of God,
I'm looking for you to help."
The word help here is a, a, a word that covers all kinda just practical needs.
He's asking God to meet the needs that he has, and to deliver him
from the situation that he's in.
And he refers here to the Lord's hand.
That's what we call an anthropomorphism, which means that this is a reference
to God using human language.
God doesn't actually have a hand.
He's spirit, as John 4 tells us, but this is a reference to the
power of God, the strength of God.
The hand of God represented His ability.
And so he's praying, "God, because you can, I'm asking you to help."
David knew he could not manage things on his own, but he knew where he could
turn And it's not as though there are times that we don't need God, right?
We prayed that earlier.
We sang that earlier.
Pastor Rod even commented on that.
You know, it's … We, we say, "Every hour, I need you," but the reality
is, oh, man, we need Him every, every minute, every second, every millisecond.
The reason that we're not hurtling off into space right now is not just
because the force of gravity, it's because Colossians 1 says that in
Christ all things hold together.
The reason that your heart is pumping right now is because
God is sustaining your life.
The reason that you're breathing is because God is giving you
br- air to breathe right now.
And so it's not as though there's ever a moment that we don't need Him, but
there are plenty of moments we are more keenly aware of our need of Him, and
that's where we can go to Him, because He can, and we can pray, and we can
ask for the help, whatever that is.
And God will answer, because He can, and He's either gonna answer one of two ways.
He's gonna answer by delivering you, or He's gonna answer by sustaining you.
He'll answer by bringing you out of whatever you're in or sustaining
you through it, depending on what His will is in your life.
But you can pray for help.
Second, because God can, David prays for greater devotion.
Notice in 175, he says, "Let my soul live and praise you,
and let your rules help me."
Let my soul live, revive my soul, he's praying.
Awaken my soul.
Give new life to me.
This may have been that David was in a life-threatening situation or it simply
could have been he was just downtrodden.
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
So he's praying, "God, let my soul live.
Enliven my soul, that I may praise you."
The Old Testament, as you read through the Psalms, time and time again, the
psalmist will say, "Lord, uh, don't send me to the grave because praise
doesn't come to you from the, the grave."
Rather, the understanding was that, that the time to praise God was while I'm
alive, and so David is praying, "Lord, revive my soul that I may praise you."
You know, that's a, a prayer that's for us as well, and it doesn't
have to be born out of a time when your life is at, at, at risk.
It can, but it can also be a Monday morning.
Lord, give life to my soul this morning.
I'm not there right now.
I don't feel the passion.
Revive my soul, Lord, because I wanna be more devoted to you.
Revive my soul so I can worship you more.
Give me reason.
Help me open my eyes to the good things that you've provided to me and,
and let me praise you this morning.
I need you, Lord.
I need you.
I can't manufacture it on my own.
I need you
Fully trust that that's a prayer that God is gonna want to answer in your
life, because He can, and that delights Him to have His people praise Him.
And then finally, David prays for grace.
I love this too, in verse 176.
He says, "I've gone astray like a lost sheep.
Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments."
I have gone astray like a lost sheep.
Spurgeon says, uh, here he points out that David doesn't say,
"I've gone astray like a dog."
Because a lot of times dogs will run off and then they will what?
They will make their way back home.
A sheep, not the same.
If a sheep wanders away, all a sheep knows how to do at that point is
bleat, is to cry for the shepherd.
And so David here is praying and saying, "I've gone astray like a lost sheep."
But notice he says here, "I, I do not forget your commandments."
And so this isn't David saying, "I've jettisoned my faith."
This isn't David saying, "I'm, I'm walking in open, in, in, in conscious
rebellion to you, and I despise you, God."
No, he's saying, "God, even as devoted to you as I am, there are
gonna be moments," as the old hymn says, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it, prone to leave the God I love."
There are gonna be times where you find yourself having drifted from
the straight and narrow, and what you need is you need to depend upon
God and His grace to bring you back
And so David prays, "God, seek your servant."
Again, the simplicity is so beauty, beautiful there.
"Seek your servant."
Spurgeon said this, "The sheep bleats, David prays.
The sheep bleats for its shepherd, David prays."
And this is a prayer that God can answer and delights to answer when by
His grace He reveals sin in our lives.
For us to be able to repent of that sin and come back and lay that sin at the
foot of the cross and seek forgiveness there, and He will answer that.
Why?
Well, because scripture tells us why.
Because Jesus is interceding for us this morning, praying at the right hand
of the Father for you this morning.
Because the Spirit has been given you as a, a follower of Jesus to
convict you of sin and to bring you back to the cross, and because the
Father stands ready to forgive you this morning because of His grace.
And so we depend upon God because He can.
He can.
We pray for help, we pray for devotion, we pray for grace
Hudson Taylor said this, "I could not think that God was poor, that He was short
of resources or unwilling to supply any want of whatever work was really His.
I could not think that God was poor."
He can.
What's your need?
What is it this morning?
What's keeping you up?
What's your anxiety?
This is the time to bring it before the Lord and to lay it before Him.
And it's so good that this final verse ends this way.
This final verse of Psalm, of our whole study in Summer in the Word
ends this way, with this line, "I've gone astray like a lost sheep.
Seek your servant."
It's so good that as we wrap up this study with that last verse, we're about
to turn to the Lord's table together.
Because that's, that's where we see most clearly the fact that God
did indeed seek the lost sheep.
In fact, Isaiah put it this way.
In Isaiah 53 he said, "All of us like sheep have gone astray.
Every single one of us have turned to our own way."
But then Isaiah says, "But the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all."
That, that God sought us and continues to faithfully seek us as believers.
And so this is gonna be such a good time for us to spend reflecting, giving thanks
to God, remembering that if we are putting our confidence and our trust this morning,
depending on anything other than the cross of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness
bought for us therein, then when we come to die, we are gonna be like those
on that sinking ship saying, "Take it.
Take it.
It does me no good."
The ship is going down.
But if you have Christ, if your dependence is on the, the, the body of Christ broken
for you and the blood of Christ poured out for you, and then the empty grave, that
He got back up and He walked out never to enter again, if your dependence is there
this morning, then you're in the lifeboat, and you will be brought safely home.
And along the way, you can depend upon God because He's God, and
because He's good, and because He can
What we're about to do this morning as we take communion, I just wanna give
you a, a, a couple of, of thoughts here.
Number one, uh, this is for the family of God, meaning this is for Christians.
So if you're here this morning, you, you know that you're not saved,
please let these elements pass by, and I say that for your soul.
Scripture says that we shouldn't take these elements in an unworthy manner.
And so if you are not a Christian, then please allow these elements to pass by.
For those of you that, that are Christians, um, one kind of
administrative thing really quick here, the cups are double stacked, so
just grab one out, and the, the bread is underneath the first one there.
So first service we had some people looking for the bread
wondering what happened.
Um, the bread's there.
It's just under the bottom cup.
But if you are a Christian this morning, let me just encourage you,
uh, don't just go through the motions.
Um, w- we're not gonna distribute just yet.
We're gonna wait for just a second, but don't just go
through the motions this morning.
Um, spend some time thoughtfully reflecting on what this is about.
Remembering.
That's what the Scripture tells us what to do here, is to do this in
remembrance of Christ, so we're gonna remember His sacrifice together.
And then the third thing I wanna encourage, uh, for, for us if, if you're
a Christian this morning, spend some time right now keeping short accounts with God.
Take those sins that maybe by God's grace He's revealing to your life
right now, or maybe you don't see any right now and, and just maybe
you're praying as these elements are passing, saying, "God, give me, uh,
insight and help me to see my sin."
And then when He does reveal that to you, if He reveals that to
you, bring it to the cross, lay it down, and find forgiveness there.
And so the music's g- gonna play, the elements are gonna be passed,
and then I'll come back up and we'll take them together here shortly.
In Romans 8:32, Paul said this: "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave
Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?"
One of the shades of remembrance that we have here with these elements is
to remember God's goodness that we talked about earlier in the sermon.
He's given us His Son.
How will He al- not also with Him freely give us all things?
He can, right?
As we talked about in that last point.
And He will if it's for our good.
If it's for His glory, then we can trust that He will, 'cause He's
already made the greatest sacrifice, which is what we remember right now.
The Apostle Paul said this: "For I received from the Lord Jesus what I
also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night He, when He was
betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said,
'This is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.'"
Let's eat.
In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup
is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me."
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim
the Lord's death until He comes.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for that reality, the, the death of Christ.
And even as I read that from Paul there, Lord, we proclaim His death,
not just, uh, here in this room, but really to a watching world.
As we gather together, Lord, we are gathering together as a testimony of
the fact that we have hope because Jesus died for us, that we depend upon Him
for our salvation, that when we die and stand before you, if you were to say,
"Why should I let you into heaven?"
That our only answer is to point to Him.
Lord, but we also gather together as the church as a testimony of the fact that
He is not still dead, that He has walked out of the grave, never to enter again.
That's why we gather on the first day of the week to testify
every single Sunday, He is risen.
He is risen indeed.
And so we observe communion.
We remember the death that we, every single one of us, needed,
where He substituted himself.
He took our place on the cross, bore our sins on Himself, Lord, and suffered
your wrath, that you would be satisfied in your justice, and that we might be
declared righteous through faith in Jesus.
Lord, what a glorious reality that is.
We can depend upon you because of that.
That's the linchpin of our faith this morning.
And so, God, we walk through this life depending upon you because of who you are.
You are God.
Depending upon you because you are good, and depending upon
you, Lord, because you can.
So God, give us a great week as we walk in faith, as you work within
us to will and to work for your good pleasure, as you guide us, as you lead
us, as you make us more like Jesus.
And it's in His name we desperately pray all of these things.
Amen.