Good morning.
Great singing with you all. You guys were dialed in today on the songs. It’s.
When we talk about our music ministry here, we always say we prioritize congregational singing. And it’s fun to have a full house and a lot of strong voices. So thanks for congregation. Thanks to the music team today. You guys did great.
So well. Good morning again. If I haven’t met you, my name is Rob Fisher. Welcome to Red Village Church. I’m an elder here, one of the.
I’m on the elder team. And almost every summer here, I think for the last five years or so or more, we try to give Aaron Josewak, our staff elder, our preaching pastor, the summer off. And kind of near the end of that, he’s coming back next week. We’ve been working through the fifth book of Psalms. He’ll be closing out with two sermons from Psalms.
And then we’ll. I think we’re moving into Ephesians after that. But just briefly, before we get into it, I just want to, you know, we intentionally try to give Aaron the summer off for a couple reasons. You know, we prioritize the preach word here, and we think that the more men that we can be developing to rightfully handle the text, the better it is for the church. So.
And then it’s good. I think it’s a good way to care for Aaron and his family. So they’re still ministering and working this summer. He preaches two or three times at his campground, but just in different ways and kind of lets them focus on other areas. So, yeah, it’s a privilege to be with you here today, and Lord willing, it’ll be fruitful.
So we’re going to continue. We’re going to go through the fifth book of Psalms today for our sermon. And I was thinking about just this morning, actually, it dawned on me that I think the summer in the Psalms is a little bit of a trend or a thing here. So, like two or three weeks ago, Demetrius and I, we visited a different church, just. And they were doing Summer in the Psalms.
And then also I realized like nine or 10 years ago, the first sermon, it was like the first or second sermon I ever preached. I need to look. We were doing a Summer in the Psalms at Red Village, and we’re back at West High in the day, so it’s just kind of. It’s kind of fun to meditate in the Psalms throughout the summer. So we’ll go ahead and read the text now.
We’re Psalm139. Go ahead and turn. There should be on the screen. You can turn there in your Bible.
We’ll read the text and then I’ll pray and then we’ll be off. So go ahead and read with me here. This is the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord. Psalm 139 to the choir master. Psalm of David.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. And before word is on my tongue.
Behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed, and Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell on the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.
Even the darkness is not dark. To you the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you form my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God.
O men of blood, depart from me. The they speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
We’ll pray.
Lord, as always, we we ask for your help.
It is a wonder to me that you have set up your church in a way that we that you use sinful and flawed men to preach a perfect in a holy word. So it is a mystery of you, and it is only through your spirit and your help that we can do this faithfully. So, Lord, just in this time, just help me to help me to be a faithful communicator of your word and faithful minister of the gospel. And Lord, as always, we pray that this would help to build the church up, build up the body of Christ and advance the gospel. Here it’s in Christ’s name we pray.
Amen. So kind of, I’ll just kind of let you know how we all approach this here. I’ve kind of found over the last handful of years that I kind of have the same rough pattern for preaching. So, you know, we read the text, we pray for it, and then kind of think about the context overall. We’ll walk through it verse by verse, and then we’ll get kind of at the end where we’re going to try to summarize the main points, look at how it applies to our lives and how it applies to the gospel.
So that’s kind of where we’re going to go. And like I said, Lord willing, it’ll go well. So, you know, not to oversimplify this, but when we think about the context and we’re looking to find the context of the passage, we usually start just writing the passage itself, right? Then we kind of look to the Bible as a whole. And then outside of there, if it’s applicable, we could look at any other historical resources that are available.
And in this case, this specific text, we really only get a little of. A little bit of context from what the text tells us. And it’s really just in that opening line, it says, this is a Psalm of David. So this is written by David, the Old Testament figure, and really kind of the most famous king of Israel. He wrote, you know, he wrote about half the Psalms.
And in his. His life, we. We have the benefit and we’ll kind of fill this in later on as we think about the application. But I mean, most of his life is documented in first and Second Samuel, right? And so we have the privilege to see a lot of his life unfold in the Bible.
And that’s really helpful when we go to think about how this passage applies to our everyday lives. And so again, we’ll kind of fill that in a little bit more later on. But that being said, let’s just kind of get in the meat of this text. We’re going to work through this verse by verse and really this case is kind of section by section. And then we’ll kind of work our way through it, try to summarize at the end and then we’ll go from there.
So sections are fairly obvious to see, to see both in like literal form. You can see it, how it’s broken up in the text and then also in the theme as well. So just starting off here, verses one through six, I’ll read them again. Says Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know, when I sit down, when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search up my path and my lying down. You’re acquainted with all my ways even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
It is high and I cannot attain it. So the main thing we want to draw from this first section of text, it’s a simple truth, but it’s a big truth. It’s just that God knows all things about us. We’re not going to be doing anything that could surprise God in any way and reflect. Just going to kind of sit in this idea for a few moments here.
It’s such a contrast to our human nature, right? Because our human nature is to, we want to make ourselves look better than we really are. And specifically, like I became a Christian at an early age and this is a problem when I think we kind of grow up in cultural Christianity. It’s like we’re used to not giving a full revelation to the extent of our sins to others. Like now there’s certainly some people who, I think some people are the exception to this, right?
There’s some people who can take joy, it seems like in laying out and loathing over all the things going on in their life. But really for most of us, the issue is that we downplay our sin. And it takes a good amount of spiritual maturity to fully and wholly and rightfully own up to our sin. And it also takes, you know, we’re talking about the church, overall, it takes, it takes a good deal of spiritual maturity to be a church and a person who can receive that confession. Well, but this text is showing us here, right in our relationship with the all knowing God and the creator of the universe.
None of the downplaying of our sin works because verse two, he says God knows our thoughts from where? From far away. In verse 4 he says God knows what we’re going to say before we even say it. And I say this not to like As I was thinking through this, I was like, this is, like this is a, this induces a certain amount of like I think holy fear. But more importantly, I think it induces like a holy freedom in this, right?
There’s an incredible amount of freedom in this. Like in the knowledge of God’s all knowingness we’ll call it. We’re freed from the burden of keeping up appearances. So it’s, I don’t want to, don’t take away that we can abandon all forms of self censor. But, but there’s a great freedom from the burden of proving to God or proving to anyone else that we have our life all put together, right?
So we’re freed from the burden of keeping tabs on ourselves. So we’re going to keep moving along. The ideas are going to kind of build on themselves here. So just moving on to verses 7 through 12, says, where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you’re there. If I make my bed and Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the other most parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. For night the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
So the main idea here of this section is that we can’t escape the knowledge of God. We can’t escape the knowledge of God. And I don’t like, it’s hard to add illustration to poetry already. So I’m not even going to attempt that. But because like David is doing it for us as he illustrates the fullness of it in the text, right.
He says, from heaven to the depths of Sheol, to the depths of the grave, to the extents of the ocean, the darkest of dark says we can’t escape God. But what I want to note here and what I think is important to understand is how is looking at this section of text in light of verses one through six, right. So the first section of text, it’s emphasizing that God knows everything, the all knowingness, the, the omnipotence of God. And the second section, I think it’s, it’s emphasizing this point even more. It’s saying we can’t escape the presence of God.
It’s almost as if David is addressing the tendency in himself and in us to come up with excuses inside our own heart and how we deal with this, right? So the reader or David or somebody like me, if they’re, you know, if you’re looking for a way to like, dodge the all knowingness of God, then we might say, well, it’s great that God knows everything about me, but what if he could never know me and therefore never gets the chance to know anything about me? But that’s, that’s what he’s addressing here. He’s trying to get in front of that in verses 7 through 12. So just thinking how these characteristics of God are building and they’re stacking up and adding and adding, adding on top of each other as we walk through this psalm.
So the first point is that God knows everything about me. And the second point says God will always know everything about me because I can never escape his presence, right? So again, as we think about understanding this psalm, I think it’s really important to just see how David is structuring this and how it’s building on each point. So we’ll keep working through this. Here verses 13 through 16, it says, for you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance.
And in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Again, I think the main thing to pull from this is how David is building on top of all the other attributes of God that he’s laid out in these first two sections. Right? So the main idea here in verses 13 through 16 is God knew everything about us before we existed. And this principle of the all knowingness of God continues to build.
Again, we’re stacking each section on top of the other. So again, verses one through six, we see God knows everything about us. In verses seven through 12, David says, not only does God know everything about us, additionally he always will because there’s no way we can escape from God. And if that weren’t enough, he’s going to add a little bit more here in this last section. He says, oh, by the way, God knew your life and knew all the steps and the intricacies of your life even before you were born.
And it took me a while to see this in the text, but it’s really kind of the genius of God and the working of God through David as the structures this poem. So he really drives this point home. He takes verse 16 of this poem to essentially say, you know, he takes the first 16 verses, pardon me, of this poem to essentially say, there has never been, nor will there ever be any part of our lives that are outside the realm of God’s providential plan for us. And it’s just important to see that and understand again how each section is going to add to the argument as it goes along. Continuing through here, verses 17 and 18 says, how precious to me are your thoughts.
Oh God, how vast the sum of them. If I would count them, they’re more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you. So a little bit of a tone shift here, right? So he’s still praising God, but he’s kind of shifting from going on and on about the nature of God to giving his response of thankfulness, right?
He’s saying, you, thoughts are precious to me. And so the main idea of these two verses is simply David’s overwhelming thankfulness. And I think the brevity of this section is almost important to note. He doesn’t say a lot here because he’s already said a lot in the first 16 verses. And it’s like, now he’s like, I just said so much already and all I can say is thank you.
Right? He says, your thoughts are precious to me and the extent of your care outnumbers the grain of sand. Alright, we’re gonna keep working through it. Verses 19 through 22 here.
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. O men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
Do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. And I count them my enemies. So a little bit of tone shift, right? Not quite as encouraging as I was, like, writing this.
I was sitting at the desk in our house and, like, above the desk, there’s this. The church gifted Rachel like, this thing. It was Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. And it says, you know, trust in the Lord and lean not on your understanding. And there’s like these flowers on it.
It’s in this beautiful font. And I was just thinking, like, wow. They don’t really put the imprecatory psalms onto canvases and sell them at Hobby Lobby. Right? You know, so, like, I just want to, like, when we come to these, we gotta acknowledge, like, it’s.
It’s a challenge. Like, it’s especially for, like, the Western Christian church, like, these are a challenge for us, but they’re fully a part of the canon of Scripture and they’re fully a part of the, you know, the holy and inspired word of God. So we can’t, like, we can’t just pass over it. And so we got to wrestle with it and consider it. And Truth for Life Ministries, which is Alistair Begg’s kind of publishing wing of his sermons, they edited one of his sermon on this text into a blog post and it said the title of his Are those verses really in Psalm 139?
And, you know, not spoiled the. Not spoil the article for you, but the short answer is yes. Right. So these verses are in Psalm 139. And you know, as I was thinking about why these are so challenging to us, I think the first reason, I think is, you know, the last 50 years of our church history, like big church, modern American church history, we haven’t really had to think in terms of enemies for some time.
Right. It’s not to say that, like, enemies were not present, but I would say they weren’t like, clearly present or impactful in our daily lives. And I think that’s last decades, last few decades, I think that’s shifting, definitely. But whether or not there are spiritual enemies or enemies of the American state, very few of us in the modern American church, we just have. We don’t have this mental reference for enemies in our lives, but that.
So we got to own that. But that still begs the question of, like, what do we do with these verses? And you know, I mentioned the Truth for Life article in the Alster Begg sermon, and I’m going to credit that a lot here as we talk through this. So there’s three things I want us to take away from verses 19 through 22 as we think about how to, how to interpret these and what to do with them. First of all, I want to say we have to learn to take evil and sin in the world seriously.
So we have to have to learn to take evil and sin in the world seriously.
You know, we can see from the rest of this chapter that David walked closely with God and we can see it, I mean, through his life again, we have the almost the full narrative of his life through first and Second Samuel. And we can, we have a lot of insight into his life and his thinking through the Psalms. And because of that, I think we can rightfully infer and deduce that the closer that David walked with God and the closer he saw the goodness of God, the more clearly he saw the vileness of evil. Right? So the lesson is that the more convicted we are, that God’s provision and God’s standards are the best thing for us and for the world, the more seriously we have to take threats towards it.
Secondly, as we think through interpreting these verses, I think we need to remember that they’re prayers, they’re not prescriptions, right? So this entire psalm is clearly a prayer of David’s. And the Bible also tells us that vengeance and justice are for God to enact. And so we can be rightfully concerned about evil and rightfully hating it and rightfully pleading to God to judge evil justly. But.
But just remember, these are targeted, directed prayers. They’re not courses of action in this text here. And then lastly, when we think about these verses, I think we need to understand that sin has to be confronted. Sin has to be confronted. So as fellow Christians here, we have the burden and responsibility to lovingly confront sin in each other.
It is love to confront sin in each other. And as leaders, I think there’s an added burden to maintain institutional integrity. Right? Like, we have to be speaking as an elder here. Like, we have to be a church where we address sin.
As we think about David, we go back to the context originally here. He’s literally leading the nation of Israel. He’s the king of Israel, right? So, like, you know, there’s a burden of leadership at any level, whether it’s, you know, relationships, families, friendships, this church, whatever it might be. But then there’s also, like, I mean, this guy’s the king.
The king of Israel, right? So I’m sure he has this burden of protecting the nation from harmful influences weighing on his mind when he’s thinking through this text. So again, just to summarize these verses here, I’ll repeat them again. You know, first, we have to learn to take evil and sin seriously. Second, we have to remember these are prayers, not action plans.
And third, we just have to understand that we have to confront sin. Okay?
So I know. I know that was a lot, and I know those. I’m sure those verses are particularly challenging for us. But. But I hope those points help you.
And I. And I. When I was writing this and thinking about how to structure this sermon, I was really. I was kind of hesitant to go into the. To too much detail in those verses.
Not because I didn’t want to. Well, yeah, I was nervous about. I was. It’s scary to preach them, too, just to be honest. But.
But the main point is, is, like, it’s almost not the main point, when we think about it in terms of like, the whole psalm, like, we want to like, really focus on this and be. Because it’s like, so foreign to us. And like, what do we do with this? This is so crazy. How do we explain this to non Christians?
But like, but I want to draw us out of that just, just right now. It’s. When we think about this in terms of like the whole psalm, the message of this, these, these verses 19 through 22, it’s like, I think it’s just saying there’s real problems and there’s real evils and real enemies in the world and we need to be asking for God’s help in addressing them. This is like this whole psalm is just a. It’s a plea to God for help, right?
So there’s just like this, this effect of all this loathing and hating and seeking deliverance. I think really, really shows that. So. And again, you know, earlier we, I spoke about, like, the context in which this passage is landing and coming from. And again, the only direct context we get is this is from David.
But there’s immense indirect context that we can apply as we, as we, as we look at what is going on here and the tone of verses 19 through 22. And really just simply put the context that we see, we think about the context we can infer. It’s like things are just not going well. There’s a lot that David’s got to deal with. So, so I’m going to kind of leave it at that for right now.
We’re going to circle back to that as we think about the application. But, you know, I don’t want to give away the punchline too early. We’re talking about context, but this tells us so much about the context. Verses 19 through 22. We’ll hit our last section of text here.
Verses 23 through 24 closes out the psalm by saying this. He says, search me, O God, know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me. Lead me and lead me in the way everlasting. So again, a little bit different turn here from verses 19 through 22.
But it’s really, I think it’s an incredible model for us. You know, I think usually the human tendency when we, after we point out the flaws of others is to point out, you know, the greatness of us or the lack of flaws in ourselves. But David, however, he’s going to take this occasion really to own up to his own shortcomings. And I think it’s an incredible model. He simply invites God.
He says, examine my heart, point out my sin. And as we think about that invitation in light of the rest of the psalm, it’s almost, it’s almost redundant. It’s like, okay, if David spent the first 16 verses, there’s 34 lines in that establishing that God already knows everything about him, right? And God will know. He’s going to know everything he could do.
He already knows. Then why does David need to invite God to point out his flaws? Why does David need to invite God to point out his shortcomings if God already knows them? He’s not doing this for God’s sake or to point out his shortcomings of God, but I think he’s doing this as a way just to reset himself in his proper position as subservient to the holy and all knowing God. And it’s just really important to see David’s humility here.
And then lastly in this, in this psalm, his last line of this, this poem, it says, lead me in the way everlasting. And again, the thing to point out here, I think it’s just the humility of David. So, you know, based off of his calling out the wicked in their ways, it seems like, you know, it seems like David has a clear picture of where he needs to go and, and the way of God, the way everlasting, right? But he still has this right sense of self and knowing that God has already laid out a plan. So.
But he’s still asking for God’s help. I think it’s highlighting David’s humility here. So it was like a breakneck survey of Psalm 139, right? Like Alistair Beg did that in four sermons. So I apologize in advance, email your complaints to Jay.
You know, but just to summarize this psalm here like, and just let’s think about what it means in our everyday lives. There’s like two main ideas here. You know, in the first 18 verses, David is taking his time. He’s drawing out these illustrations and these things just to drive home the point of the superior power of God and then, and the all knowingness of God. And then the later portion of this Psalm, verses 19 through 24, he’s saying, he’s establishing there are problems, there’s real problems in the world and himself and that only God can fix.
So again, think about this, the first section of the text, it’s establishing God’s all knowingness and sovereignty over the world. In the second half of the passage, it’s just an acknowledgment of sin in the world, acknowledgment of sin in himself, and a plea to God for his help in removing that sin. And now, as I stated earlier, we always try to wrap this, try to wrap a sermon up with one or two things that I think we should be doing, considering the message of this passage and kind of, you know, similar to how verses 19 through 22 provide a lot of context for this passage versus, I think, 19 through 24, that last section overall, they’re going to provide us as the models for our application points. So verses 19 through 24, they’re models for how we think about how to apply this passage in our lives. So the model we see in verses 19 through 24 is, you know, David, he’s just humbly asking God, God, remove this sin from me and remove this sin from the world.
And so to state it in its, like, simplest form, our model of application for this text is just to do as David did and take our troubles to God. We need to take our troubles to God following the example of David. And like David, we need to be inviting God to show us our sin as we ask for his help in dealing with the sin of the world. Right?
Now, this next point, I always hesitate to speak too much in this. I’ll make an attempt nonetheless. There’s no shortage of things not going well in everybody’s life, right? There’s no shortage of evil in the world that we have to wrestle with. And there’s no shortage of evil and sin in our own hearts.
And as I, you know, as I think about the hardships of this congregation, I don’t pretend to know all of them by any means. I’m sure I know a little bit more than others, just being an elder and kind of being in that role. But I don’t want to pretend to know or grasp the depth of pain and evil that we, that you guys confront daily, right? We live in a world after the fall. So we are like we’re cursed by sin and the effects of sin.
There’s.
There’s just. I mean, we look beyond the surface. There’s. There’s things that we’re all wrestling with. And I don’t.
I’m not going to go into them, but we all, I mean, we can infer them on our own. We know them in our own hearts. We can know the big things going on in the congregation. But as I think about this, a hymn that I often pray, it’s probably the hymn that lives in my head the most. It’s from come, thou fount of every blessing.
Oh, that day when freed from sinning, when I shall see thy lovely face. And my main prayer is that main line. Oh, that day when freed from sinning, there’s real pain and real suffering and real effects of sin and evil that we have to recognize. And whether you believe in Jesus as the resurrected Savior or not, this is like. This is something you have to recognize.
In early days of TED Talks, they invited Billy Graham, the evangelist, to do a TED talk. This is like the late 90s. And he used to. I forget what psalm he used specifically, but he basically said, we’re at this massive technology conference. We’re talking about how great this is.
Early Internet, right? Maybe some false optimism. We’re talking about how great the Internet’s going to be for everybody. But he’s like, we’re talking about how these technological advances. And he ties it back to David.
He says, david was king over this amazing empire. We read the Psalms, and he’s not freed from death, pain, and suffering. And that is the burden of this text, right? Whether you believe in Jesus or not, or God or not, we cannot deny the reality of death, pain, and suffering. And we have to have.
And the psalm is giving us the model for what to do with the pain that comes from sin and all the effects of sin. Right?
If I were to venture to summarize this text even a little bit further, I would say the model that David is laying out here is just to pause and pray. Pause and pray. And that pausing and praying, I think, is. I call it out because it’s not easily done, especially for kind of my personality. I think in times of trouble, our tendency is we’re usually gonna shut down.
We’re gonna try to frantically work ourselves out of the situation. Right? There’s certainly times for rest and times for work, but if there’s anything I want us to pull from this passage, it’s that there should be. You got to make time to pause and pray and bring these things to the Lord. And I see my own shortcomings again, in relation to my own.
I see my own shortcomings in this. In my own life, right? There’s multiple times where my inner turmoil is just so much, I can’t even put words to it. Like, Rachel’s like, are you okay? I’m like, no, I’m not.
She’s like, what’s going on? I was like, I have so much on my brain, I don’t even know where to start. Right? And I’m sure we’ve all been there before. And then the other side of it is like, she’s like, you’re not okay because you’re working like a crazy man, right?
And there’s just certain things that like, you can’t work yourself out of. So I want to think about this a little bit more, this pausing and praying. I was thinking about the account of Jesus. He’s praying in Gethsemane just the night before he was arrested and taken to Pilate. And Jesus is deeply troubled.
He takes his inner circle, right? Peter, James and John. And he says, peter, James and John, all I need you guys to do is just keep watch and pray. Keep watch and pray. And as things unfold, Jesus is betrayed and arrested.
Jesus in this scene, he’s noted for his. His fervency in prayer, his calm, confident demeanor. But the disciples, though, this is like, this is making their. Not top 10 real, right? They fall asleep not once, but twice.
They get kind of kick in the butt from Jesus, you know, twice wake up. And then the other side of this, after the arrest, Peter panics, takes a knife out, cuts the guy’s ear off, right? So this is not a highlight reel night for the disciples. My dad often says about parenting, he says, there are days that you pray your kids remember and there are days that you pray your kids forget, right? And I’m sure that Peter, James and John would have preferred the world never know their shortcomings in this scene, right?
But in the providence of God in his Word, we. You know, sometimes the best learning examples are the cautionary tales, right?
So the ESV translation says their eyes were heavy. And I’m not telling you that in times of trouble that you can never sleep. Sometimes I would say, like, sleep is actually the most wise thing you can do, right? But I would say that in times of trouble, if you’re not making time to pray, then you’re missing the point of this whole psalm, the Psalm 139. So instead of only retreating, I would say follow the example of David and follow the example of Jesus and take the time to pray and take your troubles to the Lord.
Now, the other side of this, we think about Peter in this scene. You know, I love Peter. You know, like Aaron Joselyck says, like, well, you know, who’s your. What Bible character do I identify most with? He always says, well, Peter, but only the bad parts, right?
So like. And I feel the same way. It’s like the beautiful thing about Peter is you’re hardly ever in question what he’s thinking or what he’s gonna do. He’s a man of action, right? And like, if he were in Silicon Valley now, he would be the guy that’s like, move fast and break things, right?
So this is not always for the better. And in this case, as Jesus, right, as Jesus is being arrested, he loses cool, cuts off somebody’s ear, and he gets chastised by Jesus. And Jesus says, put your sword in its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? And the meaning of this, he’s like, just stop reacting for a minute.
Have some trust in God’s sovereign plan. We’ve been talking about this, right?
So to close this illustration out, the challenge for us is to model Jesus and not the disciples. And the challenge for us is to model David’s prayer in Psalm 1, 139. Going back to David here, we know that he’s a. He’s a man of many flaws in many ways, and it’s well documented in the Old Testament. But we also know he took time to pause and pray.
He took time to remember and recognize the sovereign power of God. He took time to appeal to that sovereign power of God and to help him say, lord, just help me address the sin in the world. Help us. Help me address the sin in my own heart.
Now lastly, here, we never want to come up here and fail to mention, like how this, how this points to Jesus and it was a revelation to me, like just as I was writing this sermon, just how closely these last few verses of this psalm, they lay out the model for the work that Jesus does for us later in the Bible and New Testament. And this might be my put in my Lord’s Supper rotation here. But later in the Bible, well, we’ll read this Psalm 139, 23, 24 again. Search me, O God, know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting, right?
So later on in the Bible, we’re in the Old Testament, but Jesus is going to come out on the scene and he rightfully states that anyone who is seeking deliverance from their justly deserved punishment for sin, we just need to trust in Jesus. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus as deliverance from the punishment of that sin. And you know, later on, you know, we’re going to do Lord’s Supper, we’re going to hear do the Apostles Creed, we’re going to lay that out a little bit more directly.
But I’ll leave you with this and Then we’ll pray and we’ll be done. You know, whether you’re a Christian or not, the challenge of this text is to take the time to follow the model of David’s prayer. In this psalm, we can’t deny the existence of sin and evil in the world. We can’t deny the existence of sin and evil in our hearts. And we have to trust God and ask God for deliverance from them.
So that’s all. Let’s pray.
God, what a. What a work and wonder it is that.
As we study your word, it studies us, challenges us and can fix us.
You know, we ask again that you would work as only, only as you do.
You use flawed and sinful people to deliver a message from a perfect and holy book. And that is a wonder. So we just ask that your spirit would work again. Pray these words would be effective for the building up of the church, the advancement of the gospel, and if we don’t take anything, Lord, as we sing today, help us to remember Jesus that Jesus, the name that trumps our fears and bids our sorrows cease. What a promise that is.
So help us, Lord, to follow the model of this psalm. Help us to remember your power and your goodness.
Remember and recognize the evil in the world and in our hearts, and rightfully look to you for help. So it’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen.