Well, it's a great delight to see you all together again this afternoon, especially if you're new, I mean new to this Thursday lunch, then we want to give you especially a very warm welcome and to invite you back to join us on another occasion. These Thursdays we've been thinking about five questions I want to ask God. You shouldn't make that eye too Sinclair Ferguson shaped. I think those questions that we've been trying to explore together are questions that many people want to know the answer to. And today we are asking the question, can God really guide me? And we're going to read the psalm that's printed in the bulletin, Psalm 25. verses 1 through 22, which is, in fact, the entire psalm. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me. For you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions according to your steadfast love. Remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord." And then it looks to me as though the verses that follow are the words of a second voice These first words have all been in the first person singular. It's somebody who is in need of help and guidance. Verse 4, teach me your paths. And another voice comes in, a voice of encouragement. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. And then the first voice seems to speak again, For your namesake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. And then again the second voice, Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being and His offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him and He makes known to them His covenant. And now back to the first voice again. In response to this, my eyes are ever toward the Lord for He will pluck my feet out of the net. Turn to me and be gracious to me for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are my foes and with what violent hatred they hate me. Oh, guard my soul and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait. for you." And then perhaps both voices together, redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles. Well, it's a very complicated world, isn't it? And if I'm not mistaken, the younger you are, the more complicated it can seem In your early days there were five professions, many of you. You could be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, you could be a teacher, you could be a minister and you could be something else. Nowadays the choices that face our children and our grandchildren are amazing. Some of you perhaps in the room work for the same company for 40 years. And in terms of employment, you have become the last of the Mohicans. Nowadays, you need transferable skills because you are going to be transferred. And those of us who are older, we worry sometimes about our children. How on earth are they ever going to discern God's will for their lives? It's a question that is increasingly asked in a complex and often morally and spiritually confusing and confused world. About 25 years ago, this is not incidentally an advertisement, about 25 years ago I wrote a book called Discovering God's Will. I don't want to talk about its contents. It's been around long enough to have been translated, I suppose, into a dozen languages, different countries. And the thing that's fascinated me about this book as it's been translated is not so much these languages that suddenly I've apparently been able to write in, but the different covers that go on the front of the book. They tell you something about the communities and how they struggle in different parts of the world with the idea of how can we be sure that God will guide us? Actually, when the book began life in the United Kingdom, the front cover was a railway station. You ever stood at the end of a platform in a huge railway station and seen the way the rail tracks go out into the distance and they seem to criss-cross? And I suppose whoever thought up the idea thought, life can be like that. You're on the train, but how on earth do you know which train track eventually gets you to Columbia, South Carolina, when you leave the Central Station in Chicago? And then the next cover I saw I think was the French cover. Now the French are always a little more philosophical and it was a maze with all the different twists and turns and no way apparently out of the maze. And then the most recent cover was, I suppose they're trying to market the book now for younger people, was a young fellow and a young girl, obviously college students, going through a kind of ivy-covered gateway in some older Ivy League university, and you just didn't know what was on the other side. I actually said to the publisher, you know, if you'd got the fellow coming out in a tuxedo and the girl coming out in a bridal gown, probably would have sold twice as many copies. But people do struggle, don't they? And we all have different, not only different images, but there are different questions, specific questions in our lives that we want to know for ourselves. We long that our youngsters should know that God is really guiding them and that they can have some sense in their lives that they are right at the centre of God's will. So what do we say to them when they say, Grandpa, Mom, how do I discover God's will for my life? Or for ourselves, for that matter, in the different echelons of life in which we find ourselves faced with decisions. How do we know that we are at the center of God's will? How do we know the guidance of God? It's one of the signs of the times actually in the Christian church that people often today seek guidance in the most bizarre places and in the most bizarre kind of ways. Not least how people seem to imagine that what we all need is an individualized hotline from heaven in which God is constantly speaking to us, telling us to do this and to do that. I met a woman once who told me that she was being taught in her church whether she should put on the right shoe or the left shoe, first of all, in the morning. And sometimes she said she had to wait half an hour before God revealed this to her. And it didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that there weren't days of the week when she sat in total paralysis because God wasn't revealing His will. And you see, That's not how the scriptures encourage us to find the guidance of God. And you'll notice as we work through some of the verses in this psalm that this psalm is intentionally written in order to teach us what is involved in discovering the guidance of God in our lives. I say it's intentional because this is one of those psalms that is in the form of an acrostic poem. you know one verse will begin with the first letter of the alphabet and then the second letter of the alphabet and then the third letter of the alphabet and it's written this way in order to help people remember what follows what and what flows into what except in this instance there are two exceptions to that one is that there is a letter missed out and the other is that there is apparently a letter misplaced the Hebrew alphabet doesn't end with the letter P but verse 22 begins with the letter P and the fascinating thing is that when you take the first letter in verse 1 and the middle letter in this psalm and the last letter in this psalm it makes up the Hebrew verb to teach or to learn And that's probably quite deliberate. This is a teaching psalm. That's why there are two voices in it. There is the cry for help, Oh God, will you guide me? And then comes in the teacher, the experienced believer, and says, now let me tell you what is involved in God guiding his children. And the answer to the question does God guide me is largely found here therefore in verses 8 through 10 and in verse 12. Verses 8 through 10 and in verses 12 through 14. And the teacher here seems to be saying there are four prerequisites for knowing the guidance of God in your life. The first is this, a meekness of spirit that is yielded to the purposes of God. Sometimes you know in pastoral ministry when people come to you and say I'm having a problem with God's guidance, what actually emerges is that they are really having a problem with being obedient to the guidance that God rather clearly gives. and that's why the first thing that the psalmist emphasizes in verse 9 is he leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way it's actually the word meekness what is meekness? if you were asked to define what meekness is how would you define it? in scripture meekness is a willingness to submit to God's Word, whatever God's Word says, and a willingness to yield to God's providences, no matter how bitter they taste. That's why in the Old Testament we are told that the meekest, who was the meekest man in the face of the earth? It was Moses. Hardly a pushover, incidentally, Moses. This is the man who, by God's grace, can lead a million people through a desert for 40 years, and some of them the most frustrating people ever to live on the face of the earth. A man of intense spiritual energy and strength and vision, and yet that energy and strength is ascribed in the Old Testament to the fact that he was the meekest man in all the earth. but he was superseded by somebody else, wasn't he? The Lord Jesus. Have you noticed that the only characteristic in himself, really, that the Lord Jesus ever drew attention to, paradoxically, was the fact that he was meek? Come to me, because I am meek and gentle in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls. And this is what the psalmist is saying, that a prerequisite to doing the will of God is yielding ourselves to God, whatever His will may turn out to be. That's a risky business, isn't it? And indeed sometimes when we're wrestling with the question of God's guidance, we do set the parameters rather ourselves, don't we? Lord, I'm prepared to do everything as long as it's... and as long as it doesn't involve... But you see, that's me guiding God, isn't it? And the psalmist is saying that a prerequisite to knowing the guidance of God in your life is this meekness of spirit that yields to God's purposes. The second thing you'll find in verse 10, it's an obedience of my heart before God's presence. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and testimonies. Do you know that the word that's used very often in the New Testament for obedience is a compound Greek verb that means, quite literally, to hear underneath. To hear underneath. And that's again what he's talking about here, this obedience to God's will before God's presence is a willingness to place my will in a subordinate position to His will. And you notice how he says we will discover this. He says, the paths of the Lord will be discovered to be paths of steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant. And he's thinking about the covenant with Moses and his testimonies. I'm actually fascinated by the fact that until relatively recently, Christian writers did not write books on how to discover God's will. Do you know that that's a phenomenon of modern Christianity? And the interesting thing is that when you turn back to what older Christians did, virtually from the beginning of the Christian church right through to at least the 18th century, what they did was to teach the people of God how to take the testimonies of God, the commandments of God, and to apply those testimonies and commandments to every conceivable area of life. Those of you who are familiar with Presbyterian catechisms, the shorter catechism, the larger catechism, you may have noticed that somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of those little catechisms are taken up trying to help us to understand how the principles of God's law work universally and apply universally and leave almost nothing, as it were, in doubt as to what it is that God wants us to do. And you see, by and large in our lives, that's the real issue. The real issue is not, how can I discover God's strange and mysterious will that he's keeping hidden from me? The real issue is, am I willing to work right through into every detail of my life the principles that he has already revealed to me in the pages of scripture? So there is a meekness of spirit that yields to God's purposes, there's an obedience of heart that bows before God's presence. That's why one of the words that's used in connection with God's guidance in the scriptures is the verb to taste. You ever see these programs, maybe some of you are experts on this, on tea tasters or wine tasters. And they've these extraordinary jobs where they'll take a gulp and they swill it around and I better not imitate what they do and then they evict the liquid. It's absolutely amazing how somebody can just take a mouthful of a liquid and tell you within five miles where the grapes came from. Now how is that possible? People can do that with tea. They can say, oh this is, and tell you what tea it is, where it's come from, what part of the world. How do they do that? It's because they have developed a taste, a discernment. And indeed in the Psalms, the Psalmist cries out to God, I think in Psalm 37, it usually translated something like, teach me good judgement, but literally it's teach me good taste. Now what does somebody have who has good taste? What do they have? They've usually got... Let me illustrate it personally. I can choose a tie. You might think I've not got great taste in a tie, but I can choose a tie. What I can't do is see what goes along with the tie. I need help. Somebody to say to me, Sinclair, these two things don't go together, that's bad taste. And that's what good taste is, isn't it? Good taste in terms of the clothes you wear, good taste in terms of the way you deal with people, good taste in the things you like. What does it mean? It means that you have a sense of what goes together. And you see, that's why the scriptures are so insistent that Christian believers develop good taste in the sense that they see how what God has revealed in his word will go together with the particular circumstances in which they place themselves. Christians, in a way, are like old-fashioned pharmacists, that, as it were, in the Scriptures we've all these jars with their pharmaceuticals in them. But what we sometimes lack is the ability to take from this particular pharmaceutical and to apply it to this particular situation. And like everything else, as your mother used to say, there is no substitute for experience in doing it. That's why, sadly, when I'm in a crisis and saying, Oh God, teach me how I can discover your will Were it not for the fact that God is so often merciful, it would be far too late, far too late. So the scripture is encouraging us to develop a good taste, to have a sense, because constantly we are living in obedience to God's will. I suppose we're like some great conductor. who is so worked with the score and worked with the instrumentation that he's able to stand up there and you don't see him, you know, you didn't see Otto Klemperer stopping the orchestra in the middle of some great symphony and say, wait a minute, I need to consult the score here. It had become part of him. And so that he knew at every part of the way as the orchestra played And you see, it's the same with the Christian believer. The most important thing is not that we have the Bible on the shelf. The most important thing is that we have the Bible in the heart. And when a situation arises, it's become so much part of us that we're almost able to say to the Lord, Lord, I knew this was what to do because I'd learned by living constantly in the light of your word, that this is what you would want me to do in this particular situation. Now that requires a third thing that the psalmist mentions, particularly in verses 12 through 14. It's reverence for God's glorious person. Do you notice how he puts it? Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. Verse 14, the friendship of the Lord is with those who fear him. Now next Wednesday we're going to talk about my secret dash of fear. And I'll say just a little more about that then. But what is the fear that he's speaking about here? Because you notice what he says about it, the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him. So he can't be speaking about a kind of cringing terror, he must be speaking about, well, what is it that causes the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up? It's something that happens very near, isn't it? It's when something gets near to you that's far bigger than you ever wanted anything to be that near to you. And in a way, it's the same with the Lord. The fear of the Lord, as this psalmist indicates, is when the passionate love of his friendship comes so near to you that the hairs on the back of your neck begin to stand up because you're not sure whether you can take that amount of love. There is a kind of fear of God, of course, that's related to his awesome holiness, his intense purity. But you see in scripture it's always mingled with this kind of sense of sheer awe and wonder in the electricity of knowing that he loves you and that he seeks your friendship and seeks that you will be his friend. Now what's the hallmark of being a friend? Our children know this. She's my best friend and we have no secrets from one another. No secrets from one another. And you see, it's in this sense of reverence for God's glorious presence that we learn what his secrets are. And he divulges, he shares his secrets with us. And of course, he shared his greatest secret with us. His greatest secret, the New Testament says, is the Lord Jesus Christ. But then you notice there's a fourth thing, and it's really, I think, quite important. It's patience to wait for God's perfect positioning. Meekness of spirit to yield to God's purposes. Obedience of heart to bow before God's presence. a sweet reverence for his glorious person, and patience to wait for God's perfect positioning. Sometimes today we want a slot machine God because we've got a slot machine almost everything else, but the watchword with respect to guidance is the word wait. And if I'm not mistaken, it's actually becoming more difficult to wait in 2006 than it was in... do you remember 1906? Anybody remember 1906? When you were so used to waiting. We're not used to waiting. I find my fingers going up and down as the website comes up. It's taking 10 more nanoseconds or whatever than it ought to. and as technology can be bad for your soul in that respect and we become a very impatient people and it has a knock-on effect on the way we live the Christian life so that what we are looking for in 21st century Christianity is quick answers and simple answers but God is not a God of quick answers nor is he a God of simple answers And the psalmist is being taught that he needs to learn to wait upon the Lord. And that's often the case for two reasons. Either one, God's situation is not ready for you. Or reason number two, very likely you are not ready for God's situation. And isn't that the truth? We want our problems, our difficulties, our darkness dissipated immediately. And God says, as the Lord Jesus said, you remember, to his disciples, I have many things to teach you, but you are not yet ready to hear them. And sometimes when we find ourselves taking what God has taught us in his word and trying to shed that light upon our circumstances, we can't make the two fit together. Is that because God's word is not sufficiently clear to guide us? No. It's because at the end of the day God is always far more interested in what we become as believers than what we do as individuals. And he's getting us ready. Often the picture that comes into my mind when I listen to Christians telling me about where they are in their struggles is the picture of somebody who has been driven up to a cul-de-sac. A dead-end road. And they can't find the way forward. And what's so difficult for them is that they've got to wait for the Lord to move the traffic of life and the traffic of His providences on until He slides them back into the very place in His purposes that He wants especially to use them. There's a wonderful verse in Ecclesiastes 7 It says, listen, if God has twisted something, you're not going to be able to untwist it. You need to wait for Him to untwist it. Now, you notice what the little children are like? You say to them, can't you wait? You'll have to wait. And then we grow up and we refuse to apply that principle spiritually to ourselves. We want a God who doesn't keep us waiting. But you see, it's like untying a knot. Do you know what happens when you try to untie a knot by pulling on both ends of the string? A. You can't untie the knot and B. You end up breaking your fingernails in the process. And sometimes that's where we are spiritually. that we've got to allow the tension as it were to come out of the knot and we need time to allow our fingernails to grow just for the moment when the knot will be untied in the future. Now the interesting thing is that in all this the psalmist has not told you what job you need to do for the rest of your life, what woman you need to marry for the rest of your life, where you need to serve Jesus Christ for the rest of your life, because what he's really saying is these are dispositions of the heart that will enable you to begin to answer all of these questions in God's good time in the future. And what will help you to wait? I mean, aren't we spiritually likely, most of us feel but we're honest about it. We're really infants. Sometimes we're terrible crybabies. You know, something relatively minor happens and what is God doing? What do we need to remember in all this? Well, the psalmist tells us over and over again, you need to remember that in all of this God is absolutely, without fail, holy good to his children. And when you grasp that and trust that, something will happen in your soul that will enable you to say, wait for the Lord. Be strong and of good courage and wait for the Lord. Rest in the Lord and he will give to you the desires of your heart. Heavenly Father, Thank you for the privilege that you've given to us of making your will known to us and sharing your great secret of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ with us. We pray for ourselves that we may discern your will. We pray that we may be people of good taste. And we pray especially for those for whom many of us have a care our children, our grandchildren, whom we long to see discerning and living at the very heart of your will. And we pray that when they seek wisdom from us in their need, that we will be to them like this second voice imparting the wisdom that comes from your word. Oh Lord, this is our prayer today. Make us pliable to your will for our lives, and make us, if it pleases you, a second voice to help others. And this we pray together for Jesus' sake. Amen.