Good morning. It's great to be with you all this morning. Our text today comes from Psalm 34. So while you're turning there, while you're getting situated, finding it in your bulletin, I'd like to point out just a couple of things. The first one is that the psalm was written by David as he acted insane to escape Abimelech. We'll get into that a little bit more later. But secondly, this psalm is an acrostic poem, an acrostic psalm, which means that each line starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But this is an imperfect acrostic because it's actually missing a letter, right? And one letter is repeated. And so we're not going to make a big theological point about that, but I mention it because there's, I think, something beautiful in the fact that an imperfect acrostic or a broken psalm, a broken poem declares God's goodness. So let's go ahead now and read. This is Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ear toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all of their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we believe in the Holy Spirit. We believe in the power of your word to convict where conviction is needed and to encourage where encouragement is needed. to refresh where refreshment is needed, and to enliven where enlivenment is needed. So Lord, we pray that would happen today. Lord, we pray your word would be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We pray this all in your son's name. Amen. In the summer of 2018, we took a group of students on a mission trip to hope for the inner city in Chattanooga. This was my second summer at CNPC, so I thought I kind of had an idea of how this would go. I knew the students a little bit better, right? I lost some of that seminary edge, right? I was able to relate to people a little bit better. I was ready to see these young students. This is where we took our youngest students was to hope for the inner city. I was ready to see them develop and to flourish. But what I wasn't ready for was all the questions that they were going to ask. On Wednesday, we realized that this wasn't just your standard middle school amount of questions. This was a lot of questions. And so we decided to keep a running tally. So one of the adults counted, we picked out one of the ringleaders that was asking the most questions. Love this guy a lot. And he asked 189 questions in three days. And I was just one student and one leader keeping track. And so I started running out of answers. And eventually I just turned into, man, that's just how it's gotta be. Or sometimes, because I said so, that's why we're doing this. So any of you who have worked with youth or had kids before know that the question why is indeed a timeless and eternal question. So a lot of times I think we give ourselves the same answers in our internal monologues. All right, why do we go to church? Well, that's just what Christians do, just because. Why don't we cuss? Why don't we swear? Well, Christians just don't act like that. How do we know that God is good? Well, you know what? He just is. But I like Psalm 34 because God gives us commands, but then he answers the question. He answers our question why, and he gives us a reason. And it's always rooted in who he is or what he has done for us. It's never just because I'm God and that's what I said. So this morning we're going to look at three why questions and see what they teach us about God. So the first question, why do we magnify and exalt God? Because God answers and delivers us. Secondly, why do we say that God is good? Because God provides for us. And third, why do we turn from evil and do good? Because God draws near to us. So first, why do we magnify and exalt God? Because God has answered and delivers us. So the Psalm starts out with worship language, right? How does David relate to the Lord? He blesses the Lord in verse one. His soul boasts in the Lord in verse two. He magnifies the Lord and exalts his name in verse three. And these all flow together logically. One leads to the next. It sounds a little bit odd to say that we bless the Lord, right? Because we often associate being blessed with being needy. All right, I was sick, God healed me, God blessed me with health. So how can we bless God who lacks nothing? The ESV study Bible explains this, I think very well. To bless means to speak a good word. And so when we think of God blessing us, right? God speaks a word and it comes to pass. That obviously doesn't work for us. So for us to bless God is simply to speak a good word about God. And David says that he will do it continually. And so his soul is going to boast in the Lord. So everything that his soul takes in, it's going to be redirected out backwards to tell everybody how great his God is. And this makes sense to us a little bit, right? We have cars that we paint red and black, right? We wear red and black shoes. I've seen red and black ties, right? We've got UGA shirts that we wear, UGA stickers that we put on our car. I've even seen a little toaster that toasts the Georgia G into the sourdough in the morning. And we do that because the football team is really good and we want those Tennessee fans to know it. All right, so David's doing the same thing here, but with God. He's bringing all these things in and he's showing his people, the people around him, how great his God is. And he's really picking up steam. So David invites the congregation to magnify the Lord and to exalt his name. Literally, this means to make him great and to lift up his name. And so, I actually, I don't see D here right now. He'll know this in a second service, but there's a person named Eliud Kipchoge. Probably no one else knows who he is. I didn't know who he was, but he's a famous marathoner. He's one of the greatest, of all time. He has two gold medals and holds the world record for marathon time. He doesn't need our help to run faster, but nobody knows his name, right? I only know his name because one of the youth in our youth group told me about him. He's a runner, and he looks up to this runner, and so he told me. This guy, his times, his accomplishments, his average pace was 13 miles an hour over the course of an entire marathon, the student magnified this runner to me, and we're asked, we're doing this for God. So how can we do this for the Lord? By blessing him, or by telling people how great he is, and so it all comes full circle. But why? Why do we do that? Why does David tell us to worship the Lord? Because of what God has done. This is no cold and dutiful response from David, but one of overwhelming thankfulness. So while on the run from Saul, David fled to the Philistine city of Gath. From our perspective, it doesn't seem like a very wise decision to flee there. Sure, he would be safe from Saul while hiding amongst the Philistine warriors, but he was in Gath. That's where Goliath was from. So surely David would have been infamous in Gath and the Philistines weren't known for their compassion. So he predictably gets found out and he gets taken to the king in order to be killed. So David His great idea for getting out of this mess is to act insane. So he begins clawing at the door, scratching the doors of his prison, and he lets the spittle run down his beard, and he acts insane, and the king buys it, surprisingly. God graciously kept the truth of David's true identity from Abimelech, and David is set free. So unless we think that this is just an Emmy worthy performance by David, let's look at the actions that he attributes to himself versus the things that he attributes to God. So David, we see in verse four, he sought the Lord. And then later in verse 6, it says that he cried. So David sought the Lord and he cried. What God did, God answered, delivered, heard, saved, and sends his angels to deliver him. See, this was entirely God's doing. That last verse, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, is what's known as an active participle. It means that it's an ongoing action, right? So it's not the angel of the Lord encamped, but encamps, it goes on, the angel of the Lord encamps around his people. It seems that David is really trying to emphasize that it was God who acted and also that this isn't a one-time event. God's protection is a consistent and ongoing thing and that is the reason that David worships. Several years ago, Officer Robert Hubler got a call to respond to a medical emergency. A young boy had shot himself in the chest, narrowly missing his heart, but the child's life was still in danger. Officer Hubler was the nearest unit, and so he rushed to the scene and kept the child alive until the paramedics could arrive and get him to the hospital. The boy eventually recovered. This boy's name was Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., who some of you younger than me might recognize that name. The rest of you, this probably won't mean anything either, but he went on to become a global rap superstar by the name of Lil Wayne. That's not that important, but as you do know, waxing eloquently about the police has never been a major selling point in the rap genre. But in 2015, Carter just, he did that. He did just that in one of his songs, even going so far as to say that if Hoobler, who he now calls Uncle Bob, ever needed anything, that he would personally finance it for him. I don't recommend listening to that song, but why would this famous rap star say good things about a police officer? He did it because he was delivered And he responded by magnifying his hero. So why do we magnify and exalt God? We magnify and exalt God because God answers us and delivers us. The second command that we come to comes in verse eight. Taste and see that the Lord is good. But why? We say that the Lord is good because God provides for us. And this is something that I think we all struggle with a little bit because tasting and seeing that God is good requires us to slow down and actually enjoy things. See, God made the world for us to enjoy. He's not a utilitarian, he's an artist. Think back to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, we read that the Lord planted a garden in Eden. And there he put the man that he had formed. And this is what he says about the garden. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. God didn't just put his people in a desolate wasteland. He didn't make them just eat tasteless slop. God provided Adam a place that was beautiful so that he could more fully know God's goodness and beauty. Here, David isn't telling us merely to consider God's goodness, but to experience God's goodness. And this isn't a suggestion, right? This is an imperative. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And I know we're all Presbyterians here, but we can't be overly theoretical with this, right? This isn't an abstract concept, right? This is the difference between knowing the light waves that form to cause the color red versus going out and watching the sunset and experiencing the color red. So look around and just think of the small gifts that God has given you and know that he is good. whether that's the beauty of the leaves changing, or a nice cup of coffee in the morning, or looking at beautiful architecture, or for some of you, a perfectly crafted sentence in a book. The smell of freshly cut grass, catching up with an old friend, laughing until you cry, pizza in all its forms, a perfectly timed rotation of a 2-3 zone which J. Wade Pierce, who normally sits there, once described to me as one of the most beautiful things in the world. The smell of a campfire, watching the sun set, watching the moon reflect off fresh snow, a perfect harmony, the feeling that runners allegedly get when they feel like they could run forever, your dog seeing you when you get home, getting lost in a fantasy world like Middle Earth, taking a nap after Thanksgiving, a cup of tea before bed, The intricacy of a spider web observed from a distance, cutting the perfect angle when you build something, cold air on your face while you skate a beautiful painting, Miss Bonnie's apple cake, or your kids telling you that you love you. These are not things that we should speed by. These are things that we need to experience. Not because some cosmic accident turned out in our favor, but because the Lord is good and the Lord has given them to us. In these little ways that we experience God's goodness, don't belittle the history-changing goodness of the cross. But much like when we were kids, we felt our parents' love, not by the big things that they did, not by providing a house or providing food, but because of the little things, right? because they let us stay up late to watch the Braves game, because they gave us a little piece of candy before dinner, and so on. So too, feeling God's goodness expressed in these small gifts gives us the energy to reflect on His major gifts of His goodness. So it's a universal truth that people want good things, right? That's why you have songs written about Ferraris and not about Ford Focuses. The only Christians, right, only Christians are able to receive good things as gifts that point us back to the giver rather than making them, obtaining them the primary object of our life. So this is contrary to the way that the rest of the world works, right? We humbly receive good gifts and the world pursues good gifts at all costs. And that's the irony, right? By receiving good things from God, the one who seeks God lacks no good thing. But on the other hand, the young lions, the savage, ferocious killing machines, the apex predators that honestly should be able to find food no matter what, they're the ones that suffer hunger and want. So knowing how tempted we are to look at the rich and the powerful and want what they have and so become as they are, David reminds us that our striving is a losing effort if we strive after gifts rather than strive after the giver. By focusing on the way that God is good to us, we are reminded that we serve a good God. By recognizing God's goodness over and over and over again, we are able to proclaim that God is good even in our darkest hours. I was listening to an old podcast where they were interviewing John Piper, and they were asking him, he just wrote a book about God's sovereignty, and the host asked him, would you tell a wife whose husband had just died that God was sovereign? And the host was trying to get Piper to say, yes, I would do that because we don't want people to think this is a cosmic accident. We want our people to know that God is in control. That's what he was going for. But that's not how Piper responded. Piper said, no, and in his answer, he says sovereignty, I'm going to add in goodness because I think it works. So the question, would you tell a wife whose husband had just died that God is sovereign? Piper said, no, I wouldn't remind her of God's sovereignty or goodness in the hospital. I would cry with her in the hospital. I would teach her of God's sovereignty and of God's goodness in the 10 years leading up to the husband's death. The time for us to start looking for God's goodness isn't when the world is falling down around us. The time is now. Don't take it for granted. Store it up for yourselves and draw on it in hard times. Friends, don't miss God's goodness because you're not paying attention. Slow down. Make a list. If it's from God, then it's good. And if it's good, then it's from God. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Why? because he provides. So we've seen two imperatives and two explanations as to why we obey them. First, we saw that we magnify God because he answers and delivers us. Second, we say that God is good because he provides. And now we move on to our third point. Why do we turn from evil and hate good? It's because God draws near. As Ben mentioned earlier, Peter quotes this psalm extensively in 1 Peter. So we read 1 Peter 2 earlier, but in 1 Peter 3, he uses some of this psalm to describe the ideal lifestyle for believers. And verse 14 in our psalm is the broad statement that everything else falls under. Right? So if you're turning away from evil in verse 14, then you're obviously keeping your tongue from evil in verse 13. Right? If you're seeking peace in verse 14, then in verse 13, your lips aren't speaking deceit. So I want to focus on the word and in all this because I think we often forget it, right? We remember the negative, but oftentimes we forget the positive reasons for what we do. So for instance, if I asked you what is repentance, I think we would all just nail the part where we said repentance is turning from our sin, right? That's the negative. I think we all got that down. But the positive part, the and endeavor after new obedience I think is what we would maybe forget. So here we see turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. This is two sides of the same coin of the Christian life. We both mortify or kill the sin in our lives, but also we live unto righteousness. Sometimes we do a good job. We turn from evil, right? We don't slander. We don't get angry. We don't have road rage. Maybe we don't yell at our kids or say bad things about our boss or make fun of people at school, right? But we forget to do good. We don't encourage somebody. We don't pray as we ought to. And sometimes we do the opposite, right? We do good, but we don't turn from evil, right? We give to missionaries. We pray for our leaders. We help out at Good News at Noon. But maybe we don't stop looking at stuff on Instagram that we shouldn't be looking at, right? We don't retain from posting that inflammatory news article on Facebook that may or may not be completely true. We don't always turn from evil and do good. But more than doing that, we're also called to seek peace and pursue it. And this is the difference between whale watching and bear hunting, right? If you go whale watching, hopefully you're out on the ocean and a whale passes by and you see it. But if you see, if you're bear hunting, right, and you're on a mountain and you see a bear on the other mountain, you go, you track it down, you try to find it. So David knows, how irritating people can be. He knows how stubborn and pig-headed some people are, but the imperative is that we tirelessly pursue peace, even with those people that we disagree with, even those that annoy us, even those that make us want to pull our hair out, because you don't pursue peace with people that you're already peaceful with. Right? Only people that make you rage on the inside are the people that you truly have to pursue peace with. Okay, but we've been given these imperatives, but why? Why are we supposed to do this? And it's important for us to remember that this is a response, right? This isn't an entrance exam. Why do we turn from evil and do good? Because of what God does. Now from verse 15 to verse 22, if you look at it, what God does is mentioned 10 times. And again, we get the negative and the positive reasons for turning from evil. Verse 16 is negative. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, so don't do evil. But also positively, when the righteous call for help, the Lord hears, so do righteous things. Then we see later on, negatively in verse 21, affliction will slay the wicked. We don't want to be slayed, so don't do wickedness. But positively in verse 22, the Lord redeems the life of his servant. Serve the Lord. Why do we turn from evil? We turn from evil because God draws near to us, and we are becoming godlier. If God draws near and we become more like Him, God hates evil, so we should hate evil. Why do we do good? Well, if God draws near to us, we become godlier, then we will do as God does, which is good. So we're simply imitating our King. Now, some of you might be wondering about verse 18. It's an apparent contradiction to the rest of the psalm. So if you will look at it, I'll read it to the Lord is near the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. So the question becomes, if the Lord answers and delivers, verse four, if the Lord hears, verse six, if the angel of the Lord encamps continually, verse seven, if those who seek the Lord lack no good thing, verse 10, if the eyes of the Lord are towards the righteous and his ears towards their cry, verse 15, if the Lord hears, verse 17, if the Lord delivers, verse 19, and the Lord redeems in verse 22, how could someone be brokenhearted? How could somebody be crushed in spirit? And it seems like there's two possible answers. First, all that the Lord does, his hearing, his delivering, his redeeming, is insufficient to prevent you from becoming brokenhearted. Or the alternative, being brokenhearted is not contradictory to being heard or being delivered or being redeemed. I think it's the second option. So who knows the love of his father more? The son whose dad is a billionaire and he lacks nothing. The father can buy whatever the son wants, but the son never sees his dad. Or the son whose dad is poor but never misses a game, a rehearsal, a camping trip, or an important day. Or who knows the love of their parent more, the daughter whose mom just buys her a new cat when her cat dies. Or the daughter whose mother cries with her as she experiences death for the first time. One of my favorite, I'll go with books, because they make fun of me when I say this is one of my favorite movies, is Les Mis. And in it, one of the main characters, Jean Valjean, he's a convict out on parole. So he had stolen and now he's out of jail and he has nowhere to stay. So the opening scene is that he can't find anywhere. He can't even buy a room or a meal. They don't want anything to do with him. until he gets to a small town and he meets the bishop of the town, Bishop Muriel. This bishop invites him in and gives him a room and he sets the table, puts out the nice silverware and prepares a nice meal for him, gives him a place to stay. During the night, Jean Valjean remembers that he's a convict, right? He's a criminal. And so he wakes up in the middle of the night and steals all that silverware, the nice things that the bishop had served him with earlier. So he's caught. The police bring him back to the bishop and say, this convict, right, he told us that you gave him these nice things. And the bishop says, I did, I did give them to him, but he forgot the most important thing. The most important thing were these priceless silver candlesticks. But he turns to Jean Valjean and tells him, I'm giving this to you so you can have a new life. All right, and so he turns his life around. The story goes on and Jean Valjean changes identity and starts a business and transform a town economically and one of his workers begins to die and her dying request is that he find her daughter and take care of him. So the rest of the book, the rest of the movie is all about Jean Valjean taking care of this little girl until she's grown. And so it ends with this former convict risking his life to save the life of the man who his adopted daughter loves. So at great risk to himself, he does this for somebody else, which is night and day difference to where he was at the beginning. And how did he get there? He didn't just choose to do it, but because the bishop drew near to him, he had become like the bishop. He had become self-sacrificing. He had become somebody that looks out for the good of others. We see we serve a compassionate God and an empathetic king. Our deepest pains reveal the depths of God's love for us. Our king is familiar with the death of a close friend. He's familiar with temptation. He's familiar with rough family dynamics and betrayal. Christians alone can pursue peace and can do good knowing full well that evil is going to come right back in our face because we know that the God of the universe is there to comfort us. We can turn from evil and do good because God draws near. So the application day is threefold and I have a little bit of homework for you guys as the application, so sorry about that. But here it is, all right. It's not hard, it won't take you a while. All right, so first, we magnify and exalt God because he answers and delivers us. All right, so we're about to sing a song declaring that we have 10,000 reasons to praise God. Just think of one while I'm praying or while we sing. Second, we say that God is good because he provides for us. So on the way home or on the way to lunch today, think of one small joy that shows you that God is good and tell somebody about it. And third, we turn from evil and do good because God draws near. Before you come back for evening church tonight or before you go to bed tonight, think about how God has drawn near to you and how you can reflect that goodness back out. For example, God has been patient with me so I can be patient with my wife. God has forgiven me so I can forgive somebody else. So let's take a minute and pray and then we'll sing 10,000 Reasons. Father, we thank you that you are good and you show us your goodness. Lord, you don't simply command us to follow you, but you give us good reason to follow you. Lord, you protect us, you guide us, you love us, you show us your goodness. Lord, I pray that as we worship you, this wouldn't be something we do because everybody else in the room is doing it, but because we are acutely aware of your goodness towards us, of your forgiveness towards us. Lord, be glorified through our song, I pray. Watch over us the rest of the day. We pray this all in your son's name. Amen.