What times we live in. Think about what's going on in the world. Think about all the challenges we face. The threats there are before us. The horrible things even that are going on. Even in the last few hours, atrocious crimes committed. lots of reasons to be depressed and spirit and fearful about the future. But as I was meditating on what's going on in the world and who I am and who we are as Christian people, specifically as I was giving my mind over to the substance of the 138th Psalm, our sermon text today, I realized that for all God's people, from the beginning of the world until Christ's second coming, our situation is basically the same, fundamentally the same in a certain spiritual sense. Indeed, we have all suffered various trials and all is not well, either with us personally or in society. But as God's people, we can know and say that our experiences of his mercies in the past continue to evoke our thankful praise to him now and our hope for the future. As we consider how the Lord has saved us, keeping the promises of his word, we feel a sense of deep gratitude well up within us by the spirit. And we, we think if when we're thinking right, that the God who has been faithful to us so far will never fail us in the future. He will keep all of his promises to his people. And so that brings us to the big picture truth of Psalm 138, which I would state this way. God, faithful and loving to me, makes me grateful and confident, even now. God, faithful and loving to me, makes me grateful and confident, even now. Even on this Lord's Day, the 1st of 2023, when we think back about how, in some ways, how hard 2022 was, and how the 2023 might even be worse. I said to my dear wife just last night, who knows what the future holds for us in the temporal things. Even with those considerations, at this moment, we are, as God's people, grateful and confident, since God has been faithful and loving to us. Amen? Now, it's one thing to say that and have an intellectual understanding of the idea, it's another thing to let that truth really seep into your very bones and marrow and affect your outlook and your genuine disposition. So may the Lord be pleased to bless us with greater gratitude and greater confidence through our meditation together upon this wonderful Psalm 138. Let me read the text to you without comment now. before we expound its eight verses. Here then, what is God's word? Psalm 138, a Psalm of David. I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship towards thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cried, thou answer'st me, and strengthen'st me with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the works of thine own hands. Amen? What a great psalm. Now there, of course, is some liberty about preaching, what we might choose to say about the psalm, as long as we're faithful to the message of the psalm, there is liberty. But I have chosen to open up the substance of these eight verses under three headings. And they cover, first of all, verses one to three, then verses four to six, And then the last two verses, seven and eight. So in the first three verses, the psalmist is saying, as an individual, I am grateful for answered prayer. And the second three verses, four, five, and six, he's saying, I am confident of God's public vindication. And then he concludes the song by saying, I am confident of my ultimate blessedness. That's the progress of thought I submit to you in the psalm. I am grateful, first of all, and then I'm confident. And the statement of confidence is confidence about two things, the ultimate display of God's glory in the end of his redemptive plan, and the ultimate salvation of all that I am in God's redemptive plan, that I will come to complete blessedness. by the power of God. I'm grateful that God has heard and answered my prayers when I have offered them to him and he came and delivered me. I'm confident that one day the glory of God is going to be most fully put on public display and I will, by the power of God, be brought to my ultimate blessedness. So that's the big picture of the Psalm. Let's go through each part one at a time. I would comment on the language in the verses. When verses one to three state the psalmist's gratitude for answered prayer, this is, if you will, a look back in his personal experience. He's thinking back to blessings he has received from the Lord. So this is a personal testimony of those blessings. But before he states specifically something about those blessings, he begins with this exuberant statement of praise and thanks to the Lord who gave him the blessings he's going to mention. In verses one and two, I will praise thee, verse 2a, I will worship towards thy holy temple, and verse 2b, and praise thy name. So three times he's saying I will praise you, And in the second time, he uses the verb for worship or bow down. And then again, I will praise you. And the verb that is translated praise in 1A and 2B is a Hebrew word that means more specifically, thankful verbal acknowledgement. Thankful verbal acknowledgement. It's not only saying, if you will, that God is good and worthy of praise, it's saying God has been good to me and so I praise him by way of giving thanks for the blessings I have received. And as we study what the psalmist says about his praise, he says that my praise, and I'm interpreting now, has seven particular traits to it. First of all, it's wholehearted praise. verse one, I will praise thee with my whole heart. And that idiom, we still use and understand, but that just to make sure there's no missing it, it has the connotation of utter sincerity, utter sincerity. I will praise you, not distractedly, not praise you among other gods who also get some of my praise. No, I will praise you with all that I am and have as one totally devoted to you, O Lord, as my God and Savior. And let me say that this isn't just a good thing to praise God with your whole heart. It's the only true worship that there is. You know, half-hearted praise really is idolatry and unacceptable to the Lord. So the psalmist will have none of it. He says, I will praise thee with my whole heart. The second trait we see of his praise is it is bold. Verse 1b, before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. Now the Hebrew term here for gods is Elohim. Literally it means strong ones, plural. And there has been some debate in the scholarly literature about how this ought to be understood. But of four options that I know about, I agree with one commentator that said the most likely sense of the term is gods here. And what's in view is the psalmist who's devoted to Jehovah, Israel's God, praising Jehovah before or in front of the gods. That is, despite the prevalence of false gods and idols in the world and peoples who respect those false gods, I will give my whole heart of praise to Yahweh in front of those idol worshipers. And this is bold, of course. It's one thing to praise God among his fellow worshipers in the church. It's another thing to give thankful praise for his mercies to you in front of the world who worships their idols, whatever they may be. That is a holy boldness in the praise. The third trait of his praise is that it is joyful. He says, before the gods, I will sing praise unto thee. Sing, the verb means to use one's voice as a musical instrument. So in the Hebrew tradition, indeed in the Christian tradition now, one of the ways that the church worships God is by singing praise to him. And this is an act of worship, it's not Singing in the church is not for entertainment. It's not just because, hey, we're musical and we like music. It is a divinely ordained form of holy worship that we should sing praise to the Lord. And often singing is associated with a joyful heart. Now in the Hebrew tradition, sometimes singing is very sad because lamentations are also sung as a form of worship before God. But in the context of Psalm 138, this is definitely joyful singing because he's giving thanks for God hearing and answering his prayers when he was in distress. And you know, I would just say this, it might be almost superfluous in some churches or with some people, but here I want to stress that true worship is not only wholehearted and bold, it's also emotional on a certain level. Maybe we may be subject to a particularly kind of intellectual approach to worship and think as long as we're thinking right thoughts that our worship is fine but it ought to move us at the level of our feelings when we think about how God has been faithful just to hear and answer our prayers amen is it scandalous that pastor meadows is saying to you true worship is necessarily emotional there's an element of emotion in it now Culturally, we express that emotion variously, depending on who we are and where we live and what times in which we live and what place in society we hold. There are certain cultural settings in which earnest and joyful emotion might be shown by a smile and a little bit of a sprightly tone in one's singing. There are other places where that joy breaks out into clapping and exuberant, loud singing, you know, that's a cultural difference, but there should be joy in our worship. And if it's true worship, there will be an element of joy. Now, the fourth element of, or trait of worship here and praise is that it is humble praise. Look at verse two. He says, I will worship towards thy holy temple. The word translated worship literally means to bow down, And this is more, I think, metaphorical than physical. It's not required that we physically bow down to worship the Lord. But that posture of the body, when it's properly done, is reflective of a more significant posture of the soul. In other words, when I think about how great God is and how much he's blessed me, I also have this this deep-seated sense of being little in mine own eyes. So true worship is humble as well as joyful. And then we see also that true worship here has the trait of being reverent and trusting in the first line of verse two. That comes out in the phrase, I will worship towards thy holy temple. And in the days when this psalm was first written and sung, the temple was standing and people remembered Solomon's dedicatory prayer that even when God's people were driven out of Israel, if they would turn and face the temple in Jerusalem and pray to the God whose favor that temple represents, God would hear and answer their prayers. In other words, true praise is reverent toward Israel's God and remembers that Israel's God is not only great, but also the God who makes promises that we can trust. And so this statement, I will worship towards thy holy temple, conveys a sense of reverence and faith toward Israel's God. The sixth trait of the praise here is that it is theological. Look at verse two, the middle line, 2B. I will praise thy name, that is to say God himself, for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. Now these are words, these two words so translated, loving kindness and truth, are words in the original that are found together often in the Hebrew Bible as descriptions of God's own being. He is faithful and he's true. And God's ways with his covenant people. And the reason it seems that these two particular words are found together is They're really saying something together that is more than what each of them says separately. And when they are taken together this way, as a description of the Lord and His glorious ways, they have the connotation of His faithful, covenant love. In other words, this is one of the things that distinguishes the true and living God from the gods of the nations. He enters into covenantal arrangements with his people and he can be counted upon to keep the terms of the covenant he sets forth for his people. He is faithful and true. He is loyal to his people and to his promises. So this is to make certain theological statements about the true and living God. And so the praise saying so is theological praise. And then finally, the seventh trait of this praise is that it is X, I would say ecstatic. And, and I get that from the last part of verse two, where he says for that is the reason I will praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. is that thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. Name meaning essentially the glory of God, the reputation of God. Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. Now, it may be subtle, and I don't know whether you're picking up on it or not, but I am, to make such a grandiose statement as this reflects a really a state of ecstasy in the one who speaks this way. He's straining the limits of language to convey to the hearer how good and how great God is and worthy of praise. The translation that's offered here is really quite literal, but it may give the wrong impression. It can be translated in several different ways, and one of the possibilities that I find plausible and praiseworthy is this. One scholar has rendered the last part of verse two this way. It is hard to translate, but here's an attempt. You have magnified your name and your promise above all. So it doesn't necessarily have the idea that God has magnified his word more than he has magnified the glory of his name. It has the word all in it and it mentions God's word and his name alongside of the word all. So I think this is more likely the true sense. You have magnified your name and your promise above all that is above everything else. which is to say God is worthy to be praised because of his great glory and his inviolable and trustworthy word. So this is the expression of thankful praise that precedes a statement of my reason for thankful praise in verse three. My reason for thankful praise is to quote the verse in the day when I cried, thou answerest me. and strengthened me with strength in my soul. The verb cried has the sense, not of weeping, but of calling out to God as one in distress, really. So because the answer to the cry or calling out to God was that God strengthened me with strength in my soul, We may infer that the occasion for calling out to God was weakness in my soul or discouragement. So I was down. I felt weak. I was endangered, spiritually speaking, in that time in my life. And I called out to You, O Lord, in my weakness and discouragement. And You answered my prayer. And here's how You answered it. By strengthening me with strength in my soul. In other words, You gave me courage You gave me a will to continue. I was ready to, if I might paraphrase, throw in the towel. And I prayed to you. I called out to you, Lord, and you delivered me out of that discouragement and weakness into a posture of spiritual strength. And it is a It is a good translation and also a beautiful manner of expressing it in verse three. You strengthened me with strength in my soul. This is not talking about healing from a physical illness. This is not talking about getting out of a bad external situation. This is about a spiritual need that the psalmist felt he had And then the Lord's answer to prayer in delivering him out of that dangerous condition of his heart. You know, the greatest needs we have are spiritual rather than physical. And so our greatest blessings that we receive an answer to prayer. are spiritual blessings even more than any physical blessings we might also receive in answer to our prayers. And we see that that's what happened to the psalmist and he is careful after being so blessed in answer to prayer to thank God for his help. One of the eloquent Puritans named Thomas Goodwin said, those blessings are sweetest that are one with prayers and worn with thanks. Those blessings are sweetest, which are one with prayers and worn with thanks. Be as careful to thank God for the intangible spiritual blessings that you have in answer to your prayers as you are to call out to him in your distress before he has given you the answer to your prayers. be like the psalmist in this way when you can think back to your own personal experience to times when you surely called out to the Lord in prayer because you felt your weakness and you knew you were discouraged and and the Lord answered your prayer and strengthened your soul and now you can join in heartfelt wholehearted earnest praise to him, thankfully acknowledging that such has been your experience. So in the first three verses of the psalm, we see the psalmist saying to the hearers, actually to the Lord in the presence of the hearers besides, I am grateful for answered prayer. I am a man who has been blessed in my past experience by the Lord. I was in distress. I called upon the Lord. He heard me. He blessed me with spiritual blessings, and I want to acknowledge that thankfully to the Lord in my praise to him. And this first part of the psalm sets up the next, which suggests that gratitude for past mercies fosters fosters confidence about future mercies to us. And here's the logic that is implied by the progress of thought in the psalm. Shall God, whom I have found in my own experience to be faithful and loving to me, shall this God change and be faithful and loving no more in the future? Of course not. And so since we have known God to be faithful and loving in the past, we continue to count on him to be faithful and loving in the future. And that breeds a certain confidence that everything's going to be all right in the end. Everything's going to be all right, friends. You know, one of the prophetic utterances of the New Testament about the perilous days that are coming and the end of the world is that people's hearts will be failing them for fear. In other words, people will be terrified. And it's not like people in the church are invulnerable to that temptation. We can be tempted to be terrified. And when people are beginning a new year, sometimes they have optimism, but some people see the trouble around and they actually feel dread about what's about to hit them. And what I'm telling you is in the church as a Christian, You don't have any reason to feel dread and terror of what's going to happen. Because you have known God to be faithful and loving to you in the past. He's not going to change in the days to come. So that's the transition from the expression of gratitude in verses 1 to 3 to the expression of confidence in verses 4 to 8. And the first thing the psalmist says he's confident about is God's public vindication. And whereas in the first three verses he was looking back to his past, in these verses he's looking around at society, including kings. And so let me just suggest this to you. Our confidence about a totally happy ending for everything is threatened by looking around at society, including governmental leaders. We look and we have so much more information than the ancient peoples would have had about the goings on in the world today with technology. But we look about us and we behold, if we have any moral discernment and sensitivity at all, lots of sacrilege against the God of the Bible. Sometimes even in those who are professing Christians, lots of sacrilege that is irreligion. And we also observe the real stubbornness of sinners. And it's something of an amazement to us how that people can believe the most outrageously immoral and nonsensical things. And even when science and natural law opposes them, they won't repent. They maintain their belief, you know, that somebody might be a woman trapped in a man's body, for example, or other such ridiculous notions. And we see how sacrilegious and stubborn in its sin and unbelief and perversity the world is. It can tempt us to wonder whether this is all going to turn out alright. Sight says God will always be dishonored and God's elect will always be oppressed and on the short end of the stick. But dear friends, faith says that God's revealed plan gives us a solid basis of hope for the future. And so we walk by faith, not by sight. We don't judge with merely human judgment about things. If we have wisdom, we judge on the basis of God's holy word. And God tells us about how things are going to turn out in the end. and they will be to the public glorification of God, the true and living God. In the future, there is a day coming when everybody will praise God after a certain manner according to the Psalm. Look at verse four now and five. These verses anticipate what I'm calling the future Universal acclamation of God. That is a future praise of God. Look at verse four. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Now this is important to the psalmist because he's a godly man. Godly people actually yearn for God's glory to be more and more publicly manifested. Did you know that? If you are a truly pious person in the best sense of the term, if you love God and you fear God and you pray as Jesus prayed, told us to pray, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These prayers and desires amount to an earnest craving for the goodness and the glory of God to be so conspicuous, so public that everyone has to acknowledge it, not just the church. And so here the psalmist is telling us as a prophecy that that day is sure to come. Now kings were the most significant people of the world in those days. And the kings of the earth, uh, by the testimony of scripture were often blasphemous toward God and oppressive toward God's people. And if you remember, the psalm Psalter begins early on in Psalm 2 with this portrayal of the wicked kings of the world. Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed ones, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. So that's a typical condition of the kings of the earth. They're anti-God and anti-Christ. But the psalmist says in Psalm 2, he who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. In other words, the present status quo of blasphemous, oppressive kings and many under them who share their spirit is not forever. God will have the last laugh. His glory will finally appear like the blazing sun at noon. It's bound to happen. Now, when the psalm says, all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, this doesn't necessarily need to be taken as announcing universal salvation for kings. It's not necessarily to be interpreted as all the kings of the earth will repent of their sins, exercise faith in Christ, and with love in their hearts toward God say, you know, thank you, thank you, God, you're good and you're great and I love you, you deserve eternal praise. That's not the way it needs to be taken. But many of them will, of course. But I think we should understand it rather as the universal acknowledgement of God, even by the kings of the earth, who wouldn't acknowledge him before the last day comes. And so we have supportive text to that notion in other places in the Bible. Isaiah 52, 15, foretelling the future says, he shall sprinkle many nations and the kings shall shut their mouths at him for that which has not been told them they shall see and that which they had not heard they shall consider. Here the prophet foresees a future day when the Messiah will come and in connection with the Messiah's coming, the kings will be speechless because he will be a savior and judge like they have never seen before in the history of the world. Likewise, it says in Joshua 2, and you'll remember this story, I trust. She said that is Rahab the harlot said to the Jewish men who were spying out the land. I Know this is in Jericho I know that the Lord has given you the land and that your terror is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you For we have heard how that the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were on the other side of Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts did melt. Neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath." What's going on here? It's so pleased God in Jewish history to give the Jews such stunning victories over inconquerable foes like the Egyptians and like Sihon and Og and causing the Red Sea to part and them to go through on dry land. then later the Jordan River, that the pagans who worshipped other gods instead of Jehovah, when they heard of these miracles, these miraculous deliverances from God on behalf of Israel, they were terrified. They were terrified of Israel's God. And they're boasting about themselves and their own gods and their own religion and all that took a holiday because they saw that Israel's God was the true and living God. Well, something like that is going to happen, brethren, on the last day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven to earth in power and glory with 10,000 times 10,000 mighty angels in his train and summons all mankind to judgment day. the dictators of the world and the presidents and the prime ministers, all of them will be there. And they will either be saved by the grace of God and willingly praising Christ, or they will they will be in stunned silence and humbled before the glorious Christ. And in either case, they will be giving praise to God and God will be publicly vindicated in the glory that shall be revealed. Even their silence will be praise, if you will, to the Lord. Romans chapter 3 verse 19 says, we know that whatever things the law says It says to those who are under the law with this purpose or end in view, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. The psalmist is confident that on the last day, God will be acclaimed and his glory will be more fully seen than it ever has been. Great is the glory of the Lord on that day. Verse five. Having stated his confidence about God's public vindication on the last day, he makes a statement about the mercy and justice of God in the interim. And this divine policy of mercy and justice is conducive to his public glory on the last day. Look, verse six sounds a lot like one of the sayings in the wisdom literature, like the book of Proverbs. It says, though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knows are far off. This is a beautiful contrast that's set up here. First of all, in line one, the Lord, the most high God, has regard unto the low people, the people who would seem to be furthest from him, the least glorious people. The Lord, who's most high, has a favorable, merciful, compassionate regard toward the humble, in other words, the lowly worshiper. But the people who exalt themselves, who are big in their own eyes, in other words, the proud and lofty. Now, listen, this is another surprising contrast. The most high God knows them only a far off, which is to say he holds them in contempt. They are regarded by the Lord as his enemy. Of course, this is an eternal moral principle illustrated in the story of the Pharisee and the publican of Luke chapter 18. There was a parable Jesus told about two men who went up to pray and one of them trusted in himself that he was righteous and despised other people. And the other man knew he was a sinner. And here's the story. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, that's the self-righteous hypocrite. The other one was a publican or tax collector, that's the man who was a sinner and knew he was a sinner. The Pharisees were highly esteemed in Jewish society. The tax collectors were hated as the lowest of the low. And so Jesus says, these two men, the very religious Pharisee and the sinner publican, went to pray. And the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I'm not like other men are extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess and so on. So this Pharisee ostensibly is going to pray to God. And he looks up to God. He's a God. I am such a good person in your sight. The publican was the reverse. The tax collector wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beat on his chest and said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. So all that Jesus has the tax collector doing is feeling terrible about what a bad person he is and pleading for mercy from God. That is not to be punished the way he deserves to be punished for his sins. the moral of the story in the parable, Jesus tells us this. I tell you, this tax collector went down to his house justified, that is counted righteous by God instead of the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be brought low, but the one who humbles himself shall be exalted. Well, that's the divine policy of mercy and justice that's in verse six of the Psalm. Though the Lord be high, yet he has regard to the humble, lowly people who know their sinners, who confess their sins, who have no claims on God and know it in themselves. But the proud person who thinks they're wonderful and good and upright and moral, God, though God is high and they are high in a certain sense, God only knows them at a distance. That is, he doesn't favor them. He loathes them. And on the last day, this divine policy of mercy and justice will tend to the public vindication of God's glory. That's the implication of this verse here in the Psalm. Well, as God, faithful and loving, will fulfill his grand master plan for his own glorification on the last day. And the Psalmist is confident about that. As we come to the end of the Psalm, we see the Psalmist is also confident about God blessing me as he promised. Verses seven and eight. In other words, he's saying, I am confident of my ultimate blessedness, not just God's vindication, but my full and complete salvation. Look at verse seven. He says, though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou will revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. And finally, he says, the Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the works of thine own hands. I believe that these two verses are somewhat different in their import. Number one, the first of the two, verse seven, is the psalmist expressing confidence that God will bless him in the remainder of his earthly life. During the interim period, before he sees the Lord, when he must necessarily walk in the midst of trouble. Even in whatever days I have left in this life, he's saying, I know the Lord is going to bless me. Then verse eight is about confidence concerning the blessing that will come to him in the grand finale of all things, on the last day, when God wraps up all that he purposed to do. Even then, I am confident that I will be supremely blessed. So that's the transition. I am confident God will bless me in whatever days I have left in this world. I am also confident that in the end, I will be supremely and ultimately blessed. So let's look at these two, one at a time. First of all, he says, I'm confident of salvation from trouble in the remainder of my life, though I walk in the midst of trouble. And here he's acknowledging that though he belongs to the Lord, though he is loved by God and included in his promises of salvation, I still must suffer some misery in the present. That misery is conveyed in this word trouble. Though I walk, that's a habitual experience, though I walk in the midst of trouble, And he also acknowledges the misery he suffers when he says, he talks about the wrath of mine enemies. So yes, I am called by providence to live in troubled times and to suffer trouble in my life experience. Yes, I have enemies in the world and they hate me and they speak with hatred toward me. Yes, this is my present experience. And before we pass on to what follows, let me just say this. We infer from this that chronic pain, perpetual conflict, and enduring angst are no sign whatsoever that one is not a true Christian with a blessed end. Because these miseries in the present age are common, shared by all God's beloved people. Don't be so simplistic as to think that if things don't seem to be going well in your life, it's because God hates you and you're going to hell. That's not, that doesn't follow at all. Have you ever read the book of Job? In Job's life, trouble came upon him in a, in a, in a great and severe way because he was the most righteous man in the society. So this is an acknowledgement that, that I have to suffer misery in this present life, uh, that Providence appoints for me. Uh, even the great apostle Paul, writing Romans Included this line. Oh Wretched man that I am Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And this is an apostle filled with the Holy Spirit one of God's all time favorite people in the world chosen for singular Christian service. And he says, oh, wretched man that I am. And why did he say he was wretched? It wasn't because he had a terminal illness. It wasn't it wasn't really mainly in chapter seven of Romans, because people were against him, it was because he had an acute awareness of remaining sin in his own heart, and it so frustrated him that he couldn't repent completely, once and for all, and be sinless. That was the great burden that he bore till his dying day. That was what caused him to cry out, O wretched man that I am. It doesn't mean he's not a Christian. He's not only a Christian, He's a mature Christian, a spiritual Christian who is so miserable. If he were less spiritual, he would feel more comfortable in life. But because he's spiritual, he's miserable. So the psalmist says, I have to walk in the midst of trouble and face the wrath of my enemies. However, however, I anticipate that even in this life, I will have deliverances given to me by the Lord in answer to my prayers. Verse seven, though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. And the Hebrew term is one that means, among other nuances, to keep alive. You know, people would have me dead, Lord, but you're keeping me alive. You're preserving me every day that I continue to live in this world. Robert Trail, another Puritan said, never did a believer in Jesus die or drown in his voyage to heaven. You know, you're invincible spiritually until you finally prevail in the great spiritual battle that you're in. To quote our Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 17, Paragraph 3, listen to these most encouraging words. This comes right after a statement that Christians may sin in all kinds of ways and be very miserable at times. But it says, they shall renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end. So this is the temporal deliverance. One aspect of it that I experienced is the Lord preserves me as his own. Secondly, I have a temporal deliverance with respect to my enemies. Look at verse seven, thou Lord shall stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of my enemies. And this sounds like, I think that the Lord providentially works to overthrow the psalmist enemies in some historic way. That is in his own life experience. When I pray against my enemies, Lord, I know and I anticipate there will be times when it pleases you to disable their wrath against me and overthrow them. And then finally, he says, I anticipate temporal deliverances For me not just in me, but for me when he says thy right hand shall save me That is save me from my enemies Which is a basically a positive way to say you will rescue me from them Brethren the Lord has has really blessed me in my private study and meditation on these things and I see this in the Bible, and I can also tell you that I see this in my life and in my personal experience. And if you're a Christian, for any time, you can bear witness to this too. Listen. True Christians are preserved, even in this life, and often delivered from our enemies, like the world, the flesh, and the devil, while we witness many temporal, providential judgments against them. the people who made themselves our enemies by their malice and by their slander and by their violence sometimes or other ways that they try to hurt us. We see in answer to our prayers that God delivers us out of their paws, so to speak, even before the judgment day comes and preserves us as his own faithful ones. That's the kind of thing the psalmist had in view when he expresses his confidence that the Lord will save him from trouble even in this life. Not that he won't have any trouble, but that his soul won't be lost in his trouble. His salvation, his ultimate salvation, will not be derailed by his trouble. And then he comes to this most climactic, glorious expression of confidence in his ultimate salvation, which is verse 8. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. These are the blessings he anticipates in the grand finale, the wrap-up of God's redemptive plan for him personally. He expresses assurance about himself, first of all. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. And then he expresses assurance about the Lord. Thy mercy, O Lord, endures forever. Now, what does it mean? What does he mean when he says the Lord will perfect that which concerns me? One of the good commentaries explains it this way. He will fulfill his purpose on my account That is, keep his covenant with respect to me personally. And the psalmist is expressing his complete and eternal salvation from everything evil. So this is the consummation of my deliverance from all misery into all blessedness that is in view. A similar idea is found in Psalm 57 verse 2. I will cry unto God most high, unto God that performeth all things for me. And if you're like me, you couldn't help but think about Philippians 1.6, where Paul wrote, we are confident of this very thing. that he who has begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Look, with New Testament light, we can say this consummate blessedness involves the resurrection of the body to immortality, the perfect purgation of the soul from all sin and corruption, the complete likeness morally to the lovely Lord Jesus Christ in our souls, and the entrance into a new creation and a society which is a society of perfect love and faith toward God. This is the blessed end toward which all God's elect are destined. And the psalmist is expressing in principle his confidence that the Lord will bring him to that perfect end. The Lord will perfect that, which concerns me. And the basis for this assurance about himself is an assurance about the Lord. Verse 7b, I'm sorry, 8b. Thy mercy, O Lord, endures forever. A sentiment that is found in many other Psalms. Your mercy, Lord, endures forever. To explain this, another scholar says, the pledge of this completion is his everlasting mercy, which will not rest until the promise is become perfect truth and reality. Look, I've said a lot and I you might be saturated at this point, but let me add just a little bit more and I'm done. Because the Lord's mercy endures forever. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. Because that is one of the manifestations of his enduring mercy. God is merciful, not just in general. He's merciful to me in particular forever. He will keep his promises to save me wholly from all my miseries and bring me into the paradise of God. Because that's the way God is. His mercy endures forever. And the very last line of the psalm then might be surprising to you because it says, forsake not the works of thine own hands. At least the way this is translated here, it's a prayer request. God, please do not forsake the work of your own hands being referenced to me as the work of your own hands. Please don't forsake me. You might say, why would you pray? Don't forsake me. When you just said the Lord will perfect that which concerns you. Well, that's the reason why. And this might be counterintuitive, but God's promises never to forsake his people, rightly understood, inspire our confident prayers that he will preserve us to the end. Or another way to put it is this. God's promise not to forsake us is far from suppressing prayers for this. We can pray to the Lord, forsake not the works of your own hands, because he has promised not to. And we can make that prayer request by faith and with all confidence that the Lord will hear and answer our prayers. One more thing in the exposition I would have you hear. It's very interesting that the psalmist chooses to refer to himself in this prayer request as the works of God's hands. The works, I in other words, are the work, I am the work of your hands, Lord. Calvin quotes Augustine approvingly on this verse. Despise not the works of thy hands. See in me, O Lord, your work, not mine. For if you see my work, you will condemn it. If you see your own work, you will crown it. For whatever good works are mine are from you. So this really is a subtle acknowledgement that God is at work in my heart and life. He has already begun a good work in me, and I'm asking him to continue his good work until it's complete. And so do all the righteous pray. So what a wonderful psalm of gratitude and confidence. Gratitude that God has heard and answered our prayers in distress and strengthened us with strength in our souls. Confidence that God will be publicly glorified on the last day. Even the godless kings will shut their mouths because God's glory will be so overwhelming. And confident finally that the Lord will bring each one of his chosen people to consummate blessedness. I'm so glad that providentially Psalm 138 came to be our meditation for this, the first day of 2023. It's a wonderful and appropriate Psalm and meditation for our encouragement on the first day of a new year, isn't it? So I ask you from this day forward, Will you make this Psalm your Psalm by knowing what it says, by embracing it with all your heart, by faith? Will you share in its gratitude and confidence? I urge you to do that because as you embrace the language and the teaching and the spiritual uplift of Psalm 138, you will be better able to face the future with courage, hope, and joy. And that's my prayer for us today, that we will not be among the faithless who live from day to day in terror of what the future brings, but instead we'll be grateful for past blessings and confident of the future blessings by the mercy and power of God toward us. May God grant that blessing for all of us. Amen.