00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Turning to Psalm 107, so let's
retrace our steps here and go back to the psalm that we began
by reading earlier in the service. Psalm 107. We're going to sing the first
three verses. Excuse me, sing. We're going
to read. It is a psalm, is it not? We will read the first three
verses and then ask for the Lord's help in our time together tonight. O give thanks unto the Lord,
for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed
of the Lord say, so whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the
enemy. And gather them out of the lands
from the east, from the west, from the north, and from the
south. Amen. Again, may the Lord add
his own blessing to this reading from his infallible word. With the Word of God open before
us, let's now bow before Him and ask that He would open our
hearts to the Word, and that He would open the Word to our
hearts this evening. Father in Heaven, we come to
Thee this night knowing that Thou dost know everything. Let
us know that which will meet us in this next week. Let us
know the spiritual foes that oppose Thy people. Let us know
the physical illnesses and disappointments and setbacks that Your people
will undergo even this week. And yet, Lord, we look unto Thee
this night knowing that you have complete control over the affairs
of men, that you can say, be still my soul. And Lord, our
soul does become still. Lord, help us then to be in unison
with thee this night. Help us this night to so rest
and trust in thee that we know that you're in sovereign control
of everything that we will face in this next week. Lord, we need
to be spoken to by thee. We desire to hear a word from
heaven. Lord, we would pray that you
would fashion that word to meet the needs of all of your people.
Lord, we confess that we are amazed at the times when we gather
together, and you have a word in season for each of our hearts,
and yet the word differs from seat to seat and person to person.
Lord, we confess that Thy Spirit is certainly up for the task
of dealing with our souls tonight. And we would come and ask that
You would come and pull us all along heavenward tonight, that
You would give us each one grace to rest in Thee tonight and to
glory in Thee. We're thankful that Jesus Christ
is indeed our merit before Thy throne, that He intercedes tonight
on our behalf. that we are smiled upon tonight,
not because of our works, but because of His work. We know
that we have all failed and failed miserably before Thy throne.
And yet, Lord, You see us in Christ. He is our living Head. He is our substitute before Thee. Lord, come then and bless us
tonight for Christ's sake. Come and show us again what we
have in Him and give us the power and the grace to follow Him in
this coming week. Come and help us, Lord, even
tonight, as we study Thy Word together. May we know that anointing
upon us, that we would have ears to hear and hearts to respond
to Thee. For we ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. we have been looking at some
of the distinctives of the free Presbyterian Church. And we have
noted that many of these distinctives should not be distinctives at
all. The things that we do should not be strange or abnormal in
the world's eyes. It should be something the world,
that is the world of believers, ought all to be doing. And perhaps
two generations ago, that was the case. But now we come to
a day and age in which many of the things that we do are viewed
as strange and are ridiculed and are said to be that which
is not helpful to the Christian life. Well, one of the great
blessings that has been my lot since being in the Free Presbyterian
Church is that of singing the great hymns. When I was first
coming into the free church, we did not have a psalter. And
then when Dr. Cairns came to the church in
Greenville, he knew of a psalter that was put out by Oxford University. And it was a red psalter, the
top part had the music, and then the bottom part had the words,
and they were not joined, so you could fan through the music
and change the music for every one of the psalms if you wished. And we began singing the Psalms
as well as the hymns. What a delight. What a stirring
of the soul. And then in the hymn book that
was chosen for us, and then the hymn book that we came out with
later on, there are hymns there that I never heard before. Hymns
that are powerful, hymns that lift the soul and preach the
sermon to you. Tremendous hymns. We were speaking
last night on the way back from our prayer meeting. about Liberia. And one of the people in Liberia
had said to me in one of our first trips, you're trying to
take our music away from us. You're trying to take our songs
away from us. I said, we're not trying to do
any such thing. The songs that you are referring to, the music
you're referring to, started in America. I can tell you the
authors of some of those so-called hymns started in America. And
we don't play those in our churches. They would be a distraction to
our worship. They would stir the flesh, but
not the spirit. We don't play those in our church.
And yet we could fill the house, perhaps, if we did play them.
That was their criticism. The criticism was that, you know,
if we don't play this type of music, nobody's going to come
to listen. Well, I said we don't play it in our country, where
it originates. Now, there are many today who are singing things
that are not honoring to the Lord, singing things that do
not please Him. When you come to this particular
psalm, it is a psalm that is giving the Lord the glory for
what He has done. Psalm 107 begins the fifth section
of the Psalter. It includes the 15 songs of degrees
or ascents as they would make their way up to Jerusalem. You
see those, Psalm 120 and 134. It also includes the five halal
psalms, where each one of the psalms begins and ends with a
hallelujah. Praise the Lord. This section
is met, as it were, with this psalm at the beginning. It is
leading us into this time of praise, and it's very instructive
for us tonight to learn how to praise the Lord and what to praise
Him for. This psalm begins with the command
to give thanks unto the Lord. This word actually occurs several
times in the psalm where it is translated praise. You see it
in verse 8, we read it there, O that men would praise the Lord. That becomes a refrain. And you
see that refrain in verse 15? You see it again in verse 21?
You see that refrain again in verse 31? The same word that
occurs, O give thanks. Now in the Old Testament, this
word is used for confession of sin to God, as well as profession
of great truths about God. Many of these truths have to
do with God's deliverance of His people. And so this deliverance
produces in the heart a giving of thanks or praise to the Lord
for all that He has done. These two ideas, giving thanks
and praise, go together. And it is what the psalmist commands
in verse 1. And yet how often our hearts
are not ready to give the Lord praise for all that He has done.
One of the Puritans, David Dixon, wrote this. Unto no duty are
we more dull and untoward than to praise God and give thanksgiving
unto him. Well, I think he understood his
own heart and he understood the hearts of all of us tonight.
Here's a spiritual exercise that all of us can do. He doesn't
say, praise me if you only sing the right notes. He doesn't say,
praise me if you have an orchestra behind you. He commands that
we give him thanks, that we praise him. He has given us examples
of that praise in this particular psalm, and yet we remain silent. We remain silent. We truly are
to praise him. Now, when you go into this psalm,
there are reasons as to why we ought to praise him. I was reading
before I came out, C. H. Spurgeon's division of this
psalm. And he says in verses 1 to 3, the psalmist likens their
history to that of travelers lost in the desert. Excuse me,
verses 4 to 9. Verses 4 to 9, it's the traveler
lost in the desert. And then the praise comes concerning
the prisoners who were in iron bondage, verses 10 to 16. And
then praise for the sick of men, you see that in verses 17 to
22. And to that of mariners tossed with the tempest, you see that
in verses 23 to 32. And in the closing verses, the judgment
of God on the rebellious and the mercies of God to his own,
afflicted people are made the burden of the song. You see that
in verses 33 to 42. And then it's summing up at verse
43. And so the reason why we praise
him is very diverse. And this psalm is broken up by
this refrain that I said occurs over and over again. We can't
really put all that is in this psalm into one isolated period
of time. You would think that the psalm
is about bringing people out of bondage and bring them back
into Israel, and yet you have here those who are sailors on
the sea crying out for fear of being destroyed. Well, that never
happened in their wilderness out of Egypt and coming into
Israel. That never happened in the second
exodus coming out of Babylon and coming into Israel. God has
led this psalmist, whoever he is, to recount for us different
scenes that obviously would have taken place in the nation and
in the people's lives. Strangely enough, what he writes
about those that are on the sea and being tossed to and fro would
more easily be something in the New Testament, would it not?
The disciples on the Sea of Galilee coming and waking up the master
and stirring him up to come and deliver them? Or perhaps in the
book of the Acts, at the end of the book, where Paul and his
companions are near death because of the ship being broken up by
the tempest? We don't have any of this in
the Old Testament that I can recall other than the book of
Jonah. In Jonah, you had him fleeing from the Lord and the
ship being torn up, and he was cast overboard because of it.
What I'm saying is there is no occasion, no year in the history
of Israel that you could come and say, all of this took place
in that one year, or even in the 40 years. The psalmist is
being moved upon by the Holy Spirit to give us very diverse
reasons as to why we ought to praise the Lord. When we come
to the first three verses, and that's where I want us to focus
tonight, in the very first three verses, three reasons are given
for our praising or giving thanks to the Lord. And those three
reasons can be carried all the way through the psalm in different
situations. What are the three reasons why
we're to praise or give thanks unto the Lord? First of all,
for He is good. We are to give thanks for He,
the Lord, is good. It was Andrew Bonner who said, is
not this the Old Testament version of God is love? God is good. And from His goodness flows all
the benefits that we receive. From His love flows all the benefits
that we receive. It's almost synonymous at times
when you speak of His goodness and you speak of His love. So
what we're thinking on in this first instance, we're thinking
on what the Lord is. What He is. time to walk through
Exodus chapter 34, and what it said about His goodness, and
how that broke down into the ideas of forgiveness, and mercy,
and grace, and long-suffering, pity. All those things are flowing
from the fact that our God is a good God. Everyone tonight
benefits from the Lord's goodness. Even the wicked tonight are benefiting
from His goodness. His goodness is seen amidst all
of His creatures. You live in a land, in a world
that God has made. And He made you to enjoy it.
He gave you sight so you could see the beauties of what He made.
He gave you smell so you could smell the varieties of flowers
and trees and food. He gave you taste, touch, hearing. Things that we take for granted,
and yet we use these five senses every day. Why? Because the Lord
made you for this environment. He's good. But He also made the
environment to be enjoyed by mankind. The environment gives
us pleasure. God made it so. Men use that
pleasure in wrong ways, but nonetheless, the Lord made the environment
to give pleasure. And He made you in a way that
you could take in that pleasure. You ever seen pictures of Mars
or the moon? Barren wasteland. Nothing anywhere
that resembles what is here. You couldn't live there. You
would have to have a space suit and oxygen, and you'd have to
have food imported. You couldn't live there. What
we do is we're on this earth, and God made us in order that
we might enjoy what he has made round about us. Why did he do
that? Because he's good. He's good. The Lord shows His goodness because
He is good. In Psalm 119 and verse 68, the
psalmist says, Thou art good, and do us good. You're good, therefore you do
good. Now, we can rebel against that, but nonetheless, He is
good, and He does that which is good, so that makes our rebellion
as sinners even worse, does it not? When I sin against God,
I'm sinning against the One who is good. It would be different
if I was sinning against the One who was evil. There would
be justification for my sinning. But we sin against the God who
is good. Oftentimes, we misrepresent Him. Oftentimes, we don't understand
Him, even though He's made Himself known in the Scriptures so that
we could better understand who He is. The sinfulness of our
being still misinterprets God and perverts the goodness of
God that is shining upon us every day. God is good. This is what He is. And we are
to give thanks to Him for that goodness every day that we're
here on this earth. We are to give thanks to Him.
When you think of His goodness, as we're going to see in a few
minutes, being manifested in salvation. You have been chosen
from all of the fallen human race to come to Christ and to
know Christ and to be found in Christ. That's His goodness,
brethren. Tonight, He has been good to
us. He has allowed you to hear the Gospel. He has accompanied
that Gospel with mercies in the work of the Holy Spirit. And
though we have stumbled along the way, though we have failed
Him along the way, yet He still keeps us as His people, and He
will not turn His back upon us. That's His goodness, brethren.
His goodness. Thou art good, and do us good.
If you ever come to think of God as not being good and doing
good, you have been lied to by the devil. That is a simple truth. If you ever come to the conclusion
that God is not good and that he does not do good, you are
believing a lie. We must come and rid ourselves
of all of the false teaching that is in our heads, coming
from the nation in which we live, and settle this in our heart
once and for all. God is good, and He does that
which is good. He does that which is good. Whether
it be the world of creation, or as we are going to see in
a minute, the world of redemption. So that is the first thing. We
are to give Him praise, and if that was the only thing that
we had to praise Him for, we have reason to praise Him for
all eternity, just because He is good. You and I live in a
nation, in a world that is not good. And yet, He is good. And though men sin against Him,
and rebel against Him, and fight against Him, He still shines
that goodness upon them. allowing the rain to fall on
the just and the unjust, allowing those that are sinful to breathe
His air, allowing those that are sinful to eat and live their
life on this earth, He is still shining forth His goodness, for
He is good. Secondly, we must thank the Lord
for His mercy, and this is what He shows us. You have that in
verse number one. For he is good, for his mercy
endureth forever." We have stated that God's mercy is the goodness
that he shows to those who are in misery. And because of our
sin and the sin of those round about us, we're all in misery.
Right? We're on our way to hell. No
way to get rid of our sin. And when he comes and he helps
us in that misery, he is showing us his goodness. And the Puritans
used to define this word as the goodness God shows to those who
are in misery. Now, after you're saved, you're
still living in this sinful world. You and I still sin. We still
do that which is wrong. We still fall short. Even though
we have desires now to do what is right, we can't live up to
those desires completely. Paul speaks of that at the end
of Romans 7, the bondage that he was in. because he had a desire
to be perfect, yet he could not be. So the Lord does what for
us? He continues to show His mercy,
day after day after day. He is showing us His goodness
to help us in our misery, whatever that misery might be. And it
could be very vast. This is the particular word in
the Old Testament that is translated, loving kindness. We have said
that Mercy is the goodness he shows to those who are in misery.
But if you view goodness as love, It's his loving kindness that
he is showing to those in misery. God's loving kindness, God's
mercy are the same. It's flowing from the heart of
a God who is good, a heart that is full of love for his people.
And he interacts with his people, and he meets their need, and
he continues on meeting their need. This is the mercy that
is new every morning that Jeremiah speaks of. This is the mercy
that is as high as the heavens that David speaks of. This is
the mercy in our text that is forever. forever. God gives it to us. Something
you can't see in the English, but I wish to point it out to
you tonight. Turn to verse 8 of this psalm. It says, Oh, that men would praise
the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the
children of men. The word there for goodness is
the word mercy. Now, mercy is goodness. It is
one of the special acts of God's mercy. But this word, astley,
is the word for loving kindness, the word for mercy. His mercy
we're praising Him for. Look down, if you would, to verse
15. You see the refrain again. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for His mercy. For His mercy, His loving kindness.
Look down again to verse 21. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for His mercy. and for His wonderful works to
the children of men." Look down to verse 31. Oh, that men would
praise the Lord for His mercy and for His wonderful works to
the children of men. Then in verse 43 it says, "...whoso
is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand
the lovingkindness, the mercy of the Lord." Our translators
have tried to show us something of the diversity of this word.
But you could translate every one of these verses mercy or
loving kindness if you wished. The psalm is all about that.
It's all about that. Whoever this psalmist is, whether
it's David or someone who came after David, perhaps someone
after the Babylonian captivity even, whoever it is, they're
taken up with the idea that the Lord is merciful. They can't get away from it.
You have all of these different trials that the people of God
go through, and then the conclusion is that the men of God should
praise the Lord for His mercy. And then another trial, praise
the Lord for His mercy. And then another trial, praise
the Lord for His mercy. You know, you get the impression
that God allows trials to come upon us, that we might seek His
goodness and know His mercy in a powerful way. When Jeremiah
said that the Lord's mercy and compassion are new every morning,
that was after a 50-year ministry in the worst of conditions. The
worst of conditions. I would not want the congregation
that Jeremiah had. I would not want it. I thank
the Lord that I don't have that type of congregation, that I'm
preaching to believers, that I'm preaching to those who are
at least trying to follow the Lord. And here are people fighting
us against Jeremiah, trying to put him to death, planning his
death, putting him in a pit where he would have died. And yet 50
years later, he looks back over all of his days, and he said,
the Lord's mercies were new every morning. No matter what they
did, God had mercy for me. No matter what their plans, God
had another plan. And God spared him. Well, brethren,
that's the lot of all of us tonight. He's got mercies for us, and
he's going to let trials come into your heart and your life.
And in those trials, he's going to show you his mercy, his compassion,
the goodness to you in that misery, that which you're feeling as
being misery. He's going to come and help you.
Would you note that men are to study His mercy for wisdom? That's
what the last verse says of this psalm. Whoso is wise and will
observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness,
the mercy of the Lord. You are to study His mercy for
wisdom. Study His mercy for wisdom. You're
not very wise in the earth. If you're a rocket scientist
and can take people around the moon and back home again, and
you do not know what the mercies of the Lord are about. And I
can say that as a believer, you can fill your head with all kinds
of theology, good and bad. But if you do not know the mercies
of the Lord, you're losing out as, as to how he's dealing with
you and how he deals with others, his mercies. His mercies are
that which we must consume our attention. We must focus on His
mercies and think on His mercies and meditate on His mercies. Do you know it again in those
first verses that we are told that His mercy endureth forever? Spurgeon said the word endureth
is proper. But you know it is in italics.
In the Hebrew it literally says His mercy forever. great stress being placed on
the fact that His mercy never ends. You and I think it does.
Especially when you sin and you say, well, I've sinned this sin
and I've sinned it again. And you think, certainly there's
no mercy for me. And the scripture comes along and it says, God
is not like you. He is not like you. He is good.
And He will forgive. And He will show mercy again
and again and again. His mercy forever, the psalmist
writes. This mercy then must be associated
with salvation. The preacher William Romaine
said, mercy is all free grace and unmerited love. And then
he again said, mercy was and is and will be forever. All the benefits that flow to
us because of the Lord's mercy keep coming and keep coming and
keep coming. They're like the tide of the
ocean that never ceases. One wave after another wave after
another wave of mercy meets us and greets us and leads us as
we seek to follow Him. Well, He's good and He does good.
And when He sees us in misery, what does He do? He shows forth
His mercy to us. And one of the great aspects
of that mercy is what? It is redemption. And so we find
the third thing given to us as to why we should praise Him is
for His redemption. Look at verses 2 and 3. Let the
redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the
hand of the enemy, and gather them out of the lands from the
east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the
south." His redemption. That is the great demonstration
of mercy. And for us who are bound by sin
and on our way to judgment, it is the great demonstration that
He is good. He could have left us in our
sin. Instead, He made a way of salvation, and He made that way
known to us, and then He gave us the grace to be convicted
of our sins and desire that salvation, and then He gave us the power
to come and embrace that salvation. Why did He do that? Because He's
good, because He's merciful, and because He desires that you
and I be redeemed tonight. We must thank the Lord for His
redeeming. This is what He does because
of the mercy that he shows. It is a special type of mercy. Now, Jehovah redeems by a kinsman
redeemer. When you look at verse 2, it
says, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. And if you could
see that in the Hebrew, it's the word goel, from which the
word redeemer, kinsman redeemer, comes from. There are actually
two words for redemption in the Old Testament. They're parallel. They're synonyms. And they're
used interchangeably at times. But this word has within it the
idea of a kinsman. Who does the redeeming? Now you
know from our studies in past days that the great object lesson
for this kinsman-redeemer is Boaz. He was indeed a kinsman
to Naomi, and when she fell on hard times and came back to to
Israel, he had the right to redeem her and bring her out of her
hard times. And he exercised that right. And in doing so,
he also bought, with Naomi and all of her hardships, he also
bought Ruth. And he raised up through Ruth
a godly line that would be the line of the Messiah, the Lord
Jesus Christ. The kinsman redeemer. Someone
next of kin who could redeem us from our sin. What you probably
would not know, unless you could read Hebrew, is that the word
for revenge, or the word for avenging the people of God, is
also this same word. It is the word kinsman-redeemer,
or kinsman-avenger. So that if something happened
to me, and Boaz was my kinsman, Boaz could come and deal with
the one who harmed me. So if there is someone who comes
and takes my life, it was incumbent upon the kinsman to go and take
the life of the one who killed me. It was his job. He was the kinsman, the kinsman-redeemer. And so we see in this word two
ideas coming to us. One, the idea of deliverance,
where the Lord comes and He comes into our misery and He delivers
us from it. He purchases us. And then the
other one, when someone comes to harm us and they're successful
in that, he comes and he wreaks vengeance upon them. Both of
those are true of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our next
of kin. He took upon himself a nature
like yours. This is the second person of
the Godhead. This is the one who created the ends of the earth.
But he took a nature like yours. He took a body like yours. a
mind like yours that He might die in your place and by the
shedding of His blood He purchased you. You are now redeemed. We were reading Ephesians chapter
1 and verses 6 and 7 this morning and we have there the statement
that we're forgiven because He's redeemed us through His blood.
He's purchased us. He's that lamb that was slain
in order to redeem us just like He redeemed Israel out of their
bondage there in Exodus chapter 12. So that's our Savior. But our Savior is also the one
who will go after those who have fought with his people. Turn,
if you would, to Romans chapter 12. And we see this second aspect
of the Lord's ministry. The first is clearly taught throughout
the New Testament. And many of God's people pass
over this statement that we have at the end of Romans chapter
12. Look at verse 18. If it be possible, as much as
lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved,
avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it
is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.
Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give
him drink. For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his
head. Be not overcome of evil, but
overcome evil with good." Who is the one who brings vengeance
upon the head of those who attack God's people? It's the Lord Jesus
Christ. Some mischaracterize our Lord
by speaking of Him as loving everything, and loving everyone,
and not even loving sin, and all types of sin, and debauchery,
and murder, and say, that's Christ. That's not Christ. He's holy. He's righteous. And He made a
way of salvation by going to the cross and dying for the sins
of His people. But He will come back. And when
He comes back, He'll come back with vengeance. You see that
stated in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. He's coming back with vengeance. You see that stated in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 5. He's coming back. He is the avenger
of his people. Well, tonight we have come to
trust in Him as our Redeemer. Have we not? We trust in Him
that He's done the work. We can't see the work. We have
it recorded for us in Scripture. But we believe the work. He has
done the work. We've been redeemed. Our sins
are removed from us for all eternity. We believe that. But do you believe
that he will attack those in this world who are fighting with
you and harming you? That's why Paul says, the Lord
is the one who takes the vengeance. Leave it alone. Don't waste your
time with it. Don't bloody your hand with it.
Don't spend time planning your revenge on someone. Give it to
the Lord and leave it there. In fact, when you see your enemy,
feed him. That's what Paul says. Hopefully you'll win your enemy.
Hopefully they will turn from their sins as you have turned
from your sins. And they will come to embrace the Christ that
you embrace. But if they will not, the Lord
says, vengeance is mine, I will repay. You can count on that. You can leave it with Him. So
if someone harms you, come and bring it to the Lord and leave
it at His footstool. He'll take care of it. He may do it in this
life. He certainly will do it in the
next. Our Lord is able to bring vengeance upon those that are
attacking His people so that His people could be busy dealing
with what we normally think of as redemption. Spreading that
message of redemption and calling out people to come and follow
Christ. Jehovah redeems by the kinsman
redeemer. Would you note Jehovah redeems
from the hand of the enemy or the adversary? You see that here
in the passage. Let the redeemed of the Lord
say so. All right, we have been speaking of that. Then he goes
on. He says, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. Now John Gill has a number of
comments on this that I thought worthy of bringing to your attention
tonight. He redeems us from the hand of
the enemy. Well, one of our enemies is the sins that we have committed.
Some of those sins are known to others, some of them are not.
But nonetheless, all of our sins are known to God. And John Gill
says, He delivers us from all our sins which war against our
soul. We all have them. And our sins
war against our soul, but He delivers us from that enemy. And then he says, from Satan,
their implacable adversary, who is stronger than they. We are
under the power of Satan. We are part of his kingdom. And
yet he has taken us and brought us out from that enemy. He's
redeemed us from him. And then he goes on to say, from
the law which threatens and causes them damnation and death. The
law is screaming for our judgment. We've broken the law. There's
nothing you can do to wash that law clean. It's got your stain
upon it. It's got your sin upon it. But
God, through Christ, has redeemed us from the law. The law's mouth
has been stopped. It's been stopped. And then from
death itself, the last enemy. That is what is spoken of in
1 Corinthians chapter 15. He will destroy all of our enemies,
and the last enemy He destroys is death itself. It's been guaranteed. He's risen from the dead. All
of His people are united to Him. They must rise as well. He will
not let death rule over His people, either over their bodies or over
their soul. He will not let that happen.
So John Gill says, this is what He redeems us from. And when
He redeems us from the hand of the enemy, He redeems us from
all our sins, which war against our souls, from Satan, our implacable
adversary, who is stronger than we, from the law, which threatens
and causes us damnation and death, and from death itself, which
is the last enemy. Lastly, when we think of redemption,
we must note that we are to praise him for our redemption because
he has gathered us from the lands of the world. We see that in
verse 3. and gathered them out of the
lands from the east and from the west, from the north and
from the south. Jehovah redeems and gathers his
people out of the world. Now in the original redemption,
he was gathering them out of Egypt, which was southwest of
where they would be going, that is in the land of Canaan. But
he didn't go directly into Canaan. He took them through the nations
that were to the south and to the east of Canaan. And then
finally, under Joshua, he took them in eastward, westward, excuse
me, going from east to west. And he brought them in over the
Jordan. And they had those battles. Here he was gathering his people.
That happened. In the second redemption, and
this is what it is called, another redemption. You can see Isaiah
referring to this as a redemption. When he brought them out of the
Babylonian captivity, that was called a redemption. and he brought
them under the Medes and the Persians. The Babylonians were
conquered, and under the Medes and the Persians, Cyrus gave
a decree to go back and build the temple, and they came from
every part of the, of the world. When the Babylonians had conquered
Israel, they took the Judeans and they spread them throughout
the world so they could never rebel against them again. So
now you have out of that empire. Israelites coming to be God's
people again in the land. Proselytes as well coming. That
is Gentiles who have been converted to the testimony of God's people.
They also are coming and they were brought in. Certainly this
is a statement that would be parallel with that redemption
out of Babylon. But you know when you think of
our redemption, our redemption tonight. Our redemption is a
redemption of people from every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation.
In Matthew 8, our Lord says, I say unto you that many shall
come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Now, when you look
at this congregation, we're from different places. I didn't grow
up in Pennsylvania. Some of you didn't grow up in
Pennsylvania. Some of you didn't grow up in the United States.
God pulled you from here and pulled you from there. Actually,
when you look at what was said by our Lord, we're part of those
that were from the West. We're way over here, across the
Atlantic Ocean, in America, and yet the Lord has reached down
and pulled us to Himself. And yet, in Africa, there are
brethren that have been pulled to the Lord. In China, there
are brethren that have been pulled to the Lord. In Europe, there
are brethren pulled to the Lord. From the East, from the West,
from the North, and from the South, He is gathering a people.
And when He returns, you will see those people like a mighty
army. leaving the graves and leaving
the earth. And they will go to be with Him
from every part of this globe. That's going to be a glorious
day. A glorious day. In Revelation chapter 5 and verse
9 it says, they sung a new song saying, Thou art worthy to take
the book and to open the seals thereof, for Thou wast slain
and hast redeemed us by God. By thy blood, out of every kindred,
and tongue, and people, and nation." In this small assembly, we have
a smattering of that. People that know different languages
because they grew up somewhere else. People like myself whose
language has accents that are not familiar to this part of
the world. Right? What has he been doing? He's
gathering of people, and gathering of people, and gathering of people.
And one day, he will gather us all to himself because of the
blood that was shed. He has redeemed us to God by
his blood out of every kindred, tongue, and people, and nation.
When we praise him for his redemption, we praise that the kinsman redeemer
has redeemed us. We praise him that he has redeemed
us out of the hand of our adversary, yes. But we praise him that he
has made this a universal redemption, bringing in souls from everywhere
over every generation. And one day he will assemble
us all before himself as king. We have reason to praise him.
We haven't even gone into the psalm and shown how these three
things are found in every section of the psalm. That is, the fact
that God is good and that he is showing mercy and that he's
redeeming a people and bringing them to himself. We haven't even
looked at that. Tonight, if we should close the
meeting just thinking on those three things, you have reason
tonight and tomorrow and the next day and the next day and
the next day continually to give him thanks and to praise him
for what he has done for you. Let's bow our hearts in prayer. This should not be a distinctive
of any church, it should be the distinctive position of all of
his churches. Sad to say many of his churches
have perverted this very idea. Tonight God has called you to
give him glory. That's one of your purposes as
to why you and I were made, to give him glory. And certainly
he has given us adequate reason to glorify his name. Make that
your purpose this week. As you're serving Him, as you're
studying His Word, as you're trying to reach the lost, also
take time to give Him praise and glory and honor for your
salvation. If tonight you're without Christ,
then come to Him. Come to Him. Jesus is the Savior
of sinners. He's able to bring you into the
kingdom. He's able to redeem you completely, bring you to
Himself. Come to Him, He is the Redeemer,
and He is happily and gladly redeeming a people even now this
very night. Come to Him. I am your servant
for Christ's sake, if I can help you in the coming to Christ,
speak a word with me. If you're listening to this by
way of internet, write to us. We're happy to send you literature
about this redemption. Come to Christ. He is the great
Redeemer. Father in heaven, we come to
Thee tonight thanking Thee. that you have put us into a church
that has stressed the need to praise thy name. Lord, we confess
there are some churches, and they're all about doing. There
are other churches, and they're all about a central type of worship. But Lord, you have put us into
this building into this congregation, that we might feel our redemption,
that we might praise Thee according to that redemption. And Lord,
You've put before psalms and hymns and songs, spiritual songs,
whereby we can express this glorious truth to Thee. Lord, we are,
this night, thankful for our salvation. We do, tonight, come
and praise Thee for it. We know, Lord, that there's coming
a day when we will leave this life and go to be with Thee.
And in that day, we will see and understand and feel things
that we can't see and understand and feel now. But Lord, while
we are here below, we do praise Thee. And we ask that You would
give us that heart and that desire to give glory to Thy name every
day that we're on this earth. Help us, Lord, to see ourselves
as we really are seen by Thee. Lord, we would pray for those
tonight, whether it's by your the internet, or whether it's
by the presence here, who are yet outside of Christ, Lord,
we ask that you would help them to come and to embrace Christ,
to know the forgiveness that's freely offered through him. Do
that, Lord, in our midst. And we will give you the glory
and the praise and the honor, for we ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Three Reasons to Praise the LORD
Series FPCNA Distinctives
This passage from the psalms gives us reasons for praising or giving thanks to the Lord
- The Lord's undeniable goodness
- The Lord's unending mercy
- The Lord's unmerited redemption
| Sermon ID | 4191519135 |
| Duration | 45:24 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 107:1-3 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.