So suppose you see all those beautiful wildflowers across the road after church, and you decide, you know what, before we leave, I'm gonna walk over there and pick myself a bouquet of flowers. So you're walking around in the somewhat lengthy grass, plucking up your flowers, and all of a sudden, you stub your toe on something. And you're a little irritated, so you look down to see what it was you stubbed your toe on, and it looks like a little pyramid of rusty iron. Now at this point you make a choice. Either you go, that's weird, and go back to picking your flowers. Or you think, what is that? And what is it doing out here in this field where there hasn't been anybody for decades and decades and decades living? And so maybe you're a little bit curious, so you scuff around on the ground, kicking some of the grass away with your foot, and the pyramid gets exposed a little more, and you see that it's actually wood with an iron corner. And you think, oh, it's a box. And I'm just looking at the corner of a box. Now at this point, you might be a little bit interested. What is a box doing bound with iron and buried underneath the ground next door to the church? Well, since you're not in a cemetery, you might decide to dig it up. But you're not going to be able to do that with your tennis shoes or even your church shoes. You're probably going to have to go home, get some clothes on, get a shovel, come back and go to digging to figure out what's inside that box. Now, it might not be a treasure box, but even if it isn't, there's just something about something being hidden that makes us want to find it. Well, something similar to that happened to me when I was reading Psalm 62 the other day. I was sort of strolling through it, picking flowers. I don't know if you ever treat the psalms that way. You just kind of skim through it, looking for that verse. You know, that really encouraging verse, the inspiring verse or verses. And if there are several inspiring verses, you say, this is a beautiful psalm, by which you mean there are lots of pretty flowers in it. And you can gather those and write them down. I like to kind of write them in my prayer journal. So I was doing that. This is not the way to say the Psalms, by the way, but that's what I was doing. I was writing down some pretty verses or some inspiring verses. And as I was, you know, strolling through the Psalm, I get to the very last verse and I stub my toe. Because the last verse doesn't make any sense. Take a look at it on your sheet. Verse 12 of Psalm 62. And loving kindness is yours, O Lord, for you recompense a man according to his work. Now, it's not that it doesn't make sense necessarily, but if you read the whole rest of the psalm, and you all did, it's talking about trusting in God, and God is his power, and God alone is his strength and his refuge, and then he ends with this, you recompense a man according to his work. What does that have to do with the rest of the psalm? And that thing I stubbed my toe on, sort of like that little iron pyramid buried out in the dirt. And this is often how God shows me things in scripture. It's not the verses that just sort of naturally flow into my mind and make perfect sense. It's the ones that don't make sense that cause me to dig a little bit. And so it just struck me as a little bit odd. So I scuffed it. Well, okay, let me tell you what I actually did. So I found this odd thing in the psalm and being very spiritual, the very first thing I did was I checked the clock. because I do my Bible study right before breakfast. And I had to determine, is there enough minutes left before breakfast that I should pursue this thing that God has shown me, or am I out of time and it'll just have to wait for another day? That also is not the way to study the Psalms. So this is for free. Set aside enough time when you study the Word to meditate on it. If all you have is time to skim through it, write down your inspirational verse, and move on, you aren't really preparing yourself to hear anything from God. At least in my experience, He doesn't talk to me that fast. I need a little bit of time. And so I had a little bit of time on this particular morning, so I scuffed around a little bit, and I began reading backwards into the psalm to try to figure out why does this make sense? Because it's safe to assume that since God wrote it, this is not just a random verse that he just had a wild thought and stuck it at the end of his psalm. It doesn't work that way. There's a reason this is here, and he wrote it through David. David had a little bit of experience writing songs, and he also didn't just randomly stick something that didn't belong at the end of his psalm. So I started going back into the psalm to figure out, what's going on here? What is David saying? And that is what we're going to do, because I found something. I found some buried treasure in this psalm that I'd never found before, and it answers a question, maybe not a question, but something that's bothered me, and maybe it's bothered you before. Have you ever been sharing with a Christian brother or sister, sharing, not complaining, just sharing the struggles that you're having doing something that God's asked you to do, whether that's parenting small children, or parenting teenage children, or trying to honor God in your workplace, or trying to serve in the church, and you're having all these struggles, and you're saying, man, it's exhausting, it's difficult, and your super spiritual friend says, sounds like you're just trying to do it in your own strength instead of God's strength. Just in case you're wondering, that does not inspire me. I'm like, really? What does that even mean? What is it? I mean, have you ever seen the bumper sticker or maybe it was on a sign in a Christian bookstore or something? Let go and let God drives me crazy. What is that? I mean, if my kids are dangling over the cliff of the world and I'm holding onto the rope and it's really, really hard and you say, don't worry, just let go and let God. That's not good advice. Not if you're my kids. There's something not quite right there. I mean, yes, trusting God, that's good. It's obviously right here in this psalm. But where's what we just read in 2 Timothy, where Paul says, for this reason I suffer. serving the Lord, proclaiming the gospel, trusting that God will take this that I'm doing and preserve it. That doesn't sound like kicking back in the lawn chair and saying, God's got this. Just hand me a glass of lemonade and we'll watch God do his thing. So I know it's not that, but it's also not, I'm gonna do everything and at the end I'll say, thanks God. You know, just give a little, What is it they do in football games sometimes? Point to heaven? I'm really awesome. God is too. So if those are the two extremes, then what does it look like to do it in God's strength, and yet we know it's hard to follow God, and there's work involved. So many verses about work. That's the treasure I found in Psalm 62. So if that's ever frustrated you, then maybe that'll give you the patience to do a little digging with me, because it takes a little digging for this one. And the first thing you should do when you're digging for treasure is write at the top of your sheet Proverbs 2, 3 through 5. For if you cry for discernment, when we are trying to find treasure in the Word of God, we have to ask Him to show it to us. The man's mind can take this book and analyze it like any other book, and come up with all sorts of conclusions, but the Holy Spirit will not speak to you that way. This is not just a book. It is the living word of God, and we cry for discernment. We lift our voice for understanding. We seek her understanding as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures. So we ask the Lord and we dig. Then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. We went over this in our youth and family gathering. And that's what we're going to do today. So let's start by asking for discernment. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that you have given us not just a manual, not just a book of literature, not just a book of poetry. You have spoken to us through your word, and you continue to speak to us. And we pray, Lord, that as we dig through this psalm that you wrote through the hand of David, Preserved for us for thousands of years that you will teach us from your word. Amen Well, how do you dig into a song Well, the first thing is to remember that it's a song, which is to say it's a song, or maybe a poem. Not all the songs in Psalms were sung. Wow, say that three times fast. But this one says it's for the choir master, or the chief musician, so it's safe to say that this one was sung, so it's a song. And if you want to understand a song, you don't go through randomly taking a phrase here and a phrase there. Songs have verses, and verses have an order, just like the hymns we've been singing. So the first thing that I want to do when I'm working through this is to sort of go through the psalm and break it into paragraphs, which is why it's so weirdly formatted on your verse sheet. Paragraphs you can think of them in this case like the verses of a song but this is true of nearly all scriptures that you want to break it into thoughts and All the punctuation and scriptures added later so it's not sacrilegious to add a blank line in between two sentences as you're trying to group the thoughts and And then the other thing that's about a song is that songs aren't just a random collection of verses at least Not good ones. I'm sure there are lots of bad songs out there with just some random words thrown together. In fact, I know there are. But good songs are not like that, and the Psalms are certainly not like that. They have a theme. There's something tying the first verse, the second verse, the third verse, and the fourth verse of the song together. These thoughts are not disconnected thoughts. They're connected, and they have a progression. and they have a theme. So, I like to start with a theme. What is the theme of this psalm? Because if I'm trying to understand why is this verse, verse 12, remember, that's the odd little box we're digging up. I need to understand what's the overall theme. So, to get the theme, look for words that are repeated. And this works in any psalm, and it works in psalms. So look at this, and I've made this a little easier for you. The ground has been loosened for sure. I went through and marked not just the exact words that I felt like were being repeated, but similar words or even word pictures. So let's take the first one you run into, the box there. Waits, my soul waits in verse one, waits in silence. What does wait mean? Well, generally in scripture and certainly here, wait means to trust. It's who are you waiting on to save the day, would be a way of thinking of it. So who are you trusting in? And so I've boxed all the things that have to do with trust in this Psalm, and there's a lot of them. In verse five, my soul wait in silence for God only, for my hope, what is hope? Hope is another word for trust in this case. My trust is from Him. In verse eight, trust in Him at all times. And verse 10, Do not vainly hope in robbery. If riches increase, do not set your heart upon them." What does it mean to set your heart on something? Well, who are you looking to to rescue you? What are you setting your heart on, setting your mind on? What are you focusing on? So I can see that there's a theme here of trust. Sometimes he's saying, don't trust this. And other times he's saying, do trust that. So now that I've discovered there's a sort of a common word here, then I can go through and say, what do I learn about this word? What is he saying about trust? Well, in verse one, my soul waits or trusts in silence. Now, that doesn't mean that's just quiet outside and I'm trusting. It means that my heart is quiet. You ever feel like you have a noisy mind? you know, a chaotic mind that just can't rest. It's the idea of a rest. It's, well, you've heard the term, peace and quiet. They go together for a reason. That's the idea. I'm trusting in the Lord, and I'm resting in that. I'm not Well, I'm not resting. You get the idea. You know what I'm talking about because you experience the opposite quite often. So our trust is to be a quiet trust, a trust at peace, not afraid. And then in verse five, we see the same thing again. My soul wait in silence, trust in silence, rest, not quit working type rest. Quit worrying type rest. Let your heart rest in Him, in your trust in Him. Have you ever seen, there's actually a Psalm that talks about this. A little bitty baby is crying because I'm holding it and I give it back to the mother and it, it's quiet. It's resting. It's not asleep, but it's content to be where it's at. That's the kind of trust that we're to have in God. All right. Look at verse five again, there's a second word there, hope, which is the same idea. What do we learn about hope? My hope is from him. Now that's an interesting thing to say. I expected it to say my hope is in him, but he says my hope is from him. Some things, I don't just randomly pick an object and put my hope in it. The nature of that thing inspires my hope in it. And that's what David is saying. He's saying, God's character inspires hope in me. I don't just have hope because I'm a good guy. I have hope because God is strong and powerful and loving and kind. He's worth putting your hope in. He inspires our hope. So our trust is not something we just grit our teeth and do. David's saying, no, it actually comes from who he is. That's an important thing to learn. So we're developing the theme here that David's talking about. And then you go down in verse 10, and both of these are in the negative, what we're not to put our hope in. So what do we learn? We learn that there are false hopes. There are deceitful hopes. So we know there's a theme of trust, that our trust is to be in God, but it's not just a sort of arbitrary trust, it's an inspired trust from who He is, but it's also one in which there's a battle over it, because there are others that would like to have our trust instead. That's one of the themes, trust. I've underlined another theme, and that's strength. The very first occurrence I've underlined is in verse 2. He only is my rock What does that mean that he's hard-headed? No in Scripture the rock is well the same thing. We might use it for it's it's strong. It's sturdy it's stable and reliable and it is used and in both of those ideas and sometimes they would even call a fortress a rock and It's a place of strength, if you will. And David, who wrote this psalm, when he was on the run from Saul, he frequently retreated to the rocks, to the caves and valleys of the wilderness. Sometimes they were called the strongholds. And that's the very next word that you see. He is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold. And throughout, we see rock, stronghold, and if you're just kind of skimming, looking for underlines, verse 7, the rock of my strength. See how he puts the two ideas together there? And then, all the way down in verse 11, power. Power, strength, rock, stronghold. And all of these, the theme is not just, hey, you want strength and power. In every single case, he's saying the same thing. He is my rock. God is my strength. He is my stronghold. God is my stronghold. In verse 6, he only is my rock, my stronghold. And verse seven, on God, skipping over, the rock of my strength. You notice he doesn't just say, he gives me strength. He says, he is my strength. It's like the difference between Jesus saying, I know the way to get to God and saying, I am the way to get to God. Power is not something that God can He is power. He is all power. We can't have His power apart from Him. This, by the way, is the deception of witchcraft and of all sorts of pagan religions that somehow you can trick supernatural beings into giving you their power to do with as you please. Sometimes I think people think of God as like the force, and you can have some of the force, and you can use it for bad things, or you can use it for good things. Well, I got news for you. God is not the force. God is God. His power cannot be misused. And if you have it, you have Him. It is not disconnected from Him. He is our strength. And so you're beginning to see what this psalm is talking about. He's talking about who is the one to trust in. It is God. Why is he the one to trust in? Because he is our strength. He doesn't just possess it. In verse 11, he says, it belongs to him. He owns it. All power. Third theme that occurred to me, and you could find other key words in here, but these are the three I chose as really standing out to me, and that's the ones that I bolded and put in caps. This one's easy. It's the same word in almost every case. ONLY. Your translation might say ALONE. Same idea. What? Only what? Well, in every case, it's GOD ONLY. HE ONLY. GOD ONLY. HE ONLY. So we know who the only is about, but God only what? What is he the only one of? Well, we look at the different instances. My soul waits in silence for God only. There is an exclusiveness about God. And our trust is not just to be in God as one good source of protection and strength, but only in God. Look at the second occurrence in verse 2. He only is my rock and my salvation. Not, I get a little boost of power from God whenever I need it. He's also my strength. Not also, only. He only is my strength. I have none apart from Him. Verse 5 and verse 6 are repetitions of the same idea. Only God is to be trusted. And only in God is our strength. And then look in verse 7. This one's a little sneaky for you advanced keyword circlers. But you got to read in context on God my salvation and my glory rest the rock of my strength If he had said a rock of my strength, then I wouldn't have bolded it, but he didn't he said the there's only one Not a safe place. I can go the only safe place only is implied there He's the only one he's the only refuge and All right, so we know what David's talking about here. It's all about our trust being in God and God alone. I was reading an old preacher's comments on this, and he said, a trust in God is only a trust in God if it is a trust in God only. I'm going to say that again. I'll say it in the personal. My trust in God is only trust in God if it is trust in God only. Why is that? If I truly believe that all power belongs to God, then why would I need to trust in anything else? And if I feel like I need to have plan B and C, God's plan A, then I don't really believe plan A is who plan A says He is. There is no plan B to God. God is all power. God is all strength. If you truly trust in Him, you trust only in Him. It is exclusive not because He's pig-headed, but because He's the only one to be trusted. He's the only one worthy of trust. He's the only one, well, He's the only one with any power. Everything else is derived from him. So we have a theme, but I haven't even talked about verse 12. In fact, only one of my keywords, actually none of my keywords were even in verse 12. So what has this done? Well, it's digging. So have patience, we're gonna get there. All right, step two. We now know the theme of the Psalm. Let's take our paragraphs that I've broken it into. And there's no perfect science of paragraphizing scripture, but think about what are the complete thoughts and where's their break in thoughts. And so we're just going to go through and look at what are the verses of the psalm, so to speak. What is he saying and in what order is he saying it? So let's walk with David. Paragraph 1 is verse 1 and 2. My soul waits in silence for God only. From Him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold. I shall not be greatly shaken. So we start with David declaring his faith in God. The only thing that shows a little bit of foreshadowing is the word greatly. Did you notice it? I shall not be greatly shaken. Maybe a little bit of shaking. Maybe just a little bit of wavering, but not a whole lot, because God is big and He's strong. That's verse 1. Now verse 2, paragraph 2 in our psalm. Paragraph 2 doesn't have any flowers in it. No one is plucking flowers and writing these verses on the wall. And a lot of times we're tempted to just skip right over it. But let's look at verse three and four. How long will you assail a man that you may murder him, all of you, like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? They have counseled only to thrust him down from his high position. They delight in falsehood. They bless with their mouth, but inwardly they curse. Now, I don't know about you, but this doesn't sound like a man peacefully resting in the trust of God. He sounds irritated to me. Look at the beginning of verse 3. How long will you assail a man to murder him? You get the impression that he's a little indignant with his enemies? Maybe furiously indignant? Maybe even angry? You ever notice how many synonyms we have for anger? Or maybe euphemisms? What is David doing here? And how does this have anything to do with trusting in God? I think what David's doing here is giving you a peek into his inner self and his response to some of the struggles he went through when he thought he trusted in God, he was trusting in God, and then he wasn't. And what does it look like when you don't trust in God? And this is why this is important. We're starting to get a little bit into my mystery here. How do you tell when you are doing it in your own strength? How do you know you're not trusting in God? I mean, your mind's always, if anyone asks you, are you trusting in God? Yes, I'm trusting in God. So how do you know when that's not the case? Like David, he knew what was true, he starts the psalm with what's true, and then he dives into the pit. So what are the signs that I'm not trusting in God? Well, let's look at them. The very first one is anger. Anger at your opposition. How long will you assail a man that you murder him, all of you? He's angry with his foes. Now, what's wrong with that? Well, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. Anger is not in the list. If the opposition that you face results in your anger, that anger is not coming from the Spirit of God. And so the strength with which you are fighting is also not coming from the Spirit of God. Anger is a warning light that tells us we have, we are not operating under God's power. Because if we were, it would look like God when He operates. And anger at our enemies or even at our irritations and our obstacles. Let me just put it in the real world every day. When one of my kids does something and I blow up in them in anger, this is a sign that I am not parenting in God's strength. I'll just put it real simply. When the irritations at work leave you constantly angry at your co-workers, you are not serving at your workplace in the strength of God. Because God's strength doesn't act like that. Part two of David's pit. That you may murder him, all of you, like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence. What's he saying? He's saying, I don't have any strength. He's angry because people are attacking him and he feels totally powerless to stop it. There's a lot of theories that he wrote this in the period when his son Absalom kicked him out of Jerusalem and threatened his life. We don't know exactly. But suffice to say that he's got enemies and he feels like he has no strength to resist them. He feels like they're taking advantage of his weakness. And when Absalom did that, David was old. He was old and weak. Sometimes we feel weak and defenseless and helpless and hopeless. And when we feel like that, it's a good sign that we're not operating in God's strength. And that sounds hard and it's not very comforting if you're feeling hopeless and helpless on the surface. But if God's power is the power that's going to accomplish this, then does my helplessness really matter? No. Think about Moses. God said, Moses, go to the most powerful ruler in the world and tell him to let go all of his slaves. And Moses said, whoa, that's a bad idea. And I don't speak very well. And it's totally hopeless. And did I mention that I'm wanted in Egypt? He felt like there was no way he could possibly do that. And God got angry at him. Why? Well, it's not because Moses was wrong. Moses was right. There was no possible way he, as Moses by himself, was going to convince the king of Egypt to let all those slaves go. Now, God was angry because God had... God was going to be the source of the power and Moses did not get it. or he wouldn't get it, he was evaluating, how am I going to pull this off? And he said, oh, I'm not going to pull this off. Therefore, this is a bad plan. Get somebody else. If you feel like what God has called you to do is hopeless, then it's because you're not doing it in his strength. You're doing, and I do this constantly. I do the calculation. I have a pretty high opinion of my abilities. And therefore, if I don't feel like it can be done, it can't be done. But that just proves I was doing it in my abilities. Because God owns power. It belongs to Him. And if I doubt that what he's asked me to do can be done because I'm so helpless and so weak, and I'm never gonna be able to pull this off, then I should know right then, I am not trusting in God. I am not doing this in his strength. Okay, third thing in the pit, and then we'll get out of the pit. They have counseled only to thrust him down from his high position. Now who's the him here? This can get confusing in the Psalms. David often speaks in the first person and then he speaks about himself in the third person. That's what's going on here. Him here is David. So they have counseled, his enemies, only to thrust him down from his high position. So fear and helplessness is one sign. We talked that anger is another sign. The third sign is pride. Pride in your position and abilities. Who's high position? David's high position. What is he saying? Let me put this in the common everyday lingo. You're just jealous because I'm so awesome. That is why you're attempting to destroy me and kick me off the throne. That's essentially what he's saying down here in the pit. They've counseled only to thrust him down from his high position. Very rotten scoundrels. There's two kinds of pride. There's a pride of position and abilities, and there's a pride in workmanship. A pride in the results of something. This pride has nothing to do with the results of David's work. It is with his position. And how did he get into that position? He was a shepherd boy. But he's pretty attached to the idea of being king at this point. And his high position, it's a big deal to him. And when you are feeling proud of your abilities and your position and the spot to which you have attained, you can't be doing, you can't be walking in God's strength, because if it's God's strength, it is absolutely ridiculous for you to take any pride in where you're at. In fact, Paul says this straight up. Look down on your verse sheet, 1 Corinthians 4-7, down below the main passage here. Who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" You get that? What are you anyway? If you are of God, and God's strength is how you are serving Him, then your position and your place are not of you. You can't be proud of something that somebody gave you. And so you obviously aren't operating in the strength from God if you are proud. See how this works? If you find yourself proud of your position, and sometimes that will be easiest to see when you're irritated when other people don't recognize your position, or don't properly honor your position, then you know you're not walking in your own strength anymore. You're taking credit for what God has done. All right, great. Now you're all cheerful with me. We find that we're in the pit, and we thought we were trusting in God, and now we realize we're angry, fearful, and therefore we must not be trusting in God. And we're walking in our own strength. So then, does David just leave us hanging? No, thank God. We have the third paragraph. So third paragraph, verse five through eight. My soul, wait in silence for God only. Who's he talking to? He's talking to himself. He's addressing His own soul. He is speaking the truth. It is, by the way, the same truth that He spoke in verse 1. So he's not just telling himself the truth, he's reminding himself of the truth. And this is the truth. And he's ordering himself to walk according to it. My soul, you soul in the pit, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold. And look at what he says here. I shall not be shaken. Not I shall not be greatly shaken. That's where he started. No, he's declaring he won't be shaken at all. He will not fall because God supports him, not because of his own strength. On God, my salvation and my glory rest. His glory, that position that he was proud of, he's acknowledging it's not his position. that His glory, such as it is, King of Israel, rests on what God has done. He is only what God has made Him. He is saying the truth about every lie that He's been believing. He's saying that it's not His strength, it's God's strength. He's saying that it's not His position, it's the position God gave Him. He's saying that he doesn't need to fear because God is his stronghold. And then he turns to the audience, so to speak, and exhorts them with what he has just learned. Trust in him, verse eight, at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. What do you do when you realize you're not walking in the strength of God? First, you repent. and say the truth. Because you've been saying lies to yourself. Say the truth about who God is, where your strength comes from, how you got to where you are, and who it is that's going to make this happen. It's not you. And guess what? Those enemies that you're so angry at, they're not going to stop it from happening. I don't need to worry about them. I don't need to be angry at them. That's God's business. My anger and my fear are very closely tied. But when I quit fearing that I'm not going to be able to pull this off or that those opponents are going to be able to stop me, because God's going to take care of it, God is the one who's going to make it happen, then I don't have to be angry at them anymore. They're not my problem. My problem, clearly, is myself. So you speak the truth to yourself, you repent, you say what is right, and then you pour all that junk Fear anger pride and you pour it out before him That's such a picture pour out your heart before him And it's it's a pretty ugly bucket of muck And it says pour it out before god for he is a refuge You see this the refuge that dave is looking for is a refuge from his own sin not from his enemies at this point What do we need a refuge from? From our own pride, fear, and anger. Pour out your heart before Him. Repent. Say what is true. Remind yourself of the truth. And pour out your heart before God. The fourth paragraph, we won't spend a lot of time on, but David feels the need to point out some of the main contenders for drawing your trust away from God. They haven't changed in 2,000 years or 3,000 years at this point. Number one, putting your trust in somebody else. Whether he's your pal or somebody in high position, that's a lie. Putting your trust in man, as he says here, if you put them in the balance with God, they go up. They've got no weight to them. Don't put your trust in men. In verse 10, he says, don't put your trust in your ability to make stuff happen. He talks about oppression or hoping and robbery. And we're like, where does that come from? But if you think about it, when you are so focused on making something happen in your own strength, at least me, that's when I get tempted to do it the wrong way. ends justify the means when I've got to make it happen. And if you find yourself tempted to do what is wrong to accomplish God's work, to do what you know is not the right way to do it, that's a dead giveaway that you have moved your trust from God over to yourself and you are going to make this happen by the force of your own will. You're on the wrong track. It's a lie to trust in your own power to make something happen. And the third lie Nothing changes, money. If your riches increase, don't set your trust down. Don't put your hope on them. That is a false hope as well. All right, we finally made it to the end, which is where we were trying to get. So what is the treasure that we found? Well, David summarizes his Psalm. This once, twice business in verse 11 is just a way of doing emphasis. Sort of like when Jesus would say, verily, verily, What does that mean? It means pay attention. So, pay attention. Verse 11. Once God has spoken, twice I have heard this. What? Two big things are the conclusion. Number one, power belongs to God. It is only in Him. Number two, though, is the thing I stumbled over. Loving kindness is yours, O Lord, for you recompense a man according to his work. What does that have to do with what we've been talking about? Well, if all power is God's, then why in the world would He pay us wages to work for Him? What kind of sense does it make if He could do everything without us, and with much less trouble, that when we work on His behalf and serve Him, He gives us a reward? There is no explanation for that arrangement than the one that David draws here. Loving kindness is yours. And this then is the mystery that was dumping me, disturbing my mind is how can I work really, really hard and trust in God's strength? And the answer is, because God is loving, kind enough to involve me in His work and then enable me to do it. And then reward me for doing it. He didn't have to involve me, but He did. He didn't have to enable me, he could have just let me fail, which is what would have happened, but he didn't. And then, and this is the most bizarre part, and the part that led David to say, loving kindness is owned by you, God. He rewards us for doing the thing that we can only do because he enabled us to do it. And that we only do because he gave us the privilege. He didn't need us to do it. So, When we serve the Lord with his strength, it's still hard work, and that's part of the gift. Work is a gift. Work was given in the garden. Parenting was the plan before there was a curse of sin on the world. The things that we find hard are not a punishment, they are a gift. And if we are to accomplish them, we will need God's strength to do it. That also is a gift. The crazy thing is, if we do it in his strength, then there's a reward for it. We use his power to do his work and he pays us for giving us the privilege. Now there's something else important in that last verse. You recompense a man according to his results is not what it says. But that you recompense a man according to his work. And this makes perfect sense. If God's the one that gives all the power to accomplish the results, and he's the only one that knows exactly what results he's working for, then he can't and doesn't hold us to the results. He just wants us to work with him. He wants us to walk beside Him and do the work. He doesn't need us to do it. He wants us to do it. The results, He's got that. That's not our business. He just wants us to work with Him and then gives us the strength to do it. Look down at the bottom of your sheet, Colossians 1, 28 through 29. Paul's writing. The we here is Paul and his associates. We proclaim him. This is what Paul was called to do for God. Proclaim the gospel. We proclaim him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor. That word is the word that was used of field workers, not of desk workers. Labor with sweat in the dirt Paul says for this reason for this purpose also I labor Striving another hard work word according to his power Which mightily works within me There's a logical argument that says if we're using if it's all God's power then it's not any work for us and Whatever you may say about the logic of that, I can just tell you it's scripturally false. That is not the case. Then it wouldn't be the gift of work. It would be the gift of watching. God didn't call us to watch Him. He called us to join Him. And that means we work. And yet we work with His strength. Paul's saying, I am digging in, I'm sweating hard, and everything I'm doing is with God's strength. How does that make sense? I don't know. But that's what it looks like. So what does it look like? It doesn't look like letting go and letting God. It looks like holding fast and trusting God. Digging in. and trusting his strength to accomplish it, not fearing that you're going to fail, not hopeless because you're so weak, not proud on those days when things seem to be going well, not angry at anyone who gets in your way as if they could steal the prize. They can't. The prize comes because we are working with him, not because we overcome all those other things. That's his business, to do the overcoming. It's our business to do the working. Look at the last passage, Colossians 3, 23 through 24. Whatever you do, do your work heartily. Put your whole heart into it. As for the Lord, rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. There is a reward. We don't deserve it, and yet it is a compensation. It is tied to our work. We get no credit because our work is enabled by his strength, and our opportunity to do it, he invited us. It's like a guy who gives you the job, and then helps you do everything, and then pays you at the end of the day. This is the best deal ever. This is a great deal! It's awesome! And it... This is the way we're to work. So, you know what the signs are. If the fruit of your work is anger, pride, and fear, It's not God's strength that you're using. And you know what to do. Say the truth. Repent of that direction. Pour out your heart to God and say, please enable me to do your work. Work in me and through me. Then you'll get to see him do amazing things. Then you can wait in silence for God alone. And you can throw away that bumper sticker and rejoice in this amazing gospel, where we get to work with God, and we're guaranteed to succeed in the end, because it's all Him doing it. And yet, it's hard, and it will be hard. Paul wasn't being metaphorical when he said, you can suffer with me as we follow Christ. But that's part of the privilege. Jesus lets us experience a small part of what He experienced when He served the Father on earth. That is the privilege we have and the promise we have. Let's pray.