The Word of God to us today. We've been friends with David and Karen for many years now. 19 years this month we've been here. We've known them since our arrival here. David was the executive chairman of the New England Reform Fellowship for many years prior to their retiring and moving to Maryland. But they're up here all the time. They've got family and friends here, and they're here with us today. And so, David, come on and bring the Word of God to us, please. And I'm going to let you lead the concluding hymn and give the benediction. Thank you. Well, it's a privilege to be back with you folks again here at First Baptist. It's always nice to be back in New England. We miss New England in many ways as we spent so many years here. And as Lars said, we have many friends. Our daughter still lives in Beverly where we're headed after the service. And so it's always a joy to see Lars and the brothers and sisters. So thank you for this opportunity to be with you. I see that the distance from this pulpit to my eyes is such that I really needed my trifocal glasses. I didn't bring them, so I'll be squinting here a bit or maybe picking up paper, so I hope you're not distracted by it. But I want to read another passage, and it's again in your bulletin, before we proceed into the subject today. Subject which is complaint, lament, and remedy. And that may seem a little strange, but I hope to make sense of it as we proceed. But first, these verses from Galatians, first from Galatians chapter 3, Paul, after giving his biography of how he became a Christian, how God arrested him and brought him into his kingdom, writes to the Galatians, who had been evangelized with this same gospel, But there were those who were trying to pervert the gospel by adding to it. And so Paul moves into his address directly to the Galatians here in chapter 3. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And then from Galatians chapter 5, verse 16, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But, If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, As I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Or, if we have been made alive by the Spirit of God, let us continue with Him. God will add His blessing to this further reading of His Word. We live in a world that seems increasingly devoted to what people can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Such people are willing to live by faith—faith in science, faith in technology, faith in what they can touch, see, take hold of, Each of them is intensely devoted to themselves. And such people are always complaining, they're lamenting about all kinds of things. And they would like a remedy, and they think they know what the remedy is. And when the remedy comes, it's never enough. It's never sufficient. It doesn't bring peace. It doesn't bring satisfaction. There are people today that are out pursuing these things. And then there are folks like you all who are here. I would like to think that none of that first group are here. There may be, but Consider the strangeness of what is done on Sunday mornings at this hour throughout the world, where people meet and they are committed to a reality of a person they cannot see. They are committed to things that they cannot touch. They are committed to history, things that happened in the past. that are so influential that it shapes how they think about the future. And they're not bothered by the fact that people say this is nonsense, because these realities that they cannot see, and these things that they believe, both in the past and the present and in the future, are more important to them. than anything that they can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Because they live by faith, too. Not faith in science and technology, not in themselves, but in the words of the only sovereign creator, lawgiver, judge, savior, the living and true God. And those words are found, of course, in the Bible. That is reality to them. That is everything. That is why we read from the Bible. That is why this morning we had these number of passages, all of which I will hope to draw together to help you see what our focus is this morning. What makes the difference between these two groups? Why are you here if you're a Christian? The answer is one word, God. God in His sovereignty, God in His persuasion of you about yourself, changing your mind about yourself, relieving you of the sense that I am the most important thing about my life, and what I want and what I can taste and see and hear and do is what is most important about my life. Rather, as you look back on your life, this God convinces you that it's been a disaster, it's been futile, it's been works of straw that will not stand the test of His judgment when you stand before Him, as you certainly will, every single one of us, to give an account of everything we have thought, said, and done. That's what the scripture says. And that's the God with whom we have to do. And when a person is confronted with that reality, and the Holy Spirit, on whom we're going to particularly focus this morning, the Spirit of God convinces you of your sin and misery. In the words of the Catechism, enlightens your mind with the knowledge of Christ. He convinces you that you have to surrender, and you gladly do it because of the provision He has made for your sin in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the marvelous thing about what we are here to think about. We're not here as people of a moment. We are not here as only part of people that exist today. We are part of the people of God who have existed, well, from, we trust even the Garden of Eden, when our first parents sinned and cast all of us into misery. But the promise of God came to them. I'm going to send a Redeemer. I'm going to send someone born of the woman. And although his heel will be crushed by the serpent, he will crush the head of the serpent. Triumph is coming, it is certain. And so the whole Old Testament is the gradual enlightening, brightening of the reality of that first promise. through the prophets and through the types and shadows of the Old Testament worship, all of it pointed in one way or another to this coming Redeemer or His work and how it would take place. So there were those long centuries that passed with the ups and downs, seemingly mostly downs, of God's people, the darkness of the nations, the rise of great empires, Assyria overthrown by Babylon, overthrown by Persia, overthrown by Alexander the Great and the Greeks, and finally the Romans. During the time of the Roman Empire, when it was first beginning as an empire, a man arose who lived in the wilderness, dressed in leather skins, ate wild honey and locusts, and proclaimed, the time has come. All those promises are now going to be fulfilled. And so people went out to hear John's message of repentance to prepare for the Messiah. And the Messiah was conceived by the Holy Spirit of God. And he was born of the Virgin Mary without sin, though she was a sinner. And he lived his childhood, young people, children, here this morning, he lived his childhood without sin. He never talked back to his parents. He never disobeyed them. He never was envious of his siblings, and he had a number of them, and they were certainly envious of him because he didn't sin. And living in that family of sinners as a perfect child, how difficult. And he persevered into teenage years, and he always treated his fellow friends, male or female, with respect, with kindness. We don't have a record of this, but we know it had to be that way because he was without sin. And then he spent that decade, it would seem, working with Joseph. So he established a reputation as being a carpenter, someone that worked with his hands. He didn't have a PhD. He didn't have a great investing business. He was nothing by the world's standards, an obscurity. But he was living a life day by day that earned a perfect righteousness, human righteousness for all who put their trust in him. Then the day came for him to be revealed, to begin his public work. And the Holy Spirit descended upon him at his baptism, a baptism that was for sinners. And when John saw him coming, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You're coming to me for baptism. I should be baptized by you. John had said, I'm not worthy to untie his sandal. No, Jesus said, it is necessary for me to identify with sinners to fulfill all righteousness. I, who am without sin, must be identified with sinners. That's why I came. And even in this, dear friends, don't we see that Jesus Christ as man is able to understand anything that we experience and know. And at that moment, The Spirit of God descended upon him in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Father, so we have the Father speaking from heaven, we have the Spirit coming in the form of a dove, and the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, who now had a human nature, was hearing the words of his Father, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And then immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. And this morning I want to focus on the work of the Holy Spirit. You know, we are accustomed to celebrating great events in the history of the Christian faith, aren't we? For us who sit here and know the Lord, Christmas is about Christ. It's not just about commercialism. It's about His conception and birth That holy child is the Redeemer who had come. The incarnation is happening here. And then we celebrate Holy Week, the arrest of Christ, His betrayal and arrest, His trial, His crucifixion, His burial, His resurrection at Easter. But there are two other events in redemptive history, this history that was promised in the Old Testament, foreshadowed through the types and shadows, realized in Jesus Christ's human life. All of those events are critical. His life, His death, His burial, His resurrection. But there are two events that are just as important as all of those. First is the ascension of Christ into heaven. That's something that happened two weeks ago if you were keeping track of the liturgical calendar, which you may not have been doing. Some churches mention the ascension of Christ. Why was the ascension of Christ important? First of all, he had to be received back with his Father in his human nature. He had to be exonerated. He had to hear the well done from his Father in heaven after his work. He had to sit down at the Father's right hand as a result of his work, which Paul describes in Philippians 2 as the highest place. Seated at the right hand of the Father, glorified, exalted, and head of his church, So therefore, as the Heidelberg Catechism says it so beautifully, we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that He, the Head of the Church, will take us, His members, up to Himself. There is Christ right at this moment. How it can be, we do not know. It's the physics that are beyond us. But there is Christ in heaven, seated at the right hand of His Father in glory, representing every believer. so that as we feebly pray here, struggle here, Christ is our representative before the Father. And when the devil would accuse us before Christ and before the Father, the Son is there in His glorified, triumphant Human nature as well as of course his incomprehensible divinity to say that child is mine You gave him to me father. I purchased him. I lived a life to earn his righteousness. He's mine Oh, he sins, but I paid for his sins He's mine But there's more to Christ's ascension that is necessary for us to know. And it was in the passages that were read from the words of our Lord Himself in that last discourse He gave before He was about to be arrested and crucified. And it's about the one He calls the Helper. Sometimes it's translated the Counselor or the Comforter. And He's talking about the Holy Spirit. And He says to them, He is with you but shall be in you." And I agree with those who say that this should not be something to think about the disciples having the Holy Spirit, but that Jesus Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit and had been with them for three years filled with the Holy Spirit, and there they could see what the Holy Spirit is in a human nature. And the Lord Jesus Christ The Spirit has been with you, and He will be in you. The same Spirit that I have is going to be with you, and in you. But in order for that to happen, Christ had to ascend to the Father, and He said that. It is better for me that I leave. Now, if I ask you this morning, would it be better for you to have the Holy Spirit or to have Jesus here present physically with you? Oh, we might say, oh, I'd just love to see Jesus. That would confirm my faith. Or, I just, that's what I want. I want to see Jesus. Well, Jesus said it's better that I leave you. It's better that I go away from you. Because if I don't, the Spirit will not come. And you need the Spirit, because it's the Spirit, he goes on to say, who's going to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And he gives the reasons for it. And the Spirit is the one who will enable you to go out from the walls of Jerusalem, leave this enclosure, leave the temple, leave the sacrifices and the rites and the ceremonies that have guarded you during the childhood of the church, as Paul calls it in Galatians. And you can go out of these walls. In fact, the walls are going to be destroyed. Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, which he told them. And I'm going to make you my witnesses in Samaria, detestable Samaria, because it was to the Jews. Judea, everywhere, you're going to go out. And you will need my Spirit to do it. So, the week after Ascension, Lord's Day, is, last week, Pentecost. When we think especially, or we have the opportunity especially, of thinking about the coming of the Holy Spirit, as it's described in Acts chapter 2, where the promise of the Father that Jesus said to them would come actually came. And we are familiar, I trust, with that wonderful passage of the coming of the Holy Spirit and how Peter, who had denied Christ only weeks before, stands up full of the Holy Spirit, full of boldness, full of forty days of Jesus teaching him before his ascension the things about himself, how to understand the Old Testament. And now, empowered by the Holy Spirit, he stands up and proclaims This is the fulfillment of Scripture, which is, of course, another reason why the Spirit had to come, because Joel and other of the prophets had promised He would come, and God keeps His word. Hallelujah! So the Spirit came and he empowered these men who were cowards only weeks before. And all of them at John gave their lives in bloodshed from the records of church history and their testimony for Christ. So this morning in thinking about the Holy Spirit and coming at Pentecost and these two great things, As I've suggested to you, there is a history of redemption that begins in the garden and culminated in the sending of the Holy Spirit. Now, of course, redemption isn't finally finished, is it? Our bodies are growing older. Some of us feel this more than the rest of you. Some of you are very young. There's going to be a wedding soon and all of life is standing before them. That's great. But time passes. My wonderful piano teacher used to say to me, day after tomorrow you'll be 65 and drawing a pension. And I was a kid in my teens and I thought that was very clever. Well, I'm a decade past that almost and drawing a pension. And it seems like yesterday. No redemptive history. And it's the revelation of Jesus Christ in His glory with all the holy angels when He gathers His elect from the graves and those that are alive and brings them together. And it will all be because as to them and the receipt of the benefits of Christ because of the Holy Spirit who came upon them. So I want us to understand a distinction this morning, a couple of them, and here's the first one. The redemption that God planned and that Jesus executed completely, including in his return to heaven and his sending out the Spirit, is redemption accomplished. That's done. So Jesus at the cross could say, it is finished. My work, my suffering, my paying the penalty for sinners, my reconciling sinners to God who will believe on me, the redemption of purchasing this body of people for my eternal glory and the glory of the Father. My work is finished on earth. So redemption is accomplished in Christ. But then, redemption has to be applied. And that's why the Spirit's coming was so essential. Because the life, and the suffering, and the death, the burial, the resurrection, and even the ascension of Christ are all outside us. Those are events in history. As I said, we come in here to remember those events. Because they're critical to us as Christians. But we will not benefit from them until we believe, and we cannot and will not believe until the Holy Spirit enables us to do so. That's why the coming of the Spirit is so critical. The Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of the Son, the marvelous mystery and glory of our Triune God. Three Persons, all necessary for the one God, and yet each fully God in Himself. Great mystery. We cannot understand it, but we don't have to. We need to believe it and love Him. And so the Holy Spirit comes to apply the redemption that Christ has earned. And how does He do that? Well, He does it by coming through the Word, usually, the Word about our condition. If you're not feeling well, you go to the doctor and you want the doctor to tell you what the problem is. Well, you don't even start feeling bad spiritually until the Holy Spirit lets you know that you're not well. Because we think we're okay. Or if you're in that first group, you think you can fix it. Or you think that there's something that you can do or get, or somebody that you can have, a new relationship, a trip, a better job, more time off. whatever it might be. That's your remedy to your complaints and your laments. But when the Holy Spirit starts His work, He says none of that's going to help you at all. That's not your real problem. Your real problem is your relationship with God. You don't have one. You're under His wrath. You're a sinner who hasn't repented. And you think it's okay that you don't do this. And then he starts to undermine that confidence in yourself or in whatever else you have, money, work, relationships, family, children, parents. We make idols out of everything. Human beings do. And the Holy Spirit starts to come and says, where is God in your life? Where is the centrality of righteousness and holiness? And my first commandment to you, says God, is that you love me with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, all the time, perfectly. And we don't do that. We can't do that. And you need to love your neighbor as yourself. And so the Holy Spirit works this conviction of sin And that's what Paul was writing the Galatians about. He said, the things that happened among you was the work of the Holy Spirit. He not only convicted you of your sin, but he convicted you even more of Jesus as your Savior. And you knew that you couldn't save yourself, and he convinced you that Jesus could save you and would save you. And he did save you because you put your trust in him. And then he says, are you going to go on living the Christian life now based on your works, your efforts, your knowledge about redemption that's been accomplished in Jesus? Now, it's vital that we remember those things. But my point this morning to us is that in the application of redemption and the presence of the Holy Spirit, He has come to make us holy. He has come to make us love God, enable us to love God, and to love God more than we love anything else or anyone else, all the time. And when we face our enemies, and this we will particularly focus on, as the psalmist did in Psalm 143, when we face our enemies, We are going to face them in the way the Holy Spirit has provided for us, which is the knowledge of Christ, the redemption He has accomplished, particularly His suffering on the cross, and my access to Him at any time, any place, in prayer. I have the privilege of going to Him and going to Him and going to Him. He never gets tired. We must never think of God as we think of other people. You know, if somebody keeps calling you on the phone, particularly if it's somebody you don't care for, or if it's a telemarketer, it gets disgusting. You're tempted to hang up on them, or not even answer the phone. And we can think of God this way in our prayers. Have you prayed today? Yeah, well, I thanked God for my food this morning, and I may have asked for a safe trip to work, What happened when you were tempted to get angry? What happened when you were tempted to put your eyes someplace that would immediately start a little whirlwind or spark a fire within you? It's pollution that is filthy, that will defile you. What did you do then? Did you take it on yourself? Did you say, oh, I can deal with this, or I can look at this, or I can listen to this, and it's not going to harm me? Because I'm a Christian. You see, that's precisely, dear folks, where so often we fail, and why we don't progress in our Christian life, because they are these pieces of our lives, maybe known to no one except us, because they exist first in the mind. All sin starts in the mind before it gets to the mouth or to the rest of our body. What do we do when this indwelling sin, this strange thing, this principle of sin, or Paul calls it a law of sin. In Galatians 5, in the passage we read, he calls it the flesh. And he doesn't just mean our physical body. He means this indwelling sin that is still within the believer. It's very strange, isn't it? This business of trying to live the Christian life. Why didn't God take all this sin out of us? He forgave us of all our sins. We believe that. And that's absolutely what the Scripture teaches. But inside us there is still indwelling sin. And it can be stirred up. The world can stir it up. Things that go on in the world where people are not the slightest bit concerned about whether they're sinning or not. They're concerned about whether I'm getting what I want. I'm doing what I want. And I have what I want. But the Christian is a new creature in Christ. If anyone be in Christ, and we're in Christ when we put our faith in Him, it's a wonderful thing. We put our faith in Christ, we repent of our sins, and we become united to Christ. So we're in Christ. That's the place where we're so safe. In Christ. And we have His Spirit. He's been given to us. So, we're in Christ, then how can this sin also be there? Well, I personally believe that Scripture would encourage us to understand the presence of that sin there is a great blessing. Now, how can that be? Because it's going to help us learn dependence on God, on His Spirit, and on the work of Christ instead of looking to ourselves. And even looking to the triumphs that we may have over sin. And those are wonderful. I hope all of you who are believers know triumph over sin. That you're not living the way you did before you were a Christian. That you hate sin. And you hate it because it grieves God. And you want to be pleasing to God. And so therefore, you fight this. But how we are fighting it is my point this morning. not just with thoughts about it, but by going to the Lord like the psalmists. Consider this Psalm 143 with me again, and just look at the structure of the way this psalmist approaches the reality of his battle. Now, I'm aware that the psalmists often are battling physical enemies. David, who wrote so many of the Psalms, When he's writing from an embattled point of view, needing God's help, it's often over physical enemies. But not always. However, for us, as Christians, people who love the Lord and want to see his kingdom advanced, our enemies are not people. Oh, we may have people that are difficult, groups that we don't like, But our enemies are really not physical. Paul said we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. And Jesus told us how to treat our human enemies, didn't he? How are we supposed to treat them? We're to pray for them. Why? Because they're lost, if they're not Christians. Now sometimes Christians are enemies of other Christians, and that's really sad. And I think what we have to do there in order to love our enemies is love them as brethren, because if they say they are Christians, unless they deny Christ, even if they're caught up in a sin, we want to help them get over that sin by praying for them, by words of encouragement. If they're weak, we want to encourage them. So if we have grounds to believe a fellow person is a Christian, even though they're difficult, we want to love them because Christ has loved them. He has revealed himself to them. And he's put them in our midst, perhaps, or in our families, or even in marriages, to help us to look to him for that person and to have love for them. And that's what real love is. It's praying for other people and wanting them to grow in grace. If the enemy, human enemy, is an unbeliever, Well, we shouldn't be surprised in anything they do. And we should be glad that they aren't worse. And we should pray for them and say, Oh God, give them faith and help me to live before them if I have opportunity. Or write them. Or call them. And encourage them to believe because they are facing an eternity in hell without hope. So that you give us compassion. Jesus was moved with compassion. And as we know from Romans 8, the goal of the Holy Spirit in every Christian is to do what? Make us like Christ. Make us holy. Fill us with the love of God. So if human beings are not our enemies, what are enemies? Well, it's usually summarized up in the great, horrible trilogy, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world's our enemy, not because the earth is our enemy. The earth belongs to the Lord and everything in it. But the world, which is under the dominion of the devil, the unbelieving world, and all of its glitter, all of its false promises, its enticements, and the devil uses the world to try to seduce Christians, to try to get them to think, I can live in the world and do these things. And I'm not saying which things. Some people can do certain things and they don't mean anything to them. Other people can't do them because they're idols to them and they may be perfectly okay. But the devil wants you to make idols out of good things if he can't get you to sin outright. But I think the worst enemy we have is the sin that dwells within us, because it's always there. And that's why in Romans 8.13 and in Colossians 3.5, Paul says you must put to death the sin that is within you. How do we put to death the sin that is within us? First of all, you've got to know what sins are there. And I'm not talking about a morbid self-introspection. There are people that do this, and they're so bowed down by their sin, they're so heavy-laden with guilt about things they've done, that they don't even get into the battle. They're depressed. and they are living in defeat. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit, if they're truly a Christian, is there, and He's there to be called on. And the promises of God that we can walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh, that we don't have to bear and must not bear the fruit of the flesh that Paul lists in Galatians 5 and other lists or in the Scripture, but we can bear the fruit of the Spirit He's there. He's there to renovate us. Jesus went to prepare a place for us. And the Spirit has come to reside within us to prepare a place for God to reside. Isn't that incredible? That God resides within us. The Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, is within us. So how must we do these things? Well, I want to suggest, as I am, that we need to know what our sins are. You need to be honest with yourself. We need to stop making excuses. I have said wrongly before that God doesn't forgive excuses, but He forgives sins. Well, He forgives excuses when they're sins. Because we tend to want to excuse ourselves. We have many, many ways of justifying ourselves when we do things. Instead of facing the Word of God, facing what it says is sin, for example, anything that is not of faith is sin. Wow. Am I trusting you, Lord, about my work? Am I trusting you about relationships? Am I trusting you about my present, my future? If I get sick, if I have struggles with illness or mental illness, whatever it has been, sins in the past, will I ever be able to conquer this? Will I ever be able to stop losing my temper? Will I be able to deal with this anger that sits inside of me? We're in the sewer of a society that we live in, all of the sexual filth that goes on. and the enticements to this, and the availability of it, and the ease with which it can take hold of people, casually or very seriously, or greed, and dissatisfaction with what the Lord has given us. Will I ever be able to deal with this? The answer is, you have, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit residing within you. And you have the picture that we should maintain in our minds at all times of the Lord Jesus Christ, God become man, after a perfect life, childhood, adolescence, decade of labor, three years of public ministry, crucified. spit on, lacerated, and in the darkness of those three dread hours, as the hymn writer calls them, abandoned by His Father, in which time all of the horrors of hell were poured out upon Him, suffering what every Christian deserved. That is the picture we need to hold before us. And if you have trouble doing that, this is why you have the Holy Spirit within you. Oh, Spirit of God, Father, by your Spirit, enable me to do what David said he did in Psalm 16. I have set the Lord before me because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. I will not be shaken by sin. I will not be thrown down. I will not be tripped. I must, oh God, have the reverence and the love and the desire for holiness that the Lord Jesus died to earn for me. I cannot do it myself. Give it to me. Give it to me. And we go back to Him. And we go back to Him. Ceaselessly. And He hears us. I'm speaking out of personal testimony. Because like every one of us, I have to assume, you wrestle with sin. You wrestle with things that crush you. And you say, will you ever get over this? Will it ever be able to be dominated and dealt with? Christ has died to do it, and He's given us His Spirit to effect it. Hallelujah. But listen to this psalm. Isn't this amazing? Hear my prayer, O Lord. Give ear to my pleas for mercy. You know, mercy is something you don't deserve. And this is a godly prayer. This is not somebody who's saying, save me, I'm lost. This is a believer. This is the way we should lament. This is a way we should complain to God. And the Psalms do it. And the Psalms are so valuable for us because they're the words of the prophets. They're inspired. And they can help us in our pleas to God. In your faithfulness, answer me. You see, he's a man of faith. He believes God's faithful. Answer me. Do you say, have you ever said to the Lord in a prayer, answer me, oh God? I hope so. Answer me. I will perish without you. I have no good but you, says the psalmist. Do we think that? Can we say with Paul, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, in my body, in my being, as a sinner, there's nothing good. All goodness is in you. Can we say that? Karen's mother was an outstanding witness for Jesus, and she was talking about the Lord to somebody, and she turned to a lady that was behind her. She'd been saying to this other woman, none of our good works could we ever depend on. There's nothing that we could depend on to make us right with God. Don't you agree, so-and-so? Oh no, I don't agree at all, she said. She wasn't willing to give up her works at all. Not by works of righteousness which we have done. but according to His mercy has He saved us. Dear Christian, this morning, remember the foundation. The foundation is that when we put our trust in Christ and we repent of our sins, we are justified. And that means we are in God's sight, in God's sight as perfect as His Son. But we still have this indwelling sin. so that by position we are in Christ. By position we are to consider ourselves to be dead to sin. That's what Paul says in Romans 6. But in practice, sin is alive. We're dead to sin. We are to think of ourselves as such, but sin isn't dead. Sin is going to be stirred up. And therefore the psalmist knows it. In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness. Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you. And I'm sure he means by that, no one could stand and say, I don't have any sin. Ecclesiastes says there's no one who is righteous and does not sin. Not one. For the enemy has pursued my soul. Let's read in that enemy. Indwelling sin. Indwelling sin has risen up. Temptation. Whatever it is. Lust. Anger. Anything. It can be anything. Enemy has pursued my soul. He has crushed my life to the ground. There's a failure. I sinned. I've done it again. What hope is there for me? He has made me sit in darkness and like those long dead." Have you ever felt after you've sinned, how could I possibly be a Christian and do that? Think that? Say that? How can I possibly be a Christian? That's what the devil does, and that's what sin will do. And what God uses such moments to do, like the psalmist, is to throw us back on Him. He is our righteousness. He is our hope. He is our relief. Therefore my spirit faints because I'm sitting in darkness like those long dead. The heart within me is appalled. That's a sign of a godly person. They're appalled at their sin. They're appalled at this defeat. They can't stand it. If you can live in your sin comfortably, if you can go on sinning comfortably, you must ask yourself, am I a Christian? Is there any love for God in me? Do I really love Jesus? Do I realize He died to save me from my sin, not in my sin? Do I want to be holy? The writer of the Hebrews says, follow peace with all men and the holiness without which, without the holiness, no one will see the Lord. A desire to be like Christ. So the psalmist is feeling like he's dead and he's appalled. But what does he do? Does he just sit there? Does he just try to figure it out? No, I remembered the days of old. I meditate on all that you have done. I ponder the work of your hands. For a Christian, I think on Jesus Christ. I think on his life. I think on his suffering. I think on his death. And he did it for me to save me from this powerful sin. To deliver me from the dominion of sin. To forgive me. Give me joy. I stretch out my hands to you. Do you ever pray with your hands out? Don't be afraid to pray with your hands out. Maybe it's a Baptist church, but you can pray in your closet with your hands out. Reach up, Lord, I need you. This is not casual work. This is labor, folks. It's described as a warfare. Warfare isn't carried on like a pickup basketball game. And sin is out to destroy you. Every sin has its goal to destroy you. But we're kept by the power of God. We're given His Spirit. And as I'm trying to encourage us to understand, we have this privilege of going back to the Lord in the same way that God's people have always done. I stretch out my hands to you, my soul thirsts for you like a parched land." Are you hungry for God this morning? Psalm 73, there's nothing more powerful in all the Bible than that psalm about the hunger for God and the delight in God. If my spirit fails, hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down into the pit, who perish. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, your chesed, your loving kindness, your mercy, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Take my life and let it be. We could pray it every morning, right? Take my life and let it be. Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in ceaseless praise. Let them flow in ceaseless praise and prayers when I'm tempted in faith to believe You will help me, like the psalmists. Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord. There it is. I have fled to You for refuge. When people were deserting Jesus in John 6, he says to the disciples, will you leave? Will you leave too? And Peter says, where shall we go? To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And dear Christian, when you're in the throes of these battles, to whom will you go? At the beginning, break out of sin. Flee to Christ. Don't wait. Don't pretend like you can take it on. You can't. You don't have to. It's folly. Teach me to do your will for you are my God. There's faith again. Oh, how we need to believe God. Let your good spirit lead me on level ground. Psalmist knew about the spirit not to the degree we have it, but he knew For your name's sake O Lord preserve my life in your righteousness Bring my soul out of trouble and in your steadfast love. You will cut off my enemies You will destroy all the adversaries of my soul. Why? For I am your servant. I belong to you This is a prayer for every one of us Oh dear saints, I hope that if nothing else comes of this this morning that you will realize in a new sense the value of the Psalms for your prayer life. and for the communion of saints that we have with those who have gone before us and fought the same battles that we have had. Know the remedy is the Spirit within us, the work of Christ historically, His presence in heaven, our Head, the Head of the Church through whom the Father governs all things. The world exists for the gathering in of the elect and the sanctifying of them. It doesn't exist for the United States. or for the advancement of the breakup of the European Union, or some other political, or economic, or educational, or sports event. The world exists for the gathering of the people of God, and the perfecting of them by the Holy Spirit, through His Word, through discipline, through this warfare that I'm talking about this morning. Well, there is a remedy and it is Christ and it is His Spirit within us. And I would like us to bring this to a close by another responsive reading. Because we've had this psalm here of lament, and there are psalms like this, 13, 141, others, you can find them. But there are psalms of triumph, too. And I want us to read responsively before we sing our closing hymn, a psalm of triumph. And it's a responsive reading on page 827, Psalm 116. Page 827, Psalm 116. And let me say while we're turning, for any here in the first group, for whom these realities we've been talking about are not realities to you or precious to you, think again. Think just for a moment of all the frustrations that you've had in the past, trying to satisfy yourself with things that perish. And think very, very seriously, please, on the reality of the coming final judgment, when you don't want to stand before a holy God without an advocate, without someone in your court. without the one who's paid for the sins of all who put their trust in him. Come to the Lord Jesus this morning and hear a real song of triumph in this wonderful Psalm 116. Let's stand together and read this responsibly. Psalm 116, I love the Lord, for he heard my voice, he heard my cry for mercy. The cords of death entangle me, the anguish of the grave came upon me, I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. The Lord is gracious and righteous. Our God is full of compassion. Be at rest once more, O my soul. For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I believed, therefore I said, I am greatly afflicted. How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. O Lord, truly, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. I will sacrifice a thank-offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. in the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. Amen. Let us sing a song of triumph to prepare us to leave this place and go out to the battle afresh. Lead on, O King Eternal.