would like for you to please open your Bibles to Psalm 102, the superscription there, the title. It's a prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed and poureth out his complaint before the Lord. We are reminded that afflicted saints are not afflicted because their faith is weak, not necessarily. They are not afflicted because they have done some sort of thing to raise God's ire. Not necessarily. Those things certainly could happen. God in his providence could give a saint a period of affliction in order to help them recalibrate their thought process, right? To get our attention for how maybe we have been lax in our duties before God. It's part of the chastisement or the discipline. It could very well be that in the same spirit of the Book of Judges, where we stumble into a thought process or a period of time where we're acting inconsistently with our faith, He may give us the heavy hand of His loving discipline. Think of Psalm 51 and Psalm 32 with regards to David. But we do not leave our period of affliction, we do not overcome that affliction in our own strength. We call on and exalt the eternal God. Because God hears, and he helps, and he heals. So we're gonna hear the entire psalm, I'll read the psalm in its entirety, and we will consider what our psalmist has for us, and what God has preserved for us. This is Psalm 102. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto Thee. Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble. Incline Thine ear unto me in the day when I call. Answer me speedily, for my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin. I'm like a pelican in the wilderness, I'm like an owl in the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Mine enemies reproach me all the day, and they that are mad against me are sworn against me. For I've eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. Because of thine indignation and thy wrath, for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass. But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever, in thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory. He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come. And the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord. For He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary. From heaven did the Lord behold the earth. to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death, to declare the name of the Lord in Zion and His praise in Jerusalem, when the people are gathered together in the kingdoms to serve the Lord. He weakened my strength in the way, He shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. Thy years are throughout all generations. Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment. As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee." Powerful words cried out to a God who sees, and as we just noted, hears, helps, and heals. Psalm 102 is a cry from the depths of affliction. We don't have in mind this person has like a rock in their shoe, the equivalent of a rock in your shoe. Maybe the toner was out at work and you had to change it and you got a little stuff on your hands. That's not an affliction. We have in mind something a whole lot worse than this. The idea of having enemies arrayed against you. and all of the things that come with that. It's not just that people don't like you. Those things are going to happen. We just read from John 17 that Jesus is praying for his disciples and he's praying for us not to be removed from the world where we don't have conflict but preserved and protected in the midst of the reality of that conflict because we're not like the world. In Christ we're not like the world, we're different. And that difference manifests itself in tension and frustration between the people of the world and the people of Christ. And so we have in the idea that there is that hostility. And the hostility leads to affliction. His enemies are arrayed against him. And they have every opportunity in mind to do him harm. And the psalmist cries out, And he shows that there is a tension there. He's talking about his own frailty, but he's also talking about how eternal God is. He's talking about the human frailty versus divine eternality, if you will. That's a fancy word. Give me a lot of points and scrabble. But the idea is exactly the same thing that we've seen in other psalms where the psalmist is crying out. He's acknowledging his limitations. He's acknowledging who God is, how he is limitless. And by the fact that he is crying out to God, we have this psalm preserved. We see that that same submission to the Lord is in play. Irrespective of whether things are going well or whether they're going poorly. So we're going to talk about some of the elements in this psalm. We're going to see the first 11 verses. We'll see God's afflicted saint. God's afflicted saint. This is the whole premise of the psalm itself. So it stands to reason in the beginning you would see the psalmist talking about his affliction. Verses 12 through 22, we're going to see God's eternal compassion. God's eternal compassion. When we have these issues, when we are struggling, And we cry out to God. By His Spirit, many times we are reminded of His compassion. How He's cared for His people. In verses 23-28, we'll see God's servant's future. God's servant's future. The idea that the people of God have a particular future because of their relationship with Him, their submission to Him, that they would believe in the One that He sent and the path that He puts them on in their lives. So God's afflicted saint, God's eternal compassion, and God's servant's future. So verses 1 through 11, we see our saint, our believer, crying out in suffering. We've heard this elsewhere, we've seen it all through modern Christendom, smatterings of places where the prosperity gospel and other misinterpretations of portions of scripture, combined with the exclusion of other portions of scripture, leading to this idea that for a Christian, to be in the faith is to never have any problems. We've talked about the possibility that it's an unintended consequence of evangelism. We talk about coming to Jesus and accepting Christ's work instead of your own as the solution to all of your problems. And we certainly know that theologically that's true in the eternal sense, right? We get that we have eternal life, new life in Christ as we're born again. Our sins are forgiven. Our iniquities are covered. The Bible calls that man blessed. Who knows that? but we see that in a different perspective. From a biblical standpoint, we know that we have our sins forgiven, we have eternal life in Christ, but that doesn't mean we won't have problems in this life, this life that equips us, that trains us, that sanctifies us, that prepares us for the eternal life, where there's going to be no death, where there's going to be no mourning or tears, where we will dwell with God and He with us as His people and He our God. But that doesn't change the fact that the war still goes on. We've read that through scripture. Paul's talked about that spiritual war that goes on, how we need to put on the full and complete armor of God. That implies a militancy, a combat between the people of the world and the people of God. Jesus alluded to it pretty clearly in John chapter 17, our reading this morning. And so, what do we do when those things manifest themselves in our lives. What is our response? What should the believer's response be? Well, one of the things that Christ provides for us is a template, a pattern of behavior, that even in the midst of afflictions, when struggles seem to just be dragging us down, that there's nothing wrong with crying out to God in anguish. To whom else should we turn? Sometimes we think, well, I need to go to God once I've gotten myself fixed up. Once I've got a handle on things, then I can go to God, because I'm supposed to take my best to God, right? Okay, I see the reasoning behind that, but there's a problem with that. The idea that we can take anything good to God that is separated from the starting point that God demands of us is sin. Now by that I mean if we just try to leave and get out of God's presence in order to make ourselves better, to get a handle on ourselves, we're right off the bat. One, we can't get out of God's presence. Two, we can't control ourselves. The heart is deceitful, desperately wicked. Who can know it? Who can understand it? We can't have a handle on things in our own strength. The model from scripture is to cry out to God. in a transparent, honest, open, submissive way. And this is what our psalmist is doing. He's providing us that model that it's perfectly fine to cry out to the Lord and to long for Him to pay attention. Because isn't the perception when we're dealing with affliction that God has abandoned us? I mean, we know that from Scripture. Jesus cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So, we have a biblical understanding of God forsaking His Son for our benefit, so maybe we're thinking, okay, when I'm going through affliction, it could be that God has abandoned me. But rather than do what the world says, because the world tells you, when you do something wrong, go away, get out of our sight, fix yourself, And then come back and present whatever fix you have and maybe if you're lucky, we'll accept you back. But we're always going to throw that back in your face. You've come a long way since this. Oh, remember that time when you and then bringing that back up. It's a control mechanism. In order to remind you that you're not as good as you think you are, that we control you. That's what the world does. But no, we come to the Lord and it's completely understandable to feel like He's actually abandoned us because He forsook His Son for us and for our benefit. So to cry out for divine attention, Now, is there an element where it could be sinful? Sure. There absolutely could be a time where our thought process is, God has abandoned us and I'm going to cry out to him in anguish as though I'm wagging my finger in his face saying, where were you when I was suffering? That's not how we approach the Lord. That's not how our psalmist is approaching the Lord. He's crying out with anguish and genuine hurt. This is a personal thing. and he's longing for the Lord to pay attention. Hide not thy face from me. It's a plea. It points to the perceived alienation. We know God sees all. It's like people that say, well, the Bible says that God asked Adam what he did, so that shows God doesn't know. No, that's a rhetorical device that Moses used. We know when the psalmist says, hide not thy face from me, God is not gone. But the perception when we struggle is, maybe He's not looking. And so, rather than to accuse, we cry out, we plead with Him to see. We're still submitting our wills to His. We still need Him to see, because the plea to hide not thy face from me has at its core an understanding that it's to Him and to Him alone that we have to turn. So we need Him to pay attention to us. It's not like we assume that He's not, but we're still submitting our will in the midst of our suffering. And the psalmist in verse 3 tells us, well he says, my days are consumed like smoke, my bones are burned. He's like, I'm suffering. I'm suffering. I feel like I'm being destroyed. I'm being consumed. And I need you, Lord. I need you, God. This is the idea that he has. He says, my heart is smitten and withered like grass. You know, to have grass withering. We've heard that elsewhere, right? The grass withers and the flower fadeth, but the word of our God will stand forever. So that juxtaposition, that comparison, something temporal and limited and relatively fragile versus something that's eternal and timeless and has, because it is permanent, withstood the test of time. It transcends time. God's word is settled forever in heaven. We just heard that in Psalm 119. So our psalmist here is saying that his heart is like that. It's being crushed and destroyed and broken and it's withering. It's fading away, but he's crying out. He's presenting a situation. where he is being destroyed utterly in his mind. He says, "...my enemies reproach me all the day, and they that are mad against me are sworn against me." This idea of what he's saying prior to that in verse 7, "...I watch him as a sparrow alone upon the housetop." He's isolated, he's cut off, and he's cut off by his enemies that are sworn. They've made an oath in this. They're working against him. The idea here is that this is overwhelming suffering. There's physical weakness, there's isolation, there's being ostracized socially, cut off, in addition, not just being cut off, but being cut off and mocked and scorned and vilified. As well as this emotional longing for the Lord's presence. Like this, like he's just not around. I'm drying up without the Lord's presence. This lament isn't just personal. Because we can step back. Because we remember that the Psalms aren't merely an individual's contextual issue. If they were, they would not be preserved for us. You say, well, why did God preserve the letters to Timothy, and to Titus, and to Philemon? Because there were things there that were applicable for His people in all ages. And if we recall, God kept that word pure in all ages for His people. So what can we bring from this? What can we step back, away from the original context, and try to determine? Well, our psalmist here, to some extent, represents the church proper through all of its history. What's going on here? Physical weakness, suffering, isolation, an emotional sense of dryness, and being cast out and mocked and scorned on a social level. Does that sound familiar? It sounds pretty familiar when we think about God's history, and that is how the church has had to function for large swaths, the vast majority of her history. Calvin said, God afflicts his people, but not to destroy them, rather, he says, to draw their gaze upward. We think about the church, and we think of periods of time where the church was stronger, Versus weaker, this idea of the relevance or the strength of the church. It's kind of an earthly thing. We would rather want to talk about the faithfulness of the church. Whether the church was more or less faithful. And that faithfulness waxed or waned in part in those times where the church maybe had more connection to the state. We think of, of course, the power of the papacy, how Antichrist linked himself and really lorded over politicians and kings and rulers. We also think back, of course, of Constantine and the union there, at least the toleration of Christianity as sort of a state religion. We see how that was manipulated with the forgery that was the donation of Constantine, how that gave power to the church falsely over certain things. So we've got that period of time, but we also have that period of time where there was a lot of content provided in Fox's Book of Martyrs. We think of the killing times where Roman Catholics slaughtered Protestants. We think of the early church and all of the persecutions contained therein. We think of all of these things in its entirety, but we see that God is afflicting his people. For starters, as Calvin said, it's God that does the afflicting. And that's the hard thing to wrap our minds around because we have let worldliness creep into our understanding of who God is. That God would never want his people to suffer. I don't even know how you can read the Bible and not see God ordaining the suffering of His people for a particular purpose, for His own glory and for the good of His people, so that His people would be more obedient and more faithful. When they get the just consequence for their own sin, God will afflict His people to get their attention. But it's not just a tapping on your shoulder. It's a you have sinned, you have said you were my people, I've chosen you, made you my own, and you are living disobediently. And I will give you a taste of what you think you want so that you can see how foolish it is. And so that you will be more humble. more submissive to my will so that you will see the folly of your actions trying to go your own way. Now, for those people that go their own way and don't seem to have any consequence, it could very well be, as Paul has said, that God has given them over to the hardness of their heart, turned them over to the reprobate nature of their mind. And that's a dangerous place to find oneself in the grand scheme of things. But Spurgeon noted with regards to this section of Scripture, he says, "...the psalmist's griefs have so worn him that he forgets to eat." He said, this isn't a poetic exaggeration. Because that's what we do. Like, I haven't eaten in days. And maybe it's been a meal, a meal and a half, something like that. And we use that as a figurative piece of language that we're hungry. We haven't eaten for a while. I'm so starving I could eat a horse. Well, probably not. So we use that figurative language. But Spurgeon says, this isn't a poetic exaggeration. He said, the mind is so connected to the body that severe depression brings physical decay. And those of us who've experienced that in any form or fashion know that with that spiritual affliction, oftentimes the ability to function in the real world becomes more of a challenge. And people say, well, just eat something. Well, I didn't realize it was that simple. But our psalmist here is going through a period of affliction that is so deep, it's manifesting in his physical life. Job in chapter 30 spoke to this. In verse 30 he said, So when we are afflicted by the Lord for a season of time, it is all-consuming. And our psalmist cries out, And our psalmist being representative of, to some extent, of the church, what should our response be? It's the same response that the psalmist does here. He cries out for the Lord. Incline thine ear unto me in the day when I call, answer me speedily. We can imagine this play itself out. So, for starters, we know that the affliction is from the Lord. It's not necessarily a sign of faithlessness. It could be a consequence there. But the Lord ordains these periods of time where enemies array against us, where we are dry emotionally, spiritually, feeling distant and separated. These are spiritual and physical afflictions. But that doesn't give us the right to say, how dare you? I don't deserve this. The model, the pattern, is exactly what the psalmist does. To cry out for the Lord. To submit more deeply. To draw from the Spirit that He's provided us. And to cling to Him all the more. To dive deeper into His Word. To dive deeper into prayer. But that doesn't mean that we can't approach Him honestly. He knows it anyway. He wants our obedience. He commands it. But he also equips us to do it. It's not just obedience for the sake of obedience. This isn't breaking our wills. But then again, it kind of is. Because we're stiff-necked, like Moses has said. We're stubborn and we're prideful and we don't think we deserve bad things to happen to us. We think we're owed something because of reasons, whatever those reasons might be. It could be our bloodline, it could be how good we are, it could be how we've in our own strength overcome the desire to yell at or scream or mistreat someone and we get prideful. It could be that. But for God's people, the response to affliction should be to cry out to the Lord that much more. Now it's interesting, John Gill writes in this, commenting on this psalm, he says the complaint here is typical of Christ and his sufferings. For he bore our grief and carried our sorrow. We should kind of make that connection. If we think about what Christ actually says, it sounds familiar. He says, if there any way that it could let this cup pass, but not my will but thine be done. He knew what he was going to do. He knew what was going to happen. And he still submitted his will to the Father. But he was honest. And it was clear. Matthew Henry says, This psalm may be taken as a prayer of the Messiah and his passion, or of any godly man under affliction. It feels like God has abandoned us. And so, Does that mean we get to go cry out to the enemy? Hey, God's left me in the lurch, Lucifer. Not that they are equals as far as that fight goes, but that's the physical embodiment of what we think of as the enemy. Actually, in reality, we would actually be looking in the mirror and saying, well, God's not listening, I guess it's up to me. No, that's not what Christ did. And that's not what our psalmist does, and that's not what we should do. So as we lament, we cry out, but we cry out to the Lord. We aren't crying out to ourselves, we aren't crying out to any other false god or fallen angel. And it's when we cry out to God, the section that we were considering ends with this. He says, My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass. Verse 12, however, pivots our thought process, and that's where we seek the eternal compassion of God. He says, "...but thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever, and thy remembrance unto all generations." Even though our psalmist is frail, and he's fading, he's like grass, and the grass is withering, it's burning up, hasn't been fed, it hasn't been given water, it hasn't been given nutrients, and now it's dying. Even though our believer is frail and fading, What does he appeal to in this verse? The eternal nature of God, His compassion and His faithfulness. He says, Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof. There's a contrast here, right? A comparison there. Our psalmist is going through some things and he feels like he's dying. He knows that He's finite, He knows that He's temporal. But what does He appeal to here? The permanent throne of God. The eternal nature of God and His compassion. The idea in verse 13, The idea of God rising, the word in mind, speaks to a covenant or a covenantal response. The idea that God is going to stand and act on behalf of His people. And there it is right there. When we suffer, when we struggle, when we're dealing with the periods of affliction, and we cry out to God, we need to remember from God's Word who He is. He is our covenant God. We are His covenant people. And He's made promises. And so we can appeal to Him and be reminded from His Word and be reminded that He will rise, remember, because He is our refuge and our strength and an ever-present help in trouble. The idea is He is going to redeem His people. For the time to favor her, yea, the set time has come. God is sovereign, and He will redeem His people. Now, it's interesting here, we see in verse 16 as well, and verse 15 references the fact that because God is a covenant God, and He will rise to defend and protect His people, look at verse 15. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth by glory. Because of that covenantal protection, The heathen will fear. When we trust that the Lord will be who He said He will, when He intervenes, the heathen will fear that. They won't fear us. We're nobodies. But God is everything. Christ is everything. And He says, "...the heathen shall fear the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory." Now, what does that refer to here? Well, we also know that Christ is going to rule and reign forever. He's going to restore all things, and He will get all of the glory. And so we have a reference of the Lord building up Zion when He appears in glory. We have kind of a speaking towards Christ's second coming, when He sets all things right. And He redeems and consummates history. He said He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer. This is language that we should be familiar with. Let's start with verse 17. Like I just said, He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come, and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord. For He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary, from heaven did the Lord behold the earth. to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death, to declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and praise in Jerusalem, when the people are gathered together in the kingdoms to serve the Lord." We have heard that from Luke's Gospel. When Jesus came to set the captives free, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim the day of the Lord, and the name of the Lord. This is similar language. So we speak of Psalm 102 as sort of a messianic psalm. It's exactly what we have here. References to the work of Christ on behalf of His people and for His people. Now, that doesn't negate the immediate context. It speaks to the reality that God is not indifferent to our suffering. He's not just sitting there going, yeah, they're going through some things. It is what it is. That's not how God speaks to us. He arises in mercy and He acts in faithfulness towards us. He's not indifferent. He ordains these things for our good and for His glory, to be sure. But He acts. One of the ways that Christ executes the office of a king is He rules over us, but He subdues His and our enemies. We don't fight for ourselves. Christ fights for us. We don't lead ourselves, Christ leads us. We don't protect ourselves, Christ protects us. It is all God's doing. He is not indifferent. He is the Lord who intervenes. Right? Because look at verse 20. He hears the groaning of the prisoner, but he loses those who are appointed to death. Well, who are those people who are appointed to death? All of us. But for his people, he sets us free. We are under a death sentence because of our sin. We are appointed to death. We are under God's wrath and curse, rightly so. But the redemption that God provides for His people, the promise that He made from creation past, remember Paul tells the Ephesians, He's predestined us. So, our redemption, our salvation, we think about it in the finite temporal terms of, hey, I was at this camp, or I spoke to this pastor, or I made this profession of faith. Our salvation was set from creation past. We were appointed to death. God, in His great mercy, saw fit to redeem all of the people for whom Christ would die. from creation past, we were appointed to death and it was God that did the work. So God acts because of His promises, the promises that He made to His people. The personal lament is shifting, if you'll notice, as well. Now, where he was talking about himself as an individual, he's speaking about more of a national sort of identity. The idea of Zion, the people of God, the people that we understand, spiritual Israel, the people for whom Christ died. Because there were members of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament who were wicked. We're thinking of the godly Israelites, the people that acted and lived by faith. Those people that, representatively wise, were mentioned in Hebrews. But they were the godly people for whom Christ died. There's that shift to, ultimately, what we see fulfilled in the work of the Messiah. That God would come in the fullness of time and redeem his people. Spurgeon wrote about this, specifically verse 13, way back up there where God shall arise and have mercy upon Zion. He says, "...Zion is the object of divine regard, and when her time of visitation comes, Jehovah will make bare his arm." God will reveal, and act, and intervene on behalf of His people here. It's what we see played out. John Owen talks about this passage as the fulfillment of Christ's reign over the Church. He says, And this is crucial when we go through affliction, whether that affliction is individual or whether that affliction is the Church proper. We haven't been disregarded. We haven't been cast aside. There are lampstands that the Lord will see fit to remove according to His plans and purposes. We see that play out in Revelation. Or the potential for that play out in Revelation. But ultimately, we see God intervening on behalf of His people. And that's made clear and effective because of Christ ascending to heaven and being seated at the right hand of the Father. So we're not alone going through things. I think a lot of times when we go through stuff, we think, well, I just need to read the Bible more, as though this is just another book from antiquity. But nothing can be further from the truth. These are the words of eternal life. We recognize them as such by God's Spirit. We cannot say that we believe these words in the Bible unless God has done a work in our minds to renew it and in our hearts to change them. It is the work of the Spirit that recognizes God's Word as God's Word. Sometimes we forget that in our circles. We want to have all of our theological I's dotted and our theological T's crossed, and we forget that the Spirit affirms and confirms in our minds that these are the words of God. The Spirit has always done that. No council, no court, no group of people. It's been the Spirit that has helped us to see what Scripture is, and given us an understanding of that. So it's all been God's work. So our psalmist is crying out from his own affliction. And that affliction kind of speaks to the larger affliction of God's people. God acts because God made promises. And he's compassionate, and he's merciful, and he's loving. And because of all of those things, the promises that he makes are the promises that he fulfills. And so he intervenes on behalf of his people. And that leads to something. It leads to a discussion of the future of God's servants. Because if God does all these acts, what is the future? What's the flow from that? What follows? Well, we go back and look at Psalm 102 in the beginning, we see the contrast. Man is finite, man is temporal, man diminishes, man withers and dies. God does none of those things. He is the same, Paul says in Hebrews 13, Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever. So the same, eternal. Where we wear out, He does not. So while man perishes, God remains. And that's a good thing, because that ensures the preservation of His people, and the fulfillment of all of His promises. Because God is who He says He is. We see the shift there, verse 23. The psalmist says, He weakened my strength in the way, He shortened my days. But then in verse 24, I said, Oh my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. Thy years are throughout all generations. The psalmist doesn't want to die. It's reasonable prayer, right? Take me not away in the midst of my days. Not in the middle. Don't take me away. I've still got work to do, is what we have going on there. He says, take me not away in the midst of my days. Thy years are throughout all generations. He's affirming the idea of God being eternal. but he's pleading to do more work on behalf of the Lord, to have more of an opportunity to be God's servant. Even in the midst of affliction, he recognizes that there's work to be done. God will arise, God will vindicate, God will protect. Psalms goes on, he says, Of old thou hast laid the foundation of the earth, the heavens are the work of thy hands. Once again, that reminder that the God to whom he turns is the Eternal God that created all things. He has power over creation. He is eternal. To whom else should we go? The future that we have is linked inexorably to who God is. He's infinite, He's eternal, and He's unchangeable. He's perfect in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. There's nowhere else that we should go because there's nowhere else that we can go. So, again, the umbrella concept is in our affliction we still turn to the Lord. Our psalmist says, All those people that he mentioned back in verse 8. So our psalmist says, They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. All of them shall wax old like a garment. As a vesture, thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. Now, I'm going to go to the book of Hebrews, chapter 1, because this is an important reference. We've talked a lot, as we've done our New Testament reading, especially as we go through the Gospels in particular, about Christ and his deity. How the deity of Christ is a crucial doctrine. We see in verses 26 and 27, "...they shall perish, but thou shalt endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment. As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." Hebrews chapter 1 verses 10-12, Paul writes this, And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest. They shall wax old, as thus a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." So in addition to the enemies, we also see the creation referenced as a garment. But who is it that's spoken of here in Hebrews 1? That's Christ. So Christ is being referenced as the intended recipient of this plea. So all of this, while representing some of the works of Christ, and speaking to what Christ does for His people, it's also a plea to God Himself. And God Himself, as Paul discusses it, is the second person of the Trinity, just as much as it is the first person of the Trinity. The enemies, the creation, the heavens, all of those things get folded up because of Christ and what Christ is doing. It's Christ's deity. It's Christ's immutability. Because he says in Hebrews 13, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. So Christ hears these things. The Lord does not change. The Eternal Son of Hebrews 1 is God in Psalm 102. So, we see references, you know, there's also always talk in the Psalms, especially for those of us who sing the Psalms without musical accompaniment. Oh, well, you don't see Jesus in the Psalms. I would respectfully submit this, in addition to scores of other examples." And then the discussion and the debate begins to break down, because then people will say, well, you're not using the name of Jesus in the Psalms. Well, the name of Jesus is not Hebrew. We can talk about that another time. But the person of Jesus, the references from Scripture that point to Jesus, the work of Jesus, the offices that Jesus holds as revealed in Scripture. It's all over the Psalms. So we see that reference there, that it's Christ in Psalm 102. Now, when we make that connection, that it's Christ that doesn't change, that it's Christ that has creation in the palm of His hand, then what do we do? Well, it gives us hope, and it should give us confidence. Sometimes we struggle to have to come up with that, the reminders from Scripture. It's nice to have Bibles that have the cross references and things like that to be sure. But we are reminded that even in the midst of fading strength and being ostracized by the world, how God's people are mocked and scorned, that because the Lord does not change, He says that in Malachi, we saw it in Hebrews. We see it here. That we have hope. Because we are putting our trust in someone that does not wear down, that does not sleep. We see that elsewhere in the Psalms. We see that he makes promises and he fulfills them. Calvin said, though the heavens wear out like a garment, which we just saw, the Lord's faithfulness to his elect shall not fail. He will preserve a people for his name. And that's the hope that we have. That's the future that we have. We are His people and He will preserve us because He said that He would. So why do I say that? Do I say that we then deal with the affliction by saying, why are you even worried about it? Because you're just acting a fool, you know what's going to happen. I don't mean to say it that harshly. What we need to do as God's people in the midst of affliction is exactly what our psalmist is doing here. We appeal to the Lord. We cry out with our hurts and our anguish. But we're also reminded about who God is. And we're reminded of the hope that we have. It's the same solution that I keep going over. It's knowing our Bibles and knowing the One who wrote the Bible. So that when we hurt, not if we hurt, but when we hurt, We can be reminded from the Word, by the Spirit, not from the world, by its Spirit, but by God's Word, by God's Spirit, of the hope that we have because of what Christ did. Martin Lloyd-Jones, fantastic theologian, he said, The Christian's greatest comfort is not the changing winds of this life, but in the unchanging faithfulness of the Lord. The desires of the world shift as rapidly as the human mind can envision them. But God's Word is settled forever in Heaven. God's promises are vouchsafed by who He is, the One who would arise and redeem His people, and the One who did in the fullness of time. come down, was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that when we hurt, we can cry out to Him, not only because He knows our suffering because He walked on this earth, but because He made promises from creation past, so that we would be His people, and He would take care of us. When we hurt, when we struggle, when we suffer, Our fallback position isn't our worries or self-help books or anything like that. Our help and our hope is in the promises of God manifested chiefly in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 102 begins with anguish, but it ends with assurance. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee." It's verses 27 and 28. Psalm 102 began with hurt, but it ends with healing. The saint cries from the pit, lifts his eyes up to heaven. And he sees an unchanging God who is merciful in his governance. He hears the prayer of the lowly. We see that in verse 17. In verse 13 we see him rising in mercy for Zion, for his people. We just mentioned verse 28. He preserves a people unto himself. The hope that we have in this psalm is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. He's the unchanging one. He endures when we struggle and we can rely on Him and His work and His promises and His character. Let's stand as we call on Him in prayer. Father, thank you that we see the range of human emotion in Psalm 102. and a short course in covenantal theology as well. Our psalmists, like us in so many ways, cry out to you with hurts, pleading with you to intervene, to take away those hurts. And we see that you, because you have made promises, stand for us. And you hear our prayers, and you look after us so that we will continue and our seed would be established before you. Father, when we cry out to you in our affliction, remind us by your Spirit's leading. Remind us of these words and remind us of Christ's work so that we can trust in you more so that we can continue to look to Jesus as not only the author, but the finisher of our faith. And it is in His name that we pray. Amen.