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The following message was given
at Grace Community Church in Mendon, Nevada. Would you open
with me to Psalm 116? Psalm 116. Would you please stand
for the reading of God's Word? I love the Lord because He has
heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because He inclined His
ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live. The
snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold
on me. I suffered distress and anguish. And then I called on the name
of the Lord, O Lord, I pray deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord,
and righteous our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple.
When I was brought low, He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your
rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you
have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from
stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in
the land of the living. I believed. Even when I spoke,
I am greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm, all mankind
are liars. What shall I render to the Lord
for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints. Oh Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of
your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will
offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the
name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of
the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. This is the
reading of God's word. Please have a seat. Let's open in prayer. Our great and gracious God, thank
you for being our deliverer. Thank you for being the one who
hears, the one who rescues. And we pray now that you would
meet with us. We pray now that you would speak
to us. We pray that by your scriptures, you would speak into each one
of our hearts. And we pray that you would give us cause to rejoice
in you. We also pray that you give us
hope to persevere. Lord, give us your help now,
your needy people pray. In Jesus name we pray, amen. This is a psalm that hits us
in so many different places in our lives. On the one hand, this is a looking
back. And for some of you, you're going
to be able to put a year, a month, whatever of your life into this
psalm and see yourself. And for others, you're in it
right now. For others, you're bearing that
weight right now. You're suffering right now. And
this psalm is for you. The psalmist begins with a proclamation. I love the Lord. because he has
heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. I love the Lord. Why? Because the Lord listened
to him. The Lord heard him. This is not
the, you know, just the passive, oh, he heard my voice one day,
you know, down the way. This is a God who heard, who
listened, who helped. The psalmist is looking back
on this time when he cried out, God, give me mercy. And the Lord
stepped in and the Lord helped him. So he needed help in the
worst kind of way. And that's what I mean. For some
of you, this is a memory. For some of you, this is the
present. He needed help in the worst kind of way. He feared
for his life. He's got this picture of being
caught in the ropes and the nets of a hunter, you know, like a
hunter seeking prey. And he's the prey. He's the one
who's caught. He's the one who now fears for
his life. And in that fear, you hear how
he describes himself. He suffered. He suffered distress. He suffered anguish, agony. Nearing death, he wept in sorrow. Close to stumbling, close to
never rising again. And this is where his heart is
in this moment, is in this tremendous fear, this tremendous turmoil.
And he remembers when he was bearing that weight, when he
feared for his life, when every day was full of stress and anxiety,
and with the intensity that that kind of fire produces, that was
when he cried out, Lord, deliver my soul. Deliver my soul. And the Lord saved him. The Lord saved him, and so when
he says, I love you, Lord, because you heard and you helped, that
love is proportionate to every fearful night, every stressful
moment, every prayer when he cried out to the heavens and
was unsure that his God was listening. The love is proportionate to
the fear he felt, to the danger he experienced, he cried out,
and the Lord heard, and the Lord helped. And so what do you do
about that? How do you respond to that? With
love. It's actually not some unusual
response. If someone would deliver you
from such pain, from such fear, from such distress, what is the
response? I love you, Lord. You heard me.
You helped me. Thank you, Lord, for your help. See, for some of us, like I said,
this is a Psalm that is particularly speaking to you. In this church,
we share our prayers, we share our lives, and we have prayed
more than once for people at death's door. in fear of their
lives, bearing the weight of all that stress and anxiety.
And the Lord has not answered every one of those prayers, but
we have been there when the Lord has answered these prayers, have
we not? for you. This is your psalm, isn't it?
This is describing every moment of heartache you went through,
every moment when you prayed and you weren't sure God heard,
but you kept praying. And then that glorious moment
when you were delivered and what did you feel like doing? You
felt like praising him, didn't you? I love you, Lord. You heard,
you heard. This is so personal for some
of you, I know it. You cried out, not someone else,
not just some psalmist, you cried out and the Lord rescued you. But this is actually the experience
of Christians. It's not just those who have
been miraculously healed. It's not just those who have
been spared from some frightening, dangerous experience. This is
the Christian experience. I've given you my testimony before
of how the Lord saved me, but one of the really important things
for me was I was afraid of hell. I thank the Lord for my mom.
My mom is the reason I knew of hell. And I was afraid of it. I knew my sin. I knew I hadn't
dealt with my sin. And I knew that there was judgment
coming. And that weight burdened me. I don't know how I went so
long without repenting, because I was bearing that burden all
the time. It was growing heavier all the time. I would pray immature
prayers, but I would pray something like, Lord, don't take me yet,
because I wouldn't be ready. That fear was on me. That danger
was on me. I knew hell was coming. I knew
judgment was coming. And I cried out. I cried out
these baby prayers, but Lord, save me. Lord, save me. Lord,
save me. And then one day I realized he saved me. You see what I mean? This is
the Christian experience. The Christian experience is those
who have at some point by God's grace been given eyes to see
their sin. And they see it for its guilt and they see it for
its danger. And then by God's grace, they
recognize that sin is not just a worldly affair, not just interrupting
their relationships or their potential. That sin threatens
to drive them to the pit of hell on that last day. The Christian
experiences is people who by God's grace and faith recognize,
oh God, that's me. Oh God, I will answer. Judgment comes for me, Lord,
help me. And the Christian experience
is that he does, is that he did, is that he continues to, even
to this day. So yeah, for some of us, this
is a special experience. This is cure from cancer kind
of experience, but for every single child of God, this is
the experience of those who have known their sin, known judgment
is coming, but then cried out to the Lord and God was gracious
and he saved you. We get this. We get this. Those who have been loved like
we have, those who have been delivered like we have, we understand
what it means to say, I love the Lord because he delivered
me. I love the Lord because he heard me and he rescued me. When
God acts for our deliverance, when he acts for our rescue,
what he's also doing is he's showing us these little glimpses
of who he is. We learn about him based on what
it is he has done. And this psalmist, this psalm
is just filled with all these truths that he's come to realize
about the Lord, just woven in the whole thing. Who did he see
God was? He saw from the very get-go that
God is a prayer-hearing God. He hears prayer. I'm not the
only one who's felt like prayer is pointless, right? You ever
wondered, am I just talking to myself? We have these doubts. We have
these fears. The psalmist here is saying he
heard my prayers. One of the big criticisms that
God himself levels against us and against humanity across time
for our idolatry is that our idols don't do anything. They
can't do anything. They can't hear a prayer. If
they could, they couldn't do anything about it. God is always
looking at us and saying, this, this is your alternative. You
want to go from the living God who hears your prayers and intervenes
for your benefit to something you've carved out of a stump
of wood, to a statue you've created, to an idea you made up. God has
always just found that baffling. They can't do anything for you.
They can't hear your prayers, but he can. He is the God who
can hear the prayers. He is the God who heard the Psalmist,
who in his fear and in his vulnerability in those moments when he felt
so alone, he cried out to God and God heard. God helped. He's a prayer-hearing God, and
why? Why does he answer prayer? It's in part what he says in
verse 5, because he is the God who is gracious, merciful, righteous. This God is the God who gives
us generously beyond what we deserve. He is the God who is righteous,
who is always just, who is always fair, who never cheats justice.
And so there we are in our situation afflicted because people have
betrayed us, because people have deceived us, whatever it is. And so we appeal to the one who
is just all the time, to the one who does not betray, who
cannot betray. He's the God who's merciful. Not only is he gracious,
I was just talking about this. Not only is he gracious, giving
us what we don't deserve, he's merciful, not giving us what
we do deserve. You see how those are two sides
of the same coin. We go to him and if he's going
to give us what's fair, he's going to say, well, here is all
the sin you have committed. Here's what judgment entails.
I will judge you. That's fair. But we go to him
and say, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Do not give me
what I deserve. And you see all these things,
you say, thank God. Praise God, the gracious, the
righteous, the merciful. So we have a prayer hearing God.
We have a God who is gracious, righteous, and merciful. We have
verse six, a God who preserves the simple, who saves those who
are brought low. What the psalmist can attest
is that God intervenes for the helpless. God intervenes for
the vulnerable. Because he's not saying, hey,
everyone was after me, but then I figured it out and I beat them.
Right? He's not saying I was stronger
than them. I delivered myself. No, he was
the one who was vulnerable, who was a danger, who was to the
point of death. And God intervened for him while he was vulnerable,
helpless. The simple, the inexperienced
God rescues them. The psalmist, he says he was
brought low, which is like he was growing weak. He couldn't
hold it together. What's the world do with weakness?
Pounces takes advantage of you see someone weak. You see what
you can get from them. That's how the world was treating
him. That's the danger he was feeling when he was weak, though,
when the world was after him, the Lord was strong and he was
strong for him. And the Lord intervened for him.
And when he delivered, he delivered bountifully. Isn't that a great
word? He delivered bountifully the world. The world is just
such an enormous disappointment sometimes. It never lives up
to the trailer. It never lives up to the advertisements. You get what the world is promising.
You're thinking, oh, okay. Okay, that's what you were talking
about. The world is this incredible disappointment, such to the point
it's even the people around you. The psalmist can talk about,
I looked around at one point, I said, all mankind are liars.
All of them are a disappointment. All of them are faithless, but
you know what? The Lord doesn't disappoint.
The Lord does not disappoint. In fact, he doesn't just not
disappoint. He doesn't meet expectations. He surpasses expectations. He
goes further than you imagine could ever, could ever have come
from that situation. He is more gracious, more merciful
than you ever could have imagined. The Lord doesn't disappoint.
His deliverance is bountiful. His deliverance is surpassing.
It is generous. The world. No source of peace
there. The world, if you've got any
peace, will snatch your peace. Because there's no peace in the
world. But the abundant deliverance of God restores peace. I love
this moment when the psalmist looks in verse 7, he says, talking
to himself now, return, oh my soul, to your rest, for the Lord
has dealt bountifully with you. All that panic, all that stress,
all that fear, Return to your rest because the Lord has delivered
you and he delivered you bountifully. Through this trial, he learned
something special. He learned something important,
important for you and me today. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints. It's an interesting thing to
learn from a trial. You read this psalm and honestly, you're
going to pause for a second and think, how does that connect
to anything? But out of all this, the psalmist wants us, not just
him, us to have the benefit of knowing that there is no child
of God who is cheap in God's eyes. There is no child of God
who is unimportant. There is no child of God who
is unloved. And that's hard to believe sometimes.
It's too good. It's too much. And if you, if
you've gone through suffering, if you are suffering now, it
is harder in that suffering to believe this at all. Because
we think if you love me, you're going to do nice, comfortable
things for me. And so when we go through suffering,
we think this isn't what love feels like. We think this isn't
what it feels like to be precious, to be important. And so we need
to hear this, not from the mouth of some preacher, but from this
psalmist. What did he just go through?
He's the one who can say, I almost died. I thought they had me. I was like prey caught up in
a net and the predator was drawing near. He's the guy who can say,
I suffered. I was in anguish during that
time. I was afraid. And yet it's through
that suffering, it's through that trial that he comes out
with a conviction that is meant to bless the children of God
forevermore. All of God's children are precious.
almost died, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death
of his saints. Fear, anguish, stress, worry, precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. This experience
that could have driven so many people away from the Lord because
they thought that doesn't, that's not what love looks like. This
Psalmist learns in the worst trial, the worst kind of trial
of his life. Oh no, I'm precious. My suffering has even taught
me that I am precious to him. And so to all the children of
God, this is this truth beautifully saved for us. Your death will
never be cheap. And though you feel alone, you
will never be alone. Though the world's not making
you feel precious, you will always be precious to the Lord. You
will never be uncared for. And in fact, if that day comes
that you have to lose your life, as your blood leaves your body, as your eyes
close, in that moment, you know that with all his heart, the
Lord is looking at you as one of his precious children. Your
death does not undermine his love for you. Even in your death,
especially in your death, you are precious to the Lord. It took an incredible trial for
this psalmist to be able to give us this precious truth. It was this trial that taught
this man that my God hears prayer. It was this trial that drove
home for him that God is gracious, righteous, and merciful. It is this trial that taught
him that God preserves the simple and he saves those who are weak.
And so when our sorrows come, and they do come, they will come,
Like I said, you may be in them right now. When our sorrows and
trials come, we are taught by this psalmist. Cry out to your
God because this is who he is. When you cry out to him, know
that you're crying out to a prayer-hearing God. There is no moment you are
truly alone. He will not abandon you. You
cry out to a God who is generous. who is just, who is merciful
and gracious. You cry out to a God who does
not abandon the weak, but it intervenes for the weak. And
even in life and death, He is with them. When your time comes,
know you are precious to God. And if the psalmist learned this,
we've been taught this, even more clearly. What do we mean
by that? The Lord Jesus Christ. He learned how precious he was
by being delivered from death. We learn a greater lesson because
we're not just rescued from death to learn that God views us as
precious. We were rescued from death and eternal death and judgment
by the death of Jesus Christ, the son of God. If that doesn't
teach you you are precious, nothing will. The gospel shows you you
are precious. We know we are precious. That's
the only thing that can explain Jesus Christ dying your death,
paying your price on the cross. We love our God because he delivered
us. And he delivered us because he
loves us, and he delivered us because he is good, and he is
gracious, and he is merciful, and he delivered us because we
are precious to him. Believe it, child of God, believe
it. And the psalmist says that he
will praise God because of who God is and because of what God
has done. This last part of the psalm,
it's essentially answering this question of now what? Now what? After suffering through the worst
kind of trial, after fearing death itself, after a great deliverance
from the hand of God, now what? Now what do I do? And this is
actually how the psalmist sandwiched the whole psalm. beginning and
end with this idea. Now what? Verse one and two,
I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas for
mercy, because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call
on him as long as I live. He delivered me, I'm gonna worship
him. I'm gonna worship him with every
breath that I've got, with every day that I've got. The psalmist
wants to spend his life worshiping the God who hears and helps.
Now what, verses 12 and 14, what shall I render to the Lord for
all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people. The first part, it's rhetorical,
isn't it? It's rhetorical. How can I pay him back? How can
I pay God back for all he's done? It's rhetorical because there's
nothing you can do to pay him back. There's nothing a person
can do to pay back the almighty God over all of creation. But
just because you can't pay him back doesn't mean there's not
a response that is right. And the response, he will praise
God. He will praise God. He will lift
up that cup of salvation. Alan Ross helpfully says that's
probably referring to that drink offering in the temple. He's
going to offer that offering in celebration of a God who answered
his prayers. He talks about keeping his vows.
I'm going to keep my vows in the presence of the people. This
is a theme we see actually all the time in the Psalms. They
pray and they pray expectantly. They pray thinking, Lord, when
you deliver me from this, when you help me from this, not if,
when, I'm gonna praise you. I am going to praise you. And that's what the psalmist
intends to do. I vowed to praise you. God, you delivered me. I'm
praising you now. I am praising you now. He's been delivered and he's
going to keep his vow and he's going to keep it in the presence
of all the people, not just private, not just individual, not I'm
going to go home and have just a me and God session. I'm sure
that happened. I'm sure this guy could not contain
himself in all the praise he wanted to show, but this was
not just a private thing. He wants God to be glorified
among his people. The people of God should know
how good their God is. The people of God should know
that their God hears and helps. One of the things I realized
about Madeline and all she's gone through, she shared so much
with us as she's gone through her cancer, and I know some of
you told her this too, said, Madeline, we can all glorify
God better because of how you included us in this. God is glorified
because you shared this with us. Moreover, the people of God
are built up when they know the works of the Lord. They are built
up by knowing how he has acted. That's the idea of the scriptures,
right? Remember what he has done and that will build you up for
the life you have to live. God is glorified and the people
are built up when people know that God has delivered, that
God has helped. And this is something that, man,
a lot of us could grow in, right? A lot of us could grow in this
because we are just too private for our own good. We are just
too self-sufficient for our own good. No, no, no, no. Pray about
something that matters, not me. No, I shouldn't share this prayer
request. This is just, this is just my situation going on. Oh,
I'll let you know when this has happened or something like that,
right? What if you just share the whole thing? What if you
let your family know? Because God is only glorified
by the work in your life if you're willing to share that with other
people. You see, there's a wall there. It's a wall of your choosing.
Will I let people know what I'm going through or not? Will I
let people know what God has done for me or not? Are we willing to share our lives?
Not like social media, like look you in the eye over lunch or
whatever and say, God has really helped me recently. Or even before
that, I don't know how I'm going to make it through this. And
then a week later, God was good to me. What does that do in you
if you're the one who hears it? Don't you say, praise God. Don't
you say, may God be glorified. Don't you realize, wow, God is
that kind of good. God is that kind of helping God.
God is that kind of prayer hearing God. God is glorified when we
are willing to share his work in our lives, and other people
can't glorify God for his work in your life if they never know
about it. And I'll confess, I don't do this well. I don't. I'm one of those, I don't know,
by culture, just like private, bear up under it, make it through
kinds of guys. How is God glorified by my privacy? How is he glorified by my refusal
to talk? And even more, it's not just
His glory, but it's also the good of your brothers and sisters
who you love. It is your testimony and God's
work in that situation that is going to build them up for when
they go through it. Is there any of us that's going to be
spared the trials, the sorrows, the heartache? No, this is coming
for all of us. And the truth is, when I go through
it, I'm going to be able to look back on my sister who was willing
to share her cancer diagnosis. Say, look how she handled that.
God delivered her. God helped her. May I be faithful
like that. Other people can't be built up
by God's work in your life if you're too private to share it.
It's not like you need a megaphone. You don't have to tell everyone
everything. But let God, let God's people know that God is
at work. It will bring him glory and will
bless your brothers and sisters. Take, for example, just the existence
of this psalm. Just the fact that this is here.
The psalmist clearly meant for his life, his heartache, his
trial, his dark valleys to be the fuel for our praise. Tell
me that wasn't a good investment. How many people have read this?
How many people have read precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of his saints and found consolation and help. And it's
because there was this first one who would take his own advice
and put down in the presence of the people how God had helped
him. Your life, not just the psalmist's
life, can be the fuel for praise and strength in your brothers
and sisters lives. One last time, now what? Verse
16, oh Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of
your maidservant. Now that's an interesting phrase
to us. The big picture is it's like a commitment to lifelong
loyal service, but why does he say son of your maidservant?
What's interesting, one commentator has said that this may actually
be a reference to laws around slaves. So you may have had a
family of slaves, all belonging to the same master. And the father
of that family may go free, but the wife and the kids would stay. What the psalmist might be saying
here is, I'm the one who stays. I'm the one who never wants to
be set free from my master. You set me free from my trial. I never want to be set free from
you. I will be loyal, absolutely loyal for the rest of my life.
I am yours. I am your servant, the son of
your maidservant. So what does God want you to
take from this psalm? What does he want you to have from this
psalm? The first thing is just a reminder of God's good works. For some of you, This is your
situation, as in you've been delivered. For some of you, you
are suffering in it now. And either way, the Lord wants
to remind you that he is the God who hears, who helps, who
intervenes for his children. He is the God who delivers. And
so if you are on the other side of deliverance, you can be like
this psalmist and say, I'm going to praise God for my deliverance.
If you are in the dark Valley and you can't see any light,
then this is that light at the end of the tunnel to recognize
my God has delivered other children of God. My God has intervened
in other bleak situations. I hope, I have good hope that
he will intervene for me. that he will deliver me, that
he hears and he will help me. Be encouraged because you're
gonna have your fair share of discouragement, of trial, of
sorrow. Be encouraged that your God is
the prayer-hearing, intervening God. And hold on to the faith
as you endure. Never give up. Though your trial
should stretch on for the rest of your life, though every day
is a sorrow, though every day is a pain, never give up the
faith of the psalmist here that says, I know my God hears. I
know my God helps. He delivers. It's also a reminder
of that right response. There's nothing for you to pay
back. There's nothing you can pay back. You have nothing that
you can pay him back with for all he has done to you, so you
know what you can do instead? Just soak it in. Bask in the
deliverance of our prayer hearing God. Soak in how good he's been
to you, how mighty his deliverance has been for all his people,
and especially for you. Drink that in and let your cup
overflow to the point when it's just natural that God should
be praised. You don't have to force it. If
you're forcing your praise, you just need to spend more time
with what he's done for you. You don't have to force anything.
You don't. He has been so abundantly good
to us. So abundantly good to you. Just
dwell on that. Reflect on how Danger, how much
danger you were in from your sin, how certain your fate was
in hell, how fearsome that last day would have been. Reflect
on how great and complete his deliverance is that there is
no fear anymore. That perfect love has driven
out fear and you don't fear the last day. You don't fear the
most fearsome day in all of existence that's coming up because he has
delivered you from it. Soak that in and let thanksgiving
come forward. Let your prayers be filled with,
I'm going to thank you for this. I'm going to thank you for this.
I'm going to thank you for this. Let your actions show that you
are a grateful child of God. My, how good he has been to you.
Hey, maybe even smile a little bit. Maybe rejoice a little bit
that you are the blood bought child of God delivered from near
death from certain death that was coming into the family of
God himself. That's a cause for joy. Let's
be a people of Thanksgiving. Let's be a people of joy. Let's be a people who will share
the good works of God in the presence of all the people. Afterwards,
let's tell someone God has worked for me. He has intervened for
me. He has delivered me. Child of
God, you are made for praise. You are made for praise. You
are designed for praise. You are delivered for praise. So praise God today for your
great salvation. Praise God because he is a prayer-hearing,
gracious, righteous, merciful God, and he is that for you.
Praise God who restores the rest of your soul with his bountiful,
abundant deliverance. Praise the God who delivers. Let's pray. Our great, delivering, prayer-hearing
God, we praise you. Lord, we will love you. Because
you heard us, you helped us. You saw our great affliction.
You saw the judgment that we were headed toward. You saw our
rebellion and you rescued us. May we be a people whose lives
proclaim how good their God is. May we be a people who rejoice. May we be a people who give thanksgiving. Father, we thank you for the
deliverance of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, our Master,
from whom we never want to be separated. Please help us now
to live in light of this glorious, wonderful truth. We pray this
in Jesus' name. Amen. We hope that you were edified
by this message. For additional sermons as well as information
on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please
visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.
The God Who Delivers
Series Single Message
| Sermon ID | 723171557301 |
| Duration | 38:30 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Psalm 116 |
| Language | English |
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