Thank you, John, for your prayer of blessing upon the preached word this evening. Open your Bibles with me to Psalm 102. Psalm 102, you can find it in your Pew Bibles on page 469. Psalm 102, you see the title line there. A prayer of one afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaints before the Lord. It gives us an idea before we read of what this psalm will be about, and I'll read it now for us. Hear my prayer, O Lord, let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me. Answer me speedily in the day when I call. For my days pass away like smoke and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered. I forget to eat my bread. Because of my loud groaning, my bones cling to my flesh. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places. I lie awake. I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. All the day my enemies taunt me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink because of your indignation and anger. "'for you have taken me up and thrown me down. "'My days are like an evening shadow. "'I wither away like grass. "'But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever. "'You are remembered throughout all generations. "'You will arise and have pity on Zion. "'It is the time to favor her. "'The appointed time has come "'for your servants hold her stones dear "'and have pity on her dust. Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory, for the Lord builds up Zion. He appears in His glory. He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer. Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord, that He looked down from His holy heights, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together in kingdoms to worship the Lord. He has broken my strength in midcourse. He has shortened my days. Oh my God, I say, take me not away in the midst of my days, you whose years endure throughout all generations. Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe. and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure, their offspring shall be established before you." And thus far, the reading of God's holy word. I want to open with a riddle for you. A riddle some of you may recognize. It goes like this. This thing all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, and flowers. Gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal. slays kings, ruins town, and beats high mountain down. I see some smiles. That tells me you know where this is from. It's from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. And what's the answer to the riddle? What is this thing that all things devours, that gnaws iron and bites steel? It's time. Do you remember that? Time is the thing. And the point that Tolkien is making in this riddle is that all things in the world are subject to decay as time passes by. Life in this world is a fragile existence. That's what he's trying to capture. There's another person who spoke about the idea of time. When he was providing an answer to the question, what is life? And this was his response, he said, life is the unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all towards an inevitable death. It's a little depressing, if we're being honest, but there's a sense in which that's true. And there's a sense in this psalm that that's how the psalmist felt when he felt the realities of affliction and death pressed up against him. He's faced with the inevitability of death. Our culture really struggles with that. They don't have an answer for that. The best that our culture could ever hope to achieve with regards to the inevitability of death is simply acceptance. Accepting that their fate is fragile and that they are bound for death. But in this passage we're seeing something different. The psalmist is proposing something better, far better. And as he is confronted with his own fears because of his own fragility, He found hope in the midst of that, a hope found in the stability of God. And so the title of tonight's sermon is this, Finding Stability in the Midst of Fragility. And what I want us to see tonight is this, that while affliction exposes our fragile nature, we ought to flee to the one in whom eternal stability can be found. Affliction. Affliction exposes our fragile nature, pushing us to pursue, to flee to the one in whom our eternal stability is found. And we're just gonna consider that theme under two points this evening. First, our creaturely fragility, and second, our creator's stability. I wanna try to keep it simple. So first then, our creaturely fragility. As with all passages of scripture that we're pulling out without a lot of introduction, we want to establish the context. What is going on here? What was the psalmist's predicament? What was the occasion for the writing of this psalm? And scholars have tried to sort through this. It's not particularly obvious. But I agree with those who believe that this psalm was written during the captivity of Babylon, when Judah was taken captive and brought to Babylon. There seems to be some indicators in the text that would lead us to believe that. And given the context of this situation, it's easy for us to understand the psalmist's sorrow for the reason for his affliction, as we read in verses one through 11. They're a overwhelmingly dire tone. And it makes sense. If he's in captivity, the former glory of Judah has been wiped away, the walls of Jerusalem have been destroyed, the temple of God has been laid to waste, and God's covenant people have been killed, enslaved, and brought off to a foreign land. And in the midst of this context, it's the culmination of all of these atrocities that the psalmist was confronted with this one undeniable reality, I am just a fragile creature. And we see his fragility expressed first in his prayer in verses one and two. Look at those verses with me. Again, he says, hear my prayer, O Lord. Let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me. Answer me speedily in the day when I call. There's a certain desperation, first of all, that we can hear in these verses. But notice something simple here. Notice just the fact, the plain fact that the psalmist is praying. He's praying. Is that your first instinct when you are encountering affliction? Mine is to problem solve. Mine is to readjust my expectations. It's to work harder, it's to grit and bear, it's to complain. If I'm being honest with you all, a lot of times prayer follows all of those things. And so prayer is the first thing we see in this text. Are we praying? When we're afflicted, when trials come our way, the psalmist is. His affliction had brought him to the end of himself. It had zapped him of all of his strength, of all of his self-reliance, and as he's coming to grips with his fragile condition, he has no choice but to turn to prayer. So we notice first just the simple fact that the psalmist is praying, but notice also the anxiety behind this prayer. You see that in verse two, do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. The psalmist is afraid here. He's afraid that the Lord has removed his favor from Judah, that he has completely turned away from them. And it would have been a natural thing to wonder from the psalmist's perspective. After all, Judah had turned away from God. And as a result, they were languishing in captivity in Babylon. So certainly it must have seemed like the Lord was not inclined to listen to their prayers anymore, that Judah had lost the right to talk with God because they had sinned too greatly. And maybe you have felt like that before. Have you ever feared that you had forfeited the right to talk to God? Maybe you just feel like you've blown it too many times. Maybe you're just afraid that you took too long to pursue that course of action, like that avenue had been blocked off, that road was closed, and now you're in the middle of this desperate situation, confronted by this mess that you've created, and you're thinking to yourself, God isn't going to listen to me now, not after all that I've done. But brothers and sisters, there's this truth here that we need to grasp. And if we look ahead to verse 17, we see it there. God regards the prayer of the destitute. He does not despise their prayer. You see, the reality is our desperation, our anxieties arise not because God has stopped listening to us, but because we have stopped speaking to him. And so we need to pray. We need to seek God when we are feeling fragile, when these afflictions and trials come our way. We need to express our needs to him. And we see that's exactly what the psalmist does as we move forward in the text. Look at verses three through eight as the psalmist addresses his fragile experience. And in these verses, I want us to notice three particular afflictions that the psalmist is dealing with. In verses three through five, verses three through five, we're seeing first the psalmist's weakness. His days are passing away like smoke being carried off in the wind. That kind of imagery gives us the idea that the psalmist is dying. His flesh is fading. He's passing away. His heart has withered. You see in verse four, struck down like grass. That gives us the idea that he's emotionally distraught. He's depressed. He's, at the end of verse four, forgetting to eat his bread. He's lost his appetite for life. And then the language of verse five, my bones cling to my flesh, gives us the idea that he is literally wasting away into nothing. The psalmist is weak. That's the first affliction. And then verses six through seven, we keep reading. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, an owl of the waste places. I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. These verses are a great challenge to really understand in the original text. But while it's hard to understand exactly, specifically what birds are being spoken of here, What it's certainly depicting is this idea of isolation. And you see that clearly in verse seven there. I am like a lonely sparrow on a housetop. How often have you seen a lone sparrow hanging out by itself? Sometimes we wish that were the case. They can be a bit of a nuisance, flying as this coordinated flock of birds, but they're always together. And so we get this unnatural sight, this sparrow, lonely, sitting on the housetop. And we see this in the psalmist's context as well. He'd been pulled away into captivity. He had been meant and created for community with the nation of Judah, yet he's been separated from that group. He's isolated. And finally, in verse eight, we see his enemies taunting him. Those who deride him use his name for a curse. He's been, thirdly, rejected. The psalmist's only companions, the only people that he has for fellowship are those who choose to mock him and deride him all the day long. And that was the psalmist's experience. That was the affliction, the trial that he was dealing with. He was weak, he was dying, he was depressed, he was isolated, he had been rejected. It was these things that gave him a sense of this fragile existence and it was accompanied by deep sorrow. Have you ever been confronted with the reality of your own fragility, something like that? Can you identify with some of those experiences? Perhaps there are some of you here that haven't. And for you who've never been pressed to confront the reality of your own fragility, this psalm is for you to remind you that though you don't feel like it, you are fragile. But there are other of us here who have been confronted with that. We have a great sense of our own fragile nature. Some of you here are sick. Some of you here struggle with anxiety and depression. Some of you here feel lonely and isolated. Some of you have been rejected, rejected by a spouse, by your children, by a church family, by your extended family, by your friends. And in all of these things, they're hard circumstances. Do you know what they're screaming to us? that you're fragile, that you're weak, you're broken, fading, that your days are like an evening shadow, like withering grass. And of course, the natural question we all want to know, we all want to ask is why. Why does life have to be like this? And the psalmist answers it in verse 10. He says, because of your indignation and anger. Here's the situation. The people of Judah had sinned grievously. They had turned from God to serve pagan gods, and thus their captivity was the result of God's indignation and anger against them for their unbelief and unrighteousness. The reason why Judah had been exposed to their own fragility was because of their sin. Now, we need to be careful here. The conclusion that we draw after this is not that you sin, then you get affliction. It's not a one-for-one combination. The Lord does see fit to chastise his people, to give them loving discipline from time to time, but the reality is that a lot of our affliction is not the result of a particular sin. But nevertheless, all of our affliction is the result of sin. Do you see the difference there? Sin is the reason we live a fragile existence, and we need to take it all the way back to the beginning with Adam and Eve. We need to do this every time. You see, Adam and Eve were not created as fragile creatures. We have a hard time even imagining what that might be like. They were created for life. But when they sinned, We remember this. When they turned against God, death entered into the world. And as a result, mankind was exposed to the judgment and the wrath of God. See, beloved, the reality is that because sin is in the world, this world is broken. And whether or not we have sinned in a particular way that the Lord is chastising us for, or whether or not sin is just existing in general in this world because it's broken because of sin, nevertheless affliction still comes our way and we sense our fragility. It's part of our human experience because of our sin, and so what are we to do with that? What are we to do? Well, there are different answers that the world tries to give to address this, and we talked about one of those in the introduction. Our world, they see the fragile state of life. They see that this world is passing away and fading. They see weakness and death all around them, and their answer for it is just acceptance. Getting to a place where you're just okay with it. There's an old Buddhist proverb that speaks to this, and it goes like this. This is a Buddhist proverb. It says, life is like running down a jungle trail. And as you're running down this jungle trail, there's a hungry tiger that's hunting you from behind, and so you're sprinting down this trail for your very life, as this tiger is coming for you. And as you're running down this trail, you come to a clearing, and you come to the edge of this sheer cliff, and you look down the sheer cliff, and there's a pool of sharks. And so you're caught in this predicament. There's a tiger coming from one direction. There is a pool of sharks looking the other direction. But up ahead of you, above that pool of sharks, there is a branch extended. And your only hope is to jump to that branch and hold on. And there you hang. A hungry tiger circling the cliff behind you, a pool of sharks gnashing their teeth below you. And as you hang on that branch, you notice, at the end of it, a fruit. And life is to hang from that branch and to grab that fruit and enjoy it, to taste it, to eat it for as long as you can until your grip inevitably slips from the branch and you fall to your death. With judgment waiting below and judgment waiting behind, your only hope is to enjoy this life while you have it. That is the message of this Buddhist proverb. And this was told to me by a friend of mine at the gym. He says that's his philosophy of life. And so I asked him, straight up, I said, if you know that judgment is coming one way or the other, What comfort will you have on your deathbed? And he simply replied this. He said, none, I suppose. I imagine I'll be terrified. But there's nothing I can do about that. You've heard the message, kids, young adults. YOLO. It's buying into this same idea. You only live once, so enjoy yourself while you can. Grab that fruit while you can and enjoy it before you die. But beloved, the psalmist sees our fragility. He sees judgment coming before and behind and he has a much better proposal for us as we keep reading through this psalm. There's a much better answer to the problem of man's fragility. That brings us to our second point as we look at our Creator's stability. Thus far, the opening 11 verses, dire situation, sad circumstances, a really gloomy perspective. and the psalmist as he's languishing in affliction, rather than merely accepting that this is the reality of his life and he has no choice but to submit to it, he finds a good reason for hope despite it. And when we arrive at verse 12, we see what that is. In the midst of his despair, the psalmist lifts his eyes to the sky and finds his hope in the creator's stability. And we see in verse 12 the first evidence of that. But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever. The psalmist's hope, first and foremost, is founded in the eternal reign of God. It's in the reign of God, and we have to notice three things about this reign briefly. The first is that it is eternal. In verse 12, we see that he's enthroned forever. The fact that God's reign is eternal means that he was enthroned before the creation of the world, for eternity before we ever arrived here, and he will be enthroned for eternity after this world passes away. God is ruling over the world. And there is nothing that can prevent that. He is forever the one who is control of all things. So God's reign is eternal. Notice secondly, that this eternal reign of the Lord is a comfort to his people. Verse 13. Because God is enthroned forever, he will arise and have pity on Zion. Something we need to remember here. In ancient times, when one nation went up against another nation, they most likely had rival gods that they served. And so when one nation conquered another nation, that was a sign that their gods were superior, that they had taken down that opposing nation's gods and that theirs were stronger. And so from the perspective of Babylon, they had conquered Judah's god. They had dethroned him and pushed him out and their gods were superior. But you see the psalmist's comfort here. His God had not been dethroned. It's ludicrous to think that His reign is eternal. The gods of the other nations had no power beyond what the Lord gave to the Babylonians to conquer His people for the purpose of chastisement. You see, God reigns eternally, and just as God appointed this time for chastisement, we see in verse 13 that God is going to appoint a time for the bringing back of his people, the restoration of his people, when God will take pity on Zion, on Judah. And then in verse 15, all nations will come and bow before the God of Judah. And that's the third element of the Lord's reign, it's universal. Verse 15, nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory. That's the stability that the psalm was found in God's reign, that all nations would submit to the eternal reign of God. Now, we need to ask this question, why is this important for us to understand? What value does this have for us? We read from Westminster Confession 2.1, earlier, and there's just so much going on in that part of the confession. We have a hard time breaking it all down, but we need to ask the question, why is any of that important at all? How is God's eternal reign a comfort to us? It's because God's reign guarantees that his purposes remain on track. I think we need to illustrate that. If you think back to 16th and 17th century England, and you think back to the monarchy, there was a ton, a ton of upheaval in the monarchy of England at that time. And the upheaval of the monarchy had a great effect on the church. It started with King Henry VIII, and of course we know if you studied history that he was a Catholic. And he had a Catholic policy to his reign that suppressed the ability of Protestants to have a freedom of religion. But then after King Henry VIII died, Edward VI came into power and he took over and he instilled Protestantism. And then the Protestants were happy and rejoicing that they had freedom once again. But then Bloody Mary took over after Edward VI passed away. And then came a new policy. and her policy was to persecute the Protestants. And of course she earned that nickname because she killed so many who ascribed to the Protestant faith. But then after Bloody Mary, we have more good news. Elizabeth I came along, and then she officially made Protestantism the religion of England. But we see in these power shifts, as one person's reign came to an end and another person's reign began, there was a shift in the policy of the country, and that shift in policy brought so much upheaval. I mean, if you were living at that time in England and you were Protestant, the ruler of the country determined Whether or not you knew for sure you would be persecuted or not, whether you might actually be killed for your faith or not. And so because God is not like that, because God reigns eternally, his policies, his purposes remain in effect for eternity. There is no change in policy. We never have to worry about God's plans being overthrown by a rival who sought after his throne and won and instilled his new reign of terror. No, the plan of God remains constant because his reign is constant. And what is God's plan? It's to redeem his people from captivity. Look at those verses following, verses 19 and 20. We might praise the Lord that he looked down from his holy heights. From heaven the Lord looked at the earth to hear the groans of the prisoners to set free those who were doomed to die. That's God's plan. That's redemption language that we're seeing there. There's a sense in which this passage is speaking of Judah being freed from captivity. They were in prison in Babylon and they were going to be released. That's true, but there's a deeper sense here that we need to capture. You see, Judah was, they were some of the groaning prisoners who were doomed to die, but so are we. You see that? We were the groaning prisoners doomed to die. We were taken captive by our sin. Death was our destiny. Like that Buddhist poem, we were running from judgment in the back and avoiding judgment in the front. We were surrounded on all sides. But when God saw us, when he saw us in our fragile, broken state, he took pity on us. Oh, the tender love a father has. and he moved forward with his eternal plan to redeem us, and he sent Jesus Christ. Have you heard that name? He sent Jesus Christ, his son, who lived and he died and he rose again and he ascended into heaven. Psalm 68 verse 18 uses this same type of captive language imagery when it speaks of the redemption of God's people. And in speaking of Christ's redemption, it says he ascended on high into heaven, leading a host of captives in his train. Beloved, because God is eternally reigning, because his redemptive plan, his policy is still at work, he sent Jesus Christ to die for your sins and mine so that we might be set free from the curse of death when Christ ascended. And all you need to do, all that you need to do to have your fragile existence fixed to the stability of this Savior is place your faith in Him. Do you see how that changes your perspective on life? With this truth in mind, with these realities set before us, we could refine the Buddhist poem to meet our own, to meet what's really true. to meet what's true for a sinner saved by grace. You see, we aren't running from judgment towards judgment. We aren't hanging from a branch, clinging desperately with all of our might for as long as we can until we inevitably die. No, we're running, that's true. We're running this trail. We're running the trail of this life, but not running from anything that is chasing behind. but running towards a Savior who has gone on ahead. And there's gonna be thorns and thistles and afflictions, and they're gonna grab at our ankles as we press on, and they're going to try to ensnare us, but we press on nonetheless, running the race that is set before us in light of that future that awaits. And that's how our text closes tonight, the future that awaits. What is that future? Well, as we heard this morning, it's eternity with God. I think sometimes the Lord providentially presses on our hearts repeatedly those truths that he knows that we need. It's not a mystery to me that we had Revelation 22 this morning and Psalm 102 tonight. Setting before us this picture of eternity with God. Look at the final verses of this text, starting at verse 25. Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, you will remain. They all wear out like a garment, you will change them like a robe. and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. It's a verse that is often quoted with reference to the doctrine of God's immutability there in verse 27. But you are the same, and your years have no end. And if you were in my class this morning, you know what God's immutability is. It's that God does not change. This world is changing, that's for sure. The very foundations of this world, those things that we think are the most secure, Mount Everest is going to disappear, vanish, turn to sand someday. But God is gonna remain the same. He's unchangeable. And one day, this unchanging God who created this world will change this fading heaven and earth that we are now living in. He's gonna change them like a robe. They're wearing out like a garment and he's gonna put a new robe on them. He's going to usher in this new creation. That's new creation language. And over this new creation, he is going to continue to reign the same as he always had. This world that's around us that we can see right now is going to disappear, and a new creation is going to come, and God will continue to reign over it. His years have no end. He's immutable. He's changeless. Now that's an amazing truth in and of itself. That this fragile world is wearing down like a garment, and as time marches on, it's going to fade away, and there's going to be a new creation over which God reigns. That ought to cause us to be in awe, in wonder, I think we're so used to this truth. But if you hadn't heard the gospel before, this would have blown your mind. This would blow you away that there's a new creation that's waiting and that God's going to reign over it. There's something even more amazing. Look who's gonna be there with him. Verse 28, the children of your servants shall dwell secure. their offspring shall be established before you. It would make sense to me if this world was fading. We know we're fragile, we know we're dying. If this world was gonna pass away, that makes sense to me. But the fact that there's gonna be a new creation that God's reigning over, and that he's not just going to start from scratch with new people that are going to do a better job, but he's gonna use you and me. We're gonna dwell secure there with him. God's children, those who are freed from captivity to death by the life of the Savior. As this fragile world passes away, God's people, we're finding a stability in God, in this new creation that is coming. Beloved, as certainly as God's reign will endure forever, As certainly as his years have no end, so certainly will God's covenant children live on without end in the new creation as they dwell securely in Jesus Christ. Now that blows me away. And you have to see the hope in that. As the psalmist languished in the midst of his affliction, as he suffered from mockery and weakness and isolation and depression and sickness, as he grew near to the very brink of death, he found peace in this truth, that one day he was going to dwell secure, that his fragility would be transformed into stability, as he found life in the immutable, unchanging God. Beloved, this almost doesn't promise that God is going to heal your earthly afflictions. He doesn't promise to take away your cancer or your anxiety or depression or these feelings of the realities that some of us have been rejected by those whom we love. But he does promise this, that the sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared to the glorious eternity that awaits. That's his hope. And so we have this final question. Has your frailty been transformed into stability through the saving work of Jesus Christ? Perhaps some of you are here tonight and you're still clinging to the branch of this world. reaching out to that luscious fruit to indulge yourself while judgment waits behind and before, and you've convinced yourself that that's the best that there is for you. Maybe you've accepted that this is just the way your life is supposed to be. And if that's you, then you need to ask yourself, why would you settle for a few moments of fleeting pleasure in the midst of terror? When there is an eternal joy that could be yours right now, if you place your faith in Jesus Christ. And beloved, if you have placed your faith in Christ, then I pray that the words of this Psalm would be a great comfort to you. If you feel weak right now, if you are pressed with this reality of your fragility, that you would set your eyes on the hope that you have. Your life is not merely an unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding you towards an inevitable death. It's just the beginning of a glorious future that awaits you in the world to come. Praise God for that. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, Lord, we come before you this evening with heavy hearts. Lord, we are so weak. Lord, we are confronted on all sides with how fragile we are. Lord, that we, like this world, are passing away, and that there is no hope for us here. So Lord, what a sweet solace this psalm is to us. that this world is not all that there will be, but there is a glorious future that awaits, Lord, that is founded in the security and stability that you provide in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to take comfort in this truth as we're confronted in this week with our weakness. Help us to look towards that glorious future, to look forward to eternity with you, where we will be reigning, Lord, having dominion and perfection as we were created to do. And Lord, if there is anyone here who does not know this truth, who has not embraced Jesus Christ, who is not looking forward to that future, Lord, press on them tonight by the power of your Spirit that they would see the joy in that. That they would see the fruitlessness of clinging to this world that's going to pass away, and that they would set their firm foundation in you. Lord, that's our prayer, and we pray that your Spirit would be powerful to make it happen for your glory and honor, and for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.