God is better to me than I deserve

Intro

How good has God been to you? I feel like He has been better to me than anyone else. He has certainly been better to me than I deserve.

How have you been to God?

I’m glad that He has always been faithful even when I am not. He has always been good even when I have run astray.

When you sit an reminisce on how good God has been to you, what does it do for you? What does it do for your soul?

I get filled with such gratitude when I think about how good God has been to me.

Maybe you get filled with gratitude, maybe you get filled with a longing for Heaven when you think about how good God is, maybe you begin to feel a little conviction because you recognize you have not been as dedicated to Him as He has to you.

I think that’s where the psalmist is when he writing these verses.

One

The psalmist writes in verse 21 and 22 about how his heart is grieved and is pricked in his veins. He says he feels foolish and ignorant.

What are the feelings that conviction makes you feel? When we say we are feeling convicted, what are we saying? How do we feel?

Conviction is meant to draw us into the Lord. When we feel convicted we should find ourselves running to God and not away from God. When we sin we often feel ashamed of ourselves and want to go crawl in a hole and sit till those feelings go away. We often call those feelings conviction. Those feelings are not conviction, those feelings are condemnation.

Conviction and condemnation are not the same.

Conviction is meant to draw us toward the Lord, condemnation will send you away from the Lord. Paul writes in Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

If you are in Christ there is no condemnation.

In John 8 there is a story about a woman caught in the act of adultery. The Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus in hopes that Jesus would condemn her. The law said that she was to be stoned for her sin. Jesus didn’t respond verbally at first, He merely stooped down and began to write something in the sand. What he wrote, I don’t know, and that is not the point of the story. When he got up he told them, whoever is without sin you can throw the first stone. The Pharisees began dropping their stones one by one and walking away. Then Jesus goes to the woman, picks her up and says where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? She responded with “no.” Jesus says neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.

In the moment of this story we see the mercy and grace of the Lord. In a situation where there is clearly a guilty party, where someone deserved to be shamed for their sin. Jesus just says, I don’t condemn you. Because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Conviction makes us aware of our guilt, but if we are in Christ we are free from condemnation. We are set free from our sin. We are set free from the condemnation of our sin.

How do you feel when you sin against God?

You are not being held up by your efforts, you are being held by God. God is constantly faithful and present in our lives.

Two

In verse 13-14 the psalmist writes that he is constantly with God and God will guide him with His counsel.

It’s important to note here that I am not continually with God because of me. I am not constantly with God because of my efforts. I am not constantly with God because I am good.

I am constantly with God because “thou hast holden me by my right hand”

We are not holding on to God, God is holding on to us.

It is good news that we are not holding on to God. It is good news because we fall, we fail often. Prone to wander, Lord I need thee, prone to leave the God I love. That was written about me. I am prone to wander back into the things of this world. I am prone to wander back into my sinful nature. If my relationship with God was dependent on me holding on to Him then things would be bleak. There would be no hope because in me dwells no good thing.

I think about it like your walking downtown with a child and you get ready to cross the street. You tell the child to hold your hand. Are they holding your hand or are you holding their hand? You tell them to hold your hand but you are really holding their hand. While you are holding hands if they tried to run off they wouldn’t be able to. They couldn’t go anywhere, why, because you are holding their hand. You are holding on to them to protect them. Similarly God is holding on to our hand.

Likewise we are guided by the counsel of God.

But how can we be guided by His counsel?

The first way is being in His word. If you are not in the Word of God then you are not being counseled by Him.

You should not be counseled by this world. You should not be counseled by your family. You should not be counseled by your heart. You should be counseled by God and the way that happens if finding ourselves in the Word of God often.

The world will lie to you. Your family will lie to you. Your heart will lie to you. The Word of God will never lie to you.

Now some of those things are good and some will point you back to the Word of God, but you should confirm any counsel you receive with the Bible. If what you have heard from others does not line up with what you read in the Bible then you better change the way you think.

Three

The psalmist then goes on to respond to this act of God. This holding on. This guiding. This receiving into glory.

He writes “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee.

Now this seems hopeful to me, not something that I have attained but something that I am striving for. Truth be told, I have plenty upon the earth that I desire besides the Lord. I want to desire him more than all though. I want Him to be my fixation all the days of my life.

Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple

Why does the psalmist desire the Lord above all things? I think it is because he recognizes his frailty in this world and sees God’s strength in light of himself. He writes in verse 26 “My heart and my flesh faileth, But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.”

He recognizes that it is by the strength of God that he is upheld, not his own. We would like to believe that we have some things figured out in this life, that we have some things all put together. Truth is we are in shambles if not for the Lord. Like the old song says, “I thought of myself as a mighty big man, but I can’t even walk without holding your hand.” I can’t even walk without God holding my hand.

Conclusion

The psalmist will end his text with a warning and a blessing. The warning is simple, when you go far from God you will perish. Life is found in Him. We search for life, light, good in this world, but those things are only found in God.

One of my favorite lines of scripture is found at the scene of the resurrection of Jesus. Luke 24 records that early in the morning and a few of the women were bringing spices to Jesus tomb to finish the burial process. When they got there they saw that the stone had been rolled away, they looked inside the tomb and Jesus wasn’t there. They were perplexed. Then two angels stood by them and asked this simple but poignant question: “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” Why have you come to the cemetery looking for the living?

I think the angel would be asking us some similar questions today in our search for truth, in our search for light, in our search for good.

Why seek ye light among darkness? Why seek ye good among evil? Why seek ye truth among opinions? Why seek ye life among death?

Jesus is the Light. Jesus is good. Jesus is truth. Jesus is life. All that you’ve ever been looking for is found in Him.

This chapter ends with a blessing. Maybe my favorite text in this passage. The psalmist simply writes: “It is good for me to draw near to God, I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works.”

Friend, it is good for you to draw near to God. You have done life your own way and you still find yourself in a hole. In depression, anxiety ridden, unhappy, angry, hopeless.

You’ve drawn near to the things of this world often. You’ve put your trust in yourself, in others, only to see that it doesn’t work. Now would be a good time for you to put your trust in God. It is good for you to draw near to God. It is good for you to put your trust in God.

The last line of this text says that I may declare all thy works. When you draw near to God when you put your trust in God you’ll see that this life is not really about you. It’s about Him. And that’s a good thing, that’s refreshing, that’s freeing. It’s been about you for too long. You’ve felt like you’ve had to hold things up for too long. You can’t do it, you’re not strong enough. Come give it to Jesus.

It is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God. That I may declare all thy works.