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Today we’re going to be looking at Psalm 44 in it’s entirety, and as we make our way through it...
…we’re going to try to bring the text into our current context here at AFBC.
And so instead of reading through all of it right away and then circling back through...
…we’re just going to look at each section as we go...
so let’s jump in...
1 O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old:
2 you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free;
3 for not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.
Here we see mankind looking into their past...
…and reflecting on how God operated in the lives of His people.
And i say - “how God OPERATED” because we can see here that they’re not just looking in the past to see the end results…*
No - They’re looking back - and what they see is the SOVEREIGNTY of God...
They don’t just look back and say - “Well those people were fortunate…thank You God”...
No - they look back and they acknowledge that God was in control of all of it!
You - God - drove out the nations, but them You planted
you know that within this phrase - “Your own hand drove out the nations” - there were a lot of human decisions!
Lot of decisions made
A lot of dependent circumstances...
AND YET - God was in control of all of it!
You - God - afflicted the peoples, but them you set free
No doubt - again - a lot of decisions went into this.
A lot of EVIL intent on behalf of man...
AND YET - God sovereign over all of it!
Your right hand and arm won them the land...
YOU did this - God!
And we acknowledge that!
NOW - no doubt - in our own lives we can look back and see God’s work...
a job
family
kids
relationship
whatever it was - we know God was behind it...
…but what about AFBC?
Lots to look back on...
Clearly, coming out of where we came - i think most of us would say - God CLEARLY was involved in helping us to establish our feet
Started out meeting in homes...
Was able to start using the OCC for minimal rent...
A church that had been using it had recently left…and so we jumped in.
Then this building goes up for sale at auction - having been sitting here for 4 years...
My boss at IMARC buys the building...
and fairly soon after, asks if we’d like to purchase this side of the building.
We prayed on it, given the situation, and it’s location.
We let it sit for over a year before we made a decision...
We continued to look elsewhere…in other locations...
And everything else FELL THRU...
All the while - this space remained available...
The price for our space went from $70K.....to $50K....
to..
$1.00
Was that due to our negotiating power?
Our wisdom?
Of course not… All of it PLANNED by God...
His Mercy...
His timing...
He brought us out....
He planted us here...
He has provided for us...
I’d like to ask Joe to come up and pray over us...
Praising God for all he’s done for us...
Let’s move on the verse 4
4 You are my King, O God; ordain salvation for Jacob!
5 Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.
6 For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.
7 But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us.
8 In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
Obviously these text were written in relation to a period of time where the writers of this Psalm, the Sons of Korah...
…would have dealt with battle, and war...
What does verse 5 say
5 Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.
WE - push down our foes
WE - tread down those who rise up...
WE do these things....BUT...
THROUGH You - God
Through YOU and ONLY You can we do these things...
*This week thinking about how God uses MEANS…to accomplish His purposes...
We KNOW that God provides right…?
24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!
19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
It’s pretty clear that God will PROVIDE....we know that…BUT HOW?
Well = One of those needs is oxygen...
HOW does He supply oxygen?
*Photosynthesis (process by which plants turn sunlight into OXYGEN!
He gives plants a job!
They are a MEANS by which God provides us with what we need!
So GOD uses MEANS to accomplish His purposes!
AND yet - EVEN SO - the power belongs to the Lord!
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
It’s all DUE Him! These writers understood that in their lives...
Let’s bring this down to our level now...
Have you had the opportunity to SPEAK the name of Christ to your friends...
family?
co-workers?
Have you had opportunities to set aside your own comforts for the sake of someone else?
Have you had the opportunity to respond to someone in a CHRIST-LIKE way, when everything would point to you responding harshly?
Have you had opportunity to … prioritize your life...
NOW - Have you taken advantage of those opportunities?
Verse 5 says = we push down our foes...
WHO would be our foe - in our context?
Ourselves: Meaning - have WE changed?
Are we seeking to PUSH down ourselves....and our earthly pleasures in order to see Christ more clearly?
This World: Meaning - have we made strides - NOT TO SUPPRESS the truth of God, but to SUPPRESS this world in our lives?
Have we re-prioritized the things of God and made them preeminent in our lives?
See - a lot of us, will claim this to be the case, when in actuality we’ve set up an idol in our lives to worship...
....and we’ll WORSHIP the thing we say we hate!
We must RENOUNCE ALL things that might have become an idol in our lives…!
comfort
ministry
bible knowledge
songs
Do we TRUST ONLY in God and His power?
We NEED God’s help with this!
I’d LIKE to ask my dad to come up now and pray that God would HELP US...
First that God would HELP US KNOW where our help comes from
and that He would help us TRUST Him…TO THE EXTENT that our lives would LOOK LIKE Jesus!!
— - - - - - - - -
Now, let’s move on and see where this Psalm goes...
9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies.
10 You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil.
11 You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations.
12 You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.
13 You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us.
14 You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples.
15 All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face
16 at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
17 All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
Here we see what is a complete 180 from what we had just heard.
YOU are faithful God
We've heard of what you've done in the past
YOU've come to the rescue of your people
WE trust it's in YOUR power that we conquer our emenies...
WE trust You to BE our strength
WE trust You to BE our salvation from our enemies...
WE'RE ALL IN...
BUT You're NOT all in You God have REJECTED US
You God have disgraced US You God have made us TURN back from the FOE
You God have CAUSED us to scatter among the nations
You have made us the LAUGHING STOCK among the nations
And so based on what we had just heard PRIOR in this text...
how it was IN GOD that they were victories how it was IN HIS power they conquered...
NOW that they've been losing...and NOT conquering... BY IMPLICATION - It's the name of God that is NOW being trampled on...
The enemies of God now MOCK the people of God...
*Warriors - Cavaliers - Game 7 2016.
The Warriors had been consistently victorious...confident in their leader
BUT THEN - a LOSS - a LOSS of EPIC perportions...
And what happened to us in Cleveland the very second the buzzer went off at the end of Game 7? - MOCKERY! We MOCKED Golden State - Pride set in...!
Same thing happened here...in a sense.
The people of God began to experience suffering...
BUT they didn't see God come through for them.
BUT WHAT IS SOMETHING that we hear in this exchange that is very prevalant in our society today?
- Entitlement
The people of God here have placed their own obedience on the scale, and they're now complaining because they feel - God - owes - them.
Listen to how verses 8-9 play out...
8 In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies.
WE have boasted in You...
BUT YOU - God didn't RECIPROCATE...
AND so IT SEEMS that these people feel God owes them...
BUT - we'll see a bit later in this text that they have the right motives...
BUT so many people DO NOT have the right motives.
They feel they can earn God's graces!
That if they OBEY God - then God OWES them something
Problem is - You CAN'T put God in your debt...
35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”
11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
God owes us - NOTHING
As Christians - ALL that we receive from God is due to His - MERCY
EVEN SUFFERING
We talked before about how God uses MEANS to accomplish His purposes...
Suffering - is a MEANS by which God LOVES us!
He will put us in the flood that He might be our life jacket
He will put us in the fire that He might be our cover
He will put us in the desert that He might be our water
And IT'S IN and THRU SUFFERING where what God is FOR US is most clearly seen...
If i WAR against God when suffering comes, then in those times, He's NOT my life jacket, NOT my cover, NOT my water...
Pastor JD Greear recently said - that when ANGER rises in us, it's because one of our IDOLS has been attacked.
And so when we get angry as kids when our parent ask us to CLEAN OUR ROOM...it's because COMFORT & LAZINESS is an IDOL in our lives...
When the Rich Young Ruler walked away from Christ, sad that Christ asked him to give away all he had...it was revealed that MONEY was his IDOL...that his possessions were his IDOLS...
When we get angry at the church for continually to ask for help...
It's because COMFORT is our IDOL...that we serve
What we know from Scripture is that God owes us NOTHING
We OWE HIM - EVERYTHING
And yet, we live in this world...and we experience God ordained trials...
In our context here - we look around, and we see a people that God has kept together for a long time..
YET - at one point, not too long ago (a few years) - we had about 85-90 people attending here.
We’re down to about half that number now...
We rarely see new people coming in...
Is that due to us not inviting people to hear God's truth? I don't know...
We know NUMBERS don't tell the whole story...you know we're not a NUMBERS church...
We want growth here - BUT FIRST we want our growth to go DOWNWARD... That we would get DEEPER in knowledge...passion....delight in God...
BUT
Do you WANT more people to come to CHRIST??? I HOPE so! Well - where are they?
Are we failing at BEING God's MEANS to REACH HIS people!???
We need to PRAY!
We believe we are and will remain faithful to God's WORD!... We KNOW that people have left here... YET we REMAIN faithful!
Let's PRAY that God would reward our faithfulness...
Specifically that MORE people would come to know Him...
That we would more WILLINGLY devote ourselves to Him and the spread of His message...!
I want to ask Charles up now to PRAY for us!
That God would show us the fruit of our labor...NOT FOR OUR SAKE...
Not so that we FEEL BETTER about ourselves... But, like this Psalm ends - for - the sake of HIS STEADFAST Love!
**An example would be this - Brandy at IMARC
- CHARLES
23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24 Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground.
26 Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
Frustration.... Discouragement... Heart-ache Depression
All of these things - fruits of ministry In a fallen world...
these things come with ministry... with the Christian life...
How many of you are truly frustrated with the response of your unbelieving friends and family - to the gospel?
How many of you are truly discouraged walking in here week after week, and filling a quarter of the room?
Do you think the apostle Paul would have been frustrated?
28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Daily pressure...daily anxiety
Our level of engagement with this world, for the sake of the gospel, will directly reflect our level of concern for the world without the gospel.
I do believe that most often, in the christian life, our greatest enemy is ourself.
And we fail to get ourselves out of the way - in order to live for Christ
All we can do - is pray...and ask that God would REVEAL Himself more for His sake...
And in doing so - encourage those who need encouragement...
Could any of you use any gospel-encouragement?
Let's pray