Sermons

Introduction

Amen and amen. That was beautiful. I started working on this psalm in August because I thought – the elders had talked and said, "If there's a sudden need for someone to have to step into the pulpit, we need to be ready, we need to have one in our hip pocket." And so I started working on this psalm and got about halfway through and then I stopped. Then I realized I had to teach today, and I looked at it and I said, "It's amazing. This is what God wants for us today." He saved it for this day and this time and it's what I needed. And I think it's exactly what you need. So, I want you to take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 25, and I think you'll see it's amazing in God's providence, again, that this is His word for us today. 

Now, I want to mention before I read it that it was written by King David. Scholars are not sure what time period of life it was. They know he was older. And they know it was a time of distress, a time of trouble, and he needed direction. He was in deep, personal anguish, and he needed direction. And so, we get to see in this psalm his deepest feelings, his fear, his guilt, when the sky seems to be falling in, the pressure surrounding, the enemies are seeking to destroy him. He's wrestling with his emotions, and he wants to know, "God, where do I go from here? What do I do?" This psalm is going to provide incredible instruction on how God guided him, and He will guide us through, the darkest days of uncertainty when the waves of life seem to overwhelm us. So I want to read it. You've got it open by now. 

David writes, "To You, Lord, I lift up my soul. My God, in You I trust, do not let me be ashamed; do not let my enemies rejoice over me. Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed; those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed. 

"Make me know Your ways, Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day. Remember, Lord, Your compassion and Your faithfulness, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my wrongdoings; remember me according to Your faithfulness, for Your goodness' sake, Lord." 

Verse 8, "The Lord is good and upright; therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in justice, and He teaches the humble His way. All the paths of the Lord are faithfulness and truth to those who comply with His covenant and His testimonies. For the sake of Your name, Lord, forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great. 

"Who is the person who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose. His soul will dwell in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land. The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant. My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for He will rescue my feet from the net.

"Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses. Look at my misery and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Look at my enemies, for they are many, and they hate me with violent hatred. Guard my soul and save me; do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You. Let integrity and uprightness protect me, for I wait for You. Redeem Israel, God." Let's just pray real quick. 

[Prayer] Father, we thank You for giving us Your word today. We thank You that You would bring all the saints together, a packed room, to signify that we are here to hear Your word and that we desire to know what You would have us to do, that we can better serve You and glorify You. We thank You, Father, that You are on Your throne and that You are ordering all circumstances for our good and to Your glory, in Jesus' name." 

I got a book a while back from Amazon delivered on my front porch. Grabbed the package, opened the book and began reading this intriguing story. And I couldn't help myself, and after a while I had to turn to the back of the book because I wanted to know the ending. Have you ever done that? Do you know what I'm talking about? How many of you have jumped to the end of the book to find out the outcome? Well, that's me. And when you do that, you don't have to go through all the ups and downs in the book because it removes the suspense and eliminates the worry because you know how it ends without having to wait by reading the entire book to get to the end. 

Well, the Lord won't allow that in our lives. He ordains that we go through all the ups and downs, and He operates differently with us. I wish it wasn't so. I wish He'd just give me a peek into the next chapter and to the end and let me know exactly how it's going to turn out: "Are my worst fears going to come true or not? How's it going to end? What are the results of what I'm going through? Am I going to be able to find comfort now or next week or in six months?" 

But God doesn't allow us to look ahead. He won't give us a crystal ball, and He doesn't show us up front how He's going to solve all our problems. And David is finding that out, and he's going to show us this morning how he conducts his life while God is unfolding His will in his life and in troubling times. And it's going to be very instructive for us, not just today and not just in this trial, but for the rest of our lives, because we face trials of all sorts of magnitude, ups and downs in our life. We never know what's going to happen tomorrow. 

Now, let me start by saying there are nine psalms that are called the acrostic psalms. I'm not sure if you've heard of that or not. But this is one of the nine Psalms, and it simply means that each line is supposed to start with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Now, this one is pretty much that except for a few verses, and we can only speculate the reason why. But one of the reasons is probably because the Jewish people could better memorize if they had each line start alphabetically. And so I like that. 

But it's a complex structure in the Hebrew because it doesn't flow as easily. And I thought about this and I thought this psalm is like going to a cook and say, "Just make me an omelet. and I want you to throw all the ingredients in it that you think I'd like." And I eat that omelet and I take a bite and I go back to him and say, "Tell me what's in this omelet, this tasty, incredible omelet. I need to dissect out all the ingredients and understand what's in it." 

And so that's the way we're going to look at this psalm this morning. We understand the whole package of it. It's great. It's wonderful. But exactly, what are the ingredients? What are the components of this psalm that we need to remember and that we need to take with us? And so I've got an outline. It's a simple outline, and I want to give it to you before I start. I want to tell you that I've named this message "Upward, Inward, and Onward." And that really follows our outline. 

Number one, there's an upward trust in the Lord. David takes his worries and his concerns and he looks up to the Lord and he trusts in Him. And we've pulled out these verses, and the verses for that are verses 16 through 19 and verses 1 and 2. That shows David's trust in the Lord. 

And then there's an inward assessment; so interesting. He's buried in these trials, and his first thing to do is to look to the Lord, and his next thing is to look at himself. And the inward assessment, it's got four components to it, and we'll get to these verses. Number one, he realizes he needs to continue in the word and pray. And, number two, he needs to be a man that's constantly confessing his sin. And, number three, a man that is obeying and being obedient. And, lastly, a man who waits on the Lord. That's his inward assessment. 

And, lastly, there's going to be an onward march in the Lord's direction because he trusts the Lord to lead him and guide him in the way He wants him to go. So, there's an upward trust, an inward assessment, and an onward march. 

‍Upward Trust

So, I'm going to start here with number one, David's upward trust in the Lord. And in order to relate to David and to understand his situation, I want you to look at verses 16 through 19. He starts in verse 16. He says, "Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely." David felt like he was all by himself and it seemed no one could help him. I mean, it's one thing to be in trials, it's another thing to be all by yourself. But that's where David was. And he was so lonely, he felt afflicted. And that word means "poor" and "weak" and "wretched." 

And then verse 17, he says, "The troubles," the troubles, the troubles he's in give him deep distress in his heart, meaning his soul and his mind, his thinking, and even his emotions, they're in anguish. And his troubles, it says, have enlarged and multiplied. In other words, his problems have not gotten better, they've gotten bigger. It seems he wakes up to a problem and it is huge, and then every day it continues to enlarge. 

And then he sees his troubles have gone from bad to worse and they're overwhelming him. And look in verse 17. He says, "Bring me out of my distress. Lord, just take me out of this. Lord, take these troubles and get rid of the burden and the stress I'm dealing with." Have you ever felt that way? 

Look at verse 18. David's asking the Lord if He'll see, consider and observe his affliction, meaning, "Lord, will You take notice? Are You watching? Can You see my misery?" He's vocalizing what's deep in his heart. "Lord, feel my pain. Feel my pain. I'm in agony." 

Now, here's a man that's hurting. Here's a man that is worn out. Here's a man that is covered up with problems and doesn't know where to turn. And on top of all this, the worst thing he's struggling with as he faces his Lord are his sins. That's a godly man. He recognized as his own sins, what's in his heart. All of his troubles have brought back the sorrow and the remorse of the past sins of his life; and that's healthy. 

Look at verse 19: "Look upon my enemies, for they are many." David has developed countless enemies, starting with his own troubles, probably with his own son Absalom. And they're corrupt people, and they're influenced by Satan and the powers of this world, and they want to cause him harm, and he's crying to the Lord, "These enemies that are outside of me. I've got my own internal issues, and then I've got these enemies, and they want to cause me harm." It's one thing to deal with your own personal trouble, but it's another for people outside to be coming after you. That's where David was. These enemies were controlled by Satan's forces, and they hated him, and they hate me, and they hate you if you stand for the Lord. 

And he says, "They're coming after me" – look – "with a violent hatred." Oh, would they have loved social media. These people's evil hatred was so wicked and so violent, they would love to have killed David. That's the situation he's in. He's in the middle of this turmoil. And you know what? It's nothing new for Christians, is it? As he pens this psalm, needless to say, he's lonely, he's afflicted, his heart is troubled, he's drowning in a sea of problems. The walls are closing in and he needs the Lord's guidance to find his way out, to lead him out through the trials, and he's desperately needing to know God's will. 

What a perfect psalm for us. What a perfect time for God to give us this word today. We remember we don't know what David's trial was exactly, we're not certain. And I think that was left out for a purpose. You know why? Because we can take any trial that we go through and we can put it in the blank. We can fill in the blank and say, "If David was going through this and I'm going through my trial, I want to know how David handled it. I want to know how he walked through this trial. I want to know how God led him. I want to know what his insides were like and how he felt." And this is what we're seeing. David realizes what we need to realize: his only way out is to come to a complete trust in God. He has to shake off his own opinions. He has to look to the only One capable of handling and guiding him through this, the Lord God. And we're going to gain a lot of insight on David's experience. 

And I want you to see what he does. Look at verses 1 and 2: "To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul." I love the imagery here, the picture of David with this heavy burden on his shoulders, and he's slumped and can hardly move, and it's like he takes them, all these burdens and he just lifts them up to the Lord Jehovah, his Creator and Sustainer, and he takes all his troubles off his own shoulders and places them on shoulders that have the power to handle them, his sovereign, omnipotent protector. 

And notice, it's his whole soul. It's his whole soul he lifts up, meaning his entire being, his inner self. He hands everything over that's active in his mind and active in his will. And in the middle of these heavy trials, he stops and he gives the Lord exclusive control, turns it over. And I think if David were here this morning. he would say, "Well, I'm tempted to try and take control of all my troubles. I've chosen to trust exclusively, 100 percent in the Lord God. I'm submitting every trial, every concern in my life over to You. I surrender my soul, my innermost being to You. I give my future to You, my fears to You, my feelings to You, my desires to You, and I lift up my soul to You. O my God, in You I trust." 

And so, David is trusting upward. And he feels totally secure. He feels totally secure doing that because look what he says. He continues, "O my God, in You I trust," as if he says, "Lord, I can't handle them. I trust You to take them off. I trust You." And you know what? It's almost freeing. It's relieving to him. And this is what's behind his love for the Lord. it's his ability to rest securely, trusting the Lord for everything in his life, not just in good times, but in bad times. And what a great, what a great thing for us to know and to remember. What are we trusting in? 

How can David do this? It's one thing to talk about it. it's another thing to do it. How can David do it? How can he have the confidence to lift up all his circumstances and place them on the Lord? Well, it's because he's thoroughly convinced of God's strength. He's thoroughly convinced that God's will is right and God can lead him out of the maze of all his troubles because he has faith. And this faith has developed over a long period of time of fellowship with the Lord. And it's an unwavering confidence in placing his complete trust in a faithful God who can provide and protect and lead him. It's his experience. It's what he knows. It's what he's found out to be true in the Lord God in his life. 

You know, we know people by spending time with them. I had a man that worked for me years ago, had a great personality, hard worker. But I'd tell him what I wanted him to do, and more times than not, he wouldn't do it. He'd do some of it, very little of it, whatever he wanted to. And I would get so frustrated. Invariably, I finally just said, "I've got to fire you because I can't trust you." I worked with him for years. But I knew his character, and I found out what he was really like by spending time with him. And this, in a sense, is really what David has done with the Lord. He knows His character. He knows His nature. He knows He's fully able to take whatever problem is burdening him to lift it up and trust Him. 

And so, I think it's a challenge for all of us: "Is that the way you know the Lord?" The more we get to know Him, the more we can trust Him completely. And yet we learn here from David is that even in the face of the greatest fears potentially becoming reality, when the nightmare is really not a movie but it's reality, we too like David can rest in the Lord because He is who He says He is. So, we can trust the Lord wholeheartedly even if He leads us through what we believe to be the worst conceivable circumstances. It's what we learn. This is how our faith grows. This is how we know God is who He is by going through difficulties, by watching Him answer and lead and guide and protect. 

Here's another thing. When we place our trust in the Lord with all our heart and all our soul, it means we're willing to go anywhere He wants us to go, and let Him have control and recognizing we control nothing. I love what A. W. Pink says. He says, "A consciousness of powerlessness." Do you feel like you have power? How much power are you wielding in your life? Pink says, "A consciousness of powerlessness should cast us upon Him who has all power. Here then is where a vision and view of God's sovereignty helps, for it reveals His sufficiency and shows our insufficiency." 

And so, David's troubles, like ours, should bring us to the end of ourself. That's a good thing. David found himself in a heightened sense of helplessness and forcing himself to surrender his entire being to lift up his whole soul to place his complete trust in the Lord to guide him and lead him any and every way the Lord deemed best. And I'll tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, that's where we want to be. I don't want to be anywhere else. 

So, where are you placing your confidence this morning? Is it in a man? Is all your confidence in the elders or the deacons or men on the Internet? Where is your confidence being placed? Who do you rely on for the future? See, it's only when we trust in the Lord, like David's doing, that He can bring peace to uncertainty; dispels anxiety, and it calms our fears about the future because this is the God we serve. 

So, I want you to notice four essential components of David's inner spiritual walk, his inner spiritual life. This is going to be so instructive because this is what keeps him tethered, if you will, to trusting God and not to drift off and to wonder and to start trusting his own desires and his thoughts and his reasoning. There's four spiritual disciplines that we need to take note of, our own inward assessment, and we want to follow David's example. 

‍Inward Assessment

Point number two, it's an inward assessment, and here it is: he desires, more than anything, to continue in the word and in prayer. I want you to see this. Look at verse 5. David obviously opens up speaking in prayer, we just notice that. He lifted up his soul, but he continues pouring out his heart in verse 5. Look what he says: "Lord, lead me in the Lord's truth. Lead me in Your truth." He's calling on the Lord to instruct him to walk in His ways, "and teach me to walk with You." He knows he's frail. He knows he's flawed. We should all recognize that we are, too. But we need to lean on the Lord to teach us in His word to walk with Him. 

And David not only does that by speaking to God through prayer, but he continues. He continues to talk about His word and learning the truth and the importance of letting God speak to him. So, in other words, David knows, "I've got to have constant communication with God, me talking to Him and Him talking to me. There's got to be a two-way street here, two-way communication." There used to be these walkie-talkies that were two ways. That's what David's saying: "If I'm going to continue to trust in God, I've got to stay in His word and let Him teach me, and I've got to continue to talk to Him." 

Look at verse 15: "For my eyes are continually toward the Lord. My eyes are continually toward the Lord." In the storms of life, David is showing us that we've got to keep the main thing the main thing to stay focused continually in the instruction of God's word. Very simply put, a person must be anchored in the Scripture and prayer to stay dependent and trusting the Lord in order for Him to lead him. That's what we see right here, number one. David is saying, "I need You to lead me, and I'm trusting in You. But I know my own heart. Keep me. Keep me in Your word. Teach me and instruct me. Keep the lines of communication open." So, he's praying. That's number one. 

Number two, he's confessing his sins. And I think that's what always happens when we're in God's word. When we see the holiness of God in His word, it drives us to see who we are and our sins. It's easy to read our Bibles and pray, but we've got to do more than that. He has to come clean with his sinful heart. Look at verses 7 and 7. 

Verses 6 and 7, he asked God to remember. And then he says don't remember. In verse 6, he says, "Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and Your kindness." He's calling on His attributes, His eternal attributes. He desperately desires this compassion and kindness because he knows he's getting ready to bring his sins to Him. 

And in verse 7 he says, "Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgression." He's convicted. He knows he's a sinner. He knows he doesn't deserve it. And he's looking all the way back from when he was a young boy possibly, saying, "I'm a sinner, and yet You still love me. I want to recognize with You, Lord, that I'm still that same sinner." So, David is confessing his sinful heart and he prays for the Lord not to take action on his past sins. He knows he deserves punishment, but he pleads for forgiveness. No, this is healthy, and I want to ask you, "Do you do that?" I'll tell you what, studying this, going through what we've been through, I have probably looked at my past sins more than I ever have before. 

"According to Your loving kindness, remember me for Your goodness' sake, O Lord." Then he goes on in verse 11, "For Your name's sake, O Lord," – look again – "pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Look at my misery and trouble, and forgive my sins." On and on, "Pardon my iniquity. Forgive my sins. Confess." David knows he can't trust his own heart. He's prone to wander. Said this verse many times, Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick." 

So, genuine confession, ladies and gentlemen, is necessary because it causes us to question our own heart's intentions. David's constantly confessing because he has this heightened sense of his sin. I love what one preacher said: "David is crying to God to get rid of everything in his life that could blind him to the ways God wants him to go and deafen him to God's voice." Martin Luther said, "I am more suspicious of my own heart than I am of any other Christian brother." 

Do we come to the Lord distrusting our own hearts? How much time do you spend confessing your sins? I've told this story. Donald Grey Barnhouse was having open heart surgery, and C. Everett Koop was an elder in his church, a doctor who had become Surgeon General. And after the surgery, C. Everett Koop said, "Dr. Barnhouse, I held your heart in my hand." And Barnhouse looked at him and said, "Could you see how wicked and dirty and evil it is?" 

So, to maintain our trust in God, allowing Him to guide us through the complexities of our troubles, we need to stay in His word and pray continually. We need to constantly be confessing our sins. And, third, we need to be committed to obey Him. That's what David's writing here. Look at number three, verses 8 through 10. He says, "Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He instructs sinners in the way." There's nothing deceitful or hidden in the way our Lord instructs sinners. He points us in the right direction, and He's pointing us in the direction to obey Him for obedience. 

Verse 9, "He leads the humble in justice, and He teaches the humble His way." Verse 10, "And all the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies," and David is fully aware, then, that God won't faithfully lead the prideful. Humble, humble, humble. This word "humility" – I'm sure you've heard this – is referring to animals yielding to their master's will. 

When I was about six years old, my dad put me on top of Brownie, a little Shetland pony, and about three seconds later I was off Brownie – Brownie's will, not my dad's. And the pony's will had not been broken so my father could lead it and I could ride it. And David knew his will, just like our wills, must be broken in order to be led by God. 

We can't trust God to lead us if we're only 80 percent committed. See, that's where we stop short: "Lord, lead me, take me here, but I'm going to hold back 5 or 10 percent for myself." That doesn't work. That pony wouldn't be considered obedient if it still bucked once every four times I was on it, no horse. A horse has to be only obedient and is only obedient when his power and his stubbornness comes under the direction and the will of who's writing it. 

So, we need to learn from David here. He knows his own heart, and he prayed for his own will to be obedient to God's will and that it wouldn't be deceptive and it wouldn't be holding something out. He wouldn't be holding qualifications in his prayer and, "If You'll do this, I'll do most of what You want me to do." No, he was giving it all in. He knew he couldn't trust the Lord to guide him in half-hearted obedience. 

And that's for us. We must be all in for Christ. We must place Christ's yoke around our necks in complete willingness to go where He leads us because – listen, this is so important – we cannot expect God's will if we aren't willing to devote ourselves entirely to Him. And this is a warning. This is a warning to be constantly surrendering your will and my will to the obedience of God the Father. And so, like David, we need to look inward, don't we? We need to assess our own hearts. We need Him to guide us through the complexities of our troubles. 

So, number one, we need to stay in His word and stay in prayer. Number two, we need to be confessing our sins. And, number three, we need to be obeying God. And, lastly, the hardest one, maybe the hardest one. The most difficult is patience, is waiting. We want the Lord to fix it now: "Give me the answer now! Eliminate it now! Take it off of me now! If not today, tomorrow!" And David wisely teaches us, perhaps again, the most difficult for him too is patience. 

Look at verses 3 and 5. Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed; those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed. For You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day." Verse 20, look down there: "Guard my soul and deliver me; do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You." He's waiting. Verse 21, "Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for You." Now, if I have a weakness, it's patience, so I'm talking to myself on all of this first, but this is the one I need. 

Now, this waiting is not giving up and throwing in the towel, but it's waiting with an eager expectation to find out what God's going to do through the difficulties, and you doing all you know to do, but waiting on Him. And so, here's the question: Why is David – again, why does he need patience? Because he knows his natural instinct to have these immediate answers: "I want to know something now!" And I'm certain David is dying for the Lord to tell him. It's his natural inclination to ask, "How did this happen? How long will it be before it's over? Just clear it up for me now, and I'll feel so much better." And so, I want to stop and tell you that this really struck a chord because the experience of this past week, there's nobody in here who has more questions than I do, nobody. This is where the Lord wants me, and this is where the Lord wants you, waiting on Him. 

David learned to exercise patience, especially when his troubles escalated, because he came to understand better than most of us, "It's going to be God's timing before He gets any answers, and we need to just surrender our plans to God's plans and trust in His timing." See, that's part of it. So, David keeps telling himself over and over and over again, "I will wait for You. I will wait for You. I will accept Your timing, Your direction, to get rid of all my troubles." 

And so, the question is, "Why does God place so much of our Christian life in standby mode?" You ever feel that way: "I'm in standby mode. I'm in neutral"? Why are we always, it seems, waiting? I love what Sinclair Ferguson said, he hits the nail on the head: "Because God is far more interested in what He is doing in us than what He is doing for us." God is far more interested in what He is doing in you and in me than what He's doing for us. And what God's really interested in is what He makes us to be, to shape us more and more into the image of His Son. And God is far more interested in the work He's performing in your life and my life than giving us all the answers and the solutions to our problems that we want right now. 

And David's learned this lesson, he's learned this lesson of patience. And I tell you, we need to learn it, too. God has placed David in a massive trial and He is requiring him to wait. Why? Because God has a greater plan, and he needs to be patient to let it take shape, all the while, transforming David more into the image of His Son, Christ. That's what God's doing to me. That's what God's doing in your life. 

The famous verse sums up waiting, Isaiah 40:31, "Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary." And David's ensuring he's patient with the Lord because he's fully aware that when God places him in the holding pattern, it's meant to build up his spiritual strength, and it's the kind of strength that can only come from God. It's not earthly strength, it's supernatural strength that comes from God that he learns by waiting, and it allows him to soar above all of his problems and wait for the Lord to lead and direct. 

‍Onward March 

So, there's got to be an inward trust in the Lord. There's got to be an ongoing assessment of our lives of being in the word, reading the word, confessing our sins, obeying and waiting. And you know what? There's an amazing blessing. There's an amazing blessing that comes from that. It came to David. God leads him out, our last point: there's an onward march in God's guidance, verses 12 through 14. 

"Who's the man who fears the Lord?" In other words, if you're trusting in the Lord, like we're talking about, and you're inwardly assessing your hearts, you are the person who fears the Lord. And if you fear the Lord, you have nothing else to fear. Why? Because God will move you onward and guide you, and He will instruct you and instruct me in the way we should choose. In other words, God will prevent us from choosing our own way and our own path. Thankfully, He intervenes to guide us over to His way and in His timing, and we don't want it any other way. And Spurgeon put it this way: "He will instruct our will to be His will to choose what is pleasing to Him." 

Verse 13, "His soul will abide in prosperity," meaning he will dwell at ease. He'll be at ease. He'll dwell with God's goodness and peace, and He'll walk faithfully with the Lord. And then in verse 14, "The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him." I love this. I love this. In other words, David and everyone who walks with the Lord, God is going to share in confidence His secret intentions with you. It's the picture of a friend that's going to come alongside, and in your distress he's going to grab your hand and guide you through all the maze of difficulty. It depicts the loving Shepherd leading us through a dark valley, comes alongside and says, "Let's go. Let's march on. Let's go this way. My guidance, My direction, not yours." 

I want to close and I want to make two points, two illustrations. My father was diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 46, and I saw him struggle with that disease, tremors and stiffness and imbalance and sleeplessness and speech issues and depression and medicine and on and on for 20 years of his life before he died. He was a godly man, and he struggled. And weeks before he died, someone asked him, "What would you change in your life if you had a chance?" And you would think he would have said, "Well, if I could have not contracted Parkinson's, if I could have just had 10 more years of healthy life." You know what his answer was? "I wouldn't change a thing, because if I did, I might mess something up God wanted to do in me and through me." 

David believed that. Do you believe that? I have to think that Noah and Abraham and Jacob and Jonah and Daniel and Peter and Paul and every godly man and every godly woman understood Romans 8:28, especially in their trials, that "God causes all things, the good things and the bad things, to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." 

‍Conclusion

And I want to ask you this: Are you anchored in the wisdom of that verse? You need to be. Does this verse shape your thoughts? When it looks like things cannot get any worse, I think each of us need to make this personal and we need to carry this truth with us. Even when everything seems like it's falling apart, keep in mind that God is orchestrating every single detail and working behind the scenes for a greater purpose and plan yet to be seen. 

And, lastly, I want to remind you that we are in a war between God and Satan, and it is being played out on this earth, and it isn't make-believe. It isn't imaginary, and it isn't fantasy; it is real. And Satan is taking dead aim at those who are the biggest threat to him, just like he did everyone in this Bible, and that's a fact. 

You remember how our Lord reassured Peter about this? Remember what He said? He turned to the last chapter for Peter and He said this: "I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail." The evil forces cannot win. The church will never ever be shut in or die. God is building His church. God is purifying and He's purging us for the days ahead. He is fortifying, and He is building us individually and corporately. And as John MacArthur said from his hospital bed last week, "Trinity will be stronger for it." 

I believe God is speaking to each one of us and He's saying, "You better trust Me. You better trust Me because you have no idea what you're up against, but I do; and I'm the only one that can guide you to victory." 

So, whose side are you on in this cosmic battle? I know which side I'm on. I'm on the winning side. Perhaps you aren't sure. Perhaps you're here today for whatever reason but you don't know for sure if you're on the winning side. You don't know for sure if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and you need today, then, to make confession with God, and you need to trust in Christ and repent of your sins and recognize Him as your Lord and Savior if you want to make sure you're going to be on the winning side; otherwise, there's no hope. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we are the ones that have hope, certain hope now and in the future. And only those of us in Christ can look upward in trust and assess inward and move onward in the Lord's victorious path. Let's pray. 

[Prayer] Father, thank You for this word. I'm sure that as David was going through this, he would have hoped that You would take him out of it. But, Father, I know I'm glad that You didn't. And a lot of us here are so glad that You didn't so we could see how he handled it. So, the greater good, Father, of at least one thing that we see David struggling with helps us. So, Father, I pray that You will help us to be men and women that will gird up our loins, fasten our chin straps, and be on the front lines to battle for You, knowing that we win because You are our victor, in Jesus' name. Amen.