Good morning. Merry Christmas!
Trust you all are doing well. Just a little reminder, only three days left. If you are a procrastinator, today is probably the last day to get your Amazon order in for it to be here on time. Just a little pro tip there.
Hey, a special thanks to Trent and the team for leading us this morning. They did such a great job. So thankful for them.
My name is Jeremy. I have the privilege and honor of being the worship pastor here. So my usual place of comfort is somewhere over on this side of the stage. Not necessarily here, but it is an honor and a privilege to be able to open up God's Word with you together this morning.
Great to see a lot of faces returning here. I can see the Swim burns back there. Great to see you guys. All sorts of folks coming back for the holidays. So great to see you all here this morning.
I want to start with a question. As we're in Christmas and the Psalms, I want to start with a question this morning. It might be a little odd, but I want to ask, what makes a song great?
I've got to back up just a little bit and maybe explain where this question came from. Dr. Kochenauer in the back here invited me to come down to HCU a few weeks ago to talk with some of the creative arts students there. And we're doing a little Q&A session and everything's going along just great. And all of a sudden, one of the students raises their hand and says, "Well, what makes a song great?"
And the band was stumped. I mean, it doesn't take a lot to stump the band here, but the band was stumped. I didn't know how to answer this thing. And I thought a lot about it and I keep on thinking about it. And so anytime I'm really trying to figure something out, I want to maybe break it down. And that kind of helps me understand things maybe a little bit better.
So I thought, well, the first thing we maybe need to do is define what "great" is, right? What's great? And you think, well, okay, we're going to say it's got to be Grammy award-winning. It's going to be on the charts for a certain period of time.
Maybe we're saying only if a song's been around for 100 years then we can consider it great, right? That seemed a little bit difficult to try to put some of those stipulations on there. So I thought, well, maybe we'll just use an average understanding of the word "great": superior, superb, above average. I thought that's probably a good place for us to start for the word "great."
Well, then we have to define what's a song. Maybe this is even a little harder. As we think about this as a musician, I think of this in really two categories. I think of an instrumental song, right, where you just have a melody, maybe some harmony involved, but just a melody of sorts.
What makes for a great instrumental song? In my estimation, as I thought about this a little bit further, there needs to be an emotional response—something that just kind of wells up within me. It's really hard to explain sometimes, but if you hear something that just moves you in a different way.
You guys are familiar with classical music. You guys are familiar with the classic song "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." If you've ever been to a wedding, you will hear this song, right? The bride and oftentimes the party will pick this song because it's just a beautiful song. It just elicits all this emotion of beauty and just sacredness in that moment.
Think about maybe a great movie score that you've seen. Have you ever tried to watch a movie with the sound muted? Right? "Braveheart," they're going into the battle, and it's like there's nothing there. It just kind of takes the legs out from underneath it, right? There's some sort of emotional response that's elicited for a great instrumental song.
Okay, well, what happens then if we add lyrics on top of it, right? What do we do? How are we going to define? We've got the layer of the instruments going on. What happens now if we add on this layer now of lyrics?
Well, in my estimation, there needs to be some sort of topic or idea or theme or something that's either stated in a new way or makes me think about it in a new way or something that I can really, at the bottom line, relate to. There needs to be something where I go, "I've always wanted to say it like that," or "I didn't know I could say that."
There was a song in the '80s. The band U2 came out with it. It smashed the charts: "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Right? It resonated with all these people because everyone's going, "Yeah, I've always wanted to say that. I'm looking for this thing, and I don't even know what I'm looking for." Right? So there's this relatability that makes a lyric song great.
All right, well, you might be asking yourself, what's that have to do with anything here this morning that we're going through? Well, we have been going through this Christmas in the Psalms series, and this morning we're looking at some specific songs from the ancient Israelite songbook, right? That's been around for a while, seeing how they tell the story of Jesus.
We've been looking at some Psalms, seeing how they tell the story of Jesus. This morning, we're going to look at a song that's really hung around for a few thousand years. Think about any hits today you think are going to be around maybe in a hundred years—probably not. This guy's lasted for thousands of years.
We don't have the original instrumentation or melody of this particular song, so we'll spend our time focusing on the lyric portion of it. Or in sermon speak, this is going to be our text for this morning.
Okay, so I think that as we get into this, we're going to see that this Psalm is both relatable, and also we're going to see glimpses of our Savior that we can fully relate to and, fortunately for our sake, relates to us in our condition.
Let's spend some time together praying before we look at our text.
Father, we are so grateful to be able to be here this morning together. It's a beautiful time of the year that we get to stop and pause and again consider the fact that You came to be with us. And we're so grateful, Lord, that You knew exactly what we needed before we were even aware of it. You knew what was going to need to be done in order to come rescue us. And so we're grateful, Lord, to be able to celebrate that today.
We're grateful to be able to look into Your Word to see what You might have to say to us. Would You allow us to open up our hearts and minds to hear from You this morning? Spirit, would You do Your work in ways that only You can through Your Word? We're so grateful for this time together this morning. Would You bless it now, we ask in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.
Well, we're going to be in Psalm 30 this morning. Hopefully, you've got your Bible. If you want to open up your Bibles to Psalm 30. If you don't have a Bible, we've got some in the back if you want a paper copy. If you've got your phone, I love my Bible app. I'm on that all the time. The challenge for me is not looking at my email when I'm on there on Sunday mornings. But if you want to check that out, that's good. It's going to be on the screen as well.
Would you, out of respect for God's Word, stand and join as we read together this morning from Psalm 30?
I will extol You, O Lord, for You have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried to You for help, and You have healed me. O Lord, You have brought up my soul from Sheol; You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O His saints, and give thanks to His holy name. For His anger is but a moment, and His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved." By Your favor, O Lord, You made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face; I was dismayed. To You, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord, I plead for mercy.
What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it tell of Your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me; O Lord, be my helper.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing Your praise and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to You forever. Amen.
You may be seated.
Well, we don't know a whole lot about the background of this song other than the fact that it was written by King David and that it was written for the dedication of the temple. Lots of scholars think that perhaps this was written around the time that he went and counted the army, which displeased the Lord. But for whatever it's worth, we don't have much more than this.
Other than what I think is interesting, there's a lot of universal themes here. It's not really tied to a specific event. For example, Psalm 51—we think of when David sinned with Bathsheba. The prophet comes and confronts him, and David recognizes and confesses and has this beautiful Psalm. Sometimes it was something like that.
I don't know about you, but I think about Psalm 51, and I'm thinking, "Yeah, okay, the next time I commit adultery and murder, I know what Psalm I'm going to read," right? That can be a little bit challenging on some of these things. Psalm 30 is a little more universal; it's a little more ambiguous, so to speak. It speaks in broader terms, and I think that that's going to be helpful for us this morning as we have an opportunity to look at our own situation, our own circumstances, and see how our lives line up with what's going on here.
We have really a common cycle that we're going to see here in this Psalm. David walks us through a few things, the first off being that—oops, I hit it twice. Sorry about that.
Rough circumstances. Verses one through three deal with just life, deal with rough circumstances, and we're going to look at that for just a second. Then David gets into the response to God's good saving work in verse four. He then goes down to a reflection on suffering in verses five through seven. We get a reminder that it's God and God alone that's rescuing and saving us in verses eight through ten. And then finally, David wraps up with the result of God's saving action in our lives.
We're alliterated—hey, Pastor Brent, be proud, right? Awesome. Okay, let's dive in a little bit further here on some of these things.
Rough circumstances. There's really three types of hardship, and if you think about life, what's that saying? You're either coming out of a trial, you're in the middle of a trial, or you're about to get into a trial, right? Life can be hard, and there's lots of stuff that can come our way.
David speaks of three types of hardship. The first one being in verse one: "I will extol You, O Lord, for You have drawn me up; You have not let my foes rejoice over me." David's got some real enemies here, right? A real enemy. He's got someone that's not only after him but wants to really just rejoice in being able to crush him. Whether it was the Philistines, whether it was King Saul, whether it was his own son Absalom, David had real enemies.
How many of us can relate to having a real enemy in our life that wants to come and provide hardship for us?
Verse two: "O Lord, my God, I cried to You for help, and You have healed me." I think the implication here is that he's in need of help or healing. Again, we don't know for sure if it's physical, mental, emotional—what kind of healing is needed—but David's here praying for God to come help and provide some healing that he needs.
The third thing that we see in verse three: "O Lord, You have brought up my soul from Sheol; You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit." This really is the third aspect of just desperation. David's really expressing desperation. You're basically saying that with ancient Sheol being hell, "I feel like I've gone through hell here."
How many of us can relate again on whatever circumstance that is? Whatever life throws at us, man, this feels like hell on earth. Whatever it may be, this is really, really a cry of desperation.
The great thing is that God eventually heals. And I put that parenthesis there on purpose—eventually heals. What I want to make sure that we're not thinking is, "Well, it's this kind of sitcom thing where there's a problem at the beginning, there's some sort of challenge, and then yay, by the end, 22 minutes later, we're all done and everything's fixed and healed up great. Yay!" That's not how life works.
We all know that well enough to know that that is not what God is talking about here. Hebrews 11—I think about that chapter of the great heroes of the faith—describing how most of these people never received the promise. They never received what God said, "This is going to happen." And yet they walked in faith, knowing that eventually God’s going to heal and do what He’s going to do in His good time.
I think it's important to make that distinction here that "eventually" can but doesn't always mean that God provides healings on this side of things. We can absolutely, though, bank on the fact that through Jesus, He's already provided the ultimate healing waiting for us in eternity.
I have the note up here to look at the Paul David Tripp devotional we've been going through this Christmas and devotional together as a church. One of the readings that came up just a little bit ago was super encouraging, and I thought very fitting for what we're talking about this morning. I just wanted to read a little portion of it to us.
"We have all been through tough moments of suffering when we wonder where God is and we're confused about what He's doing. If you read through the biblical narrative, you will soon have to let go of the conclusion that that hardship means that God is absent, distant, uninvolved, or uncaring. Behind dark clouds of difficulty is a God who is actively working for the good of His children."
I love this little phrase he has here: "God regularly takes His children to places they would have never planned to go to in order to produce in and through them things that they never could have produced on their own."
It's important to recognize that the workings of God's grace aren't always predictable or comfortable. Often when we think that grace has passed us by, God's grace is really at work, just not in the way that we would expect.
Again, Paul David Tripp goes on to describe some examples from Scripture where we see the Lord working through and creating things that we could never have produced on our own—incredibly hard and difficult situations.
All right, verse four then takes us to a response to God's work—a response to God's work in David's life: "Sing praises to the Lord, O you saints; give thanks to His holy name." It's very simple, straightforward. We stop and we worship and we praise and give thanks to God alone for all that He's done.
I thought it was an interesting thing that came to mind as an example of what not to do: the lepers in Luke 17, right? Jesus comes to heal them—the ten lepers—and they're all so excited. I can't blame them. They probably went off to tell everybody, "We're healed! We can actually come back now! We can do this!" And nine of them kept going, with that one going, "Wait a sec! I want to go back and thank and give praise to the one that's healed me."
Let's remember to sing praises to the Lord, O you His saints, and give thanks to His holy name. And I thought too, it's interesting—it's not just an individual thing; it's really a collective activity. "You, His saints." We do this together.
When we get together on Sunday mornings, we get to praise through our worship. We get singing; we get to praise through our time in the Word together. When you're with other brothers and sisters in Christ, you have an opportunity collectively to say, "Look what God’s been doing in my life. I might not have this all figured out, and I'm still in the woods, but look how He has worked this situation or this circumstance out."
It's one of the things that we can respond with.
There you have to deal with this anger from God. I had a college professor—we would have a lot of spiritual discussions. He was not a believer, and he said, "Jeremy, I gotta be honest. When I look at the God of the Old Testament, He just seems like a five-year-old that's always having a temper tantrum—just always mad, and I'm gonna do this."
And that was really, really a hard thing for him. But I would propose God's anger here that we're seeing in this passage really has to do with the basis of sin—the anger of sin. It's really a result of the original sin that was introduced back at the beginning.
Lots and lots and lots of ink and energy have been poured into this topic, so without getting too far into the weeds here this morning, I want to offer this abbreviated summary of things.
There's a perfect creation in Eden, right? It's altered by the introduction of sin. God then, in His holiness and righteousness, could not have sin in His presence, so anger is His right and correct response to this evil. Sin brings about death, both physical and spiritual, and God is righteously angry that His creation has been marred.
He's well aware that the wages of our sin—what we've earned, what we deserved—is death, and He also knows that sin brings suffering. Suffering is one of the natural consequences of sin in this world. It's not always due to something specific we did or didn't do, kind of like a karma thing, but it's just part of our human reality.
I'm reminded of the blind man that Jesus comes to heal. What's the first question that the religious leaders have? "Who sinned? Whose fault was this? What happened here?" And Jesus is like, "It wasn't anybody's fault, right? This is part of the condition." He says ultimately, "I did this so that I would be glorified."
But that's not this whole thing of, like, "There's going to be someone's fault for this." And I think that's important to note here.
The great part about this truth of God's anger is that it's not permanent. God's anger is not permanent. God's wrath or anger towards this sin is ultimately placed on Jesus a couple of thousand years ago, who was obviously the only perfect substitute that could take His place.
Because of Jesus, because of Jesus, because of His sacrifice on the cross, God's anger—in light of eternity—is but for a moment. We get to enjoy His favor for a lifetime in eternity.
Said another way, at the second half of this verse: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning." It's this beautiful poetic picture of our existence on earth here being our current night, while eternity with God is our morning that we all look forward to.
There's a danger that's introduced here in verse six. It says this: "As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved.'" Isn't it easy to deceive ourselves and think, "Okay, once I finally get this, once I finally prosper and accomplish that, then I'm going to be in a place where it's all taken care of. I've kind of just—we're good. I've kind of taken care of everything. I'll be all set."
And I'd ask, where's our true hope? Is it in our bank account? Is it in our contacts in our phone list? Is it in the next medical report that we're waiting to hear back and just praying it's going to be okay?
We see here, and David sees and helps us remind in verse seven, this is a great reminder and a great conclusion here: "By Your favor, O Lord, You made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was dismayed."
David gets it right: "By Your favor, You made my mountain stand strong." But then there's this interesting little thing here: "What about Your favor, O Lord? It's there, but then You hid Your face, and I was dismayed."
What's happening here? Does God turn His favor on and off? Is He just kind of flipping about? Does He randomly decide to show us His favor, resulting in good things, or then another time He decides to play this cosmic game of hiding the secret where He hides His face from us?
I would argue that perhaps it's more a matter of our perspective. The Lord isn't really changing or toggling His favor back and forth on things. This isn't some whim of His favor, or worse yet, based on our behavior and what we're doing. Somehow we could earn His favor or lose His favor in our life. I don't think so.
I think things can certainly feel dark and or alone, but we've seen enough examples in Scripture and our own lives to know that where we currently are is not the end of the story. It's not the end of the story.
Moving on to verse eight: "To You, O Lord, I cry, and the Lord I plead for mercy." Again, it's very straightforward and hopefully simple. David's proclaiming here there's ultimately one God, one supreme being that's able to ultimately take care of what we have.
There it is. And moving on to verse nine, this is an interesting question that David poses here: "What profit is there in my death? What profit is there in my death? What profit is there in my death? What profit is there in my death? What profit is there if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it tell of Your faithfulness?"
When I first was looking at this, it felt almost rhetorical, and then it almost felt like there was a little bit of—is David trying to manipulate God? Is he trying to hold Him hostage by saying, "Hey, look, if I'm dead, I mean, You want—you have to do this, right?"
And I think it was interesting. I went to do some study on this, and I found some help in enduringword.com, this commentary. I just want to share some of this. Again, this is from enduringword.com. Let me just read a couple of things that will help us hopefully understand what's going on here.
These words of King David may sound strange to someone familiar with the New Testament. It seems very different from the triumphant confidence of Paul, who said, "To live is Christ and to die is gain." David seems here to see no gain really in his death; therefore, he pleads with God to preserve his life.
Again, only a shadowy understanding of the afterlife is present in the Old Testament. It's not until the New Testament that God reveals more clearly the fate of those who trust God from this life to the next. David's looking at things from a pre-Jesus standpoint.
We in the New Testament, the new covenant, get the advantage of looking back and seeing the teachings of Jesus. Therefore, David logically and rightly, according to the revelation he had, only knew with certainty that he could praise God on this side of death. It was a valid question to bring before God in prayer.
Spurgeon adds, "It was an argument with God, an urging of reasons, a pleading of his cause. It was not a statement of doctrinal opinions nor a narration of experience."
Verse ten says, "Hear, O Lord; be merciful to me; O Lord, be my helper." Again, this is the bottom line. This is really what David's saying over and over and over again. He's crying out to the Lord for Him alone to be his helper, his redeemer, his rescuer.
And then we see in verses eleven and twelve the results of God's saving action in our lives: "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth; You've clothed me with gladness."
Again, look what God does for us! Look what He does for us! He takes what is broken, He fixes it, He mends the torn, He brings life to dead bones, He raises things from the dead. This is God's good work.
Verse twelve then goes on to say, "That my glory may sing Your praise and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to You forever." Again, a right and fitting response here. When we become aware of who God is and all that He has done and continues to do for us, our response should be that we sing His praise and not be silent, to be grateful and to give thanks to Him forever.
Well, we started here just a little bit ago with the question, "What makes a song great?" right? And I suggested that it was really the relatability of a song, especially a lyrical song—the relatability of something here.
And as we're looking here now in this season of Christmas in the Psalms, we want to see how we see Jesus in these Psalms. I want to modify this question just a little bit here. And so let's ask ourselves, as we're thinking things this morning, what makes a Savior great?
What makes a Savior great? And I would offer that same answer: it's relatability. It's a relatability. God, the maker of all things, who by His very Word spoke life into existence, by the very hush of His hand calms the storm. He could have done this whole redemption thing however He chose. An impossible amount of ways He could have done things.
But He chose, for whatever reason, to get down in the dirt with us. He chose to come and be one of us, to put that man suit on—100% man, 100% God—all at the same time, and come be with us.
Again, from arm's length, He could have just pointed His finger and made redemption somehow possible. He could have done whatever He wanted to do, but He decided to come be with us and relate to us.
Let's just talk and look at some of the things that He did and experienced that might be relatable for us, relationally speaking.
His people, the people He came to save—they embraced Him, right? Said, "Oh, thank you! You're so wonderful!" They killed Him, right? What kind of suffering is that? They killed Him! That His own people He came to save—they killed Him.
People in His circle, His disciples—Judas, obviously very easy. Peter, one of His best friends, right? He ends up just denying Him and saying, "I don't know the guy." How many of us have friends, family members, people that have stuck that knife in our back? He understands; He can relate to what that's like relationally.
He also can understand financially speaking. Here's the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. This is all His—everything. Everything's His. Yet He comes and He subjects Himself to being homeless, to being in a place that doesn't have a place to lie His head at night. He understands financial challenges.
He understands spiritual challenges. He's on the cross. What's He say? "My God, why have You forsaken me?" He understands what it feels like to have God turn His back. He understands; He gets that. He's been through that suffering.
He understands emotional suffering. He's in the garden of Gethsemane. He's so worried and consumed with what's about to happen, He's sweating blood, right? He understands that emotional suffering that we experience as humans.
And frankly, He understands what it's like to be tempted. This human temptation—you take food away from me for 40 hours, and then whiff a little bit of bread under my nose, I'm done, right? Jesus goes 40 days. He understands; He gets it. He understands and has walked that road that we walk.
There's a beautiful verse in Hebrews 4. It says this: "We don't have a high priest, Jesus, who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet He was without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
He experienced it all, right? What an encouragement! Isn't it great to know? It's like, again, He didn't come from arm's length, but He came to be with us.
There's a wonderful summation in another Psalm, Psalm 118. It says this: "The Lord is my strength and my song." We've been talking about songs this morning. "And He has become my salvation."
What makes it for a great song? Relatability. What makes for a great Savior? Relatability. And in this season, when we think about Emmanuel—God coming to be with us—I love it. Last week, when the kids reminded us during their program, I love that part where they all yell out, "God with us!" It's awesome!
But think about this again in this season of the year. When God comes to be with us, it's not like, "Well, yeah, there's some political figure or some politician or something like that."
It's not like, "Well, yeah, there's some famous person. They're in the same building with us." Famous person, they're in the same building with us. Famous person, they're in the same building with us. Yay! I kind of see their coat; maybe I don't know if that's them.
God's not arm's length distant. He is with us! There's a huge difference here. And we think about this time of year, and this is my prayer every year. It's easy for me, especially as a musician, December starts rolling around the counter, and I go, "Okay, here we go. It's going to get busy."
It's easy to just kind of want to pass and get through everything. But my prayer each and every year is this: "God, would You somehow in a fresh way allow me to see and understand and remember the magnitude of You coming to be with us?"
And that's my prayer this morning. I want to pray that now as we wrap up our time.
Lord Jesus, would You do what only You can do this Christmas season? I know sometimes this can be a time of challenge and pain and all sorts of things. But as we consider Your goodness to us, as we consider what You've done for us, as we consider that You came, left heaven, left perfection, left all these things, and came to be with us, may we worship You well.
May we give thanks. May we say thank You for coming to be our healer, our helper, our Savior. Father, thank You so much for giving us exactly what we needed, even though we had no idea that was our great need. We're so thankful for this time this morning. Continue to speak and lead us as You will. In Your Son's name, we pray.
on Dec 22, 2024
