Psalm 116 - How does God meet us in our need, and put our broken pieces together? "Today is a song, it's a prayer to God...when we see on the other side, what's happened..."
Faith Baptist Church
A Psalm of Thanksgiving, 6.23.24
Well good morning. Happy summer. Well I want to correct some rumors going around. We've not had a guest speaker lately. This is still Pastor Rob. So I know some of you haven't been quite sure about that. Well it's good to be here. It's good to gather as a church to sing these songs, to take that moment throughout the week to remind ourselves of some really important things. And we've been going through the Psalms this summer. We've been looking at three core Psalms that are in the Bible. I'd call them categories of Psalms. And the first one is when life looks like this. We see what God has made out in the world and we say wow. It looks really good. We look at creation and we say wow what God has put together. And then and we have situations in our life like that as well. Right. Beautiful day. The family's getting along. All right. And then there's times where the story goes from once upon a time to and suddenly, right. And then all of a sudden it rips like this. We say well that's not how it was meant to be. And then it rips again like this. And we say uh oh. All right. All of a sudden we have these pieces in life. And we see the gaps in between them. And we start to fall in the gaps. And we looked at a Psalm last week but Psalms of disorientation it's called. When things just don't seem right. Say does it fit together like this or like this. And I want to show you our next slide here. I was thinking about our logo as a church. Our logo as a church is made up of four pieces. And we see how the cross connects these broken pieces. And so in our logo we have four pieces and in the outline of those four pieces. What do you see? You see the need for a cross don't you. A cross to connect it all together. And that's what we're looking at today. Psalms of reorientation. When everything seems wrong. God steps in. And everything gets fixed. And so we see God apply a little work here into our lives. And we're still in this process between now and when Christ comes a second time. Where God's putting the pieces together. Okay. As we're falling on the gaps. I hope you find the cross. All right. And so to put this together. I didn't trust myself to actually do this on the spot. We see God putting those pieces back together. And so today is a song. It's a prayer to God. And when we see on the other side what's happened. And in some ways in your life you see some things that have come together. I'm sure He has a testimony. Or you've seen this intervention. And yet I guarantee you there's spaces in your life you're still waiting for this. Right. All of creation is waiting and groaning for when Christ will make all things right. And put all things together. When it really looks like all along that's what it was meant to be. Was to be a reflection of the character. The nature. A relationship with this God who loves His creation dearly. And so turn with me to Psalm 116 today. I've split this Psalm into three parts. Each centered around the appearance of a term of salvation. Which in Hebrew is pronounced Yeshua. Which translated becomes Jesus. And so this first section is where we are crying out for Yeshua in salvation. And it begins with a very peculiar way to start a Psalm. The first words out of His mouth is I love the Lord. Often those are not the first words out of our mouth. Are they? And yet this person has a love for the Lord. A deep love as you look at the Psalm. This word for love it's not the most common word for love in the Old Testament the most common word is a word named Hestid which is a loving kindness and that's often a type of love that God demonstrates towards people. This is a love that's more of a responsive love. It's the second most used word for love and it is an intense emotional connection an intense emotional response. And so God loves us first. And then we respond with I love the Lord. And why does this person love the Lord? Says because for He heard my voice the Hebrew here it hasn't more of a present tense. He hears my voice. As I am falling in the gap of the broken pieces of this world we have a God who hears. He hears you out of 8 billion people on the planet. It's a God that hears your heart and your thoughts. He hears your pleas and cries for mercy as the scripture continues. And he doesn't hear it out of the good things you've done or out of your own merits. The term mercy here describes something we deserve that God is not giving. We have a need for mercy. Verse 2 continues because he turned his ear to me. And so I will call on him as long as I live. For this person God had earned his trust given a situation in his life that God had brought him out of. He realizes any other one of those rips in the paper he's going to turn to God with for the rest of his life. And here's the situation. He recaps it in the past tense. That's what makes this a song of thanksgiving is he's looking in backwards on it. He's no longer in this situation. In verse 3 it says that the chords of death entangled me. The anguish of the grave came over me. I was overcome by distress and sorrow. Everything was falling into pieces for this guy. And the greatest problem of all death was staring him in the face. And then it says then I called on the name of the Lord. He said Lord save me. In other words Lord yeshua me. Because I'm falling in this chasm that has to be filled with the cross. Otherwise I'm toast. That's the dependence he had. In verse 4 it says he calls on the name of the Lord. This word for name is one of my favorite words in Hebrew. It means a reputation. A proven character. The name of something isn't just what we call it but what it represents about that person. So it's the reputation. The branding. You trust this brand. You trust the brand of the Lord. And I love this word because in Hebrew there's one little letter added onto this word that is the word for the Son. And if you think about what the Son is we know it based on what it exudes. It's the experience. The effect it has on creation. And so I love how in the Hebrew culture they would view the son of the son above. Something that's brilliant and marvelous. So much so that you can barely look at it. So much so that it's still filled with wonder and mystery. But they look to God in that same way. And that is where he looks. And here are some of the rays of sunshine he sees in verse 5. It says that the Lord is gracious. The Lord is righteous. Our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the unwary. This word unwary is the term. He protects the simple. This word mainly appears in the Proverbs as someone who's foolish and simple and low. It's not someone who's got it all put together. But when the simple cry out to God he promises to be there. He continues, "When I was brought low, he saved me. When he was falling into the gap of those ripped papers, God yeshed him. He fell upon the cross which proved to be solid ground." Verse 7, "Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you." What a great scripture. Don't we all want more rest in our souls? The person here is talking to himself. He's saying you used to have rest and then you lost it. You've fallen into this chasm of restlessness. He's talking to himself saying, "Return to your rest, O my soul." Why? Well, because the Lord has yeshed with him. He showed his goodness to him. How? How has he showed his goodness? Well, it says, verse 8, "For you, Lord, because you, Lord, have delivered me from death." Amen. It's okay to say amen sometimes when you see something that's true. You brought my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I might walk in the presence and the face of God forever. Your eternity is locked in when you place your faith in Jesus Christ. So return to rest. Tell yourself that. Say it with me. Return to rest, okay? Return to rest. Return to rest. Let your soul rest. There's far too much restlessness in the world. And restless people do stupid stuff. Amen. All right, all right. I'm liking this. I'm liking this. But a restful heart, a soul at rest is unshakable, right? A heart is firmly rooted here is at rest. And on a Sunday morning, we get those reminders hopefully every week to rest our hearts. So Yeshua arrives for this person. He sees who it is that's putting the pieces together. And in verse 10, we see a response to this Yeshua. He begins by saying, I had trusted in the Lord when I said, I am greatly afflicted. In my alarm, I had said, everyone else is a liar. This person, when they had lamented out to God, he was saying, I did that out of trust because I trust that God is a God who hears my voice. And God is a God who responds with Yeshua for those who cry out to him. This passage is repeated over in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 13. And I want to read this to you. It says, quoting this passage, it is written, I believe, therefore, I have spoken. Since we have the same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak. In other words, in the broken pieces in your life, we are placing faith that the cross is going to connect those pieces through a God who hears. Verse 14 of 2 Corinthians 4 continues, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. And all this is for your benefit so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore, we do not lose heart. For though inwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are attributing for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. And in our last verse, so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Continuing in verse 12, this is a great question for us today. Since we have this hope, since we are placing our faith in this cross, what shall we then return to the Lord for all His goodness to me? What a great verse. You see, God returns to us our rest so that we can return the rest of our lives to Him. What can we give to Him that He has not already given to us? What can we give to the Creator that He has not created? You see, God owns everything and owes nothing, and we owe everything and own nothing. And in verse 13, and on it shows our responsive thanksgiving, a response of just awe and wonder. It says, "I will lift up the cup of salvation, I will lift up Yeshua, and I will call on the name, His reputation and character of the Lord." Verse 14, "I will fulfill my vows to the Lord and the presence of all His people." In other words, I am going to live a life out of thanks. For you know, it was precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His faithful servants. And truly, I am one of your servants, O Lord. I serve you just as my mother did. You have freed me from my chains. Jesus has freed us from our chains. Verse 17, "So I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord and the presence of His people and the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst of Jerusalem." And it ends with the Hebrew word hallelujah, which we translate as praise the Lord. This is a psalm that was traditionally sung by the Jewish people after Passover. It was part of the hallelujah psalms, the hallelujah psalms from 113 to 118. And after they would finish a Passover supper celebrating how God had delivered them from Egypt, they would sing these psalms as a way of saying hallelujah, which hallelujah means to praise, to shine forth, and yeah, short for Yahweh. Hallelujah, hallelujah, praise God. In other words, they're doing what verse 13 says, and I will lift up the cup of my Yeshua and my salvation. And so Jesus most likely would have sung this hymn with His disciples on the night that He was betrayed and went to the house. And as the Seder's Supper goes, they take cups. And as Jesus did, He took a cup that we celebrate in the Lord's table. He takes a cup after the Supper and says, "This is my blood poured out for you. This is the cup of Yeshua. This is the cup of my salvation." And I am offering it to you. And the proper response to that is to say, "Thank you, God." The proper response to that is how this song all started, "I love the Lord because He has loved me with such a great love." The response is to say, "Return to rest, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to me." The response is to say, "What shall then I return to the Lord? What could I possibly give?" If those are not your responses, we'll go to this last slide. If those are not your responses, if you are not saying in your heart those three things. I love the Lord. Lord, you've given my soul rest. Lord, what can I return in thanking you with my life? If those are not your responses then maybe you need to take the cup of salvation of Yeshua and drink a little more deeply today. And our worship and our preaching of the Word and our fellowship as believers, we are taking this as a reminder every week and drinking deeply so that we might say, "I love the Lord." We might say that the Lord has been good to me. Now we might say, "What can I return to my Yeshua?" If this has stirred something in your heart for maybe the first time, please talk to me or in our welcome center, talk to someone. We'll connect you to a person here that can share their testimony with you, share with you this Yeshua, this Jesus, this salvation, this cross. And if you've accepted that already, then return to your rest of church. Return to your rest. Let's continue. I love you, Lord, because you hear my voice. I rest in you, Lord, for you have been good to me. And I give back to you the rest of my life. That I might proclaim and lift high and exalt with a loud hallelujah with my life that I might show the world, the cross that puts the pieces back together. May we have the same response as the Psalmist. And may we see the same salvation that he saw. In Jesus' name, we thank you. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]