April 16, 2017

Let me begin this morning by reading the scripture for our sermon. We are finishing up a series based on Psalms. And so we're looking at some 16 this morning and psalm 16. David says keep me safe my God for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord you are my Lord apart from you. I have no good thing. I say of the Holy people who are in the land. They are the most noble ones in whom is all my delight those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out Libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips Lord. You alone are my portion and my cup you make my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in Pleasant places. Surely. I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord who counsels me even at Night My Heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord with him at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore. My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices my body also will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead nor will you let your faithful one see Decay you make known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal Pleasures at your right hand. Psalm 16 is quoted in Acts to the first Christian sermon preached by St. Peter at the beginning of the church and it's a sermon that proclaims the good news of God's plan and raising Jesus and those who believe in him from the dead and so even though we don't traditionally think of a song as an Easter Sermon text. It is actually maybe the most Easter Sermon text because the very first Easter the very first sermon for climbing the resurrection Peter preached from acts 16 and quoted this song this song David the author of this song is embracing and unshakeable refuge in God. That's what this song is all about. And that's a theme that is present throughout scripture. I can preach a whole separate sermon on the life of David which was an amazing life both with blessings and challenges and heartbreak and hardship. In the context of that life this song He's celebrating the wisdom of embracing God as his Refuge. You can look at Hebrews chapter 11 and 12 and it kind of reviews the lives of many Saints and the wisdom they had in pursuing a path to defined and live a life based on a foundation that's unshakeable and permanent. And that's the wisdom that David model since this song because the reality is the wise have observed that this world doesn't have permanent foundations up until a hundred fifty years ago. All of science would have said that matter was eternal and permanent. But now all of the best science points to the fact that matter itself will not last forever. You have heard references to the sun ending one day the universe closing in myself because it's going in that direction but matter itself will not be sustained. Eternally. There is not even a physical foundation in this world that is permanent and unshake Given enough time all of it will evaporate and end. One author said it this way if nature is all that exists if there is no God human civilization will have been an accidental Flicker and there will be no one even to remember it. But the whole thing even if it lasted for billions of years must be so infinitesimally short in relation to the oceans of Deadtime with precede and follow it. The world has no intellectual foundations that are unshakable and permanent. I mean, the reality is the philosophies of human thought our kind of overturned sometimes with disdain and even violence every 48 years things that were published twenty years ago that were considered Cutting Edge thinking are now looked at as an embarrassment and wrong and they need to be stretched out of history. And the reality is in another 40 or 80 years things that that that are said today on the editorial pages of newspapers. All these are the things are the best thoughts ever. They will be looked at with disdain and ridicule and stupidity. Our descendants will look at things that we believe it said how can they have believed that? There are many human philosophies and Foundations and convictions that don't have eternity to them that don't have a foundation that aren't on shakeable. And even this world has no emotional foundations. This life will take away everything eventually. I mean the reality is that friendships family health wealth career. They are not unshakable Eternal foundations. And while we are tempted at time to make those things ultimate. I cannot sustain that weight. They are not foundations in an of them self James one talks about that how there's a human. There's a limitation to humanity that our lives are like a flower that's here and blooms but Withers and goes away. David knows these truths that if he tries to build his life on a foundation of this world or of the philosophies of humans or of even those things like family and career and success that they won't hold the weight of being asked to be eternal. Doesn't mean those things aren't important and that they shouldn't be pursued and that they aren't viable and they can't be treasured what it means is they can't be ultimate. I can't be our God because even the best of families can evaporate even the best of marriages can end even the most wonderfully successful career. Cannot satisfy our souls David acknowledges this reality in human life, and he wants to be more than simply a wave upon the sand. More than just being here and gone with nothing Eternal and that's what he's crying out for in this song this Refuge that's on shakable and internal we need a life anchored in a love and I refuse that cannot be shaken taken or terminated and this song points in that direction because David reflects upon the limitations of humanity. It says God, you know what they're not going to last are they all these things that we would be tempted to make ultimate in our life. The truth is and David if you know his life, he knows he lived a life in which he got. Everything is some seasons in his life. He would have to look at his life and said I have everything I could have ever dreamed of or wanted. I am king of the world in which I was born. I have riches and wealth and family everything he could have longed for the ra seasons is life that he would have had them set. I've got it all. I've succeeded in every possible Eric and because he lived this full and Rich life both full of highs and lows of Glorious closest to God and heart-breaking life crushing send that debilitated him because he lived that sort of life. He had this sort of wisdom in the song when he said, you know what those things can't be ultimate. Can they They can be good and treasured and valuable X family and relationships and so forth, but they can't be ultimate only God. Can be the ultimate thing only God can bear that way of being the foundation in my life that is unshakable and permanent and total in this song He points Us in the direction of how to move toward the ultimate verse for David processor reflect upon an answer this question. What is it that we run after?

What is it that you run after?

What is the ultimate in your life? What do you pursue with? Abandon David sees the false gods that others run after he talks about those who pursue those false gods and says look all that leads to is just suffering up on suffering when you're going down this dead-end path toward these other false gods. And we might be tempted at times to say well, of course they had false gods. They had a god of harvest or God of wealth or God of fertility and they they literally worship these false gods but we have moved far beyond that, right? Wrong, I think we may not have the statues or had this literal conversation or have a rethink if there's a God of wealth or God of career, but we still sometimes run after those things and we make them Altima in our lives. And so they become Gods to us. Put all our eggs in that basket. If only I could get this person to like me and possibly marry that all my life would just be complete and full. If only I could get this degree or this career if we could just have one more kid in the family would be rounded up. If only if only and sometimes we can make all these different things which are things in of themselves sometimes but we can wrongly make them the ultimate in our life and David acknowledges that false path and we run after these things as well that word of the Hebrew run means to pant so it is this long as if I've got to have this to be satisfied and part of the lesson is be careful what you wish for because even those lucky few who get everything they want like King David can testify to his own life. Sometimes those folks who get all the money they've ever wanted to get the dream spouse that they wanted to get the career that unfolds just the way they imagined it was going to unfold stay still. Sometimes sadly later in life that even with all those wishes granted. Those things are not permanent. They are not unshakable. And suddenly they realize. I put all my eggs in the wrong basket. I'm just going to be a wave upon the sand. This flower that's here and then gone and David in The Amazing Life. He have came to this wisdom and challenges us to learn from him what it means to follow the permanent and the unshakable foundations of God himself. So here's the lessons he gives us David was very deliberate in following God. You can't just assume it's going to happen. You can't just mean well or wish well or say, I'll go to church when I have time or I'll read my Bible every now and then and all of it will just kind of threw happenstance and we'll just kind of fall in place David learned through life itself, but that won't work. That you have to make this choice to very deliberately and intentionally follow God. Because the adversary and this world will constantly wave and yell and seek your attention and say over here over here. Right. What was the movie?

If I know that one.

Some of you know that movie. The world is like that. It could be this constant distraction and invite us to look away from those things that are Eternal and unshakable. So you have to be delivered and intentional about following God's because there are so many things that will say. Hey hey. Hey, hey, hey get this promotion. If you can just get this money. If you can just get this fast. If you can just get this home, you will feel that god-shaped hole in your soul and we get deceived and so David learned that he must be very intentional and deliberate about following God. He said inverse to I say to the Lord you are my Lord apart from you. I have no good thing. There's nothing really true or good and Lasting except those things of God himself. And then it bursts Bobby says Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup David is talking about running after God's not simply doing religion. Those are very different things. Look here is the test for you is the order gets reversed. If you want to know if you're running after these things, but only giving God a place in your life. Here's the test. If you've got the order reversed and you lose one of these things and you're angry at God. That shows the order if you lose your job and you say to God, what is the deal? I have followed you Faithfully all of my life and how can I have my career in like this? Guess what? God wasn't first that thing was first and God was a means to an end in your life. If the doctor gives you tragic news or your spouse says it's over and you say God, how can you allow this to happen? Then your health or your family was your God and God was simply a means to an end. David learned all those lessons the hard way through a life. That was a roller coaster that the only ultimate life. The only eternal life is to run after God first and foremost where God is your ultimate because of God is your ultimate. Guess what then your ultimate in life can never be shaken can never be taken from you. Your Alderman and life will be permanent. You can know that I stand in this life on a foundation that cannot be moved. Even if other parts of my life would go in a direction in a way that I never imagined never wanted that direction. That was heartbreaking not in the last I can say I can stand on the foundation. That is God and his life. That's what David had to learn through his life to pursue God intentionally. I say to the Lord. You are my Lord apart from you. I have no good thing Lord. You alone are my portion and my cup Packer said ask God for a joy not connected to events. but to himself think about the wisdom of that thought. If you have a joy in your life that is not connected to events. But to God himself then you have an unshakable immovable permanent joy in your life. I don't know about you, but the adversary easily tricked me into attaching my joy, two things of this world to my health or my bank account or my relationships or my goals and as they go my spirit goes But David says no make the ultimate in your life. God himself.

Get your joy from God not those event as if those words weren't remarkable enough David goes on to pain even more remarkable words in the song. He says they're for my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead nor will you let your faithful one see decay? You make known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal Pleasures at your right hand. They be the saying this is an amazing thing for an Old Testament writer to say they'd be the same the love relationship I have of God is so strong. I cannot believe that he will even let death separate us. That's an amazing proclamation of the Old Testament because the Jewish worldview said there was no such thing as Resurrection not in the middle of Life. There might be this Grand Resurrection at the end of all time and which there's judgment and the right just get the rewards and others don't but there is no Resurrection right in the middle of life. Every David to go against everything the culture and the world and even his religious convictions in the Jewish community in the Hebrew Community to say, you know what this is what the holy spirit this is what God has inspired me to pain. I put my trust in God. I believe that I can trust even my body. And it's securing him that he won't let me see Decay. He won't leave me in the grave because of who he is this amazing trust that David exemplified in this song. Stand out in the Old Testament. He's also saying that he believes God's Destiny for those who trust him is eternal relationship and pleasure. It's interesting. There's really no other religion. If you compare world religions that speaks of God as one who takes the kind of pleasure in humanity that the biblical God does. Meaning of the creation stories in other religions are all founded in God's who are battling together and out of this conflict or this battle. There's this world that comes about or the world is created to serve that God does that God is authoritative but it's interesting in Christianity you get this image of God that we talked about this before we fight three chairs on this on the stage and Genesis one where God says, let us make Humanity in our image the language there is this overflow of love and fellowship that exists between the father Son and Holy Spirit another unique aspect aspect of Christianity where there's this Unity yet. Also this relationship between Father Son and Holy Spirit. Let us make Humanity in our image is this invitation is the three of us are loving life with pull up more tears left expand. Let's create other beings in our image like us so that we could no fellowship and relationship and joy and love with them. And David says, you know not only do I believe that my that God loves me and I love him and I trust him that I won't see decay in the grave. Not only that. I believe I will live eternally with God. It'll be this eternal life. That's full of pleasure. I'm thrilled to have me with him and thrilled for me to be full of joy not this guy who Lords it over. And says I'm God, you'll serve me even Jesus said those radical things when he said I didn't come to be served. But to serve and to give my life as a ransom for others. CS Lewis talks about pleasure and is amazing in his inside and this is a thick kind of quotes. I want to go through it kind of slowly, but think about the inside that he had when he thinks about you and pleasure. He says the faint far-off results of those energies, which God's creative Rapture in planted in matter when he made the world's are what we now call physical pleasure. He points to this true that you see in Genesis 1:26 and you can look at it another passages to wear in God creating the world. He was full of joy this Rapture to use the word Lewis uses just so thrilled to say puns and ducks and make a platypus in God when he created everything. So he kept saying in Genesis right when he would create something when we do about every 24 hours. He would say it's good shake these different color flowers, which is filled an entire field with a more close to the ground and some that grow really tall that grow on trees.

It's good. It's good to make some water. Bill parsley Earth of water make animals that live in the water. So they have all this time and sharks porpoise. Things are crawling along the bird that fly in the air from tree to tree from Mountain Top to Mountain Time.

So that they can enjoy this just like we do and they can enjoy one another the way we enjoy one. Another Garage on 15th. Jesus is talking about. Hey, here's what it's all about father. I brought your lost children back to you so that they could know you the way I know you that they could love you the way I love you and you can love them the way you love me and they can love each other the way we love each other. That's what it's all about. The Lewis says there's this amazing joy that God had when he created the world and it's what we call those little faint Echoes of that. Joy and what we think of as physical pleasure some of that Joy said God took when he created everything kind of Steve doubt and remains in the universe. It's what we call physical Pleasures. He continues the faint far-off results of those energies with God's creative Rapture and planted in matter. We made the world or what we now call physical pleasure. Even the filter. They're too much for our present management. Now again, almost like the life of King David that could be a whole sermon and of itself that Louis had that inside there's these wonderful things. We call physical Pleasures their Echoes of what God knew the joy he knew when he created the world and that's awesome. But the truth is even these little Echoes are so Grand that we really even though they're filter to us. Our experience of them isn't pure firsthand as filtered down just a little glimpse of what God knew even then. It's too much for us to handle, right? Have humans ever become addicted to physical pleasure.

If we ever liked them so much that we just couldn't handle them properly. I mean New York cheesecake. I should have a single piece to go to the doctor, but I'll have three Easter lunch and I'll have another roll of those are good.

And you can go across the Spectrum from sex to addiction to ambition. In and of itself Pleasures are good. And this echo of God's original pleasure and created the world but even filtered we struggle to manage them properly it so God in his wisdom and his word warns us about managing them properly Louis continues. He says what would be what would it be to taste at The Fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches proved so intoxicating yet that I believe is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink Joy from that Fountain of joint Louis says what we call physical Pleasures are left over from God's joy and creating the world and even that little Echo, sometimes it's too much for us to manage but it is what would it be like if we know the echo of the moment when we when we when we hold our newborn child for the first time and we just tear up we just think I could there's there can be No Greater Joy one thing about holding a baby on the way you whenever I'm holding a baby. I just think there's nothing more important I can be doing. There's just a Complete peace. You can just hold that baby. You know what everybody else could just do whatever they did. I am completely at one with a person with everything because it's such pleasure. the appropriate pleasures of marriage and intimacy those things are wonderful wonderful things that God created intentionally for us to enjoy he created us with taste buds to take them by that cheesecake and say all that's awesome. We just get in trouble when we go too far. But Lewis says look those Echoes that are so amazing. So amazing. What will it be like one day? And not just experienced that echo of the pleasure God created us to know but to be at the very Fountain Head itself to be in God's presence not just a no pleasure because there's a remnant of him left in this world where he created it but to be in his very present and that's exactly what David says it at first. He says I will be in your presence and there is a language I will be face-to-face with you. It's that thing that God told Moses with Moses that I want to see you face to face. God said you don't If you saw me face-to-face right now unfiltered, it would be more than you could bear. And so I'll just pass by you can get a little glimpse. I believe that God doesn't reveal himself completely now because it would overwhelm our free will. People wonder why God doesn't just show up in person in the sky right now, but he's giving us the opportunity to choose any gives us enough Revelation to know and to choose of her own free will but not so much that were overwhelmed. Another flipping Sue refers to that moment one day when Jesus will appear in Philippians 2 says when that day happens every knee will bow every tongue will confess. I don't I don't picture that is this day the way some preachers do where Jesus shows up and he says I'm here everybody on your knees. I believe he shows up and he's so amazingly beautiful that that's just a response. the weight we cry during some songs or or when we hold a baby and we just And we say the Earth starts why you crying something wrong? It's just so right. It's just all right, unfiltered view of him and vision him every knee will bow and every tongue will confess he is Lord. Is Lord & Taylor's Pointe into that possibility? even in the Old Testament that I believe I won't see death because of God's love for me because when you love someone you will do whatever is within your power to keep that love relationship going once you And so if death threatens our love love relationship of God the Father guess what God is omnipotent.

And he has the power to Fort even death. And so as Peter said and ask wicked men killed this Christ to Cayman. At Miracles proof that he was from God. He was killed but death could not hold him. Because God the father that you're not going to hold him up from the grave Christ arose at the word and the will of God the father and David's even Point into that. Peter in Acts 2 when he interprets the song he says someone greater than David a greater David Jesus was not abandoned and is now at the right hand of God so that those who believe and trust in him will not see death. That's how Peter interprets and preaches that passage. He said when David said hey God so great and the love relationship is so great. That death won't get ahold of us. Peter said that's right and the full revelation of this song. Is it referring to Christ and Christ did not see that God raised him from the grave fill that he sits at the right hand of the father and if he sits at the right hand of the father those who trust in him will not see death. But like David dared to Hope Peter says not just hope it has come true. It has come to this is the gospel. But Jesus came on the father's behalf to do the father's will that he became sin for us 2nd Corinthians 5? The one who knew no sin became sin so that we might be redeemed and reconciled and restored to God the father so that we could be in his presence so that we could know him forever and know those Pleasures for which he's designed us forever. That's what Easter is all about celebrating the resurrection and what it means. A British scholar and I'm going to invite the worship team to come Ford a British scholar named and Wilson. Who is an atheist for years continued to study Christianity as an atheist and then instead in Christianity he converted? Part already converted on was the reality of the Resurrection there was so much evidence. Even the fact that you know, sometimes we look back is kind of what crop CS Lewis calls chronological snobbery. Sometimes we look back and say well, of course, we are smarter than any generation that lived before us up, of course those Jews and the early church and those who believe in Christ, they had superstitions and they believed in folklore. We are people of science. We are so much Superior and often that chronological snobbery is really simply incorrect. You could probably make a case that the average Jewish boy or girl growing up was far more educated than we are today. There was no Xbox. There was no television and television applies to all of us adults. So I'm not picking on kids cuz am I speaking the truth? They studied all of their life. They started not only religion but philosophy. I saw the way we think I'll were sophisticated. We can't leave the resurrection. That's a crazy thing to believe in. We know better than that Jewish culture would have been raised to have said we can't believe in the resurrection. I mean some Scholars say maybe at the end of times but no Resurrection at the end of life. That doesn't make sense that a human could be gone that that Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing good comes out of Nazareth that he believed that they had as many obstacles as you and I do to believe in the resurrection. And yet thousands and thousands dip. Ian Wilson said we can easily dismissed Easter as a fairy tale, especially if we hide from ourselves the uncomfortable fact that the first men and women who claim to be witnesses to Easter were prepared to be tortured and to die horribly rather than to Die the Risen Christ.

You have to believe that they saw. What they said they saw.

the Risen Lord

The echo but David hinted at in Psalm 16 proclaimed as full trumpet blast on the first Easter that it is true that those who trust in God will not see death their bodies will not see Decay instead. They will be resurrected to eternal life to Pleasures every more Evermore in fellowship and relationship with God the Father.

I invite you this morning to believe in the resurrection. If you don't believe in the resurrection, I invite you to believe there is plenty of evidence for the resurrection.

I personally believe that it takes more turning off of my mind to reject the truth of Christianity than it does to embrace it there so much evidence both historically and in documents and books and also in transformed lives and transformed cultures and continents in the world.

Buy challenge you to believe in the resurrection. When we sing this song in just a moment. I challenge you to make the decision. If you've not done it to accept Jesus as your lord. If you believe already that I challenge you to imagine what it would be like to be 10 or 20 times more sure. Because you can't be. You can be. That when David calls us to base our life on God as the ultimate in our life to run after him. He's inviting us to the best life ever. That we would have this ultimate Foundation. I love how Joe Ben's and will end on this scripture Jobe. If you read the book of Job is an amazing story just like David you can go through all the scriptures and find amazing stories that all lead back to Christ as God's love expressed and God's promise fulfilled job after losing everything and being challenged by Prince to reject God because all these things that are supposed to be ultimate released testimonies that you're good with God because all these things are good in your life. They were gone and Jobe still trusted God in the midst of that hardship job said I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end, he will stand on the Earth again and amazing statement in the Old Testament before the time of Christ that Joe had this inside of the spirit was leading him and after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh. So Job saying in a way, none of us right now can't understand my life. We'll both end and yet it won't end. I will see God. Then he continues I myself will see him with my own eyes. I and not another how my heart yearns Within Me. As we seeing here in just a moment. The invitation is to celebrate that Joy Of Who Christ is God's love expressed to you to realize that the cross and the resurrection is God's love expressed to you. And I realize that it's an invitation to accept what he's provided for us to be restored to him and redeemed so that we can live with him forever and know the pleasures of this relationship. He designed us to have forever pleasure that we just get an echo of now that one day will be so great.

overwhelming

Will describe it as heaven? That's what it would be like to be with him. I'll be in the back if any decisions are pretty to come back there and find me. I'll be standing in the back will be folks in the front and the back for prayer. If you have prayer concerns, please stand as we sing this song.