The Lord is Good

reading that account of Abraham is when you look at what faith was in that situation, it's so extraordinary. None of us have, I'm confident in saying, none of us have ever been called to do anything comparable in terms of magnitude to that. Now, all of us have been called to live by faith, but never with those terms. And yet Abraham had real faith. Now I want to ask you, Do you think that what Abraham did with Isaac was abnormal for Abraham to do? Meaning, do you think that this was the only example we have of Abraham living by faith? No, I don't think so. Because scripture teaches us that those who are faithful with small things will be faithful with big things. And what we see in this account of Abraham and his son is a big thing. And it's fair for us to reason back and to say, I bet he was faithful with small things that led up to that. Was he perfect? Nope.

There were things that Abraham didn't have faith about. He had faith to leave Haran, but he didn't have faith to claim Sarah as his wife when he was going through a foreign land. And so Abraham is the father of faith, and even his faith wasn't perfect yet. What I want us to do this morning is to continue on in this study of what it looks like to live by faith in our lives. But I want to move away from the extraordinary, the sort of thing that Abraham was called to, because that, in some ways, that can show us sort of the upper end. But most of us aren't living at the upper end. I dare say any of us are living at the upper end. Each one of us is living our normal day-to-day lives, and yet we're called to live by faith, the same faith that Abraham had. So I want to take our time today to look at what's it look like to live by faith in a normal day, not in some extraordinary circumstance. It's often a set of men, they say, oh, I'd die for my wife. And we say, good, but will you take your shoes off at the door and not track mud through the house?

I'm glad you'd take a bullet for her. I'm glad you love her that way. Would you love her in this other, more simple, daily way? So that's the approach we're going to be taking to living by faith in our study of Scripture this morning. We're going to be studying Psalm 100. We're going to see in that passage, ultimately, God's faithfulness. And what I hope, what I want you to know is that in this psalm, as we come to the end of it, you're going to see the goodness and the faithfulness of God. This psalm has often been a comfort and an encouragement to me to live by faith, and I hope that by the end of our time today, it'll serve that same purpose for you. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Psalm 100 says, This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Now when you come to this passage, if I were to ask you to go through these five verses and say,

What type of statements do you find in this psalm? What you'd undoubtedly come away saying is, there's lots of instructions. There's lots of exhortations. There's lots of commands. Shout joyfully to the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. Enter his gates with thanksgiving. Give thanks to him and bless his name. That is the majority of this psalm. It's simple, do this. There are other parts that we'll come to in... and look into as we work through the text. But the majority of this psalm is instruction. It's exhortation. It's command. It's telling us what to do. And though there are many particular exhortations, do this, do this, do this, do this, I don't intend to go through each one of them, but rather to take them as a whole, since they're so closely related to each other. And the particular exhortations are not hard to understand. If it says, shout joyfully to the Lord, come before him with joyful singing, that the vast majority of you, even down to the two and three-year-olds that are in here, can grasp what that means. And so the problem in this psalm is not understanding what we're supposed to do. There's plenty of instructions. They're all sort of first-shelf sort of instructions that we all understand. Come into his presence with thanksgiving. We say, oh, I know what that is. So what are we supposed to learn from this passage? Well, if it's not the particular substance of these exhortations,

There must be something more to it, and that's what I want to spend our time talking about. So I want to start by asking you this question. What goes on in your heart when you hear these expectations, these exhortations, these commands? Do you hear them as expectations? Do you hear them as demands from God? Do you hear them as requirements? Or do you hear them as, well, suggestions? I think that most of us, if we're listening and we're looking at the... The structure up there, we're saying, you know, I think that these are what God requires of me. This is what he expects of me. This is what I'm supposed to do. Now, I want to talk a little bit about what you're supposed to do. Because many of us don't like what we're supposed to do. We don't like being told what we're supposed to do. Kids don't like to be told what they're supposed to do. Wives don't like to be told what they're supposed to do. Employees don't like being told what they're supposed to do.

And yet this psalm is full of instructions about what we're supposed to do. And so this is a psalm that we use here and is commonly used as a call to worship in our worship service. We'll use this at the beginning of the service. And what is a call to worship except to tell us each week as the body of believers when we've gathered together and we're about to start our worship service what we're supposed to do. And so that's what we use this psalm for. Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. There's all these instructions, right? And we hear them that way. The requirement is inescapable. We are supposed to do these things. God expects, he demands, he requires each and every one of these things, and not just from his children, but from all the earth. This is what the very first one tells us. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth, everyone. So what's the earth made up of? Well, it's made up of his children, and it's made up of the animals, and it's made up of the plants.

And it's made up of the mountains, and it's made up of the seas, and it's made up of the unbelievers. And this call to shout joyfully to the Lord and everything that follows is for all the earth. So the first thing we learn about this passage, this section, is there's all kinds of commands, there's all kinds of demands, expectations, requirements, and they're not just for us, they're for all of creation. Everybody is supposed to do this. Everyone. Everything. When the sun shines, it's doing its thing. When the waters rage, when there's waves and there's all these things, they're doing what they're supposed to do. When the trees are bearing their fruit, when the animals are roaring with hunger, they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're calling out to their God for meat. And any who don't answer this call are sinning against God.

You remember I said at the beginning, these are expectations, these are commands, these are requirements from God. And we all said, yeah, that's what they are. They're not suggestions. And I say, we're right. But do we live as though they're suggestions is the question. What goes on in our heart when we're told to do something? When we're told to shout joyfully? When we're told to enter his courts with thanksgiving? When we're told to serve the Lord with gladness? Do we say, well, if I feel like it? Well, if it's convenient? Well, if the opportunity plops down in my lap. If we process that way, we're processing not as though these are commands, but as though these are suggestions. These are good things we could do if we are so inclined, but that's not what they are. These words of Scripture are compulsory. They're not voluntary. They're calling us, telling us we must do something. They're not saying, do it if you feel like it, do it if it's convenient, do it if you want to. No.

You do these things. And if you don't do these things, they come with consequence. And so we've established that these exhortations are not voluntary. And so I want to ask you again, what goes on in your heart when these commands come to you and there's real expectation behind them that you do these things? A couple of things. There's probably a lot of things that could happen. I think if most of us are honest about our behavior, and what we actually do. Because we could all say, oh, I'm supposed to do all those things, and I agree, and that's right, and yep, amen. But if we were to compare what we actually do with what we're told to do, we might say, well, I don't live like, I actually don't do all that stuff. Not like I should. We'd say, well, how does my heart respond to those commands? Well, it depends on a bunch of things. What's it depend on? Well, it might depend on how I'm feeling. Do I feel like singing joyfully?

Do I feel like serving gladly? Do I feel like coming to church with thankfulness? Praising God with his people? Do I feel like doing those things? You know, here at Clear Note, I want us always to be honest, always to be telling the truth about our temptations. And I know that there's no one in this room who hasn't faced a temptation not to come to church because you're just like, you know what, I don't want to. I know that people may ask questions. I know I'm gonna have to do work. I know I'm gonna have to do all these other things. I just don't want to. I know you face those temptations. I want you to recognize those and say, blech, that's bad. But I don't want you to lie and live in a delusion that says you don't face those temptations. What? Mm-hmm. Can I talk about that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Speak up. Yeah, if that's what's going on. What he's saying, all he's saying is what I, Luis is affirming what I'm saying, that he's faced that temptation that he used to be like,

No, I don't want to do that. I want to go do what I want to go do. And he said, can you speak to how to deal with that? And I say, yes, that's the point of the sermon. We're going to get to that. That's the whole point. You're tracking. Luis gets a gold star. Do we need bouncers for hecklers? We might. We can't have the deacons do it. It's the deacons that are always running their mouth. No. When it comes to not just these commands of Scripture, but any commands that are put on us, if your teacher says, Do this, fix this, and get it turned in. Does your heart say, well, I don't want to. When your boss says, no, you didn't do it right, go do it again. You say, but I tried my hardest. And they go, I know, but you didn't do it right. Go fix it. Whenever things come to us that are just clear commands, do this thing, our hearts are always saying, but I don't want to. I don't like being told what to do. That's what it comes down to is in the end of the day.

All of us are rebels against authority, and we just don't want to be told what to do. And we can talk from now until forever about how that's not the case. But I'm telling you, that's the case. There is no one in this room who likes to be told what to do. Not naturally. Can you learn to like to be told what to do? Yes. And I hope that by the end of our sermon, you've got a path forward to see how you can like being told to do things. But out of the gate, If I ask you what goes on in your heart when somebody tells you to do something, your answer ought to be, ain't nobody going to tell me what to do. I don't want to be told what to do. Who are you to tell me what to do? And we don't just say that to men. We rise up to our full height and say that to God. Who are you to tell me what to do? I want you to note about these exhortations that each one of them doesn't simply say what to do. It tells us how to do it. And so not only is it clean your room, it's clean your room with a good attitude.

Sing while you clean the room. If I have to do it, I'm told I don't have to like it. Actually, actually, you do. So the bar is just a little higher if you can believe it. Serve the Lord. How? With grumbling and complaining? With misery? With oppressive silence? No. With gladness. With gladness. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. Singing? Yes, joyful. An exhortation, and built into the exhortation is an expectation or a description of how it's supposed to be done. If these things are not being done in the manner that we're told to do them, then we have to see we're not really doing them. We're not really doing them. Why do I say we're not really doing them? Well, I say we're not really doing them because our hearts aren't engaged.

And so what I want you to see from the very beginning with this psalm and all of these exhortations is that written into the code underneath it is that your heart would be engaged as you do these things. Jesus warned us when he was speaking. In Matthew 15, he records it. He's speaking to the Pharisees, and he says, You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. And so I want you to see from the very beginning when we look at this psalm that what's required of us is not simple actions. It's not simple actions. What's required of us is our hearts being invested in and given to and won over to those actions. It's a very high bar. Not something that comes naturally to us. And it turns out, That how we feel about those commands and the necessity of our hearts being engaged fully in those commands doesn't change the expectations at all. I remember hearing a story one time, some of you will know it, of a father who had a daughter who was sullen. And he said to his daughter, smile. And she said to him, I don't want to smile. And he said to her, you're my daughter and your job is to give me joy.

So smile. And she's crying. I don't want to smile. I don't feel like smiling. And he said, I don't care. I want you to smile. And she did. And that's the process that we have to go through in our hearts with the commands of God. You get told to do something. You say, I don't want to do it. They say, no, you really got to do it. You say, fine, I'll do it, but I won't like it. And we say, no, that's not good enough. Not only do you have to do it, you have to do it cheerfully. You have to want to do it. Because God's not glorified in anything less than that. And so a Christian has to subordinate his feelings, her feelings, their hearts, to the word of God. And we have to worship God just as he requires. That's the first thing this psalm teaches us. If you believe, if you slip into the interpretation that what you feel like matters,

I can tell you from experience, and I can tell you from observation, but more importantly, I can tell you from Scripture, you are never going to get around to doing it. It just will never happen. And you believe in a lie if you think that there's some circumstance and some season of life or some other thing going on when you will want to do what you're told. You won't. Not the way you will in heaven. Can you learn to do it? Yes, you can learn to do it. I'm going to use this psalm to teach you how to learn to do it. But again, If you haven't learned to do it, if you're undisciplined, you're never going to become disciplined until something disciplines you. And it won't be you. The reason that we would never come to doing this on our own is because even a Christian's heart is still corrupted with sin. And it never yields as willingly, as immediately, or as thoroughly as it should. And so we're in constant need of instruction, of discipline, of training in righteousness.

constant need of it. And so this is part of our instruction. God says to us, shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth, serve him with gladness, come before him with joyful singing. You say, that's exactly what I don't want to do. And I say, I know, but it's exactly what you need to learn to do. So isn't it a good God that we serve who takes us in our weakness and says, this is what you must do. What else might go on in your heart? If you've gotten over the initial hill of, well, I don't want to. I don't feel like it. You might say, well, What goes on in my heart, it depends. It depends on the knowledge of whether I think I can. Because I know that I've failed so much in the past. I actually have come to the point in my life where I want to serve God, where I want to come joyfully into his house, where I want to give praises to him in the midst of his people. I want to do those things. I've learned that much. But as I've learned it, I've realized I still don't do it the way I should. So what goes on in my heart?

Maybe not a digging in of my heels and saying, you can't tell me what to do. What goes on in my heart might be, I can't do that even though I want to do it. Not the way I should. What should we do at that point? If that's how you feel, what should you do? Should you despair and go, and therefore I don't have to? No, that's the wrong answer. If we were playing Family Feud, there'd be a big X that came up and said, that answer was not in one of the survey answers. You still, even if you don't feel fit to do it, Because you have some knowledge of your own sin and your own inadequacy. And you go, I don't want to come into the presence of the Lord because he's holy and I'm not. And that's a fearful thing. What are you supposed to do? Oh, I didn't know that the people who were overcome with the knowledge of their sin didn't have to worship God. No. They have to worship God too. So what should they do? Well, they ought to confess their failures. Which is what we ought to do whenever we're confronted with them. Whenever we see our own sin, we ought to confess our sins and say, that is not what glorifies God. I should not have done that.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Get right back to it. There are other things that may go on in your heart when you hear these commands. Wherever you find yourself, whatever you're dealing with, the command stands. You think that God doesn't care about you? One, you're wrong. And two, you still have to worship him. And what I hope you'll see is that in worshiping him by faith, remember we're talking about faith. I haven't said faith in the last 15 minutes, but we're talking about faith. When you submit to God and you give yourself to his requirements by faith, you will learn to want to do it. You'll learn to enjoy it. You'll learn to delight in it. And so I hope that by now each one of you realizes the work that you have to do in your own heart. I hope you're thinking about it and going, you know, this is what I think when I get told what to do. This is how I respond. Maybe you run and hide. Maybe you fight and argue. Maybe you despair. Maybe you do something else.

Whatever it is you do, wherever your heart goes, God calls you out of that to do these things. Now, as often in Scripture, when God commands us to do things, he doesn't simply say, do this thing, period. And even in this psalm, he doesn't just say, do this thing, and period. There's other parts of the psalm. You remember I said earlier, there's other parts we're going to get to, we're going to talk to. There's often with Scripture, though it's not required, Though it's not required for God to tell us why, and it's not required for him to tell us how we'll benefit from it, he often does. And that's his kindness to us, that when he tells us to do something, he often tells us why we should do it, what the benefits are, what the glories are, what the dangers of not doing it are. He often gives us context to his commands, and this psalm does that. In verse 3, we read that the scripture says, know that the Lord himself is God. So here's, verse 3 is this like aside,

It's an intermission in the instructions to us to tell us something that we need to know, something we need to bear in mind. It's as if these words are coming to us and we're saying, you need to do this and you need to do this and you need to do this and we're kind of all going, whoa, I need to do all this stuff. And he says, and as you do it, bear this in mind because it will help you. Now do these other things too. There's some knowledge that we have to bear in mind. There's some context to these. These commands. And the first bit of context we get is verse 3. Know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. And so we have to ask, how does this help us obey these commands? What's it teach us? Why is it there in the middle of these exhortations? Well, before we understand how it all works, we can say,

One of the primary helps that we have is knowing that we're not God. Because that's the first thing other than the command that we're told is that we're not God. I'm not God. You're not God. What's it mean that I'm not God? Well, it means that I don't get to make my own rules. I don't get to set my own course. I don't get to tell myself what to do because I didn't make me. It also means that I'm not responsible for those things. A creator is responsible for his creation. to care for it, to direct it, to instruct it, to bless it, to curse it, to destroy it. He's responsible for all that stuff because he's the creator, because he's the God. I'm not God. You are not God. And so what it does is it takes away your responsibility to make decisions that aren't yours to make. It also means that he is right and we ought to acknowledge.

with our hearts that he is not out of line to tell us what to do. If I were to say to one of my sons, son, go clean your room. If his response was why, what might I say to him? What? Yes, because I said so perhaps. Now why would it matter that I said so? I'm your dad. I made you. I'm responsible for you. So do what I said. It'll be good for you. What? Yes, daddy, that's what you want. Cheerful yes, daddy. And so the first bit of context we're given, the first bit of knowledge we're given is know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. He's right to tell us what to do. He's right to tell us what to do. But not only has he made us, he's claimed us. Okay? We are his people. What does it mean that we are his people? It means that he has taken possession of us.

He hasn't just made us and set us off to spin our own path and do our own thing. He has made us and he's claimed us. We are his people. We're not just a people. The world's full of people, but we are his people. He's not a God who is far off. He's a God who's near, who's personal, and who instructs us and gives us commands specific to his glory and our good. So he's made us and he's claimed us. He's taken us as his people under his care. He loves us and keeps watch over us. We're the sheep of his pasture. Very few of us know anything about sheep in terms of a firsthand knowledge. I bet half of the people in this room have never even eaten sheep. So we don't know much about them. But I can tell you a couple of things. Sheep need shepherding. Sheep are stupid animals.

They're inclined to get themselves into very dangerous situations and they're not smart enough to get out of them. And so they need a shepherd literally to take them to the water because they could die of thirst if they're not taken to the water and made to drink. That's dumb. That's sheep. That's us. What else does a shepherd do? A shepherd sets up a perimeter, if you will, of protection around the sheep, keeps the danger away, keeps them away from danger, keeps the wolves away, keeps them away from the The danger, the deep ravines, the thorns and briars and things. That's what a shepherd does. And so when we're reading this passage that we're his people, the sheep of his pasture, we understand that he's made us. We understand that because he's made us, he can command us. We understand that he has claimed us. He's called us his own and that he keeps watch over us the way a good shepherd keeps watch over his sheep. He keeps them from danger.

And so how beneficial is it to us to know that the commands that God gives to us are not given to us to put us under his thumb and to make us do things that make us squirm and squeal and be miserable. No. His commands are for our benefit and for our good. When he tells us to shout joyfully to the Lord, do you think that he doesn't know that you don't want to all the time? Of course he does. That's the problem. That's the remedy. If you went to the doctor, he'd say, that's the sickness, so what are we going to do about it?

Here's your prescription. Here's the thing you need to do. Do it. This will help you. This will make you better. This will heal you. And so his commands to us in this psalm are his instructions to us. They are his protection. They are his love to us. It's for our good that we would obey this psalm and do what he says. It's for our good. Now who can argue with that? We can't argue with that. We wouldn't want to argue with that. If I told you to do something and you said, well, I don't know that I want to. And I said, buddy, honey, it's for your good. It's for your benefit and it's for your protection. And it's for my glory. Now I want you to go do it. You might say, oh, I thought you were just being a mean, miserly old man just telling me to do something because you didn't feel like it yourself. And I say, no, no, no. No, no, no. That's not why. The final verse tells us, or verses four and five tells us, you know,

Continues with the expectations. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. I want you to see that our response, the way that we carry out this work, is in community. Okay? Now, it might seem kind of obvious to some of you why I'm saying that, and some of you might go, I don't know why he's saying that. Let me tell you. Sheep don't do well alone. Sheep are not intended to be alone. They're meant to be amongst other sheep. And they're meant to join together with other sheep, all doing the same thing. And so he tells us in this psalm to enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. And these gates or these courts that are being referenced to are in the Old Testament, the tabernacle, the temple as it moved around. There were different parts that the people were allowed into. They weren't allowed into the Holy of Holies.

They weren't allowed into the holy place, but they were allowed into the court around it. And they did have to come through the gates to get into it. And what they were doing when they came through the gates and they came into the court is they were coming as close as they were permitted to, as close as possible to their God. They were drawing near to him. And as they drew near, they were to bring sacrifices. They were to bring offerings to him. And they weren't just supposed to bring these offerings and these sacrifices, but they were to do it as an act of worship.

And so they were to come with thankfulness. They were to come with praise. They were to come with singing. They were to come with dancing. They were to come with joy. And so this is what it alludes to in the Old Testament. Well, what's it mean to us? Well, it means come to church and come here cheerfully. Now, it's one thing to say come to church. You're like, yeah, I know I'm supposed to come to church. And I'm going to say to you, you need to come and be cheerful here. And you're like, well, I don't feel like being cheerful. And I say, yeah, we're back where we started, aren't we?

But we already teased that road out and found out it was a dead end. So guess what? It doesn't matter, actually, that you don't feel like it. And you say, no, it really does matter. And I say, no, no, it really doesn't matter. Do you expect me to just be happy here? And I say, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're missing out on all the good stuff if you're not. And what kind of fool does that? Sheep, right? Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. For what? Oh, I don't know. You tell me. For what? Good question to ask. Maybe you ought to think about it before you come here. When you come into the presence of the Lord, do you have anything to be thankful for? Do you have anything to give praise to God? I'm sure you all have troubles and you all have difficulties and you all have burdens and pains and afflictions. We live in a fallen world. I get it. Do you have anything to give thanks to God for? This is the place to do it. You say, well, I tell God. He knows I'm thankful. And I say, that's good. I'd like to know too.

And so would all of your brothers and sisters. No one's going to look down on you if you come in and say, you know what the Lord did. I know that many of us would like to not be so caught up in, distracted by, in bondage to the difficulties of life. How do you break free of that? By giving your attention and your heart to something else. That's how. You might think, I just want all the hardships to go away. And I say, okay. We'll check back in and see how that's going. I mean, honestly, you'll trade them out. Some hardships will pass and new ones will arise. But God never promised us in this world that we were going to have an easy go of it as his people. It's possible that sheep could love to graze in big safe fields with fences like cows do. But they don't. Sheep are pretty dumb. I've never hunted sheep. And when we think of sheep, we often think of like little white.

fluffy sheep. And there's those kinds of sheep. But by nature, sheep like to live in really dangerous places. You ever watch sheep, like doll sheep or something, walking on the crags and the rocks up in the mountains with hooves? And they walk up these sheer face cliffs and you can't figure out how they do it. It's amazing how they do it, but I'll just tell you, that's stupid. That's dangerous. They die doing that. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. Give your attention and your heart to outside of today and right now to what God has given you and how he's been good to you. Write it on your connection card. We're supposed to be a thankful people. And we're supposed to express that thankfulness, especially when we get together. And if you say, I'm having a hard time with that, I say, then you're in the right place. Because even in having a hard time with it,

You've come to the right place. What do you want to do when you're upset, when you're down, when you're depressed? You want to be all alone. Does that help? Oh, no. Don't take someone who's having a bad day and leave them alone. Take someone who's having a bad day by the hand and make them be around people and have a good time. And they say, they don't want to. And I say, I know. But at the end of the day, they'll be happy. Or maybe at the end of the week or two. You say, it might be that hard. And I say, yep. How's it go otherwise?

You leave a grumpy person alone for a couple of days, a couple of weeks, are they cheerful again? Are you? Doesn't work, does it? So get over yourself and give thanks to God. This psalm ends with three attributes of God. And these attributes are meant to gird us up as we worship him. The first is the Lord is good. You'll undoubtedly face temptations to disbelieve the Lord's goodness because of the afflictions that you face. And what I want to say to you when you face those afflictions is, This world is not your home. And as you get older, we have a young congregation. So many of us have not lived long enough to have our fingers pried off of the things in this world. But some of you are older, and some of you have had more time to do that. And you're going to think, is this...

Is this all there is? Is this worth it? Is this what I'm supposed to endure and go through and suffer under? And for how long? And I'd say, if you have that question, you have the questions of the psalmists. How long, O Lord? How long will you hide your face from me? How long, O Lord, until you deliver me from the hand of all of my enemies? How long, O Lord, until you give me rest? I'm hemmed in on every side by my enemies. And I think so often we think of that in terms of, literal war and battles. And I say, this is your temptations and these are your sins. They surround you and you feel hemmed in by them. And you think, the Lord must not be good because I'm all hemmed in by them. And I say, it's a good question to ask because the psalmist asks it. But the answer is not forever. The answer is for a short time. And you say, well, this short time is really long in my time. And I say, yes, a thousand years on this planet is like

One day in the presence of the Lord. He will deliver you. And when he delivers you, whenever it is, and under whatever circumstances it is, when he delivers you, you will then see and believe, not by faith, but by sight, that the Lord is good. You'll see it. And that'll be true for every Christian. And it won't be true for anybody else. But every Christian will see the Lord's goodness when they stand and behold the beauty of Jesus Christ when they meet him. And all of the trials and all of the burdens and all of the hardships and afflictions that they went through will then be put into their context and they will have their conclusion in the rest and in the glory of God. Why? Because the Lord is good. Because he doesn't abandon his people and leave them, though they do feel like it sometimes. His loving kindness is everlasting. You might look back and say, man, the Lord took care of Abraham. The Lord took care of...

Isaac, the Lord took care of Paul, if we might be so bold as to say that. He had a difficult life, right? The Lord took care of these other people. And as we build up for ourselves a history and a record of the Lord's kindness toward his people, we ought to be encouraged and strengthened to believe that he will be kind to us too. Because his loving kindness is everlasting. It doesn't have an expiration date. It doesn't run out. And so he's been kind to people in times gone by and that should help us to see his kindness to us. He's been kind to us when we've sinned in the past and we go, surely he'll be done with me now. I'd be done with me. My love and kindness has an end, but the Lord's doesn't. His love and his kindness and his mercy toward his people is everlasting. It never runs out. It never runs thin. His love is constant for his children and it's one of the primary reasons we should worship him is that whatever circumstance we find ourselves in,

Young or old, single, married, healthy, sick, rich, poor, what have you. His loving kindness is everlasting. It endures forever. And finally, his faithfulness is to all generations. You might think, man, he was faithful to Abraham. He took good care of him. But he's not just faithful to Abraham. He's faithful to all, to all generations. From then on through to now and beyond. His faithfulness endures forever. And so if you're inclined to look at someone like Abraham who lived by faith and think, man, I'm nothing like him, my contention to you is it doesn't matter at all that you're nothing like Abraham. That doesn't actually matter because the God that you serve is the same. And it's his faithfulness that matters, not yours. Any faithfulness you have is the result of his kindness and his mercy in your life and his grace to you. So don't compare yourself to other people. It won't do you any good. Look to the Lord. His faithfulness is to all generations.

And God is faithful not only to some, but to all. This is what the passage tells us. And again, in 2 Timothy 2, verse 13, Paul says this. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. Why? Because he cannot deny himself. And so the Lord's faithfulness is a sort of faithfulness that can't be shaken, that can't be moved, that can't be changed, that can't end. You cannot cause any of that. What good would it be if you could alter it? What good would it be if you could... break the Lord's faithfulness. And so these characteristics of God are the boundaries that hem us in. Even if for a time there are difficulties inside those boundaries, these are the boundaries that hem us in and protect us on every side. Because of his goodness and his loving kindness and his faithfulness to all, we're free to worship him without encumbrance. As I said, you'll face many temptations to disbelieve the truth in favor of lies.

That's what we started out with this morning when we talked about how we feel about things. We talked about all the lies we're inclined to believe. My purpose this morning was to call you to trust God, not to worry about your future. You say, but, but, but. And I say, what good are you going to do by worrying about it? You say, you're calling me. And I say, yeah, that's exactly right. That thing you think is just preposterous, that's exactly what I'm saying. I want you to actually trust God. Trust God. Really, wholly. You know those trust things you do where you stand like this and people are behind you and you're supposed to fall? Yeah, I mean like that, but I don't mean like to the ground. I mean like off a cliff. If you don't trust him, you're going to cause yourself a whole lot of grief and a whole lot of trouble. That's going to encumber and hinder your ability to worship him as you should. So stop stewing and stirring and fretting about the future and about what's going to happen. The Lord is faithful. He's good. He'll see you through it. There'll be instructions for you to...

to do when those times come. Don't worry about it before it comes. So how do you live by faith when you're not being called upon the way Abraham was to do something that's extraordinary? You do what the Lord says for you to do today. There's nothing in this psalm, if you look at it, that's extraordinary. What's he tell you to do? Shout joyfully to the Lord because he's faithful and good to you. Serve him with gladness because he'll never leave you or forsake you. He hasn't and he won't. Come before him with joyful singing. Why? Because you're not worried about the future. You don't feel like singing. Well, it's because you're worried about what's going on. You fret and you worry. Don't worry. You say, that sounds irresponsible, Dave. You sound really irresponsible. You're telling me not to think about all this stuff. And I'm saying, all right, if you have a question about your future, I'll make you a deal. If you have a question about your future, if you're worried about money, come talk to me about your money and I'll tell you what you should do.

If you're worried about your relationship, your marriage, your singleness, your dating, your whatever, come talk to me about it. I'll tell you what to do. If I don't know, I'll put you in the way of someone who does. If you're worried about your kids, my kids, come talk to me. If you want to do something about it, then come talk to me. I'm your pastor, after all. It's my job. You have elders, and this is their calling. Don't worry about it. If you really think something needs to be done, come talk to the people who keep watch over your souls and ask them what they think you should do. Because I know they won't tell you, you should just worry. I think that will help. And you should come to church and not sing, but only if you feel like coming to church. No, they're going to say, you get your butt to church. You get to small group. You come to Sunday school. You be around God's people. You tell them what's going on there. And when you're done with that,

You go do these other things if you want to get your money situation fixed up, your relationship fixed up, your kids obedient, or whatever it is. We'll give you plenty of things to do. None of them will be worry. You say, well, that stuff's hard. And I say, not any harder than Abraham had to do with Isaac. Do you have faith? And so faith really is a simple thing, a very difficult thing. But it's a gift that God gives to all of his children. So don't churn over your future. Don't worry about it. Do something about it. What are you supposed to do about it? Sing joyfully to the Lord. Serve him with gladness. Ask what you can do to help. Where is there need? How can you help? Tell other people about his goodness to you. You think that's cliche, and I say, only to a cynic. Live by faith. Trust God with your future. And give him the glory that he deserves now. Don't wait. Let's pray.