Strangers in the Earth

Well, today we are going to continue in the sermon series that I'm going through of Psalm 119. We are on sermon number three, Gimel. If you were to read this section of eight verses in the Hebrew, the beginning word of each sentence would be Gimel. The first letter of each word would be in with Gimel. Because of that, often there are people who want to think or say that, you know, the wording of these psalms are constrained because he was forced to find a gimel word, right? As sort of if you were writing poetry and you were trying to just find a rhyming word, and then the other word rhymes, but it may be awkward. That's not how God writes his word. And I think that the more we study these passages, the more we'll see that there are connecting ideas.

And there is a flow to each section and ways that can help us remember a theme that we'll find. And the theme for today that I want us to focus on is that the psalmist realizes that he is a stranger. He's in a foreign land, and the comfort that he finds is in the Word of God. And so what we'll see is, again, this... This is partially why I think that whether or not Daniel wrote this psalm, it is a really hopeful touchpoint for us. Because if you think about Daniel being led captive out of Jerusalem into the land of Babylon, he is a stranger there. He is a foreigner there. However, Daniel's not the only one who's a stranger. There's actually only two groups of people in the world. There are those who all they have is the world.

and there are those who are strangers and pilgrims within this world, whose citizenship is not here, but it's in heaven. And if you're a Christian, that's you. This world isn't your home, and so you shouldn't be surprised as you go and live in this world that you don't quite fit in, that when you face challenges, how you respond to them should look different than how worldlings respond to them. Because we have different priorities. We march to a different drum. Many of the challenges that you face in your life will stem directly from your knowledge of God and his word. If you don't feel that tension, then there's a disconnect between your life and your faith. And you're too comfortable in this world. And I would submit that maybe you do not have a high enough understanding of the glories of God and of the wonders of his word and of the greatness of his law. So today, I want us to look at a journey of God being generous with his slave, of opening his eyes to God's law, and then the slave, the psalmist, realizing that he no longer fits in. He's a foreigner. And his response is not to

draw back from God. It's to pursue God more. It's to embrace the fact that he's a stranger, and rather than finding, withdrawing and finding comfort in this world or the things of this world, the psalmist actually finds comfort and guidance in the law of God. He doubles down. And my desire is that that would be each one of us, that we would join the psalmist in the prayers that he prays, and that like him, we would call on God to be generous with us. that he would enable us to keep his word and that our lives would be filled with a crushing longing after God. Please stand for the reading of God's word. This is God's word and it is eternally true and given to us today. Deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law.

I am a stranger in the earth. Do not hide your commandments from me. My soul is crushed with longing after your ordinances at all times. You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from your commandments. Take away reproach and contempt from me, for I observe your testimonies. Even though princes sit and talk against me, your servant meditates on your statutes. Your testimonies also are my delight. They are my counselors. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. So their first verse says, deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. Deal bountifully. Isn't that a striking?

for the psalmist to begin this section. Deal bountifully. This idea of dealing bountifully means that he's asking God to deal fully with him, to act generously towards him, to reward him, to treat him well. And is that something that you ask God to do? Do you generally ask God to deal bountifully with you? You may think like this is somewhat of a audacious request, right, for him to cry out. How does he dare to ask so much, to pray that God would be so generous with him? This was making me think of when Israel, when Moses first came back to the Israelites to bring them out of Egypt.

Remember what Pharaoh does. Pharaoh reacts in anger to Moses' request, and he says, well, you think you don't have enough work to do, apparently. You're not busy enough. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to require the same number of bricks, but I'm not going to give you the materials necessary to make those bricks. And isn't that a wicked response, right? That the slaves are not given the things that they need to fulfill the commands that they're given, right? Well, this is not how the psalmist views God. He says, I am your slave. Feel bountiful with me so that I can live and do what you command. Listen, when he asks this, there's three things that he says. First, he acknowledges that he's God's servant, that he's God's slave. And as a servant of God, someone who's to be wholly devoted, whose whole lives are to be about the command of their master, you have the right to ask God to give you the things that are necessary for you to fulfill that of which God requires of you. And so that's what the servant is saying, right? He says, I am your servant. Deal bountiful with me. Give me the things that I need. What are they? Well, he goes on and he says that,

that I may live, right? So he's asking the master to give him the things that are necessary for him to live. And not just to live, but to keep the master's word. So he's saying, look, my life is dependent upon you, so deal generously with me. Because without you, I don't have life. God is the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, right? And so it actually is almost insulting for us. to expect little from God or to call out for little because he has so much. And we're told in scripture that he's a good father, a generous father who delights to give good things to his children. And so if we acknowledge that we're owned by God, that we are his people, then our prayer should be that he would be generous with us, that he would deal bountifully with us, that he would give the things that we need both to live and to keep his commandments. Because ultimately all that we have is from God. And so the psalmist is saying, deal generous with me because my life is dependent on you and I want to be able to obey your commandments. And to obey them, you must be generous with me. It's all dependent on him. And so this isn't an arrogant request. He's actually just saying, everything I am and who I am depends on you. And so if you're not generous with me,

How then will I live? How then will I be able to fulfill the commands? And so we see this is actually a very dependent prayer that he's praying. And he goes on, and in verse 18 he says, open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law. See, this is also another area where he's showing his dependence on God. He says, open my eyes. You know, this is what Pastor Dave was just saying from a reading in John. Our understanding only comes from God. And the wonders of God's word are hidden to us until God opens our eyes so that we can see him and see his glories and see who he is. Someone who does not have their eyes open may...

be able to read the words of Scripture and have an understanding of the words, the stories, the propositions, but the glory of salvation, the wonderfulness of the truths, the beauty of the Scriptures are only discerned by those whose eyes have been opened by God. The joy, the depth. The way that it just connects with where you are and what you need for today, that's only revealed to those whom God has opened their eyes. But God's word was given to us to be understood. God didn't give us the scriptures to just be a black box. with which we have no understanding. Rather, he's given his scriptures to instruct us and to teach us. And that's what we see throughout the psalm is that's the constant prayer of the psalmist is that he wants to follow God's word, that his word are his counselors. And yet the only way that he can do that is if God were to open up his eyes so that he could understand and that he could see and that he could know what is going on. And so there's a lesson here for us that

As we go and read our Bibles, the first thing we ought to do is pray for God to open our eyes, to reveal wondrous truths to us. Because if we don't do that, if we try and comprehend and do it in our own strength, we won't get far. We must have the Holy Spirit because spiritually things are discerned through the Spirit. The other aspect of this, I think, is that we often are too easily content with little. That what the psalmist is saying here is that in God's word, there are wondrous things and glorious things to be beheld and to be understood. But often I think the reason we don't understand or desire these glorious things is because we're actually content with very little.

What do I mean by that? Well, we're happy to have a little bit of faith and a little bit of understanding because we want to be saved and we don't want to be under God's wrath and we don't want to go to hell. But beyond that, we're content. So we believe, we profess faith, we have the fire insurance, and then we're content to just go throughout life. Just sort of meander down the path of whatever thing is interesting us. And we're sort of blind to the great glories and the depths and the riches that are there for the asking and the seeking. Would you be happy? And what I mean by this too is like, so think about this. We're here. We hear the word preached. And then what's going to happen tomorrow? We go back to work.

We go back to our movies, to the games that we play, you know, with our toys. And toys being, you know, whether you're a kid with your toys or whether that means your truck or your mower or your house or your Xbox. We're just, you know, we think we're saved. And so now we're just going to go pursue all these other things that have our interest. And what I want to say is that... If that's where we're finding our interest and our comfort and our joy and our pleasure, that is a very sad state for a Christian. When we're content with little things, with knowing enough of Christianity to be saved, but not wanting to find the depths and the glories and the riches that are there to be had. Think about this. Think about a marriage. I've been married for almost 12 years now.

I would not want to go back to year one of marriage. And it's not because year one was particularly hard. I've loved marriage. Marriage has been very sweet. But the depth of my relationship with my wife now, the enjoyment that we take in each other, the knowledge that we have of one another, the richness of the relationship now is nothing compared to year one. And I don't want to go back to that. What I'm looking forward to is another 12 years, right? I mean, you talk to someone who has a healthy marriage and who has been married for any amount of time, and it's like the depth of the relationship that you build and the richness and the warmth just grows. It gets better. And you don't want to go back to something that's shallower.

Right? You look forward to the years that ahead where it deepens and gets better and richer and more glorious. And that should be like that with our relationship with God, where we're not just content with a little bit of knowledge, with just enough so that we can live together. We want to be exposed to all the riches and the glories and the depths that you can have when you have a deep and abiding relationship with God. If you're a Christian, you cannot sit and be contented with simply thinking that you're saved and then go on your merry way. Because, well, I have a relationship with God and I've got the things that I want and I don't need to go deeper. No, no, Christians want to see the wonders of God's word. They want their eyes to be opened and open further and further and further so that they can see the depth and the glories of God's word and the richness of a relationship with him.

And haven't you met old Christians, Christians who've been Christians for decades, and you see the sweetness and the unity and you hear their prayers and you're like, that's what I want. I want to be able to pray like someone who has known Christ for 50 years and just grown and to have that steadiness and the glory that they have, right? That's what we should be desiring. And so we should be like this psalmist praying. That God would open our eyes to the wonders of his word. And I'll add a caveat. I don't mean that you need to be learning Latin and Greek and Hebrew so that you can do that. That's fine. You can learn those languages and there are hopeful things in it. But that's not what I'm saying. You should grow in your understanding of the richness and the depth of the salvation wrought by God.

The basics of the gospel should grow richer and deeper and more wonderful to you with every passing year, right? The depth and the glories of the gospel don't have to be because you did a deep dive into a Greek word. That could be. That's fine. But a child can begin to comprehend the wonders and the glories of the gospel. It doesn't have to be complicated. It will not happen by accident. It doesn't just magically happen that God's wonders and glories are revealed to you. It's something that you must pursue. But here's the thing. This is a promise. God will answer that prayer. How can I say God wants? Because God wants to be known by his people. If you are his child, if you are his, you are his slave, then he delights to reveal himself to you.

He is not up there playing jokes on us. He's not a divine trickster who's trying to hide himself from you. He may test you to see if you actually want to know him. But if you give yourself to knowing God and to appealing to him daily, open my eyes to see who you are, he will reveal himself to you. There is no person. who has genuinely sought after God, whom God has hidden himself from. No person. He's there. He says, knock and the door will be opened. Seek and ye shall find. Anyone who claims they have sought God wholly and not found him is a liar. Because God told me in his word, and he tells you that if you seek, you will find.

He's not playing games with us. So there are great wonders and glories in his word. And so you ought to be praying and praying and praying that God would open your eyes, that he would deal bountifully with you, and then he will. Now, here's the thing, though. When you do that, as you do that, guess what's going to happen? All of a sudden, you're going to realize that you and the world don't jive the way you used to. As you begin to know God and follow his commandments and obey him, what you're going to see is that the world becomes a little more stale. It's not quite as appealing. And you no longer just sort of fit in the group of people that you were in before. I'm not saying that worldly things won't appeal to you and that you won't be tempted. What I am saying is you're not going to be able to just blithely join into the temptation.

It's gonna be, your conscience is going to irk you. You just won't have peace in the sin that you once had peace in. The mark of a Christian is not that they are not tempted and that they don't give in to sin. It's that sin doesn't satisfy. It's that sin no longer does it for them in the way that it used to. And it's because they've begun to see the glories of God. And when you've seen the glory of God and his righteousness and his holiness, The things of this world just don't quite, the varnish is gone. The appeal just isn't there like it used to be. And then when you do indulge in that sin, the high is not as high and it's just not as good. Think about Daniel. Daniel.

knows the law of God. He was given a good education, and then Babylon comes in, and Nebuchadnezzar steals him and his friends, and now he's in the court of Babylon, and Daniel, this bright, brilliant young man, is being trained to be one of the wise men of Babylon, one of the counselors, right? And Daniel could have fit in with the Babylonian culture. All he had to do was eat their food. All he had to do was join in their games. And what Daniel said is though, no, it's inconvenient for him, isn't it? Because he knows the law of God. And he says, I can't do what you're doing because of the law of God. So he stands out and he becomes a stranger and he brings his friends with him. And now they're all strangers in Babylon. They're foreigners and they stick out because they said, I am going to follow the law of God rather than just fit in with the culture. And as a Christian, that's what you're going to find. You're going to become increasingly aware that if you bend the knee to God and you follow his commandments, you won't be able to just go along to get along with everybody. And there are going to be painful moments in your life. And the pain is going to be caused by the fact that you say, no.

I am going to follow God. I'm not going to follow the world. And in that moment, you are a stranger, a foreigner. You're sticking out, and it may be uncomfortable. And then you have the question, what are you going to do? Are you going to stick with God's commands, or are you going to go be with the world? This applies to your relationship, right? There's a lot of areas we could go through, but just think about it. When it comes to relationships between men and women, when you think about dating, when you think about being friends and who you can be friends with, the world says there's no difference between men and women. Go ahead, be friends with women, with girls. Go ahead, just date, date, date, right? But God's wisdom is different. The world encouraged, oh, you worked hard.

You deserve rest. So when you go home, veg out. Watch movies. Play video games. Get on YouTube. Get on social media. Don't engage your family. You've already worked hard. Let them veg out. Put them in front of movies and videos, things too, right? Then we can all just sit and be doped, right? Drugged by our entertainment. God has thoughts about that, doesn't he? About how as fathers, we ought to be home and engaged with our wives and our children and not just engaged on our phones with social media and whatever. Now, which one's normal? What does the world say to do? Well, you deserve, you deserve, right? And think about kids, right? Kids is another area because the world preaches a few different things at us with kids, right?

It's you can kill your kids. You don't have to have kids. Just have two kids. They have all these different things, right? But now what's the new trend? Well, all of a sudden, some of the people are realizing that if we really want to be wealthy and build, then we have to keep having people. So now we're going to maximize kids, right? So have lots of kids. But the way that these people who are preaching that are going about it is so wicked. It's not in the context of being a father. It's have kids by donating sperm to all these different women, but they're not at home teaching and raising their children as God would command. And so like we have, there's these ditches that we can go in on either side, right? That the world will push us towards. And if you say, no, I'm going to be faithful to a woman, I'm going to be faithful to a man, and we're going to have kids.

and we're going to raise them and be engaged and teach them, that is different than the world. That will stick out. You will feel that tension. Politics, you shouldn't fit in a political box because the way you think about politics, the way you approach politics, the way you deal with all the issues in our country should be first and foremost as a Christian. And that will make you a stranger and a foreigner when you're at work talking about politics because your approach will be fundamentally different because your highest rule is God's moral law, not what feels good or what's popular or what's trending on social media. How we respond to authority, whether we like the authority or agree with the authority.

That's different as Christians. How we deal with food. Our purity doesn't come through how we eat or what we eat or what we don't eat. We're to receive all good things with thankfulness. We've talked about entertainment, but I mean, we could just drill down because entertainment is so prevalent in our society. And what's normalized, like the... You should be a stranger because when people are talking about the coolest book that came out, you should be like, oh, I don't read that because it is soft core porn. I don't watch that show because the women in it are dressed so inappropriately. I cannot defile my eyes with it. And you don't want, like, Christians are going to be looking at you weird if you say that, right?

We should say, no, we don't let our kids watch that TV show because it's teaching them to be rebellious against us, and we'd rather our kids not. They know enough about rebellion without watching TV shows where they dishonor and disrespect fathers, right? So like all of these things, and we could just drill down and down and down and down and look at all these different things. What I'm saying is that the psalmist is a stranger and a foreigner in the land because he follows God's commandments. If we're not strangers and foreigners, if we don't feel that, then we must ask, are we even following God's commandments? Because the tension that he feels, the tension that Daniel felt in the court of Nebuchadnezzar was because he obeyed God. It wasn't because he was a weirdo or he was awkward. It was because he was going to stick to what God had commanded him. And since the world is headed to hell in a handbasket, And he says, no, I'm going to go on this path. He's a stranger and a foreigner and people don't know what to do with him. So we have to look at our own lives and see, is this true of us? Are we strangers and foreigners? Or are we comfortable, right? Are we just comfortable in this world? Do our lives not stick out? I actually, it was interesting.

I had a friend who is a pastor and he sends out like a FYI email every week. And he sent this one out where he said he just stopped at this coffee shop, his new coffee shop. He went in there and there was a lady wearing a hijab and she was doing the coffee. And so he had this very nice conversation. They were talking and interacting. She made him the coffee. And then at the end, he said, you know, it was really nice talking to you, getting to know you. And he went to shake her hand. She wouldn't shake his hand, right? She's Muslim. She's not allowed to touch someone who's not her husband or her son. She's not allowed to touch other men. And she said, no, I can't do that. Have a nice day. Very friendly, very firm. That's weird, right? That sticks out. That's because she's following what she thinks to be the law of her God, right? That's strange. How many interactions do we have like that? Where we won't do the socially normal thing.

because of a command of our God, and then we have to sort of live in that awkwardness. If you have a principle based on the commandment of God and you follow it, don't quiet quit. Don't not just do it, but say, no, the Lord requires this holiness of us and stand on it. Be willing to bear that awkwardness, that strangeness, that foreignness. Now, The psalmist realizes that he's different and that the things that work for the world don't work for him. And so he's sort of left in this quandary, right? What do I do? And in the next verse, he says this, my soul is crushed. My soul is crushed with longing after your ordinance at all times, right? I think, I mean, what's the best example maybe you can think of this is like when Before you ask a girl out and you've fallen in love with her and you want to ask her out or this guy, and you just want them to ask you out. You just want to, and you just feel that crushing weight of like, I'm so interested in this person. And you want the relationship so bad and that just weighty crushingness in your heart, right? That's what the psalmist feels about God and his laws, right? Think about this. If I were to,

pick you up and drop you at the intersection of South Avenue and Detroit, and you didn't have a, in Toledo, and you did not have a GPS or a map, all you had was a flip phone, what would you do? Well, I would think you might call me because I know where South and Detroit are, and I could get you to a highway. I could get you somewhere, right? I'm assuming none of you know where South and Detroit are and Toledo. This is the psalmist. The whole world is saying, this is what's normal. This is what's good. This is how you should act. And his eyes have been opened. He's beginning to see the law of God. He's beginning to say, that is a way I don't want to go. But which way should I go?

And so his soul is longing after God's law to instruct him, to give him direction, to say, I know I don't want to go that way because that way is death and destruction and rebuke from God. I want to follow God's law so that I know what to do in every situation. Because that's life and health and wonderful and glorious things. And so his longing after God's law is directly related to the fact that he realizes that he's a stranger in the land. He's a foreigner and that he doesn't fit in and he doesn't want to go the way of the world. But then what way should he go? The only way that he'll know which way to go is if he follows the law of God.

As if that is wonderful to him. If that he longs after it. And I'm afraid that the reason we don't long after God in prayer and in reading his word is because we're not strangers. We're comfortable in this world. We love the things of this world. We don't stick out. But if we stick out, then we're going to need God's law because we won't know where to go. We'll be lost without it. And you see, the law of God is what puts a space between us and the world and creates this strangeness. But then once that separation has happened, the only comfort we can have is in God because we no longer fit in. And the only place we're going to fit then is with God. The only hope that we're going to have is in God. The only comfort is in him because we no longer can have comfort in the world.

It's this separation, this strangeness, this foreignness, and we'll only be able to have ease with God. Our lack of longing after God's word demonstrates how comfortable we are in this world and how much we think that we have it figured out. We should be seeking God as if our life and death, as if it were life and death, because it is life and death. And he says at all times, which again, we all should, you know, all times is kind of inclusive. There's our inclusivity for us, right? All times. Do you seize every leisure moment to pursue spiritually good things? Do you pull your wife or your husband or your kids or your friends into spiritual pursuits?

If you do, as I said before, God will bless this. If you don't have an insatiable desire, then be humbly and patiently seeking after God for it. And guess what? As you do this, like almost everything in life, that which you feed yourself and you pursue will change your appetite. This is why we make our kids eat food they don't like, because it's good for them, and eventually they learn to enjoy it, right? And that's us. If we feed on the word of God, even when we're not feeling it, our hearts will change. He'll grow in us an appetite for it. He'll give us a desire for it to where it's insatiable. This is a prayer that is in wine with the will of God. He says, be holy as I am holy. He doesn't say, be as holy as you think you can be. Like he will, if we give ourselves to it, he'll pull us and bring us along.

Now, we have to go into the next part, which is you rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from your commandments. And there's a few things we should do with this. As one, you should pay attention to the world and the people around you. The psalmist tells us that God rebukes the arrogant and the accursed who wander from his way. And they're accursed because they're arrogant and have wandered from his way. It's rebellion. Pride leads these people to rebellion and to disobey and it brings them under God's curse. So there's this contrast between the psalmist who is longing and desiring to know the way of God and feeling that he's a stranger and the proud man who says, I know which way to go, goes his own way, does not follow the commandments of God and is thus cursed by God.

So the psalmist is looking out and seeing how God deals with proud men. And that's a lesson to us. We should pay attention. Mark a proud man and see how God deals with him. It's a warning to each one of us. I mean, think about sticking with the theme of Daniel, right? You have Nebuchadnezzar. Look at my great kingdom. I've built this all. And he's just me, me, me, me, me. And God rebukes him. And it's like for a year, Nebuchadnezzar humbles himself. And then he after, you know, he's afraid because Daniel says you're going to be judged for your pride. And so it's like for a year, it seems that he actually practiced humility and tried. But at the end of the year, nothing's happened. And then he goes up on his wall and is proud. And then God makes him as a beast of the field and he eats grass for seven years, right?

And you see God humbling a proud man. But we should also just pay attention. So we can go through countless examples in scripture of proud men whom God humbles. We can also pay attention to the news. And you can look at someone like Christopher Hitchens who blasphemed God and then gets cancer in his throat and mouth and dies of it. God is rebuking a proud man. So we should have our eyes open, as the psalmist does, to see what God does to those who reject his ways and pursued pride and arrogance. However, we shouldn't just look out there. We should remember that pride is a wicked sin and it's devilishly hard to overcome in our own lives. And I want to read to you a quote from Pastor Charles Bridges and what he says on this verse about pride. Pride is most like its father, the devil.

and serpentine deceitfulness. It's always active, always ready, imperceptibly to mix itself up with everything. And when it's mortified in one shape, it rises in another shape. And when we have thought that it is gone, in some unexpected moment, we shall find it there still. It can convert everything into nourishment, even God's choicest gifts. Yea, the graces of his spirit. Let no saint, therefore, however favored with the shinings of his countenance, consider himself beyond the reach of its temptation. It's so deadly, and God will rebuke it. So we must be on guard against pride and arrogance. And the antidote to being proud is what the psalmist starts with, where he's saying, open my eyes that I may see the wonders of your law. If you want to be small, in your own eyes, God must be big in your eyes. God's the only one powerful and big enough to crush our pride and to keep us humble, to keep you dependent on him. If you think that you have life figured out and that when you walk in the room, the smartest person entered the room as well, you have pride and you're arrogant and you'll be trapped by it and God will humble you and rebuke you. There are many times

When we don't understand the things that are being required of us. We don't understand the obedience that we're told. The law and the rule is given to us and we don't quite know why. And so our pride says, you don't understand it? Get rid of it. Don't follow it. You don't understand. It must not be important. Brothers and sisters, don't let us be like that. Humble yourself and follow the commands of God. The wisdom that's given to us by older godly men and women, even if you don't quite understand it, don't reject it. Don't be proud and wander away simply because you don't think that they know what they're talking about. Well, our last few verses, we got to wrap up. It says, take away reproach and contempt from me, for I observe your testimonies.

Even though princes sit and talk against me, your servant meditates on your statutes. Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. I don't know how familiar you are with chickens or with pigs. There actually can be very vicious creatures. If a chicken has a bare spot on its back where the feathers were plucked off, do you know what all the other chickens will do? They'll attack it. They'll peck that spot. And they will do it until that chicken dies. If you, I had a friend who raised pigs. If you have a pig and you clip its tail or its ear or it gets an infection and there's blood, all the other pigs will literally eat that pig alive. This is the world. You're a stranger in the world. And that's what they'll do to you. That's what he's saying right here, isn't it? Take away the reproach and the contempt, even though the princes sit and talk against me.

right? They see you living as a righteous, holy person, and they say, kill him. That's what they did to Christ. Are you better than your master? And if they don't do that, are we living holy lives? Are we pursuing the commandments of God, right? Because when we follow God, there are two ideas, I think. Why would they hate that? Why would they pick at that spot? Well, there's two things. One is, We all have God's law in our hearts. And when you follow God and when you say, no, I will not watch that. I will not read that. I will not spend my time in this way. I will not pervert the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What do you do? You heap burning coals on their head.

Because their conscience knows that you're holding them, holding to a standard that they ought to conform to as well. And in their pride and arrogance, they won't do that. And now they want to attack you because they are actually enemies of God and you're the closest representation of God to them. So they will fight you. The other thing is, it's just simply evil and evil hates good. And don't discount that, that the enemy goes around like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. Brothers and sisters, we're strangers on this earth, and our only comfort and guidance will be found in God's holy word. It's eternally true. We don't just say, this is the word of the Lord, and it's eternally true. Thanks be to God. We don't just do that as some sort of rote thing. It's not just part of a liturgy that has no meaning. It's because it's true. It's because it's given for us.

Our hope is not ultimately in our perfect longing for God, but it's in Christ, who perfectly lived as a stranger to this world and perfectly conformed to the law of God, set a perfect example for us. We ought to follow him. So pray every day. Pray for God to open your eyes, that he would deal bountifully for you. Consider, are you too comfortable in this world? And the answer is yes. The real question is where and how are we going to fight it? Nurture a longing for God's word. And what I'll tell you is this. This is the hope and the joy of it all. Is that one day we will no longer be strangers. But one day Christ will return as the mighty conquering king. And in heaven, guess what? We're told that we're adopted. We're going home. That we're sons and daughters of the king. That Christ is our brother. In heaven there's no strangers. It's a family.

And so that's the great hope is that while we're uncomfortable and strangers and foreigners here in heaven, we're home and it's peace and it's glorious beyond our comprehension. Let's pray.