Will everyone please stand for the word of God? Psalm 125, those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds us people. From this time forth and forevermore, for the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts. But those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the Lord will lead away with evil doers. Peace be upon Israel. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Thank you so much, John Lail. John Lail and Russ Harwood have been wonderful greeters for our family here in this community. We're so thankful for those two young men. And I appreciate John reading the scriptures that reminded me a little bit of my opening illustration, my son Jordan, who's now 28 years old, about six foot something and tall, strapping young kid. I remember when he was just a toddler. He went from crawling to walking. I don't know if you remember those fearful days when you realize they take off and you can't keep up with them. Well, I was teaching Jordan to walk. And I remember right off the bat, I would take both of his hands and kind of grip his hands. You remember those days? You'd have them and they'd be walking along in front of you. And then it got to the point where you just hold onto their hand and walk them along and pretty soon they'd like go over your hand and off they go. And you watch your child walk away. And I remember the first time I saw Jordan walking out into the front yard toward the street. I was thinking, oh my goodness. I've got to not only teach this child how to physically walk, but God has given me the responsibility to teach him how to walk spiritually in this world, how to make decisions where to go, who should be his friends. He was just year after year progressing. I remember when he walked off to school with the group of his buddies in first grade. They're a higher elementary and University Park, Texas. Remember that feeling watching him go to this government run institution that we know as public schools. And the government does such a wonderful job in leading so many institutions around our country. You know, about a hundred years ago, in the wisdom of our public school system, they found that if they extolled the values of commercialism and capitalism, that they could, over the generations, produce a country that honored monetary gain and living in comfort became an idolatrous standard for Americans. In fact, that's how people know us around the world. We've trained our children coming up we have July 4th, we celebrate our independence. And if you ask our kids, what did you learn about our independence? Why did we move away from that British rule? They'll say mainly, well, taxation without representation, which is accurate. It's one of the 27 issues our founding fathers took issue with the British government. But it was number 17 out of 27. And it reflects when our children say taxation without representation. That our education system has indeed worked. They now understand our world and their world, our culture, in light of a monetary system. Taxation without representation is driven mainly by this sense of monetary fairness and security, finding security in things of this earth. Our educational system has moved from seeing history as the hand of a providential God working in real time in people's lives to being basically a mechanism for commerce. Well, I sent Jordan into that system. Man, the public schools in many areas offer wonderful education. Certainly some diverse experiences for our children. It allows our Christian kids to stand up and step in there and say, well, this is who I am. And this is what I believe. And I believe that our independence of our nation was greater than simply taxation without representation. And they can speak of God's providential care and love. And so as Jordan walked away to hire elementary and he stepped into that public school, I noticed that he began to surround himself with friends. He had to choose his buddies. And I felt the responsibility as his dad to help him choose his buddies. You know when you're traveling in this world, you're accompanied by others. That's exactly what we find in this song. We find three kinds of people who are traveling on this pilgrimage that started in Psalm 120. Now we find ourselves in Psalm 125. And I'm going to list for you these particular individuals because within this room, this morning, I believe that all three of these individuals are represented. And so as we work our way through the text, I would encourage you in the power of the Holy Spirit to honestly seek to slip your foot into one of the sandals of these three fellow travelers. So if you look in verses one and two, I want to draw your attention to this first traveler, this first traveler, those who trust in the Lord. We're the people who put our trust in the Lord. The first traveler is if you will, a Lord, trust her. Somebody who puts their hope and puts their confidence and puts everything they are and everything they have and everything that they will be in the trust of the Lord. Now I want you to notice the synonyms of the Lord trusters, if you will. If you work your way through the text, verse one, those who trust in the Lord, verse two, he calls his people, verse three, the righteous, verse four, those who are good, verse four, who are upright in their hearts, verse five, Israel, he calls us these names. And those words may typify your life. You may say I am a person who trusts in the Lord. Yes, I recognize I belong to him. I'm his people and I'm righteous and I do good
and I'm upright in my heart and I am a striver with God. I am Israel. There's beautiful word picture that accompanies these people of God. It says in verse one, those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. It goes on to say, as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people. From this day four and forever more. If you're a God-truster, you have placed your faith in God, then you're like a mountain. Now, Jerusalem is an interesting geographical setting. It's about 2,500 feet above sea level, which is not unsimilar to a couple mountains in this area, about 2,000 feet above, but Jerusalem is unusual in that it's placed up kind of in a saucer, if you will, beneath the peaks of these surrounding mountains, and the reason the psalmist uses this as an illustration other than the leadership of the Holy Spirit, is that it allows you to think that if you're a truster in God, your life is impenetrable. It's safe, it's a fortress. You're surrounded by the Lord. So right now, if you're a person who has placed your trust in the Lord, you're surrounded by God, like Jerusalem is surrounded. And then throughout the scripture, we have these wonderful word pictures that are worked out, and you find out for yourself, you're a person, you're movable, you stand in abiding with the Lord forever and that you're surrounded by the Lord. From this time fourth and forever more, I wanna take you for a little walk through the Psalms, keeping with our journey motif this morning. If you look at Psalm 18, I want you to look at a few verses from Psalm 18, and get this sense of description that the authors of the Bible give us when we think about this thought of trusting, verse one of Psalm 18. I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and here's that word, my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, listen to the possessive pronoun, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Can you see Jerusalem as that stronghold up there for King David in the peaks? I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. And I'm saved from my enemies. I see this wonderful picture of trusting in the Lord and what he provides for us. Look over in verses 25 and 26 of Psalm 18. With the merciful, you show yourself merciful. With the blameless man, you show yourself blameless. With the purified, you show yourself pure. And with the crooked, you make yourself seem torturous. With the crooked, you make yourself seem torturous. For those who don't trust in the Lord, he is torturous to them. He appears to be this celestial joy killer. And so he's not attractive to them. And then look over in Psalm 37, beginning in verse three. Psalm 37, three. Trust in the Lord. There's that word again. Trust in the Lord. You know, this concept of trust is an interesting concept. It has the meaning, if you will, of leaning so far that if somebody doesn't catch you, you're gonna faceplant. And so if I were younger, I would probably lean out over the platform here and allow myself to fall and catch myself on my nimble feet. I'm not going to do that this morning, unless a group of men and women would care to gather. And I would lean so far that I couldn't catch myself any longer. That's the word faith. That's what it means to trust. It means to trust the Lord so much that if he doesn't come through for you, boom, you're gonna fall flat on your face. I hope and pray that every one of us are in a position, either by choice or by the Lord's providential placing of situations, that you and I, we have to trust the Lord, that we have to lean so far that we're saying, I really do believe you God. I really do trust in you. That's this concept that we find in Psalm 37. Says trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. And then this verse that Jerry shared with us, to light yourself in the Lord. In the early your service, I said it in Spanish. De li atate, as semismo en ayo va. Iote, considera las peticiones de tu corazon. The light yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. That's not officially tongues, by the way, for those of you who are fearful Presbyterians. That's simply another lone language. But it's this idea of, I trust in the Lord, I'm leaning on Him and I'm delighting in Him. I delight in the leaning process. Do you hear that? Delight in the leaning process. There's a joy, there's a freedom. There's an exuberant experience of trusting the Lord. And you trust Him and in the midst of trusting Him. And you say, I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know where this thing is going, but I'm trusting God. And He's gonna be with me. He's surrounding me like mountain, surround Jerusalem. See, this is what faith is about. This is this idea of following after the Lord. Now, I want to encourage us with a few thoughts about faith. Just four brief thoughts that I want to help you frame up the concept of faith. First of all, faithfulness is this concept that the Jewish person had in this context, that meant if you have faith, you're a faithful person. And if you're a faithful person, the reason you're a faithful person is because you have faith. It's a bit circular in the he break way of thinking. But I want you to know they're exactly right. If you have true faith, you're a faithful person. And if you're a faithful person, it's because you have faith in Yeshua. Messiah, our Christ, to use the Greek. He's the anointed one. He's come for us. We place our faith not, and I really want you to get this this morning. It's not that we're holding onto his hand. The way Jordan held onto mine when he was learning to walk. It's that I was holding onto Jordan's hand. That's what gave Jordan stability. And I want you to know that your stability is because God's faithfully holding onto you. He won't let go of you. He won't let go of you. You trust Him because you recognize He is not letting me go. So our faith is in God's faithfulness. Yahweh, that covenant keeping God is trustworthy. Secondly, we recognize that we come to faith through hearing God's word. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing. And so here you are, you're listening. I'm listening even as I preach. And the word of God is stacking up in my soul. It's stacking up in my mind to say, yes, He's trustworthy. Yes, I believe in Him. I've heard His word preached and I believe it. And then thirdly, the idea that faith is not faith unless it's accompanied by works. In other words, faith alone is expressed in our life of gratitude as we follow the Lord. You know, James was Jesus' little brother. And I'm sure James got a wonderful view of seeing exactly what this looked like to have faith with works because that's who Jesus was. Jesus was the embodiment of good works. Everything he thought, everything he did, everything he said was honoring to his father. And so this idea of faith without works is really an issue that isn't taken up in the Bible in the sense of the way people live. The idea of faith without works is a bit of an aberration. It's a confusion. It's a non-sequitor to a biblically trained mind. Of course, James lived with the living word. So he understands the concept. And then fourthly, faith is a word that's used to embody and to kind of if you will give a title to the entire body of Christian doctrine. He keeps the faith. He has the faith. And these are the words that Paul uses in first Timothy as he addresses his spiritual son in chapter four in verses one and six. So this idea of faith, this idea of trusting in the Lord and all the benefits of that are contained in these first couple verses. Now secondly, we move from a person who trusting God and the second person we're gonna meet on our travel this morning is we're gonna meet a person who trusts in themselves. They're a self-truster. Now in the scripture, it's found here in verse three and I want you to see this. It says, for the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous. Why? Lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. Now I call that a truster in self. Someone who trusts in themselves more than they trust in the Lord. And you have this idea that is manifest in a person who walks along and they're part of the visible body as Jerry beautifully explained this concept within the apostles' creed that Catholic simply means universal, this visible expression of God's body. And here we are this morning. Some of us are God in, we are trusting in God. Some of us are trusting in self. So this idea of a backslider, this idea of somebody who is here in the church but their life does not depict and exemplify the reality of who Jesus Christ is. And so this morning I would ask you are you someone who trusts in God or are you someone who trusts in yourself? And some of you are thinking, isn't there another category? I mean, don't you have like one A? Don't you have like, well, I trust in God sometimes and I trust in myself. Look, can I still be a Christian? Well, you know what happens in our journey? In our journey, we start as a self-truster, an exclusive self-truster and an exclusive self-worshipper. And then as God reveals Himself to us, we begin to see that He is more trustworthy than we are. He can do things, He is something that we're not and that we cannot do. And so we begin to transfer our trust from ourself to the Lord. And I would imagine that that's where we find most people here this morning. You're kind of over here, you're like, I've got the self-trust going and I've got this God-trust going. And over the years, we learn to trust more in the Lord than in ourselves. And if you don't make that transition, you're either an immature Christian or you're not a Christian. Now, you put your foot in that sand of wherever it fits. I don't know, but if you're not about the business of being transformed from a person who trusts in himself to a person who trusts in the Lord, then you're walking on very dangerous ground. And I would encourage you to slow down and take account of your life. You know, we tend to measure this in external terms. Oh, her skirts too short. Oh, he works too many hours. Oh, his language is terrible. Oh, all he cares about is money. We tend to measure it externally, but I want you to know the Lord can burst through those external bondages and he can bring you to a place of peace and a place where you're able to say, do you know what? I know myself and I really don't trust myself as much as I used to. I'm trusting more in the Lord now. He can deliver you to that place. You're on a journey. And it's a privilege for you to be here this morning. It's a privilege for you to have an opportunity to see the Lord as expressed in song and in prayer and in his word. Now, the third category I would like us to think a little bit is this last category that is labeled evil doers. So we've got people who trust in the Lord. We've got people who trust in their own self and their own abilities. And then we have people who trust in the world. Now, I want you, if you will, maybe you haven't taken one note or maybe you're just scribbling as fast as you can, but maybe you're just brilliant and you're absorbing it into the gray matter. But in your brain then, I want you to draw a big circle in your brain and then inside that circle I want you to draw another circle, make it whatever size you wish. But the big circle is the world. That big circle represents the world. And inside that big circle is a smaller circle that represents the people of God. And so the people of God have always been called to live in the world but to not be of the world. Look at this in John 17 with me, if you will. John 17 is Jesus high priestly prayer. Just marvelous, marvelous to ponder the Lord's thoughts as he was approaching the cross. And as he's approaching the cross, I want you to hear beginning in verse 11 of John 17 this high priestly prayer. Jesus says, and I'm no longer in the world. So I'm no longer in the world, right? He's going to ascend into heaven. But they are in the world. And I'm coming to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name. So those of us who are here and we are believers in Christ, we are kept under the protection of the name of Jesus which you have given me that they may be one even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me. I have guarded them. Isn't that a beautiful thought? Jesus really could have very possibly had Psalm 125 in his mind when he said that phrase. I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. What a kind Savior we serve. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world. Just as I am not of the world, now listen to this. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. You see, we are the visible expression of the body of Christ in the world. So we live in this world, this cosmos. And we live amidst amongst people who are world trusters. They trust in the world. And they've bought in so far that they laugh at people like us. They think we're intellectually shallow or socially backward. See, our education system has propagated a person who doesn't value a Savior. They value hard work and taking advantage of the weaker partner in business. It's capitalistic. And so we live among evil doers. What's an evil doer? Here's a definition for you. It's a person who's deliberate and they sustain a determined rejection. They have deliberately sustained this rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ over time. And some of you just took a big sigh of relief because somewhere in your life along the line you've rejected the Lord. And you're thinking, please don't let me be that person number three. Don't let me be the person who journeys with them. Let me be one who trusts in the Lord. Well, I want to encourage you and I want to challenge you this morning. It is my hope. It is my hope and humble prayer that the Lord is moving us along from evil doers to self-trusters,
to those who trust in the Lord. It's my hope and prayer that the Lord has scripted you by your heart and by your hand. And he's walking you along. And he's moving you. It is the desire of the Lord to do these things for us. So I call you to stop trusting in the world.
I call you to stop trusting in yourself. And I call you to trust in the Lord. In the words of this hymn, Kelly taught us, listen to this in verse three, Satan, I defy the death. I now decry the fear. I bid the cease world thou shalt not harm me, nor thy threats alarm me while I sing a piece for God's great power. Guards me. Are you one guarded by Christ? Are you one trusting in yourself? Are you someone who's trusting in the world? I want to finish this sermon by reading Revelation chapter three. Revelation three is poignant, it's powerful. And I ask you to listen carefully to these words. Verse 15, I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot? So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing. Not realizing that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen to savv to anoint your eyes so that you may see those whom I love I reprove and discipline behold, I stand at the door knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. I offer to you the words of the Lord Jesus Christ as he knocks at the door of your heart, trust her in self, invite the Lord in again, if you will. I trust in him in his strength. And for you, evil doer, I'm so thankful that you're here in this church and you should be even more thankful for God can lift the delusion of your mind and can deliver you to your savior. It is in the Lord Jesus Christ, we trust. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. Let's pray together. Father, we find such delight in this journey. In fact, some of us have found great delight in the world. We have pursued the world for all we're worth and led lives of debauchery and foolishness. Lives that one day will be judged as wood, hay, stubble, they'll burn up in a fire. But oh God, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, you would deliver those of us who are evil doers, those of us who have put our trust in ourselves, to be those of us who can be called you or people, those who trust in the Lord. Do this for your glory, Lord. And for our good, we make our prayers in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Would you please take your hymnal and stand and sing be thou my vision and hear this good word? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you. May the Lord lift up its countenance and give you peace both now and in the life everlasting. Amen.