Psalm 33

Psalm 33 and we'll look at verses 18 through 22, even though our point of reference will actually be the totality of the psalm, but our home base will be verses 18 through 22. Behold the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in a steadfast love that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive and famine. Our soul waits for the Lord, He is our help and our shield for our heart is glad in Him because we trust in His holy name. Let your steadfast love O Lord be upon us even as we hope in you. May God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of His holy word. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13 the Apostle Paul summarizes the Christian life as consisting of three things, faith, hope, and love. Whatever else we can say about the Christian life, whatever else that we possess, what makes us Christians are at least these three things they can be unfolded and explained in their individuality or even as they work together. As Christians we live by faith, hope, and love. The interesting thing that Paul makes, the point that he makes in his discourse in 1 Corinthians 13 is that on this side of heaven we need all three, but when we are in His presence we will no longer have faith because we will have the object of faith and we will no longer have hope because we will be in the presence of what our hope looks towards. What I want to do this morning is demonstrate from this particular Psalm, the Psalm of David. We want to show how or the Psalm of the Lord, I should say, not of David, but how this Psalm demonstrates the dynamics of these three components of the Christian life, how faith, hope, and love work out in the Christian life on this side of heaven. Now that being the case, the first thing that we want to do is begin with faith. And in talking about faith we want to offer a basic definition or a working definition of faith. And here's the way and again I say working definition is not necessarily a dictionary definition, but a working definition of faith. And a working definition of faith is trust and confidence in something or someone. Trust or confidence in something or someone. Now that being the case, what it means is that faith always has an object. In other words, faith in something or faith in someone. So faith is that which attaches to an object. Therefore, the object of Christian faith is God's promise. God's promise, his promise of salvation. And we could say that God's promise of salvation consists, and again we're going very broadly, but God's promise of salvation consists in three things. A, it consists in salvation from sin and its consequences. Deliverance or salvation from sin and its confidence. So and its consequences. So when we say we have faith, our faith attaches to God's promise to deliver us from sin and the consequences of sin. But God's promise is not only the deliverance from sin and its consequences. God's promise is also the gift of righteousness. God promise that he would give us righteousness, the righteousness. In fact, the New Testament says that we become the righteousness of God. He doesn't impute our sins to us. He imputes the righteousness of another. So God's promise includes not only salvation from sin and its consequences, but it includes the gift of righteousness and the righteousness that he promises is the righteousness that he demands in his holy law. God promises to give us that. But thirdly, God's promise is also, it also includes eternal fellowship with him in both body and soul, eternal fellowship with God in both body and soul. So when we talk about faith, faith is trust or confidence in something or someone. Christian faith is confidence and trust in the promises of God. And the promise of God, the promises of God, the promise of his salvation consists of saving us from both sin and or the curses and consequences of sin. It includes giving us the righteousness that he requires that it includes eternal, unbroken fellowship with him. Our faith is attached to that promise. Well, not only do we have faith, but as we turn to this particular Psalm, we'll see something about our faith. And one of the things that we see is that the source of the promise that we attach our faith to is actually the Word of God. In other words, we trust God's Word or we trust His promises, but His promise is not whispered into our ear. His promise is written in His Word. Everything that we believe that God promises us for our salvation, He's given us in His Word in verse 4 of our text, it says, by the Word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of His, or excuse me, back up, verse 4, the Word of the Lord is upright and all His work is done in faithfulness. So the source, we, when we say we believe in the promises of God, I think this is important because so many people are talking about what God promised, but they don't have a scripture in verse. In other words, they think that God just shows up and says, I'm just going to promise you, and we have all kinds of things that we think that God is promised, but the source of what our faith attaches to, we trust God's promises and the promises that we trust are the ones that He has established in His Word. But secondly, we see that God's Word of promise is framed in covenantal commitments that are couched in the single term, his stepbast love. In other words, God has given us His promise in His written Word. That's what we trust. We trust what God said as it is recorded in His Word. But God's Word is framed in the phrase, the covenantal phrase of stepbast love, verses 18 and 22. Repeat that phrase, stepbast love. Actually, you see it in other portions of the Psalm as well, but specifically in verse 18, He says, behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His stepbast love. We said before and are working through the Psalms that the phrase that translated stepbast love is has said, which means God's covenant faithfulness. God has pledged Himself to deliver that which He has promised in His Word so the totality of what God promises His people can be called His stepbast love. And God's stepbast love is His promise to fully deliver everything that He has promised to those who look to Him by faith. Verse 22 also touches on His stepbast love. It says in verse 22, let your stepbast love, O Lord, be upon us even as we hope in you. So God's Word of promise contained in the scriptures is framed in the covenantal commitments that are couched in the words God's stepbast love. But certainly, we also learn from 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20, that all of the promises of God find there yes in Him, Him being Christ, that in, that is why He's a Paul says, through Him we can utter amen, which is to say that everything that God promises in His Word, the full substance of what He, what is covered by His stepbast love towards us is fulfilled in the person and work of God. And therefore, Christian, the Christian life consists in trusting God's Word of promise. And that Word of promise is fulfilled in the person and work of Christ because that is the consummation of His stepbast love. Now we've mentioned this here recently, that listen, all of God's love for us is contained in Christ. All of God's, the treasures, the riches of the treasures of His grace are contained in Christ. There is no more love other than what we have in Christ. In other words, He can never love us more, but because of His stepbast love for us, He will never love us less. So all of God's benefits for us are in Christ and our faith. Christian faith, Christian life is a matter of attaching faith to the promises of God as they are fulfilled in the person of His Son. Well that brings us then, if we talk about faith, what about hope? And hope, the Christian life doesn't just consist in faith, trusting God, trusting His promises, trusting that Christ is the fulfillment of His promise, but the Christian life also consists in hope. Now the interesting thing about the Hebrew word that's translated hope is it simply means weight, weight, w-a-i-t, not weight, w-e-i-g-a-c, but weight. And so when we talk about weight, weight, and so hope, it's not wishful thinking. Now another way that we talk about faith is anticipating, but the question is this, especially given the Hebrew context of this particular Psalm, the question would be this, what are we waiting for? If hope is waiting, then what is it that we are waiting for, and what we are actually waiting for in this Christian life is that it's for everything that God has promised in His Word. So what we're waiting for, what we're waiting for, God has promised complete salvation in His Son. God's, all of God's love is conveyed to us in His Son, all of His grace is contained in His Son, and what we are waiting for, and waiting is a critical part of the Christian life. We are waiting for the full deliverance, you say, but you already have it, we already have it, we have everything, we have all of the love of God, and in a sense we do have, as Peter says, everything necessary for life and Godliness, so what is it that we are waiting for? What is it that we are waiting for everything to be delivered? Now that brings out a couple of things for us to consider. One is this, the very fact that we are waiting and that we are a waiting and hoping people, and verses 18 through 20, what it means is that in this life, our experiences will not always, well, in fact, they will seem to sometimes run counter to what we embrace by faith. Again, let me repeat that. We are the fact that we are a waiting and hoping people indicates that our experiences in this life will sometimes seem to run counter to what we have embraced by faith, the God, the promises that God have given to us. So let's look at verses 18 through 20. And again, here's what the Psalmist says, behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in a steadfast love that He may deliver them, their soul from death, and keep them from famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. So why do we need a help and a shield if we have been delivered by God? Because sometimes in our horizontal, existential experiences, we will encounter some things either from us or even towards us that will run counter to what the scripture says that have been given to us by God in Christ. In other words, we have the gift of eternal life, but we also have the sentence of death. So therefore, because our our horizontal experiences are sometimes challenged, a challenge to what we possess by faith, it also can create problems. So therefore, secondly, we see that because our experiences don't always line up with what our faith attaches to, we are sometimes tempted to trust in and hope for things that we see rather than what God has said. In other words, here's what we know that by faith, we trust God. We trust what God has promised and what He's promised. He's put in His Word and what He's put in His Word. He has secured by His Son. But our horizontal experiences sometimes don't line up with what God has promised. For instance, God has promised the gift of righteousness, but we all don't always practice righteousness. We don't always feel righteous. We don't always sound righteous. We don't always act righteous. Where is this righteousness? Is it mine or not? And so the Father has promised us everything. And so here's what we will and this is what we are prone to do when we don't experience what God has promised in an immediate way, in an immediate way, in our horizontal situations, then we are prone to hope and we are prone to trust in something that we do see rather than what God has said. I think this is what the writer gets at in verses 16 and 17. He says, the king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The warhorse is a false hope for salvation and by its great might it cannot rescue. Now you can substitute any number of things for warhorse, for warrior and for king. You can substitute anything for horses and and shrimp and those and the other things that that people tend to put their trust in. The point is this that our existential horizontal experiences sometimes run counter to what God has promised in his word and what and what has been secured by Christ. And so as we we trust we wait and sometimes the waiting literally can be the most difficult part and especially as we deal with the realities of life and death it's a difficulty. So therefore the tendency is to know what God has promised and therefore attach the fulfillment for the interpretation of his promise to things that we can see. That's the challenge that he says is he reminds the writer reminds his readers that sometimes here's what we need to do and I think this is what the Lord's Day helps us to do is to get a better grip on things so that the warrior cannot be deceived into thinking that he is victorious simply because of his great skill and so that the king cannot be deceived into thinking that the number of his army is the measure of his strength. And so it is with us sometimes we can be sidetracked from what God says based on what we see and so I think waiting is the hardest part because it challenges us to say God has promised and I know he's promised and everything that he's promised has been delivered. Peter says we have everything necessary for life and godliness and then we'll say but what about this and this is one of the reasons I think Christians are very vulnerable when it comes to dealing with sickness and when it comes to dealing with death because somehow the death that we see obscures the promise of eternal life that we possess by faith and so therefore we will turn to charlatans we will turn sometimes out of desperation to any number of things to get us away from what we actually see. I've shared before when my mother was in the hospital dying we had to keep certain people away from her because the doctor said that she didn't have she only had X amount of time and then there were some people just refusing to receive now listen understand I believe in the gift of you I know we all have the gift of eternal life but when a person is about to go into chemotherapy this is not the time to start claiming stuff other than just pray that God would strengthen them as they go through this season because that existential experience sometimes is greater it's right there in our face so that we are blinded by the experience to what god himself has promised. I still think that one of the most paradoxical yet powerful statements that Jesus makes at the grave grave of Lazarus is this he says that if anyone believes in me you'll never die but if you die you'll live again and so we we hope and the reason we hope is because everything that God has promised has been secured but we don't always immediately possess it and so we're waiting and sometimes in our waiting we get desperate and sometimes in getting desperate we'll cast our our faith and our hope in the wrong direction because we're desperate but here's the third thing to remember therefore trusting God's promise and waiting for its consummation includes trusting that our existential circumstances are under the sovereign control of Almighty God. In other words here's what we're saying because sometimes we associate strength and we associate favor and we associate we associate blessing with things blessings with things that we see we have a hard time trusting in what God has promised or we tried to reinterpret what God has promised based on what we see but what God has promised is not always seen and therefore trusting God's promises and the consummation and waiting for the consummation of it waiting patiently on the Lord instead of jumping on every truck that passes by waiting patiently for the Lord means understanding that God is at work sovereignly even in all of our existential experiences. I think this is a point that the writer makes in verses 11 through 14 he says the council of the Lord stands forever the plans of his heart to all generation blesses the nation whose God is the Lord the people whom he has chosen as his heritage notice this the Lord looks down from heaven and sees all the children of man from where he is where he sits in throne he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all of their deeds and brothers and sisters that doesn't mean that God is watching like on a big screen television but the sound is muted this is a reminder that regardless of what we see the sovereign God who is other is actively involved in this world and his activity in the world does not obscure what he has promised in his son and so waiting waiting for the Lord means having a better understanding of how God is sovereignly at work we cited in our responsive reading from Romans 828 that all things do work together for the good for those who are the cause of God and for those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose God is at work and I think sometimes as Christians we get too trite about that and so when people are going through a trial we say that God is just trying to teach you something but listen unless you know the lessons you probably should shut up on that here's what we know that God is at work and we're waiting we know what he's promised but we're waiting that's what our hope is we're waiting we we don't know why he takes us through this season we don't know why he takes us this route rather than another but we know that the God who promised is with us and we know that what he's promised he will deliver and sometimes we get sidetracked by what we see rather than what God has said but we must trust that his purposes will not be frustrated by anything that is experienced horizontally because the God who promised is the God who is still active in human history and he is providentially bringing the winds that he has decided your way and so we hope we live by faith trusting what God has said we live by hope we live by hope waiting for the full disclosure of everything that he has promised that's why I think Paul can speak in 2nd Corinthians 4 and says that you know we know that there is a greater that this present weight this present glory is not worthy to be compared to the greater weight of glory these these perishing things we don't look at the things that are we look at the things that that don't that are not but what we're looking at are those things that God has promised but that brings us to the final thing and that is love we live by faith in this world because we trust what God has said as we live our lives we live by hope in this world because we are waiting for the full disclosure of everything that God has promised and the fact that there's a delay sometimes causes attention but we also live by love now here's what we mean by Christian love if if faith is is confidence and trust and if hope is is is waiting then love is our affection for and our devotion to God in response for to his love or his affection to us and his devotion to us which is captured by his covenantal framing of his love in other words God has committed himself God has has has has acknowledged his his his affection towards us in the term steadfast love but he is also pledging his devotion to us instead fast love so therefore our love is our response it is our affection to God and our devotion to God because of our reception of his love and his devotion to us now notice in this particular Psalm you notice that it opens with an exhortation and the exhortation that it opens with is not just for all of creation but the Psalm opens with an exhortation for the people of God first to shout for joy and then to give praise and to give thanks to the Lord in fact the Psalmist says that giving thanks for praise it defeats the righteous and the righteous refers to those who are the recipients of God's gift of righteousness so therefore in other words it it makes sense for those who are the saved of the Lord to shout for joy and to give thanks and to give praise to him in other words basically this exhortation is an exhortation for believers to let your affection for and your devotion to God be manifest even as you wait for the full disclosure and the consummation of everything that he has promised be be be be joyful in the Lord be thankful to the Lord be happy in the Lord even as you wait for him to fully disclose everything that he has promised and and here's the reality here's the reality of our experience our the reality of our horizontal experience is this as we live by faith and not by sight we can sometimes be distracted by what we see as we live by faith and not by sight we can sometimes be distracted by what we see here's the other thing not only can we be distracted from by by what we do see rather than what God has said also sometimes as we wait for God's promises to unfold we can also be discouraged we can be distracted by what we see and we can be discouraged by what we experience and sometimes because whether it's in sickness or in health sometimes we we know what we're waiting for but we catch we just get tired of waiting and when we become tired of waiting then we can become discouraged as reading of of a scientist and or he was a philosopher philosopher in England uh it was I think he died last year early of this year and he was 95 years old or however old it was and and people were celebrating the longevity of his life and he was upset he says listen I'm I'm tired I'm tired I just I don't know whether he was a believer or not but he says I just I'm I'm tired I I'm tired of living and sometimes we what we experience we know that yeah we we know what God has said and not only can we be distracted by what we see but sometimes we can be discouraged while we wait for what he has promised you say that here's what we are told that we have new bodies how many times have we been felt felt like crying out Lord how long right you order something from Amazon then you can get it overnight you see here's what he's promised here's what he's delivered he says this is what is ours in Christ in fact we are so guaranteed this new position that we have in Christ that Paul says we are seated with him in heavenly places and we look around there's no look like it's right how long will we struggle to love what is right how long and so sometimes waiting makes us discouraged that's the reality of our horizon to experience and then sometimes when we get discouraged as we wait and we get distracted by what we see then our affections for God become dull that's what we see I know what people love to say I know what we say in testimony time I want fire for the Lord sometimes it's not that we don't love him we do because God has poured his love in our hearts but sometimes in our heart sometimes in our own frustration sometimes even in our own rebellion the truth of the matter is that our affection for God is dulled I'm not trying to put guilt trips on people but that look at our priorities look at how we talk about how much we love the Lord until he comes times for the Lord and the reality is I thought we don't love him but our affections towards him in our devotion because it's our affection towards him that drives our devotion that's why Jesus is quoting from the from the prophet says zeal for your house has consumed me brothers and sisters that's not always a reality sometimes we just really need to say Lord I do love you but obviously not enough like what Jesus asked Peter in John 21 when he when Peter went back to fishing after the crucifixion of Christ and Jesus found him and and sought him out and came to him and he didn't ask him if you love me but he asked him do you love me more than these brothers and sisters that are daily challenge here we love the Lord more than these we love him more sometimes these these isn't listen it's a it's a it's a it's a changing word these change their clothes sometimes the these that we need to challenge our love by is sometimes we love some things more and some things that we love are more pleasant to us and some things that we love in other words sometimes the reason we don't love one another like we should is because we love the grudge better than the brother sometimes we love to complain see we love and and so here's what here's what we see that that when we are distracted by what we see rather than what God has said when we get discouraged because of what we experience rather and as we wait for the full disclosure then our affection can grow dull and when our affection grows dull you can sound out all of the alarms that you want is not going to change the affections of the people whose love has grown cold and it can happen it happens in relationships it's not that you you fall out of love I don't I don't know what that means but I I understand what people mean when it says they when they talk about drifting apart but as we can drift apart from one another in a horizontal relationship with people that we see every day we can also grow cold in our affection towards God that we do not see here's what we how do we manifest dullness of love in our horizontal relationships detachment just just not caring not noticing not being excited about the same things and just letting things go and how do we demonstrate how or what's the manifestation of a love grown dull towards a God that we do not see in difference towards the things of God in difference towards the people of God and so brothers and sisters when we can be distracted from what God says by what we see when we when we become discouraged in waiting for God to fully deliver then it's possible for us to grow dull in our affections and therefore become disengaged from the things that we truly do love God's love has been poured abroad in our hearts so what do we do you say well I'm just old I'm just tired or I've gone through this and I'm tired but here's where we are on this side of heaven we have faith trusting what God has said we have hope waiting for him to deliver it and we have love and the greatest of these three is love and the only thing that can spark our love for God is our being washed with the repeating the repetition of his steadfast love towards us look at what he says in verses 20 and 21 he says our soul waits for the Lord he is our help and our shield the unseen God is for us what those things that can be seen in other words he is he will protect us as a shield that you can see he is our guide but then he says this for our heart is glad in him there's the affection why because we trust in his holy name now here's the request then he comes back notice the shift here in other words he tells us he speaks and he appeals to God's steadfast love or in fact it's really a self appeal to God's steadfast love in verses 20 and 21 he says let your steadfast love O Lord be upon us now he's speaking to God now Lord see in other words he begins by speaking to himself about the steadfast love which makes our heart rejoice or heart glad but now he speaks to the Lord Lord let your steadfast love be upon me this is equivalent to what David says in Psalms 35 verse 3 he says he's speaking to the Lord and he says say to me that I am your salvation until we get home that's what we need God to say to us because that's what stirs our affection that's what drives our devotion to him is for him to say to us in the midst of our trials in the midst of our struggles that I am your salvation even as we go through the valley of the shadow of death even as we go from doctor's appointments even as we go to dysfunctional homes in the midst of this God has promised and we're waiting for the deliverance of his promise the full disclosure and until we do don't let our love grow cold because we've been distracted by what has seen and don't let our hearts grow discouraged because we do not see the full disclosure of what God has promised but instead where the promise of God like the eronic benediction and that's what the Lord tells Moses to tell Aaron he says now when you tell Aaron after he's offered all of the sacrifices you tell Aaron to raise his hand and put my name on my people the Lord bless you and keep you may the Lord give you peace and may his countenance be upon you and I pray that those of us who are down here at this time on this side of heaven that the name of the Lord and the steadfast love of the Lord would be upon us so that we would continue trusting what he says and we will continue waiting for what it will be fully disclosed even even in spite of all that we experience and that we will never grow cold in loving the God who has promised and the one who has delivered in his son say to me says David I am your salvation and God says to us in his steadfast love that he is our salvation amen