Collierville First Baptist Church

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Today we are going to observe the Lord's Supper

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And before we do, I'd like for you to take your Bible and turn to Psalm, chapter 130 Psalm 130 I want to speak to you on this subject, blessed assurance Do you have the confidence that when the final chapter of your life is written

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and your life here on earth is over Do you have the confidence that you will be ushered into the presence of a holy, holy, holy God and that you will experience fullness of joy and pleasures forever from the right hand of God Do you have that kind of confidence today?

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Well, let me ask you this, if you've got that confidence, what do you base your confidence on? See, I believe there's so many people in the world today who base their confidence about their eternal destiny upon what they do or what they don't do Let me just clarify something right now Nobody's going to heaven on their own merit Nobody Your record will not stand up in the presence of a holy God

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We need someone to do something for us that we could never do for ourselves And that's what this message today is all about Now this morning, I want to invite you to use your sanctified imagination I want you to join with me as we join a group of Jews who are headed to Jerusalem for a special feast It could have been the feast of Passover And they're heading to Jerusalem When you come to Psalm, chapter 128 to 134, they are called the Ascent Psalms Because you're ascending up to Jerusalem for one of the feasts So here they are, and they're singing some songs You see, these are songs that they sung

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They're singing Psalm 130 Let me read it to you

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I'm not going to sing it to you "Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord Lord, hear my voice

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Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications If you, Lord, should mark iniquities

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O Lord, who could stand?

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There is forgiveness with you

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That you may be feared I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait And in his word do I hope My soul waits for the Lord More than the watchman for the morning Indeed, more than the watchman in the morning

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O Israel, hope in the Lord For with the Lord there is loving kindness

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And with him is abundant redemption And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities

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This psalm shows us how to be right with God How to know that we know that we know That when we die we'll go to heaven Not based on our record But based on the spotless record

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of the dear Lord Jesus Christ Would you bear your heads with me? Heavenly Father, I pray that you would take this amazing psalm and I pray you'd make it come alive in our hearts and I pray, Heavenly Father,

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that you would touch our hearts, that you would save lost souls, that you would encourage believers, that you would cause those who feel overwhelmed by life

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to get a new lease on life. Lord, use your word in a powerful way in our lives. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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Now, I want you to understand that this psalm is a special psalm and it had a special place in the hearts of some of the great heroes of the faith. Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin, John Wesley, and John Bunyan. They all considered this to be one of their favorite psalms.

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It is a powerful message and that message can be condensed down to one salient point I want you to understand, I want you to memorize today. You can know you're saved. Now, there are people who tell you today that you can't know if you're going to heaven or not. There are people today who say you're arrogant if you believe that you can know absolutely for sure that you're going to heaven when you die. But I tell you based upon the authority of God's word, you can know you're saved.

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You can know it.

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Now, I want you to listen carefully.

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As these Jews that we're traveling with on the way to Jerusalem begin to sing this psalm, the first thing they sing about is number one, the cry for mercy.

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In Psalm 130 verses 1 and 2, "Out of the depths I've cried to you, O Lord.

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Lord, hear my voice.

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Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications."

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Hey, as you hear those words, can't you just sense the desperation and the hearts of these group of pilgrim Jews headed to Jerusalem for worship?

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It's like the psalmist has hit rock bottom in his life. Have you ever been there?

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Have you ever had a time in your life where for one reason or another you feel absolutely overwhelmed?

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It reminds me of Jonah in Jonah chapter 2 verse 2. The Bible says that, "Jonah called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me, and I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice." You hear what Jonah said? Now, where was Jonah? Think about this. He'd been thrown overboard.

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He's sinking into the ocean,

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and he's swallowed by a great fish. So not only is he sinking to the bottom of the ocean, he's in the belly of a great fish.

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And he cried out to God. And guess what? The Bible says, "God heard him."

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You may be at a place in your life,

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and things are tough. Things are real hard for you right now, and you wonder, "Is God listening to me? Is God hearing my prayers?" I tell you, he hears your prayers.

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Now, he answers your prayers in his timing, not your timing.

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I remember reading about David Brainard,

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who was a missionary to the Indians in New England. He died when he was 29 years old.

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29 years old. On December the 16th, 1744, he wrote these words in his diary.

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I quote, "I was so overwhelmed with depression that I knew not how to live.

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I longed for death exceedingly.

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My soul was sunk in deep waters."

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You see, even strong, faithful, fruitful believers

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sometimes face trials that take the wind out of their sails temporarily.

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David Brainard experienced that. You've experienced that. I've experienced that.

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So what's troubling the psalmist here? We don't know for sure.

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It could have been financial problem.

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It could have been a personal problem. It could have been a family problem. It could have been a spiritual issue. We're not sure. But we do know this.

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This psalmist was in the depth of despair.

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Listen to the Jewish people as they sing about their own desperate need for the mercy of God.

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Are you there today?

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Are you ready to cry out to God for mercy today?

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To get you out of this predicament that you find yourself in?

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I'll tell you, he'll hear you. He'll listen to you. But there's a progression in this psalm.

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Secondly, I want you to see not only the cry for mercy but the truth about God. Number two, the truth about God.

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Now we hear this group singing about the holiness of God and the greatness of God.

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They know they're sinners

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and they know that God is utterly holy and perfectly just.

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They are deeply troubled

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by the thought that one day they're going to stand before God.

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Boyce in his commentary made this observation. He said, "We live most of our lives with very little awareness of God.

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And where God has been abolished

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and awareness of sin is inevitably abolished.

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Also because sin is defined

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only in relationship with God."

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You know, it's amazing in our culture today how many people have forgotten about God. It's amazing how many people in our culture today

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are fixated on things that have no eternal impact in their life, no spiritual impact in their life whatsoever.

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And they forget about God.

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And I'll tell you, I promise you when a deep sensitive awareness of God is missing in your life

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then there will be a lack of awareness of sin in your heart.

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Now think about this.

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We can sin against God by what we say.

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We can sin against God by what we do or by what we don't do. We can sin against God by the motives we have in our heart that lie underneath our actions.

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There's a lot of ways we can sin against God. But I want you to notice this truth about God. Look at verses 3 and 4.

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And these pilgrims heading up to Jerusalem are singing about the truth about God. If you Lord should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand?

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Who could stand? There is forgiveness with you, but there's forgiveness with you that you may be feared or reverent.

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Does God keep a record of our sins?

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Absolutely. He does. In Matthew 12, verse 36.

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But I tell you that every careless word that people speak they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.

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God knows what you say.

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God knows what you do. God knows what you don't do. He knows everything about you.

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Now listen, how would you like to stand before a holy, perfectly just God on the day of judgment

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without your sins having been forgiven?

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Do you know the only thing that will happen in that moment?

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You will be doomed to spend eternity separated from God in a place called hell.

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Now look, I love verse 4, but there is forgiveness with you. I love these butts in the Bible.

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I hope you got that right.

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Look at verse 3. Let me explain.

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If you Lord should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand?

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But is a contrast.

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But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared.

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Who can forgive your sins?

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I can't forgive your sins.

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Your parents can't forgive your sins young people.

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Nobody can forgive your sins except God alone.

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Only God can forgive your sins. And he offers unlimited forgiveness for every sin that you have committed or will ever commit in the future.

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Now, how does he do it? Well, let me tell you what God does not do. God does not pretend that our sin doesn't matter. He doesn't wink at our sins. Sin is serious business with God.

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Every sin that you have committed, every sin that I've committed has to be atoned for, has to be paid for by someone or something.

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That's why God sent his son 2,000 years ago to the cross of Calvary to pay the price for our sins. In 1 Peter 2, verse 24, the Bible says, "And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, for by his wounds you were healed." Now, do you understand what that says?

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It says that every sin that you and I ever commit in our entire history on this earth

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was placed upon the Lord Jesus. The guilt of our sin was placed upon the Lord Jesus 2,000 years ago.

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And he paid the penalty for our sins with his own body and blood. You and I are guilty sinners,

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and we're in desperate need of a Savior.

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And Jesus is that Savior, the only Savior that God has ever provided for the entire human race. You say, "But what about people who live in another part of the world?" I'll tell you, Jesus is the only Savior for the entire human race regardless of where a person resides.

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The same Savior that Zach and Becca have loved and Zach has taught about here in Carville, Tennessee will be the same Savior in the country where he goes to proclaim the gospel.

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And we've got to understand that.

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Now, how do we know that God accepted Jesus' sacrifice on the cross? We know it because he raised him from the dead.

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Three days after Jesus was crucified, he was raised from the dead, and it was a sure sign from God that he had accepted the sacrifice of his Son on our behalf. Isn't that good news? I mean, that's the best news of all.

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God accepted his sacrifice.

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Now, when you and I turn from our sin and place our faith in Jesus, God forgives us. He forgives us. I love what Micah wrote in his prophecy, Micah 7, verse 18 and 19.

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"Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity?" Aren't you glad that the God of heaven has pardoned your iniquity? Another way of saying he has forgiven your sins.

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Now, I'm reminded that when somebody has cancer, one of the first things they want to know after they come out of a test or after they come out of surgery,

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Doc, did you get it all?

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Did you get it all?

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Let me tell you,

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when Jesus forgave your sin, he got it all.

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Every single sin that you've ever committed, every single sin that you will ever commit in the future, Jesus forgave that sin based upon his shed blood on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.

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I know what you're thinking about, but what about, and you're thinking about some big ones, some big nasty ones that you've committed in your life,

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and you wonder, could God really forgive me for that? Now, look at me. Yes, absolutely yes. There's no sin that God will not forgive except the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Bible says. And if you're in this room today, you have not committed that sin, I promise you. I promise you. But God forgives our sins based upon the sacrifice of his son. So the Bible goes on to say in Micah 7, 18, 19, "Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession?

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He does not retain his anger forever

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because he delights in unchanging love.

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He will again have compassion on us.

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He will tread our iniquities underfoot." I love that. And listen to this. Listen to this.

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"Yes, you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."

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And I tell you, every sin that the Lord Jesus paid for you by his blood and by his body, I tell you, those sins do not have corks on them. They don't float.

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They are at the depths of the sea, and you are forgiven for all of your sins, if you have repented of your sin and placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now look again at verse 4, "That you may be feared." Now the word fear there is not like the fear of a child in a thunderstorm.

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It's talking about a reverence for God.

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A reverence for God, a desire to worship God.

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Once the sinner repents and places their faith in Jesus, they are blessed with a deep sense of fear and reverence for God because they have been forgiven.

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I'll tell you, sometimes in my quiet time, I'm reading my Bible,

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and I think about some of the dumb things I've done in my life, things that I wish I could erase and do over,

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but I can't erase them, and I can't do over them.

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But I'll tell you, my friend, the Lord Jesus loved me, and he went to the cross and took my sin and your sin, and he paid the penalty for our sins so that we could be forgiven

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and so that our sins, all of them, not a single one missing, would be cast into the sea and separated from us as far as the east is from the west, like it says in Psalm 103. I'll tell you, you can know you're saved. You can know you're saved. Now here we are. We're with this group of Jews,

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and they're heading to Jerusalem. They're singing this song, Psalm 130.

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They sung about the cry for mercy.

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They sung about this truth of God, about God, that He forgives,

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that He doesn't hold our sins against us. And now they sing about the reality of hope, the reality of hope. Look at verses 5 and 6.

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"I wait for the Lord. My soul does wait, and in His word do I hope.

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My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning."

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Indeed, more than the watchman for the morning. Now just picture a watchman on the wall.

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He's got the graveyard shift. All right?

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So he's up there and say 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. and he's got the graveyard shift. And what's he looking for? He's looking for the first light of dawn.

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He wants to go home and eat some breakfast and spend time with his family.

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And he's looking for the sun to come over the horizon.

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And there's psalmist here says, "I'm waiting for the Lord." Look, the watchman waits for the first sign of sunrise.

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So what's the psalmist waiting on? Well, he's waiting for God to give him the assurance that his sins are truly forgiven.

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Can we be sure that God forgives us and saves us? Absolutely.

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But we find our confidence where the psalmist found his confidence. Now look at these verses again.

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"I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait." And look at this. You ought to underline this in your Bible. "And in his word do I hope."

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Where do we find our assurance? Where do we find our confidence? We find it in the Word of God.

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The psalmist believed the promises of God.

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Can I ask you the question this morning? Will you believe the promises of God this morning concerning your forgiveness and your assurance of salvation?

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Look at Colossians chapter 1 verse 13 and 14.

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"For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption." Now look at this. The forgiveness of sins.

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The Bible says, the Bible promises that if you trust Jesus as your Savior and your Lord that you will have the forgiveness of sins. How many sins? All of them. All of them.

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God keeps his promises.

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So with our sanctified imagination this morning,

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we've been blessed by tagging along with this group of Jews who are heading to Jerusalem. You say, "Are they coming from the north, south, east, or west?" I don't know, but it's all uphill when you go to Jerusalem because Jerusalem is up on a mountain.

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And so they're heading up to Jerusalem

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and they're singing this song, Psalm 1.3. It's one of the songs they're singing.

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And they're rehearsing the truth about how to be right with God.

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How to know that they're saved. How to know that they're right with God.

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They've been singing about the cry for mercy.

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The truth about God and the reality of hope.

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And now they're leaning into this final one. I love this one. The promise of redemption. Look at verse 7 and 8.

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The Bible says, "Oh, Israel, hope in the Lord." Now, can I tell you this? When it comes to sin in our lives, when it comes to the fact that sin separates us from God, the Bible says, "For the wage of sin is death,

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but the free gift of God's eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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And so what does sin do to our life? It separates us from God.

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If that sin is not forgiven,

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that separation will be for all of eternity.

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It's a frightening thought.

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And if you're here today and you say, "Pastor, I don't know if I've ever truly repented of my sin and placed my faith in Jesus." We're going to give you an opportunity in just a moment to do that.

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And you can walk out of here today

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knowing that you're saved, knowing that you're forgiven, not because some preacher said you're forgiven, not because some preacher said you're saved, but because of what God says in His Word.

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The promise of redemption, verse 7 and 8.

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"Oh, Israel, hope in the Lord." If you're going to hope in someone, make sure you hope in someone that can come through for you, right?

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"Oh, Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is loving kindness." "I get loving kindness" in the Hebrew is a very special word.

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It speaks of steadfast love, the steadfast love of God,

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merciful, gracious love of God.

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"For with the Lord there is loving kindness." You say, "Well, Pastor, how long will the Lord love me?" Forever.

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"Pastor, will the Lord love me when I blow it?" Yes, He'll still love you. The Bible says in Romans chapter 8, "There's nothing that can ever separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." He'll love you forever. He loves you today.

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"For with the Lord there is loving kindness." And with Him is, I love this, abundant redemption.

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I love that. Not just redemption, but abundant redemption.

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"And He will redeem Israel from all His iniquities." The Jewish people who were headed to Jerusalem are now celebrated. They started out in the depths of despair,

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a cry for mercy.

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Then they sang the truth about God.

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Then the reality of hope.

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And now they're on a spiritual mountaintop.

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And they're singing about the hope of hoping into the Lord and His loving kindness and redemption.

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We can understand this redemption better than they could.

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But because we live in the New Testament era.

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In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7, Paul wrote this,

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"In Him we have redemption through His blood.

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The forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace."

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Jesus redeems people caught in the web of sin

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by offering His body and blood as a payment for their sins. You say, "Well, Pastor, I feel like I'm caught in one of those webs of sin and I can't get loose."

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Maybe it's a sin of immorality.

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Maybe it's an addiction. I don't know what it is. But you feel trapped by that sin. That's what sin does.

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Jesus said, "He who commits sin becomes a slave of sin." And you feel like you're enslaved of that sin. I tell you, by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ,

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by the fact that He offered His body and blood on the cross to save you and deliver you, He can set you free.

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He can set you free from the penalty of sin,

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the power of sin, and eventually from the presence of sin. That's what Jesus can do for you.

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I want to ask our staff to come, our worship team to come, and we're going to give you an opportunity today

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to have your sins forgiven. If you've never been saved, you can be saved today. You say, "Well, Pastor, what do I have to do to be saved?

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What do I have to do to have that no-so salvation where I know that I can stand in the presence of a holy and righteous God?"

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Well, number one, you got to cry for mercy because you can't save yourself. I don't care who you are. You got to cry out to God for mercy. You got to say, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner."

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And you have to put your faith and trust in Jesus as your Savior and your Lord.

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And then you have to be willing to follow Christ.

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Jesus said, "If any man wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." Follow Jesus.

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Are you willing to do that today? I hope and pray you are. If you are, come to one of our staff members and just tell them that you want to be saved today. You want to have a no-so salvation.

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You want that blessed assurance.

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But listen, if you're here today and you're a believer

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and you're going through a dark time in your life, like David Brainard,

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one of the hero missionaries of American life,

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and you feel like the walls are closing in on you're overwhelmed, come to this altar.

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Bow before the Lord. Ask him to set you free,

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to give you joy unspeakable and full of glory.

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He'll hear your prayer no matter... Listen, nobody can go down further than Jonah did.

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I tell you, he went a lot further than you are today. He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard him, and the Lord will hear you.

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Let me pray and you respond as God leads you. Father, in the name of Jesus,

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I pray for the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and use it in people's hearts and lives today.

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Oh God, in heaven, have your way in our hearts. I pray for people to be saved, for believers to be encouraged. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand and worship and you come as God leads you.

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