Collierville First Baptist Church

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If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn with me to the book of Psalms, chapter 16.

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It is a remarkable privilege to be able to share the Word with you again this morning, and I want to say thank you to so many of you who have been encouraging to me over the last couple of weeks,

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as I had my first opportunity to preach here just a couple of weeks ago.

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So, I thank you for that. Psalm 16.

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It shouldn't seem unusual to us that it's through the ordinary reading of Scripture and listening to the Word of God preached that we seem to find that it overlaps with the things that happen around us seamlessly.

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Any time that the reading of God's Word,

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listening to God's Word being preached, starts to line up with current events in a way that gives clarity and hope to us, we should be reminded that that's God's plan.

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It's easy in times like ours, and just with the events, the news events from the last week or so, to start flipping to the book of Revelation or to other places to try to discern what God is doing in these times. But one of the things that I've found is it's just through the normal, systematic reading of the Word that God impresses upon our hearts and our minds who He is, what He's doing, and what He's doing in our life.

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God gives clarity in this and gives us courage to move forward even when our circumstances and emotions seem to conspire against that.

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Here's a case in point.

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I selected this passage for this sermon about a month ago,

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well before conflict between Israel and Iran broke out,

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and I was just about finished completing my sermon prep when we received word last night that our military had bombed three of Iran's strategic nuclear sites.

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However, when I look at this passage, this passage has a lot to say to us today.

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Now, with circumstances going on around us and circumstances going on in our own lives,

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it's not unusual when events like these that we are watching and experiencing, they raise all sorts of questions for us about our futures,

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both as nations and as individuals.

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As Christians, we live with that understanding that events like the ones that we are witnessing will serve as forerunners to the Lord's return. And I want to encourage you this morning with two reminders.

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First of all, you are not alone in anticipating the Lord's return and wondering where these events fit into His plans.

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You join along with other brothers and sisters in this room and outside of this room, and in fact with brothers and sisters throughout 2,000 years of church history who have at least wondered if not wholeheartedly believed they were living in the last days,

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because in a sense, we all have been.

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When the writers of the New Testament used that term "the last days," we're referring to that period of time, those days between the ascension of Jesus and His second coming.

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Only the Lord knows exactly when He's going to come back.

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Here's a second reminder.

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You are also not alone when you consider similar questions in your own life.

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Where is everything going?

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What am I supposed to be doing? Where do I belong?

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Who can I depend upon?

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Every one of us goes through seasons and circumstances of life when those questions rise to the forefront, and we're tempted to wonder.

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It is with those questions in mind that I want to offer to you this morning concrete hope for questioning hearts.

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That's the title of my message, "Concrete Hope for Questioning Hearts." And it goes along wonderfully well with the VBS song that we sang earlier, that God is watching over the big things. He's watching over the small things, all things.

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He's faithful in them all.

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This message comes out of Psalm 16. It's good to remember that the book of Psalms was given to us by the Lord to serve as a songbook, and it voices the praises and the prayers of God's people, not just in Old Testament times but throughout all generations.

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The Psalms are varied in their content and in their style, but they all work together to give words to our questions and our concerns, our joys and our sorrows. It reminds us that we're all small, frail individuals in need of hope.

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But over and above that, the Psalms remind us of a God who is unrivaled in authority,

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matchless in splendor and limitless in his capacity to act on our behalf.

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I love the book of Psalms. If you ask me five or six days of the week, I'll tell you the book of Psalms is my favorite book in the Bible.

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The other days of the week, it's probably whatever I've read most recently.

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When you read the Psalms, it's important to remember that while the names and the circumstances and the places have changed between the writing of the Bible and our reading of it today, that God has remained the same.

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This particular Psalm, Psalm 16, is called, if you look at the heading, most of your Bibles will probably say it's a mictum, a mictum. Maybe a word that you haven't thought about over the last few weeks. So I'll refresh you on what a mictum is. There are six of these in the book of Psalms, six of them, and four of them are written during a time of crisis during the life of David,

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such as when he's running from Saul or when he's hiding from Saul or when he's running from his son Absalom, times of crisis.

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Most scholars will agree that they don't know exactly what mictum stood for in the beginning, but these Hebrew scholars that are really good with word origins and etymology, they've summarized it. Some believe that it could mean a golden song, something of great worth.

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Some have said that it could refer to a sudden revealing of something that was previously hidden, or even something that was worth inscribing in stone. Some of the mictums have been carved into stone as a memorial to God's faithfulness to His people.

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So whatever the term originally meant, we can gather from those ideas when we compress them together that the truths contained in this Scripture are precious to us, that they're worth building your life upon, they're worthy of serious thought and trust.

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If you'll look with me at verse 1, this psalm begins with a request,

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one with which you might resonate.

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David writes, "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge."

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Psalm 16 is comprised of 11 verses, and this is the only request that David makes.

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I don't know if you realize this or not, but praying is not just asking.

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It certainly includes asking, but it's not only asking. This is the one request David makes for help.

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He implies here great loss if God doesn't answer.

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The same word is used in Hebrew in Genesis chapter 2 of Adam's original responsibility in the garden.

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If you'll think back to Genesis chapter 2, God told him to work and to keep the garden. That word "keep" in Hebrew is the same word that we have here, "preserve."

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Adam's task was to work in the garden in a way that promoted life and cultivated fruit. The garden needed a gardener if it was going to become what God wanted it to become. And so here David asks the Lord to treat him in the same way that a gardener would treat a garden.

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And here's his logic, because God is his only hope.

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He refers to him as a refuge, a safe place designed to protect seekers from harm.

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David's declaring in this verse that God is his only help. God is his only home. God is his only hope.

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This is a very appropriate prayer for anyone to pray at any time.

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If you're ever at a loss to know what to pray in a particular situation, you won't go wrong by simply turning the eyes of your heart to heaven and crying or whispering, "Help."

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Help.

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This is an accurate prayer because apart from the Lord we have no hope for survival. Apart from the Lord we have no safe place. Apart from the Lord we have no advocates because no one else is coming for us.

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David doesn't stay here though.

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He reminds himself of the basis for his trust.

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And so he transitions from a request to a confession, verse 2, "I say to the Lord." Now, if you'll notice in your Bible, this first time you see the word "Lord," it's in all capitals.

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Any time you see all capitals used, it's because the original version in the Hebrew uses the word "Yahweh," which is the to be verb in past, present, and future tense. It's a way to describe the God who was, the God who is, and the God who always will be, the eternal God who transcends time. And David says, "I say to the eternal God, you are my Adonai."

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The God who is infinite and limitless has come near, personally, to instruct, to lead, to shepherd.

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This implies relationship.

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He's not speaking generically about any God at any time. He's specific about the God upon whom he is trusting and the fact that he is rightly related to that God. "I say to the Lord, you are my Lord," and I love this phrase, "I have no good apart from you."

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You could give me all the world's goods, all of the pleasurable circumstances, and they're nothing, Lord, if you're not there.

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But if you give me yourself, and none of the rest of it works out according to my pleasure, I still have everything that I need.

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No one, no thing, delights me the way that you do.

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I love this single-minded devotion.

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David sees God not just as the giver of all good, but good itself.

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That's an important distinction because it raises a question for each one of us. Why do we love the Lord?

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It's easy for a child to love a parent that just keeps forking over money for allowance without loving the parent.

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Because the child loves the parent because of what the parent does for the child.

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But it's possible to love the gifts without loving the giver, and David's not describing that kind of love.

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David sees in the Lord, "You're all I have, you're all I want, you're all I need." It's a question for us. Do we love the Lord because of who he is or because of what he does for us?

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Is God himself the greatest good in your life?

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David transitions here. He's made a request. He's confessed his love for the Lord, and then he starts recounting particular ways that the Lord has proven his faithfulness, that he's faithful in the big things and faithful in the small things and faithful through it all.

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These are the same means that God offers to us to give concrete hope to questioning hearts. I want to draw attention to four of them. First of all, God shows his goodness and he gives hope to us, first of all, by cultivating our character, by transforming us, by changing us. He reminds us that he is still working on us.

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He's doing this primarily through the habits and the relationships that we form. Look with me in verse 3. David writes, "As for the saints, the godly people in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight." How? How is David going to prove that God is his greatest good in life

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by surrounding himself with people who share the same hope?

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This is important because the Lord never created us, never designed for us to live in isolation.

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He saves us and he calls us to be a part of a body, a mass of humanity throughout all cultures and spaces and nations and times to together reflect his character to the world around us

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and extend his kingdom.

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Because being closely connected to godly people reminds us that we're not alone.

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When we walk through hardship, we're not alone.

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We're encouraged when we see other people linking arms together. Second, it provides support in growing closer to the Lord because at any given time,

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an example is going to be set that's worthy of imitation.

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Third, because there's a shared witness that they all have together to witness to the world around about the Lord, about his ways.

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And their lives themselves preach a message about his faithfulness.

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Fourth reason that this is good to be connected and intimately, tightly connected to a larger body is because together they can reject diverse distractions that are heaped upon them by a culture who's running in a different direction, as we see in the next verse.

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David intends for there, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, he intends for there to be a contrast between those who are godly in verse 3 and the ungodly in verse 4.

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He writes that the sorrows of those who run after another god will multiply.

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Sorrow after sorrow after sorrow after sorrow.

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Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.

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You see David intentionally distancing himself from those who seek satisfaction in any other god, thing or experience that is not Yahweh.

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He reminds us that drifting away from the Lord, away from his ways, never leads us back toward him or even our own good.

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Where distractions and diversions increase, sorrows increase all the more.

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And so those who experience this, those of whom verse 4 is their testimony, you'll see them experience one dissatisfaction after another.

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They live with no hope of redemption.

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In the end, they end up losing their life and they become cautionary tales of those who do not love the Lord and do not walk in His ways.

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They are living sermons that you cannot serve two masters.

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In this day, we would say that one of the primary ways that the Lord cultivates our character is through Christian community.

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And it's within the context of the church that He gives a space to work out that which is within. This is a laboratory of sorts that is a proving ground, equipping us for the life and the ministry that takes place outside of these walls.

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When you compare your life to verses 3 and 4, what do your priorities, what do your friendships say about the direction that you're heading?

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Do your pursuits lead you closer to the Lord or do you find that your relationship with the Lord is often compromised or challenged by the other pursuits that are happening in your life?

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You might look at verse 4 and say, "Now, Will, we're all Christians here. We worship the same God and we don't do blood sacrifices anymore."

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But make no mistake about this.

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Any person or any pastime that God consistently loses to, that the Christian community consistently loses to in your heart is a false God that you are orienting your life around.

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Anything that comes before the Lord and connecting with His people runs the risk of becoming idolatry to you.

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A reminder in this section is that we can always trust the Lord to cultivate our character through the habits and the relationships that we form, either to make us more godly or even at times to temporarily experience the sorrows of those who are teetering between two masters with the hope that eventually will repent and walk in God's way.

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One of the first ways that God gives us concrete hope is by cultivating our character through community and through the habits of our lives. The second way that God gives us hope is with the reminder that He controls our circumstances.

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God exercises careful, meticulous providence over every area of our lives.

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Whether it's we consider it to be a big area or a small area, He is Lord over all.

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Verse 5, David writes, "The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot." Verse 6, "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places." Some of you, perhaps you've purchased a piece of property before and you can remember the boundary markers that line off the property that is yours. David has in his mind the boundaries of the life that God has designated for him. And he's looking at it and he's saying all of it, start to finish, everything in between is good because God has done it. It is pleasing to me. It is a beautiful inheritance.

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David sees the Lord and His work in all of life as good and right in all these details.

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Now it's important to remember who wrote this.

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David, the youngest of several sons by Jesse, anointed to be the next king of Israel when he was a teenager, goes to work for the man that he's eventually going to replace for a period of about 13 years.

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Multiple attempts taken to take his life either by spear or army or some other means. He's constantly on the run. That doesn't sound beautiful.

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But David's not writing about how each moment felt to him. He is referring back to God's providential care over all of life. And how at every turn, no matter how he felt, God proved himself faithful.

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David has the spiritual vision to trust the Lord's providence with his times and with his placement. Oh, how difficult this can be.

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I mean, how often does discontentment and anxiety rise up in our hearts with the details?

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It's not uncommon to be tempted either to look forward with longing so much so that we neglect what's immediately in front of us or to look back with regret if even resentment.

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But one mark of spiritual maturity is to trust the Lord's wisdom and to trust his kindness in regard to the situations in our lives, whether they seem comfortable to us or not.

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And we can always trust the Lord that he is providentially overseeing circumstances in a way that promotes his glory, that shows how awesome he is through our lives and also in a way that is our best good.

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A third way that the Lord gives us concrete hope is through his guidance.

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God gives us guidance.

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You see this in verses 7 and 8. He says, "I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.

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In the night also my heart instructs me."

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To bless the Lord is to acknowledge him as the source of all of our good. And in this section, David praises God for being his private counsel.

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He specifically mentions, "In the night my heart instructs me."

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Oh, how dangerous this is. I mean, who among us hasn't woken up in the middle of the night with racing hearts? Imagination is going wild as we consider worst possible scenarios.

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Right? Am I just speaking of myself? Nobody's nodding in agreement.

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It's so easy to spiral.

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And I think it's because we do far too much listening to our hearts instead of preaching truth to them.

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Until our hearts catch up.

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Oh, that moment's critical. We can either listen to our creative hearts developing disasters, or we can speak truth to our hearts knowing that he who keeps us will not slumber, nor will he sleep.

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Elsewhere David writes, "In peace I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

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My safety is not guaranteed by my ability to know everything, do everything, or be in all places at any given time."

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That's God's job.

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Verse 8, he goes on. He says, "I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken." We have to remember God is present. He is active in our lives and working in ways that we can't see or imagine.

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And so the truly wise person is the one who rests content in their own limitations.

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Friend, you don't have to know everything.

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You can't possibly be everywhere.

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You can't do everything.

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That's the Lord's job.

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We get in trouble when we try to be or do what only God himself can be or do. He did not design us to be omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent.

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Only he is.

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And so when we rely upon him to be those things and to do those kind of things on our behalf, we can get back to the business of being small, frail, limited, little people depending upon a great God.

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And the good news at this point is that you can always trust the Lord to give guidance that is good and right in every circumstance. He gives us hope.

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The fourth way that God gives concrete hope to us is by promising our preservation.

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He promises our preservation. Look in verse 9. David writes, "Therefore my heart is glad, my whole being rejoices, my flesh also dwells." He doesn't say my soul dwells secure.

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He says my flesh dwells secure. He's speaking of an embodied existence.

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And that's important because we are embodied individuals.

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Sometimes we have this idea that you separate the body from the soul and God only cares about the soul. Then why did he come in flesh?

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We're a lot more difficult to separate than we think that we are, and God cares for all of us.

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All of us.

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He says my flesh also dwells secure, for you will not abandon my soul to sheol or to death, to the afterlife. You won't just turn me loose and let me go and disintegrate or whatever else. You will not abandon me. You will keep me even there. You will not let your holy one see corruption. David knew that trials and suffering and death would not have the last word over him.

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He was convinced that God's care for him extended beyond his birth to his death because he could look back and he could see God's providential care over all the generations that came before him. And he knew that God would show the same kind of care to the generations ahead because he knew that God would not change.

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David was convinced that if he fell, he would also rise.

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If he suffered before people, he would also flourish before the Lord.

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And this leads to the last verse, which is a culmination of everything that we've read so far.

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This is a doxology of sorts. You see his heart just being spilled onto the page.

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He says directly to the Lord, "You make known to me the paths of life.

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And in your presence there is fullness of joy and in your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

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There's a lot there. We see in this verse the kind of clarity and the kind of abundance that God gives in his way, that God will never lead you astray. He reveals to us the path of life, flourishing the path of hope.

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There is joy in God's presence that will not fade away.

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And delight in all that he is, in all that he does on our behalf. This is the God that we worship, the God who causes our heart to swell when we consider him as if it were going to burst.

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The Lord who can't stop, he is relentless in showing his goodness to us.

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So I ask you this morning, are you concerned about what lies ahead in your future?

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Friend, on the authority of God's Word, if the Lord is your delight, if the Lord is your sustainer, if the Lord is your counselor, then you have nothing to fear in the days ahead. Nothing to fear.

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And this leads to my takeaway truth for the morning.

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You can always trust the Lord. There's not a season, there's not a circumstance in your life that you can't trust the Lord.

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There's nothing that has happened or is going to happen in your life that is going to cause you to have to cut corners or manipulate people or circumstances in order to get God's will done. God is faithful in the big things. Should we call the kids back up? He is faithful in the big things, he's faithful in the small things, he's faithful in it all.

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There is never a time that you can't trust the Lord to act on your behalf, and there is no one better suited to handle your case.

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Now those sound like great words, but how do we know?

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How do we know at the end of the day that this is true?

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Simply look at His Son who perfectly fulfills every verse of this psalm. Jesus was completely dependent upon the Father during His earthly ministry, even going so far as to say in John chapter 5 and in John chapter 8 and several times in John's gospel that He didn't do anything on His own initiative, but He simply came to fulfill the Father's plan.

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Jesus encircled Himself with disciples who were the excellent ones in His book and who adopted His teaching and the message of the gospel to carry it on after He left.

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Jesus entrusted Himself to the Father when He was ridiculed and forsaken and crucified for our sins. Jesus, though He was crucified and buried, did not ultimately experience decay.

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But He rose again in glory, ascended to the Father, and sits today enthroned with Him in heaven, and one day He will return to claim all that are His so that they can enjoy life and fellowship with Him for eternity.

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This is not the last time you see this passage in Scripture. When searching under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for words that would adequately and accurately describe how the Old Testament prophesied of the resurrection of Jesus.

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Do you know where Peter turned in his Bible? Psalm chapter 16.

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He quotes about half the psalm, the last half of the psalm, in his sermon in Acts chapter. We read about in Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost when 3,000 people were saved. And this is what he says, Acts chapter 2 verse 31, that David foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption, that Jesus rose again to conquer sin, death, and the grave, so that anyone who trusts in Him would never experience those things without hope.

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Not wishy-washy hope, concrete hope, confident expectation.

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Paul writes about it this way in Romans chapter 8 verse 32.

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He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.

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How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

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He then writes, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

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Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?"

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A moment of honesty here. He says that it is written, "For your sake, we're being killed all day long.

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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."

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No! In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus, our Lord.

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And this kind of confidence is only ours in Jesus.

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And he reminds us that we can always trust the Lord. Trusting the Lord is not something that we just say that we're doing, and it's not something that we gear up our feelings to do. Trusting the Lord is worked out practically.

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And so I want to give you five bullet point quick points of application. How do we practically trust the Lord in everyday life?

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When our feelings are running wild, and our minds and imaginations are going crazy, what do we do to strengthen our trust in the Lord? First of all, listen to the Lord through his word.

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David said that even in the night watches, "The Lord is my counselor." This reminds me of last week, we were reminded of this in Pastor's sermon.

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We have to rely upon the Lord to be our counselor through the voice of the Spirit, through the written word. Keep in mind that when Jesus was tested by the devil in the wilderness, do you remember how he responded the first time he was tested?

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The devil offered bread to him, and he said that, "I don't live by bread alone." People don't live merely by what they eat, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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We live by what God says. What God says is living and active. It's breathed out by him, and it's profitable. He shapes us by his word, and equips us for every word that he calls us to do. You know what that means? There is nothing that God's going to require of you in your life that he's not going to also equip you for by his word. Not by going on Facebook and ranting and rallying and trying to get people to support whatever you're feeling that day, not by calling your best friend.

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It's by his word. We live by what he says, second. We bolster that trust. We listen to the Lord, second. We meditate upon the word. So we receive it, but we don't just run on from it. Like Psalm chapter 1 verse 2, we meditate on it. We turn it over in our minds. We explore the implications.

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Instead of listening to our hearts, we preach to them as we turn the word over in our minds.

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When I meditate on the Scripture, I like to take one word. I'll take a verse, and I may take one word at a time.

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Psalm 16, 2, "I," this is in a way, this is personal, "I." "I have, I possess." What do I have in my possession? Right? Not a lot. Family, books, home, vehicle.

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I have no good apart from you. And I'll just take each word and meditate on the significance of that word. Why this word and not another? And it helps me to see different angles of the same truth.

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We receive the word, we meditate on the word. Third, we pray the word. I'd encourage you to think of reading your Bible as a conversation.

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God starts, it's always good to let the Lord start the conversation.

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He starts the conversation through the word. We think about what He says, and we take His words, and we pray them back to Him.

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Fourth, live the word.

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We've prayed the word, "Lord, would You help me to do this? Would You empower me to be this? Would You help me to take advantage of this?"

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And then last, we share the word. How do we build trust?

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We receive the word, we think the word, we pray the word, we live the word, we share the word.

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And over time, God will give opportunity to share with others the reason for your hope in Him, and you become one of those excellent ones in verse 3 that other people are looking toward as an example.

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Let's all stand together.

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I want to ask our team if we can put Psalm 16 verse 2 back on the screen. Worship team, staff, you come on.

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Psalm 16 too.

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I want to say this together.

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I'm just going to look out here. Y'all tell me when it's up.

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How about I just lead you in it?

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Psalm 16 too.

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I say to the Lord,

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"You are my Lord.

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I have no good

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apart from You."

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I want to ask you this morning, is that true in your heart?

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Oh, I pray that it is.

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If we had all the time in the world, and maybe we will in eternity,

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I would love, I'm looking at people that I'm growing to know and love, I would love to hear how the Lord has proven His faithfulness to you, how He has proven Himself like these verses describe in your life. Wouldn't it be neat if we just have testimony after testimony?

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Is this true in your life?

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It's always one thing to say, but it's another to know.

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If you're here this morning and you don't know where you stand with the Lord,

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maybe you realize this morning that you are relying upon yourself for salvation.

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The good news is you don't have to.

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The Bible says that at just the right time, Jesus came, righteous for the unrighteous,

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and He died. He gave His life so that we can have our sins forgiven, and He rose again to give His eternal life.

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I want to encourage you, if you don't know that you know that you know that you have a relationship with the Lord and that your eternity has settled, please come. Talk to one of these staff members. They'll pray for you. They'll share the gospel.

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Maybe this morning you're battling something, and you don't know if the Lord truly is the greatest good in your life. Maybe you know the Lord, but He's got a rival. You may want to come with a friend and kneel at these steps and pray. However the Lord leads you to respond, you respond.

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Lord, we thank You for this time and thank You for this Word, and Lord, most of all, thank You for giving concrete hope to us when all hopes seem lost.

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Lord, we ask You by Your Spirit to work in the hearts of those who don't yet know You. Reveal that to them. Lord, help them to turn to You with an everlasting yes.

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Lord, bless all of us. Help us to walk in Your ways, in Jesus' name. Amen. As we sing, "You come if the Lord's working in your heart."

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