Psalm 92

Eoghan Bateman preaching from Psalm 92

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Our scripture reading is Psalm ninety-two. How great are your works! It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night. To the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have I meet glad by your work. At the works of your hands I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep, the stupid man cannot know, the fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. But you, O Lord, on hide forever. For behold, your enemies, O Lord, for behold, your enemies shall perish, all evildoers shall be scattered. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies, my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. And so reads God's word.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Good morning, everyone. My name is Owen. I'm a member here in the church, and I'm going to be taking us through Psalm 92 this morning. We live in a pretty chaotic world. I was driving home the other day, same way that I always do. I wasn't really thinking, I was just driving home, and suddenly it was crazy. There was traffic everywhere, it was chaos. I had forgotten I was by Croke Park and the hurling semifinals were on. So suddenly there's people walking across the roads and streams all wearing the same colored jersey. There's taxis cutting in and out. There's just chaos on the roads. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to put my hand on the horn, blast everyone out of it. I wanted maybe I could kind of cut in between all these little gaps, all these little taxis. It was chaos. I wanted to take control and take some kind of action. But ultimately I realized in that moment, what's the best thing for me to do here? It's to sit in this traffic. It's to rest, it's to wait, it's to not hit anybody, it's to take my time. It was a chaotic scene. I wanted to take control, but the rest the best option was to wait. Now, ultimately, when I got home, I could forget about the traffic pretty quickly. It doesn't play in my mind too much, it didn't bother me. In fact, I got stuck in similar traffic this morning. But there's other areas of restlessness that would be more likely to weigh in my mind. Things that feel more threatening, more consuming than just traffic. Maybe relationships that are challenging or not working out the way that I had hoped or expected. Maybe it's decisions around my future and what's coming next in life. Those are the kinds of things that are more likely to weigh on my mind. Those are the kind of things where I might want to take control. I might want to grab the wheel and steer my life exactly where I think it should go. I think we all experience this chaos, this restlessness in one way or another. Maybe there are areas in your life that feel this way at the moment. I wonder what they are. It could be at work, uncertainty around your job, it could be in your relationships, maybe there's just a lack of stability or clarity in your connection with one person or a group of people. Is it health struggles that you have no control over? Maybe you particularly feel the weight of wars happening around the globe and humanitarian crises. There are often parts of life that feel chaotic around us, things that we can't just take an easy action on and fix, no matter how hard we try. In a sense, we're all caught in the traffic in some way. What does God invite us to do here? How does he speak into this sense of restlessness that we so often feel? Well, the first thing he says to us through Psalm 92 is to rest in his work. And that's our first point this morning. Rest in God's work. When life feels this way, we are called to rest in God because He is the one who is at work. I was on a flight to Belgium once, and you know, there's not a whole lot you can do on a flight. Um, I think I watched a movie or two, I tried to sleep for a while, but really what I wanted is I wanted to get to Brussels. I wanted to get to where I was flying to. Eventually the plane comes down, we land. It was a pretty good landing, you know, it was fairly smooth, and some people around me started clapping. I don't think I've ever seen a whole flight where everyone starts to clap, but there's there's always one or two, right? Um who were they clapping for? Why were they clapping? Were they congratulating themselves or their fellow passengers on their successful flight? Well done me. No, who were they praising? They were praising the pilot. And that's the response of the psalmist here at the beginning of Psalm 92. He praises God. Look at the language there in verses 1 to 3. It isn't just a one-liner, ah, praise God. No, these verses show an abundance of genuine gratitude and praise. From morning to night, there's a constant posture here of rejoicing towards the Lord, the most high God. It's something that is good and right to do. I don't think it's by accident that musical instruments are mentioned here. You probably know I'm much more used to being over there praising God with my guitar. Why is that something that I love to do? Why do we do that as a church? Well, scripture calls us to worship. That's what these verses are doing, and that's a very important part of our service here together. Look at the attitude of these verses from verses one to three. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night. The psalmist is joyfully and wholeheartedly praising God. And that's what we are to do as well. So when we're singing later, think why do we sing? We sing in response to who God is. We should be intentional and joyful in the way that we sing. It isn't just a time filler, it's the appropriate response to God. Specifically, why is the psalmist singing here? Well, think again of the plane. Why clap for the pilot, right? Why did those people respond that way? Those people clapped when we landed because the pilot was working. He was navigating and landing the plane on our behalf. Would it have been right of me to go into the cockpit and try and land that plane for myself? I don't think so. That would be ridiculous. The pilot was doing something that I couldn't and shouldn't do for myself. So it was right for me to praise him for it, to rejoice in what he was doing. What was my job on that plane? It was simply to rest, to let the pilot do his work. That's what's going on in our Psalm here. At the top of the Psalm, you'll see there's a little superscription before verse 1, and it says, a Psalm, a song for the Sabbath. This Psalm, it's written for the Sabbath. In fact, this is the only Psalm with this kind of superscription, specifically setting it apart for the Sabbath. Why? Why is that there? Well, the Sabbath is the day of rest. It's the day where God's people rest from all their work and focus their attention back on God. The emphasis is placed on enjoying Him rather than focusing on all that we need to do, our tasks, our goals, our whatever. The Sabbath shifts away from thinking my anything, and instead looks to God, rests in him. Verse 4 continues this idea. It says, For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands, I sing for joy. We sing for joy because of what God does. This psalm, it's designed to take the emphasis off of ourselves and place it on God. And that's a good thing. Because I can't land the plane of my own life, but he can. There are things that he is doing that are for him to do. It doesn't make sense for me to try and wrestle control of them. He is at work, I should rest. That's the controlling idea of this Psalm. On the Sabbath, on our day off, I can rest because God is in control. The works of his hands are good. Just because I let go doesn't mean that God does. It's right for me to rest and rejoice in his work, in what he is doing. Well, that brings the question: what is God doing? The Psalm goes on to give us two things that God does while we rest in him. The first is this God brings justice, and we trust him in that. That's our our second point this morning. Trust God's justice. This point doesn't always land on us very easily. What the Psalm is saying here is that we praise God because He brings justice. But that justice is seen on how God brings destruction to the wicked. That can feel uncomfortable. We can shy away from thinking of a God, of God as a God who judges what he does. Let's see where this is coming from. Verse 5. The stupid man cannot know. The fool cannot understand this. We know the psalmist is focusing on God's works, but then is he calling everyone stupid? No, he's saying that we need wisdom to understand this. We need discernment to make sense of God's judgments. It isn't always easy to grasp, but it is foolish to ignore God's words here. That brings us into verse 7. That though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. But you, O Lord, are on high forever. For behold, your enemies, O Lord, for behold your enemies shall perish. All evildoers shall be scattered. Back when I was in school, in fifth year in school, um, I was doing a subject called DCG. It's design communication graphics. It's where you kind of have to draw these very detailed pictures with rulers and angles and all of that. And we were doing the exam, and I'd finished my exam. And my classmate next to me, he looked at my work and he said, Hey, that's that's wrong. So firstly, I'm like, why are you talking in an exam? But I was pretty sure I was right. So I kind of shook my head. I don't I don't remember exactly what I do. I was, I thought I was okay. Um, but anyway, in this exam, he takes out his phone and he googles the answer. Whoever's supervising is not paying attention. And what does he discover on his phone? He discovers that he's wrong. So what does he do? He gets his rubber, rubs it out, changes his answer so it looks pretty much exactly like mine. Okay, how do you think I felt about this? I wasn't too impressed, but ultimately I was thinking, listen, it's out of my hands, it's not my control, it's it's Grant. Whatever, we move on. Results day comes around. Guess who's been bumped into second place? I have. Guess who wins the prize for this DCG exam? He does. Okay, he gets the recognition. Big clap from the whole school. He gets a little gift voucher, and what do I get? I get nothing. Okay, that's it's quite a low-level example, but it shows us that people do wrong and they get rewarded for it. I'm sure you've seen examples of this in your own life. I'm sure you've experienced the frustration of seeing someone else excel in an unfair way. Our psalm acknowledges this. Evil is prevalent around us. There is chaos and injustice in this world. I don't think that's particularly surprising to any of us. Look at that image of the wicked spreading like grass. As abundant as grass is, so the wicked will be. Why do people cheat on tests? Why underpay your workers and overcharge your customers? Why lie on your CV? Why be corrupt at all? Well, it can very easily lead to flourishing. If you want to get rich quick scheme, this is the way to do it. What hope is there for us here? We read in the Psalm, all evildoers flourish, and yet then it says they are doomed to destruction forever. The psalmist here praises God because evil is not allowed to prevail. Evil is not left unchecked forever. It may feel like there's some momentary reward for evil, but is it worth the cost? Where does that evil lead? Notice the contrast in verse 7 and 8. Evildoers are doomed to destruction forever, but you, O Lord, are on high forever. God is greater, he will be on high forever, while evildoers are brought low. How does this help us? Do I take vengeance on my classmate who cheated? Do I hold on to the bitterness of that injustice? No. God invites me to rest and trust his justice. There's great reassurance for us here. Life isn't fair now, but we know that God is making all things right. That's a good thing. And yet, there are hard realities to this as well. For one, in our experience, evil might feel so great that we can't see how God will defeat it. Why am I going through this hard time? This thing that's happening to me is so clearly evil. Why would God allow this? It doesn't feel like he has victory over it as I'm struggling. For this, it can be helpful to focus on the language that the psalmist uses. Okay, look down. Verse 7. They are doomed. Verse 9, they shall perish. Verse 11, my eyes have seen their downfall, my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. It's such a done deal that it's written in the past, present, and future tense. There's a certainty to this. That even if we can't see it, God has defeated, is defeating, and will defeat all evil. That's something we can cling to when evil seems too much around us. Trust God's justice. The second hard reality to this is God saying that these people who are evil are condemned forever? Well, some of you will know I'm a teacher by trade. I teach 10 to 12 year olds. Picture the scene. One day, Jimmy in my classroom, he's breaking all the rules. Okay, he's shouting over everyone, he's stealing Jenny's pencils, he's disrupting the whole lesson. Would I be a good teacher to just leave him be? Look, he can do what he wants, I'll not bother him. Leave him at it. No. If I want to do what is right and care for him and the other 20 kids in that classroom, I need to take action. I can't let that wrongdoing go unchecked. It isn't fair on me, it isn't fair on the other kids. In love, I need to show justice. In the same way, God, he can't turn a blind eye to evil. For him to be good, he must take action. We couldn't rejoice in a God who allowed evil to reign. We rest and rejoice in our God who brings judgment to the wicked. That's the truth of this passage. Judgment of the wicked is a reality in this world, and the Bible doesn't allow us to ignore it. For the psalmist, this is cause for praise. We praise God because He is good and He is just and He brings destruction to the wicked. Trust God's justice. If that's how God acts towards the wicked, well, how does He act towards His own people? What other work of God are we invited to rest in? The Psalm turns in this direction from verse 10, and we are shown how God brings a life of flourishing to those who trust in Him. So our third point is to enjoy God's flourishing. Okay, that's our third point this morning. Enjoy God's flourishing. I wonder what you consider flourishing in life to mean. If I told you I'm flourishing in every way at the moment, what do you think my life would look like? What is God talking about here when he promises a life of flourishing? Well, firstly, let's consider how does flourishing come about? Have you ever seen a tree floating in the air? Maybe a better example. Have you seen a tree that's been ripped out of the ground, roots and all, and placed on a hard marble floor? What would happen to that tree? Well, it would die. It isn't planted, it isn't connected to anything. It would slowly wither away. Think instead of a great big oak tree planted somewhere in an Irish forest. Okay, it grows and grows year after year. It continually flowers and blooms and flourishes. Now take that tree out of the lovely Irish forest and place it in the courts of God, in the house of the Lord. Do you see the image here? The flourishing of a tree is completely dependent on where it is planted, on what life source it is connected to. And the psalmist is telling us: if you are connected to God, if you are rooted in him, if you rest in him and depend on him, you will have a life of complete flourishing. You will have an abundant life as God intended it to be from the Garden of Eden. God promises this life of complete flourishing, and he promises it to the righteous. Who are the righteous? Am I righteous? Do I get this abundant life that God promises? Well, our righteousness is our C V. In a sense, it's talking about what we bring to the table. What have we done to make ourselves right with God? Okay, so picture my CV. Owen Bateman is nice sometimes, can be generous, relatively helpful when it suits him. And then under that, you've got a nice tidy list of every wrong thing I've ever done, every sin, the rot in my heart, and suddenly it becomes. Abundantly clear, my CV, it's rubbish. Okay, I'm not going to get the job. It's not even close to God's standard. It's not going to qualify me to be counted among the righteous who God brings into this flourishing. When the Psalm mentions the righteous here, it shouldn't first bring our minds to think about ourselves, but rather it should point us towards the only truly righteous one. The only man who ever lived a sinless life and remained in perfect relationship with God the Father, the one who is upright, who has been exalted, and who flourishes eternally at the Father's side. This Psalm points us towards Jesus. He is the righteous one. We should be led to rejoice in who He is. And then He gives us His CV. Remember, this it's a Sabbath Psalm. It's a Psalm that invites us to rest while God is the one doing the work. So if we put our trust in Him, Jesus, He takes my shabby, no good CV, He rips it up, and He hands me His glowing CV of righteousness instead. I can know this life of flourishing in abundance set aside for the righteous because Jesus makes me righteous in God's sight. We rest and he works for our good. So the question then becomes what interrupts your rest? What stops you from resting? What's so important that on your Sabbath, on your day off, you just can't stop and relax because there's something else that needs to be done or achieved or pursued. What consumes your thoughts? This life of flourishing Jesus gives us should enable us to rest in his presence and know his blessing without anything that can threaten that. There are four things that this Psalm brings to mind. They are things that we often feel the need to run after for ourselves, but we are being reminded here of how God establishes these things for us. I wonder which resonates most with you out of these four. They are honor, vindication, acceptance, and security. Let's start with honor in verse 10. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil. Do you want to be exalted? Do you want to be honored and recognized for your success, your talents? Do you want to be raised to a position of power? What do you find yourself doing to achieve that goal? If you are someone who feels tired from always trying to achieve the next thing, make a name for yourself, if you're constantly feeling the pressure of that, God says, Rest in me, and you will be exalted. Trust in me, and you are promised an eternity of honor. The path to that life is through Jesus. So work hard, yes, of course, but don't strain after that honor with everything that you have. On your Sabbath, on your day off, rest. Flourishing is knowing that Jesus promises a life of honor that can't be taken away, a life that He gives you rest in Him. The second way of flourishing here is vindication. Look at verse 11. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies, my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. We don't need to strive for revenge, we don't need to be consumed by it. It doesn't have to keep us up at night. We don't have to prove ourselves to be right. God does all this. All justice is made complete by him in eternity. We've looked at this point a little bit earlier on. Trust God's justice, he will vindicate. The third aspect of a flourishing life mentioned here is acceptance. Feeling like you belong. I think that's a big one. We all want to be accepted, don't we? Look at any secondary school and how teenagers change their personalities and who they associate with just to fit in with the crowd. It all comes from a place of wanting to feel known and loved and accepted by those around us. That can be a good thing to want. Of course, we want to feel loved. But how does that desire interrupt my rest? Where do I try and control that more than I should? Verse 12 tells us that the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God. Okay, there's a lot of temple language here. There were palm trees on the curtain in the temple. Much of the temple was built from cedar trees that have been brought in from Lebanon. And then he mentions the house of the Lord, the courts of God. God brings his people into a place of belonging. He brings us into his place where he is. He loves us and accepts us as his children in his courts. That's a reality that will be fully realized in heaven, but we can also know it now, right now, if you are a Christian, the God who made the entire universe and holds it in his hands knows you, loves you, cares for you. You belong to him. And you can rest in that. You don't need to endlessly run after love and acceptance from others in this world. The final area I think we see here is security. Do you worry about the future? What if it all goes wrong? What if I lose everything? Read verses 14 and 15. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright, he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. God keeps his people to the end. He will continue to grow, and you will continue to bear fruit all the days of your life. Have you ever seen an older person who is just full of life and energy? You know, their knees should have given out years ago, and you still see them out there playing golf. Or they just have this social energy that when the grandkids come in or when people come in, they're welcomed with a smile on their face. They still have that kind of glimmer in their eye. There's something really heartwarming about that. Now, God doesn't say he's going to protect you from the arthritis or the hip operations. But he's saying here, if you live a life planted in him, he will fill you up forever. Even if your life seems to be falling apart, you can't lose everything because the most important thing you have is your relationship with him. He will lead you to persevere right to the end, ever full of sap and green. And even in old age, you will be able to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock. There is no unrighteousness in him. What a promise. So should I be careful with my money and have future proofing in mind? Sure. But I don't need to be consumed by it. I don't need to seek that security in life with everything that I have. I can rest and know with certainty that God has me. Honor, vindication, acceptance, and security. Four ways in which God leads us into this life of flourishing. He works these things out while we rest in him, as we experience the contentness that only he brings. I wonder which of these you struggle with. Which one do you wrestle for control over in your life? Hear God invites you to rest, to prayerfully surrender your control of your life to him. You aren't the pilot. He is. Okay, this it isn't always easy. We so often feel the need to grasp these things for ourselves. Or God doesn't always bring this flourishing in the way we expect it to come. You might have an expectation, an idea of what this flourishing is going to look like in your life, but God fulfills his promise in a different way or on a different timeline. That's not always easy. Okay, we can wrestle with God over this, we can doubt that he's doing what's best for us. This is why we need to ask for his help with this. Ask for his help to rest in his promises and walk alongside others as we do. Because here in this Psalm, God is saying to you that the way of flourishing is to entrust your life to him, to the perfectly righteous one. Remember the chaos of the traffic, the restlessness in your life we were drawn to consider at the beginning. God is working for these things in your life, to fulfill them in ways you could never do for yourself. We can rest, we can take a day off and enjoy him. Let's pray together. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, for you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands I sing for joy. Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you work on our behalf. You bring flourishing to the righteous. The righteous flourish like a palm tree. They flourish in the courts of God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green. We thank you that this is true for those who rest in you, for those who depend on you, you lead us into a life of blessing. We ask for your help with this. We so often try and do this for ourselves. We wrestle for controls, for control. We doubt your promises. We pray that you would help us to rest in you. We pray that we would believe deeply in our hearts that your word is true, that you, the God of all things, know what is best. We pray that you would help us to rejoice in that, to sing your praise, to sing loudly and wholeheartedly. We thank you for your words. We pray that you'll be with us in Jesus' name. Amen.