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["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["All The Way My Saviour Leads Me"] Song 110 Song 110 All day my Saviour leads me What have I to ask inside? And I doubt his tender mercy Look through life as meant by God Heavenly peace, divinest comfort Here by faith within you dwell For I know what every call means Jesus, through with all things well For I know what every call means Jesus, through with all things well All may my Savior please be Jazing, twining path I tread Gives me praise for every trial Beats me with a living bread Though my weary cells may falter And my soul a thirst may be Gushing from the rock before me Though a spring of joy I see Gushing from the rock before me Though a spring of joy I see All may my Savior please be Oh, the fullness of His love Perfect rest to me is promised When my Father's house is full of love When my spirit flow immortal Wanes its flight to realm of name This my song through endless ages Jesus, lead me all the way This my song through endless ages Jesus, lead me all the way Father in Heaven, thank you for the gathering of believers in this church today. I pray that you please bless all aspects of this service and also Pastor Anderson as he preaches your word. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Amen. Amen. Let's hear the next song, song number 104. Lean on his arms. 104. 104. Lean upon the arms of Jesus He'll have you alone, have you alone If you will trust His love of failing He'll fill your heart this song Lean on his arms, trusting in his love Lean on his arms, all his mercies proved Lean on his arms, looking on the world Let's lean on the Savior's arms Trust me upon the arms of Jesus He'll guide you in the way, guide you in the way Just follow the planning where he's leading you His gentle voice obey Lean on his arms, trusting in his love Lean on his arms, all his mercies proved Lean on his arms, looking up above Just lean on the Savior's arms Let's lean upon the arms of Jesus So bring every care, bring every care The burden that has seemed so heavy Trade to the Lord in prayer Lean on his arms, trusting in his love Lean on his arms, all his mercies proved Lean on his arms, looking up above Just lean on the Savior's arms Let's lean upon the arms of Jesus Lean all to him, lean all to him His heart is full of love and mercy His eyes are never dead Lean on his arms, trusting in his love Lean on his arms, all his mercies proved Lean on his arms, looking up above Just lean on the Savior's arms All right, this time we'll go through our announcements. If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high. We'll get to you with one. On the inside, we have our service time. Sunday mornings at 10 30 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6 o'clock is our preaching service. And then Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study. Tonight we're in Psalm 60. We've got the soul-winning times listed there below, as well as salvations and baptisms. And then across the page there, don't forget about the new board game area for young people, ages 12 through 19, is open up in the back there. The games are stored in the room back there to the left. Then we've got the Bible memory passage, Isaiah chapter 40 verses 21 through 31. The singing class is back in effect on Sundays from 4 30 to 5 30. There's a ladies fellowship on August 30th, and so that's just about a week and a half away. And that's going to be right here from 2 to 4. Tea, coffee, and pastries will be provided. Nurselings are welcome. Please RSVP on the Facebook event or contact Mrs. Sarah Ventura. There she is. All right, Sarah Ventura. And then on the back, we've got the notes about the special services for the anniversary down in Tucson. Two year anniversary, and so you can come down on Thursday night to hear me preach. You can come down on Friday night, hear Pastor Mejia preach. Saturday is soul winning. There's going to be breakfast, I'm assuming, at 9 o'clock. Okay, so the shuttle is available on Thursday and Friday, but that's it. Saturday and Sunday, no shuttle. So what's the breakfast? Talk me into this. No, I'm just kidding. Is it Panera? All right, so Panera breakfast, 9 a.m. on Saturday, and then you're going to provide lunch, right? More Panera. All right. So we've got that available on Saturday, time of soul winning. Two hour session of soul winning in the morning, two hours of soul winning in the afternoon. A lot of eating and fellowship mixed in there. And then we've got also Sunday will be the the official anniversary services. And Brother Corbin Ressel will be preaching at 10 30 and 4 o'clock. So anyway, if you want to make a weekend out of it or just go down for one or more of these events, you are more than welcome. There's going to be the shuttle on Thursday and Friday, but only on Thursday and Friday unless you find somebody else that wants to carpool with you. And then congratulations to the Fide family on the birth of Joseph James. Baby Joseph was born on August 15th, 10 41 a.m. 10 pounds, two ounces, 21 and a half inches long. And so be sure to congratulate them. We've got the expectant ladies listed there so you can pray for them. And that's about it for announcements. Let's go and count up the soul winning from the past few days. Going back to Monday. Anything from Monday? Gotcha. All right. Anything else from Monday? How about Tuesday? What do we got for Tuesday? All right. Tuesday. How about today? Wednesday? Did we get a total for the van or anything? I don't think we had it. It was a it was a rough area. Got two back here. All right. What else we got for today? Anything else? All right. Very good. Keep up the great work on soul winning with that. Let's sing our next song. Come lead us. Hey, you should have a page in your hymnal. Still sweeter every day. Please raise your hand if you don't have a sheet. Should be in your hymnal. Still sweeter every day. The day before. Half an octave can see this side the golden shore. Still sweeter than he ever was before. Glory of Plaintiff before not be fancy this side the golden shower Oh there he'll be sweeter than he ever was before. My heart has sometimes had anybody come to speak with me. He voted to his love so great I drove with light and grief. But I love the price to all my hurt and say that's my tour. He said he was sweeter than he was the day before. The half cannot be fancied, this side the golden shore. Oh there he'll be sweeter than he ever was before. All right, we're going to do over-slung and re-endal, song number 88. Sometime we'll understand. On the chorus on this one, kind of halfway down, it says a little faster. So we're going to do that one just a little faster. Song 88, Sometime We'll Understand. Song 88. Not now but in the coming years, If we be a better man, we'll be the new year of our tears. And then sometime we'll understand. You must get by through all the days, Through every love of my hair. With your heart my wings will sing our praise. Sometime we'll understand. We'll cast a broken thread again, And finish what we've been given. And build a mystery to sleep, And then sometime we'll understand. You must get by through all the days, We're not for even hope I have. With your heart my wings will sing our praise. Sometime, sometime we'll understand. And though our hearts are set aside, We're over many generous lands, Our song has just been set to die. Tis there sometime we'll understand, And trust in God through all the days, We're not for even hope I have. Though our hearts are still singing praise, Sometime, sometime we'll understand. Our love's a way he holds the key, He guides us with a new hand. Sometime, with fearless eyes we'll see, Yes, there, up there we'll understand. And trust in God through all the days, We're not for even hope I have. With your heart my wings will sing our praise. Sometime, sometime we'll understand. Alright, this time we'll pass our offering plate. As the plate goes around, let's turn our Bibles to Psalm 60. Psalm 60, as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter, beginning in verse number 1. We'll follow along silently with Brother Hester as he reads Psalm 60, beginning in verse number 1. Psalm 60, the Bible reads, O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, Thou hast been displeased, O turn thyself to us again, Thou hast made the earth to tremble, thou hast broken it, Heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh. Thou hast showed thy people hard things, Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment, Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, That it may be displayed because of the truth, sila, That thy beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and hear me. God hath spoken in his holiness, I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, And mete out the valley of Sukkoth, Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine, Ephraim also is the strength of mine head, Judah is my lawgiver, Moab is my washpot, Overeatim will I cast out my shoe, Philistia, triumph thou because of me. Who will bring me into the strong city, Who will lead me into Edom, wilt not thou, O God, Which hast cast us off, and thou, O God, Which didst not go out with our armies? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, For he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Dear Lord, we just thank you for this opportunity to be here tonight, and we would just ask that you open our ears and our hearts, Lord, so we can receive your word as Pastor Anderson preaches his sermon. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Psalm 60, verse number 1, the Bible reads, O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased, O turn thyself to us again. Thou hast made the earth to tremble, thou hast broken it, heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh thou hast showed thy people hard things, thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. So the setting for this psalm is Christians, God's people, in distress. You know, things are going bad, and we're going through a dark time, and it's because of our own fault here. You know, because he says here, you have been displeased, in verse number 1. He says, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased. So obviously, this is a psalm about God's people having done something wrong, you know, we've committed some kind of a sin, we're not right with God, and as a result, God has brought judgment, and we're begging God to forgive us, and restore us, turn his face back toward us once again. So if you look at these things that describe the condition of having displeased God, you know, when you've displeased God, these are the kind of things that are going to happen. He starts out by saying, you've cast us off, and then he says, you have scattered us, right? Thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us. Now what does it mean to be scattered? Well, if you think about it, this is a lack of unity, right? This is a dispersion of, say, an army. The immediate context is obviously King David, and that whole era of the monarchy in Israel, where they're constantly fighting against some of the people that are listed in this psalm, for example, like they're fighting against the Moabites, they're fighting against the Edomites, they're fighting against the Philistines, so there's a lot of military language that's being used. And so when you think of being scattered, you think of well-ordered troops going into battle, and everybody's keeping rank, but then all of a sudden, things go wrong, people begin to panic, and they break rank, and you can see where the troops would be scattered. And everybody just starts running in their own direction, every man for himself, and this is what would be called a rout, right? Who's ever heard that term, you know, being routed in battle? Because even if you lose a battle, you want to have some kind of an orderly retreat. There's a time when sometimes it makes sense to retreat and live to fight another day, but the worst nightmare in a battle is when it just becomes chaos, and everyone's just running in a different direction, and that's when it becomes a rout, and that's where there are going to be a lot of casualties, it's going to get ugly, okay? And so it says here, thou hast scattered us. Now we want God to scatter our enemies, and you remember the famous prayer from the book of Numbers, you know, arise, O Lord, it might be Exodus, arise, O Lord, and let thy enemies be scattered, is the prayer of the children of Israel as they move forward through the wilderness. Arise and let your enemies be scattered, but here, because God's people have displeased the Lord, they are the ones that are scattered. Now here's what I want to apply this to in modern times, obviously, whenever we're reading the Psalms, we want to apply it to 2020, we want to apply it to New Testament, Christianity, we're not physically out on a battlefield, but we're in a spiritual battle, and so a lot of those parallels are there, and when you think about being scattered, I think that the equivalent of that in 2020 would be disunity in the local church. Being scattered means we're not working as a team, we're not united, everybody's going a different direction. Now when it comes to Christian unity, what we have to understand is that God does not tell us to be unified with every Christian in this world. Now first of all, that'd be impossible. You know, you have millions and millions of Christians all over the world, in all different countries, they have all different doctrines, all different beliefs, all different cultures, all different geographies, how can we be united with people that we've never met, we've never seen, obviously that's not what the Bible's saying, okay. But not only that, even people that are geographically near to us, we don't necessarily want to unite with everyone who claims the name of Christ, because there are a lot of false religions out there that claim the name of Christ. You've got Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, they don't believe the Gospel that we believe, they don't have the salvation that we have, they don't have the religion that we have, they are part of a false religion, we can't have unity with people that aren't saved, they're not our brothers and sisters in Christ. What we want to do is love them and reach them with the Gospel, and they're the mission field that we want to win to Christ. But we can't have unity with them. How can we have unity with someone who doesn't believe in the Trinity? How can we have unity with who doesn't believe that the Bible is the word of God? Or someone who doesn't believe in salvation by grace through faith. How can we have unity with someone who believes you can lose your salvation? How can we have unity with someone who believes that the blood of Christ doesn't save us? These are deal breakers, right? But not only that, even when it comes to saved Christians, the Bible says that we should withdraw ourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the commandment which he received of us. You know, the Bible tells us that there are even brethren that we should separate from and not fellowship with. And for example, if there's someone who's called a brother who's a fornicator or covetous or a drunkard or a railer, we shouldn't have unity with that person. So God's not expecting us to have unity with every Christian in the world or even everyone who has the same doctrine as us. God wants us to have unity in the local church. Okay? Unity in the local church is what he's constantly after. He says that he doesn't want there to be any divisions among us. He doesn't want there to be a schism in the body. He wants us to have the same mind and walk according to the same rule. And he wants us to be like a body where every body part is contributing something to the whole. You know, you've got the nose and the mouth and the hand and the foot described in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and each body part contributes something and plays a role and he wants there to be unity. Obviously having unity with all Christians is impossible, but it is possible to have unity in the local church. That is a goal that we can actually achieve. Now it doesn't mean that we're going to agree on every little thing. It doesn't mean that we're going to have all the exact same beliefs. It doesn't mean that we're even going to have the same opinions about even bigger issues, but we're going to agree on the essentials. You know, it's sort of like if a body part is transplanted, sometimes have you ever heard of someone where they got a body part transplanted and then their body rejected the transplant? Yeah, sometimes that's how it works in church too. You know, sometimes we get a transplant in here and we're just like rejected because of the fact that it's just not compatible. You know, they're trying to put some pig organ into a human being and it's like it didn't, it didn't get accepted. Sometimes it will accept it, right? Sometimes it gets rejected. Okay. So, you know, there are people who come to our church and you know what? They might not be someone that should be a part of this body if they, if they're a heretic, they have weird beliefs, if they're just a wicked person or a railer, a gossip, a drunk, whatever. You know, they might not be able to get assimilated into this body. Okay. There are going to be some people that just don't belong in the body, but we want to be a body that has unity and look again, not to say that everything's going to be perfect or that we're going to agree on everything, but we need to agree on the essentials. Okay. Or else the organ transplant is not going to work. So we have to agree upon the essentials. What are the essentials? You know, we have to have the right salvation. We have to have the right Bible and, and look, we have to at least believe in soul winning. You know, the, to me, these are kind of the three main essentials of what it takes for me to be able to have fellowship with other believers. Now look, I can have fellowship with a Christian who doesn't go soul winning as long as they believe in soul winning. If they're slacking at it, hey, I can live with that, but at least they have to believe it. I can't have fellowship with someone who's anti soul winning. That's ridiculous. That's an enemy of the gospel at that point. That's bad. And you know, if somebody has got the right Bible, right salvation and right soul winning, Hey, those are the main essentials. We can fellowship with that person. And look, there are people in our church who disagree with me on a lot of secondary issues and that's okay. But in order to have unity, we've got to have the same Bible. We've got to have the same Holy Spirit and we've got to have the same vision for the great commission. You know, those are just, uh, just a basic thing that we need in order to be on the same wavelength so that we can work together. So being scattered is the opposite of having unity, right? Being scattered is everybody's going in a different direction. Nobody's working together. There's no team spirit. We don't want our church to be scattered. Okay. We, that would be a negative. That would be a bad thing. That would be like, Oh man, you know, either God's not pleased with us or something's going wrong here when we're being scattered in a bunch of different directions. We want to have a team where we're all, you know, having the same goals, the same vision. We're all pulling on the same rope and working together. And so the opposite of that would be being scattered. Now, sometimes being scattered can end up being a good thing because God takes bad things and he ends up turning them around and using them for something good. You know, the Bible says all things work together for good to them that love God. They more of the called according to his purpose. So for example, you know, there was a split between Paul and Barnabas and God ended up using that to just kind of double the missions and send them in two different directions and they could preach in two different places. Or for example, in Acts, uh, Paul, before he was Paul, back when he was Saul of Tarsus and he persecuted the church, he scattered the church. And the Bible says then they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the gospel and God actually used that scattering to promote the gospel. But in general, scattering is bad in general, although God can turn it around for good. Scattering is bad. Unity is good. We want to strive for unity. And listen, unity in the local church does not happen by accident. The Bible says, endeavoring to keep the unity in the spirit of the bond of peace. If we want to have unity in our church, if we want to be able to keep ranks and be a body that's functioning and working together, the hands and the feet and the heart and the liver and the lungs and everything's working the way it should and supplying the need of every other part. If we're going to have that kind of unity, it's going to take effort. There has to be an endeavoring to keep the unity. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter four, verse three, endeavoring to keep the unity in the spirit of the bond of peace. Just like in a marriage, there has to be an effort put into that marriage in order to keep unity. There has to be an effort in a family. There has to be effort in a business or a church to keep unity. We don't want to be scattered. We want our enemies to be scattered. Let them be scattered. Let them be compounded and devour each other and let them run in a million different directions. But we want God's people to be unified. You know, we can do more collectively than we can individually. And there are 400 of us in a local church gathered together. We're all into soul winning. We're all into the mission strips. We're all, you know what? We can do a lot. Whereas if we're by ourselves, we're not going to do much. I know I wouldn't do much by myself because I wouldn't be as motivated if I weren't in a group of like-minded people. You know, I'd be soul winning for a while. I'd probably start to slack on soul winning, lose my zeal, and pretty soon I'm not doing anything. Okay. Church keeps you fired up. Church keeps you motivated. If you're here three times a week, you're constantly getting that recharge and reboot and you're ready to go out and do something for the Lord. And so it says, oh God, thou hast cast us off. Thou hast scattered us. We've been scattered. We lack unity. We're going in different directions. Thou hast been displeased. Oh, turn thyself to us again. Verse 2, thou hast made the earth to tremble. Thou hast broken it. Heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh. So the second thing we see, the first thing we saw in verse 1 was, was there being scattered, lack of unity. And then in verse 2, we see there's a lack of stability, right? Because he says thou hast made the earth to tremble. Thou has broken it. Heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh. So you picture like an earthquake and plate tectonics, right? A fault line, a crack in the earth and the earth is quaking and shaking. And so the picture here is of, you know, instability, being unstable. And you know what? That is also a bad thing. Just like being scattered is bad, instability is a bad thing. Okay. What do I mean by that? Well, the Bible says in Genesis 49, unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. He says, if you're unstable, you will not excel. In it, James, he says, a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. And you can see how these two things could go together. You know, when there's disunity, when people are not united and, and unified, then you can see how basically people could be unstable in what they believe. Whereas church has a stabilizing effect on your life, doesn't it? It's a routine of going three times a week. It's a routine of going out soul winning. And basically you're hearing the preaching constantly reminding you of the doctrine, teaching you the Bible. And basically you have one person predominantly who's preaching to you. You know, you're, you're not listening to a different preacher every single week, teaching you all different doctrines that aren't compatible with one another. You see how that could be confusing. Let's say you're just kind of just on a random YouTube rotation. And one day you're listening to this, you know, Baptist preacher. He's a fundamental Baptist. Next day you're listening to Calvinist. Next day you're listening to a charismatic. Next day you're listening to some from non-denom church, Presbyterian, Methodist, Nazarene. You know, you're just all over the place. You know, you're not going to learn anything like that. You're not going to go anywhere like that. You know, you need to be stable. You need to not be double minded. So you need to figure out some basic beliefs that you have that you can lock in. Okay. And realize, okay, I'm a Baptist and I believe in salvation by faith and I believe in the eternal security of the believer. I believe the King James Bible is the word of God. You kind of lock in these baselines of belief. You get steadfast and unmovable. That's how you can always abound in the work of the Lord. You get plugged into a local church. You're not just church hopping, you know, different church every few weeks bouncing around church hopping. You get locked into a church. You're locked into some doctrines that you know are right. And you can have some stability in your life, not be double minded. You know where you're going. You know the direction of the church. You're on board. You're part of the team. You know we don't want to be scattered and we don't want to be unstable. These are not the blessing of God. This is when God's displeased that people get unstable and scattered. And it says in verse 3, thou hast showed thy people hard things thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. So again, because God is displeased with them, they have to go through some hard things. They're going through hard times. They're going through the chastisement of the Lord. They're going through discipline. And so this is not where you want to be. This is a bad place, you know, scattered. You're going through life. You have no direction. You're wandering through the wilderness. You don't know where to go. You're not a part of any team. You're not a part of any group of people, local church. You are unstable. You have no direction in life. You don't know where you're going to be next week. This is bad. Okay. And you're going through hard things. And look, the Bible says the way of transgressors is hard. If you want to be blessed by God, you've got to obey God. You've got to please God. If you please God, things are going to go well for you. Now, I'm not saying you're not going to have any problems, but in general, in the long run, things will go well for you. Even a guy like Job who goes through the worst problems imaginable, in the end, everything was great. God blesses latter end. So in the long run, when you serve God, God will be blessing you. Things are going to go well for you. You're going to succeed in life if you're serving God. You're going to have short term setbacks, short term trials and tribulations, but in the big picture, you're going to be winning. That's what it means when you're serving God. So realize that by displeasing God, you're making your life harder. The Bible says thou shaltest hard things. So if you displease God, life is not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. And it's not going to get harder in a good way. It's going to get harder in a bad way. Now there's a good hard and a bad hard. Let me explain this to you. Here's the thing. There's a good hard. Let's say I go into the weight room and I start lifting weights. I want to work hard. No pain, no gain. So if I'm not working hard in the gym, I'm not going to make any gains. So that's a good kind of hard, that kind of resistance. So when we go through the Christian life, we want to face resistance because we want to get stronger. We want to grow. We want to have a good kind of heart. So that's when God brings trials and tribulations into our life that are making us stronger, making us better, et cetera. Then there's just a bad hard where you're working hard. Somebody help me with an illustration for a bad kind of hard. What's a bad kind of hard? No one. Yeah, there we go. I like that. Oh man, I can relate. Hey, I was an electrician for over a decade. For those who didn't hear him, using a worn out drill bit, using a messed up drill bit. That's hard and there's nothing good coming out of that folks. It's just pain and misery and sorrow and woe and agony. It's just torture is what it is. And let me tell you something, 90% of the drill bits at the store are garbage. Only the most expensive one is worth buying. Everything else is trash. Don't waste your time on it. You got to buy the most expensive drill bit. It's the only one that even deserves to be sold. The other one just like melts immediately. It melts in your mouth, not in your hands. It's like M&M's. Hershey is making drill bits now. I'm telling you, I don't know what alloy that stuff is made out of. It's garbage. You have to get a good drill bit. That's just, that's what a sinful life is like. This is what it's like when you displease God. It's like just, and like smokes coming out. It's like trying to make a fire rubbing two sticks together. You're basically doing that on the pipe that you're drilling into or the metal that you're drilling into. Yeah, that's just a bad hard. There's a good hard. Yeah, you know, getting stronger. Hey, I'm okay with facing a little resistance in the Christian life. You know, I mean look, you see people when they're out exercising, they wear like a vest with weights on it. You know, that's just resistance, right? But then there's just a bad hard, you know, of, of, of, you know, yeah, that was a great example. Anybody else got another good one like that? Walking on a broken ankle or something like that? Walking on a broken ankle? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, exactly. Like, like here's what's hard. You get injured and you have to keep going. One time, one time I was on this long like run slash hike and I was like four miles from the car when I rolled my ankle and I rolled my ankle bad to where, you know, the kind where you just drop to the ground and start screaming. So I just dropped to the ground, you know, roll by. It was horrible. Okay. And I knew I have to get up and start walking immediately or this thing's going to, or I'm not going to be able to walk because this thing will swell up and I won't even be able to get back to the car. So I just got up and just gutted it out and I had to walk four miles back to the car on that rolled ankle. And then as soon as I got to the car, you know, that's when I, you know, I elevated it, put ice on it and then immediately just like swelled up and there I couldn't even walk after that for, you know, it took a few weeks to heal or whatever. But here's the thing. It's hard to keep going. Or let's say you develop plantar fasciitis. You know, it's going to be hard to keep walking. It's going to be hard to keep running. It's going to be hard to keep moving forward, but that's a bad hard because it's not making you stronger. It's not making you better. It's just pain, misery, sorrow, and you're doing more damage. This is what it's like. Okay. Just like you're damaging your drill, damaging the battery, damaging the equipment. Look you're walking on a broken foot or a rolled ankle or plantar fasciitis. It's just hard, but there's no silver lining. It's not like, well, this is hard, but at least I'm getting in shape. No, you're not. You're doing more damage. You're doing permanent damage. Good job, buddy. Are you happy? And that's what it's like. That's what I mean by there being a good heart and a bad heart in life. So is the Christian life hard? Yeah, but it's a good heart. Is the sinful worldly life hard? Yeah, it's a bad heart. It's just, it's all negative. There's no silver lining. All things work together for good to them that love God, even the bad things, even the hard things. But when God's displeased with you and he shows you hard things and makes you drink the wine of astonishment, there's not always going to be a silver lining. The only way to get a silver lining is to get right with God, get him pleased with you again and get him back on your side. Because, you know, he says in Lamentations chapter 3, the Lord will not cast off forever. Here's the great thing about God. If you're saved and you're breathing air, it's never too late to return to the Lord. Even if he says things to you that make it sound like it's too late, it's not. Because you can always come back. Like the prodigal son, you can always return. If you're breathing air and you're saved, it's never too late to repent and get right with God and walk with God again. And he'll take you back. And you can live the victorious Christian life and go from having a bad heart life to a good heart. I just want to have an easy life. There's no such thing. Doesn't exist. I mean, maybe somebody out there is living an easy life, but if they are, they're probably a do-nothing, be-nothing, living a worthless life. What's the point? What's the point of even living if you're just a do-nothing nobody? I mean, I'm sure there's some guy who just lays by the beach in some tropical place and just eats coconuts and bananas and just doesn't really do anything. And he's probably living a pretty easy life. But let me tell you something, most people in life are going through difficulties. And that's why the Bible says to know that the same temptations that you're going through are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. They're going through the same things that you're going through. Except when we go through hard things in the Christian life, there's a silver lining. It's going to work together for good. It's making us stronger. When you're out there living the life of sin, it's hard in a bad way. Okay. Either way, you're going to go through hard things, but you don't want to drink the wine of astonishment. You don't want God showing you hard things because he's displeased with you. That's the wrong kind of hard things. Great illustrations. All right. That was the interactive part of the sermon. So verse number four, it says, Thou is given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. See law. This verse seems a little bit out of place, you know, because we've got the first three verses just saying how bad things are going. You've cast us off. You've scattered us. You know, we feel like the earth is shaking beneath our feet. There's just a chasm opening up in the earth. There's no stability. We're going through hard things and, you know, we're drinking the wine of astonishment. But here's the thing that, you know, there's always, like I said, light at the end of the tunnel for the Christian, right? No matter how bad things are, it's going to end if you turn to the Lord, you can get through it. So he says in verse five, he says that thy beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and hear me. So basically in verses one through three is basically the complaint. You know, verses one through three is just here's where we're at. Lord, we're cast off. We're scattered. We're seeing all these hard things. Then verses four and five is basically like the solution, right? So verses one through three are the problem versus four and five are the solution. God has given us a banner that it may be displayed because of the truth. And then he says that thy beloved may be delivered, save with thy right hand and hear me. So here's the thing. If we want to be delivered and when we see the word saved here, we're not talking about go to heaven saved. We're talking about saved from whatever situation we're in, you know, bailed out of our earthly situation. Like when Peter's drowning, he yells, save me. That type of saved. Okay. And he says here, you know, basically in order for us to be delivered, in order for us to be saved and for God to hear us, we've basically got to be on God's team because what is a banner? If you study the concept of a banner throughout the Bible, a banner is like a flag that you would wave in battle to show which side you're on. So battle could be confusing, you know, and you want to know who's on that hill, you know, is that us or is that the bad guys? Well, the banner is something you, you carry into battle to show your colors of who you are. You know, when somebody says they show their true colors, that's where that expression comes from. You know, what banner do they carry? What team are they on? What side are they on? That's their banner. And so God has given us a banner to be displayed because of the truth. And here's the thing. If we want God to hear us, if we want God to deliver us, if we want God to be on our side and, and fix things for us, we've got to fly his flag. We've got to display his banner. We've got to be on the right team. It's sort of like when Joshua is confronted with the captain of the Lord's host in Joshua chapter five and Joshua doesn't know who he is. He just sees a guy coming out of the field and he says, are you for us or are you for our enemies? Whose side are you on? What team are you on? And, and basically the answer is just no. Which team are you on? No. And the reason why he gives that answer is because he wanted to make sure Joshua knew I'm not on your team. You're on my team. So he says to the captain of the Lord's host, which is actually the Lord himself, is actually a Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ. He said, are you for us or are you for our enemies? He said, no, I'm come as the captain of the Lord's host. So the idea is we want God on our side, but that's not how it works. We got to get on his side. Here's how to guaranteed have God on your side. Get on his side. You're not going to get him to just fall in line behind you. He's not just your ATM machine for prayer requests to just give you what you want and he's just going to get behind you and follow you and serve you and work for you. It's the opposite. You got to get behind him. You get on his team, you fly his flag, you embrace his truth, you publicly display his banner and then you're on his side. And hey, how do we know God's for us? Because we're on his team. We're on his side. We've joined his army and not vice versa. So make sure we get that in the right order. We display the Lord's banner. He hears us, he saves us, he delivers us. So now, so in verses one through three, we have basically the problem, you know, the bad condition because we've displeased the Lord. Things are going bad. And then in verses four and five is the solution. You know, we got to get on the Lord's side. We've got to fly his flag and he's going to listen to us. He's going to hear our prayers because how do we get our prayers answered? The Bible says, whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. So in verses one through three, we've displeased him. So everything's going bad. Verse verses four and five, we get on his program, we fly his flag, we do his work, we keep his commandments, and then he hears us. He delivers us, he blesses us, he saves us out of all our distresses. So verse verses four and five is the solution. And then in verse six, we have the answer from God. The answer coming from God. So in verse four and five, it's okay. We're going to fly God's flag. We're going to get under his banner. We're going to pray to him. Verse six, God has spoken in his holiness. So here's the answer from God. I will rejoice. I will divide Shechem and meet out the valley of Sukkoth. Meet means measure. M-E-T-E, like the word meat yard. Measure. He's saying, I'm going to measure out the valley of Sukkoth. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the strength of my head. Judah is my law giver. So he's talking about blessing Israel because obviously a big concern for Israel at this time is territory. It's like a game of risk where you take over different territories. When Israel is not being blessed by God, they're kind of just holed up in Australia. You know what I mean? And everything else, who knows what I'm talking about? You know that guy that's just in Australia and he just keeps beefing up Australia and then eventually he comes back and takes over the whole board? Well, the thing is, that's how it is when Israel's not right with God. Basically he always leaves them a remnant. They've always got Jerusalem and Judah and they've kind of got that core area that they always have. But the Philistines are encroaching over here, Moab's encroaching, Edom's encroaching, Ammon's encroaching. And then when God's blessing them, they take back a lot of those peripheral areas. You know in the days of Solomon, in the days of David and kings like that, they have a lot more territory. The outlying areas are under their control. And then even areas outside of Israel, areas like Moab and Edom, are paying taxes to the Israelites. They're paying tribute because they're part of the empire. So we see here that God is listing out the territories saying, look, I'm going to give you back these territories. These are territories that you should own, that you should control, that are historically, traditionally and part of the promise of what the promised land is. You're going to get these territories back. He's going to give you Shechem and Sukkoth. And if you look at like Gilead, Manasseh and Ephraim, some of those are the areas that are on the far side of the Jordan River. That's kind of the first territory that they lose when things are going bad, the stuff that's beyond Jordan. So he's saying, look, that stuff belongs to me. I'm going to meet it out. I'm going to divide it to you. You're going to inherit it. And then he says, Moab is my wash pot. Over Edom will I cast out my shoe. So we think about the wash pot, you could picture like maybe the pot that you wash your feet in. Right. So what God's saying is that basically he's going to bless the Israelites by giving them their territory back. And they're going to control places like Shechem and Sukkoth, Gilead, Ephraim and Manasseh. And then places like Moab and Edom are going to be basically subservient to them. Because if you think about, have you ever heard someone be called a doormat? You know, sometimes people will say that a woman is a doormat. Sometimes they're just insulting actual biblical wives who are just submitted to their husband like they should be. You know, but there could obviously be abusive situations where a woman is a doormat, quote unquote. Well, being called a wash pot is kind of like being a doormat. You know, like that's where I'm going to cast off my shoe. You know, this is like a doormat in that sense. So he's basically saying that Moab and Edom are going to be subservient to the children of Israel. Okay, because he's going to be blessing them. He's going to fight with their armies. And then he says, Philistia, triumph thou because of me. Now that seems to be the opposite. So this may be sarcasm. This could be sarcastic. Like, hey, Philistia, you know, I'd like to see you try. You know, Moab's in the doghouse, Edom's in the doghouse. And yeah, give it your best shot, Philistia. Because it's kind of strange how it doesn't really match the other two. Verse nine, who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom? And again, he's talking about the armies of Israel going into Edom and conquering them. Wilt not thou, O God, which hast cast us off? And thou, O God, which didst not go out with our armies in the past? Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. So here's what he's saying. He's saying, look, when God's displeased with you, he's working against you. God is working against you. He's scattering you. He's making your life unstable. He is showing you hard things. He's making you drink the wine of astonishment. You know what astonishment is? Astonishment is just when you just sit there and you're just like, I give up. I don't even know what to do. That's being astonied. You know, there are times in the Bible when people are astonished, they're just kind of just like, you know, they just have that thousand yard stare and they're just like, I don't even know what to do anymore. I just give up. So that's a bad place when God's not pleased with you. But when you're serving the Lord, when you're on his side, you know, he works for you. Okay. He works with you and for you, but you got to get on his program. You got to get on his team and then he works for you and then he's going out with your armies. So look, you can go to battle and have God working for your enemies against you, or you can have God working for you and against your enemies. Okay. It depends on whether you're pleasing in his sight, whether you're on his team or not. That's what the Bible is describing here. Okay. Now this is why it's so ridiculous when people are praising the Israeli military and talking about how, Oh, God is blessing the Israeli military. No he's not. There's no way that God is blessing. If God's blessing the Israeli military, I guess we just have to throw out all these Psalms. We're going to have to throw out the whole Old Testament. We're going to have to throw out the book of Deuteronomy and everything that says over and over again that in order for God to go with Israel's armies, they have to be right with God. They have to worship the Lord. They have to fly his banner and you know what his banner is? Is the banner of the cross. And if you don't have the son, you don't have the father. If you don't have Jesus, you got nothing. And so how could God be going out with Israel's armies? And people tell you these apocryphal stories about all these miracles that happen, you know, out on the battlefield miracles where God is just, you know, and, and, and they quote some Arab soldier, we cannot win because every, all of our missiles are just bouncing off the enemy because you know, God is in the camp of Israel. I think that quote's apocryphal. You know what I'm talking about? Who's read those quotes? Like every missile they fire, you know, God is directing it to the target. It's a bunch of baloney is what it is. Now maybe the devil's, you know, helping them out with their missiles, but let me tell you something. I can promise you, I can guarantee you that God is not going with Israel's armies if they're not right with God because he didn't do it in Exodus. He didn't do it in, in, in, in numbers. He didn't do it in, do it right. He didn't do it in Joshua. Whenever they're not right with God, not only is he neutral, he actually works against them. He teams up with their enemies. You know, uh, in the book of Jeremiah, I always love this. I believe it's in Jeremiah. I could be wrong. It's in one of the major prophets. I want to say it's Jeremiah. This is one of my favorite parts is where he is, where they're, you know, they're asking God to deliver them and God says that if the only thing that's left in the king of Babylon's army are just wounded guys that are there, they're casualties. They're out of commission. If they, if, if you defeat everyone to where the only people left in Babylon's army are wounded guys, I'm going to make sure that those wounded guys get up and burn your safety to the ground and I will fight for them. And even the wounded casualties will defeat you. Jeremiah chapter 37. So basically what he's saying is, you know, if, if, if I decide you're going to lose, you're going to lose. It doesn't matter how good you are at Krav Maga or whatever or whatever or how, how many weapons, how many, you know, uh, weapons you have or what kind of skills you have. You know, if God wants you to lose, you're going to lose. It's just that simple. You can't win and God is not going to bless you when you're displeasing in his sight. And what could be more displeasing than rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ? You know, last time I checked the Bible had some real clear verses in it. Like if any man loved not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. What about that? If any man loved not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. You know what anathema means? Cursed. So that's what the Bible teaches. And so, you know, if you want God to go with your armies, you gotta be right with God. Now look, are there people in the Bible who win battles without God on their side? Yeah, but don't tell me that somebody has God on their side when they're wicked. Sometimes God allows the wicked to win a victory. It's short lived, you know, it's, it's for some greater purpose that he has in mind or some greater plan. We could read all throughout the Bible, wicked people winning victories without the Lord being on their side. But I'll tell you what, I want to win victories with God on my side. I want the Lord working for me and not against me. And so I got to make sure I please him. You know, the most important thing you could do in life is just make sure that God's happy with you. You know, that's, that's the most important thing is just to do a self check. Hey, am I, am I pleasing the Lord right now? Is God pleased with me? God like what I'm doing because, you know, if you displease the Lord, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. And it's the bad kind of pain, the not the good kind of pain, the bad kind of pain. So he says, give us help from trouble. We've got to have God on our side, right? He didn't go with our armies, but now he is going with our armies. Now he's going to bring us into the strong city. He's going to lead us into Edom. And he says in verse 11, give us help from trouble for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Now what does the word valiant mean? Valiant means courageous. It means you have bravery. The opposite of being valiant is being a coward, right? And so the Bible is saying through God we shall do valiantly because there's the thing, if you know that God is with you, that gives you a lot of confidence, right? Proverbs 3 26, the Lord shall be thy confidence and shall keep thy foot from being taken. If God's on our side, we can do valiantly because you know, it's pretty easy to have a lot of courage when you got God backing you up. You know, if you're doing it in your own strength, you're going to be scared and you ought to be scared. Be very afraid. If you're trying to go through life and fight all these battles by yourself and the flesh without the Lord's help, you ought to be afraid that it's going to all fall apart and blow up in your face. But if God be for us who can be against us, and so we'll do valiantly by having the Lord on our side. That's where we get our confidence. That's where we get our bravery and boldness because we've got the Holy Spirit upon us. We're filled with boldness. We're courageous. We're brave. The opposite of that would be a coward. Okay, so boldness and confidence comes from walking with God, being right with God and knowing, hey, the Lord's on my side. You know, I'd rather have everything messed up in my life and know that the Lord's on my side than to have everything in my life dialed in and I know the Lord's displeased with me. Think about that. I mean, what if I had to choose between, okay, my bank account's dialed in, my health is dialed in, the home repairs are dialed in, my job is dialed in, my relationships are dialed in, but I know God's not pleased with me. I don't want to be there because whatever I'm experiencing, it's all about to fall apart. It's just a matter of time before I crash and burn. Whereas let's say I'm in a situation where my finances are messed up, relationships are messed up, my health's messed up, my job situation's messed up, my house is falling apart, right? It's a, you know, the earth is cracking. It's my earth, my house like splitting in half or something, a faulty foundation. You know, I'd rather be in that situation if I had a guarantee that God's pleased with me right now. If I could be in that exact situation but then I hear a voice from heaven saying, you're my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased, I'd just be like, hey, everything's going to be okay. You know, I'll be like that cartoon of the dog in the fire and it's just like, this is fine. You know? Hey, when you know you're right with God, that's how you feel. When life's going crazy and tribulations abound, you're just like, this is fine. This is okay. Because you know that God's pleased with you, all things work together for good to them to love God. I'd rather have that than the best portfolio, best health, best relationship, and knowing God's mad. Because if God's mad, he can, he can destroy. Look at Job. Job had the perfect deal. Now, God wasn't mad, but was God able to just take everything away pretty fast? Well, doesn't that show you that if he was mad, he could do the same thing? I mean, think about it. You say, well, you don't know how diverse my portfolio is. God could wipe it out easily. God could take whatever you're holding onto. God can take it away from you at any time. God can kill anybody he wants at any time. He said, I kill, I make alive. I'm the Lord. You know, if God wanted to, God could just snap his fingers and, and any of these wicked politicians could just fall over dead. None of them are guaranteed tomorrow. It doesn't matter how much money they have, how many doctors they have, and, and experts testing them and checking their vitals and everything. They could just fall over dead and no one would even know why and just say, we can't explain it. He just fell over dead. He's just gone. You know, God can take you down. He can take me down anytime he wants to. We must be right with God. So yes, we have to take care of things in our life and you know, we want to make sure that we work on relationships and finances and work on our job and work on our health. You know, I, you know what? I work on all of the above, right? Those things are all important, but at the end of the day, the thing we should work on the most is making sure God is happy. Think about that. Make sure God's happy because if God's pleased with you, everything else just falls into place. If God's displeased, nothing, nothing's going to end right. It's not going to end well. Then you say, well, I've seen a lot of wicked people prospering. Yeah, but they're not saved. They're not saved. You will, you do not see wicked saved Christians prospering because whom the Lord loveth, he chaseneth and scourges every son of me receiveth. And if you're without chastisement, where of all our partakers then are you bastards and not sons. So if you see somebody just out, just ungodly, wicked, and they're saved, but nothing bad is happening, then you could probably ascertain, you know what? I thought that person was saved, but actually I don't think they're saved. And if they are saved, they're about to be in a world of hurt. But when you see wicked people out there prospering and everything's going great for them, so what? They're going to go to hell when they die. What good is it? This life's a vapor. So therefore, if you're saved and I'm preaching to the saved tonight, you know, 99% of people here hopefully are saved. And so I'm talking to you. If you make God mad, he's going to punish you, period. And you're going to suffer the bad kind of suffering, the rolled ankle kind of suffering, the bad drill bit kind of suffering, the kind where there's nothing good that comes with it. And if God's pleased with you, you know what? No matter what bad thing happens, it's just, you're just pumping more iron. You're just, it's just another workout. You know what I mean? That's how you got to look at it. Something horrible happens and you know you're right with God. Just say, hey, God's got me doing some additional reps today. You know, God's got me working harder today, but I'm getting stronger. I'm building muscle spiritually. But if he's displeased, it's just bad on bad. Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this Psalm, Lord, and just pray that you would let it sink into the hearts of every single person who's here, Lord. Because really, to me, this Psalm is just saying that everything rises and falls on whether or not you're pleased with us, Lord. And Lord, I pray that you'd be pleased with me. And if there's something in my life that's not pleasing to you, Lord, then help me to realize it and eradicate it from my life, Lord, because I want to be well pleasing in your sight. And I just pray that I would always make that the priority in my life and that everyone who's here would make that a priority just to please you with our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Turn our next song to Psalm 106. Abide with me. Song 106. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me. Abide with me.