Being People of the Wait

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

Amen.

You can have a seat if you've got a Bible and you take an open up to the 37th Psalm.

And today is the first Sunday of Advent.

If you're our guest, I know many of you are in town from out of town celebrating Thanksgiving holiday.

Thank you for being a part of our service.

Let me explain what you see before you.

This is an Advent wreath.

And each of these candles will be lit, like this one here.

We'll light today later on our service.

As a reminder, this is a each Sunday has a theme of Advent.

It's the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.

Like today is hope.

And then next week we'll do love and then joy and then peace.

And on Christmas Eve, we'll we'll light the Christ candle to celebrate the coming, uh, to commemorate the coming of our Lord.

But uh each Sunday has a theme, and today's theme is hope.

And so I want to talk on this.

Hope means implies that you have your belief, your sense that your affections and your anticipation and expectation is kind of banking on something else.

And so I want to talk to you this morning about being people of the weight, being people of the weight.

From the 37th Psalm, this is what God's Word says.

Verse 1, he says, fret not yourselves because of evildoers, be not envious because of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the herb.

Trust in the Lord and do good.

Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord.

Trust in him, and he will act.

He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and the justice as the noonday.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Fret not yourselves over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices.

Refrain from anger and forsake wrath.

Fret not yourselves.

It tends only to evil, for the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

The word of the Lord.

What does it mean to be a people of the way?

As I told the first service, I want to draft you all into a conspiracy.

Advent is a conspiracy where we kind of say, uh, we're not going to be like the culture.

We want to reflect Christ during this holiday season.

We kind of slow down.

And what does it mean to be people of the way?

Well, David says uh a few things there that I want to point out, but before I get to that, I want to just give you three introductory statements that are just kind of uh obvious, but I want to I want them to be the lens through which we kind of listen today.

And the first one is simply this that waiting is an inevitable part of life.

Waiting is an inevitable part of life.

Researchers have figured out that we'll spend five years of our life waiting in line.

You'll spend six months at a red light.

Your kids, if they were born and texting has gone berserk in the past five years, uh, most students will spend, I think they said, seven years of their life sending text messages.

And so waiting is just part of it.

And if you're not careful as a Christian, you think, well, I'm a Christian, and certain strains of Christianity that are a perversion of the gospel that make it sound like, well, you don't have to wait.

God wants you to have it all right now, and so you just name it and claim it, and then boom, it's yours.

And for such people, heaven will be a real disappointment because everything is right now.

And yet the Bible comes along and says, hey, you're gonna have to wait because it's a part of life.

Second introductory statement is simply this: that waiting means we expect something to happen.

Wait, we're waiting because something we want to have happen has yet to happen.

Like for Abram and Sarai, God told them they'll have a child, and then they waited 25 years before they had that child.

And if we're not careful, we'll make it sound like God says it, and then boom, the next day she comes out and goes, look, two pink lines, it's a girl.

There's people in this church that struggle with infertility that want babies, and so far God's not seen fit to give them.

It's not because you're doing anything wrong.

A lot of it is just waiting, it's just part of life, it's part of the Christian experience.

And it means that something you long for and you expect something to happen.

Noah set out and he built, began building a boat, and everyone's like, What are you doing?

And he have you ever tried to explain the flood to people who've never seen rain?

And all those years, he was just waiting on God to prove him right, not crazy.

People would walk by and kind of mutter and mumble to themselves.

Third introductory statement is just simply this: how you wait is as important as what you're waiting for.

How you wait is as important as what you're waiting for.

Now there's one phrase I want to define, and then we'll get into the verbs in Psalm 37.

But three times uh David said this phrase, fret not yourselves, fret not yourselves, fret not yourselves, and you hear that and you're like, I don't know exactly what he's doing.

He's not saying don't worry.

That word uh basically in in in Hebrew, it's a Hebrew verb uh harak, harak, and it means to glow with anger.

It's like he's not saying don't worry, he's saying, hey, don't look around at everybody else and get mad at what you see, which especially this time of year is easy to do.

Like case in point, yesterday, I took my eight-year-old to Sam's.

Uh, there was a period of time yesterday where it was raining canned hams.

I don't know if you were outside.

It was like raining junior high kids pouring down.

We were at Sam's when that happened, okay?

And so we're, and I'm like, let's let's let's hurry and get out there.

And she's like, Can I get a pretzel?

I'm like, really?

It's like I gotta finish the ark before this rain stops.

And I want to get icy and a pretzel.

You said at the house we got i.

It wasn't raining at the house.

It's now raining.

No problem we got there.

We need one of those Coca-Cola icy because we need some sugar and some caffeine to go home on.

Keep in mind we've yet to eat lunch.

So yesterday, while my wife was not around, my eight-year-old had an icy about that big and a big sugar cinnamon pretzel for lunch.

Because I'm a winner, that's why, kids.

And then we get to the door, we're going, then they can check you there.

And I saw it was like a lot of backup.

There weren't that many people, and I was like, what is a big backup?

I thought, are they checking the receipts?

What's going on?

Well, there's a backup because about 18 people walked out and got their stuff out and just jumped in their vehicles and left 18 empty shopping carts right outside the door.

And there's about six people backed up, and all of a sudden I begin to glow with anger.

Here's the danger of reading the Bible.

It finds you at real inconvenient times because I was thinking to myself, if these people would just do what I would do in this situation, we wouldn't be in this situation.

Now I know you all never have those thoughts.

So you pray for me.

You also know there's a smell that your brakes make when you ride your brakes.

It's the rotor glowing orange on your brake, on your disc brakes.

And so I begin to smell that, and I was like, what in the world?

And I thought I was frustrated.

There's an older lady in front of me.

She's like in her 80s, move, move.

I'm like, grandma, grandma, that's everybody.

You can get away with it.

You know, there's an age where you can do whatever you want and no one says anything.

I'm not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

And so, I mean, then he's backed up and it's just getting more and more backed up in the Salvation Army bell ringer.

All of a sudden, he's a traffic cop.

Y'all are gonna be in a bad mood on this day.

Hey, we just want to get to our cars.

We're trapped.

Well, we can't do anything, and so I'm thinking, I'm glowing now.

I'm not angry, I'm not harak, I'm close, okay?

And so I just walked out there just to see if I could remedy the situation.

And there's a lady who's older than the 80-year-old, and she can't get her umbrella opened, and I heard her say, I forgot where I parked.

Yeah, my thought exactly.

You ever go from, hey, please, God, don't kill me.

And I went back and I said, Uh, can I have some of that pretzel?

We may be here a while.

And we got out and we got to our car and it, our my truck, and it was fine, and we got soaking wet, and Sophie was dry because she I held the umbrella over her.

And if you ever tried to hold an umbrella and load stuff with one hand, like that five gallons of mayonnaise they sell at Sin.

There's a reason David says, fret not yourselves because of evildoers.

Fret not yourselves, fret not yourselves, it only tends to evil.

And so, because he says in verse one, fret not yourself because of evildoers, be not envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.

See, see, people that live that way, don't worry about them.

Don't get glowing hot over them because they're not gonna last.

You are.

And so, what do you do?

What helps you to last?

Well, he says you kind of gotta look up.

And there's there's four things he says to us.

The first one he says is trust in the Lord, verse 3, and do good.

Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

What a great phrase, befriend faithfulness.

But before he tells us to do that, he says trust.

It means literally to attach oneself, to confide in, to feel safe.

If you looked it up in the Hebrew dictionary, it would say this word expresses the sense of well-being, which results from knowing that the rug cannot be pulled out from under you.

This sense of well-being that comes from knowing that God's not got you out here on a limb and all of a sudden he's just gonna saw it off and you're gonna come crashing down.

There's something bigger than you at work on your behalf.

It's months ago I'm at Walmart up here, and it's raining again, and I'm kind of waiting it out because it's raining sideways outside.

And I'm standing in one of the aisles, and a big clap of thunder hits, and this little girl lifts up her mom's coat and gets under it.

And I just kind of looked there and kind of smiled like that's different.

And her mom looked at me and she said, She thinks I'm bigger than the thunder.

And out of my mouth, I said, You are.

And by the way, your kids never outgrow that need to be reminded that you are bigger than the thunder.

When they come home from college, they're not just coming home for food and clothes and money, they come for those things.

But there's a part of them that comes to be reminded, there's something in this world that's bigger than what I'm afraid of.

And God says to you and I today, there's something, when he says, trust in the Lord, he is saying, attach yourself to me.

Get up here under the pinions of my wings, because there's nothing in this world bigger than me.

I'm bigger than the thunder.

David says, because of this, he says, Befriend faithfulness.

Go to lunch, have coffee with the idea that you are faithful people.

When you do the right thing, it's not an outer body experience, is what David is saying.

That's who you are.

Befriend faithfulness.

Spend time with the idea of you being consistent and doing the right thing.

It's not I've done some bad and so I need to do good.

No, it's befriend faithfulness.

Get on speaking terms with being consistently connected with who the Bible says you are.

That's what David means when he says trust.

That sounds simple, but from of old, way back in the garden, God told Adam and Eve, here's the deal, just trust me.

I got this.

Of all the trees, you're free to eat of any tree in the garden, of this one tree, don't eat.

And what do they do?

They eat.

And what does God do?

God doesn't argue with people, but occasionally he just withdraws his presence from people.

That's why he put Adam and Eve out of the garden to create in them a sense of awareness of what it's like to be separated from God.

Advent reminds us.

See, when we sing, O church, come stand in the light.

It reminds us that if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves in darkness.

And so the first thing David says is trust.

Second thing David says is delight.

Delight.

Verse 4, he says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

This is many people's favorite verse in the Bible, but they really don't understand what it's saying.

They're like my children, now that every other commercial is a new toy, or a new this, or a new that.

And used to they would look and go, I want that.

I want that.

I want that.

Now they just look over and smile.

And I'm like, I don't I make I just feel them looking at me kind of like, uh do you see what I see?

A toy, a toy.

Yes, yes, that's why in our freezer right now we have dipping dots being made.

Because last year they came out with a dipping dots machine.

The most overrated, overpriced little BBs of ice cream you'll ever find.

But I got to look.

Oh, Dad, I need to make dipping dots.

We have dipping dots in our freezer right now, if you care for some.

Come by, I'll scoop you up some.

They're$9 for a little shot glass full.

What am I saying?

Delight is, when the Bible says delight yourself in the Lord, he'll give you the desires of your heart.

It's not like you don't start with your heart.

Most people start with their heart.

This is what I feel, this is what I want.

Oh, if you're not careful, most of us, we're gonna wake up one day, we're gonna be 50, and our whole life is gonna be about our appetites, not God's attributes.

What you've got to understand is what the word delight is.

It's a Hebrew verb, it's anag, and it means to be soft or pliable.

You get about 50, and you're not soft and pliable anymore.

You've earned the right to do what you want.

You get them kids out of the house, the empty nest.

You remember that?

You're kind of like, yeah, now it's my turn.

I'm not saying, I understand that.

I'm not saying it's bad.

It's not at all.

I'm saying be careful because delight, anag means this, to be soft and pliable.

And the church in America is full of people who spent their whole life singing, Thou art the potter, and I am the clay.

And yet, the older we get, the more brittle we become.

And if you're not careful, you'll fail to realize that when you stop being soft and pliable, it was about the same time you stopped really enjoying your relationship with God.

And so David says, Trust in the Lord, and he says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

What does that mean?

It means that your heart is perpetually moldable and pliable before God.

Sounds easy, doesn't it?

But yet the Bible comes along and God says in Jeremiah chapter 2, he says, Of his people, my people have committed two sins.

Jeremiah 2 · chapter mention

If you want to have a fun little conversation tomorrow when you go to work, just say to the guy next to you, and then maybe in the office next to you, or the cubicle next to you, hey Bill, how many sins have you committed?

You'll be like, This weekend?

And they'll give you some astronomical millions, not just two.

This is what the Bible says, Jeremiah chapter 2.

Jeremiah 2 · chapter mention

Don't turn there about verse 13.

He says, God says, My people have committed two sins.

Number one, they've forsaken me, the well of living water.

And number two, they've dug for themselves wells that hold no water.

You would think that God has demonstrated himself such that people would be forever faithful, but they're not.

They're not.

Their heart gets brittle and they say, This is what I want, and this is what I can get, and therefore I'm gonna get it.

And during this Advent season, God comes along and he says, Trust, and he says, secondly, delight, because when we forsake the well of living water, he doesn't chase after us and say, Hey, come back, don't do that.

He gives you over to your own way.

That's why Isaiah says in Isaiah 53, we all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us is turned to his own way.

And so God allows us to experience the darkness of our disobedience.

And so David comes along and he he says, thirdly, in verse 5, he says, Trust in the Lord, delight yourself in the Lord.

Verse 5, he says, Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act, he will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

When he says, Commit to the Lord, commit yourself, your excuse me, commit your way to the Lord.

There's two things you got to understand.

When he says commit, it means to roll yourself up on the Lord.

You're like, what?

It's the same thought that Peter picks up on in 1 Peter chapter 5 about verse 7 when he says, cast all your cares upon him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

Heave all of your anxieties up on him because he cares about you.

Before we do any casting, we have to ask ourselves, just in the quietness of our head and heart this morning, do you do you really believe that he cares about you?

Because when it's going well, we think, oh yeah, he cares about me.

Got money in the bank, my wife's doing what she's supposed to be doing, my kids are obedient.

Does he care about you when you gotta go bail your kids out of jail?

Does he care about you when they call from college and go, uh, I think I might have overdrafted my checking account?

What makes you think that, son?

Well, my picture's up in the post office.

Or when your boss comes in and says, Hey, you know, with the end of the budget year coming up, it looks like we're gonna be making some changes, and I can't guarantee you're gonna have a position in the new year with the company you've worked for for 28 years.

You feel cared for?

Because deep inside all of us is the capacity to kind of take responsibility.

And yet he doesn't say commit yourselves, he says commit your way.

It's so much easier to commit yourself and to commit your way because we all have an idea about the way we want this to go.

And he says, commit your way.

Lay down your plans for being married.

I love how single people all start with the assumption that you're just supposed to get married.

You've been talking to my parents.

Or how young people, middle school and high school students, start with the assumption that God wants them to be in a relationship.

What would it be like?

And would you be willing just to lay your way down before the Lord and say, I don't I don't want the life I can get.

I want the life you want me to have.

Commit your way.

And then fourthly and finally, probably the most difficult of all, David says this in verse 7.

He says, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Fret not yourselves.

There it is again.

Don't get glowing hot with anger because you're not getting your way, and other people are.

That's the hardest part about not part about not getting your way.

It's not just I'm not getting my way.

That jerk over there is getting his way.

David says, Hey, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Fret not yourselves over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices, refrain from anger and forsake wrath.

Fret not yourselves, it only leads to evil, for the evildoers shall be cut off.

But those who wait for the Lord will inherit the land.

God has been saying to his people for generations, for thousands of years, be still.

If you could go back to Exodus 14, his people have been brought out of bondage, and now they find themselves at the Red Sea, and there they are, they're pinned down, and Pharaoh's army is bearing down on them, and little kids are lifting up their mom's skirt and getting under them because they believe that my mom's bigger than the army that's coming to get us.

Men's hearts are melting like wax, they're turning on Moses, going, Are you kidding me?

You brought us out here because there weren't enough graves in Egypt.

What are you gonna do now?

And he stands up before them and he says, These Egyptians you see today you'll never see again.

You need only be still and see the salvation of the Lord.

And they stood still.

And the Bible tells us that God drowned all the armies of Pharaoh in the Red Sea.

And not only was he delivering his people, he was changing the geopolitical structure of an entire region of the world.

And they would leave that, and they would cry out just days later against God in the wilderness.

And this continues all through the Old Testament.

Faithful God, unfaithful people.

We love God, we love to sin.

Oh God, forgive us and take us back.

God takes them back.

And finally you get to the end of the Old Testament, and you get to the minor prophets, and they seem like angry guys with funny names.

Because God is raising his voice through the instrument of his prophets, his people.

But his people aren't listening.

They're marrying who they want, they're spending their money on what they want.

And so God slowly withdraws himself and his voice.

And it's very dark and it's very, very, very overwhelming.

Between the old and the new testament, there's 450 years of pretty much silence and spiritual darkness.

And it's easy when the lights are all on to think, where's God?

But yet when it gets dark, it becomes obvious that the light is not always obvious, but it's available.

And maybe just beyond the horizon of what you're facing or thinking or feeling, there's this flickering aura that kind of says, I'm here, I haven't forsaken you.

Were I to forget you, I'll have to cut off my right hand.

And so this God says to you and I, in your time of deepest darkness and greatest uncertainty, trust in the Lord.

Delight in the Lord.

Hold your hands out.

You are a blessed people.

Blessed by the presence of your God who will never leave you nor forsake you.

That's why he binds himself to you.

Your story has been lost, submerged in his.

They call it history.

Because it's his story.

He's telling his story through you.

Depart now, and turn up the volume on his story in your life.

Let it be one of hopeful waiting.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you, you dismiss.