The Lord is My Refuge

Prepare as we hear the word of the Lord.

Open our minds to be renewed and our hearts to be opened to his word so that we may live and have light and life in us.

And uh this is uh Psalm chapter 17.

Psalms 17 · chapter mention

It's uh in the shadow of your wings, it's a prayer of David, and the psalmist charges his accusers with callousness, pride, and cunning, and praise God's will to keep hide and defend you.

Hear a just cause, O Lord.

Attend to my cry, give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.

From your presence, let my vindication come.

Let your eyes behold the right.

Few things are as powerful as a prayer from a pure heart.

You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tried you have tested me, and you will find nothing.

I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.

With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips, I have avoided the ways of the violent.

My steps held fast to your paths, my feet have not split.

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God.

Incline your ear to me, hear my words.

Wondrously slow your steadfast love.

O Savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand, treat me as the apple of your eye.

Hide me in the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who do me violence, and deadly enemies who surround me.

They close their hearts to pity, with their mouths they speak arrogantly.

They have surrounded our steps, they set their eyes to cast us to the ground.

He is like a lion eager to tear, as a young lion lurking in ambush.

Arise, O Lord, comfort him, subdue him, deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword, from men by your hand, from men of the world whose portion is in this life.

You fill their womb with treasure, they are satisfied with joy, and they leave their abundance to the rights.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness.

When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

This is the word of Church, let's pray over the Lord.

Father in heaven, we're just so thankful for the gathering this morning.

Father, we just as we as we sing and study your word, Father, I'm just so reminded of how we need you.

Father, we need your spirit and your grace to just transform us.

So that we can love our brother and sister, like you call us to do, so that we can respond how you call us to respond.

And Father, we just we just need your transforming power to do that.

Our our flesh does not want to cooperate.

We just trust you in that.

Father, we're so thankful for your word.

Just we just pray that our our hearts and our minds be open to what you have for us today.

And Father, we just we lift up uh Brother Robert here to bring the message that uh you've provided to him for us to hear and to learn.

Father, we just we want to come out of this this uh sermon, learning more about who you are, and just having a heart full of love for your church and the lost.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, brothers.

Good morning and welcome.

Let me add my welcome to whoever has greeted you, either from the platform or face to face this morning.

I this as I've worked through the text this week, one of the things that I have prayed and even thought about as we were worshiping and uh even conversing with many of you in the four-year, I just pray that that we all uh palpably taste the magnitude of God's grace each and every week, not just on Sundays, but as we go through our week.

And as I converse with several of you out in the four-year, many of you had weeks that were filled with joy, and many of you had weeks that were filled with sufferings or trials or difficulties.

And regardless of what your reality is or was this week, I want you to know each and every time that we gather, one of the beauties of the gathering, one of the graces I would say of the gathering is that Jesus welcomes the weak and the weary sinner.

I've heard people often say it's it's difficult to come and to worship when you are weak, and when you are weary, I would say that is the exact place that you need to be to be reminded of the magnitude of God's grace on you and on your life.

So this morning, I welcome you in the name of Jesus, who is not far and distant from the brokenhearted, but who is near and cares for the brokenhearted.

And as we prepare to dive into the text, I want to do two things for us.

I want to both set the context very briefly and also want to present a challenge to you.

What we know from David's life, not just in Psalm 17, but in other places that we read about his life and other Psalms where we read about his prayers, is that we know for a fact that David faced both external difficulties and also at times internal fears, right?

External difficulties and internal fears.

And this wasn't an isolated thing.

This was something that seemed to happen over and over and over again in his life.

And I want that to kind of be the context in which we approach Psalm 17.

And now comes the challenge.

It would be very easy for us when we read this passage to put our seat or put ourselves in the seat of the persecuted, to put ourselves in the seat of David and begin to think about the people in our lives all around us who have wronged us about different things at different times and for different reasons.

To picture the faces and the list of names of people who we have self-declared as our enemies, who we desire to be vindicated from.

And I want to caution you this morning: if we do that, what we are in danger of doing is we are in danger of focusing more on the perceived enemy than we are on the one who vindicates us.

Today we're going to look at three specific things in this text: the inevitability of trials or sufferings, as it shows in your listening guide, the necessity of prayer and the importance of endurance.

And I just pray and ask that you please understand that the purpose of this passage is not to give you fuel to seek revenge or to justify the revenge that you seek or to justify sinful behavior towards someone who may have or may not have wronged you.

The thrust of this passage is that David, in the midst of a life that is riddled with trials and difficulties and sufferings and opposition, found endurance in one place, and that is in the Lord alone.

So please do not allow the vindication that you desire to cause you to miss the refuge that the Lord provides you.

So with that, let's dive in.

The inevitability of sufferings.

I want to kind of go out of order in the verses this morning.

Let's look at verses 10 through 12.

I'm going to reread those for us as it lays out some specific things that David is enduring in this passage.

They close their hearts to pity.

With their mouths they speak arrogantly.

They have now surrounded our steps.

They set their eyes to cast us to the ground.

He is like an eye lion eager to tear as a young lion lurking in ambush.

This is what David was enduring as he is voicing this prayer to the Lord.

They spoke arrogantly about him.

They falsely accused him of things.

They had come to him and they had surrounded him.

And it was their goal not just to verbally and to falsely accuse and make accusations.

It was their goal to tear him, literally tear him physically to the ground, like a lion who is lurking ready to ambush and tear apart its prey limb from limb.

In essence, his integrity was attacked.

And not only was this integrity attacked, but he faced the potential of actual physical attacks.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a fairly difficult situation.

And the temptation that we have, I know that I have when I read something like that is to downplay what I am going through because it doesn't seem to be as bad as what he is going through.

That is something I do often.

I often downplay the things that I walk through in this life by pointing out how much harder it is for someone else and what they have to go through.

I had a faithful brother years ago call me out for doing that.

Just because your trial isn't his trial doesn't mean that your trial or suffering isn't real and difficult.

The inverse is true as well.

We can also have the tendency to see the things that we have to go through in this life and compare them to other people and say, man, ours are way more difficult than what the other person has to deal with.

That in a similar way is not helpful, nor is it biblically appropriate either.

Don't downplay your trials or your sufferings because they are not the same as others.

And in the same way, don't downplay the trials and sufferings of others because they're not they're not the same as yours.

What we know is that David faced trials.

And scripture also tells us in 1 Peter, I'm going to read for you out of 1 Peter 4, this two verses from verses 12 and 13.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

So David faced trials, and scripture tells us that all will face trials, right?

Not just David, not just the other person, not just you, but all will face trials, including you and including me.

This isn't an option, this isn't a maybe, this isn't, you might have to face something difficult.

This is a guarantee.

We should not be surprised when we have to face sufferings and trials and difficulties in this life.

Tribulations and persecutions will certainly and surely come upon you.

The fruit of a Jesus follower, I think often we have this wrong idea.

The fruit of a Jesus follower isn't that their life is puppy dogs and rainbows and perfect.

The fruit of a Jesus follower is confidence in the Lord in the midst of the difficulties that you go through, even though they are one by one, back to back, day by day.

As followers of Jesus, we should be known not for the perfect life that we have that is free from difficulty, but we should be known for the perseverance that we show in the midst of the difficulty by relying on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in this Psalm, what we see David do over and over again is he goes from presenting his uh problem or persecution that he's facing to prayer.

Prayer, persecution, prayer, persecution over and over again.

And ultimately, where he lands at the end of the text is endurance.

Not in his own strength, but in the Lord's endurance.

He took his problems, his sufferings, he took them to the Lord.

He wasn't leaning on his own ability to endure, he wasn't leaning on his own competency to get everything right.

He wasn't leaning on his own strength.

He was leaning on the Lord over and over and over again.

And David's model communicates for us and for the readers that there must be a reliance on prayer.

And that's what we're going to look at next, the necessity of prayer.

As I just alluded to, we see time and time again, David in the Psalm go to the Lord.

Let me point those out to you.

Verse one, he says, Hear me, Lord.

Verse six, incline your ear to me, Lord.

Verse 13, arise, O Lord.

Verse 14, O Lord, David faced immense difficulties, and over and over and over and over and over again he went to the Lord.

What an example that is for us to follow.

When you face difficulty, do you fall to your knees in prayer?

Or do you rely on your own competency to fix it, acting as though you actually have control of the situation and that you have the capacity to be able to fix it?

David takes this posture of prayer.

Not only does he take a posture of prayer, it is a prayer posture that is modeled with uh with humility and with submission and with not self-reliance but reliance on Christ or reliance on the Lord.

He was falsely accused.

He was falsely accused.

I want you to think about what is the human inclination if you have been falsely accused of something?

Is your first response to drop to your knees and plead with the Lord?

Or is your first response, I'm getting even?

I'm going to get my revenge.

They don't know what's about to come at them.

David didn't seek revenge.

I think we can read this passage at a surface level and think, man, David is sure seems to be after revenge here.

He is not after revenge.

He is after the God of creation.

It wasn't about getting even for him.

Rather, what we see is we see this prayer of lament that that modeled submission and selflessness before God.

We see peace and calmness in the midst of peril and chaos.

Some might remember David because of his sin.

David is a pretty popular Bible character, right?

Or Bible individual.

Some might remember him because of his sin.

Others might remember him, I've heard many of you say this before, because he was named as a man after God's own heart.

David's actions, specifically his sin, murder, adultery, amongst other things.

When we think about those things, when we look at verses three, four, and five, really this whole passage, but specifically verses three, four, and five, that can be difficult for us to comprehend.

The sinful man, David, the sinful man David, who at other points in the book of Psalms cries out as a sinner, cries out as a broken man, says, Here you will test me and you will find nothing.

How do we make sense of that?

He says, I have avoided the ways of the violent.

He was a murderer.

Says he held fast to the path of the Lord and his feet didn't slip.

Does anybody remember the story of Bathsheba?

David isn't only speaking about sanctification, he's also speaking about justification here.

We mustn't be careful not to read those verses and assume that David is speaking to a state of perfection or a state of glorification.

That is not the case.

David was not perfect.

David was weak and weary, just like us.

But gay, David knew that God's faithfulness was perfect.

David had so aligned, this is one of the most beautiful things in this passage for me.

David had most had so aligned with the Lord that he began to also align his desires with the Lord.

He aligned his priorities with the Lord.

He was truly living in submission to the Lord's will.

And with that, I want to turn for for just a second to Psalms 37:4.

Psalms 37:4

Listen to these words.

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

Think about that for a second.

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

The wrong interpretation of that is if I delight in the Lord, I will get what I want.

We read that, and that can be the temptation to interpret that way.

I delight in the Lord, therefore I get what I want.

That's the wrong interpretation.

The right interpretation is this I delight in the Lord, and the things that he delights in becomes the things that I delight in.

Therefore, because I am so in pursuit of what he wills, I get the things that I desire, because the things that I desire are the same things that he desires.

Another way of saying this is the further that we aligned our hearts, our minds, and our lives and our souls with the Lord's, the more that our delights begin to match his.

And what comes with that is the more distinguishable, this distinguishable, excuse me, that we are from the world.

David had gotten to this point where he had so conformed his desires in that way.

He had so conformed his life to be in pursuit of whatever it was that the Lord had willed for him, even if it was difficulty, even if it was suffering, even if it was trials.

We should always have this posture of asking ourselves, where do our delights lie?

Where do our desires lie?

And if you don't know how to answer that, ask the person who is closest to you.

I would say also, if you don't know how to answer that, look at your bank accounts.

Where are you spending your money?

Where are you spending your time?

What are you putting your energy into?

Or the things that you are aligning yourself with, or the desires that you are in pursuit of, are they in line with the Lord and with his word?

Or are they in line with the world?

Earnestly desiring and pursuing the will of the Lord will drastically impact how you are able to face difficult situations and unexplainable circumstances in this life.

Therefore, when we read verse six, we see David's words, not as the Lord will give me what I want, but the Lord will hear my plea because I am pleading both to him and I am pleading for him and for his will.

This posture helped David persevere in the midst of trials and difficulties and sufferings that he was facing.

He had confidence not in himself.

This isn't David saying, Man, I'm super strong.

I am competent.

I got this junk figured out.

This isn't David saying, I know the result will be to my earthly favor.

This is David saying, I am confident in you, God, and I submit to you in all things.

In verse 4, he speaks to the word's lips.

In verse 6, he speaks of the word Lord's ear.

In verse 7, he speaks of the Lord's hand.

In verse 8, he speaks to the Lord's eye and to wings.

And in verse 15, he speaks to the Lord's face.

The first time I worked through this text, I missed this.

But as I read it over and over multiple times, and I read different commentators on this particular passage, it became evident to me that David's use of those anthroporms, it's a hard word, anthropopomorphisms, right, is an expression of his confidence in God.

The simplest way to say this: the Lord speaks to us, the Lord hears us, the Lord guides us, the Lord protects us, the Lord sees us, and the Lord knows us.

The Lord speaks to us.

Do you hear the impact of this?

He speaks to us.

He guides us.

He protects us.

He sees us.

He knows us.

This is the same God that created all things.

And he speaks to you.

He sees you.

He hears you.

He protects you.

Those things were true for David, and they're true for us today as well.

The capacity to endure trials and sufferings is rooted in the strength that we find in his faithfulness.

Not the strength of your faithfulness, the strength of his faithfulness, and also in the reality of his presence as he speaks to us, as he hears us, as he guides us, as he protects us, as he seeds us, and as he knows us.

I understand because I am one of those people.

We are not a people who are faithful in every circumstance.

We make mistakes.

We have slip-ups.

We often live in shame.

But the Lord is faithful in all circumstances.

We can have confidence in that.

You may screw it up, but he's not going to.

From Yahweh?

Who is worthy from such faithfulness from God the Son, from Jesus Christ Himself?

Who is worthy of such faithfulness from God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit?

Not a single soul in this room would be able to raise your hand.

And if you did, you would prove that you're not worthy of the faithfulness.

Not a single soul, none of us are worthy of being the benefactors of God's faithfulness.

We are totally and completely undeserving of it, yet he freely gives it to us.

Let that sink in.

He freely gives it to us.

We are a people who are riddled with a lack of assurance.

We are riddled with a lack of assurance.

We are riddled with temptation and trials and sin and difficulty and suffering.

We are riddled with it, but we have assurance of pardon because of the work of Christ on the cross.

The privilege of approaching the throne in our prayers because of Christ.

We too can petition for the Lord to keep me as the apple of your eye, as David verbalizes in this text, to keep me under the shadow of your wings.

And subsequently we can rest in the confidence that He will be present, that He will be faithful as we endure.

When God's people petition or pray for the Lord's endurance, they are reminded that He is the source of their endurance.

That's one of the very things that is a fruit of our prayers, as we as people are reminded that He is the source of our endurance.

Which brings us to the last thing we're going to look at: the importance of endurance.

David's persistence through trials was not because of the ease of circumstances.

I alluded to this earlier.

It wasn't because of the ease of circumstances, nor was it because of the strength of him as a man.

I had this in my notes and I deleted it, and I'm going to put it in there just for my own sake.

I think oftentimes we read God's word and we just assume that all these people had it real easy.

Like it like as time has passed, we look at it through rose-colored glasses, as all these people had it super easy.

David didn't have it easy, right?

His persistence wasn't because he had it easy.

His persistence and confidence and endurance was because of God's faithfulness.

Sometimes it's easy for us to look at our specific circumstances and whatever those are for you, whatever your circumstances are, the pain, the heartache, the false guilt, the false accusations, and we wonder why.

Why are we having to endure such things?

Our culture is obsessed with comfort.

The ease and familiarity of prosperity often kills the biblical approach to sufferings and trials.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are in the shadow of his wings, as it says in verse 8.

Even in the midst of your suffering, the faithful saints within God's word that we read about and that we look at often through rose-colored glasses and think, man, they must have had it real easy.

They had lives full of difficulties just like you and I, and just like David.

They weren't living on some plush piece of land with everything going their way.

They were enduring trial after trial and suffering after suffering.

The world hated them in ways that we can't even begin to fathom.

They were falsely accused of things they didn't do.

And they often lived the opposite of what we term today as the American dream, this prosperity that we are so obsessed with.

A faithful brother this week sent me a summation of different people in God's word that endured for the sake of the gospel, even in the midst of what seemed like in impossible circumstances.

I want to run through those real quick.

Joseph, why don't you think about Joseph for a second?

He was betrayed by the people closest to him, his own brothers, betrayed him.

He was sold like an animal or like a piece of meat into slavery.

He was eventually falsely accused by Potiver's wife, even after he had resisted the temptation that that was, he was falsely accused of some egregious action that he did not commit.

He was imprisoned despite doing nothing wrong.

And God eventually used him to save many, many people.

Job, in the middle of the story of Job, one would be inclined to think, I don't know about you, but when you read through the book of Job, my mind is inclined to think this has to be one of the most tragic stories of all of history.

Most tragic story of all of history.

He was described as blameless and upright, yet he lost everything.

Everything was ripped from his fingertips.

He lost his financial prosperity.

He lost his children.

Even lost his own health.

The friends around him assumed that he had sinned greatly to deserve this.

His wife said this, and this is a quote from Scripture Do you still hold fast to your integrity?

Curse God and die.

It's what his wife told him to do.

God eventually restores him in many ways.

Daniel's enemies tried so hard to find faults in him.

They searched and searched and searched and searched and searched, but they found nothing.

So they took matters into their own hands, and this is what we see in Daniel 6.

Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God.

Then they came near and said before the king concerning injunction, O king, did you not sign an injunction that anyone who makes petition to any God or man within thirty days except for you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.

The king answered and said, The thing stands fast, according to the law of Moses and Persians, which cannot be revoked.

Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who was one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.

Part of me just wants to say tattletales, right?

Tattletales.

And we know what happens after that.

He was eventually thrown into a lion's den.

Why?

Because he sinned?

No.

Because he was faithful.

Jeremiah was faithful in communicating the message of God.

He wasn't often celebrated.

Instead, he was mocked, he was beaten, he was imprisoned, eventually thrown into a cistern.

David, as we saw a few weeks ago, was pursued by Saul, right?

Remember that?

We worked through a different psalm where David was in the wilderness.

He was pursued by Saul.

They so desired to take his life.

This was after David himself had done the opposite of sparing Saul's life.

David eventually becomes king and still endured great suffering, some of which was a result of his own sin.

But in the midst of that, God was faithful.

Moses was instrumental in leading the nation of Israel out of Egypt.

But as the saying goes, the Israelites bit the very hand that fed it.

They rebelled against him.

They rebelled against the things he communicated.

They rebelled against the direction the Lord was leading them through Moses.

He faced criticism, he faced skepticism, he faced people who were skeptical of him.

He faced rebellion from the very people that he loved and led so faithfully under the Lord's direction.

Paul, after his conversion on the Damascus Road, was unbelievably faithful.

Unbelievably faithful in the midst of all sorts of things.

We know about his thorn in his side.

We're not sure what it was, but we know it was there.

And we know he pleaded with the Lord to take it from him, to remove it, to get rid of it, but he didn't.

We know that he faced beatings.

We know he was thrown into prison.

We know he was shipwrecked on more than one occasion.

We know he was falsely accused.

We know he was persecuted to no end.

Why?

Because he was faithful to do the very thing the Lord had called him to do, preach the gospel to the Jews and to the Gentiles.

And if those examples weren't enough, you have Jesus the Christ, God in the flesh, the Son of the living God.

He lived a life on this earth facing the very same temptations that you and I face every single day, the very same temptations that everybody who has ever walked this earth has faced, and he did not sin.

Yet he was still falsely accused.

He was rejected by many.

He was mocked, he was beaten, he had his flesh ripped from his body, and ultimately he was crucified.

And instead of removing himself from the cross, instead of looking down at all the people who were mocking him and saying, You fools, I'm out of here.

Instead of doing that, instead of getting even with all the people that were too blind to see who he actually was, he willingly and graciously stayed on the cross.

Therefore, we can declare this truth that we see in Romans 8.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.

He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

David remained confident in the Lord because he knew that the Lord was faithful.

We too can be confident in the Lord because we know that he is faithful.

If we had no other evidence of his faithfulness than the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that's all we need, right?

That is all we need.

Don't be blinded by the realities of the world that we live in that is in pursuit of everything that we want.

All we need is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

That is it.

That is all we need to find strength and hope and endurance.

I don't know exactly what you are enduring right now, the hardships, the memories of your past that flood your brain and weaken you and fill you with shame and guilt, the broken friendships or relationships, the job loss, the worries about what is coming next, what that next phone call will bring, your next text will bring, the next meeting with your boss will bring, the concerns for your future, the chronic illness, the anxieties, the fears.

I do not know what you are in, but I do know because you are a person in flesh that you are weary and that you are tired.

It may have taken everything that you have to even get yourself here this morning.

Some of you, like me, are often so overwhelmed by worries that it seems impossible to be able to get to the point where you won't worry about something.

It's like this cycle of one worry passes, the next one comes, one worry passes, the next one comes, over and over and over again.

It would be nice if we could walk over and turn off the light switch and the worries be gone.

But there's no light switch.

How frustrating is that.

We long to have freedom from sufferings, we long to have freedom from worries, but we can't seem to get our hands on the freedom that we desire.

What we need to do is let go of the worries that we have and grab a hold of the Lord.

Let go of the worries and grab a hold of the Lord.

David had trials.

David went to God in prayer.

David found endurance.

And subsequently, David was able to praise the Lord in the midst of it.

Look at verse 15 for a second.

Ask for me.

I shall behold your face in righteousness.

When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

David knew and was aware of all of the different ways the Lord had provided for him and had sustained him.

And we know that because otherwise he would not have been able to pin the words of verse 15.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness.

When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

He doesn't say I should be satisfied with my circumstances.

He doesn't say I should be satisfied because all of these trials are over.

No, he says I should be satisfied with your likeness.

As I said a moment ago, if you had nothing, if you if you came in here and you leave here with nothing but the cross, it is enough.

It is enough.

There is no greater expression of love and grace and mercy and compassion and provision than the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ.

There's no greater expression of that.

So if the weight of the trial or suffering that you are going through is so heavy that you can't even seem to stand.

Maybe you even feel like you are in the midst of some level of false accusation, just like David.

Be reminded of this that there is one who stands for you, and there is one who stands with you.

It's not that he picks you up and then runs from you.

He stands with you.

He is present with you.

Your trials will continue.

That is the bad news.

Your trials will continue.

The thing that you are walking through right now, whatever that is, will not be the last thing you walk through.

Unless the Lord comes back suddenly, right?

It will not be the last thing you walk through.

My prayer is that you will fight for perseverance, not fight to get even.

Just because David was not aggressive towards his oppressor doesn't mean he wasn't aggressive towards the suffering itself.

And we have to see that.

And he was aggressive in this way.

He humbly submitted himself to the Lord.

He prayed for strength and he pursued Christ'lieness.

If you are constantly trying to endure in your own strength, I'm just gonna let the cat out of the bag for you if you haven't figured it out.

You aren't strong enough.

You aren't strong enough for what you will face in this life.

You are not enough.

You are not enough, but the Lord is.

But the Lord is.

If you're here today and you've never put your faith in Christ, let me challenge you to do that today.

Trials will certainly continue.

I think sometimes people make these big evangelistic pushes and they say, Man, come to Christ, everything will be great.

That's not what the Bible says.

The Bible says, put your faith in Christ, it will be really difficult.

You will face trials, but you're not standing alone.

Christ stands with you.

Put your faith in Christ.

Trust him.

Let that be a response today.

If you've never made that response at the prompting of the Spirit, and if you're a follower of Jesus, may you have so ingrained in your mind when you walk out of this place that in the midst of whatever you're going through, you are not alone.

You are not alone.

Christ is with you, and he expresses that to us in so many different ways today, right?

That's part of the reason we have the church, the one another's.

That's part of the reason he has given us the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper to be reminded of the grace that has been bestowed upon us.

We have his word.

You are not alone.

Faithfully endure for the glory of Christ and know that you don't have the strength, but he does.

Let me pray for us.

Father, we are so grateful for who you are.

We're so grateful for your word.

We're grateful as a people who face difficult circumstances and sufferings, as a people who grow weary at times.

Some people in this room, and I know this from communicating with them, it seems that they have more times of weariness than anything else.

And that's difficult because there's no guarantee that the sufferings will end.

But it's also joyous because there is a guarantee that we can find strength in the God of creation, that today, as a as a new covenant people, right, post-life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as followers of Jesus, we can find strength in the reality that the Spirit is within us, that we do not stand alone.

And that you have given us so many graces of expression as it relates to that, with each other, with the ordinances, with the church itself, with worship that we get to participate in every week together, corporately, with the word.

May we receive those as living examples of your presence in our lives, and may they give us strength.

And for the person today who's not a follower of Jesus, I pray that something in in today's service would be what the Spirit uses to respond, uh prompt the response in them to remove the blinders from their eyes, to put their faith, hope, and trust in Christ for the first time.

We give you all glory for all things in Jesus' name.

Amen.