Psalm 75 – Psalms In The Summer

Psalms seventy five.

We give thanks to you, O God.

We give thanks, for your name is near.

Recount your wondrous deeds.

At the third time that I appoint, I will judge with equity.

When the heart taught us and all its inhabitants, it is high, who keep steady its pillar.

I say to the boastful, do not boast.

And to the wicked, do not lift up your horn.

Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with hearty neck.

For not from the east or from the west, and not from the wilderness comes lifting up.

For it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.

For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours it out from heath, and all the wicked of the heart shall drain it down to the dredged.

But I will declare it forever.

I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.

All the owns of the wicked I will cut off, but the owns of the righteous shall be lifted up.

Amen.

If you can have Psalm 75 in front of you, that'll be really helpful.

Thank you, G Day, for reading that for us.

This is the last of our summer Psalms.

Uh that's been our pattern for the last six years or so, is just to do Psalms all the way through the summer.

Start at Psalm 1.

And here we uh conclude actually at the halfway point.

We're halfway through the book of Psalms, Psalm 75.

But one of the things that uh that's true of uh Peter Nicole today is that they they kind of stand at an at an inflection point in their life, kind of a crossroads where uh where one uh one path, uh so to speak, that that career of uh of teaching these last years that uh at very least gets put on ice for a while and then they begin to journey down a slightly different path into full-time Christian ministry.

And I wonder if you had those those moments of of realizing, oh, uh this day kind of changes everything.

Lizzie and Daniel are about to have that on Tuesday, like, oh, this this changes uh a lot to do with my life.

It's one of those crossroad moments, and in those moments you have a choice.

You have a choice between making uh things better or making things way worse.

You have that choice at uh at a funeral.

Funerals are always hard, emotions are always fraught, it can make things very difficult, but you have a choice those days, you have a choice to make things better, shouldering the emotional burden, or I imagine you've been to those funerals that people have made them way worse by the decisions that they have made.

I vividly remember uh when I moved to London uh to go to theological college, realizing that nobody knew me.

And that I could go anywhere, do anything, and I would be completely anonymous.

So I had a choice.

I could make things better or I could make things way worse.

This morning, Peter begins a new season of life as a full-time pastor here in City Church, and so he is in one of those crossroad moments, and so he has a decision to make.

He can either make things better or he can make things way worse.

Psalm 75 is going to help us.

Let me start by by pointing out the three-step guide to making your life way worse.

The three-step guide to making your life as a believer or Peter, your ministry, as miserable as possible.

You only need to do three things in order to make your life utterly miserable.

You taking notes?

You ready?

Here they are.

You're welcome.

This is my advice.

First, first thing you do to make your life utterly miserable, forget gratitude.

Forget it.

Gratitude is for the weak, for people who have to rely on others who aren't strong enough to achieve things on their own.

In order to forget gratitude, what you need to do is you need to make yourself really, really busy, right?

We live in a city, so that should be easy.

Make sure that you program out all of your life so that you never stop.

That you get so wrapped up in your ability to achieve great things, always running to the next meeting or event, that it never occurs to you to pause and to reflect and to do any sort of thanksgiving.

Peter, you want to make your life ministry, you want to make your ministry miserable?

Program it out so that there's no rest.

Because if you have rest, then you have time to reflect and then you'll become grateful.

Don't do that.

What you need to see is that there's always another mountain summit beyond you.

Don't look back.

You want to make your life miserable?

Don't look back at how far you've come.

Only look at how far you still have to climb.

Keep your eyes fixed on the next peak, keep your eyes fixed on the next goal, on the next achievement, on the next success.

Forget gratitude.

Because the great thing is that forgetting gratitude allows you to nurture something else in your heart, actually.

It allows you to nurture restless discontentment.

And you need that if you're going to make your life miserable, because that becomes kind of the fuel in your engine.

You want that restless, discontent, envious, resentful fuel because that's what's going to drive you further.

Discontentment is the fuel of ambition.

If you want to make your life miserable, make sure that you are super discontent.

And how do you become discontent?

By forgetting gratitude.

Okay?

Thanksgiving brings rest, or if I, as I prefer to call it, laziness.

Discontentedness will help you to push yourself, and it will also help you to push other people down so that you can lift yourself up and climb over the pile.

Discontentment gives birth to envy, and that keeps you so focused on the now.

Stops you being distracted by the future, by any sort of future hope or any sort of past faithfulness.

You want to make your life miserable, Peter?

Forget gratitude.

Second thing you do to make your life miserable, remember that you're in control and that it's all down to you.

Okay?

That's the second thing to remember.

Uh, Peter, you need to be aware that in this room there are about 150 people, and you're responsible for all of them.

Right?

Their pastoral issues, the hidden secrets that they haven't even told you yet, it's all down to you.

It's all on your shoulders.

That's why we prayed for you because you know you're gonna need it, because you're responsible for it all.

You have teams to run, pastoral situations to navigate, new ministries to create, and so you need to remember that it's all on you.

And as for the rest of you, the quickest way to make your life miserable is to remember and to believe that it's all on you.

That way you can do whatever you want, you can create your own identity in the world, and if you can create your own identity in the world, if you can be anyone, you better make sure that you are someone.

It's all on you.

Here's the wonderful thing.

When you believe that it's all on you, when you actually achieve it, man, the sense of pride.

It's odd, it's intoxicating, believe me.

That's self-satisfaction.

It's wonderful.

Now, you have to be careful because you can feel that internally, but you can't show it to other people because we're all people who follow Jesus, right?

Okay.

So you need to learn to mask it.

So when people come up and they give you compliments, Peter, when people give you compliments on your sermon or something that you've done well, you need to learn to mask your pride.

Here's some things that you can say.

You can say, Oh really?

Do you do you think so?

Or you can say, Oh, oh no, it wasn't, it wasn't me, really.

I don't really know what I'm doing.

Or you can say, oh no, it was all him.

But secretly you know actually that it was all you.

You can make your life miserable today.

The way you do it is by forgetting gratitude and remembering that it's all on you.

The third thing that you need to do to really kind of lock in that miserable Christian life is to reject any idea of uh of a future judgment.

I love those people who who get the kind of who get the tattoos that say, only God can judge me.

Have you seen those ones?

Because what those people are saying, well, they don't generally believe in God.

So what they're actually saying is, well, no one can judge me.

No one can pass any sort of assessment on the choices that I make.

It's essential that if you want to be miserable, uh, to reject any idea of any future judgment.

Because if there's no judge, then everything's permitted.

Peter, you're about to step into a position of maybe increased power.

And power is all there is at the end.

If you're strong enough, you'll win.

The other good thing about there being no judgment is that there's no moral imperative for you to live differently, to improve your faults, to work on your character weaknesses.

That's true for all of you.

You are you, and no one can call you to anything different.

No one can call you out of yourself to virtue.

People say that pursuing virtue is good, but actually it's exhausting.

Oh, and if you in your ministry reject judgment, or if any of us in the Christian life reject judgment, then you'll be seen as nicer, and that's good.

You'll be seen as more welcoming to different worldviews, faith, lifestyle choices, moralities.

The people in the world will actually come to you and tell you how great you are, and that's pretty good, isn't it?

We can finally bring Christianity into the modern era, and all you have to do is reject judgment.

You want to make your life miserable?

Forget gratitude, remember it's all on you, and reject judgment.

Let's pray.

Oh no, I should probably keep going, shouldn't I?

The result of all of this is that you will have a ministry or you will have a Christian life that is marked by pride or anxiety because you haven't achieved it, discontentment, uh, resentment, and it's ultimately marked by power rather than love and service.

You can pursue those things.

That's the choice that is open to all of us.

You can pursue those things if you want.

Or you can cultivate a ministry that's marked by humility and service and love.

How do you do that?

If you actually want to go down the other road, here's how you do it.

First, pursue gratitude.

If you don't want to make your life miserable, pursue gratitude.

Do you see?

Do you remember how the psalm begins?

We give thanks to you, oh God.

We give thanks for your name is near.

We recount your wondrous deeds.

The psalm begins with the psalmist expressing thankfulness and gratitude.

It begins with him looking outside of himself, seeing how far he has come, seeing what God has done for him, and rendering him thanks.

I actually think that it's a wondrous thing that we've commissioned Peter this morning.

I think back to those early years as a UCD student.

Imagine a UCD student.

Meeting up in coffee shops and reading concise theology.

Seeing you married and then commissioning you as an elder.

And then seeing how God has laid that call, as you rightly said, on your life to be a pastor here at City.

It actually makes me grateful for God's wondrous deeds in your life.

It's important actually that we don't always look at the next summit because that is exhausting.

We do need to stop and to look back, and I'm really grateful for these next two weeks because all that we're doing really over the next two weeks is placing a marker down and saying, gosh, we have come a long way.

Look around you City Church.

We have come a long way from the ten people that met in St.

George and St.

Thomas's and Calbreu Street ten years ago.

It's important to look back and to render thanks.

A few weeks ago, you may or may not remember it, uh, but if you were here, I preached through Psalm 73.

And in Psalm 73, the psalmist is wrestling with uh with envy and discontentment.

He's looking at the wicked and seeing how great their life is, and kind of going, well, they seem to be getting away with everything, and they're fat and sleek, and they have no cares in the world.

Why can't I be like them?

Have I followed God for nothing?

And so he he sinks in the first half of the psalm into this bitterness and envy and resentfulness.

And a couple of days afterwards I was reflecting on the psalm and I realized something that I that I should have said, but it fits here.

Do you know what the antidote to envy is?

The antidote to envy is gratitude.

The antidote to envy is gratitude.

Because envy says, well, why can't I have that?

Why do they have that and I don't?

But gratitude's completely different.

Gratitude looks at your life and goes, look at all, look at God's wondrous deeds in my life.

Look at all that I have been given.

Look how far I have come.

Gratitude is the antidote to envy.

So if you don't want to be miserable in your ministry life, you need to practice gratitude.

And we have so much to be thankful for.

The psalmist thanks God for the nearness of his name, that's his presence, and for his wondrous deeds.

And we stand on, in a sense, on better ground than the psalmist.

Because in the Old Testament, the name was as close as God got to his people.

But we know that God has drawn near to us in the person of the Lord Jesus.

That he is with us and in us and empowering us now by his spirit.

We have much more to be thankful for.

So take a moment today with the psalmist in Psalm 75 and practice gratitude.

What have you got to be thankful for?

You have objective things to be thankful for in what God has done for you in the Lord Jesus.

In coming that he might rescue you and make you his own, recount his wondrous deeds today, and practice gratitude.

The second thing that you need to do to have a ministry or indeed a life that is marked by humility and love and service is not just to practice gratitude, but to secondly to remember that it is God who reigns and who raises up.

The first half of the sermon might have been tongue-in-cheek.

But here's my confession.

I spent the two years of the first two years of my ministry here at City Church thinking that it was all on me.

And thinking that I had created this world.

And what an amazing thing is that people would follow me.

Do you know what the consequences of that were?

I felt very proud.

I felt great about myself and about my abilities.

But the second thing is that I also felt like I needed to hide.

I needed to hide any weaknesses.

I needed to, when I was talking to other pastors, only talk about the good things at City Church.

Not the stuff that was breaking around the edges, not the stuff in me that was cracking around the edges.

The first half of the sermon was tongue-in-cheek, but it's possible.

So God speaks, and he says, At the set time that I appoint, I will judge with equity.

When the earth totters and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars.

These verses talk of God's complete control and sovereignty over the cosmos.

Verse 2, at the set time he will bring judgment.

I imagine that we've all wondered from time to time whether why it is that God doesn't just come back?

Why Jesus doesn't come and wrap up history and and punish the wicked?

Why does God allow so much evil to go seemingly unanswered?

Why does he wait?

Well the answer is because he has appointed a time.

We know from elsewhere in the New Testament that he is patient.

Think back to when you uh became a believer in the Lord Jesus, if indeed you are one.

Imagine if Jesus had come back the day before.

God was patient with you, allowing you to come to a knowledge of your need of a savior.

That is why he wins.

Because he is mercifully patient.

And did you notice that God says that he will judge with equity?

That is with the with complete unbiased justice.

Another way that you could be a terrible leader, or I could be a terrible leader, or indeed any of you in your in your work life or home life, is by playing favorites.

Toxic leaders always create inner circles, what C.S.

Lewis called the inner ring, where there's insiders and outsiders, and you treat people differently depending on where they are.

What a wonderful thing that God says that he judges with equity.

God doesn't show any favorites.

There's no inside track.

We stand equal before his glorious and terrible holiness.

Then he says in verse 3 that it is he who keeps steady the pillars of the earth.

What a great, what a great image.

Like a strong man holding together the cosmos.

So God steadies the pillars.

This confronts the proud and it should comfort the anxious.

We all face moments where the earth seems to totter.

Certainly, our world seems to shift and sway.

You feel like the tectonic plates of your life are sliding over one another and causing those earthquakes, and you think.

Well, is it all on me?

The psalmist comes and he wants to give you comfort and say, Well, no.

It is God who holds fast the pillars of the cosmos.

So surely then the plea is in those moments when all things seem like they are beginning to crumble to run to the strong arms.

Jesus strong and kind.

It's a very good song, actually, isn't it?

Peter chose it because it makes Peter cry.

And because it's his day.

But if it's just Jesus strong, oh my goodness, that's kind of terrifying.

Well, how is he going to use his strength?

Is he going to use his strength to be good to me, or is he going to use his strength to smite me?

You know, the song says that Jesus is strong and kind.

That we can run into the arms of Jesus strong and kind when the world seems to shake.

What's more, the psalmist goes on to encourage us to see that exaltation, the you know, the building of your reputation, the being lifted up, the being seen, the having a name for ourselves, that that doesn't come from us.

You might be able to create it temporarily, but not eternally.

No, it comes from God alone.

Do you see verses six and seven?

It's not from the east nor from the west, not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting the other.

This is why God warns the proud in verses four and five.

He says, Don't be boastful, don't be proud, don't have stiff and haughty neck.

Why?

Because it is God who exalts.

It is God who lifts up.

The psalm in saying that is kind of like the you might be hearing echoes of Mary's song, we call the magnificat from Luke chapter 2, this idea of uh of how God uh lays low the proud and exalts the humble.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

It's all the way through the Bible, this great reversal.

That's why Jesus says, you know, the last will be first and the first shall be last.

Or when he's talking to his disciples after they are uh wanting to figure out, well, who's the best and who considered the right and who consider the left, what is it that Jesus says?

Jesus says, the Son of Man, in fact, let's go back and say another word, even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

That word, even, is an important one.

Even the Son of Man, even the most highest and best, served.

His exaltation by his father came through humble obedience, through service and the giving of himself.

It is God who reigns, it is God who raises up.

Thirdly, and finally, you want to cultivate a life of humility, of gratitude, of service and love, pursue gratitude, remember that it is God who reigns and who raises up, and then finally, we must live in light of judgment and salvation.

We must live in light of judgment and salvation.

The psalm is the core, a psalm of thanksgiving.

The psalmist is really grateful to God, and what's he grateful to God for?

That God's going to come and judge the world.

That's jarring, right?

What are you really thankful for today?

The judgment is coming.

Ben read from or Ben opened our service by alluding to um to Acts 17.

Acts 17 is a really interesting talk by Paul because it never mentions Jesus.

It never mentions the cross.

All the things that a good evangelical sermon should have, not in there.

What does he say?

He says that God is going to come and judge the world by the man that he has appointed by raising him from the dead.

What's the Psalm thankful for?

Judgment.

Don't really get that in many churches.

It comes off the back of five Psalms that we've been looking at over the last six weeks because we were off last week.

And all of these Psalms are crying out to God to make things right.

Looking at the world and seeing all of the injustices that are around the place.

The fact that the wicked seem to prosper, and the uh and those who follow God are the ones who are laid low.

But here at the end of that little run, the psalmist thanks God that actually God will bring justice by his good judgment.

Now, most of us don't think in terms of judgment as something that we should be thankful for, but I'm going to try and make a case for you as we finish.

Here's why you should be thankful that God is a judge and live in light of that.

Here's the first reason.

It means that our world is not just a moral free-for-all.

It's not just about, well, who's the strongest?

No, there is a moral order to the world.

Might does not make right.

God will judge and he will do so fairly.

That is a good thing.

It also means for those of us who have been sinned against, say some injustice has befallen you, someone has wounded you, and they have not acknowledged it, and justice in this life has not been given you.

It means that there is the future hope of vindication.

Because God doesn't let sin and injustice go unanswered.

Your pain will have its recompense.

He will vindicate those who have been wronged.

He is the judge.

And he will vindicate the innocent.

It also means that because there is a judgment coming, that there is a call on each of our lives to live differently and to live in light of it.

It's so common at the moment to tell people that they're perfect as they are.

It's a terrible thing to say to anybody.

To say you're perfect as you are.

Because everyone knows deep down that we have things to work on.

To tell us that we are perfect and that we don't need to change leaves so many people stuck.

With no potential for growth.

Now, God's future judgment is a call on ourselves to live differently, to change how we think and how we act and what it is we are trusting.

To place our values not in ourselves, but in another.

Living in light of God's judgment and salvation means that we as the church have something to say.

Peter, you have a message that people need to hear.

Did you note the image of verse 8?

That image that perhaps is so familiar to some, that evocative image.

For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed, and he pours it out on all the wicked of the earth, and they shall drain it down to the dregs.

Here, God's judgment is pictured as a cup, a cup of foaming wine that makes the wicked of the earth stagger and fall.

A moment's reflection, just internally in ourselves, makes us realize that we aren't simply the good people.

That the world isn't as simple as good people and bad people.

That we are never just simply victims.

We're sometimes the perpetrators too.

And that leaves us with a problem.

So we deserve the cup of verse eight.

But then we remember Jesus.

And we remember his words in the garden.

Do you recall them?

When he prays to his father, what does he ask?

He says, Take this cup from me.

What cup?

This cup.

The cup of the wrath of God.

The Son of God drains it to its dregs.

He drinks that judgment into himself, though he had no sin of his own.

And why?

So that we might never have to taste that bitter cup.

He was put down so that we might be lifted up, exalted.

Do you remember that, Peter?

For however long your ministry lasts, you will always have something to say.

You forget that you'll have nothing of any worth or any eternal value to tell anybody.

And so we all have a choice, in a sense, we all stand at a crossroads to either nurture pride or cultivate humility.

You can nurture pride, you can forget gratitude and remember that you're in control and to reject any notion of future judgment.

Or you can cultivate a life of faith, of humility, of trust and service and love.

Trusting in the salvation that Jesus brings inevitably begins to grow those fruit in each of our lives.

And it is my prayer for Peter and for Nicole and for all of us that as we pursue God together, as we turn to trust that Jesus, who took the judgment of God into himself, that these characteristics might be borne out in each of us.

Peter, may you have confidence to declare this message and together lead us as we seek to live in light of it, to live a life of gratitude, trust, faith, and love.