Psalm 4 “God Moves in Mysterious Ways”

Church, turn in your Bibles to Psalm 4, if you would.

Psalm 4.

Psalm 4.

And while you're uh while you're turning there, um let me just say y'all can sing.

Especially this choir over here.

This is amazing.

So we're all gonna go on tour right after this.

So just so you know, we're gonna we're gonna go on tour after this.

Um it is such a privilege to preach to you this morning.

Um Rick and I met each other in uh a couple of years ago.

Um we debate as to when that was, but we we we uh we met in uh Starbucks a couple of years ago, and uh Rick and I have been friends ever since.

And so we I want you to know it is so wonderful to finally put um a bunch of faces to the church that we have been praying for for the last two years.

We have been praying for you, Gethsemane Baptist Church in Morengo, Ohio.

We've been praying for you over and over and over again, and we just love you so much.

And we've been praying that God would just be glorified, that the gospel through proclamation church would just burn brightly here.

And so, um, just so you know, you've got a bunch of Christians gathering this morning in Morengo praying for you this morning.

So uh Psalm 4.

We're gonna be in Psalm 4 this morning.

And actually in the Hebrew Bible, verse 1 is this superscription.

So we're gonna include that.

That is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

And so we're gonna start with this superscription, and then we'll get into verse 1 in the English Bible.

I say this to my church every week.

What we're about to read is God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word.

That means it doesn't contain anything, any kind of error whatsoever.

This is an incredible thing that we're about to read.

It's God speaking to us this morning.

So this is God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word.

Psalm 4.

To the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm of David.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

You have given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Selah.

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

Be angry and do not sin.

Ponder in your own hearts on your own, on your beds, and be silent, Selah.

Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, Who will show us some good?

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

In peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

This is the word of the Lord.

Well, our church in uh in Marengo, Gethsemane, we've been we've been uh going through a little series that we've just called the summer in the psalms.

And uh we've been going through a little series, and one of the things that we've been saying over and over and over again at our church is that the Psalms contain the full range of human emotion and experience.

It contains joy and sorrow, loneliness and comfort, fear and anxiety, exuberant gladness and crushing despair.

And Psalm 4 is no exception.

Uh the other thing that we we see in the Psalms is that they're not particularly arranged chronologically.

When you go through 150 Psalms, they're not arranged chronologically.

The first few psalms are written by David, but then you get to Psalm 90 and it's written by Moses.

So they're not arranged chronologically, they're actually arranged thematically.

So if you if you go back, we're not gonna go read Psalm 3, but if you let your eyes just fall back on Psalm 3, it looks strikingly similar to Psalm 4.

Uh David, David in Psalm 3, David in Psalm 3 has enemies.

Just like Psalm 4.

He's got enemies.

He's scared, he's filled with anxiety and worry and crushing despair.

And then what happens?

God gives peace to his soul.

Psalm 3, verse 5 says, I lay down and slept, for the Lord sustained me.

Psalms 3:5

I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

It's just like Psalm 4.

And then David is praying in Psalm 3.

Excuse me, David in Psalm 3 is praying.

He's filled with anxiety, he's filled with worry, and then he confesses God's sovereignty and God's care over his life, and then the result is he sleeps in peace.

He gets a good night's rest.

And then you get to Psalm 4.

And it's like David never prayed Psalm 3.

He's right back where he started.

You get to Psalm 3, it's Psalm 4, and he cries out, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

What happened?

I thought he got all this taken care of in Psalm 3.

I thought he prayed and he brought his anxieties to the Lord, he brought his cares and his his despair, his worries, his fear, he brought them to the throne of grace, and God answered him when he called, and he got a good night's rest because of it.

And he experienced peace.

And now he's back in Psalm 4 saying, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

He's experiencing fear again.

He's got enemies surrounding him again.

He's crying out to God for help again.

What is going on?

Well, here's what's happening.

That even the arrangement of the Psalms is teaching us.

You never outgrow your need for grace.

You never outgrow your need, as the author of Hebrews says, to outgrow your need to find grace to help in time of need.

You never ever outgrow your need for prayer.

Amen.

Okay, my church says amen a lot.

So when I say amen, you're just gonna have to say amen.

Okay?

It's kind of a give and response.

Amen.

So let's let's practice.

Amen?

Amen.

Praise God.

You never outgrow your need for prayer.

Let's look at Psalm 4.

Psalm 4 breaks it breaks down this way.

I'll give you three points.

This will be our outline this morning.

If you are an incessant note taker, this is uh three points.

David shows us the relief that prayer produces, the relief that prayer produces.

Number two, the confidence prayer affords, the confidence prayer affords, and lastly, the perspective prayer brings.

The perspective prayer brings.

Let me go through them again, one more time.

The relief prayer produces, the confidence prayer affords, and lastly, the perspective that prayer brings.

Let's look at number one.

The relief prayer produces.

Well, David begins his prayer and he says, answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

You've given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear me.

Now, this is very interesting in the original language.

In the original language, which was Hebrew, the the word there, relief, which you see in verse one, the word relief there has the idea of enlarging.

It has this idea of enlarging.

If you've ever experienced anxiety, or maybe the semblance of a panic attack, what you feel is the walls closing in around you.

You feel like you're surrounded and you don't have any room to breathe.

Right?

And that's how David is feeling.

He's feeling constricted.

He feels like the walls are closing in around him, and then he calls out to God and he asks him for relief, a kind of widening, that's the idea of the word relief, a kind of widening that reduces the pressure.

Now, what kind of relief is David asking for here?

What kind of relief is David asking for?

Is he asking, this is very important, is he asking for a removal of the difficulty?

Is he asking for a removal of everything that's causing him to feel constricted and all of the things that are causing him pain and sorrow and anxiety?

Is he asking that God would just take away the hardship that so that he doesn't feel pressed on every side?

So he doesn't feel anxiety and the pressures of life anymore?

Is that what he's asking for?

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

Read the rest of the Psalm.

It's it what he's asking God for is the kind of relief that can only come through prayer.

It's the kind of relief that can only come through prayer.

It's it's the kind of relief that allows David to finish praying and then say, in verse 8, in peace.

I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

So is he gonna get a good night's rest?

Is he gonna get a good is he gonna be able to sleep because the difficulty has been removed?

I don't think so.

This is prayed in the middle of the difficulty.

This is prayed in the midst of crushing sorrow and despair.

He's gonna be able to sleep.

Because he knows, even in the middle of the difficulty, that his God is sovereign.

His God is Lord of heaven and earth.

And that nothing can come his way apart from his command.

Amen.

That's why David says, be gracious and hear my prayer.

Hear my prayer.

He's asking for an enlarging.

Now, don't you see the purpose of prayer?

We said this all throughout our Summer in the Psalms series.

Don't you know the purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind?

It's not to change God's mind.

Do you think you can change God's mind through prayer?

That was a laugh over there, and that's exactly the right response.

Do you think you can change the mind of him who said in Malachi 3, I the Lord do not change?

No, of course not.

The purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind.

The purpose of prayer is to change the heart of the one praying.

You know that's why God calls you into prayer, into a life of prayer.

It's not so that you can change his mind, it's not so that you can get him to just change his sovereign decree that he authored from all of eternity.

It's so that you will be transformed into the likeness of Christ.

The purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind, it's to change our hearts.

It's to get us from this place of distress to the place of relief, do you see?

Where we rest, we rest in the goodness and the sovereignty of God.

That's the that's the relief that he's talking about here.

Now, some of you, some of you have been crying out to the Lord, asking him to remove this this hardship in your life, whatever it is.

You've been crying out to the Lord and you've been asking him, please remove the difficulty.

And the only way you can see relief on the horizon of your life is if God removes the difficulty.

But well, I want to ask you this.

So far, he hasn't done it.

So, what if that's not how relief is actually gonna come to your soul?

What if that's not the kind of relief your soul so desperately needs?

David says, You've given me relief before.

He says, I've prayed and I've been given that relief before.

I've rested in the sovereign goodness of my Redeemer, and I felt that rest.

I have felt that relief.

How about you?

How about you?

Have you ever experienced that?

When you come to God in prayer and you experience that rest, you experience that relief of the soul.

The things of life are not as big as they seem when God is as big as He is.

Right?

And you begin to see how sovereign and great and good and merciful and gracious God really is, and somehow all the pressures of life don't seem to be as big as God is.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's the kind of relief that our souls so desperately need.

David says, You've given me relief before, now do it again.

God uses this prayer, if I can put it this way, the Bible uses this language uh elsewhere throughout the Psalms, in an enlargement of the soul.

That's what he's talking about.

Give me relief.

It's an enlargement of the soul.

Or to put it another way, maybe in a way that we're more accustomed to hearing hearing it.

What we're praying for when we say, You've given me relief, now do it again.

We're asking, we're saying, increase and strengthen my faith.

That's what you're asking.

Maybe that's a more common way for us to think about it.

But you're talking about an increasing and a strengthening of your faith.

Now what's what's the object of your faith?

Well, the object of your faith isn't anything but Christ, is it?

It's it's nothing but Christ.

So the object of your faith is Christ, and so you're you're asking for you're you're asking for an increasing, an enlargement of the soul, uh, uh, an increasing and strengthening of your faith in Christ Jesus, which is going to produce the relief that we so desperately desire.

Do you see?

Well, that's the relief that prayer produces.

Let's look secondly at the confidence that prayer affords.

Let's look secondly, number two, the confidence prayer affords.

Now, when you get to this part of Psalm 2, excuse me, Psalm 4.

You get to this part, and it's a little strange, I have to admit.

David starts to turn his prayer towards, he turns his attention towards his enemies in the middle of his prayer.

And he says, O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Now, if you go back even further, to Psalm 2.

Now, again, the Psalms are arranged thematically here, and there's something going on, even in the arrangement of the Psalms.

In Psalm 2, you see the nations raging against the Lord and against his anointed, which in this case is David.

And the nations are plotting, it says, they're plotting in vain.

They're plotting in vain, and that's exactly what these enemies are doing to David in Psalm 4.

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

It's total vanity, he says, for them to afflict the Lord and his anointed.

It's total vanity for them to afflict David as the Lord's anointed.

So really, we can interpret, we can interpret David's question, how long?

Now you've heard that language before in the Psalms.

How long, O Lord?

How long is this gonna go on?

Now that's throughout the book of Psalms, that's cried in desperation.

But here it's cried in confidence.

It's cried from a spirit of confidence.

He's saying, How long?

How long are you gonna keep doing this?

How long are you gonna are you gonna rage against the Lord's anointed?

He's basically saying this.

Are you done yet?

Now does that sound confident to you?

He says, Do you know who you're up against?

It's not just me.

This is the Lord of heaven and earth.

He says, I've got Yahweh on my side.

That's what he's saying.

And then he says to them in verse 4, be angry and do not sin, ponder in your own hearts, on your beds, and be silent.

Now, the ESV translates this, be angry.

If you have an ESV in your hands, then you see it uh in verse uh in verse four.

Uh be angry, which sounds a lot like Ephesians, doesn't it?

Be angry and do not sin, let not the sun go down upon your wrath, to quote the King James Version.

Uh do not let the sun go down upon your wrath, do not give a place to the devil.

It sounds exactly like that.

And I think that's probably why the ESV translators translated it this way: be angry and do not sin, because it sounds exactly like Paul in Ephesians 4.

But I don't think that that is the translation.

I don't think that's the word, how it's being used in this context.

The word here that's translated be angry in verse 4.

Here it means tremble.

Here it means tremble, uh be afraid, tremble, quake in your boots is basically, or sandals, whatever he's saying there.

Same as in in uh Psalm 99, verse 1, there's a similar translation.

Psalms 99:1

It says, The Lord reigns, let the people tremble.

Same translation here, same idea here.

David's saying, tremble before the Lord.

Now that sounds confident, doesn't it?

Tremble before the Lord and do not sin.

He says, rather than speaking, rather than using all these vain words, rather than just filling your mouth with lies, he says, verse 2, why don't you just be quiet?

Why don't you just be quiet?

This is what he's saying to his enemies.

He goes on in verse 5, offer right sacrifices and just put your trust in the Lord.

Now David's prayer sounds so confident here, doesn't it?

He's not, he's now you gotta understand when he says how long, he's not asking for he's not asking his enemies, do you have a timeline?

For how long you're gonna keep afflicting me?

He's not asking that.

He's not saying, Well, are you how long is this gonna go on?

Do you have a timeline?

He's not asking that.

He's saying, he's actually rebuking them.

He says, Why don't you stop making a fool of yourself?

Because he doesn't say, Do you know who I am?

This is David.

This is the one, this is the, this is this is King David, the one, the man after God's own heart.

He doesn't say, Do you know who I am?

He says, Do you know whose I am?

That's what he says.

He's grounding his identity in the God to whom he's praying in verse 1.

Oh God of my righteousness.

Do you see?

Now, I still don't think that this is a very common way for us to pray.

Do you?

When was the last time you prayed Psalm 4 and said, Oh man, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

This is not a very common way for us to pray.

On the one hand, it doesn't feel very warm and fuzzy.

But on the other hand, we're really confused about who our enemies are, aren't we?

It's amazing to me how many, how many worship songs, modern worship songs that you hear, they don't have enemies.

But the Psalms do.

The Psalms just it just presumes that a follower of the one true God is gonna have the same kind of enemies that nailed Christ to the cross.

But still, this is not a very common way for us to pray.

But do you see what David's doing here?

This is what he's doing.

He is praying the truth of who God is, and who he is because of who God is.

And that is affording him such confidence.

It's actually giving him humble confidence.

There's a kind of false confidence that's really proud, right?

That's not what this is.

This is humble confidence.

He is confessing the sovereignty of the one true God.

Now you might ask, Pete, how do I do this?

How do I, okay, I don't, again, I'm not sure who my enemies are, and I'm not sure how to pray Psalm 4.

So how do I pray with the kind of confidence that the Bible gives me in the sovereign God?

Well, let me show you.

Pray like this.

Father, I know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

Now listen to the confidence here.

I'm getting this straight out of Romans 8.

You can pray like you can pray like this.

If God is for me, who can be against me?

You can pray, if you did not spare your own son, father, but gave him up for us all, how will you not also with him freely give me all things I need for life and godliness?

Amen.

You can pray, who will bring a charge against me?

It is God who justifies.

Who will separate me from the love of Christ?

Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.

No, in all these things, you can pray this I am more than a conqueror through him who loved me.

Nothing will separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord.

That's how you can pray, church.

That's how you can pray.

Prayer, specifically, gospel prayer.

The kind that the kind that you're praying from Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Gospel prayer affords you, Christian, so much confidence.

So much confidence.

And not it, not confidence in yourself, confidence in him who loved you and freed you by sending his only son, in whom we live and move and have our being, as Paul says.

Well, let's look lastly at the perspective prayer brings.

Lastly, number three, the perspective prayer brings.

We've looked at the relief that prayer produces, the confidence prayer affords, but look lastly, thirdly, at the perspective prayer brings.

Well, this this last point really kind of builds on the first two points that we've been making throughout this whole psalm, because the relief that David prays, the relief that David prays for at the very beginning of the psalm actually comes to him at the end, doesn't it?

Look at verse 8.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Now we'll get to that in just a second, but look at this.

Look at this part.

Right here in verse 6, he says, There are many who say, Who will show us some good?

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

Now you gotta get what they're saying here.

This is a little confusing if you don't read it in the context of verse 7.

Look at verse 7.

He says, You've put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Now, what's going on here?

Now you gotta get this.

The many of verse 6, the many of verse 6 are saying, here's what they're saying.

The Lord needs to lift up the light of his face upon us.

He needs to, he needs to look at look at how much good has been withheld from us.

Look at our grain silos, look at our wine vats.

They're not as full as they as we would like them to be.

And so the Lord needs to show his goodness to us by filling up our grain silos and filling up our wine vats.

That's what he's that's what they're saying.

So here's what they're saying: they are judging the nearness of God, the loving kindness of God, and the faithfulness of God by the amount of grain in their silos and wine in their vats.

And then David says in Psalm 4, verse 7, what does David say?

Psalms 4:7

He says, You've put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Listen, there's no indication in Psalm 4 that the difficulty has been removed.

That David is not, he's no longer surrounded by his enemies, that he's not afflicted on every side.

All of that is still going on, and this is spoken in the midst of the storm.

It's spoken in the midst of the difficulty, and and does God remove the difficulty?

No.

He enlarges David's soul to feel to have more joy in the midst of sorrow and pain than they have when everything is going just fine.

Do you see?

Now, which do you want?

Good times or real joy?

I'm not saying you can't have real joy when times are good.

You know what I'm saying.

I'm not saying that.

Listen to what David is saying here.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and wine above.

Which do you want?

Good times or real joy?

And what's the result?

What do you see in verse 8?

In peace.

In peace.

I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord.

Make me dwell in safety.

Do you see how all of this is coming together?

This man has gotten the relief that he prayed for, he has got the confidence that he prayed with, and now he has got this perspective that is bigger than when he first began.

You've put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound, when everything's going fine, when there's no suffering, when there's no sorrow, when there's no despair, no pain.

But I've got joy.

So I'm gonna get a good night's rest.

That's what he says.

Some of you are judging the nearness of God, the loving kindness of God, and the faithfulness of God by his willingness to remove the difficulty that you find in your life.

We've all got, we've all got grain silos and we've all got wine vats, so to speak.

And maybe it's maybe for you, maybe for you, it's how healthy your kids are.

You know?

All these people are saying, the goodness of God is judged.

I can conclude that God is good as long as there's grain in the silos and wine in the vats.

So what is that for you?

Maybe, maybe for some of us it's it's that our kids are healthy.

Maybe how well your job is going.

How much money you have in the in your uh in your in your bank account.

Or how well your car is running, how nice your friends are, or maybe it's how much cancer you don't have.

How much depression you don't struggle with.

So that if you did, you might come to a different conclusion about how good God is.

How much fear and anxiety you don't have from day to day.

What we inevitably say is, if life is good, God is good.

And what we end up doing is we judge the nearness of God, the faithfulness of God, we judge the goodness of God by his willingness to basically give us what we want.

But I want to go back to a question I asked you right at the beginning.

What if what you want is not what you need?

What if what you want is not what you need?

What if the difficulty?

What if the suffering?

What if the pain and the sorrow that God has sovereignly placed in your life precisely because God is good and God is sovereign?

What if he has brought all of that about in your life so that he can transform your heart?

What if all that is God's way of answering your prayer?

That you might pray with David at the beginning of Psalm 4, give me relief, enlarge my soul, increase, strengthen my faith.

What if the way to an increased faith?

What if in it what if the way to an enlargement of the soul is precisely through the difficulty?

Are you good with that?

Few of us are.

Theologically, we'll all say, oh yeah.

But from the day to day, are we okay with that?

Can you say, are you good with God getting you to the point where you can say, you have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're cancer free?

You put more joy in my heart than they have when everything is going fine.

Friends, you must not look at the difficulty, at the suffering, at the pain, at the sorrow through which you are now walking and say, Where is the grace of God?

Because you are getting it.

You are getting that grace.

God is lavishing it upon you.

You aren't being abandoned, you are being loved by the triune God.

I love how William Cooper, or Cowper, puts it.

I don't know how you pronounce it.

Cooper.

He was a good friend of John Newton.

I don't know if you know, uh, everybody knows Amazing Grace.

John Newton wrote that hymn.

William Cooper lived with uh John Newton.

And William Cooper uh struggled with crushing anxiety and despair and depression.

So much so that later he died from it.

And this is what he wrote.

God moves in a mysterious way.

His wonders to perform.

He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.

That's a statement of his sovereignty.

Deep in unfathomable minds of never-failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will.

I love this next part.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take.

The clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace.

Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour, the bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

He says, lastly, blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain.

God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.

Can you say amen to that?

Now the question is, how do we know?

How do we know?

How do we know everything is going to be fine?

How do we know that God is gonna answer our prayer?

How do we know that God is good and that he has good designs for us even in the midst of our suffering and pain?

I'll tell you, it's the cross.

It's the cross of the Lord Jesus.

That's how you know.

That's how you know that one day God is not just going to give you temporary relief, he is going to give you this eternal, unending, blissful relief of the soul.

It's because Jesus Christ was the only one who ever deserved to say, answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

Do you understand that?

Jesus was the only one who could ever pray that prayer and deserved to have it answered.

And yet, on the cross, what did he cry out?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why did he do that?

Why did he do that?

When he deserved to be able to pray, answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

Why did he do that?

It's so that you wouldn't have to.

It's so that you would never, ever have to pray, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

It's so that you could pray, answer me with confidence.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.

It's so that when you call out to God, he was shown no mercy.

He was shown no relief in the midst of his stress.

Why?

So that when you call out to God, he is gonna answer you.

And he's gonna give you that relief of the soul, that that confidence, that infallible assurance, that hope that God is God and God is good.

Because in Jesus, God has become the God of your righteousness.

Because now Christ is your righteousness.

How do you know that God is faithful?

How do you know that God is good?

Believer?

It's because of the cross.

In other words, how you know your prayers are going to be heard is because of the gospel.

That's the only way to read the Psalms.

It's through the lens of the gospel.

What is the gospel?

Well, the gospel is simply good news that God is infinitely holy and infinitely just and infinitely, infinitely perfect, who, by virtue of his character, demands perfection.

A perfection, by the way, that we could never achieve on our own.

And so Christ came and offered that perfection in the place of sinners.

And he lived a perfect life and he offered in our place a perfect death as an atonement, as a satisfaction for all of our sins.

And as he hung on that cross outside of Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago, in his body and in his soul, Christ absorbed the wrath of God against sin.

All our iniquity was placed on him.

All the vain words and lies and disobedience, all our failures to pray.

I don't know if you're feeling a little conviction that you haven't prayed a lot recently, how do you preach a sermon on prayer and not feel conviction?

Does anybody pray enough here?

Please don't raise your hand.

Nobody's prayed enough here.

That sin was laid on Christ at the cross.

Christ was buried in a tomb.

He was raised from the dead for our justification, and the goodness of this good news is that anybody who comes to him by faith will have all of their sins washed away and they will be justified, which means they will be declared righteous, righteous in the sight of God, not on the basis of their calling out to God or anything good that they have done, but because of the on the basis of the perfect life and satisfactory death of Christ.

All of that is going to be transferred to anyone who calls upon his name.

Amen?

Church?

Now, if the gospel is true, let me rephrase that, since the gospel is true, you and I have no grounds for wondering if God will bring you safely through whatever you're going through, believer.

If the gospel is true, if Jesus endured untold amount of suffering and pain, then you can't look at what you're going through and wonder while you're going through it, wonder why you're going through it, and conclude, well, it must be that he doesn't love me.

Not if Jesus suffered in your place.

You cannot look at your difficult your difficulty or your distress as a sign of abandonment.

Again, you aren't being abandoned.

You are being loved.

Non-Christian, non-Christian, that's what we implore you to believe.

I just don't assume that anytime I've ever gathering in a place with a lot of people in it, that there's just going to be only Christians.

I'm just assuming that somebody in here needs Jesus.

Aside from the Christians, Christians need Jesus too.

You know what I mean?

Christians need Jesus a lot.

But with I'm just assuming that there are people who identify in here as non-Christians.

And non-Christian, we want you to believe this with all our heart.

We want you to believe the invitation to come.

The invitation by Christ is simply to come.

That's what the invitation is.

Or to put it the way David did here when he addresses in verse 5, put your trust in the Lord.

That's what he's saying.

Put your trust in the Lord.

And you might say, Well, don't I need to prepare myself to come to him?

Don't I need to just maybe wash up a little bit in order to come to him?

You know?

Do I need to just maybe stop sinning as much as I am in order to come to him?

Shouldn't I try to be a little harder to be the kind of person that Jesus would want to save?

Some of you might be thinking, what if I'm just too bad?

What if I'm just too dirty?

And to that I want to say all the conditions to come to Jesus have already been met in Jesus.

There is nothing for you to do.

Non-Christian, there is nothing for you to do.

Just come.

Just come.

And you know what the promise is?

Jesus says in Matthew 11, come to me.

Come to me, and I will give you rest.

You know what?

When you come to Jesus, don't try to clean yourself up.

You don't take a shower in order to take a bath.

You don't clean yourself up to come to Jesus.

You come to Jesus and He cleanses you completely.

So come to Jesus.

Come to Christ.

Obey Him when He says, Come to me, and I will give you rest.

And you know what's going to happen?

You'll be able to say, In peace.

I will both lie down and sleep.

Non-Christian, because you can say, For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety, because in Christ He can become the God of your righteousness.

Amen?

Amen.

Church, let's pray.

Father, we pray that you would take these truths and write them on our hearts.

Cause us to trust you.

Cause us to worship you.

Cause us to obey you with our whole hearts.

Father, we pray for anybody here who is not a Christian.

We pray that you would work in their hearts through the means of