God's Fierce Loyalty | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Amen.

Alright, we started a new series of messages last week in the book of Psalms.

So we're looking at the totality of the Psalms, and I gave you a framework last week.

Anytime you're reading a psalm, most of them fall into one of three categories.

You have orientation psalms, disorientation psalms, and reorientation psalms.

And so the orientation psalms are when life makes sense.

Good things are happening to good people, the wicked are being punished.

The morality seems to be running, making sense, and uh you just sort of, in that season, you just say thank you, Lord, and keep moving.

The second is disorientation, and this is when life stops making sense.

I did something good and something bad happened.

Or something bad happened, what seems to be for unjust reasons.

I didn't deserve that, and yet it happened, and so you find yourself in disorientation, and so you see the psalmist often opening up their emotions, shouting their prayers or their feelings into the heavens, trusting God's love to hold space for them.

And then we talked about what do you do in disorientation?

You pray, you process, you persevere, you pray, you process, you persevere, and then eventually you have the next, which is reorientation.

You may lose some of the naivety that you had before, but you gain a deeper perspective, you grow in wisdom, you see things differently, and you come to peace with some things in your life, and this is part of developing character and embracing the complexity of life that can sometimes be overwhelming.

But this is something that happens throughout life, and we see this in the Psalms.

Uh today we're gonna keep looking at the Psalms, but before we jump into Psalms, I want to give you something that's gonna be essential for kind of creating a foundation for what we're gonna read here in the Psalms.

Uh, what you see up here are uh would fall under the category of covenant.

Okay, so anytime you hear, you know, covenant, the word covenant in church, talking about God's covenant or old testament covenant, really it's uh there are four covenants in the Old Testament.

So let me help you to understand uh what these covenants are.

The first one was God's covenant with Noah related to the flood.

You remember the flood story?

After that, God says to Noah, Hey, Noah, I'm never doing that again.

That's his covenant with Noah.

Abraham also shows up in the book of Genesis, and uh Abraham, God goes to him and says, Hey, Father Abraham, you're gonna have many sons, and many sons will have Father Abraham.

And basically, I'm gonna make a great nation out of you, and I want to bless the world through you.

Look up in the sky, you see the stars, it's a lot of them, right?

Yeah, your descendants are gonna be like that, and I have a work that I want to do in the world, not just in your nation, but in the whole world because I love the world.

But I'm gonna make a great nation out of you.

So that's God's covenant with Abraham.

Moses, okay, this is after the children of Israel have gone to uh uh into exile in Egypt, God raises up Moses to lead them through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.

They go to the wilderness, they go to Mount Sinai, and God gives the law to Moses, essentially saying, here's how folks should behave.

And so he talks about morality, he talks about justice or civil law, and then he talks about ceremonial law.

In other words, here is how you would sacrifice to God, here is how you would express gratitude to God, and then here's how you would work through your sins and get right with God.

And so that's given to Moses.

Of course, they're wandering in the promised land, and eventually they make their way to the promised land, but it's Joshua that leads them ultimately into the promised land.

Once they're in the promised land, you now have a nation, but they are a theocracy.

Okay, meaning they don't have a human king.

God is their king.

And God would raise up different leaders or judges to help them through hard times, but they did not have a king.

And at some point in 1 Samuel chapter 8, um, the elders of the nation look around.

1 Samuel 8 · chapter mention

They're like, you know what, we're in the promised land, we have law, we don't have a king, and we look around at the other nations, and all these other nations have kings.

They have these uh charismatic war daddies that are leading them into conquest and making their economies uh pop, and we want one of those.

And so they go to Samuel and they say, Tell God we want a king.

Samuel the prophet.

Samuel's disturbed because he's like, Well, God's our king.

That's not how we do, but he goes to God and he says, God, the people want a king.

And God says, Okay, Samuel, if the people want a king, then we'll give them a king.

But he says, before we do that, warn them solemnly.

Sober them up to the reality of what they're asking for.

And essentially what Samuel says to the people is, listen, human beings don't make good kings.

That's a whole lot of power for one person.

And when you do that, all right, listen, if you do this, the king is gonna look at your sons and daughters, and he's not gonna see what you see.

He's gonna take your sons and he's gonna have them run up in front of his chariots and lead his conquests, and he's gonna treat them just think of them as soldiers, not as sons.

And he's gonna take your daughters, he's gonna do whatever he wants with them.

And then he's gonna take your best land and your best vineyards and your best vintage, and he's gonna take it for him and his boys, and by the end time he gets done with you, you're gonna feel like slaves in your own nation.

And you're gonna be begging me to rescue you from this king that you asked me for.

And they say, Well, that's nice, we want a king.

Alright.

So they get a king.

Starts with Saul.

Saul proves to be unfaithful, God removes him as king and installs a man after his own heart, David.

Now, David, okay, is a complex character, a dynamic character, as we all are.

David, who loved God and was a shepherd at heart.

But as a king, the more powerful he became, the more mistakes he made, and the more he got started to get his eyes on the nations around them.

And when you get to 2 Samuel, David's kind of the main character at this point, David and God, and you have in 2 Samuel chapter 7 that David has built a palace and it's beautiful.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

And he looks, and God is in a tabernacle, essentially a mobile home, a tent, and David says, You know, I've been to these other nations, and their gods are majestic, and they have majestic temples to their gods, but our God's the greatest God, and so we should build a temple for our God that's more beautiful than anybody's ever seen.

And so here we go.

2 Samuel 7, chapter uh 7, verse 4, says, But that night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, so this is the prophet Nathan, who's the mouthpiece from God to David, says, Go tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says.

Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in?

I've not dwelled in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day.

I've been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling.

I've had a mobile home, and I kind of like it that way.

Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of the rulers I commanded to shepherd my people, shepherd my people?

I picked you, dude, because you were a shepherd, and I like the way you fought for the sheep.

That's why I wanted you to come be a king, because I wanted you to be a king like a shepherd.

Did I ever say to any of the shepherds of my people Israel, why have you not built me a house of cedar?

So what you see here is a bit of a misalignment between even a great king, David, who's kind of the prototype, he's kind of the model, but even he started to get his misaligned ultimately with God.

But God still makes a covenant with him in verses 11 through 16.

So let's look at this and pay, do the best you can to pay attention to the specifics of this language.

It says, The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, when when you die, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name.

Now he's talking about his David's son Solomon, but he's not just talking about Solomon.

He's talking about his lineage.

He's talking about everybody who will come after Solomon.

He says, I will uh I will establish his throne forever.

I will be his father and he will be my son.

When he is doing wrong, okay, so he gives kind of a contingency clause, he's making this covenant.

He says, If he messes up, if he makes mistakes, does wrong, turns from me, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands, but my love will never be taken away from him.

Now, the Hebrew word here for my love is the word Hesed.

And Hesed is not a word of affection or a sentimental word.

It is a legal covenantal word.

It's a contract word.

It's describing fierce binding loyalty or an obligation.

So God is making a covenant with David.

David, when you die, I'm going to continue to bless your son, your grandson, your great-grandson, and on down the line.

And even when they mess up, I will correct them.

There will be appropriate punishment, just punishment.

But he said, My Hesed, my commitment, my I'm obligating myself to them.

I will never be taken away from them as I took it away from Saul when I removed him from before you.

Now, this is extremely important to understand before you start reading the book of Psalms, because what you're going to see in Psalms, like we mentioned last week, if you go to chapter 1, verse 1, and you look at what's called the superscript, which is it's above verse 1, and there's a little like uh little caption under under there.

So what we saw was at the before chapter 1, verse 1, it says book 1.

Which is kind of weird because we're like, book one, I thought Psalms was a book.

Well, it is.

But it's five books within the book, right?

So in book one, which is uh chapters one through 41, we have uh, if we were to kind of put a heading on it, it would be personal faithfulness.

It would be, hey, in this crazy, sometimes unfair, sometimes disorienting world, even when the world is disorienting, we can still choose faithfulness and still choose obedience and still choose goodness.

And so what you have in book one is the establishment.

You start to see the intense focus and affection and mindset that the nation has with the king.

So here let's go to Psalm 20.

Okay, if you don't have your Bible, don't worry, it'll be on the screen.

But if you can physically go there, go there.

So Psalm 20, the superscript under Psalm 20 says a psalm of David.

Now, whenever you read a psalm of David, we're talking about an actual guy, David, but even more than David, we're talking about God's covenant with David.

So often in the text it'll say his anointed one.

When it's talking about his anointed one, it's talking about David or one of his lineage, someone from his lineage, one of his great grandsons or whatever.

Okay, so Psalm 26, starting in verse 6, he says, Now this I know.

The Lord gives victory to his anointed.

He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary, from the victorious power of his right hand.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand.

Look at this, verse 9, Lord, give victory to the king.

So you're starting to get a glimpse of the national mindset, the belief that their victory or defeat, their prosperity or their punishment is directly related to the relationship between God and the king.

If you go to Psalm 21, which is just the next one, and you look at the superscript, again you're going to see a Psalm of David.

Starting in verse 1, it says, The king rejoices in your strength, Lord.

How great is his joy in the victories you give! You have granted his heart's desire and have not withheld the request of his lips.

You came to greet him with rich blessings and placed a crown of pure gold on his head.

Don't forget that.

You placed a crown of pure gold on his head.

You asked, he asked you for life, and you gave it to him.

Length of days, forever and ever.

Through the victories you gave, his glory is great.

You have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.

Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence.

For the king trusts in the Lord.

Who trusts in the Lord?

The King trusts in the Lord.

Through his unfailing love of the Most High, he will not be shaken.

So you're seeing a growing infatuation, a growing focus on the king and a mindset that our relationship with God, for better or for worse, runs through the king.

If you move to book two, which are chapters 42 through 72, the heading I would put on those is royal and communal hope.

So you see that their hope for the future and their hope for security and prosperity is in the royal line.

And so the language and the intensity ratchets up.

If you get to chapter, Psalm chapter 45, this is fun.

Psalms 45 · chapter mention

Now we're just having fun.

We're going to look at the superscript here.

And the superscript says, for the director of music to the tune of lilies.

You know what, you know how lilies go?

I don't either.

But in the text, okay, you see here, what they're doing is helping us understand, okay, what is a psalm?

A psalm is a song that's essentially plucked to an instrument, probably a string instrument.

So what you have here is like sheet music.

Okay, when you see, like, hey, I want you to play it to this tune, it's not familiar to us, but it's familiar to them.

So it would have had the content of Psalm 45 to a particular kind of music.

And then it says at the end, this is a wedding song.

So the wedding song, okay, could have been like at the king's wedding when the king was wed.

More than likely, it was like at a king's coronation.

So when someone became king, we're going to sing this song.

But it was a song that the nation was singing, uh, describing their relationship to the king.

Now, look at this language, Psalm 45.

You see how they feel about their king.

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king.

My tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.

You are the most excellent of men, and your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you forever.

Again, they're coming back and remembering 2 Samuel 7 and the covenant.

Gird your sword by your side, you mighty one.

Clothe yourself with splendor and majesty.

In your majesty ride forth victoriously.

Why?

Because if you win, we win.

In the case, uh sorry, in the cause of truth, humility, and justice, let your right hand achieve awesome deeds.

Let your sharp arrow pierce the hearts of the king's enemies, keep us safe.

Let the nations fall beneath your feet, make us great.

Verse 6, look at this.

Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever.

What you have here is when he says, O God, he's taking the king as God's representative and taking them, putting them together.

This is not claiming that the king is deity.

Okay, it's not saying that David or his descendants are gods, but what it's saying is they are in a unique connection, they're close to God in a way, and in some ways almost starting to conflate the two.

Okay, so I could, by the way, I'm just giving you a tiny sample.

I could keep going and give you more, but you get the idea, you're starting to get the picture.

When you move to book three, which is chapter 73 through 89, the heading here is theological crisis.

Okay, you remember last week we said these psalms are not just some random playlist that you put on shuffle when you need the verse of the day.

I need a notable quotable, I need something to post, you know, as an overlay with my coffee.

Okay, so I'm just gonna yank me a psalm and I don't even know what it is.

Okay, they all stand up.

No, this is very, very carefully edited and curated and pulled together.

So it's telling a story of a nation and a royal hope, and then they get to chapter 89, and they are completely exiled and destroyed by the Babylonians.

So the king who has a covenant with God is dead, and now an empire has taken over us.

And not only did they take over us and destroy our king, they destroyed our temple, which our king built, which in our minds localizes the presence of God.

They have ransacked our capital city and they have sent us off into exile, and so now everything that we have built, these things that really matter to us, have all been destroyed.

And so now you have in verse 8, or sorry, chapter 89, which is the last chapter in book three, you have the ultimate disorientation.

It's the third longest chapter in all of the Psalms, and it starts out the first 19 verses is just sort of this soaring majestic language declaring, you know, divine jurisdiction.

You know, it's words of worship and praise of God, your majesty is so high and so great.

And so it says that for 19 verses, and then in verse 20, it makes this it makes this huge shift and it recalls God's unbreakable covenant with David.

And so he starts reading God's vows back to him.

Okay, it's like he goes back, the psalmist goes back to 2 Samuel chapter 7 and starts saying, Hey God, here's what you said.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

This is what I didn't say this.

You said we didn't come up with this, you came up with this.

Here's what you said, verse 20.

I have found David, my servant, with my sacred oil I have anointed him.

My hand will sustain him, surely my arm will strengthen him.

The enemy will not get the better of him, the wicked will not oppress him, I will crush his foes before him and strike down his adversary.

Verse 24, my Hesed, not my sentimental, gushy love, my legal, covenantal, fierce, binding love, will be with him.

I'm obligating myself.

Remember, God, when you said that?

And through my name, his horn, his strength, will be exalted.

Verse 28.

I will maintain my Hesed to him forever.

By the way, they're gonna keep bringing up Hesed.

It would almost be like if you were standing in a broken marriage and hard feelings, hurt feelings, broken hearts.

And you go back to the vows you made.

And in your vows, you remember when you said I was the cream in your coffee?

Remember when you said that in front of all of our family?

I didn't ask you to say cream and coffee.

You came up with that.

Those were your words.

And now the coffee has no cream.

Alright?

There's no sugar, there's no cream, there's no foam, there's no whip, there's no nothing.

It's bitter and nasty.

And so you'd keep bringing up cream and coffee just to take you back to the words you came up with.

It says, I uh remember when you said, verse 20, I will maintain my Hesed to him forever?

I thought forever meant forever.

And my covenant with him will never fail.

I will establish his line forever.

Grandsons and grandsons, great grandson, his throne will be as long as the heavens endure.

If his sons forsake my law.

Oh, yeah, remember the contingency?

I remember the contingency clause.

Do you?

His sons, if they forsake my law and do not follow my statutes, if they violate my decrees, if they fail to stop uh to keep my commands, of course I'll punish them for their sin with the rod and uh their iniquity with flogging.

Of course, that's just.

We would expect that to happen if somebody turns.

But but remember what you said after that in verse 33, but I will not take my Hesed from him.

I will not remove my love, my commitment, my obligation, nor will I betray my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered.

Once for all I have sworn by my holiness.

You swore faithfulness by your own holiness, and I will not lie to David.

And his line will continue forever, and his throne will endure before me like the sun.

God swearing God.

By his holiness.

He's using imagery like the sun and giving certainty of faithfulness.

If that's the case, then why am I standing in the middle of a pile of broken dreams?

Verse 38 pivots violently, falls off a steep cliff.

And 18 times from verse 38 to 45, the psalmist says, you, you.

And it's not just you, it's an accusatory finger at God.

You.

Because you said, you said, I will, I will, I will, I will.

And I'm going to tell you what you did, you did, you did, you did.

Verse 38.

But you have rejected.

You have spurned.

You have been very angry with your anointed one.

You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust.

But you have broken all of his broken through all of his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins.

You've exposed him.

All who pass by have plundered him.

He has become the scorn of his neighbors.

Everybody's kicking him while he's down.

You have exalted the right hand of his foes.

You have made all of his enemies rejoice.

Indeed, you have turned your turned back the edge of the sword and have not supported him in battle.

You have put an end to his splendor and cast his throne to the ground.

You have cut short the days of his youth, and you have covered him with a mantle of shame.

18 years.

Verse 46.

How long, Lord, will you hide yourself forever?

How long will your wrath burn like fire?

Remember how fleeting is my life.

For what utility you have created all humanity?

Notice, that's not a question mark.

That's an exclamation point.

Who can live and not see death?

Or who can escape the power of the grave?

Lord, where is your where is your former has said, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?

Chapter 89, the psalmist is attempting to bring a lawsuit upon Yahweh for a breach of contract.

Reading it back to you.

And I'm saying, what's wrong with this picture?

You broke this.

It's an uncomfortable text.

It's unsanitized.

It's almost a blasphemous level of candor.

And yet it's connected to a historic reality.

You have a group of people who have put their faith in someone and something, and it didn't play out like that.

And they're to them, exile is their living reality.

They're living in it.

And so there's this looming question, right?

If God is perfectly faithful, like the first half of Psalms establishes him to be, then how can this dynasty fall?

And does God lie?

Did he break his own oath?

And so chapter 89 ends with this dark-hanging question of where is your faithfulness?

If you've ever had a dark night of the soul, if what I just read to you and explained to you in the text feels kind of familiar, maybe you've been in your own version of that situation.

I don't know how else to frame this, other than everything's broken, and it feels like I'm surrounded by nothing but lies, and I'm starting to think about what why am I even here and why is anybody even here?

And you're starting to fall into despair.

Dark night of the soul.

Talk about disorientation.

You know that in the heat of that moment, there's no like answer that's just gonna make you feel good.

It's gonna be a long night.

And you put your feet on the floor the next morning and you keep moving, and you may have another long night and another long night.

And at some point, if you will pray, process, and persevere in the disorientation, and the dust starts to settle on the rubble, and you start to kind of see some other things, and you start to be in a position for a different perspective, and now I'm open.

Now I I'm never going back to what I believed before, but I start to be open to something new.

A curiosity starts to re-emerge, and all of a sudden the end of book three and the end of chapter 89 moves to the beginning of book four and chapter 90.

Don't stop your book in chapter 89.

I'm really thankful that the Psalms are not just 89 deep.

I'm glad it's 150 Psalms.

Do not stop the story in Psalm 89.

You gotta flip the page.

Okay?

You may not be able to do that today because you might be standing in 89, it's a pile of rubble.

I'm not ready to think about anything yet.

But there comes a day.

If you'll stay in it, don't give way to despair.

Stay in it, be patient, let the dust settle, and then you turn to book four, chapter 90.

Now, bro, you can play all you want is third service.

I'm gonna take my time.

Come on out, man.

Give it up for Josh Chan, wonderful human being.

First two services I rushed.

I ain't rushing, okay?

I'm ready, I'm gonna get this one out.

Um turn to Psalm 90.

Alright, Psalm 90, let's do what we've been doing.

Let's go to the superscript.

What does the superscript say?

Somebody talk to me.

What does it say?

Psalm 90.

What is it?

What it says before verse 1.

What does it say?

A prayer of Moses?

Moses?

Man who got Moses?

This is Psalms.

What is Moses doing in the Psalms?

This isn't Genesis or Exodus or Leviticus or Numbers and Deuteronomy, the Torah.

That's Moses.

What's Moses doing all the way over here in Psalm 90?

It's the only Psalm attributed to Moses.

Now, to be clear, more than likely they're not claiming that Moses came back and wrote it.

What they're doing is using the persona and the perspective of Moses while they're in a moment where they've lost their king, they've lost their temple, and they've lost their land.

And so what they do is they jump over David in history and they go back to a covenant with Moses that was given to them in a period of time before there was any Jerusalem, before there was any monarchy, before there was any temple, before there was any of that.

Going back.

Because in many ways, we're back to where we were in exile, and we're back to where we were in the wilderness.

And so we're going to go to where we were in disorientation, in the wanderings, and they go back to Moses.

And this is what it says in Psalm 90.

After the dust settles and we start moving toward reorientation, verse 1 says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place through all generations.

The word for dwelling place, some of your translations say, you've been our home.

Some of them say you have been our refuge.

So now, with the removal of the king, think about this now.

Sometimes like kings and temples and promised lands are blessings, but even blessings can be blinding.

Even blessings can be blinding.

They got so caught up in the majesty of the king and the beauty of his palace and all the vision he was casting that by chapter 45 of Psalms, they almost could hardly tell the difference between God and the King.

But when the king was removed, all of a sudden they remembered and were reminded by Moses.

Listen, before the king ever showed up, God was faithful.

God was our refuge.

God, you've always been our dwelling place through all generations, before the someone and the something that we were attached to and connected to, and in some ways obstructed our clear view of you.

Now that those things have been taken away, once we wipe the tears and we let off the steam and the dust settles, and I start to look and realize there was life before the king.

There was relationship with God before the king.

And there will be a strong relationship with God after the king.

And so he says, uh, before the mountains, verse 2, before the mountains were born.

Now that they're getting preached to by Moses, before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the whole world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

And now they go back to chapter 89, some of the questions raised.

So this is how I want you to think of this.

So if you go do this on your own.

Chapter 89, the end of book three, and chapter 90, the beginning of book four, these chapters are talking to each other.

They're talking to each other from disorientation to reorientation.

And so it says in verse 3, you turn people back to dust, saying, Return to dust, you mortals.

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that's just gone by, or like a watch in the night.

So again, remember chapter 89 talks about the futility.

Why are we even here?

Gonna be gone tomorrow?

So now that question that was brought up moves from just, because my life is finite, therefore it's futile, and that's how you feel in despair when your heart's broken.

Now it's validating the question, even validating the emotion, but now starting to change the focus.

And now you go, you know what?

I was so caught up in this and that that I forgot that, you know what, this life is brief.

And you start to think about mortality and more of an anthropological uh questions that they're asking about the existence of human life.

And again, these are good questions to ask.

And so what you have here is when the king is removed, and and now Moses is speaking and taking them back to a time before they had all the things that they loved and lost, it's like a factory reset.

The monarchy's collapsed, we're back in the wilderness, and we've God has always been there, He's always been our king, and somewhere along the way, we kind of lost sight of that, and now the whole system has collapsed.

And it took the system collapsing to cause them then to question uh new things, and the questions to start changing.

Um, so look, look at this.

Jump to verse 14, chapter 90.

It says, Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, your Hesed.

Now, this is this is again, this is bearing major theological weight in the book of Psalms because when have we seen Hesed over and over again?

2 Samuel 7, God's covenant with David.

We saw it a few verses earlier, uh sorry, the chapter earlier, Hesed, Hesed, Hesed, your unfailing love, your commitment, always related to God's relationship to the king.

And now look at the shift that's taking place.

It says, satisfy us, your servants, your people, the everyone, with your Hesed, that we may sing for joy and be glad in our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you've have afflicted us, and for as many years as we've seen trouble.

May your deeds be shown to your servants.

May your deeds be shown to your servants.

A few chapters earlier in the previous books, we were just praying that your deeds would be shown to the king.

But now you have a transition of God's eternal, uh God's eternity connecting to humanity, that the community is taking over the role of the king.

Make us glad.

Uh may your deeds be shown to us and your splendor to our children, not just the lineage.

So now our hope and our faith and our trust is moving from a zip code and a family line to now God's relationship with his people wherever they are, the God who was always a tabernacle.

May your deeds be shown to your servants in the splendor to their children.

Verse 17.

Establish the work of our hands.

Remember when he was saying to the king, gird up the sword and do the okay.

He's saying, Lord, may your work of may the work of our hands establish our work.

Yes, establish the work of our hands.

So what you're starting to see is this shift from just simply the king being the one who's blessed, and we're all dependent, and if he's up, we're up, and if he's down, we're down, to now a value in the faithful labor of ordinary people.

So the transition is from king to community, it's from David to Moses.

And this now sets the tone for the fourth book.

Alright, if we're putting a heading on the fourth book, the fourth book's heading is the Lord reigns.

Before we were enthroning a guy, and we put all of our faith in him.

No, we're we are reminding ourselves now that the king has been removed and the temple has been destroyed and we've been taken off our land, we are now, we can we we look, and you know, you find out that God's all you need when God's all you've got.

I had all these other things that were distracting me, and now they've been removed.

And as much as I cried tears and I felt real pain and it was real suffering, and it was a dark night of the soul, I've come through it and I'm seeing God more clearly than ever.

And so, what you're gonna have in Psalm 93 through 99, and I am wrapping up, I'm serious.

I'm I know some of you are freaking out.

You're like, I should have never come to this late service.

Should have never come, man.

He's gotta go quick earlier in the day.

That is true.

If you want to be done fast, come earlier in the day.

But this is what I'm gonna say.

I'm almost done.

Psalm 93 through 99 are what we call enthronement psalms.

I'm gonna read you quickly a few excerpts, but this is coming back to the we're taking our eyes off the king and we're putting our eyes on the king of kings.

Look at this, Psalm 93, 1 and 2.

The Lord reigns, the Lord reigns, the Lord reigns.

He is robed in majesty, the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength.

Indeed, the world is established firm and secure.

Your throne was established long ago.

You are from all eternity.

Psalm 95, 1 through 3.

There's there's more where this came from, but I'm just giving you a sample.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord.

Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation, the King of kings.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving, extol him with music and song.

For the Lord is the great God, the great king above all God.

Psalm 96, 1 through 3.

Sing to the Lord a new song.

Come on, this is the reorientation.

The old song doesn't work anymore, it doesn't make sense anymore.

I sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth, sing to the Lord, praise his name, proclaim his salvation day after day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all people.

And so it's a reorientation and a refocus on God.

Here's where I want to end today.

Some of you are in Psalm 89, full tilt, disorientation, standing in the middle of a pile of broken promises and broken dreams, and it's really hard to see anything other than that.

It's a dark night of the soul.

Giving your words back to you.

You said this, not me.

And it may be related to a person, or it may even be related to prayers and things that you've received from God, and it's just did not go like what I thought it would go at 2 Samuel 7.

And I want to encourage you in that disorientation, do not fall so far into despair that you quit and give up hope.

You can go slow, God is patient.

But as the dust settles, if you'll remain curious and you'll do the best you can today to put one foot in front of the other and you pray and you process and you persevere, you're gonna start to see some things you've not seen.

And there will be a reorientation.

So I encourage you with that.

If you're in Psalm 90, some of you are in reorientation and you're starting to think a little more clearly than you did back in chapter 89 when you were just ticked.

And you start to think about the king, and you start to think about, you know, if I go back to 1 Samuel 8, we did get a warning.

This was kind of our idea.

God went along with it, but we did sort of reject the theocracy, and we were sort of told what was going to happen, and then it kind of did.

And you start to see a little bit of that, and you start to think about mortality, and you start to think about some other things, and God starts to show you, and you begin to move towards a reorientation.

Here's what I want to encourage you with.

In chapter 90, Psalm 90, they think that they're gonna have to come to peace with the fact that God's covenant with David was completely broken.

And what they don't know is what you and I know, which is where this whole thing's going.

God doesn't break his covenant with David.

Just because they no longer had a monarchy and they had no royal lineage did not mean that because they didn't have a physical king and a physical palace, that God broke his covenant with David.

We know what's coming.

The messianic Psalms that are pointing to something that's gonna happen in the first century, there's one to come, a Messiah who will come, a king who will fulfill God's covenant with David.

He will fulfill God's covenant with Moses, he will fulfill God's covenant with Abraham.

It's coming, it's just a few hundred years away.

So when you're in your Psalm 90 and you start to get some, you start to think back on what I ignored back in 1 Samuel, and you start to think some fresh thoughts and start to see some new perspective, embrace it, grow in it, but please live under the awareness that there's still some surprises that God has for you.

Some things that you thought were destroyed, and yet God is still doing the work.

There's a fulfillment coming.

God does not break his word.

God does not retreat on his has said, but it may look nothing like what you were looking for.

If you're in despair, keep praying, processing, and persevering.

If you're starting to reorient, be ready for some surprises God still has in store for you.

Let's pray together.

As we bow our hearts in prayer, I'm gonna invite our prayer team to come make their way.

And at any time during this prayer, if you'd like someone to pray with you, you can step out and come down.

You don't have to wait for me to say amen.

You can get a head start.

In fact, when I say amen, there's gonna be a stampede toward the door, and I don't want you getting run over.

All right, so you can start moving now, and uh, no one's gonna judge you for coming forward for prayer.

Prayer's not the least we can do, it's the most we can do.

So I want to invite you to come forward.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

I pray for my brothers and sisters, some of whom are trying to make sense of broken hearts and broken promises.

Some who are reading the contract back with great confusion and emotion, justifiable anger.

Lord, I thank you that you make space for that.

I thank you that you do not punish the psalmist for being confused by confusing things.

But Lord, we thank you that in your patience we can turn the page to Psalm 90 when the time is right.

And we receive a voice from someone like Moses who helps us to see things that we could not see, we couldn't stand in chapter 89.

We start to see you more clearly that you were there before the someone or something we lost was ever there.

That you are faithful generation to generation, that you are our dwelling place, our home, our refuge.

And Lord, we do this with awareness that there are things to come in the future that we can't even wrap our brains around now, but we do it in confidence, Lord, that you always have been and always will be faithful and loving.

We thank you for Hasid even when we're sad.

We love you and praise you and thank you.

Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.