–A few years ago, a man and a woman met online and started dating. Unfortunately, he lived in Holland and she lived in China. The man eventually got fed up by the distance and decided to buy a plane ticket to visit her. He sent her all his flight information and boarded the plan. When he landed, he looked all around for his love and she wasn’t there. But he was in a new county that spoke a different language, and he had 1 mission on this trip, so he decided to wait for his girlfriend. And wait he did! After a couple days he started trending on social media, a local new outlet did a segment on him, and after 10 days of waiting he had to be taken to the hospital because of physical exhaustion. A news outlet tracked down his girlfriend, and she thought he was joking! 

-We wait pretty much daily, don’t we? I waited at a stoplight driving here this morning (just 1 thankfully)

-How do we wait for God? Today’s Psalm instructs us in what it looks like to wait for the Lord, and it doesn’t involve being ghosted at an airport

READ/PRAY

-John Stott’s outline was really helpful, so I just borrowed this from him. 

1. Looking Backward (1-3)

-David begins by looking backwards and reflecting on God’s provision, notice past tense “waited”

-Heb. “waiting I waited” have you ever noticed how slow it is to become like Jesus, and how much effort it takes? There’s a theme throughout the Bible of periods of waiting and preparation before God uses you.

-Abraham promised a child at 75, child at 100. Joseph spent decades in servitude after being his dad’s favorite child, then he rose up to the number 2 in all of Egypt. Moses was exiled in Midian for 40 years before God came to him in a burning bush, David was anointed young and didn’t become king until 30, Paul had this radical conversion story and then he goes off to the wilderness for 3 years. But none of these experiences were wasted, and God wasn’t ignoring any of these people, instead God was using these experiences to shape and form all these men to be ready to be used by God later.

-The waiting season is rough, you may be in one now! Waiting for a new job, a new house, to go back to school, lots of life is waiting. But waiting isn’t doing nothing, despite how it often feels to us. If you just remain faithful in the midst of the waiting it is always remarkable how much work God does in those seasons, isn’t it?

-Just reflecting this past week with some people over my waiting to come here! It took almost 2 years of me looking and hoping and praying and waiting to find a church that would hire a young guy like me! Was told from 1 church that I wasn’t a good enough singer, another church told me they loved everything about me but wished I was 3 years older it was humbling and stretching! But God was still working. So friends, keep waiting! And if you’re not waiting encourage those who are waiting that you know! This will come up again, but you’ll have to wait.

-After the season of waiting, David is saved from God, notice the description in vs. 2 Hiking in mud is awful! Through my trip I experienced this, your feet get heavier, literally start weighing you down and wearing you out. Unlike that is walking on a rock-solid road. Clear path ahead, nothing to burden you. 

-And friends, that’s what it looks like to follow after God. By being obedient to Him, it allows you to be brought from muddy clay to a rock. It doesn’t mean that life will be easy, but it does mean that God will be with you in the midst of it. God’s way it right, good, true, and beautiful, it leads to flourishing as a human.

-Have you ever noticed how sociological data demonstrates this truth? I was just this week listening to a podcast that talked about all the benefits of biblical marriage: between 1 biological man and 1 biological woman in a lifetime monogamous covenantal relationship. Financial stability, healthier children, healthier lives for both spouses, it’s almost as if God knew what He was doing! 

-New song – the response of God’s movement in His people is singing. Friends, there’s a reason that we sing so much each week! Singing has been marker of God’s people since the beginning. Some theologians believe that God created through singing, I think when Adam meets Eve he bursts out in singing, this book of Psalms is an entire book dedicated to songs of God’s people. In Rev. (pick up again in 2 weeks) it says there’s singing around the throne of God 24/7. We must be a people who sing God’s truth to each other and back to Him 

-When this salvation is happening and God’s people are singing, what will other people see? They’ll start to see how God saves His people, and what’s their response? Fear and trust the Lord. Notice it doesn’t say the David will trust in the Lord, it says THEY

-Our lives are meant to be a witness to others, this means that our lives need to look different. Does yours? I think one of the reasons we need to gather together as the church is to be reset to this reality that we have a reason to trust in the Lord, that He has proven Himself faithful over and over again, so we can know that He’ll continue to!

-If you’ve ever been a part of team you’ve experienced some of this reality. When you’re running suicides with the rest of the bball team it helps when you can look over and see someone else persevering. Same thing in the church, when you’re struggling and hurting it helps when you can look down the pew and see a brother or sister who has walked through something similar to you. This is why God brings us into a new family called the church when we’re saved, we need that support and encouragement.

• Looking Upward (4-5)

-Same idea that we’ve seen the past few weeks, God’s ways are the best way, they lead to our flourishing as humans, including happiness (not the pursuit of happiness, true lasting happiness)

-Same word here as the beginning of the whole book, another reminder that we need to read this as a whole book, there’s an intentional ordering to it that builds on certain ideas or topics.

-It’s wisdom literature, similar to Proverbs, just structured slightly differently. But this whole book is meant to give us language to express ourselves in the midst of life’s circumstances. We’ve seen language from the past few weeks on how to suffer well, how to voice those complaints to the Lord. This week we see how we wait on God in the midst of those times, which David goes on to tell us what we should be doing when we struggle:

-By remembering all the things God has done for David and His people. What are these wondrous works that David would think of? Exodus, wilderness wanderings, safety from enemies, food.

-God not only has done wonderful things in His people, but He also has future plans for them. What are God’s plans? Salvation in Jesus, which leads to life with God, which is the only way to have lasting happiness. God wants us to live life to the full! God wants us to enjoy His good gifts of food, drink, observing His creation. But notice that His plans aren’t just for God, He has plans for US. God throughout history has always been identified by and connected to a people. Adam and Eve, Noah and his family, Abraham and his family, this is why the Bible calls Him the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who aren’t in the family don’t get the family blessings. 

-Think about how many things God has done to the people in this room. How many are God’s wondrous works in this room? David describes them as “more than can be told.” How often do you talk about and reflect on how God has been good to you? Multiply that among all of God’s people throughout all of history and how great is our God?

-One encouragement I have for you all is to find ways to be celebrate when God works in you. An old song we sing “Come Thou Fount” has a line that makes no sense to our modern ear: “here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come” When I was growing up all I thought of was Ebenezer Scrooge (and not even from the original story, from the Muppets Christmas Carol). What that song refers to is a Hebrew word ebed (stone) ezer (help) a stone of help. God’s people would build stone altars when God saved them so that in the future when they were struggling and hurting they could look at these altars and remember how God had provided for them. What can you do to give thanks for God’s provision in your life so that you can remember His faithfulness when you’re struggling?

• Looking Inward (6-8)

-The next place David looks is inside Himself, how does God’s provision affect his internal life?

-A bit of an exaggeration here, because God does delight in sacrifice and offerings. David mentions all the required offerings from Lev. 1-4 here. Leviticus can be a difficult book for us to understand, but the point of the whole book is: how can an unholy people be in relationship with a holy God? What does it require? It requires a sacrifice, a way for the penalty for sin to be paid, as David says here it takes sacrifice, offering, burnt offerings, and sin offerings.

-I think David is actually picking up a story about his predecessor in the office of King of Israel: King Saul. He’s commanded to completely destroy an enemy, including all their animals, but he doesn’t. He leaves the king alive and takes all the spoils of war. Because Saul doesn’t obey, God rejects him as King, and sends Samuel to confront Saul. In that confronting, Saul says he was just saving these spoils as an offering to the Lord, and Samuel replies 1 Sam. 15. Yes, God does demand sacrifices and offerings, but the heart of even those offerings is to create a spirit of obedience in His people.

-Jesus picks up on this idea in Matt. 23. Jews loved creating a hierarchy of laws, prioritizing some over others, but missed what all these laws were pointing to: a life fully surrendered in obedience to God. Jesus summarizes them as: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. What God wants from us is growing in holiness, taking 1 step closer to God each day. What does that take?

-God’s Word, obedience to God’s Word, internalizing God’s Word so that it becomes evident in your life. This is what David had been fixating on, mediating on, soaking himself in day after day. Friends, just as God works in the waiting, God also works through things that seem very ordinary and at times boring. It’s not magic or rocket science, it’s what have been referred to as the ordinary means of grace: the Bible, prayer, the church. All 3 of those elements are what it takes to have our internal life grow more holy.

• Looking Outward (9-11)

-After working internally we can move to looking outward.

-Last week we saw the need to keep silent in the midst of wickedness, this time we see what we should talk about: righteousness. Means “straight” or “what is in accordance with law or social norm.” (EDOT)

-There is an external drive to the way God wants us to live, we’re supposed to speak out about God’s faithfulness, about how to pursue righteousness, we’re supposed to tell others the truth of who God is and that He continues working and moving in the world.

-This also means we need to tell each other how God has provided for us. Twice in here David refers to the “great assembly” The word “church” is taken from the word “assembly.” Again we see one of the purposes of our gathering together so that we can remember who God is, and remind each other the to live differently because of that.

• Looking Around (12-15)

-Faith has precedent because of what God has done in the past. We are commanded to be students of history, our faith literally hinges on historically verified events. If the tomb is not empty, that everything we’re doing in here is worse than pointless, it’s a waste of time and we should be pitied. But because the tomb is empty, we can cry out to God when we’re surrounded by evils. 

-Because we’re supposed to be students of history, we’re offering a class at 9 AM this fall titled ‘Echoes of Faith” I heard someone said this class isn’t helpful or practical, but the truth is knowing church history helps prevent us from making the same errors, and demonstrates to us the validity of our faith. Church history is theology applied – 

1- gives us a broader perspective on God’s working in the world. It can be too easy to see our moment as the most important moment and each crisis as the worst crisis ever, but when we see how God has worked in the past it gives us confidence in the future.

2- it helps us to evaluate theology. I remember learning about the liberalizing tendencies of the German church in the late 1800s and realized that many people were doing the exact same thing today!

3- it helps us to mediate extremes. There’s a tendency to overreact (think of deconstruction today), but when we know church history we can understand the way things come and go not overreact to either side. It helps us to know that those who are opposed to God will someday be dealt with.

• Looking Forward (16-17)

-Because of how God has moved in the past, we can continue to say that the Lord is great. God has promised to be our helper and deliverer, all these promises find their fulfilment in Jesus. 

-If you love God’s salvation (which I hope you do!) then we should moment by moment say “the Lord is great!” 

-Tertullian, the great North African theologian, said about David, “He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself.” These Psalms are meant to point us to Christ, and Jesus used Psalms at key moments of His life to demonstrate that He was the fulfillment of all the promises to David, but this Psalm has a double application to Jesus

–Heb. 10:5-10: Jesus’ arrival means there’s no more sacrifices we can make, His death was complete and final, there’s nothing else you can add and nothing else is required. That’s the message of the gospel, the message that Jesus came to save sinners like you and me, so because of what Jesus has done we can walk in a new way and we can with Jesus say the Lord is great!

-What does this require of us? We’ve seen a few things in this text:

-Waiting patiently. God doesn’t work on our timetable

-Celebrating when God provides for you. Find ways to commemorate those moments

-Both of those mean that we must live unique, sacred, set apart lives