← Mariners Church Weekend Messages
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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.
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Eric
Thank you, guys. I missed you so much. It's so good to be here teaching this weekend. I love you. I love being your pastor. I. You're like, some of you, like, who are you? I've. I've never met you before. I have been gone for several weeks because the elders give me a study break in July, which allows me to spend some extra time in the scripture, really hearing from God on what I'm going to teach you and feed you in coming days. So I'm really excited about what the Lord burned into my heart. Also got to spend extra time with my family. Gosh. My oldest daughter starts college in a couple of weeks, so this summer was just. It was really special and spending time with Kay and my daughters and. But it's great to be back teaching. During study break, I learned that one of my best friends, he's been one of my best friends for 20 years, Ed Stetzer. He's the one of the deans at Biola University and the president of Talbot Seminary, the seminary of Biola. He actually moved here to Southern California several years ago for that role. He's one of our teaching pastors and our scholar in residence. And I learned while I was on study break that he was in the hospital. He and I were talking, and he had had trouble walking. He. He said he just had to keep widening his gate because he felt like he was going to fall over. And he went to the doctor, and his doctor said, you've got to go get an mri. He got an mri. And then those who read it said, you have. You need spinal surgery fast. And so he had surgery on his spine. I went to see him at the hospital on a Saturday. I brought breakfast to him there. And then that was one Saturday. The very next Saturday, I met him and Donna, his wife, at his house to help him get up the stairs because he couldn't walk. Had to help Ed up the stairs, get the chair in his living room set for him so that he could spend time in the. In this chair. And it was a trial that just hit so fast. We sat down and talked for several hours, and Ed said, eric, two weeks ago I was hiking and now I can't walk. He's loved living in Southern California because he loves hiking with Donna, his wife. Two weeks ago I was hiking, and now I can't walk. Now the doctors believe the surgery was successful and that he'll have a recovery. There will be a process. He'll be in a walker and then a cane. But you are likely not surprised by this story because you've experienced this in life, that a trial just comes out of nowhere. It just hits so quickly. And in this room there are people who are in a physical trial. We're going to offer you a time to receive prayer at the end of our service. But physical trials are not the only kind of trial that we face. I want you to imagine if you were in your young 20s, or just imagine that when you were in your young 20s, imagine this, that someone promises you a role that you never thought. I mean, amazing role. You never thought you could get a role like this. Very few people ever get a role like this. But you if. But it's been promised to you. You're not exactly sure when it's gonna happen, but you've received and you believe that you're gonna move into this role. And then imagine in your career that you raise your hand and you volunteer for an assignment and you crush it. And everyone knows that you have crushed it. And this means people are looking to you for the role that you have been promised. The problem is the person who's in the role currently that you've been promised is now filled with this animosity and jealousy and bitterness towards you. And. And they decide that they're going to spend as their personal agenda for the next several years of their life. Their whole purpose is to ruin you. Imagine that kind of trial. That actually is the trial that the psalmist David experiences. We're starting this teaching series when Life Doesn't Make Sense. And this week we're going to talk about when life doesn't make sense and there's a trial. What we're going to do in this teaching series is we're going to look at a famous psalm every week, but we're going to do more. I think this is going to be beautiful for you and helpful for you. Not only are we going to look at the psalm, we're going to look at the story beneath the song. So we're going to get to the psalm, but let me tell you the story beneath it. This is in the scripture. This is not a made up story. This is the account of this trial that David the psalmist faced. It begins in 1st Samuel 16 when David is anointed as the next king of Israel. He's anointed as the king of Israel because God has rejected the current king of man named Saul. The reason God rejects Saul is because Saul is being a king for his glory, not for God's glory. He doesn't care about the people. It's all about him as an egomaniac. And God tells the prophet Samuel, I've rejected Saul as king. Go and anoint this next king. And he anoints David. David is a really young man. When he's promised that he's going to have the palace and the crown, that he's going to be king, that's 1st Samuel 16. He doesn't know exactly when it's going to happen. You keep reading the scripture, you get two chapters later to 1st Samuel 18. If you are new to studying the Bible, perhaps you have heard of this story that happens in 1st Samuel 18. It's the famous account of David and Goliath. In 1st Samuel 18, Goliath is the representative head of the Philistines. The Philistines are the army that are against God's people. And instead of both armies going against one another, each chooses a representative. And so the representative from the Philistines is Goliath. The scripture says he's a giant, like 7ft tall. He's talking smack to God's people. He's saying, who's going to fight me? Just send anybody out, someone out to do battle with me. And nobody wants to volunteer. Then David raises his hand and says, I'll fight David. This young man goes and fights Goliath. And he slays Goliath. He's victorious. And so everyone honors David. People think he is our guy. In fact, the scripture says that when Saul the king and David and the others go home from war, that women come out from the cities and they are singing a song. We don't know exactly how the beat or the rhythm was, but we know the lyrics. It was, saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. Saul his slain his thousands. Dave, I don't know. I don't know how it went, but it was something like that. Now, if you are Saul and you're an egomaniac and everything's about you, you're crushed by this song. This song crushes you. Because people are saying, David is such a better warrior than you. The scripture says that from that point forward, Saul looks at David with this jealous eye. In fact, the very next day in the palace, Saul has David play music for him. Saul wrestled with depression, and at times he would feel better when music was played. And David, man, this is crazy. The kind of guy he was, he could take down a giant and he could play the harp for Saul in the palace. And Saul is seeing David play, and he's filled with jealousy and rage. He grabs a spear and throws it at the wall to kill David. David runs for his life. Now, this is amazing. David, because he trusts the providence of God, he chooses to still be loyal to Saul. So even though Saul tried to kill him, he. He's still gonna fight for Saul in Saul's army. He leads military campaigns for Saul. And every military campaign that he leads, he comes back, and he is wildly successful, which only causes Saul to be filled with more jealousy and anger towards David. So then Saul has a plan. This is how he's gonna kill David. He's such an evil man that he uses his own daughter, Mikhail. That's his daughter's name, as a pawn to try to kill David. He tells David, listen, I will give my daughter Mikal to you in marriage, and if you will bring me 100 foreskins of the Philistines. A foreskin is. Never mind. You just bring 100 foreskins. Essentially, you're going to lose this battle if you go, so bring me 100 foreskins. David goes and he fights a battle, and he brings 200 foreskins back to Saul. We have a guy on our staff, Eric Bradley, actually runs our lights and our sound. And he has a tattoo on his. His calf. His tattoo is make it a 200 day. It's awesome. So when you interview someone and they have a tattoo from the story in the Bible, make it a 200 day. There's no way. You don't hire that guy. You hire that guy. He literally has a tat on his body that says, whatever you ask me, I'm going to make it a 200. I mean, come on. Give it up for Eric Bradley for being an amazing person. Yeah. So David comes back from battle with 200 foreskins. This is what the scripture says. Saul at that point, realized that the Lord was with David and that his daughter Mikhail, loved him. And he became even more afraid of David as a result. Saul was David's enemy from then on. So from then on, here's the trial gets really intense from that moment forward. The king wants to kill and destroy David. It actually starts the next day. Saul once again tries to spear David and kill him. David knows this time he has to run. But he's not gonna stay in Saul's army. He runs to his home. Saul sends people to his home the next morning to kill him. Saul then starts to flee. I'm gonna sum up for you. Real quickly, 1 Samuel 18 all the way to 1 Samuel, chapter 22, where you find David in a cave. 1st Samuel 18, Saul is pursuing David. David starts to run. He goes to Ramah. In Ramah, he meets with the prophet Sam, Samuel. But he knows he can't stay there long because Saul and the men are chasing him. He then goes from Ma to Knob and Knob. He meets with the priest and the priest feeds him. And then the priest realizes that David doesn't have a way to defend himself. So the priest gives David a sword. Guess whose sword it is that he gives David? Goliath's sword. I mean, this is painful. If you're David, you're holding the sword that you took off of the giant who ridiculed God's people. You defended God's people. You. You stood up for God's people, and now you have to carry that very sword. The king of God's people is trying to kill you. People are slandering you, trying to ruin your life, and you're gonna defend yourself with the very sword when you risked your life for these people. This is so painful. He leaves from there and goes to Gath because he know he's being pursued. In Gath, there's a king who David feels is afraid of David because all his conquest in the military. And so David decides, I gotta get outta here. So he pretends to be insane so the king of Gath will send him away. He's. And then he goes to a cave, a cave in Adam. And he's in a cave. And according to the scripture, there's other people who join him there, but it's not people with amazing LinkedIn profiles. It's 400 people, according to the scripture, that are in debt, distressed and discontented. There are people like David who. Who feel like this world is cruel to me. I'm out of here. I'm gonna go live in a cave with David. And so David is in a trial that has been so intense. Now, I summed it up for you real quickly, but scholars believe that the length of time that David is on the run from this madman egomaniac king named Saul is a decade. This is a long trial, a decade. Some scholars believe this was his 20s, that this was his 20s. Some of you are in your 20s and you have heard, just like David probably heard, that your twenties are so important, some psychologists actually call your twenties your defining decade. That's the name of a New York Times bestseller written by Meg J. Who went to UC Berkeley and then now teaches on the east coast, the defining decade that your 20s are the years that matter so much. Not based on what you do, but the kind of decisions you make that then impacts who you are. She did lots of research and concluded that people who are successful in life, they will all point back to their twenties being the years that defined who they would be, that their 20s were their defining decade. If you had given David the book the defining decade or told him his twenties were his defining years, David would have said, I don't want this to be my defining years. These feel like throwaway years. I feel like I'm. I've lost these years. I've lost them. As you know, I have a deep heart for the twenties in our church. And some of you who are in your 20s, you feel, like, bad, like you've lost some years. There's things that you wanted to accomplish that haven't happened. There's hopes you've had, dreams you've had that haven't come to fruition. That's how David felt. I've lost these years. Some of you are in a trial just like this. This trial was an undeserved trial. David is wise enough to know that he's not perfect, but he doesn't deserve this. He's been loyal to Saul. He doesn't deserve to be hunted down like he's an animal from the king who wants to ruin his entire life. This is a trial that is undeserved. Some of you are in that kind of trial right now. You don't deserve what you're in. This is a relentless trial. The scripture says that every day Saul sought, David wanted to kill him. Every single day. Every morning he woke up, he knew the king wanted to ruin him. Some of you, you're in a trial right now that's always in your mind. It's relentless. It keeps coming. It feels like it's always in the room. There's a pang in your stomach. It is there all the time. This is the trial that David experienced. And it's a long trial. His entire twenties. What do you do when you find yourself in a trial like this? David is in the cave when he prays. Psalm 142. We start this teaching series when life doesn't make sense. This week we'll talk about a trial. Next week we'll talk about anxiety or anxiousness because the scripture is not chlorinated from the problems that we face. I love this about God's word, that God meets us where we are in the middle of our struggles. Some of you are in A trial right now that is very severe and significant. And God is not unaware and he's not uncaring. He's given you a scripture to help you in the midst of your trial. Psalm 142. This is God's word. I want you to notice in the prescript you will see these words. A cry of distress. A mask of David when he was in the cave. A prayer. I love this because that's in the original language. I love the Psalms. There's 150 of them. But there's some Psalms that have a prescript like this. They're my favorite because I'm able. I know exactly what was going on when he prayed this prayer. I just summed it up for you. 1 Samuel 16 all the way to 1st Samuel 22, when he's in a cave. Whoa. I know the exact background. And this is what he prayed in the midst of a trial that was crushing him. So let's pray the same words. Will you stand with me? And let's read God's word together aloud as we begin this series. Read with me aloud, verse one. I cry out aloud to the Lord. I plead aloud to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him. I reveal my trouble to him. Although my spirit is weak within me, you know my way along this path I travel. They have hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see no one stands up for me. There is no refuge for me. No one cares about me. I cry to you, Lord, I say, you are my shelter, my portion in the land of the living. Listen to my cry, for I am very weak. Rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Free me from prison so that I can praise your name. The righteous will gather around me because you deal generously with me, Lord Jesus, I pray you will use your word to encourage your sons and daughters in the midst of trials they are in now and to give them wisdom for trials that they will face in the future. Thank you, Lord, for giving us this psalm, this teaching psalm. I pray you'll teach us now. We sit humbly at your feet, ready to learn from you. In your name I pray. Amen. You can grab a seat. Let me pull out for you 2 thoughts from this psalm that will help you when you are in a trial and some of you are in one right now. The first is. This is what you see David do. This is a masculine, which means a teaching psalm. Here's what you see David do. He first. He brings his trial to God. You bring Your trial. You take your trial and you bring it to God. Notice what David prays in the very first verses. He says, I cry aloud to the Lord. Sometimes a trial is so severe that the best way to describe your prayers is they are cries. Some of you, that is your prayers right now. They're deep, painful cries. I remember when Eden, my oldest daughter, was diagnosed with pandas as a child. This is a pediatric neurological disorder which was essentially strep in her brain that was changing her personality that was causing this joyful daughter of mine to become anxious and. And fearful. And I remember when the doctors told us what the diagnosis was, and I would lay in bed at night and pray for my daughter. And the best way to describe my prayers in that season was they were. They were cries. There's no pain like seeing your kid in pain. Crying aloud, Lord, why, Lord? Please bring healing, Lord, I pray miraculously tonight. I'll wake up tomorrow and it will be gone. Lord, please, I beg you, cry aloud to the Lord. Next he says, I plead aloud to the Lord for mercy. Now, this is important because even though David has been faultless in his dealings with Saul, he doesn't approach God as if he can bargain with God. He doesn't say he and God are on equal terms. He's not saying, God, I've done this for you, now do this for me. God, I'm right before you, so you owe me this. That's not his posture at all. Even though he's been faultless in his dealings with Saul, he. He realizes that he's fallen. He knows he's not perfect and that God is the one who's merciful. He's begging, God, I plead with you to be merciful to me. I don't deserve your mercy and grace. I'm not bargaining with you, but I need your mercy and grace is what he's saying. Then he says, I pour out my. I have questions about this, my complaint. The reason I have questions is I just taught you the Book of Numbers. Do you remember what happened in the Book of Numbers when people complained to God? I mean, he opens up the ground and swallows people. He sends fire from heaven. What is happening? Why is it that David can complain and God's people in the wilderness couldn't complain? What makes David's complaint different? This is important because there is a way for you to bring a struggle to God. God's people in the wilderness, they accused God. You aren't merciful. You aren't gracious. We wish we had the Egyptians as our slave owners. They're better to us than you. They accuse God, not David. You're merciful, God. Give me mercy, but I'm struggling with this. He didn't complain about his Savior. He complained about his situation. You can have a challenging situation that you bring to him, and he welcomes you that way. Then he says, I reveal my trouble to him. Reveal? Does God not already know? Of course God knows. He knows everything. Why is it that God welcomes David and wants David to actually reveal his trouble? Some of you, like me, have sat down with a wise counselor, a wise therapist. And perhaps your therapist has said, as you sit down, why are we here today? Because your counselor believes that if you will reveal that there's something good that happens in you as you uncover and you don't keep things buried as you reveal. And so God is welcoming David and he welcomes you. He's not only a wise counselor, he's also the gracious Father who loves when his sons and daughters come to him. When my daughters have troubles and they reveal them to me sometimes I already know about them because their mom has told me. But I love it when they come to me. Do you understand that? Your Heavenly Father, in the middle of your trial, he loves it when you bring your trial to him. He loves you and wants to hear from you in the midst of your trial. David brings his trial to God because he does not feel as if he is able to solve the trial himself. Notice why he says, my spirit is weak within me. I can't fix this trial. I can't solve this. But he also knows he really can't trust other people in his life to solve it as well. He says, along this path I travel, they've hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see no one stands up for me, no refuge for me. No one cares about me. So he has a trial he believes that he can't fix and that he doesn't trust other people to fix. So he finds that God is the one who he's going to bring the trial to. Now, this is interesting because you saw the backstory. There's 400 people with David in the cave. But he's. Even though they're there, he doesn't fully trust them. Why? He's been betrayed. He's in such pain. Some of you have been betrayed and are. Such pain. It's hard to trust somebody. It's hard to trust somebody. It's hard. So what David does is actually really beautiful. In the middle of his trial, I don't trust that the people around me are gonna be able to give me the love that I ultimately need. But, God, you can. You can. The people around me can't really be. I'm glad that some people are here, but they can't really be my ultimate refuge. But you can be. This trial is bigger than David. Your trial that some of you are in right now is bigger than you. Your trial is bigger than you, but your trial is not bigger than him. Your trial is not bigger than God. And you bring your trial to God, and that is when he's going to work graciously in your life. When you get to the lowest place in your life, the trial is so overwhelming that you feel there's no one that can understand me. There's no one that can fix this. It's actually a really beautiful place to be because that's when you bring your trial to God. So, number one, bring your trial to God. Number two, though, this is equally important. You want to bring God to your trial, so bring your trial to God. But then you want to bring God to your trial. Okay, what does that mean, to bring God to your trial? It means that you're going to look to see how God's going to work in you in the midst of the trial. How can this trial actually be, oh, it doesn't feel good, but how can it be for good? How is God gonna work in me in the midst of this trial? And then also, how's God gonna work through me? How's he gonna do a work through me in the midst of this trial? This is what you see. David pray. Next he says, I cry to you, Lord, you are my shelter. I love this phrase because we know where David is when he prays this. Where is David when he prays this? Okay, I think maybe your lack of answering is. I just. It's me. I've been rusty. I've not preached in a couple of weeks. I'm off my game. I'll ask it again. This time I'll try to ask it better so that you answer more efficiently and effectively than you did. So we know where David is when he prays this. Where is David when he prays this? He's in the cave and he says, God, you're my cave. I ran into this cave as my physical shelter, but it's not my ultimate shelter. God, you are my ultimate shelter. I'm in this cave physically, but really, you're where I run. You are who I go to in the middle of this trial. You can tell who your God is or what your God is by where you run when you're in a trial, where you run in the midst of a challenge, you is ultimately your God. If you run to relationships to find people to validate everything you're thinking, that is ultimately your God. If you run more to your career because I'm just gonna work so hard through this to get my mind off the pain I'm in, then your career is ultimately your God. If you run to pleasure because you want to numb your mind from the pain that you're in, whether that's with some escapade or with some addictive behavior, you're throwing yourself into pleasure because you really believe the pleasure is your shelter to numb you from the PA of the trial. Wherever you run, that is ultimately your refuge, ultimately your, your God. For some of us, actually the common default of us, unless God rescues us, is ourselves. We run to ourselves. Our shelter is us. We are self sufficient. We trust ourselves. We don't say like David, I'm weak. We say, I am strong. I can fix this. I run to myself. Brian Johnson is a tech entrepreneur who became very famous in the last several years because he is attempting to biohack his way to longevity, a really, really long life. In fact, even we'll go as far as to say he's trying to achieve immortality by biohacking his way there. He has a movement called don't die. And notice what he said just a couple of months ago he posted on social media, this is in December, so not long ago. I'm going to try and achieve immortality by 2039. Now notice the language. Achieve immortality is a very disciplined regimen. He measures every aspect of his body. I'm going to try and achieve immortality by 2039. One year of time passes and I remain the same biological age. I invite you to join me. Clearly his cave where he runs is himself. I'm going to fix this. I'm going to achieve this a couple of weeks ago, just three weeks ago now, Brian Johnson shared on social media that he has been diagnosed with an incurable stomach disease and that his stomach, to quote him, is eating itself. He posted on social media some of the responses were cruel. This is what you get when you try to cheat death. This is what you get when you try to play God. When I saw, I prayed for Brian. I prayed for multiple times. Lord God, I pray that you would use this trial in his life to get him to the place where he realizes he doesn't have to live with the pressure of achieving immortality, that he can receive immortality by the gracious work of Jesus that, that you don't have to achieve, that you can receive. Now, what we tend to do when a trial hits. There's one or two things that will happen to you when a trial hits. You will either get tender towards God or toughen yourself up towards God. You will either be humbled or you will harden yourself towards Him. What we tend to do, the default for all of us, is that when a trial hits, we'll run deeper into the cave that we've built. So if our career is our cave, a trial hits, we run further into that cave. If our health is our cave, we run further into it. If a relationship is, we run further into it. And maybe you're saying, but, Eric, isn't it good to take care of our health? Absolutely. Our bodies are a gift from him. They're a gift, but they are a horrible cave because they're temporary. Your career, a gift, but a really bad cave. Your community a gift, but a really bad cave because all of those are temporary. Brian, it seems so far, based on what he's posted on social media so far, he's doing what many of us do, running further into the cave that he built after being diagnosed with this rare stomach disease. He posted on Social. What's different about this moment? He's believing that he can still solve this. What's different about this moment that is unlike any other moment, is that physical death may no longer be inevitable. That even after this diagnosis, he's going further into the cave. I don't say that with judgment, because all of us have done the same. A trial hits and we go further in. Better is to be humbled by the trial and to see God work in you. To see God in the midst of your trial. Because when you cry out to him, he shows up with his mercy and his grace. And he's the only who can bring inexpressible and inexhaustible joy to you. He's the only shelter that is sturdy and strong. Anything else you run to will ultimately fail. But he's the one who doesn't fail. And he'll use a trial in your life to remind you that he's the shelter to which you can run. And when you run to him, he overwhelms you with his mercy and his grace because he's the gracious, merciful God who loves you so much, so you run to him in your trial. Notice that David also says, you're my portion. This is so good. You know what a portion is? You sit down for a meal and there's a portion of food placed on your plate where you live. You have a portion of land that you steward or a home that you steward. That's the portion of real estate that you're responsible for. Here's what David is saying. God, you're my portion. You're who I really need. A trial can be what tenderizes you before God when you see him as the one you ultimately need. I've been so proud of my friend Ed as we visited together, as I've seen his heart tender before the Lord, that the trial isn't hardening him, that the trial is causing him to see God's grace, to be humble before him, to enjoy the presence of God in the middle of the trial. You bring your trial to God, but you also bring God to your trial. You let God work on you, tenderize you in the middle of the trial, but then you want to see God also work through you in the trial. So you bring God into your trial. Notice how David ends the psalm, free me from prison. It's okay to ask God that. He's saying, I'm in this cave. I don't want to be in this cave. God, liberate me from this. You're in a trial right now. You bring that God, liberate me from this. I don't want this any longer. I'm asking for you to free me from this. Yet notice why David asked us. So that I can praise your name. God, do a gracious work through this trial so that I can praise your name, and people can see that you are the true shelter who is worthy for people to run to. David was at his best in the cave. David perhaps would have hated the book, the Defining Decade. But really his twenties became his defining decade. God was doing a gracious work in David in the cave to prepare him for the palace. David would have thought these years were wasted. They weren't wasted at all. Because in the cave, God saw David saw God as his refuge, as the one he would go to. He saw God as his portion. In the cave, God was preparing him to be the king. And David became an incredible king. He united the 12 tribes. He brought the Ark of the Covenant back to the city of David, back to the city of Jerusalem. God used David in incredible ways. But it began in the cave. It began with God purifying him and doing a gracious work in him while he was there. In fact, we'll see in coming weeks. David was actually at his best in the case. He really made his most foolish choices when he was in the palace. He was actually at his best in the case that the trial was actually the place where the great work of God was happening in his life. The defining decade. The book, the author says that your 20s are defining, not because of what you do, that some people put so much pressure on themselves in the 20s, that your 20s are supposed to be this highlight reel of all the things you've done, that no, those who have a long, successful life, when they look back at their 20s and they say their 20s were defining, it wasn't what they did, it was who they became, the decisions that they made that changed their character, that formed who they were. And that's what happened to David in the cave. That God is his portion, God is his refuge. God will use the trial. No matter what generation you're in, no matter what decade you were in, God will use the trial to define you for the future, so that God will use you in great ways, that people will look at your life and praise your name. Because in the trial, you saw God as your refuge, as your portion. So that on the other side of the trial, as you praise him, people will look at you and believe you, because you really believe that God is good, that he's enough, that he's ultimately who you need. Now David turns out to not be the perfect king at all. We know this. None of us are perfect. He's very imperfect. But there is a perfect king who comes actually in the same lineage of David, actually a fulfillment of a promise by God given to David that his kingdom will never end. But David's kingdom does end, because David dies. But there's one who comes in the lineage of David who never really dies, who dies but on the third day is alive again. There's one who comes in the lineage of David who's the everlasting King, the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus, the Christ, the eternal King. And this king is perfect. He's the perfect king. But this king knows how to suffer too. Just as David suffered, Jesus, the everlasting King, suffered. He suffered the trial of all trials. Because he's the truly innocent one, the suffering servant who goes to the cross. The trial of all trials on a Friday afternoon is crucified. He endures the cross, endures that trial to absorb in his flesh all of your sin and all of your shame, so that he could make you his son and his daughter. This everlasting king is not only the eternal king, he's also, if you have believed in him, he's your dad. And in the middle of a trial, he is with you. He's never going to forsake you. It's impossible for him to forsake you because that would violate his character. And he never violates his character. He's the faithful one who's always faithful to you. Even when you haven't been faithful to him who's always with you. His presence is always there, and he invites you to come to him in the midst of his trial. In the midst of the trial, he asks you to come to him to pour out your concerns, to plead for mercy, to cry aloud. This great God loves you so much that he says, you bring that trial to me and we're going to have a time of prayer where you can bring your trials to God. God, when ask our shepherding elders to come forward and line down front. I don't want to just preach about you bringing your trial to God. I want to give you an opportunity to do so if you want to. We're going to go into a time of singing. Some of you, the trial is so overwhelming. You just may want to stay seated. You don't even need to stand. You may just want to have your hands open on your knees and just God, I need your help in this. Lord, be merciful to me. You may want to read the psalm. You may want to pray the exact words that David prayed. Some of you, as we stand and sing, you may stand and you may open your hands and you may say, God, I'm giving you this trial. Now help me to release it to you. Or you may want to say, God, I'm asking you to work right now in this trial. But some of you, you would love someone to pray with you. We have amazing people in our church who would love to pray over you. And so as we worship you, come and receive prayer. They're awesome. They would love to pray with you. Let's stand. Let's worship you. Bring your trial to God. Bring your trial to him. All right, extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week that you would remind them that you were gentle and approachable and that you love them. Cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.
- [36:21]
Podcast Host
Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message podcast to support the ministry of Mariners Church. You can click the link in the show notes, or download the Mariners App at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual reading and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors in your community, check out the Gospel Every Day podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners app for more information on where to find it.
- [37:02]
Eric
Sam.