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No, we'll be in Psalm 119, the very last section. 169. Psalm 119 is in fact the longest chapter in the Bible. It's an acrostic, which means it's just. It's. It's follows the Hebrew Alphabet letters all the way through. So that means there's 22 sections. And yeah, they are very central on God. Help me. Help me understand. Let me have your word. Let me know your word. Let me center on your word. It points to God's word. Now, this last portion, though, it kind of summarizes everything, but it does it, I think, in a very beautiful way. So let's pray and then jump into it. So, Father in heaven, Lord, thank you so much again for this wonderful, beautiful day. Although it's probably going to get warm. But, Lord, we thank you so much that we all are above the grass today. I pray that you would speak to our hearts, speak to our minds, Lord, that we would release any and all presuppositions that we have about what we're going to discuss, Lord, and leave it open for your spirit to just guide in every aspect of what we are going to read and discuss today. Lord, I just pray again for myself, Lord, that I would step aside and let your spirit speak, Lord, and that the word of truth would be rightly divided, that you would penetrate into our hearts, to our minds, Lord, that we would all surrender to you at this very moment so that you can live for us in the name of Jesus. Amen. Let my cry of lament come near before you, O Yahweh, or O Lord, give me understanding according to your word. Let my supplication come before you. Deliver me according to your word. Let my lips pour forth praise for you. Teach me your statutes. Let my tongue answer with your word. For all your commandments are righteous. Let your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, O Yahweh, and your law, and is my delight. Let my soul live that I may praise you and let your judgments help me. I have wandered off like a lost sheep. Search for your slave, for I have not forgotten your commandments. So what's this about somebody who really is kind of reliant on God in his distress? Yeah. Okay, so here's what I have as a summary for this. This psalm serves as a concluding section of the psalm and summarizes most of what's being said. Okay. The psalmist calls out to God, asking for understanding of his Word and Deliverance according to his promise, he expresses a desire to praise God for his teaching and to sing of his righteous commands. The passage emphasizes the psalmist's commitment to God's law, expressing delight in it and longing for God's salvation. Notably, the psalmist acknowledges his own fallibility. Do you guys know what fallibility is? Your own weakness. Confessing that he has strayed like a lost sheep and asking God to seek him out. This humble admission coming after the extensive praise for God's Word. So the entirety of the psalm provides a poignant conclusion to the psalm. Throughout the verses, the psalmist reaffirms his love for God's law and his determination to obey, even in the face of persecutions. So altogether, yes, you guys are right. In his distress, in his weakness, in a area of despair, he is willing to still turn himself to the Lord, to His Word, and remember it. How many of us suck at doing this part? Yeah, we're all bad at this, right? We all know what the Word says, but we're not all willing to actually cling to it and cling to God when we're struggling, right? Most of your versions, what it says here in this section, it says, I cry out to you, O Lord, hear me. But mine. I like the way that the LSB translators did this. They put lamentation, okay? I cry of lament. Who knows what lamenting is? I'll give you the definition from the Lexham Glossary of Theology. It says that lamentation an expression of grief or sorrow, especially a type of biblical poetry that expresses mourning or sadness. Does it make sense? Lamenting is this like deep sorrow or grief, but it's not grumbling, right? Grumbling is a very different thing. Let's see what the differences are. Lament and grumbling are distinct, are distinct from forms of expressing dissatisfaction or distress, primarily differentiated by the direction and substance. Lament is directed toward God, rooted in a foundational trust that life's events come from God's hand. Even when circumstances are difficult, it involves voicing confusion and hurt without necessarily arriving at a rational explanation for suffering. So you might not actually get to understand why lament is characterized as an energized attempt to insist on God's reliability and goodness despite current evidence, and is seen as faith seeking understanding, comfort, and hope. Now, in contrast, grumbling is often a third person account, speaking about God as if he has left the room. It tends to be more resigned, revealing a suspicion that God was never as trustworthy as claimed. Unlike lament, which is encouraged in Scripture, grumbling is warned against. The Bible distinguishes both the two, encouraging lament while condemning grumbling. Importantly, lament is seen as a dialogue with God, whereas grumbling is more of a this is a big word, soliloquy or complaint to others. This distinction is crucial as bringing complaints directly to God in prayer is encouraged, while complaining about God to others is condemned. So what's gossip? Is gossip the same thing as grumbling? I think they're related, right? Or as we learned in Boundaries. Right. The triangle. Right, Right. Where you go to one person, you talk about the other person, but you want to be friends with the other person, so you go talk about them. And then just constant talking. Bad and not always good, right? You're grumbling, you're complaining. Or if you're just sitting there blaming God and not recognizing that he is still sovereign, then you are grumbling against God and therefore sinning. So let my cry of lament come near to you. We can speak of our grief to God, we can take our sorrow to God. We can actually go before him and tell him exactly how we're feeling. I know some of you have done this, some of you have never done this. And right now you're thinking to yourself, I don't know if I'm ever going to do this, but how many of you have definitely dealt with some strong things in your history that you know? You need to go before God and lay it out and cry out to him, whether there's an answer or not to the suffering, whether there's a reason for it or not. Why God did my daughter have to die? What was the purpose in that? God? How is there glory in that? Show me in your word. Because I trust your word. That's hard for me to say. That's hard. It'll be the nine year anniversary of my daughter's death and I never got to meet her. She was four weeks before she was due and died. I still carry that. It's hard. Some of you guys have been through some horrific things. You've been abused. It wasn't your choice. It was the choice of somebody else. It was wrong. It was sin. And God condemns those things. But we have a choice in how we're going to deal with those things. Are we going to shrink back and hide or are we going to take it before God and go, I need you, I need your word, I need my Father. If you have something like that going on, you need to voice it. To voice it to God, you need to voice it to the other People that are around you. One of those practices that some churches will practice in these things to begin the healing process is that they will actually communally lament. Now, am I going to sit here and ask you guys to stand up and share your junk? No, because. Okay, I don't think we're quite ready for that. We can go to God and we can lament the things that have happened. We can lament the things that we have done, right? Because even though horrible things might have been done to us, that doesn't mean that we have to live our whole lives based on that. I don't have to live my entire life being held back because I feel the pain of a death, because I feel the pain of an abuse, because I feel the pain of people abandoning me because of the things that I have done. God says that he will be there. He will be there with you if you will come to him. Right? Ask him for understanding of his word. Lord, show me the areas in your word that will help bring healing, that will bring me to the place where I can be on my knees before you. We see this all over, like this psalm. It's all over it, but we see it all over the Psalms. Then you have a whole bunch of book of lament called lamentations is Jeremiah lamenting what is happening to the nation of Israel, to the Hebrew people. And we also see here in Psalm 18:6, in my distress, I call upon Yahweh, or I call upon the Lord and cry to my God for help. He heard my voice out of the. Out of his temple. So God hears us in our distress and pain. And my cry for help before him came to his ears. God will listen. Broken soul, a contrite heart. God wants those things. He wants us to come to Him. Psalm 102, verses 1 through 5. Oh, Yahweh, hear my prayer. Let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me in the day when I call. Answer me quickly, for my days have vanished like smoke, and my bones have been scorched like a hearth. My heart has been stricken like grass, and it is dried up indeed. I forget to eat my bread because of the sound of my groaning. My bones cling to my flesh. This is. He's like really showing the depth and gravity of the distress that he's in. Right? This is like on that despair end, right? Do you guys know that depression is talked about in the Bible? Yeah, it's called despair, right? Where your, your hope is just gone. And you don't know what's going to happen next when what's the next thing that God's going to throw at? What's the next thing that I'm going to have to be faced with? So give me understanding according to your word. Let my supplications come before you in the next verse. Let my prayers come before you, God. Don't be deaf to me. Deliver me according to your word. Hear my prayer. Deliver me, God. You may not know what that deliverance looks like, but the ultimate deliverance is justification in Christ right to receive the atoning sacrifice of Christ and be washed and made clean. And in Psalm 28, verses 1 through 9 says this to you. O Yahweh, I call my rock. Do not be silent to me, lest if you are hesitant toward me, I will become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my supplication when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary. Do not drag me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity who speak peace with their neighbor while evil is in their hearts. Give to them according to their works and according to the evil of their actions. Give them according to the deeds of their hands. Return their dealings upon them because they do not regard your works. Do not regard the works of Yahweh, nor the deeds of his hands. He will tear them down and not build them up. Blessed be Yahweh, because he has heard the voice of my supplications. Yahweh is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him. I am helped, therefore he exalts, and with my song I thank him. Yahweh is their strength, and he is a strong defense of salvation to his anointed. Save your people and bless your inheritance. Be their shepherd also and carry them forever. Do you hear that? Even in the distress and the despair of all those around him, surrounding him, those who are coming against him, he is still able to cry to the Lord and see that God is the one who saves and delivers. How many of us need to be reminded of that today? Psalm 30, verse 1 through 8. Out of the depths I called to you. Out of the depths, out of the dirt, O Yahweh. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If you should keep iniquity, O Yah or Yahweh, or God, O Lord, who could stand so? If God actually kept a record of our sins, we could not stand but you. But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I hope for Yahweh my soul does hope. And for his word do I wait. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning. The watchmen for the morning, right? The guys on the wall watching the security, watching, ready to sound the alarm. But these guys are watching for the morning because they're watching for the wrong things, because they're watching for the sun to come up and my shift to be over. Oh, Israel, wait for Yahweh. For with Yahweh there is loving kindness, and with him is abundant redemption. And. And it is he who redeems Israel or us from our iniquities, right? Because you are grafted into the covenants so we can trust that God will deliver us. Jesus even said that His Word cleanses. If you go to John, chapter 15, and you read about the vine and abiding in Christ and he talks about how his Word cleanses. He doesn't always deliver us in the way that we want to be delivered. Right? Right. He delivers us in his way and in his timing, according to his will, not ours. Right. But we are to cry out to him in verse 71, let my lips pour forth praise. Right? Praise is the opposite and the antidote to despair. It's hard to despair when you're praising. It's hard to despair when you're. When you're in the presence of God and you're feeling the hope of Christ washing over you, when you're feeling that indwelling of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit speaking to you, transforming you and changing you. It's hard to be in despair in those moments. Right? So let us practice doing those things for you. Teach me your statutes again. He is teaching the Word. God is proclaiming the Word to our hearts. Right? It is now written on our hearts. And he says, I will write it on their hearts. It is in us. We don't have to. We don't have to go. I don't know God, you know, I don't know what your Word is and blah, blah, blah, but it's in you. You know, It's. It's there. And if you have the Spirit, this will be illuminated to you and you'll start to love it and you'll go, man, I want to be this guy. I want to be this one who's willing to cry out to the Lord no matter what, who's willing to surrender at every moment, who's willing to take the junk that has happened to me and the things that I have done and lay it at the feet of God and walk away from it. So I will praise him because he has and will lift those burdens. I mean, David does this over and over and over again, right? He's always crying out to God. I mean, today we would diagnose David as bipolar. But in Psalm 51, the Psalm of David's repentance from what he had done with bathsheba, in verse 15, it says, oh Lord, open my lips so God speak for me that my mouth may declare your praise again. Sometimes we just don't know what to say, right? Like, okay, what do I say? How do I go about this? And Jesus tells us that the Spirit will speak on your behalf. And when you don't know what to pray, the Spirit prays for you with groanings too deep for us to comprehend, right? Because he searches the heart and he knows your heart. In Psalm 63, verses 3 and 4, my lips will glorify you because your faithful love is better than life. So I will bless you as long as I live at your name. I will lift my hands. I will worship you, right? How many of you heard that song? Praise you in the storm, right? I will praise you in the storm, right? It doesn't matter what's going on, doesn't matter how bad it is. Take all these people who were thrown in prison even today, who get lined up by Islamic radicals and are told to deny their faith and they'll live. And instead they start singing and praising God as they're being shot or having their heads cut off. What it would be to have faith like that. We have it easy here. Persecution like that has not happened here will one day. So we should start preparing for it now. That's why we need to commit God's word to our hearts and meditate on it and praise Him. 172. Let my tongue answer with your word again. Internalize God's word. Act upon it, bring it to memory so that when you are faced with temptation, when you are faced with horrific circumstances, you can proclaim God's word, you can worship him, and you can be steadfast in faith. Back to Psalm 51, verses 14 and 15. David says this. Deliver me from blood guiltiness or deliver me from my sin, O God, the God of my salvation. Who's the salvation? God's the salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise. We must proclaim his praise. His Word we must worship because it is the cure to the things that we are facing and struggling with. We can help others as we point them to the Lord. Right? That's again, one of those aspects we've talked about with forgiveness. That forgiveness, while for you, yes, because you've been commanded, is also for them because it points them to God and it shows them that that man, this guy, forgave me and I don't deserve it because I wronged them so horribly. But because he is in Christ and following Christ, he is willing to forgive me. I want to know what that's like. I want to know this God that He says, says gave him the ability to do this. It will draw others in when they start to see that in your life and they see the changes that God is making. For all your commandments are righteous. No commandment of God is burdensome. You got to understand, we look at the law and we think that man, that's kind of burdensome. And they had to do all these things in order to be, to be righteous before God. We're like, man, that's such a burden. Back then, they delighted in it because it gave them something to hold on to and to live by so that they could honor and worship God, so that they could come before him with their problems, so that when they were in distress, they could go, cry out to him and go, hey, there's this army coming against us and we really need some help. And we know they constantly went and did the wrong thing, but somehow God always drew them back and they would repent, follow him for a time, go stupid again. But we're the same way. Real easy for us to fall, right? As we demonstrated the last time, it's easier to pull somebody down than to pull them up. Verse 73, Let your hand be ready to help me. God is our ever present help in time of need. He is always there, ready and willing to help. He's the one who can pull you up, the infinite creator of all things. He's powerful enough to lift you out of the pit. In Psalm 37, verse 23 and 24 says, the steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way. So when we're actually following the Lord, our steps are guided and directed by Him. Though he falls, so though we fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds His hand even though we fall. If we are clinging to the Lord and He is clinging to us, we will not fall. Face flat, right might be a gentle drawing down, but you Will not just and go, what happened? God thought you had me. He goes, I did. That's why you didn't fall flat. That's why I gave you a way of escape. That's why I gave you repentance. That's why I gave you confession in Joshua 24, verse 22 through 23. And this goes along with. For I have chosen your precepts. All right, we choose it. We must choose it. We must give ourselves to God's word. Joshua says to the. To the Hebrew nation. And Joshua said to the people, you are witness against yourselves, that you have chosen for yourselves Yahweh to serve him. And they said, we are witness. So they're getting ready to go. He's getting ready to die and leave them in the promised land. And he's saying that, that you need to choose. Are you going to serve these gods that are foreign, that are among you, or are you going to serve the one true and living God, the only real God, because all the other ones are just fake imitations. Are you going to serve him, or are you going to keep going in the way you've been going? Are you going to keep with the idols you didn't keep with these things that mean nothing and will do nothing? And they say, no, we're going to serve the Lord. He is our only God. And then he says in verse 23, so now put away the foreign gods which are in your midst and incline your hearts to Yahweh for God, for the God of Israel. So the question being is who here still thinks maybe, maybe they have an idol of the heart, they have something that they're holding above God, but you've chosen, yeah, I'm going to serve the Lord. I'm going to delight in his law. But there's still this thing looming over you that you're like, but this thing, I like this thing. I want this thing. This thing needs to be above it. Could be a family member, could be a wife, be a child, could be a vehicle, could be money, it could be Job, you name it. If you're holding it in higher esteem than God, you are worshiping something other than God. The biggest one of all is are you ultimately worshiping yourself? Put it to death now. Don't kill. Just don't go kill yourself. I'm just saying put those mindsets to death. Put away the idols that are in your midst. Verse 174 says, For I long for your salvation, God's salvation, right? The hope of glory, the final salvation, right? Because you are Being saved, the final commencement of that salvation is at the return of Christ. When you are gathered to him and transformed into his likeness, you will be as he is. So again, delight in him. Delight in his word. Verse 175. Let my soul live that I may praise you. Again praising him. God, let me live so that I can have a life of worship, glory and honor to you and you alone. Isaiah 55:13 says, Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the water and you without silver. Come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without silver and without cost. Why do you spend silver on what is not food or your wages? On what does not satisfy? How many of us know we were not satisfied in the things that we gave ourselves to? Listen carefully to me, to God, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest foods. Pay attention and come to me. Listen so that you will live. I will make a permanent covenant with you on the basis of the faithful kindness of David. The new covenant. An everlasting covenant. Right, our High Priest, like we talked about in Hebrew, it is complete, it is finished. Forgiveness has been given. Grace has been given. Mercy is given. We must have salvation in one and one only. And we will praise him because of that. And let your judgments help me. God disciplines those whom he loves. Even if it's not pleasant to you at the time. Remember that if you are being disciplined by God, it is because you are in Him. You love him and you are following Him. Despair in that discipline because it's God showing you where you have areas that you need to give to Him. And the final verse, verse 176, I have wandered off like a lost sheep. Maybe you feel that way sometimes. Like, man, I know I'm in this program where we get the Bible constantly, like, annoyingly so, right? We're constantly being taught something that is about the Bible. We're constantly being talked to about Jesus. Everything they flip and do points to Jesus in the Bible. I'm on overload. But even then, you're still that sheep that's just over here going, ooh, look at that. What's the shiny thing over here? And what's that? Oh, oh, look, something pretty. We're just like that. We're easily distracted, willing to wander off because we're not looking at the chief shepherd. You guys know that there's verses all over the Bible when it comes to sheep and shepherds, talking about just a few of them. Isaiah 53:6. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Remind me again, where have your sins gone? They have been placed on Jesus, nailed to the cross, never to be remembered again if you are him. Jeremiah 50, verse 6. My people have become lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray, which is something we see happening a lot in the American church and around the world where false teaching is taught. They have made them turn away on the mountains. They have gone along from mountain to hill and have forgotten their resting place, our resting places in Christ. Our resting place is with the Lord. Ezekiel 34, verses 6 and then 16. My flock wander through all the mountains and on every high hill. We're just kind of wandering around, just kind of eating grass as we go, thinking that, you know, we're doing the right thing. My flock was scattered all over the surface of the earth. Now, also keep in mind, this is still in reference to Israel, okay? They're in exile. They've been scattered throughout the world. But it very much, I think, applies to us because we too have been scattered. We too are lost and wandering at times, and we need to be found by the shepherd. And my flock was scattered all over the surface of the earth, and there was no one to seek or search for them, no one looking for them. Verse 16 I, the Lord, will search for the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick and the fat and the strong. I will destroy so those who think that they are righteous in and of themselves. I will shepherd them with judgment. And God's judgments are right and always good. God will find them. Just like Jesus says in Matthew 18, right, that I came to to seek the lost. Right. If one of them goes astray, I'm going to leave the 99 and I'm going to go find the one that went astray. And when I find him, I will rejoice because I have found him and brought him back to the flock. Are you wandering today? Jesus is looking for you. He wants to bring you back into the sheepfold. First. Peter 2, 24 and 25. Who himself. So Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree or the cross, so that having died to sin, we we might live to righteousness. By his wounds we were healed. Did you catch that? Does it say are or were? Were healed. You are healed. You were healed already. He has taken sin on and defeated it. For you were continually straying like sheep. But now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your soul. If you're wandering today. Trust that Jesus is there. Trust that Jesus has already taken your sin, that you have already been justified, that you are regenerated, that you have been brought back before the throne of grace and that grace is still there, that the forgiveness is still there, that God's mercy is still there. And trust in Him. Follow Him. Stop looking at all the other shiny things around you and trust that he is with you. He will guide you and he will provide everything for you, no matter what stage you're in for I have not forgotten your commandments. Don't forget. Don't forget who you are in Christ. Don't forget the commands that he has placed before us as followers of Christ. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Remember, we've talked about this before. First, John is pretty hardcore about this. If you hate your brother, right, your brother in Christ, then the love of God is not in you. It's harsh, but it's God's word. He's not holding back because it is so strong, it is so powerful that we express love to everyone and that we love one another with a love that we don't comprehend. And it can only come because we have the love of Christ.