Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 138
The word of the Lord. A Psalm of David. I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. For thou has magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cry, thou answerest me and strengthenest me with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth.

Yay, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth a far off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the works of thine own hands.

We thank God for his word. And let us pray now that his spirit would illumine it to us. Let’s pray. Our spirit watcheth early unto thee, oh God, for thy precepts are light. Teach us, oh God, thy righteousness, thy commandments, and thine ordinances. Enlighten the eyes of our understandings, lest at any time we sleep unto death and sins. Dispel all gloom from our hearts. Bestow on us the son of righteousness. And unassailed do thou keep our life in the seal of thy holy spirit. Direct our steps into the way of peace. Grant us to behold the dawn and the day and exaltation that to thee we may send up our morning prayers. For thine is the might and thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit now and ever and unto the ages of the ages. Amen.

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My voice—and if you glottal you clear your throat over the next 40, 45 minutes, that’s okay. Seems like a lot of people are doing that around me these days to kind of help me clear mine or something. We know how that works. But providence of God, that’s the way it is. And I’m sure it’ll be okay. So, let’s proceed on into Psalm 138. Finishing up really what we started last week. We suggested that Psalm 138 is a very good psalm for ending one year and beginning another.

In the midst of the final decade of the 20th century, I’ve returned to Psalm 138 where I preached a sermon at the beginning of this final decade at the close of 1989, the beginning of 1990 and in the providence of God. If I stand here in five years, this would be a good psalm to preach as we begin the 21st century as well. Our lives are regulated by God’s calendar. And try as men might, they cannot move away from that.

I don’t know if you know or not, both the French Revolution and the communist government later in the USSR tried to eliminate the 7-day week, make a 10 day week at the French Revolution. They like that 10 thing. Never worked. Never worked. God’s calendar always is retained. So, our lives are marked by his cycles.

Our day and age, there’s a lot of people these days who like mission statements, purpose statements for organizations or churches or missionary organizations, whatever it is. You know, people spend six months trying to figure out what our mission statement is. They try to boil it down to a sentence, a couple of sentences, whatever it is. Make it real simple. And Psalm 138’s a pretty good mission statement. I think it’s a good overview as we’ve seen last week of much of what the scriptures teach about our relationship to God and why we were created. And it is as good as any to memorize this psalm as our purpose statement as a church perhaps and your purpose statement for life as well.

It begins as we said last week with stressing the worship of God. It is amazing if you look at the scriptures how often the worship of God is spoken of. I noticed that in Psalm 1 of course talking about the exclusion of sinners from the halls of God so to speak or his word is preached and people praise him. The scriptures say really the pinnacle of our life is to praise God in all that we do and say and so the Lord’s day convocation that we have is a tremendous time in our lives and this psalm begins where our life should begin with praising God.

We seek God’s glory first in the world round about us not man’s glory. We’re not humanists. We’re not altruists looking for the well-being of others. We’re theists, biblical theists. We want to achieve and do whatever we can to glorify God and to praise his name. So, Psalm 138 starts there. Yea, or rather, excuse me, I will praise thee with my whole heart. Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy temple, thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth.

And then he goes on to talk about what God has done for him. Thou has magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cry, thou answerest me and strengthens me with strength in my soul.

We begin with the praise of God. Praising him for his attributes, his loving kindness and his truth, his covenantal faithfulness to his covenantal people primarily is what’s talked about there, which of course has the concept of mercy. It’s the only reason God is in covenant with us is because of his great mercy and compassion, his condescension toward us. And then his truth, his faithfulness, his certainty of what he says will come to pass. And that’s the basic understanding of truth in the scriptures. It comes forth from the person of God. And the psalmist and David here talks about praising God in the context of the gods.

If you were here last week, you know that I think that’s angels in the convocated worship in which we meet with the heavenly host in around God’s throne room on the Lord’s day worship. And so in worship in the Old Testament as well, they had that understanding. That’s why we do the let us lift up our hearts. We lift them up to God. He says he’ll worship toward his holy temple and praise his name. So the purpose statement begins with the same thing the Westminster Catechism does. Our chief purpose of man is to glorify God and then secondarily to enjoy him forever. And so that’s given to us.

The psalmist goes on to talk about what God has done for him. The second part of our outline again this week talks about what God has done in terms of magnifying his word above all his name. And this is in the context of David crying out to God for deliverance. And so God’s bringing David into relationship with him and bringing by way of symbol the people of Israel, the church into relationship with him through his covenant and through the exalting of the faithfulness of that covenant word above his name and person, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, dying for our sins, he answers us and strengthens us with strength in our soul.

And so while the transcendence of God is stressed in the first a couple of verses, God’s imminence with his people, his saving acts with us is stressed in the next verse and a half. And then we go on to see so part of our purpose statement is to recognize what God has done for us. And when we seek deliverance from whatever it is in our lives, to turn not to men first, not to other things, not to our own abilities, but to turn to God for deliverance.

And then the third part of our purpose statement could be an implication of verse four, all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. We’re to glorify God. We’re to seek and understand that our deliverance has come from his gracious condescension to us. By grace, you’re saved by faith. And that is not of your works. It’s the glory of God is to be stressed in that and his sovereignty.

But then we’re saved for a purpose. We’re saved to speak forth God’s word to the created order. The kings of the earth are the covenantal heads of the nations and everywhere the word is to be spoken out. And we have been given a wonderful promise by God of the future. Here he says that all, not some of all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord. He promises that the future will involve the conversion of men and nations and kings representing those nations.

And how does this happen? Does this happen through political action? It does not. Does it happen through physical force and with the sword of the flesh. No, it happens through them hearing the words of God’s mouth. And what are those words? Well, it goes on to say in verse 5, they’ll sing in the ways of the Lord. The words of the Lord, the ways of the Lord includes his law. What we’ve spoken of in the first portion of scripture, the kings will recognize their purpose is to glorify God and to seek deliverance from him and him alone and then to serve him.

So, our purpose statement could go on to say that we stress the glory of God. We recognize our salvation came from his mercy. We turn to him for deliverance from our problems that beset us. And the context of all that is so that we might then preach his word forth to the entire created order and expect victory. Expect men and nations to be converted through the speaking forth of the word. And then it goes on to talk about the need for humility before God.

That God brings forth sanctions against those who do not humble themselves under his mighty hand. Verse 6 and 7. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth far off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. He’s talked about it from the past. He said, when I called out, you strengthen me. And he says, in the future, then I know that if I have trouble this week with my employer, with my family, with my church, with my government, with my own sin, whatever my problems are, if I walk in the midst of trouble this week, thou wilt revive me.

He relies upon God’s past action, telling him who God is and God’s faithfulness and truth to say that when the sanctions come, if we’ve humbled ourselves before God, he will revive us. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies and thy right hand shall save me. God’s right hand, you know, when you take an oath, you lift your right hand. And God lifts his hand in terms of covenantal faithfulness to his people.

And that hand is a hand and arm of power and strength. And he brings sanctions against the proud, but he lifts up with that same hand those who humble themselves under him. And so our purpose statement also includes an acknowledgment of a need to humble ourselves under God and to receive the blessings of his sanction and not fall into the cursings of the sanctions of his law. And then finally, it ends with a view to the future.

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, oh Lord, endures forever. Into the future, God will continue to perfect that which concerns us. And then he seeks to makes a petition before God. Forsake not the works of thine own hands. It’s a good purpose statement. I think Psalm 138 gives us God’s wonderful condescension to man pointed out in those first three or four verses. God has brought us into a position where we can praise him because he’s exalted his faithfulness and his covenant word above his very name.

And he has brought us into covenant. He has answered us when we cried out to him and delivered us. He has condescended to us. He has brought us into covenant with himself. It speaks of God’s marvelous promise of the future. All the nations of the earth shall be converted when they hear the words of God as spoken through his people relying upon the scriptures as their only standard. And then God gives us a final comforting task at the end of that psalm that he will perfect that which concerns us.

Every Lord’s day we need to come wanting to praise God with our whole heart and we want to hear that word of instruction that we might know God’s ways as the kings are to know God’s ways. And we want to rest at the end of all of that in the finished work, not of our holiness and righteousness, but the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Great comforting promise at the end. And we rely upon that both personally, individually, and corporately as well, that God will perfect that which concerns us.

We spoke last week that God has in many ways brought us increasingly year by year to a perfecting of the work, the maturation going from glory to glory. I’m sure of us individually. I could go for hours talking about people in this church for the last 5 years and those who have God has continued to work and mature and the demonstration of that and he’s also done it with us institutionally. If we look at these five parts here of the outline where we stress first the worship of God secondly the scriptures the word of God’s that God has magnified above his name third the need for evangelism.

To kings of course but also to every everyone else. A fourth the need for humility and finally a reliance upon God’s work. We can see that in each of those areas worship a biblical focus evangelism and humility God has perfected and matured us over these past few years here at Reformation Covenant Church. Our worship becomes increasingly year by year more and more self-conscious and we build in elements that have been foreign to us but yet the scriptures spoke of them such as an example the raising of hands in worship.

We spoke about that for several years before we started doing it. And it’s still uncomfortable for some of you, I know, but it won’t be uncomfortable for our children. And the scriptures say several times that the lifting of hands in worship is proper in praise of God and a good thing to do. We’ve talked about the provision of overview sheets that explain why we worship the way we do. I’ve talked about that last week.

A biblical focus, of course, is what we tried to do with our constitution. Why it took longer than some to write? Because we’re trying to think these things through biblically. The same way that the Jerusalem Council matured the church in Acts institutionally through the provision of documents. So it is also that God has done that here at Reformation Covenant Church. We talked about evangelism. We’ve talked about humility, God’s faithfulness in the past to mature us in these things.

And I want to talk today a little bit about the future. Looking at what we’ve done last week, looking ahead to what we’re planning for this next decade into this year. I want to talk a little bit more about that this week in the context of this psalm. But let’s just review a couple of more things here. Go a little bit slower now over these five points and review a few things. First, again I’m telling you the same thing.

The first aspect of this psalm and the place we start is to glorify God. And particularly that’s seen in the context of worship. Worship is the model by which we live our lives. It’s the pattern for living and what we do in the Lord’s day here is important. Why are you here today? Think about it. Why are you here? Is it a sense of duty and responsibility? That’s not bad. That’s good. Is it because you need biblical instruction and you have hurts in your life that need to be addressed by the scriptures?

That’s a good thing, too. That’s a good reason to worship. I was listening to a great tape this week by Curtis Krenshaw, and he talks about what we should do in trials and afflictions. And one of the many things he talks about is we should worship God because worship heals us. It helps us to have that biblical perspective, the heavenly perspective. So, that’s a good reason to be here. But let me suggest that the primary reason you should be, maybe you’re here because somebody else thinks you should be here, your wife or your husband or your parents.

But let me suggest that the primary reason you should be here is because you owe God. You owe him. He has delivered you. He created you. He brought you into salvation. He delivered you from hell through the work of your savior. Here you owe God worship and praise. It is a responsibility and you should love God so much if you understand the hell from which he has delivered you and your own rebellion that he’s rooting out of your heart.

Your response to him should be so much driven by a duty and responsibility you owe God but also for a love for him that you come forward to this place every Lord’s day desiring to praise him to praise his holy name. Not primarily to see the folks, not primarily, you know, what you might get out of it, but what you can give to God to sing forth his praises. That’s where we begin. That’s where we begin.

I spoken on discipline. I remember a sermon I gave you number of years back. We had a hard discipline case going on and we had to excommunicate somebody. And I preached on why we do those kind of things. And you know, you never want to forget that God’s pattern of discipline going through suspending folks to the table, admonition, suspension, excommunication, those declarations by the church. You never want to forget that one of the purposes is restoration.

We’re not too smart. You know, we think we can figure out what’s going to help people. We can’t. We’ve got to rely on the instrument panel, God’s word. Well, if we make this declaration, they may get upset and it’s just going to harden them against the Lord. Well, you know, you may be smarter than God, but if God says that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s what you’re supposed to do. So, we got to keep in mind that discipline has that element to it.

But more than that, to hold somebody back from the Lord’s table, more than for their well-being, the primary purpose again should be the first couple of verses here. It should be a concern for the glory and praise of God. The reason why sinful men are kept out of the convocation of the saints is because God doesn’t want their worship. He doesn’t want his worship defiled by people who in their hearts have rejected him and spurn his counsel again and again.

A discipline’s basis, worship’s basis is the glory of God. And let me let me just suggest here that in terms of the glory of God and the formal worship of the church. I’ve talked about the great things God has done in many ways the last a decade. But you know, there’s areas in which we need a lot of work and worship is one of them. You know, worship is one of them. I don’t, you know, again, I don’t want to step on toes or make you feel bad.

This is supposed to be a comforting talk because God will perfect that which concerns you. But as we look to the future, one thing that I want, and I know that there are others in this church who want to better worship and praise God on our Lord’s Day services, we want to sing when we come here. We want to sing out to God. We don’t want to be, you know, concerned about who might hear us or that we don’t have a voice that’s very good or that it’s cracking today or you know whatever it is that holds you back from filling your lungs with air and blowing that back out and praise to God through the gift of speech and music. Whatever holds you back from that, get rid of it. Knock it out of your lives because God wants to hear you sing to him.

When we come together, we’re not singing for each other. We go away encouraged by the singing. But when we come together, we’re singing to God. See, we’re doing worship for him. We’re in his presence and he desires you to sing loudly and to lift up your hands and not be feel ashamed or embarrassed by that somehow. If you’re not if you’re not convinced of the biblical truth of it, talk to myself or Elder Mayhem. If you’re not if you’re not convinced of why you should sing talk to us. I think the scriptures tell us over and over again, we’re supposed to sing praises to God loudly with a loud voice.

Let your voices shake the ground. And we’ve got to learn to do that better. Not I take a lot of responsibility for a lot of the blame rather. Maybe, you know, we’re not picking the right songs or maybe they’re difficult for you to sing. Maybe they should be transposed down a key or whatever it is. I don’t know music that well. Maybe we should start having the organ played too. You know, one of the things about having an organ and piano going at the same time is it creates a lot of noise and your voices aren’t quite so significant then or so or so much heard.

So you maybe wouldn’t be as embarrassed. Maybe we could do some things like that. Maybe we could train a small chorus of people in the songs we’re going to sing a couple weeks ahead of time. I was thinking maybe I could provide a tape a week ahead of time. We got orders of worship week ahead of time. Maybe I can have a tape where just the tune is played out so you can practice it at home. We’ve got to practice our worship of God.

We want to sing forth praises to him with voices that are filled with love and excitement. James B. Jordan when he was up in Seattle talked about how when you first got married, you wanted to sing around your wife. You know, you were happy. You’d whistle when you saw your sweetie pie or whatever it is or your husband. And then you if you if you get a raise at work, you go to work and then boss gives you a big raise or big commendation, you just feel like whistling or singing.

We should be excited about what God has done for us and what he’s doing for us. And we should love God. And if we have that love and excitement in our souls, we’ll sing forth more fully praise to God and we’ll mature into these this next 5 years moving toward the 21st century to be a church that sings well.

I think that everything that we do as a church based upon this simple truth that the praise of God, his glory should be our first purpose in life. Everything we do here at this church and in your lives individually too of course should be done with a sense of excellence. You should do you should try to be the best you can be in everything you are in life. Well scriptures say no matter what you do all things for the glory of God. Whatever you do it unto the Lord as if you were doing work for God because you are at your vocational calling or in your worship or in your ministry here at church.

I mentioned last week that a corrective factor for our lives always should be the summation of the law as given by our savior. The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second like unto it is to love your neighbor as yourself. That means that if we’re loving God, taking the ministries here at church for instance, as an example, whatever it is you do should be done with a sense of excellence.

You should aim to make whatever ministry you’re involved with, whether it’s music, instruction, setting up chairs for the meal, getting the meal ready, the agape, whatever you do here in the context of your ministry at church, maybe you’re part of the homeschool group that has leadership positions or things to do or ministries in the context of that. Maybe you’re involved in missions and you’ve got a missionary responsibility here at here at RCC. Sabbath schools, as I said, maybe you’re involved in one of things you do every year is try to help on one of the special days, the the celebrations we have, Reformation Party, the Thomas’ October Fest, whatever it is.

See, you should look at it as an attempt to do excellence in that way. I’d like us to have the best homeschool support group in the state. Not because I want to be prideful about us. I want every other church to aim for that same thing because it glorifies God to try to do these things well. To try to do them well. I want us to have the best. We probably do have the best agape in the state because we probably have the only one. So, we’re pretty well off there, but we want to improve it. You know what I mean? We want to do it excellently for the well-being, not for the wellbeing, but rather for the praise and glory of God.

I want us to have the best showers to welcome new babies into families into this church. Whatever form they may take, they can be different. I’d like us to have the best sets of instruction because we want to do things for the glory of God. But remember, there is that second commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. And God says that if you think that somehow you’re doing things right because you’re striving for the best, but you’re not really encouraging the people that you’re doing in the context of, you slipped up.

I was at a basketball practice this last week with my two boys. I love go to these practices, whether last year softball or baseball, this year basketball. You learned so much. The lessons are so clear as these people are trying to work together as a team. This last night I saw one boy probably the be and undoubtedly the best shooter in the team on their basketball team. Best player, no doubt. He’s got that first part down.

He’s doing things excellently. Not for God. I don’t know. He may be doing it for God. I don’t know. But boy, he does not love his neighbors himself. He’s yelling at everybody else cuz they’re not doing as good as him. And he’s getting mad at people. And he’s even getting mad and yelling at the coach. See, so he may be a good player and all that’s fine. But when he does that and thinks that somehow that’s an opposition to being to loving his neighbor as himself.

He’s got it messed up. And so here in evaluating your ministry and committing yourself in your particular ministry here at RCC or in your vocational calling or in your family or in your community, those are the two poles. The love of God, the love of God’s image bearer, man. This is second, but this is important because if we say we’re really loving God, and as a result, we’re playing on that basketball team the best we can and we’re getting upset because other people don’t do it.

If we’re not figuring out ways to encourage them to do that, not just always, you know, cranking on them about it, then we’re not really loving God. God says, “Don’t say you love me.” In First John, if you hate your brother, you’ve not seen me. God says, “You’ve seen my image bearer. If you’re always upset with my image bearer, you’re upset with me. You hate me.” So, those are the two polls. And as you evaluate ministry here at RCC, what you did in the past, what you did yesterday in terms of your family, vocation, what you did the last month in terms of your ministry here at RCC.

I want you to think about it. Did you do it striving for excellence because of your love for God? You’re serving him, not the members of this church. Ministry is to God first. Have you done it excellently? And then secondly, have you done it with a view to encouraging and loving your neighbor as yourself? You see, those are the two poles that we can evaluate ourselves on.

So okay, very important that we get that straight and continue to go back to that first point, the glorification of God, the praise of God being our central purpose. But then secondly, as we said, God speaks of his marvelous condescension to us. He tells us that he’s magnified his word above his name. We talked about that last week, Elder May, I read Psalm 115. I hope you made the connection. Remember we talked about that last week. Swearing to your own hurt, putting those things above the very person and God says that kind an amazing statement. He says that’s true of himself.

Let me just read a quote here uh Spurgeon in his treasury of David reminds me. Okay. Spurgeon in his Treasury of David quotes a fellow named Joseph Philpot on this particular verse where God magnifies his word above his name. Philpot says this, God has magnified it above all his name and the fulfillment of it. God’s faithfulness being so dear to him, he has exalted his faithfulness above all his other perfections.

We see this in nature. Here is a man so to be depended upon, so faithful to his word that he will sacrifice anything sooner than depart from it, that man will give up his property or life itself rather than forfeit his word. So God has spoken of magnifying his word above all his name. He would sooner allow all his other perfections to come to not than for his faithfulness to fail. He has so magnified his faithfulness that his love, his mercy, his grace would all sooner fail than his faithfulness.

The word of his mouth and what he has revealed in the scriptures would affirm salvation that is ours which rests upon his word when God has magnified that word above all his name. What volumes of blessedness and truth are contained therein? So that if God has revealed his truth to your soul and given you faith to anchor in the word of promise, sooner than that should fail, he would suffer the loss of all.

For he has magnified his word above all his name. Tremendous, tremendous truth from God’s scriptures that should greatly greatly encourage you. Now, God also wants us to exalt our responsibilities to him above our person. That’s really kind of a a further statement going back to that first point in our outline. These kind of go together. God wants his glory to be more important to us than our person who we are.

I uh Greg Skipper reminded me last week after the sermon that R.J. Rushdoony and he several years ago quoted someone and I don’t remember who it was about this point of the glorification of God. This man said one way to test your commitment to the glory of God is to ask yourselves are you willing to be damned well I think he meant eternally for the glory of God. Remember when I heard that I thought, “Wow, boy, you know, I mean, does the scriptures really ask that same question of us?” I don’t know.

In another conversation this week with Chris W., he reminded me that Paul had said that he would, if he could, be accursed from Christ for the sake of his brethren, the Jews, that they could come to conversion as a result of his being accursed. So I think the statement is a good one. I think we do have to evaluate our desire to exalt God and his name above our name and person. And now you know I if that question is too hard for you, let’s make it a little easier.

Are you willing to be poor for the glory of God? That should be a lot easier, right? I mean, not eternally dead, just poor. Well, if so, then you want to crucify the lust of the flesh that leads to greed, for instance. I was listening that Curtis Krenshaw tape, he was talking about Spurgeon said that he thinks every man needs two conversions, one for his soul and one for his pocketbook. Well, That’s probably true in a lot of people.

We It is a hard thing to give up love for money in our culture particularly that stresses it so much. Are you willing to be poor if it means obeying God’s word? Let’s make it a little harder. Are you willing to be hated if it means glorifying God and being faithful to his word? Now, that used to be somewhat of a somewhat of an intellectual statement that I would ask. Now, it’s a little more real for me.

I remember when we took biblical counseling training from Mr. Cyprian He said, “There are people in I don’t remember if it was Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, wherever it was, who to this day, if you mention George Cyprian’s name, they spit on the street. They’re so mad at him for what he’s done to their family because of the biblical truths he brought to the family.” Well, are you willing to be hated for the glory of God?

Are you willing to be made single for the glory of God? Willing to give up your wife? You willing to give up your kids if it means obeying God’s word, glorifying him above you? do. These things are things that happen in the providence of God. I’ve not been tested with that last one yet. I’ve been tested with the other two. In fact, I can’t tell you that what my obedience would be. I know that God’s grace is sufficient.

And I know that there are other people I know in the last 10, 15 years who said no to each of these things, who put their love for money above the glory of God, and who put a desire to be liked by people above the glory of God, and who put their wives or their children above the glory of God. And I feel bad for those people. I feel bad because their lives will continue to be a shambles as long as they continue to fail those tests.

God asks us, God says that this nice theological formulations that we come up with the sovereignty of God, that’s where we all start this church. God’s sovereignty, his glory, nice intellectual truth, easily taught, easily demonstrated from scriptures, very difficult to apply in the life. Very difficult. There are real life implications to the theology we’ve talked about for a dozen years at RCC. And you know, I it I think that it takes years to understand that this is not some intellectual game.

Now, I know nobody’s here because of an intellectual game. And I know I never really thought of it that way, but I know too that when the difficult times came in my life the last few years, these truths got more and more real. I saw the real life implications of being steadfast to do what God has declared in his word we ought to do in spite of these problems and I know that many people around me over time takes time sometimes God is gracious this church no problems for seven eight years to speak of it maybe almost 10 years and then a lot of problems he was gracious built us up knew we were weak I guess so he kept us from some of that stuff not so other churches right out of the shoot independent reformed church in Salem got formed good faith faithful church got formed having to be hated by people to be faithful to God.

See, so it’s going to happen in your life sooner or later. You got to come to those things and you got to be willing to put the glory of God above everything else. What did Job say? Job lost wife, children. Not wife but children. Lost all his children. And he said, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He understood first couple of points of Psalm 138. God had graciously brought him to acceptance of it.

All right, so let’s move on. In the day I cried, he strengthened me. The first two points, then I’ve repeated them over and over. I probably said enough. Let’s move on to point three. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, Lord, and they hear the words of thy mouth. Mentioned this a little bit last week. This is a statement of eschatology, and it’s a statement of what God will do in the future, and it’s a statement of the means he will use to accomplish that purpose.

The providence of God, we want to grow and mature individually and institutionally as a church in our evangelism. I think that’s what’s being stressed in this third point I mentioned last week and didn’t have time to read the verse. It says, “These kings will praise God or they’ll walk in his ways.” First Kings 2:3, they’re commanded to keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways. And then it goes on to say what that means.

To keep his statutes, his commandments, his judgments, and his testimonies as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whethersoever thou turnest thyself. First Kings 2:3. Kings will walk in his ways. They’ll keep his statutes, his commandments, his testimonies, his judgments, as written in the law of Moses, and is brought to fruition in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In whom came grace and truth, faithfulness and covenantal mercy by God to his people. The ways of God are the ruts of righteousness as defined by his standard in the word. And so this third element of this preaching from Psalm 138 has to do with our responsibilities. Once we get our mind straight about glorifying God, our primary task in life is to speak his word. There was a couple up in Seattle. Don’t have don’t see them much anymore, but boy, I just loved what the wife particularly I learned from this uh Priscilla you might call her today that our responsibility is simply to speak the word or our responsibility is not to convince anybody.

Ultimately, Holy Spirit does that. God does that. But he does it through means and the means that he chooses to use as us speaking forth the word. I’ve got a tremendous desire in my soul to simply speak the word before kings. I have an opportunity probably in the next few weeks to do just that. I was contacted by a legislator and I don’t know this woman really, but she wants to know what our perspective is.

Wants to spend a couple hours with me and some other folks from parents education association and pray for me that I use that opportunity simply to speak God’s word not confrontationally but not ashamedly either being clear and bold I ru you know I’m you some of you who’ve been here number of years know that when Governor Roberts vetoed our bill several sessions back she called me on the phone to tell me why she was going to veto it and I told her that I thought she was wrong and this and that and the other thing but you know I don’t think I made good use of that opportunity to speak God’s word before the governor.

I try to use those principles, you know, of freedom and education, etc. But it’s different. God doesn’t say speak forth the principles of his word. He wants them to hear his words. See, from the scriptures, he wants us to take what the scriptures assert and make sure that when we talk to kings, they know that we’re not talking for ourselves and we’re not talking from a libertarian laissez-faire attitude, either economically or educationally.

We’re speaking because Our standard is the word of God. God wants us to remind kings that there is a king of kings. See, he’s not just interested in getting them more intellectually on board with what they should be doing in terms of their laws. He wants them humbled. It goes on to say after talking about those kings that you got to be humbled before God. If you put up with pride, he’s going to cut you off.

Now, we got a tremendous. I mentioned it last week just in passing. Another great opportunity this year. Charles Star Representative Star is leading the Bible study for the combined they’re going to combine the House and the Senate. Now, there’ll probably be 20 25 maybe 30 legislators in that study to begin with. And in the past, they’ve gone through a book of the Bible. You know, that’s okay. And people tend to, you know, one of those things everybody shares what they think it means to them.

And Representative Star is going to take them through this book, the Challenge of God, the Government. This is ABC’s for you and me. I’d say just about everybody in this church knows the truth of this. And really, All it asserts is the kingdom the king Jesus rules over the kings of the earth that civil magistrates should rule for him. But that’s a tremendous isn’t that doesn’t that make you excited to know that kings rulers here in Oregon are going to hear and reading this book that they are responsible to King Jesus.

Now, you know, probably I’m not saying they’re going to turn around the Oregon legislature. It’ll probably empty out the Bible studies. What it’ll probably do at first, but praise God for it. I hope you desire to have an opportunity to testify and to speak God’s word before kings. I do. I have a great desire. The Parents Education Association has gotten more and more self-conscious, more and more overt than the biblical statements we’ve made in the various publications we put out.

That’s a good thing. And now, now we’re going to bring up, Lord willing, some speakers in May. We’re going to try to have a regular conference every May to coincide with the anniversary of the date when Geneva is a city in the 1500s adopted God’s word as the basis for their culture, their community and their civil polity. You see, kings in Geneva, the king of Geneva, ruling assemblies there heard God’s word and they ended up praising God because of it and God blessed them.

Three months later, he sent him John Calvin and you know the rest of it. So we want to remember that every May and we want to take opportunity that we to keep in front of ourselves the goal. We want to speak the word to the city of Portland as a city that it would affirm the principles of the Reformation that God’s word is the only standard. We’re talking with Pastor Melhuenny from the Bay Area, California.

Probably a lot of you have heard of him. He’s the fell that has gone done battle with the sodomites for years down there. Church was firebombed, I believe, etc. House had bricks thrown at it. You know the story, I think. What you may not know is that his doctoral dissertation done at Westminster Theological Seminary in California was on preaching to politicians. Preaching to politicians. See, that’s what we’re talking about here in verse four.

Preaching to politicians. And he is committed to the concept of a Christian political party to speak God’s word self-consciously into the political arena and then, you know, God does the rest. But to be faithful. So hopefully he’ll be he’ll be up here in May. We got to look over some of the literature, make sure he’s the best speaker. Maybe have one or two others. We’ll see. But hopefully he’ll be up here for a conference relative to Christian political action to speak God’s word into that arena and to kings.

So that’s an exciting thing. Pray about that. Maybe you can help us out in some ways. We’ll things will form up in the next few weeks. So we go from glory to glory as a church, maturing in terms of our application of God’s word to the civil sphere as well. Remember that kings govern over nations. This is talking about not just the conversion the kings, but nations. And so the evangelism spoken of here, God isn’t just concerned about the kings.

They represent the nations. You see? And so what I’m saying is that if you think it’s a good thing for you or me or someone else here to speak God’s words to kings and see the results of that and them coming to conversion, then how about you in your neighborhood? How about you with your co-workers at your place of work? How about you with your neighbors? How about you with your friends, maybe Christian friends?

Do you want to speak the word, God’s testimonies, statutes, judgments, etc. full orbed implications of what Christ has accomplished for us? Do you want to speak them forth before those people as well? You should want to. And I’m pledged to go anywhere, any place, any time to lead a discussion, whether it’s one night, 10 weeks, all day, middle of tonight. I don’t care. But if you want me to come and help you speak that word to a group of people, call me.

You know, I’m anytime, any place, I have a great desire to take what God has done in terms of this church and understanding of it, the glorification of God, to speak it forth to individuals and to help you speak it forth. And you know, you may be thinking about that. I know some of you are about having me to your house and getting some folks together. And you know, as I was thinking about this last week, I don’t know that we want to focus upon the church that this is a thing from Reformation Covenant Church.

You know, what we’re to praise is not the institutional church, as good as that is, or the civil sphere, political, anything else. We’re we’re not here to worship Reformation Covenant Church. We’re here to worship God. And so, if we take the word out to kings, it’s not the word of the institutional church. Now, hopefully The institutional church comports itself well, conforms itself to the message of God’s word.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of the church. It’s extremely important, but it is a judged institution in America. That’s what’s happening. The church is being judged by God. I got a letter this week from John Elliott, who editor of the Christian Observer. He has a thing called the Chesapeake Theological Academy back in the East Coast. He’s trying he’s using on Olive Tape Libraries mailing list to put together a directory of churches that love the works of the Puritans, love reformed covenantal theology and who are independent primarily.

He’s trying to reach the independents because he says in this letter, the denominations are all breaking down. You’ve heard that, you know, for years from me, but it’s true. That’s what’s happening. The cracks are everywhere in these denominations. The churches are being judged individually, institutionally, denominationally. And so, we don’t want to talk about a message of the institutional church.

We want to bring people to church. Certainly, we want them to convocate together and form churches, but the primary message we want to speak is the glory of God. They need to glorify God in all that we do and say, including in the civil sphere and in the rule of nations to the kings. So, this year, great opportunity to start to implement some of the stuff some of us have talked about and thought about for years.

John Thomas’s idea of video coffees. We’ve got videos we can show if you don’t want me in there or Elder Mayhem or someone else. Great videos, great tapes. We could have little tape listening groups of some of your neighbors to talk to them about full orb implications of Christ’s gospel, what he’s accomplished and what how he reigns now as king of kings. Pretty easy. Invite people over to watch a video for an evening, friends, neighbors, whatever it is.

John had another project. I think it was called project six, where you get six friends or relatives and you regularly feed them information from a biblical reconstructionist transformation is perspective kind of a more of a low-key approach and have them over and full bore discussion feed material six people focus on them pray about them and try over the course of 6 months or a year to develop some lines of communication that if they’re Christians they may go from glory to glory and mature in their Christianity or if they’re not that they’ll come to a submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and come to salvation unconditional surrender studies etc this is the year having accomplished much of the structure stuff took us three years instead of two.

Now we’re cranking up and getting ready to take this message of Psalm 138 being a synopsis of what all the scriptures teach to take it out there again. Pray for us. Do what you can do. We’re going to have a booth for the church, not just the parents education association. They’ll have a separate booth for Reformation Covenant Church at the winter workshop next month in February. Pray for that. Pray that we know what advertising sheet what sheet of