Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 92 today.
Psalm 92 begins by telling us how important it is to take seriously the start and the
end of the day.
Listen to verses 1-5, "It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, almost
to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, to the music of the
ten-string lyre and the melody of the harp.
For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord; I sing for joy at the work of your hands.
How great are your works, O Lord, how profound your thoughts!"
The way that you start your day and the way that you end your day will end up being the
way that you spend your days as a person.
If you start and end your day with busyness, you are a busy person.
If you start and end with worry, you are an anxious person.
If you start and end your day with lust, then you are a greedy person.
If you start and end your day with God, then you are a godly person.
The Living Bible paraphrase of verse 2 is, "Every morning tell him, 'Thank you for
your kindness,' and every evening rejoice in all his faithfulness."
And then, after telling us how important it is to start and end the day with God, Psalm
92 goes on to tell us the difference that starting and ending your day with God will
make in your daily life.
This is a psalm about trials and about the new perspective that God's presence can bring
to those trials as you start and end your day with God.
Let me just walk through what this psalm has to say to us on the trials of the heart that
we face that are talked about in this psalm.
Verses 6 and 9 tell us that for those who feel mistreated, maybe you're feeling mistreated
right now in your life, or you have at least at some point, and you know what that feels
like.
For those who feel mistreated, God is exalted and evildoers will be forever destroyed.
Listen to those verses, 6 to 9, "The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand,
that though the wicked spring up like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever
destroyed.
But you, O Lord, are exalted forever.
For surely your enemies, O Lord, surely your enemies will perish.
All evildoers will be scattered."
So he says, here's the perspective change that happens when you spend time with God.
Those enemies of this life who mistreat you, who might be mistreating you right now, it
might be a person, it might be a circumstance, it might be something in your own thoughts.
It may seem like they're springing up like the grass right now, like you can't stop them
from growing, like you can't stop those evildoers from succeeding.
They said that about me, and they're the one that got the promotion?
He says, in the end, if that's the path they continue on, it's a path of destruction.
You're going to be destroyed forever, but God will be exalted forever.
So that is the new perspective that's given through God's presence.
God is exalted forever, and you serve him.
You're his servant.
So whatever you might have to go through in this life, it doesn't change the truth about
who you are.
You are the servant of the forever exalted God, and as his servant, he's going to exalt
you.
He's going to have you come up beside him.
It's amazing to think about the rewards that are in front of us.
So which life would I rather have, the forever destroyed life or the forever exalted life?
It's a change of perspective when I spend time with God.
Then in verse 10, he says, "For those who are feeling weak," he prays, "make me like
a wild ox."
He's praying, "Give me a new confidence that's born of worship."
Verse 10, "You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox."
This is not as immediately understandable to us.
The horn was a symbol of power.
So to have a horn that was exalted was to be in power, a new power to live your life.
And he's saying, "Give me that in my day."
Now maybe you're feeling weak right now.
I encourage you, instead of trying to make yourself look strong or feel strong, lean
on God who is strong.
Lean on God as the one who will lift you up.
You may not feel strong, but he will give you strength.
And know this, that even though you cannot do all that you would like and dream in this
life, some of us get to do more of it, some of us get to do less of what we like and dream,
none of us get to do all that we would like and dream.
Even though that is true, if you're feeling very weak right now, God is at work through
your life.
God is at work through your prayer.
God is at work through your faith in ways that are above your imagination.
He is a God of strength.
And as you lean on him, that strength is shown through your life in ways that you won't
know until you get to heaven.
So the new perspective is, God is working through your life in power, in his power,
even today, even when you feel weak.
When I am weak, he is strong.
In verse 10, he reminds us of something else as we walk through our day, as we trust in
our perspective that's changed by his presence.
Verse 10, he says, "For those who feel unloved and unlovable, pour fine oil on my head."
He's saying, "Clean and purify me."
The last part of verse 10, "Fine oils have been poured upon me."
This world and the people in it have a habit of telling us that we're not worth very much.
And our own thoughts can conspire against us as well.
The hurts of your past may be whispering to you right now that you are not loved, that
you are not lovable.
But look at the cross.
As Jesus' blood was poured out for you, in one sense, it's that the oil of forgiveness
was being poured over you.
Oil is a sign of cleansing and purity, and that is what God has given you through your
trust in Christ.
God is shouting from the cross that he loves you, that you are loved by him, that he accepts
you, that he has not condemned you, that he has purified you and forgiven you.
Listen to his voice.
"Fine oils have been poured on me."
Let that pour over you right now.
Receive the truth of God's perspective, like oil being poured over you right now.
In verse 11, he goes on to give us another one.
"For those who feel defeated," he said, "that's what the trials of life are doing to you.
You feel defeated," he says, "God is bringing victory."
Verse 11, "My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries.
My ears have heard the rout.
The enemies are going to be defeated, and God's children are going to be victorious.
My eyes have seen it.
My ears have heard it," he's saying, "I have sensed it."
You're going to face some defeats in this world, but you, because you are a follower
of Christ, can always live in victory because you know that victory is the end of your story.
If my favorite baseball team gives up 10 runs in the first inning, I might be tempted to
turn off the game.
Not going to watch this one.
But if I knew in advance that the final score was 11 to 10, you better believe I'm going
to watch that game just to see how the victory finally happened.
Even though it looked like they were defeated, the victory was going to finally happen.
And that's what God has told us in a much stronger, more powerful, and significant way.
Our life in Christ is a life of seeing how the final victory will happen.
No matter how defeated you might feel right now, the game is not over yet.
Life is not over yet.
God wants to give you his victory, and he has given it to you in Christ.
Now it is good to be honest about the defeats and hurts of this life.
You see that all through the book of Psalms.
We don't have to pretend that we don't have defeats in this life, but we do have to recognize
this new perspective that we get from God's presence, that the story of our life in the
end is going to be a story of victory.
There is no defeat.
There is no defeat that can change that story, because it's a story that's written by the
cross, written by the resurrection.
He goes on to talk to us about how we might experience life because of our trials.
In verses 12 and 13, he says, "For those who feel useless, God is bearing fruit through
you."
12 and 13, "The righteous will flourish like a palm tree.
They will grow like a cedar of Lebanon, planted in the house of the Lord.
They will flourish in the courts of our God."
Now verse 6 talked about the evil flourishing like grass.
And now we hear about the righteousness flourishing like the palm tree, flourishing like a cedar
of Lebanon.
The grass is here today, gone tomorrow.
It dries up in a day.
But palm trees, they can live hundreds of years.
But they're just kids compared to the cedars of Lebanon, which can live thousands of years.
The oldest is said to be 3,000 years old.
That is a new perspective.
Am I going to focus on the grass or the cedars?
Am I going to live for the one day or am I going to live for eternity?
I will often, as a follower of Christ, feel useless in this world if I measure myself
by the standards of this world.
But that's not how we measure ourselves.
Get God's new perspective.
And flourish like the palm and the cedar.
Live for things that are going to last forever.
Live for people.
Live for character.
Some of the things this world doesn't value, but God values.
In verse 14, just to add another word to this, he says, "For those who feel old and passed
over," you might feel that way right now, "he will keep you fresh and green."
Verse 14, "They will still bear fruit in old age.
They will stay fresh and green."
And then verse 15, one final one, "For those who feel uncertain, God is your rock."
Verse 15, "Proclaiming the Lord is upright.
He is my rock and there is no wickedness in him."
God is the rock that we stand on.
And in these verses, in this verse, verse 15, he says, "God is upright.
There is no wickedness in him."
God's goodness and God's integrity is the rock of security that we need.
In a world of shady deals, he's the light.
I can't imagine the light of the world saying, "Oh, that's a gray area to me.
He knows what is right and what is wrong.
His truth is a rock that I can stand on."
Sometimes we can tend to make our rock a circumstance, but once that circumstance changes, our hope
seems to have disappeared.
Or sometimes we make our rock a person and that person lets us down and we feel like
our hope has disappeared.
Your rock is the God of the universe and he will never let you down.
So we talked about spending time with God, recognizing his presence.
Let's do that in prayer right now.
Lord, we pause at the end of this to ask that through these words we've just heard, you
would speak to our hearts about who you are, that in your presence, we'd recognize that
even in our weakness, we can find your strength.
Even when we feel useless, we can see that we're being fruitful by trusting in you.
Even when life feels shaky, we can see that you are the rock that we can stand on.
We stand on you as our rock right now.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Tomorrow we're going to look together at Psalm 93.