[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church, located in Plano, Texas, for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit CitizensChurch.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to see you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to be with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Coreia.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of the pastors on staff.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are a guest or if you've been visiting, it's cool to have you here on a summer morning with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Last week, I was just reminded of how summer rhythms change in my home.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all up a little bit later than normal my wife and I were watching a movie.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our 15-year-old son, our oldest son, comes downstairs after a bit of a longer gaming session on my gaming session with his friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always an interesting thing to see how they do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got an iPhone set up so they can see each other and play with the screen in front of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't get it, but he does, and it's cool for him, and I like it great.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he comes down stairs after that to tell us good night.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sweet, it's drama-free, it's simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lean's over to give us his 15-year-old version of a guy's hug.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then makes his way up to bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't always like this with him in bedtime.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are raising little and dry, now you know exactly what I'm about to talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually, bedtime with him when he was very young, it started around six.
[SPEAKER_01]: slow warm bath, move to the bedroom, really light play.
[SPEAKER_01]: No wrestling, I got trouble for that a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wake him up a little bit too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Read two or three books, sometimes four.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sing two or three songs, sometimes five.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd run out of songs after a while, pray with them, lay there, until he fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's important right and then I would kind of do that like inchworm slide out of the bed so it's not to wake him and then like the really slow crawl or stepping towards the door which I would then slightly shut the door so wouldn't wake up all all to help him know that you safe You're secure you're good and I have me wondering what I was thinking about this last week do we ever outgrow that need
[SPEAKER_01]: that longing for safety, for security.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we outgrow it?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure that we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you've felt this too, I know you've experienced this, this feeling, the longing for safety or for refuge or for preservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the reasons we buy insurance invest in our finances, we have ring doorbells and two factor authentication on our phones, whatever that thing means.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have that longing in our hearts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think King David had this feeling too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like us, he experienced it throughout his life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It actually led him this feeling, this need for refuge, for preservation, led him to write six Psalms called victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what we're in this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the six.
[SPEAKER_01]: In all of these Psalms, there's a steady prayer a cry out to God for refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all most of those have specific historical circumstances, moments from his life that prompted him to ask God for help to be his refuge, his preservation, but this song is just a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not a historical setting for this song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I do think there's a reason David is praying this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll get to that in just a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he shows us that in this song.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here, I think what David is doing is actually teaching his people how to pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we read the Psalter, it gives us the words of prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: How to talk to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feeds us, how to speak to God in situations just like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think David was teaching them, employing them to call upon God alone in these moments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at Psalm 16 in verse 1 if you have your Bible over.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, preserve me, oh God, for a new, I take refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's this solemn yet urgent prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a plea, a petition that can be held up by any difficult circumstance of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can kind of choose your moment there.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were here last week, Jeff Saladin, one of our elders, preached out of Psalm 107.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, there's these moments in life that lead us to cry out to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be a wandering, it could be a struggle with a besetting sin, it could be foolishness, it could or just be living in a broken world that would cause us to cry out to God and to look for his refuge just like this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can imagine David.
[SPEAKER_01]: In his older age, long and kingly leadership sitting, getting in his fields, and having some core memes and thinking back on his life and considering a moment just like this and emotion fills his soul, saying, once again, God, you are my first outcry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need you, I need you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it made me wonder for myself and for you, where do your prayers begin?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they ever begin with this need for God, this going to Him as our only one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody in here knows that these moments will come.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment of needing preservation and refuge in a storm, it's true because we've all experienced it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's true because Jesus told us it would happen in John 16, he said, this is gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can count on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: These inescapable and evitable moments that you might just have finished one or you're coming out of one or you're in one
[SPEAKER_01]: these moments are going to come for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do we live in a world like that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And a fallen world where anything can happen at any moment, how do we do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: And David answers the question, the petition for refuge in the very next verse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse one's providing this language for our prayer to God that our backfill with circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think what we find in verse two is really,
[SPEAKER_01]: The central focus of the passage, they'll give verse two.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I say to the Lord, you're my Lord, I have no good apart from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He follows the plea with proclamation, a cornerstone that he stands on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that the original language says, y'all, way you are my adenai.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, you are my master.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will put my whole life on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are my cornerstone.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying that God has become his one supreme treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how he's talking to guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, all other goods in life are good, because of God alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is over everything, and yet he is in all of it as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: No good unless you're in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now one of my favorite things to do in prepping to stand here is to read multiple translations, and it fed me this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the NLT.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, I said to the Lord, you're my master.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every good thing I have comes from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The message, Eugene Peterson's translation says, I say to my God, be my Lord without you nothing makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The new King James, don't read it a lot, but it was pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, oh my soul, you have said to the Lord, you are my Lord, my good thing, my good is nothing apart for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: My goodness is nothing apart from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: David's already found his chief good is delight his treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not on a search anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: His quest for his good is done.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's found that in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a song from someone who has found the one refuge that cannot be taken away.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is longing for Himself and for His people.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted them to have an unshakable refuge in a world that won't stop shaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to talk about this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is when God is your greatest good, you have an unshakable hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me pray and we'll dive into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got as we pour over your scriptures together
[SPEAKER_01]: Pray God that we be reminded, once again, that you alone are our greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's you alone, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We proclaim together, we trust you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hope us to believe these truths, Lord God, as your people gather around your words, spear to the living God with you full fresh.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pray these things and images, I'm in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically, the old student minister got me, we wait till the end to provide some so what, but that's not how David did this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, some practical applications.
[SPEAKER_01]: If verse 1 and 2 kind of set up the conversation, 3 and 4 are almost like this interlude in the song.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: A moment to consider, David considers when he thinks about God being as great as good, he actually considers two groups of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first one is, it's like a verse 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, as for the saints in the land, they're the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eugene Peterson says in the God-choes and lives all around me what splendid friends they make it's likely King David was reciting this prayer publicly in the presence of Israel, okay in the mere side of people who treasure God, who love God, who God is their their firm foundation, their their supremacy that are pursuing him together that trust him whole heartily is reminding him once again of where his goodness is truly found.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought I'd be good, if just for a moment, I know it's a bit awkward in our, like, usually in Sundays, we're like, just look forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, if you would just look around for a moment and consider the people that are around you, see the folks that are here, maybe you're sitting with your home group, maybe you're sitting with your closest friend, maybe sitting with your pals from school, your spouse, your kids, it is a really beautiful thing to sit around a group of people who delight in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: and remind you that he's your greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And stir your affections for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a delightful thing for me to find myself and my family with such a delightful people who delighting God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It fills my soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need this, you do too, and we need when the need comes, when the longing for refuge comes,
[SPEAKER_01]: and they will remind you that he alone is your greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: But David considers another group of people, look at verse four.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, the sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their drink offerings of blood, I will not pour out, or take their names on my lips.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think verse four is what David is asking to be preserved from in verse one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 20 cries out for preservation, verse 4 states the danger, preserve me God from running after other gods, running after other idols.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 4 is what he's pleading against.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be drawn away from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you were to read through the story of David in verse 2 Samuel, you will see this journey from young man shepherd to becoming the king of God's people and you will see a young man who knows what happens when he chases after another God even if the God is himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll show you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows what it's like.
[SPEAKER_01]: This section of the passage feels like the last verse have come now found to every blessing, not saying in it, but I will read it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ode Grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let thy grace now like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm prone to wander, or I feel it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm prone to leave the God I love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's my heart, or take and seal it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seal it for thy courts above.
[SPEAKER_01]: David is stating man's attempt to fix himself to find stability and safety and security and refuge apart from God in a statement in verse four is that it leads to a multiplied sorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Multiplyed sorrows.
[SPEAKER_01]: Culturally he would have been talking about the lower case G gods of his day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: If he watched destroy the lies of his people and countries around him, but I think he also knew what it looked like to run after another king called himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyan College.
[SPEAKER_01]: He addressed the idea that everybody worships something.
[SPEAKER_01]: He argued that the day-to-day reality of life is there's no such thing as atheism or non-belief.
[SPEAKER_01]: This from a person who is not a follower of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, we do not get the choice about whether we worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: only our choice of what we worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's his direct quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, by default, humans are hardwired to believe that they are the absolute center of the universe when we're stuck in traffic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ouch.
[SPEAKER_01]: crowd of grocery store, grueling routine, our automatic default setting is to feel frustrated that the world isn't bending to our immediate needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we do not consciously choose out of think, we naturally slip into an unconscious worship of the self.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says if we do not choose what we worship, that will automatically worship the default settings, offered by the culture, or I would say, of our broken, simple heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: He warns that the cultural gods are insidious because they're unconscious and they'll start to destroy us without us even knowing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he says these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, if you worship money and things, you'll never feel like you have enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you worship your body, your beauty, your health, you'll always feel ugly and you'll die a million deaths as you age.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you worship power, you'll end up feeling weak and deeply afraid, constantly needing to control in order to numb fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, if you worship your intellect, you'll constantly feel like a stupid fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you worship comfort, you will search for a frictionless existence that's always in danger, filling up your life with disappointment and anxiety, or as King David said, multiplied sorrows.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the life of pursuing other gods, not the God of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the battle in our lives to fight for God as our highest and greatest good, our chief treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to return to this Psalm, verses one and two, over and over again to make it a part of our language that we have no good apart from the God who loves us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And verse two then is our reminder, verse four is the challenge that asks God to show you what other gods you run to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you go for refuge that is not Him?
[SPEAKER_01]: So David, this is the experience of David, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: But what is it that would cause him to say things like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do he find amidst the problematic pursuit of other gods that we have all experienced?
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody in here is experienced.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we see that and verses five through eight and verse 11.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go back to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 5 says this, the Lord is my chosen portion.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's my cup.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, here we find David the poet using this beautiful imagery for us to imagine him sitting down to an exquisite meal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Years ago, my older brother took my family and I with him to Chicago on a trip.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a doctor, he sits in the board for the AMA and we went and he took us and he set up for us to go have dinner at a multi-star Michelin star restaurant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never done anything like this before.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just good with eating it, you know, Chick-fil-A or something, but like, I'd never sat at a restaurant like this before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Multicourse, who are there for hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Smollier's bringing out different wine for different courses.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: The chef came out to say hello, it was like, wow, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: His mom took us on a tour of the kitchen where the best seat in the house is in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that meal was unlike anyone that I had ever had in my whole life.
[SPEAKER_01]: My 15-year-old son has his list of favorite restaurants to eat at.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one's not on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chipotle's near the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you laid them out beside each other, there's one choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: The richest affair.
[SPEAKER_01]: David is saying, God, you are my choice, you are the finest choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are the richest of fair and here's why it keeps talking about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the rest of verse five and six.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you hold my lot, the lines of following me in pleasant places.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a beautiful inheritance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, David, as the king, was obviously the overseer and owner of all this land, but he wasn't talking about real estate or gold or power.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and Israel, your father's land became your land.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the boundary lines, you were a lot that was drawn around that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was your inheritance, that was your providence, that was your security, that was the long to you and your father passed away.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was your good, that's what was going to sustain you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But David looks past the soil of Israel and he said, the Lord is my chosen portion of my cup.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hold my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: His greatest possession had nothing to do with the kingdom that he ruled over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing, nothing to do with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's instead saying, God, you are my future and my inheritance, my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of it has been assigned by you and held by you.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a world of unstable unreliable gods, David looks at the boundary lines of his life because of God and actually realizes his future is actually completely out of his hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, it's never been more secure.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's never been safer.
[SPEAKER_01]: because his life belongs to the Lord, because of God, I think David would say, I'm set.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse 7.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I bless the Lord who gives me counsel, and the night also, my heart instructs me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about David's life.
[SPEAKER_01]: During the day, his world was incredibly boisterous.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of us can imagine being the king of a country,
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but he was running things and ruling things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It headed out to war and managing armies and leading people constantly handling all sorts of distractions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we aren't kings, but we get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand the busy life.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand having a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand things in front of us that require our attention all day long, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: But then he speaks about this in the night.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reality to nighttime that changes things.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reality to when life slows down and gets quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: The night was when everything would slow down.
[SPEAKER_01]: No crowds, no demands, just David in the quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we look at David in what's his statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said when the distractions fade when the work ceases, what fills his mind isn't panic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, it's the character and promises of God that is heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: rehearses over and over.
[SPEAKER_01]: The truth that God had given him over and over during the day was so deeply internalized.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was woven into his soul and his mind rehearsed it even in the dark when he woke in the night.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what he heard.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your heart tell you in the night?
[SPEAKER_01]: when you slow down, when it's quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: For most of us, the night is when our anxiety is screaming the loudest, us when it does for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's when we try to distract the most, wait on our phone the most, then just show the most, disappear the most, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's when our fears and our regrets and our worries take center stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, like you, long for his counsel when that moment comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm so grateful, I'm so thankful to God that He doesn't just leave us to figure things out, that He wants to be our counselor in the night when our soul wakes us up.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to actively guide us through that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think because of God, His counselor, David would say, I'm safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And look at verse 8, he keeps going, he's starting to build.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I've set the Lord always before me, because he's at my right hand that will not be shaken.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much of the experience has moved from this inward experience, this mental thought, these feelings about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now he's externalizing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking about God in a different way.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's shifting outward.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's setting the Lord before Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not passive.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a deliberate daily choice to set God in front of Him, to fix his attention on God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the image isn't just that God happens to drift into David's line of sight.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's intentionally placed God at the center of His vision, His pursuit.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's out in front, providing leadership and focus and the way that He should go.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he also speaks about Him being at His right hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: The place in battle it would be the weak side, unprotected side.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's providing a defense and a strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the position of honor and trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: On Friday morning, I took my eight-year-old son and my 11-year-old daughter, rock climbing, indoor rock climbing, not outdoor.
[SPEAKER_01]: indoor rock climbing here in Plano.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I say I took them, I took them up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a guy here that works on staff and is air and he's a professional rock climber.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we met him there, I've a torn-roaked rotator cuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's what would happen before they would get on on the wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a boulder.
[SPEAKER_01]: Aaron will go in front of them And he would say he would literally look back and say, hey, just watch and he would climb
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would show them the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it would say, come here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my boy would just run up there and he'd get on the wall and he would step to the right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would just be with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Standing there, providing encouragement and strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this exactly the way that God is with David.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's literally there, saying, listen, I'm out before you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here beside you church who were not meant to endure this life, surviving under our own fragile, limited power.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anything,
[SPEAKER_01]: If anything, it's an opportunity possibly to repent of trying to exist in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking that we can do this our own.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a supreme leader out in front of us, an invincible defender beside us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are to set the Lord before us every day, but it will not happen on accident.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will not happen on accident because Dave would say the Lord was always before me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he would say I'm strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lastly, look at verse 11.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you make known to me the path of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: In your presence, there's fullness of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: At your right hand, our pleasures forever more.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've reached, I think, probably one of my favorite parts of this passage.
[SPEAKER_01]: At this verse, it goes the heartbeat of David, throughout this journey of this passage back in verse two, and he says, I say to the Lord, you are my Lord, I have no good apart from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at how he talks about it in verse 11.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he's come to this place where his confession, his need, has turned into praise.
[SPEAKER_01]: David's looking to the ultimate destination of life lived in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you show me the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: You show me how to truly live.
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You bring me into your presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: You fill me with the joy that has no bottom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Has no end.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a pinnacle.
[SPEAKER_01]: The zenith of human existence is to be with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Church, look at those words.
[SPEAKER_01]: pleasures forevermore and ask yourself the question, what else can do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: What else can do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: The answer is nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A week and unreliable gods of our culture leave us empty.
[SPEAKER_01]: They promise pleasure that typically expires on Monday morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: their empty, their leaky systems at best.
[SPEAKER_01]: The presence of God is the only place where our soul will finally find its rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think because of God, in his presence, David would say, I'm satisfied.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can see the progression.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see as we make our way through this David's zeal for God, growing as you rise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, as he starts this in one way and finishes in another, his soul is on fire and then there's this therefore.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants his people to be experts on the character of God as they experience him and set him in front of them to chase him as they're only good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at what happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a therefore.
[SPEAKER_01]: The verse is 9 and 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: When David's greatest good was God, here's what came of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, therefore, in light of all these things about God, therefore, my heart is glad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I've made him my greatest good, because he is my refuge, my heart is glad.
[SPEAKER_01]: My whole being rejoices, my flesh, dwells secure.
[SPEAKER_01]: for you and not abandon my soul to show or let your holy ones see corruption.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladness and rejoicing, worship, security, strange and beautiful and radical things to talk about in the middle of needing preservation and refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, David finds them in the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladness of heart flesh that dwells to cure amidst a myriad of problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: David's at rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: and verse him kind of have to pause because it was David talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk to you about what he's not saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: First, David is not saying that he thinks he's immortal.
[SPEAKER_01]: David is not saying that he thinks he's not going to die, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: He obviously did.
[SPEAKER_01]: God told him plainly, if you were to go back and read in 2nd Samuel in chapter 7, the prophet Nathan told David, he literally said, this is where he said, David, he said, you will die, David, and you will lie down with your father.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he knew that his heart would eventually stop, his body would be returned to the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, David had an unshakable confidence,
[SPEAKER_01]: that the relationship he had with the Lord could not be touched or dissolved by the grave.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew that even in death, he had refuge, that even in the worst and terrifying moment of his life that would end his life, God would be with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, he knew that there was a promise that God had made.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as David penned these words, I think he was looking at a glass through a glass darkly.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was pointing towards a massive earth-shattering reality that he didn't fully understand yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where the beauty of the gospel comes in.
[SPEAKER_01]: centuries later, Peter in Acts 2 and Paul in Acts 13 would point back to these exact verses.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what they would say.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, David died in his body saw corruption, but he was a prophet looking forward to the one person who would fulfill this promise completely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as Peter and Paul point out, David was a prophet looking through a glass darkly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse Peter 1 tells us that ancient prophets certainly to understand the grace it was company.
[SPEAKER_01]: David knew something greater was coming, but he didn't really know how.
[SPEAKER_01]: He held on to a promise, who's mechanics, he couldn't really see or understand yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: But church, we live on the other side.
[SPEAKER_01]: We live on the other side of the Nipi tomb.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know how the story fits together.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know what happens when Jesus is the singer
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: What David can only glimpse Jesus fully accomplish through his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, that he becomes our ultimate true one and only refuge from sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unlike any other weak God of this world which promised much but bring no lasting gladness, Christ is our steadfast and secure.
[SPEAKER_01]: hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Jesus went to the cross, he was not abandoned to shield.
[SPEAKER_01]: His body did not see corruption.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, he did something miraculous for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what Pastor John Piper said.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, Jesus willingly allowed himself to be swallowed up by death for sinners like you and like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But inside the belly of that monster, Christ poisoned death from the inside out.
[SPEAKER_01]: He destroyed its power, broke its teeth, and on the third day, the grave vomited him back out into life because Christ poisoned death.
[SPEAKER_01]: The monster has been killed, and we have been set free.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what does that mean for you and for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: That means that in Christ, you're said, he holds your lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christ, what he did for you on the cross, your said, because of Christ beloved, your safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your sin does not get to have the final say over you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your failures in this life, your pursuit of other gods are not the strongest word over your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: This means that you are strong in Christ Jesus in the presence of the one who saved you and then gave you his spirit to walk with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the strength of God abiding with you daily through the Holy Spirit, guiding you, empowering you, helping you, protecting you is with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: This means because of Christ in Jesus, you can actually be satisfied.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a world that offers no lasting satisfaction, we have it in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have this in Christ, she's believer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody who trusts in the person and promise of Jesus Christ is united to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means his victory is your victory.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Christ chimed over death, you cried triumphed over death.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have made him your greatest good, you have an untouchable refuge
[SPEAKER_01]: And a shaken world we have an unshakable hope in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, if you have yet to make him your greatest good, this moment in this moment I would implore you, come to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come to Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come and find the refuge that your soul is longed for, come to Him, run away from the broken experiences of running after multiplied sorrows and some of the God that will never do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friend, it will never do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come to Jesus, allow Him, offer Him, ask Him to be your refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a song from someone who found the one refuge that cannot be taken away and it's offered to you too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, God, I love you so much, you are my delights.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, you are my greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe that Lord, I trust that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, in my honesty,
[SPEAKER_01]: There are days where I don't live that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at our return to you again.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are my refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Preserve me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're my greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are my greatest good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was to speak that Lord to live that to walk in that to set you ever before us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to chase hard after Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at our prayer that you would use this time to have made us more like him.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love you, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for Psalm 16.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thank you that Jesus is the true and better singer of the Psalm, singing it over us and offering us life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Praise be to God, I love you, Lord, and Jesus name.