It's good to see you all here this morning. Shall we begin this morning in prayer? We're thankful to have a time today, Lord, to sing praises to the ever-living one, the everlasting one, who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow and forever. It was our Redeemer and our Savior and our friend.
May our hearts be stilled. May our minds be quieted as we think about your word this morning so that we might be strengthened and that our needs might be met in Christ. We ask in His name, amen. I don't know whether you were at the early meeting, but we enjoyed reflections upon the person of Christ.
And some of those thoughts fit in very well with my message this morning. My message this morning is, you might say, directed at trying to get everyone, myself included, to get back to a book in the Bible, which is a very important book. That is the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms.
There are many blessings to be found in the book of Psalms. Telahim, Psalmoy, however you translate it, the original meaning is songs of praise, praise, songs. That is what a psalm is. It is not merely a song.
It is a song of praise contained in that one word. We might say that the Bible, as a document full of information, valuable information about God and His Son, Jesus Christ, helps us to understand our faith. But isn't it wonderful that that book of 150 chapters in the center of your Bible is a book which can help us to express our faith. Charles Swindall called it private and unfiltered songs, prayers, and petitions, an inspired anthology of praise.
It's quite a good observation that he starts that with the word private, because of course now it's not very private. The thoughts and meditations of King David are now for you and I to read. And my message this morning is in three parts. I'm going to look at the Lord Jesus and the Psalms, then King David and the Psalms, and then some touchstones in my life where the Psalms have meant something personal to me.
Job 387, what does Job 387? Where was thou, thou, Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together, when all the sons of God shouted for joy. Before there was a Bible as we know it, there was singing. There was singing.
And that gives you pause. That should give you pause. That singing is actually something that is inherent to what God's creation is designed to do. And of course we're not all equally gifted.
I speak for myself in terms of being able to sing. But we sing, and that is a God-given gift to be able to try to do. However, we may try to do it. It goes back to before the world was even created.
And so that if the Spirit of God moves you to sing, you should respond to that. You should respond to that. And you should consider, well, some of the things that God has given in his word that can be sung. Warren Wierzby brings out two very important words about God.
And some of them came out this morning. The Psalms present God as being both imminent and transcendent. So everyone knows the meaning of the word imminence spelt with two eyes. Does everyone know the meaning of the word immanent with an A in the middle?
So everyone knows imminent means near in time. If something is an imminent event, it's going to happen very soon. Immanent means near in space, near in creation, near in reality. So we have, in fact, if you were to Google this, you would find out that as I did, that very often theological statements about the nature of the Christian God use these two words together.
That God is both transcendent and imminent. So transcendent, transacrossed area to give way for. So beyond or above the range of normal human experience. Yes, God is like that.
God surpasses the ordinary. He is exceptional. In a sense, he exists apart from it. He's not subject to the laws of physics and the limitations of the material universe.
Yes, God is transcendent. He's also imminent. He exists and operates within. He's inherent.
He permanently pervades and sustains the universe. Paul said this in Acts 17, in Athens, in him, you live and move and have your being. Do you know that? He served a bunch of Zeus worshippers.
And he says, there is a transcendent God. And you have forgotten him. He's transcendent. But I'll tell you something else about him.
That in him, you live and move and have your being, even though you may not know it. This morning, a brother said that from Ephesians that Jesus is all in all. Indeed, he is. He is all in all.
He is transcendent. And he is imminent. Colossians 1 16 was read this morning. For by him all things were created.
That are in heaven. That are in earth visible and invisible. Whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him.
And he is before all things and by him all things consist. He is imminent and he is transcendent. Psalm 75 1 brings these ideas into a single verse. unto thee, oh God, do we give thanks?
unto thee, do we give thanks for that thy name is near. Thy wondrous works declare. Thy name is near. The transcendent name of God, the person of God, the character of God, and all that his name is and all that who he is is near.
What a wonderful thought in the Psalms. We look at the creation of God. And indeed, it does declare. They do declare to us that God is behind it.
And God created it. But is it near to you? Or are you like those people in Athens for whom this is just a theoretical concept? Is the transcendence and imminence of God, the glory of God and the nearness of God?
Are these actually realities to you? If they are not, you need to come to know God. You need to come to know the Lord personally. The Psalms, I guess anyone would say, any believer would certainly say, you know if I was stranded on a desert island, I would, what, and I had to pick one book.
That would be a no brainer for me. And for you, probably, give me the Bible. That's the only, if I can only bring one book with me, and I'm going to be alone and stranded, I want the Bible. Oh, here's maybe another one.
What if you can only take one book of the Bible? Not allowed to take the whole Bible. Someone says you can take a book of the Bible. I'll take the Psalms.
150 chapters, lyrics, prophecy, theology, that is truth, doctrine, history, because it's tied in many places to the life of King David and others. And therefore, instruction, instruction comes out of the above four things. All scripture, 2 Timothy, 3, 15, 16, all scriptures given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, in righteousness. As a person who teaches for a living, and as a guy who's raised four kids or tried to raise four kids, you sort of get the sense that people can have a lot of problems.
Turns out my associate dean is a believer. And he was in my office and we were talking about a particularly problematic student. And he said that, you know, and we have been saying in the department that the percentage of students with various kinds of problems seems to have increased. I say, yes, I think it has.
And he said that the range and diversity of problems that come through his office are kind of staggering. And you know, there's a certain amount that you can do for people. But there's a certain problem that you can't do a whole lot about whether you're a father or whether you're a teacher trying to impart information. Somebody's not teachable.
If somebody's not teachable, that person has a tremendous deficit, a tremendous problem in their lives, whether it's moral or whatever it may be, a person who's fundamentally not teachable, who's stubborn and stiff-necked as God refers to the Israelites at their worst, that is a very serious problem. We as believers need to be open-hearted and open-minded to the instruction of the word of God. We need to be teachable. Jesus Christ is all through the Psalms, 73 of which were written by David, 12 by Asaph, 10 by the sons of Cora, two by Solomon, two by Ezra Heights, and one by Moses.
It has five books. Did you know that? And no, they're not 30 chapters each. And they have different themes.
Although I would say that his people, his deliverance, his sanctuary, his reign, and his word could actually, you could probably come up with related themes, because through this book, you have his incarnation, his suffering, his person, chaperding of his people, and his reign, his coming reign. So this is a very, very rich book. And I would commend it to your reading, just as I would commend the entire scriptures to your study, reading, and especially when it comes to the Psalms, to your meditation. I've been quite taken in the past little while with the Lord Jesus, the fact that he is prophet, priest, and king, or as I have it here, king, prophet, and priest.
And these are offices. They are indeed offices of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is indeed king of the universe. He is therefore worthy of worship. He is worthy of your loyalty.
He is worthy of your 100% allegiance. If he is your king, you are his subject. He deserves your full loyalty and allegiance, and even your worship, as no one else does. He is also God's final word.
He is God's ultimate prophet. The world often thinks of him as a good teacher, but he is far more than that. In the same way that we need in our souls someone to be worthy of our worship, we need someone to guide us. We need someone who is all wise, who is all wise, who can shed light into our lives to guide us.
It's a fundamental need. He is also priest. He is the priest and all priesthoods. We can think perhaps that when you think of these offices, that the priest shall we say occupies the religious component of life.
And I've never known a born-again Christian who really likes that word. I don't really like that word. You like the word religious? If you're born again, we tend not even like that word.
But this is a component of what you are. You need the right leader. You need a king in your life. You need light in your life to reveal the mind of God.
You need God's ultimate prophet. And you need someone who is your redeemer, who is able to redeem you, the priest to end all priesthoods, who will intervene for you and who is advocating for you even now. So let's look at some verses that point out and remind us about the fact that Jesus is king, that he is prophet, and that he is priest. Psalm 2.
You can see that it begins with a question. Why do the heathen rage? Do we not live in a society today with an awful lot of raging against God? And as a Christian go, why are you doing that?
How is that profitable to this society? Why do people imagine vain things 24-7 to their own destruction and confusion? The kings of the earth set themselves, take counsel against the Lord. What is the point of that?
What utter futility? To work together to fight against God. What utter, utter futility? The verse that I love.
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. Jesus is the king, the appointed king. I will declare the decree the Lord has said unto me, that art my son this day. Have I begotten the incarnation of the Son of God, the king, the king.
Is he king of your life? Does he occupy the throne of your heart? God has said there is no other king. He is the only one worthy of your allegiance, of your loyalty, and even your worship.
Prophet, in Psalm 22 we read in the first 20 verses or so in which David is speaking by the Spirit of God about the sufferings of a person who is being crucified. And this was written 1,000 years before the crucifixion of Christ. How do you explain that? How do you explain that?
There was a famous Jewish rabbi who actually had so much respect for the teachings of the New Testament and of Jesus of Nazareth that he wrote a commentary as an unbelieving Jew on the New Testament. His name was either Montesiori or Montefiori. I can't get the answer to the F right. But this rabbi, there were two chapters in the Bible that he wouldn't touch.
Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 can't explain them. Can't go there. In the Spirit, the Lord revealing to him what was coming. David saw in two the sufferings of Christ.
And then we read, my praise shall be of the and the great congregation. Another translation says, I will tell of thy name to the assembled congregation. Isn't that wonderful? This is the Lord Jesus, the fact that we congregated here, assembled here, have the revelation of Christ.
And in the revelation of Christ, we have the revelation of God. God is shown to us in and through the person of Christ. And after his sufferings have been completed, we are then pointed to God by Christ. Priest, do you need one who intervenes for you?
Do you need one who advocates for you who's on your side, who is not only on your side, but is in fact, your redeemer and your savior? As noted in the book of Hebrews, this Jesus is a priest forever, forever after the order of Michael Kizadak, a timeless book, a timeless character from the book of Genesis, forever. That is the kind of priest we need. By the sacrifice of himself, he brought to an end the need for sacrifice forever.
All sacrifice is finished. He is unique in that he presents himself to God because he has sacrificed himself for our sins. No one else can therefore advocate for us like him. When we come to the book of Psalms, we should be watching for the Messiah.
We should be watching for the coming savior and his person and his work. But we can also watch for other things. We can watch for how the experiences of King David relate to the Psalms. And in fact, there are 13 of them.
Here are some of them. Why? Why is that good to watch for as you read the Psalms? Because here is a person, notably, the most victorious King that Israel ever had.
So if I make an analogy to today, the most victorious Christian ever. He's the most victorious King Israel ever had. And when he pens these words in the book of Psalms, he is showing us by the direction of God's spirit in penning these words, what it's like to receive guidance from God. Do you need guidance from God?
I sure do. Here's a man who had so many ups and downs, as well as the victories, that his life was, in some ways, quite a roller coaster. I don't know whether your life feels like a roller coaster sometimes. But in these books, in these chapters, you have the history and you have the devotion of David to God and the penning of how God guided him and blessed him through his experiences of life.
He would receive peace. He would praise God. He would experience forgiveness. These are all things that I think we can relate to.
So the book of Psalms is a very good one to be able to identify with someone, and that someone is identifying with you about what it's like to be a Christian day to day. Psalm 3 relates to betrayal by Absalom. Psalm 34 on the run. Psalm 51, sin and forgiveness.
Psalm 52, betrayal. Psalm 56 being under suspicion. 57, fleeing again. 59, having to jump out of the window of your own house because your wife is warning you that they're coming to get you.
Psalm 63 in the wilderness yet again, but this time as king. Wilderness. Before he was king, he was in wilderness that had names like Ziff and Mayon and Peran, wildernesses. So let's think for a moment about three of those things, those many varied experiences.
Betrayal, is that an easy thing to handle in life? Catastrophic sin, moral failure. Disaster, moral disaster. And wilderness, the wilderness.
Have you ever felt like you're in the wilderness? Betrayal. When everybody says there's no helping you, you're hopeless. Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in God.
But thou our Lord art a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of my head. I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill, Salah. I laid me down and slept. I awakened for the Lord sustained me.
How disturbing it must be to be betrayed, especially to be betrayed by your own son. And yet, through God, he is able to sleep at night. Failure, moral catastrophe. As you know, David had an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba.
And he got his confrontation from the prophet Nathan. And when it was pointed out to him, he immediately accepted that he had done it, that it was him. It's me, you're right. No denial, immediately admitting it.
And so we read in Psalm 51, the plea that God would create in him a clean heart and a right spirit after a moral catastrophe. Wilderness, that's interesting, isn't it? To think about wilderness, the number of times that David ended up, well, before he was king, he also ended up after he was king, in a desolate place. Well, sometimes life is kind of desolate.
Sometimes life puts you out there, and no doubt you feel alone. You feel abandoned. You feel that there's nothing around me that's of any use. And the Lord has brought it into your life.
Brought wilderness experiences into David's life multiple times. These are opportunities. Wilderness experiences are opportunities. No distraction.
Turn to the Lord. Focus on the Lord. There's nothing else. The wilderness is the wilderness.
That's a good time to focus on the Lord. If he's brought a wilderness experience into your life, welcome it and turn to him. Oh, God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee.
My soul, thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory. So as I have seen thee in the sanctuary, because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Returning back to the Lord, remembering what it's like to spend time with the Lord in sanctuary.
Is there thirst in your life? Well, there can be thirst, and there can be thirst. The Lord Jesus in talking to the woman at the well said, I am the eternal fountain of water, the living water. That is what I am.
And she went and told everyone. Now I come to some thoughts, sort of general thoughts. I work at a place where there is a significant Buddhist influence, a significant number of my colleagues, not so much in the engineering campus, but at our Buddhists. They're Buddhists.
And it seems that the administration of the university is very much behind that. And it used to be that people who are into Eastern religions, they would say, join our meditation class. And it's funny how that has changed. You don't see much in my way of posters.
It's almost like every bulletin board has something. But it's not Buddhist meditation anymore. I bet you know what it is. I bet you know the words they're using.
Mindfulness. What? Awareness. Of what?
It reminds me of the fact that when you look at the dictionary meaning of the word meditate, that has to do with thinking about something that's true, probably, or about some one. In other words, thinking about something, not thinking about nothing. I don't even know how you think about nothing. But the idea of meditating is actually extremely appropriate in the Christian context.
Because we have some one to turn to, some one to meditate upon, some one with whom we can commune in our souls. It reminds me of how, in the realms of apologetics, some atheists are now trying to redefine the word atheist. Because it's philosophically flawed to try to say that a negative statement is absolute. Atheism.
No God. From a logical and philosophical point of view, even unbelievers know that that is not something that can be proved. It is a negative. So aware of this, are they that they are now changing the meaning, trying to change the meaning of atheism into what we would call agnosticism?
But they are atheists make no mistake. They are denying the existence of God, whether they admit it or not. Meditation should be thinking about someone and that person's character, not thinking about nothing. The Psalms give us an opportunity to glorify they help us, they're the lyrics to songs.
And of course, many of them have been put to music, so that we can praise someone who is worthy and who is glorious. I think also, in light of the roller coaster of David's life, as many victories as he did have, we need to be led. We need to be led. We need to be led by someone who's capable of leading us.
And that person is the all-wise savior. Down at the bottom, I hesitate to even put my initials there, but I have. I question the wisdom of doing that. In closing, I have about five minutes.
And the Lord got hold of my life in 1977. And the experience that I've had over these years has been affected quite a bit by what I like to call touchstones. In engineering, we have benchmarks. You can survey the territory.
And then somebody says, well, what's that relative to? And if you say nothing, all of my surveying today is relative to nothing. I've worked with professional surveyors, and I've done some surveying. I tell you that if you have just done all of that stuff, relative to nothing, throw the record book away.
It is useless. If somebody forgot to write down where the benchmark is on this entire project, I don't know what to do with the book. It's all relative. In my Christian life, there are things that you sort of need to come back to.
You need touchstones. You need things that you come back to. Things that the Lord has given you. Sometimes life beats you up.
Sometimes you get emotionally depressed. Sometimes you get mentally discouraged. Sometimes things don't make a lot of sense. And at that point in time, you're sort of not prepared to engage in a two-hour Bible study.
You're just kind of, ah, I can't. I don't know. And then these touchstones, these verses, would come to me in difficult times. Psalm 1, blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sineth in the seed of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law does he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers, yes, of water, of water. That bringeth forth his fruit in his season.
His leaf also shall not wither. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. And I think of that image of a leaf. A leaf is a relatively fragile thing.
Somehow, it gets its life through that stem, through that branch, through that trunk, through the root, from the water. And that's why the leaf is green as fragile as it is. And it'll be fine as long as that connection to the nutrients and to the water is maintained. Leaf going like this in the wind.
Sometimes your life is like, I'm just this fragile thing being bounced around in the wind. Yeah, but you'll be OK. You'll be OK as long as you are drawing from that river of life. As long as the nutrients from the Lord keep coming, you're going to be OK.
Be like that tree. Psalm 16, the lines in one translation, it says of verse 6 there, the boundary lines. Boundary lines, I love this thought. The boundary lines are falling for me in pleasant places.
I have a goodly inherited inheritances. Life is not all about having complete freedom to do whatever. That results in disaster. If we imagine that the best kind of life is a life without any boundaries whatsoever, that is a very wrong concept.
It doesn't work for the believer to be able to say that God's hedging in of me, the boundaries that God has created for me are pleasant. They are good. I hope you know something about that. Has God hedged you in?
Has God protected you? When you think about it, he has. He has not let things get out of control to the point that you have been destroyed utterly. You may have been brought low, but he is in control.
And though the boundary lines around your circumstances and your life are of God, they are pleasant. And the future is therefore good. I have said the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My flesh also shall rest in hope. Psalm 37, delight thyself also in the Lord. And he shall give thee the desires of thy heart.
Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass. Going through uncertainty in terms of, well, there's two things that parents tend to be very concerned about with their kids. The first one is their salvation.
The second one is who they're going to marry. And the third one is whether they have a decent job to put food on the table. And I go back to when I was single and I felt very much at sea and not knowing how that singleness would ever be resolved, I go back to when I thought my job was just about the most horrible job in the world and how I could go out there in the field and do that another day I didn't really know. And it all worked out.
It all worked out. The Lord, I kind of came to a bit of a breaking point and I said, if I have to go out there again tomorrow, in the ice and the cold, and take those samples from the rivers again, so be it, so be it. And I just trusted the Lord. I just accepted it.
I said, well, if that's what the Lord has, I will rejoice of it and I will accept it. It wasn't long after that that the whole thing changed. Everything began to change. A Christian professor came from UNB and everything began to change, not long after that.
Verse 6 of Psalm 84 and closing, we're at 12 minutes after. Looking at life and comparing God's tabernacles to the longing of the soul and being in God's house, which is a great privilege. He comes to this. Verse 5, blessed is the man whose strength is in whose heart are the ways of them.
Who, passing through the valley of Baca, makes it a well or a spring. The rain also fills it with pools. They go from strength to strength till each appears before God and Zion. In the wilderness, God can fill those depressions, those cavities with water, so that you can make it.
And instead of destroying you, you can go from pool to pool, from strength to strength. And the outcome is that God will bring you to himself. And that's the, you know, clearly that's the most important thing. It may never be rich, but the most important thing is that one day you will be with your Savior.
One day you will be with God. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you that your word is rich. And we pray that as we live out our lives before you, that you will teach us to turn to you in all of life's troubles and wilderness experiences and difficulties.
Teach us to come to you to rely on you, to know what it is, to enter into sanctuary with you, and though all around us is wilderness. We thank you for our brothers and sisters who love and support us. We thank you for this assembly. Help us to be people who worship you and who understand who the Lord Jesus is.
As our Redeemer, as our Messiah, and as our King. We pray in His name. Amen.