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When Life Hurts (Psalm 5)
12 Plays1 month ago
Growing in Grace Devotions and Inspirations
Hosted by Pastor Victor Morrison
First Baptist Church
1700 Milam Street
Columbus, TX, USA 78934
http://fbccolumbustx.org/
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Transcript
Introduction and Prayer
00:00:08
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Welcome to Growing in Grace with Pastor Victor Morrison. This is a ministry of First Baptist Church located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas. We are praying that God will bless you as you listen to this message.
00:00:22
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If you would like additional information on worship times and ministries at FBC Columbus, you can find out more at our website, fbccolumbustx.org.
Motivation and Recent Disasters
00:00:32
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And now, take your copy of God's timeless Word as Pastor Victor gives today's message.
00:00:43
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Welcome to Growing in Grace. I'm Pastor Victor Morrison, pastor of First Baptist Church in Columbus, Texas. So glad that you're listening today. Pray that God will bless you through this message.
00:00:54
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This message is motivated in my heart anyway. i was having my own quiet time with the Lord and praying for the people who had been through the Hill Country flood disaster.
00:01:05
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ah Perhaps you've heard of it, maybe depending on where you are. You might not have, but I think our whole nation, for sure our state, is definitely hurting for the people that are in Kerrville and Hunt and Ingram, different places that are to the west of where I am.
00:01:22
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But even being here, I still feel it, and I know others do around me, and we're all trying to help ah to minister.
Resonating with Suffering and Offering Comfort
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I just ah was giving a check to one man just minutes ago,
00:01:34
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who's taking a load of supplies that way. But anyway, um I want this message to to really connect with those who are hurting. You know, sometimes life hurts.
00:01:46
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Sometimes we're happy and life is just incredible and overflowing. And if that's the way it is now, then I rejoice with you. You know, the Bible says rejoice with those who rejoice, but we should also weep with those who weep.
00:02:00
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And so Psalm 5 is what the Lord spoke to me through His Word. As I was praying and just meditating, I was thinking, how can I be of help? So um in some ways, I guess as a pastor, this is my way of helping. I just want to pass it along.
00:02:16
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So anyway, I hope this blesses you.
Psalm 5 as a Refuge
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You know, most scholars say that the historical setting during which David wrote the fifth Psalm was the rebellion of his own son, Absalom.
00:02:31
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Absalom attempted to seize the throne of Israel from his father. Can you imagine how painful that would be for your own son to attempt to not only violently take what you have worked so hard to achieve, but to even try to take your life as well?
00:02:50
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That has got to hurt. Since there are many hurting people across the state of Texas this week, I sense the Lord leading me to share with you my devotional thoughts from my personal time with Him shortly after the Hill Country flooding disaster.
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Psalm 5 comforted me as I read it, and I pray that the Lord will use this great passage to comfort you as well. Of course, that was my context for my own personal sorrow from seeing the tragic images on television and social media.
00:03:26
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You know, human suffering is hard to process when we see it. So I'm not going to offer any easy answers or platitudes, but I'm simply going to point to a consistent place of refuge, a place of comfort that has been effective for the hurting for centuries.
00:03:48
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namely Psalm 5. This great Psalm tells us what we can do and where we can go when life hurts.
Connecting Pain to Biblical Stories
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Perhaps in addition to your grief over the devastation from flooding that has now taken the lives of so many here in our state, as a matter of fact, more lives have been lost through this flood than through Hurricane Harvey.
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You may have other hurts of a different kind that are weighing you down. And the Lord may connect with you about another kind of pain other than, well, like David's dysfunction within his family or the disaster that removed so many loved ones across our state.
00:04:34
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So let me read the passage and let's see what God will say today. Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
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O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness.
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Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers." You destroy those who speak lies, the Lord of whores, the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
00:05:18
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But i through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
00:05:29
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Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me. For there is no truth in their mouth.
00:05:40
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Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels because of the abundance of their transgressions.
00:05:56
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Cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in you Let's go through this passage, and share five different truths with you that be support.
God's Unchanging Nature
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may exult in you for you bless the righteous o lord you cover him with favor as with a shield let's go through this passage and i want to share five different truths with you that i hope will be of support The first truth is found in verses one through three of this psalm.
00:06:36
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You know, and I believe the truth is this, that through prayer, we can ask God to pay attention. We can call attention to our pain.
00:06:47
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And whose attention are we asking for? God's. the attention of God to my pain. I believe that's what he's referring to in verses one through three.
00:06:58
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You see, he asks God in these verses, especially like, ah for example, in verse one, he asks God to notice the density of his pain.
00:07:09
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You know, he uses the word groaning. What do you think of when you hear the word groaning? I think of wailing, I think of something that very ah deep within someone. It's an ache that cannot be healed instantly.
00:07:26
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I think also that whenever we are wanting God's attention to our pain, we can not only ask Him to notice the density of it, but also the intensity of our pain.
00:07:39
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Listen to what He says next in verse 2. Give attention to the sound. of my cry give attention to the sound of my cry my king and my god for to you do i pray Don't you hear a father here who is hurting and he's just saying, Lord, I can't hold it in anymore.
00:08:02
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I've got to let it out. And as he lets it out, he said, Lord, please listen to the pain that is in my voice, to the pain that is in my heart.
00:08:15
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Ask God to notice not only the density of your pain and the intensity of your pain, but also the immensity of your pain. It's immense.
00:08:26
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The suffering and the pain, the sorrow of those who went through this flooding, it's immense. It's colossal. You know, ah he says, it's so large, Lord, he said, in the morning you hear my voice, in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
00:08:45
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Twice, he says, this is such a big thing for me, I'm gonna i' gonna talk to you in the morning. I'm not gonna wait until after I go through my checklist.
00:08:57
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Lord, you are first, and I wanna talk to you, and I wanna ask you, please, Lord, would you graciously pay attention to what has caused me tremendous pain?
00:09:10
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That's the first truth that I see that we can learn from a man who was hurting. But let's move to the second truth because I believe it's very important whenever we're going through hard times.
00:09:22
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Verses four and five and six, I believe move beyond God paying attention to our pain to us paying attention to God's attributes.
00:09:34
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So the second truth is this, the attributes of God during my pain. Sometimes when I've been in pain and ah in the past, I know when my father ah was diagnosed with cancer and it it didn't look like he was going to survive it, this second round that he had.
00:09:54
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Well, when I went through that, I began to question whether God really cared, whether God was really present. And I was a missionary to Japan.
00:10:04
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And I was a servant of God. I walked with God. I tried to read his word and pray every single morning to start my morning off with him. Just like David was saying, I'm going to start my morning off with you.
00:10:17
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And Lord, these mornings, I want you to please pay attention to my pain. But I wonder sometimes if we can still, even though we're praying, even though we're going to church, even though we're serving the Lord and a Christian you know Sunday school teacher, let's say, or someone who's been living for the Lord, we can still allow a terrible tragedy or some hurt that we have experienced in our lives to cloud the truth about who God is
00:10:51
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You see, the attributes of God, they don't change. Like our circumstances, our situations that we go through in life, they're up and down. We have the happy times, we have the sad times, and everything in between.
00:11:05
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But the attributes of God are steadied. And so I wanted you to know verses four, five, and six, I think God is saying through David that we need to recalibrate if we're beginning to drift in our faith.
00:11:21
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You know, your emotions are one thing, but your faith is something totally different. Our faith should not be attached or built upon how we feel on given days.
00:11:33
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It should be built upon who God is. So when I read these verses, I thought, who is God? And he says, you are not a God who delights in wickedness.
00:11:46
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Evil may not dwell with you. So I thought, who is God? I'll tell you who he is. God is a God who delights wickedness. in righteousness and goodness.
00:11:59
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That's who he is. Another verse here reminds me that also the kind of God that we know and serve that is revealed to us in Scripture clearly is a God who is drawn to brokenness and drawn whenever we humble ourselves.
00:12:16
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And that's why David says quite clearly in verse 5, the boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. And so I'm thinking what he's trying to say is humble yourself.
00:12:30
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Bring your brokenness to God. Come to God with humility. Don't come to God with arrogance. Come humbly to God and say, Lord, I am really hurting over this.
00:12:42
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I need your healing touch right now. I think also you can see in these verses that God, he does not like falsehood. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
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So he speaks of lies and deceit as being the polar opposite of who he is. Who is God? Well, He's a God who delights in righteousness and goodness.
00:13:11
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He's also a God who is drawn to brokenness and humility, but He is also a God who is defined by truth. His word is truth and He is true.
00:13:24
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He is faithful. He is consistent. And so just know that's who God is and it will help you to have that rock, that is placed in your life on purpose for times like this, when you need to say, I need to know where truth is but because my emotions are all over the place and because circumstances are all over the place and I don't know where God is.
00:13:51
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I'll tell you where he is. God will always be standing in the same spot he's always stood in this in that place of truth. But also I believe that God defends life.
00:14:05
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He defends life. God is not bloodthirsty. He does not delight in the death of the wicked. He does not. No, he will judge. He will send wrath.
00:14:17
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But that's not what he wants to defend and delight in. I believe sometimes what we're confused about is he has to defend the righteous and the innocent by taking the lives of those who are bent on evil and those who are bent on murder and lying and all those kind of things.
00:14:37
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But I just encourage you to meditate upon what Scripture says are the attributes, the characteristics, the traits of the Lord God, the Almighty.
00:14:50
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But let's move to the
Facing Spiritual Enemies
00:14:51
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third thing. That is the attachment to God with my pain. Now there's some people described in verses four, five, and six who are walking away from God.
00:15:02
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Maybe they've never even walked with God. They've never prayed to God. They don't care about God, verses four, five, and six. But what you see in verse seven is a contrast.
00:15:14
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David contrasts. David now is out in the wilderness. He is no longer sitting in ah his palace. He's not sitting upon the throne.
00:15:25
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And so even though some choose to push away from God in their pain, David said, you know what? I'm going to draw near to the Lord. Rather than push him away, I'm drawing near.
00:15:38
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Now, what were the things that caused David to say, I need to draw near to God right now? Right now, in the midst of this disaster, in the midst of my pain, while my heart is breaking, I'm hurting,
00:15:52
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Here are two reasons why i think David, even though he's out in the wilderness, who knows about mosquitoes, who knows about comfort? All I know is he has left the comfort of the palace.
00:16:05
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He's been run out. He had to get out of there because his own son was about to kill him. And so here's the attachment to God during his pain.
00:16:15
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He said, you know what, Lord? Here are the two things. The heart of God motivated David to draw close. Listen to verse 7. But I, see the contrast? But i through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.
00:16:33
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Isn't that amazing? He still considers himself in the temple of God, even though he's out of Jerusalem. He's out in the wilderness. Man, he had to escape quickly.
00:16:44
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He had evacuate out of the city. Well, But he says, you know what? I'm going to go into a house of worship. Like sometimes, you know, New Testament says our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
00:16:58
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So now it's like we are a temple. So David's saying out there in that wilderness, I'm going to make this place a place of worship. And what draws me to worship you at such a time as this is your heart of love.
00:17:14
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Did you catch that? He says, The abundance of your steadfast love makes me want to enter into your house of worship. But then there's something else.
00:17:25
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Not only the heart of God motivated David to draw close, but the holiness of God. caused David to bow down, to bow down. He said, I will bow down toward your holy temple.
00:17:40
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See, now he's sort of getting more closer to the ah actual reality. He's saying, I'm not um not in the temple, but I'm going to bow down in the direction toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
00:17:54
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You know, sometimes I think people lose that holy reverence for God, that fear of God, I don't believe it's a fear in terms of just being frightened out of your wits at God.
00:18:08
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But it's certainly one that says, you know what? Anytime he wants to, he could crush me. God is way bigger than my life.
00:18:19
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God is way bigger than the collective lives of everyone on this planet. If he wanted to, he could just crush the whole planet. He wouldn't even have to use his hands. He could just say it and it would be gone.
00:18:32
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So all I'm saying is that the holiness of God caused David to humble himself at that moment when he's on the run. He didn't say, Lord, why did you give me a son like this?
00:18:45
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He didn't say, Lord, I don't deserve this. He wasn't saying any of those kind of things. He's saying, your great love makes me want to worship you, and your holiness makes me want to bow down in reverence and fear and acknowledge, you run all of life, not me.
00:19:03
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And you know what God did? He did take care of Absalom. He took care of the rebel. But you know, David at that moment didn't know how the story was going to end. All he knew was, in the midst of my pain, when my life is hurting and full of hurts,
00:19:21
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I'm going to go to God because I know he loves me, because I know that he does all things right. I know that he's not changed. He's holy. he's He's so ah faithful and dependable and consistent.
00:19:35
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He's the one that I'm going to ask, please pay attention to how I'm hurting. But there's
Finding Refuge and Joy in God
00:19:42
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another thing I want you to know from verses 8 through 10. You see, we live in a fallen world, right?
00:19:49
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And in this fallen world, broken world, it's not the way God created it. Things happen in this world that God didn't create that to happen, but it's because of our sin.
00:20:03
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We've disobeyed God and we've caused things over all, like over all of time, not this week, not this month, but over all of time, we've broken the planet.
00:20:15
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Our sin has, collectively our sin. And so what happens whenever we are in the midst of a disaster? This is what I think happens.
00:20:25
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We are attacked. We're attacked by God's enemy. You know, God has an enemy, Satan. The devil is real. You can read from the beginning of the Bible in Genesis all the way through Revelation, and you know what?
00:20:41
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He's there. He is there. ah We said yes to the devil, and he came in, and he causes great harm. But when I was looking at this, I couldn't help but think about ah one of Israel's enemies a long, long time ago in Deuteronomy 25, verses 17, 18, and 19. It talks about, these are during the days of Moses, how Moses warned them of a group called Amalek.
00:21:11
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And Amalek had this certain characteristic about them. They attacked without the fear of God, and they attacked three groups of people.
00:21:22
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They attacked those that were tired, those that were weary, and those that were stragglers. So you see what they're doing? They're attacking from behind. they're They're coming up from behind and pulling people off from the fringes and from the back.
00:21:40
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That's exactly the way that the enemy does things. You know, ah there's a ah testimony that I heard of a man saying, who was in the the Hill Country floods, and he had a family with 32 members of the family.
00:21:57
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I don't know the extent of you know who it was. I don't know how it was extended family or his nuclear family. I don't know who all was there. But all I know is he's he said that he got his family out of the hotel or cabin, whatever they were in, and he got them up on the roof.
00:22:17
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And he said that in their case, because it was elevated ground, the roof was enough. And he said, but at first, whenever he opened the window and water was starting to come in the window, he said in three months ah three months, three minutes, rather, in three minutes time, he said the water in this hotel room went from the ankles to my knees to my waist.
00:22:43
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So he got everybody out. They helped one another get up on top of the roof. And every one of the 32 members of his family, they all were saved.
00:22:54
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But you know what that i remember from that man's testimony on the news when they interviewed him? Here's what he said when he opened the window and the water came in. He said, I did not know which way to go.
00:23:07
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He said, I thought, which way is higher ground? I can't see anything. It's raining so hard. The water's pouring in. I have seconds to make a decision. My family's looking to me.
00:23:19
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He said, I simply don't know what to do. Maybe that describes where you are in your pain. You simply don't know which way to go.
00:23:30
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Well, here's what David said in verse eight. He said, lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies, because make your way straight before me.
00:23:43
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"'Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness "'because of my enemies. "'Make your way straight before me.'" That's a man looking to God for direction. I submit to you, that's the way to do it.
00:23:57
Speaker
Ask him for direction. But you can also ask God for defense. And I'm sure that he was asking God for protection. Just like David, when he says, make them bear their guilt, O God, let them fall by their own counsels because of the abundance of their transgressions, cast them out for they have rebelled against you.
00:24:17
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But he's saying, God, I need your protection. I need you to watch over me. I need you to help me from those that are attacking me. And that's why I think he was asking for discernment.
00:24:28
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You know, those in floods and those in disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes, they need discernment from God, like verse 9, for there's no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction and their throat is an open grave.
00:24:42
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They flatter with their tongue. Why would people in disasters need discernment? Because already I've been warned, they're scammers. They're scammers. They're looters sometimes that try to take what we own and what we have, what they've not paid for.
00:24:59
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So anyway, all I'm saying is, why don't you say, okay, I'm being attacked by... the enemy. So God is not my enemy. God is for me, not against me.
00:25:12
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So the last, the fifth truth is this one, attunement to God in my pain. You know, to say, Lord, I want to be in tune with you. And so the attunement to God in my pain means not that God is going to make all of this go away today in your life,
00:25:32
Speaker
No, it's not the absence from reality. It's your presence in God's refuge. Where is the refuge of God? Well, verse 11 tells us where David was going to you know depend upon for his refuge.
00:25:47
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Of course, he was vulnerable in that wilderness. He doesn't have walls of protection. But verse 11 says, but let all who take refuge in you.
00:25:58
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Let all who take refuge in you. So it's not the absence from reality. It's the presence in the refuge. The address of the refuge is in Christ.
00:26:10
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It's in the Lord. Once you are in the shelter of the refuge, you know what that leads to? Rejoicing, rejoicing in song.
00:26:20
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you know, he says, let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them that those who love your name may exult in you.
00:26:33
Speaker
Wow, isn't that amazing? Do you know that back on July the 6th in 1415,
00:26:40
Speaker
Man, that's a long time ago. A man named John Huss, he was a godly man, but he was being executed for things that weren't true. And so he could not exit his situation.
00:26:52
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But you know what he did? When they were burning him at the stake in 1415, John Huss died singing, Oh Lord, be merciful to me.
00:27:03
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Man, It kind of reminds me of what I heard the Lieutenant Governor of Texas say this week. His name is Dan Patrick. He talked about 750 girls being at Camp Mystic and how 200 of those girls were gathered in this place and the water was coming in and so they had to move.
00:27:24
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So they moved them. they They went to one place. it was already beginning to flood. So they took them to another place and they they said, oh, look up on that hill. there's an old building. Let's go up there.
00:27:36
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So they went up on that hill and got into that building that someone estimated it was probably 80 years of age, but they went up in there and they went up on the second floor of that building and they saw the water rise and the water came all the way up to the balcony of the second floor, but it never came on the second floor.
00:27:58
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It stayed just below that balcony. So can you imagine... What were those girls doing? Well, the girls themselves said in the interview, we were singing praise songs to God.
00:28:10
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Can you actually praise God in the midst of something like that? Wow. You know, I think that we are covered by Christ's righteousness. It doesn't end with bruises and burnings and bullets and all that.
00:28:25
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It ends with blessing. And that's why he says in verse 12, for you bless the righteous, O Lord, you cover him with favor as with a shield. Listen, I encourage you whenever life hurts to go to God.
00:28:41
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He's been a refuge through the ages and he will be a refuge for you. And so take it to him and say, Lord, help me to look to you whenever life hurts.
Closing Prayer and Conclusion
00:28:54
Speaker
Let me close in prayer. Lord, I thank you so much for being there for us as a rock, as a shield, as a buckler. Lord, thank you for your protective care.
00:29:05
Speaker
But sometimes, Lord, we also need that healing, that inner healing, that comfort, that peace. And we need hope. And Lord, you definitely can dispense hope and give us incredible hope because everything that you're going to do is not limited to this life and it's certainly not limited to this planet.
00:29:26
Speaker
You're going to do more to answer our prayers than what we can see with the eye. So I thank you so much, Lord Jesus, for your grace, your goodness. I thank you for exactly who you are. You are a God of hope and a God of love, grace, mercy, and comfort. But Lord, bless my friends.
00:29:46
Speaker
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you so much for listening today. I pray that you've been blessed.
00:29:57
Speaker
This is a ministry of First Baptist Church located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas.