Open up your Bibles to the book of Psalms. Psalm 41 in verse 12 will be our verse we'll start with. We're gonna read some other scriptures as well. Tonight, the title of the message is The Upholding Hand of God. The Upholding Hand of God. How is it that you and I do good? I mean, good things that are pleasing to God. How is it that we can be virtuous? Some Christians believe that they can do good just by starting over again, getting a fresh start, turning over a new leaf is a phrase sometimes used. meaning that they believe that they can kind of reach down in themselves and find something, change something, and they're gonna do good. Well, it doesn't really work that way. The thinking is I can use my own strength and kind of clean up my act. That works about as good as giving a pig a bath. You can clean that pig up, But as soon as it gets the opportunity, what's it gonna do? It's gonna find a mud hole and water in that mud hole. So how is it that we can do anything good? And that's our question for tonight. And the answer is the upholding hand of God. Before we read Psalm 41, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, O Lord, we come to you tonight thankful for your mercies, thankful for your goodness to us, O Lord, thankful indeed for your upholding hand. Help us, Lord, to understand more about this in the course of this message here tonight. We just thank you so much for all you do for us, O Lord, for your sustaining power in us. We just pray now all of these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Psalm 41 in verse 12, it says, and as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity and settest me before thy face forever. So let's go to where it really starts for our first point. The only way anyone's ever gonna do good is because God regenerates that person with spiritual life. Before regeneration, there is nothing a person can do that is good and that pleases God, because everything we do is stained by sin. Now, there are people who live moral lives, really. I mean, they live good moral lives. But is that good in God's sight? No, it's not unless they've been born again and he's working it out in them. Just to make a good moral decision or to do something good that appears to be that way morally is not necessarily pleasing to God. Turn to Romans chapter 3 and we're gonna read starting at verse 10 Probably a very familiar passage to you But the thing is because of our sin nature everything we do is turn towards evil and away from God. I It may look good on the outside. It may be law-abiding in some respects, but our motives, whatever it is that caused us to do that, is bent and turned against God, and therefore it is not pleasing to God. There is nothing we can do in God's sight, when we are unregenerate, that can be said to be good. Romans 3, verse 10, as it is written, There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. You know, there are people out there that are unregenerate that understand the Bible, maybe better than we do in some cases. They can have all kinds of head knowledge, okay? They can be seeking after God, but not really be seeking after God because they are lost and undone in their sins. There is none, verse 12, they are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their mouth is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they abuse deceit. The poison of Asp is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things whoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Here it is. If you ever aspire to do good before God, you must first be regenerated. He must work that in you. And then he will continue to work in you and he will bring you to where you can follow his commandments and obey him and do things that are good and pleasing in his sight. And that's really what the message is gonna be about. But this is always the starting point. One must be born again before they can ever do anything that's good in God's sight. God takes no pleasure in our flesh. He takes pleasure in the spiritual life that he gives to us. It was purchased dearly by His precious Son, and the blood shed there on the cross. That's what God takes pleasure in. So let's move on then and make this point. God upholds us in our integrity. Going back to Psalm 41 and verse 12, where it said, it is for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity and settest me before thy face forever. This is a messianic psalm, meaning that it is about the Messiah, it is about Christ, but I think because of Christ, it is a promise for the believer also. You see, because we are given spiritual life through Christ, we now have a heart that is turned to God to do good works that please Him. In our flesh, when we're lost, when we're undone, unregenerate, our flesh has no desire to please God. The heart we have then is filthy and rotten and wicked, okay? But with spiritual life, we're given a heart that is turned to God, that seeks after God, that wants to obey God. Now this refutes the old argument that people try to throw at those who believe in grace when they say that we believe that we become robots. Well, that's not the case at all. We want to please God, we want to serve God. Obviously at times in our flesh we don't, but when we are walking in the spirit, then we have a desire to please God, we have a desire to obey God. And the things that we do in obedience to God are very pleasing to Him. But why is it that this works? It's because He upholds us in our integrity. He uses his strength to uphold us. It is the work of God in us that produces those things that are pleasing to him. This word integrity here, if you go to the Webster's 1828 Dictionary, it means a moral soundness or purity, incorruptness, uprightness, honesty. All of these things are possible in the one who has been born again, in whom God is working, in whom his Holy Spirit is ministering and teaching and guiding. Those are things that are actually possible. Not just possible, but they are the things that we should be, should be doing, should be described as. Those words should describe your life. Can it be said that you have moral soundness? Can it be said that you have purity, incorruptness, uprightness, honesty? These things are the work of God in you. And this is the only way we can be set before his face forever. Notice the last part of that verse, Psalm 41, 12. And set us, me, before thy face forever. The only way we can be set before the face of God is, as we've said, to have been born again, to have the work of Jesus Christ done in us, okay, and for him to uphold us and accomplish these things in us. Therefore, we can be set before the face of God and he desires to look upon us. Now, I'm not sure how much we appreciate that. that blessed privilege, okay? We are allowed into the presence of God, not because we can point back, look at what I've done here, God, I've done this, I've done that, I've been to church every Sunday, I've read my Bible every day for 10 years and all this. None of that is what sets us before the Lord, before God himself. It is the work of Christ in us that does so. He sets us there. It is by his power. When we're left to ourselves, we will fall. We will blunder. We will spoil everything. The good news is the Lord does not leave us entirely to ourselves. When you've been born again and you are his, he does not set you out in the world all by yourself to get along as you may. The Lord is with us every step of the way. And he preserves us, by the way, from terrible sin. He does this in us. That leads us into the third thing here. God prevents our fall into terrible sin. His grace works in us to keep us from all of the sin that we are capable of doing. He sometimes even completely removes temptation from our path. We probably never know it or realize it, but he does that for us because he sets limits upon what we do and what we don't do, especially when it comes to sin. Now, there are times when he does permit temptations and trials. There are times when he himself brings afflictions upon us. These are all designed by His sovereign hand to teach us to depend more on Him. as well as other important lessons that are always for our good. So when we go through these times of temptation, trial, affliction, we need to be looking to the Lord and asking, Lord, what is it you are working in me? What is it you want me to learn? How should I grow in this? How should I depend more upon you? That's the way we ought to look at these things. Our tendency is to want to turn and run away and hide from them. Our tendency is to want to ask the Lord to remove them. And it's okay to ask the Lord to remove them, but we must be present or understanding spiritually that he may not do so. And if he doesn't do so, then it's because it was designed to help us. It is designed to draw us closer to him. It is designed to further shape that lump of clay into that vessel fit for service to the Lord. Therefore, necessarily, there are gonna be times when we slip, yet he is there for us then as well. And when I say slip, we're gonna sin, we know that. It does not mean that it's God's fault that we sin by any means. We can never look to God and say, well, God, you should have taken that temptation out of my way. If you would have taken that temptation out of my way, I never would have sinned. We cannot approach God in that way. God does not ever lead us into sin. He will never cause you to sin. He will never cause you to act in opposition to what his word has instructed us. If we do so, it is because we choose to do so, and we sin, we slip. Yet he's there when we slip. Look in Psalm 94 now, verse 18. Psalm 94 verse 18. It's good to know that the Lord is always there for us. When we obey him, then he rewards us, I believe this. One of the great rewards is just to be walking in fellowship with the Lord and in closeness to the Lord. There's no greater feeling for us here on this earth, I believe, than that. But even when we do slip, look at Psalm 94, 18, when I said, my foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up. It's kind of like a little child that's a toddler learning to walk, and we stand real close to them, right, and they take those steps, and we're right there, and if they should slip, we try to catch them, you know, and hold them up and keep them from fully falling. Most do that. I took a different approach with our children. I wanted them to fall, because they learn then better how to walk, but maybe I'm just different. My mother-in-law didn't appreciate it. But anyway, in those circumstances where we begin to slip, it is His mercy, as the verse says. Thy mercy, O Lord, help me up. What does this word mercy mean here? It means kindness or loving kindness. That's the way the Lord is disposed towards His own. Even when we slip, He manifests his loving kindness towards us and reaches out and helps us and stands us back up, wipes us off, cleans us up, and puts us back on our feet. That is his loving kindness, and oh, how we ought to relish that. Sometimes we feel like when we slip, we carry guilt with that, and we think God's gonna lower the boom on us. There are a lot of Christians who go through their lives just waiting for God to hammer them, just to knock them down because they're sinners. That's not the way God looks at us. Will he chastise us? Yes. If we persist in sin, he'll bring judgment our way if we continue on in that sin. But when we turn to him, He responds with love He responds with forgiveness and mercy. That's what he demonstrates to us. And so we ought to learn when we do slip to hurry to Jesus, to look to him. We ought to be like Peter when he was walking on the water. You remember the Lord came to them walking on the water. Peter said, Lord, can I, can I come to you? And the Lord said, come on. And Peter got out of the boat and he's walking on the water. And so he well know he got the look of the wind, the waves and began to sink. And what happened? The Lord got him. and pulled him up and lifted him up. Did the Lord chastise Peter for that? No, because the Lord understands us. He knows that we are easily distracted and he still loves us. He knows that we give in to the flesh and we sin and we give in to temptation and we sin. He still loves us because we are his. We are purchased by his precious blood. He gave his very life for us. Don't you know that he has love for us and a kindness that he shows towards us? We need to learn to recognize our situation and call out for that mercy and by faith know that mercy will come. This brings us to a fourth thing. God is the one who keeps us safe. We are ever safe in the hands of God. Now, we should be careful in our temporal understanding of this, because sometimes our physical safety is allowed to be in jeopardy. Contrary to the health, wealth, and prosperity people, there will be times in our life where we're gonna be in physical danger, and physical harm may come our way. I especially think of those who are suffering for the cause of the gospel around the world, whose very lives are threatened who are very ill-used by the enemies of God. Their lives may be at risk, their physical lives. So we need to understand, now God can protect us there as well, and he does. We're gonna show a few examples of that in a few minutes. But we need to understand that when he keeps us safe, it is first and foremost our spiritual life that he has in mind. It is that spiritual life that he will preserve for all eternity. Our spiritual life will never, ever be in jeopardy. Nobody can take that away. Nobody can harm our spiritual life because we are protected by the sure and strong hand of God. In those times when physically we may be threatened, we need to learn to trust God. But we should always know our eternal soul is kept eternally safe and it will not be allowed to fall at all. Psalm 119 verse 117, longest Psalm, longest chapter in the Bible. Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe, and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually. Psalm 119 verse 117. Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe. Have you thought much about that? or do you take it for granted? We get to thinking about being once saved, always saved, as the old phrase goes, and we get accused by people of saying, oh, that means you can just go out and do whatever you want to and you'll still be saved. That's not what it's about. What it's about is the Lord preserves our soul. He preserves that spiritual life he's given to us. forever, and it cannot be lost. And this holding up, he says, hold thou me up, and I shall be safe. This holding up exercise by God causes us to respect the statutes of God. Note the psalmist says, I will have respect unto thy statutes continually. We learn to see his statutes as a means to live and abundant life and not as burdens that restrict us, we come to appreciate his commandments. We come to understand that they will guide us into a better life and that they are good for us. Before we are born again, the law is our enemy. It condemns us. But when Jesus gives to us eternal life, when God gives us eternal life, the law becomes our guide, no longer our enemy. And so we ought to relish his commandments, and we ought to seek every way we can to obey them. And then finally, God is the one who strengthens and upholds us. Turn now to Isaiah chapter 41. Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10. So God is the one who strengthens us. He is the one who upholds us. He is the one even who preserves us. Let's see what Isaiah says. Isaiah 41, 10, fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. How many times are we told in the scriptures to not fear? If you belong to the Lord, fear not should be your daily mantra. You should be able to say that time and time again when faced with whatever difficulties you're faced with. I will not fear because God has me. He is in charge. He is in control. I belong to him and I can trust him. He says, fear thou not for I am with thee. God is with us. Every step we take, every breath we take, God is with us. Therefore, we shouldn't be dismayed because he is our God. There are many things in this life that can cause us to experience dismay. We can be disheartened. We can feel downtrodden. We can feel all alone in this world. but we never should if you belong to the Lord because he is our God. He says, I will strengthen thee. You won't be able to find strength within you to tackle everything that comes your way, but you will find strength in God that will help you do so. His strength is much greater than our strength, right? And it is his strength that we must rely upon. He says, yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee. And with what? With the right hand of my righteousness. There is none more righteous than God himself. In fact, that's why that righteousness of Christ that he imparts to us is so very good for us. It is his, it is God's righteousness. It's not our own, it's not of us. And that is very special for the child of God. It is his right hand of righteousness that holds us up. I say this so that we know and that we remember that there is no better promise that God could make to us about this. He is promising his own right hand to hold us up. And there is nobody, no creature, no power in all of this creation that can stop or impair or in any way hold back the righteous hand of God. Nothing. It will prevail over all things. Oh, what a great God we serve. Oh, great is his faithfulness unto us, as the song says. I'll give you a few examples. David, as a young boy, when faced with the giant Goliath, was not fearful or dismayed, was he? Facing this great big old giant, where the rest of the army of Israel had hid in their tents, and would not go face him, this young boy walked down that hillside with a sling and he picked up five rocks on the way and he went and he did not fear, he was not dismayed. Why? Because he knew the Lord was on his side. And that this great giant had dared to slander the name of God and the people of God. And in David's mind, God was not gonna let that stand. So he went with great confidence and faith down that mountainside. Caleb, on the other hand, didn't go down a mountainside, he went up one to go tackle some giants that lived on top of a mountain. If you'll remember the story, Caleb was one of the 12 spies who, early in the 40-year journey through the wilderness, was sent into the Promised Land to get a report of what might be found there. And they came back, and 10 of the spies were all about, oh, there's giants there. And it's terrible. There's some good things here, but there's these giants there. That's all they can talk about. Caleb and Joshua said, hey, we can take them. God's on our side. Those giants aren't anything. That was their attitude. Well, you know, 40 years later, when Caleb is about 80 years old, and it came time to divvy up the promised land to all the tribes of Israel, he specifically asked for the mountain where these giants lived. He says, I want that territory. That's mine. 80 years old. And he climbed up that mountainside and whipped all of them. And he took that land. He wasn't fearful. He wasn't dismayed. He was 80 years old. The Bible says that his strength was just like it was when he was a young boy. God blessed him. And it was God's strength in him that allowed him to climb the mountain and face those giants. And then I think of Daniel, no mountain to go up or down in his case, literally, physically, but he faced one politically in a king. who ended up sentencing him to a lion's den simply because he prayed to the Lord. The king had been tricked and a law had been passed saying that you couldn't pray To any other God than the ones they had and and that didn't stop Daniel He continued to pray to his it was a setup all the way and he got turned in if you will and sentenced to be Cast into the lion's den Daniel went down into that lion's den without fear. He wasn't dismayed. He knew he belonged to the Lord and He might end up their supper that night, but he was still, he still belonged to the Lord and he wasn't dismayed and he wasn't fearful. And the Lord delivered him. May we ever look to God to uphold us by his strong hand. How precious is the hand of God. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Brother Larry, would you dismiss us please?