You can now turn in your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 25. Psalm 25. Whenever I'm out for a week, it always kind of feels like I'm out for a lot longer than that. But we were here just in Psalm 24, the King of glory ascending and entering his place on our behalf. And now we're into Psalm 25, back on the ground, as it were. So this is the word of the Lord. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. So make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble His way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and His testimonies. For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are my foes, with what violent hatred they hate me. O guard my soul and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's ask for his blessing. Jesus Christ, you are, You are our Savior. You speak to us by your word. And you wrote these Psalms for us, for us to sing them, for us to put them in our hearts and in our minds and to know them and to know your mind. So teach us, O Christ, for the glory of your Father and by your Spirit. Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. Some of you may be familiar with the phrase, hurry up and wait. I've experienced this one a lot. I think if you're in the military, it's one that it's near and dear to your heart, but in kind of a way where it's kind of like an ugly baby. Like I love hurry up and wait as a concept and I want anyone to, You know make fun of the hurry up and wait folk because I was one of them But I myself it was hard to hurry up and wait, you know You get told show up at such-and-such a place 530 in the morning with such-and-such gear you need to be there and then you know, it's one of those things you're showing up at 530 because your your commander's commander told him to show up at 6 and his commander's commander told him to show up at 630 and And so you end up sitting there for hours, tired, hungry, waiting. Hurry up and wait. It's chaos until you actually get to the place. And then you're there for a while, feeling like the leadership has forgotten about you. You're blaming your commander, but your commander's, you know, he feels the discontent and he's blaming his commander and that commander's going, this is, here we go again. Hurry up and wait. We see this a little bit in this situation. David is waiting. He's waiting upon the Lord. We see that there in verse three. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. And then later it says, in verse 21, he's waiting. So in the front end and on the back end, we see David is waiting. Now, hurry up and wait's not a big deal, really. It's actually quite tolerable when you think about it in a calm, rational manner when you're not in the midst of hurrying up and waiting up. It's tolerable unless there's a deadline. A hard deadline. The plane is leaving and TSA is holding me up for what? Just take the candy bar if you must. Let me get on my flight. Not just the military, you see. when there's a deadline or when you are taking enemy fire. Military. I've never taken enemy fire myself, but for those who are in hurry up and wait, when you are taking fire and you are stuck, you don't have orders, you may feel like your head is going to explode. Hurry up and wait. David is waiting, but David is waiting with hope. And that's what God would have us do. And God will show us how to wait with hope in this Psalm. But like David, we are to wait with hope and hope in God's deliverance. So if you could with me imagine like a target, a circle, and then one circle inside that circle, and then one more circle in the middle. Not like a dart, I think there's more than that in a dart board. But three targets. An outer ring, a mid ring, and an inner ring. That's how I'd like to approach this psalm. Somewhat non-sequentially. But we're gonna see the edges of the psalm have some issues. It gives way to the more of the middle. Closer to the middle of the psalm it has some issues. Then in the center of the psalm is the supreme issue of all. Hurry up and wait, but wait with hope. So that first outer ring, if you will, we're gonna see David's condition lead him to conviction. The first ring is condition to conviction. So what is David's condition? We see here in verse two, well, verse one, David's lifting up his soul to God. He says, let not me be put to shame. Let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous." David is putting his hope in God that those who are pursuing him to death, and some think in this case, this is David and Absalom, his son, but it could be David and Saul. It could be David and someone else. There's no way to know, but someone's got it out for David. They are out there plotting his downfall. They want him off the table. They're sick of him and their violent rage has risen up against him. But David knows this, but he knows his God. He is waiting on the Lord for deliverance. Let me not be put to shame for I take refuge and you may integrity and uprightness preserve me for I wait for you. Ultimately trusting in God. but the conditions are rough. As it were, David is under pressure. He's got dangers without. And with this, we're gonna see David feels a sense of inadequacy. He is not able to handle the issues by himself. You see that in 16 through 18. He says, turn to me and be gracious to me. I'm lonely and afflicted. Troubles in my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble, forgive all of my sins. I mean, God is gonna take care of David and he knows this, but David is also, as he trusts, is also struggling at the same time. It is okay, church. Actually, you must trust, but as you are trusting, it is okay, church, to struggle. I mean, it could be that our struggling reveals some sort of sin or a lack of faith, but the struggling is an experience of the saints of old. God's people, as they trusted him, they trusted him not when times were good, but when they were in distress. So it is with David. He's in distress because he feels inadequate to the task. He can't fix it. You know, if he could fix it, he wouldn't be waiting after all. So there it is. David is waiting because David can't fix it. And because David can't fix it, rather, because he is not enough and enough himself. So in the condition, it leads him to the conviction because the dangers without, plus his own inability to handle it, has shown him, I need God. I need outside help. I'm not enough. I can't do it. God, help me. Once we come to the conviction that we can't do it, that's when we start to really trust God. But so it is, God will bring trial and trial upon us to convince us that we aren't enough. And trust me, we do need convincing of that. There's nothing like a good old fashioned, unfixable trial from the Lord that will remind you of that. What our condition, our hard conditions teach us is that my eyes were closed and now they are open. It's like when you, you know, are walking, you're walking in a room and you suddenly step on a Lego. Maybe you weren't paying attention to where your feet were or what was going on before that, but there's nothing like stepping on a Lego or a tack or just something really sharp that will open your eyes, let the blood pump to your head and convince you, I don't know what's on the floor. But in this case, the hard, the hard harvest. The bad diagnosis, the deaths, tornadoes. They'll convince us, huh, I'm a lot smaller than I thought I was. I have a lot less control than I thought I did. Maybe some of you farmers feel that when I've, you know, I've heard some of you describe farming as gambling millions of dollars every year for seems like, but for a livelihood, you're gambling. Maybe you feel I am a lot smaller than I thought I was. The trick is we need to think those things. When God sends trials, we need to let them open our eyes. The worst thing we can do is inoculate ourselves to those things. That when we feel the pressure of trials, that we find distractions or ways to excuse them or to blame them on some other thing. Yes, people can cause, people themselves can be the trial. People can bring trials upon us, but ultimately by God's allowance, remember that, to open our eyes to what we are. So when we entertain ourselves to death, we might not have the conviction that we should have. It's one thing to have hard trials that bring us to the knowledge of a truth of ourselves, and another to go through hard times and to turn to our old gods for help and support. Gods with a small g in this case. When we move from our condition to a conviction, we need to let circumstances open our eyes to the way things really are. When I was an unhappy single person, in college and in my early 20s. I really struggled with this for some reason. It's hard to remember that I did. But being single and wanting to be, you know, getting ready to be married or to be married, and I got married at 24. I was trying to get married when I was like, I had a plan to get married when I was 13. Okay, just for reference. It was a long road for me. It wasn't like I woke up at 22 and thought, oh, I should probably get married. But I really struggled. And in that struggle and in that distress, God was showing me a lot of sin. Not necessarily related to this is why you are struggling with being single, but how much I needed him. That's a minor problem. And it was one that God graciously corrected. And there'll be more problems for me, I'm sure. But let your hard trials open your eyes. Let your condition move you to a conviction And so as condition moves you to conviction, now let conviction move you to a confession. So we had that first outer ring, now we're in that mid ring. And with conviction may come sorrow. In those very same verses that I just read from 16 through 18, look how sorrowful David is. His condition, now the conviction that he's not enough, is really weighing on his heart. He's in distress. There's sorrow. There's pain that cannot be fixed. You can't, I mean, when you're stuck somewhere. I remember being late for a very important meeting and my car would not start. And it was one of those things I thought would drastically affect my standing at work and my future and being just so angry. And then, you know, going through the stages of grief, anger. I can't list all of them, but one of them is, you know, despair, sorrow. That's where David is. He's sorrowful and we see it. But we see in the midst of that sorrow is a need for instruction. On the other side of the circle, verses four through five, it says, make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all the day long. So even as he's sorrowful, even as he's struggling, there's a sense of, okay, Lord, what's the lesson? Teach me, make me to know them. Know the things that you would have me know. Cause me from the start of the gaining of knowledge to the bringing it out and executing your will. Make me to know. We find this really, really helpfully well laid out and we'll get there eventually. In our Westminster Shorter Catechism, you know, what is in the Lord's Prayer. What is the third petition? The third petition is, thy will be done. And that means we're praying for God to make us able and willing. Make us able and then willing to know, obey, and to submit to his will in all things. So from the start of the ability to have the knowledge, the will to carry it out, and then the execution, we're dependent upon God. Make me to know your ways, oh Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth. Teach me. God, you're my salvation. If you've saved me, what have you saved me for? Teach me the lessons I need to know. Show me the path so I can walk in it and please you. So there's a sorrow, but when paired with a need for instruction at the same time, I think God will answer those prayers. Sorrow plus need for instruction, God teaching us his ways, with our sorrows and learning his ways, we will see our sins. It'll lead to confession. So David goes there, says in verse seven, remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, the covenantal love of God, remember me for the sake of your goodness, oh Lord. When we learn God's ways, we learn how often and how far short we fall from it. When that conviction leads to confession, we see the truth of God and the gaining of the truth of God from our problems. We learn to confess our sins more and more. And a good confession of sin, a true one, even from the depths of the heart, when we see the true state of our corruption within, we can confess the deepest evils in our hearts. And those evils are their people. There is no temptation that has overtaken you that is not common to man. Someone hurt my feelings actually when I heard this, because I was shocked and appalled by it, but I've come to see it's true. Someone once told me that if every crime you've seen or heard about out there, this very seed of it is within you. I was appalled, and I still kind of am, because it's true. every crime possible we are capable of if God withdraws His grace. So we must have God teach us, we must confess it, we must lay and bear our hearts before Him. We can't say that we're too good to sin. That's how we end up sinning. You know, it's always the, you know, the man that says, I'm too, I would never cheat on my wife. Well, Satan's like, how much you want to bet? Let's, let's try that. Let's try it and see how good and holy you are. So we confess. And David, he calls upon God to covenantally remember. Remember in the Old Testament, whenever that word remember is used, often in such a case of God, remember your love, remember your covenant, the eternal covenant. Remember me for the sake of your goodness. Remember me for the sake of Christ Jesus, my Lord, remember me. That's what the thief on the cross said. Maybe you have this verse among many in mind. Remember me, O Lord, when you come into your kingdom. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. Remember me. That's truth doing its work. When we confess the deepest sins of ourselves, that is the first step to walking in true holiness. We don't claim to be perfect people, but we seek to be a people whom God has claimed for himself to walk in his ways because of his love. So in this case, I think, what is the danger? I listed a danger for condition to conviction that is inoculating yourself. doling yourself. I think for conviction to confession, I think the truth is actually a half-truth. To have sorrow for your sins in your situation without asking to learn. It's easy to be sad. It's easy to despair. And it's very easy to sit there and let it just, just let it fester. You know, sorrow that fester turns into despair. Despair that fester turns into death. It will rot your bones. But on the other hand, to have a desire to learn, to know God's ways, but not have a sorrow for your circumstances, to not have a sorrow for your own sins and shortcomings, that's learning without an end, without a direction. They must be married together. This sense of sorrow for circumstances and sin and desire for instruction to lead to confession, to show, God already knows what you're like, but to show yourself to God as you are, as you know that you are, and to let Christ fill in the cracks or to let Christ rebuild you, reform you all together. So we wait and hope on the Lord's deliverance. And while we're waiting, move from condition to conviction, from conviction to confession, outer ring, middle ring, and then that center from confession to communion. God doesn't just want us to confess, you know, restore the relationship that we've wandered to get right, as it were, and then to go off on our merry way. For us to stay and to abide in what God would have us be, we must go from confession to communion. God would have us go deeper. We see that here. We see David meditate first on the character of God. In verse six, he says, remember your mercy, O Lord, your steadfast love, for they have been of old. The goodness that David has experienced from God is a goodness that has been planned in God from eternity past. We learn this, and for those of you who were there for Dr. Fesco in that very first session, the covenant of redemption, a plan amongst the Trinity to go for Christ to come. to save a people to himself. This mercy that comes out of a steadfast love that is grounded in the very character of God, in this very goodness. Verse eight says, good and upright is the Lord, therefore he instructs sinners in the way. It's also a promise to those who confess. He is the humble in what is right, he teaches the humble his way. And all the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness. for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. Here's a promise that God offers, it says, if you walk in my ways, if you go along that line from conditioned conviction, confession into communion, you will experience great blessing to walk with your God. As part of his, in his character are these promises to those who would walk with him. But in that promise being held out, a condition as it were, there is also the accomplishment of it. See, we see it in those verses that God is the one who is acting on our behalf. But then in verse 12, who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being and his offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant. I love that verse. We're gonna come back to it, especially. My eyes are ever toward the Lord for he will pluck my feet out of the net. These promises are grounded in the good character of God. The best thing about the love of God is that he never started love or he never will stop loving you because he never started. The eternal love of God. Remember in Jeremiah 31.3, where God, through Jeremiah, tells the people of Israel about to go into exile, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I've continued my faithfulness to you. We need to know this love. And God calls us to come to him and to know it, to walk with him in it. We see his character is what it comes out of, and then the execution of that covenant throughout time, but in a turning past. and forward toward Christ, that everything that God gives to us, he gives to us by way of covenant. In Hebrews 9, the writer of Hebrews tells us about how the old system of the blood and bulls of goats could never forgive sins. You know, the high priest has to offer the blood year after year, and it never makes pure the consciences of the worshiper. But finally Christ has come and he has laid down his life on the cross once and for all. And he describes this covenant as a testament in this case. That everything we receive is received because Christ died. And that's how the will works. When you make a will, the will goes into effect upon your death. And the beautiful thing about that is Christ died and his will took place that we should live. And then he rises again and he executes that will. He is both the testator and the executor of that will. He lives to see it through for us. And for us who are being called into this covenant or who are walking in it, we see these promises, beautiful, precious promises, going from confession to communion, to go deeper with God. We see that deepness, if you will, in verse 14, especially the friendship. You can also say this word is intimacy. The word translates that way, a deep intimacy, not just the friendship, but maybe if your friendship was like David and Jonathan, like the closest possible friendship possible. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them. He shows them his covenant. I was going through a really tough time last fall, had nothing to do with y'all. It was something I was, struggling within my own character, in my own soul. And this was the verse, I was glad I was preaching good Psalms, it's like I know I'm gonna get to it in the spring. But this verse is what, it was the answer to the problem that I was facing. And I can't describe the problem, because it would just be too long and you'd get bored. But basically this, for me it was, Stephen, God will take care of you. Stephen, God has made you to fear Him. Stephen, God has shown you His covenant. He'll keep showing it to you. The covenant, the deep character and the deep holiness mediated through love of God is for you, not just for me. It is for me, but also for you. This deep intimacy that no matter where you go, church, whether you go on your merry way and things are peachy keen, or you walk into through the valley of the shadow of death, the intimacy of God will sustain you. The covenant promises of God are what that intimacy is built off of. So we can say with James, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. You know, the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and when steadfastness has had its full effect, it will be perfect and complete and lacking nothing. We can count it all joy when we know the heart of Christ. We can count it all joy when we confess our sins and when we go through hard things because we know God is working in us. Romans 5 verses 3 through 5 says, We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love, the intimacy, has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. God is near. If you believe in Him and you have the Holy Spirit, how much closer could you get than Him residing in your own heart, connecting you to the Christ and connecting you to the life? of the Godhead itself. This is what Jesus was trying to show the disciples in the upper room. This is his last kind of his magnum opus, his great speech to them. And what's he trying to show them? Yes, that you're gonna have problems, these things are gonna happen, but the Holy Spirit is going to bring you into the life of God. Wow. Amazing. All because of what Christ would do the very next day. and then two days after that, three days, two, three days, depending on how you reckon the time. His death and his resurrection deliver these things to us. Taste and see that the Lord is good. John Owen says, we are never nearer to Christ than when we find ourselves lost in holy amazement at his unspeakable love. I love this quote. I chose it because of that unspeakable love word. I find, and I knew I would find myself in the situation up here where words fail me to describe it. I consider myself a novice in knowing the love of God, but I have tasted enough people of God to know that the love of God is good. And you ought to know it and know Christ through it to see that This is the love of God that He gave for us, His only begotten Son, as a propitiation for our sins. A gift of infinite cost. Go back to when you were young. When you were, you know, at the age for love, as it were. When you were prone to falling in love, and you did fall in love. Imagine if the person pursuing you had given you a gift of infinite cost. For free. No perks attached other than you must love, you know, they expect love in return for that love, but you would be blown away. Wow, this person really loves me. And so it is with God himself sending himself, the father sending the son, who loves the son more than the father, and the father sent him to die an awful death to pay for your sins and to bring you to himself. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. So let us walk in His truth. Let us go to Him. Know that love more and more. And then we work ourselves back out. We know that love makes it easier to confess our sins, actually. If you know how much God loves you, you would try to find sins to confess. And then from that confession of sin into conviction, not that I'm an adequate, yes, but God loves me. You see how here in 15 that he goes back to in the middle, God will pluck my feet out of the net. So no matter what happens to me, God will save me. He'll preserve me. And if I die, then I die, but I will rise again into glory. And that conviction grows into, yes, these issues are a problem. But I know that this, Jesus, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him be long, they are weak, but he is strong, yes. Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me. All of our problems and our pain and our angst and all the questions we have and going into confession of sin and communion back out into a blooming, simple faith in the God who will deliver me from all of my troubles. The chef's kiss, it can't get any better than that, people. It can't. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I could go on and on and on. I had to cut myself off. But you know, you know how good you are. I pray for each and every one of these people that they would know how good you are too. That they would see the love of God that you've shown to us on the cross, a love that comes out of your very character. The love that Jesus displayed and willingly going to it. Lord, no matter what happens to us, whatever really could be horrible things waiting for us in our future, painful things, trials, tribulations, let us know, Lord Jesus, that you have overcome the world so we can take heart and trust you. Lord, let these things be so. We pray them in your son's precious name. Amen.