Trials

Also are thy thoughts, now we have the plural, that's the same Hebrew word, it only appears twice in the Old Testament, and we read the first occurrence earlier, this is the second occurrence, verse 17, how precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God. How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.

Surely thou will slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, ye bloody men. That is going to be the first imperative in this psalm, that little word depart.

He wants the ungodly as far away from him as he can get them, and he wants to be close to his God. Depart from me, therefore, ye bloody men, for they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not, I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee, and am not, I greed with those that rise up against thee.

I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Now comes the second imperative, a command, search me, O God, and know, another command, and know my heart, and another command, try me, and another command, and know my thoughts, another command, and see if there be any wicked way in me, another command, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Now that's all we're going to read. We'll look to the Lord to give us a little help. Things that we have enjoyed from this psalm, I trust will kind of be a bookend to what my brother opened up with.

I suppose you really don't know much about yourself until you come into a trial, like my brother was talking about the psalmist in Psalm 73. I remember my father used to say to me a number of times, he said, Scott, when you pray, ask God to show what is in your heart, but at the same time ask God to give you something of Christ, to balance it, because if all you're left with is our failings, my failings, my weakness, my inconsistencies, it just leads to absolute despair, and there has to be something to get the eyes off of self and to get them on what is real, God. What my brother spoke in Psalm 73 is something that was too painful for me, and that's a sight of self.

What the psalmist got ahold of in 139 is the opposite. It's something that was too wonderful for me, and that's God. Now I know, I do thank those that were praying for me.

I had a little bit of a health trial last year, I know you know that. I could relate so well to what my brother was saying. There's something about a trial, we can handle the short ones, one day, two days, a week, a month.

How many people have been in a trial where there just doesn't seem to be an end? Maybe you're in it today. Well, I would like to just, with very few reference to myself, I want you to get you into Psalm 139. I want to encourage you with the Word of God.

I want to say that again. Sometimes we can develop these natural little, call them hamster runs in our mind when we come into a situation. I was speaking to someone recently, I won't tell you who it was, and this Christian was relaying to me what she does when fear comes upon her.

And it might seem kind of comical to you, but just putting the dog in for the night. And the dog is put in a barn, and there's probably about a 40-foot walk from the barn to the front door. And no sooner is the light turned off in the barn, the door shut, and all of a sudden the night collapses in upon you.

And this Christian mentioned that the mind just starts to race with, there's someone behind you, there's someone behind you. And what this individual said they do is they start thinking about what they're going to do the minute they get in the house. Well, I have to do this, and I have to wash the dishes, and I have to go get this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this.

And my comment back to them was, what would be better? Start quoting the Word of God. Train yourself to always resort to the Word of God, because there is unlimited power and comfort in the Word of God. And that is something that might sound so simplistic.

Like we memorize, why do we try to get children to memorize verses? Why are we constantly in our gospel preaching, quoting from the Word of God? Because that is where the power lies, dear child of God. I can relate to you just a couple of incidents. I can remember what I went through last year, running on the treadmill, and I couldn't see God.

I couldn't feel God, and my mind was just screaming, God has left you! You're done! And it was only the Word of God that got me out of it. I spent three months on Psalm 23, and I spent three months on Psalm 139. And I committed to memory.

And it wasn't just once a day I went over it. I went over it every hour in my head, because the attack, whatever you want to call it, the darkness, whatever you want to call it, what that man was going through in Psalm 73. It is so easy to get your eyes off of God.

And you know what surprised me? It only took a little physical illness. It wasn't a multitude of people standing in front of me, hundreds strong, saying, stop, there's no God! You're wasting your life pouring it into the Word of God. There's nothing! It was only my heart.

It was only me. And I used to think in my pride, in my arrogance, if everybody stopped standing for God, I'm going to stand for Him. Oh yeah.

I'll stand for Him and say, hallelujah, I believe God. Well, there was plenty of days that God took me through that I couldn't raise my hand. I couldn't see Him.

And I almost quit. I almost gave up. You know what struck me one day? Well, let's get to the Word of God.

I'm going to show you. This is what encouraged me. Look at Psalm 139 again.

I want you to notice this in verse number five. Now, I'll tell you what I did. I went out to our local Staples business store, and I bought myself a whiteboard that's not quite as big as that, okay? And I screwed it onto the wall in front of my treadmill.

And I wrote out Psalm 139 on that whiteboard. And I broke, I got different colored ink, okay? The four different colors. And I wrote three verses in one color, the next three verses in another color, the next three verses, and you get the picture.

So that as I'm running along, I could focus on these colors, and I could go over those three in a loop and keep memorizing them. And one day, this is what jumped out at me. Look at this.

Psalm 139, verse number five. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thy hand upon me. Now, this is what's too wonderful for him.

Listen to what he says. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Isn't it something to think that the Almighty Creator, the Almighty Sustainer, the great God has not just hovered over him, but he set his hand upon him.

Now, let's just keep reading. Now, look what follows. It is high, I cannot attain onto it.

Now, look at the distance. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lay upon me. Believe me. You see what he got a hold of? The hand never left him.

Even though he recounts distance that's so vast. Who could measure the heights of heaven? Who could measure the depths down into hell? Who could look this way, east and west, and try to measure that distance? To the human eye, to the natural eye, to the natural senses, well, it has to have an end. And then the psalmist, he says this in verse 11, if I say surely the darkness.

Now, how many of us can see good in darkness? So he goes from distance and then he moves into darkness. And he says, even the night, even the night shall be light about me. And then it's almost like you can see his heart.

He says, verse 12, yea, the darkness hideth not from thee. The night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike unto thee.

Listen, do you know what encouraged me? In spite of the fact that I couldn't feel his hand, in spite of the fact that I couldn't see his hand, the word of God told me that his hand was upon me. That's all I had. You want to know something? That was the turning point in the trial.

Just as my brother mentioned, the circumstances didn't change. There was still the physical thing and the mental thing to deal with. But in the depths of it, the eyes of the heart got off of self and circumstances and the time and the length and it got on his hand.

That is real. I want to encourage every single Christian here. I mean, you cannot gather a group of people like this together and not have broken hearts.

There's not a person, there wouldn't be a row here that would have somebody that's not being pressed and pressured by something. Could I encourage you with the word of God? In spite of what you think? In spite of what you feel? In spite of what others are saying? Could you just take the word of God? I can remember days running on that treadmill and I can remember just in the basement all by myself, just saying out loud, I believe this book, the Bible. And there would be that voice in there that would say, no, you can't depend upon it.

I believe the word of God. I believe the word of God. You get the picture? You might say, well, you're overdoing it.

Well, I don't know. I know it was real to me. You want to know what the psalmist got a hold of? Look what he says in verse 13.

You know what the verb is? The verb's imperfect. He's not looking back just to a past event where the hands of the Lord were upon his reins. No.

It's the idea of a horseman with the reins of the horse. Look where he takes it, dear child of God. Thou has covered me in my mother's womb.

My, can you imagine that? Listen, keep on reading. I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works in that my soul knoweth well.

My substance was not hid from me when I was made in secret. Can you comprehend that? The moment of conception. When it's unseen to the naked eye.

You would have to use a powerful microscope to look into that egg having been fertilized from the sperm. And all of a sudden there is the commencement of me. Me.

But there's no arms, there's no legs, there's no head. All there is is two little cells. Four, eight, sixteen.

And it starts to multiply and multiply. And it's not until day twelve that the heart starts to beat. And what does the psalmist get a hold of? Right at the moment of conception.

His hands. Thou has possessed my reins. Thou has covered me in my mother's womb.

Now that's almost hard to take in, isn't it? That is where science just drops dead. It can't go any further. But thank God that's where faith takes over.

And we just simply rest upon it. Yes. My God has always had a hold upon me.

And that hold that he has upon me will never let go. You know something I was enjoying just from the Psalm 2? Do you understand? This really encouraged me. As a born again Christian, I will never die alone.

Never. I'm indwelt by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is not going to leave this body while my soul and spirit goes across death.

No. He's going to take my soul and spirit across death. I have the Lord Jesus.

I read in Psalm 73. He will take me over death. Isn't that wonderful? What a tremendous comfort to know that in the darkness of death, that hand, that right hand of his, will always be upon me.

Does that encourage you? Dear child of God, that encourages me. I am so precious to my God. You are so precious to your God that he's going to be with you every step of the way.

Keep looking at verse number 15. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect.

Notice this. And in thy book all my members were written. That's another imperfect verb.

Do you know what it means? It means God is still writing them. You know, I was contrasting that to the New Testament. The Bible says that every hair of her head is numbered.

There you go. Members written in his book. Now listen, I love my wife dearly.

I finally had a chance to take her with me to Iowa to meet you good folk. I love my wife, but I don't love her enough to count her hair. I haven't taken time to do it.

I just haven't. And I combed this mop today and I probably lost some hair. And I didn't look at the counter and go, oh, lost two today.

But my God did. Every single detail. I better not pull one out there.

All written in his book. Why is it that when we're in a trial, why is it that the natural response is, God is so distant. He's so far away.

It's almost like we get, it was brought out in the psalm, it's almost like the psalmist, he said, God, you're sleeping. You're sleeping. Listen, you have to be awake to count here.

Look what the psalmist got ahold of here. Come down a little further. Look what he said.

Verse 17. How precious are thy thoughts? No. How precious also.

He's gone from all of this physical activity that God is doing. And now we go right into the very mind of God. And look what he says.

How precious also are thy thoughts on to me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they are more number than the sand.

Listen, when I awake, I am still with thee. Very similar to Psalm 73. Do you know what I understood from this? I go to bed.

I close my eyes and I drift into an unconscious state. I'm not aware of my God. But my God never sleeps.

My God never closes his eyes on me. And as I come out of that unconscious state and come back into the morning light and into consciousness, oh, oh, God is my God. But he's never left me.

I've left him, so to speak, with my mind because I go into sleep. But there is my God. Just like a, just circling me constantly.

You know, it's wonderful just to write on a piece of paper all the different directions that God is in relation to this man. You get that in the first couple of verses. And it's just the idea of there's a big basketball and there's this little tiny pea inside and God is everywhere he looks.

Everywhere. There's not an opening. There's not a crevice where the enemy can get in.

Now, let's come to the difficult one. Look what he says in verse 28. This is important to notice this.

As a result of what he's understood about his God in the trial, do you know what he explained? Search me. Do it again, Lord. Do it again.

How many of us like trials? I'd be the first to say I hate them. How many of us would like to rerun a trial that we just came out of? I'd be the first one to say I don't ever want to go through what I went through again. But I did and I do enjoy what I saw my God.

I saw something and I got a hold that I would not have understood any other way unless I went into that trial and stayed in it until God took me out of it. You know, I remember the day when my wife came to me in the back porch, spent a lot of time on that back deck looking out of the field trying to figure out what to do. And I can remember the day because, you know, dear Christian, we have to we have to be honest with ourselves.

We as believers with all that we know from the word of God. We get bitter at God. I was.

We get angry with God. We start to question God. I did.

And I just could not understand how I was supposed to be in a gospel tent with this man preaching. And here I am, hardly able to put my head together back deck. You know what my wife said to me one day? She said, Scott, you are going to get nowhere until you first thank God for the trial you're in and the fact that he's trying to teach you something.

I was hard to take. That is just not right. It's not right, God.

And I'll tell you, a couple of days later, I bowed my head on that deck and I felt like a hypocrite. I could hardly get the words out because half of me meant it and half of me didn't mean it. Lord.

Thanks for the. To trial. What are you trying to teach me? That was another turning point.

You know what the psalmist got a hold of? He says, search me, O God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

You know, wonderful to think. That the right hand of the almighty God is holiness. How could that hand possibly take you anywhere else but to blessing? How could it? Why do we question it? Why do we allow that wicked old heart to constantly throw these things across our minds? And we in our, I'll say, ignorance, grab onto the thoughts sometimes.

And we allow them to plague us. Could I encourage anyone going through a trial? Grab your favorite psalm. Grab your favorite verses.

And the minute that panic comes upon you, that fear comes upon you, that darkness comes upon you, just start quoting the word of God. And if it doesn't stop, quote it again. And if it doesn't stop, quote it again.

And if it, keep on quoting it. Keep on holding on to your God. Because the Bible's very clear, he's holding on to you.

He'll never let you go. And he is taking us through different things. Now what was a trial to me might not be a trial to you.

Maybe, I don't like the dentist, well that's a trial to me, but that might be fun for you, I don't know. But there's all different things. And we're all made differently.

And do you know what the end result is? God is going to take us through these things. He's going to bring us out the other side. And with God's grace, you're going to be able to look back and go, Oh, wow, look at my God, look what he's done, look what he's doing.

May we be encouraged with the word of God.