Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 26, 2020 | He's Still* Got The Whole World In His Hands - Emotionally

Transcript

April 26, 2020 | He's Still* Got The Whole World In His Hands - Emotionally · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning and welcome to the uh final uh week of uh uh the month of April here at Speak Bible Church.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're in a series, we're in the second week of the series uh called uh He's Got He's Still Got the Whole World in His Hands.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Week number one, uh last week, the 19th of April, we uh we we looked at the coronavirus psalm, we called it, Psalm 91, and we discussed it physically.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do we respond to the physical threat of the virus?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the lesson we learned from Psalm 91 was shelter in the shadow of Shaddai.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Say that one last time.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Shelter in the shadow of Shaddai.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think I heard a number of you doing that, and uh and our takeaway was listen to men, but trust in God.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um today, um, the 26th, we want to talk about emotionally how do we respond emotionally to the quarantine, to the social distancing, to the stay-at-home orders, to the isolation.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I know I've talked to some of you, some of you are taking advantage of this opportunity to get fit.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you've stopped eating junk food and you're you're you're working out, you're doing your push-ups and stuff.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, Melody uh suggested that uh maybe she and I should do that.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I reminded her that small businesses and restaurants are struggling right now, and how selfish would that be to just cook our own healthy food and get fit?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I went out and headed to the drive-thru to pick up some barbecue ribs, because you just need to put others first at times like this, because we're all in this together.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, people are noticing that as we uh shut ourselves up in our homes, dogs are fine with this.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Dogs really like this whole stay-at-home thing, more time with us, but cats, not so much.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, at least not Miley the cat, in a video that's gone viral recently.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: You may want to check it out and laugh with me.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Miley does not think that her humans being home with her is a good thing.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Having humans in her space all day, every day is making her mad.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And on the video, the more they get down there and they try to sweetly explain to Miley that they have no choice, they have to stay at home.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: The angrier she glares at them and the louder she meows her displeasure.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And some of you uh know exactly how she feels because a few weeks ago, you know, when the stay-at-home order first came out, yeah, it was kind of like an adventure.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sounded like kind of a fun vacation.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have to go to work anymore, don't have to go downtown, don't have to uh, you know, get into traffic, get to camp out at home, get to hunker down at home.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds kind of like a fun time.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: But a few weeks later, am I right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're missing out on the way it used to be.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've gotten used to our privacy, we've gotten used to our quiet, and it's hard to adjust to the loss of privacy, more people in the home and the noise, and even the people that you love most in the world begin to get on your nerves.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Our guy said, I got so stir crazy at home, I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to somebody, and he asked me what I was wearing.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's maybe an inside joke, but it's quarantine time, so I only tell inside jokes.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh anyway, lately my home has begun to feel like a cave.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're staying at home like we've been told to, and the walls are beginning to close in.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I confess that my sense of humor is dropping, my impatience level is rising, and I'm having to do a lot of emotional self-talk, actually.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one reason I like this psalm, Psalm 57, because it's really clear that um that during this stay-at-home order, while I'm doing self-talk, David also had to do self-talk in Psalm 57, which I'm calling the isolation psalm.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Last week, physically, the quarantine, Psalm 91, this week emotionally, isolation psalm, Psalm 57.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the reason I say that David felt isolated and he had to do some self-talking.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: See it in the heading to the psalm.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes these are called superscriptions.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: They were actually verse 1 in Hebrew, but they're just put at the top.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've opened your Bible to Psalm 9, Psalm 57, you will see there are four lines here for the director of music to the tune of do not destroy.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wish we knew what that tune was.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's apparently a pretty common tune because it's uh we find that elsewhere in the Psalms.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: By David, a Miktem, uh, when he had fled from Saul, so he's in a cave.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: But by the way, let me just say that don't underestimate this psalm.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Don't sell this psalm short just because it's not Psalm 23 or Psalm 100, one of the psalms that you know well.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because this was a famous psalm in ancient Israel.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Say that.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this word uh miktam in your Bible is not translated because everybody argue has argued for thousands of years over what it may means, but it almost certainly, I think now we agree, it means it was inscribed.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what that means, it was so special, it was inscribed on a rock or or on rocks.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are only six of these, and they're all by David in the Psalms.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't help thinking that that they were inscribed because they were so popular.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like um, you know, of all the songs that Carrie Livgren wrote, uh there are two, I think, for which, you know, he got gold albums hanging on his home that were inscribed on gold albums, and that would be Dust in the Wind, Carry on Wayward Sun.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, I think a MikTom is that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: These six Psalms were inscribed, they were special.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so all I'm saying is don't overlook this psalm.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh back in Jesus' day, and even up till today, they translate Mktam as golden, like solid gold, like a solid gold song or solid gold psalm.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you if you went to the synagogue today, that's how they would translate Mktob.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is a solid gold psalm.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So don't uh all I'm saying is don't underestimate it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: But notice when it happens, it happens when he'd fled from Saul in the cave.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you remember, I think, the story of Saul.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you remember that Saul was first king of Israel, and when he was chosen to be the first king of Israel, he was more surprised than anybody.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because he was humble, or actually was shy.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: He was just a big, shy kid.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, he was the biggest, uh, a tallest kid in the whole land.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when they said, We want you to be the first king, when the lot fell, and they said, God's chosen you to be the king, he was stunned and he was humble and he was shy.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it, you know how they talk about uh guys, uh, you know, women and men who get elected as legislators for the first time they go off to Washington, D.C., and you've heard people say, wow, Washington D.C.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: ruined them.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it can take a humble farm kid and turn him into a proud hogger of the limelight.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what happened to Saul.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, gradually he stopped being shy and he became someone who just loved the limelight and didn't want to share it with anybody.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: But then something happened that ruined his career.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Philistines attacked.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they had a giant named Goliath who dared the biggest, strongest Israelite, obviously King Saul, to a one-on-one battle, winner take all.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh we find as we read in Book of 1 Samuel, chapter 16, that King Saul has who knows what he's done.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's making excuses, he's got a headache, he's high, hiding night in the royal tent, and so forth, and all of a sudden, here comes a young guy, his name is David, and he's trusting God, and all he's got is a slingshot, and he goes one-on-one with Goliath, and he kills him, cuts off his head, and all of a sudden, all of the tabloids, all of the magazines, David is now on the cover of all of them.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: David is the most popular guy.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's now in the limelight.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Saul is backstage, and Saul doesn't like it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Saul, King Saul then brings David into the palace so he can keep a close eye on him, but that backfires because Saul's son David, uh Saul's son Jonathan, the heir to the throne, falls in love with David.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: They become uh BFFs, they become super best friends, and Jonathan says, Hey, David's the man.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh and all of a sudden, Saul begins to hear this rumor that not only does Jonathan, but the whole kingdom is talking about David being the next king.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they're saying things like, sooner Saul leaves, sooner David is the next king, the better.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Saul gets into this murderous frenzy of jealousy and sets out to murder David.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh David, who's who's basically maybe young 20s at this time, with Jonathan's help, escapes from the palace, escapes with his life, and begins running for his life for the next number of years.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Saul sends his army actually to chase after him.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and David's hiding in the wilderness.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually kind of a familiar story down through the years.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: You've probably you can you can think of other stories where uh a reigning king out of uh green jealousy has determined to eliminate future competition.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there's King Herod who killed all the babies in Bethlehem, afraid, trying to get a hold, kill baby Jesus.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was a thousand years later.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or a famous story, by the way, which you'll enjoy uh thinking about, is that 400 years later, the king of the Median Empire, M E D E his name is Astyages.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: According to the story of Herodotus, he saw in a dream Astyages did.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: He saw that a boy that he knew in the palace named Cyrus, a young boy, would grow up and would knock him off the throne and become king.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So Astyages woke up, called his number one general, said, I want you to take this boy out in the woods, I want you to kill him.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: General takes Cyrus out in the woods, but he doesn't have the heart to kill this cute, innocent boy, and so he gives them to, as you can guess, he gives them to a farmer to raise.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Cyrus grows up, and sure enough, eventually, uh Cyrus does knock Astyages off the throne.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I tell that is this story happens during the time of Jeremiah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah, you know that story.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: 700 BC, 600 BC, actually.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Cyrus is the one who took over the throne of Babylon, and after the Jewish uh uh captivity and exile, he's the one that allowed the Jews to go back to Jerusalem.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So so this is kind of a familiar story, and here it's happening 400 years before this.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's happening in 1000 BC.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Saul is chasing after his competition, David.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: David is hiding out, he's fleeing into the wilderness, and we know that he fled into the hot Judean wilderness, the desert down by the Dead Sea, which is just uh where you're looking from.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're sitting in the Dead Sea, and you're looking at Ingeti, it's called.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: In means spring, spring of wild goats, lots of ibecs and wild goats around there.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: We all would love to go hiking up here.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as you take this uh mile-to-mile hike up here to the uh oasis of a waterfall, you see these caves, some large, some small, high up on the walls.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And David hid out with his men in one of these inaccessible caves, and Saul's soldiers could not find him.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine, though, if day after day David's hiding in caves and it's tight in there, we know the walls are beginning to close in on him.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, I imagine some of you, when you hear the word cave, you're going, ooh, cool, ooh, adventure.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like fun.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you visited the Merrimack Caverns near St.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Louis and they're festooned with lights.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: You walk in there and you got a lot of room, and you can touch the stalactites and the stalagmites and you can wander around.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But these caves were not like that, of course.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Some people like crawling through small openings to go underground into caves.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: They actually do.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: They actually like squeezing their bodies into these.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: I begin to shudder just talking about it.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then wriggling like a worm through pitch-dark passages, you know, hopefully they got a flashlight or something around their head.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: They they'll do this with a person ahead of them, their feet just inches away from their face.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they call it spelunking, which I think is an entirely misleading term.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Spilunking sounds like, I mean, it sounds a lot like children splashing through mud puddles and laughing, you know, not sucking in your gut so you can get your belly, you know, through the tight hole, hoping the person whose feet are just inches away from your face doesn't decide to suddenly back up.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'll confess that caves trigger my claustrophobia.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I take people to the land of Israel.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Israel has a lot of underground caves, which is not a good combination for me.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one cave that I can't avoid taking people to every time is called Hezekiah's Tunnel.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's in Jerusalem, underground, built 2,700 years ago by King Hezekiah, good king of Israel, so that his people could go down and get water when the Assyrians put them under siege.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it was such an amazing, this is before the days of laser leveling and GPS.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow they were able, two groups of people in a hurry carving underground, and they were able to meet each other underground just by people banging on the surface with rocks, and somehow they were able to do it.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is so amazing that God actually gives Hezekiah a shout-out for this in the books of Kings and Chronicles.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was such an amazing achievement called Hezekiah's Tunnel.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I take people through this, and it's a third of a mile long with water that sometimes reaches up just above your knees, usually.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this looks really nice, this picture from off of you know a website, because it's really well lit up.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: This cave, however, is not lit up.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: The entrance to this cave, you have this water, and then you're going, you're bending way down and getting going underground, and this is beginning to trigger me already.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what the cave looks like if you've got a flashlight.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's a BYLF, bring your own flashlight kind of a thing.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you've forgotten it, you're in trouble, okay?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So honestly, what I've had to do, and it's not really good for a tour leader, is I'll get I'll be the first one in the group, and I just tell them there's no place to get lost in here, and I have to get out of here.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I will go through as fast as possible, and I'm gonna turn a 20, 30, or 40-minute trip into a 10-minute trip.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to try to stay up with me, that'll be fine.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I just plow through this and I create a wake, okay?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, so anyway, last year I'm I'm um I'm going through and I'm talking out loud, just random words, to keep my mind off of thinking that there's wall, sometimes just inches above my head or banging me in the head, and I have to bend down and walls and walls of rock on both sides, rock above my head, rock underneath my feet, and and and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I'm going around these corners in this dark thing, and it's not this light, but all of a sudden, I see, I come around a corner, I've gone about a quarter of a mile, and I see this person just standing there ahead of me.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then other people.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly skid to a stop.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've been making an awake, and I just go, oh Lord, and I wasn't cussing.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was that was an actual flare prayer.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, oh Lord, make those people move.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have nowhere to go.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then I heard a little buzz up ahead of them, and it turns out they've got a tour leader or something who decided, of all things, to stop in Hezekiah's tunnel to give some sort of a lecture to the three people who could hear him nearby.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm standing there.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I back up to about 20 feet, we call it social distancing underground, so that I have a little room here.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And after a few minutes, I begin hearing my group catch up.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm about to get squeezed.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I am freaking out.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I see a member of my group come, as soon as I get about 20, 25 feet away, I put my hand up, I say, stop right there.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I am becoming an emotional wreck.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'll finish that story later.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe that David had a similar issue because as you read the 11 verses in this psalm, Psalm 57, when the cave walls began closing in.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Notice that this psalm, David begins to do a self-talk and shows us how he handled his emotions.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want you to notice that the Psalm falls into two halves.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Verses 1 through 5, and then in the first four verses, David cried help, and verse 5 says, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Verses 6 through 10 then move to singing praise.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: He cries help, he sings praise, and he ends word for word, the same as he did in verse 5.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's zoom our way through this Psalm so that you can appreciate it, and then I'll give you the takeaway.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, Psalm 57, verses 1 through 5.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to honor God with your emotions during this time in the cave of your home, right?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: With the walls closing in, cry help.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now the two cries that David makes in Psalm 57, 1 through 5 are, God, please end this thing.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, can we end this virus right now?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: God, please end this attack, is what he's saying.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very human attack from King Saul and others.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And second, he says, God, I long for you to be exalted above all the earth.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take a look at verses 1 through 5.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Psalm 57, 1.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's the word Hannah, Hannah, be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: For in you, my soul, when you find my soul, it means my life, but mainly my emotional life.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about emotions here, has taken refuge, and in the shadow of your wings, I will take refuge until the destruction passes.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Notice the similarities to Psalm 91.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because there again we had the same word refuge.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: I take refuge in the towering mountain last week and in the sheltering hen.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we find the same thing here, taking refuge, and the focus is on the sheltering hen.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't catch last week, you may want to go back and listen to especially this part of Psalm 91, where we talked about a hen.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when her chicks are in danger, they she clucks, they run to her.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Used to see this on our farm growing up, and she she covers them with her feathers.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Psalm 91, 4.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And here in our verse, verse 1, Psalm 57, in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Psalm 91, Psalm 57, God is our sheltering hen.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we need emotionally, okay?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: To take refuge in him.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Verses 2 and 3 move to, I will call, meaning I'll cry out, I'll cry, help.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll go, oh Lord, help.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'll call to God most high.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Two words for God, Elohim, Elion, to God who accomplishes a plan for me.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: He'll send from heaven and save me.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: He'll put to shame my oppressor.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: See, like God will send his loyal love and truth.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So last week we saw these same two words for God.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Elohim, God, creator of the world.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Eloon is the most high.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Elohim Elion means the most high God.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: We get to take refuge in him, and I'll call out to God most high.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Notice to God who accomplishes his plan for me.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not as common as you'd think in the Bible.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: A clear statement that God has a plan for you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: He has purposes that he wants to accomplish in your life.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he especially wants to accomplish them when you're under trial, when you're in stress.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: In 19 first year, I was here at church.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: In December, I went up to something called the Urbana Missionary Conference, very famous, held every four years in Urbana, Illinois.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: One of the speakers there that year was a woman named Elizabeth Elliott, who's recently.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Passed away.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very famous.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband, uh, Jim Elliott, had died uh a couple decades before, down at the hands of the Alka Indians in Ecuador.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Jim Elliott, very famous.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and then she'd come back, and she had eventually married a theologian named Addison Leach, and he had died after only three years.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that had not been long before she was speaking, okay?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she shared, um uh, as she was speaking, she shared a story that was impossible for any of us to forget, that she had gone to Wales and she had watched a shepherd and his dog.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And she'd watched the dog sort of herd the sheep up a ramp and into a tank of antiseptic where they had to be bathed to protect them from parasites.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and she watched and she noticed that as soon as the sheep would burst up out of the antiseptic, the shepherd would grab the sheep by the head and force it back down and hold it under the antiseptic for a few more struggling seconds.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Elizabeth Elliott said, she asked the shepherd's wife if if the sheep understood what was happening.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the wife said, they haven't got a clue.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And Mrs.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Elliott said, I've had some experiences in my life that have made me feel very sympathetic to these poor sheep.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't figure out the reasons why God was doing what he was doing for the treatment that I was getting from the shepherd that I trusted, and he didn't give a hint of explanation.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've been a Christian for very long, then you've been there.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: The shepherd you trusted threw you into some sort of a circumstance that was highly unpleasant, and you didn't have a clue as to why he was doing it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, faith will look at Psalm 57, verse 2, and see that God has plans, has purposes for you, and he is accomplishing those for you.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in the middle of the emotion of the walls closing in around you during this stay at home, just say, God wants to do something in my life, especially during this time.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then he says, uh, confidently, he'll send from heaven and save me, he'll put to shame my oppressor, he will send, notice these two words, loyal love and truth.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And verse 4, as for my life, in the midst of lions I must lie down, those who devour people, their teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So what's happening is that David is being trash-talked by Saul.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh fake news is coming out of the out of the palace, right?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Saul is is saying things about David that are not true.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Notice the, notice the uh three uh three words that refer to the fact that this is poison speech that's attacking David.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's devour him, teeth and tongue.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So David is really mourning at this time.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's crying out to God because of the unfairness that he's not only being chased to lose his life, but he's losing that reputation of being a good guy because Saul is lying about him as well, right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's verse 4.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have this beautiful, beautiful refrain to this, to Psalm 57 in the first half and second half.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't this remind you?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of asking why is this happening, God wants us to ask, what is it, Lord, that you're trying to do?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer in every case at the very bottom is God wants to establish his glory above the earth.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: This word glory, by the way, is a very famous word, very interesting word.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not it, it's the word kavod, k-a-b-o-d, which means heavy or weighty, like we'd say uh that guy is, you know, he's a heavyweight in his field.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and to give God glory is to simply recognize that God is the heaviest, the weightiest, the most important.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not he's not a light person.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's a very important, heavy, valuable person.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the goal is that everything that happens during this time in our lives, especially when we're in trial with the virus and with stay-at-home order, all of that is supposed to make us the kind of people that bring glory to God as part of God's ultimate goal, which is to have his glory over all the earth.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when you pray, notice that we should pray our desire, Lord, that you be exalted above the heavens, and that his glory, may your glory be over all the earth.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's verses one through five.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first half, verses six through eleven, to honor God with your emos, your emotions when you're in the cave.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, remember you prayed help, you cried help, you know, end this, Lord, please, as soon as possible, you know, my cry in the in Hezekiah's tunnel.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, sing praise.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in verses uh uh 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, what you have is three things to praise God for.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, you praise God out loud, out loud.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't do it just privately, you do it out loud, no matter how bad your voice is.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: You sing out loud before the world.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Verses 6, 7, 8, 9.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Second, for his love and truth.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Those same two words we saw in verse 4.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And third, and you longing, tell him, you sing that you're longing for him to be exalted above the earth.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Really quickly, verses uh 6 through 9.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: First, you sing out loud before the world.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh David repeats, they prepared a net for my steps, and my soul was bowed down.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Being attacked like this made him depressed.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Made him depressed.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: They dug before me a pit.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: But notice by faith, he says, they fell into the midst of it.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: David knows that what happens when enemies dig a pit against God's people.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's in the book of Daniel or in the book of Esther, we know that they end up falling into the midst of their own pit.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Words of faith here.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was depressed, but God will take care of me.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then what he says in verse 7 is, My heart is steadfast, O God.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: My heart is steadfast.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why is his heart steadfast?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is because he breaks out, forces himself to break out in a song.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I resolve to sing, I will sing.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the feeling of it, and I will sing praises.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So David says, I'm gonna sing in the midst of this hard time.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then he continues in eight and nine by talking more about singing.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Awake, my glory, meaning uh what God has put inside him.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Awake, harp and lute.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I will awaken the dawn.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna sing out in the morning when my voice is at its worst.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna bring in the dawn with my song to the Lord.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: I will acknowledge you, Lord, among the nations.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be public.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, I'll sing praises to you among the peoples.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that beautiful?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So cry help and then move to sing praise.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's verses eight and nine.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Verses uh um, so the second thing is you praise him specifically, verse 10, next to last verse, for his love and truth.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: For great into the heavens is your loyal love and unto the clouds your truth.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you sing uh praise to God and you sing good songs.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: You sing songs that uh praise God for who he is, for the fact that he is loving and the fact that he is true.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, let me share with you how that uh how that might feel physically.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh uh this uh woman's name, Demarcy.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: She lives down in uh in Tampa, Florida, and she's pregnant in this picture, which is taken early in April.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she's pregnant with twins.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's just now last week delivered uh twin girls.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that twins, there were some complications.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: So she had to go into the hospital, Tampa General Hospital, huge hospital.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: She had to go in in the middle of March, leaving behind not just her husband, but her eight-year-old son, Fox, F O X, who loves his mother, loves giving his other mom hugs and so forth.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there she would be because of coronavirus, nobody, they couldn't visit her in the hospital and so forth.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was quarantine and everything.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: There she would stand with the walls closing in in her little room high up in Tampa General Hospital, just looking out the window.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, her son, Fox, got the idea at home.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was his idea that he would take paper and he would he would make big words like, Hi, Mom, and I love you.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he talked his dad into driving down into the parking lot of the Tampa General Hospital where he could stand far away and he could hold up these signs.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And up there on the fourth floor, you know, his uh they called her ahead of time and said, Please look out your window.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there he is holding, Hi, mom, and I love you signs.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine how she felt.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when they interviewed Fox, you know, on TV down there, he said, I so miss giving my mom hugs, but I can guarantee you she felt great at that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a picture of what the Lord God is doing for us in this song.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Listen, I know the walls are closing in, but I'm holding up, I'm holding up my attributes to you, and I'm saying, I love you.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love you.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Love and truth, that's who I am.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: I am faithful to you.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: I urge you to sing about these things.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: What Fox did for his mom, God does for us.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we're cooped up.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: When we're cooped up, God holds us a sign from heaven saying, Hi mom, hi dad, hi son, hi daughter, I love you.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um then the final verse is, of course, this famous one sing our longing for God to be exalted above all the earth.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And here we have that famous verse again Be exalted, O God above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Psalm 57, verse 11.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um let me summarize once again this Psalm, Psalm 57, with cable all cry out close in, do two things cry for help and sing praise.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it seems to me that the two emotions that we feel most that at least have been cropping up at me have been impatience and anger.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this psalm would say, Jim, replace impatience with prayer, replace your anger with a song.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I uh came across this Peanuts uh cartoon about impatience, and maybe this is during uh quarantine where uh where Snoopy's banging, uh kicking the door, and and um and we have uh is it supper time already, Charlie Brown says, and then he looks out and he says, Okay, okay, you don't have to break down the door.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen anyone so impatient.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And during this time we have this level of impatience with each other, brothers with sisters.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um another peanuts uh cartoon goes uh where Linus or Linus watching TV and Lucy comes up to him and she says, Am I bothering you?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Linus keeps watching TV and he says, Not so far.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, How would you like to have someone like myself remind you of all your faults?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, I wouldn't like it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, See, right there is one of your problems.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: You have no desire to improve.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, I don't need you to help me improve.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like home, doesn't it?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, and you're so impatient, you get upset so easily.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he stands up and he starts walking out of the room.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I don't have to listen to this.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she says to him as he leaves the room, and you think everything can be solved by storming out of the room.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then as he's gone, and then she turns around, looks at the TV, and says, And you always forget to turn off the TV when you're through watching it.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I am sure that you could probably tell us stories about levels of impatience in your home that that lead to anger.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I love this text, Psalm 57, which says, Replace your impatience with prayer, cry help, replace your anger with a song, sing praise.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it strikes me that uh, you know, back in 1952, uh award-winning uh musical with uh Gene Kelly and uh and uh uh uh Debbie Reynolds uh singing in the rain.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um and by the way, this was not easy for them to sing in the rain.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because uh Gene Kelly, when he sang this very song, had a temperature of 103.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Debbie Reynolds had never never danced before, never taken dancing lessons.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, later on in life, she said the two hardest things I ever had to do in life was give birth to a baby and do singing in the rain.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to sing in the rain, or not easy to sing in a cave.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what David does, and I I remind you of that musical because I know for some of you that'll help you remember the story of Psalm 57 to sing in the cave.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how dark it gets, no matter how the walls are closing in during this time, God wants you to sing.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, 3,000 years earlier than singing in the rain, David sang in the cave.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when I back to Hezekiah's tunnel to close.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I find myself in there, and I am I'm freaking out as bad as when I got stuck with somebody's feet in my face in uh in Cheop's uh pyramid years ago down in Egypt, and and I am not knowing what to do.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so after going, oh Lord, and praying for them to move and seeing that they were not gonna move very soon and having people on both sides, I started singing.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't have the voice.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is just this last summer, and I certainly don't have the voice that I used to, but I didn't care, and my singing of all the songs I could think of, uh, worship songs, praise songs to God, just started echoing around me in this cave.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then the neatest thing happened is that more music began to echo even louder than mine.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out later that Melody, who was who was leading our group at the back of it, seeing that everybody was stopped and hearing the word that there was a group ahead, knew that I would be literally emotionally crumbling.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so she told everybody to sing, and the rest of my group started singing very loud.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this, these songs of praise to God just echoed through Hezekiah's tunnel.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And after it was only like three, four hours before the group ahead of me finally moved.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it felt like.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure it was only five minutes, maybe ten.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: But finally they moved and we got out into the sunshine.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that experience of having to cry for help and having to sing praises in order to survive was a wonderful, wonderful lesson for me.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I would like to advise you this week, as you look at Psalm 57 in front of you.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, last week I asked you to uh pray out loud Psalm 91.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: This week I'm gonna ask you to sing, and I would urge you to maybe sing uh the last three verses of Psalm 57, which are pretty famous.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: We used to sing it all the time here at church.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna ask Jeremiah to play it.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read the words.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna sing it, but the words, as you look at the last three verses, are word for word, I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, among the people.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: I will sing praises to thee among the nations, for thy steadfast love is great.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is great to the heavens, and thy faithfulness, thy faithfulness to the clouds, be exalted, O God, above the heavens.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let thy glory be over all the earth.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Would you uh would you play and sing that for us?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'll come back up and I'll say a few things and then close us in prayer.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I will give thanks to thee.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: I will say praise to thee.
• 40:28
  unknown: Jeremiah.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if uh I want you to sing that, and if uh you maybe you sang along with Jeremiah, if you know it, if you don't know it, you can rewind this and you can learn this song, you can sing it just holding your Bible up.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I encourage you to sing Psalm 57, this golden, this golden, golden psalm about how to handle what we're going through emotionally.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we have uh I'll close in prayer, but we have uh one more announcement for you, and that is that if uh if uh if you're new to the church, if you'd like to know more, we've got a special program that uh that we're gonna do.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: We invite you to be part of that.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here it is, new to TBC, meet us afterwards, go to discover tbc.com slash after, and we'll we'll tell you, we'll explain to you, Teresa will explain to you and Doug how you can get to know us better.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now bow your head with me in a word of prayer, Heavenly Father.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're so, so, so grateful that you care not just about us physically, but you care about us emotionally, and you understand because you've made us how we can sometimes get depressed and we get stressed, we can sometimes start to feel impatient, angry because we feel the walls closing in around us, we begin to feel that way.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you that you really do have a plan, a purpose to make us more like your son so that we can glorify you on earth and eventually the whole earth, the whole world will glorify you.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you want, because you still hold the whole world in your hands.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, give us the ability, even when we don't feel like it, to cry to you for help and then to sing praises to you in Jesus' name.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again for joining us.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Have a great week.