Remember God's Grace

I listen to other songs here oftentimes. I have other playlists that I listen to, but coming here when we get to sing our songs together, there's just something uniquely refreshing about it. that all these different kinds of people, all these different kinds of sinners who believe in Jesus Christ, we get to gather and unite under these songs, under this truth. It's a beautiful picture of what Christ is doing in His church. I'm often counseled and comforted and encouraged by the songs we're singing in this one voice. You see, our songs, they're meant to do a lot for us. They're a testimony to the things we believe. They're reinforcing the truths that we've gathered together to believe. They transform us. I believe they're as effective, if not more effective, than the sermons in telling us what we believe and helping us understand it. I believe this is especially true for children, which is why we have a children's choir on Wednesday night. I hope that our kids are learning songs that they can sing for the rest of their lives. That saints before them have sung for centuries past that are going to reinforce the truths that have been handed down for all time. At home, we try to reinforce these songs. We try to sing the bulletins, so we take bulletins home and we sing them. And we oftentimes ask the girls, well, what have you been listening to? What have you been trying to learn in kids' choir so that we can reinforce what they're learning? And, well, we were surprised recently when we asked this question because one of the answers was, ain't no mountain high enough. And I looked at my wife and I was like, I'm pretty sure that's not a Christian song, a good song, but I don't know how that's a Christian song. Well, there is a Christian song with that same name, but this led to me asking Alexa to teach the girls Marvin Gaye's version, which then led to a dance party and it was very distracting. But we want to make sure that the songs we're singing are full of truth. What we're uniting under and with. I think we also need to be aware that what we sing is a witness. To non-Christians who are with us, to our children, to those who come in and observe us, it's a witness to what we believe and how we're living. And I think this is one of the problems, and I regularly wrestle with this, there's just not a lot of good songs of lament and confession. There's not a lot of good songs that really help us work through the pain, trouble, and trials of life, and confessing sin, so that we really are witnessing, we recognize life is difficult, but we always turn to the God of grace and peace. There's just not enough songs like that. It's a false witness to always come in and sing happy, happy, happy. We should be happy, we should be rejoicing, but we have to be honest about the difficulties. Well, let's say I'm thankful that this morning we get to look at a psalm of lament. We should think about how many songs we sing of rejoicing and praise versus lament because the psalms are full of psalms of lament. Crying out to God in difficulty, crying out to God in the midst of sin, seeking his peace and forgiveness. So this morning, we're looking at a psalm of lament. We're in the middle of a psalm series. If you're new with us, we usually go through books of the Bible. We're going to be going through the psalms. We're kind of hopping and skipping along the way. And the goal of this is to kind of capture different kinds of psalms. So the first one in the series was Psalm 146. It was a praise psalm. If you look at the last five psalms, they all start, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. So we looked at a praise psalm. Then last week we looked at a psalm of ascent. Mark Collins was here, he preached the Psalm 121. And ascent psalms were those psalms most likely that were sung by Israelites on their way to Jerusalem for a festival. And this morning we're looking at a psalm of lament. And there are actually different kinds of psalms of lament. This one is a remembrance psalm. It's a Psalm of lament pushing you to remember in the midst of your lamenting. And here's the point of the text, I believe. When lamenting in trouble, we find comfort by remembering God's past work. When lamenting in troubles, we find comfort by remembering God's past work. There's gonna be a correction in the first half of this Psalm. We misrepresent God when we try to figure out things on our own, with our own imagination. We get ourselves in more trouble when we do that. It leads to a downward spiral that then God says, you need to reorient yourself to thinking about what I have done, rather than thinking about your own thought process. There are four main sections to this Psalm. You can see there are three Selahs. We actually don't know what that is. Sarah didn't read it because I told her I think it's just a pause. There is one source who thinks this was a moment to have a musician shred out a lyre solo. I don't think that's probably what it is. I think it's probably a moment to pause and to think about what's been said because they do set up four stanzas. If you think about the Salahs, I think they're separating four different stanzas as this Psalm continues. But I'm gonna look at it in two sections. First, verses one to nine. And we're gonna spend most of our time actually here. Because we're gonna see that despair grows deeper when we reason in our hearts. Despair grows deeper when we reason in our hearts. And then, Lord willing, 10 to 20, we'll see that faith grows stronger when we remember God's salvation. Despair grows deeper when we reason in our own hearts. Faith grows stronger when we remember God's salvation. So first, let's look at our faith grows. I cut and pasted the wrong title. Despair grows deeper when we reason in our own hearts. Look how it begins. I cry aloud to God. Aloud to God. And He will hear me. In the day of my troubles, I seek the Lord. In the night, my head is stretched out without wearying. And look at the honesty here. My soul refuses to be comforted. The psalmist begins by stating he cries out to the Lord, he's seeking Him in some kind of trouble. This is the beauty of a psalm. As we look at it as ways that God tells us, here's how you practice praying to me. These are ways for us to practice prayer. It's amazingly honest. It's refreshingly honest. I can't hold my eyes open. I remember God and I moan. I meditate and my spirit faints. Here we see a believer coming to God and saying, I am exhausted. I am tired. I'm wore out by whatever trial is going on in my life, and I'm coming to you, and even when I remember you, I won't. Now, if you were here last week, Mark led us through Psalm 121, and this was a good thesis summary of Psalm 121. Mark said, God's people look to him for help because they trust he will keep them safe. True, a great summary of Psalm 121. God's people look to him for help because they trust he's going to help them. I think our psalmist in verses one to nine, he's saying, I tried that and it didn't work. Now what? This is a brutally honest song of someone who has a deep despair, who's in the midst of a very difficult trial. I looked up and I moaned. I'm troubled, I'm weary. Really, we see here a lesson from God in how to pray and how to receive instruction on how to get the help we need to ask for help. The psalmist cries out for when he's in trouble? Well, what kind of trouble? What is wrong with the psalmist here and what's led him to this kind of despair? So the difficulty in preaching a psalm is that you rarely have context. The beauty of praying a psalm is it doesn't have a context. It invites you to pray this in your own context. That's the beauty of what God's doing here. He doesn't give us a context. We have no idea what the psalmist is troubled by. But we get to come and pray these words with our troubles. What kind of troubles would you pray this kind of prayer for? I'm going to start out that Russell Wilson could have prayed this prayer. Russell Wilson is a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. The greatest victory you can have as a football player is to win the Super Bowl. Russell Wilson was as close to me as those stairs to winning the Super Bowl, and he threw the game away by throwing an interception. After that game, he could pray this. I remember and I moan, I'm weary. That defeat would be overwhelming. And you may think, Keith, you're just full of football silliness. Yes, maybe. But if football is your life, if you worship the game and winning, It's the moment of great despair. Now we can look to things that we all recognize are true real-life problems. We can look at the parents of Charlie Gard or Otto Warmbier. And they could pray this prayer. There's this trouble. How do we make sense of what's happened to our son? It doesn't make any sense. How could we possibly see God doing something good in these just irrational deaths of our children? We could look to this and we could pray this in the midst of financial trouble. I'm overwhelmed with debt. I don't have financial security. I just got a phone call from a friend who's a pastor. He has to resign because the church can't afford him. And he's troubled because he loves these people, but he's crying out, what do I do? I'm growing weary because I can't provide for my family. It's a real problem that you could pray this prayer in. Maybe it's a relational context. Maybe there's a death in the family like we mentioned earlier. Maybe there's this relational tension. I don't know how to resolve this relational problem. I cry out to God and I moan. I'm weary in trying to figure out what to do. This can be prayed in the midst of security or insecurity. Israel may be under attack by another nation. There may be some kind of personal attack or a friend's betrayal that could be prayed in the midst of health crises. It could be prayed in the midst of sin. someone entangled and caught in sin, and they don't know how to pray for God to heal them and restore them. All these are troubles that could lead us to this kind of prayer of despair, seeking God in comfort. And here, whatever the trouble is, he needs to turn to God, he's looking to find comfort, but he ends up with moaning and growing faint. Verse two, again, is just wonderfully honest. My soul refuses to be comforted. He's not blaming God. He's not blaming anybody else. He's taking responsibility. He's acknowledging the real problem is somewhere in here. I am refusing the comfort, he says. It's an internal problem. And this is a very scary and dangerous place to be. When there's a wound in the heart, the gospel needs to be able to come and heal it. And it's just like somebody who has a wound that's painful, and the medicine, when it touches, it's gonna hurt, but that medicine needs to be applied. Recently, I slid into third base, I had a huge strawberry, and that night, my wife looked at it and said, we gotta put some medicine on that, that looks pretty nasty. So she gets hydrogen peroxide. She barely touches it. And the scream I let out and the height of which I jumped terrified her to the point and said, we'll do that later. But it needed medicine. It was a problem. But the medicine hurts. So I refused it. How much more are hearts with wounds? You need the gospel medicine. And the deeper the wound, the more it stings sometimes. Because usually it's confronting some kind of idol or some kind of sin, and it's going to hurt when applied, but it's going to ultimately heal what's going on. Sometimes it's like someone drowning. Someone drowning is usually flailing, and they're usually a danger to the person trying to save them. That's how we respond to someone trying to apply the gospel. That's how our souls respond. They resist the help. This is really confessing a heart that's become hard. It's important to see here. The problem's internal. The heart needs help. The heart needs help asking for help and receiving help. It's one of my favorite lines from a song we sing, Come Thou Fount. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. God, I need grace to sing grace. I need help to receive help. This kind of prayer is hard work. To be this honest with God, and he's not afraid of you being this honest with him, but in this kind of despair to come before him. He cannot sleep, verse 4. Verse 5, I consider the days of old, the years long ago. He's all internal. We're transitioning now to the second stanza. And notice verse 6. This is actually the most terrifying part. Verse 2, my soul refused to be comforted. That's a scary place to be. Verse 6 really tells us the most scary part of this entire meditation. I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. He's turning inward. The soul, the heart, the internal that's refusing God, that is a source of even more trouble, he's turning inward to contemplate. He should be singing a new song right now. In many Psalms, there's a cry for help, and then there's a rejoicing, I'm going to sing a new song that God has given me, but notice what he says. I'm gonna remember my song. I'm going to meditate in my heart. He's singing a song back to himself, and listen to what the song is. Will the Lord spurn forever? and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? This is a very sad and scary song that we can be prone to sing. In the midst of our trials, in the midst of our difficulty, when we turn inward to try to make sense of things, this is where our despair can lead us. He's questioning God's favor and love and promises and grace and compassion. When we go through a trial and we look inward, this is usually where it leads us. These are some serious questions. Especially for someone who's a believer. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, our whole life is built upon God's favor, love, promise, grace, and compassion. To begin questioning these things. I know in school we say there's no bad questions. These are bad questions. In the sense that they're unhealthy. Now God's not afraid of you asking these questions. God is not afraid of you asking these questions. God has modeled for us. You come and you ask me if my love has ceased forever because I will assure you my love is steadfast forever. But let's just get into the mind of our psalmist. This is terrifying. What he's confessing is actually, I've let my circumstances, my experiences, and my reason take me to the point where I trust what I'm thinking more than what God has said. Because this is what God says about himself. I'm going to read from Exodus 34. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, this is God telling Moses what his name is. The Lord, the Lord God. compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. Same word as steadfast love. Abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgressions and sin. And yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation. Now we see there He's a just God who has to penalize sin and has to judge sin, but those first words are so sweet. Who is God? He's compassionate. He's gracious. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in love and kindness. He's, in truth, He keeps loving kindness. That's who God said He is, and our psalmist has gotten to such a point of despair, he's asking, he's questioning all of these things. This is why we must cling to what God has said and let that interpret our circumstances rather than the other way around. Now I just want to look at verse 8 for a moment as we think about this particular problem and I want us to see how in the midst of trials our despair can make us quite frankly just illogical. Alright so to ask if steadfast love has forever ceased is kind of like saying God has your square become a circle. By definition, steadfast love does not cease. By definition, it's a forever love, and you're saying, has forever love stopped being forever? No. God's love is the one most sure thing you can build your life upon, but His circumstances have become overwhelming. Also, I want you to notice some language here. Verse seven. Will the Lord spurn forever? and never again be favorable. Has his love forever ceased? Has his promises come to an end for all time? The language of always, never, forever, really unhelpful in most conversations, especially when it's doubting and questioning someone. These are words being declared by someone who's defeated. He doesn't see how he could possibly get out of this particular trial. He lacks what we call assurance. Now, I praise God that it's been a long time since I prayed seven to nine like this psalmist prayed it. But I can tell you, my junior year of college, that was pretty much my prayer. My entire year was asking God, do you still love me? I was only a Christian for two years at this point. And at this point, I'm wrestling with sin. Things have been revealed to me that were new. And I hadn't yet understood that God's love isn't earned. And so the entire year, this plagued me. And it wasn't until I learned, stop thinking about that and just look to the cross where you know he loves you. See, this is what sin does. It says, well, no, you need to get deeper in your heart and you need to figure out how to untie the knot. No, God says, look to the cross and the Holy Spirit will untie your heart. When we get into this kind of trouble, this kind of doubting, we think, let me get in deeper and figure out. No, his whole problem is his internal processing. The trouble that began the cry in verse one is nothing in light of how he's processing and creating more trouble. Now I mentioned that distant past doubting of God's love, but as we think about a soul that refuses comfort, it reminded me that just a few years ago, there was an interaction with a godly woman of this church. She complimented me after a difficult meeting. And I do not remember what I said, but I remember that my awkwardness that evening was more awkward than my normal awkwardness. And so I emailed the next day and just said, please forgive me. You said something nice to me and I didn't receive it. And I say that to say, our souls regularly refuse words that we need to hear. The building up. The correction. Our souls are too resistant to what God would have us hear. Receiving words well is a Christian discipline that takes practice and prayer. So if you wanna think about what that means for you, here's a few questions. What kind of words do you resist most? What words automatically throw up a wall that are hard to receive? What kind of conversations do you avoid? What are the topics you figure how to redirect? What kind of prayers have you not engaged in? Really what we're asking there is what are you afraid of losing? What idol are you afraid of losing by having a certain kind of conversation or hearing a certain word? Hearts that refuse building up or hearts that refuse correction, That all comes down to humility. Just saying whatever God has to say to me, I'm going to receive it. It is a pride problem, either way we look at it. This is what sin does, it leads us to mistrust God. Look at verse seven and nine again. That there's nothing here other than just believing Satan's lie that surely God would not do that to you if he loved you. Can you really trust that God's good to you? If he's done this to you, if you're in this trial, if these circumstances are such, can you really believe he's loving and favorable? He wants you to question if God's good. And God is going to assure us, yes, he is good. And yes, his love is favorable, it's forever. And his promises do not end. Now, I wanna pause here for a moment because there's a say law. Before we go to verse 10, If you struggle with assurance, we doubt when we get into this internal dialogue. That usually makes doubt more difficult. And so I wanna encourage you, don't get caught in this cycle. Don't get caught without talking to others about it, because what we need to do, again, is not try to figure out, all right, I'm just gonna handle this problem, I'm gonna figure it out. No, our despair usually grows deeper when we try to reason our own hearts. You need to look outside of you. Meditate upon what God has done. No more of Christ, his death, his resurrection, and that will grow you out of the doubt. Figure out what sin continues to lure you in and entice you and entangle you and realize it is not worth it. God has saved you to enjoy His perfect love. That love does not cease, but if you look for joy in sin, you do not get to enjoy God's love. It doesn't end. It's always there on you, and always there for you. You just don't get to enjoy it. Do you realize what a ridiculous trait that is? Exponency grows difficult when we let our internal process take over and we do not look to God, we don't look to others. Secondly, I want to challenge us. Ask God questions. Ask God the real serious hard questions of your heart. Ask God the real hard questions. It's an invitation here. Have you ever asked God anything so bold as our psalmist does, as God has inspired our psalmist to do, to lead us to ask questions? He's not afraid of our questions. He's eager to hear and to respond to give us comfort. Third, I want to say, ask one another good questions. This is what helps grow a culture of discipleship in a church that truly builds one another in Christ. Ask other hard questions. Get into the nitty gritty of each other's lives. And elders, we need to start with this, by asking questions, being willing for hard questions to be asked. But I want to be honest about something. It's just as hard to ask a hard question as it is to be asked the hard question. Because as soon as you ask the question, you're vulnerable. You may have to answer it. You should be ready to answer. But this is where a church that's trusting one another and growing up in Godliness, we're starting to be able to say, look, we've gotta ask the hard questions. Not how are you doing? Okay, on Sunday morning, that's fun. You're just kinda passing by. Don't you meet together? Ask the hard questions. As we think about what's coming next, I wanna just hypothesize for a moment. Imagine if Psalm 77 ended at verse nine. Imagine what happens to the psalmist. He eventually quits. He eventually just peters out. You can't persevere like this forever. This isn't where God intends anyone to stay. So he gives us verse 10. Look at verse 10. It goes into our second section. Our faith grows stronger when we remember God's mighty work. The transition. Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the most high. Now look at verse five. I consider the days of old the years long ago when I remember my song. All right, verse five, he's considering his own years, but no, now verse 10, he's transitioning. I'm going to appeal to something more. My circumstances, my internal reflection, my reason, it's gotten me to a stop. I need to appeal to something more, to the right hand, his action, his saving work. And notice how this section changes. Let me just read verses 10 to 15. Listen for how God is talked about so much more than the previous section. Listen how he's talking about more personally, you God, your way. He's not abstract God, he's you, oh God. And notice how his feelings are not even mentioned anymore. His internal process is not mentioned anymore. He is going to be thinking of God and what he has done. Then I said, I'll appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the most high. He's reorienting himself away from inside to what God has done. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, oh God, is holy. What God is great like our God. You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. You, God, our God, your work, your might, your redemption. He's reorienting himself to think about God. Now, I wanna stop here and I wanna go back. I mentioned earlier this is a specific kind of lament. It's a lament of remembrance. There's a key word that drives throughout the psalm. It's remember. Look at verse three. When I remember God, I moan. Verse six, let me remember my song, that song that doubted the love and grace and compassion of God. So the internal remembering, that led him to trouble. But then look at how he begins this new appeal. Verse 11. Remember, parallelism is saying the same thing twice. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. He's reorienting himself and making himself think of something very different. It's not the internal process. I'm going to think about you, O God. I also want you to see the word remember and meditate. They go together. Look at verse three again. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my heart, my spirit faints. Verse six, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Look at 11 and 12. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. God is modeling what we have to learn to do by practicing it. He's reorienting himself. It's not what I'm feeling and thinking and how I'm reasoning, it's I've gotta look outside of myself. I need help that's going to come from outside and that help is looking to the God who has a mighty right hand to save. Verse 10 is a change, it's a commitment, it's a solution. I've looked inside and it's gotten me nowhere, so I'm going to look outside where there's going to be rejoicing and trust and hope. Look at verse 13, your way, oh God, is holy. What God is like, our God, your way's better than my way. Okay, what I'm currently suffering, he's saying, I would not have chosen, but your way's better than my way, you're holy. I can trust you. You're the God who works wonders. You've made your might known. Everything you've done has pointed to the fact that we can trust you. So go back verses one to three, that was really a general cry. Then four to nine was a very specific cry of lament. Verses 10 to 15 was a general reorienting of himself. And now 16 to 20 is a more specific reorienting of himself. Let's look at that last stanza. When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid. Indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind. Your lightnings lighted up the world. The earth trembled. and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. I believe there's a few things we can gain from meditating upon what our psalmist is saying God has done. Verses 16 to 18 specifically, I think, talk about a God who is good and ordered and sovereign. He's a God who can look at the chaos and that chaos of the waters and the thunder and the lightning, it obeys Him. There's things that terrify us. God is in complete control. He brings goodness out of chaos. He's a great creator who brought order and goodness. He reigns over chaos and so it cannot cause us fear. Secondly, there's a clear reference in verses 19 to 20 to the deliverance out of Egypt. The greatest salvation story in the Old Testament is what he's referencing here. If you ask an Israelite, a Hebrew, what's the greatest deliverance of the Old Testament? It's the Red Sea. They just came out of Egypt after 10 plagues, and they're going to cross through the Red Sea on dry ground as a declaration of God's great power to save. Your way was through the sea. Your path through the great waters. Yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock. the great mighty king, the great shepherd, cared for his people. I want you to see here what the psalmist is doing. He's going from a general appeal to God's mighty power to save to the very specific act. Because in the midst of our trial, we can be overwhelmed with those circumstances, but when we put it in light of what God has already done, he made the waters part. He made the land dry. He conquered the greatest nation the world knew at the time, Egypt. Are our problems greater than those problems? When we think about what we're going through in light of what God has done, our problems look like small stuff usually. He can do it. He's able. Now to really appreciate what the psalmist is remembering, I want to go back and I want to get past kind of the shorthand reference. I want us to go back to Exodus. So you can turn in your Pew Bible if you have it. Page 56. Let us remember what happened because in order to truly appreciate how this psalm heals us by looking outside, we need to remember what's going on. Israel had been in Egypt for many years. God sent them there. Then an evil Pharaoh took over. He was abusive. He mistreated God's people, and God's people cried out to him. So God said, I'm going to save you. Moses, the chosen instrument, is sent back to Egypt after he fled like a coward earlier to lead them out. And the people initially reject Moses. Actually, not initially. Over and over and over and over again, God's people rejected Moses. God responds by telling Moses, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna keep going to Pharaoh, and every time you go back, you're gonna tell him another plague's coming. I'm gonna keep hardening his heart. I'm going to destroy Egypt from the inside. I'm going to demonstrate my glory over these so-called gods, so that my people know I am the only one worthy of worship. So God demonstrated himself over a period of months, over and over and over again to his people. Israel had 10 great examples of God's power over the Egyptian gods. Then when they leave, they take all the gold of Egypt. They leave rich with a full assurance that Yahweh is the one true God who is with them and for them and has saved them. And as they're marching out of the city, God says, go over there and I want you to camp next to the sea. And then God says to Israel, he tells them what he's going to do. I will once again harden Pharaoh's heart. I will once again send him after you. This is in chapter 14, one to four. Look at verse four. I will harden Pharaoh's heart. He will pursue them. I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. God's going to show he's the one true God. He tells them it's going to happen. The people of Israel should have enough evidence of faith to know he can do this and will do it. So there they are, they're camped by the Red Sea. And then they see the shields, the sun hitting the shields in the distance. They start asking questions, there's a stir. And then as the Israels are prone to do, they murmur. Listen to what Israel says. I'm just gonna skip all the way down to verse 11. They said to Moses, is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us out away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is it not this what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. That's saying the same thing as 7 to 9 in our psalm. It's questioning God, His goodness, His love, and His power. They're questioning actually God's motivation here. You brought us out here to die. What does God do in response? I would have smited him. But what does God do in response? Remember when he brought them out, he brought them out with a glorious cloud. That's how he led them out, with the glory of his presence. And that cloud that had been leading them, moving them where they're gonna go, it now circled around behind them so that those Egyptians couldn't come near them. Now we actually don't have a record of the sky breaking and the lightning. I wonder if that's what the Egyptians saw on the other side. Just absolute frightening glory of God because of His enemy. But what do the Israelites get to see? The beauty of God's glory and protection. And then what does God do? He doesn't just protect them. Moses takes his staff. Look at verse 21. He stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided and the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on the right hand and on the left. His ways are holy and awesome. demonstrated to a grumbling people who should have already seen how much he's demonstrated he's the one true God, that he is the one true God whose love does not cease, whose promises never end. This is what the psalmist comforts himself with. God doesn't fail. God doesn't fail. Whatever our trouble is, if He can save Israel in the midst of this problem, He can save us in whatever our problem is. Now, should we as Christians meditate upon the Passover and the Red Sea deliverance? When we are in the midst of trials, absolutely, but you get to meditate upon a deliverance that's even better. You see, just as the Red Sea is the great deliverance of the Old Testament, there's a greater deliverance in the New Testament. On that Friday, we get to meditate upon that Friday when Christ died on the cross. Now I want you to think about what that day actually looked like. An innocent man is charged for crimes he did not commit. He has to carry his own cross after being beaten, spat upon, and mocked. He's nailed to a cross where the religious leaders are cheering. and it's snarling. The devils are, they're dancing. It looks like a dark day. Everything that's seen is frightening because when he breathes his last, the earthquake, so there's some actually references. The sun doesn't shine. It's a dark day from everything we see. But God was doing something in the hidden. God was providing you and me forgiveness for all of our sins. God was providing us a freedom from the power of sin. When he crushed his son, the father, on that day, which is what's happening in the hidden, we were given freedom from guilt, freedom from the enslaving power of sin. That is what God has done. That's why we call that Good Friday. Our Savior was murdered, but it was good because of what God was doing in the hidden. God was at work so that we can look back and know He will not withhold one single thing because He did not spare even His own Son. will never lose us. His love is forever. He's demonstrated His compassion, His grace, and His promises have come to fulfillment. How could we ever pray seven through nine? When we meditate on the cross, we can't. It's an absolute assurance because of what God has done. Not how we feel, not how we're reasoning, not our process. what God has done. Your faith has a sure foundation. It's Jesus Christ, His death on the cross, and the resurrection. That's how we know that that interpretation of that day is true. If you're not a Christian this morning, I don't know how you wrestle through the trials of life. We all have our different coping mechanisms. We all have our different ways of trying to ignore or numb different pains. The great God of life invites you to actually really have healing, to receive a healing. And that doesn't mean there's gonna be troubles and trials. You may have more troubles and trials as a Christian, but what you have is a God who says, my love's never gonna stop. I'm going to walk with you, care for you, carry you. If you're not a Christian this morning, your greatest trouble is not the one you're thinking of. Your greatest trouble is that one day you're going to die, and you're going to stand before God, and you're going to see all of your sin, and how you've rejected Him, and how you've refused Him, and you're going to be speechless. So today, you can believe in Jesus Christ. that he died for your sin, that he, in the midst of that speechlessness, he's going to come in and say, Father, I died. All those sins have been wiped away. All those sins were placed upon me. Your wrath has been satisfied because it came upon me. I am with him or her and for him or her. I'm with you, he's going to say. Your sins can be forgiven. If you're a Christian in the midst of trials, Let's be aware of how dangerous it can be to go internal. Let's speak to one another. Let's look outside of ourselves to one another and most of all, look upon what Christ has accomplished. That's what unties the heart. That's what gives us the healing and comfort we need. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you've given us Words to pray when we don't know how to. We thank you that promise in Romans eight that the spirit groans when we don't know the words to say, but here in the midst of a moment of despair, we're led to trust you and to praise you. Forgive us for how we think we can figure things out and process them on our own. Help us, Lord, to look to You, the God of love, for healing and help. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.