At Work to Redeem His People

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Transcript:

Well, we’re spending so much time at the hospital lately. I’ve also had to try to be intentional about spending time with the other kids so they don’t feel neglected, especially the older two. Charlie doesn’t care.

He’s in his happy place with Granny. He doesn’t care where I am. But especially the older two have tried to spend extra time with them.

And so we spent a couple of mornings this last week at the state capitol for field trips that were already planned. It’s only a mile from the hospital. We’re going to go ahead and go. They had a big time, and I kept my comments to myself, which, as we were talking to legislators, which those of you who know me know that that’s not easy for me, and it’s not also what usually happens, but I behaved this week.

Well, the kids were with me last year, and I said some things I shouldn’t have. Benjamin got confused about how old he was. I don’t know if I’ve told this story, but last year, Benjamin got confused about how old he was when we were talking to one of the representatives, and he said, I’m five.

No, I’m six. And I said, it’s all right, Benjamin. Math is hard.

People at the Capitol understand. And yeah, we had to leave that man’s office quickly. There was nothing like that this week.

But as I was walking through the hallways of the Capitol, I was thinking to myself of how over the years, Oklahoma politicians have just provided a lot of, they’ve said a lot of funny things, and not trying to be funny, but things that they mean to sound intelligent that sometimes don’t come out that way. And I was thinking about one particular politician, I won’t say who it was because some of you may like him, but one particular politician who several years ago was having a press conference about something that was a really big deal as far as he was concerned. I don’t remember even what it was.

But he was holding a press conference and talking about this problem, and he’s got his serious face on, and he said, I will literally move heaven and earth to do X, Y, and Z. And I remember listening to that and thinking, he’s going to, okay, are we talking like I’ve got an earthquake and tornado machine literally or misusing the word literally, literally? I hate to break it to the government of Oklahoma, but you can’t literally move heaven and earth.

I mean, it’s Oklahoma. We have earthquakes and tornadoes. If we had control over those things, we would have used it by now.

But I thought how silly it was. And he didn’t mean literally, but that’s what he said. And I thought then, and I was thinking again this week about how silly it was, the idea of an Oklahoma politician saying, I’m going to literally move heaven and earth to take care of this problem.

When none of us have that much control over anything. None of us can move heaven and earth to take care of our problems. As a matter of fact, when it comes to what we can affect, there’s actually very little. I’ve had to remind Charla of that constantly over the last two weeks.

When some little something will come up and she stresses out and wants to micromanage it, I have to say, what in these last two weeks have we actually had control of? We’ve just got to kind of let this go and be jellyfish. Just go where the current takes us, all right?

We don’t have control over much of anything, let alone big things like moving heaven and earth. But the reason that came to mind is because I knew where I was going with this message this Sunday morning and was thinking about we have a God who not only can but will move heaven and earth when it comes to fulfilling his plans. Now the series that I started last week is about how God is in control of all things.

God is sovereign. Some things happen because he causes them. Some things happen because he allows them, meaning he didn’t cause them but he allows them to happen.

But in all of it, when we think the world is out of control, God really is in control of all these things. So we’re looking at the sovereignty of God, not only that, but also the fact that God is at work in our midst, even when we don’t recognize it. And we looked at that a little bit last week, with God being in control in the book of Ezekiel, and Ezekiel writing, as God inspired him, to the exiles who were carried away into Babylon, and saying, you know what, I let this happen.

I let you be taken captive. This you know what, I’m also going to restore you. That’s going to be all me.

I’m going to bring you back into the land, and I’m going to clean you up, and I’m going to restore the land. I’m going to do all that. That’s going to be all me.

This is all part of my plan, and it’s for my glory in both cases. And we saw how God was at work, and the people of Israel weren’t necessarily going to notice it, weren’t necessarily going to understand it all, until it all came together at the end, and they could see the complete picture. Well, this morning we’re looking at that idea again of God being in control and God being at work and some of the reasons why he’s at work.

Last week we looked at God being at work for his own glory. This morning we’re going to look at God being at work to redeem his people. And if you would, turn with me to Psalm chapter 33.

Psalm chapter 33. What we see here and what we see throughout Scripture is that we serve a God who can literally move heaven and earth. when it comes to matters of protecting and preserving and upholding and redeeming his people, that when it comes to the plans of God, we may look at things and say, there’s no way this is going to work out.

There’s no way that anything good is going to happen here. There’s no way this is going to be taken care of. And God, meanwhile, is behind the scenes doing what only God can do and doing things for our redemption, for our good, that we won’t even recognize until it all comes together at the end.

it’s the same thing that was happening in psalm chapter 33 and many of the psalms by the way were written by david this one doesn’t say specifically that it was written by david but the one before it and the one after it were so it’s in all likelihood written by david and david understood god’s redemption because david was somebody that had been plucked out of obscurity by god and and been set on the path toward becoming the king of Israel, that was all God. David didn’t sort of do his politicking to get into the position. God plucked him up out of where he was guarding the sheep and put him on a path to becoming king of Israel.

That was all God. And during that time, even when David was faithfully serving King Saul, King Saul wanted to kill him because he was paranoid. And time after time after time, we see God intervening.

Now, sometimes God used others, like Jonathan, who was Saul’s son and David’s friend. Sometimes God would use others, but God was constantly intervening to rescue David from certain death, because God had a plan for David where he would sit on the throne of Israel. And so we see God’s redemption and God’s preservation, God’s protection at work constantly throughout David’s life.

So when we get to Psalm 33, we begin to see this theme emerge again. And we’re going to start in verse 10, where it says, The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to naught. He maketh the devices of the people of none effect.

The counsel of the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. There in verse 10, he’s talking about the counsel of the heathen. You look at the nations around Israel, they call them heathens.

You can’t get by with things like that nowadays. But he was referring to these heathen countries, and they really were because they worshipped idols, and in some cases they sacrificed children to these idols, did all sorts of barbaric things, and so they were the heathen pagan countries around them. And these countries always had designs on Israel.

They always had plans for what they were going to do to Israel, much like today. Israel’s neighbors are, you know, I feel like just wait for an opportunity when Israel’s not looking to stick a knife in its back and would gladly take over if they could. There’s no difference between that time and this.

They were surrounded by hostile neighbors. And you look at them militarily, you’ve got all these hostile neighbors, some very strong countries, and they’ve got plans, and by human logic, they should be able to come in and take over, just like some of the wars that Israel faced in the 20th century. You’ve got a, you’re outnumbered by millions, And you’ve got the militaries of some very strong countries around you, and they should be able to just overrun your small country, and yet they were not able to.

It was the same thing in David’s day. These countries should have been able to conquer them. The only time they were able to conquer them, though, was when God said, all right, I’m going to teach you a lesson.

And then they would come in and take over for a time. But when God said no, when God’s hand was with Israel, when God’s blessing was with Israel, It was just like it says in verse 10 that the Lord brings the counsel of the heathen to not. When the heathen countries around them, when the pagan countries around them would sit and plot and plan for how they were going to take over Israel, God would make sure those plans just completely fell apart.

They came to not. And God would frustrate these armies to no end. God would make it impossible for them to do what they should have been able to do by human logic and military strength.

And the only reason their plans were confounded was because God said, no, stop here. The counsel of the Lord standeth forever. We see this in contrast to verse 10, where the counsel, the wisdom, the planning of the pagan countries around them came to nothing.

It says the counsel, the wisdom, the plans of the Lord stand forever. There’s nobody who can thwart God’s plans. There’s nobody who can thwart God’s plans.

You say, wait a minute, you mean God’s plans always work out? Yeah. I believe God gives us a free will to do certain things, but it always circles around where things are going to work out according to God’s plan.

You see, we have free will, but God also knew what we were going to choose. We’re getting into some deep territory here. Theologians have argued for centuries about how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will work together, and I don’t have all the answers for you.

I can’t explain how that works in detail except to say I believe the Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all things, and I also believe that God gave man free will and moral responsibility. Now, how exactly those fit together is a little bit above my pay grade. I try to understand it, but there are theologians much smarter than I am who don’t understand it.

My answer to you is just accept that they’re both true, and someday in heaven when God wants us to understand it perfectly, if God wants us to understand it perfectly, he’ll make sure that we do. But we see that God’s counsel, God’s plans stand forever, and the thought of his heart to all generations. So just think about that for a minute.

All the wisdom and all the might and all the plans of the kings of the earth pale in comparison to what God has in mind. When we look at our world today, there are some pretty strong countries out there. You know, things are tense with Russia.

Russia is a pretty big country. Things China. Things are tense with North Korea, who’s not a very strong country, but they’ve got, they’ve evidently got nuclear weapons, and they’re on that trajectory.

And sometimes we watch the news and we think, man, if we end up in a war with one of these countries, and sometimes it looks like we’re just about there, how’s that going to play out? Who’s going to stop that runaway train? Who’s going to.

. . Think about how powerful Russia and China and North Korea are.

Think about how powerful the United States is and all of our allies, you add up all the power of all the governments and all the militaries in the world and you put together all their plans and they still can’t even begin to hold a candle to the strength that God has and his plans will come to pass sooner than theirs will. Man can plan, but God can in an instant say, no, your plan’s not happening. Verse 12, blessed is the nation.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord and the Now, I hear this verse quoted, verse 12, quite a bit in political circles, because we want to encourage our government to do the right thing and be a voice for righteousness, but at the same time, this is not specifically a statement about the United States. It says, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and he’s referring there to Israel, Because Israel, the Lord, where you see Lord in all caps, is the Hebrew word Yahweh, which is the name of God. It means the self-existent one.

He doesn’t depend on us. And he was the God of Israel. Just as the Canaanites had Baal and some of the others, they had their national gods.

Yahweh was the God of Israel. And God was saying, blessed is the nation who has me for a God. That the nation that serves me, the nation that belongs to me, it’s going to work out well for you in the end.

And he says, and the people that he has chosen for his inheritance. The people that he chose for his inheritance, it was the nation of Israel. It was the Jewish people.

He chose them to have a very special place in his plans, to have a very special place in bringing the Messiah into the world. The people of Israel are just special to God. And so we can’t take that verse and say, oh, he’s talking about America.

Because you look at the end of it, the people he’s chosen for his inheritance. That was Israel. But I think the principle of the first part still applies.

Even though it’s not talking about us, I think the principle still applies, that a nation that serves God will be blessed. It was certainly true of Israel that they were blessed when they served God. You know what?

I think it’s also true of the United States of America. that in as far as we serve God, his hand of blessing, I believe, will remain on this country. Any country, I believe, that serves God will be blessed in that regard, even though this is speaking specifically of Israel.

So I don’t want to let the. . .

If you’ve been looking at that verse in a patriotic way, I don’t want to let the wind out of your sails too much. It is talking about Israel, but I think there’s a principle in there that applies to us as well. Verse 13, The Lord looketh from heaven, he beholdeth all the sons of men.

What he’s saying here is that God looks down from heaven and he sees all of us. And what that means is that even the plans that are made in secret, even the plans that these pagan countries thought they were putting together in secret to harm Israel and it was going to be a sneak attack, it was going to be a surprise, God knew all about that. And to bring it down to an application to us as well, God looks and sees men.

God looks and beholds all the sons of men. He looks from heaven. God sees you and God knows you.

God knows what’s in your heart. And why is it important that God sees all? Because if God is sovereign over all, God can’t be a God who’s caught off guard and says, oops, I didn’t see that coming, whenever we do something.

God knows the plans of the nations before they even come to pass. Verse 14 says, From the place of his habitation, he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. And that goes along with the last verse.

He looks out. He can see all of it. I can only know for sure what’s happening in this room.

And maybe not even that. Some of you may be playing on your phones, and I think you’re looking at your Bible. I don’t know.

I can’t know for sure what’s happening at this exact moment outside these doors, at my house, in the city. I can’t know. But God sees all of us all at the same time.

God sees what’s happening in real time. And he fashioneth their hearts alike, and he considereth all their works. Verse 15.

He fashioneth all their hearts alike. Even the rulers of nations, people that think, oh, I’m so powerful. My destiny is in my own hands.

The destiny of my nation is in my hands. God is the one who formed their heart. And the Bible says that God holds the hearts of kings in his hands.

And you and I as believers understand that every breath and every heartbeat that we have is a gift from God. Because James says every good and perfect gift comes from above. And the book of Acts says that in him we live and move and have our being.

And that’s been something I’ve remembered this week dealing with Carly’s heart issues, that every heartbeat is a gift from God. you don’t take any of it you don’t take any of it for granted at the moment God says that’s enough, the heart stops beating and as long as God wants the heart to stay beating, it stays beating and you might say that’s a sobering thought, it’s been comforting to me to know that it’s according to God’s will here he fashionedeth their hearts alike he considereth all their works so all the things that the kings were doing all the things that the nations were doing God sees it all, he considers it all he’s looking and paying attention. There is no king saved, this is important, there is no king saved by the multitude of a host. And a host simply means a large multitude.

They’re not going to be saved by the size of their army. A mighty man is not delivered by much strength. Verse 17, a horse is a vain thing for safety, neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.

And when you put all these verses together, what we see is that God made each of us. God even made those who think they’re so powerful and they’re the masters of their own destiny. God is actually in control of whether their heart takes its next beat.

They think that they do things in secret, they make plans, and they’re going to bring all their plans to fruition by just sheer force of will, and yet God knows their plans. God knew their plans before they were even born. And God can in an instant overthrow the plans of all the strongest people on earth.

And when it comes to trying to stand against the will of God, he says armies aren’t going to save you. Horses aren’t going to save you. All your multitudes of people and your great strength aren’t going to save you because there’s no collection of men.

There’s no collection of weaponry. There’s no collection of horses. Any of it.

There’s no amount of strength that can stand against the will of God when he says, no, I’m going to do this instead. And to those who are believers, that ought to be a comforting thought to realize that God’s plans shape the destinies of entire nations. And I’ve talked about this a little bit in the last few weeks, and we’ll be in the next, in the coming few weeks as well, that we see in scripture that God, God causes nations to rise and fall.

Talk about literally moving heaven and earth. God causes nations to rise and fall. So how do we know that he did that?

Well, God caused the Babylonians to rise and build an empire. Then God caused the Babylonians to be overtaken by the Persians. And then God caused the Persians to be overtaken by the Greeks.

And then God caused the Greeks to be overtaken by the Romans. And then God caused the Roman Empire to split in two. And God caused the Roman Empire to weaken and to fall apart.

So how do we know that God did that? Because God told the prophet Daniel hundreds of years before it ever happened. Hundreds of years before it ever happened.

If anybody sitting in here this morning is a skeptic, there’s nothing wrong with, I’m skeptical about a lot of things, okay? I don’t want you to feel bad about that. But maybe you’re sitting here saying, I’m not totally sold on God.

I’m not totally sold on the Bible. How do I know any of this is true. There’s a multitude of reasons.

And at some point, I’d like to do a series on what are some of the logical reasons for belief in God, for belief in the scriptures. I’d like to go through all those. If I can submit to you one of them today, look at the concept of prophecy.

Look at how the book of Daniel very clearly foretold in the prophecy of the statue toward the end of the book. Actually, I don’t know that it was toward the end of the book. I get confused about the order of things in the book of Daniel because it’s not always in chronological order.

But there’s a prophecy of a statue with four parts. That was written before Alexander the Great, before the Greeks came and took over the Persian Empire. As a matter of fact, I think it was written just before the Persians took over the Babylonian Empire.

And it was certainly completed before the fall of the Roman Empire because even the New Testament was finished before the fall of the Roman Empire. That’s just one example. Alexander the Great was prophesied.

Some of what he did to the city of Tyre was prophesied in the book of Ezekiel. There are prophecies in there where God predicted the rise and fall of nations. God said, this is what is going to happen to fulfill my plans.

God said it hundreds of years before it ever happened. Folks, we see in this that God says, you’ve made your plans. That’s fine.

You make your plans. You’ve got your armies. You’ve got all your strength.

That’s great. Whatever. I hold the destinies of nations in my hand.

You want to talk about somebody who can move heaven and earth, literally move heaven and earth to fulfill his plans? It’s God. He’s done it before.

This week, talking to Benjamin, we were discussing Joshua 6 and 7 about the conquest of Jericho. And we got to the part of the story where the priests, when they were crossing the Jordan River to go and attack Jericho, the priests were sent out ahead of the people. And they stood in the middle of the Jordan River with the Ark of the Covenant, and the water backed up further up the river so that the flow would stop.

And I said, now, what does water do? Does water ever pile up? And he said, no, I’ve never seen water pile up.

There’s something wrong with your water if it just sits there in a pile. No, water seeks to spread out to the lowest point it can find. I said, yet upstream from where they are, the Bible describes the water just piling up instead of going further downstream so that the people of Israel could cross the Jordan River on dry land.

I said, does that remind you of any other miracle that we’ve looked at, that we’ve discussed? He said, well, yeah, the Red Sea. And in that case, the water also piled up because the water just split at the Red Sea And it was like there were walls on the side where the people could, like the water was just being pushed back so the people could cross on dry land.

I said, God can move oceans. God can stop rivers. God can do all sorts of incredible things.

We’ve read a story about the sons of Korah where they opposed Moses and they opposed God speaking through Moses. And so Moses said, well, we’ll just see who speaks for God. All right, let’s do this.

And the ground splits open and swallows up just the people who were opposing God speaking through Moses and then closed back up over them. Folks, God can literally move heaven and earth to accomplish his purposes. So what are his purposes?

That’s one of the things we’ve been talking about through this series. I’d like to give you an additional purpose this morning, one of the things he moves heaven and earth for. We see that part of God’s will and part of God’s plan is to watch over his people and intervene in human history to protect and to preserve and to redeem them.

God is at work to protect his people and to preserve his people and to redeem his people. And we see this in the next couple of verses. Starting in verse 18, it says, Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him.

Now that word fear, I was in a church last Sunday night and heard somebody talking about fear, fear of the Lord, and said it’s not being afraid of what God’s going to do to you. You know, it’s a healthy respect. And I think that’s true.

But at the same time, we also need to understand fear of the Lord isn’t a terror, like a running and hiding because I’m terrified of what God’s going to do to me. But we also need to have a sense of awe at His power. There needs to be just a little bit of, he’s so big and he’s up here and I’m just this little sinner down here.

It’s a reverence for God, but I think it’s also a remembering our place and remembering who he is. And it says here that his eye is on them that fear him. Now this should be reassuring to you if you’re a believer, because we get to times where our feelings and our circumstances lie to us and make us feel like God is distant, God’s not even paying attention to me.

No, he says the eye of the Lord is on those that fear him. If you’re a believer, God is watching over you. Let me say that again.

If you are a believer, God is watching over you. You may not feel like it. You may not feel it.

But let me tell you, I don’t care how I feel or what I feel like. God’s word tells me it’s true that he’s watching over me. His eye is on them that fear him.

And with God watching over us, we need to understand that nothing happens to us that God has not either caused or allowed. Now, some people use that as a reason to get mad at God. I shouldn’t say use it as a reason.

Some people are looking to be mad at God, but I’ve met people that I don’t think went looking to be mad at God, but their circumstances happened, and they realized God allowed this to happen, or they think God caused it to happen, and so they get mad at Him. And I think that’s a natural response sometimes. But typically when things have happened to me that have been bad things, I don’t deserve to be going through this right now.

I know God allowed it, but that has not made me mad at God. I assume there’s some greater part of his plan where ultimately this is going to work out better for me in the end. I know that’s difficult to remember in the meantime.

It’s difficult to remember, well, I’ve got a daughter laying in a hospital bed in a little incubator, whatever you call it, in a little crib thing in the NICU with a heart defect. it’s hard for me to remember that God has some greater plan in mind when your mind immediately goes instead to God, why is this happening to us? God, what did she ever do?

But you have to remind yourself. I don’t believe God did this. I don’t believe God said, you know what?

I think I’ll mess up her heart. I think a lot of things happen because we live in a fallen sinful world. Death and sickness and suffering are all results of sin.

Not necessarily her sin, but no sin occurs in a vacuum. Sin infects everything around it. And so just the fact that we live in a sinful world, things like this happen.

And God allows us to deal with those consequences. But I’ve never doubted for a second that God has some greater plan in mind and God’s going to do something. I don’t see where the pieces are, but I know God’s got a plan here somewhere.

And sometimes that’s all you can trust is that God has a plan and I may never know what it is, but he has a plan. but in some sense it should be reassuring to us as believers to realize that nothing happens to us that God did not either cause or allow. You know, that’s hard when you’re in the circumstance to think, oh, how comforting, God allowed this.

But at the same time, it reminds us that things are not as out of control as they feel. God wasn’t surprised by it. God wasn’t caught off guard by it, and God has a plan for it.

The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy. And see, that was one of the things that separated Israel from the nations around them, and separates us from the world around us as well, that we hope in the Lord’s mercy. Because the world in its natural state, mankind in its natural state, is sinful as we all are.

We have that sin nature. And yet in the natural state, mankind says, I don’t care. I’m going to do what I want to do.

I don’t need anything from God. I don’t want him telling me what to do. Or you come to a point of being born again and say, I realize what a sinner I am, and we throw ourselves on the mercy of God.

We realize that our only hope for reconciliation to him, our only hope for anything, is the mercy of God. The fact that God would choose to have mercy on us. And for Israel, they recognized that they too were sinners and they needed the mercy of God.

That’s one thing that we in Israel have in common is hoping in his mercy. So it says, Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. We see a spiritual protection here, and we see a physical protection.

Now, God was going to be at work in Israel to keep them alive in famine, and we see that he did that. The entire story of Israel ending up in Egypt in the first place was God using that, and Joseph being sent into slavery in Egypt in the first place, was so that there would be someone there who would be able to preserve the people of Israel alive when famine hit some years later. And Joseph was there so that his brothers could find food and survive.

We see time and time again in the Old Testament that God provided that kind of provision. Now, to Joseph, in the meantime, it might have seemed like, God, why are you doing this to me? We know that Joseph was a sinner because he’s a human being, but Joseph is one of the few major characters in the Bible about whom much is written that we don’t have recorded anything he did wrong.

We know he’s a sinner, but God didn’t think we needed to know what he’d done wrong because Joseph was basically a good man. So of all people who should have to suffer in slavery and suffer in prison in Egypt, it wouldn’t have been Joseph. And yet God had a plan and God was orchestrating things to preserve his people.

And we see the spiritual protection to deliver their soul from death. And ultimately our souls are delivered from death because God has orchestrated human history to send his son to die on the cross to pay for our sins in full. And God raised him up to prove that he had the power to forgive sins.

And God orchestrated human history, as we’ll see in the coming weeks, so that that gospel could be preached to the ends of the earth. See, this is not just saying I’m going to protect you from physical death because we will all ultimately die if the Lord tarries. He’s protecting ou