Speaker 1: 0:05

Good morning. I'm Morgan Lusk. I'm the associate pastor here at Westtown and before we begin the sermon I want to share just a personal update with you guys. About a month ago I asked our elders if they would consider granting me a sabbatical and they graciously agreed to do so. So my family and I will be taking a three-month sabbatical, beginning July 20th, lasting through October 19th. We will be away from ministry here at Westtown for that time just to focus on rest and restoration, and I'm just incredibly thankful to the session for this gift. I really do see it as a gift and just real quick.

Speaker 1: 0:50

You may be wondering what is a sabbatical and why should you get one? And a sabbatical is a prolonged period of rest and renewal for pastors and for their families, and for most pastors they are much needed. I'm thankful that Westtown's offering me one, because a lot of pastors do not get this benefit. But pastoral ministry is challenging. Every vocation is challenging, but pastoral ministry is unique because a pastor's spiritual, relational, vocational and family lives are all interwoven in a unique way. So in other words, for me, what happens here at work affects my spiritual life, it affects my family life, it affects my friendship. It's all connected. And for a pastor to get away and detach from that for a little while is vital. And you know what's been going on here. I mean, for the past three years we've dealt with the issues with our former senior pastor, that investigation and his removal, and then there's something going on with the bridge and a very long pastor search, and that's all on top of just the normal stresses of ministry life. So during the sabbatical we will not be coming to worship here. We really won't communicate with the congregation other than maybe to provide a few updates. My teenage boys will probably come to youth group still, but that sounds kind of extreme. But it really is vital to disengage completely so that we can focus on rest and renewal. If you have questions about this, you can feel free to ask me, you can feel free to ask any of the elders about it, or Corey, and we're just really thankful for this gift and thankful for the opportunity and hope to come back in October feeling refreshed. And with that I'll just start off by making the obvious statement that God has designed us all for rest, not just pastors.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Maybe the best way that we see that is the fact that we have to sleep every day, if you think about it. I mean we take that for granted, but it's kind of humbling that we sleep Because you see, we spend a third of our lives sleeping and you know it's like eight hours a day or so. They say we need eight hours a day. We're just unaware, we're just unproductive, we're doing nothing, we're like unconscious. We're just unproductive, we're doing nothing, we're like unconscious. You know that unproductive. And what's really cool about that is that when we wake up, the world is still here, the world is still spinning. Usually everything's fine. Every once in a while you wake up and stuff's in disarray, but for the most part the world is okay. And that's because we have a God who does not sleep. We have a God who doesn't need to sleep. We have a God who's in control of the entire universe. He's the one that is keeping the world going. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. So we can sleep knowing that we don't have to do that, and that is a wonderful gift and a blessing.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Now, why am I talking about sleep? Because really is that the wisest thing to talk about while you're preaching a sermon, when people are prone to nod off a little bit anyway, I mean like probably not. But this is what David's talking about in Psalm 4. And so I'm going to have a stand. As we read Psalm chapter 4, verses 1 through 8.

Speaker 1: 4:33

He says Answer me when I call, o God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer, o men. How long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies, selah, but know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your hearts on your beds and be silent, selah. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. There are many who say who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, o Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound In peace. I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, o Lord. Make me dwell in safety. The word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So David is saying that it is possible for us to have peaceful sleep, and that's nice. That's good news, because a lot of us don't sleep very well. Many of us don't sleep well because of physical ailments. Lot of us don't sleep very well. Many of us don't sleep well because of physical ailments. Or maybe you used to sleep really well but you've gotten to that age where, apparently, sleep is fleeting. But others don't sleep very well for different reasons. It has nothing to do with physical ailments. It's because you're anxious about the many different distresses that you're dealing with.

Speaker 1: 6:04

And that's the first point that we'll talk about is that we don't sleep and we lack peace, often because we are anxious about difficult circumstances. He talks about this when he says that he's in distress and that God has given him relief from distress. But even still, even though he has that relief, you can sense that he has been through some anxiety. And we're not talking about social anxiety or the type of anxiety that you might actually need medication for. That's different. We're talking about anxiety from being overwhelmed by the trials and distresses of life. Overwhelmed by the trials and distresses of life.

Speaker 1: 6:48

We know that David was often distressed. If you just go back and look at 1 and 2 Samuel, it just reads like a list of trials all throughout his life. He started off as the youngest of eight children. That in and of itself is a distress To have seven older brothers always picking on you and ordering you around. And then he ends up going and fighting Goliath no big deal, just the greatest warrior of the age and a giant who was like over nine feet tall. Nothing distressing about that. And then, after he's beaten Goliath amazingly by the hand of God, all of a sudden he's like this famous guy, he's this hero. And then he ends up marrying King Saul's daughter, which if you want to look up what was distressing about that, go look up in 1 Samuel 18 what David had to do to get to marry King Saul's daughter, michael. I'll let you look that up later. And then, after he was popular and he was married to Saul's daughter, david all of a sudden is Saul's enemy. Saul decides he hates David, he's jealous of David, he wants to kill him. So now David has to go on the run. He's hiding out in caves and he ends up going and hiding amongst the Philistines and he has to pretend to be a crazy person so that they'll leave him alone. It's just all this stuff. It's like. When did the guy ever have any peace? So he knows what it means to be distressed, and we understand We've been there too. Maybe our list of distresses doesn't sound exactly like David's, but it's similar.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Who knows what trials you may be walking through at this very moment? And it's normal, it's understandable, to look at those trials and just feel overwhelmed and feel anxious and feel like what am I going to do? But here's the issue, here's why we end up with anxiety and here's why we end up losing sleep. It's when we say what am I going to do? And then we just stop there and we keep on asking that question what am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? How am I going to get myself through this? What do I need to do to make these trials go away? And on and on. And the focus is always just me and my own abilities, my own strength. That's when we get anxious Because we've forgotten to take the all-important next step, which is what you see in 1 Peter, 5, 6 and 7.

Speaker 1: 9:23

He says Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that, at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because he cares for you. Why are we anxious and overwhelmed? It's because we have not humbled ourselves before the mighty hand of God. We've prayed to ourselves instead. Andrew Wilson is a pastor over in the UK.

Speaker 1: 9:54

He says anxiety is what happens when you pray to yourself. You are looking to yourself for the answers. You're looking at your own abilities and capabilities and talents and your own strength to try to handle the things that are overwhelming you. And, honestly, that's pride. It might be misguided pride, but it's still pride, and it's still me thinking that I'm on the throne of my own heart, that I'm the captain of my own soul, that I'm in, ultimately, the position of God in my life. And so no wonder we're anxious, no wonder we are overwhelmed. We think we have to handle it ourselves, and we know, we who need eight hours of sleep every night, we know how limited we are. And so we're afraid and we're anxious.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Instead, what David in the psalm here tells us to do is to humble ourselves, to look to the God of the universe. To look to the God who does not need sleep, to look to the God who does not ever get overwhelmed. To look to the God who is keeping this universe together just by His Word. To look to Him, a God who is that big, a God who can just speak and create the whole universe, and then to know that that's the same God who says call out to me, cry out to me, come to me with your prayers, come to me with your burdens, lay them on me, let me have them. That's incredible that a God who's that big would say every single one of you come and please share your grief with me, share your burdens with me, share your trials with me. That's how we get true peace. That's how we get true rest.

Speaker 1: 11:57

David says he got relief, and that's a little misleading with the English translation, because when we see that word relief, we might think that means that God took away David's trials and so, therefore, david had peace. But if you know this list of trials that I just talked about, how many times was David hiding in a cave praying for God to give him relief? And the next day he was still hiding in a cave being hunted. God didn't take away his trials, not for a very long time, and then, after he took away his trials, he had some peace for a while. He got more trials, which you heard about last week, but what God did instead was he enlarged his capacity. The relief actually means you have enlarged me. You have enlarged the capacity of my heart to deal with the things that are in my path. You have grown my capacity to walk through these trials and in that way, he's been given relief.

Speaker 1: 12:58

I think of it kind of like parenting. Jennifer and I have four kids, ages 17 to 8. And our first two we adopted from Uganda in 2013, and when we were, we were on a connecting flight from Cairo, egypt, to Entebbe, uganda, and we were on the runway in Cairo and I turned to Jennifer and I said Jennifer, I'm not sure I can do this. And she said remember what you said. She said I think it's a little bit too late for that, because I was freaked out just going from zero kids to two kids. I just think I can't handle this. There's no way I can do this. And then it wasn't a week or two before I felt like, okay, maybe I can handle this by the grace of God.

Speaker 1: 13:43

And as we've grown our family, I felt like, with every child, god has given us the capacity to parent them well and to love them, and it's okay, it's normal. I feel like, okay, god's got me, god's got this. And I talk to people who they're about to have their first child and they're kind of in that same boat, like I don't know if I can do this, I don't know how you have four kids. Well, god gives you the capacity. God grows your heart, god enlarges your capacity to deal with what he's given you. And so peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding. It really comes down to this idea that it's not that my circumstances are all going my way, like when does that ever happen? Unless you're like a five-year-old, you know. No, it's God's got this. That's where peace comes from. It's being able to say God has got this, god's got me. That's where we get peace, even in the midst of distress.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Well, another distress that we often deal with that can steal our peace is the fear of man. The fear of man, the fear of man, is to allow the thoughts, opinions and judgments of other people to rule over us, to dominate our hearts and our thought, lives and our behaviors. David is struggling with this a little bit when he says in verse 2, o men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? You see, he feels ashamed, he feels judged, he feels wronged by some wicked people. Maybe it's King Saul, maybe it's some of the other people who sought to disparage him. He knows their opinion isn't worth much, because he's already said. He knows that they're men who love vain words and seek after lies.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Why should I care what these people think? But yet we do, don't we? We care, everybody thinks and it's normal to care what people think. I think it's actually kind of a good thing. You don't want to be that guy that has absolutely zero thought for what other people might think of you and you end up, you know, never showering and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 15:56

But like the issue is do we care so much about what people think that we're enslaved to their opinions and judgments? And that's the trap, right? Proverbs 29, 25 says the fear of man lays a snare. It traps us. But whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. So let me give you an example of what that looks like, right?

Speaker 1: 16:25

So when I was in high school, I, like probably everyone else, cared too much about what people thought of me. You ever heard of the hallway effect? The hallway effect is when you're you're walking down your high school hallway. If you can transport yourself back there just for a minute, oh the joys and you and you, everybody's standing at their locker between classes, right, and what are you thinking? You think that they all are thinking about you, but the problem is they're all thinking that everybody else is thinking about them, so really nobody's thinking about anything but themselves. But you think they're all thinking about you Because you're obsessed with what people think For me.

Speaker 1: 17:11

I was enslaved by that. I dressed the way I dressed because of what people thought. I listened to the music that I listened to because of what people thought. I was constantly worried about what girls thought of me. I didn't realize it then, but I was enslaved to it and what I needed was to start by fearing God first, by fearing the Lord and fearing and caring most about what his opinion of me is, and that's why David calls him in verse one. He calls him the God of my righteousness. It's interesting because that's a title. That's why David calls him in verse 1, he calls him the God of my righteousness. It's interesting because that's a title that's not really used anywhere else in the Scripture. It might be a variation of it, but that specific wording is not used anywhere else that I'm aware of, and Charles Spurgeon says that this means that God is the author, witness, maintainer, judge and rewarder of my righteousness. In other words, my status with God. Like where am I with God? Am I right with God or not? Where does that come from? It doesn't come from me, it comes from God, and we know this even better than David knew this, because we know that our righteousness is found in Jesus Christ and in Him alone. And that's what it means.

Speaker 1: 18:25

To be a Christian is not to have your own right standing with God, not to have your own righteousness with God, not to somehow live a good life and be a moral person and thereby get righteousness. No, to be a Christian is to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ given to you as a gift, and it never stops being a gift. It never stops being His righteousness that matters. Like, your standing with God is not a roller coaster. Your standing with God does not change. Like you're not less right with God because you had a bad week and you sinned a whole bunch and you're not more right with God because you had a really good week and you went to church and you did your devotional and you served and you helped the homeless or something. No, your standing with God is based solely on the work that Jesus Christ finished off on the cross 2,000 years ago. That's what it's based on. It's never based on your behavior ago. That's what it's based on. It's never based on your behavior.

Speaker 1: 19:35

So what that means in this case, when we're talking about the fear of man, is that your worth, your value, your identity, your identity, your validation comes from God and comes from God alone, and you are as valuable and validated as you could ever be, because the God of the universe has said that one's my adopted son or daughter. You don't need anything else if you have that. If you have that, it doesn't matter if everyone in the world hates you. The God of the universe has said that one's mine and that one is right with me. We're good. We've got everything we need Now.

Speaker 1: 20:26

It doesn't mean that it isn't painful when people ridicule us or hate us, but it just means that what they say about us doesn't define us, and what they say about us doesn't have to wreck our lives. We're not enslaved to that. We're not in that trap anymore. We're safe. We're safe because we have right standing with God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and so that's why David can say in verse 3, but know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

Speaker 1: 20:53

The Lord hears when I call to him. He knows that he has set apart, which is the same word for holy. He belongs to God and it's not because he's done good things and made himself holy, it's because God has made him holy. And he also knows that I have direct access to God. I can talk to him anytime I want. He hears me, he loves to hear me, he loves to hear from me. Nothing, not even our own sin, can take that away. But our own sin can steal our peace. It absolutely can steal our peace. Look at verses 4 and 5. It says Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts, on your beds and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Corey talked last week about the consequences of sin and how devastating they can be, and the consequences of sin can absolutely steal our peace. So can the conviction of sin when we've sinned and we know it and we feel convicted over that. If you're not a Christian, the guilt of sin can steal your peace and you may not even realize it. But have you ever said a regretful, impulsive word to someone that you wish you could take back. Have you ever done something regretful and impulsive that you wish you could take back? Have you ever tweeted something impulsive and regretful that you wish you could take back? And now it's just out there for the whole world to see. Doesn't that keep you up at night? Just go back and you wish. I wish I had said this differently. I wish I just hadn't said this, I mean, and then think about where that comes from.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Doesn't it often come from just being angry? You're angry and you just say something out of anger and you really, really wish you hadn't said it, and now it's just stealing your peace. It's created some consequences, it's hurt someone. That's what our own sin does to us. That's why he says be angry and do not sin. It's okay to be angry. Anger is an emotion. What's hard is anger. It so quickly can lead to sin, because it's such a volatile emotion and so it's so difficult to control it.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Maybe you're sensing a theme here, but this is where, again, we need to look to Jesus, just for how he handled Himself, but also for what he offers us when he was put on trial, when he was falsely accused and he had to go before the high priest Caiaphas, and he had to go before Herod and Pilate. I mean, he probably said two words. He hardly said a thing. When they listed the charges against him, he was just kind of like, yeah, whatever you say, he was mostly silent. Dude, do you think he was angry? Do you think he was just kind of like, yeah, whatever you say, he was mostly silent. Dude, you think he was angry? You think he was angry that they were falsely accusing him? The God of the universe? I bet he was, and he was righteous to be angry too.

Speaker 1: 24:03

He was totally justified, but he didn't sin in his anger. He didn't sin in his anger. He just took it, obviously because he knew he had to go to trial. He had to go to the cross to save us from our sin. He wasn't going to let anything get in the way of that. But again, look at the way he handled himself.

Speaker 1: 24:22

I think that's what David is pointing to here. He's like when you are angry, when sin is troubling, you walk away, close your mouth, take a nap, be silent, ponder your own heart and your own sin. If you're saying you know like somebody else is being ugly and their sin is the problem? Well, you know what, probably but also my sin is the problem? Ponder that, ponder the things that are in me that are causing me to react this way. And then he also says to offer right sacrifices. David would have meant going to the temple and offering sacrifice for his sin, or something of that nature, but we have an updated understanding of what this means because of Jesus right Hebrews 10.12 says but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

Speaker 1: 25:26

A single sacrifice has been made to cover all of our sins, past, present and future, and it's the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. There are no more sacrifices necessary. That's it, it's finished, it's done. The sin that you're going to commit tomorrow, it's already been paid for. The sin that your grandchildren will commit in 100 years, they've already been paid for by Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

Speaker 1: 25:57

So if we've sinned, what do we do? We don't need to go to the temple and offer sacrifices. We go to Jesus. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so we go to Jesus and we confess our sin and repent and we find that he restores us.

Speaker 1: 26:14

But then look at Hebrews 13, 15 and 16. It says through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. This is kind of what it means, like in Romans 12, when he says to offer yourselves up as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord. We offer our sacrifices now simply by praising God, by worshiping him, and then by going and living lives of obedience, trusting Him through it all. That's our sacrifice. So we live these trustworthy lives and we look to the Lord as our one sacrifice for sin, and we find I think we find peace. But then there's one more thing that steals our peace, one more reason why we lack peace. That's because we're looking for joy in all the wrong places. He says in verses six through seven.

Speaker 1: 27:19

There are many who say who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, o Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. So that phrase who will show us some good is what someone might say if they have looked for joy, or looked for goodness or looked for meaning in the pleasures of this world. And they've continued to try to find it in the pleasures of this world and they just never find it. But yet they keep on thinking, well, if I get this other thing, then I'll have joy. But they just never find it. They're never satisfied and so they end up resentful or bitter or feeling like life is meaningless.

Speaker 1: 28:02

What David's trying to say here is that if we think that the good things, the pleasures of this life are going to fulfill us in any meaningful way, any lasting way, then we have misplaced our pursuits, we've misplaced our loves, we're simply mistaken. This is what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes 5, verses 10-12. Remember, solomon was the wealthiest, wisest man in the world at one point. But he says he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This is also vanity. When goods increase, they increase. Who eat them? And what advantage has their owner? But to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much. But the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. In the message version of this it just says mo' money, mo' problems. In the message version of this it just says Mo' money, mo' problems. Not really, but pretty much it's what that means. The more money we have, the more wealth we have, the more our problems just increase and the less we actually enjoy life.

Speaker 1: 29:22

My in-laws used to have a mountain house in Asheville, north Carolina. It was gorgeous. We would go up there and visit when we lived in Chattanooga. It's about four hours away, so it was easy to go over there for a long weekend. Just iconic views, such nice weather, especially like right now. It'd be nice to go up there, but it was also a ton of work. So it was like every time they'd go up there for a couple weeks, they had to spend like four days just doing yard work and cleaning and stuff, and it was just more to think about. Right, it's just another thing to maybe be anxious about. And then you know, obviously this doesn't happen to most people, but they lost their house In 2013,. While we were in Uganda, asheville had all this rain, like historic rainfall, and they had a mudslide and it knocked the house off its foundation. So they actually had to demolish the house so that it wouldn't fall down the mountain and destroy other homes. And then, of course, you know what insurance doesn't cover Mudslides. So they got nothing out of it, right? They got nothing. It's a beautiful home. They got nothing for it.

Speaker 1: 30:39

My point is not that it's wrong or foolish to have a second home or even a third home. If you've got a third home, man, that's awesome. I'm happy for you, right? The point is not that it's wrong to be rich. The point is not that wealthy people can't love Jesus. It's certainly not the point. I want to make sure to say that in this room, which is a room full of wealthy people, whether you realize it or not, by the world standards, we are all filthy rich. So just something to think about.

Speaker 1: 31:11

The text also says the sleep of a laborer is sweet. That does not mean that being poor makes it guaranteed that you're going to be a Christian, because a poor person could be just as obsessed with wealth as a rich person. They're just obsessed with the pursuit of getting it one day, right? No, the point of this is that if our life's goal is to be fulfilled by material wealth, we will never be fulfilled. I know we hear that all the time, and they even have that as the plot of movies sometimes, but it's like people still don't really believe it. But it's the truth. We're going to lack peace if our goal is to have, if our only goal in life is just to have seven figures in our bank account by the time we retire. If that's all you got, you're never going to have peace. If all you're doing is worrying about my 401k, you're never going to have peace. It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1: 32:06

Like he's talking about people whose grain and wine abound. Well, that's like the Old Testament, equivalent to having your 401k be as big as it's ever been. Maybe you have some investment properties and the market is hot. You can sell those things and make tons of equity off of it. He's saying, if you have all that and you find some joy in that, well, guess what he says to God? You have put more joy in my heart than when all those things abound.

Speaker 1: 32:46

He's saying, if you could measure joy, you would get more joy out of one minute of being in the presence of Jesus than you would out of a lifetime of having everything you ever wanted. That's what he's saying. It's the truth. He has this joy.

Speaker 1: 33:05

I mean David, look great big sinner, messed up royally multiple times. He's a bigger sinner than you or I, I think and yet he has this joy in the Lord. It's just palpable. He wrote all these Psalms because he has this joy in the Lord. Do you have joy in the Lord? Do you have joy in Jesus?

Speaker 1: 33:30

Have you experienced? This is David's experience. It's not just some fact that he knows that he wrote out Like he's actually experienced real peace that surpasses understanding, and real joy that you can't find anywhere else. He's experienced that in his relationship with God. Do you have that?

Speaker 1: 33:50

I'll be honest, I don't have that very often. I don't feel that very much. Maybe you don't either, I don't know. But what I do know is that there's a reason why it's harder to feel that where we live, we have so much of what we want. We have everything we need, but we have so much of what we want. That stuff tends to dull our understanding of what we lack. It tends to dull our concept of how needy we are. We are extremely needy people If you think about what our sin deserves.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Our sin is utterly offensive to the God of the universe who created us. It's an assault on him and his character and it is deserving of his wrath for eternity. We think about that and then think about what we have in Christ. We have been justified and we've been adopted into his family as his sons and daughters. He's going to seat us. In fact, paul talks about it as such a sure thing that we will be seated with Christ that he uses it in the past tense. It's like it's already happened. That's how sure it is. We're going to be glorified saints living in paradise with the King of kings for eternity, and that's just a gift. None of us deserves that. It's just a gift of his marvelous grace.

Speaker 1: 35:33

If you think about the gap between what we deserve and what we have in Christ, how can we not be joyful about our relationship with Christ?

Speaker 1: 35:45

How can we not be overjoyed and satisfied by our Savior? And yet so often we are just so looking for joy in so many other things. I know I am. I just want to ask if you know the joy of Jesus, that he's the friend of sinners, that he delights in you, that he doesn't want to burden you with. You know, do this and do this and do this and this and this and this, and then you can be my buddy. But no, he's given us the gift of salvation at extreme cost to him and at no cost to us. If you know that joy, then you can quote Psalm 8410, where it says For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. With that kind of joy and Jesus alone, that's where we can agree with David. He says in verse 8, in peace I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, o Lord, make me dwell in safety.