Psalm 92: Rest and Flourish

 Okay, friends, if you have a Bible, would you grab a Bible under your chair or in your own Bible that you have and open with me to? Psalm 92. Psalm 92. Every summer for the past 10 years, we have preached, uh, the Psalms and so we come this morning to Psalm 92. It is a psalm for the Sabbath. As the inscription says above the chapter, and I just wanna help where you orient you just briefly to the importance of the Psalms.

The Psalms are the Psalm of the church. They're the P songs of the Lord Jesus. He undoubtedly knew them. Perhaps he knew every one of them by heart. It was until about 120 years ago that to be ordained in the church, you actually had to have the salter memorized and they would examine men for, um, to be an officer by asking them to recite a particular.

Psalm, the Psalms were the basis of classical education in the schools for many, many years, and they are, um, indeed the poetry of the passions and. As you come to the very end of book three of the Psalms, which ends in Psalm 89, the Psalms in book three, which is from Psalm 73 to Psalm 89, they descend into the depths of spiritual despair.

Psalm 88 is commonly known as the saddest Psalm, and so book four, which is Psalm 90, all the way to Psalm 106. Is a way of showing you a new affection in the midst of your despair. Psalm, after Psalm, after Psalm, the church put these together in book four to raise you out of the depths. And so as you think of the Psalms, don't think about them purely as a bunch of poetry in the middle of the Bible.

Think about them as the ancient church's way to help bring us through the highs and lows of the spiritual life, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit. And so as you come to Psalm 92, we come again. Psalm 90 was about dwelling place, written by Moses, Psalm 91. Again, he says the word dwell in the very first verse of Psalm 91.

And now in Psalm 92, he says, where is it that you were to dwell? You are to dwell in Sabbath worship together with God's people. And so before I read the Psalm, I just wanna commend to you the importance of worshiping on Sunday. It is very easy these days, my friends, to be distracted by worship and to ignore it.

And blueberry pancakes in your pajamas on Sunday. Some of us are still coming out of our COVID habits and it is no lie and. The statistics back this up that to be a regular attender in a church once used to mean that you're at church twice a month now. To be a regular attender, you're there once a month.

I don't say that to give you permission to come once a month. I say that to challenge you because the way culture is renewed through the church is through subversive ways. And the chief among those is to consistently come to worship, not because of Trinity, not because of who's preaching, not because of anything else other than because it is good for your heart to work into the rhythm of your week to rest in worship.

And so as we read the psalm together, and I challenge you from God's word to consider the importance of the Sabbath, who is not only a day, but is a person, Jesus, our true Sabbath rest, would you consider your own? Spiritual rhythms and would you come and invite your friends to prioritize Sunday worship together for it's meant to change you, and indeed it does in ways that you consciously may not even be aware of.

So if you have your Bibles, would you open with me to Psalm 92, and please stand, if you would, for the reading of God's Word.

A Psalm, a song for the Sabbath. It is good to give thanks to the Lord to sing praises to your name, O most high, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night to the music of the loot and the harp. To the melody of the liar for you. Oh Lord, have made me glad by your work at the works of your hands.

I will sing for joy. How great are your works? Oh Lord, your thoughts are very deep. The stupid man cannot know. The fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout, light grass, and all the evil doers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever. But you oh Lord, are on high forever. For behold your enemies, oh Lord, for behold, your enemies shall perish.

All evil doers shall be scattered, but you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. You have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailant. The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord.

They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. You may be seated, please.

In 15 55, 2 English pastors Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were tied to stakes. Right in the middle of Broad Street in Oxford, and if you go there today, you'll see a cobble cobblestone cross right in the middle of the paved street on Broad Street in Oxford, where Latimer and Ridley and later Thomas Kramer were killed.

Latimer and Ridley were sentenced to death because they refuse to deny salvation through faith alone. Latimer was the bishop of. Warchester and uh, Ridley was the bishop of London and Queen Mary, if you know English history, after Henry VIII came, his son Edward, the boy King. And after Edward came, Mary and Mary returned to England, all the throes of Roman Catholicism.

And as she tried to reinstitute Roman Catholicism as the state religion in England, she rounded up all the Protestant pastors and she had them killed. That's how she got the moniker Bloody Mary. And when Latimer and Ridley were about to be, uh, killed for their faith, the last Sabbath was filled with images of smoke and heat and trembling.

For days, they knew that they were going, uh, to die, and when the time came and they were put together bound with chains in the middle of Broad Street, and the flames were lit, Ridley in particular historians say, began to tremble in fear. And Latimer famously cried out to his friend Ridley, and he said, be of good comfort, master Ridley and play the man we shall this day.

Light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out. And at that moment, queen Mary's view of justice failed because as these two faithful pastors burned for their faith in the middle of Oxford, England, indeed a candle was lit. That was not put out as it gave strength to many of the Protestant reformers in the Church of England and around Europe at the day.

What led Latimer to talk this way amidst his death? The persecution, the flames, the trouble was as bad as it gets. But for Vladimir and Ridley, there was a presence of a deeper reality that they knew that there was a rest, that God provided them and that rest was full of justice, even though they couldn't see it in this life, and that God's purpose of eternal life were already theirs in Christ.

And Psalm 92 confronts us with this very tension. Week after week in the temple, God's people sang this Sabbath song. It praises God's steadfast love and faithfulness, but it also rustles with the fact that wicked people often look like they are winning. And you know this from your own experience, and I know this from mine.

If we are left to ourselves, we begin to doubt God's works. We distrust his view of justice and we search for rest anywhere. But in the gospel, we chase quick prosperity like the grass. In verse seven, we measure flourishing by comfort, by not being planted in God's presence. Even as believers, we forget that the true Sabbath rest isn't just a day of restoration.

It is a person, the Lord of the Sabbath. And so Psalm 92, we orient us every Lord's day, inviting us to, again, look at his works, look at what he has done, trust his judgment, dressed in his presence, because though it's hard to imagine now, what would you give up on your way to persecution? And Plato talks about it as a triangle, as you ascended the apex of the triangle.

Plato says there are, there's room for fewer and fewer things. Question, what is the final thing that you would give up at the cost of your life? And if that final thing is not your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, then my friends, you are seeking rest in something different, then what will help you flourish?

In Psalm 92, this Psalm of the Sabbath is calling us to again, find our deepest and most honest, honest rest in the finished work. Of Jesus and it does it in three movements. It shows us first Sabbath praise verses one to four Sabbath confidence verses five to nine and lastly verses 10 through 15, Sabbath flourishing Sabbath praise in the covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in Jesus Sabbath confidence in God's righteous judgment, which is fulfilled in Jesus.

And Sabbath flourishing in God's presence fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So first Sabbath praise. Notice before the first verse, the psalm begins with the a scripture or the heading a psalm. A psalm for the Sabbath day in the Hebrew manuscripts. That's part of scripture itself. In the mishna, which are the Jewish, um.

Instructions for Sabbath life and worship in Talmud. Verse seven, verse chapter seven, verse four. It says that Psalm 92 was to be read in the temple Every Sabbath. In verse one, it says, it is good to give thanks to the Lord to sing praises to your name. Almost high. The word good in Hebrew is the word tove.

Can you say the word tove? Tove good. It harkens us back to creation. When God created the world, as you see in the creation shields on this wall, seven shields telling you the days of creation every day after he created, what did he say? It is good tove. In the verse two, he says, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness.

By night, not only is worship built into worship and gratitude built into the very fabric of reality and creation itself, we are to declare it. We are to speak it out. The Hebrew word means to say it, to declare it so that others hear it when we speak of God's sed, covenant, steadfast love, where to do so morning and evening.

Now, that quite literally means in the morning. And at night. This is speaking of the Sabbath day, a day of worship where you begin in the morning and you end at night In worship. Saint Augustine, when he was preaching this to his congregation in the fifth century, he said that morning and night just does it just mean literally morning and night.

But Augustine in the way, only Augustine seemed to be able to do so, that it also means in the morning when things are going great for you and you're in the. Dawn of his care and love for you, your job's going well, your children are flourishing. Everything seems to be going great, and you proclaim his faithfulness even in the depths at night.

And that's certainly true. But in the poetic movement of Hebrews, we have no reason to not, uh, believe that it's slowly talking about morning and night, and indeed for our own experience when it's going well. And when it seems as though things are not going as well, we were to proclaim his faithfulness, verse three names, the instruments, the harp, and the liar.

They, they're given to us because they signaled the beginning of worship, much like, much like the guitars or much like Eric on the trumpet, or Melanie on the piano. Amanda with her voice. Nathan on the bass, John on the drums do today. They signal, Hey, it's time for worship for us all to come together. The harp and the liar.

For you. Oh Lord, have made me glad by your works at the work of your hands. I sing for Joy Sabbath. Joy rests on whose works. God's works not ours. And one of the most significant things, indeed, the unique thing about Christianity is every other religion is based upon performance. And if you were to ask, how do you get to God?

Every other religion says, here's humanity, here's God. The way you get there is by religious performance, which breeds a kind of self or righteousness. Look at me, look at me. Look how good I am. But it's only in Christianity where it's not man trying to ascend to God. It is God who first initiates to come down to a man, and he does that through the work of Jesus.

And he invites us not to come to him by performance. He invites us to come to him by faith alone. This is what Ephesians chapter two, as we looked at earlier in the year, talks about, and when we come to Christ because of his initiative in our life, to open our hearts to him, we are filled with the sense of love and gratitude.

That's verse one of chapter 92. It is good that we give thanks to our God. You then obey him. You walk in the works, he's prepared in advance for you. Ephesians two 10. Why? Because you do it out of an incredible sense of gratitude for his love for you. Do you see how that works? So that in the end, Christians from the outside looking in, oh, we still walk and live good deeds and do the right things, but we don't do it because we're trying to perform as though we could possibly please an infinitely holy God, we only to it out of a deep sense of love and of gratitude, having been humble.

And so, oh, friends, the energy to shape your culture, to lead your family, to drive you to holiness is always by the engine of Jesus's love for you and who he we love because he first loved us, so that we can be distinct amongst the. Religions of the world and the secular worldviews that we have to fight against every week because we are not driven by performance to our infinitely beautiful and holy God.

We are driven out of a sense of gratitude and humility because he, the Lord Jesus Christ, performed for us by living a perfect life. These trusses talk about his incarnation, his perfect ministry, beginning with the wedding of Cana, his death for us, his resurrection, and then his ascension. Isn't that good news?

You can rest and worship. One of you thinks it's good news. Thank you. You can rest and worship because he has accomplished it for us. Notice how he says it is all about the praise and the work of God in verse three, and that places this psalm in the world of creation and covenant and of rest. These biblical themes, they continue to repeat all throughout the psalm.

God's completed work led him to rest on the seventh day. Genesis chapter two, one to three Israel's Sabbath. Rest celebrated both creation and God's promise of redemption of them, and then rest. The true and greater rest is found in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah to come. And we who stand on this side of the history of the cross, we're able to look back at the cross and we're able to see in him was our true and final rest.

And I wonder if you know him,

not Jesus, the coach calling you to perform better in football season. Our young sons are learning how to run routes and they're learning how to catch the ball. That's not the way the gospel works. You're not trying to perform for Jesus the coach. You're trying to live outta gratitude for Jesus the redeemer.

Hallelujah. I wonder if people saw your life, they saw your home, they saw the way that you live with such levity and joy that people would say Certainly they are people who know something different, and I wanna know what that is. Is there a laughter in your home? Is there joy in your home? One of the ways that Lauren and I measure the health of our marriage is how much laughter there is in our kitchen and on weeks that it is not, we are not laughing very much.

We're too serious. It means that we're operating by some kind of performance metric, and I have to consistently die to that, especially as a pastor. And we just have to laugh because look at this guys. The Lord has called us to worship together in this beautiful place. We have this amazing gift and we have this amazing joy of knowing each other.

There are people in this room who have insights into life that you will be encouraged by as you get to know each other in community groups. And so we move toward each other. We get to laugh together, we get to live life together. We get to invite our friends into the Trinity life, which is not a building, it's a people.

And I wonder how many people know. That we are indeed people changed by the Holy Spirit because of our incredible trust and rest in his finished work. Jesus says that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. He says it in Mark two, and he also says it in Matthew, chapter 12. In his divinity, Jesus is the most high of verse one.

And in his humanity, he lived the perfect life of covenant obedience and faithfulness. That we can never live. And on the cross, Jesus says, it is finished. They no longer have to perform because I performed for them.

So where does your Sabbath praise live? Answer in. And as you live out your weeks, week after week after week, it is expressed in you gathering on Sunday for Sabbath rest and worship. That is what it means to come to worship with a sense of weightiness and joy and levity and gratitude because Christ is the true Sabbath rest and he invites us to embody that as the body of Christ joins together week after week after week in worship.

First you see our Sabbath pray. Secondly, verses five to nine, you see our Sabbath confidence. How great are your works? Oh Lord, look at the text with me. Your thoughts. I love this. Your thoughts are very deep. That's an understatement, isn't it? This PS almost uses the Hebrew phrase to describe the expanse and vastness your thought.

Your plans, your purposes are beyond our tracing out. You can't plumb the depths of God's wisdom. You would never hit bottom. That's why we will live eternity eternally with him. We will consistently be learners of his beauty and grace. Day after day, you think, oh, isn't he amazing the next day, oh, I thought I knew how beautiful he was.

He's even more beautiful still for all eternity. That's how beautiful he is. And we get to see just through a keyhole. With all the expansive theology that we know these days, just a keyhole of his goodness. It is an accurate view. It is a true view and it is a complete view of all we need to know to have a relationship with him.

But it is but a keyhole into a vast room of his beauty and his grace. Verses six and seven. Describe the other side of the picture. The stupid man. I love that translation. The stupid man is, he is spiritually brutish. He's foolish. He's unable to understand spiritual truths. The fool kessel is hard hearted.

He is morally dull. He can't see reality for what it is. They look at the wicked and they say, the fool says they're winning. But the psalm says they flourish like grass. They spring up suddenly green for a season, but are shallow rooted and they're doomed forever. You can, you can think about this in the way that you think about those you followed on social media.

The number of people who come and go on social media for, for a month, incredibly popular, all the rave. Same with many theological or, um, cultural leaders. Sometimes people, you know, bust out of, of their, their local environment and they become all the rage. People give them attention and they focus and then they burn out.

And then there's the next person, and then there's the next person, and then there's the next person. And some of you, as we just confessed, thou shalt not covet. Cove. Oh, if I can only be seen by the world. And the good news of the gospel is, oh, you're seen and you're seen and treasured by the one who created the world and who loves you more than you could ever imagine.

And so if there's anyone who should have confidence, it is the Christian who has confidence because you have confidence in Christ's work.

And the way that you live outta that confidence is that you grow down more and more humbled and grateful for his finished work in your life. Are you hearing me? Do you hear the psalm calling us to this kind of Sabbath rest, this kind of Sabbath confidence, but you, oh Lord, verse eight are on high forever.

That's the contrast to se a sec. A turtle security versus a temporary show and verse nine drives it home for behold. Behold, it's like the Sabbath is trying to grab our attention. Look, look seat with your own eyes. God vindicates his people. His enemies perish and evil doers are scattered. If we step back from the Psalm, we see these biblical redemptive themes in creation.

God ordered the world in his righteousness. Sin brought disorder and the illusion that evil can thrive. But in God's covenant, the Sabbath is not only a sign of God's blessing, it was also a reminder of his judgment that he will come again to judge the living and the dead that His justice is sure, even though it seems in our own experience that it has been delayed.

And at the cross you see the ultimate point of his justice, where the only one who is perfect in every way, who did not deserve. To die sinless, Jesus Christ died, suffered the father's wrath for us. Yes, he died in our place to absorb the father's wrath so that when he rose victorious on the third day, it was a declaration that he has defeated death by death and new life in the grave.

And so you see the beauty of Jesus. Who is the most high of verse one. It says He is on high In verse eight, he was on high on the cross before the watching world. He was held on high in infamy and shame, condemned by the Jews and by the Roman authorities. For you and for me and all of our Sabbath rest, all of our coming to worship on a Sunday.

Please hear me. All of our rhythms of spiritual devotion to Jesus, again, out of gratitude, out of a tremendous sense of joy for what he's done for us, they drive us again to see the beauty of the cross. Because in the paradox of the cross where the perfect son of God was put to death, it is there at the bloody cross where we covered in his righteousness, have life.

And in his resurrection, we have the promise that we one day will be resurrected when he comes again to make everything new in the new heavens and the new earth. This is your worldview Christian, and so you can praise him on the Sabbath. You can have incredible confidence amidst all the cultural prevailing headwinds.

And lastly, you can flourish in the Sabbath verses 10 to 15 Sabbath flourishing. Verse 10 says, you have exalted my horn. A horn is a sign of strength. In Hebrew poetry like that of the Wild Ox you have poured over me. Fresh oil. The Wild Ox was a picture of rambunctious energy and power. Fresh oil speaks of the anointing, the, the joy, the consecration, the God-given vitality.

Notice it shifts here, doesn't it? Into the first person. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies. My ears have heard the doom of my assailants. Who is my, well, undoubtedly it's originally the author of the Psalm, but also it points us to course to Jesus, who undoubtedly may have even prayed the Psalm as he neared the cross in the midst of the most pain.

You might be able to imagine, Jesus said, in the Lord Jesus Christ, I find my rest, and Jesus was rejected. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And yet Jesus proclaimed it is finished so that our performance anxiety could die and we could rest in his finished work and so that we could flourish. Verses 12 and 13, it switches to tree imagery, the righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar.

In Lebanon, they're planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. The palm tree, um, signals strength and glory. You ever notice whenever a hurricane comes and you know, you see on the news the hurricanes, what does it always show? It always shows those palm trees bending in the wind, right?

They're incredibly strong. They endure. Even gale force winds, the whole town could be leveled in what is still standing. The palm tree. Why does the psalmist use the language of a palm tree? Because they grow stronger with age, and they grow more beautiful in their height. Just like the Christian, if you show me a Christian who is mature with years, you'll find a Christian who has been melted by the goodness of the gospel so much that they are incredibly humble.

I'm ready to teach and learn, and therefore, young men in this church, find an older saint and get to know them. Ask them to mentor, to shepherd, to encourage you. If you need help doing that, come find me and I'd be glad to connect you to older gentlemen who are ready to do that. He says not just like a palm tree, but like a cedar.

A cedar is a, if you own ranch land, you know this is true. Cedars love the sun and the heat, and they seem to only grow stronger when all the grass withers, the cedars thrive and they even remain green all year long. He says, these are trees that have endurance, that even flourish. When the heat gets hotter, they're planted in the house of the Lord.

That's temple language, that's language of Eden pointing us back to the garden. 'cause God's dwelling place is the root system. Of our life. Verse 14, it says They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green. The word full of sap and green deim means fat, luxurious, full of life, spiritually alive.

And verse 15 gives the purpose we flourish to declare that the Lord is upright, that he is our rock, and there is no unrighteousness in. Him. Notice the psalmist isn't saying, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. No, he's saying It is in Christ. It is in God, the Father, son, and the Holy Spirit. Ultimately in Jesus, in whom there is no unrighteousness, he is my rock.

So friends by our union with him, we are now planted in Christ. Psalm 92 becomes for us. A kind of challenge to ask us, are you really resting in Jesus? We know the Sabbath is not just a day, but it's also a person. But let me speak to the day here just for a second. Practically speaking, I wonder how many of you, I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hand, but how many of you actually practice Sabbath rest, uh, TU students?

When I was a campus minister. In New Jersey, one of the interesting things about Princeton students is the students that actually committed to not study on Sundays were almost always the healthiest because they took a break, they arrested, and it's true for us as well, friends. I dunno what your Sunday looks like, but I challenge you to do the opposite kind of work that you do over the course of the week.

If you counsel people during the week while counseling's a wonderful thing, do something different. Work with your hands. Do something that helps you rest. I wonder if you were to take your your week and you were divided, you know, into five hour chunks of time. And you were to say, you know, morning, afternoon, evening, and I wonder if you were able to try to bring three of those together and let me encourage you to do that on a Sunday to bring three of those five hour chunks of time where you are doing the opposite kind of work You do the rest of the week and you are able to focus on resting in him, reading his word, perhaps caring for your family, spending time with them, putting down your phones.

Like even setting up a way for your phone to like not set, not get email, or not beep just to rest in him. You know? Why is it that even in this place you don't see screens? It's because we're trying to help you at least one point in your life, not have a screen in front of your face to learn how to rest.

What would it be like for us to be that kind of people with joy and levity and care? Oh man, they're, they take one day and seven and they really do rest. That's the invitation of the psalm because you have the ability to praise Jesus on the Sabbath, to have confidence in Jesus, our true Sabbath rest, and to flourish in the presence of God because our rest has been secured in Jesus.

When the fire finally took Ridley's life that October 16th morning in 1555, Berg's words came true. A candle was indeed lit. They gave courage for leaders inside and outside of the Roman Catholic Church to bring reform. It was the Gospel's light burning brighter because the darkness could not quench it.

And Thomas Cram near a year later in 1556, he too died. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in the very same place. Friends. I don't know what culture's gonna bring to him. Us, but I do know that we have Sabbath praise, Sabbath confidence, and we do have Sabbath flourishing able to be that kind of counter-cultural community for the common good of our city.

Not being afraid of the city, moving toward it, loving it, caring for it, living out your callings in the midst of her with joy and gladness, doing excellent work for God's glory and serving because Jesus Christ was a finished rest. For us, the wicked or light grass here and gone. But in Jesus's righteousness, we are planted like the palm tree, like the cedar able to flourish even when the heat and the sun come our way.

Because Jesus, the true son of God endured the wrath of God for us on the cross, and he rose again. Proclaiming the Eternal Sabbath rest to come in the new heavens and new earth so that we might be a people who are able to have Sabbath praise, incredible Sabbath confidence and flourish as God's Sabbath, resting people.

Hallelujah. Hall, let's pray.

Father, we thank you that you are upright. You are our rock. And in you, there is no unrighteousness. Lord Jesus, help us to find our rest in you. Even this morning. Father, for those who may not yet believe, would you open their hearts to believe the beauty of your finished work for us, Lord Christ, and be reconciled to you, our Father, through the work of your spirit?

We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.