Psalm 41

Message Transcription

I want to thank you all so much for all your love and your compassion and all of the things that you do to make us a part of the body of Christ. Having yoked up together to believe God for His mercy and his grace, I pray God's blessing over you as a body, and I pray this prayer. Deuteronomy one and 11 over you every day. It says, May the Lord God of our fathers increase you and make you a thousand times so much more than you already are. And bless you according to the promises he's made unto you. That's my prayer for Broadway every single day. One of the messages that I was asked to talk about, we're in the series in the Psalms. It's kind of like the oldies but goodies for me. It's one of the things that I love to read and love to meditate on. And then I want to just let you know that if I get a little excited, it's not you. It's just me. Okay? I'm nervous because I want to do I want to do. Right. In the absence of your your great leader, my brother. Thank you again. And if you're watching, I salute you, sir. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Now let's get our Bibles out and we're going to run swiftly in the word of God. It's in your program. Psalm 41, verse 11 and 12 from the Amplified. As we're finding that, I want to thank Full Armour. Can you help me thank our members for letting me come up and be a part of this service.

So. I acknowledge. I acknowledge my wife and. And to all of the full Armour family. Thank you. It says this in Psalm 41, verse 11 and 12. It says, By this, by this. I know that you favor me and delight in me because my enemy does not shut out. Does not shut it out. All of the triumph that I am. I'm only that because you didn't let my enemies triumph over me as far as me. You uphold me in my integrity and you set me in your presence forever. I was reading over another translation that says that you set me or you stand me in your presence where I can see you eye to eye. We're going to get there one day to where we finally mature, to be able to stand eye to eye with God and understanding of all the things that we've been through. One of the things that I love about this Psalm is, is that David is a bit conflicted when it comes to his relationship with God, based upon the fact that he had done some things in his life that he wasn't too proud of. He realized that it was a fact that the Prophet had come to him. And second, Samuel, chapter 12 and verse ten, and declared to him that the sword would never leave his house because of his sin with Bathsheba. What this meant was that he had a lifetime of trouble, that he opened the gate to that was going to going to take God some time to work it out for him.

And in the meantime, there were some things that happened along the way that he writes some beautiful songs that says where he is and was at the time of his thinking. So he declared that in verses one through three that the Lord had brought him to a place of like the modern day Robin Hood. He was like the modern day Robin Hood because he was loved by the people, but not all the people because his son Absalom had kissed enough babies and politicked enough around the place of the temple and had gotten the heart of the people. That's what the Bible said, that he stole the heart of the people. And so Epsilon became an enemy to his father. And therefore David began to get weaker and weaker in his strength. David turned not only his his heart toward God, but he started looking at the poor. You see these in the first few verses that he considered the poor and the homeless. And I see a lot of that here at Broadway. I get out of church and I see where the kitchen is open. I see where the the through the week when I'm here with Gary and doing different things, I see where the homeless is coming by. And you you're taking care of those needs and you're fulfilling all of those things. But I promise you that God's love for you is greater than anything that you could have ever done in your lifetime that would have caused you to have this life of treacherousness to take place.

Let me let me share with you about life. Life has a series of events that take place. It's called Experiences. And everywhere along your life experiences are there in order to develop you and as they are there to develop you, then they strengthen you. And then God somehow gives you a passion for what you've been experiencing. And then as you get this passion, then he puts you in the geographical location as to where you really need to be. And then he says to you, Go to work. Work while it is day because night is coming where no man can work. Well, I have to take from the life of Jesus as an example, before I get into the story. The Bible says in Luke two and 52, it says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. This is the balance of human experience. The balance of. Human experience is, is that you must have mental capabilities to where that you're an empty canvas before God, number one, that he could write on the heart. Not the bump bump, but the thing thing. And as you serve him, you serve him with your mind and everything that he writes on your mind. You have to grow like Jesus grew. He grew in wisdom, which means that he experienced God on the level of his word.

And when he regurgitated the word, he grew in wisdom. So this is mentally. He grew in statue, which is physically, physically, somehow. I think the believer or the Christian simply don't want to grow up. I'm going to give you an example that often give in a church. I tell the church all the time, if I were to walk up to you and introduce myself by my baby picture and I say to you, Hi, I'm Leonard Chatham. And this is where you know me. I think you would say that's good, but you wouldn't really know me until you start dealing with me where I am. Our experiences are not to be taken lightly. That's not what I'm saying. Our birth is good. Our birth in Christ is good. But we have to go beyond those birth places. We have to grow. We have to grow and mature in stature. So this means physically and mentally, you've got to grow up church. We have got to grow up as we won't be able to sustain what God is ready to do through us. So. There are some things that I could say, but for its time, I want to make sure that I stick with the time limit that was given. Then it said that he grew in favor with God and with man. This is spiritual. This is spiritual. This is relational. People are not mechanical. Say that with me. People are not mechanical. I know you want everybody to do what you tell them to do.

I know you're the man of your house. Yes. Us men say that. But we really know who wears the pants. When a man gets up and tells you This is my house and it's going to be done my way, and if he has to get up and say all that, you know, he's not in charge. A sign of immaturity is, is that you keep on doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Redundancy never in God's word in the Psalms where you see David, does he repeat the same sin twice? You never see that. So he grows. And these are the orders in which you grow by. You have to eat. You eat God's word. You eat naturally. If you want to grow, if you want to mature, if you want to be in this land we call the land of the living. You got to eat number two. You got to throw off waste. There are things that God is kicking out of our lives every day. There are things that David had to go through in order for God to get all the toxicity out of his life. Everything that was toxic from his children to every relationship that he had. He had a man sit down at his table and it was a form of theophanic form of Judas sitting at the table of the King. And the Bible said that Jesus said in the Word of God. It says that he knew who he had chosen.

And he tells him, he said, But there is one who sets at the table with me who is not for me. David experienced that with his son, but the friend that David had eating at his table went and told Absalom his secret. And his secret was, is that he was about to go on a sabbatical to get away from his mental distress. He was sick. He was sick in Psalm 41. And he goes on to experience God's goodness. But there was a servant who overheard the man was at the table who told his son Absalom that you could kill him at this point. And David went out just like he said. But then there was another servant. Thank God for another servant who comes and tells David. He said, Don't go where you intended to go. He said, You go otherwise because you got an enemy in the camp. And so he goes otherwise and his life is spared. And this is where he begins to write. He says, God, I know you favor me. I know that I am spiritually in alignment with you. I am in balance with you because my life is now lining up. Yes, I might have conflicting thoughts. I am conflicted as a man and all of us are in some way conflicted. But here is the experience when it says that in Second Samuel and when he tells him that the sword was in his house and David knows this, the sword is in his house, his heart is broken because he knows that he can never be good enough.

He can never do enough to regurgitate the things that he had done that was wrong. But here is the here's the good thing about it. He considered the poor and God remembered that God remembered that he he felt as though he was unimportant. And God remembered that he dealt with the unimportant, just like they were kings and queens. He understood what it was like to be helpless. He was out in many situations that was in helpless conditions. And he understood the helpless. He understood the painless, the powerless. I mean he understood the powerless. He understood those who had no power, no authority at all. He loved those kinds of people. The insignificant. What are you doing about the insignificant people? He said These people is the people who God places in my life. And the Bible said, David loved the people. It's one thing about it you can't lead people if you don't love them. So David loved the people and he said that they will be blessed. The first thing the Lord does is he says, Deliver me verse one, Deliver me. He delivers them from the time of trouble. Some 50 and 14 says this When you have done your vows and you have given homage to God, he said you could call on him in the day of your distress and he will come see about you. Is there anybody need God to come see about you? Then what you have to do is what we used to say when I was growing up.

You got to turn right. Keep straight and you can't miss it. You can't miss it. Once you turn right with God, you get yourself together by doing everything you can. In verse two, he says, Lord, you will preserve me, you will preserve me, and you'll keep me alive. My enemies want to see me dead. They conspire against me. They speak lies against me. They whisper against me. He said, But you keep me alive. You preserve me. I remember. And I'm going to. I'm going to go pretty fast after this one. But I remember my grandmother making preserves. Anybody know any thing about canning preserves? You take a bunch of sugar and put it in a sterilized glass and you boil it and you put all the sugar in there, and then you put it in this glass and you put a seal around the top and you turn it and then you let it set. And then it turns into some of the best uses of bread, butter that you could ever have. This is what David said God did with Him. God preserved me. He added sugar to my life. That where it was bitter, the bitter places in my life. He preserved me because he has used for me later on and he has used for me because he sterilizes me. He cleaned me up. If you don't believe it, look, in Psalm 51, he says, Lord, he said, wash me, purge me.

Clean me up, fix my heart. I don't want to be wrong. You can have the kingdom, but don't take your spirit. Yeah, don't take your spirit. Whatever you do, don't.

Take my willingness to look for you. I'm lost without you. And God does this. He keeps him alive. You eat, you throw away, you grow and then you reproduce. This is the full cycle of life, the full cycle of life. Now, what is what is the whole summation of this Lord? Favor is what God gives us. It's two things that God gives us that the world cannot take. That's joy and integrity. We have to give that away. We have to give that to people to talk about. And even if they talk about it and they talk about us when we have done nothing, the Bible said that God will uphold us and God will keep us. God upholds the righteous and he gives them favor. Proverbs, Proverbs eight and 35. That's what he does. He's given us favor. Favor is something we don't deserve. It's almost like mercy. They went hand in hand. They're twins. When David says in Psalm 23, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. God is keeping us alive. And you know what? He does something wonderful for those enemies that have come to eat up your life and to speak down to you and to take you away from everything that that you're supposed to be. The Bible says in Psalm 23, you don't eat until your enemies show up. Because he prepares a table in the presence of the enemy.

They look at you and wonder why you didn't die. Well, they conspired to kill you. They wanted to team up with somebody else that had a common enemy. A thread of of envy against you. But they could not win. Who is they? I've always wondered who they were. I'll tell you who they are. They are all of the spirits of the enemy of the Antichrist spirit that is in this day and this hour in which we fight. And we have got to learn to know that God favors us. He will not let our enemies triumph over us, and he will keep us until the the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians one and six, that he began a good work in you. And he's going to perform it. Relax. Sit back. Let him drive. He's going to perform it in us. And then he's going to help us keep it. This is what preserving does. It's keeping it. So I thank you so much for the time that you gave me. And I wish I could have done you a little bit better, but I'm coming back. I promise you. Thank you so much, brother Gary. Give my regards to the leadership of this body. I want to thank you all so much for giving me this opportunity to speak.