Go to the Lord first.
Lord, we thank you because you are good and you are faithful.
Lord God, we thank you because who you are.
Lord, thank you that you go before us,
that you go with us.
Lord God, we thank you that you give us an opportunity
to come together and to worship.
And so Lord, we need you right now.
Lord, we need you to go in front of us right now.
We need you to speak into our hearts.
Lord, whatever we came for,
Lord, we pray that you would challenge us,
that you would move mightily through us,
that you would open our ears and our hearts.
And Father, I pray that you would go before me.
Lord, you know that I am not capable to stand here.
Lord, you know that I am not talented enough.
And Lord God, we pray right now that it doesn't rest on me,
but it rests on your spirit.
And so Father, when it's all said and done,
Lord, we pray that you would receive your glory.
We thank you Lord for all things.
In Jesus' name, amen.
So we are looking at a series that you guys are going through
through the book of Psalm.
And so we're gonna look at Psalm 20 today.
And as we look at this Psalm, what I wanna do is
I wanna read through it in its entirety.
And then I wanna kind of just give a little background,
then we'll go through it verse by verse.
Is that all right?
Look, they participate well.
I mean, they're not just a bunch of people.
Oh, I like it.
So let's read it.
It says,
may the Lord answer you in the day of trouble.
May the name of God of Jacob protect you.
May he send you help from the sanctuary
and give you support from Zion.
May he remember all your offerings
and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices.
May he grant you your heart's desire
and fulfill all your plans.
May we shout for joy over salvation
and in the name of our God, set up our banners.
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.
Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed.
He will answer him from his holy heaven
with the saving might of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots and some horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright.
Oh Lord, save the king.
May he answer us when we call.
Your series is about the faithfulness of God.
And as we look at this text,
let me give you just a little bit about what's going on here.
When we read this text, we understand something here,
and that is this, that it's most likely
that this was a prayer request
that went before the King David,
before he would go into battle.
And we don't think it was only used one time,
but we think it was used often.
And so the people were basically having
an intercessory prayer for their King, for David,
before he would go out.
And as I begin to think about that,
I am convinced of something.
And that is that intercessory prayer is a good thing
and a good posture for us to be in.
You see, they were praying before the King
so that he could go into battle and have a victory.
But I also recognize that Jesus intercedes for us
when we look at the priestly prayer
that he prayed in John 17,
he was interceding on our behalf.
So then that leads us to wonder,
in what way do we intercede for the church?
Jesus interceded for us
that we could be faithful followers of him,
so in such a way that we would then be faithful followers
and doers and going before him before his return.
And so we are to intercede and pray on behalf of the church.
But we get to look at this text, let's take a look here.
It says, may the Lord answer you in the day of trouble.
You see, this day of trouble is battle.
It's a battle that they were recognizing
that the King was getting ready to go into.
And so then I begin to ask myself,
and I wanna ask you,
what battles are you facing in life right now?
What battles do you know that you're going through
or what battles do you know that other people
are going through that you could be interceding for?
You see, when we think about battles,
there are many different things in which we face
on a daily basis.
Some of us are facing a battle of health.
Some of us are facing a battle within our marriages.
Some of us are facing a battle within our children.
Some of us are facing a battle
hoping that our parents will do right.
Some of us are facing all kind of battles.
Pastor Jim mentioned a moment ago
about the battles that we face in our country
with people who wanna follow an elephant
and someone to follow a donkey.
I wanna encourage us to follow the Lamb of God.
Because we recognize that there's battles all around us
and how we're willing to engage and interact
with these battles are so important
because life and death matter on how we choose
to face the battles that we face.
So what do we do with those?
You see, this first five verses here
are all about intercessory.
It's all about how we understand
that Jesus is calling us to do something here.
Notice what it says here.
May the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
You see, some people get this wrong
when they think about the name of Jacob.
You see, if you are praying in the name of Jacob,
you're gonna miss it.
You see, it's in the name of the God of Jacob.
Because who was Jacob?
You see, it's not about who Jacob was,
it was about who God was and what God did
to establish Jacob, which became the land of Israel,
which became the tribe, which became,
which became, which became.
And so what we understand here is that the God
who set up the nation is the God
that will protect the nation.
And so if they're gonna go to battle,
it was great to have the God who set them up
in the first place.
And so I wanna encourage us to understand something.
And how are you living your life
in such a way that God can go before you?
Are you calling on the right name?
You see, I think about, the Bible talks about,
you remember in Acts, it talks about,
there's this guy, he had seven sons.
His name was Sceva, okay?
I don't know who named their kid Sceva, I don't know.
But he had seven sons.
And these seven sons, they were watching
Paul do ministry, and they're like,
ooh, yeah, look at him, he's casting out demons and devils.
And so they decided that they would go into this man's house
that was possessed with a demon, okay?
Can you picture it?
Here's the house.
There's a man inside of there with demons.
These brothers over here, they've been like,
look at that Paul guy.
He's still, he's casting people out.
And so like, hey, let's go in there, let's go get him.
And so they come up in the house.
They're inside.
Can you see them inside?
It's seven of them.
It's one dude on the inside.
And all of a sudden they're like,
hey, you gotta come up out the man.
And here's what the demon inside of the man said.
They're like, listen, Jesus, we know.
Paul, we know.
But we don't know who you are.
Man, that demon whooped them seven dudes so bad,
they left the house naked and beat up.
That's a bad beating if you get naked and beat up.
You see, they went because they were talking about
the God that Paul talked about.
They didn't know the God that Paul was talking about.
And so what I'm trying to communicate here is this.
You can't have your parents' relationship with God.
You can't have your wife's relationship with God.
You can't have the pastor's relationship.
You can't have the elder's.
You gotta have your own relationship with God
if you're gonna do battle for God.
If you're gonna do battle in the things
that you're going through, you gotta know him personally.
All right, all right, all right.
You see, verse two says, may he send you help
from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion.
You see, help comes from the sanctuary.
Why does the help come from the sanctuary?
Because that's where God dwelt, God dwelt in the sanctuary.
And so he recognized that because God is holy
and he has a holy order about himself,
he's calling you and me to draw near to him.
And why we draw near to him, we understand
that it's because of his love and his grace.
God doesn't change for us.
He came and he still remained holy
even when Jesus was on earth,
but he's calling us into proximity with him.
And there's help when we go to God.
There's help when we go to the sanctuary.
There's help when we trust the God of the sanctuary.
And so he's saying, if you're doing battle,
you need help.
Go to the sanctuary.
Go to the place where God dwells.
But I wanna encourage you to remember something.
Second Corinthians gives us a hint of something.
Second Corinthians tells us that we have become
the temple of the living God.
You are the temple of the living God.
So now the building is not where the sanctuary
where God dwells, but God is where the people of God are at.
And he calls us and he encourages us to go to him.
Do you recognize that the Holy Spirit dwells in you?
And so now if you're gonna go to battle, don't go alone.
You gotta take the Holy Spirit with you.
You gotta take God with you.
Let's move on.
Look what it says here in verse three.
May he remember all your offerings
in regard with favor your burnt sacrifices.
May he remember all your offerings.
You see, the offerings were not just nothing.
The offerings were this thing that you were given
for the atonement of your sin,
or they were given for a gift for God.
And so the offerings that were being given,
you had to calculate, you had to know what you were given.
You couldn't just say, you know, I'm just gonna show up
and you know, I didn't come prepared,
but I got a quarter.
Man, I grew up in church and listen,
we grew up in different areas, okay?
Baby said, yeah.
And sometimes people would,
Mark, do you remember this?
People would put in a dollar and ask for 75 cent back.
I kid y'all, y'all think I'm lying, I'm not lying.
People would put in a 10 and say, let me get five back.
What is this, a change agency?
Listen, you can't show up with your offering
if you haven't thought about what you're doing with it.
Your offering is something important.
Your offering is a gift to God.
How many of you have been to a baby shower before?
How many of you have been to a wedding shower before?
How many of you have been to a birthday party before?
How many of you thought about the gift
before you were gonna get there?
Now the card you might've filled out
on the steering wheel when you got there,
but you thought about the gift before you showed up.
You didn't just show up and say, ooh, on the way in,
what do I got in my back seat?
Let me grab this empty fry can.
No, you showed up prepared and in the same way
that you had to understand that
when they were bringing their offerings,
they thought about what they were giving.
It meant something about what they gave.
And in the same way, if you want God to be faithful
and look and say, may he remember your offerings,
ooh, wait a minute, may he remember all your offerings.
Ooh, if God were to remember your offerings
and you came up one team,
you don't want him to remember your offerings, do you?
But if you're giving something good,
something that costs you something,
you're like, yeah, God, go ahead and remember my offerings.
I ain't gonna press too hard on that
because I'm not at home right now.
I'm the guest.
But the guest is getting in your business a little bit.
Sometimes, sometimes it takes courage.
Sometimes it takes courage from the guest to say it
because it's hard to bring up when it's amongst family.
They might not bring me back,
but I'm not here for your offerings.
But God is.
You bring your offering
because you've prepared your offering
because it meant something.
Let's jump down, verse four.
May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill your plans.
May he grant you.
You see, what I'm convinced of is this,
is that God does bless those.
He grants things to those who are obedient to him.
When you think about the obedience of God,
it takes me to Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses one through 14
because from one through 14,
it's all about when people who are being obedient to God,
the blessings that he gives to them.
Listen to what it says.
Let me give you a few of them.
It says, blessed shall you be in the city.
Blessed shall you be in the field,
in the fruit of your womb,
the fruit of your cattle, your herds.
Blessed shall your basket be.
Blessed your kneading bowl.
Blessed shall you be when you come in and when you go out.
Blessing will cause your enemies to be defeated
and to come out.
They come against you one way,
but they'll leave and flee seven ways.
Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
Whoo, it says that word a whole lot.
In your barns, everything that you undertake,
he will establish you as his holy people.
You, the people of the earth will see
that you are called by the name of the Lord.
Whoo, but that's all about being obedient.
There's a whole section after that
of if you're not obedient and you got some curses coming.
Now I'm not here to bring the curses on you.
I want you to have the blessings.
So I'm just telling you, obedience is better than, close.
In the Bible it says obedience is better than sacrifice.
But obedience, obedience.
We wanna be a people who are obedient to God
because he causes the rain to fall.
You see here, we don't care about rain that much.
We don't want it.
But if you lived in the middle of the desert
and your livelihood was connected to what you could grow,
you want rain.
You want the favor of God to rain down on you
and you're like, oh yeah.
And so all of this that we have read so far,
it's all about wanting this God to bless them.
May we shout for joy over your salvation.
Do you guys practice your shouting
for what God has done in your life?
Are you shouting about it?
I got an idea.
You might not like it.
I was just wondering if we could just give a shout to God.
Just something like, yay.
If you're happy because of what God has done in your life
and you know him as the one who has saved you
from your sins, can you give him a yay?
Yay.
Ooh, I like it.
I like it a lot.
Now, all that was this intercessory part.
Now watch how this text transitions.
It's about to be a big transition here
because now it's about to go from May to all of a sudden
they're about to make some strong declarations.
They're about to make some statements here.
There are some statements of faith.
There's three statements of faith in the next three verses.
Watch what it does here.
Verse six, now I know that the Lord saves his anointed.
Do you know that the Lord saves his anointed?
Do you know for a fact, do you know that God saves his anointed?
If yes, say yes.
Have you experienced the saving power, the grace of God,
in who he is and all that he has done
and how he has taken you from one place to another,
how you used to be a sinner but now you're saved,
how you used to do wrong but now you're doing right,
how you were separated from him but now he's brought you in.
Do you know him as the one who went to the cross?
Do you know him as the one who gives life?
Do you know him as the one that is a healer?
Do you know him as the one that can restore marriages?
Do you know him as the one that can go before you?
Do you know him as?
Yes.
You see, you see, here's the thing.
When you know him, then I want to encourage you
to give your testimony about him
because why would God do something for you
if you're not going to share what God did for you?
You see, sometimes our pride gets in the way of us
sharing the things of God.
We say to ourselves, look at what I have done.
And if you're saying that, then you're robbing God of his glory
and woo, that's not good, people.
We give credit to where credit is due.
We never rob God of his glory
because that's actually taking the third commandment in vain.
When you take his name in vain,
when you're robbing him of his glory,
that's taking his name in vain.
I know some of us think that taking his name in vain
is only using profanity.
Oh, you got to press into that word a little bit more.
When you rob God of his glory,
and if you're not willing to tell somebody,
hey, listen, this is where I was, but this is what God has done
because you got so high and mighty and I've arrived now.
If you're not willing to tell people,
hey, listen to what God did in my marriage because I was here
and we were struggling, we were on the brink of divorce,
got to give him his glory.
And so this is what this was a big statement here.
There was a big statement.
He said, hey, and now I know that the Lord saves.
Verse seven, some trust in chariots, some in horses,
but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God.
And so here's the second one.
The second statement is trust God.
I trust God, I trust God, I trust God, I trust God.
And when you think about trusting God in all he is
and all that he has done, it's a big statement here.
You see, some trust in horses and some trust in chariots,
some trust in their power, some trust in their status,
some trust in their bank accounts, some trust in their connections,
some trust in where they've been and some trust in their parents
and some trust in a lot of different things,
but we got to trust in God.
You know, when I think about Saul, we remember Saul,
when Saul was, he had a problem.
The problem was there was a giant in the land
and Saul was like, man, listen, I don't want to go fight that, man.
You ever have a battle that was too big for you to fight
and you're hoping that somebody would come alongside of you,
but you were too afraid and so you're like, man,
if I could get a little help here.
And all of a sudden God sent David and David was like,
dude, I ain't afraid of nothing.
In my mind, David was a little, he was a little out there.
You know, like that dude that's on a playground
and he ain't afraid of anything?
In my mind, I could see David just there and he's like,
I don't like that guy.
Maybe it looked like this.
Y'all just going to keep letting him talk about our God like that?
That's how y'all, yep.
David was like, I don't like when people talk about my God.
I will protect my God even if it costs me my life.
I will go to battle for my God even if it costs me my life.
I will go and fight a giant.
I don't care what may happen,
but you ain't just going to talk about my God like that.
And in that moment, he was like, I'm going.
I'm going.
And so I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, why don't you go ahead and go.
Here, put on my armor.
Here, take my sword.
Take my breastplate.
And David was like, I don't know this stuff.
This is not mine.
I've never tested this before.
I've never perfected this before.
I've never used it before.
I can't go with something that I don't know anything about.
I can't go with your armor because that's not what got me to this point in my life.
I got to go with what I know.
And what I know is the power and the presence of Jesus Christ in my life.
I know that God won't fail me.
I know that you trust in this stuff, but I trust in my God.
And my God will be the one that will go before me.
My God is the one that will save me.
My God is the one that will give me life.
And I will defeat this man because this man is coming against my God.
So my God is going to be.
Give me some rocks.
Just give me some rocks.
I know about rocks.
Baby said, what about rocks?
We're training them up right.
I want to talk back to the preacher.
I like it.
Let me move.
First, it says.
They will collapse and fall, but we will rise and stand upright.
We will rise and stand upright.
You see, when we think about this here, he's saying all that other stuff won't make it.
And so we got to have a strong statement here that we will rise and stand upright.
We will rise and stand upright.
I don't care what battles you're facing in life.
I don't care what you're going through.
I don't care what you've been through.
It doesn't matter what's in front of you.
It doesn't matter if you have a Goliath in your life right now.
You will rise and you will stand and you will say, I am not going to move.
I'm still standing.
The devil wants to take you out.
He doesn't want you to have success.
He doesn't want you to have joy.
But you look at him and you say, I'm still standing.
Why?
Because God is going with you.
You see, I'm convinced of this.
I am so convinced that the thing about God is this.
God won't remove the situations and circumstances from our life.
He won't remove the hardships from our life, but he will prepare us to go through them.
You see, sometimes we want all that stuff to be easy street.
We thought when we came to Jesus, we were like, okay, it's going to be easy.
Now, no, Jesus never said that.
God never promised you that it would be easy.
As a matter of fact, when we look at the text, I don't know if anybody's got to watch.
I don't know how much time I have.
I got a couple more minutes.
I got a couple minutes.
I'm good.
All right.
Don't be lying to me now.
Don't tell me you talk way too long up in the church.
Don't be setting me up for failure.
Pastor told me to keep going.
Let me jump over to Corinthians real fast.
Second Corinthians.
Let me hit you with chapter one and chapter six real fast.
Watch this.
Blessed be the God and the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
You see, you wouldn't need comfort if you're not going through anything,
but you need comfort because you're going through some stuff.
You follow what I'm saying there?
And he is the God of comfort.
So you got to know the character and the nature of God if you're going to live this life.
The character of God is that he is a comforter.
Now notice what it says here.
Who comforts us in all our affliction.
Anybody had some of that before?
Now this next part right here is important.
It's so that, so that.
That's a powerful statement.
So that.
Well, what do you mean so that?
So you got the God of all comfort who comforts you in all your affliction for a reason.
Here's the reason why.
So that you may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.
So you've been afflicted and God went with you so that you could walk with others who are going through it
with the comfort in which we ourselves are comforted by God.
For as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so through Christ, we share abundantly the comfort too.
So I guess we're not going to get a pass on this whole affliction thing, but we will get a partner.
Let me jump to chapter six.
Watch this.
Look at what it says here.
He says, this is Paul.
He's writing.
He's talking about some different things and he's like, hey, listen, let me tell you something about life.
He said, by the service of God, we commend ourselves in every way by great endurance.
What do you need endurance for?
You ever need some endurance?
Listen, you ever had a tough life?
You had a tough life?
Tough moment?
Tough week?
Listen to what he says here.
Listen, let me tell you why I need some endurance.
Because in afflictions and hardships and calamities and beatings and imprisonments and riots,
some of us got riots going on in our hearts right now.
One way is one trying to do this and the other side of us trying to do that.
We got riots going on.
But they were real riots that they had.
Oh, we got riots in our country and now we got people that are going to be mad.
How are you going to handle it?
And labors and sleepless nights.
You ever have a sleepless night and hunger?
And then there's this key word here, by.
By means this is how we had that endurance.
By purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech,
the power of God with weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.
Weapons of righteousness, not fingers of texting, of social media posts, of righteousness.
That righteousness is how we overcome all this stuff.
What is the weapon that you're trying to go into battle with?
Are you trying to come at your spouse because you guys are having difficult times?
Are you coming at your spouse with weapons of hatred and meanness?
Are you coming at your spouse with weapons of hatred and meanness and just ugliness?
Are you coming out with weapons of righteousness?
I'm going to serve you even though it's not right.
Are you coming with weapons of righteousness at your job?
Are you coming with weapons of righteousness when they don't treat you right, when they don't talk to you right?
Weapons of righteousness is what God calls why?
Because he told us that we should be his righteous.
We are the righteousness of God.
We fight with righteous weapons because that's where we get results.
And it goes on.
He says, hey, listen, though we slander, we praise.
We are treated as imposters, yet are true, as unknown, yet well known, as dying and behold, we live,
we are punished, and yet we are not killed, as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing, as poor,
yet making many rich, and not having nothing, and as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
You see, here's the thing.
I'm convinced of two things from this section here.
First, it doesn't matter what you go through.
Your circumstances don't dictate your behavior.
And the second thing is this.
It doesn't matter what I'm going through because who I am is not what I go through.
And so when you remember that in life and you understand that although you may go through something,
did you see all those yet's that I just read?
You see, the word yet appears in the Bible 434 times and 424 verses.
So there's a lot of yet's.
Does that make sense?
And if I think about the yet's in life, if I were to just come up with my own yet's for a moment,
this is what I would begin to recognize, that Jesus was God, yet he was man.
He was 100% man, yet he was God 100%.
You see, when I understand about Jesus, I understand that he was the king of the world,
yet he let a local governor named Pilate question him.
He was the one that said his burden is light, yet he took on the sins of us.
He was the one that would be lifted up, but yet it would draw all men to him.
He was the one that was used to be the sit on the throne in heaven,
yet he found himself in a tomb on earth.
He was the one who on Friday gave up his spirit, yet on Sunday early morning he had life.
He was the one who walked on earth, yet he's the one that ascended back to heaven.
When I think about us, I recognize that we were dead in our sin, yet we are alive in Christ.
When I think about we were once hostile to God, yet now we've become lovers of God.
When I think that we were yet perplexed, we were once worried, yet we are comforted and we have peace.
You see, when I think about heroes like Job, who said, although he may slay me, yet I will trust in him.
When I think about Moses who's seen a burning bush, yet it did not burn up.
When I think about Joseph, who was forgotten by the cup bearer and was left in prison,
yet the king requested his presence.
When I think about Ezekiel, who found himself in the middle of a valley of dry bones, yet they came back to life.
Here's when I am convinced, the battle that you're facing may be hard, yet the battle belongs to God.
And if you're willing to allow God to be a part of the battles of life that you go through, that is where you will find your peace.
Will it be easy? No.
But can you stand up mightily and boldly and declare because of all that you have been through
and all that you remember who God is and you say, God has never left me, he won't leave me now.
And I will trust him.
Sometimes God will ask you to do some things that don't make no sense.
Because one of the way that God fights battles, he will say to you, hey, you're down on the ground
and I know it don't make no sense, but just go ahead and look up at the treetops because my armies are marching across the treetops.
I know that you're trying to fight the battle of Jericho and you're wondering when do we draw our swords,
but I just want you to walk around and then just blow the trumpets horns.
It'll make no sense, but I'm God and I never asked you if I needed to make sense in your mind.
I'm God. I won't work things out the way that you think that they should be worked out.
I'm God. I would do something that will blow your mind.
I'm God. I don't need your permission.
I'm God. You're in a box. I am not.
I'm God. I can do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it, however I want to do it.
And I don't need your permission because before you were ever born, I already was.
And long after you're gone, I will always be.
I'm the one that went to the cross. I'm the one that gave up my life.
I'm the one who died. I'm the one who came back to life. I'm the one.
So stop thinking it's all about you because it's not.
But I'm willing to go with you because I love you that much.
I fought the battle of death so that you could live and this is the power of the gospel.
And we take great comfort and courage when we reflect on Psalm 20.
We remember that God is faithful.