Healing The Broken Hearted

00:01 Greet you this morning in the name of Jesus. Let the church say, Amen. Amen. We want to give thanks to God, give glory to God for the things that He has done for us and through us and in us, and that the Lord would continue to change us and to heal us. 00:18 Titled the message this morning, "Healing the Brokenhearted," and I'd like for you to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to Psalm 116. We all have some area of brokenness in our lives, do we not? And to some, that is, some of us, that area of brokenness is known and visible, 00:39 and is visible to others as well. And to some, it may not be known, but they function out of that brokenness and that pain, and they're not exactly sure why they respond the way they respond at times in broken ways. 00:55 And the truth remains that God is a master at taking broken things and making them whole, taking broken people and making them whole. But we need to come to Him. I know I saw a short video clip a number of months ago, 01:14 might have been a year or so ago, of a man who was sitting in the barber's chair, and I don't recommend that barbers do this because it appeared to be kind of fake and put on. But as he was doing, sitting in the barber's chair, his barber was going on and on, just kind of very piously, telling him how bad he is as a... 01:34 I don't know what... remember how all the context of the conversation was. But the man in the chair went on to tell his barber, he said, "I don't believe in God. I don't believe in God." And well, the barber asked him, "Why? Why don't you believe in God?" "Well, I've never seen Him. I've never seen Him. And if there was a God, 01:54 why was there so much pain in the world?" And 01:59 shortly after that, he walked out of the barber shop. The barber did. I think I got the story mixed up. I wasn't planning to share this story for some reason. It came to me. It was the man in the chair that was witnessing to the barber. 02:15 And the barber said, "I don't believe in God because there's so much pain in the world." So the man in the chair got up out of his chair when he's done and paid his bill and walked out the sidewalk, and there was a hippie standing out on the sidewalk, leaning up against the building. And all of a sudden, he had a thought. He asked that man with long shaggy hair to come and talk to the barber. 02:36 He said, "Come on in here. I want to do something with you." And so he said to the barber, he said, "Mr. Barber," he said, "I don't believe in barbers." "What do you mean you don't believe in barbers?" "Well, I just don't believe in them because I don't think they're real." "Well, why not?" "Well, because there's so many people in the world that have long hair. I mean, look at this guy. 02:57 You try to tell me there's a barber in the world? Why does he look like this?" "Well," he said, "that's dumb. The reason that he looks that way is because he didn't come to me." "Ah. Well, the reason there's so much pain and suffering in the world is because it doesn't mean that there's no God. It just means we don't come to Him. 03:16 We don't come to Him." So we want to come to God this morning. And Psalm 116 says, "I love the Lord because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me. Therefore, I will call upon Him as long as I live." Can you say that this morning? Can you say that God has heard your prayer and your cry, 03:35 and you've come to Him and you've tested Him and found Him true and faithful, and that you want to just keep coming to Him as long as you live? That's my prayer this morning. "The pains of death surrounded me, and the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I implore You. 03:56 Deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low, and He saved me. Return to Your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, 04:17 and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed. Therefore, I spoke. I am greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, 'All men are liars.' What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. 04:36 I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord, truly, I am Your servant. I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. 04:54 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of You, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!" You notice there's an exclamation mark behind that. 05:10 It's to be said emphatically, "Praise the Lord!" The Hebrew word is "Hallelujah!" Why don't you say it this morning? "Hallelujah!" Well, you forgot the exclamation mark. But anyway, it's there. It's there to praise the name of the Lord for delivering us, for setting us free from sin and from our struggles and our problems, 05:30 for taking those things upon Himself at the cross. You see, there are at least three fears that afflict each one of us in life. There is the fear of dying, and the fear of pain, and the fear of falling. As children, we can probably all remember those things about the fear of dying. 05:48 Maybe you remember as a child when you went to your first funeral or someone around you passed away and the impact that that made upon you. You know, when you kneel down at night, we used to say this prayer when we were little children. "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord, my soul, to keep..." "If I should die..." "What do you mean if I should die?" "Mommy, I don't want to die. 06:08 But if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul, to take it..." So there's kind of a fear. There's a fear of dying that is innate in our lives. It's inborn. Fear of the unknown. There's a fear of pain. And so tears come, and tears come in expectation of pain, and tears come as a result of pain. 06:28 And then even children have a fear of falling. They're the closest to the ground, but many of them have a fear of falling. And the elderly, the more vulnerable we get, we have those fears. We have those fears of falling. And at times, we're vulnerable. When we're vulnerable in our lives, we have these fears. But praise the Lord, this morning it says, 06:47 "You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling." God has delivered us from the fear of death, the fear of pain, and the fear of falling. And He does that when we come to Him and lay ourselves before Him and the concerns that we have about preparing for death, 07:08 about walking through life, a life of pain, a life of sorrow, a life of difficulty, and about falling into sin. Sometimes we ought to be concerned about those things. But the fear, the fear can be taken away from the brokenhearted. So what do we do when these fears plague us? And how do we heal the brokenhearted? 07:27 What do we do with our burdens when the tears of life leave stains upon our pillows? When a believer faces sickness and poverty and financial adversity and persecution in many parts of the world or opposition? When he faces temptation? When he faces depression? 07:46 When he faces spiritual darkness or the loss of friends and families for the sake of following Christ? What do you do with those fears? What do you do with those burdens? What do you do with that brokenness and the broken heart? Well, I'm thankful that we can come to God. We can come to God with our brokenness and our pain. And we can be assured that when we come in the name of Jesus Christ, 08:08 He hears us. He hears us. He understands. So I want us to look at this passage this morning with three things in mind. I want us to look at what we can know about God in this passage. I want us to look at what He is qualified to handle in this passage. And thirdly, what our response to that should be. And so first of all, 08:27 we look at the refuge that we have in God. What do we learn about God? Well, let's just introduce this Psalm just briefly, an introduction to the chapter. Many look at this Psalm as only speaking to the passion and death and triumph of Christ. But while it may be applicable to those and that, 08:46 and it may actually be the correct interpretation that this is speaking of Christ and His calling out and crying out to God, but it's even so much more than that. The Church of England appointed this Psalm to be one of thanksgiving for women after childbirth. 09:03 And so this was a good one for them to recite and to quote and to read upon the childbirth. 09:10 Maybe that's because of the pangs of childbirth and the emotion of it and the tears and the... maybe you're close to death when you have a child. I'm not sure. In some cultures, you are. You're vulnerable. You're vulnerable. It's a time of weakness, a time when no matter what you do, you cannot stop those pains. 09:31 You bring those to the Lord. So that's how the Church of England dealt with this passage. Other churches use parts of this in celebrating the Lord's Supper. This is part of the Hallel Psalms or praise Psalms, which were sung during the annual feasts with chapters 115 to 118 being sung right after the Passover meal. 09:50 These likely were the Psalms that Jesus used when He says, "And they sung a hymn at the end of the Passover meal." Luther said, "This is a Psalm of thanksgiving in which the psalmist renders thanks after coming out of the most heavy trial and again rejoices in God." Are you in a trial this morning? 10:09 As you come out of that trial, praise is fitting. As you go through the trial, praise is fitting. We should be praising the Lord in the trial, before the trial, during the trial, after the trial because He does hear us and He does care about us. Someone else said, "This Psalm contains a solemn thanksgiving to God for a glorious deliverance from grievous and dangerous calamities, 10:31 as also from great perplexities and terrors of mind arising from the sense of God's displeasure." Do you have great perplexities? Are you terrified at the thought of dying? Are you grievous and dangerous calamities? 10:45 You look pretty calm this morning, but we can carry an incredible amount of grief and sorrow and pain in a heart that's dressed up real nice on the outside. This is a Psalm of worship. It's a Psalm of public worship. Did you ever think that maybe the thing to do when we have a broken heart is to worship? 11:03 Do you ever think that the thing to do when we have a broken heart is to give thanks to God and give praise to God for being there for us and for hearing us when we cry out to Him? What do we know about God in this passage of Scripture? Number one, He listens. He listens. He says, 11:21 "I love the Lord because He has heard my voice. He has inclined His ear unto me." We know that God hears. He hears the testimony of our worship. He hears our supplication. I asked a family yesterday morning during breakfast. I said, "What is supplication? What's that all about?" Well, 11:42 some answers were request. A request is we give our request to God. But sometimes we think about supplication as being that. But supplication is even deeper than just a request. Sometimes children give a request to their mother or father, and they get an answer, and then they go skipping on their way and back out to play. 12:01 And that answer was either acceptable or not acceptable, but really didn't make a whole lot of difference to the life that they were living that day. But when you talk about supplication, it's not just a request, but it's actually a plea for mercy or a prayer of petition, like from a poor man to a rich man saying, "Help me. 12:20 Have mercy on me." You can think about this on the Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus sitting at the gate of the rich man's palace full of sores, crying out, "Have mercy upon me." You can hear that in the heart of Bartimaeus, the blind man, as Jesus came passing by when He said, "Son of David, have mercy on me." That's a supplication. 12:40 Know that God would give us opportunities at times, and He does. Gives us opportunities to actually somewhat be overwhelmed with life. So we cry out to Him, "God, have mercy on me." And what He does, He doesn't turn us away. He doesn't close the door. He doesn't shut the windows because of our much speaking and our oft crying unto Him. 13:02 He doesn't just say, "Leave me alone. I'm busy," or, "I don't want to hear that anymore." When it's prayed in sincerity and faith and in the name of Jesus and under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, He bends His ear to us is what the word incline means. He bends His ear. He stretches it out. He extends His ear. 13:22 He gives attention to. He pays attention to that cry for help. "Therefore, I will call upon Him as long as I live." The second thing we see about God is in verse 5. He is gracious. Gracious. Have you ever met somebody that just wasn't gracious? Wasn't very gracious? 13:41 They weren't full of grace. They weren't very kind. They weren't very good. That they they they they were consumed with their own importance and with their own power and their own dignity. And look down there on their nose on others. That's not our God. He is gracious, which means He is good. It says, "He is righteous. He is right. He does right. 14:00 He is right. He will do right. And He is merciful." He's merciful. We see that about God in verse 5. In verse 6, we see that the Lord preserves and helps the simple. The word simple there means the naive, those who lack understanding of the complexities of life. 14:19 Do you lack understanding of the complexities of life? It seems like the older we get, the less we know. You know, we kind of don't know very much, and then we get to be young adults, and we think we know more than what we do. And then that gets tested in the battlefield of life. 14:35 And as the battlefield of life unfolds, you begin to realize that life is complex. It's complex. And we really are naive a bit. And we need God's wisdom. And so those who call upon Him, even though they're simple, even though they lack understanding, they know enough to know to go to God. 14:55 You may not know much in life, and you may be the things that you thought you know, you don't really know anymore. But do you know enough to go to God with your brokenness and your broken heart? He is gracious. He preserves. The word preserves there means it's the same word that is used in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were supposed to tend to the garden. 15:15 They were to preserve the garden. They were to keep it. They were to watch over it. They were to save it and to and and and to to till it and tend to it. And that's how the Lord preserves us. I want you to think this morning about God preserving you like Adam and Eve would preserve that Garden of Eden, 15:35 taking care of you, tending to you, guarding you, bringing you to fruitfulness, to bring to a place of safety and a broad pasture so you're not hemmed in about with sin and discouragement and and and darkness. You see, 15:53 when you're in darkness, there's not a lot of place to room. There's not a lot of room to move because there's so much fear in your life. But when God deals with the darkness and takes away the pangs of death and the pangs of the grave, then you have a broad place. That's the word behind the meaning of the word behind preserves, to take and put in a place of safety, in a broad place. 16:13 He helps us in our weakness. He never turns away from the brokenhearted, and He's always attuned to the cry of His children. Another thing we learn about God, number four, is that He deals bountifully. In verse 7, "Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." That just means that the Lord is good, 16:34 that God has dealt with us in a good way. Do you believe that this morning about God? Can you embrace that, that God is good all the time? You know, we say that God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. And we kind of use it as a cheer for cheerleaders, you know, as a cheer to move on the team, you know? 16:55 But do we really believe it? Do we really believe that God is good when life is bad, when life is hard, when there's pain, when there's discomfort, when there's depression, when there's discouragement? One of the greatest things that Satan tries to lie to us about is that if you can't believe us to not get us to not believe in God, he'll try to get us to believe that God is not good. But God is good. 17:15 He has dealt with us bountifully. Number five, He delivers. He delivers. Verse 8, "For you have delivered my soul from death. 17:24 These pangs of death surrounded me." Verse 3, "The pangs of the grave, Sheol, hell, laid hold of me." It's just a way of saying that the place of the dead, the grave, the the the fact that we feel like we're going to be consumed and destroyed. 17:40 He said, "You have delivered me from that and my eyes from tears and my feet from falling." Next, we learn that God delights. Delights. Verse 15. Wow, this is an interesting verse. It's a precious verse because it says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." Precious. That word precious means weighty or significant. 18:02 It means 18:06 something of great significance. You see, God does not just overlook people when they die. He is with them. He is orchestrating their way, and He delights. He takes care of them right up to the very end. It matters to Him when another saint finishes well. 18:26 God is pleased, and the enemy is rebuked. You know, the enemy wants to destroy our testimony. He wants to destroy our confidence in God. But when the when the time of the end comes, God is as much involved in that as He is in any other aspect of our lives. 18:47 Do you believe that? God is as much involved in the day of your death as He was in the day of your birth. Yes. Someone has said it like this, "Let not the righteous be overanxious concerning the fact, the time, or the manner of their departure out of life. This is all arranged by God, 19:07 by the Lord." The Bible says of Peter in the book of John that it says that he was concerned about what manner of death, or that Jesus stated what manner of death he should die and glorify God. Peter wanted to know that information about John. 19:27 Jesus didn't tell him about that, about John. He just said, "You know, Peter, there's going to come a day when you're going to be taken somewhere. You don't want to go, and you're going to be you're going to be martyred in a way that you don't want to be. But nevertheless, I'm in charge of that day as well." The servant of God troubled themselves in vain when they distrust Him. 19:47 "For in life, He is with them, and in death, He will not forsake them." And then we learn about God in verse 16 that He loses the chains. He loses the chains. "O Lord, truly, I am Your servant. I am Your servant, the son of Your handmaiden. You have loosed my bonds. 20:07 You have loosed my bonds." You know what that means? If He's loosed the bonds of servanthood, then that means that this person is serving not because they're forced to, but because they choose to. So we serve God because we choose to. And He loses us, sets us free so that we might serve in a right way. 20:27 So what kind of trouble is God qualified to bear? Have you ever wondered about that? Can God handle this one? Can God can I really trust God in this one? Well, verse 3, we see that He is prepared to handle the sorrows of death and of the grave. "The cords or ropes of death entangled me," one translation says. 20:47 The pain, the pangs, the torments of the grave, the place of the dead. It was like I'm going to be overwhelmed and destroyed. Can God handle that? Absolutely. Absolutely. God can handle the sorrows of death. And He can handle trouble and sorrow. 21:07 Verse 3, He says, "I found trouble and sorrow." You know, the trouble and sorrows of life. God can handle that. You don't get any sense in this chapter, this the Psalm of praise and thanksgiving. You don't get any sense at all that there's nothing that there's something that God can't handle. Nothing that He can't handle, even the trouble and sorrow. 21:28 The things that make us feel small, He's able to handle those. Verse 6, "The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low, and He saved me." Do you ever feel insignificant? Do you ever feel insignificant? You walk in a room and no one cares. You walk out of the room, no one cares. No one notices. You feel so small. You feel embarrassed. 21:47 You feel insignificant. You feel unimportant. You feel unnoticed. You just feel like the world could you could cease to exist, and no one would ever care. Do you ever feel that way? 22:00 Well, God cares. God cares. We may be brought low, so low that our memory is even that is even gone, the memory of us. You know, I think about that sometimes about people that don't know that certain people exist anymore, that we're important to me. And the memory of the memory as you pass away from this life to the next. 22:21 Eventually, I mean, people think about you, especially at the time of your death. And then you pass away, and a week later, their life has gone on. And a month later, their life has gone on further. And you're still dead, and you're not there to remind them, "Hey, I lived. I existed," you know? And the people that really think about you is just your family. And then your grandchildren grow up not knowing grandpa. 22:42 And you fade from memory. You fade from memory. And God says, "That's okay. That's okay. I still have got your soul. I've still got you." Trouble and sorrow, the pains of death, the things that make us feel small, the fears and failures of life. 23:03 Verse 8, "Can God handle those? For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling." I just keep coming back to that verse. God can handle the things, the fears, the failures in life, the death, the tears, the stumbling, the failures. You bring it to God, and God's got it. 23:24 He's got it. The only thing He can He's waiting is for us to commit it unto Him. Apostle Paul said, "I know whom I have believed and persuaded, that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." The good, the bad, the ugly, the failures, the successes, all of those things, the lump sum of a person's life committed to God, and God gets it. 23:45 He holds it. He takes care of it. He does with it what needs to be done with it. What about those things of extreme hurt? Verse 11. Verse 11, "I said in my haste, 'All men are liars.'" Wow, that's quite a statement. That's quite a statement. Verse 10, "I believed, therefore I spoke. I am greatly afflicted. 24:04 I said in my haste, 'All men are liars.'" You kind of get the idea that this man had been hurt, wounded. You get the idea that this person really, really was betrayed. You see, men will disappoint us. Someone has said that often when people could would help us, they cannot. 24:25 And when they could help us, they will not. You know, we want to trust each other, but the bottom line is people will let you down. That doesn't mean you don't trust. It doesn't mean you don't lie. You don't that you don't enter into relationships, be vulnerable. 24:44 But bottom line, people will disappoint you. I tell that to my children every so often. We've done the best that we could, raising you with the things that we had and the truth that we knew and the situations of life that God had led us through. But we're not enough. Mom and dad will never be enough. 25:01 Don't fault them for that because if God or if mom and dad were enough, you wouldn't need the Heavenly Father. And the Heavenly Father is enough. People will disappoint you. Pastors will disappoint you. Church people will disappoint you. Unbelievers will disappoint you. Business partners will disappoint you. Husbands, wives will disappoint you. 25:22 But God will never disappoint you. So don't get cynical. Don't say in your haste, "All men are liars," and just write off everybody with a broad brush and say, "That's the last time I'll ever trust anybody in my life." That only leads to sorrow and bitterness and unforgiveness and anger and hurt. Bring it to God. Again, God can handle this. 25:43 He has heard the voice of our supplication, inclined His ear to us. Keep calling upon Him, brother, sister. We also learn that God is able to handle the worst that life can throw at us. That's death. Verse 15, "He considers that able to be handled. It can be weighty. 26:03 It can be glorious. It can be valuable. It's something versus something worthless." God doesn't take people's lives and then just discard them on the scrap heap of humanity and throw them away. Even at the very end, you are valuable to God. 26:20 So we've looked here this morning at what God is and who He is and the things that we can learn about God in this passage. We've also looked now at the things that He can handle. Nothing in the passage that gives any hint that God cannot handle what we bring to Him. So what should our response be? What should our response be? 26:38 I want to give you several things that will help heal the brokenhearted. This is our response. Number one, return to your rest. Return to your rest. Verse 7. Verse 7, "Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." Just come to God. 26:58 Where is our place of rest? Where is our place of refuge? There is a place of firm retreat near to the heart of God. I can't remember the exact words. 27:09 The place where help me. Anyway, you know the song, "Near to the heart of God." That's our place of rest. Come to the place of rest internally, our soul, coming to the place of rest. We need to come to that place every morning, every evening. Come to the place of rest. 27:28 At the end of the day, when there's been helter-skelter, this and that happening in the day, just bring your soul to the place of rest. First thing in the morning, bring your soul to the place of rest. God will meet you there. God will meet you there. And so we return to our rest. 27:48 Verse 9. Verse 9, "I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." This is something we can do. We'll walk. Get up and walk. Get up and walk. God does not want people to wallow. He wants people to walk. He wants people to walk in the light, 28:09 bringing our burdens to the Lord, bringing our sin to the light so that we can receive that forgiveness. We can receive that healing, that cleansing so that we can walk. God does not want people to wallow. He wants them to walk in His ways. And He is able to make you to stand, the Bible says. He is able to keep you from falling, the Bible says. 28:31 And so we walk. I remember hearing a minister say one time how he dealt with somebody with depression. And you know, when you go through depression, it's very real. It's very real. But one of the things that Satan wants to do is immobilize people because if you immobilize, then you can't do anything productive for the kingdom of God, right? 28:55 And so I remember this pastor talking about how that this lady in his I don't know if she was in his congregations a long many years since I heard this story, but he actually said, "One of the keys to your recovery, ma'am, is going to be to do something. Do something. Don't just wallow, but do something. 29:15 Get up. Make your bed first thing in the morning." You'd be surprised how much healing and wholeness there is from making the bed, from walking instead of wallowing. You know, do what you can. And that God will give you the strength, a little bit like muscles. If you don't exercise your muscles, you lose them. 29:34 If you exercise your muscles, they grow and they increase and they strengthen. So it is in our hearts as well. When we walk, we come to God, we lay out our burdens, we cry out to Him. He hears us. And then we get up and we walk. We do the next thing that needs to be done. And God meets us at that place. 29:55 And so we walk. Verse 9. Verse 10, "Believe in the goodness of God. Believe in the greatness of God. I believed. Therefore, I have spoken. And not just believe it, but confess it. 30:11 Confess it out loud that God is good." Have you ever get up in the morning and say, "Oh, my back hurts"? Why don't you get up in the morning and say, "God is good"? Huh? 30:22 It's a matter of perspective. Get up in the morning and, "Oh, man, I don't know how I'm going to get through this day." Why don't you get up in the morning, "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," and start speaking it. 30:35 Now, I'm not one of those word of faith preachers that believes you can create your own reality with words. But I do believe you can influence reality with words. Amen? You can influence it. 30:52 You walk around all day telling everybody how bad things are and how bad you are and how bad you feel. You're going to feel real bad at the end of the day. But there's something about positive confessing of the goodness of God. He says, "I believed. Therefore, I spoke." And so speak what you believe. 31:15 The devil needs to hear it. God wants to hear it. And you need to say it. So say the goodness of God. God is good. Your testimony, even if it's just something simple like, "God is good. Thank you, God, for waking me up this morning," whatever it is, but speak it. Believe it. Confess it. And then verse 13, 31:35 "Sacrifice to the Lord." Sacrifice to the Lord. So we've gotten return to your rest, walk in the Lord, believe and confess the goodness of God. Verse 13, "Lift up the drink offering or the sacrifice." Verse 13, he says, "I will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord." The cup of salvation. 31:55 What's the cup of salvation? Let me do a little research on that. There are some sacrifices that were made to be offered with a drink offering. You can read about this in Numbers chapter 15, and I believe also Leviticus chapter 7, that as you brought your offering and your meat offering, 32:16 and you brought the oil that was to come with it and the flour that was to come with it, and you brought the wine that was to come with it, and you poured that out around the altar and around the sacrifice, taking the cup of salvation and pouring it out before the Lord. 32:36 You see, not every sacrifice was a sacrifice for sin. We oftentimes focus on the sacrifices that relate directly to the issue of sin and those who typify most clearly the death of Christ. But some of the sacrifices God demanded were presented in the context of a mournful excuse me. 32:55 Those were presented in the context of a mournful confession of sin and repentance, those that related to the death of Christ. But many of the sacrifices in the biblical period were presented in context of celebration and of joyful, heartfelt expression of one's delight in knowing the Lord. 33:12 By the way, that's why we come to church and offer up our cup of salvation and pay our vows. He talks about this in the presence of the people. Verse 14. Verse 18, "I will pay my vows now in the presence of His people, in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of you, 33:31 O Jerusalem." There's something to be said about celebrating and worshiping God together in the context of His people, the community of faith. There were Thanksgiving offerings, peace offerings, fellowship offerings. 33:48 An animal offering was given to maintain and strengthen a person's relationship with God. It was not required as a remedy for impurity or sin, but was an expression of Thanksgiving for various blessings. An important function of this sacrifice was to provide meat for the priests and the participants in the sacrifice. 34:07 It is also called the peace offering or the sacrifice of well-being. And it was offered up in the midst of the people. We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. And we offer up to you the sacrifice of Thanksgiving and the sacrifice of praise. 34:29 To pour the wine out. Wine in this context speaks of joy around the altar. Bringing our burdens and having received the blessing of God and the favor of God and the ear of God creates joy in our relationship with God. 34:49 And so we lift up the drink offering. We pour out the drink offering. In verse 14, we pay our vows in the presence of the people. Testify. Testify. I think this could be an application to testify before the Lord and before the people. A vow is an agreement between God and man. 35:10 You don't make rash or hasty vows, but God does answer prayers. As He does answer prayer and you make a commitment to God, then keep that commitment. Pay your vows in the presence of the people. You know, there are several vows that we have made in life. First vow I made was at my baptism. 35:31 I vow. I vow. Don't take those baptismal vows casually. 35:40 I vow. I'm going to forsake the world. I believe in Christ. I give my life to Jesus Christ. I'm going to walk in the way of Christ. That's a vow. Pay it. Pay it. Do it. Do what you said. 35:56 And then when I got married, made another vow. Made a vow to God, to my wife, and to about 250 people, 300 people in that audience. You see, I didn't just make my vow to her. I didn't just make my vow to God. I made it in the presence of witnesses. I said, "I will. 36:16 I will be faithful. I will be your husband. You will be my wife. We will remain in covenant relationship as long as we both shall live." I made that vow. Keep it. I intend to by the grace of God. And then I made ordination vows. Wow, 36:36 some of the vows that you make in some of those solemn occasions, you look, you need to have you probably ought to go over your baptismal vows about once a year. Probably ought to go over your marriage vows about once a year. 36:49 Take them with you to your dinner getaway for your honey. Say, "Let's look at our vows. See how we're doing. This is what I vowed. This is what you vowed. How are we doing? Let's keep this thing alive here." We probably ought to do that with our ministry vows as well. 37:08 To feed the flock of God, to take care of the flock of God, to pay attention to doctor, to pay attention to spiritual life, to pay attention to the ordinances, to pay attention to the flock that which God has made you an overseer. There are some very weighty vows that we have taken that we need to be faithful to, but we can't be faithful to them. We don't remember what they are. And so we want to remember those vows. 37:30 They're not made rashly or hastily. They are made very cautiously because God expects them to be fulfilled. And then Thanksgiving. Verse 17, "I will offer to you the sacrifice of Thanksgiving, and I will call upon the name of the Lord." Oh, we have so much to be thankful for, 37:49 even when there's even when there's difficulty and pain and sorrow and suffering and disease and devastation, so much to be thankful for. And a lot of life, a lot of healing the broken heart is to help people refocus. You know, are you going to continue to focus on your own pain, 38:09 or are you going to start thanking God 38:13 for what you've learned in the valley? Job, one of the keys to Job, key verses in Job coming through his valley was when he said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." There's always something to be grateful for. 38:33 Always something to be grateful for. Even if it's grateful that you can get up out of bed, even if you're just grateful that you can tie your own shoes, even if you're just grateful that you had soup last night for supper instead of steak, whatever it is, there's always something to be grateful for. We can cultivate that attitude of greatness, gratefulness. "I will offer to you the sacrifice of Thanksgiving. 38:54 Not if I feel like it, not if I don't feel like it, not if I want to, if I don't want to, I will do it." Can you say that this morning? "I will offer the sacrifice of Thanksgiving." And then lastly, commit yourself to serve God no matter what. Verse 16, 39:14 "O Lord, truly I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant." God, we've been doing this for a while as a family. And I want to make it clear that I'm not just doing this for my family. I'm doing it for you. I'm doing it because I believe and I want to be your servant. Yes, my mother was your servant. My father was your servant. 39:33 But I want to be your servant. Not just because I have bonds around me that attach me to you. Because you have loosed my bonds, I still want to be your servant. And so commit yourself to serve God no matter what. So as we conclude this morning, whatever you are going through today, God cares. 39:53 He listens. He understands. He responds. And He can handle it. He can handle it. But you got to come to Him. You got to come to Him. The barber can't cut your hair if you don't come to Him. God can't prove Himself to be the good God that He is unless you come to Him. And He invites you to come to the altar of worship, 40:14 to pour out your petitions, to beg for mercy and strength, to confess Him before the assembly, to confess your faith weak as it may be, and to do it in the midst of the people of God. Oh, God delights in hearing and answering our prayers. They'll always do it like this. I read the story of a missionary. 40:35 She was from Zaire. Maybe you've heard this story before. She was from Zaire. 40:41 And they had in Africa, and they had a woman who gave birth to a premature baby. And in that birthing process passed away. She died in childbirth. And so they were trying to improvise an incubator for this little baby, this preemie. What do we do? 41:01 We need to have a place where it can be warm and cared for and loved and secure. And they wanted, needed a water bottle, but their only water bottle busted and broke, a hot water bottle. And so what do you do? So they began to ask the children to pray for the baby and for her sister, which was about two years old. And one of the girls went to prayer right away and said, 41:21 "Dear God, please send a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late because by then the baby will be dead. And dear Lord, send a doll for the sister so she won't feel so lonely." You're going to pray for one thing. You might as well pray for something else too. And the missionary said, "Boy, how do we handle this? What if God doesn't?" You know, 41:41 sometimes we get hung up on the, "What if God doesn't?" instead of the childlike faith that says, "Well, you know what? God can do this. God can do this." So that afternoon, which was pretty unusual, a large package arrived from England. The children watched eagerly as they opened it. And much to their surprise, under some clothing, guess what there was? 42:03 A hot water bottle. And so they kept digging. Said, "Keep digging. There's got to be a doll in there somewhere." Sure enough, under a whole bunch of stuff, there was a dolly for the little two-year-old sister whose mother had died. 42:15 And oh, I tell you what, God knew in advance that child's sincere request and five months earlier had led a lady's group to include both of those specific articles in that basket, in that missionary package. God can do it. He's got it. Somebody said, 42:36 "If God doesn't have it, you don't need it." I kind of like that. If God doesn't have it, you don't need it. If you need it, God has it. But let me give you this caution. George Mueller set forth five conditions of prevailing prayer, which he followed. 42:51 Number one, entire, entire, listen to this, entire dependence upon the merits and mediation of Jesus as the only grounds for claiming a blessing. We don't claim a blessing because we're such good people. We don't claim a blessing because we're Mennonites. We don't claim a blessing even because we're Christians. 43:10 We claim a blessing because of Jesus and our relationship with Jesus. 43:18 And then secondly, George Mueller's five conditions. The second one was separation from all known sin. 43:23 The Bible does say, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." We talked about it in the Faith Foundations class this morning, that there came a time in the people of Israel in Malachi chapter two when God said, 43:37 "I'm not going to listen to your prayers anymore because you have sin in your life and the sin of marriage and divorce and remarriage." 43:46 Number three, faith in God's promise as confirmed by His oath. He has said, "I will provide for you in His way, in His way, not ours." And that's number four, asking in accordance with God's will, not selfishly. When we ask for prayer, when we pray, do we pray selfishly, 44:06 "Lord, get me through this?" Or do we pray that God would be glorified? You see, if you pray that God would be glorified, you'll never be disappointed. Will never be disappointed. And then number four or number five, importunity. What's that word mean? Mr. Mueller, what does the word importunity mean? 44:26 You remember the man who, the the the man who was asleep with his family in the house and somebody came and said, "Help me, help me, help me. Knock, knock, knock. I have visitors that have come. I need assistance. I need supplies. Help me, help me." And they'd go away. 44:45 "I'm busy. I'm sleeping." Or I was. "I'm sleeping with my wife and my children. We're shut up for the night. Everything's quiet. We don't need you disturbing the peace." But the Bible says, because of his importunity, what does that mean? It means shameless persistence. Because of their shameless persistence, 45:07 they kept knocking and knocking and knocking. The only way this is going to get over with is if I go meet the need. That is a picture of the perseverance. It's not a picture of God's response, but it's a picture of the perseverance in prayer. 45:25 So entire dependence upon the merits of Christ, separation from all known sin, faith in the promises of God, asking according to God's will and not selfishly for His glory and importunity. Oh, why do you love the Lord this morning? 45:43 I think one of the greatest reasons is because He has heard my voice, my supplication, plea and petition for mercy. He has inclined His ear to me, and I want to call on Him as long as I live. Let's bow our heads this morning. 46:05 Lord's laid on my heart to have an invitation this morning. I don't know that there's necessarily great significant issues happening in your life today. Maybe there are. If so, many of you have hit it well. 46:20 But I believe that there's an opportunity here for us to come to the altar this morning to pray in the midst of the assembly, in the house of the Lord, before the people, to just come to the foot of Calvary's cross, as it were, 46:39 and utter our plea to God for mercy, 46:46 to celebrate His goodness, to pay our vows to Him, and to rejoice in the goodness of God. And so we're going to open the altar this morning, and Brother Aaron is going to lead us in number 8:27. Why don't you turn to that in your songs of faith and praise? 47:07 8:27. And if there's a burden on your heart this morning, there's a brokenness, there's a brokenheartedness. Maybe it's so far back that people don't even know it's there, but you know it's there. And you'd just like to come to the Lord this morning and respond to Psalm 1:16 and and and and call upon the name of the Lord. 47:28 Or maybe He's answered a prayer this week or recently that you've been praying, praying, praying, and you just want to come and give Him thanks. We're going to sing that song, Sweet Hour of Prayer, and invite you to just come front and just bow down and thank the Lord. 47:49 And if somebody comes and you see them come and you don't necessarily feel like you need to come, come pray with them. I love to be in a church when people just get up, when someone responds to the altar and somebody else just gets up and comes with them. I love that. I love to see that in revival meetings. 48:05 And so, Father, we come to You this morning and we cry unto You. We cry out to You on behalf of our country. It's a mess, Lord. It is a mess. It's being ripped apart. It's being divided. It's being torn to shreds. 48:24 It is veering so far and so fast into godlessness. We pray for our country. We pray for mercy. Father, we pray for our families. We pray for our families, Lord. We pray that they would be saved. We pray for our children, our grandchildren, our grandchildren yet unborn, 48:43 in some cases, great-grandchildren of those who are here this morning. We pray for our marriages, Lord. We pray for our witness. We pray for our testimony. We pray for our financial needs. We pray for grace. 48:59 We pray for people's emotional and spiritual health. Lord, that place in our spirit where we churn and where, when we think about it, it just brings us to a place of unrest. Lord, we pray for that place that we would return to Your rest, O soul. We just lay these things out before You this morning in the name of Jesus. 49:21 Meet us according to Your goodness and deal with us bountifully. We pray in Jesus' name. Shall we sing?