[0:00] Let's get to Psalm 119 as we continue in that psalm. This is one announcement before I get started. Tomorrow night, Stephanie and I and some others will be providing child care to some foster families so they can have a date night, and we could use a couple more volunteers.
[0:16] And if you could help, please see Stephanie afterwards. It would be a great way to serve the families in our church and the community. What a wonderful song. I've never heard it before. In case you're not aware, the book of Daniel, the Old Testament, there's a story about three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
[0:31] And Nebuchadnezzar, the king, the evil king, says, I'm going to throw you in the fire. He tells them, God can deliver us, but nevertheless, we won't bow to you. And when he throws them into the fire, the fire is so hot, those that throw them into the fire catch on fire in doing so.
[0:48] But then he sees that there is a fourth man in the fire, which is Jesus Christ. And so that song is reminding us of his presence in our lives, even the most difficult times.
[0:58] I'm going to make one of the greatest understatements of all history. The Bible is of great benefit to us. It is of great benefit to us. Two weeks ago, we were studying, we're seeing that so much is gained by trusting God to meet our needs, including our need for comfort.
[1:15] We all have that need for comfort. In Psalm 119, 56, it said, This I had because I kept thy precepts. And the thing that he had was back at verse 49, which was, Remember the word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope.
[1:31] This is my comfort and my affliction, for thy word had quickened, has made me alive. That we don't have to turn to the vices of this world when we need comfort, that we can find it in the word of God.
[1:42] How would you find it? Well, you would find it in a truth, like in Daniel chapter number 3. When you're going through a difficult time and you feel all alone, you'll be reading in Daniel and you would see, No, I'm not alone. You would find it in other passages of the Bible.
[1:55] And the word of God brings comfort into our lives. It's a great benefit that so much sin comes from us looking after the world for it. The story of King David, who's standing at the top of his house, and he ought to have been at war, but he goes there seeking pleasure, seeking comfort, and he falls into sin.
[2:14] He should have turned his heart away from the things of this world and that sin and found this comfort in just the precepts of God, of doing right. Yes, this seems to be a shortcut to happiness. Yes, this may take my mind off of the war at hand.
[2:27] Yes, this may be immediate for me, but obeying God's word is going to be better. And that's where David fell into sin. And so many times in our lives, we turn from the precepts of God.
[2:40] We look for comfort in this world. That's why we should pray, as we say in Matthew 6, that he would lead us not into temptation, but he would deliver us from evil. The word of God is a deliverer of evil, because in it we find him.
[2:52] In it we find something that is greater than the temptation. So tonight, I'm going to read to you verse 57 through 64, and we're going to look at the fact that the Lord is my portion.
[3:03] The word of God is of great benefit tonight, because it teaches us that the Lord is my portion. And we'll talk about the words in that statement here in a moment. But verse 57, Thou art my portion, O Lord.
[3:14] I have said that Thou would keep Thy words. I entreated Thy favor with my own heart. I plead for, I begged for Thy favor with my whole heart. Be merciful unto me according to Thy word.
[3:25] I thought on my ways, and I turned my feet unto Thy testimonies. I made haste, and I laid not to keep Thy commandments. The bands of the wicked have robbed me, but I am not forgetting Thy law.
[3:36] At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee, because of the righteous judgments. I have a companion of all them that fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts. The earth, O Lord, is full of Thy mercy.
[3:48] Teach me Thy statutes. So in this passage here, it starts off saying, The Lord is my portion. And I look at four eternal truths, four truths that are found in this psalm, but they weren't created when this psalm was written.
[4:00] This psalm is just telling you what is eternally true, what is undeniably true, which cannot be changed. In this world, there's laws that can't be changed, gravity, and just like that, the words of God will not be changed.
[4:13] First of all, we'll see that Jesus, our Lord, is to be our treasure. He, the Lord, is to be our treasure. Secondly, in treasuring the Lord, we will treasure His word.
[4:25] There'd be a real disconnect to treasure someone without treasuring their word and their thought. And those thoughts should be all that matters to us. His thoughts towards us should be all that matters towards us.
[4:36] And then lastly, knowing His thoughts towards us, knowing He's our portion, knowing that desire for the word, our lives ought to have, we ought to have a growing desire that can form our life to His word and to His mind.
[4:49] So we say Jesus is our Lord. He is our treasure. That's how it says in verse 56. It says, the Lord is our portion. I'll use the word Jesus and Lord interchangeably because the Lord says who He is to us.
[5:00] In saying that He is Lord, we're saying that we commit ourselves to obey Him. We're acknowledging His rightful ownership of us. It's logical that we would submit to Him as Lord.
[5:12] Some say in Luke 6, some would say, Lord, Lord, but you do not do what I say. Which is to say that if you don't do what He says, then you can't rightfully say that He is your Lord.
[5:22] It's a truth. Whether people acknowledge it or not, He is Lord. More than Messiah, more than the Savior, He is the Lord. And someday we'll all submit to this truth. Many people would say that they would like to have a Savior, but they're not looking for that Savior to tell them what to do.
[5:38] But when we came to Jesus, we came to Him as Lord and Savior. So first of all, it's just a statement of fact. The Lord is our portion. How we would say this today, I would say Jesus is my portion.
[5:51] Jesus Christ, my Lord, is my portion. The greatest gift is not the gift of forgiveness or a life of purpose, but the greatest gift was Him. He is my portion.
[6:03] We were forgiven so that we could be reconciled unto Him. I get sappy over these videos that will show somebody coming home from the military, a man or woman, and the kid thinks that they're getting a gift and they're blindfolded, and they find out that the gift is not a thing, but it is a person.
[6:21] It's their mom or dad, because they don't care about anything else. It is a person that they want. When it says that the Lord is our portion, that's what's being communicated to us.
[6:31] In the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 18, the children of Israel, the Levites, everybody was getting a portion of land, and the Levites didn't get a portion of land, and it was said that the Lord would be their inheritance.
[6:43] And that same thought continues. He'll tell them in Exodus 6-7, He'll say, you're going to be my people, and I'm going to be your God. In Revelation 21-3, not at the beginning of human history, but at the ultimate end of it all, it will say, they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.
[7:03] God is our portion. He is our inheritance. He is all that we have. He is the lot that we've been given Him in life. And we should rejoice in that.
[7:13] He is my portion. That expression alone would fight off all kinds of discouragement and temptation. Should I be discouraged? I can't. The Lord is my portion.
[7:24] Should I yield to temptation? I don't need to. The Lord is my portion. And so this, what we learn when we learn the gospel, we learn something that we call justification, is the fact that we have been declared righteous.
[7:38] 2 Corinthians 5-21 says, For He hath made Him to be sin for us. That's Jesus was made sin for us, who knew no sin. He lived perfectly. That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
[7:50] As I told you earlier this week, I was so encouraged at being reminded that this book here, in that passage, is called The Word of Reconciliation. That is the message. That if I'm teaching the Bible, discipleship, one-on-one, if I am teaching people the Bible, but I am not speaking about reconciliation, that I'm not teaching the Bible appropriately or correctly, because it's through His Word, He has committed to this Word of reconciliation.
[8:15] And so, how does that happen? How did we get declared righteous? How did His righteousness become my righteousness? It's because I received Him.
[8:26] It's that He became in my place. And so now His righteousness is now laid to my account. So when I say He's my portion, I'm talking about the greatest truth in all of the world, that my sin went on His account, and His righteousness now has become mine.
[8:41] So it's a statement of fact that He is my portion, and we understand that more fully because of justification, what it means that Jesus Christ is our portion. But it's also an expression by the psalmist of aspiration or His affections.
[8:55] This is what He wanted to be true. This is what He knew to be true. Remember in the garden, when they desired something that wasn't, the Lord is my portion, where it wasn't just walking with the Lord and the cool of the day was enough for them, but they desired something else?
[9:10] Adam and Eve were far away from being able to say, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. It's just another way to communicate. He is my portion.
[9:22] Less could not satisfy, more could not be desired. Less could not satisfy, more could not be desired. You know, I want so many things with my life. I want so many things for this church, and we all do.
[9:35] I won't have you all stand up and say what you want in here. I can't get to go to New York and see the one church. I look forward to going back, and when we're meeting with people, maybe a meeting of young men from all the different churches come together, I look forward to that.
[9:50] I have worked with Brad, and I believe God has more for us in the future about helping in our community with people that have battling addiction. I believe that's part of our future. I want that.
[10:01] I want to not meet with Brother John once a week, but twice a week, because we have so many people that need to get signed up for discipleship that we don't even know what to do, all right? He has to quit his day job for it, all right?
[10:11] And I want to do that. I want to be working over plans for new buildings with men in this church and thinking about it.
[10:21] I can't wait to see people coming in for grief share on October the 23rd. Can't wait until Jeff is introducing us to the 10 new students in the training center. Can't wait to see videos of the people Sam Wilson's talking about that are headed to Israel.
[10:35] I want all those things so badly, but he is already my portion. I'm already satisfied. If I never see any of those things, I'm already completed him.
[10:47] The Lord is my portion, not just the things that he may give me in my life. He is what I want. Not just serving him. He is what I want. Why do I enjoy serving him?
[10:58] Because I get to work with him in it. I mean, if he was doing something else, all right? If he was making snow cones, I would want to make snow cones, all right? But he's not. He's reconciling the world to himself.
[11:09] The ministry is wonderful because I get to be with him. It hurts my feelings, and some of you dads may relate to this, when I'll ask the kids, hey, do you want to go with me? And they're like, yeah, Salah always wants to go. But then I'll say, I'm going somewhere she doesn't want to go.
[11:22] Like I'm going to Home Depot. No, dad, I don't want to go. I don't want you to go and not know what you're doing, and we're going to walk all over the store because you can't remember the word for a hammer. Have you ever noticed your vocabulary just kind of disappears when you're trying to explain to somebody?
[11:35] Micah doesn't know what I'm talking about, but wherever I'm at, I'm like trying to, I just got to run all over the store. But it hurts me. My feelings, I'm like, I'm going. You're going to be with me. Who cares what we're doing?
[11:47] In the ministry and in life, I want to be involved in the ministry because it's with him. He is my portion. I just want to be with him. I want to be involved in what he's doing. The treasuring the Lord, we will treasure the word.
[11:59] Thou art my portion, O Lord. I have said that I would keep thy words. I will keep thy words because you're my portion. It is not out of a compliment that those that we love, we keep telling them how beautiful they are.
[12:12] The delight is incomplete till is it expressed. Me telling my wife that I think she's beautiful is part of my delighting in her beauty. When you love the Lord as your portion, you're looking for a way to express it.
[12:26] You're looking to take that next step. I want to know you. I think about Moses, right? He just wanted to see the Lord so, so badly. And he expresses it. He just begs for it.
[12:38] We won't get to it tonight. I have a problem with time management as we're all learning in here, right? I'm going to get to the second point here, but I don't want to rush this. Moses, he would have liked to have, he would have wanted to see the Lord.
[12:51] It's what, in this verse it says, he entreated or he plead or he begged for favor. But you know what Moses would have done if he would have had 66 books of the word of God? He would have been ecstatic because he would say, I get to see so much.
[13:06] He was so happy about his tablets, all right? With that, had the 10 commandments on it. He was happy with what was revealed to him. But if he would have had all of this and said that I would get to treasure you, I want to keep your words.
[13:19] He would want to know it because this book is in between him and knowing God. This isn't the end to itself, it's knowing him. And so verse 57, Thou art my portion, O Lord.
[13:30] And as a result of this, I have said that I would keep thy words. And so knowing he is our portion, we're looking for a way to express our love towards him.
[13:40] And that happens in our commitment to his mind and to his words. In spite of opposition, it wouldn't be a Psalm without some opposition, right? You don't get through any section in the Psalm where it just comes easy to them.
[13:54] And so verse 61, it says, The bands of the wicked have robbed me. They've tried to steal from me. They've tried to tie me up. But I haven't forgotten the law. That no matter what opposition comes, no matter how I'm being hindered, I'm not going to forget about his word.
[14:08] And why is there always opposition in the Psalms? Why can we not get through six verses or any little portion without some opposition? is because opposition to the godly is the normal state in the fallen world.
[14:21] Yea, all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. That's always been true. It was even true in Psalm before it was written down in 2 Timothy. Wanting to live a life for God is going to bring opposition.
[14:32] Living godly means keeping his word. Then it tells us not to even focus on that opposition. Verse 64, The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy. Teach me thy statutes.
[14:42] In the garden, the earth was filled with his pleasure. Forevermore, everything he made was for the good of man. It was just incredible, the things that were available for them. There was nothing that was lacking.
[14:53] Adam and Eve weren't vitamin C deficient. They weren't lacking any mineral. They weren't lacking any nutrients. They weren't lacking anything. The garden was completely sufficient for all that they were needing.
[15:04] That sounds like a multivitamin commercial, right? And it was everything that was needed. But now after the fall, this world is filled with his mercy, his loving kindness.
[15:16] And we should see it on every way we look. We see it in creation, the stars at night, the sunset, the laughter of children, how he cares for a sparrow.
[15:27] We see it how he cares for us, even in things that aren't just tangible, not the things that you can drive, not the things that you can live in, not in the things that you can eat, but in the things that couldn't be sold to you at Walmart.
[15:38] I have a saying, if Walmart doesn't sell it, I don't really need it, right? There's things in this world that we need that Walmart doesn't even sell. Peace, hope, and love, that they are provided for us.
[15:49] In spite of opposition, my relationship with the Lord gives me those things. And so because he is my portion, I will commit myself to his word because it's his word in which I get to know his mind and his thoughts.
[16:04] And that's what I want. I entreat him for his favor. I want him to look upon me. I want his favor. We say that. I'll pray that occasionally. I'll say, Lord, thank you for the favor that you have shown our missionaries with these churches.
[16:17] And it's a great thing. It's a true thing. But I get to say, Brother Paul, that I entreat the Lord for his favor. I want him to look upon my life and I want his blessings. And I get to do that because I've been justified.
[16:29] I get to do that because when he saw the cross, he saw my sin because Jesus didn't have any sin. And when he sees me now, he sees his son because that has been put onto my account because he's my portion.
[16:43] And that's something to rejoice in. And I hope you will. Knowing that he is that is something that should bring rest to you. Knowing that the Lord is your portion, Hayden, it ought to give you rest, man.
[16:55] No more working for our salvation. No longer trying to get his attention. No longer needing to do something where we become worthy. Jesus made us worthy. But knowing that that one that we find our rest in and our portion can be known through his word is something we rejoice in.
[17:12] Because I can draw as close to him as I want to. I recently heard it said a man was preaching about revival. He thought he did a good job. And when he got done, the preacher in Alabama said, Well, let me try to tell you what that man was saying.
[17:25] That's not what you want after you preach. You don't want the guy coming up and says, Let me tell you what he's really trying to say. He says, If you will lean towards the Lord, he will walk towards you. If you will walk towards the Lord, he will run towards you.
[17:39] If you will run towards the Lord, he will fly to you. Which is to say, we get to be as close to him as we want to be. You will never show up for an invitation in God's word where you say, God, I want to know you.
[17:53] You're my portion. And he was busy that day. He's always there. And there's things that we don't know and that are exciting. Right before we started the night, Brother Paul and I were talking about something in Hebrews 9.
[18:04] And like so many times, I'm just like, I don't really know what you're talking about. It's not that I don't often know what Paul's talking about. That's all I'm saying. But I'm saying in the Bible, somebody can be excited about something and I'll say, I don't really, I'm not real familiar with it.
[18:17] But you know what you're going to find on the other side when you study something you don't know? It's something that you want to know. You're never going to do a deep dive in the Bible and try to figure out something that doesn't really make sense to you right now and think, that wasn't worth its time.
[18:30] Because when you get to the other side of it, you're going to say, that was wonderful. That was great. Because you're spending time with the Lord who is your portion. We'll leave the night if we can all agree that the Lord is our portion and that's worth rejoicing in.
[18:46] And all God's people said, Amen. All right, I'm going to pray and we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father, thank you for being our portion. Thank you for us who were unreconciled, that our relationship was broken, who were alone, who did not have you in our presence, that what seemed to be absolutely unfixable, that seemed to be broken beyond repair, that we would be eternally separated from you, that Jesus Christ came to this world and that he died in our place and now we belong to you.
[19:19] You are our God and we are your people and Lord, we rejoice in that. More than anything else we will ever have in this world, we rest the night and we rejoice the night in the fact that we know that you are our portion.
[19:34] In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.