Psalm 25:16

[0:00] but I'm talking to me. Blessing God. In the 25th Psalm, verse 1, it says, In 2D, O Lord, do I lift up my soul?

[0:15] Verse 2, Oh my God, I trust in thee, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me. And there are a few verses in here that really imply to me.

[0:29] I mean, when we read the Scripture, it should apply to us. It should. Some of, not all of it, some of it. Yea, let none of that weight on thee be ashamed.

[0:43] Let them be ashamed, which we transgress without cause. Show me that way, so Lord, teach me my paths. Leave me in the truth and teach me for thou art the God of my salvation.

[1:01] O thee, do I wait all the day. Amen. O thee, do I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, there are thy tender mercies in their loving kindness, for they have been ever of old.

[1:19] Remember not my sins of my youth, for my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember thy need for thy goodness sake, O Lord.

[1:31] Amen. Yes, sir. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, he will keep sinners in the way. The meat he will guide in judgment and the meat he teaches in the way.

[1:46] All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, and to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

[1:57] For thy name say, O Lord, pardon my iniquities, for it is great.

[2:08] Amen. What man see that fears the Lord, him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.

[2:19] His soul shall dwell in ease, and his seed shall inherit the earth. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, again fear him, and he will show them his covenant.

[2:36] My eyes are covered toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy up on me, for I am dazzlet and afflicted.

[2:52] And that's what's brought me to this 25th Psalm, is verse 16. And I'll read it again. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy up on me, for I am dazzlet and afflicted.

[3:08] Amen. Yes, sir. The troubles in my heart are enlarged, or bring me out of my distresses. Look upon my afflictions, my pain, and forgive all my sins.

[3:24] Consider my enemies for their many, and they hate me with cruel hatred. O keep my soul, and deliver me, that may not be ashamed, for I put my trust in thee.

[3:40] Let integrity and righteousness preserve me, for I wait on thee. Redeem me, Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.

[3:53] And the reason that I'm at the 25th Psalm is because I've been listening to a preacher that comes on radio there at 11 o'clock, and he was preaching from this.

[4:10] And I mean, I felt so bad, and I can feel bad right now. But, you know, the 16th verse, and again I'm looking at you and talking to me, turn thee unto me, and have mercy up on me, for I am dazzlet and afflicted.

[4:28] Amen. And you know, the only thing is, you know, I was thinking, reading the Bible there, you know, where the disciple says, you know, increase our faith, or increase our faith.

[4:42] Right. Well, I don't know if he'll increase your faith, but he'll increase your trouble, whereas that will increase your faith. Amen. Or make a turn towards it. You know, I just, since I've came to Lord, I've had more problems, more troubles, more worries than I ever had.

[5:01] You remain, yes, sir. And you know, I don't know, and I really think things are more self-inflicted than anything.

[5:12] I mean, I just got to be truthful. But again, I just felt I needed to come up here and read this, you know, read it to me and look at you all.

[5:25] And thank you, and God bless you. Bless you, dad. Bless you, dad. Amen. You're blessed, sir. Morning.

[5:45] Morning. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, I wish. I enjoyed that. 25th song was very good, and most of y'all ain't know them down as long as I have.

[5:59] I'm proud of them for getting up and saying this. Amen. It takes a lot. You know, I've told a lot of young preachers, people that are just getting started preaching.

[6:11] If you ever stand up to present the gospel of Jesus Christ and you ain't nervous, sit back down and let somebody else live right. Yeah. Because folks, it's a fearful thing to present the gospel.

[6:22] Yeah. Because I'll be accounting, it'll be helped by account, how I've done it one of these days. Look at James chapter three, I believe it is, begins with my brethren, be not many masters, knowing this, that we shall receive the greater condemnation.

[6:38] And James is talking about teachers there, but teachers, preachers, anybody's presenting the word of God, it'll be held to your account. So it's a fearful thing. So if a man ever gets up to preach, teach, and he ain't got a little bit of butterflies, he needs to sit back down and let somebody else do it, but it's nervous about it.

[6:58] And I said some advice that I've given. Since I've been preaching, I've given that to several young preachers. But Dan, I did, I enjoyed that and not to add to anything that Dan said, but while I was sitting there, I was thinking, he mentioned verse 16 several times and folks, you can write the gospel up in that verse.

[7:26] You really can. What is the gospel? The gospel is the fact that you and I are sinners and we are incapable of doing anything to save ourselves.

[7:38] And the father sent the only begotten son to take your place and to take my place. He was killed, buried and resurrected and is forever as it was already said this morning, forever at the right hand of the father, making intercession.

[7:53] And folks, that's the gospel. That's the gospel on a nutshell. And verse 16 there says, Turn the unto me and have mercy upon me for I am desolate and afflicted.

[8:05] Folks, that's the problem with us. We are desolate and we're afflicted. Now, this was David writing this Psalm here and I know that David was a Jew.

[8:17] David was already one of the body of the apple of God's eye at this point, but nevertheless David was afflicted and David was desolate.

[8:30] David was destitute. He was king over Israel. But folks, without Almighty God by his side, the kingship meant nothing. He can read about pagan kings in the scripture that they had power, they had money, they had armies, the Pharaoh over in the book of Exodus.

[8:49] He had the biggest army in the world, had the most modernized army in the world. You might look at it and say he had horses and he had chariots. What's so modern about that?

[9:00] Folks, in those days that was modern, he had more chariots and more horses than anybody else did. He had the money, he had the power. He was basically president of the entire region that was over there.

[9:13] He had all power over that region, but yet he did not have Almighty God by his side. Almighty God's face was turned against him. He didn't have anything along those lines.

[9:26] He didn't have holiness, didn't have righteousness. He did not have the power of God. But nevertheless, there was one named Moses that Almighty God had chosen to go down and had chosen him to bring his people up out of Egypt.

[9:43] Moses wasn't nobody to understand. He was raised in the house of Pharaoh, but to also understand that he killed an Egyptian man. He went out on the backside of the Sinai Desert for 40 years raising animals on the backside of the desert.

[10:00] God came to him in the form of a burning burst. God came to him, spoke to him and said, you go into Pharaoh, this mighty king, this ruler, this man with all his power, and you tell him that I said to let my people go.

[10:20] These kings, these presidents all over our world right now, this is what I was planning on preaching on, is the way good Lord led these people that are in power right now.

[10:32] I guarantee you, and folks, I'm casting judgment. I'm casting judgment in all the word of God judges us. The word of God judges every last one of us. When are we lacking or not?

[10:43] We are all judged by the scripture of God, and we are all condemned by the scripture of God. We're all condemned by the law. We're condemned by the law of the Old Testament.

[10:54] We're condemned by the laws that are spoken in the New Testament. But folks, there is a way named Jesus Christ that will bring us out from underneath that condemnation that the scripture and the law has us under for all of sin and comes short of the glory of God.

[11:12] Every one of us has for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. In Jesus Christ our Lord, in Jesus Christ is the way out of that, but these leaders that are in the world, they think because they have power, because they have money, because they have things that God must be around with them, that is not necessarily the case.

[11:39] Most, Moses had nothing. Moses had some clothes. Moses had his wife. He really and truly compared his upbringing in the palace of Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world compared to his upbringing.

[11:54] Moses had nothing while he was stuck out there in the desert, but God has a habit of choosing nothing and bringing something out of him. God has a way of choosing.

[12:05] Hey, David, David was a little runny young. He was the last one chosen of Jesse's boys, but he rose to be king over God's chosen people.

[12:16] God can choose the smallest and he can bring the greatest things out of them. You read in Naga chapter five where it's prophesied where Jesus Christ will be born.

[12:27] It says that he will be born and that the Messiah will come from Bethlehem and Frida. And he says, though he be small among the cities, he be small among these people, among all these things.

[12:41] I will bring something greater of you both. And Jesus Christ himself, the Messiah of the entire world, the Savior of the entire world came out of a little insignificant town that no one cared about.

[12:58] That's what God does. God does those things. Samson over in the book of Judges, how you all picture Samson in your head when you think about him. Samson the big strong man.

[13:09] Samson the one that lifted up the gates and pulled the posts up out of the sides of the ground in the city of Gaza, pulled him up bar at all according to the scripture. And he carried him to the top of the hill that was before Hebrew.

[13:22] I have a feeling Samson was not this big muscular oath that we usually picture him as because God has a tendency to take what is small and what is insignificant and make it strong.

[13:36] I don't have any proof for that. That's what I think he did. I think Samson was just a regular size filler. I don't think there was anything that marked him as strong other than the strength that Almighty God that gifted him with.

[13:52] But folks all throughout the scriptures, we have this. You look at the disciples that Jesus Christ won't buy any hand-picked these men. Men that were nothing but a common fisherman on the sides of the sea, on the side of the body of water.

[14:07] He walked by Peter and said, follow me. He walked by Andrew, said the same thing. He walked by Levi, a man that was hated by his own people and hated by the Roman government.

[14:19] And he said, follow after me. He took that which nobody cared about and made something of it. He took that which was desolate and that which was afflicted.

[14:31] And he made something out of it. Verse 25, verse 16 says, turn unto me, oh Lord, turn unto me. Folks, God turns unto us and it takes God turning unto you.

[14:44] If you're sitting here saved right now, it took God turning into you because you were incapable of going to God on your own. It took him to come to where you were, no matter the filth, no matter the sin, no matter the blackness, it took God to seek you out and come to where you were.

[15:03] It took him to turn to you before you could turn to him. None of us seek you. The Bible says there's none that seeketh after righteousness.

[15:14] No, not one. None that seeketh after God. Not one. Folks, that included David. That included Moses. I don't read where Moses went out in the desert and saw God.

[15:25] I see where God came to where Moses was and God heard Moses heard a voice and he saw the bush that was burning but the bush was not consumed. Hey folks, that was Almighty God that came to where Moses was because he had something to tell to Moses.

[15:42] He came to me one day when he saved my soul. He came to me and he said, I got something to tell you. You're a lost sinner. You are hellbound. You're going to that place that's already been brought up this morning.

[15:54] That place where there's weeping and that place where there's wailing and there's gnashing a teeth. Hey, I'd heard about hell all my life and hell did not scare me until God's the very one that told me about hell.

[16:07] I could hear the preachers, hear the teachers. Hell didn't bother me but when God got in my heart and he showed the gospel lie and he showed what I was and where I was headed, then I became afraid of hell.

[16:23] Let's all be honest. If you're here saved right now, it's a God to come to where you were. Was it God though? Was it God that made you say yes?

[16:34] Was it God that said, okay, or that made you say, okay, here I am? Or was it your fear of hell? That done, hey folks, God can use hell like a God and use anything he wants to. I'll tell you what, when God was dealing with my soul, when he was dealing with my heart, and I realized how wrong I'd been for 33 years of my life, I realized that there was a God, I realized that the Bible was true, and I realized that there was a hell.

[17:00] My very next thought was my God, I'm going to hell. I've got to do something about this. That was my next thought and it scared me.

[17:11] It scared me. So we're all honest with ourselves. Hell scares us. I'm sitting here saying hell ought to scare you. It ought to be a scary thought. Now folks, if I'm sitting here saved, I ain't worried about going there.

[17:26] But hell is still a scary thought. Hell is still a scary thought because there's millions. There are millions of souls right now in hell. The old proverb, not biblical proverb, but the old saying is the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[17:43] The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'll get right next year. I'll get right next week. I'll get right at this time or at that time. I'll start going to church.

[17:55] I'll do this and I'll do that. You'll do it on God's time. You'll do it in God's way. And if God ain't dealing with your heart at that time, you have no chance of escaping hell because Jesus Christ said himself that no man can come unto the Father but through him, Jesus Christ and other than that, no man can come unto him unless the Father draws him.

[18:16] So if the Holy Ghost is not drawing you at that time, then you think that you'll get right with God. You have no chance. You've got to wait till God's doing the drawing.

[18:29] Why is that? Again, Psalm 25 verse 16, because you are desolate and you are afflicted. You're desolate and afflicted in your scene. You're desolate and afflicted within your own life.

[18:43] I've preached it too many times. Your muscles, your bones, your blood, everything about you is full of sin. Everything about you, everything about your flesh, whether you like it or not, is nothing but sinful.

[18:55] We inherited that from the garden with Adam and Eve. It is carried on through their children and their children's children. And their children's children's children. It is carried on to you and I right here in 20, 21.

[19:09] Nothing has changed. God put a curse on Adam and Eve on the very earth. And that curse is still here and is still active. And it is still good in the only way outside of the curse of God is Jesus Christ.

[19:26] Jesus Christ will save that soul. If you're here and you're not saved, Jesus Christ is the only one that will do. That was pretty much the subject matter. I thought I'd be preaching this morning.

[19:37] People trying to be their own priests. Now listen, the Bible says, I ain't gonna preach the whole sermon, but the Bible says we're kings and priests. Who is the saved?

[19:49] We're kings and priests. We're kings and priests according to what the Bible tells us. And Peter quotes that in his right. We are kings and priests. The folks say as a high priest that the priests answer to.

[20:04] If we are kings and priests, it's because you're saved. If you're lost, you're not a king. And you're not a priest. And you're not a queen. You're not even a lay member of the church. You're nothing along those lines.

[20:16] The kings and priests is for the people of God. And that is the only people that it is for. And we've got too many people out in the world right now. So many people that are lost have no idea that they're lost.

[20:29] And some of them know that they're lost. And they're trying to get to God on their own way, in their own time, in their own manner. They're trying to be their own priests. And God will not take heed to that.

[20:40] God will not recognize that. The only priestly work that he recognizes is the priestly work of Jesus Christ. When he went into the Holy of Holies, offered up his blood, once and for all, for your sin and for my sin, my priestly work does not matter in salvation.

[21:01] My priestly work matters after I'm saved. Why was Adam putting the garden? Why was Adam created? God says God put him in the garden to dress it and to keep it.

[21:16] To dress and to keep the garden. That was Adam's priestly duty. That was his priestly duty. To who? To God, the very one that had made Adam.

[21:27] The very one that had made the garden. It was his duty. It was Adam's duty to dress it and keep it. Now folks, listen. This was before the days of weeds. I don't think God created weeds. I don't think God created any of them.

[21:39] He's going to grow up and smother out that which was good. That stuff morphed on its own. God allowed that to happen when the curse came on the earth. God cursed man. He cursed everything, including the very earth that you and I walk around on.

[21:55] I think that's when roses develop thorns. I think that's when disease started coming into the picture. I think Adam may have even gotten his first runny nose that day that God cursed him. But that's when all that stuff started to happen was when the curse happened before that.

[22:10] That was perfect. So what good was it to put Adam in the garden to dress it and keep it if it was perfect? I mean folks, the atmosphere was perfect. The pressure was perfect. The water was perfect.

[22:24] There was steam that came up from the earth in those days. And that's what watered everything. It was the steam that came up out of the ground. There were no clouds. There was no rain.

[22:35] Folks, that's one of the most amazing things about Noah's Ark and that whole account was we have no biblical account of it ever raining up until the time of the Ark. Up until the time of the flood.

[22:46] So when Noah was building that Ark for 120 years and he was a preacher of righteousness in that time. What was he preaching? He wasn't preaching Adam. He wasn't preaching Seth. He wasn't preaching any of the other descendants of Adam.

[22:59] If he was a preacher of righteousness, he was preaching Almighty God. And he was preaching the truth that there was rain coming. There was a flood coming. God was going to kill everything and that Ark was the only way out of it.

[23:13] Jesus Christ is that Ark. Jesus Christ is that Ark. Those eight people, Noah and his family, Noah's wife, his three boys and their wives, they went into the Ark. They were the only ones saved.

[23:25] Folks, there was no biblical account of rain up until that point. So when he's out there saying that there's a rain coming, there's a flood coming. Water's going to come down from the sky. Those folks looked at him like he was nuts.

[23:36] That's why lost people look at you. If you're sitting here saved and you say, I used to do this, I used to do that. I was a horrible person and God saved me. That's why they look at you like you got three heads when you say stuff like that.

[23:49] Because they say, why would God save you? And then they get to wonder, why would God save me? I've done worse stuff than this guy has. I've been this and I've been that. And then you got the flips out of that coin where people are saying, I haven't been as bad as those that are in prison.

[24:03] I haven't been as bad as this one or as bad as that one, but I've already said it. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Everybody sitting in here, I promise you, has told a lie at some point in your life, even if it was just one.

[24:17] It was enough to fan a holy and righteous and just God. And it was enough to justify sending you to hell. But God made a way.

[24:28] God made a way. Why'd you tell that lie? Because you were desolate and you were afflicted. You were desolate and afflicted. And it took God to turn into you to fix that problem.

[24:39] It took God to come to you and show you how desolate you are. You know what desolate is? Desolate basically means barren, useless. It's a wasteland. It's good for nothing.

[24:51] How many of you have ever had gardens? And once in a while, you've got to rotate your garden around. Otherwise, that soil becomes desolate. It's replenished of the nutrients that it needs.

[25:05] Unless you throw a boatload of fertilizer in there, then you're risking burning up your plants. That's why you rotated around. Hey, that was a commandment of God. He told the Israelites to do that. He said, don't you sow in that field the seventh year.

[25:17] You give it a rest. You rotate those things around just a little bit. Folks, if God knew what the earth was like and God knew how much nutrients was needed for what plants, don't you think that God would know what he was saying when he said, don't plant in this field.

[25:32] Let it rest the seventh year. Folks, we're desolate and we're wicked. We are completely, totally, and utterly depraved.

[25:44] We need God. If we're sitting here lost right now, you need God. If we're sitting here saved right now, you need God. Hey, when I got saved, that did not discount my need for Jesus Christ.

[25:56] It didn't discount my need for God's guidance in my life, for God's instruction in my life, for the Holy Ghost to get inside of me, bleed me, and show me what I needed to do, what I didn't need to do, and kick me in the shins if I needed it.

[26:13] It takes God to do all those things. I need God just as much saved as I did when I was lost. Maybe in a different way, maybe in a different way, but nevertheless I need Him.

[26:25] Why? Because I'm desolate, and I'm destitute, I'm worthless, I'm desolate, and I'm afflicted. Even with Jesus Christ, even with Jesus Christ, you're still going to get sick.

[26:39] Dan said when he was up here earlier, he said he's got more sickness, more worry, more everything, since he got saved. Folks, before I was saved, I was one of the biggest drugs you ever met in your life.

[26:51] You know what? I was never sick. You know why? Because there was usually enough alcohol floating around on my bloodstream where anything that got inside of me, that alcohol jumped on it and killed it. That's why. But since I got saved, hey, I laid the bottle to the side.

[27:04] I laid the alcohol to the side. I laid that to the side. Why? Not because I wanted to, but because God would not allow that in one of His children. God won't allow us to devour ourselves in such a manner.

[27:18] Hey, you say what you want to, about Jesus creating wine, but the Bible says that the drunkard will have no place in the kingdom of God.

[27:29] I've heard that argument. I've lost, and I've heard it since I've been saved. Anyway, we're desolate and we're afflicted. Dan, I didn't mean to steal your lesson.

[27:42] That's why God led. I didn't mean to take that at all. We're desolate and we're afflicted. That's the beginning of the story of the gospel.

[27:55] We wouldn't have needed Jesus Christ if we were not desolate and we were not afflicted. We would not need Jesus Christ if we were not depraved, if we didn't have that need in our lives.

[28:08] He would have never had to have come, but He did because of our affliction and because of our desolation and because of our unwillingness to do it ourselves and our incapability to do it ourselves.

[28:22] Jesus Christ came and done it for us. Jesus Christ paid that price. Dan's already said it. There is nothing that we can do. You want to feel secure in your salvation? Trust in Jesus for it, because that's where it's coming from.

[28:37] It comes from Jesus Christ and from no other. I could tie 50% of my paycheck and still wind up in hell. In fact, that's what I'm dependent on for my salvation, but I know who saved my soul. I know when He saved my soul.

[28:51] I know why He saved my soul because I was desolate and I was afflicted and I couldn't save it myself. I couldn't speak for myself, couldn't act for myself. It took God to do it for me.

[29:03] Hallelujah to God that He sent His Son to do that which I could not do. That's why Jesus had to come. Turn the unto me and have mercy upon me.

[29:17] Have mercy upon me. This affliction, He gives a what? Turn the unto me and have mercy upon me. That's the what? He tells us the why.

[29:28] For I am desolate and afflicted. That word for could also be translated to call. For I am desolate and afflicted. That's why He's asking God to turn unto Him and to have mercy upon Him.