Our Confident Communion

This week I want to share with you uh a psalm that was really meaningful to me and has continued to be meaningful to me. And I'm going to tell you why. One of the things I wrestle with and I know you wrestle with it too. Even if you wouldn't admit it out loud, it's shame. We all wrestle with shame. At least after Genesis 3. Prior to Genesis 3, there was no shame. And as evidence that we all wrestle with shame, we actually cannot imagine what it's like to not feel shame. That that's a foreign concept. We'd have to suspend our disbelief to even try to conceptualize what is it what is it like to live without shame. Shame concerning things I've done. Certainly I struggle with that. You do too. And we struggle with shame regarding things that were done to us, things we didn't choose, evils that were done to us. Some of us have some horrible, horrible things done to us. And that shame unwanted lingers. In his book, Shame Interrupted by Ed Welch, he he notes, and this has been really helpful. Alison and I have been going through this book since our our time away. He he notes how shame while it can be a gift from God. We we shame is is a gift when we sin. It should bring us to repentance, but but it's one of those things that becomes a tool of the enemy and drives us away from from God. Or at least that's how we perceive it. We we often think and feel too dirty because of past sins done by us or to us or we feel that we are unforgivable. In short, shame is one of the weapons this the devil uses to convince us that we can't approach God. Now, that's true if you're outside of Christ. And if you are not a Christian today, I'm glad you're here. Please hear the word. Respond in faith. Believe in this God. He is real. He has changed lives. And he is the only way to chase off your shame. But outside of the work of the cross, yeah, there's there's no cure for shame. And there's no chance that you can come into God's presence with confidence. But friends, family, if you're united with Christ by faith, having been baptized in him and risen with him in his resurrection, then you're not you're you're able to not only come into his presence, but you can have confident communion with the God of the universe. And Psalm 27 along with many psalms in the Old Testament points to our communion with God through Christ and the removal of our shame. We can if we are in Christ have fellowship with God without the sting of shame, regret, and with courage and confidence in the face of our greatest fears and struggles. Would you open your Bibles to Psalm 27? And would you join me in standing? I'm going to read the psalm in its entirety. If you cannot stand, that is totally fine. Or if you've got kids in tow, that's totally fine. But if you're able to stand, open up to Psalm 27. Psalms are in the middle of your Bible. Uh 27 is towards the beginning of the book and we're going to read together out loud or I will read, you listen out loud. Uh 27 Psalm 27 of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war rise against me, yet I will be confident. Verse four, one thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He will conceal me under the cover of his tent. He will lift me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me. And I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing and make melody to the Lord. Verse seven. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, "Seek my face. My heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, oh you who have been my help. Cast me not off. Forsake me not, oh God of my salvation, for my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. Verse 11, teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Give me not up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. May God bless the reading of his word. Let's pray again. Lord, we ask for your word to do what only it can to get into our hearts and our minds, to dispel the darkness of disbelief, to bring about faith, to remind maybe for the hundth thous, thousandth time or to show us for the first time that there is truly hope outside of our means and our strength, but in you. that in you, God, we can find our hope and our trust and our salvation through Father, your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the evidence of the spirit within us. Lord, now Holy Spirit, we ask you to do the work unseen but promise that you would speak the words of truth to our hearts that these words that you have inspired, now you would do the work of surgery and healing. and may you get all the glory. Father, Son, and Spirit, we pray in the triune name of our God. Amen. Please be seated. [clears throat]

In your bulletin on the back, you'll notice the title for today's sermon, our confident communion. And I see four points. It's a little bit of a danger to do this with poetry and a psalm, but I think it's clear. We have four kind of points, if you will. Verses 1 through three, we'll see the Lord is our stronghold. verses 4-6, the Lord is our sanctuary. Verses 7-2, we learn that we can seek him in prayer. And the last two verses 13 and 14, we can wait on the Lord with hope. Now, remember when you're reading the Psalms, uh [clears throat] sometimes there is biographical information that is shared in the actual Hebrew text. This is not of course the same as what your Bible editors have inserted as suggested titles or the medieval monks when they put the chapters and verses in. Those are not in scripture. But uh so you'll notice in in in your ESV Bible, if you have a Pew Bible or you have a one of your own, you'll notice there's a suggested title or theme for Psalm 27. It's in italics, which means it's not scripture. It says, "The Lord is my light and my salvation." And that's a good summary of our passage. But it's beneath that we we see a short what's called superscription. Sometimes these are quite long. Sometimes they're not there. But today we have one. This is actually God's word. This is actually in the Hebrew text. And it's wedged, if you will, between the the editor's suggested theme or title and verse one. And if you were to go into my office and grab my Hebrew Bible, you would notice in the Psalms, whenever there's a superscription, that becomes verse one. So in my Hebrew uh uh Bible, verse uh Psalm 27 actually has 15 verses. Just shifts one down. So what does it say? It says of David. Now, that's not much, but it is something. David is the most popular and you could argue the greatest psalmist in the 150 Psalms. So, we know he's the author of this psalm. What we don't know is when he wrote it, wrote it or why. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we know it's when Abselum, his son, is trying to kill him or when he's fleeing from Saul or when he's been betrayed, etc. And that's worthy of note. And at times, you can scroll back to 1 or 2 Samuel and actually find the date in history when the act happened that kind of spawned or brought this psalm to to to being. But here we just we just know that David's writing. We can observe though that he's writing in two ways. He's writing from past experience verses 1-6 and then he's applying that verses 7 through the end in the heat of a moment. We don't know what the moment is. We don't know exactly what's going on, but it's real. You [clears throat] could say that David in verses 1-6 is rehearsing what he knows. Turn now your attention to verse one. And I've titled this again, the Lord is our stronghold. Notice David's words right off the bat. The Lord is my light and my salvation. The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Who should I be afraid of? Now, if you're a a religious person, and what I mean by that is someone who doesn't believe in a relational God. If if God is distant but not near, then this language probably kind of sets you on edge. feels quite quite presumptive that David would use such personal language. How could anyone write something so personal about God? What arrogance to use possessive language? But friend, if that's you, do you do you not know how often David has seen God's kindness to him in very personal ways? Just a brief reminder, our our series several summers ago in 1 Samuel, we learned that David has seven older brothers. And yet God chose him under the anointing of his prophet and priest Samuel to be the future king of Israel following Saul, the first king's failure. David was a teenager, a young buck. Oh, he was a brave shepherd. We know that from other Psalms and other accounts of David's life. But he was a kid. There's nothing that David had done to earn God's choosing or grace toward him. Remember then how God stirred up in David's heart a righteous indignation against Goliath the Philistines massive giant of a champion and how David with his sling and one rock slayed the giant. Now we as kids especially young boys love that story but don't lose sight. It was God who used David to kill Goliath. I mean statistically the odds are are astronomical that that would have worked. But we being Christians believing that God God did that. No problem for God. God again gracious to David in very personal ways and and we could be here for another hour just listing the ways in which God has personally been kind to David. So for David who has experienced so much kindness and love and merc uh mercy, it is no surprise that he speaks with such personal relational language. So he says God is his light and his salvation [clears throat] and in other words his stronghold. Hebrew poetry often builds on itself. So in in in line in line one and line three, we get an idea of who this Lord is that David calls on so closely and so intimately. Well, he's his light. He's the one who casts light into the darkness of fear, dispelling it. For darkness cannot stand light. He is his salvation. David has seen God save him numerous times. We don't know again at what point in David's life he's writing this, but we know he has been saved by God numerous times. He should have died. And he caps it off by saying, 'The Lord is my stronghold. Now, we don't get that term, but in ancient Neareastern culture, they do. It's a fortress, a castle. Think of it that way. God is David's castle. And castles are strong. Castles are impenetrable. And that is who the Lord is to David. And Christian, that is who the Lord is to you. He is your stronghold.

He is your salvation. He is your light. And so as a result, lines two and four, David says, "Who can who why would I be afraid? Who who should I be afraid of if God is my stronghold? If God is my salvation?" So whatever situation David is in, he's been given by the eyes of faith despite what he might be seeing on the battlefield that he is as safe as any person could be because he's in God's care. God is his stronghold. He he unpacks this a little bit more in in in verses 2 through three. When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and my foes, it is they who stumble and fall. And though an army a camp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war rise against me, yet I will be confident. Now, David isn't facing any of these threats that we can tell as he's writing, he's looking back, remembering when evildoers had assailed him. They're the ones who stumble and fell. Biggest example literally and figuratively, Goliath. Though an army encamps against him, David doesn't have any need to fear. He's watched God wipe out armies of Philistines, Philistines, and other enemies. The wars rise against David. And we know he was a mighty man of war, leading God's people into battle over and over again. It was what made Saul so jealous that David was used by God mightily in many victories. But David knew that it was God who was the one who kept the arrow from hitting him and the sword from slaying him. It was God that David put his confidence in. David is remembering being surrounded but through the eyes of faith he's reminding himself again the Lord is his salvation Christian so too for you and I your circumstances with your human eyes may seem far insurmountable overwhelming doomed so to speak through the eyes of faith we can reorient to see that God is the one working and we can have a confidence He will do what only he can do [clears throat] and that is be our stronghold. David now shifts into our second idea that God is our sanctuary. Verses 4-6. And verse four begins in in a way that's always arrested my attention and probably yours too. One thing, David says, have I asked of the Lord. Only one thing has David truly longed for, sought after, and asked for above all else in his life. David has prayed to build the temple. God said, "No, your son Solomon's going to do that." David has come before the Lord in many ways, but above all else, David has wanted one thing. And friends, if you're a notetaker, write this down. Communion with God. David has wanted more than anything else in his life, communion with God. Now you and I think of communion as what we see here, the bread and the wine. And that's true. Okay, that's one meaning of the word communion. But in the the scriptures, the other meaning that is perhaps more more general is fellowship, intimate fellowship with God in his presence. And here we're talking about the second. Such a request and quest by David would have been inconceivable for Adam and Eve because they always had communion with God. Think back to our time in Genesis. Genesis 1 and 2. God made everything very good. There was no shame. Adam and Eve never knew a moment that they weren't in the presence of God, their creator. They had no fear of his holiness. Again, no shame of their sin or sins done against them. All was right as rain. And again, they had intimacy with him that was unddeinished and unstopped. It was continuous. So that David would request this reminds us that we are living in Genesis 3 and beyond, the second chapter, if you will, of the Bible. There are three. We're in the long second chapter, waiting for the third, the consummation of all things. where God again makes a new heavens and a new earth and everything is again good and right and sin is dispelled. So,

so David is recognizing his [clears throat] separation from God or his discomunion and wanting a constant communion with God. Christopher Ash, an excellent commentator on the Psalms, helps us see the the poetry in verse four. And I I like poetry, but I'm often kind of poor at getting some of the meanings out of it. I tend to read pros more easily. Notice in verse four, you've got six lines, and they kind of go in pairs. So that the first pair helps us see what David is seeking. He's asking of the Lord. He's seeking the Lord. It's it's it's there there's a there's a an amp an amping up of what he's doing here. He his purpose is to seek the Lord. Verses or I should say lines three and four the second pair give us the object of his quest. That is he wants to dwell with God to have communion with him all the days of his life. And finally it's the why. What what is he what is he really after? Why does he want communion with God? Because God's beautiful.

God's beautiful. Men, that's true. We could say handsome if it feels a little girly to you, but God is handsome. God is beautiful. He is the most beautiful being in all the universe. The most handsome in all the universe. David wants David seeks to be with him so he can enjoy and admire and ponder his beauty. I I think verse four here is the crown jewel of this entire psalm. Not merely because David shows us, he models for us the heart of what it means to be a Christian. That the heart of the man after God's own heart. That all that we should want in our lives when it comes down to it is to be with God every day of our life and for eternity without end. But even more so than that, we see David's love and desire to be with God. and all the more clearly how truly love lovely God is. So it's not just that David models although he does but it's that through his eyes God becomes or should become far more beautiful to us. It it's like watching uh it's like this question if you want to get a real glimpse of how beautiful and lovely a woman is you watch her husband watch her. Think of those those weddings. You you see the groom standing here and he sees his wife to be coming down the aisle and there is awe. There are tears. There is a warmth. She is so beautiful in his eyes. You get to see her more clearly through him. And so too for David here. He is, if you will, magnifying God's beauty through his desires to be with him and his model for us to want the same thing, to dwell with God and to enjoy him forever. It is the opening of the Westminster Shorter Catechism as well.

David says he wants to inquire. And that word struck me because it's a little odd for us. What what does he mean here? I I I I thought of cathedrals. My wife and I before we were married were in Europe touring with a musical group. We had a chance to go to London and Westminster Abbey and sing there. We sang at uh the Louvre uh not the Louvre but uh uh Notredam there as well. And we got to see all these beautiful cathedrals, Lusakur. And they're they're they're really beautiful, but you know, and they were made to be beautiful. That's the point of a cathedral, right? Gorgeous and the these just amazingly beautiful. But of course they were made to be beautiful for a greater purpose than their beauty. Their beauty is meant to magnify the one whom those worship in the cathedral. So sometimes I think when we think of inquiring, we're like that person who walks into the cathedral and all he or she does is read the plaques of how the cathedral was made, where the stone was quarried, the the the years the masons took to do these things, the the flying buttresses and all these archaeological terms or architectural terms I don't even understand. And we can get lost in that and and lose the true beauty that is ultimately being pointed to God who is the most beautiful. And David here as he inquires in God's temple which by the way isn't built. David wanted to build it but it's not built. But when David gathers before God with his people, he inquires. He he seeks after. He marvels after God. He studies him like a good spouse studies his or her spouse and grows more and more enamored and in love with the marvel of the person next to him or her. And David is modeling this for us and helping us to see that we can do this too. He continues in verses 5 through six, God's presence is both beautiful and safe. Verse five, for he, the Lord, will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He will conceal me under the cover of his tent. He will lift me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me. And I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing and make melody to the Lord. David knows that where God dwells that when he is in his presence, peace and worship result. And that's really really the gist of verses 5- six. God has saved David from evil. time and time again, he's protected him. Verse five, that's obvious. He's hid him. The language, he's concealed him and he's lifted him. So, there's the idea that God has not only protected him from it, but that in the midst of it, he's lifted him up. If there's a flood water coming through, God has set David, lifted him up on a higher shelf so that he will not be hurt by those waters. It's the idea that sometimes God calms a storm and sometime God calms us within the storm, protecting us even as the things rage around us. And David is referencing those things here. Then he he's not only lifted up in the sense of safety, but his head is lifted up. Now, this is the the image we get when you run a race. The winner of the race has his or her head lifted up and everybody else, they're all dog tired. Their heads are down. Why? Because they didn't win. They're not the victor. But here, David says, "With the Lord, I am the victor." And what does he do in response as God gives him victory over his enemies? David worships. He makes offerings, sacrifices, which clearly in his day and age would have been sacrifices of of money to buy animals to sacrifice to the Lord or from his own uh flock, his time, and his worship. You see that shouts of joy. I will sing and make melody to the Lord. David the king and the psalmist and musician is singing praises in response to God's victory on his behalf. There is safety in God's sanctuary in his presence. The place where he dwells and receives our praise. And we at the free church here, we practice this every Sunday. I'm thankful for Karen and Aaron and David and their leadership as they lead worship in rotation. They help us rehearse what we know to be true. That's what David's doing here. He's rehearsing what God has already done. We on this side of the cross rehearse the glories of the cross. I was a sinner, but through Christ, I'm saved and I get to offer God back worship and praise. We do this because we need to rehearse. We need to remember because sometimes it's not just that we remember God's faithfulness in the past, but we need to apply it right here in the present. Verse 7, we can seek the Lord in prayer. Something changes in verse from verses 6 to 7. It wasn't obvious to me. I totally missed it at the first. As you read it, you can tell something's the the the language is is is is more passionate and and there's definitely but there there's a clue that I I totally missed. Again, I'm thankful to a good commentator who pointed this out. Notice the change in language in verse 7. We go from the Lord, third person, to oh Lord, first person. David was speaking about the the the Lord, his savior, his rock, his redeemer. Language that that is true. But it in the present tense here, David is now coming before the Lord in prayer asking, "Oh Lord, I need your help now." And we see this for the rest of the psalm. He moves again from my Lord, third person to first person. Oh Lord, why? Because no longer is David remembering when God provided for him in the midst of fear. David's in the thick of it. He's been dropped in the drink and he's trying to remember God while swimming and he needs God to show up post haste. [clears throat and cough] It's a good model. It's a good model for us. And this again, not my thought, somebody else's. David practices what he knows in verses 1-6. He rehearses the truths of God's character and actions and then he prays. Often we flip it around. Something is happening in our in our lives. We're worried. We're fearful. We're scared. We're in pain. We start praying. Lord, fix. Lord, fix. Help. And that's not wrong. It's not bad. Pray. But notice what David does first. He reminds himself in verses 1-6 that God is the one who saves. God is his sanctuary. God is his stronghold. And then he begins to lay hold of those promises in prayer. In an age of self-focus, in an age of me first, that's a really good model. It steers us away from just turning God into Santa and instead a personal savior. here. And so David having rehearsed in verses 1-6 what God has done and has acted because God does not change. He is true to his character. David now applies these things while he's in the soup, if you will. Verse 7. Notice, and I'm going to read through this. I'm going to point out a couple things. I want you to notice the positive uh commands. David is commanding the Lord. He is these are imperatives. He's not saying, "Lord, please." He's saying, "Lord, do it. now with reverence. But David is a son who knows he's coming to his loving father and he's asking knowing the bond of their relationship and the trust. He's not coming in so much as a as a fearful peasant before a wrathful king, but as a son before a father. So notice his positive requests that are strong. And notice his negative ones, too. Let's start with the positives [clears throat] here. Oh Lord, when I cry, be gracious to me. Oh Lord, answer me. Verse 7, teach me. Verse 11. Those are all imperatives. Those are all demands, prayer demands that God that David is making of God. Hear me. Be gracious to me. Answer me. Teach me. David can pray this boldly because he knows his father and he knows that he answers these prayers in his timing. That is true. He does answer. So Dave, David is that beloved son calling on his gracious, merciful, sovereign father that we reminded oursel of last week and have seen all throughout Genesis 1 through 25. So again, if nothing else in Genesis, may it have dispelled this hideous and horrible exaggeration that the God of the Old Testament is all wrath and the God of the New Testament is all grace. Friends, that's garbage. God is just and he will bring wrath, but he is merciful through and through. Amen. Now, notice the negatives here. I as a pastor who needs counseling, I've benefited from counseling several times and who gives counsel. I really appreciate this Christians. I want you to practice this the next time you're in crisis. And by the way, you practice it now so you can apply it then. Remember Don Carson, maybe it was Don or one of my other professors said, you know, one of the reasons why we struggle so much when we're faced with evil is we don't know what our scriptures say about God's goodness and how he works even in the midst of evil. In other words, we haven't practiced what we know so that we're prepared to handle it when we're in it. But I digress. Notice the negatives. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger. Cast me not. Forsake me not. That's all verse 9 alone. And then at the end verse 12. Give me not up.

Don't Don't hide from me, Lord. Don't turn from me in anger. Don't forsake me. Don't give up on me. Haven't you feared those at some point in your life? And if you're like me, those fears are really hard to verbalize because it's they're so terrible. But like a good counselor who would come alongside you and say, "Put words to those fears." David does that. Practice that, Christian. I don't know what your circumstances are, but I know several of us have had some pretty hard days, weeks, months. Next week, we're going to be burying Celeste, a sister who we love. That'll be our seventh funeral this year. So, I know we're hurting. And those fears, the devil loves to plant them and then tell you to hide them in the darkness. Don't bring God's light into that room. No. No. Close that door. Don't bring it out for shame. But here, David models for us. He brings those things out right before his father in heaven. Don't hide your face from me cuz it feels like you could right now. Don't Don't turn away from me in anger cuz I know I'm a sinner, God. I know that I have failed. I'm not handling this situation really well right now. I'm I'm struggling. Don't cast me away. Don't forsake me or reject me. [cough and clears throat] Don't give up.

David prays these things in faith and you and I can too. When those fears lurk in the darkness, bring them to God the Father through the Son who is our high priest by the power of the spirit into the light so that those things can be dispelled and dealt with.

Now, David has some shocking words here at the end of that section, if you will, verses 7-2, I'm sorry, 7-10. He says, "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in." Now, one of two things is going on here. I mean, one, we have no evidence actually historically that Jesse, David's dad, and we don't know the mom's name, rejected him. So, [clears throat] some commentators have said this is a headscratcher because doesn't seem like that's actually the case historically, but it could be that we just don't know that. And so, David is saying there was a time maybe under Saul's persecution where mom and dad weren't on his side.

Or it could be that David is using some poetic license here and he's imagining a scenario, the worst of all scenarios. If you're if you've been raised in a healthy, loving home, the thought of your parents throwing you out, rejecting you is is terrifying. Now, some of us have experienced that. But but our homes were broken to begin with and and what we thought was normal wasn't. But but imagine that. It's it's a horrific thought. And yet, David, whatever the circumstance may be here, lands where he should. But the Lord will take me in. the Lord will take me in. And often in experience, friends, the Lord takes you in in the community of Christ's people. There's an old alpha video. And if you remember last some last year or earlier this year, I guess technically, we launched our first alpha series, an outreach small group series based off a video curriculum out of England. And [clears throat] I remember this uh from a Chicago alpha some years ago. It's a it's a young girl. She is Arab in descent and therefore raised in a Muslim family. And she's she goes to Alpha a couple two, three, four times. I can't remember how many times. And she cannot get over words like God loves me. It it it's an utterly foreign concept according to the Quran, which is their their false holy book. There's no sense of a loving God. No, it it's it's that there is just fate and it is a cold hard cleaver. And it eventually by God's grace, the thought that maybe God does love me and that he did send his son to die for me begins to unfreeze her hard heart. and she finds she's been converted and she's baptized and she's a member of a church and now she realizes either before that the baptism or after that there's going to be a cost and sure enough she is dead to her family. She's lost mom, dad, brothers, sisters, extended family. She has been cast forsaken. But in her testimony, and again I'm I'm paraphrasing here horribly, she finds the Lord taking her in with his people. So if that's you today, welcome. You have a family here that will be with you for all eternity.

We can seek the Lord, friends, as David does here, boldly in prayer, asking him to do what he does over [snorts] and over in history, and asking him not to do what we fear most. And finally, in verse 13 and 14, we can wait on him with hope.

David writes, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. There is nothing harder than waiting, isn't there? Humanly speaking, uh waiting is so difficult. We think of it as passive. We do. We think of it as not doing something. Those of us who are active doers, waiting is even therefore more difficult. But notice David's confidence. Christian, it should be yours. It can be yours, too. I will again look on the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And I can wait. And notice that the positive command be strong. There's activeness to waiting. There is strength required to wait. It may not be strength we have. So in our weakness, we say, "Lord, help me be strong. Help me wait for this diagnosis. Help me wait for the surgeon to come out. Help me wait for that child who seems so far away. Give my heart courage. Wait for the Lord. Wait for the Lord to show up. Wait for the Lord to do what only he can do. Believing his goodness can be found. I'll close with a story and then a verse from Hebrews that we read earlier. There's a P camp. I cannot recall. I think it's after World War II. I believe it's in an Asian context. So, it's a horrible situation. And this young man uh is a Christian and things [clears throat] have gone from from from hell to double hell. It's been just horrific. And he's losing hope and he's he is at least verbally or in his mind said, "I I I I'm done. I can't can't do this anymore, God. I don't believe you're really here." and he gets stuck doing latrine duty and I don't mean like to prollets like we have. Okay, this is this is disgusting. And he has to clean these things out, I think, by hand. And you know what he finds in the latrines? A little rolled up piece of paper and then another one. And it's verses of scripture. And he unrolls those and he just weeps. even when he couldn't imagine anything worse that God had forsaken him that God that he couldn't wait any longer for God to deliver him. I don't remember how long he was a prisoner, but it was a long time. And God gives him a a little gift in the midst of quite literally human feces. Wait. Waiting is hard. It may be the hardest thing you do, but give the Lord permission to grant you strength and courage, and he will answer. Waiting, friends, isn't passive. It's prayer. In closing,

find sanctuary in the Lord. Let him be your stronghold. Seek him while he can be found. If today you see yourself as outside of Christ, if you feel like a stranger here in a strange land, become a brother or a sister by faith. It's very simple. Confess your sin. Ask Jesus to forgive them. Come talk to me and we will begin to talk about baptism, which is your first step of obedience in following Christ. And Christian, you who have walked with him for days, weeks, months, years, decades, [snorts] waiting is not losing. Or in the words of of of Hebrews 4:16, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." As I pray, I would ask the ushers to come forward and prepare for the Lord's supper. Let's pray.

[laughter] Jesus, we call out to you, our high priest, and we ask that indeed as we wait upon you, as we seek you, that [clears throat] you would be found, that through your word and through your people, you would encourage us. You would comfort us. you would equip us with the truths that we need to fight the good fight to keep the faith.

[cough]

We are weak. We are frail. But Jesus, you are strong. So help us to stop focusing on what we lack and where we fall short, but instead to rest in the object of our faith, which is you, Jesus. And you are strong. You are mighty to save. You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are the one who rose from the dead. The one who walked this life in perfection. Never once sinning, though tempted in every way.

Bolster our faith through your grace.

Help us to wait on you and in waiting find a strength that no human could muster. but [clears throat] that you give out of the kind, the loving kindness

and magnificent mercy that is true to your character from Genesis chapter 1 through the end of Revelation. Prepare us now our hearts for the Lord's supper. Or help us again [clears throat] if there's sin that is lingering that has come to our mind, help us to confess it so that we might receive with joy your body and your blood. Lord, if there is a grievance between us and someone else, help us to let the trace pass so that we might be able to take communion without fear of judgment. Lord, if we're not a Christian, Lord, oh, do a work in our hearts this morning so that we can one day soon receive this communion, this body and this blood that we are commanded to remember and we need to remember and we have the privilege of enjoying. So through these these elements bring us joy in this love feast that saints have celebrated for millennia. And one day soon and we pray soon Lord we would be seated with you at the wedding supper of the lamb.

And while it would bring tears to my eyes now Lord it will just bring us joy. Joy that is unconquerable. unquenchable. Do all these things, Lord, because of your kindness, your character, your promises. [clears throat] In your name we pray. Amen.