5-31-26 - O Lord, Who Could Stand?

So if you think about the families going up to Jerusalem and being very excited to go, it was a holiday, a holy day. And worship is a joy. I don't know whether you experience what I do, but often now on Sunday mornings, regardless of the church I'm in, I just feel like I've, you know, it's a 110 degrees out and I I dive into a cold pool. Just the, the the the centering and and the sense that this is what is right in a worship service of our of our wonderful God. Well, Psalm one thirty is in that context.

But what's interesting is how it begins. I don't know if you were shocked by it as I was, but the way this prayer begins is out of the depths. And so here they are going up to Jerusalem filled with joy. Families all together. It's a holiday.

And the song begins out of the depths. And so the prayer begins with a statement not of heights, but of depths. Here we are taught to pray in meekness and humility. God himself leads us into our depths. And here he teaches us to acknowledge them when we come to him.

I wanna say that again. God himself leads us into our depths. And here he teaches us to acknowledge them when we come to him. Back in the nineteen fifties, a woman named Hannah Hernard wrote a novel similar to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in that both of them are extended allegories. Hernard took the title of her novel from these words in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk chapter three verse 19. The Lord is my strength and he will make my feet like hinds feet. And he will make me to walk upon mine high places. Herrner titled her novel Hinds Feet on High Places. And her book has been a best seller for decades.

It remains high on Amazon's best seller list. And it has an average rating of many thousands of ratings. Its average is 4.8 out of five. But among Christians, this book has a best sellers rank much higher than all the books on Amazon. And for many years, you could find the book in the bookshelves of many, if not most, evangelical Christian homes all through my lifetime.

Books titles often have more of an impact than the book's content. Alright. Think carefully about that. And Hernard's title has come to represent the expectations of many American Christians concerning the normal Christian life. Today, this false doctrine of the triumphant and victorious Christian life has become popular within the most conservative reform churches.

Pastors and influencers proclaim that discouragement, fear, and sadness resident in the souls of Christians is likely sin. It is weakness. It is a failure to attain the sure footedness of mountain goats and sheep at home up on the ridges and mountains of high places. Men are told that as Christians, we are made for the high places. And failure to live way up there is a sign of the Christian's lack of faith.

Depths are for losers who don't know the will of God, which is that his people will have mountain goat feet living out the normal Christian life up there on the high places. Now of course, it is true that when the Christian is downcast and heavy hearted, he is to pray asking God to make his feet like the feet of the deer, sure footed on high places. But what brings the psalmist and the people of God on their way up to Jerusalem, what brings them to pray the actual words at the beginning of this Psalm? And listen, this question is not to be avoided. These words are not to be hop skipped and daily jumped over.

Out of the depths, I have cried to you, oh Lord. Now what brings the man and woman of God to this prayer are the trials and temptations that God gives us, which sanctify us, which make us holy, and through which we enter the kingdom of God. Paul and Barnabas, we're told in Acts fourteen twenty one and twenty two. Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples. And so, you know, I had a I had an elder once.

I was thinking about this. I was just listening to John Calvin on this Psalm and then to the sermon text I had on the radio as I drove down from Michigan. I had three hours on the road this morning. And I just kept thinking of this elder I had. We would get together once a week and we would have lunch together.

Fifteen, twenty years weekly lunch. And the most consistent themes were he always thanked me for loving the people. You know, Tim you you love the people. But he would always say to me, Tim, you're preaching. People's lives are hard.

They just need to be encouraged. And so he was constantly telling me that I was failing because I wasn't encouraging the people. Did you hear what I just read in scripture? Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples. Encouraging them To continue in the faith and saying.

So what were they actually saying? It was strengthening and encouraging the saints. Right? And saying quote, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Unquote.

Listen, everything about this Psalm is contrary to The United States Of America today. I kept thinking of MAGA the whole time I was preparing. The best, the brightest. All history has never seen anything like what we're doing. Make America great again.

And this this, this political hucksterism, and I voted for president Trump. Don't worry. This is not a political statement. But this political hucksterism has infiltrated the church. And what it's done is it's caused us to think of God as just as cheerful as our president.

And and and that we should all be very excited about the future that is in front of us. And that we should all be hopeful and victorious and cheerful. Did I mention cheerful? And then we read this psalm, and I just worry that we just sort of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. There it goes.

Yeah. That's a wonderful psalm. And then we go back to socials, And we suck in politics. And it's just the weirdest thing how we can just dismiss the words of scripture. And so in the church, in the conservative reformed church, I was singing on the way down about the fact that when I was at Gordon Conwell Seminary with my brother David, my brother Nathan, and Tim Keller there a year before us.

I was thinking about the fact that, there was a guy named Gordon Fee. He was a feminist. But he would constantly condemn the health and wealth gospel because he was a charismatic. He was out of the assemblies of God. So, he's constantly talking about how the health and wealth gospel had permeated Africa and African missions.

And it was permeating The United States Of America. And everybody clapped and applauded him for speaking against the health wealth gospel. And when I mentioned that to you, you're probably thinking about Pentecostals and charismatics. But this is precisely what has infiltrated the conservative reform church today. It's just a little bit different.

The health and wealth that's being sold is not the crass materialism of Pentecostals and assemblies of God. I'm not speaking against them. I'm just saying that they're each group has a different form of prospering and success and numbers and and goodies, you know. Not not everybody likes cotton candy. Some people like lollipops.

And some people, policemen like donuts, You know? And so, each denomination has its, its goodies that it sells to each other. It's sort of a social class thing. You know? And reform people, presbyterians, reform baptists, we're not as crass.

You know, because we're higher status. Are you with me? And yet, it is the health and wealth gospel when we cannot read this Psalm and realize that it honors God for us to come into his presence saying out of the depths I have cried to you. I was also thinking of my father who some of you have heard this story before, but we had he had three sons die. And the second one no the first, was my blood brother.

He was four and I was three. And we played together constantly. I can remember it. And as he was sick with leukemia, they prayed that he would be healed. They they were sure he had been healed.

The elders came and anointed him. They went into Children's Memorial in Chicago in in Philadelphia. And they they thanked everybody and said, we won't be back. God has healed our son. And then a year later, he got out of remission and died within two days.

And probably twenty five years later, my father had one of the men who had been involved in them praying for the healing come, talk to him on the telephone. And at the end of the phone call, it was a business call when dad was a publisher. The other phone call, he said to dad, Joe, isn't it too bad that you didn't have the faith for your son to be healed? And my father said, do you really believe that? Oh, yes.

The Bible says it. You do really believe that that because I did not have enough faith, Danny died. Well, this scripture promises that if we ask with faith, God will heal. My father said to him, do you believe that enough that you will pray that God will give your son leukemia so that you can show me your faith. Now, I'm proud of my father for his restraint.

But is this really what we become? Have we become people of God that have no meekness, no humility, and who just put our hands up and say, I don't receive that. Whenever anything causes us to look more deeply at who we are. And to wonder where is God? You know, the Westminster Sanders talk about God taking from us assurance of salvation as he makes us holy.

That that's one of the tools he uses. How many of you are teenagers? Raise your hand if you're in junior high or senior high. Raise your hand high. Okay.

Now listen, I'm talking to you. One of the problems you're gonna run into in high school and junior high is that you are going to face, what feels like an avalanche of sin. It's overwhelming when you hit that period of life. All of a sudden, it's like your eyes are opened to who you are and who other people are. And I think it's God's kindness that younger children are saved from a lot of this.

But it is God's purpose for you to grow in your knowledge of your sin. And it is serious. And one of the things you're gonna be tempted to do is you you don't wanna say out of the depths to God. You're already in the depths. The hormones, the the, you know, all those manipulations and weirdness of clicks and who likes whom.

And and then you're you're Everything about your life is in change and flux right now. And you don't want to have to be subject to having your heart weighed down and in the depths. But I want to warn you that don't take the way out that the socials give you, which is to just become completely superficial and trivial. Don't believe the lies. Socials are just permeated with lies.

How many times I hear people tell me that they were just talking to a friend whose marriage was horrible, and then they went on Instagram. And the couple had an anniversary. And the woman who had just been telling her how awful her marriage was and what a jerk her husband was, is on Instagram with this big smile. They went out to eat. They took a picture and they put it up on Instagram.

Which by the way is a lie. Okay. Do not believe what people your age tell you their lives are like on socials. You say, well, my parents don't let me look at socials. And I say, well, don't believe the people here in church that smile and act as if they're clean and everything's okay.

They're not. You know, Christians can lie just like everybody else. We can lie in church. We don't have to lie on socials. Right?

And so what I'm trying to say to you is that when you feel the weight of the world descending on you in your teenage years, this is intentional. This is a gift from God. Be a good steward of that. Okay? Be a good steward of it.

Most of God's good work in my life has come from pain. Okay? And for years, I did everything I could to avoid it. And a lot of sin is when we try to avoid the depths that God intentionally is putting us in so that we will turn to him as this Psalm does. Okay?

And so victory in Jesus' present triumph and victory are not the norm of a truly Christian life. And fellow believers who are sad or discouraged or suffering are not necessarily doing so simply because they fail to have faith. We ought not to look down at people who are suffering discouragement, depression as weaklings. That's horrible. We're supposed to be a comfort to them.

We're not supposed to be condescending, looking down on them and calling them names. Treating them as losers. And for sure, this triumphalism is absolutely drowning in likes on the socials, but it's a lie and it causes many to bark from the straight and narrow path. The only path which leads to heaven. Cheap and superficial promises and expectations are a surefire way to subvert the often painful work of sanctification carried on by the Holy Spirit without which Come on.

Say it. No man will see God. This precious manly Psalm does not begin with cheap triumphalism. Rather, it leads the man of God to begin his prayers by freely acknowledging his true position. And that true position he acknowledges is out of the depths.

Now having made this humble acknowledgement, he pleads with God the only true God. He doesn't do obeisance before any idol. He is going up to worship God almighty. And it is the only true God he looks to for help. Out of the depths, I have cried to you, oh, ward.

There is only one God who may be turned to in confidence. Only God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth exists. Only the true God has eyes and ears and a heart beating with compassion to listen and answer man's prayers. The prayer continues, Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

He asked God to listen to his prayer. He asked God to hear his voice. He asked God to pay attention to the voice of his pleadings. He does not bounce into God's presence, cheerfully assuming that God will hear him. Rather, he stoops low and asks God to do so.

The man who truly knows God will never take God's listening ear for granted. God has turned away from many, refusing to hear their prayers. I don't know that there's any more sobering account in scripture than the account of the end of God's presence with Saul, king Saul. In first Samuel 15, Saul has sinned against and we read again, and we read beginning with verse 24. Then Saul said to the prophet Samuel, I have sinned.

I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord and your words because I feared the people and listened to their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. But Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord. And the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. As Samuel turned to go, Saul seized the edge of his robe and it tore.

So Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you. Rightly then, here in Psalm 130, we are taught to plead with God to listen to our prayers and to pay attention to our requests. Presumption should never be present in the prayers of God's people. Study and learn the nature of presumption and avoid it as the sin that it is. Recognize presumption in your sons and daughters and rebuke and discipline it.

This will teach them how to pray to the one who is high and lifted up, and whose train fills the temple. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Reading this Psalm, we recognize that the man praying it is meek and humble. He acknowledges the depths from which he prayed and he doesn't presume on God's attention in response.

He asks God to give his attention to him and to respond to him. He pleads with God. He prayed out of the depths and now he gets more specific concerning the nature of those depths that he was in and is in. He acknowledges that God has every good reason not to listen or answer him. Verse three.

If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand? So this is the, this is the reason I'm preaching this text this morning. Would you understand me if I told you that I find this one of the most cheerful verses of scripture? I think there are two kinds of Christians. Christians who find proper diagnosis of scripture of their own hearts depressing and those who find it encouraging.

Maybe the people that find it depressing are people who are really holy. And maybe those of us who find it encouraging are just twisted. I don't know. But I mean, I love this verse. If you if thou, oh lord, should mark iniquities, oh lord, who could stand?

If you're a teenager and you're seeing your sin, just pray that. Oh lord, nobody can stand. Now, those of you who aren't homeschooled might have heard of the thing called grading on a curve. And and it has corrupted our ability. By the way, homeschoolers have nothing to look down on because they just have grade inflation.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got it there.

Yeah. I had a funny experience this week of grading a paper of in this class that, pastors Halsey and Cogburn and I have been teaching on Pilgrim's Progress. And and so I gave a grade. And I I I I did the I did the naughty. I gave somebody a beat.

It got raised. And then I raised it again because I realized I hadn't really thought about the grade that I've given it, you know. But grade inflation is a real thing. But grading on a curve is a real thing that has that has corrupted our ability to understand the holiness of God. Because when he says, if you, oh Lord, should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand?

Calvin points out that it is commonly our habit to, look at other people, compare ourselves to them, and saying, well, being wicked, being sinful, you know, being the way I am. I mean, I'm better than a lot of them. And so this isn't serious. And that's how we think, I think, as as Americans. We think that God is an egalitarian and that he gives everybody sort of equal grace and equal tolerance.

And and that we don't need, you know, you know, one day I came home and there's a big circle on my refrigerator. And Taylor always had a special relationship with his mother. And it was labeled chill pill. Taylor had cut out a circle and written chill pill on it and put it on the refrigerator. He felt his mother needed to take a chill pill.

Right? And this really is the way the church today treats God. You know, great on a curve. I'm doing better than most people. I'm still married to the same woman.

You know? Take a chill pill, God. Or, well, I shouldn't talk to God like that, but I sure as heck can can tell my pastor to tell take a chill pill. You know? I pay him.

You know? Take a chill pill, Tim. You know? And so we surround ourselves with teachers who say what our itching ears wanna hear. Okay?

And so you have some responsibility for the kind of preaching you get. It's been impressing me more and more in the last few years, you know. It's not just pastor's fault. Okay? I love the verse.

If you, Lord, should mark iniquity as a Lord who could stand. Calvin says that as we look at the condition of man standing before God, the judge eternal, Many of us choose the path of comparing ourselves to others to minimize our sin. He says, but no. The psalmist here is comparing himself others to maximize his sin. Because what he's saying is nobody can stand and it's implicit in that.

And so certainly I can't. Isn't that a beautiful thing? The question, oh Lord, who could stand is rhetorical because there's only one answer to the question. The answer always has been and always will be no one can stand before God. Romans three ten, as it is written, there is none righteous.

And then you remember what it says next kids? No. Not one. The apostle Paul is constantly repeating repetition. Right?

He says, there is none righteous. No. Not one. No one can stand. If God should mark iniquities, keep close track of them, which he does by the way.

But if he did it in such a way as to refuse to listen to the man with sin. There's not a man or woman on the face of the earth. Not a man or woman who has ever lived who could stand in his presence. I'm going through Genesis right now in my reading. And what scoundrels the patriarchs were.

What scoundrels. And again and again, I honor them. I wish I was like them. But there is not one man that can stand before the holy God. And yet here, the prayer, here the psalmist is standing and pleading his case with God, pleading with God to listen to his prayers and to answer his request.

What faith? What allows him to be so bold as to stand and plead with God? What allows you to ask anything of God? Verse four, but there is forgiveness with you. There is forgiveness with you.

If we were preaching the way we must but don't. Regularly, men and women, boys and girls would be awakened to the horror of their sin because we would preach the law of God so that our children understood the holiness of God. And they would grow in their awareness of their sin. And that growth in the awareness of their sin would have one or two trajectories. And you see this over the years as you're shepherding God's flock.

There are covenant children who get so angry at God at their inability to be holy. They get so angry at God at the conviction of sin that is constantly raining down on them. There's not one person on the face of the earth who is not fully aware of their sin. Not one. They're just liars who are good and liars who are bad.

And so as covenant children grow, they're aware of the horror of their sin and the majesty of the holiness of God. The high and lifted upness. And, there are covenant children who will just become angry at their inability to please and to honor and to obey God. And inevitably, without faith, they become accusers of God. And then in time, haters of God.

Okay? And there are covenant children who come under conviction of sin. They grow in their knowledge of God's law and of God's holiness and of their wickedness. But they grow in that awareness with faith. And what is the faith?

Well, the faith is, but there is forgiveness with you. Isn't that something? In other words, the choice of all of us and our children is either to live by faith or to live in unbelief. The difference between us is not who sins and who doesn't. All of us need the same amount of faith.

But if your pride demands that you please God without pleading with him, without humbling yourself before him, without repenting, you will certainly become incapable of seeing your sin as it is. You will become like an arm that's had an iron. A hot iron brought down. It loses all its elasticity. It just becomes scar tissue.

You can't stretch it anymore. That's how your conscience will become. You will say, I can't bear it. And so your conscience will shut down. You'll grieve the Holy Spirit.

You will not be able to see your sin as the years go by because you've hardened your heart, and hardened your heart, and hardened your heart. But if you live by faith, guess what will happen? Even if the scar tissue, it will vanish. You will become more pliable, not in a negative way. Pliable in Pilgrim's Progress is negative.

Alright. You'll become more, Alex help me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's simple. Why couldn't I think? You'll become more tender hearted.

You'll become more, sensitive, more compassionate, more open. You'll become more snowflaky. Seriously. I have told you many of you about Rita Cuffee. She was the weirdest bird on the face of the earth.

She was as weird. You walked in her front door and she and Jimmy, her husband had put up these boxes of cereal. Count Dracula or chocolate chocolate or whatever. And they had put a rod, a little doll that was about this long through those the boxes of cereal that were empty. So that you had boxes of cereal going up like this off the edge of a bookshelf.

So when you walk in the door, there were suspended in space cartons for cereal that were gonna come down on you. Except they all had these rods going through them diagonally that held them up there in space. Now, that's just I could go on and on telling you how weird Rita was. She was as strange as they come. But you know, loving her, all her weirdness was delightful to me.

I just got such a kick out of it. But the reason I'm telling you this is if you live by faith, you will be freed from the lockstep conformity of the socials and of all the peer groups. It won't affect you because you'll have God to think about. And God will free you from the oppressive forces of conformity, which everybody else is subject to. And so if you wanna know what sanctification looks like, it looks like becoming more and more and more and more as you get older.

Peculiar. And did you know that that's a good synonym for holy? God's people are his peculiar people. His holy people. Can you imagine anything weirder in this world than holiness?

Well, I mean, it's a question. Yeah? No? Maybe? It is very disconcerting looking at you.

Have I told you why? Because you look just like Adam Spady. Yeah. I just Adam, what's Adam doing here? I miss him all the time.

He's a dear man. Adam Spady was weird. Those of you that you. And so if you live without faith, you will become just like the world. You will be called a worldling, and you will be utterly boring.

But if you live by faith, Now remember, they both have the same sin. I'm not saying that the Christian doesn't become more holy. But if you live by faith, you will become more and more holy. And to be holy is to be peculiar. And wouldn't you like to be one of God's peculiar people?

What a relief to stop keeping track of how you're conforming to everybody else's standards. You know? When a man of God comes into the presence of God and pleads with him in prayer, he starts with his need. He's down in the depths. On top of this, he's a sinner.

But he comes by faith that there is forgiveness with God. And this is something that is not true of any of the idols of the world. It's not true of any of them that they forgive sins. It's not true of Muslims. It's not true of their god all along.

This is the god of all the nations. All of those gods do not forgive sins. The god of Buddhists and Confucians and Santareans, ancient Greeks, Canaanites, Jainists, Hindus, Wiccans, Rastafarians, communists, and secularists. Secularism is a religion with a god. None of them look to their god with any hope of forgiveness.

Only the triune God, father, son, and holy spirit forgives sin. Only the man who repents and comes to the Lord Jesus Christ to be washed in his precious blood comes in hope and confidence in his forgiveness of sins. And this truth is the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus appeared to his disciples and he said to them, look at the holes in my hands and my feet. Look at my hands and feet.

Thus it is written, he said to the disciples, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day. And that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of this thing. And so the Christian and it's just permeates a song. He comes to God in repentance and faith.

He comes to God in repentance and faith. What does the Christian have to bring to God? He has repentance to bring to God. And repentance is a joy. It's a joy.

With repentance, everything just melts away. How does he come to acknowledge his sins before God, this Christian? Well, God himself answers this question by asking us a question in Romans two four. God says to us, or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience? Not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance.

And so listen, believers. Do you think lightly of the riches of God's kindness and of his tolerance and of his patience? Do you think lightly of it? Do you not know that it is God's kindness that leads you to repent? The man who thinks lightly of the riches of God's kindness and tolerance and patience inevitably also thinks lightly of his sin.

And how do we know he thinks lightly of his sin? Because he thinks lightly of God's kindness and tolerance and patience. And one thing can be certain of such a man, he has no fear of God. Notice it ends speaking of God's forgiveness, did you notice how it ends? It says, but there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared.

It's probably the weirdest part of the whole Psalm. Right? Why would it come directly from forgiveness of sins to God being feared? Well, if we have repented and taken our sins to God and asked us to lift us up out of the depths, how could we not fear him? Knowing that we have escaped his wrath.

We have escaped his punishment. Knowing that he sees us as righteous because of the righteousness of his son. How could we walk away from that transaction of imputation? How could we ever do that cavalierly, you know, with cheerfulness asking our friends if they'll share their bubblegum with us. And yet, isn't this how we treat the blood of Christ today?

It's just a nice addition to a life that was already American. You know? You're with me? Listen. God is to be feared.

And God is to be feared when we have received his forgiveness because God has created us to produce good fruit. And we will not produce the fruit that he has called us to produce if we don't fear him. It's just like obeying your father. So many dads just wanna sort of, you know, become a piece of woodwork in the home, you know, and and minimize their authority. And pastors do the same thing.

The pressures on all of us who hold authority, men, women, it doesn't matter. The pressure's on all of us is to minimize our authority. And so, you know, we don't wanna teach our children to fear their father. And fathers don't wanna teach their children to fear their mother. And pastors don't wanna teach their people to fear God.

And yet the immediate sentence coming after forgiveness is so that he may be feared. Now I'm gonna end with a pastoral application. One of the common mistakes that we make as pastors is to act as if we're oblivious to the context of our preaching. So, you know, a nuclear bomb just hit New York and, you know, we preach on the tongue, you know, or, you know, some other similar thing. And this morning, we have a very, very weighty matter before us.

And by this time, you know that, the vote is coming and the vote is whether or not Dave pastor Abasara's resignation be should be received. And so we're all weighing this. And let me tell you, nobody I know, nobody involved in any way has anything but sadness. But some of us are firmer than others of us. And, you know, this has permeated the lives of many men and women for, especially for four months now.

I mean, you have no idea. And I want to, I I want to just say a word about out of the depths, and presumption, and fearing God. God does not have the goal of making us happy. God does not have the goal of us being happy with him. God is to be worshipped.

But to characterize our relationship with him as best buds or grandpa or anything approximating the way most people in America think of God is completely perverse. And as I said to you earlier, I wish it weren't so. I wish I learned just by being told what was right and doing it. But that's not me. It may be you, God bless you, but it ain't me.

I have to suffer. And suffering gets through my thick head. And would you please, for your children, have faith for them suffering. Don't try to protect your children from suffering. You say, oh, so I'm just supposed to let them walk in front of a semi.

Right? No. No. Don't let them Yeah. Protect them from that suffering.

But there's a lot of suffering that God sends to our children that we're not in control of. And God was not surprised by it. There's suffering in marriage. And you say, if I'd known about this beforehand, I'm not sure I would have gotten married. God knew.

God knows what you need and what your wife need to make you holy. And if I may, I'm gonna use an illustration that is very touching for me and for some of you. So what? Twelve, thirteen years ago, all of a sudden, my daughter Hannah gave birth to a little girl and she was she was sweet. She was beautiful.

And then almost immediately, we realized she had serious problems and that's Mary Louise. And Mary Lee is not here this morning because she's spending a week with Mary Louise and the number second from last baby so that Hannah and Lucas can have some time away, without constantly doing the feeding, all the things that are involved with Mary. Mary Louise spent a huge amount of her life since the birth of Mary Louise with, with the weeks. And Mary was and And especially when she's young, she lives in perpetual pain. And you could hear it.

She'd be at thanksgiving dinner. Everybody's having good dinner and talking. And she would cry out in pain. You felt that it was in her, g I. You know, you you could just.

And you knew that that was a problem for kids with her syndrome. And you could just hear her pain. So you're sitting there. You're having a good time. It's Thanksgiving.

Are you thanking God for her pain? So you have lost a child to a miscarriage or a stillbirth. Do you thank God for this pain? I could keep going and mentioning specific pains of some of you here. But listen, I wanna warn you.

Do not subvert the work of the Holy Spirit in your sanctification. The sanctification of your husband and wife and the sanctification of your children and in the sanctification of your elders and pastors and presbytery. You know, this is a painful time. And yet, do we trust God with pain? Do we trust him that it's a tool that is precious, that God uses constantly to make us more like Jesus.

Do you know what is the hardest verse in the bible for me to understand? Anybody wanna take a stab at it, Alex? You probably think you know. Right? The hardest first for me to understand is the verse that says that Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered.

I've never preached on it. I don't think I'm going to because it just boggles my mind how it could be that suffering did something good to Jesus. And so listen, that's it. I'm done. Don't be superficial.

Don't be cheap. Don't be happy clappy. Don't be name it and claim it. Especially you kids, have faith for the suffering that God puts you in. Ask him to help you.

Ask him with faith. Don't be bitter against God. Let's pray.