God Belongs in Life • Psalm 107

42:01 Teaching begins

Notes

This is a psalm for those people who are thinking that God can’t help them.

I’m not talking to unbelievers, I’m talking to believers who live in the real world. We know that God is great in the theological world, He is eternal, omnipresent, almighty, knows everything. He beats the devil ten times out of ten. He is amazing. Praise the Lord.

But in the real world real stuff happens. You’re lost and you run out of food and water. You’re a prisoner in a death camp. You’re in hundred-foot waves on a God- forsaken ocean. You face real problems and you need real solutions. Can God deal with real life?

This is a psalm for people in trouble who find out they need God.

Let’s read in Psalm 107.

1. You think you need the land, but you really need God, vv. 1-3.

A. Here’s a command to praise the Lord for His goodness and His lovingkindness. This is what the psalm is about; God’s goodness and faithful covenant love working in the real world where stuff happens.

B. Israel sinned against God and ignored Him and worshipped other gods. God exiled them from the land that He gave to them and scattered them to the north, south, east, and west. They lost their material inheritance.

C. You can live fine anywhere. You need food, shelter, clothing, a job. You can live after losing your land.

D. But if you lose your essential Jewishness you’ll be lost forever.

E. So even as God exiled Israel out of His land, He also preserved them among the nations. He redeemed them and brought them back into His land.

F. The truth is you don’t need the material blessing of God as much as you need God to preserve and keep you His people.

2. You don’t need satisfaction, you need God, vv. 4-9.

A. Here’s a group of people who are about to die in a harsh wilderness, trying to get to an inhabited city.

1. They've never been there before. They're depending on someone's map or directions, and it's failing them. They're lost.

2. They brought supplies and thought they had enough but their planning is failing.

3. They are overwhelmed. We’re going to die. Nobody knows where we are. Nobody can help us. We’re dead.

B. What can God do in this situation? But they pray anyway! Oh God, please help! I don't want to die. We’re starving, we're so thirsty. Oh God, oh God!

C. God does what they think is impossible. He saves them out of their completely messed up problem.

1. He leads them in a straight way. One of the guys says," I really think we need to go this way. God gives him a conviction. The others say, “Well, if we die, we die. Let's try one more time.”

2. So God gives them enough hope to try again, and this time they make it where they need to be.

D. Why are they out looking for an inhabited city in the first place?

1. Notice in verse 9 they were hungry and thirsty in their souls. You can't feed your soul. They were hungry for satisfaction. They didn’t have it where they were. They thought, we need a new start in life. Let's go to a new city and start over.

2. They knew about God. So why didn't they pray to begin with? Obviously they did not expect God's goodness and lovingkindness to do anything in the real world.

3. They found out, I need God more than I need food, water, and good directions. I need goodness and satisfaction, and only God gives those. I need a new start with God.

3. You think you need something to happen in the real world, but you really need God, vv 10-16.

A. Here are people in prison. Real misery on the inside, real bars of iron and walls of brick on the outside.

B. They're in prison because they said God is not real.

1. They knew His word but rejected it. That's a bunch of superstition to frighten children and old women. That's not real. I'm rational. I don't need anyone telling me what to do. I'm throwing the Bible away. I don’t care.

2. Notice, it's God who humbled them. They got caught doing something God says don't do. Stealing, lying, scamming. They're tough. But eventually someone tougher catches up to them. They get put in prison at hard labour. They work till they stumble and fall. They can't get up again. Please help me. The jailer says I don't care.

C. They become so desperate they actually pray to God. God, I'm so beat. God please help me. Please save me. Save me and I will serve You the rest of my life. Please have mercy on me.

D. God hears their prayer and has mercy on them! God makes someone have mercy on them. Either He changes some minds or He changes the rulers. Before, they didn't care. Now it's mercy.

E. Now these tough men give thanks to the Lord. Because God was tougher and He broke their pride, then He broke them out of prison.

F. They have learned that if you need something to happen in the real world, then you need God.

4. You think you can solve your own problems, but you really need God to identify the problem and fix you, vv.17-22.

A. Fools are not those lacking intelligence, these people can be sharp and brilliant. They are moral fools. God has shown us what is right and what is wrong. But these people reject God’s view of what is the problem, which is, relationship with God.

B. These people are following what they sincerely believe is going to lead to their advantage, their well- being, their happiness.

1. It could be that they pursue sensuality, sexual relationships that God forbids, like homosexuality or pan-sexuality, make your gender what you think it ought to be. It could be alcohol, drugs, just being stoned all the time.

2. It could also be self-denial that they pursue. Harsh treatment of the body in order to purify the inner person. Not eating foods is included here. Food is God’s idea, it’s good. But some decide that food is the enemy. I’m going to solve my self-image problem by denying myself food and I will conquer this with my iron will. I looked up anorexia nervosa up, and it was coined in 1873. This is not a new experience. They just named it then.

3. It is possible to develop a mental attitude that destroys the body, that you can get into but you can’t get out of. That’s because you can sin against yourself. You can’t solve the problem of sin. Only God can. All you can do is make it worse even to the point of death.

C. That’s where these people came to. They were going to die, drawing near the gates of death. Once you go through, you are never coming out again.

D. That’s where they do something they swore they would never do: cry out to the Lord. Suddenly it’s a crisis. Life or death. And they discover they don’t want to die, they want to live, but they can’t stop themselves. God!

E. That’s where the Lord does two things. One is He comes into their crisis and saves them. It’s life or death, He answers their prayer and comes in, and it’s life.

F. But then begins a process of saving.

1. It’s not as simple as, and they lived happily ever after. Some people don’t like this. They want God to step in, change their lives and boom, we’re back to normal, thank You very much. They don’t want a process. They want salvation quickly, all of it right now this second.

2. The writer uses six verbs to show that it’s a continual action with no end in sight. God saves by crisis and also by process.

3. God continually sends His word to them, and He continually heals them and continually delivers them from their destructions. Part of our salvation is learning to think God’s way in order to live God’s way. Instead of going the wrong way and ruining our knees and feet we make straight paths for our feet so that what is lame may be healed instead of being put out of joint.

4. It also says, let them continually give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness and for His wonders to the sons of men. We begin a lifestyle of noticing all the good things that God does for us continually and acknowledging them. It is godly to give thanks, and it is ungodly to take all that God does for granted and ignore His goodness.

5. Let them continually tell of His works with joyful singing. You develop a lifestyle of continually worshipping God and continually telling others of what God has done for you. His wonders that He has done in you are to be remembered forever.

G. First you decided what was right for you, you diagnosed your problems, you prescribed the solution. Now you go God’s way, let Him solve the problem, give Him the glory. Your life was about you, now it’s about Him. And it’s much better that way.

5. You need God in a natural disaster, vv.23-32.

A. These are professional seamen, they have learned how to travel by sea. This is how they make their living. They know that the ocean is an act of God. You cannot control the waters, you can’t negotiate with water in motion. You can only react and cooperate with it.

B. But this is like nothing they have ever experienced. God spoke to the winds and that lifted up the waves. Each wave looks like the perfect wave that will capsize and drown them all. Professional seamen are helpless.

C. What can God do in an act of God? But they cry out anyway!

D. And God does another act of God: He listens to them and causes the storm to be still. And they are continually glad, probably for the rest of their lives.

E. Let them continually give thanks to the Lord in the congregation of the people. Let them tell others what God has done for them.

6. God is the one constant in life, vv. 33-43.

A. God can change rivers into wilderness because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it. An example of this is Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities were situated in the well-watered Jordan valley, it was like the garden of God. Yet when God chose to judge He made it into the Dead Sea. Nothing grows there.

B. But for the humble God can change a wilderness into a luxuriant farming community.

C. He lowers arrogant princes, and He raises up the needy into security and relationship like a family.

D. Nothing is forever. Nothing remains the same. All through life, you don’t need favourable circumstances, you need the Lord.

7. So what?

A. God belongs in life. There is no place where the Lord doesn’t belong, where He cannot bless, except sin. He won’t bless sin because that is going away from God. He won’t bless death and destruction.

B. These are real life accounts. They are not made-up stories, these people act just like us. They all know about God, yet He is the last resort in all their trouble. People are not accustomed to going to God first, seeking His will, His direction. Like God doesn’t fit into life. This is the real world, you have to make things happen. You have to take care of yourself. It’s what you want.

C. What also is real life: God never yells at the people who call on Him when they’re desperate. He never says, “So, after all that tough talk you’re begging Me now, are you?” He doesn’t make fun of them, He doesn’t despise them like they despised Him. He isn’t nasty or belittling. He always hears, He always answers. God has never yelled at me. Has He ever yelled at you?

D. God belongs in life because He is there. He is good. He is gracious and compassionate. He is the life, and therefore, He belongs in your life.

1. You’re unsatisfied. You are not to diagnose what your problem is and try to fix it. Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. God knows what the problem is. He has the solution.

2. In the meantime, don’t worry about the process. If it takes time to solve your problem, don’t worry about it. Only God can help you, you can’t solve it. If it’s a sin, you can’t fix yourself. He has a process for you, go His way. Jesus is saving you. He wants you to learn Him. That takes time, just like any relationship. He could heal you immediately, but would you know Him? Knowing Him is eternal life. Go with the process of seeing all His goodness all around you, give thanks, tell of His goodness, and enjoy Jesus greatly.

3. Pray to God no matter what. Turbulence in an airplane. Cancer. Your future. Your past haunts you. An insolvable problem. Every place you are tempted to think, what could God do?

God can do anything. He is listening to you. You need God.

Let’s pray.