Sermon
Flashes of Light From God's Word
August 16, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you to take your Bible; it's Psalm 119. We've learned that it's the longest psalm as well as the longest chapter in our entire Bible. Because it is such a long portion of scripture we decided to take the 176 verses and divide it into sections. Tonight we're going to commence our reading at verse 41. And here's an observation that I think is very important. You'll notice in the Bible that about every 8 to 9 verses they are divided with a letter or a name above them. Mine begins with Aleph and then it goes to Beth and then Gimel and then the Daleth, and now today we have Waw which of course is the Hebrew letter for 'v'. Now we've learned that there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and so there are 22 sections to this particular psalm. And it's known as an acrostic psalm, that is, each section begins with that particular letter that is so designated. It was of course an ancient hymn, and these were the stanzas of that hymn.

Here's what we read this evening. It says, "Let Your mercies," verse 41, "come also to me, O Lord-Your salvation according to Your word. So shall I have an answer for him who reproaches me, for I trust in Your word. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, For I have hoped in Your ordinances. So shall I keep Your law continually, forever and ever. And I will walk at liberty, for I seek Your precepts. I will speak of Your testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed. And I will delight myself in Your commandments, which I love. My hands also I will lift up to Your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on Your statutes."

We made another observation: out of the 176 verses, 170 or more have a direct reference in some way to the Bible. So it's an entire psalm on the Bible. The writer we believe to be David. David uses various terms to identify the word of God. He calls them statutes; he calls them ordinances; he calls them laws; he calls them precepts; he calls them commandments, but all of these are in reference to the word of God. So when we come to this particular passage you'll notice a number of those identification words are used. He has the word for commandments, he calls it statutes, he has again testimonies, he has law, precepts. So again in this particular portion he uses those identifying words to specify that he's talking about the word of God.

I want to take your Bible and go back to the very front where it says "Table of Contents". And the reason why I'm doing this: because this particular chapter is all about the word of God I'm spending the entire month of August building knowledge concerning the word of God. Why we would believe it to be the inherit, authoritative word of God. The very voice of God Himself. And the reason I'm doing this is because our series has attracted a number of folks who are really looking for truth.

I have a gentleman who walks in here every Sunday -- at least he has now for the last 9 or 10, 11 weeks, and he was very, very clear when he introduced himself to me. He said, I want you to know I'm an agnostic. But, he said, I'm searching and I want to find a reason to believe. Now the other Sunday he brought his son home from university and his son came up and he had a comment. I knew by his comment that he too was wrestling about this whole issue about the authority of the word of God.

I have taken the position, and will throughout this month, of using the introduction to say various things about the word of God. We have a large book in our hands and what I have found is a beautiful poem that in one sentence describes somewhat what is found in each book. So you've got your "Table of Contents" open before you, and I'll read just one line and basically you'll find that if you read that particular book this would be the theme in the book. So we begin:

In Genesis the world was made by God's creative hand;
In Exodus the Hebrews march to gain the Promised Land;
Leviticus contains the Law, holy, just and good,
Numbers records the tribes enrolled, all sons of Abraham's blood.

Moses in Deuteronomy records God's mighty deeds.
Brave Joshua into Canaan's land the host of Israel leads.
In Judges their rebellion oft provokes the Lord to smite.
But Ruth records the faith of one well pleasing in His sight.
In 1st and 2nd Samuel of Jesse's son we read;
Ten tribes in 1st and 2nd Kings revolted from his seed.

In 1st and 2nd Chronicles we see Judah captive made,
But Ezra leads the remnant back by princely Cyrus' aid.
The city walls of Zion Nehemiah builds again,
While Esther saves her people from the plots of wicked men.

In Job we read how faith will live beneath afflictions' rod,
And David's Psalms are precious songs to every child of God.
The Proverbs, like a goodly string of choicest pearls, appear;
Ecclesiastes teaches men how vain are all things down here.

The mystic Song of Solomon exalts sweet Sharon's Rose:
While Christ the Saviour and the King the rapt Isaiah shows.
The warning Jeremiah apostate Israel scorns;
His plaintive Lamentations their awful downfall mourns.

Ezekiel tells in wondrous words of dazzling mysteries;
While kings and empires yet to come, Daniel in his vision sees.
Of judgment and of mercy Hosea loves to tell,
Joel describes the blessed days when God with man will dwell.

Among Tekoa's herdsmen Amos received his call,
While Obadiah prophesies of Edom's final fall.
Jonah enshrines a wondrous type of Christ, our risen Lord;
Micah pronounces Judah lost - lost but to be restored.

Nahum declares on Nineveh just judgment shall be poured.
A view of Chaldea's coming down Habakkuk's visions give;
Next Zephaniah warns the Jews to turn, repent and live.

Haggai wrote to those who saw the Temple built again,
Zechariah prophesies of Christ's triumphant reign.
Malachi was the last to touch the high prophetic cord;
It's final notes sublimely show the coming of the Lord.

(The New Testament)
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the holy Gospels wrote,
Describing how the Saviour died-his life and all he taught.
Acts proves how God the Apostles owned with signs in every place.
St. Paul in Romans teaches us how men are saved by grace.

The apostle in Corinthians instructs, exhorts, reproves;
Galatians shows that faith in Christ alone, the Father loves.
Ephesians and Philippians tell what Christians ought to be.
Colossians bids us live to God and for all eternity.

In Thessalonians we are taught the Lord will come from heaven.
In Timothy and Titus a bishop's rule is given.
Philemon marks a Christian's love which only Christians know.
Hebrews reveals the Gospel as prefigured by the Law.

James teaches without holiness, faith is but vain and dead;
St. Peter points the narrow way to which the saints are led.
John in his three epistles on love delights to dwell;
St. Jude gave awful warning of judgment, of wrath and hell.
The Revelation promises of that tremendous day
When Christ, and Christ alone, shall be the trembling sinner's stay.

Isn't that interested? An overall view of what we hold in our hands, the inerrant, authoritative word of God. Now let's go to our notes tonight. I begin our lesson by suggesting that the singer of this psalm knew that not everyone shared his trust in the Word of God. In this segment of the psalm we see him striking the flint of God's Word with his hammer of conviction; we see the sparks of his testimony fly.

Now the question is, and this is an introductory thought with regards to the Scripture is, Can I trust my Bible? If all of this psalm is about the word of God, then it's imperative that we have an understanding. We must trust the Scripture.

A great pastor at Moody, I think he's the president of Moody Institution, recently wrote a book entitled, "Can I Trust My Bible?" He takes seven reasons why you can trust the Bible. It's very excellently written. But I'm going to take just one this evening. I believe there are many reasons for us to trust our Bible, but let's consider just one -- the historical reason. I pause there.

Way back in my college days I learned to love history, and I'll tell you how it happened. I was taking 17A and 17B, and this was about 50 years ago in college, and it was the history of, I think, the United States. And my professor whose name was Dr. Gersten, I still remember him, he was a German gentlemen but he loved history. He lived history. And when you walk into his classroom he was always talking; he was talking to the wall. Over on this wall he had maps of things taking place, and over here he had documents, and over here... And he changed those walls almost every day. But he started talking at 8 o'clock in the morning when he started his classes, a bell would ring, he'd keep talking and he'd be talking when you walked in. So I would hurry to try to get there early from the last class. He's got a war going on over down here in South America, and he's got a document being signed over here, and I began to see history from this marvelous, marvelous scope. And I said, man, this is an interesting area of study and I've always enjoyed history. And it's always been a part of my ministry and I have a great number of books.

The historical proof of the Scripture and this could go on for hours, but let's just start here. I have selected this defense on the reliability of the Bible because of my personal love for history. Glance at any page in the Bible and you will encounter stories about men like Abraham, Moses, and David; and you will read about Christ, His disciples, and Paul. The Bible is filled with thousands of events that purport to have actually happened in the continuum we call history. Births, deaths, hardships, and miracles--they are all there.

But here's the question: Can we believe the history of the Bible to be reliable? Now it depends on whom you ask. TIME magazine quotes John Van Seters of the University of North Carolina as saying, "There was no Moses, no crossing of the sea, no revelation on Mount Sinai." Indeed, TIME reported that Seters spoke to the Society of Biblical Literature with "Pope-like confidence." TIME editorialized that years of searching for evidence have "convinced all but the most conservative experts that Abraham and the rest of the Patriarchs were inventions of the Bible authors. That's an absolute lie, and whoever wrote it had done no research in history whatsoever.

And in keeping with this viewpoint, Peter Jennings, in his ABC network television special on Jerusalem, commented on the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian belief in Abraham and then asked, "What can historians tell us about him? His answer: "They don't even know whether Abraham lived." Peter didn't do any research at all.

Now let's take a moment to understand the deeply held convictions of liberal biblical scholars. First, none of the Bible is accepted without independent confirmation from history and archaeology. These scholars speak of themselves as "minimalists," meaning that they accept only the bare minimum of the Bible, limiting themselves to what secular sources can confirm.

Page 2: For example, since no reference in the Exodus has been found in extrabiblical sources, that is, in sources outside the Bible, the event is not held to be believed by the modern scholars. We should notice in passing that no other historical documents are held with such skepticism. Ancient manuscripts are usually accepted at face value, along with archaeological inscriptions and the like. Although these seldom are thought to need independent confirmation, the Bible is different. If some other documents do not confirm it, its history is denied; if such documents contradict it, the Bible is assumed to be in error.

You have to understand that the modern liberal scholar comes from that point of view; the Bible is to be questioned, the Bible is to be disbelieved, the Bible is to be of error. Any other document, in fact, to them supersedes the authority of the Scriptures. Now that's a tragic, tragic viewpoint to start an honest research, in terms of an educated approach to a subject. It's biased; terribly biased.

Look at number 2: Second, there is the deeply held conviction that no miracle can have occurred. Even if some scholars now believe David lived, they most assuredly do not believe that he spoke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit or that God made a personal covenant with him. They would scoff at the story about David's encounter with an avenging angel on the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite.

And I repeat: Some scholars will accept nothing in the Bible unless it is independently confirmed. And since the crucifixion of Christ is not mentioned in other histories, it is generally denied. And even if a first-century reference to the crucifixion of Christ were discovered, these critics would certainly not admit to the biblical interpretation of this event. They would give grudging acceptance to whatever historical or archaeological studies might yield, but not a mite more.

I wanted to point that out because when you start to use as your argument the historical validity of the Scriptures, and you're dealing with somebody who's been taught in our universities and our schools, those kids are going to come home because the scholars or the educators have taught them (and I hate to call them scholars), but that's what they call themselves. They teach our kids that the Bible is just simply another historical book without any divine authority whatsoever. It's sad.

But those of us who believe the Bible, that it is trustworthy, we look at matters very differently. Because we accept the Bible as the Word of God, we do not suspend belief until biblical events are confirmed by archaeology. We believe that the Exodus happened even if the Egyptians didn't record it; for what makes us think that such a proud people would record a defeat for their nation anyway? We believe that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish long before the zoologists measured the gullet of a whale and told us that such a feat is possible.

Consider with me some of the contributions provided by archeology. Archaeology can be defined as "a study based on the excavation, decipherment and critical evaluation of the records of the past as they affect the Bible. And I'll tell you folks, the last fifty years have been a bonanza for the archaeologists, for the Christian. The majority of archaeological finds have illuminated biblical history and have, if anything, confirmed the biblical record. If we were to make a list of discoveries that have shut the mouths of biblical critics, it would be a long list indeed.

Given the Bible's excellent reliability over the long course of research, it is doubtful if archaeology could ever make a discovery that would conclusively prove the Bible in error. Though our faith is not dependent on the next archaeological find, it is gratifying to know that, as time moves on, more and more discoveries confirm the biblical record.

Dr. Henry Morris, as you know is part of the Creation Institute of San Diego, writes: "It must be extremely significant that, in view of the great mass of corroborative evidence regarding the biblical history of these periods, there exists today not one unquestionable find of archaeology that proves the Bible to be in error at any point."

The New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, written by a score of experts in the various fields, says in the preface that archaeology has demonstrated the historical and geographical reliability of the Bible. Among the hundreds of archaeological finds that relate to the Old Testament, there is one that I think is important and interesting which has to do with the Creation account. The question is, Did Moses receive his information from God or did he simply rewrite accounts that were already in existence?

Answer: In recent years Nineveh was excavated and thousands of clay tablets were discovered that comprised the library of the king of Assyria during his reign of 668-626 B.C. Now folks that's 2700 years ago. Among these writings was a set of seven tablets called the "Creation Epic" that listed six days of creation and one day of rest, which corresponds to the biblical account.

Now you say, just a minute pastor. I've been in the classes and I know that the Babylonian account is supposedly older than the book of Genesis. Well I've mentioned that. Also, a Babylonian creation account has been discovered, bearing some resemblance to the Genesis outline but laced with pagan polytheism and unbiblical additions. Both accounts, though, begin with a primal chaos, the beginning of light, the creation of the luminaries, and the creation of man; and on the seventh day, in both accounts the Deity rested. The Babylonian account confirms Genesis in the sense that it points to a time when the human race occupied a common home and held a common faith. It points to a common heritage when early civilizations had a common understanding of the creation of world.

Now the biblical critics have always given grudging acceptance to the archaeological finds that confirm biblical records. Let me cite just a couple of examples:
(1) For years the critics insisted the story of Abram's rescue of Lot in Genesis 14 was not historical, and couldn't be. It was inaccurate. They said that the names of the kings listed were fictitious, since they were not independently confirmed by secular histories. But archaeology has debunked these critics. The names of some of these kings have now been identified. And there is evidence that the king of Babylon did serve the king of Elam at this time. What is more, a monument depicting a warlike expedition of the character described here has been discovered, confirming that one tribe pursued another to subdue a rebellion.

So what I'm suggesting is when the critics try to knock down the Bible, God wonderfully provides a new finding that makes the critics liars.

Now here's one, (2) The existence of Solomon's reign and his thousands of horses at one time was questioned. Now we find that story in the book of Kings, and here's what it says: And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen; (I'm at 1 Kings 10:26) he had one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen. It says that Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and the king's merchants bought them at current prices.

So the question is, is the Bible correct? Did Solomon have all of these chariots at all of these horses? Was he a lover of horses? And look at what they found -- But in Meggido, which was one of the five chariot cities, excavations have revealed the ruins of thousands of stalls for his horses and his chariots. Isn't that interesting? God confirms His word.

Bernard Ramm, one of the great scholars, writes: A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put. No other book has been so chopped, sliced, sifted, scrutinized and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or classical modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom, such skepticism. With such thoroughness at every chapter?

The Bible is still loved by millions and studied by millions. You say, Pastor, why are you doing this? Because I have people who are searching because they live in a world where they are taught to question the authority of the Scriptures. And I want you to know only a foolish man questions the authority of the Scriptures. I believe it takes a fool, because even the wisest, the most brilliant scholars, are having to back away and say -- the Bible is true.

Now here's one, and I point this one out. I'm on page 4. Please consider with me one further proof that our Bible CAN be trusted. And I'm laying heavy on this because, again, if all of that chapter that we're studying has to do with God's Word, it's imperative that I approach God's Word without any question; that whatever it says it's God speaking with eternal authority. The grass will wither, the flowers will fade, but His word will stand forever. And what I'm trying to do is to build a deep confidence even in all of our hearts that the Bible we hold in our hands is God's perfect word to us.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has confirmed that the Old Testament text has not substantially changed throughout the centuries. In March of 1947, a Bedouin shepherd looking for a lost goat near the Dead Sea threw a stone to ward off other animals and then heard of something breaking. He found a companion and together they went into a cave where they saw several large jars containing rolls of leather and papyrus wrapped in cloths. They smuggled them across the border between Israel and Jordan that existed at the time and found an antique dealer in Bethlehem who bought them for a small fee. The merchant told a Syrian scholar in Jerusalem about them, but he was unable to identify their age or significance. The Syrian acquired several of the manuscripts and stored them in the Monastery of St. Mark in Old Jerusalem. Soon after, the caves in the area were scoured for more manuscripts, and in all, the caves yielded about fourteen significant finds, including one cave that housed what was believed to be a library of materials.

Now the question is: Where did these scrolls come from? In 140 B.C. a group of people called the Essenes left the city of Jerusalem to survive in the barren dry caves of the Judean hills. Qumran, as the site was called, was established to preserve the purity of the priesthood and to cling to the law of Moses and the prophets. When you read history you'll find that these were a group of people who were deeply concerned about the purity of God's word, and they saw it being so corrupted by religion in Jerusalem. They decided they were going to take their text and go to find a quiet place, and so they went to this place near the Dead Sea.

About the year of A.D. 60 Rome became weary of the rebellion of the Jews and decided to crush them throughout the land. And this included the Essene community. When the Roman troops left Jerusalem for Qumran, the Essenes immediately hid their scrolls in nearly caves and fled to the hills, hoping to escape the wrath of the Romans. Thus these scrolls were in these caves for some two thousand years.

What's their significance? Until these scrolls were found, the oldest Old Testament manuscripts in existence dated back to about the year of A.D. 800. These editions of the Hebrew Old Testament are known as the "Masoretic Text," so named after a group of scholars known as the "Masoretes" who took great care in copying the text of the Old Testament and making sure that it corresponded with the most reliable manuscripts.

Now these scrolls found, the Dead Sea Scrolls, are some eight hundred to a thousand years older than previously known manuscripts. And one of the most important scrolls found in a complete scroll was the Book of Isaiah. The text of Isaiah has been shown to be substantially the same as that which is known as the Masoretic Text. And the two copies of Isaiah found in the caves proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of our text. Now ladies and gentlemen, that is absolutely amazing.

I'm at the top of page 5. The 5% variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling. For example: Of the 166 words of Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in the Qumran scroll that differ from the standard Masoretic Text. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the meaning. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word "light," which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. It is a matter of wonder that through something like a thousand years that the text underwent so little alteration.

What about the manuscripts that we have of the New Testament? Let me stop there just for a moment. The amazing thing when you think... You can go back 2700 years and the Bible you and I hold in our hands today is almost identical to the original text. How does someone doubt the authority and the authenticity of something so sublimely correct? It's interesting, but when we come to the New Testament our resource for information that backs up the historical evidence of the Scripture is just phenomenal.

I have in my library, and next Sunday I am going to bring along, because we're going to take some of these ancient writings from the first and second century. We actually have the letters from the great apostolic fathers. We've got copies of them. If you go to England and go to the museum in downtown London they have a marvelous section on the ancient manuscripts of the Bible. I've been there. And we have actual letters written by Ignatius and many of the church fathers just 50, 60, 70 years after the ascension of Jesus Christ.

Now when you think of that you realize that someone who says something that has a knowledge that it happened 50 years ago, you have to believe them. I'm 72 years of age and I can go back and I can tell you about what happened on Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941. Now that's 60 some odd years ago. That's when we were bombed in Pearl Harbor and I was riding in my car and I heard the news and the world was at war. You don't forget those things. So what I'm saying is when we come to the New Testament we are absolutely beyond measurement. I have 38 massive volumes of letters written by the church fathers from the second and third centuries and it's amazing how they beautifully correspond and parallel with the teachings of the Scriptures.

But I reference just three here. Notice there's the Alexandrine which came out of Alexandria. It dates us clear back to 450. Then there's the Vatican manuscript, which dates us back to 350. And then we have a manuscript that was found down in Mount Sinai at St. Catherine's there, and again, all of them are as perfect as our testament that we read today. That is amazing, and yet you hear people questioning the authority of the Scriptures. Ladies and gentlemen we have every reason to believe every word that it came to us by men moved by the spirit of God who wrote it for us.

Now let's go to page 6. I did all of that, and you have to understand that throughout this series on the Bible I'm trying to build a deep confidence and a knowledge of why we have a reason to believe our Bible. Now we go to page 6 in our notes and we have just a brief exposition of the passage before us. David writes: "Let Your mercies come also to me, O Lord--Your salvation according to Your word."

Now in this section of the Psalm we are studying commences a new portion in which each verse begins with the letter VAU, or the English letter V. In the previous verses of this Psalm, the poet has been expressing his desire to know God. He used the first-person pronoun more than in the case of other psalms, and he has addressed God directly again and again. It is always "I" and "you." Something changes now. But in these verses before us, he rises to a new height in expressing his desire to know the God of love and the God of all comfort.

We could really read it, 'May Your unfailing love come to me, O Lord, Your salvation according to Your promise.' David, in this first stanza of the Psalm, it's the first time that he mentions the love of God. He's gone now 40 verses. Now he wants to talk about the love of God. And it's very interesting, he connects the love of God with the idea of salvation. And when you think it through, you can only come to know God in that great experience of salvation.

Now I ask the question mid way down the page, when David writes about salvation, what is the thought that must have been going through his mind? When you and I as New Testament Christians and we're on this side of the cross, when somebody talks of salvation we immediately relate it to what Jesus did at Calvary in paying the penalty for our transgressions so that we might be forgiven, that we might be saved. So we always think of salvation as evangelical Christians as it relates to the cross and the act of Christ dying on that cross and spilling His precious blood for our cleansing. That's always a part of our thought when we talk of salvation. But now David and is writing hundreds of years before the cross and he's using the word salvation. What was going through his mind? Because his concept of salvation would be different than ours. He was on the other side of the cross.

So in our notes: Salvation is the great central theme not only of the Old Testament but of the whole Bible. From the story of God's rescue of Noah and his family from the flood to the graphic picture of the final destiny of God's saved people as the Bride of Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelations 21, God is seen to be at work in the rescue of men and women. Now there are a number of words that are used in the Hebrew Text that will help us to understand what David meant when he wrote that word and when he used that word salvation.

The first word that we find is HAYAH, which means "to preserve," "to keep alive," "to give full and prosperous life to someone." Now you have to remember, that's the Hebrew word that he's using to think of salvation. And here again it's to keep alive, to preserve, to give. Now the second Hebrew word is YASHA, which refers to "bringing into a spacious environment," "being at one's ease, free to develop without hindrance." It deserves close attention, not only because it is normative for the whole concept of salvation in the Old Testament, but because it forms part of several of the best-known names in the Bible, such as Isaiah, Hosea, Joshua, and supremely Jesus. Part of that Hebrew word is found in there.

If we are to understand what is implied by Matthew 1:21, "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins", it will be imperative to grasp something of what this word YASHA had come to mean to the Hebrew people of the Old Testament. One cannot help being struck from the very outset of the study of this word by a remarkable fact that in the vast majority of references to salvation, however it was conceived, God was always seen as the author. So David is thinking of a concept using again the meaning of those words, being brought into freedom into a spacious environment, to be released, to be set free.

At the top of the page 7: It's God who saves. It's the Lord who rescues His people. And wherever we look in the books of the Old Testament this fact stares us in the face. It is the Lord who hears from heaven and saves His anointed with the saving strength of His right hand. So to know God is to know Him as Savior. And when you think that through and transpose that fact into our day, it's really true. We never really come to a personal relationship, an understanding of the God of eternity until we fall in repentance and seek His forgiveness and His salvation. It's in that great moment of salvation that God becomes very real to us and spiritual things become meaningful.

The first reference to the word YASHA comes to us in Exodus 14:30: "So the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore." Now it's no exaggeration to say that this rescue from Egypt, the land of bitter bondage under the threat of imminent death at the hand of harsh taskmasters, determined the whole future understanding of salvation by the people of Israel. Here's what's going through David's mind. He uses words that we interpret as salvation, but David is thinking back to a historical moment when something marvelous, something wonderful happened to his nation.

For years they have been in bondage down in Egypt and they had suffered. Joseph had passed on and kings had come, and the more kings the farther the distance became between the kings, the pharaohs, of Egypt and the children out there in the delta known as the Israelites. In fact, when kings came along they feared the Israelites because they were growing in such massive numbers. So when it comes time for the exodus they have decided we're going to do something about these Israelites, the Egyptians, we're going to first of all, make them service; they're going to make bricks, and then finally the decision was made to kill all their children. They had to be thrown in the river. This was the Egyptians way of trying to pare down and to bring under control this massive nation known as Israel. And God looks upon a scene of a weeping, crying out people and God calls Moses and says, I want you to go down and set My people free.

We know that story. Moses arrives and that whole process of breaking down and finally after 9 plagues God said there's 1 more; we come to Exodus 12 and God said what I'm going to do is I'm going to slay the first born in every household. But I'm going to preserve Israel. If you'll take and slay an animal, lamb, and you'll paint the post and the lintel of your doorpost when the Death Angel comes at midnight, any house that has the blood applied the Death Angel will Passover. And thus, all the Israelites prepared their home that night. They made special preparation also to be ready to start traveling because they knew this was God's time for their deliverance. They were going to leave this bondage, this nightmare of having to just exist as a people. They're going to be set free. They're going to a promised land.

And here's what David is thinking when he talks about salvation, and that's the rest of the verses, this is the theme: he remembers that God who saved them from their bondage, the God who brought them into a spacious new land, into the Promised Land, the God who loved them, the God who was patient with them through all of their murmurings. So when he uses the word salvation he's thinking of that experience wherein God sets one free and God brings to a new dimension of joy and to a new dimension of life. So that's why he prays, Lord, may I see Your mercies and may You bring me into a new dimension of Your joy and Your freedom that is in You dear God, and then I'll lift my hands. I'll follow Your word. I'll walk at liberty before You because I'll be set free.

And I bring that quickly to a close by suggesting when we think of salvation we too say God is the author. We know that salvation is not of anything that we do. It's purely by grace; we read that. This is the teaching of the New Testament: our salvation comes from a God of mercy and grace. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And then Romans says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And Romans again, He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all--how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? And here's a marvelous revelation from Ephesians as Paul writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to an adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise and the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.

And so I bring our lesson to a close. When David is talking, Lord may your mercies of salvation come to me. Then I'll enjoy a liberty, then I'll lift my hands in praise unto You. And you and I know that what he's talking about is something very personal that we experience. We only come to know God when we put our faith in Jesus Christ and experience the glorious event, the transformation of our lives and salvation. And that's the moment when God reveals Himself by His Holy spirit to us. So we'll never know God until we come to Him through faith in His Son and enjoy the salvation that He's promised for all of us. And David said, when you come to know Him you'll lift your hands in praise to Him. Amen?

Father in heaven, we don't wrestle with this issue of believing or not believing the Scripture. We are a people that believe, but we know that surrounding us and filling the minds of our kids who go to college are questions and doubts that are put there by atheistic teachers. Men who have really never studied the real history behind the Scriptures, all the truth that has been proven by the archeologists. They mutter forth their words to fill our kids with doubt. We're here to church on this Saturday evening because we have this deep conviction that the Bible we hold in our hands is the inherent word that came from Your heart through men guided by Your Holy Spirit, and what we read are Your thought, Your word, Your will and Your purposes dear God. And I pray that that deep love for Your word will continue to grow, and may we every tenaciously cling to Your word and all of its beauty, and all of its power, and all of its authority. We love Your word. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for Your word, and everybody said...amen. God bless you folks. God bless you.