Word of Salvation – Vol.24 No.07 – November 1977

 

A New Year Confidence

 

New Year’s sermon by Rev. F. L. VanderBom, B.A., Th.Grad. on Psalm 73:24

Scripture readings: Romans 8 : 26 39, Psalm 73

Psalter Hymnal: 327; 252; 287; 411; 490

 

Many people have the custom of starting the new year with a new year’s resolution.  Maybe some of us realise that some more exercise would be good for us.  A father may need to decide to spend a little more time with his wife and children.  Our boys and girls could make a new year’s resolution to be more helpful around the house.

The trouble is that usually our resolutions don’t get us very far.  The kind of people we are does not depend on what we want to do, but on what we actually get done.

But the Christian goes further than that, doesn’t he?  As Christians, we don’t live by resolutions, by trying to do this or that.  And we don’t even live by what we do or by what we get done.  No, and maybe just as well!  Our promises and our performance aren’t always exciting.  Christians live by the things God promises to us.

At the start of a new year, some people may talk loud and long about their achievements.  Others make promises.  As the song goes: “Promises, promises…!”

Some make plans and resolutions, and they do have their place, of course!

But as God’s family, meeting together at the start of another year, is there anything better that we can do than to listen to the promises of God?

In our worship service today, we’ll look at one of these promises of God.  How about learning this particular promise of our text?  Do it today, and then keep it with you this coming year: watch for ways in which the Lord will keep this particular promise, and you will come to know Him better.

The promise which comes to us today is that of Psalm 73:24,
“Thou dost guide me with Thy counsel,
and afterwards Thou shalt receive me to glory”.
The verse is really talking about the future, as some translations make this clearer than the RSV: “Thou shalt guide me…!

The Lord does guide His people; He will guide us!  The writer of this psalm is stating it as a fact, but it is just as much a promise.

The Lord promises to guide us.  We are not always so keen on that, and yet we need God’s guidance.  Why do we need God to guide us?  Let us think about this first.

This Psalm 73, when we take it as a whole, makes it very clear why we need God to guide us.

Many people have found this psalm to be one of the most down-to-earth, and also one of the most true-to-life psalms.  It’s always a bit of a risk to make comparisons like those, but this psalm does deal with the feelings of doubt and faith of one of God’s Old Testament children, and who of us doesn’t have problems with doubt, even if we do believe?

Psalm 73 was written by someone who just didn’t know what to think anymore.  He was confused, not sure about God.  And why was he in this well-known position?  Because he had fallen into the well-known trap of looking around at other people too much.  True to life, or not…?

The writer of this Psalm had noticed that people who ignore God are not usually the kind of people we might feel sorry for.  Sometimes believers are pictured as good people, and happy, healthy, successful people; and the unbeliever is a model of badness and unhappiness.  But in real life, it isn’t often as simple as that, is it?

Verse 3:         “I was envious of the arrogant,
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

Verses 4 &5: “For they have no pangs;
their bodies are sound and sleek.
They are not in trouble as other men are;
they are not stricken like other men.”

Verses 10, 11, 12 [read these also]..!

This is the problem: that being a child of God doesn’t necessarily make me rich and popular.  And if I as a Christian fall into the trap of looking around and comparing myself with other people, I will become unhappy, and I’ll start to doubt God and His Word.

The writer of Psalm 73 was going so far as to be inclined to forget about God.  Why not join the crowd and be done with it?

Verse 13:       “All in vain have I kept my heart clean
and washed my hands in innocence.”

Isn’t this how we also feel at times?

Asaph, who wrote this psalm (and who was probably King David’s director of music) was not able to find a solution to his feelings until he ‘went to church’, as we might say.  It was worshipping God that made the picture clear.  Even though he has never heard of Jesus Christ and Easter morning, Asaph comes to see that he should be thinking in that direction.  Verse 17 makes that clear, and so does our text.

Going to the Lord enables things to be put back into their right balance.  The problems go and the writer’s faith and trust are restored.

Now he can see that the happiness and health of the unbeliever are passing things.  Their end will be, to perish.  God does not guide them with His counsel; they will not be received by the Lord into glory.  People who ignore God are like people putting money into a bad company.  The bubble will have to burst one day.

It is good to be reminded of this at the start of a new year, isn’t it?

Our emotions and feelings are changing all the time.  One week we are happy with life and with the Lord and with people.  The next week we may feel so differently!  We make great resolutions and plans, and then we mess them up.  One day we have a faith that we are sure that we could move mountains.  Another day we may feel that we have no faith at all.  Haven’t we all been through these experiences?

This is why the promise of our text is so great:
“He will guide us..!”  “He does guide us…!”

When the Bible tells us that God will guide us, we can be very much sure of that.  We may go hot and cold, keen and cool, on and off, but the Lord does and will guide.  He does not go hot and cold about us.  He guides and continues to guide.

In verses 21 to 23, the psalm writer tells us about his own experience: we can be so silly, emotional, jealous of other people, up and down in our faith…!  “Nevertheless,” (we read in verse 23) “I am continually with Thee; Thou dost hold my right hand”.

God doesn’t change in His feelings about us.
Verse 26:      “My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.”

We need God to guide us!

So we see that the psalm writer Asaph is very much like us, don’t we?  He is not very sure of himself, but he is sure about God.

It is the Lord’s guidance in the past that enables Asaph to say what he says in verse 24: “Thou wilt guide me…!”   If we have taken trouble to notice God’s guidance in our past, it gives us trust and confidence in Him for the year ahead.  “Thou hast – Thou dost – Thou wilt..!”

Brothers and sisters, can we say that too?
We can live in one of two ways, can’t we?
We can live by resolutions; good intentions, trying, hoping, having a go.
Or we can live by God’s ‘promises and performance’, as we say it sometimes.
“The Lord has guided me in the past, and He will guide me in the future”;
Can we say that for ourselves?
Most of us here are Christians of Reformed persuasion: we like to say we believe very strongly in the Lord’s sovereignty, in His overall control, past, present and future.

Why is it then that so many Reformed people find it embarrassing and hard to be confident about the Lord’s guidance for their particular life?

Why do so many of us find it difficult to follow Asaph when he says in our text: “Thou dost guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward Thou shalt receive me to glory”?  Why is that so hard to say?

For Asaph it is not difficult.  He can see quite clearly (when he takes the trouble) what God has done in the past.  And this enables him to have such great and happy confidence about the future with God.

It follows, doesn’t it, that if we cannot see what God has done in the past, in our past, then we shall certainly also have problems about whether the Lord will hold on to us in the future?

The Lord is utterly faithful.  What He did in the past He will continue to do, because He keeps His promises.  He doesn’t change the way we do sometimes.

We are not always faithful: we get others into trouble for things we may have done; we leave jobs unfinished, letting people down; sometimes we even break our marriage vows.

Asaph knew, just like the apostle Paul did, that God is not like that.

Paul reminds us about this in Romans 8.  “Just think,’ Paul says in effect, “the Lord God sent His Son to die for our sins; He saw Him suffer and be killed; He raised Him up from the grave; He has protected the Gospel message for thousands of years; He gives us faith today: now do we really think that God is going to waste all that by not continuing to hold on to His children?” (Romans 8: 32)

This is the first thing, then, that God tells us in this verse.  We need God’s guidance, and God will certainly guide us in this new year!

Secondly, the text tells us how God guides us

Verse 24a: “Thou dost guide me with Thy counsel”.

To understand what this means, think of how dad and mum guide their children.  They do this in two ways.

One way in which parents guide their children is not even noticed always, when mum and dad protect their young, steer them away from danger, help them do a job.

The other way parents guide the children is more or less by talking: teaching, giving some instructions, telling them off.

Now the Lord also guides us in two ways.

God guides us by His power and providence, and often we won’t even know it!  God also guides us by what the text calls His ‘counsel’.  This is not something we are unaware of.  When God guides us by His counsel, it comes via our heart and mind.  So we’d better make an effort to get that ‘counsel’, or we won’t get it!

Congregation, make sure you get the guidance of God’s counsel, if you are not getting enough of it.

It comes to us through the Word of God, first and foremost.  If you really want God to guide you more, or you want to be more aware of the Lord’s guidance, read your Bible more.  Use Scripture Union notes or something similar to help you think about what you’re reading.  Study the parts that especially interest you.  Spend time praying about points that stand out or that concern you.  God’s Word is a light on our path: does it give you guidance?

God’s counsel and guidance also comes to us very strongly through the preaching.  Paul reminds us (in 1Thess.2:13) that the Word of God preached is not just the words of a human being but “what It really is, the Word of God”.  Preachers are co-workers with God, Paul says somewhere else.

The preacher does have the responsibility to preach God’s Word, and not his own, of course!  But right through the history of God’s people, the Lord has used the peaching to bring His counsel and guidance into relevant contact with people like you and me, in our unique situation, today.

So don’t stay at home, even to read your Bible during church time!  Be there when God’s Word is being preached.

A third way in which God guides us with His counsel is by the work of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit takes the Bible passages and the preaching and makes our heart and mind respond.  Sometimes a Bible passage may puzzle us, and a sermon may leave us cut up or even angry, but in time, the Holy Spirit will continue to sort things out.  Pray that God’s Holy Spirit will find an open and submissive attitude as God’s Word comes to us.

There is also a fourth way in which God guides us with His counsel.

There are times when God’s counsel has to be like a chisel, hurting us, having to chip and chop away at some things in our lives.  Sickness, trouble, times of uncertainty or doubt, closed doors: these are also ways in which the Lord guides us with His counsel.

So we see that He does it in many different ways.  Notice the ways in which God guides us, and learn to recognise what He may be doing with your life at any time.  And then believe the promise that Asaph also came to accept: “The Lord does and will guide me with His counsel.”

Finally: the result of God guiding us.  “Thou dost guide me with Thy counsel and afterwards Thou wilt receive me to glory.”

By the word ‘glory’ here, Asaph means the wonderful future that awaits the children of the Lord God.

This future to which Christians look forward has become a lot clearer since the Lord Jesus came to earth to open up the way through the barrier of sin and fallen-ness.  But even before the coming of the Saviour, there were a few Old Testament believers who could see glimpses of what God would give us through His Son.

We may become sick and tired of our enemies: enemies on the outside, and also those struggles that go on inside us.

Our body may become old and worn, or even broken by tragedy or disease.  Maybe our memory will one day go,

In one way or another ‘the tent’ will be battered and worn out one day.  But: “…afterwards Thou wilt receive me to glory.”

There is laid away for each child of God that crown of righteousness that will never fade away.

As Christians, we also know that the glory God promises us is in part able to be enjoyed in the ‘here and now’.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit; the continuing work of God’s Spirit bringing the life of the Lord Jesus more and more clearly into my life and behaviour; the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness these are also part of the glory and beauty God welcomes us to.

When we can live in God’s hands and trust Him; when we can enjoy our life and work and at the same time be following the Lord Jesus: that is part of the glory God gives.  When people can see God guiding us, and working at us: this brings glory both to the Lord and to us, doesn’t it?

And the end result of a person who trusts God’s promises, lets the Lord Guide him with His counsel, and reflects something of God’s glory?  In the words of our text, that person will be received by God the Father to glory one day, “afterwards”!

Congregation, we can have confidence in God’s guidance.

But: we shall only have it if we have seen God’s past guidance of us.  Or if we turn around now, and trust Him.

It is by faith, and by later experience, that we know that the Lord’s promise holds true.  Faith, or trust in God and His promises, has always made God’s people what they are.  Faith and trust made Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Elijah, the apostle Paul.

Faith in God and His promises made the early Christians willing to die at the hands of a Roman emperor.  Never think that faith and trust are empty and ineffective, or that God does let His people down today.

Think of the witness of German Christians who died during the Nazi years.  Think of the witness of Christians opposing evil rulers in communist countries and in places in Africa today.  These Christians are strong because they believe God’s Word, and live by it.

Don’t start the new year with a resolution and a vague wish to do better.

Start the new year with your trust in God’s promise, believe Him!

“Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterwards Thou wilt receive me to glory!”

AMEN.