Life on the Heights (Eight-Part Sermon Series)

Sunday, June 1: "Tender Mercies" (Psalm 23)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

Our first message is taken from the most famous of all the psalms, the Twenty-third and is entitled “Tender Mercies.”

The great truth of this portion of God’s Word is how He deals with us. Far from being a divine taskmaster, an erratic deity or a distant creator, what Psalm 23 tells us is that God in fact responds to us as a loving shepherd and a gracious host.

Verses 2-3 encourage us with four specific ways in which God as our shepherd affects our lives.

He makes us lie down in green pastures; He leads us; He restores us; and He guides us.

Verse 5 changes the image from that of a shepherd to that of a gracious host. Here, the Lord invites us into His presence just as an ancient desert ruler would invite a thirsty wanderer into his tent for refreshment. The verse identifies three ways in which we are cared for in God’s presence:

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

Finally, verse 6 assures us that no matter what happens in our lives, God protects us. In more modern language, “God has your back.” The verse says, “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

God promises us that if we will consciously move into His presence, through a relationship with Jesus Christ, He will provide all we need in order to live for Him.
(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, June 8: "Living in God's Presence"
(Psalm 84)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

The second message in our “Life on the Heights” series is entitled “Living in God’s Presence” and is based on one of the truly beautiful psalms, the 84th. The central teaching of the message is that the human heart was made to worship God and longs to be in His presence.

The psalm begins with by focusing on the theme that we spoke of last week, the power of blessing. God wants us to live blessed lives. Most of us seek to live prosperous lives or exciting lives or even stable lives. In contrast to those pursuits, though, the best life is the blessed life. Blessing in this regard means living in the continuing sense of the God’s favor, of His love, of His guidance and provision.

Verses 5-7 of our text make clear that, when we are blessed, we can even go through the hard times of life and emerge victorious: “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca [tears], they make it a place of springs… they go from strength to strength.”

Verse 9 makes an even bolder promise: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” In other words, just being in God’s presence is far superior to even the best places this world has to offer.

The final verse restates the value of blessedness. “O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.” The best life—this great psalm makes clear—is when we live continuously in God’s presence.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, June 15: "Fruitful Living"
(Psalm 1)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

We turn to Psalm 1, in a sermon entitled “Fruitful Living,” as we continue our summer journey through the Psalms, “Life on the Heights.”

The first psalm serves as the doorway into all the rest of the book of Psalms. The two key categories of people that the psalm builds from are the same two categories that guide all the remaining 149 psalms; namely, the “righteous” and the “wicked.” These two words describe not so much moral issues as they do relational ones. The “righteous” are those pursuing a right relationship with God. The “wicked,” on the other hand, are pursuing life according to their own evil agenda. The precious promises of the psalms with which we are so familiar are directed toward the righteous. The wicked have no claim upon God.

Verse 1 lays out the inevitable progression of the wicked as a course to be avoided: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers.” In contrast, verse 2 presents the righteous, whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Such a person, according to the next verse, is “like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”

In other words, God’s plan for us is that we be vibrantly alive, solidly rooted and fully productive for His Kingdom.

The practical impact of this teaching is that God blesses us when we seek His presence and live according to His Word.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, June 22:
"The One Who Will Never Let Us Go"(Psalm 139)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

In the fourth of our summer series on the Psalms, “Life on the Heights,” we focus on some of the most beautiful and mystical language in the entire Bible, Psalm 139, as we speak of “The One Who Will Never Let Us Go.” The theme of today’s message is that God meets us in every circumstance of our lives.

The first four verses set the tone for all the rest. In some inscrutable fashion, God knows everything about us there is to know. “O Lord,” the psalm begins, “you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise… Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

Not only is there nothing God doesn’t know about us, neither is there any place we can go to escape His attention. “Where can I go from your Spirit?” verse 7 asks, “Where can I flee from your presence?” The answer is nowhere. Just as God knows everything, so there is no place where we can hide from Him.

The next section goes even further into mystery. It was God Himself who formed us from the beginning. Humans are not the result of biology or evolution or even accidental conception! Instead, the live of each and every person, beginning in the womb, is the divine work of God, intended to bring Him glory. God is our Maker and has a purpose for every life.

Finally, in verses 23-24 the psalmist affirms the only response we can make to the great truth of God’s involvement in our lives. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

The great teaching of this psalm is simple and direct: God loves us through and through, just as we are.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, July 6: "Desiring God" (Psalm 42)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

In this, our fifth sermon for the summer series, “Life on the Heights,” we look to the beautiful Psalm 42 as we speak about “Desiring God.” Our theme today is that regardless of our life’s circumstances, in external events or internal struggles, we can trust God to see us through.

As we begin looking at this psalm, we notice immediately that a single refrain is repeated twice, in verses 5 and 11. In fact, this same refrain is repeated yet a third time in the following Psalm 43, which leads many scholars to think the two psalms are linked together. The refrain affirms the truth—through the interior dialogue carried out by the psalmist—that our human wills actually determine how our souls respond to challenge. “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” the psalmist writes, “Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

Looking back to the first two verses, now, we see the beautiful expression of the true desire of the human soul: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” The context of the psalm is that the writer is living in a distant place, separated from his heart’s true home, the great temple in Jerusalem, and the worship of God that takes place there. He is homesick for worship!

Under the pressure of separation, he feels an undeniable sense of being overwhelmed by the circumstances of his life. “All your waves and breakers have swept over me” he says to the Lord. But in his very affirmation that it is God who actually controls the elements of his life, he is brought into a new place of peace. “By day the Lord directs his love, at night is song is with me,” he prays in verse 8.

Finally, the psalmist affirms for the second time the great refrain initially spoken in verse 5; namely, that his soul has no cause to be disturbed. God is still in control, and He can be trusted. We as New Testament believers know in full what the psalmist only glimpsed in part. We know peace when we trust that God through Jesus Christ knows what He’s doing in our lives.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, July 13: "Confronting Evil" (Psalm 36)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

We’re travelling in God’s mountain country through this summer, the Psalms, in a sermon series called “Life on the Heights.” In this sixth message in the series, we’re looking to Psalm 36 as we speak of “Confronting Evil.” This psalm brings us to the painful reality that we experience God’s love for us in Jesus even as we live in an evil world.

The first section of the psalm provides us with a psychology of evil. Verse 1, which is best understood in the Revised Standard Version, says, “Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart.” So the motivation for evil comes from placing self in the center of our hearts. Verse 2 reads, “For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.” The delusion of evil is that is blinds us to our true situation. Verse 4 says, “Even on his bed he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong.” Evil works its course through life.

Verse 5-6 then turn our attention from the cramped, dark place of evil, to the glorious light and freedom of the Kingdom. “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep.” The message behind this startling contrast between evil’s psychology and God’s grandeur is clear: God invites us to step from the darkness and constriction of our self-centered lives into the light and freedom of His Kingdom.

Verse 8 describes such a life: “They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.”

Two practical applications emerge from Psalm 36. First, we live as believers in the real presence of evil. Second, God’s grace—extended to us through the cross of Jesus Christ—lifts us out of this dark world into the Kingdom of light and freedom.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, July 20: "When God Is On Your Side" (Psalm 124)
(To hear the complete sermon, click here.)

Psalm 124, “When God Is on Your Side,” is the seventh in our summer sermon series, “Life on the Heights.” The introductory comment in the psalm reads, “A song of ascents” which marks this psalm off as one of the fifteen such psalms that were sung by ancient Jews as the journeyed up the mountains to Jerusalem, to worship in the great temple. For us today, these songs of ascent provide specific encouragement in our own journey of faith, as we grow closer to our heavenly Father through an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus Christ.

The first five verses lay out the disasters that life holds for us, apart from God’s intervention. “If the Lord had not been on our side…” verses 1 and 2 say, then go on to list what would have happened had the Lord not been actively engaged in caring for us. “The raging waters would have swept us away,” the section concludes. The point is that God’s divine provision, timing and guidance keep our lives from disaster.

Then, in the second section (verses 6-8), Psalm 124 makes the great turn that is so prominent throughout all the psalms. King David, the writer, after recognizing the real threats aligned against him, nevertheless chooses to trust God. This is the posture all believers are called to assume throughout history. “Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth,” David triumphantly affirms in verse 6. Then again, in verse 8, he concludes his psalm by saying, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” His vibrant faith leads David to understand that what matters most in life is not what we see but what God says.

The principle underlying this psalm is that God delivers His people. In fact, that deliverance is the same as salvation; in the Old Testament the two words express the same divine action. To be delivered is to be saved. To be saved is to be delivered.

Finally, we must also accept that fact that there are crises in life where, for His own reasons, God doesn’t choose to deliver us. This uncomfortable reality leads us to two gospel truths. They’re “gospel” truths because both are grounded in the cross of Jesus Christ. First, God can be completely trusted even when deliverance doesn’t come as we desire. Second, God sometimes delivers us in this life; He always delivers us in the life to come.

(To listen to the complete sermon on your computer, download the sermon notes, or download the audio: click here.)

Sunday, July 27: "Keeping Life in the Right Perspective" (Psalm 103)

We conclude the series, “Life on the Heights” with the well-loved Psalm 103, which has so much to teach us of worship, God’s love and our place in creation.

The first section, verses 1-5, call us to a lifestyle of worship that is much more than simply a Sunday morning routine. Instead, true biblical worship, as these verses say, involves the totality of who we are. The key word is “all,” repeated four times: “all my inmost being praise his holy name… forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” Life takes on a new perspective when we offer all we are to God in worship.

The second, largest section of the Psalm turns to the object of our worship, God Himself. While listing many of His divine attributes, the passage focuses on the foundation of His connection with us; namely, His love. The word used is the special, covenant love that describes the unique concern that God has for His people: “The Lord is… abounding in love” (v. 8); “So great is his love” (v. 11); “The Lord’s love” (v. 17). God’s love, extended to us through the cross of Jesus, gives us a new perspective on living.

Finally, in verses 19-22, the psalm expands our attention beyond the relationship between the individual and God, to include all the created order. Indeed, worship is the center of all creation, since all creation was made to reflect glory to the Creator. The four-fold “all” which was used in verses 1-5 is now used again, only this time to describe this much larger context for worship: “his Kingdom rules over all… all his heavenly hosts… all his works everywhere [all] in his dominion” (Psalm 103:19-22).

The great and enduring of Psalm, as indeed is the case with all the psalms, is that we have the right perspective on life only when we live to the praise and glory of God through Jesus Christ.