How Is God Directing My Life?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | So many of the ways God is sovereignly directing our lives are intangible,
00:00:10.000 | or they are simply imperceivable to us.
00:00:12.000 | But that's not always the case.
00:00:14.000 | There's one way God sovereignly directs our lives that is very tangible and concrete,
00:00:18.000 | as John Piper explained in his recent sermon on Psalm 16, titled,
00:00:22.000 | "The Path to Full and Lasting Pleasure."
00:00:25.000 | Here's what Pastor John said on Psalm 16, verse 7.
00:00:29.000 | He is our treasure, and now we're going to see that he is our counselor.
00:00:39.000 | Verse 7. He goes one step further in exalting in what God is for him.
00:00:45.000 | God is not only refuge, treasure, sovereign, but now he's counselor.
00:00:52.000 | I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
00:00:59.000 | Now that's not a small add-on.
00:01:02.000 | And the reason I say it's not a small or insignificant add-on to refuge, sovereign, and treasure
00:01:11.000 | is because trusting God as your counselor affects how you experience God as your refuge
00:01:21.000 | and as your treasure and as your sovereign.
00:01:24.000 | Let me just illustrate what I mean by that.
00:01:28.000 | God is a refuge in part by the way he counsels us.
00:01:35.000 | God's being a refuge for you is not automatic.
00:01:39.000 | It's not mechanical.
00:01:41.000 | It's not like you pay zero attention to his word and his counsel,
00:01:46.000 | and you simply find yourself safe.
00:01:50.000 | It doesn't work like that.
00:01:51.000 | If you find yourself in danger, danger of harm, danger of a sin,
00:01:56.000 | danger of some absolutely foolish way of life, and God comes to you with his counsel,
00:02:03.000 | he's telling you how to find refuge.
00:02:06.000 | Don't go there. Don't do that.
00:02:10.000 | So his counsel is the means of his becoming refuge for you.
00:02:15.000 | This is dynamic. This is interactive.
00:02:18.000 | God's word are his counsels to us, and his word is the path of life, not death,
00:02:26.000 | the path of safety, not destruction, and therefore he's becoming a refuge for us
00:02:31.000 | all the time as he speaks to us.
00:02:35.000 | Or treasure.
00:02:38.000 | How does his being a treasure for us relate to his being a counselor for us?
00:02:43.000 | Well, because you don't only treasure God because of his character,
00:02:50.000 | righteous and just and true and gracious and loving and wise.
00:02:57.000 | You also treasure him because of his teachings, his words.
00:03:03.000 | Remember the soldiers who came back, and they said, "Why didn't you bring Jesus?"
00:03:07.000 | And the soldiers said, "Nobody speaks like this man."
00:03:11.000 | His disciples were constantly jaw-dropping at the kinds of things he said.
00:03:17.000 | His counsels were stunningly satisfying and beautiful.
00:03:22.000 | So he's our treasure, not only in the way he is, but the way he talks to us.
00:03:28.000 | And so being our counselor intersects with his being our treasure.
00:03:34.000 | And the same thing is true about his sovereignty.
00:03:38.000 | God is sovereign over you.
00:03:41.000 | Sometimes in spite of you, he just cuts you off at some stupid direction
00:03:47.000 | you're going and you didn't approve of it at all, and he rescues you.
00:03:52.000 | Other times he exercises his authority and sovereignty through his counsel to you.
00:04:01.000 | God uses means as well as acting sovereignly apart from means.
00:04:10.000 | So the first seven verses are first, "Preserve me, O God.
00:04:16.000 | Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
00:04:19.000 | Preserve me, O God."
00:04:20.000 | And then four declarations and exaltations.
00:04:26.000 | "You're my refuge, my safe place. You're my sovereign, my Lord.
00:04:32.000 | You hold my lot, and you are my treasure supreme.
00:04:37.000 | I have no good apart from you, and you're my counselor."
00:04:42.000 | Now, what in the flow of that worship happens to his petition?
00:04:50.000 | When you get to verse eight, "I have set the Lord always before me."
00:04:55.000 | That's what he's been doing.
00:04:56.000 | "Because he is at my right hand, this refuge, this sovereign, this treasure,
00:05:01.000 | this counselor, because he's at my right hand, I shall not be shaken."
00:05:08.000 | That's not a request anymore. That's an affirmation.
00:05:12.000 | So the way I understand verses one through eight is that what begins as an aching longing,
00:05:20.000 | "Preserve me, O God," ends with, "I will not be shaken.
00:05:25.000 | I will be preserved. I will be kept. He will not let me be lost."
00:05:31.000 | And the pathway from the petition, aching and longing, to the assertion and the affirmation
00:05:38.000 | and the confidence is heralding and exalting in what God is for us.
00:05:45.000 | And I would simply commend to you that way of praying.
00:05:51.000 | Because almost all my beginnings in prayer begin the way his does.
00:05:56.000 | I seldom begin a worship service or a time of prayer in solitude red hot for God.
00:06:04.000 | Totally confident. This is going to go well. This day, he's in charge.
00:06:08.000 | It's going to go right. He'll give me his guidance.
00:06:10.000 | My prayers don't begin that way. They begin, "Help!"
00:06:14.000 | Which is the way he began, right? "Preserve me, O God."
00:06:19.000 | And then what do you do? You stop and wait for confidence to happen?
00:06:24.000 | No. You do what he did. You do what he did.
00:06:28.000 | You declare. You can do it alone. You can do it in a small group.
00:06:32.000 | You can do it as you sing. You declare what he is for you.
00:06:37.000 | And you exalt in what he is for you.
00:06:40.000 | And after you do that through safe refuge and highest treasure and sovereign Lord
00:06:46.000 | and trusted counselor, confidence is rising.
00:06:51.000 | That's the way the psalm flows, it seems to me.
00:06:56.000 | Beautiful. We are going to return tomorrow with a really important question that Christians face,
00:07:02.000 | which is how angry should we be about cultural sins like abortion
00:07:07.000 | and the Planned Parenthood videos that we see online?
00:07:10.000 | We don't want to become raving lunatics.
00:07:13.000 | What we certainly cannot be content is mute observers of such public injustice.
00:07:18.000 | So how should we vent our anger in a way that is helpful for our friends to see?
00:07:23.000 | I'll ask John Piper that question tomorrow.
00:07:25.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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