Trusting His Deliverance

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Are you doing alright today? I’m fine, thank you. Happy in the Lord. No complaints. This old man said when he got up and they asked him how he was, “I’m fine. I always look in the obituary page, and if my name isn’t there, I go back to bed.” Well, it’s wonderful to be living for God. I love life. I enjoy it, because it’s an adventure. Every day is an adventure with your Lord. Ed Mann, my dear friend of other years, who served as President of Eastern Nazarene College used to pray, “Good morning, Lord! What are you up to today? Count me in on it.” An adventure with God, every day. Hallelujah!

It’s great to know Him, isn’t it? We’re looking at the closing verses of Psalm 37, and in verse 39, “The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. He is their strength in the time of trouble.” All that’s good about you is from God. He has given you the abilities you have, the opportunities you have. He’s kept you from ruining yourself many a time, no doubt. He is God, and all that you have is from Him. It is of the Lord.

That being so, it says, “He is their strength.” Not that He gives the strength, but He is your strength. A person becomes the source of strength. You take by faith from your Lord the strength you need to face the days and nights ahead. Now what does it say? It says the Lord shall help them and deliver them from the wicked, and save them because they trust in Him. Work back through that verse. The reason for God’s help and deliverance is not because you’re worth anything, but just because you’re trusting Him. I dare say that if you are taking care of your little grandchild, let us say, and there comes a question as to whether or not to do something, let’s say, to eat something. Now, you don’t say, “Because you’re my grandchild, I will guide you as to whether or not you may eat that article.”

The motivation is that little child is trusting you implicitly. When you say yes, it means yes. Just as though the Almighty thundered it from heaven. When you say no, it means no. So, because the trust is there, you wouldn’t for the life of you let that little child down or be disappointed. Isn’t that true? Now God says, “I’m going to help you. I’m going to deliver you, and I’m going to save you because you trust in Me.”

Conversely, if you stop trusting God, you make it difficult for Him to intervene in your life. He may, with sovereign grace, do so, but the real way to experience help, deliverance, and being saved in a situation from the wicked, is trusting in Him. Now, to trust means simply to risk the situation on the will of God. Risk the situation on the will of God, on God himself. That’s trust. “Roll thy burden on the Lord and He shall sustain Thee,” the Bible says. You take the burden, whatever it is, and you say, “Here, God. It’s yours.” And by faith, you give it to Him. He says, “I’ll help you, then, I’ll deliver you, I’ll save you, because you’re trusting Me.”

Now God makes that a rule of operation. He said to the king one day as recorded in the Old Testament, “Because you didn’t trust me but you went down to Egypt and made an alliance with Egypt, you’re going to see what will happen when the invaders come from the North. Egypt won’t help you. You didn’t trust Me, you trusted them. Now you’re going to have to pay the penalty.” It says of a certain king that he died, after having had a severe disease, and it said “in his illness, he sought not to the Lord but to the physicians, so he died and was buried with his fathers.”

You find that God says very clearly, “If you don’t want to trust Me, you’ll have to pay the price for unbelief.” It short-circuits the working of almighty God in your life. But, He says, if you’ll trust me, I’ll help you, I’ll deliver you, I’ll save you from the wicked. Why? Not because you’re any good, but because you’re trusting Me. You see, God has a reputation to maintain. “I am the Lord,” says He. “That is my name, and my glory will I not share with another.” Do you follow that?

This makes it, therefore, very simple to understand the logic of trusting God. He takes care of you in answer to your heart’s cry, not because there’s value in you, although there is. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul,” Jesus said. But because He is involved, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” said David. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul, he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Why is God leading His servant? Because He has something invested in that servant, and He’s going to see to it that the reputation of Almighty God in all of the universe is sustained as One who never fails. “Because they trust in Him.”

Now see what He’s going to do. We’ve already covered verse 39, the second part: “He is their strength.” He becomes to you the strength you don’t have. Second, it says, “The Lord will help them.” There is no substitute for doing your best. I used to tell the young people at the college, “A red-hot prayer meeting is no substitute for doing your homework. You can goof off and neglect your homework and not study, and then come to final exam and pray like everything, and God will answer your prayer. He will answer it by giving you an F. He won’t put into your mind something that you didn’t first forget.”

So, He will help, it says. There’s no substitute for doing your best. God will help the person who is sincerely seeking to serve Him, and doing his best. Don’t goof off in the name of spirituality, and then say, “Well, I trusted the Lord.” I had to deal with a very angry boy back in the early 1960’s. His father, five or six years previous to that time, had announced to the family that he was not going to work any longer but just trust the Lord. And so he sat down and read his Bible, and sang some hymns, and pottered about. He quit his job, and they just about starved. And mother went to work and took in washing, and every one of the kids that were old enough had to find odd jobs, and by dint of real, hard work, they managed to keep the family going while father was trusting the Lord.

And so this young man then came to college age and enrolled in college, but he was angry. Angry at the God his father professed to be serving. He equated his father’s behavior with Christianity. It took awhile to straighten that out. I guess we all know people who goof off in life and then blame it on spirituality. That simply doesn’t work, friends. It says “God will help them.” Help means help, not do everything. So do what you can, do all that you can, in every way you can, to obey God, and then expect Him to help you.

Then, it says deliver. We talked about that a while back. Deliver means enter into a situation and pull you out of it. It’s the fireman going into a burning building and bringing out a person who is about to be burned to death. Deliverance: that’s what God will do in a situation, even of terror, of tremendous risk and danger. He will deliver them from the wicked. There’s a repetition here, and I don’t know why the Holy Spirit put it in unless He wanted us especially to be aware of it. God will deliver you: that’s a general statement. But the fact remains that it’s a wicked old world, and God will deliver you from the wicked.

Can God keep me on a dangerous street? Yes He can. Can God keep me in an office situation where they’re finagling and scheming to get my job? Yes He can. Can God deliver me in a family situation where I’m the only Christian and everybody is picking on me and everything seems to be pointed in my direction by way of criticism? Yes He can. Can God deliver me when I’m in a heathen situation in high school or college and everybody else is hooting at the idea of being a Christian? And everybody else is sleeping around and having a high ‘ol time in sin? Can God deliver me? Yes, He can. Why? Because He’s God. And Paul says that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. And then, it says, he’ll save them. To be saved means that the danger is passed, the price has been paid, the penalty has been paid, your position is secure, and you are in the place where God wants you to be. We are seated in the heavenlies with Christ, says Paul. God has adopted us into His family. We are children of God; if children, then heirs, joint heirs with Christ.

This word save wraps that all up, and you have the ineffable joy of walking step by step with your blessed Lord, in a life that has now been delivered and you are secured by His grace, and you have a place for all eternity in His eternal purposes. Now why is all this? Not because you’re any good, not because you deserve it, because we don’t, do we? It says, because they trust in Him. How much do you trust the Lord today, dear friend? For how much can you trust Him? How much are you willing to put in His care?

Oh, we all pray when we’re burdened and in a jam; I know I do. But the real index of spiritual life and accomplishment is the point at which you are willing to place key situations and relationships in His hands. Let’s do that today, shall we?

Holy Father, in Jesus’ name, we give ourselves to Thee. We want to trust Thee completely today. We want to turn over to Thee the running of our lives and the managing of our moods, and the determination of our desires. Jesus, be Lord of all. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!