Be Angry At Sin, Offer Right Worship, And Have Joy And Peace

Psalm 4. eyes, Salem. But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent, Salem. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, who will show us some good. Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. So in peace I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. God in heaven, how lofty is it that we could have your perfect word open up before us and that you would call us, your church, to proclaim it to ourselves and to the world.

It's too lofty for me, God, and it quite honestly frightens me each time I'm burdened to do it. Lord, I know without your aid, this is all for naught. So Lord, I just in humility ask that you might give your spirit the utterance I need so that your word can be properly and accurately declared. And Lord, I pray that you would press upon the heart of the church before me that just as much as I'm weak in giving the word, they are weak in receiving the word.

So I ask, Lord, that you would give them a desire even in this moment to seek your face, to seek your spirit, to enable them to hear what your word would say. God in heaven, despite my weakness, I pray that you would help them, Lord, to hear what they need to hear in order to come along in their faith and their salvation. Those who are not saved that are sitting before me, I pray, Lord, that you might use this to save them, even in this moment, and that we would be all growing in salvation together.

Lord, again, we are in need, and we know that in our need we are thankful when you meet our need, and so let us worship you now in thanksgiving as you have called us to do. We praise you this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. So we're going to finish up Psalm 4 today. If you remember last week, we really highlighted the fact that this is a psalm of distress.

And distress is something that we all know, that we're all aware of, that we all feel in different ways. Distress is something that we are all acquainted with. Even in this moment, most of us would say in some degree we are distressed in one way or the other. And so it can be something as we approach this psalm, as we realize that this speaks directly to us, directly to us in our own distress.

This is a psalm of distress. As David says, answer me when I call. You have given me relief when I was in distress. But we also said that this is a psalm that ends itself in that distress being met by God being our refuge. And if you remember, this is where we're going. In verse 8, the psalmist says, in peace I'll both lie down and sleep.

You see, keep your mind on distress as he says this. He says, in peace, I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. And so we're getting to this point to where although we are, we have a life of distress, there is a point in which we can at the end of the psalm with the psalmist say, in peace, I will lie down. Despite my distress, I will lie down in peace.

So even in your own life right now, in your own distress, it is important as a Christian you say to yourself, you know to yourself, that this is meant for me to feel at peace, at ease in the Lord. That this is meant for me to be pointed to the Lord. And this is where we're going, this is where we're headed. And if you remember last week, we detailed, we looked at verses 1 through 3. and we see it really before we get to there um this idea that there's distress but yet there is um security there is um there is safety in god and remember it just again continue this theme of look into psalm 2 and remember at the very end of psalm 2 we the the last line there is blessed are all those who take refuge in him and so we talked about how this psalm 4 is the individual who has taken refuge in the sun, has kissed the sun, if you remember we talked about that.

And so although I have distress, I take refuge in Jesus, he proves to be my refuge. And if you listen carefully, if you keep an ear out for it, you might be able to hear echoes of Jesus in Matthew 11, in which he says in verse 25, well we'll go verse 20, we'll go to 28, when he says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. See, there's the son inviting the world who is heavy laden with their sin, heavy laden with their rebellion. He says, come to me. And if I may use Psalm 2 language, kiss me. Come to me and I'll give you rest. I'll give you security.

Stop rebelling against God. Stop being in your sin. I am the one who brings you out from your sin, out from your rebellion. I will give you rest. So Psalm 4, again, as we talked about, is one who has taken Jesus up on his offer. And he has kissed the sun And this is a psalm in which in our distress when we are one who find ourselves taking refuge in Jesus we can truly say that I will lie down and sleep in safety And so this is a psalm for those who have taken Jesus upon his offer.

But yet, even in the kingdom of God, there is distress, isn't there? It's not like before you came to Christ, you were in distress. Now that you're in Christ, there's no longer distress. But we talked about that very realistically here, is that you will face distress in the kingdom of God. You remember the psalmist, he even says, what's the source of this distress?

He says, I'm in distress here. And what's the reason for it? Well, if you remember in Psalm 4, verse 2, he labels that. He says, O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? You see, these sinners did not like him for his righteousness.

That's the whole nature of coming to Jesus, right? So he could be made righteous and live righteously through Christ. And here we see that this is the source of his distress because people see his righteousness and they don't like him for it. And so we can see that him coming into Christ, finding refuge in Jesus, being righteous in him, is actually the source of his distress.

And beloved, that will be a lot of times what we face as Christians, especially as we come increasingly to encounter a very pagan world. But we see that very source of his distress is the very essence or the assurance that God hears him in his cry because of distress when he says in verse 3, but know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears me when I call.

And so we concluded that this is a psalm right here. Psalm 4 is the one who has kissed the son, who has been made righteous because of the son, but who faces distress because of his righteousness in the son. And so how does he deal with the distress? How do we deal with distress in light of being in Christ? Well, the first thing we looked at last week was the fact that he cries out to God and God hears and acts based off of the righteousness that he has given this one.

And so as we conclude that thought and we go into this sermon, we must ask ourselves, what's the nature of your distress? Your distress isn't because you're living in sin, is it? Because certainly the world, they live in sin. And in their sin, they receive all sorts of distresses. And what are we to do in that moment? if you are an unbeliever in this moment and you're considering your distress and you know it's because of your disobedience to God what are you to do well find rest in Jesus and for those of you who are in Jesus and you are facing distress what kind of distress what does that look like is it as a result of your sin but here in the psalm it's a result of his righteousness and so what are we to do when we are distressed as Christians because of our righteousness how are we to act well the baseline is is that we cry out to God and we know and we are assured that he hears us because of our righteousness that we have been given in Jesus that is the baseline and we covered that last week and now with that baseline established we are then able to act in a way that glorifies God in our distress and as we'll see that God actually is the one who places that distress in your life to produce something very good in your life that's not a Joel Osteen statement okay that the distress in your life is truly meant by God to produce something very, very beneficial, full of life.

And that's what we're headed to. Heading to. And what do we do? What do we do with our distress? Well, the first thing we're told in verse four, with the baseline secure that we cry out to God, he answered us, we're assured of that because of the righteousness that's found in Christ, we are able to then be angry. It's not a pious thing that when something bad happens to you because of someone's sin, someone's sinning against you, you just ignore it.

That's not a pious thing. It's not an okay thing to do. Whenever we're in distress because people are sinning against us, you are called to be angry about that sin. You're called to be angry about that situation. It is not pious to try to ignore it and to say, well, I'm just not going to feel anything here. No, we are called to be angry.

But you see, our anger is very different, it better be at least, than the world's anger? What does the world do in their anger? Well, let's go back to Psalm 2 again, because that is a common theme I've been doing. Look at verse 1. Why do the nations rage? The world rages.

They're angry. What are they trying to do? In verse 3, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. See, the world and their anger is in rebellion against God, and so their anger is wanting to be autonomous away from God. Their rage is because they want to be autonomous away from God. They do not like God.

See, our anger is not like the world though. See, their anger leads them in sin or to sin. It's because of sin. What is our anger? What does our anger look like? It's pointed at sin.

Our anger is directed at sin. See, we're the ones who have been made righteous. We're the one that's living righteously because of Christ. And so when we get angry, it is always, always, always pointed, directed at sin. If your anger is not directed at sin, you are angry in an unrighteous way. If in your anger, you cannot see how it's directed at sin constructively, then that means that you are in a autonomous self-righteous anger that has to do with rebellion against God.

And it's very easy for us. Something bad happens to us and we respond in anger. And if we just take a moment, we'd see that although it responds because of what they've done, we are using it now in an unrighteous way. It's not directed at sin and it has all sorts of chaos involved with it Now the one who is sinned against distressed over that sin they respond angry over it, but that anger is directed at the sin.

In fact, the psalmist says, do not sin. This is how we act in distress over being sinned against by others. We are angry over that sin, but we do not sin ourselves. We do not sin ourselves. And so it's very important to understand that your anger is only permissible when it has its crosshairs on sin, when it has at its aim to take care of sin. Sin is poison.

It's cancer. It's awful in all its ways. It looks cute and cuddly, and the moment you get close to it, it destroys you every time. And God is very kind to us to give us something for us to be able to locate sin and get rid of it. And that thing is called anger. It's something to make us act, to be able to see, to be able to dislike something, and that is sin because of the cancer that it is.

And so those of us who have been made righteous in Christ and are acting in our righteousness because of Christ, we act this way in response to sin. We hate it, and we look at it to root it out. and so if we find ourselves clamming up the two common ways that we sit we are angry and in sinful ways we you either clam up or you explode one or the other typically right clam up don't talk don't do anything and just stew in your bitterness or you explode either way that is not it's not going to produce a destroying or getting rid of the sin that you are focused on, right? When we're doing that kind of, when we respond that way, you can, you better believe that your, your aim is not going to be at sin.

It's not going to be to take care of sin. It's going to be for other reasons, and it's going to lead to death and decay. Now, let me give you an example, or try to give you an example. um it kind of sounds high schoolerish i guess but whatever um you you hear someone's gossiping about you okay you hear someone's gossiping about you um or in my day and age it might be someone's talking trash about you right you don't like it you don't like someone gossiping about you don't like someone talking ill about you should you be angry when you hear that someone has talked has been gossiping about you.

Yes, you should be angry. There should be a level in which that is sin, and you don't like sin, and so it should cause some sort of emotive, some sort of emotion of anger against that sin, and it should be directed against that sin. And so all yet you do as you hear that you've been gossiped against, sinned against, is that in righteousness what you'll do is you'll see the person who has done it to you, and you'll want to stop that sin that they have done.

You'll want to help a brother out or a sister out in that sin and say, you have sinned. You have sinned against me. And your whole motivation is that I want to help you with that sin. But you see, in unrighteous anger, what we'll do is that our ego, our righteousness has been impaired upon, right? In unrighteousness, we'll look and we'll say that my ego has been hurt.

And so now we'll be angry against this person, not in order to help with sin, not in order to eradicate sin but because they have hurt our feelings or they have hurt my ego and so we'll be all sorts of either we'll be penting it in here we'll be holding it in with bitterness or we'll rash we'll lash out right but you see we don't have the sin itself as our aim to destroy do we we have our own our own ego in mind you see righteous anger what it does is it looks at sin and it wants to get rid of it because it recognizes it as cancer it is bad and so it's aimed at the sin for the love of the sinner and i think this is what's being said here in psalm 4 a verse 4 he says be angry do not sin and it goes on to say ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent selah you know it's interesting when you're in unrighteous anger it's very difficult for you to ponder, isn't it? It's very difficult for you to consider things and to think soberly, isn't it? When you are either pent up with all this anger or you are acting out, it is very difficult for you to take a breather and to soberly think about the situation.

But we see righteous anger, what it does is it causes us to really consider the situation to see where is the sin here and what can I do to get rid of this sin, right? And righteous anger, what it does is you consider this situation you see if someone's gossiping against you what do you consider well do they have a point in what they're saying are they right in what they're saying yes they might have done it wrongly by doing it behind my back but nevertheless are they right in what they're saying is there a sin here that I need to take care of and you'll consider how can I best approach this brother or sister in love to get rid of the sin right you will ponder you will consider you will do what's right you will do what's righteous the best of your own ability you see again this is an anger that is focused upon the sin to get rid of it, and it causes you to be sober-minded and to consider and to think. But again, unrighteous anger, you're not able to do that.

If you're keeping it all inside, you're not going to be considering the situation, how best to honor God in that situation. You're just bitter. And if you're lashing out, again, you're not thinking the situation from all different angles, trying to best understand it for the glory of God and how to handle it. Instead, you're just acting out. This idea.

And distress, this psalmist who is being sinned against. Because of his righteousness, because of his acting out of righteousness, he says how we handle distress is that we are angry over it But it a righteous anger that has its aim upon sin So I think chapter 4 verse 4 is how do we act in distress in light of Christ being our refuge Well, we act against sin. But verse 5, going moving forward, I think he says, and you worship in righteousness, you see, in distress.

You act against sin that causes that distress, and you make sure you lean into righteousness. He says in verse 5, offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. So again, we're being sinned against. It's causing distress. And the way we act is to act against that sin and we then, in verse 5, lean into righteousness with what he says, right sacrifices.

Notice how he says, and put your trust in the Lord. In this psalm, I think he's dealing with someone who's sinning against them, it's causing distress. And this person who's sinning against them, it's an unbeliever, it seems like. It's someone who's, you're not gonna be able to reason with them and say, brother or sister, you're sinning against Christ when you do this against me.

It's someone who's going to continue doing it and he's not gonna be able to stop it. And so he says, put your trust in the Lord, even when it looks like the distress will not go away. But what does it mean in verse five? Offer right sacrifices. We gotta ask ourself, what does it mean to have wrong sacrifices? What is wrong sacrifices?

And I think to help us there, I think we can go to Psalm 50. I absolutely love this psalm. I probably go to it more often than I should. My mind is on it a lot. But what does it mean to have right worship and what does it mean to have wrong worship? And in our distress, right, it's important that we lean into righteousness, that we lean into correct worship.

And I think we see wrong worship, if you look at verse, again, Psalm 50, starting in verse 7. What does God say to his people, to Israel? He says, hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. And not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you, because your burnt offerings are continually before me.

But I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds, for every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

What's going on there? The Israelites were providing a sacrifice to God as if he needed it. They were sacrificing to God. They were offering sacrifices, but they're doing it to, They're doing it for him as if God needed it. Is that the way we are to worship God? Do you worship God because he needs it?

No. You do not worship God because he needs it, because he doesn't need it. So what's the answer? What is right worship? If wrong worship is sacrificing or worshiping God as if he needs it, then what is right worship? Well, God gives the answer moving in verses 14 and 15.

He says, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Right? Stop thinking, because think about it. If we are worshiping or offering sacrifices to God as if he needs it, are we doing it because we are thankful? No, we are not. If we are doing things for the Lord because we feel like he needs it, we will not be doing it from a heart of thanksgiving.

And fundamentally, God says that that is not proper worship. He says proper worship is to offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. and then flowing from that he says in verse 14 and perform your vows to the most to the most high if you look at verse 23 he says the same thing the one who offers thanksgiving as a sacrifice glorifies me to one who orders his way rightly i'll show the salvation of god so this idea that we are to sacrifice worship god in the heart of thanksgiving and all that we do our works our obedience is in light of that reality. I think it's very interesting in Romans 1, Paul, he talks about the wicked.

You know, you look at Romans, it's all about, the first few chapters, it's all about condemning sinners, okay? And his whole point is that we're all sinners. We're all sinners. And it's very interesting, at the beginning of his going off about sinners, what he says is they fail to give thanks to God. In chapter 1, I write down, yes, verse 21, the foundations of their wickedness is that they fail to give thanks, right?

That God would give his creatures all this to enjoy him in, and they would respond by failing to give thanks, and from that comes forth all sorts of wickedness. You see, the foundations of the wicked is that they fail to give thanks to God. The The foundations of the one who has been made righteous. The foundation under the godly set apart in Psalm 4 is a life of thanksgiving.

I think this is what right worship is. And notice, going back to Psalm 50, just for a moment longer, what does he say in verse 15? Remember 14, he says, offer to God, this is right worship, right sacrifice, a sacrifice of thanksgiving perform your vows to the most high and then what does he say and call upon me in the day of trouble and i will deliver you and you shall glorify me what does that do that kind of adds into our thanksgiving doesn't it we worship god properly and when we're in distress we call upon lord the lord and he rescues us and that adds more thanksgiving and so it's a cycle of proper worship and this is exactly what's going on in psalm 4 isn't it this is a righteous person who is distressed.

He's calling out to the Lord and he's saying, in your distress, this is how you are to act. You are to be against sin and you are to lean into righteousness. And how you do that is you offer right sacrifices. You offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to your God. So we can see that right worship is thanksgiving to God despite the fact that you are distressed.

You get that? Right worship to God is thanksgiving to God despite the fact that you are distressed. The distress threatens to take away a thankful heart. But right worship to God is you offer him a thankful heart despite the fact that you are distressed. So how do we lean into righteousness? How do we lean into right worship in light of the distress of the wicked, of their sin?

Well, we hate the sin, and we lean into righteousness with a thankful heart. And I think this thanksgiving, this heart of thanksgiving, this worship of thanksgiving, is only possible for the one who has been made right with God. because if you're not made right with God what's the very nature of our thanksgiving the essence of it has to be the fact that I am right with God you remember he he says what really gives him assurance that God will listen to him is he says the godly he sets apart for himself and so we are the ones who are made righteous by God and so because God has made us right this is the very heart and the attitude of thanksgiving and so no matter how much distress may be crushing down on us, we know that the eternal truth that we are made right with God and no amount of sin that someone commits against us can do anything to that. And so we have an eternal abode of thanksgiving that rests upon our hearts.

You see, the problem is, is whenever we have these stresses come upon us, these distresses, these things that people do against us and it creates distress, oftentimes the gospel can become this small and so no longer are we thankful for the very fundamentals of our faith that we have been centered we were sinners and we've been made right with god and this produces praise and worship in our hearts that has gone to the wayside instead i'm concentrated on this distress but you see here the psalmist tells us offer right sacrifices offer thanksgiving to god in your distress and put your trust in the lord beloved, even in that distress, remind yourself that God is over that distress. That God is not powerless in that distress. That distress can be used for you to fully and truly, in a better way, realize the gospel of truth.

Although the sins of the world may be crushing down upon me, I experience salvation. I experience God intimately through this. They can have a way of having a happy trust upon him. So we can tell ourselves, if you are in distress today and your heart is filled with this distress, your heart is filled with anxiety, you know what, typically your heart is not filled with this thanksgiving.

You've forgotten to preach yourself the gospel. You've forgotten to preach yourself that though you were once separated from God, you are together with God and know nothing. Man can never do anything to stop that beautiful foundational reality. And typically the distress that God allows in your life is to make that foundational truth more potent to you.

That although man lets me down, God does not. Although man sins against me, I've been forgiven of my sins by God. And if you remind yourself, preach yourself the gospel, it will show itself in reality in light of this distress. So in distress, we work against the sin that causes it and we use the distress to lean into righteousness or into right worship And now finally what is the happy result What is the happy result that we have Well look at verses 6 and 7 of Psalm 4 David says, there are many, there are many.

I think he's referring here to the sinners, to those who are his enemies. He says, there are many who say, who will show us some good? who will show us some good and it's difficult there's a little difficulties here i don't want to spend much time but you know is he is he quoting his enemies here and now he's saying lift up the light of your face upon us oh lord right i think he might be referring i don't know exactly but i think he might be quoting his enemy still and so they're saying who will show us some good they want to see some good they don't want to be distressed they don't want that they want to be shown good and they say lift up the light of your face upon us oh lord oh god but what's the definition of their good? The enemies of God, those who are not righteous, right?

What is their definition of good? Well, look at verse 7. I think it's answered there. David says, you put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. And so the unrighteous, those who are not living in light of their righteousness, those who have not been made righteous and living in light of it, those who are hating David because of his righteousness, they want good too.

And they're even asking it of God. But their good is defined a little differently than the one who is made righteous by God. Their good is circumstantial. It's good things happening to me, right? It's a good thing. They say, God, show us some good.

What is that good? When their wine and their grain abound, when their circumstances is good. Now we're all Baptists here, so we can say when their pot looks abound, when their pop abounds, right? We can see that they're good. things are good for them when their circumstances are good. Indeed, I say that they're slaves of their circumstances. So when they're distressed, there's no hope of being happy.

There's no hope of having joy because they're a slave to those circumstances. In fact, a lot of times they will sin against God when their circumstances are bad. But what's his point here? What is he saying? What's the happy result of him who is, again, righteous in Christ, righteous in God? what's the result of him what is he saying he says well you have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound notice he doesn't say you have changed my circumstances he doesn't say my circumstances are better now you know at the beginning of it he's saying help me oh lord i'm distressed and now at the end he says hey you took away my distress and now i'm happy he doesn't say that his circumstances are still distressful He still has distress crushing down on him.

He doesn't say that that goes away. But nevertheless, because he handles it in a rightful way, he can say truly that despite my circumstances, despite my distress, I can say that you have put more joy in my heart than when their circumstances are great. In other words, Christian, you're not dependent upon your circumstances for your joy. You're not. You know how, if you are, if we who are in Christ are dependent upon good circumstances to be joyful we have a very weak Christ and a weak salvation but we don't have a weak Christ and we don't have a weak salvation I was once dead in my sin he made me alive and now I have his light upon me I have his continents upon me he I have his face upon me and this puts more joy in my heart even whenever I have bad circumstances from the wicked than the wicked do when they have great circumstances.

The wicked, again, are enslaved to their circumstances. The Christian is not. You are not. So the moment you facing a distressful situation you don yield to it and say well now my joy is gone But rather you preach yourself you're right standing before the Lord, that although you might be sinning against, your sins are cleansed. And this produces an eternal joy that you are right with God, that no distress can take away, that no distress can take away.

So the happy result of the Christian is that although my life may be full of distress, and even in light of the fact because I am righteous because of Christ, that is not what I'm dependent upon to have joy in my heart. And this sort of... this sort of worldview, strong foundation, is why Christianity has always flourished and always will. because no matter what the world does to us, the worst thing that the world can do is persecute us because we are fitted by the Spirit to take what they do to us and glorify God with it. And do you know what kind of testimony we give to the world when we do that?

So although distresses may grow, our God does not become small. In fact, I would argue, and I do argue, and it's very clear, that if you are in a certain distress, even if it's because of someone doing something to you in sin. God has ordained it for your good. It is there for a purpose. You take hold of it, you're obedient to him, you remind yourselves of the beauty of the gospel, and despite the hardness of it, you say, God, you have put more joy in my heart, even in light of this distress.

But again, we must remind ourselves of the gospel. We must remind ourselves of the foundations of our standing before the Lord, that he has set apart the godly for himself, he has set apart me for himself, He has made me righteous. And that has to be beautiful to you. And if it isn't, ask, God, why is sin not as ugly as it should be to me? And why is the reality that I'm not in sin as beautiful as it should be to me?

And why am I allowed in this temporary distress, caused me to just completely be blinded to these great eternal truths? Why am I so blinded? And in that kind of challenging yourself, repenting, reminding yourself of what actually matters, you will say along with David, oh God, you have put more joy in my heart because I am made right with you. And this distress is actually pointing more to that beautiful reality.

And so we can say, and we can conclude with David in verse 8, even in our tears, even in our hardships, even in the things that people do to us that are wicked, we can say, in peace I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Beloved, he is our stronghold. He is our refuge. And he proves himself to be so in the midst of the storm.

The, um, I don't want to say this. You ever notice that, you know, a refuge, a storm shelter, is proven by the storm, right? You know that a storm shelter works whenever you are in the midst of a terrifying storm. You go in the shelter, and it's completely peaceful in there. So a storm shelter is proven by when the storm comes, and you are protected in it, right?

You think of those preppers, right? You ever see those preppers? Those guys are crazy. But they could live in their basement for about 25,000 years. They can. They have all sorts of defenses and everything, tripwires, and they have food and everything. you know those preppers who have shelters ready to to you know be able to survive the apocalypse you know that they are wanting zombies to come they are they want the end of the world to come so that they can prove their shelter They hoping for it They praying for it Oh, God, let the end come so I can prove my shelter here.

A shelter is proven when a storm comes and it protects you, right? God says he is your refuge. He says, I am your refuge. And that is proven when the storms of life come and you go into him and you say, my goodness, he is my refuge. I am safe in here. So God allows these distresses in your life so that he can prove to be your refuge to you.

We get a distress heading our way, the first thing we do is complain. Love it, that's backwards. Of course, it's not like we're like, yeah, another distress. We're not going to throw a parade for it or anything. But we have a certain sure foundation under us that if God has called me to this, it is so that I can see that he truly is who he says he is. And I'm going to experience that here in this moment, in this distress.

And when you do it, when you face it that way, when you have that kind of tenacity, when you have that kind of foundation under you, you glorify your God and you prove him to be true. So this is what's going on here in Psalm 4. This is the one, again, who has kissed the sun and made him his refuge. And in so doing, he faces many, many, many distresses.

But what does he do in that distress. He calls upon the Lord, and he is secured by the Lord. He leans into God, leans into righteousness, worships him, reminds himself of the standing he has before him, and he's angry against the sin that causes the distress, and he works against that sin. And in doing this, God shows himself to be a great refuge, a great refuge.

So this is the same kind of outlook we are to have in our distress. Because we're the ones that kiss the sun as well, aren't we? And we're the ones that are going to face distresses. It's going to happen. And if we have this foundation under us, we will endure the distresses. And in fact, God will become all the more meaningful in our eyes as we do so in obedience to him.

Let us do so all of our days. God in heaven, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you, Lord, that you truly have set apart a people for yourself. And Lord, in this age in which the wicked are there. Sin is everywhere, my God. In fact, even being in your kingdom, we can be abused because of our righteousness.

God in heaven, I pray that you would help work in our hearts to see that this is actually an opportunity for us, that the distresses in our life is an opportunity for us, for us to see the sin and hate it and be angry and to work against it. And so if we see a brother or sister in sin or what have it, that we would work against it in a godly way. And we would lean into righteousness as we lean into proper worship and remind ourselves of the beautiful gospel.

And so that we can then, despite the fact that we are distressed, we can have joy within our hearts because of this way that we have responded. Lord, I know that there's people before me, though, who are distressed, not because of their righteousness, but they're distressed because they're in sin. And I ask God that you would help them to not be fools.

That you would see that they need to repent. They need to kiss the sun. Again, not that they would have no distresses anymore, but that rather they would use that distress to honor you instead of honoring their flesh. So I pray, God, that all these things will work together for our salvation and the growing of it so that we can prove to be faithful followers of you.

And I'm so thankful that you give us opportunities that you would prove of what you have declared to be true, to be real experientially in our hearts. I thank you, Lord, for being so good to us. And so let us worship you truly today. In Jesus' name, amen.