Episode Transcript
I want to read two Psalms this morning. First Psalm 57 and then Psalm 108. We haven't so much time this morning, but I'm sure the Lord will help us to say what needs to be said in the time we have. I'm going to read these psalms in full.
Be merciful unto me, oh God, be merciful unto me for my soul taketh refuge in thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I take refuge until these calamities be overpassed. I will cry unto God most high, unto God that performeth all things for me. He will send from heaven and save me when he that would swallow me up reproacheth. God will send forth his loving kindness and his truth. My soul is among the lions. I lie among them that are set on fire. Even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword. Be thou exalted, oh God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be above all the earth. They have prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down. They have digged a pit before me. They are fallen into the midst thereof themselves. My heart is fixed oh God. My heart is fixed. I will sing, yea, I will sing praises. Awake up my glory, awake psalter and harp. I myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto thee oh Lord among the peoples. I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy loving kindness is great unto the heavens and thy truth unto the skies. Be thou exalted, oh God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be above all the earth.
And then Psalm 108. My heart is fixed, oh God. I will sing, yea I will sing praises even with my glory. Awake, psalter and harp. I myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto thee, oh Lord among the peoples and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy loving kindness is great above the heavens and thy truth reacheth unto the skies. Be thou exalted oh God, above the heavens and thy glory above all the earth, that thy beloved may be delivered. Save with thy right hand and answer us. God hath spoken in his holiness. I will exalt, I will divide Shechem and mete out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the defense of my head. Judah is my sceptre. Moab is my washpot. Upon Edom will I cast my shoe. Over Philistia will I shout. Who will bring me into the fortified city? Who hath led me unto Edom? Hast not thou cast us off, oh God and thou goest not forth, oh God with our hosts. Give us help against the adversary. For vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly. For he it is that will tread down our adversaries.
Now this of course is the modernist's paradise. They have found here a portion of scripture which they believe some stupid scribe, some dimwitted believer in past generations in a dozy haze, heat hazy afternoon sort of copied the 57th Psalm unfortunately into the 108th and thus we have it, but this is not so. The same thing of course happens with Obadiah. Nearly the whole of Obadiah is found in Jeremiah.
The fact is that whenever God repeats himself, it is with very great importance. It is vitally important and necessary for us to always know why does God repeat himself. With a few minor changes, we have these verses of Psalm 108:1-5 also in Psalm 57. There is a repetition here and evidently the key to both these psalms and indeed the experience of the psalmist and the triumph of the psalmist is found in these verses. My heart is fixed, oh God.
Now it is a vitally important thing to have a fixed heart. The issues of life are all bound up with the heart, not with the head. Even those who have the most marvelous brain and the most perceptive, shrewd, brain power,
rational kind of outlook, still the issues are the issues of the heart. All the major things in our lives come out of our hearts and the most important thing of all is to have a heart fixed. What a terrible thing it is when we have a heart that's all the time straying, an unstable heart.
A few weeks ago I spoke about foundations. No one can know true foundations without having their heart fixed. You will be as unstable as it is possible to be unless God can get your heart fixed. Now, there are those who believe that the only way your heart can be fixed is when everything is lovely in the garden, when all is peace and when the sun shines and when there's a kind of abundant harvest, obvious all round, ability to get it in, garner it and so on, then we feel our hearts can be fixed. This of course, is totally opposite to the truth.
The fact of the matter is that our hearts are often the most sort of unstable when we least realize it. In other words, when our circumstances are all right, when we have no problems, when everything seems to be marvelous, we think that our hearts are fixed, but they're not fixed at all. It's when the storms come, when the battle rages, when we're in darkness, when all the pressures start to build up, that we find out whether our heart is fixed or not fixed or we find out what our heart is really centred on. If our treasures are on earth, then when everything starts to rock down here, our heart becomes depressed, unstable, weak as water, but if our treasure is Christ, is in heaven, then of course whilst we feel all the pressures down here and the problems down here, we have a heart that's fixed. Deep, deep down in the center of our being, we have an anchor and that anchor holds.
Now both these psalms are psalms of battle. At a first reading, you might think Psalm 108 is a psalm of triumph. You will say, "Why, just look at this psalm. What a wonderful experience the psalmist has got." All that God had promised to the children of Israel, to Moses, this psalmist is seeing. He says, Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine. Those are both on the east side of the river Jordan. He says, Philistia is mine. Even Joshua didn't manage to subdue the Philistines. Edom is mine. Joshua didn't manage to defeat the Edomites. Moab is mine. I mean it's amazing really. You would think at a first reading why the experience of this psalmist is to walk on the mountaintops. He's having a marvelous time. Everywhere he sees fulfillment, everywhere he sees victory. But you look a little more carefully, you get the key of course to the psalmist experience in the cry suddenly of his heart as the curtain is drawn aside in verse 12, give us help against the adversary for vain is the help of man and then he says, has not thou cast us off oh God and thou goest not forth, oh God with our hosts? So evidently the actual experience at the time of writing the psalm is one of defeat, forsakenness, a sense of alienation, a sense of being in the dark, a sense of the Lord being a long way away.
That's why he says in verse six, that thy beloved may be delivered. Save with thy right hand and answer us. We turn back to Psalm 57, of course, and we find in Psalm 57 that it is more apparent. Be merciful unto me oh God, be merciful unto me, for my soul taketh refuge in thee until these calamities be overpassed. Calamities evidently are his experience here. Actually the word, as you'll see in your margin, could be wickednesses, something terrible here. Then he says, my soul is among lions. Verse four, I lie among them that are set on fire. Sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword. Verse six, they've prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down. They've digged a pit before me. Now this is the experience of the psalmist. So dear child of God, here we come to our first great lesson this morning. Far from trials, battle and problems meaning that we cannot be established. It is exactly the opposite. Right in the midst of such experience, we can find our hearts founded and fixed on God.
The very weaknesses, the storm, the problems will show up. If our heart is fixed it will mean we come out stronger. It's not that we haven't got weaknesses, but rather like every storm finds out a tree, the tree blows, its branches seem to bend. If there's a weakness in its roots, it's found out. But after the storm has gone, the roots go deeper and stronger than ever. The tree is more prepared for the next storm. Now, some of you who know the more exposed parts of our coasts on the western side of this country, the west country or parts of Wales or Western Ireland, or in Western Scotland, you've seen trees, which it is almost a joke. I mean I've stood there, looked at trees which are shorn as if some invisible giant has come with shears and sheared the tree, the line of the trees in line with the hill, stunted. And that's because the gales that have blown on that tree have not been able to root it up. They've shaped it, but the tree is alive. Its roots have gone right deep down. Every gale has only meant it's stronger. Now that can be so with the Christian, the storms, the problems, the difficulties that come, the manifold trials that James talks about being found in and so on, all these things come to us in order that we might discover the only real key in life, and indeed for eternity. My heart is fixed.
Now, I want just to point out three simple things about this which may help you. The first is this is a position of absolute faith. You might almost say faith in the dark. Now, faith does not mean that you do not have doubts.
You have doubts in your mind, but not doubts in your heart. How wonderful it is when the Lord said, “and does not doubt in his heart.” That saved me, you know. I used to think that this meant that you should never have a doubt and that when faith came to you from God, God given faith, you didn't have a single doubt. But I've always been distressed by my unbelieving mind. Any work that I've seen God do, any provision that I've seen made, my mind has been filled with doubts. It can't happen. It won't happen. So-and-so's not here or the other's not there or this or that or the other. But when God has given real faith deeper than all those that sort of unrest in one's brain, deeper than it all, has been the certainty that God is in this thing. “Shall not doubt in his heart.”
Now, this is a position of absolute faith. My heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed. No matter how great the conflict is, the heart has been fixed and it is a position of faith. Now, it doesn't matter where you turn here, you must see this. I mean, for instance in Psalm 57, he says they are fallen into the midst thereof themselves, verse six.
Now I can only believe from what he said before that he couldn't have been sitting there and saw it all happen. This was the position of faith. While he says, my soul's amongst the lions, their teeth are like spears and arrows. Their tongue like a sword. They're set on fire. Oh, what a terrible thing it is when the devil gets into people, what a terrible thing. Decent people become demons, sometimes when Christians are influenced by the enemy. Why, what cruel people we can be, what terrible things we can say. Set on fire by hell, says James, a tongue set on fire by hell.
But look what the psalmist says. He takes a position of faith. They're fallen into the midst thereof themselves, long before it's happened. He's taken a position of faith. I'm not going to fight this thing. I'm not going to touch this thing. Like Haman, they will hang themselves on their own gallows. He says, again, I will cry unto God, verse two, unto God that performeth all things for me, a position of faith. God, that performeth all things for me. Then he says, in faith, he will send from heaven and save me. When he that would swallow me up, reproacheth. God will send forth his lovingkindness and his truth. Now, many of us have a terrible habit, which I would like just to mention this morning, and that is we always look at the dark side before ever we can see the light side.
We rumble through every possible dark part of our circumstances. We go round and round and round, drag it all out, gaze at it, dissect it, analyze it. The devil has a field day. It's a terrible thing. The psalmist has learned a secret here. He refuses first to mention his circumstances or his problems until first he's taken a position of faith. Now that is the only way you can deal with problems. You must first take a position of faith. Otherwise, once you've looked at the problem, you find yourself in one of those melancholy cesspools, which you can't get out and actually if anyone tries to help you get out, you sort of have a kind of bitter and twisted sort of attitude toward them. Can't you see that this is a problem I’m in? The first thing we must do is to take a position of absolute faith.
Then we can look at our problem and then we can look at our problems realistically, not in one of those silly ways, but realistically. My soul is among lions. There are some of course who would say that it isn't Christian, this kind of attitude, talking about other people like this. My soul is among lions there, but the psalmist was no fool. He saw the devil behind flesh and blood. He saw what was behind all this. He was quite realistic, as many of the Old Testament saints, a good deal more realistic than many evangelicals, looked things squarely in the eye and called them by their names. Now that's a good thing. It's a position of faith.
Now, it doesn't matter where we turn, we find it. You turn to Psalm 108, it's still a position of faith here. Perhaps even more remarkable there than even in Psalm 57.
He says in verse seven, “God hath spoken in his holiness, I will exult!” What a position of faith. God hath spoken in his holiness. In other words, the psalmist attitude was this, because God is holy, he cannot lie. God hath spoken in his holiness, and so he goes on, I will exult. And then here it is, I will divide Shechem. I will mete out the valley of Sukkot. Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine. Ephraim also is the defense of mine head, Judah is my sceptre, Moab is my washpot and so on. What a thing. Do you know what David is basing all this on? What God said 400 years earlier to Moses, “All this is yours.”
So he simply says, in the midst of evidently this kind of battle, he says, all right, here I am. God hath spoken. Let them rage. Let them do a war dance all around me. Let them do what they like. God hath spoken, I will exult. And then he states clearly what God has said. Now, that is the first thing I just want to say this morning. It's a position of absolute faith. If you want your heart fixed, remember this, it's not going to come through feeling. It's a position of faith. Some people want to feel marvelous. Well, woe betide you. Woe betide you if all you want to do is feel marvelous, everyone wants to feel marvelous. The world wants to feel marvelous. That's why they have this continual sort of pop stuff. They want to feel marvelous, joyful, turn on the radio, blah, blah, blah. It all goes up and they feel happy and so on.
And there are many believers who just like that and they would treat the meetings like that too. They just want the gatherings to be that kind of shot in the arm. Oh, we feel marvelous now, wow. Now I'm not saying of course that we shouldn't feel marvelous and that we shouldn't meet with God, but what I am saying is this, that woe betide us, if we think the feelings are the thing that count, the determining factor in it. That's not so. It is God's work and God's purpose, God's word, which are the foundation for our absolute faith. May I just simply say this, you can never have faith unless you have an objective.
You can never have faith unless you've got an objective. Once you start to turn and say, where's my faith? Where's my faith? I ought to have more faith. You'll find you've got less, less and less. You paralyse it. The only way you and I can have faith is by seeing someone. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finish of our faith. Then we get faith. It's always objective. First we see, see what he's done. We see what he's said. We see where he is, and then we have faith. Now that leads me to the second thing I just want to say about your heart being fixed. There are three things that I think are essential in having a fixed heart, and the first is this. It's fixed on Christ, fixed on Christ. The apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:21 for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
In other words, to live was Christ, to die was more of Christ and that was the whole philosophy of the apostle. His heart was fixed. So he comes to those great catalogs of necessities and persecutions and trials and problems and he says, don't worry about them. All they're doing is bringing me nearer to the place where I love more of Christ. He writes that great letter of Philippians, which I've quoted and says a bit later on, I count everything but loss that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Then he goes on and says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. His heart is fixed. Fixed where? Fixed on Christ.
You can't find God's foundation until you find that it is Jesus Christ. We can be fixed on things. We can even be fixed on teachings. And then when the teachings get a knock from one quarter or another, we wobble. Sometimes we're fixed on the fellowship, on the fellowship of God's people and when we begin to see what some of them are like, we start to wobble. Sometimes we are fixed on some particular friend and when that friend lets us down, our faith collapses in a heap. We must have hearts fixed on Christ, solidly founded on Christ. My heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed. What a lot there is that one could say about this. We've already been reminded that the Lord is always in the centre. The supremacy and centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ is one of the most tremendous subjects in the whole word of God.
When dear John, looking in the wrong direction, heard a voice behind him which told him to turn round and look in the right way, when he turned round before ever God showed him all the terrible things that were going to come in history. He saw the Lord, the risen, glorified, ascended, triumphant Lord in the midst of the churches. The key to their going through was whether they kept their eyes on him, whether they gave him his place. Don't you think that's the tragedy of church history? We've dethroned Christ, we've got a kind of figurehead monarchy, a democratic monarchy. He just stamps things. He just signs things that we decide. We've dethroned him, devalued his headship and authority. And every great movement of the spirit of God in church history has been when the Lord Jesus has got his place again and there's been a divine flow from heaven. It’s so with your life, well, I won't say I can bet, but I can be absolutely certain about this. If there's anyone whose heart has grown cold in this room this morning, you will discover it is because you have devalued the headship and lordship of Jesus Christ in your life.
You think about it, you will find you have dethroned him. All coldness of heart comes from putting the Lord Jesus out of his place, not giving him his place, whether personal or corporate. My heart is fixed. But what a wonderful thing it is to have a heart fixed on Christ. Then what happens? I think of brother Watchman Nee, 20 years imprisoned, 17 years in solitary confinement and just when the man comes out, like the apostle Paul, beheaded. Watchman Nee, he's not beheaded but dies. Someone says, what a waste. What a waste of a life. What a waste of a ministry. Why did God keep him alive for 20 years in terrible affliction and suffering, only to let him come out for one month and die alone without another person near him? It was brother Nee who wrote and spoke so much upon the subject of waste. God has a habit of making real our ministry in our own lives. It was he who said, God dares to put his greatest ambassadors in chains. You say why? Because there is another world. Because there is an eternity and because this life is really, even in all the work we do, and all the glory of triumph that we see, is but the kindergarten to service beyond. My heart is fixed. How could anyone go through all that if their heart was not fixed? How could they go through it all if their heart was not fixed on Christ? Supposing their heart was fixed on things? Supposing their heart was fixed on others?
Only when it's fixed on Christ can you go through. And then I would like to say too that I think our heart must be fixed on the work, the finished work of Jesus Christ. Christ crucified, if you want to put it in its proper way. Upon his actual work, what he did, his finished work, how interesting it is that the apostle Paul again says in Romans five and verse two, he says, well, I'll read verse one, being therefore justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.
Your heart cannot be fixed if it's fixed only in a sentimental, forgive me if it sounds wrong, devotional way upon the Lord. Your heart can only be fixed on the Lord if it's based on solid truth, not your love for him, not your whims or fancies, your ups and your downs, but upon the fact that he has apprehended you through his finished work, that you have been torn out of darkness, out of the powers of darkness and delivered, translated, transferred into the kingdom of his dear son. That is the solid ground under our feet. All may change, but Jesus never, and neither will the effects and consequences of his finished work ever, ever deteriorate.
You can stand if they blow the whole world up. You can stand on the finished work of Jesus Christ and go through one moment, the great explosion and the next moment in the presence of God. You won't be too sorry for it. You won't have perhaps liked all the buildup, but when it's happened, you'll say, what isn't this wonderful? Here we are just like that faster than it took to get home from work and we're here in the presence of the Lord forever. Fixed on his work. Oh, and you see it doesn't matter what happens. God's word is the expression of God's work and therefore you see we can hold to God's word.
And then I must say, fixed on his purpose. Yes. What is this purpose? The psalmist had it. David who wrote these psalms says it in Psalm 27. One thing, have I asked, that will I seek after, that I made dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
Of course we're going to be up and down if we are people who are supposed to be builders and don't even know what we are building. There are many who would serve the Lord and they don't even know what the objective of the Lord is. They just think it is to get people saved or to get people serving. But there's much more than that. God is building a habitation. God is producing a bride. God is building a city which has the foundations. We must be clear as to God's purpose and this gives us a fixation, a right fixation. It gives us, we are able to be fixed on him in such a way that, come thick or thin, we know he's going to win. Why, I know that doesn't depend on Lance Lambert, the building of the city. Thank God, I hope I shall be in it by the grace of God, but I know that the city will be built whether I'm there or not.
It is the very purpose of God. That gives me a fixation, a good fixation. Now, some people have got the wrong kind of fixation and here's a good one. My heart is fixed.
And so I must just leave with you this last thing. What are the consequences of this position? They're wonderful. First you find it is refuge. Refuge. Once your heart is fixed in the right way, then your soul taketh refuge. My soul, taketh refuge in thee, yea, in the shadow of thy wings, will I take refuge until these calamities be overpassed. He says it again and again. When your heart is fixed in the right place, you know where to hide. You can [unintelligible] as it were into your deep shelter in Christ and there you can be absolutely safe. Refuge. And then I believe there can be worship. Now, here is a very important point.
The consequences of a heart that's fixed is worship. My heart is fixed. Oh God, my heart is fixed. I will sing, yea, I will sing praises to thee. Awake, psaltery and harp and so on, awake my glory and sing. Awake, psaltery and harp. I will get up right early, I'll meet the Lord because my heart is fixed. No matter what the storm is, what's happening around, my circumstances may appear to tell me that what I believe is a lie, but I know my heart is fixed and in the end, if it takes a lifetime, the truth will come out and all these circumstances and pressures and things which are but a lie will disappear like a dream in the night. The worship of faith, this worship of faith is simply marvelous when you look at it, it doesn't matter really what of the two Psalms you see, you find it everywhere.
It's just the worship of his heart. Fancy speaking in this way, in the midst of this storm even says, thou hast cast us off oh Lord, thou goest not forth with us, against the enemy. And yet here he is saying, I'm going to sing, I'm going to sing. He seems so stupid in one way, but his heart is fixed. Because his heart is fixed, he can do nothing else. I've spoken about the declaration effect. When your heart is fixed, you can declare with your lips the truth. Always do that. Never hide it in your heart. Say it with your lips, say it. I don’t know what it is, but when you say with your lips, what you believe in your heart, there is an assurance that comes to you.
Remember that. Always say with your lips what you believe in your heart because assurance, his spirit witnesses with your spirit to the truth. So don't be one of these [who] feel that you've got to be terribly decent and modest and it's all inside. You've got to declare things with your lips even on your own when there's no one else to hear. Say it with your lips, declare with your lips and don't “think” so to say “I think somehow or other maybe, maybe I'm going to come through or I think in the end probably the Lord will triumph in my circumstances or it's just possible that this will all work out for good if God comes in,” oh, you are just giving over to the devil. You might as well keep that to yourself, all that kind, because it only…a pall of death comes on you afterwards.
I've tried it again and again, but it's true, a pall of death comes on you after you've said that kind thing and you wonder what's wrong, what's wrong? You think, oh dear, the enemy seems to be so strong, but you've just given the enemy ground and I found again and again that when you resist the enemy, and said, “this is not the truth. The truth is this,” joy comes into your heart and you can't understand it because the circumstances are just the same, but there's joy in your heart because the Holy Spirit has said this is truth. Do you honestly believe that the Holy Spirit is going to witness to something which is a lie? “Maybe, possibly this might happen”. The Holy Spirit says, “Oh my goodness, what can I do? I can't commit myself to that.” But if that person steps out and declares something with their lips, the Holy Spirit says, oh, this is terrific. This is wonderful. This is truth. God hath spoken in his holiness, I will exult. And then lastly, stir up your spirit. Now you wonder where on earth is that? Well, here it is in Psalm 57 and verse eight, awake up my glory. Psalm 108:1, my heart is fixed, oh God, I will sing, yea, I will sing praises even with my glory. Now of course, some have had great problems over this. What on earth? How do you sing with your glory? Now think about it. How do you sing with your glory?
Or again, think about this. How do you awake your glory? You haven't got any glory. I haven't. How do you awake your glory? Of course, this was an old Semitic phrase for your spirit, your glory. There's nothing else that's your vessel for glory. That's the only part of you that's the same substance as God, and the God of glory is going to fill it one day with glory, your change from glory to glory is by the Lord, the spirit. It's your spirit. So stir up your spirit. Don't let your soul sit on your spirit with all its moods and opinions and outlook and views and everything leaning on your own understanding. Don't let your soul sit on you like some foggy November morning. Stir up your spirit. Get on top. Your salvation means that you have spirit, soul, and body, not soul, spirit and body.
So sometimes remember this, say to your spirit, awake my glory. You may not feel there’s much glory there, but say, awake my glory. That in itself is faith, isn't it? When you think of it saying to yourself, when you can hardly open your eyes and you've got so many problems that they could weigh you down and you say to yourself, awake my glory. It's almost comedy, but it isn't because that spirit of yours is the vessel of glory. You can sing with your glory, you can sing with your spirit. So just remember, my heart is fixed. It'll never be fixed if you make too much of your soul, but if only you'll put the emphasis on your spirit, your heart will be fixed. May God help every one of us so that all our hearts are fixed on him. And now, Lord, we just commit ourselves to thee.
Oh Lord, wilt thou help us? All of us Lord, there's not one of us that does not need to have this kind of fixation. Now, Lord wilt thou we pray, bring each one of us to that place where our hearts are fixed on thee. Lord, do this work and may we know what it is to find refuge and to be a worshiper and to declare what we believe and above all to be those who stir up our glory. We thank thee Lord thou art changing us into the same image as thyself, from glory to glory as by the Lord thy spirit. Go on with that work we pray, we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
