Turning Point

Dr. David Jeremiah: Well, life never is straight. It's not a straight line from here to heaven. There's ups and downs. If you charted it, you would see them. The interesting thing is that God is always with us in the same measure as He has ever been and will ever be. But when we go through the dips of life, the difficult things, we are more sensitive to His presence. It's not that God is more present with us because He could not be possibly more present with us at one time than at the other because He's perfectly present all the time. But we understand that trouble often makes us aware of His presence. I can testify to that from my own personal experience, and you'll see that in today's lesson as we open our Bibles again to the 30th Psalm.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk about Psalm 46, and the title for that Psalm is Triumph Over Trouble. I told you last week we had one more day with trouble, and this is it tomorrow. I hope you'll join us then. Five Psalms for a Flourishing Life is the book we're making available during the month of May. It is in tribute to the Psalms series that we've been sharing. We chose five of them and did a tremendous insight into the Psalms and printed it out in a gift book. It's really a great book that you'll want to have in your library, and you can have your copy for a gift of any size to Turning Point. Whatever gift you send, you simply ask for the book on Psalms, and it will be on its way to you. We have them here in our warehouse, ready to send as soon as we hear your request. Well, here is part two of Life's Ups and Downs as we finish up our discussion of Psalm 30.

Anyone who's ever been through a life-threatening experience or a difficult disease knows that when God brings you back from that disease, you just can't ever wake up any morning without thanking Him for the light of day. You can't get up any day without thanking the Lord for His goodness to you, to give you another day. You see the colors differently, and you see the beauty of His world differently, and your heart is filled with joy for the renewed opportunity to be alive.

In fact, this is what David says. He says, "Lord, You healed me, and You kept me alive." How many of you know that when God heals you or whether He doesn't heal you, if you're alive today, it's because God's keeping you alive? Every day, whether you've ever experienced a threat to that or not, you should get up and look out at the world in which He's placed you and say, "Lord God, thank You for keeping me alive through another day, through another night. I lift up my voice and my hands to You in praise for Your goodness." Notice David has gone now from hurting to healing.

Then notice the purpose for His healing, which is in the fourth verse, and we'll touch on that a little bit later. But He just says, He turns now and addresses the people, and He says, "Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name." When people have prayed for somebody who is sick and God raises them up, it's just as much their responsibility to praise God for the healing as it was for them to pray for the healing in the first place.

I know that for many of you, you've prayed for those who've been ill, but have you always been careful to give praise to God when He has healed them? Sometimes when the healing comes, the pressure's off and we forget. We're so careful to say, "Lord, if You'll do this, I'll give You praise," but then we don't often do it. David exhorts the people, "Sing praise, you His saints, and give thanks to God and remember His goodness because of His healing." Now you see the first contrast is one of going from hurting or ill health to healing, and it's kind of a long way between the two.

He goes secondly to another contrast: from hurting to healing, and now from weeping to joy. Notice what verse five says. It says, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." From weeping to joy. Now, most of the time, weeping and joy don't go together. I've noticed one exception, and that is that sometimes women cry when they're happy. I don't understand that completely, but I've seen them. "I'm just so happy." I'm trying to figure that out. I can't understand it.

But most of the time, weeping goes with sadness and joy goes with gladness. David now is talking about this big chasm that exists between the ups and the downs of weeping and joy. You can experience those things in just a moment of time. You can be filled with joy one moment and in tears the next because events change and things happen. I want you to notice two things about this little expression, this little contrast between weeping and joy.

First of all, this is an everyday truth. This doesn't even necessarily have to come from the Bible to be true, but it is true. It's good common sense that when a person is going through a difficult thing, you can usually say to that person with meaning and not be false in doing it, "It's not going to be like this forever. Just hang on, it's going to get better. Just hang on, you'll get through this." One of the great verses of the Bible, which has been a bit misinterpreted with this little phrase, but I like this misinterpretation.

Some guy was asked what his favorite verse in the Bible was, and he said his favorite verse in the Bible was this: "And it came to pass." It didn't come to stay, it came to pass. That's the way it is. A lot of people think when you go through trouble, it's forever. But the Bible says weeping comes in the nighttime, but joy comes in the morning. It is true. This is an everyday truth. I see this all the time as a pastor. Sometimes when we're paying tribute to someone that we've loved who has gone on to be with the Lord, and you look at the sadness in the faces of the family members, and you think it'll never, ever be alright with them.

But then a year later or so, you see that somehow God has healed over the open wound and He's brought back some gladness and joy. I was talking with a pastor friend of mine just recently. They've just gone through some tragic things with one of their children. His wife said, "I looked at my husband the other day and I said, I wonder if we'll ever smile again." Some of you have been through hurt so awful that you've actually wondered if you'd ever be able to smile again because it hurt so much at that moment of time.

But generally speaking, God restores it and you move through that time of weeping and God brings back the joy. He just has a way of healing. But you know, this is not just an everyday truth. This is an eternal truth. I want to explain this to you because this is a precious thought. How many of you remember in reading the Old Testament account of creation that the Bible says something if you think about it that's rather strange? After describing the creative work every day, the Bible says this: "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Now, what's wrong with that?

Isn't that upside down? Isn't that backward? Isn't it morning and evening is the first day? But in God's calendar, it's not like that. In God's calendar, He says it's the evening and the morning, and that's the first day. There's a wonderful little practical thought there if you'll just grab hold of it. How many of you know that if you start the day the night before in the thought process, in the planning process, in the thinking process, the next day will always go better? If you sit down at night and read just a little bit from the word of God before you go to bed and look over the things you're going to do the next day and say, "Lord, these are the thoughts that I have as I look at tomorrow, and just bless them." You know what'll happen? You'll go to bed that night and God will organize those things in your mind while you're sleeping, and you'll get up the next day and the evening and the morning will be the day.

I think it's important to start early with God, but maybe we should start even earlier. Maybe we should start the night before. But here's the precious truth about eternity. Right now, you and I are living in the evening time of life. But the Bible says there's going to be a morning that dawns someday, and all of the sorrow and the sadness and the difficulty that we have known in our nighttime of life is going to be all gone in the dawning of that new day when the Lord comes back.

And guess what? When He returns, there's not going to be any more ups and downs. There's not going to be any more weeping and sorrow and difficulty and challenge. He's going to heal every hurt and take away every sickness and restore every blemish, and there is going to be joy in the morning. Weeping may be ours for now, and it is probably ours. It's a wonderful thing that God has given to us. So here is this contrast from weeping to joy.

Now notice the third one. This everyday eternal truth is followed in the text by number three, and that is from prosperity to poverty. Notice what David says in verse six. Once again, he takes us on this rollercoaster experience. He says, "Now in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was in trouble." If I can take this out of the New King James language and just put it down in practical terms, what David is saying is this: "I look back on my life and there was a time in my life when I was very prosperous."

The foolishness of his prosperity is illustrated in what he said at such a time. Watch carefully and look at your Bibles. He said, "In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved." In other words, "I have now become invulnerable. Nothing can touch me. I am so prosperous that I am now in control of my life." You say, "What a foolish thing." But you know, that is where a lot of people get when they get very wealthy. They get to the place where they think, "I've got my life in control. I've got all the money I'll ever need and nothing can touch me."

But then how many of you know the cycle that goes people giving up their health to get their wealth, and then when they get their wealth, they have to give their wealth to get their health back? It kind of goes like that, doesn't it? But it's kind of foolish, isn't it, to think that prosperity would make you totally and perfectly secure? And yet that's what David said. It reminds me of First Corinthians 10:12, where we read, "Let him that thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall." What a foolish thing to think that because you have resources that you are perfectly safe. You can get one phone call from the doctor that'll blow that right out the window.

I'm not against having what you need and being successful in what you do. But the whole point of it is, if you think that makes you safe from any of the ills of life, you're just not thinking straight. I'm reminded of a man in the Old Testament who got this mixed up pretty good. His name was Nebuchadnezzar, and he was the king of Babylon, the great empire of the Babylonians. One day, according to the book of Daniel, he was walking through his palace, Daniel chapter four, verse 29. He was walking through the palace in Babylon, and this is what he said: "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?"

While the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven saying, "King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you." I read that. He was walking along and just admiring everything he said, "Look what I built. Look what I did. I did this. You know what? I did it for me. I didn't do it for anybody else. I did it for my majesty." And while the word was in his mouth, Heaven spoke and said, "You just lost the kingdom, son. It's over."

Do you remember the rest of the story? God wasn't finished with Nebuchadnezzar because He was going to use him as an illustration for all of us. If you don't believe this story, you go back and read it in the book of Daniel because this is really in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar became the world's first wolfman. He was translated into a wolfman so that he spent the next seven years eating grass out in the field like a beast. Guess what happened? At the end of seven years, he was restored just as the prophecy had been told.

I want to read to you what he said in Daniel 4:37: "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth, and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride He is able to put down." Right on, King Nebuchadnezzar. He wasn't too bright, but he learned that. Seven years of eating grass has got to teach you something. And he realized that what he had learned was that when you get puffed up with who you are in prosperity, God can bring you down in a moment.

David's talking about that very thing: going from prosperity to poverty in one day. The ups and downs of life. Did you know there's a wonderful prayer in the Bible? It's a wonderful prayer that maybe all of us ought to pray more. I think about this prayer once in a while, and I need to remind you of it often. It's found in Proverbs chapter 30, verses eight and nine, and this is what it says: "Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God."

Isn't that an interesting prayer? It's a prayer for balance. In our world today, it would be simply this: "Lord, give me everything that I need, everything You bless me with that won't get in the way of my relationship with You. But don't give me any more than that because it's not worth having the things of this life if they end up keeping you from knowing God and having eternal life forever and ever." The contrast of prosperity and poverty.

Let me give you the fourth one that's in the Psalm: the contrast from mourning to dancing. Verse 11. David says, "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness." Verse 11 is one of the main reasons why scholars believe that this Psalm goes with Second Samuel because let me tell you the rest of the story of bringing back the Ark. Do you remember that story?

David's coming back into the city with the Ark of the Covenant, and he's got the band playing and people rejoicing. He's wearing his clerical robe, his linen ephod, says the scripture. Then the Bible says this: that David danced with all of his might before the Lord. That's a really troubling passage to a lot of people. I spent a lot of time in that Old Testament text, and I looked up the word "danced," and you know what it means? It means danced.

But I want to tell you, this wasn't dancing socially. This wasn't dancing at line dance or whatever they do in a country and western stuff. This was David dancing before the Lord in exhilaration because of what God had done. He just got so overwhelmed with God's blessing and the beauty and majesty of that moment that he couldn't contain himself. David went from mourning and wearing sackcloth to dancing in the robe of gladness. Isn't life full of ups and downs? Isn't life overwhelmingly a life of extremes? Some days, it is almost more than you can handle in the context of 24 hours: the extreme emotions that we go through.

Then there's one last one. It's in the last verse, and that is from silence to singing. "To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent." This is a reminder of how many of us keep silence in spite of the fact that God has blessed us so much. The great lesson here is the lesson of God's wonderful blessing upon us when things are going well, and yet God is still there when things aren't going so well. God is in the room when you get news of some great accomplishment, some award, but God is also in the hospital room when you get news of some difficult situation that you have to face.

He's always with you in the ups and downs. That's why the thing that we're told to do here at the end of the Psalm is, whether it's up or down, we're to praise God. Notice, "O my God, I will give thanks to You forever." If you go back in your Bibles to the fourth verse, here the thing is said again, "Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name." The one thought that you don't want to lose from Psalm 30 is this: whether you're going through weeping or joy, give thanks to God.

Whether you're in an uptime or a downtime, give thanks to God. If you're experiencing prosperity or poverty, give thanks to God. If you're in times of dancing or mourning, give thanks to God. Don't ever forget that the one constant in all of it is that God is there. He understands. Don't be afraid when you're in the pit to lift up your hands and your voices to God and say, "God, I don't understand this, but I give You praise, and I give You thanks." One of the things that happens to us when we go through a downtime is that we forget all of the other things that are good.

We lose a loved one in death and it's the most difficult thing, and yet oftentimes when that happens, God has left us with others to comfort and encourage our hearts, and we need to give thanks. When you start giving thanks to God, He puts it in perspective. Of all the things about life that I have the hardest time with, it's this cycle stuff, this up and down stuff. I just get myself geared up for a good run, and then something happens that turns it in another direction. But I've got to learn, and I think God is teaching me, maybe He's teaching you, that all of these things are for His glory and His purpose, and He's got a reason why He allows the things into our lives that sometimes we don't understand.

I feel a lot better about this after reading something that I want to share with you in closing. I'm not much of a scientist, though I like to read the accomplishments of scientists. But I learned something that is one of the most amazing stories that I've ever heard from the animal kingdom. One of the most unique animals that God ever created is the giraffe. It's a strange-looking creature, isn't it? I don't know if you've ever read about the birthing of giraffe calves, but I want to tell you that story as we close.

I read this in something written by a guy named Gary Richmond. He had been invited to a zoo where they had a captive giraffe that was about to give birth so that he could watch the process. He said, "The moment we had anticipated was not a disappointment. A calf, a plucky male, hurled forth falling ten feet and landing on his back." The mother giraffe gives birth to its young standing up, and the distance from the birth canal to the ground is about ten feet. Now, I don't know if you know how high that is, but that's how high you have to jump if you're going to dunk a basketball.

So this calf fell out of its mother ten feet above ground and landed on its back. It lays there for a few moments, and then according to the story, it scrambles over and gets up on its legs with its legs underneath it so that it can look out and see what's going on. The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself so that she's standing directly over the calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does this most unreasonable thing. She swings her pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby so that it is sent sprawling head over heels on the ground.

Gary turned to the zoologist and he said, "What's that all about?" Well, the zoologist said, "She wants it to get up. And if it doesn't get up, she's going to do it again." Sure enough, the process was repeated again and again. The struggle to rise was momentous, and as the baby grew tired of trying, the mother would again stimulate its effort with a hearty kick. Amidst the cheers of the animal care staff, the calf stood up finally for the first time—wobbly for sure, but there it stood on its little spindly legs.

Then we were struck silent when the mother kicked it off its feet again. Gary's friend was the only one not astonished by the female's brutal treatment of the newborn calf. "She wants it to remember how it got up," he said. That's why she knocked it down again. In the wild, it would need to get up as soon as possible to follow the herd. The mother needs the herd too for safety because out there, there are lions and hyenas and leopards and hunting dogs, all that would enjoy having a young giraffe for dinner. And they'd get it too if the mother didn't teach her baby so quickly to get up and get on with it.

I'm reminded that one of the reasons we have some of the challenges in our lives is that God is toughening us up and preparing us so that we don't get chewed up by those things out there that are really trying to destroy us. I don't know if you've ever felt it, but I've felt the foot of the Lord on an occasion, kicking me back and saying, "Get with it," preparing you, toughening you up. The ups and downs of life are not always just happenstance. Sometimes God brings those things into our life for a purpose: that He might strengthen us and make us the kind of people that He can trust and use in the days that are before us.

I'm glad my Father's more gentle than the giraffe, but nonetheless, He's the one often who is behind the ups and downs of our life. The thing that's so precious about that is He's always there. So give Him praise, saints. Don't be afraid to lift your heart and say, "Lord, I don't know what this is all about, but I give You praise, and I thank You. You're up to something, God, and I don't need to know what it is right now, but I give You praise." And one day you'll be up on your feet walking, protected when the moment comes that you need it.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Do you know the book of Psalms has a lot about trouble in it? Someone once said every Psalm seems to start with a sigh and end with a song, and I think there's some truth to that. The Psalms teach us the valuable importance of praise and worship in our own personal lives. I've been so impressed by that again this time as we've gone through Psalms together.

Tomorrow we talk about Psalm 46: Triumph Over Trouble. Don't forget today you still have an opportunity to order the book, Five Psalms for a Flourishing Life. This 236-page beautiful hardback gift book is yours for the asking when you send a gift to Turning Point in these last few days of May. We want you to have this book. We thank you for your investment. We want you always to know it is our desire to care for your soul. When we send you these resources, we're nourishing your soul, and we know it and we're thankful for it. See you next time. This is David Jeremiah.