2024-09-01 Sermon Notes1 - Daniel Lyons' Notes

type:
  - "[[Sermon Notes|Sermon Notes]]"
speaker: "[[Archibald Allison]]"
date: 2024-09-01
location: "[[Emmaus Orthodox Presbyterian Church]]"
passage: "[[Ps-104#v17|Psalm 104:17-18]]"
sermon series: "[[Allison on the Psalms]]"
sermon link:
subjects:
title: Lessons from God's World
takeaways:
publish: true

💡Big Idea

Takeaways and Next Steps

Be who God created you to be. Do not try to be someone that God didn't make you to be.

📖Bible Passage

Psalm 104:17-18

where the birds make their nests. The stork makes its home in the cypress trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.

Points

Do not despise the poor
- Psalm 69:33 He who despises the poor despises the LORD
- God has made all creation. Do not despise any of it, lest you despise Him who created it.
- Isaiah 6:3 The whole earth is full of His glory.
- This world indeed is the theater of God's glory.
- Heaven is but the upper story of where God's glory is. And this earth we live in is not without it's glory for God.
Some Christians try to remove themselves from the world.
- Monasticism is a vain weakness.
- God's world does not debase me. It is I myself who is deficient when God's world does not cause me to glorify Him?
- All God's works are masterpieces.
1. God has prepared a suitable creature for each place.
- The birds make their nests in the trees
- The stork in the cypress trees
- the goats in the high mountains
- the rock badgers in the cliffs
- Notice everything in creation has a use.
  - Likewise each age has its saints.
    - Noah, Moses etc. In whatever period of history you look, God has prepared a worker for His kingdom, even in the most barren of places.
    - God still has His elect remnant:
      - even in the most wicked times:
      - and fearful persecution:
        
        When Ahab killed God's prophets, God preserved a remnant for Elijah
      - and heresy:
        
        When Arius taught lies, God preserved the Church
- Do not worry or mourn for the current crisis of this age:
  - Every age has had its own crises, and there shall be many more, but God will still be good.
  - Crisis comes from the Greek word for judgment or decision
    - John 12:31-32
  - No man needs to say "My trade will not permit me to be a Christian."
    - If that is true, then you have no business being in that trade.
      - For God will preserve His people in every place.
      - Just as God preserved Lot in godless Sodom.
  - God has even preserved some true Christians even within churches which have rejected God.
    - He has preserved His own chosen people where we are least likely to look for them.
    - Just as the wild goats live high in the barren, dangerous mountains.
    - Acts 18:10 God told Paul "I have many people here in this city"
1. Each creature has its appropriate place.
- A lion in a cage is a very different creature from a lion in the plains.
- Each creature looks best in their God-appointed place.
- Each Christian looks best in the place that God has called them.
- It is foolish to say If I were placed in a different position, then I could do so much more for God.
  - You could not do more than you can do where God placed you right now.
  - You might think, "I'm only an apprentice. If I were more than I could do so much more."
    - If you can hardly glorify God as an apprentice, then you can hardly do it as a leader.
    - Be grateful for what you have and where God placed you, and trust that He wisely chose the right place for you.
    - Rejoice in whatever circumstance God gives you.
      - I might wish to have a different temperment but God made me in exactly the way that is best.
        
        Luther might have wished to have been more gentle, but that might not have led to the Reformation.
      - The only thing I ought to change in myself is that which is sinful.
      - ⭐ Be who God created you to be. Do not try to be someone that God didn't make you to be.
      - Ask the LORD to mold you after His own mind.
1. God provides each creature He has made with shelter.
- There are the cliffs for the rock badgers, the nests for the birds.
- If God has made a refuge for each animal, then He has not left man without a refuge.
  - Nothing here on earth can fill an immortal soul. You may have profited in business, but nonetheless you will hunger for something that the world cannot satisfy.
  - God made us to know Him. There is a fullness somewhere to meet my emptiness.
  - It is because we are guilty that we are fearful, but Christ bore our sins, and bore God's righteous wrath, and it is He, Jesus, who is our shelter.
    - Isaiah 40:1-2 "Speak comfort to God's people. Her iniquity is pardoned."
1. The shelter is appropriate for each creature.
- the rock cleft is suitable for the rock badger.
- And Christ is a suitable refuge for us sinners.
  - It is lunacy for man to reject his savior and refuge.
  - Just as it would be lunacy for the rock badger to reject his home in the rocks.
  - Isaiah 1:3 "The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib; but Israel doesn't know. My people don't consider."
  - John 6:37 But Jesus says: "The one who comes to me, I will not cast out."

Application

Further Study

💬Discussion Questions

2024-09-01 Sermon Notes1

Interactive graph

On this page