Daniel Lyons' Notes

2024-09-01 Sermon Notes1

💡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
      • 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
💡Big Idea
Takeaways and Next Steps
📖Bible Passage
Points
Application
Further Study
💬Discussion Questions