I Am Bowed Down

Psalm 38
 
Let’s pray before we look into Psalm 38,

Lord Jesus, thank you for including Psalm 38 in Your Word.  Sometimes we do feel far away from You.  We allow our sin to separate us from You.  We desire to draw near to You.  I pray that You would speak to us this morning.  Teach us to enjoy sweet fellowship with You.  We ask this now in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

I happened to give the message on Psalm 16 back in January.  I remember I complimented David for setting the example of not dwelling on his circumstances.  In the first verse of Psalm 16, David cries out to the Lord to keep him safe, but from there on, David praises God.  It is a good thing to “rejoice always.”  That is a clear exhortation from Philippians 4.

But Psalm 38 is an anguished and even desperate plea.  So, if the right thing to do is to “rejoice always,” why did God allow Psalm 38?  I think it’s here in part because it is real, it is genuine, and it is honest.  We are told to cast our cares on him because he cares for us.  Sometimes our cares are so big that we can barely articulate them much less speak of them with praise.

Failure and Preparation

Numbers

Welcome! Today we come to our third message in the series entitled Law and Grace, focused on looking at the Old Testament law and then the gospel of grace as explained in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Two weeks ago we looked at Exodus, and last week we looked at Leviticus. I want to start by giving you a quick summary of what we have talked about so far.

Both Exodus and Leviticus combine a sequential telling of the story of the Israelites’ history and God’s progressive revelation of His Law for the Israelites. God’s first command to the Israelites was to celebrate a new holiday called the Passover, commemorating God’s delivery of the Israelites from Egypt. He gave them this command, telling them to do it every year, even as He was preparing them for the night in which the firstborn of the Egyptians would die. The Israelites were released and then crossed through the miraculously parted sea. Then they were led by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and given water and the manna, and then reached Sinai. There they were given the Ten Commandments along with other regulations. On multiple occasions during these events the Israelites grumbled and complained against their God, and they even made an idol to worship while the Ten Commandments were first being given to Moses, who smashed the tablets when he saw what his people were doing. Moses went back up the mountain and received a second set, and when he came down, he began instructing the people in what God required of them. 

Sacrifice and Sanctification

Leviticus

Welcome! Today we continue our series entitled Law and Grace, looking at the book of Leviticus as a whole. As I explained last week, the reason we are going through the Law is that it helps us to better understand grace, and in the second half of this series we will go through the book of Galatians, using what we have learned in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to better understand and appreciate the incredible gift of grace we have received through Christ.

Leviticus is a big book; we could spend many weeks exploring it. My approach this week is to first give a general overview of the book, and then say a little about each chapter, focusing on what people of the Law really had to do and, also, explaining how these things are hints of Christ.

The name “Leviticus” comes from the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament into Greek made a few hundred years before Christ. Leviticus means “of the Levites,” and the Levites were set apart to serve as tabernacle caretakers and priests. A significant portion of Leviticus focuses on what the Levites were to do in their service to God.

Redemption and the Tabernacle

 Exodus

Welcome! I am excited to begin a new series called Law and Grace. This series really has two parts. The first part focuses on the Law, also called more specifically the Mosaic Law, based on scriptures in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the second part focuses on Grace, based on the book of Galatians. You may wonder why these two topics are paired together. It is because Galatians becomes much richer when you better understand what it is talking about when it refers to the Law. Indeed, this is not just true of Galatians but of many New Testament books, but Galatians specifically, I think, has some wonderful truths open up when you really understand the Law.

This month and a little bit into the next, we begin our first part, on the Law. Today we focus on those parts of the Law given in the book of Exodus. What comes to your mind when you think about the Law? For many Christians, I think the whole issue of what we are to do with the Law is kind of fuzzy. Clearly, Christians do not keep the entire Law today. Unless you completely abstain from pork, only eat bread that is unleavened during the Passover, go to Israel annually for the feast of Ingathering, bring animals to Jewish priests to be sacrificed, and so on, you do not keep the Law.