Title: YHWH My Rescuer
Scripture Reading: Psalms 31:1-5
‘In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge; Let me never be ashamed; In your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me, rescue me quickly: Be to me a rock of strength. A stronghold to save me. For You are my rock and my fortress; For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me. You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, For You are my strength. Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O LORD, God of truth.’
- What do we need to be rescued from?
- Drowning in your own sorrows and successes
- Shame (Shame is the painful emotion that is caused by a consciousness of guilt, failure, or impropriety, that often results in the paralyzing conviction and the belief that one is worthless, of no value to others or to God, unacceptable, and altogether deserving of disdain and rejection.
- Guilt (the objective reality of being liable to punishment because of something we’ve done.)
- A captive
Isaiah 61:1 says, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. To proclaim liberty to captives. And freedom to prisoners.’
A captive is one that is captured, taken prisoner, under the control of Satan and led astray. The captive described here is a slave to Satan.
- Those who walked away
- The doubter
- The one where religion failed him.
- Weary of lives
- Those who the world ignores
- Those who strives
- Trust God to rescue you
Psalms 31:2 says, ‘Incline your ear to me, rescue me quickly.’
David added in verse 5, ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit.’
Just before he died Jesus echoed these words. He called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’
John 4:34-36 ‘Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest’.
Jesus was on an evangelistic, revelatory mission.
The phrase ‘there are still four months and then comes the harvest’ was a proverb with the idea that there is no particular hurry for a task because things simply take time and you can’t avoid the waiting. Jesus did not want His disciples to have this mentality. He wanted them to think and act as if the harvest was ready.
Jesus loves souls.
The LORD is:
- Your refuge. This psalm starts with the words, ‘In you, Lord, I have taken refuge’. Later he says, ‘Keep me free from the traps that is set for me, for you are my refuge. There are many trials, tests, traps and temptations in this life. In all this the Lord is your refuge.
- Your Rock. David writes, ‘Lord, be my rock’ in verse 2. And ‘since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. You can know God’s guiding and leading, by His Spirit. He is your security on which you can depend.
- Your rescuer. David prayers, ‘turn you ear to me, come quickly to my rescue’. He goes on to describe how God saw the ‘affliction and anguish of his soul. Yet God did not hand him over to the enemy. He rescued him and has ‘set his feet in a spacious place. In Jesus you receive the ultimate rescue. He will set your feet in a spacious place.
- Marvel at God’s amazing rescue plan
Because of his great love for you, God meticulously planned your rescue.
God’s great rescue plan for humanity took far more planning, preparation and prefiguring.
The Jewish Day of Atonement lays the background to the death of Jesus.
The scapegoat
‘He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness; the goat will carry on itself all their sins.
This prefigures your sin and my sin being laid on Jesus. This morning if you need rescuing, you have to stretch out your right hand, close your eyes, and in your mental picture, lay all your sins, all the things you needs rescuing and confess them and laid it on Jesus at the Cross
The scapegoat in the KJV is called Azazel.
- Accept and love your rescuer passionately
You have to receive Jesus today.
Before God performs something wonderful for you, He always ask for a sacrifice
Judges 6:19-20 it says, ‘And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so.’
Today God is asking the same thing. He wants a sacrifice. And he has provided that sacrifice. And that sacrifice is Jesus. You have to accept Jesus the sacrifice. If you want miracles to take place in your live, if you want God to be your rescuer, you have to accept Christ.
John 5:24-25 says, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you; He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live.’
The word ‘verily’means truly, truly, a characteristics introduction to significant statement. Jesus is saying most assuredly I say to you. What? ‘he who hears my Word and believesHim who sent Me, has eternal life’.
There are three significant statements mentioned here.
Firstly this is an emphasis on belief in God the Father who sent the Son. The man who knows not God lives a dying life, or a living death; but he who believe in the Son of God passes over from the empire of death, to the empire of life.
Secondly eternal life is often a future event to be hoped for in faith, but in the Gospel of John it is characteristically a present reality. Your lives will significantly change in that you will realize you are living an eternal life here on earth.
Thirdly it is possible the term ‘hears reflects the Hebrew term ‘shema’ which mean ‘to hear so as to obey.’ It means you have to receive Christ. Charles Spurgeon says, ‘hear and your soul shall live.
There are two Greek words for ‘life’. The word ‘bios’, from which we get the word ‘biological’ means the condition of being alive rather than dead – mere existence. The other word, ‘zoe’ means the full, abundant, spacious, open-hearted, richness of life that Jesus speaks about here – a life of fulfillment and purpose.
Jesus go on and say, ‘the hour is coming and now is.’ ‘Hour’ here means
- Hour of salvation
- Hour of judgment
Now is the time to receive Jesus. Not tomorrow. Not another day.
The hour of judgment has reference to death.
There are three kinds of death
- Spiritual death
- Physical death
- Eternal death
What to do after this? Love your rescuer passionately.
