How God Lifts Me Up When I'm Worn Down - Part 1

0:27 If you'll take out your message notes, life can really wear you down so that you've got nothing left to give. And I'm sure that every one of you at some point in your life could identify with this anonymous prayer request that came in. I feel like I'm in a war zone. It's just one battle after another. I argue with my wife. I clash with my kids over everything. I fight to keep my job. I struggle with our growing debt, and I'm losing the battle with my weight.

1:06 And then there's the conflicts inside me. I fight my own fears, and I battle with my anxieties and my temper, and I'm always fighting off depression. Sometimes I'm just fighting to keep my head above water, and I'm just so tired. how does the goodness of God help you when you feel like that? When you're in the battle and you're all beat up, how does God lift you up when you're worn down? Not after the battle's over. I'm talking about in the middle of the battle. Where do you find the goodness of God? Now we've been in this series for now. This is our eighth week on living in the goodness of God. And we're looking at Psalm 23, the most famous chapter in the entire Bible.

1:59 It's only six verses, but it gives us 12 pictures, 12 expressions, 12 identifying factors of God's goodness in your life. How God is good to you, whether you're resting in green pastures and by still waters, or whether you're in the valley of the shadow of death, or this week when you're facing an enemy, wherein you're in a battle, a financial battle, a health battle, a relational battle, a battle for your own sanity. How does God show his goodness in that kind of situation? Well, today we're in verse 5. And in verse 5, there are three more pictures of how God is good to you. We're only going to look at one of them. For the next three weeks, we're going to look at one. This is such a deep passage. And the metaphors are so full that we're taking literally one phrase, not even one verse at a time, one phrase at a time. And so we're going to look at the first phrase in Psalm 5.

2:52 It's at the top of your, excuse me, verse 5. at the top of your outline, and it says this. You prepare a banquet for me in front of my enemies. Pretty simple statement. You prepare a banquet for me in front of my enemies. What in the world does that mean? I mean, this was written over 3,000 years ago. So how can it help you in the battles you have against your enemies this year? Well, we're going to tear it apart first word by word. And to understand this metaphor, you need to ask four questions. We're going to ask, what kind of banquet is it? We're going to ask, who are the enemies? And then we need to ask, what does this banquet symbolize? And then we need to ask, what's on the menu?

3:48 So let's get right into it. First, what kind of banquet is this? Well, again, let's just take it apart word by word. He starts off by saying, you prepare a banquet for me in front of my enemies. You, the word you means God. He's talking about God. So write this down. Five things we know. God is the host. God is the host of this banquet. So whatever we're going to look at today, it's God's idea. He is the host. And can you imagine the honor of getting an invitation in the mail where God says, I'm inviting you to my banquet. You'd be on an A-list. you probably wouldn't even go to bed tonight. You'd stay up taking a couple of showers, getting a haircut, whatever you could do. Find new clothes so you'd be ready for a banquet that God has invited you to because he's the host. Then it says you prepare. And what that means is this is well prepared. This is well planned.

4:41 Write that down. This is not a spontaneous banquet. It's not off the cuff. It's not like, hey, let's go down to the beach right now. God has put forethought into us. This is planned. It is prepared. It's not of the spur of the moment decision. Now, I want to tell you that the word banquet in a lot of translations is actually in Hebrew the word table. And King James Version says, you prepare a table for me. But it's not just any table. The Hebrew word here is the word shulkan, and shulkan literally means the king's table. When he says, I prepare a table for you, a banquet, he's not talking about a TV dinner tray. He's not talking about a formica dinette in your kitchen. He's not talking about a folding table. This is one of those really long tables you see in a castle, in a medieval castle that holds 50, 100 people. It's the king's table.

5:34 It's the queen's table. This word in the Bible is used almost always to refer to a king's table or it is referred to the table of showbread in the temple. So it's a special, it's a sacred table that you're being invited to. And it is well planned. It's all laid out. It's big, heavy, and it's got the king's feast on it. He says, you prepare a banquet, the next phrase is, for me. Here's what you need to write down. You're the guest of honor. So write this down. I am the guest of honor. This is not a banquet for somebody else that you're being invited to attend. This is a banquet that is really just for you. It's you and the king. You're the guest of honor. You're the big cheese. You're the big deal. And so it is for you. I am the guest of honor. You prepare a banquet for me, and it says, in front of.

6:30 Here's the next phrase. It's a public banquet, not private. People are going to watch you eat with the king. people are going to watch you. It is public. It's not in secret. God wants to see you honored, and God wants everybody to see you being honored. So this banquet we're going to look at today is for you, and it's to be in public. It's not a secret event. It's in front of, and then the last phrase, which is the catch, in front of my enemies. Oh, now that's a twist. I might think, God would I'm going to prepare a banquet for you and your friends. No, he says, I'm going to prepare a banquet just for you, but all of your enemies are going to watch us eat together. What in the world does that mean? It means that it's on a battlefield. Write this down. The banquet is on a battlefield.

7:24 This is a banquet not just when good times are going in your life. It's when you're under attack. The king says, during the battle, I'm going to come and throw a banquet for you, and all of your enemies are going to watch me honor you, bless you, and have peace with you. So that's what the banquet is. Now, the second question is, who's the enemy? And I could go into this. This could be a whole sermon. We've talked about it before. I'm just going to give you the fill-ins. I've written some verses there. I'm not going to even teach on these because I don't want to spend most of the time on it. But the Bible says you have three enemies. They are the world, the flesh, and the devil. You might write these down. The first enemy you have is the world around me. The world around me. And I've given you some Bible verses there to look. The world is in opposition to God because it worships itself, not God.

8:20 And the world around you is always coming after you, always criticizing you, always not understanding you. If you've ever been picked on, if you've ever been put down, if you've ever had injustice or bias or racialism or prejudice or overlooked because of your gender, that's the world around you. The second enemy you have is Satan is against me. The world is around me, and the second is Satan is against me. And again, I don't have time to go into all of this, but God says that Satan is real and that he wants to defeat you. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life. And the Bible says that Satan wants to kill you. Satan wants to destroy you. Satan wants to defeat you. Why? Well, he doesn't even care about you.

9:12 The only reason Satan hates you is because God loves you. That's why you're the enemy of Satan. Because God loves you. And Satan hates anything and anyone God loves. because God loves you greatly, Satan hates you. Satan wants to hurt you and destroy you because he thinks that'll hurt God. If you wanted to get at me, get at my children or my grandchildren, you would hurt me the most that way. So you've got the world around you, you've got Satan against you. But then the third enemy, and this is the biggest one of all, is my old nature inside me. That's your third enemy, your old nature inside you. And the older you get, the more you're gonna learn that your biggest enemy is you. And you don't always do the right things that you intend to do. You have good intentions. Paul wrote an entire chapter about this in Romans 7.

10:06 He says, the things I want to do, I end up not doing, and the things that I know are bad for me, I end up doing. I'm in this battle constantly. And that's the third enemy against you. Now he says, in the presence of my enemies, I do a banquet. What does this banquet symbolize? Well, it symbolizes two things. In the Bible, a banquet almost always represents two things. Write these down. First, God wants and welcomes fellowship with me. That's the first thing that this banquet says, that God wants to hang out with you. He wants and he welcomes fellowship with you. This is one of the most amazing truths in the universe, that God, who created the whole thing, wants to know me, wants to know you. God wants to be your friend. God wants you to be his friend. God wants a fellowship. He wants to eat together.

11:00 Let's go get something to eat. That is an amazing truth, that in the Bible, a banquet almost always represents fellowship. You know that. When you want to fellowship with somebody today, you say, let's go get something to eat. You have somebody over to your house. That's fellowship. When God throws a banquet for you, he's saying, I want to hang out with you. I want you to understand how much I love you. And he wants to show how you are welcomed by him, how you are wanted by him, and he wants to do it, listen, when you're under attack, to encourage you in the presence of your enemies. When everybody else is coming against you, God says, I want to throw a party for you. I want to have a banquet for you. Psalm chapter 5, verse 11 says this. You welcome us with open arms, talking about God, when we run for cover to you.

11:57 In other words, you're in a battle, and you need a little protection, and you run to God. God says, I welcome you with open arms. I love this in the message paraphrase, Psalm 511. You welcome us with open arms when we run for cover to you. Let the party last all night. stand guard over our celebration. God says, I know you're in the heat of the battle right now. You're fighting for your job. You're fighting for your health. You're fighting for your sanity. You're fighting for your dignity. While the battle's going on, hang on, I want to throw a banquet for you. Just a little encouragement here. Now, it's a party in a combat zone. It's a banquet in a battlefield. Now, I want you to use your imaginations to imagine this scene. Go back to like Robin Hood days of knights and vassals and kings and courts and imagine a giant medieval battle.

12:52 And there's two mountains and this team A over here and team B over here, you're on the good side and this is the bad side. These are the evil people. And the enemies have come out and the soldiers have come out to fight this battle. and just imagine that you are a soldier on the front line in a medieval battle and you're out there and you're fighting hard and you're working hard and the enemy's coming against you. It's a heated battle and you're tired and you're sweaty. You probably got some blood on you and you're scared and you're hungry. And all of a sudden word comes up without explanation and a superior officer pulls you off the front line. You're going, I don't know what's going on, but I'm glad to get off the front line because this is a hot and heavy battle. And the superior officer pulls you out of the battle and you start walking back and about 1,000 yards back off the front of the battle, you see this giant banquet tent has been erected with all the turrets and the flags and it looks like a circus tent.

14:03 a big tent, and you go, what's going on? And as you start walking toward that banquet tent, you realize, and there's a full feast there, you realize that the king has showed up. The king of the empire has shown up. And when you walk into that tent, there is the king's table. And it's 75 feet or 50 feet long, and it's heavy and wooden. and somehow they figured out a way to get it out of a castle and transport it directly to the battlefield. And this is the king's table. Only the fancy people, the noblemen, get to eat at this table. And you walk in there, and the table is decked out with all your favorite foods, comfort food. Now, when you're in the middle of a battle, nothing tastes as good as coming home to some comfort food.

14:58 And you walk in there, and this table's covered, and it's just you and the king. Just the two of you, that's it. And all this food. And around the tent have been stationed about 500, maybe 700 guards. So there's no way the enemy's getting in here. But the tent flaps are up and everybody can see what's going on. It's not hidden, it's public. Everybody sees that the king has called you out of battle, brought you back to this giant banqueting tent, put on the feast of your favorite food and it's just you and the king. And everybody sees it. And then the king says to you in a loving voice, this is all for you. I made this for you. I planned it for you. And I just wanted to hang out with you. I love you.

15:49 I miss you. And I want to affirm you publicly in front of both of these armies. And I want you to eat all you want. And you're unhurried. You're unworried. You're protected here. There's no way the enemy can get to you. And I just want to affirm you and have some fellowship with you. You think you're in a dream world. How does the king even know me? I'm just a servant. I'm just a soldier. And then, so everybody knows what's going on, the king orders erected a giant banner outside with your name on it. And the banner says this. I love, and it has your name. It's signed, the king. So everybody knows what's going on. This is a personal recognition, a personal act of love.

16:43 I love you, your name, and I am proud of them. What I just described to you is exactly what God is talking about doing for you. you prepare a banquet for me in the presence of my enemies. I'm the guest of honor. You're the guest of honor. It's not for anybody else. It's not like you get to look on. It's not like you're a wedding crasher and you just came in to get some food. No, this banquet is in your honor. And the banner clearly says, because it's got your name on it. This is what God wants to do for you in the battle of your life. Look at this verse up here on the screen. Song of Solomon says this. He brings me to his banquet table and his banner over me is love.

17:37 you may have never thought that God was proud of you but if you're a child of God your heavenly father is proud of you and he loves you and he brings you to his banqueting table and his banner over you is love he wants your whole enemies to know how much he the king loves you now go back to this picture the enemy are fighting and they see this going on and all of a sudden they just stop the battle. And both sides are looking at this event taking place up here on the hill because it's public, it's not secret. And the enemy is absolutely dumbstruck by the scene. They all stop fighting and they just stare. And they go, are you kidding me? The king picked that one guy and brought him out.

18:32 And they just stare. You know, I have learned personally that when God wants to bless your life, there is nothing that critics can do about it. when God wants to bless your life they may spite you they may slander you they may ignore you they may ridicule you they may libel you they may say all kinds of mean things about you but they can't stop God's blessing on your life they just can't do it and that person at work who wants your job and is trying to push you aside if God wants you to have that job doesn't matter what they want to do. And if they are having a tough time with you getting over here in this area and they're trying to stop you, stop you, when God's blessing is on your life and God's banner over you is love, it doesn't matter.

19:33 They cannot stop what God wants to do in your life. They are powerless against the king and your enemies are dumbfounded. God loves to show the blessing of his people in front of the enemy. Now, today, let's talk about you. In your battle, in the middle of your battle, God is inviting you to a banquet. I'm gonna explain it in just a minute, what that banquet is. But he's inviting you to a banquet. Job chapter 36, verse 16 says this. God is gently calling you from the jaws of distress. What a picturesque phrase. From the jaws of distress to an open place of freedom where he has set your table full of the best food.

20:25 The same metaphor. Job's saying the exact same thing David says in Psalm 23. He says, God, while you're in the middle of the battles you're in right now, God is saying, hey, come over here. Come over here. I've got a banquet for you. He is gently calling. He's wooing you like a lover. He's coaxing you. This is all done in love. Right now, God is tenderly calling you to his banquet. I highly recommend you accept the invitation once you understand what it means. And he says, God is calling you from the jaws of distress. Everybody remember the movie Jaws? Doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon. Yeah. I love this, the jaws of distress. Let me ask you, what's chewing on you right now? what's eating you up right now?

21:20 What is it that's got you worried, anxious, fearful, and it's just gnawing, gnawing, gnawing? You're stressed out about it. You are in the jaws of distress. God said, hey, come on. You deserve a break today. Come over, I got a banquet for you. God is gently calling you from the jaws of distress to an open place of freedom where he has set your table with the best food. As I said, others may criticize you, attack you, demean you, dismiss you, disregard you, but God wants to hang out with you. That's the first thing this metaphor, I prepare a banquet for you, means. God wants to fellowship with you and God wants to feed you, to give you some new strength so you can get back in that battle. you're tired and you're about to fall over and you need God's strength and you need sustenance and you need nourishment and you need refreshment he says it's all there, it's all laid out on the king's table and I've transported it right here to the battlefield for you he says I've put a lot of preparation in planning this and I want to honor you What a great and timely message today. Let's end our show with a closing thought from Pastor Rick.