Psalm 5 • The God Who Leads

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Let me ask that you would look in your bibles at Psalm 5 this morning, Psalm 5.
Our musicians have reminded us that our prayer to God is that we would be made whole, and a means by which He does that is with His Word by which He challenges, directs, and heals and reminds us of His grace.
Psalm 4, that we considered last week, is in many ways considered the Bible's lullaby, giving us permission and reason to sleep and reminding us that our rest is actually part of worship.
But if you rest, you got to get up, you got to get up, you got to get up in the morning.
[Laughter]
And so Psalm 5 is the Bible's alarm clock, as the Lord is reminding us what gets us up in the confidence of His abiding care.
Let's stand, Psalm 5, as we honor God's Word.
The psalmist writes in Psalm 5, "Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning.
Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
But I, through this abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.
For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.
Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.
For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield."
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, as we see young adults preparing to go into a world with training that they have received, our prayer is that You would be guide, shepherd, shield to them.
Help us by Your Word, by what we as a church believe and teach, be those who carry that message of a grace that is beyond them so that whatever phase you take them into they truly know that You are a God who provides for those who cannot provide for themselves.
And You do so generously and without reproach, so that when those who are in need come, they are confident they come to a good, good Father.
Grant that we would know it and fountain it to the generations, we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> "Well, you are scared, aren't you?" my words from my father to me in an account I've probably told you more than once.
But if it's repeated in my mind, it's because it's important to me.
And I thought of it again this weekend as my wife is taking our youngest daughter to an internship in Texas, and she'll be gone for a while.
And I couldn't help but remember that first trip of my father taking me to a college.
Now I look back and I think:  How did this happen?
I was going to a school I'd never visited, a town I did not know, people I did not know.
And, yet, here I was on this grand adventure.
As we left our home in Memphis and drove up to Chicago, up Highway 55, I know that I was, first, very excited.
And in the early part of the trip as my dad was driving with me alone in the car, you know, I was just talking and just babbling on about how fun this was going to be.
But the further we got from home, from what was familiar and family, an internal dialogue began to happen in my brain something like this:  "Are you nuts?!
What in the world are you doing going so far from home, people you don't know at all?"
And the further we got from home, the closer we got to Chicago, the greater my anxiety got and my anxious regular conversation, the early part of the trip became increasing quietness.
Until finally at some point, my father looked over at me and said, "You're scared, aren't you?"
I nodded yes.
And then my father did something I hope I never forget.
He pulled off to the side of the highway, right there on Highway 55, stopped the car, put it in park, turned to me and said, "Now, you listen to me.
I don't know if you will do well or poorly at that school.
I don't know what they will require of you.
But you are my son.
I'm your father.
And you will always have a home in my house.
That will never change."
Did it take away all the challenges?
No.
But it gave me a foundation of security and love for the challenges that would come.
I knew I could always go to my father with the challenges that were before me.
And Psalm 5 is not really anything different.
It is our Heavenly Father providing assurance of His security and love for the challenges that we face in life.
The reason:  So that we would know what we can ask of Him.
What can we ask of God?
The opening's pretty plain.
We can ask God to listen.
I mean, that's right from the beginning, verse 1:  "Give ear to my words."
It's said again in verse 1:  "Consider my groaning."
Verse 2, it's there again:  "Li--, give attention to the sound of my cry."
But each of those petitions to hear is followed by the assurance of verse 3:  "O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice."
That there is this sense that we can call out to God and that He will listen and we can be confident that He will listen.
How do we actually call out to God in a way that we can be confident that He will be listening?
Well, the psalmist reminds us:  We can call out early.
After all, the instruction here is ultimately for us to pray early.
Verse 3, "Lord, in the morning you hear my voice."
Again in verse 3, "In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch."
Now, the fact that we would pray in the morning is not making our prayer more holy.
It's not making us more holy.
It's the idea that before we start the day there is this priority to our thoughts, that before we face the challenges of the day we would talk to the Creator of the day.
And we would say to Him, "Lord, I need Your help.
I want to make sure You're my priority before I go through all the other things in my life."
And that's not always easy to do.
Life can be pressed.
I think of the priorities of early prayer in an internet prayer that some of you are aware.
It was popular a few years ago.
This prayer begins this way:  "Dear Lord, so far I've done alright.
I haven't gossiped.
I haven't lost my temper.
I haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or vain.
But, Lord, in a few moments I'm going to have to get out of bed."
[Laughter]
"And then I'm going to need a lot more help."
And it's that understanding that creates the early prayers:  "Lord, I'm going to need a lot more help, and I want to approach You before I approach the challenges, which will surely come."
How do we do that?
Listen, if some of you already pray over your coffee or the breakfast table, great.
It's a wonderful habit.
Others of us, you know, we kind of get up and we rush to the bus or we rush to the first appointment or we got all the playing going on in our brains of the priorities that we're facing, and it just kind of presses prayer away.
But what if you could, just as a change of pattern for a while, as you're on the bus, as you're driving toward work, just mark the store or the sign post that you might say, "I'm going to repeat the Lord's Prayer there"?
Or you know that, just at the time that you're on the road there's going to be a newscast that starts and just as the newscast starts say, "I'm going to ask the Lord to help me before the day."
And we create those markers, those signals in our experience where we put the day before the Lord.
And the reason we do that is we're expecting God to listen, and as we are expecting God to listen, we're expecting Him to begin to control the priorities of our lives.
That means we're not just to pray early:  But we're actually to pray earnestly to the Lord as what makes Him not only hear us but encourages our hearts that He is listening.
If you just look at verses 1 and 2, you begin to recognize that three times there is this persistency of the psalmist's prayer.
"Give ear to my words," verse 1.
"Consider my groaning," verse 1.
"Give attention to the sound of my cry."
It's this persistent prayer, the willingness to go back again and again.
But right with it is this passion before the Lord.
I'm not just going to repeat formula words.
How is the psalmist praying?
The end of verse 1:  "Consider my groaning."
Verse 2, "Give attention to the sound of my cry."
I so love the words of Romans 8:26 as the disciple there echoes what I know about my own heart.
"We don't know how to pray."
Can you imagine that the apostle Paul says that?
"We don't know how to pray," so the Holy Spirit prays for us with what?
Groanings too deep to utter.
As though we recognize there are those places in life where I don't even know what to say.
I might not be able to call the words to mind.
And, yet, that is permissible to God.
That the cries of my heart, the groanings of my spirit can be put before the God as prayer.
We don't just have to say all the Thee's and Thou's.
You know, say it in some formula way we do it in church.
Just talk to God personally, earnestly.
And the willingness for Him to be addressed personally is there in verse 2.
"Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God."
The "my King" and the "my God" are the psalmist taking the most royal and esteemed words that we have for God, that He is the King of all creation, that He is Elohim, the royal name for God in the Old Testament.
And yet right before is just that little two-letter pronoun:  my King, my God who hears my cry, as though He is infinite and glory and majesty and power, but He's mine.
And as personal as are my cries, so personal is my King.
It's, again, that gospel just in nutshell:  that He is infinite in power and glory and yet intimate in His care.
It's why the Immanuel principle of all of scripture holds so m--:  He's God with us.
Yes, He's God.
Yes, He's great.
Yes, He's glor--.
And yet He's with us, so that we can even say, "You're my King; You're my God, and You hear my care."
He's actually just that personal to us.
And for that reason, we can pray when we pray that early morning prayer with expectancy that He's going to hear and that He will act.
Verse 3, "O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch."
Now, again, because we're this side of the cross, we sometimes forget the implications.
"I come to you in the morning and offer," says the psalmist, "my morning sacrifice."
Here was somebody who knew sin and weakness in his life, and yet he says, "God has made a way for me to come to Him."
It's by sacrifice, that offering of animals in the Old Testament, but Jesus Christ was being prefigured, the one who would know the worst about us, our sin, our failings, our weakness, and say, "But I'm preparing a way for you."
And so now as we approach God, we recognize that that sacrifice of Jesus offered once for all allows us to come to God, even early in the morning, say, "God, listen to me.
Even when I cannot form the words, You're my God and I offer to You my cry."
And He's made a way for us to come through Jesus.
Knowing the worst about us, knowing our failures, knowing our weakness, there's a way.
And so we say, "God, I'm going to ask Your help."
And then the wonderful words:  "And watch."
What's God going to do?
I put my needs, my prayers in front of Him, and now I'm going to watch and see what God does.
It's hard for believers to do that, to actually say, "I'm going to put it in the Lord's hands and watch," because what we want to say is, "I want God to do what I want," instead of saying, "I’m going to put it in the Lord's hands and watch and see what He does."
Even in the Bible we see Christians struggling with that.
Do you remember the message in Acts 12?
Peter has been arrested and put in prison.
Four squads of Roman soldiers are around him.
He's chained between two Roman soldiers, and he's praying in the prison for release.
And people are praying in the house church of John Mark.
They're praying for his release.
And in the night, an angel comes to Peter, hits on the side and says, "Get up."
And the chains fall off.
The prison doors open.
He begins to walk out toward the town.
An iron gate just opens of its own accord in front of him, and Peter thinks, "This isn't real.
I mean, I know I've been praying for it, but I must be dreaming."
And then he begins to approach the house where believers are praying for him, praying that he would be released.
And he knocks on the door.
And a young girl named Rhoda comes to the door and hears that it's Peter calling and knocking.
And she runs back to the people who are praying and says, "Peter's been released."
And they say, "No way."
[Laughter]
"No, you're crazy.
He's."
And so Peter, you know, Peter just keeps knocking:  "Hey, it's me.
What you are praying for has happened."
And even the believers have trouble believing it, because they're not really watching.
They don't have the eyes that say, "He listens and He hears."
But if we are praying, "God, You're the Creator of this day, I'm going to put it before You, and I'm going to say it as personally and expectantly and persistently as I can; I'm going to put my cries before You," then here's what we know:  He listens.
And we have the right to call to Him, because He has said He listens.
That's not all.
He promises to lead as well.
I mean, we have a right to ask God not only to listen to us but to lead us.
Verse 8 is the summary of things that have preceded.
"Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness."
Yes.
Lead me.
How does that actually happen?
You know, verses 4-6 are a description of the way that the Lord leads and they are a description of warnings.
And we don't always like reading these words, that God, on the path of leading us, has put guardrails in place.
And He said, "Listen, you need to be aware of these warnings."
And He finds three ways of saying the same thing.
God and evil cannot exist in the same place.
If you're expecting to be led by God, then recognize God and evil cannot exist in the same place.
It's kind of like that old law of Newtonian physics, right?
That two solid objects cannot exist in the same space at the same time.
Or even kind of the, you know, the more moddy, you know, modern, the Pauli exclusion principle:  that even at the subatomic level, two objects cannot exist at the same time in the same space.
Except the psalmist is talking about a spiritual level.
If you're expecting God to lead you, then recognize that evil and God do not coexist on His path of leading.
How does He say that?
The warnings are actually pretty intense.
Verse 4, pretty plain:  "You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you."
That word "dwell" is actually a Hebrew word that means a brief sojourn, just for a brief time.
Evil and God cannot coexist in the same place of leadership even briefly, not even for a moment.
I'll get to God later; need to do this right now.
No.
It's not the path of God's design.
Even for a moment, briefly, God is not going to lead that way in His paths.
Verse 5, "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers."
What if I begin to take credit for what I'm doing?
[Chuckles]
I got this diploma.
I got this achievement.
I got this career by my smarts, by my wiles.
By.
Well, really?
You know, kind of the cliche of old westerns is what?
"This town ain't big enough for the two of us."
Right?
The reminder here is:  Your heart is not big enough for two kings.
And if what you're saying is, "I'm going to rule," or, "What I've accomplished is by my rule," God is saying, you know, "The boastful shall not stand before him."
If I think I'm standing, I'm accomplishing, I'm achieving because of all that I am and all that I do, it's just my talent, my gifts, my wisdom, God is saying ultimately, "You will not stand."
Ultimately, there is a fall that occurs as a consequence of that boastfulness.
Verse 6, "You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord apol--, abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man."
You cannot expect the lie to result in God's blessing.
And when the psalmist goes on to talk about God abhorring the bloodthirsty and deceitful man, you wonder what's actually in his brain.
We don't know when David wrote this, but some think that terminology right there means he is thinking of his own son, Absalom, who by boasts and lies and deceit stood in the gate at Jerusalem and confixed--, and convinced those who were of high rank in Jerusalem to turn against his own father.
And in that rebellion, 20,000 people died.
And David is saying, "You think the lie is going to be good for a while, but if the way you're getting somewhere is by deceit, by not telling, by hiding, ultimately that results in the hurt, not just to you, but to other people too."
This is not the path that God intends.
If we are following His path, His will, His leading, it's not going to come by hiding and by deceit.
Now, we struggle with this, because we're a church that talks about grace a lot.
Wait, wait, wait.
What's all this stuff about consequence and warnings?
I mean, this is not very gracious to me.
But the reality is if God didn't love you, He wouldn't warn you.
The warnings are actually part of His grace.
Here are the guardrails for the path that God intends, the road of His purpose.
And so He says, "Listen, there's warnings here."
And part of our growing up, as it were, is actually hearing the warnings as love.
Some of you know this already.
I mean, one of the marks of adolescence is to equate permission with love.
Well, if you really loved me, you would let me go to "X."
If you really love me, you would let me date "X."
If you really love me, you would let me have that car.
And so we begin to equate love with permission.
Whereas if you move into adulthood even a little bit, you recognize that love with no warning, love with no prohibition, is not love at all.
It's just not caring.
God says, "I care enough to warn."
And in these warnings, He is telling us of all the things that are the guardrails to help us on the path of life.
But then He tells us something else.
If the warnings are the guardrails and we're trying to travel down the path that is good for us, where are the headlights?
And, as it were, that's verse 7.
As God is talking about the headlights, as it were, of His guidance, which comes from all things, it comes from worship.
Do you see that in verse 7?
"But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you."
In worship, we learn of the abundance of God's love.
Now, I know and you know there are people who say, "I don't need the corporate worship of God's people.
I'm going to worship God in the woods.
That's where I see the beauty of His creation."
And, listen, you can actually do that.
I mean, if the heavens declare the glory of God, then, no question:  Creation is one place you see the glory of God.
But in worship, what are we meant to see?
The abundance of God's love.
The word "love" there is, some of you already love this word:  It's the Hebrew word "Hesed," which means covenantal love as opposed to contractual love.
Contractual love says, "If you love me, I'll love you back."
"If you satisfy me, I will keep loving you."
Covenant love is heavenly love whereby God has a prior commitment to people who He knows will fail Him.
My covenantal love is abundant, so that I forgive and still receive.
I understand that you have been faithless; I abide faithful.
Covenant love is based upon a prior commitment of a sovereign, eternal, holy, loving God who says, "My mercy is not bound to your goodness; My mercy is bound upon My goodness."
And that abundant mercy is not God just saying, "You know what?
I've got a few pennies here of this abundant covenant love I'll give."
No, no.
This is abundant love, as God is saying, "When you are among God's people for a growing up time, for the period of growing up and you see people, some who fail, some who fall on their faces, some who love you, some who mentor you, we're beginning to understand in the body of Christ what you don't understand in the woods," which is God's covenant love, is abundant, even for people like us.
And when we observe it, worship is teaching us of that covenant love.
When we sing, when you listen, when you just see the people who come and you recognize their strengths and their weaknesses, you say, "God is something else if you let these people sing to Him and let these people love Him and love them back knowing all the worst things about them."
That is abundant covenant love.
And that's what we learn by worship, but even more than that, "I will bow down," into verse 7, "in your holy temple in the fear of you."
Now, hearing about fear, we struggle.
How am I supposed to love someone I fear?
Well, the difficulty is we don't have a good English word for the Hebrew word "fear" there.
Just as love is "Hesed," covenant love, so fear is this sense of reverence or awe for a covenant keeping God.
And that's not just the sense of terror:  I'm going to stay on the road here so God doesn't hurt me.
That's not the fear of the Lord that's being talked about here.
One of the passages that I've learned to turn to over and over again, to think about what is the proper fear of God, is Isaiah chapter 11 verses 2 and 3.
I'll read to you just the end of verse 2.
Now, what's being said here is a prediction of the Messiah.
When Christ comes, what will His nature and character be?
And we're told in Isaiah 11, right in the end of verse 2, when the Messiah comes, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord will be upon him.
And His delight will be in the fear of the Lord."
Now, whatever you think to be the relationship between Jesus and His Father, you know deep down somewhere it is perfect love.
It's not the terror of, "He's going to hurt me."
No, it is instead this regard, this reverence for all that God is.
He's just and merciful.
He is Creator and He's the God who hears my cry.
He's the one who's fully God and yet fully cares.
It's His justice, His wrath, His mercy, His goodness, His love, His rule.
It's full regard for the totality of who God is.
And when we are in worship, we are learning all those dimensions of God, so when earth touches us with its immediate problems, with the things that cause of consternation and concern and we can't make sense of, we have, by the worship that we have done, learned, "I have proper regard for the totality of God, not just His earthly but His eternal purposes.
I understand His character, His nature.
I do that because worship has taught me who my God is."
And is it where this worship is the headlights by which is the guardrails of establishing the path I need to go down, God is showing me Himself, so that I'm able to go down that path in a broken, fallen, and difficult world.
When my second son was in college, at the end of his first year, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is a chronic and not healable disease.
Within a couple of weeks of that, a girl that he had dated in high school, a very good friend of his, was killed in a freak accident in the Colorado Mountains.
And as he was driving home for that funeral, he was T-boned, and his car was totaled.
He went to the funeral at our home.
And as he was preparing to go back to school in a borrowed family car for the time, he was so low.
>>> Parents, some of you are going to understand what I'll say:  So low that we were scared for him.
>>> And as he was putting his stuff in the car in our garage getting ready, I just stopped him for a minute and said, "Jordan, now listen to me.
I don't know all that you're going to face.
I don't know how hard or difficult it's going to be.
But I want you to know this:  I'm your father, and you are my son."
And the words that I had heard from my father I was saying to my son.
"I don't know what the challenges will be, but this I know:  You're secure in this family."
And God is saying that here.
What's ahead of you, no one knows entirely, but you are secure in the love of your Heavenly Father.
So secure that as He's pointed this headlight to His abundant mercy, to the reality and the totality of an eternal God, He ultimately makes this amazing promise, verse 8.
The psalmist prays, "Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; but make your way straight before me."
It's not just that God has put up the guardrails on the road, not even to give us headlights to see the road, but He actually makes the road.
God, make the way straight before me.
It's echoing what some of you know and maybe memorized from Proverbs, right?
That, "Lean not on your own understanding, but in all of your ways, acknowledge the Lord, and he will do," what?
"He will make your paths straight."
Now, it's not just talking about the distance between one point and another:  I'll make it straight.
It's saying make it smooth, make it level, make it what it ought to be.
There's been only one experience in my life in which I have been given the privilege of operating a D9 bo--, dozer, k?
In my college years, I worked for a construction company, and I was a shop dispatcher, sending people out to repair equipment.
But one day, a dozer came into the shop to be repaired, and at the end of the repair, they had to go out and test the blade.
And so, you know, being in college and knowing I knew everything, I.
[Laughter]
I said, "Let me do that."
And so, the foreman let me go out into what was basically a sandlot where I couldn't hurt anybody.
[Laughter]
And operate the dozer.
One task:  Just make a straight ditch.
Well, I worked for about three minutes, and suddenly we had mountains and valleys going like this.
[Laughter]
But, of course, it took the operators about one minute to straighten it all back out.
God's hand is on the blade.
He's the one making the road.
And He's saying to us, "I've shown you the guardrails and I've told you how great is My love for you.
Now, this is the way."
And the thing that we have to understand, all of us, if there are guardrails that God has given and if there are headlights He's showing us who He is and what He's like and He'll say, "I'm going to make the road," then every one of us should think:  There's a calling on my life, that God has purpose for me; I'm not just willy-nilly in the world; it's not that my choices don't matter.
God has given me a way, and He's giving me the path to stay on it and the means to stay on it.
And that means there's a calling that God has upon my life.
Whatever is the career, whatever is the place, whatever is the relationship:  God has a calling on my life.
And as I live for Him, He's actually working eternal purposes through my life.
He said He was going to do it.
He's going to listen to me.
He's going to lead me.
And when I believe that, it tells me the last thing I'm able to do, which is simply to expect His blessing.
I mean, if that's the path, that's my calling, that's the way, then I'm going to actually believe He intends to bless me through that way.
Verses 9 and 10 are really the expression of that blessing.
Ten is most particular, right at the beginning.
The psalmist points at those who are not following God's way and says, "Make them bear their guilt, O Lord; let them fall by their own counsels."
Now, if you were a Hebrew, that sentence surprises you, because the word that we expect at the end of that word fall, "let them fall by their own," the word the Hebrew ear expects to hear is the word sword.
"Let them fall by their own sword."
Let them die on their own sword.
But instead, the psalmist says, "Let them fall on their counsel," as the Lord, You've provided Your truth; You've provided Your way to help people, and let people who don't follow, let them face their own consequences.
That's typically in life:  The consequences are the way in which people experience wrong choices.
And so the psalmist says, "Lord, here's the safe and good path.
Let those who don't follow the safe and good path face their own consequences."
That's the sword of God's truth operating.
But in opposition to that is the blessing not only of facing the sword of God's truth but being able to live under the shield of His name.
Verse 11, right at the beginning, "Let those who take refuge in you rejoice."
The end of verse 11, "That those who love your name may exult in you.
For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield."
Remember David and Goliath?
David is facing the giant.
"You come with sword, javelin, and spear.
I come in the name of the Lord."
To bear the name of the Lord is to represent His character and care:  I'm going to show you who God is.
And the psalmist is saying, "If I show you who God is, if that's the path of my life, the friend and professor and neighbor and the fellow inductee into the military, whatever it is, if I'm showing you the name of the Lord, His character and care, here is God promise:  He will be your shield."
Nothing comes against you that can do you eternal harm.
God has become your shield.
What's the promise of God?
I will listen to you, and I will lead you.
And I will bless you even in eternity, and for eternity I will be a shield about you as you wear My name, not yours, Mine.
Because our youngest daughter is off on her internship, I had to think about a lot of these things, I guess, again this summer as Kathy is taking her even now to Texas for this internship.
And I remember the experience of each of our children as we kind of took them to college, and it will be the same for you parents, whether you're taking your child to an induction center or taking them to the airport for whatever trip they're going on or taking them to college:  You know what it's like.
To the amazement of your children, the very parents who have been butting heads with them for the last five years are now blubbering that they're leaving.
[Laughter]
And, you know, the kids are just kind of like, "What is this, you know?
You were pulling out your hair over, you know, what I did or what I drove or who I dated.
And now you, I thought you wanted me gone.
And now you're crying because I'm leaving."
[Laughter]
Well, love's behind both the warning.
[Chuckles]
And the loss.
Our youngest daughter when we took her to college because she had seen us weep at the leaving of all three of her older siblings.
[Chuckles]
She was determined:  No scenes.
You know, no scenes.
[Laughter]
And so on that day of taking her to college, you know, she just was not going to show any emotion whatsoever other than joy.
[Laughter]
So she was happy and talkative and go lucky right up until that moment.
You know, we'd had all her stuff unpacked.
We had all the books purchases.
We paid all the fees.
And now we're having to get in the car to leave.
And she's just as happy as she can be, you know.
And so just before we left, I took her by the shoulders and I said, "Now, Katie, I want you to remember what my father said to me."
[Laughter]
"I don't know whether you'll do good.
I don't know whether you'll do bad.
But you're my child, and there will always be a home for you in my house."
And just for a moment, her face froze:  "I'm not going to show any emotion."
[Laughter]
And then the ice broke.
[Chuckles]
And the tears came.
And she said, "Oh, daddy, that's not fair."
[Laughter]
Well, of course it's not fair.
It's grace.
As a father says, "Even if you cannot provide for yourself, I'll provide all I can for you, my child."
And the psalmist reflects that grace of a Heavenly Father toward all of us.
I don't know whether you'll do good or bad.
But you have a heavenly home by a Father who sent His Son for you.
Remember how great is His grace.
You are secure in Him.
He's given a road, given guardrails, given headlights, made the road, and also made a way back, so that if ever you leave Him, He will never leave or forsake you.
You always have a home with Him.
>>> Father, remind us of how great is Your grace, for each of us are at times the wayward children who need to be taken by the shoulders and reminded again of the one who made His heart our home and provided a way back by the blood of His own Son so that sin and guilt would be taken away and love and joy and rest in His arms could be ours again and forever.
Teach us of the God who holds us and leads us and protects us.
For Christ's sake we pray.
Amen.