January 17, 2021
Upcoming Events and Notices
This week San Diego Country remains in the highest COVID-19 risk category of Purple/Widespread. The State of California guidelines for San Diego County states that all worship services should be conducted outdoor. And given the challenges of weather and logistics, we will continue to hold our Lord's Day worship service online only.
Please join us 10 AM, January 17, 2021, for worship. You can participate in this week's service via YouTube here. You can find the order of worship and songs here.
You can find the sermon from the January 10, 2020 service here.
Please join us as we read another collection of great books for the year 2021. You can find the list here.
January 17 (Lord's Day 11:15 AM): Please join us for fellowship after the worship service via Zoom: Meeting ID: 879 4595 5692 — for meeting passcode please text pastor Ken.
January 20 (Wednesday 7 PM): Please join us for for "Knowing God" Zoom study. This week's study will cover chapter 15 — "The Wrath of God." Meeting ID: 831 0828 6050 — for meeting passcode please text pastor Ken.
Thank you for your continued support of Grace Fallbrook (PCA). Your loving support makes the proclamation of the gospel and the building up of the saints possible. Please continue to mail in your gifts and offerings to our church treasurer, Bruce Summers. In addition, our church website now features online giving. Please visit the church website and click on "Give" which you will find in the upper left corner of our church's website. When you click on "Give Online Now" button on that page, you will be directed to the PCA Foundation where you can give towards Grace Fallbrook (PCA).
Before We Worship
Psalm 42 is for the depressed people. Indeed, it begins with a desperate picture. "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God." Contrary to popular sentiment, this is not an idyllic scene of a deer frolicking in a dreamy meadow, something perhaps the likes of Thomas Kinkade might paint. A deer looking for water is a desperate deer. Their survival depends on finding water. That is, the picture that Psalm 42 draws for us is more like that of a marooned sailor who arranges rocks and debris on the beach to spell out S.O.S in hopes of being saved.
The psalmist's desperation has two main sources. One, he is far away from home, from Jerusalem, and he cannot appear before God to worship. He remembers "as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival" (v.4). This is a strange sentiment for people who think nothing of missing worship. Can it be said of us, "My tears have been my food day and night" because we are unable to worship with God's people? This certainly says a lot about us.
Second, the psalmist's desperation comes from the lack of encouragement. Twice he repeats, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?" (vss. 5 & 11). Thus, cut off from worship, and with a heavy heart, the psalmist cries, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?" Psalm 42 is a song of a depressed saint.
Depression can have clinical causes (i.e. medical & physiological). In such cases we need to seek medical help. But depression can also have spiritual roots. We face depression, not necessarily because of our previous spiritual failures, but because God can only teach us somethings about himself (and about ourselves) in our isolation that he does not teach us when we feel content in the glow of fellowship. Depression makes us very keen to the fact that we are painfully cut off from people. And we come to realize we have depended too much on the encouragement of others and not enough on God. Indeed, depression and discouragement often take hold of us when we look to something other than God with the expectation that they will save us. But nothing can live up to that expectation, and they all let us down.
In Psalm 42 God becomes bigger through depression. Thus the psalmist ends, "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." God can bless us even, and particularly, when we have lost heart. Would you hope in him? May our souls learn to be desperate for the presence of our God, and only for his presence! If you are parched in a desert where there is no water, then you deserve pity. Likewise, if you are starving in a famine where food is scarce, once again, you deserve pity. But what about the person who is dying of thirst sitting next to an abundant stream of clean water? And what if they are wasting away with hunger in a banquet hall with tables laden with sumptuous delicacies? The person who would rather die of thirst rather than drink, and the person who would rather die of hunger rather than eat rightly evokes in us not pity as before, but a deep sense of frustration. What is wrong with you? How can I get this through to you that there is water and food? Why do you keep on refusing?
Surely that is the tragedy of Isaiah 55. "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do yo spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…". Isaiah 55 is Israel's tragedy in a nutshell. The Lord spread before them a feast, but they refused to eat and complained there was no food. And they wasted their lives and money chasing after the things that can never give them life. This was their story.
And maybe it is our story also. How often do we refuse to come to the Lord's feast? The Lord invites us to his banquet hall, and the price of admission is free. We may come and eat and drink without any money. But we will not come. For there is actually a price to be paid before we can come to the feast. That price we have to pay is to acknowledge and renounce all our efforts to satisfy ourselves is futile. Sadly, we are not willing to forsake and renounce the things that cannot save us. We do not want to pay this price. But that is the only way we can come to the Lord's feast.
But thanks be to God. He takes pity on us. Isaiah 55:3 continues: "and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David." Whenever the Scriptures speak of God's everlasting covenant with David, our gaze is directed to the One in whom God's covenant with David is fulfilled, Jesus Christ. God's pity and compassion for us are in Jesus Christ, the bread from heaven and the living water.
Where are you searching for life? What are you chasing after? Will you not come to Jesus? The table is set. Your place is reserved. Come to Jesus and live.