Fifth Sunday of Lent - Delivered!

 

Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent. This entire Lenten season, as is true of each season within the Church’s calendar, was designed by the early Church to help people focus attention on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to that focus that we now turn to the primary text for today’s Lenten message. Look with me at this prayer in Psalm 86:11-13

 

“Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and will glorify Your name forever. For Your lovingkindness toward me is great, and You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”

 

For our remaining time this afternoon, I hope to demonstrate how this prayer is applicable to our walk with our Savior – not only as we journey toward Easter Sunday, but also as it applies to our DAILY walk around the calendar with and toward our Lord.

 

When we pray with the psalmist, “Teach me, oh, Lord your way and I will walk in your truth” – our prayer presupposes an important point – that being  we WANT to know God’s truth – even if His truth is inconvenient or unpleasant. Scripture and even our personal histories give ample evidence that God’s truths can be inconvenient or unpleasant. For example, there’s the story in the 42^nd and 43^rd chapters of Jeremiah’s prophecy that illustrates that point.

 

The Babylonians had already ravaged their way through Jerusalem and Judah, and the small surviving remnant wanted to escape to Egypt for safety. They asked Jeremiah to seek guidance from God, saying, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the Lord your God will send you to us. Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, so that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God.” Jeremiah 42:5-6

 

When Jeremiah received word from the Lord, he told the remnant that God wanted them to stay in Judah and NOT go to Egypt. He told them God would protect them from the Babylonians if they stayed where they were. But as soon as Jeremiah told them what the Lord had said, they responded: “You are telling a lie! The Lord our God has not sent you to say, ‘You are not to enter Egypt to reside there’” (see Jeremiah 43:1-2).

 

The remnant then rushed off to Egypt like they’d wanted to do in the first place. But it didn’t end well for them – as it never does when we disobey God. They all died in Egypt when the Babylonians chased after them. What the remnant thought would be their haven became their graves.

 

The people of Isaiah’s day held similar attitudes, even though God rebuked them through the prophet: “This people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.” (Isaiah 29:13)

 

And human nature didn’t change even to the first century. That’s why Paul wrote to Timothy whom he left to pastor the church at Ephesus: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

 

In the late 1960s, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel said it well in his song titled, ‘The Boxer’: A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. I think that’s why so many people – even in churches – love to reinterpret Scripture. They want to make God say what He never said, so they can live in sin and justify to themselves their lifestyles.

 

“Teach me, oh, Lord your way and I will walk in your truth.”

 

Listen, please – We ought not to expect God to speak to us through His Scriptures or through His ministers if we choose to hear only what we want to hear.

 

Again, we each ought to pay very close attention. The Almighty God, the Holy God, the fiery pure God is not one to be trifled with. For good reason Jesus warns: “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

 

So, let’s return to the psalmist as he continued his prayer: Unite my heart to fear Your name.

 

If you’re like me, you find your heart often divided between what you want to do and what He wants you to do; Probably not in what we call ‘big things’ like living a morally pure life, but in a thousand little things such as what to watch on television, or whether to engage in a ‘little’ gossip, or holding on to the money you sensed the Lord directing you to send to some organization to feed the poor or the evangelize the lost.

 

What an important prayer this is: “Lord, unite my heart to YOUR heart.” Who doesn’t need to ask the Lord to make such a thing true increasingly so in their life?

 

Lord “Unite my heart to FEAR Your name.” And yes, it’s a good thing, a necessary thing, to have a healthy fear of God. As Scripture so often reminds us: “By the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6b)

 

While growing up in my mother’s home, I loved her – but I also I feared her and her discipline, whether it was a swat on my bottom, or losing my television privilege, or whatever else it was, I feared her – and because of that fear I am in large measure the man I am today.

 

When we have a healthy fear of God, knowing that He will discipline us when we disobey Him – sometimes severely, if necessary – it is that healthy fear of God that protects us from ourselves.

 

I think our disintegrating culture is directly linked to the wishy-washy tripe too many pastors have been feeding their congregations for the last two or three generations, teaching, “God is love, God is love, God is love” – without hardly a mention that without JUSTICE, without DISCIPLINE, God’s love is nothing more than a sickeningly sappy and empty phrase.

 

Listen: God is serious when He says He expects from us holiness, obedience, and self-sanctification. Listen to these representative texts: (2 Corinthians 7:1) “Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” And Hebrews 12:14 “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.”

 

Let’s go back to today’s text: “Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and will glorify Your name forever.”

 

When God teaches us His way, when we WALK in His way, when He unites our heart to fear Him, we will give thanks to Him with all our heart and glorify Him forever because our lives are rich with His presence.

 

But what might it mean to ‘glorify’ God? Surely it is more than simply singing worship songs or offering Him the words of our mouths. How can you and I, sinners as we are, give our awesome and mighty God glory? Well, Scripture tells us how we give glory to God.

 

For example: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

 

Listen again to the Lord’s answer to that question in John’s gospel: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” John 15:7-8

 

How can we glorify the almighty God? Live in obedience to Him. And when we do as He tells us to do, we will not only bear fruit for Him, but also shine a light on His magnificence, a light directing everyone around us to look at Him.

 

He tells us through Isaiah: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;  So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

 

Said another way, you don’t need a seminary degree to share with others what you know of God. You only need a heart desirous of bringing honor and glory to our Savior, and our sovereign God will use your words and your life to succeed in what He set it all out to succeed.

 

Let’s return to verse 13 of our text: “For Your lovingkindness toward me is great, and You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”

 

Have you ever thought what your life would be like today – today, March 22, 2026 – have you ever thought what your life would be like today if Jesus hadn’t saved you? I hope you’ve thought about it – long and often. 

 

And if you haven’t, you should start. How can we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory if we don’t remember the horrible darkness that enfolded some of our lives. I don’t care if you were baptized as an infant, if you were raised on the front pew of the church, you and I are STILL sinners. We were all born in sin. And if Jesus hadn’t rescued us from the domain of darkness, it should be easy to extrapolate where we’d would be now. Today.

 

Just look at the culture all around us. Hateful. Angry. Jealous. Bitter. Selfish. Bigoted. Pugnacious. Not knowing the love of their Creator. Not knowing the life-changing change He could make in their life, even if they’ve ignored Him for decades.  

 

If Jesus hadn’t rescued us, we’d today be in danger of helplessly imitating the godless world around us. We would right now, today, be unredeemed sinners without hope and without God in the world.

 

Ah . . . ‘But God.’ If you’re His child through your obedient faith in the Lord Jesus Christ – if you’re a child of God, then your life now and your life after death all HINGE on that phrase: “But God.”

 

Listen to St Paul: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins . . . and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:1,3-5)

 

Listen also to what he wrote to Titus: ^“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7)

 

Oh, how I need – how WE need – to remember where we were, where we could be, and where we are headed, because and only because of God’s mercy toward us through Jesus Christ. How we need to remember, with the psalmist: Your lovingkindness toward me is great, and You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”

 

But not only did God in His righteousness and mercy saved us from a lifetime of self-destruction and the ruin of others, He ALSO saved us through Christ’s atonement from an eternity – a forever and ever – away from His very presence and in an inconceivably torturous place the Bible calls by a variety of names – Sheol, hades, and hell. But whatever the name, Scripture describes it as a place of suffering, fire, and unending anguish. (see for example, Matthew 13:42; Luke 16:23; Mark 9:48; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 20:14).

 

Contrary to the ideas of those who prefer to deny Biblical truth, Hell is not temporary. It is not metaphorical or symbolic. It’s a real place. And also contrary to the ideas of those who prefer to dilute Biblical truth, hell is inhabited by souls even today as we sit here. The place of eternal torment was originally prepared for Satan and his demons (Matthew 25:41), but it is now and forever will be inhabited also by every person who rejected the atoning sacrifice of God’s Son for their sins.

 

If the eternality of hell is only allegorical, then it would be reasonable and logical to believe the eternality of heaven is also only allegorical. And if both heaven and hell are NOT eternal, then what else did Jesus and the apostles say that is not factual?

 

Christian!  Don’t go down that satanic-designed rabbit hole. As the Psalmist wrote: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” (Psalm 118:8-9); And again, “I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope.” (Psalm 130:5)

 

I close today’s message with the text I opened with at the beginning of our time today. This short prayer is rich with application to everyone calls Jesus their Lord, Master, and Savior. That’s why I urge you to try to memorize those few verses during the last few weeks of Lent. Doing so will serve you well through the remaining years of your lives.

 

“Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and will glorify Your name forever. For Your lovingkindness toward me is great, and You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”