Ron Dunn Podcast - When the Upright Get Uptight - Part 2 - Bellevue

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Ron Dunn continues his series at Bellevue in 1991 in a message out of Psalm 37.

I want you to open your Bibles again today to the 37th Psalm, the first seven verses. We began yesterday speaking on the subject of when the upright get uptight, and the very opening words of this psalm gives us the message, fret not thyself. That is a reflexive thought. Fret not thyself. Fretting is a self-inflicted wound. We fret ourselves. But what else is there to do? That's the only thing open to us. That is our natural response. What else is there to do? When you don't know what to do, what do you do? When God doesn't make things sickness, what do you do then?

I couldn't help last night while Darrell was preaching, and again this morning when John was mentioning about this new body, how all of us last night were praising God and shouting ourselves hoarse, one of these days we're going to see Jesus, can't wait to see Jesus, can't wait to get into His presence. If the doctor tells you today you have a terminal illness, you'll start asking everybody to pray for your healing. But what do you do if God doesn't answer that prayer. One of the things that I love about the Bible is that it never commands us to do something without at the same time giving us the power to obey that command. You ought to look at the commands in the Bible as promises. Because whatever God commands of us, He imparts to us the ability to obey that command. He stood before the grave of Lazarus and said, I think that's asking a little bit much of a dead man, don't you?

If he could have come forth, he surely would have done it before now. And yet, he did. Because when Jesus gave him the command, he imparted to Lazarus the power to obey that command. He said to a man that had been crippled for 38 years, rise up and walk, and he did. He said to a man with a withered arm, stretch forth your hand. Well, that's one of the things that you can't do if you have a withered arm, but he did.

Every command is really a promise. Maybe this is why John says in his epistle, his commandments are not burdensome. They are not grievous. And of all the commands that the Lord gives to us, I don't know of one that is any more impossible than this one. Fret not thyself. Don't let envy and anxiety be kindled in your heart, fret not thyself. Well, if you don't fret, what else is there to do? And the psalmist is telling that. There is an alternative.

Now, I'm careful not to say there is a solution or a cure on this side of glory. But there are some alternatives. There is something we can do. And that's what we're going to look at today and tomorrow. So we'll read again the first seven verses of Psalm 37. Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good, and so shalt thou dwell in

the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass. What do you do when you don't know what to do? Well, you trust in the Lord. You delight yourself in the Lord. You commit your way unto the Lord.

You rest in the Lord. What if God doesn't make the wrongs in my life turn out right? What if bad things continue to happen to good people and good things continue to happen to bad people? What if there is a great gulf between your legitimate expectations and the way things really are? What do you do? What's the alternative? It makes these four very familiar statements. We all know these and we've preached on them many times.

Verses 3, 4, 5, and 7, these four statements, rather than fretting yourself, trust in the Lord and do good. Verse 4, delight thyself also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Verse 5, commit your way unto the Lord and then in verse 7, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Four statements which are really one statement. Verse 3 is a summary solution to the whole business. When he says, trust in the Lord, he has said really all there is to say. All the way through the Bible, you'll find that these two emotions,

fear and faith, are mutually exclusive of one another. Where you find faith, there is no fear. Where you find fear, there is no faith. And so in the face of fear and fretfulness, the one word is trust in the Lord. Having said that, you've said it all, without faith it is mighty difficult to please God. No, without faith it mighty difficult to please God. No, without faith, it is impossible to please God. And the tense of the verbs there indicate that without faith, there is not a single moment that you can please God. Not a single way is there to please God apart from faith.

So having said that, he said it all. These other three statements, delighting yourself, committing your way, and resting in the Lord, are as I see them the ingredients of trust. Take trust like a nut, crack it open, and on the inside you find delighting and committing and resting. What does a person do when he's trusting the Lord? Well, he delights himself in the Lord, he commits his way unto the Lord, and he rests in the Lord. That's what it means to trust in the Lord. So we're going to take this morning just verse 3, which as I said

is a summary solution of the entire business, And then tomorrow we'll take the other three, delighting, committing, and resting. But for now, we'll look at the third verse. Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. I said yesterday that the Hebrew language is a very picturesque language. It is a language of images and concrete pictures. The background, the root meaning of this word translated trust has the idea of somebody laying helplessly face down on the ground. That's a good picture of it. The trust in the Lord is a person who finds himself lying helplessly

face down on the ground. Absolute helplessness, abject hopelessness, there is nothing he has to lean upon, he simply has to himself on the ground. It reminds me of the words of the Proverbs when it says, "...lean not unto thine own understanding, but trust in the Lord with all of your heart." Don't support yourself, don't try to sustain yourself by your own cleverness, by your own understanding, but rather cast yourself upon the Lord. In all the words translated faith and trust throughout the Bible, there is that element of resting on something, of relying on something,

of leaning upon something. I think it is highly significant that when God wants to express to us what it means to trust Him, He uses a word that carries with it such a graphic picture of a person who finds himself lying helplessly face down on the ground. I think what he means is, folks, that there are just some things you and I are going to have to leave with God. There are just some things, like it or not, we're going to have to leave with God while we go on and do our business.

Now I say over and over again, I believe if there's something you can do, you ought to do it. If I have a headache, I'm going to take an aspirin. But those are not the things that bother me. The problems in my life, the things that keep me awake at night, the things that wake me up in the night and feel like bobware running through my stomach are not the things that I can do something about. They are the things I can do nothing about. Those circumstances over which I have absolutely no control.

Most of us spend our time worrying about things over which we have no control. Most of us spend our time worrying about things over which we have no control. Worry about the one thing you do have control over, and that's how you respond to the things over which you have no control. I am increasingly believe that the real test of our walk with the Lord is not how we act. I mean, if you leave me alone, don't bug me. All things being equal, I can act pretty good. I really can. I can act pretty good. Acting good is really not my problem.

Reacting is my problem. That's the real test. You've not tested a person just by watching him act. You test that person when you touch him in such a way he has to react. People may pay absolutely no attention to you until they see you in a critical situation and they're awful anxious to see how you're going to respond to that. All right, what is my response to fretful situations? What is my response to despairing

dilemmas? It is this trust in the Lord. You cast yourself helplessly upon the Lord. Now personally, I believe that God's greatest task is to teach us to trust Him. I think you can sum up all of salvation in these words, by grace through faith. Everything in the Christian life, by grace through faith. By grace, God provides it. Through faith, you and I receive it. Except, of course, God even provides the faith. But we can say that grace is God's side and faith is man's side. And that if I had to sum up in one word all that God wants from me and expects from me, it is that one word, faith. That one word, trust. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

The thing that Jesus kept rebuking the disciples about was their lack of faith or their baby-like faith. And so I think what God's trying to do from the moment I'm saved until the moment I see Him face to face, He's trying to teach me how to trust Him. I want to say three things about that. Number one, you ought to learn to trust God by trusting God. You don't learn to trust God by listening to sermons on it, but I do hope you'll stay. You don't learn to trust God by reading books about it, no more than you learn to fly by reading a book on how to fly.

I hope next plane I get on, the pilot's done more than read a book. You don't learn to swim by reading a book on swimming. You learn to swim by swimming. You don't learn to drive an automobile by reading a book on it. You learn to drive by driving it. You don't learn to trust God by reading books about it or listening to sermons about it. The only You don't learn to trust God by reading books about it or listening to sermons about it. The only way you can learn to trust God is by trusting God. Number two, most of us will never trust God until we have to. There is something about fallen man that finds it extremely difficult to cast ourselves on the Lord. As long as we have one more trick up our sleeve,

as long as we've got one more dollar in the bank, as long as there's one more gimmick we haven't heard or one more seminar we've not attended or one more how-to book we have not yet read, we're not going to trust God. You just won't trust God until you have to trust Him. If you have the machines to move mountains, you don't need faith to move them. So, first of all, you only trust God by trusting God. Secondly, you won't trust God until you have to. Number three, God sees to it that you have to. I want to say to everybody this morning, relax. Don't worry. Don't worry about whether or

not you're going to learn these things. Relax. Sit back. Take it easy. It'll come. God will see to it. The old saints used to have a phrase that we would do well to bring back. They used to speak of being shut up to faith, of being shut up to faith. And what they meant by that was that God would back them into a corner where it was either sink or swim, live or die. The only way out was up. You had to trust God. Backing you up in a corner, shutting you up to faith, closing down every other avenue of escape.

I believe that's what God did with Jacob in Genesis 32 when it says, and he was alone. He was isolated. God had him right where he wanted. There was nobody else to turn to, no place else to run. And God puts us in situations where we have no choice but to trust him. Oh, I can remember making a grave mistake one day when I read the biography of George Mueller.

And I said, oh, that's what I'd like. Oh, that's what I'd like. I remember kneeling in my office and praying, dear God, give me the faith of a man like George Mueller. Lord, I want to learn how to trust you. I want to learn how to walk in faith. Well, I'm telling you what's true, the next two or three weeks,

everything in the world started coming apart in my life. I mean, one problem after another, one difficulty after another. And I said, Lord, you've got to stop this. He said, well, I'm just answering your prayer. I don't remember praying anything like this. Well, you wanted to learn to trust me. Many of you know Manly Beasley. I sure miss that man. I don't know of any person that knew as much about walking with God and trusting God as did Manly Beasley.

And we were together a lot, thrilled to hear his testimony. And you could feel the whole congregation caught up in that dramatic testimony of faith. We were eating lunch afterwards one day, and I said, you know, Manly, everybody there this morning wanted your faith, but nobody wanted to go to the school you went to to learn it. You do not learn to trust God by singing hymns only. You learn to trust God when you don't have much of a choice left. I think

the most dramatic illustration of this is the children of Israel at the Red Sea. God has delivered them with a mighty arm. They have escaped out of the land of Egypt, and it's just wonderful. They're just praising the Lord, and they come, and they camp by the Red Sea. Now, you remember God is leading them. They haven't just aimlessly wandered into that portion of land. God has led them. They camp by the Red Sea. So you've got the Red Sea on front, mountains on either side, and Egypt in back. And one morning, they wake up, and they look over their shoulder, and here come all the Egyptians in the world swooping down on them. Pharaoh's had a change of heart and the devil always tries to regain lost ground. And so they look and here come all of these Egyptians.

And that's when you discover that the Israelites were the first Baptists because they immediately blamed their pastor for it. Well, Moses, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into. Didn't leave well enough alone. Bring us out here to have plenty of room to bury us. The Bible says Moses went over there behind a rock. Don't blame him. He began to pray, Lord, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? There were two answers. I wish we had time to spend on both of them. First answer was, stand still and see the salvation of

the Lord. For these Egyptians that you see today, you will see no more forever. I will fight these Egyptians. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And the second word was, go forward. How in the world can you stand still and go forward at the same time? Have you noticed how many times the Bible admonishes us to stand still and yet nobody does? Stand still is not simply a physical position. What he's saying is, watch me. Don't fret.

Don't get up in a sweat. Just stand still. Take your place of position. Take your position of faith in me. I will fight these Egyptians. You go forward. Now there's a great lesson there. There's a great lesson there. God is saying, I didn't save you out of Egypt to fight Egyptians.

I saved you out of Egypt to possess the land. And one of the devil's most effective strategies is to get a church, get its eyes off of going forward and spending all of its time and energy fighting all the little Egyptians that are snipping at its heels. God said, you leave the Egyptians to me. I'll take care of those. You can't spend all your time fighting all the little brush fires that come up and expending your energy and the energy of your church and staff on trying to put down this little thing, this little thing. You go forward, God will take care of the Egyptians.

You go forward. So that was the Word of God. Go forward. Right. That's one time they wish it had been the Reed Sea. God says go forward. Right. Of course, Lord, you do know what's forward, don't you? Red Sea, you just hold those Egyptians up long enough for us to build a few boats and

we'll go. No bridge, no, just take off. And they did. And the Red Sea parted. The psalmist says the waters fled from them as though they were afraid. And they walked across on dry land. What a demonstration of faith. But they would never have done it if there had not been an Egyptian army behind them encouraging them to do so. If the Lord had just come to them one day and said,

Hey, we're going to have a pop quiz today and see how much faith everybody has. Y'all take off across there. They'd be there there. They'd be there yet. They'd still be there. No, you've got to put an Egyptian army behind them. Low motive is better than no motive at all. And I'll tell you something, this may explain some of the things that's going on in your life and in your ministry. Have you checked out your prayers lately? Have you been praying for faith?

God just doesn't wave a magic wand over you and put a holy zap on you and say, now you've got faith. I believe that there are emergency rations of faith that God gives us in crisis situations. But basically what God is wanting to do is to build us into a trusting person, into a person whose second nature it is to trust God, to have faith. So that's the first thing. Now, for a long time, I used to just stop there. And then I went ahead and read the rest of that statement.

Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness, is what the new King James reads. Stay where God has placed you and fulfill your duty. Trust in the Lord, but that's not all. Do good. Now that word does not necessarily imply moral good, but rather the word is most often used as it refers to economical good, practical

good. The psalmist is not saying, trust in the Lord and go hand out tracts. He's not saying trust in the Lord and have your quiet time. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying trust in the Lord and answer your mail. Trust in the Lord and mow the lawn. Trust in the Lord and take care of things you ought to take care of. Do business, function. Now there's a marvelous, there's a marvelous truth here. God says no use both of us, we're in our sickle, self-sickle with this.

Let me just worry about it, and that'll leave you free to do what you need to do. One of the ways that I express my trust in God is by living it with Him, and I'm able then to carry on my everyday activities. I'm able to function. I go ahead with business. But if I am so preoccupied with the problem, I can't function. That shows me I have not yet learned to trust God in this even a non-Christian counselor and psychologist, psychiatrist I think would say that one of the greatest therapies for discouragement

and depression is to get up and do something you know how it is when you're down in the dumps, you know how it is when you're depressed, you just don't care about anything else. You don't, oh, I just can't bring myself to do this. What you really want to do is stay in bed and just pull the covers over your head and just sleep it off. You don't care if the lawn grows.

You don't care if the dishes pile up in the sink. You don't care about anything. You are atrophied. You are totally paralyzed. There is nothing that paralyzes us like fear and fretfulness. We just can't function. It would happen on a number of occasions while I was pastor, but there was one that I'm primarily thinking about. There's a couple in our church. He was a deacon. She was a Sunday school teacher. And they were both very, very active. But they were going through a terrible, terrible time with a rebellious teenager.

And they came to me. And they said, Pastor, for right now, we need to kind of... I don't need to serve as a deacon. And my wife doesn't want to have the burden of a Sunday school class right now. You understand what we're going through. You understand what we're going through. And I did understand. I really did understand. But I think it was a bad decision they were making. What they were really doing was simply giving themselves that much more time to brood over the situation.

To think about it. To brood over it. Abiding in the Lord is not idling in the Lord. And you and I are never excused from our duty, no matter how serious the problem is. We are never to escape the responsibility to function, to make our ethical choices and moral decisions and we're to keep on doing that. And another way you can do that, of course, is if you trust Him. Trust in the Lord and do good.

And He says, if you will do that, then, He says, in that situation, verily your need shall be met. Stay where I have placed you. Trust Me. Take care of business. Do what you're supposed to do. And in that situation, verily, your need will be met. Of course, you see, our primary reaction is that when suddenly we find ourselves in some kind of terrible situation, our first reaction is try to run,

get away from it. Oh, the solution to my problem is go to another church. Get out of here. That's the solution to my problem. I tell you something, you'd better make certain that when you go to another church, you're going rather than leaving. If the emphasis is on leaving,

the main thing I want to do is get out of where I am. Wherever I go is not important. I just want to get out of there. If your emphasis is on leaving, then it will be the same in the next place, in the next place, in the next place. There is something about us that we believe,

if I could just have a change of scenery, everything would be all right. If I could just get out of this place that I'm in, I could somehow, it would be alright. If I could just get out of this place that I'm in, I could, somehow it would be alright. If God would just move me on to a better situation or a different situation, then everything would be alright. Folks, that's not the answer.

That's not the solution. God says, trust in me, take care of business, stay right there where I have placed you, dwell in the land, and there your need will be met. There you will be fed. I used to wonder, and maybe you do too, why is it that God puts such great emphasis on meeting the needs of His children?

One of the most frequent and emphatic promises in the Bible is, in the Old and New Testament, God will take care of you. God will supply all of your needs. I have been young, now I am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every living creature. Jesus said, be careful for nothing. Don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink or wear,

for your Father knows that you have much at need of these. And if he clothes the lily, how much more will he clothe you? Paul says, my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Why does God make such a big deal about supplying our needs? Oh, I know why it is. It's because once you become a Christian, you become so inept that unless God feeds you, you'll starve to death. Is that the reason?

Do you even have to be a Christian to have your needs met? Do you even have to be a man of faith or a woman of faith to have your needs met. No, you really don't. I know a lot of lost people whose financial and material needs are being met a lot better than mine are. I know some carnal Christians that are getting along a lot better than I am, financially and economically. No, it isn't that unless God feeds us, it isn't unless God takes care of us that once we become a Christian, we become so inept and we're of no earthly use, that bless our hearts, if God doesn't feed us, then we'll

all starve. No, that's not why. That's not the reason. That's not the reason. Do good do good and I'll feed you not that you wouldn't starve otherwise but there's a reason what is that reason that God makes this problem why does he tell us to trust him in the first place to me I think you find some real light on it in Matthew chapter 6 where Jesus says several times don't worry about anything, don't worry about anything, be careful for nothing, be careful for nothing.

And then he comes to verse 33, but he says, but seek you first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, and these things will be added unto you. These things will be added unto you. Now, I want you to notice, Jesus is addressing a problem to these Christians. He's saying, now, He said, you know, the characteristic of the heathen, if you want to live like a heathen, a heathen is a man who is constantly occupied, preoccupied with how he can make his living and how much he can make and where he can live and the clothes and the food and the car.

That's what a lost man, that's what a pagan is after. And sometimes Christians get the feeling that if they don't get in there with the rat race, they're going to miss out. Boy, you see these lost guys, they're making bundles of money and everything seems to go their way. And here you are serving God, and sometimes preachers feel this way. I'll admit to you, I'm not ashamed to admit to you, there was a time in my Christian life, in my ministry, when I began to resent that I wasn't making any more than I was,

that there were people who had gone to school not half as long as I had, and they were making a lot more money than I was. And I, you know, I think every minister, I think every staff member, I believe every Christian worker at one time or another feels like, boy, I'm missing out. I'm missing out. I could have a car like that guy has. I could live in a house like that guy has. I'm missing out. I'm missing out. Fret not thyself because of evildoers. Don't be envious of them. Don't fret yourself because the wicked prosper.

All these things shall be added unto you. Listen, trust me, you won't miss out. You're not going to miss out. I'll take care of you. I think Jesus is saying, if you're going to worry about anything, worry about doing my will. If there's anything you're going to worry about anything, worry about doing My will. If there's anything you're going to be preoccupied with, be preoccupied with the doing of My will.

Now here is my opinion, which I greatly respect. I believe that the Lord promises over and over emphatically, promises to supply all our needs so that we will be left free to preoccupy our minds with the doing of His will and the seeking of His kingdom. I do not know anything more paralyzing than financial problems. I don't know of anything that makes me sicker than financial problems. I wouldn't hesitate to say that the vast majority of the marital counseling I've done in my ministry, most of the problems can be traced back to some financial woe, some financial problem. I tell you what, if you're worried about phone calls and getting overdue bills and there's not enough money, you can't be a decent husband, you can't be a decent father,

you cannot be a decent wife or mother, you just can't function. Jesus is saying, I want you to be able to function. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll make a deal with you. If you will not make the preoccupation of your life getting clothes and things that you need, but if you will make the preoccupation of your life my will and my righteousness, I'll take care of these other things. I'll take care of these other things. In 1965, I was called to be the pastor of the Munger Place Baptist Church in Dallas,

Texas. I was the third pastor that church had had in 50 years. The first pastor founded it and was there 35 years and died. The second pastor was there 15 years, and he retired. As a matter of fact, I was there because of the retiring pastor. He had met me, and I preached for him, and so when he retired and was going to retire, he recommended me to the pulpit committee, to the church. And they called me. I'll never forget one day when I was moving my books and things into the pastor study. This other pastor came in, a retired pastor came in, sat down on the couch, and we began to visit. It was on a Monday. And after a while, he said,

Now, Pastor, I need to tell you something. I said, All right. He said, You know that Sunday, last Sunday, was my last day here as official pastor. Yes, I know that. He said, Well, I hope you don't mind, but I called the church into business meeting Sunday night, and I made a proposal and asked them to take some action that has to do with you and your ministry here. I hope you don't mind. Well, you know what I was thinking. Oh boy.

I said, well, what did you do? He said, I asked the church to give you a $75 a week raise in salary. He said, I hope you don't mind. Nah, I don't mind well I want you to feel free anytime and then he said and then he said

but I didn't do that for you. I did it for the church. Because you cannot do your best for God or this church if you're having to worry about making ends meet. Now, was that wisdom or not? Is that true or not? But it's not just true for ministers, it's true for all of us. You can't do your best if you're having to worry about getting by and making ends meet. So he says, trust in the Lord. Take care of business. I'll see to it that your needs are met. And the Lord bless you.