God’s Purpose in a Variety of Testings: Disappointment

God's Purpose in a Variety of Testings: Disappointment

Good morning church family. I trust everyone is doing well in the Lord today. I would like to call your attention for this morning's message to Psalm 62. Please turn there with me to Psalm 62. And I'd like to begin the reading in verse number 1. Psalm 62 beginning in verse 1 we read, Truly my soul waiteth upon God, from him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be greatly moved. How long will you imagine mischief against a man? You shall be slain all of you, as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence. They only consult to cast him down from his excellency. They delight in lies. They bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly, selah. My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him.

And let's pray. Gracious Father, in these moments as we open your word today, I pray, Lord, that you'd help each one of us to pay full attention to what you have to say in your word. And that we would make necessary application with the enabling of the Holy Spirit of this word to our hearts. Help us, Lord, to learn more about what it is that you'd have us to see. About our trials, Lord, as we walk through these testings and what your purpose is in those trials, as you bring them to our lives, so that we might be further conformed to the image of your son. We ask all of these things in Jesus' name.

Last week, we began our study of God's purpose in the variety of testings that He brings to our lives as Christians. And we saw that one of the ways that God tests us is in the form of taking away loved ones that He's used in a special way in our lives. But when God takes these people from us, He intends to fill that void in our hearts with His own love, with His own grace. And He wants to draw us closer to Himself even as a result of taking that loved one away from us. Through the test, our Lord wants to impart peace to our lives. He wants to fill us with His wisdom and His joy. And He wants to show us Himself in a way that we could never have experienced Him if He had not tested our faith in this particular way. So our Lord's purpose in taking the loved ones that He takes from our lives is not to destroy us, but actually to make us more dependent upon Him and to praise Him more fully as we see Him provide for us in our time of weakness. And when I said that it's not, that He wants to show us Himself in a way that we couldn't have experienced Him before, it's not so much that He's not able to show Himself to us even in good times, but it's more so that our eyes will be open to see Him in a clearer way than we've ever seen Him before. He's always there with us and He's full of grace and He's full of truth, but our faith needs to be purified. Our faith needs to be tested and purged of its dross. We need the scales, so to speak, removed from our eyes, that sometimes we have there because of perhaps idols in our lives or things in our lives that keep us from being able to clearly see the Lord and His purposes for us.

But this week, my heart is actually drawn to the way that God tests us with disappointments in life. How does God teach us through the disappointments that He brings in our lives? So let's take a moment at the outset to define what a disappointment is. We are familiar with the word appoint. That word means to arrange, to settle, to place. You may have a calendar or an appointment book in which you write down your appointments for the week. Those appointments are scheduled to take place at a certain time or at certain times, so that the parties involved will coincide at the same place at the same time, and no one's time and energy is going to be wasted. It would be fruitless for you to say or your doctor to say you have an appointment at 2:30, and you don't get there until 4:30. Some of you may have experienced that you had a doctor's appointment at 2:30 and the doctor didn't get there until 4:30 or some time later, but we might say that it would be a disappointment if those that had arranged to meet at a certain time don't show up at the same time. So when an appointment is made, everyone involved in that appointment expects the other parties to be present. If you schedule a meeting and the other party doesn't show up, you might say that they stood me up or that they were a no-show. And I'm sure that each of you have at some point experienced such a disappointment. To disappoint means to fail to satisfy the hope, desire, or expectation of. And when someone fails to keep an appointment, we can see how that would be a disappointment.

David was a man who, in his lifetime, experienced his share of disappointments. This led him to say the words we read in our text today. Let me read a bit of that text again for you. And I'm going to take time to give special emphasis upon certain words. Look back with me in verse 1. Truly, my soul waiteth upon God from Him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be greatly moved. Then in verse 5 we read, my soul wait thou only upon God for my expectation is from Him.

If you live long enough, God will see to it that you experience disappointments in this life. That's right, you didn't hear me incorrectly. God appoints tests and trials for our lives. He allows us to experience, quote-unquote, let-downs. David spoke from experience in our text, having been betrayed many times by those that were close to Him. Instead of becoming bitter, or regarding all people as being untrustworthy and suspicious, he learned and taught a simple truth. People will fail us, but we can always trust in God. David's son, King Solomon, learned that lesson well and added to it, saying that it's better to trust God than to trust their own selves. If you remember that passage in Proverbs 3, I want to read it to you in Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6, where Solomon said, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

As children of God the Father, we don't really know what is best for us. We need our Heavenly Father's correction in our lives. We need His direction in our lives. We need Him to appoint our lives for us. Now God is not going to make our schedule out for the rest of the week for us. He expects us to make plans, doesn't He? He's not going to say, this is what is going to happen on this day, at this particular time. We cannot schedule our trials. No, He allows and expects us to make our own plans, putting Him first, seeking His kingdom first, following biblical principle, obeying His word, yes. But He also expects us to be open to His appointments. Oh, how it will help us, dear people, if we will not only simply see the changes in our schedule as disappointments, but if we will see them as His appointments. Our Lord doesn't reveal all of the appointments He has for us ahead of time. In fact, really He doesn't reveal any of them ahead of time, so we must purposely yield ourselves to His appointments for our lives as they arise. Otherwise, we're going to end up saying, here is my will. Lord, this is what I want to do. Now, put your blessing upon it. And we may end up pushing back against the Lord as we lean on our own understanding.

If we encounter a closed door, if we encounter a disappointment, we may just have the idea, well, we just got to keep trying. We got to keep trying to ram this square peg through this round hole. And that's not the Lord's intention for us. If it's something very clearly that the Lord has said to do, yes, we need to do that. But we must not lean to our own understanding in our making of our plans. If the Lord redirects our path, then we need to accept that from the Lord. I think about the spirit of Manoah. You remember Manoah, the father of Samson? Think about the spirit He had when He said, as He asked the Lord, He said, how shall we order the child? And how shall we do unto Him? See, this is the spirit the Lord wants us to have. Lord, what would you have me to do? How would you have me to go? Manoah wanted the Lord to show Him and His wife His will and how they should arrange or order their son, Samson's life.

Now, there are some things God has made crystal clear in His word to us of what we are to do. And yet there are other situations where we need wisdom. And the Lord may guide us in a certain path for a time of giving us wisdom, to do a thing a certain way. And yet there may come a time where He changes our course. And He leads us to another geography or in another vein or in another direction in our lives. And we must be willing and ready to follow Him in His providence. Please turn with me over to Proverbs 16 and verse 9. Proverbs chapter 16, please, and turn there with me to verse 9. It is there in verse 9 that we read this: A man's heart deviseth His way, but the Lord directeth His steps. Let's read that again. A man's heart deviseth His way, but the Lord directeth His steps. The word deviseth here means to plan, to devise, to think, to do something. Of course, both unbelievers and believers make plans, don't they?

God often interrupts the plans of the wicked to spare the righteous, but He also gives the wicked ample opportunity to repent and turn to Him in faith. If that heart refuses to change, destruction will be the ultimate end. However, God is merciful to provide delays along the way. As we've already said today, planning is not bad in and of itself. In fact, not to plan would be bad. Architects devise plans, and they call it a blueprint. We think of coaches of sports teams, devise a plan for each game, and they call it a game plan. We have military leaders who draw up battle plans. You probably have a daily plan or a calendar where you write out plans for the week at least ahead. And everyone makes plans. That's not the problem. The problem is when we make plans in stone rather than in pencil. Our plans as Christians must be made tentatively, always allowing the nuance, if the Lord will, we will do this or that.

Those who don't know God get upset and bitter and don't learn anything from the disappointments of life and the redirection of the Lord's hands to them. But they say things like, if it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all. But even as Christians, if we fail to see that God is in control of the appointments of life, we could easily be affected by this way of thinking and the spirit as well. We need to see that God often delays and alters our plans in order to test our faith, in order to build our character and increase our dependence upon Himself. No matter how many disappointments we face in this life, ultimately our hope as Christians will be realized. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. All things are working together, both bitter and sweet, for good to them who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. And we know His purpose is that we might be conformed to the image of His Son, that we might glorify Him and live for His pleasure.

So if you trust in the Lord today, your prayer, each day as you plan your schedule, ought to be like those words that we see in Psalm 119:133. Please turn over there with me. Psalm 119 in verse 133. The psalmist says there, order my steps in thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. In other words, the psalmist is saying here, Lord, I delight to do thy will. Help me to walk obediently according to thy word, which is thy revealed will. Help me to be in the pathway of obedience and demonstrate my love to you, Lord, and delight to obey your will. What I don't yet know, like what's going to happen later today, what's going to happen tomorrow, what's going to happen the next day, those things I don't know, but the things that I don't know yet shouldn't concern me. I must concern myself with what I do know, and what I do know is what God has shown me in His Word, and I need Him to take that word and make it a lamp to my feet and make it a light to my path.

Remember, David was keeping His father's sheep when His father Jesse called on Him to go up and deliver some goods to His brethren. He didn't know that God had appointed for Him to stand against Goliath, and defeat him. That wasn't in His plans, but He was obediently doing what He knew to be God's will. If He hadn't been in the right position, ready to do God's will, then God couldn't have used Him in that situation. So we must make plans, but we must also be flexible. We must be willing to adjust to disappointments or changes to our appointments, seeing them as God's appointments for us. Remember, in James 4:13, we were told, go to now ye that say today or tomorrow, we will go into such a city and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain. I see this verse as a great contrast to our text today. Whereas David in our text today says, truly, my soul waiteth upon God, these men in James 4 were saying, we will go. This puts too much emphasis upon themselves and what they could accomplish. It leaves God out of the equation. They said we will go. Notice they didn't say, Lord willing, they didn't say, let us plan to go. They said we will go. That's a big difference between their words and what we need to be thinking and how we need to approach the plans of life.

Charles Spurgeon said, there are two great certainties about things that shall come to pass. One is that God knows and the other is that we do not know. Those men in James 4:13 also said, we will continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain. One question we need to ask about that statement is this, had they made plans and set goals for their spiritual lives as well? Were they seeking first God's kingdom? I don't think so. So many times people move to a geography with their finances in mind, but not their spiritual well-being. The local church they will attend, the education of their children, Christian fellowship, all of that tends to be an afterthought, we've seen it many times, but the actual priority should be to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things would be added unto us. We need to make sure that the number one priority in our lives is to do and to delight in God's will.

We must delight in doing what He's already revealed to us in His Word. We must also delight in His will when His plans override the ones we have made. We need to be willing to adjust to His appointments. God's intention for us is to realize that His appointments are actually what are good for us, what are best for us. I am certain that Joseph, the legal father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was betrothed to Mary, I am sure that when He went down to Bethlehem for the census, he had full intentions of returning afterward to Nazareth, but that was not God's plan. And yet because He was willing to adjust to God's plans, God greatly used Him. He was willing to go down as it was revealed to Him to Egypt and in His obedience to God, prophecy was being fulfilled. Yes, plans change, disappointments come, people fail us. You will even fail and disappoint yourself.

Even though others disappoint us at times, we can and should still seek to build trust in relationships with one another. Think with me for a moment. While you don't trust your mechanic to fix your plumbing, you have to have some level of trust in Him to do something that you may not have the skill to accomplish. If you're not a mechanic yourself, then you're taking that vehicle to the mechanic because you trust that He knows what He's doing. You don't trust that mechanic for your salvation, nor should you trust anyone else, including yourself for your salvation. When I say trust as it refers to our trust in others, I am saying, do not be a cynic. Take people at their word. Your trust for salvation must be in the Lord. Within the body of Christ, among believers, God has tempered us together and calls us to love one another. Trust is a part of our relationship with our brothers and sisters. We're able to trust one another in a limited sense because we know that we trust God in an unlimited sense. God will never fail us even when we trust others and take them at their word. Our ultimate security is in the Lord, not in man, so we are free to trust others in relationship as brothers and sisters in Christ and experience the joy that comes from that co-dependence, that fellowship, that sharing, being members one of another as the scripture says. And if our brother fails, our sister fails and asks for forgiveness, our Lord teaches us that we are to forgive them seventy times seven. None of us would be here without the forgiveness and grace of our Lord Jesus, would we? And we can only care for one another because of what our Savior has done and is continuing to do in our hearts.

So as He purifies us through the tests and the trials of this life, we are being built together, fashioned, brought together as brothers and sisters in Christ. God is in the process of forming His character in our lives and through testing He is purging us of any doubt or distrust in Himself so that we may trust Him wholly, we may trust Him completely. If you and I completely trusted the Lord in everything, then we would obey Him in everything, wouldn't we? But when we fail to trust and obey the Lord, we end up failing one another. Every one of us has expectations and we all make plans, but only God knows what is good for us and only He knows when it will be best for us. Even when He says no or wait, this is always for our good and for His glory.

We'll look back in our text with me though in Psalm 62 and verse number five where the psalmist says, my soul, wait thou only upon God for my expectation is from Him. The word expectation here literally speaks of a line or a cord that is translated as expectation, hope, line, and the thing that I long for. That's how it's found in various places being translated into the Old Testament. Have you ever heard someone say, I'm hanging on to hope or he is hanging on by a thread? This is the basic thought in that statement. What are we hanging on to? What expectation, if cut off, would cause us to fall or to despair? Ultimately, our hope is not in the gifts given to us but in the giver of those gifts. And only as we hope and trust in the giver will we not be disappointed. If our hope is that we're always going to have good health, we will likely be disappointed. If our hope is that we're going to get married, if we're unmarried, we could be disappointed in that. If our hope is in our favorite sports team winning, well, we're going to be let down, aren't we? If our hope is in our spouse and our parents, in our children, we will at some time or other be disappointed. But we must not expect too much from ourselves or from men, but we must turn our eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

While we love our families, we must not love them more than God. God gives us children, but He can also take those children away from us if He sees fit. Job said, naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. We must remember those words were spoken even after He had lost His children. Even our own spouse will disappoint us at times. Look at Job's wife, and this could be said of husbands as well, but in this situation with Job, we see that His wife said unto Him in verse 9, dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die. But He said unto her, thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil? Instead of getting upset when people don't give as much as they should and they disappoint us, we need to ask ourselves, is my life pointing others to the Lord? Am I upset with the very things that I myself am guilty of?

The Lord told us as husbands, men, in Ephesians 5:25, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. How did our Lord love the church? Well, He laid aside His rights, His comforts and glory to become a servant, didn't He? In Psalm 27:10, the psalmist said, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. We must remember that even if father and mother disappoint us, the Lord is still our hope. We are stewards. We own nothing. We brought nothing into this world. We can't take anything out of this world, but our Lord, our Creator, our Savior, is our all. Even the very life-breath we breathe right now comes from God. He's given us time to live a life. This is simply an extension of His mercy and His grace to us. Our hope is not even that we have another moment to live, but our hope is in the Lord who gives us those moments.

While we ought to love, forgive, and serve, and seek to build stronger relationships with our brothers and sisters in the Lord, we must not have unrealistic expectations even from them, or even of them. In Romans 12:10, we are told we're given a responsibility. We're responsible to be kindly affectionate, one to another with brotherly love. In honor, preferring one another. Peter will tell us in 1 Peter 4:8, above all things, have fervent charity among yourselves. For charity shall cover the multitude of sins. If we have fervent charity, and we're really endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, that will be honoring to the Lord, and will go a long way in building our relationships and our trust among ourselves as brethren. We will be swift to hear. We'll be slow to speak. We'll be slow to wrath. Not because that's the way we are naturally, but because Christ is being seen in us. We build trust with our brethren the more we trust wholly in the Lord, and follow His paths. We build trust with our brethren by having the mind of Christ, serving instead of seeking to be served.

Turn with me to Luke chapter 14, please. Luke chapter 14. And it's there in verse number 8 that we read, and he put forth a parable to those which were bidden when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms, saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden of him, and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place, and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room, that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, friend, go up higher, then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee, for whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Your brothers in Christ and sisters in the Lord may be forgetful. They sometimes may not sympathize or understand as you think they should. They may be short with you. They may be impatient. They may fail you in any number of ways. But we must remember that our Lord never fails. He never Himself disappoints us. And even when He brings disappointments into our lives, they are intended to help us grow closer to Him and present, and even those disappointments present new doors of opportunity to serve Him. But not only should we not expect too much from our brethren, or our families, but we must not expect too much as it pertains to money. When money doesn't come through, or we have money come through, and it gets gobbled up by some unexpected expense that arises, and we have a tendency to get disappointed because we were hoping to use that money for X, Y, or Z. Just know that God already knew about that unexpected expense that was going to arise. God knew that those things were going to happen, and He is testing our faith. We must have things like insurance. We must have certain financial tools in place. We understand that. But our hope is not to be in these things. In Psalm 62:10, we read that if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. Even in Proverbs 23:5, the question is asked, wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

We also should not expect too much with our health because we may be disappointed. We know that our health can be taken in just a moment of time. How many times have we seen this played out? It can be taken unexpectedly, even from the rich. It can be taken from the young. Health can be taken from anyone, but living a godly life doesn't guarantee that we're going to have perfect health. Even in 3 John verses 1 and 2, we read the words, the elder unto the well-beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. The clear understanding of what our brother John was saying here was that he longed for it to be so that Gaius would prosper and be in health, even as his soul was healthy. But evidently, even though we're not told the specifics, evidently there was a lack of health in some way, but it was the longing, the desire of John, that his physical health would match his spiritual well-being.

It's also true that we must not expect too much from our job and our co-workers. Oftentimes, co-workers don't seem to care about the job or they don't care about taking honorable pride in their work, but we must remember that there is one who cares and we must answer to Him. We must do all that we do as good stewards, even as employees of the company that we work for. We must do honorable work, even if it may not be the norm that everyone else is doing honorable work. They may be trying to cut corners. They may be trying to get away with things. We may feel like we're getting weary doing the right thing, but even when we may feel weary doing what is right, we must consider Christ. We are stewards of His. We are servants of our Lord. And when we don't get a raise we were wanting to get, we must remember that even in that disappointment, the Lord is in control. The Lord is not taken by surprise. He will provide. He will supply all our need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

In a given day, so many things can happen. We may have bad weather. We may have an interruption to our plans. We may have doors that become closed before they seemed to be opened. We may run into dead ends. In life, we may have future plans cancelled by any number of things. I think about how last weekend we had an unexpected leak in our well. And just as the ice storm was moving in, our well stopped working. And it took us a couple of days to get it operational again. And yet, I see how the Lord was showing us things and teaching us things about Himself and about patience, even through that disappointment. Proverbs 27:1 says, Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Do not hope in tomorrow. Hope in the God of tomorrow.

Our Lord is the only one who can truly put gladness in our hearts. Some of the most unhappy people that I've ever seen have a lot of things. But they don't know the Lord, and therefore they are so unhappy because they're hoping for happiness to come from the things. And they just have to keep on getting more and more things. But it is our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone produces happiness that comes when we put all of our confidence in our trust in Him. No matter what rises and falls, no matter what comes and goes, if we have our eyes on the Lord, He is our hope. He is our joy. I think of what Ecclesiastes 2:22 says, For what hath man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the sun. For all his days are sorrows and his travail grief. Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity. I think of those words there, and I think of how it's so true that all the things that man can vainly acquire will not cause his heart to be at rest. It's vanity. But the man who trusts in the Lord, the woman, the boy, the girl that trusts in the Lord will not be disappointed.

Our lives do not consist, as Luke will tell us, our Lord will tell us in Luke, our lives do not consist in the abundance of the things which we possess. Our lives consist in the Lord. And we can count it, as James tells us, and we should count it, all joy, when we fall into diverse temptations. We should count it all joy, pure joy, when the Lord puts us through these tests of life. You can't put your full trust in people. They'll disappoint you. You can't even trust your own heart and mind, but you can and should trust in the Lord and His word. You might say, but I've been hurt before, or I've been disappointed. Well, who hasn't? But what did you learn from the disappointment? What did the Lord teach you through the disappointment? Did it make you bitter, or did it make you better?

Well, I think of Joseph and how he, even though he was done wrong, and even though his brothers meant it for evil, he realized that God had truly appointed that trial in his life. His brothers selling him into slavery had appointed that trial for good. His good, his brethren's good, the good of many in Egypt and Israel. And so may we with the same eyes that Joseph saw that, may we see that our expectation is only from the Lord. He, the things He gives, the things He takes, the timing in which He works is all for our good. And that the disappointments of life, if we really look at them from eternity's perspective, are not merely disappointments, but they are His appointments.

Let's pray. Gracious Father, thank you for these moments we've had in your word. We do pray that you will help us to acknowledge and truly live in the light of what we have seen today. These appointments of yours that you put in our lives, help us to realize that we should not be sliding down into the slough of despond, but that we should be ready and willing to learn what it is you're trying to show us through the disappointments of life. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.