Psalm 121:1-8
What Is Normal for A Christian?
The title of the message asks a pretty open-ended question. What is normal for a
Christian? Let me see if I can direct your thoughts.
The Bible makes some big claims for those who know the Lord. Let’s consider a
few of them.
I. God’s Promises
A. \\#Psalm 121:1-8\\ In this chapter, God promises to protect His
people.
1. This chapter is directed to Israel, but I believe New Testament
Christians can expect similar protection from the Lord.
2. \\#Ps 121:2\\ God promises His people HELP.
a. When we have problems or adversaries, God promises to help His
people.
b. The word for HELPER is the same Hebrew word used for the wife
in Ge 2:18, when she is called a HELP MEET.
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I
will make him an help meet for him.
(1) A wife doesn’t fix everything that goes wrong but she is
there to give strength and aid when things do go wrong.
(2) So God promises to be there for His people.
3. \\#Ps 121:5, 7\\ This thought is further emphasized in these
verses by the words KEEPER and PRESERVE.
a. Both of these words are the same Hebrew word.
b. The word means that God WATCHES and OBSERVES His people.
c. The notion is that He keeps an eye on things to keep them
within the proper boundaries.
4. None of these promise us an easy life but the verses do promise us
that God will watch over us, keep our the circumstances of our
life where He wants them, and help us when He deems it
appropriate.
5. That is a pretty big claim.
B. \\#Luke 12:22-32\\ God promises to provide for His people.
1. This passage is clearly New Testament.
a. Jesus is talking to His disciples.
b. He was preparing them for New Covenant ministry.
c. We are a part of the New Covenant.
2. Jesus is telling the disciples that just like the ravens and the
lilies do not have to worry about being cared for, neither do we.
a. I don’t think that is a prosperity gospel.
b. Lilies and ravens don’t have mansions and Mercedes, but they
have what they need to do what God wants them to do.
c. So I believe God promises to give us what we need to do what
He wants us to do.
(1) Now God does not always provide first class. His servants
have been known to ride coach—or even to hitch-hike.
(2) And God does not always provide in advance. There have
been times when His servants have had to do what He
wanted and then trust Him to provide afterward.
(3) But God makes the promise to provide for His people.
Psalms 37:25 I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
3. This is again a big claim.
C. God promises to answer your prayers.
1. There is not a passage or verse for this. There are passages and
verses.
Luke 11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
John 14:14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye
will, and it shall be done unto you.
1 John 3:22 And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his
commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
2. In these verses, God promises a direct correlation in our asking
and our receiving.
a. If we are in proper fellowship with Him and ask for something,
God will give it.
b. Of all the promises of earthly help that God has made to His
people, as far as I am concerned, this is the most powerful.
c. \\#John 14:14\\ says that God will do ANYTHING for us.
3. We have examples of God doing unique and impossible things.
a. For Moses, God caused fire and hail to fall out of the skies
\\#Ex 9:24\\.
b. For Joshua, God kept the sun from going down
\\#Josh 10:12-13\\.
c. For Peter and Paul, God raised the dead \\#Acts 9:40\\ and
\\#Acts 20:9-10\\.
4. You ask…
a. "Preacher, do you believe God did those things?" I do.
b. "Preacher, do you believe God will do those things?" If God
could find a servant who loved Him enough to give his all
to the Lord, I believe He would.
D. Add those promises together and God seems to be promising to help us
with our problems, supply what we need, and give us what we ask for.
II. How literally are we to take those promises?
A. It would almost seem that God is saying He will help with every
problem, meet every need, and answer every prayer.
B. Understand that I am not advocating that Christians should have no
problems, have no needs, or get every prayer answered.
1. There are some who take these verses and carry them to an extreme.
2. Generally, they fall into the category of preaching a prosperity
gospel.
3. The lives of Bible saints teach us that this is not what God meant.
a. The Apostle Paul had problems in most every town that he
entered.
(1) Paul knew much more about jails than he did hotels.
(2) If being imprisoned repeatedly, stoned once, shipwrecked
three different times, and abandoned by his friends and
colleagues doesn’t count as having problems, then Paul
never had any.
b. Paul, speaking on the behalf of all of the apostles, told us
that they had earthly needs.
1Cor 4:9 For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it
were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and
to angels, and to men.
10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak,
but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.
11 Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked,
and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace;
12 And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being
persecuted, we suffer it:
13 Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and
are the offscouring of all things unto this day.
c. And Paul acknowledged that he had a thorn in the flesh
that he wanted removed but God said no.
C. But on the other hand, to never see God render aid, to never see God
meet a need, and to never see God answer a prayer is to move too far
in the other direction—the wrong direction.
1. God did give us the promises.
2. As much as we sometimes criticize those who preach a prosperity
gospel, at least they have some Bible for what they believe.
a. Those who never receive from God stand as a contradiction to
the Bible.
b. The questions we must ask ourselves are:
(1) "Is God truthful or not?"
(2) "Are we living the NORMAL Christian life?"
D. The NORMAL Christian life is to see God doing what God said He
would do.
1. The NORMAL Christian life is that the Christian sees God’s
hand everyday.
2. The NORMAL Christian life is that the Christian have confidence
in God’s care.
3. The NORMAL Christian life is that the Christian have stories
in abundance to brag on his God.
III. Modern-day Christians may be guilty of four sins. Ask yourself if any of
these apply to you.
A. Could you be guilty of a lack of knowledge?
1. God wants us to know His Word and God wants us to know Him.
2. For us not to know these promises or not to know that God wants
to help us is surely a sinful lack of knowledge.
a. God gave us these truths so He wants us to know them.
2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
b. Not only does He want us to know Bible truth, God wants us to
know HIM.
(1) God doesn’t want us to know the Bible for the sake of
knowing the Bible.
(2) He wants us to know the Bible so that we will know HIM.
(3) Jesus speaking to Philip said…
John 14:7 If ye had known ME….
John 14:9 …Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known ME,
Philip….
c. And if we know HIM, we should know that the normal state for a
Christian is that God does help him, provide for him, and
answer his prayers.
(1) God did not make these promises in vain.
(2) God is neither the cosmic jokester nor the cosmic liar.
(3) God intends to keep these promises to us and He wants us
to know that.
3. So you and I should have some rock-solid knowledge on this topic.
B. Could you be guilty of self-dependency?
1. Here is where most of us seem to be.
a. We know something about God and something about His promises.
b. We just don’t desire God to keep them—that is unless there
is an emergency too big for us to handle.
(1) When there is an emergency, everything changes.
(2) We want God to start doing His part right away then.
2. Why is that?
a. Because we would rather handle the day-to-day operations of
our lives ourselves.
b. This is the sin that I feel most 21st century Christian (myself
included) are guilty of.
c. It gets us back to our comfort zone.
(1) We don’t want to be dependent upon someone (little "s")
or Someone (capital "S") else.
(2) If we must depend upon another, we are not in control.
(3) Whoever the "other" is, is in control.
(4) That goes against human nature.
3. You and I must make a conscious, spiritual effort to quit depending
upon ourselves and to depend upon God.
a. We need to start putting ourselves in situations where God
must provide for us.
b. It is time to start getting out on a spiritual limb—not
foolish, self-contrived situations, but following the
leadership of God, no matter how bizarre it may seem, and
see what God will do.
c. It is time to start wanting God to do what He has promised.
C. Could you be guilty of a lack of faith?
1. Then there are those who no longer expect God to keep His promises.
a. Usually, these are those who tried God’s promises at one time
or another, and they believe God somehow failed them.
b. They BELIEVED God would do a miracle for them once,
they PRAYED at one time,
they HAD faith LONG AGO,
but things didn’t happen as they expected so they quit.
c. These are those who say, "God doesn’t do those kinds of things
anymore" or "This just isn’t that kind of age."
(1) Granted, there were only a few times in history when God
parted seas and called fire down from heaven.
(2) Yet, the promises of God were written to all of us.
d. I don’t think the problem we are having with God keeping His
promises is with God. I think the problem is our lack faith.
2. What some don’t understand is that everyone has been disappointed
at least once, probably many times more than once. Why? Several
reasons.
a. Maybe God was testing them.
(1) God does sometimes. (Ask Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses…)
(2) He doesn’t answer a prayer or meet a need just as we think
He should just to see what we will do.
(3) If our faith was so shallow that we would quit so easily,
it wasn’t a God-honoring faith anyway.
b. Maybe God was trying to teach them that He is not a fairy-god
father or a Santa Claus who is going to give every whim we
might have.
3. The point is, failures and disappointments do not change the
promises of God.
a. If God wrote it, God meant it.
b. If God wrote it—especially in the New Testament—it has some
application to us.
4. If our faith has become flawed, it must be repaired.
a. Most seem to have no problem believing God for the eternal
things.
(1) We expect God to keep His promise of salvation?
(2) We expect God to keep the promise of His return?
(3) We expect God to keep His promise about heaven?
b. How can we have faith in these things and not in the practical
promises of God helping us? We can not.
c. Like it or not, a broken faith is hypocritical.
(1) We believe God is big enough to do the eternal things but
we won’t trust Him for the everyday things?
(2) That is hypocrisy.
5. We must get back on that horse of faith and figure out how to ride
him!
D. Could you be guilty of not examining yourself?
1. Why have we not pushed to find out why God isn’t honoring these
promises?
2. The answer is because we know where the problem must lie.
a. The fault can only be in one of two places.
b. It’s either Him or it’s us—and guess what that means?
c. Expecting God to work means we are going to have to start
putting our Christian life under the microscope to see what
is wrong with it.
3. Chances are that we need to start praying harder, walking holier,
fasting regularly, and separating ourselves from this world.
a. That is four different areas.
(1) Because of time, let me just mention one.
(2) prayer
b. We know that the New Testament church didn’t measure their
prayer time in minutes. They measured it in hours and days.
Acts 1:14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with
the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.
Acts 2:1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
accord in one place.
(1) The church prayed for days before Pentecost.
a. Jesus was crucified either on or near the Passover.
b. Pentecost is 50 days after the Passover.
c. Jesus was in the tomb 3 days and taught His disciples
forty days.
d. That means these folk prayed about 7 days.
e. Maybe not all day everyday, but they prayed a lot.
(2) When Peter was arrested, the church began a continuous
prayer vigil for him.
Acts 12:5 Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing
of the church unto God for him.
(3) The Bible commands us to pray long and hard.
Ephesians 6:18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit….
b. Along with prayer, the church fasted. That is a lost largely
lost art.
c. Most of us would acknowledge that the world we live in has
pulled us further away from God and closer to it than we
should be.
(1) There are more things that occupy our time—some of them
are necessary and some are not.
(2) But it is not just the volume things that occupy our time.
(3) It is also a matter of the quality of things that entertain
our time.
(a) John the Baptist thought the world such a vice filled
place that he chose to live in the wilderness as
opposed to the city.
(b) I wonder what he would think now?
The question is, "What is NORMAL for a Christian?" The answer is that God should
be evident in his everyday life. He should be helping the believer, providing
for the believer, and answering his prayers. Are you having a normal relationship
with Christ?
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