June 3, 2007 Trinity Sunday
Sermon Title: “God Did, God Does”
Series: None
Text: Psalm 146
Dr.
Delivered on June 3,, 2007
“Happy are those
whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope
is in the LORD their God ” Psalm 146:5
God Did, God Does
In his bid for reelection in last year’s gubernatorial race, Sonny Perdue came up with a series of commercials in which he took credit for solving a lot of our State's problems. As photos of Perdue and his family rolled, a voice complained that Perdue’s opponents did nothing about housing, education, crime, and a series of other issues. Then, at the end the voice would say, “they didn’t do anything…“but Sonny did.”
For some reason when I studied Psalm 146 this week, I kept thinking about those “Sonny Did” ads. In fact, I titled this message, “God Did, God Does” because the Psalm is about praising and placing our trust in God based upon who God is and what God has done.
I’m going to keep my comments brief because we’re going to have communion at the end of the service, and because I’ve got another little surprise for you as well. Let’s dig into the Psalm…
In between opening up the Psalm in praise and concluding that way Psalm 146 gives us two things: The Basis for Trusting God and The Blessings of Trusting God.
The BASIS of Trusting God
The basis of trusting God is based upon who God is. The reason we should trust him, according to the Psalmist, is intrinsic to the character of God. By way of contrast the writer points out that as mortals, humans are fallible. Our knowledge is limited, our physical stamina is limited, and our ability to help is limited by our mortality. That’s what the writer means in verses 3 and 4 when he says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”
God, on the
other hand is different from us in at least three ways. First of all, he’s eternal. Verse 10 assures us “The LORD will reign for ever your God, O
I’ll never forget a Twilight Zone episode I watched as a kid that scared me to death. It was the story of a convict in a penitentiary who came up with a perfect plan to escape. The man befriended the mortician in the prison, who was also a prisoner. The first prisoner devised a plan where he and the mortician built a coffin with a fake bottom in it so that it had room below for another body. The plan was for the prisoner to hide in the coffin under the false floor and then when someone died and they took the dead guy out to bury him, the mortician would go back out later and dig the coffin up and release the first prisoner. The convict with the plan was buried, he heard the sound of dirt being shoveled on the top of the coffin that grew fainter and fainter as the depth of the dirt above it grew. Everything went according to plan until the prisoner began to run low on air. He couldn’t figure out why the mortician hadn’t come back. The first prisoner began to beat on the false floor of the coffin in a panic. And then, as the camera panned out from the scene you see the dead guy who had been buried in the coffin above the prisoner. Guess who it was? The mortician! The prisoner was buried alive!
That’s how it is with you and me when we place our trust in other people instead of God. Many of them don’t mean to, but there’s only so much help they can provide. We’re finite, limited. But God is infinite and unlimited in his ability to help.
The Psalmist concludes, therefore, that the basis for trusting God boils down to our two alternatives. We can either place our trust in humans, who are mortal and fallible, or place our trust in God who is immortal and infallible. Over against the human, the transitory, the disappointing, the inadequate, stands the Divine, the eternal, the satisfying, the sufficient. That makes the choice a simple one in the mind of the writer.
The BLESSINGS of Trusting God
The second half of the Psalm, lists the Blessings of Trusting God. In contrast to the basis of trusting God, which is based on who God IS, the blessings of trusting God are based on what God DOES. And what an extensive list the Psalmist gives us. How many did you count? I find eight things listed:
1. He executes justice for the oppressed
2. He gives food to the hungry
3. He sets the prisoners free
4. He opens the eyes of the blind
5. He lifts up those who are bowed down
6. He loves the righteous
7. He watches over the strangers
8. He upholds the orphan and the widow
He also brings the way of the wicked to ruin, but I won’t include that as a blessing for obvious reasons.
Do you notice anything about that list of things God does? Something I noticed was that the type people God is blessing here don’t appear to be people like us. Did you notice? God’s blessings—at least as they are listed here—seem to favor the downtrodden, the destitute, and the powerless—those who live at the fringes of society. That’s not really people like most of us. We don’t really have a lot of persecuted folks, prisoners, blind people, strangers or aliens, orphans, and widows in our church.
What does that say about us? Does it mean we’re not blessed by God? Of course not! Obviously we are the recipients of many of God’s blessings.
What it tells me is that if God looks with special care on these kinds of people, we should too. In other words, one of the ways God blesses “them” is through “us.” That’s how God goes about it most often. We are, as you’ve heard so many times before, the hands and feet of Christ in the world today. We have a mission—to bless others, to turn our own blessings into blessings and to not let them stop with us.
We’ve all heard the old example of a guy who is stranded on his rooftop in the middle of a flood. One winter, after heavy rains, a man heard a knock at his door. It was a policeman in a raincoat. “I’m here to tell you the dam’s in danger of bursting” he said. “If you want to leave, you have time to do so.” “No, thank you.” said the man. “God will save me.” “Okay,” said the Policeman…”suit yourself!” and he left. The next day the dam burst and the flood waters had taken over his home and he was stranded on the roof.
Before long a fireman came along in a boat and threw the guy on his roof a rope and said, “Grab the rope and we’ll pull you to safety.” But the guy didn’t even reach for the rope. He said, “My God will save me.” A few hours later a helicopter came by, and a Rescuer shouted through the open door “Give me your hand!! We’ll get you out of here!!!” “No!!” replied the old man….” “God will rescue me!!” “Suit yourself!!” said the Rescuer, and he flew away. Late that night the man drowned and when he got to heaven he asked God, “What happened? I prayed and prayed for you to rescue me, and I died anyway!! Why!!???” And God said in a booming voice: “Good grief, I sent you a policeman, a boat, and a helicopter, what more did you want?”
This morning I want you to hear that story from a different perspective though. We always picture ourselves as the ungrateful or unknowing man on his roof waiting to be rescued. But what about the policeman, the fireman, and the helicopter pilot? If we’re not in mortal danger ourselves—if we’re not a captive, or blind, or a widow or orphan, or hungry—our place in that story is as the one God sends to the rescue. Ultimately it is God who does the rescuing, but in the midst of God’s activities there is a call upon his church—upon his people to be the hands and feet, the person knocking on the door, doing whatever to get others out of harms way—blessing them, with the good God has in store for them.
Churches like NewSong—American churches rich with blessings and filled with the good things of God—have within all those blessings a commission. We have a commitment, a calling to fulfill. That’s really what we’re here for. We’re not here to become biblical scholars, or to be saints put up on a pedestal. We’re here to be firemen and policemen, and helicopter pilots—to fulfill a function for God—to give him praise and honor and to join Him in his work throughout the world today and every day. As the Psalmist says, “Praise the Lord!”
And that’s where I want to end my comments today—with words of praise for who God is and for what God has done. The last four Psalms in the Book of Psalms are called the hallel Psalms, as in hallelujah, because they all begin with that Hebrew word which simply means “Praise the Lord!” Look it up sometime, Psalms 146 to 150 all begin and end with the cry, “Praise the Lord.” At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of one’s life, that should be the cry on our lips, even as it is in the last few words of the Psalms. I challenge you during this next week to read Psalms 146 to 150 every day and you will find countless reasons to praise God. It’s something I don’t think we ever do enough—it’s one of the weakest areas of most folks’ spiritual walk—the ability and the desire to praise God for who he is and for what he has done.
And so now for the surprise I mentioned earlier, I’d like us to take just a few minutes to open up the floor for testimonies about who God is and what he has done in your life. The “rules” are simple: You must simply begin with the words “Praise the Lord…”
Sharing of Testimonies
Holy Communion