All posts for the month August, 2024

How to Go to Church – Sermon Manuscript

-In 1940, a philosopher named Mortimer Adler published what has become an often used book that remains in print even today, titled ‘How to Read a Book.’ 

-The irony is you need to know how to read a book to read this book, and often we assume we already know how to read a book. But where this is helpful is it demonstrates to you different ways of reading that we often just assume as when we pick up a book. You used to be able to demonstrate this with a newspaper (anyone remember those things?) maybe a better way of thinking today is reading differently based on the website you’re using. I read ESPN differently than CNN. I read a blog differently than I read The Onion. Because we know the kind of writing that’s taking place, we interpret what we read differently. I don’t read ESPN to learn how the stock market is doing (nor do I look to athletes for help on political opinions, but that’s a talk for a different day!)

-We approach buildings similarly, even though we don’t often think about it. I don’t go to Cub Foods to buy clothes, I don’t go to a hospital to try to buy a car (or for their coffee!) So how do we approach the church, and how should we approach the church? What should we be looking for, what should we expect, and what should our attitude be?

PRAY

-To help you remember today, I used alliteration and fill in the blanks!

  1. Excited 

-How are we supposed to be excited about coming to church, where we have to sit still for over an hour, listen to me talk for half of that time, and then miss the beginning of football games pretty soon? Do you think that maybe that’s overly idealistic?

-To see why and how we should be excited, we need to look at a few Bible passages.
-1 Thess. 5:16-24:

-We’re excited because the Bible commands us to rejoice always. Always, explicit command. This means even on Sunday morning we’re supposed to be joyful, filled with joy. That doesn’t mean we pretend everything is fine when it’s not, this joy is talking about the implications of our salvation. If our sins have been fully paid for, how should we respond? With joy! With excitement! Friends, can you believe that NOTHING can now separate us from God’s love? Death can’t, life can’t, angels can’t, the rulers of the earth can’t, anything you see now can’t, anything that’s coming in the future can’t, any other power can’t, you can’t climb high enough to escape it, you can’t dig down deep enough to outrun it, NOTHING can separate you from God’s love! Isn’t that amazing? Not only is that true, but we also now have a family of people to remind us of that truth every week, an entire group of people who are committed to rejoicing together because of the salvation Jesus has purchased for us. If you can’t get excited about that, I don’t know what to get excited about! No matter what happens to me, NOTHING is going to change my eternal position.

-What else do we see here? Constant prayer: we can be in constant conversation with the God of the universe. He not only hears us, He also cares about us and responds to us when we cry out to Him. Yet another reason to rejoice!

-And give thanks all the time. Give thanks when things are going well, give thanks when things aren’t going well. And part of the reason we can give thanks is because we never go through life alone. God is with us, and He’s given us an entire church body to walk with us!

-Finally, who’s the one who actually does this work God or us? Yes! God himself will sanctify us completely, that means He will make us perfectly holy. But it comes about by living out what all the previous verses said. God works in us, and expects us to work out our faith along with Him. Jesus gives us a picture of what this looks like when He says that He can only do what the Father tells Him to – God wants us to be completely surrendered to Him, to represent Him in every area of life and to walk with him day by day in fellowship with other believers.

-Heb. 10:25

-I was recently listening to a podcast from a Christian rapper who said this verse doesn’t mean what we tend to think it means in America, that we need to go to church each Sunday, and I’m going to disagree with this rapper here because he’s only half right. It actually means that going to church on Sunday isn’t quite enough, it means that we need to be involved and engaged in one another’s lives so much that we can know how best to encourage each other.

-There’s some provocative language here: provoke love and good works. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever think of provoking being a good thing, and I see a lot of provoking happening in my house! A sister provokes a brother until he hits her, a twin grabs his other twin until he provokes crying. But what if we provoked each other in positive ways? Provoked someone to better love other, provoked someone to act kindly toward others. How much more excited would you be to come to church if you knew the outcome was being provoked to love and good works? Yet that’s exactly what this tells us we should be doing! The way that happens is by encouraging, how much? Even more! Anyone in here just feeling overly encouraged today, like your encouragement tank is just completely full and you can’t handle anymore? And look at the urgency that we should have for our encouragement: ALL THE MORE. What’s “the day”? Bible talks about 2 days: today, and THE day. Today we’re supposed to be faithful, because THE day when Jesus returns is coming. Each day brings us 1 day closer to THE day, so be faithful today in encouraging others!

-Rom. 12:10

-Last verse has 2 ideas in here: first is be devoted to one another in love. That’s an incredibly strong commitment, isn’t it? I heard someone recently say that the Bible talks about being devoted in 2 places: to the church, and in marriage. What I saw was the Bible primarily talks about being devoted to the Lord, but here it says we’re to be devoted to each other. That’s a much stronger commitment than just showing up 1 day a week, isn’t it? That means remaining involved in each other’s lives.

-I had someone at one church I served who was trying to take this idea to heart, and would take time each week to randomly stop by church member’s houses! Might have been taking it a little too literally, but I think the sentiment was good.

-Then we see how we’re supposed to compete with each other: outdo one another in showing honor. If you see something that God is doing in someone, encourage them in that! Honor them in that! Don’t worry them being overly encouraged, or getting a big head, let’s compete with honoring each other!

-We’re excited because we get to be with our family to be encouraged and encourage others.

  • Expectant 

-What do you expect when you come to church each Sunday? Are you expecting (as one pastor has called it) a U2 concert followed by a TED Talk? Are you expecting a choir? Are you expecting some good coffee? What is it you expect, and what should we expect?
1 Cor. 11:18

-First I want you to notice that there’s the expectation (twice) that we gather together as the church. Gathering together isn’t an optional add-on for those who claim to be Christians. 

-Second is that there are divisions where there shouldn’t be. Divisions come about when we’re not outdoing one another in showing honor, but they’re not supposed to be markers of the church.

-Finally, when there aren’t divisions, then we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper, otherwise we’re just taking a tiny piece of bread and little shot of grape juice that has no deeper significance or meaning, which we’ll see next:

Matt. 18:20

-You may have this one cross-stitched on a pillow at home! Some bigger context: Jesus is talking about church discipline. Jesus actually gave the church His authority before He left that means part of the church’s role is to help the world understand who is a part of Jesus’ kingdom and who is not. 

-It’s a delegated authority, not a final authority.

-While this verse applies specifically to church discipline, the principle is true: when we gather as the church, Jesus is here among us. So when we gather together, our expectations should be that we are meeting with God. There is something sacred and unique about our weekly gathering as the church that marks this as different than the other 166.75 hours in our week.

-We’re expectant because we actually get to meet with God

-Because we come excited and expectant, that means that we need to come:

  • Engaged 

-Church isn’t a passive spectator sport. It’s not like what I do on Sunday afternoons during football season where I turn into Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite “I could throw the pig skin a quarter mile. Would’ve won us state.” I would yell at Captain Kirk Cousins on the regular! You know what I’ve never done? Had a 400 pound lineman trying to kill me while attempting to throw an oblong ball at some of the fastest human beings on earth. It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback, but I’ll never get into the game. The church is the opposite! Church requires every single one of us playing our part in the whole body for us to function as we should, for us to be a healthy church. Think if you’ve ever broken a bone, doesn’t it make everything more difficult? 
2 Tim. 4:2

-There’s a reason preaching takes up so much time on a Sunday. We see this explicit command in there: preach the Word! We want everything we do to be built on God’s Word, and anything that doesn’t come from there needs to disappear. It doesn’t matter what season we’re in, the solution is the Word. Our lives are meant to be changed and shaped by the Word. Each week we gather to learn more about God’s Word, and then apply that Word to our lives this next week. Paul says “correct, rebuke, and encourage”

-Do you expect God to speak to you when you come here each week? An old Reformed Confession called the Second Helvetic Confession states “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” When I stand up here each week, I’m claiming to be God’s mouthpiece, which is a terrifying thing! It leads to much prayer on my part, and I have copied John Calvin’s practice of each step I take on my way up here saying “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” But that also means you have a responsibility to each word you hear. I have a little book here titled “Listen Up! A practical guide to listening to sermons” that I think gives some good advice on how to remain engaged each week.

-But preaching is only half of what we do, there’s a couple other passage that show us how else to remain engaged. 

Col. 3:16

-Once again, we see the emphasis on the word of Christ, AND we’re supposed to admonish and teach one another through our singing, the word Paul uses has this idea of setting right or correcting. So singing is meant to be a teaching tool where we admonish/teach each other AND sing to God. 

Eph. 5:19

-Which is what this passage says! Speaking to each other through our singing. This is why I love listening to you all sing every week! It teaches me, but it also means you need to sing! We were laughing this past week about former pastor Bruce’s ability to sing loudly enough to be heard across the room even when he doesn’t have a microphone! But that’s a blessing and encouragement to me, because he’s engaged!

-We’re engaged because we need to teach others

So be:

Committed 

-I understand that we live in a transient and consumeristic culture. Transient in that people come and go pretty regularly without any thought given to where and how they’ll remain connected to a local church body. One of the things I’ve started encouraging people if I hear they’re thinking about moving is to factor in the church into their decisions. Friends, it’s better to get paid a little less if it means you have a place where you can serve and grow more like Jesus. The math isn’t even close! But our world is also consumeristic where there’s a tendency to pick and choose the things that I like or want instead of committing myself to a body. I’ve known of people who would go to 1 church for music, then hop in their car and drive to another church for the preaching, and then were involved in a life group in a different church! Friends, commit to a local church where you engage holistically with the same people on a regular basis. It’s the best way to grow!

-Micah and I have been chatting recently about this tendency, if you are a member of a church you’re supposed to be “devoted” to it, similar to marriage. Yet I’ve had numerous conversations with people who say they’re “just looking around” at other church for a season. How do you think that would go if you told your spouse you were going to stay married to the, but you wanted to take some time to just date around for a little bit? That’s why we need to commit to 1 body.

Concerned

-Paul actually gives us instructions on how to encourage each other when we gather.

-Warn those who are idle. One of the expectations of someone who follow Jesus is to work hard. There’s no place for laziness in the kingdom of God. Just as with most things in our faith, there’s a fine line to walk because there is lots of room for play, enjoying God’s good gifts, but the Bible commands us to work hard as if everything we were doing was done for God (because it is). In 1 Tim. 5:8 Paul says that if someone will not provide for his family, he is no longer following Jesus, and is worse than an unbeliever. So one of our jobs when we gather is to exhort those who aren’t working.

-Comfort the discouraged. Friends, the church is a place for you to receive comfort. It’s the only place where you can find lasting, eternal comfort, and we as Christians are meant to comfort others just like Jesus comforts us. This is a joyful privilege for anyone who is now in Christ – we get to minister to each other as Jesus would minister to us if he were here. Do you look for ways to comfort other people?

-Help the weak. At some point, I can guarantee, you’re going to be overwhelmed by something in your life. Sickness, loss, wandering children, the troubles of this world will catch up to you, and will stretch you far beyond what you can handle. Where do you turn? My encouragement is to turn to the church! They’re people who are committed to you, concerned about you, and want to help you when you’re weak. I don’t know how anyone survives without a church family!

-Lastly, if you don’t fit into the idle, discouraged, or weak camp: then be patient. What a good reminder, because just like a nuclear family, sometimes your church family will drive you nuts, offend you, or even hurt you, so when that happens, remember to be patient with EVERYONE. At some point in my life, I’ve been all of these, and I’ve needed other people to be concerned enough for me to help me work through my issues.

-Paul summarizes this as always pursuing what is good for one another. You can’t just worry about you and God, it always has to be about WE and God, what can I do to encourage my brother or sister? How can I pursue their good? We actually need to care and value others more highly than ourselves.

Compassionate (forgiving)

-Because we live on this side of Eden and Eternity, there is going to be conflict, tension, turmoil, difficulty. That’s a guarantee. The question is what do we do with that? We are kind, compassionate and forgiving. One of our jobs is to assume the best in others instead of the worst.

-How do you go to church? Excited, expectant, engaged, which means we all need to be committed, concerned, and compassionate.

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by mikethestrand on August 25, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 25, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/25/how-to-go-to-church-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 40 – Sermon Manuscript

–A few years ago, a man and a woman met online and started dating. Unfortunately, he lived in Holland and she lived in China. The man eventually got fed up by the distance and decided to buy a plane ticket to visit her. He sent her all his flight information and boarded the plan. When he landed, he looked all around for his love and she wasn’t there. But he was in a new county that spoke a different language, and he had 1 mission on this trip, so he decided to wait for his girlfriend. And wait he did! After a couple days he started trending on social media, a local new outlet did a segment on him, and after 10 days of waiting he had to be taken to the hospital because of physical exhaustion. A news outlet tracked down his girlfriend, and she thought he was joking! 

-We wait pretty much daily, don’t we? I waited at a stoplight driving here this morning (just 1 thankfully)

-How do we wait for God? Today’s Psalm instructs us in what it looks like to wait for the Lord, and it doesn’t involve being ghosted at an airport

READ/PRAY

-John Stott’s outline was really helpful, so I just borrowed this from him. 

  1. Looking Backward (1-3)

-David begins by looking backwards and reflecting on God’s provision, notice past tense “waited”

-Heb. “waiting I waited” have you ever noticed how slow it is to become like Jesus, and how much effort it takes? There’s a theme throughout the Bible of periods of waiting and preparation before God uses you.

-Abraham promised a child at 75, child at 100. Joseph spent decades in servitude after being his dad’s favorite child, then he rose up to the number 2 in all of Egypt. Moses was exiled in Midian for 40 years before God came to him in a burning bush, David was anointed young and didn’t become king until 30, Paul had this radical conversion story and then he goes off to the wilderness for 3 years. But none of these experiences were wasted, and God wasn’t ignoring any of these people, instead God was using these experiences to shape and form all these men to be ready to be used by God later.

-The waiting season is rough, you may be in one now! Waiting for a new job, a new house, to go back to school, lots of life is waiting. But waiting isn’t doing nothing, despite how it often feels to us. If you just remain faithful in the midst of the waiting it is always remarkable how much work God does in those seasons, isn’t it?

-Just reflecting this past week with some people over my waiting to come here! It took almost 2 years of me looking and hoping and praying and waiting to find a church that would hire a young guy like me! Was told from 1 church that I wasn’t a good enough singer, another church told me they loved everything about me but wished I was 3 years older it was humbling and stretching! But God was still working. So friends, keep waiting! And if you’re not waiting encourage those who are waiting that you know! This will come up again, but you’ll have to wait.

-After the season of waiting, David is saved from God, notice the description in vs. 2 Hiking in mud is awful! Through my trip I experienced this, your feet get heavier, literally start weighing you down and wearing you out. Unlike that is walking on a rock-solid road. Clear path ahead, nothing to burden you. 

-And friends, that’s what it looks like to follow after God. By being obedient to Him, it allows you to be brought from muddy clay to a rock. It doesn’t mean that life will be easy, but it does mean that God will be with you in the midst of it. God’s way it right, good, true, and beautiful, it leads to flourishing as a human.

-Have you ever noticed how sociological data demonstrates this truth? I was just this week listening to a podcast that talked about all the benefits of biblical marriage: between 1 biological man and 1 biological woman in a lifetime monogamous covenantal relationship. Financial stability, healthier children, healthier lives for both spouses, it’s almost as if God knew what He was doing! 

-New song – the response of God’s movement in His people is singing. Friends, there’s a reason that we sing so much each week! Singing has been marker of God’s people since the beginning. Some theologians believe that God created through singing, I think when Adam meets Eve he bursts out in singing, this book of Psalms is an entire book dedicated to songs of God’s people. In Rev. (pick up again in 2 weeks) it says there’s singing around the throne of God 24/7. We must be a people who sing God’s truth to each other and back to Him 

-When this salvation is happening and God’s people are singing, what will other people see? They’ll start to see how God saves His people, and what’s their response? Fear and trust the Lord. Notice it doesn’t say the David will trust in the Lord, it says THEY

-Our lives are meant to be a witness to others, this means that our lives need to look different. Does yours? I think one of the reasons we need to gather together as the church is to be reset to this reality that we have a reason to trust in the Lord, that He has proven Himself faithful over and over again, so we can know that He’ll continue to!

-If you’ve ever been a part of team you’ve experienced some of this reality. When you’re running suicides with the rest of the bball team it helps when you can look over and see someone else persevering. Same thing in the church, when you’re struggling and hurting it helps when you can look down the pew and see a brother or sister who has walked through something similar to you. This is why God brings us into a new family called the church when we’re saved, we need that support and encouragement.

  • Looking Upward (4-5)

-Same idea that we’ve seen the past few weeks, God’s ways are the best way, they lead to our flourishing as humans, including happiness (not the pursuit of happiness, true lasting happiness)

-Same word here as the beginning of the whole book, another reminder that we need to read this as a whole book, there’s an intentional ordering to it that builds on certain ideas or topics.

-It’s wisdom literature, similar to Proverbs, just structured slightly differently. But this whole book is meant to give us language to express ourselves in the midst of life’s circumstances. We’ve seen language from the past few weeks on how to suffer well, how to voice those complaints to the Lord. This week we see how we wait on God in the midst of those times, which David goes on to tell us what we should be doing when we struggle:

-By remembering all the things God has done for David and His people. What are these wondrous works that David would think of? Exodus, wilderness wanderings, safety from enemies, food.

-God not only has done wonderful things in His people, but He also has future plans for them. What are God’s plans? Salvation in Jesus, which leads to life with God, which is the only way to have lasting happiness. God wants us to live life to the full! God wants us to enjoy His good gifts of food, drink, observing His creation. But notice that His plans aren’t just for God, He has plans for US. God throughout history has always been identified by and connected to a people. Adam and Eve, Noah and his family, Abraham and his family, this is why the Bible calls Him the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who aren’t in the family don’t get the family blessings. 

-Think about how many things God has done to the people in this room. How many are God’s wondrous works in this room? David describes them as “more than can be told.” How often do you talk about and reflect on how God has been good to you? Multiply that among all of God’s people throughout all of history and how great is our God?

-One encouragement I have for you all is to find ways to be celebrate when God works in you. An old song we sing “Come Thou Fount” has a line that makes no sense to our modern ear: “here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come” When I was growing up all I thought of was Ebenezer Scrooge (and not even from the original story, from the Muppets Christmas Carol). What that song refers to is a Hebrew word ebed (stone) ezer (help) a stone of help. God’s people would build stone altars when God saved them so that in the future when they were struggling and hurting they could look at these altars and remember how God had provided for them. What can you do to give thanks for God’s provision in your life so that you can remember His faithfulness when you’re struggling?

  • Looking Inward (6-8)

-The next place David looks is inside Himself, how does God’s provision affect his internal life?

-A bit of an exaggeration here, because God does delight in sacrifice and offerings. David mentions all the required offerings from Lev. 1-4 here. Leviticus can be a difficult book for us to understand, but the point of the whole book is: how can an unholy people be in relationship with a holy God? What does it require? It requires a sacrifice, a way for the penalty for sin to be paid, as David says here it takes sacrifice, offering, burnt offerings, and sin offerings.

-I think David is actually picking up a story about his predecessor in the office of King of Israel: King Saul. He’s commanded to completely destroy an enemy, including all their animals, but he doesn’t. He leaves the king alive and takes all the spoils of war. Because Saul doesn’t obey, God rejects him as King, and sends Samuel to confront Saul. In that confronting, Saul says he was just saving these spoils as an offering to the Lord, and Samuel replies 1 Sam. 15. Yes, God does demand sacrifices and offerings, but the heart of even those offerings is to create a spirit of obedience in His people.

-Jesus picks up on this idea in Matt. 23. Jews loved creating a hierarchy of laws, prioritizing some over others, but missed what all these laws were pointing to: a life fully surrendered in obedience to God. Jesus summarizes them as: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. What God wants from us is growing in holiness, taking 1 step closer to God each day. What does that take?

-God’s Word, obedience to God’s Word, internalizing God’s Word so that it becomes evident in your life. This is what David had been fixating on, mediating on, soaking himself in day after day. Friends, just as God works in the waiting, God also works through things that seem very ordinary and at times boring. It’s not magic or rocket science, it’s what have been referred to as the ordinary means of grace: the Bible, prayer, the church. All 3 of those elements are what it takes to have our internal life grow more holy.

  • Looking Outward (9-11)

-After working internally we can move to looking outward.

-Last week we saw the need to keep silent in the midst of wickedness, this time we see what we should talk about: righteousness. Means “straight” or “what is in accordance with law or social norm.” (EDOT)

-There is an external drive to the way God wants us to live, we’re supposed to speak out about God’s faithfulness, about how to pursue righteousness, we’re supposed to tell others the truth of who God is and that He continues working and moving in the world.

-This also means we need to tell each other how God has provided for us. Twice in here David refers to the “great assembly” The word “church” is taken from the word “assembly.” Again we see one of the purposes of our gathering together so that we can remember who God is, and remind each other the to live differently because of that.

  • Looking Around (12-15)

-Faith has precedent because of what God has done in the past. We are commanded to be students of history, our faith literally hinges on historically verified events. If the tomb is not empty, that everything we’re doing in here is worse than pointless, it’s a waste of time and we should be pitied. But because the tomb is empty, we can cry out to God when we’re surrounded by evils. 

-Because we’re supposed to be students of history, we’re offering a class at 9 AM this fall titled ‘Echoes of Faith” I heard someone said this class isn’t helpful or practical, but the truth is knowing church history helps prevent us from making the same errors, and demonstrates to us the validity of our faith. Church history is theology applied – 

1- gives us a broader perspective on God’s working in the world. It can be too easy to see our moment as the most important moment and each crisis as the worst crisis ever, but when we see how God has worked in the past it gives us confidence in the future.

2- it helps us to evaluate theology. I remember learning about the liberalizing tendencies of the German church in the late 1800s and realized that many people were doing the exact same thing today!

3- it helps us to mediate extremes. There’s a tendency to overreact (think of deconstruction today), but when we know church history we can understand the way things come and go not overreact to either side. It helps us to know that those who are opposed to God will someday be dealt with.

  • Looking Forward (16-17)

-Because of how God has moved in the past, we can continue to say that the Lord is great. God has promised to be our helper and deliverer, all these promises find their fulfilment in Jesus. 

-If you love God’s salvation (which I hope you do!) then we should moment by moment say “the Lord is great!” 

-Tertullian, the great North African theologian, said about David, “He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself.” These Psalms are meant to point us to Christ, and Jesus used Psalms at key moments of His life to demonstrate that He was the fulfillment of all the promises to David, but this Psalm has a double application to Jesus

–Heb. 10:5-10: Jesus’ arrival means there’s no more sacrifices we can make, His death was complete and final, there’s nothing else you can add and nothing else is required. That’s the message of the gospel, the message that Jesus came to save sinners like you and me, so because of what Jesus has done we can walk in a new way and we can with Jesus say the Lord is great!

-What does this require of us? We’ve seen a few things in this text:

-Waiting patiently. God doesn’t work on our timetable

-Celebrating when God provides for you. Find ways to commemorate those moments

-Both of those mean that we must live unique, sacred, set apart lives

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by mikethestrand on August 18, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 18, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/18/psalm-40-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 39 – Sermon Manuscript

-Do you know anyone that never seems like they’re actually interested in talking to you? They always look just past you to see if there’s someone else they should be talking to so you end up feeling like an inconvenience. I know someone like that, and it frustrates me every time I talk to him! I’d rather he just tell me he’s busy than stand there and pretend to listen to me! At the other end of the spectrum I’ve met a number of people who are “Christian famous” who will remain completely engaged and focused on you no matter what’s going on around them. Met Matt Chandler once, and it really stood out to me!

-Which one of those responses do you view God’s way of engaging with you?

READ/PRAY

  1. Silent Suffering (1-3)

-Who is Jeduthun? Psalm 62, 77 – 1 Chron. 25:1

-Remember, these are written as the songbook for God’s people, just like we might make notes to Tami, Richie, or Micah

-David begins by contemplating how to be a happy person, which is the aim of this book! “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.”

-How are we happy? By living the way God commands us to!

-He starts by pursuing holiness with his mouth, the way he speaks.

–James 1:26. 3:6-10. Isn’t it fascinating the way James talks about the tongue? He says that the tongue is the marker of whether or not someone is “religious” (said in a positive way here, truly following after God). He goes on “no one can tame the tongue” no one. Out of the same mouth praises God, and belittles humans who are created in God’s image.

-Reflection on Jesus’ words in Luke 6 – the mouth reveals what’s really in your heart. 

-Maybe you’ve had this experience where something happens to you that you know isn’t good or right, and you overreact. Anger, frustration, flippant, and even in the middle of your poor response you tell yourself that you’re overreacting, but you can’t stop! 

-Swindoll “Life is 10% happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Jesus talks about this reality earlier in Luke 6: If anyone hits you, turn the other cheek. If anyone takes your coat, give them your shirt. You can’t control what other people do, but you can control the way you respond, and that’s what God cares about. We’ll talk more about this idea later, but keep it in mind as we work our way through it.

-This is what David is meditating on in this Psalm. He doesn’t want to sin against God, but he’s seeing the wicked sinning and seemingly not suffering for it. He kept silent even when he wanted to speak good, so he got more and more frustrated at the lot of the world.

-Don’t expect the world to act like Christians, they’re not saved! But you will feel an inner turmoil about it, I know I do! It’s hard when it feels like Christians are being increasingly marginalized, when pastors are no longer trusted (read this week that trust in clergy fell to the lowest on record at 32%), when pastors fail at what feels like an alarming rate. Is there anyone actually following after God? What’s the point?

-We’re not the first people to feel that way! This is part of the reason the Bible remains relevant even 3,000 years after it was written – humans haven’t changed! We have the same desires, we still sin, and God is still God.

  • Short Shadows (4-6)

-Eventually, the tension builds up in David and he can’t help but talk, but just as last week he directed his focus in a specific direction, this week he does the same thing. 

-Look at the first word of this verse: Lord. Up to this point the pressure had been building in David, the frustration was increasing, but instead of blowing up at someone standing nearby, he aims his direction to the only one who can truly help him with his situation.

-Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this, where you were working your hardest to not respond in a mean way. Kids, maybe you’ve had that experience where your sibling just keeps pushing your buttons and they won’t stop! David is demonstrating for us here the right way to respond: go to God! Pray! Ask God to help you! God can handle your complaints, He knows all your emotions, and He’s promised to walk with you through every situation in life.

-But what David asks isn’t help in the present situation, it isn’t for God to destroy his enemies, this time he asks God to help David remember the end of his life.

-That’s a fascinating thought, isn’t it? All of us are mortal, we will someday die, and the older you get the shorter you realize your life is. Calvin turned 7 this past week, and I don’t feel like I’m old enough to have a 7-year-old! In my mind he’s still crawling in diapers! One of the things I’ve tried to do with my kids (imperfectly) is to not make them feel like they’re growing up too quickly, because of this reality. Calvin has lived 7 years, he should be a 7 year, regardless of how I feel, and if I just try to keep him stuck at where I feel like he should be both he and I miss out on the joy of our relationship today! This is what David’s expressing in theses verses. Our lives are nothing when you compare them to eternity. That’s why last week’s message is so important: endure in the midst of suffering and difficulty, because the end is coming! 

-There’s a sobering that comes when you reflect on your future, isn’t there? It shifts your focus, keeps today’s difficulties in perspective, and should bring joy to today’s experiences. I think this is where it’s so important to spend time with people older and younger than you. Older people help you remember that life is short (“just you wait, blink and they’ll be in high school”), younger people help you remember to take advantage of each day. Every day when my kids wake up they ask “what fun thing are we going to do today?” Every day is full of potential, if we are willing to be faithful with it!

-There’s a phrase that David uses here at the end of vs. 5 that is most often used in Ecclesiastes: vapor. It’s the Hebrew word hebel which has led to all sorts of debates about its’ meaning! It’s translated as breath, or emptiness, or vain, or futility. Some have translated it as fog.

-And David is comparing human life to that hebel, that vapor. Thankfully, winter hasn’t come yet, but during a cold winter day when you walk outside, what happens when you breathe out? You can see your breath! How long can you see your breath? A couple seconds? That’s how God sees human life, just like we see our breath.

-But this is only true of our earthly life. That’s what David means when he talks about being aware of our end! We need to factor eternity into our daily lives, and by keeping an eternal perspective, it will shift the way we engage our lives today. 

-There’s a missionary named CT Studd (1860-1930) served as a missionary in China, India, Africa who wrote a poem that has a refrain that is embedded in my mind: “only one life twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”

-Selah. Contemplate the idea that your life is a vapor.

-David then continues contemplating the how short his life is, describing life as a “mere shadow,” where people rush around to get stuff, but they don’t know where they’ll end up. Have you ever considered that nothing you have will last forever?

-We see this in history, I think. Think of how we’ve discovered the Egyptian Pharaohs buried: with all their stuff, and sometimes even some of their slaves, which his incredibly morbid. But they didn’t believe this! They thought they were able to take all their possessions into the afterlife! 

-I read a couple stories this week about some of these realities that helped me to understand some of what David’s saying. The first was a man who looked at the average life expectancy for a male in the US and calculated how many days he had left. Each day he would knock a number off to remind him to “count his days.” Similarly, my dad’s dad died of a heart attack at 62. My dad and his brothers calculated the exact day, and when each of them turned that age they send a text out to the thread to give thanks for their good health. How do you number your days?

-The second story was about a man who lost his wife in his late 60s, but by God’s grace was able to meet another woman who had lost her husband about the same time. This man worked hard, but he wasn’t wealthy by any means! The woman he married, however, first husband was VERY wealthy! So this man who never had much suddenly had access to this other man’s wealth: friends you can’t take anything with you, even money! Only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.

  • Substance (7-13)

-Once again, David turns his attention to the Lord. He asks a question that’s true for all of us: What are we waiting for? 

-I think just as he’s been contemplating the realities of living in the world, here he’s continuing to ponder that idea. Another component of being human is waiting, isn’t it? You wait for food to be done, you wait in line at the grocery store, you wait at traffic lights, you wait for your kids to get ready, or you wait for your mom and dad to play with you! But then as you get older, you’re waiting for bigger things: you wait for your dream job, you wait for your dream car, you wait for the perfect house, you wait for a vacation, you wait for retirement. Yet each time you achieve what you were waiting for it changes, doesn’t it? That dream car doesn’t seem to be quite a dream when you have to take care of it, the dream job isn’t quite as dreamy as you had thought when you run into issues and conflict, and it’s not quite as fun or enjoyable as you thought it would be.

-What does David wait for? He says his hope is in the Lord, he’s hoping for God to be present to him. He’s asking God to be with him, to come alongside, to support him. If God is with him, it changes all the other waiting that we do on earth, doesn’t it? Suddenly all the other waiting starts to make sense because God is doing a work in us even as we wait. It shifts our perspective and mindset as we wait for the events on earth.

-But there’s a second component to this hope because David needs salvation from God. Another component to numbering our days is pursuing holiness instead of dabbling in our sin.

-We talked quite a bit about this in last week’s Psalm, but there are consequences to our sin, the question for us is what do we do with our sin? Do we continue to play with it assuming that it’s not that big of a deal, or do we confess our sins and bring them to the only person who has provided a way for our sin to be dealt with?

-When we keep our focus on eternity it begins to make our sins look really dumb. God doesn’t give us a list of rules as a punishment or as chains, God tells us how to live so that we can have life to the full! He wants us to live full, healthy lives in this world that He’s created, which means He knows best how we should live and desires that all of us can be in lasting relationship with Him.

-So friends, deal with your sin. Because your life is just a moment, keep short accounts. Because your life is just a vapor deal with your sin today.

-Selah. 

-The last place David goes is asking God to hear him because this world isn’t his home.

-I don’t know about you, but I love home (the place where your phone automatically connects to the Wi-Fi). I know where everything is (most of the time), I’ve got my earthly possessions there, I can grab food from the fridge whenever I want, it can become too easy at times to remember that this world isn’t actually my home. It can get too easy to get comfortable here and not count my days, not deal with my sin, not keep God as the focus of my life, which is why I need reminders like this Psalm. I need the reminder to keep an eternal perspective each day so that I don’t become complacent in my walk with God.

-As we wrap up, I want us to contemplate David’s direct requests to the Lord throughout this Psalm, there’s 3: (4) make me aware of my end, (7) what do I wait for, and (12) hear my prayer. 

-These 3 requests together are how we are able to keep eternity as the focus of our lives. The first is the reminder of our mortality. Because of sin, we will all die at some point. Because we will die, we should live differently today, which is what leads to the second request.

-We wait for the Lord! I think Paul gets at how we do this in Phil. 4:6-7. Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can live a worry-free life! That’s a whole lot easier to say than to live. But look at the outcome: the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. Friends, lasting peace is possible, but only through Jesus, which gets us to the third one, and what Paul also mentions here:

-In everything, through prayer and petition, present your requests to God, or as David says “Hear my cry!” Bring everything to the Lord: your hopes, your sickness, your sin, your joys, He’s honestly the only one who’s patient enough to deal with it all! 

-Just as we saw last week with David’s reaction to being sick was to run to God, we see the same thing this week. We need to each day run to God because He cares for us, because He helps us to number our days, and because He’s the only one who can bring lasting peace to our lives. 

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by mikethestrand on August 11, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 11, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/11/psalm-39-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 38 – Sermon Manuscript

-People handle sickness differently. Kids seem to get sudden onset sickness, like running around playing like everything’s normal, then stop and projectile vomit. And then go straight back to running around. As you get older, the approach to sickness has to change because you don’t bounce back quite as quickly, and sometimes that’s a difficult lesson to learn! 

-During college, I remember learning this lesson through a difficult experience. I had perennial sinus infections (at least once a year, hence surgery last week), so my way of combatting the these infections was trying to load myself up with EmergenC, the little powder form of vitamin C, and I’d mix it with my Mountain Dew. I don’t do that anymore, but I still will sometimes take EmergenC (with water)

-In this week’s text, we see David’s response to sickness.

READ/PRAY

  1. A Plea and a Prayer (Psalm 38)

-Helpful summary of this Psalm: “The Psalm opens with a prayer (1); continues in a long complaint (2-8); pauses to dart an eye to heaven (9); proceeds with a second tale of sorrow (10-14); interjects another word of hopeful address to God (15); a third time pours out a flood of griefs (16-20); and then closes as it opened, with renewed petitioning (21-22).” Spurgeon

-I’m going to spend our time in this Psalm looking at what David asks of God. The other parts are a continuation of how terribly David feels, and I want us to focus more on David’s prayers, and then look at some different responses to sickness.

-First thing to note is the first word David uses. When sickness comes, where do you look? 

-The impulse for believers should be to look to God! Acknowledge His oversight, His control, His plans.

-Do you trust in God’s direction in every area of your life? David doesn’t try to exonerate himself, doesn’t make excuses, but the consequences are heavy.

-Chatting with Micah this week about 3 different kinds of suffering: general fall, righteous suffering, being dumb. 

-God created the world good, without sickness or dying, everything working perfectly as God intended. But with the Fall, disobeying God’s law, comes death, destruction, chaos, and pain. Because of sin entering into the world, suddenly everything becomes difficult because of what scientists call “entropy” that things always fall into chaos and disorder, that’s a result of the Fall, it means life is going to be hard, it means your car will break down, your body won’t recover as fast as it did when you were a kid. 

-There’s also suffering that comes from being righteous and facing the influence of the devil, where Jesus tells us in this world we will have suffering and difficulty. 1 Peter says we should rejoice when we suffer for the sake of being righteous (in good standing with God). A subset of this is so that we can encourage others, 2 Cor. 1:4 “He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” Don’t miss that sometimes your suffering isn’t just for you! We need to remember that God sends us to others as well.

-Finally, sometimes suffering comes as a consequence to your own dumb decisions. Think of David who lost a son because of his adultery and murder, or Moses who missed out on the promised land because of his anger, or Peter whose impulsiveness during Jesus’ trial meant he betrayed his Savior. Your sin will find you out, either in this life, or the next.

-In this case, David is dealing with the consequences of his sin: look at the end of vs. 3 into 4.

-We live in a world that doesn’t have any space or understanding of the spiritual realities around us all the time. We look for purely naturalistic explanations for everything. We read passages in Scripture about demonic influence and use terms like epilepsy to describe it. When we talk about sickness, we often talk about germs and bacteria. And while that is right and true what we don’t often talk about is sickness being the consequence of spiritual decisions.

-As I say that, I want to be careful in the way we talk about this. Not all sickness is a consequence of a sinful decision, but I worry that we have gone SO far to the extreme that we have no room in our minds for sickness as a consequence of spiritual decisions we’ve made. Not health/prosperity gospel, but acknowledging the complex realities of being human where we’re impacted by biology AND theology! We have become so focused on the material world (taste, touch, see, smell) that I worry we too quickly neglect the spiritual world, the things that have eternal value. We’ll talk about that more in a bit, but don’t forget that in the meantime! 

-What does David ask God? To not be punished in anger. 

-Spurgeon: “I must be rebuked, for I am an erring child and You a careful Father, but do not throw too much anger into the tones of Your voice; deal gently although I have sinned grievously. The anger of others I can bear, but not Yours.” When we sin, there are consequences. David admits that, recognizes that reality, but he still asks God to be merciful and gracious to him.

–Heb. 10:31 “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Terrifying, living. God is completely unique among all the gods, the only one who’s alive, therefore He’s the only God who can punish sins committed against Him.

-Next: 9 Every desire is known to God. This is why God’s judgments are right and true, He can see down to every motive and desire of every human heart. 

-So why hide? If God knows everything we can’t hide from Him, so don’t! Confess yours sins to God, it’s not like it’s a surprise, and it’s not like He’s going to stop loving you because of it!

-Then 15 in the midst of recognizing the implications of his sinful choices where does David put his hope? In God. Friends, it’s far better to trust yourself to God’s judgment than the judgment of the world.

-Sin looks so enticing until you realize the implications of your sins. “If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side. Holiness gives us new desires and brings old desires into line with one another.” Keller

-Friends: sin always and only leads to death, either in this life or the next. We have to decide if we’re going to die to the sin in ourselves or die to Christ, but we will all face a death of some sort.

-And sometimes, but not always, the implications of our sin will be felt and experienced here and now, as David does. But I can guarantee even if you don’t see or feel like you’re facing any problems because of your sin here, you will face eternal realities due to not living according to God’s commands. 

-Last request 21-22 even though David is facing consequences from God, he realizes the only hope he has for salvation is by running to God. Being saved can’t come from anything or anyone else, even though we often act like it can.

-Why do you think food and drink are so enticing? Because we act like they can save us! Why are drugs so addicting? Because we act like they can solve our problems. Why do people cheat to get more money? Because we act like money can fix our deepest longings.

-Friends, David serves as a model here for how we should handle sickness and disease in our lives: run to God, He’s the only one who can truly save you!

-One of the people on my big hiking trip is an ER Dr, and he made the comment one night that we need to change the way we pray for medical issues. We often pray that God would guide the surgeon’s hand, as if the surgeon is the savior, when what we should be asking is God to intervene DESPITE the accident prone human working on us! (No offense to anyone who’s Dr) but doesn’t that put a different perspective on it? Ultimately the only hope we have for salvation here and in eternity is by running to God, putting our hope anywhere else is guaranteed to let us down.

-This Psalm is a glimpse of the physical implications of our sin, but there’s another important place in the Bible that shows not all sin is because of a specific sin, so I want to look at John 9.

  • Whose Sin? (John 9)

-Ultimately all sickness is traced back to the Fall, but what about individual sickness? There are accounts in the OT of physical sickness being traced to a specific sin (Miriam, Moses’ sister), but does that happen today, when we’re under a new covenant that came after Jesus’ resurrection? Yes! This story looks at the way we view sickness, and how Jesus views sickness.

-John’s primary point in this whole book is to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah, which includes healing people. He does this by connecting Jesus’ teaching to His healings. Jesus’ message isn’t just a proposition or intellectual argument, it’s supposed to be connected to physical wholeness and flourishing as a human.

-Cara and I were talking about this a few weeks ago – Jesus desire is for us to be truly human, sin causes us to become sub-human, or less than human. So Christianity is the process of becoming what God truly intended us to be: fully human. Jesus was the only true human to ever live!

-Think about that! Part of the implication of that is there was no division in Jesus. He is the only person who didn’t talk better than He walked! He both talked the talk and walked the walk, and He’s called us to do the same, which is the process of slowly, day by day becoming more human.

-The reason I want to take a look at this passage is because it shows the way we tend to respond to suffering, which has been a problem for a really long time. His disciples see a blind man and ask who’s responsible for this man’s problem?

-I don’t know about you, but one thing I’ve discovered is true of me is when I’m facing something difficult, I tend to ask God “Why me!? What did I do to deserve this!?” But I’m very slow to give thanks to God when things are going well. Maybe you’re the same way. Maybe you forget all the good gifts God’s given you! The fact that you’re here today is a gift that we shouldn’t neglect or take for granted. That’s our response, but look at how Jesus answers that question:

-SO THAT God’s Work might be displayed. Friends, our view of sickness and suffering is often way too short-sighted. Part of the reason we get so off base when we suffer is because we are so focused on the immediate feelings we have, but feelings come and go based on a moment. I read a fascinating article this past week that looked at being spiritually sick. Often it’s easy to tell when your physically sick (something’s not working as it should), but how do we tell when we’re spiritually sick? Have you ever been spiritually sick? See, Jesus tells us that sickness is meant to serve as different purpose than we often admit, and even sickness and suffering are meant to be tools to bring true healing in our lives, to make us more like Jesus, to make us more human.

-There’s a beautiful picture of this in The Chosen. A couple caveats, and then the story. This is extra-biblical, we need to use our imagination to fill in some of the details of these stories, just like the writers of this show are doing. Doesn’t contradict Scripture, but isn’t explicit in the text. Same reason we get caught up in stories, they help shape our imagination in things are good, true, and beautiful. Also, don’t pray to Johnathan Roumie who plays Jesus in this show, he’s just an actor! Story: Jesus has just commissioned his disciples to go out 2 by 2 to start preaching the gospel and heal people, just like Jesus had done. One of the disciples (little James) has a limp (actor has scoliosis). Jesus has healed a number of people of all sorts of maladies, but not one of the 12 disciples, and he was just tasked with healing others. It’s a few minutes long, but I think it’s worth watching.

-Do you see the kindness of Jesus here? He doesn’t promise an easy life, He doesn’t promise healing, but He promises Himself. That doesn’t mean life will always make sense here, but it will make sense if we have a long-term perspective instead of worrying about the immediate feelings. 

-Friends, even sickness and debilitating disease is only for a moment compared to the glory of eternity that is coming. Can we be faithful and endure suffering now for the glory that’s coming in the future, or do we expect God to fix all our momentary issues now?

-The final piece that I think we need to consider on this topic is God as our Father. Fathers are given a unique role in the family to represent and image God to the rest of the family. We know that no earthly father will do that perfectly, but they’re supposed to give us a little picture of what God does in all our lives.

  • Loving Discipline (Hebrews 12:7-11)

-We need to talk briefly about the role of parents here. Parents are meant to shepherd the children God gives them. This means training them morality, providing for them, and at times disciplining them as a necessary consequence to disobedience. 

-It’s not fun or easy to discipline, but it is necessary. I once heard a comedian say that he was spanked as a child, and everyone who wasn’t is just entitled today. Every parent has to discipline somewhere. For example, you’re not going to let your kid play by the stove without supervision (up to a point), or you’re not going to let your kids play in the street without first teaching them that cars would win in any battle they had with one! 

-Yet that discipline (though painful and difficult in the moment) leads to better outcomes because the children learn how to pursue the right things. God does the same thing with us. Sometimes He allows suffering to come into our lives (righteous suffering) so that we can be made more like Jesus, that is so that we can become more truly human. The question is can you be faithful in enduring that suffering, or will you just give up?

-One of my favorite quotes I’ve ever read: “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once. And he volunteered.” R.C. Sproul

-Friends, any suffering we face is a tiny sliver of the suffering Jesus faced when he bore the penalty for our sins. He did that both to provide salvation for us, and to demonstrate to us how we can endure in the midst of our suffering, so for anyone who is sick today, either physically or spiritually: run to the Lord! Salvation, true eternal healing is found in Him, and Him alone. 

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by mikethestrand on August 4, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on August 4, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/08/04/psalm-38-sermon-manuscript/