All posts tagged Psalms

Psalm 42-43 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the realities of living “east of Eden” as Steinbeck so famously put it is that life is difficult, isn’t it? And the older you get, the more complex things seems to become where then you laugh at the things you couldn’t handle in your youth! I remember as a music pastor, being told from a high schooler that life was getting too busy so they needed to step off the music team. They did no extra-curriculars and didn’t have a job, so I was confused about how “full” their life was! But that’s looking at it from a 25 year old’s perspective instead of a 15-year-old (my prefrontal cortex was fully developed!)

-Have you ever heard the quote “Life is hard, then you die” before? I looked it up this week, turns out it’s from a science fiction writer (who contributed to Star Trek), but there’s also more to the quote:

-But for those of us who are in Christ, that’s not the end of the story is it? Life may be hard, but there’s always reasons to hope: God is always in control and never leaves us to struggle on our own. But that first sentence remains true, doesn’t it? Life IS hard! That’s a universal reality. The question for anyone is what do you do when life is hard? Today’s passages help us understand what to do when life is hard: we cry out to God.

-We’re beginning book 2 of the Psalms today (broken into 5 books as a picture of the Torah), which contains a number of Psalms written by “the sons of Korah” we’ll get to them in a bit, but we’re going to be looking at Psalms 42-43 today because they appear to have originally been combined into 1 Psalm. There’s a repeated refrain that appears in both that gives us the outline to this Psalm.

READ/PRAY (pg. 494)

  1. Thirsting for God (1-5)

-Who are the sons of Korah? According to 1 Chron. 6, these are part of the guys who served under David as the music leaders in the Lord’s temple. If you’ve ever wondered why we do so much singing at church, it’s because God’s people have always been a singing people. The biggest book in the Bible (Psalms) is a book of songs, there were music leaders in the tabernacle, Jesus sang with His disciples, and Revelation tells us that there’s singing around the throne 24/7 today. So when we gather each week to sing, we’re joining in to something that’s already taking place in the spiritual realm, but we have the privilege of joining along.

-As a deer pants for flowing streams. Once again, we need to know our Psalms! This is alluding back to Psalm 1:3 where the righteous person is the one who is planted beside a flowing stream. And do you see the contrast between what Psalm 1 says vs. what we just read about from these Psalms? Here the Psalmist isn’t enjoying a happy season, he’s feeling a distance from the Lord.

-Some scholars believe this Psalm was written by David, but adopted by the sons of Korah, and then tweaked by them. Just like a song today might be written by multiple people. It’s an individual lament that contains references to the corporate gathering, even here the gathering is alluded to: appear before God isn’t done by yourself, it’s done in community. But think of this thirst being described.

-Have you ever been so thirsty you would do anything for just another drop of water? A couple years ago I got to go on a little 110 mile hike with some other pastors from MN across the Alps (which forever means I have that soft flex to throw out), and the first day of hiking (which also happened to be the longest and most difficult day) we ran out of water with another 3 hours of hiking to go. Here’s a picture from that day, switchbacks, inclines, and each time you go down you have to go back up! When that moment hit, desperation quickly sets in, if you don’t get water your muscles start to cramp up, your brain doesn’t work as well, and you start to wonder if you’re going to die! This Psalmist is saying that’s exactly what it’s like to live without God. He’s so desperate for God to show up that he’d give up everything else to have Him.

-Not only is he panting and longing for God, he says that his tears have been his food. Have you ever tasted your tears? Pretty salty, right? How satisfying would those tears be to someone that’s hungry and thirsty? And not just physically, but mentally and spiritually worn down. Have you ever been in one of those moments where it feels like the world is crumbling down around you? I know some of your stories here, and some of you have experienced that pain! The difficulty of losing a job, or finding out your spouse has been unfaithful, or your children refusing to engage with you, or maybe you just feel really lonely, and maybe all of those things have happened at the same time.

-When those moments come, when you’re so desperate that you can’t even think of moving, do you cry out to God or turn away from Him? I can think of a couple key national events during my lifetime that demonstrate a couple different ways to deal with difficulty. First: 9/11. I was in 7th grade (still living in ND) didn’t know I’d be moving to MN the next year! I remember reading newspapers that were asking “where was God?” or “how could God let this happen?” Compare that to the response during COVID. Anger, dissension, division, lines being drawn, but I didn’t hear anyone ask where God was in the midst of that. This Psalm gives us a much better response: take your anger TO God. Don’t run away, don’t ignore, take those things to God.

-Now, maybe you think: that’s really cute, Mike. I’ve tried praying, I’ve tried reaching out, and it doesn’t change the difficulty of the world I live in, and science has even shown that prayer doesn’t change anything. Let’s look at the end of vs. 3. One of the things the wisdom books do (Psalms, Prov. Ecc.) is model for us what the good life looks like. In this Psalm, we’re finding a model of how to process grief, suffering, and difficulties.

-But here’s where we tend to miss the solution presented to us (vs. 4). The goal isn’t just to sit down with me and God by ourselves while ignoring those around us. The way the Psalmist encourages his heart is by thinking back to His times gathering with the people of God.

-I’ll be honest, there’s times when I’m feeling discouraged that I don’t want to come here! Sometimes the church is the last place I want to go, and sometimes the church is the place where I feel the most hurt and pain. And those are probably the most important times for me to make the additional effort to gather with the church because those are the people who can remind you what’s most important when you’re struggling to remember.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Lutheran pastor who was killed by the Nazis during WW2) in his book Life Together, written while serving at a male only seminary said this: 

-I love that last phrase: The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word if his brother. Have you ever come to church weary from the heaviness of life? I have! And one of the biggest ways to persevere through the difficulties of life is by gathering together with the people of God. Tami and I have talked before about the difficulty of singing sometimes, when we look across the room and realize some of the burdens some of you are carrying, but you’re still singing (loudly) about God’s goodness and kindness and there’s moment where it brings tears to my eyes because I don’t have the same level of faith as some of you who have walked through your seasons of difficulties! That’s one of the reasons this gathering is so important for our growth and progress in our faith: we need to be able to be encouraged by others and other times be the one who’s encouraging others.

-In remembering how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity, the Psalmist then turns to himself and preaches to himself in vs. 5: 

-This becomes the repeated refrain throughout these Psalms, and it reminds us that God is good to us even when we’re hurting. Friends, in those seasons where you feel dejected and in turmoil, don’t give up on the church! This is what the author of Hebrews has in mind in Heb. 10. First, have you ever considered how you provoke someone positively? Normally that’s a negative, but here we see we can provoke positively in someone else. But second, what’s the opposite of not gathering together? Encouraging. Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a time in my life where I walked around feeling too encouraged, can you? So I’ll take any encouragement I can get, and if gathering as the church is supposed to bring encouragement, I’m going to go to church! But also, if you’re not coming to church looking to encourage, your motivations might be off, do you see the urgency in this text? ALL THE MORE as you see what day? The day. The Bible has 2 days that it talks about today (are you being faithful today) and THE day when Jesus returns. And friends, each day we live gets us 1 day closer to THE day. Back to the Psalm, one of the people that we need to encourage is ourselves, and one of the biggest issues we all face is that we spend a great deal of time listening to ourselves instead of preaching to ourselves. There are 2 British pastors that I have a great deal of admiration for that served in the last century that spoke to this topic: Martyn-Lloyd Jones and John Stott.

-The Doctor: did you know that you lie to yourself more than anyone else? We all spend more time with ourselves than anyone else, and we all have thoughts that make zero sense if you stop and think about it. So instead of letting those thoughts take root in your mind, stop and assess if it’s true. 

-Stott: this is a bit of a false dichotomy, because there can be real chemical issues that you need help with, but I think we jump to chemical cures far too quickly in our country! How often are we stuck in our own minds and listening to ourselves instead of preaching to ourselves and looking to God? How much of the mental anguish in our world is us trying to be little gods and take the burdens of the world on our shoulders? Friends, we were not created to keep up with the news of the world! We can’t handle it! Add in that we so often view identity as something chosen instead of received and it’s no wonder we have so much therapy in the West today! If we instead are able to both preach to ourselves to remind us that God is in control AND have others who are actively provoking us to be encouraged, how much healthier are we going to be? And that’s why God calls us into a church family, so we can remember and remind. Keep all that in mind as we come to that repeated refrain again 2 more times in this Psalm:

  • Broken Because of God (6-11)

-As much as I wish it was as easy as saying “Stop it!” to any and every issue in your life, it’s not that simple, and the Psalmist goes on after reminding himself to trust in God to go right back to complaining!

-All these references are to the north side of Israel, not at home in Jerusalem where he belongs where he’s looking at the source of the Jordan river and reflecting on all the difficulties God has permitted to sweep over the Psalmist’s life

-And once again, he reminds himself to think back to God’s provision towards him: faithful love (covenant, steadfast faithfulness) during the day, and at night he will remember God’s song which serves as his prayer 

-BUT this prayer still needs to be said! And acknowledging that God is in control doesn’t automatically fix all the issues, following Jesus doesn’t lead to an easy life, even when we know the right things about God (like He is always with us, He’ll never leave us, He sends His faithful love towards us), it doesn’t always change the circumstances that we’re in. I remember reading a story Tim Keller told about a girl who was asking all these big theological questions about God, and after Keller answered them all she said, “but who cares if no boys notice me.”

-That’s kind of what’s happening to the Psalmist here, we look at whatever our definition of the good life is (in this girls case it’s being notice by boys) for me, it’s a house that doesn’t keep breaking around me, maybe for you it’s kids that clean up after themselves or maybe recognition at your job. We all have things that we look to as the “good life” but the marker keeps changing. Once again, we tend to become our own worst enemies who keeps changing the finish line of what we think we need.

-One of the things I shared last week is we need to read all the Psalms as directing us to Jesus, and here we are at a clear connection to Him. This is why it’s so important that we have Jesus who is able to understand every single one of the emotions and temptations that we have! Think about the 3 temptations that Satan gave to Jesus after He’d been fasting for 40 days in Luke 4, aren’t they an offer of the good life? He offers him delicious food, the entire world, and religious recognition in Jerusalem. But another time in His life, Jesus also faces the reality that He feels forgotten from God. 

-It’s likely that Jesus alludes to this Psalm in the Garden of Gethsemane when He says that He is “deeply grieved,” which is the same wording that gets translated as “so dejected” in this Psalm (repeatedly). Jesus had to preach to Himself too: He knew what was coming, He knew the burden He was about to experience, and He was needing to remind Himself that God’s plans are still good.

-And after that refrain, we’re into the last section of these Psalms:

  • Guidance From God (43:1-5) 

-There’s a slight shift as we get into 43 because after all this complaining the Psalmist then finally gets around to making his requests to God.  

-These descriptions are meant to contrast with God, since these enemies haven’t been operating with loving kindness, God should judge them. If God won’t protect the Psalmist he’s going to continue being maligned and mistreated.

-God is the refuge, the source of strength, the place where we can find comfort and hope, as long as God doesn’t reject us, and if we’re in Christ, He never will!

-Since the Psalmist is so far away from “home” he needs a guide back: light and truth. Light as a guide for his future steps, truth as the source of vindication. Those can lead the Psalmist back home to Jerusalem, the holy mountain.

-And just so we understand, this once again isn’t an individual goal, this is a communal call. Where is the altar of God? And where would he praise God with the lyre? In the gathering of God’s people (what we today do at church together). Our western mindset tends to miss how corporate these songs are, it’s not just to bring comfort to me when I’m hurting, this is meant to bring comfort to US as the outpost of God’s kingdom here on earth! We together come to the altar of God, we together praise God, we together need to remember and remind each other to put our hope in God!

-Just so we don’t miss even more Christ connections here, think of what the Psalmist just asked God to provide in vs. 3: light and truth. We did a series a number of years ago looking at the 7 “I Am” statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel, and 2 of them just happen to be seen in this request from the Psalmist. 

-If we have been saved, we have the Holy Spirit as the light in our life, guiding and supporting us as we work to grow closer to Jesus step by step. 

-What we’ve seen in this Psalm is the reminder to not just passively sit back and listen to yourself talk, instead we need to actively and intentionally work to preach to ourselves AND OTHERS so that we can encourage and be encouraged to that one step closer to Jesus today, and all the more as we see THE day drawing near.

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by mikethestrand on June 14, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on June 14, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/06/14/psalm-42-43-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 41 – Sermon Manuscript

-I heard a great story of the implications of what God has done for us this week from Christian apologist John Lennox. Now, he’s an Irishman so he has a much more enjoyable accent than me, and he’s much smarter than me, so I won’t tell the story quite as well, but I believe you’ll get the point.

-Cara and I celebrated 11 years of marriage this week. What if our meeting story was me seeing her across the room, going out to buy a cookbook for her and handing it to her on our first date. She’d look at me like I was crazy and ask what she’s supposed to do with it. What if I said, “well, on page 126 there’s a recipe for my favorite kind of tacos, and I happen to really like those tacos, so as long as you follow all those instructions to a T, you and I are going to get along splendidly!”  Now, I happen to have bought Cara a few cookbooks over our 11 years of marriage, but I’ve never told her that! And I’ve DEFINITELY never told her that her food doesn’t tastes the same as my mom made it!

-But how often do we treat our Christian faith that way? These aren’t rules God has given in order to make his life easy, it’s the inverse of the way God has designed things. My love for Cara has nothing to do with how closely she follows the rules in the cookbook, just like God’s love for us has nothing to do with how closely we follow the rules. It’s in the context of a loving relationship that this book can begin to make sense!

-What we get in the Psalms is a picture of someone who is in that loving relationship with God, and what that means for us to live in that relationship.

READ/PRAY (pg. 494)

How to read the Psalms:

-Annual reminder: 1 is called a Psalm, 2 or more is plural PsalmS 

-The book of Psalms is at times difficult for us to figure out what to do with. It’s very different from the rest of the Bible, some of the things said in here almost feel like they’re heretical because they’re making some big accusations against God, there’s sections that ask God to kill someone, and as I’m sure many of you talk about with your kids, there’s a lot of “big feelings” throughout this book. Yet despite the differences, it is God’s inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word (inspired is a theological term that is trying to capture what Paul says in 2 Tim. 3:16: “God breathed”, inerrant means there isn’t an error, and authoritative means we have to submit to it). 

-They’re also written in Hebrew poetry, which can be an acquired taste! I’m not sure about you, but the poetry section for me in English class was NOT my favorite section (bit of a snooze fest, sorry Bob). Even the questions my teachers asked about poetry were so different from the prose! I could not wrap my mind around it!

-The Psalms can be similar. They’re often very contextually based on situations that happened in the Psalmists life that he’s processing through singing which adds another level of complexity to us interpreting them. C.S. Lewis said about the Psalms: “the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons.” I think he’s slightly overstating his case because there is such rich truth in the Psalms, but the primary focus of these is to be beautiful works of art that stir our affections toward God. Here’s how some early historic church pastors described the Psalms. (compendium is a brief summary of a larger work). The Psalms teach us all sorts of things about God, things like God is infinitely creative. The Psalms give us language for both our prayers and songs that give us room to express ourselves, to feel comfortable crying out to God in the good and bad seasons. But I thought of 5 ways we should read through all the Psalms:

-Prayerfully: we’ve talked about using the Psalms as an inspiration for prayer before. If you don’t know what to pray, pick a Psalm! Read the first phrase and pray whatever comes to mind, when you run out of things to say read the next phrase, and continue down. And do you know how many Psalms there are? 150, know how many days there are in a month (usually) about 30, you’ve got 5 Psalms for each day of the month. A psalm a day keeps the devil away! Our very own Joe Taylor created an app you can download if you want help with this practice called “Pray the Psalms”

-Devotionally: one of my favorite things about the Psalms is the way they train my heart and mind to think God’s Words in my prayer. It gives me words when I don’t know what to say, it trains my mind to think the right things and it provides a framework for us to know how to cast our cares on God (1 Peter 5:7) because He cares about us.

-Emotionally: whatever emotion you’re experiencing you can find a Psalm to correlate to it. Jesus did this, when He was dying on the cross, He was thinking about Psalm 22, and we know this because He quoted it from the cross! The Psalms help us know what to do with our “big feelings” and learn how to turn those feelings into prayers and times with the Lord. Friends, feelings aren’t bad, but they’re also not necessarily true, the Psalms teach us how to feel properly, bringing all our feelings to God!

-Repeatedly: we’re going to be taking the hymnal of the Psalms into eternity, so get started memorizing and understanding it now. It has been a regular practice throughout church history to read through the book of Psalms on a regular basis and it’s worth continuing that practice for us today.

-Christo-centrically: Jesus is the main character and focus of the entire Bible, including the Psalms. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this of the Psalms: meaning that Jesus is the focus of the Psalms. The Psalm aren’t prophetic in the same way passages from Isa. or even what we saw in the minor prophets, but we need to read the Psalms looking for how they point us to Jesus.

-Read it as a prayer to Jesus. The book of Hebrews begins sharing the history of God’s revelation which used to be through prophets but now is through His Son. He then runs through a list of OT quotations that are pointing to Jesus, and in these verses quoting from Pss. 102:25-2, and we’ll see another example of this later in Psalm 41.

-Read it as a prayer of Jesus (as I just shared of what Jesus did on the cross)

-Read it as a picture of Jesus. Think of how Jesus describes Himself in John 10:11. Can any of you think of a Psalm that talks about God being a shepherd? Yeah, Psalm 23! Probably the most well-known one! Jesus is telling us all those things that we read about in the Psalms are about Him!

-With all that background, now let’s work our way through this week’s Psalm:

  1. The Mercy of the Lord (1-3)

-Title or description is in the original text. Many times, it’s just an educated guess going into them because it’s mostly musical notes or something like that.

-Let’s start with the first word: happy, some translations will say blessed, the intent is similar (at least in English), it refers to someone who is faithfully following God, and it points us back to the beginning of this entire book, because this book is carefully arranged to build on itself, so when we read that word “happy” our minds should go back to the first 2 Psalms that set the stage for everything else coming after.

-Look at how the first Psalm begins: how is someone happy? By not following after sinners but delighting in God’s instructions and allowing that to be the focus of your life and attention.

–Psalms 1-2 are connected by this similar theme, and if you look at the last 2 verses of Psalm 2 it continues building on the way to be happy, here it’s in those who take refuge in Him, so we’re already starting to put a composite together of what it takes to be happy: someone who delights in God’s Word and takes refuge in Him.

-Let’s go back to Psalm 41 now and see how else we can be happy:

-Considerate of the poor. Our minds jump to financial, but that’s not the only thing meant by this word, think of it more like lowly or meek. Remember how we’re supposed to read this focused on Christ? Can you think of a time where Jesus gave a blessing to someone who was meek? His beatitudes. Grant Osborne (prof. at TEDS) in his commentary on Matthew says: 

-So maybe Jesus was thinking about and meditating on this Psalm when He preached His beatitudes. Both passages are getting to this same idea:

-As followers of the Lord, we are expected to represent Him, which means looking out for the poor, weak, and marginalized and using whatever resources we have to care for them. I’ve been thinking about this idea the past week in terms of people who try to live without the church, and maybe some of you, even though you’re here, don’t feel like this makes a whole lot of sense. The sun’s out, it’s lake season, the fish are biting, and you’re sitting in this large room with some people that you may not even know that well. Why? One basic reason is because woven into creation is rhythms, you see it in the creation account in Gen. 1 where God says we’re given the sun and moon to be able to mark the seasons and days out, and part of that rhythm is a 7 day week, where we gather on the 1st day of the week to celebrate the resurrection and to be encouraged to live as Christians throughout the rest of the week. But there’s another reason to engage in the church: you’re not made to do life alone. 

-How can someone be considered happy? By being considerate of the poor, which means you need to be around other people who are poor! Not just financial, but I was thinking about one of the early descriptions of how the church acted this past week in Acts 2

-This has unfortunately been twisted beyond what it says, and some people try to argue that this means the early church practiced communism or socialism, but that’s not at all what’s being said! It says people still owned possessions and property, and as needs came up the church would meet those needs. It’s actually very similar to what happens here! When a family has a new baby, people from church will drop off meals as a way to help. When someone has yardwork needs, it’s easy to recruit a group of people from church to come help. It’s the church living as the church is supposed to live, always looking for ways to help others as the opportunities come up. 

-And this idea isn’t restricted to Psalms, here’s a couple examples of how we’re supposed to treat the poor from Proverbs.

-What is the outcome of someone who is “happy” and considerate of the poor: protection and preservation from the Lord. And this is important for David to make this note, because things are going to shift in the next verse for him:

  • The Cruelty of the Enemy (4-9)

-David has done all this work previously to talk about what it takes to be blessed by God, but now David is saying he is the poor one who needs God’s protection and preservation.

-What is this sin? No one knows! But David asks God to still be gracious despite his sin, which is why he had previously said that God sustains and heals those who are sick. David is connecting his sin to some kind of sickness that his enemies are using against him and hoping that he dies from

-What’s the connection between sin and sickness? We (I) tend to look on miraculous healings with a level of skepticism, we’ve all been trained that science & technology can solve all our problems, but is that true? The Bible doesn’t say that all sickness is related to sin, but it does say some sickness is! And we also see that we’re supposed to pray for those who are sick. It’s wrong to say that there’s no correlation between sin and sickness, but it’s also wrong to say that every sickness is connected to some kind of sin in a person, and that’s about as far as we can go with it! We need to be comfortable with some ambiguity.

-Again, not sure what event this is referring to where David is incredibly sick, but his enemies are using it to begin planning his demise

-There’s an interesting connection to David’s complaints with Psalm 2 (besides just the happiness piece we saw before), in vs. 7 David says of these people conspiring against him that they whisper together and are planning to harm him. It’s the same word used in Psalm 2 for what the nations are trying to do against the Lord’s Anointed One. David is casting himself in that light, He is God’s anointed one who has been called to lead the nation at this point, but he’s not the ultimate anointed one, although the ultimate anointed one uses this Psalm during His time on earth too, which we see in vs. 9

-The last verse in this section takes a dark turn, it’s not just enemies who are against David, it’s even a friend.

-Ate my bread, David opened his home, they fellowshipped together, God has given food as a gift to join people together. Have you ever tried to be angry with someone over a meal? I know it happens, but it’s hard to be angry when you’re enjoying good food & drink together!

-And Jesus knew this, shortly after he washes His disciples’ feet in John 13, He warns them about what’s coming and says that this Scripture must be fulfilled. Just because it’s also fulfilled in Jesus doesn’t mean it’s not also true of David. David had a friend betray him, just like his eventual descendant Jesus had a friend betray Him. If you’ve ever felt the sting of a friend who betrayed you and went behind your back, Jesus knows that pain, too! But there’s another promise even further back in the Bible that this is also picking up. When you hear something about a heel in the Bible, you should hear the first gospel message God gives His people in Gen. 3, right after the fall:

-The rest of the story of Scripture is this continual fighting between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In David’s case, his enemies are carrying out the serpent’s plan: try to destroy the seed of the woman, but since God is on David’s side it’s not going to work, which is where David turns next:

  • The Grace of the Lord (10-13) 

-God isn’t like David’s enemies or friends! God is always faithful and steadfast and will preserve David. But David says something that seems to contradict other passage of Scripture, how can David claim to repay others? Isn’t that something God is supposed to do? What would repayment even look like for a follower of God?

-David here is acting like a righteous King is supposed to by bringing about shalom, lasting peace in his nation, similar to what Peter says about those in authority:

-Part of that authority means punishing those who are trying to do evil. Now, that isn’t something we get to use today, the church isn’t given the task of fighting and protecting land, David was! Today, we trust God’s repayment, as 2 Thess. 1 says: We wait patiently and trust that God has a plan for us that’s better than anything we experience on earth. When we meet God, we won’t consider any trials or difficulties we experience here as not worth it. God is in the redemption and restitution business; we’re in the trusting business.

-David ends by preaching truths to himself. God delights in him, God defeats his enemies, God supports David, and David gets to be in the Lord’s presence forever!

-Do you see the connection between living a life of integrity and being in God’s presence, where true and lasting happiness is found? It’s us working in sync with the Lord where living a life that’s obedient to Him leads to flourishing for us. God has told us what we need to live a peaceful and contented life, the question is: do you believe Him? As I shared at the beginning of this message, these rules aren’t in place to allow us to “earn” being in right standing with God, these rules are God telling us how much He loves us! Do you understand that God loves you enough to send His Son to take our sin on Himself? That His Son was betrayed by a friend who shared His table even though Jesus lived in complete integrity all so that we could live in God’s presence forever. The only adequate response to that reality is the last verse:

-Most likely, this last verse wasn’t in the Psalm that David wrote. This is the end of the first book of 5 that make up the bigger book of Psalms, and each one of the books ends with a doxological note giving praise to God. 

-The purpose of these Psalms is for us to praise, and as we saw last week with the end of the Nicene Creed, amen is the correct Christian response to talking to God.

-The biggest takeaway from this Psalm for us today is the reminder that we have an example of the person who was considerate of us who were poor. I preached a series themed on this verse last August if you want to go listen to it further, but this is a verse I’ve been meditating on for the last year:

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by mikethestrand on June 7, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on June 7, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/06/07/psalm-41-sermon-manuscript/

The Prayerbook of Jesus – Sermon Manuscrip

-Happy 2026! One of the things I’ve tried to do at the beginning of each year is to do what I’ve called “Theological Tune Up” where we talk about some things that have come up that are pressing issues in the world today, or things that have come up over the past year in conversations I’ve had with some of you, but I’ve always wanted to try including some emphasis on spiritual practices or disciplines we can grow in over the coming year. One of the things we need to be doing every year is continuing to get God’s Word into our lives, whether that be through reading it more, memorizing it more, meditating on it more, and there’s other practices that will help us take steps closer to Jesus, and this past year I’ve been focusing more time on prayer.

-And maybe like me, you’ve had that experience at about this time every year, where you’re determined to pray more and read more Bible, so you set out your clothes the night before, go to bed early, get your coffee ready (as everyone should be doing in the morning), get all comfy and ready bright and early, then you start to pray, get through your entire list you thought of and feel like you’ve been praying for about an hour, and check your clock and somehow only 3 minutes have passed.

-We’re going to be looking at 4 ways to pray this January (there’s lots more in the Bible, but we only have so many weeks!). We’ll start with the prayerbook of Jesus the guide Jesus used for His prayers, next week we’ll look at the most famous prayer: the Lord’s prayer, the third week we’ll look at the need to pray honestly, and finally we’ll look at the prayers of Paul.

READ/PRAY  – Psalm 110

  1. The Dilemma

-The Bible talks about prayer A LOT! And I don’t know about you, but for most of my life I felt discouraged about my prayer life. Think of what Paul commands us in 1 Thess. Not only are we to pray constantly (some trans. without ceasing), but this is God’s will for us! Talk about pressure! How does that stand up to the reality of everyday life, and how does that make you feel?

-This started changing for me when I was in seminary. One class I had, the professor began the class with the question: “how’s your prayer life?” And I answered “it could be better.” And we spent literally the rest of the class talking about why we feel guilty about our perceived lack of prayer. And friends, this was with a group of both present and future church leaders! If church leaders struggle to pray, what hope is there for everyone else, right!?

-And I’ll put all my cards on the table: I’m not a morning person, I REALLY don’t like getting up early! If it were up to me (and my kids didn’t have school) I would sleep in every day! And when I was growing up, I was always told that you were supposed to get up every morning to do a “quiet time.” I don’t like mornings and I don’t like quiet! (God’s working on me) so what else could I do? I’d also regularly forget to pray about things friends asked me to pray for (it’s a good thing God isn’t constrained by time like we are!), so I remember sometimes praying after someone had a surgery that went well! Thanks, God, for answering my future prayer in the past!

-And just to be completely honest, my heart and desires often weren’t even in it! Growing up I remember the church had a monthly prayer night that made ZERO sense to me, and what was worse was we couldn’t even do our normal playing because it would be distracting to the adults who were trying to pray!

-I remember when an adult that I looked up to was feeling called to seminary, the church commissioned him, prayed for him to go, and on his last Sunday I saved up all my money to buy him a CD (expensive in those days! Plus I was 12). I knew my mom got him something too, so I asked what it was, and he told me she had committed to pray for him and his studies every week. Astonished, I said “That’s IT!?” And he said “That’s much better than the CD you got me!”

-Now, I know some of you are much better at praying than I am, you have it scheduled, you never miss that time, it’s a sweet time of fellowship every day. Similarly, there’s other people that are able to run dozens of miles without stopping! We’re all wired differently, but we’re all commanded to be people who pray. Regardless of where you’re at with praying every single day, or whether your only prayer time is when during this worship service each week, this series is going to be some potentially new ways for you to pray that you may not have considered before, some ways that I’ve been stretched and challenged to grow in my own life, because the reality is we’re all on a journey. None of us will ever arrive, and we all have ways we could continue to grow.

-I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading on the idea of spiritual disciplines over the last couple of years. If you haven’t heard of him, a guy named John Mark Comer has just absolutely taken off. Former pastor and author who is a New York Times bestseller. College professors I talk to say everyone is reading him, every pastor I talk to has thoughts on him (including myself! But I’ll save those for another time, if you want to talk about him let me know and I’ll buy you some coffee)

-There seems to be a rise currently taking place in the church towards mysticism or experiential theology (seems to come in cycles, any of you former pastors remember Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline?). The trend (especially for younger Christians) is toward some more historical church practices, with a current obsession with eastern orthodoxy. 

-Just last week, I was talking to Micah about this trend with music leaders. I would argue that the music we do in the church today is mostly influenced by the Jesus People of the 60s, and that we’re on the 5th generation of those music leaders, which Micah believes is now emphasizing the experiential or mystical aspects. (again, if you want to talk about this, let’s get coffee!)

-The guy I’ve found that I think is writing more helpfully on this than anyone else right now is a guy named Kyle Strobel – a professor at Talbot seminary in LA. What he argues that we need is a recovery of Word-centered, Spirit-empowered, whole-life spirituality (come to the Walk This Way class for more!). He’s someone who stirs my heart and mind to love Jesus more completely. I’d encourage you to find his books and read them, listen to his podcast, or checkout his substack! 

-There are 3 theological realities that serve as the foundation for prayer that we need to be aware of.

1 Reality: We don’t come before God in fear. This is where my comment about “could be better” is off base, because I don’t truly understand God’s desire for me. Look at what we learn in 1 John 4. Friends, Jesus loves you! And not only does He love you, but he likes you. Not some future you, not the you with all your issues “fixed” (whatever that might mean), He loves and likes you! And out of that love comes a desire to be with you! Similarly in Heb. 4, we learn about Jesus who allows us to come boldly before the King and Creator of the universe! No fear, boldness. 

2 Reality: The Spirit is always praying for us Rom. 8. Do you ever feel like you don’t even know where to start praying? You don’t need to worry, because the Spirit is already praying for you! And not just the Spirit:

3 Reality: Jesus is always praying for us. Look at what Paul says in Rom. 8. Jesus is constantly interceding for us, which is also brought up in Heb. 7.

-Because of these 3 realities, prayer isn’t something we begin or end, it’s us entering into something that is taking place 24/7 regardless of what we do. We enter into what the Spirit and the Son are constantly doing on our behalf. Yet we still have the responsibility to come before God.

-I shared this quote as I came back from sabbatical, but it’s still been ringing around in my head since then (from Kyle Strobel) that comes because of the previous truths.

-In prayer we come as we are. God already knows it, why do we pretend that we can keep things hidden from Him?

-This gets to our “wandering minds” in prayer, too. What if, in prayer, as we draw near to God, the idols of our hearts begin to come to the surface? Like as metal is dropped in a forge, the impurities are literally burned out, as our hearts approach the completely holy one, our impurities start to bubble to the surface. Friends, instead of being a distraction from praying, those things may be the very things God is calling you to pray for! We’ll get there in a couple weeks.

  • A Proposal for this week, here’s my proposal for us.

-But we need somewhere to start. And I would argue that we have an entire book of the Bible that was used as the prayerbook for Jesus, that He taught His disciples to use and pray, and has benefited countless Christians throughout history.

-I am indebted to Donald Whitney for helping me understand this approach to both praying and reading the Bible. AND I’ve got a number of extra copies of this book, so first come first serve for whoever wants it!

-Martin Luther loved the Psalms so much he described it as a “little Bible.”

-The reason we know Jesus used the Psalms is because Jews have been using it as their prayerbook for centuries, and Jesus quoted from a Psalm while He was hanging on the cross, AND he used the Psalms to point to His divinity, AND His disciples quoted from the Psalms to share how Jesus fulfilled the OT, AND we have an entire book of the NT that one scholar has described as a sermon on Psalm 110.

-First, what is probably the most quoted verse in the NT: Psalm 110:1

-Jesus was interrogated by many of the religious leaders of His day on a regular basis. They had all the rules and all the history, and Jesus didn’t fit in their boxes! So Jesus goes on the offensive, and asks them whose son the Messiah is, so they reply (obviously…) David’s. But if that’s true, why does David call Him “Lord” in this Psalm? What comes out when Jesus is confronted is the Psalms.

-And His first disciples followed in His footsteps. During Pentecost in Acts 2, when the Spirit descends on the disciples and they begin telling the world in Jerusalem about what Jesus has done, Peter stands up and guess what he quotes from? This Psalm!

-And not just the early disciples, some scholars believe that the book of Hebrews is a sermon walking through this Psalm. Every time someone in the NT refers to Jesus sitting at the Father’s right hand (it’s all over!) it’s referencing this Psalm.

-The second reason we can see the Psalms being Jesus’s prayerbook is because of what He says on the cross. One of the last phrases he cries out (Hebrew, to Aramaic, to Greek, to English), is asking a question to God. But He’s quoting from a Psalm in the OT, specifically Psalm 22. We most likely don’t have every word that Jesus said from the cross (this was a multi-hour event), it’s feasible Matthew just references the first verse to signify that Jesus was praying this whole Psalm as His last prayer on the cross.

 -And listen to some of these descriptions from this Psalm: 

-Friends, this was written 1000 years before Jesus came! Crucifixion hadn’t even been invented yet, and here David (under the inspiration of the HS), is talking about the kind of death Jesus experienced. I don’t know about you, but that comforts me! Jesus, in His humanity, experiencing the weight, the burden of all of our sins (and not just ours, the sins of the WHOLE world), was able to use God’s Word as a comfort, it gave Him the words to say as He experienced the heaviness and burden of the sins of the world.

-So if Jesus can use the Psalms as His guide for prayer, maybe we should too, right?

-Now I want to get at something right off the bat – using other people’s words to pray. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but when the elders pray, they’ve written out their prayers ahead of time and then they read them to us. When we first started having them pray, there were some elders that didn’t like that I asked them to write them out, and there were some people in the congregation that were hesitant about seeing the elders writing out their prayers. If you’ve ever heard someone get up to pray that hasn’t written anything down, isn’t it distracting to hear them say “just” over and over again? “God we just want to thank you, we’re just so blessed, we just want to confess our sins…” Many times, there’s a pointless repetition to those prayers! 

-Once again, we need to have an understanding of a theological truth to know what’s taking place here. Heb. 13:8 tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” So we can say that GOD never changes (that’s worth praising God over, and something we can barely understand because we ALWAYS change!). If God never changes, then why would we think that He’s more present if my preparation takes place in the moment on Sunday morning instead of being present if my preparation takes place days before? 

-I experienced this when I was a music pastor. I would schedule out the services a month ahead of where we were, so people could both know they were on the team that week and know which songs they had to know. And I was accused of squelching the Holy Spirit because I wasn’t spontaneous enough. So I walked people through the reality that God doesn’t change, the Holy Spirit is JUST as active in my preparation before as He is in the moment. BUT we plan everything in pencil, because God can do whatever He wants. And honestly, what I’ve found is those who push for less structure just don’t want to put the work in ahead of time!

-What we’re doing when we use someone else’s words (God’s and humans) is helping to guide our thoughts and prayers, and it turns our prayers into a conversation with the one true and living God because if we use God’s Word, it begins with what He’s said and revealed, and then moves to our response.

-I worked for a pastor who got really into what he called “listening prayer” where you ask God to speak to you and then sit silently while you wait for Him to give you an impression or a word for the moment you’re in. Now, I completely believe that God can and does work in the present moment, but it comes across as denying that God has spoken to us THROUGH HIS WORD! 

-This isn’t sitting silently and waiting, this is letting God set the agenda for your prayer time, and I think the Psalms is a great place to do it because the Psalms really cover the whole human experience. High highs, low lows, and everything in between.

-Let’s think of how this would work:

–Psalm 23 is one of the best-known Psalms, worth memorizing and meditating if you haven’t memorized it (even if you have it memorized in the KJV!).

-The first line: The Lord is my shepherd. Have you ever thanked God that He is a good shepherd who is leading and guiding us as His sheep? Honestly, this line could be the spark to spend hours thanking God! Maybe you think of the under shepherds God has appointed in our church (the elders and pastors) But pray whatever comes to mind when you hear that line, and then go onto the next one.

-I have what I need. Well, this makes me think of the fact that I’m getting kind of hungry, but I’ve never been truly hungry. I have enough food in my house to let me eat for a LONG time without truly starving (despite what my kids think!) And maybe you then think of some of the kids you sponsor across the world who do struggle with food.

-He lets me lie down. And you remember that you need to schedule that vacation you talked to your spouse about! But you have the opportunity to ask God to be in this time of rest and recovery.

-And on and on you can go! I think the Psalms are the easiest, but you can do this with any passage of Scripture! 

-150 Psalms, most days have at least 30 days, so 2 options. Day x5, start there and work back 5. Or take the day, jump ahead 30, another 30, another 30. 

-What happens when the Bible inspires and guides our prayers?

  • The Outcome

-God gets to speak to us on His terms, we don’t come up with an agenda that God has to answer.

-Many times, there’s a verse or 2 that really stand out that you’re able to use to meditate on throughout the day. So you get a 2 for 1 special here, where you’re praying the Bible, AND you’re memorizing the Bible!

-So your assignment this week is to pick a Psalm each day and use it as a template for your prayer for that day.

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by mikethestrand on January 4, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 4, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/01/04/the-prayerbook-of-jesus-sermon-manuscrip/

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 32 – Sermon Manuscript

-Do you ever feel like someone’s always watching you? Security cameras everywhere (even in our building!), self-checkout you can watch them recording you!

-It would take 17 hours to read the terms and conditions for the top 13 apps in the UK

-I figure at this point that Google knows more about me than I do. And if that’s true of Google, how much more is it true of God? He created us, He knows us far more intimately than even Google does! So why do we so often pretend like we can keep things hidden from Him? 

-We’re going to talk to today about something that affects us all, something that has been true of almost every human being who has ever lived (1 exception, which we’ll get to), that is we are all sinners. EDoT: “Sin is not only an act of wrongdoing but also a state of alienation from God.” Rom. 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Anyone left out of that? Nope!

-But we don’t talk about it much today, and if we do we’ve somewhat sanitized this idea. We talk about messing up, a mistake, it was my bad, but we don’t often think about it how bad it is: cosmic treason against the Holy Creator God. I don’t say that lightly or carelessly, but because we have committed treason, all of us, we are worthy of eternal separation from God. 

-We talk a LOT today about God’s love, about His forgiveness, His mercy, and those are all right and good, but the only reason they’re good is because of just how terrible sin is, and I don’t think we give much thought to that anymore. We may have thought about it when we read ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ in high school, or if we hear about someone REALLY messing up, but we don’t think about ourselves as sinners very often.

-Today’s passage gives us the reality that we’re all sinners, but it also tells us how to deal with that sin so it no longer affects us.

READ/PRAY

  1. Joyful Forgiveness (0-2)

-David wrote this, has some similar ideas to another Psalm he wrote – 51, after his sin with Bathsheba was uncovered. 

-Maskil – no one knows what that means, root word has to do with teaching or instruction, but that title is on a number of Psalms that don’t fit that.

-Joyful: happy, blessed. Begins the exact same way as the very first Psalm. Our minds should immediately jump back to that first Psalm, which gives us the theme of the whole book. If you want to be truly happy (not fleeting, like graduation which the gifts eventually break, or wedding day which is just 1 day, or getting a new car which eventually becomes an old car), it only comes through being obedient to God, by being a God-like person, responding as God would respond if He were you. Heavy job!

-Jesus talked about this too! One of his most famous sermons Matt. 5. Same word used here! Happy are the…

-Instead of rooting this joy/happiness in what we would think of blessing, David goes to sin. Does that feel like a sharp left turn to you? Maybe this should tell us something about the way we think about our sin! Instead of being flippant or careless to it (which has been an issue since at least the 1st cent.) Where Paul had to warn someone not to continue in sin to get more grace because that’s not the way it works! If we want blessing it comes by continuing to fight against the sin that we have within us.

-David uses 3 words to describe sin here, each one having a slightly different connotation and significance to them:

-Transgression – this gets to the idea of rebellion. Think of what we saw in Rev. 12 of Satan stirring a great rebellion against God. He tried to become god and let an entire revolt against him, but lost. If we don’t trust in Jesus we are a part of the rebellion. I think this is a part that is often missed today. We don’t start from a place of goodness, or even a place of neutrality when we look at God’s standard. All of us start in the same place: condemned as sinners.  I’ve had 5 kids now – it’s amazing how much we don’t need to teach them to be sinners! And it’s also amazing how much work it is to shape them to become upright people (I’d say it’s impossible until they’re saved!). 

         -This means that because we sin, God sees us in outright rebellion against Him. That’s why I’ll saw there’s only 2 options in your life! And we often only compare ourselves to other sinners, not to a completely perfect God, who is the standard we’re supposed to compare ourselves to. When we compare ourselves to perfect, who would dare to say they’re good enough? Think of one of the old proverbial phrases “to err is human” Being human means you will err, you will sin, you will transgress.

         -Think of it like this: could you get pulled over for going 1 mph over the speed limit? Technically, yes! That is breaking the law as it’s supposed to be the LIMIT for driving in that area, but we all know we’re not going to get pulled over. We tend to view God’s law the same way: technically it’s breaking the law, but God’s going to give grace to me, when in reality we’re just demonstrating that we’re more willing to rebel against Him than we would care to admit. 

-Sin – this one is picked up by a Greek word that means “missing the mark.” Often used in connection to archery. Think of your favorite local retail store: anyone know what store this is? Target. If you were aiming at the bullseye and you hit here, would that be successful?

         -Once again, so often we’re using the wrong standard of measurement when we think about sin. If we miss the mark, well that’s just human. Exactly! There’s an eternal chasm that separates the perfection God calls us to and the way we actually live. We all constantly and repeatedly miss the mark, no matter how hard we try we can’t ever reach it.

         -One of the best days of my life growing up was when I finally reached a mark. As I’ve shared, I love basketball, I’ve been playing basketball as long as I can remember, and there’s different goals you have as you grow. When I was in 7th grade I remember finally being able to touch the net. From there it’s grabbing the net and pulling yourself up, and then the backboard, and finally the rim. Rim is 10’, do you think it would be possible to ever touch it if it were 20’? Anthony Edwards can jump ridiculously high, but I don’t think even he could touch that net! What if it were in space? That’s where you start to get how far off the mark we are compared to God’s perfect standard. There’s literally no way for you to reach it.

-Iniquity – corrupted or twisted. This gets to the very motivation for us. Not only do we sin, but we still want to do sin! Think of what Paul says in Rom. 7“For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.” We can’t help ourselves! We’re literally at war within ourselves for anyone who is in Christ. We fight against the sin within us, striving and straining against the sin, at least we’re supposed to be.

         -There’s a word that’s not used much anymore, but signifies what we’re supposed to be doing: mortifying sin, that is killing it. John Owen “be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” (The Mortification of Sin). Friends, it’s much easier to just ignore it, or pretend sin isn’t an issue, but until Christ returns we’re going to continue needing to fight against sin, and until we actually start fighting and pushing back against sin, we won’t be blessed or happy. Remember, to err is human, but the quote goes on: to forgive divine. How does forgiveness come in?

-This is where we see 3 words that show us how God’s grace comes against even our sin, 1 for each of the ways we sin, did you see them as we were reading?

-Forgiven – pardoned from holding you accountable for your rebellion. Have you ever considered the power of forgiveness? Think of Les Miserables: Jean Vaujaun is forgiven for stealing silver and it literally changes the course of his life, that’s meant to be a picture of the what forgiveness does to us.

-Covered – when you miss the mark, God’s mark is counted instead of yours. Gets to the idea of the Passover (we’ve seen in Revelation the need to keep the Exodos story at the front of our minds). Anyone remember whiteout?

-Does not charge – take the biggest loan you’ve ever had (house, car, college) and imagine logging into your account and seeing the balance is $0, and you didn’t pay it. And all of this is rooted in who God is (grow in your theology!)

-Do you see what David’s saying here? The way to be happy is have all your sins dealt with once and for all, and that’s only possible because of who God is. He’s actually picking up on an idea from the Exodus:

-Some commentators believe David was reflecting on this passage because he uses the same language: Ex. 34 – forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin, same words! And look at how this passage describes God. Slow to anger, abounding in hesed. Compare His judgment to His love and forgiveness. The God of the OT isn’t all judgment and wrath!

-Paul quotes these verses in Rom. 4 to make the point that forgiveness from God is only possible if you have faith in Him, which begins an argument 2 chapters earlier where we see that God’s hesed is meant to lead to repentance. If we repent, we will be happy/blessed people, but what happens if we don’t? David goes on to list exactly what happens.

  • Sinful Desolation (3-5)

-Unlike someone who’s happy, because their sins are covered is someone who refuses to acknowledge that they’ve sinned. David could think on a time like that, and it literally affected his body!

-If you’ve ever had secret sin, have you ever felt this way? Like it physically was eating you up from the inside, and if people only knew what was actually going on inside they’d reject you? Remember: God knows everything, including what you think. You can’t hide from him, but many people do try to hide. What’s scary is if you become numb to sin and don’t have a reaction! That’s when you need to start worrying.

-Selah: I want you to take some time now to reflect and ask the Lord to reveal any sins that you need to confess.

-After having his body waste away from trying to hide, David confesses, and God forgives. John picks up this same idea in 1 John. We see this tension between still being sinners, but being able to be cleansed from our sins, and all it takes is confession. Doesn’t that seem too easy? On the one hand, I worry that we don’t take our sin seriously enough, but at the same time I also worry that we sometimes don’t confess because we feel like we need to pay some kind of penance or earn God’s forgiveness. This is why the message of the gospel is (or should be) so scandalous! It’s not based on what you or I have done, it’s based on what Jesus has done.

-I realize we just had one, but there’s another Selah in here for a reason! So take some time and think about the sins the Lord may have just brough to mind and confess them.

  • The Response of the Forgiven (6-11)

-Therefore: building on everything else said so far. Since forgiveness is possible, what should the response be?

-Instead of bottling it up and trying to hide, pray IMMEDIATELY to God and ask for forgiveness! When this happens, you suddenly go from being in rebellion against God to being able to withstand anything that comes your way. See: great floodwaters won’t hurt them (even a flood like Noah faced). God becomes our safe place. I onetime heard a story about the way we should think of God in relation to our sin, when a little kid gets into trouble is their instinct “Oh no, dad’s gonna kill me!” or “Oh no, I need to go find my dad!” Friends, because of what Jesus has done for us, our response should be the second one. When we sin, we run to God because His grace and mercy are enough for all our sins.

–Selah

-Here we see what this could be viewed as instruction, we end with an exhortation from David. He contrasts following and being obedient to God with bring like a horse or mule who can’t do the right thing. Very similar to how Paul describes unbelievers in Rom. 1 as suppressing the truth and refusing the acknowledge the Creator God who rules over them.

-He goes on to say that many pains come to the wicked, but whoever trusts the Lord will be surrounded by faithful love.

-We don’t always see that around us. Doesn’t it often seem like the wicked are the ones who are doing well? That the one who cuts the most corners gets ahead, the one who cheats gets the raises and accolades, and Christians are increasingly marginalized? Psalm 73 talks about that exact idea! Asaph is complaining about how the wicked always prosper and do well while he’s wasting away, but then he gathers with God’s people and is reminded what’s truly true. Friends, God will bring about perfect and eternal judgment and justice someday, and when that day comes you can either have many pains, or faithful love: which one will you have?

-The last verse is a reminder for us to praise God for His forgiveness that is given to the 1000th generation! We can choose today to be forgiven, to be healed, to have our sin covered over, and to be finally and fully happy and blessed.

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by mikethestrand on June 16, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on June 16, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/06/16/psalm-32-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 31 – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you ever had one of those experiences where your response to a situation doesn’t match what’s happening? I remember most acutely feeling that during college. You leave for a year, then come back home and suddenly things at home feel weird. Siblings bother you in new ways, parents rules are overly restrictive all of a sudden, your best friends are acting weird (graduates, just wait a year, and I promise I won’t say I told you).

-As we grow as Christians, there will be times and seasons where our response doesn’t match the situation at hand. What do we do when that’s true? How do we snap out of it, and what would God have us do in the midst of those situations?

-I remember hearing someone onetime say the problem with people is they listen to themselves instead of preaching to themselves. If we feel discouraged doesn’t your inner voice make it worse? Or if you’re sad doesn’t your inner voice make you more sad? Or if you’re feeling guilty doesn’t your inner voice heap on even more guilt? Today’s text will demonstrate exactly what it means for us to take every thought captive for Christ – and it doesn’t come by faking it til you make it, or by reciting a verse out of context (God causes all things to work for good), but by being real with God.

READ/PRAY

-Housekeeping notes:

-Book of Psalms vs individual Psalm (please don’t get a tattoo PsalmS)

-Psalms were the songbook of God’s people throughout history, the songbook of Jesus, and gives words to the gamut of human emotion and experience. Luther called it a “mini Bible,” because it traces the whole storyline of Scripture, and points to realities of the incarnation of God’s Son. Athanasius “Whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you . . . learn the way to remedy your ill.” 

-These are used to help you know how to talk to God during every season of your life. I use that term season intentionally. I’ve found it helpful for myself to think of life in terms of seasons. Read The Resilient Life in seminary on this

-Every ministry job I’ve interviewed for has asked the question to my about balance in work and life. I don’t think there is. Wobble is better word.

-But God is still God in every season you’re in. “All of my life in every season you are still God.” (Desert Song). The Psalms are here to give us words in every season we’re in. Soak your mind in them, friends. 

-I know many people who read through this book each month, I’m doing a Bible reading plan this year that reads through it twice. Some orders of monks read through it every week.

-These are poetry, very different than prose, very different from apocalyptic. Read it full of flowery language, lots of extremes (very high highs and very low lows). Lots written by King David, all have musical notation, but none have the musical notes (intentionally).

-Last thing is the headings (verse 0) are a part of the original writings. Some give information about events that inspired the Psalm, some have musical notations, some tell the author. 

-Can be hard to preach, so keep that in mind! Because it’s poetry in order to get a cohesive outline we need to read it more section by section instead of verse by verse, so if I don’t touch on a verse you really liked or wanted to learn more about, I’m sorry! 

-Some notes about this Psalm: themes repeated in other places in the Bible. Psalm 71 copies the first 3 verse verbatim. Jesus quotes vs. 5 on the cross, Jonah quotes 6 from the belly of the fish, Jeremiah quotes vs. 136x. This one was apparently popular!

  1. God Is a Refuge (1-8)

-David begins by committing to seek refuge in God. 

-There are many times and places where David would be tempted to beg this of God. Chased by Saul, surrounded by enemies after he’s king, wayward children in his elder years who tried to take the kingdom away from him. There were many seasons in his life where he would need God to be a refuge.

-Disgrace means different things here than it would to us. Has a bigger and deeper meaning to them: social outcast, ghosted.

-If he’s been dismissed by everyone else, he starts to wonder if God will treat him the same way.

-Trusts himself to God’s righteousness. What does that mean? It means David is trusting himself in that God is right and will do right by His people. Since God is righteous, He can only be righteous to His children.

-Listen closely. One of the realities of being a parent today is the use of screens and how to handle them well with kids. I’ve had to learn how to be more present with my kids because they notice if I’m not actually engaged with them and distracted by my phone. This is David proverbially taking God’s face in his hands and saying “look at me!” That’s BOLD and takes courage, but is possible because he’s our Father.

-Interplay between 2-3. Asks God to be a rock of refuge, but it’s because God is a rock and fortress.

-James Montgomery Boice “’You are…then be…’ should be the prayer of every Christian.” Church, the reason we need to grow in theology is because it gives us a foundation to build the rest of our lives on. We could spend the rest of this sermon on this idea (actually the rest of our lives). Since God is faithful, we can ask Him to be faithful to us. Since God is love, we can ask Him to be loving to us. Since God is good, we can ask Him to be good to us. See, it’s only because of true things we know about Him (theology) that we can trust in Him throughout our lives. It’s only because we grow in theology that we can continue persevering in our faith and know that God will continue working in our lives. Theology isn’t just an intellectual pursuit, it’s a pursuit that is meant to help us better understand and trust Him. Keep that in mind as continue, I’ll come back to it.

-And notice how David continues: for your name’s sake. It’s not ultimately for us. 1 Cor. 6 your life is not your own, you were bought with a price. 

-David repeats this idea until vs. 6 where he contrasts himself with the wicked. I thought we were supposed to love everyone, including our enemies? Did Jesus just upend all this judging and hatred of the OT?

-Judge not? We’ve been reading some pretty dramatic ways Jesus responds to evil in Revelation lately. Does He just sit passively back and let evil run unchecked? No! Because God is the ultimate judge that provides a meaning even to our suffering today. On top of that, we even have a passage in the NT that tells us one of our jobs is to judge, but only a subset of people: the church. Friends, we must love each other enough to judge each other when we see sin grabbing a hold in someone’s life. 

-Idols were thought to bring healing and protection. Think more like a rabbits foot than a cosmic judge who sits on clouds. There were gods of each aspect of life. God of sea, god of rain, god of crops – needed to appease the right one based on the activity you were pursuing. 

-Where David lands this section is important. Instead of being handed to his enemy, God places him in a spacious place.

-Where would you rather go for a walk? Think of the freedom and joy that comes from a wide-open space to run and play. Think of Psalm 23 “He lets me lie down in green pastures.” Friends, this is God’s plan for your life! Wide open spaces. I remember growing up terrified that if I took 1 wrong step I would be outside God’s will and never get back on track. That’s not how God’s will works! He’s told us His will for all of us, and it leads to wide open spaces! You don’t have to be afraid of taking the wrong step, you don’t have to worry you’ll never get back on, this is the point of the overquoted passage in Rom. 8 that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him. It means even when we take the wrong step, He’s still with us.

  • God Is Gracious (9-20)

-Things seem to take a sharp left turn for David here, almost as if he did step out of God’s plan for his life! He lists all sorts of issues: his body is failing him, he’s ridiculed, abandoned by his friends, ghosted, oppressed everywhere he looks. How do you respond in those situations?

-I remember when I was in high school reaching a point where God was starting to become more real to me. It felt like I was the only one following after God in the school, felt like I was the only one taking my faith seriously, and then my dad showed me 1 Kings 19: Elijah onetime felt the same way and God told Him (basically) get over yourself, you’re not as big of a deal as you think, I’ve got 7,000 others besides you. I learned that God works in community, not just individuals, so because God works in community, I can ask Him to give me community. God is always working to preserve His people! I can rely that I’m not alone and be encouraged to remain faithful. It is graduation season too – so high schoolers (and those who know a high schooler) remind them to remain faithful. It may feel like you’re the only one following God (even at a Christian college) so use this Psalm as a reminder to continue being faithful.

-Let’s look at how David responds, start in vs. 14

-Instead of focusing all his attention and energy on his peers, “friends” David looks to the Lord, and preaches to Himself in vs. 15. This is another reason I find the Psalms so helpful for us today: how often do we forget to preach to ourselves? How often do we succumb to listening to ourselves and then spiral worse and worse? Friends, this is part of the reason it’s so vital that we soak our minds in God’s Word. We need to have our minds shaped by what God says about us, not what we think or how we feel, because that changes minute by minute.

-Make your face shine is a way of denoting spending time in God’s presence. I’ve been kind of surprised how often that idea has come up in Revelation – the face shining connects back to Moses (Ex. 34) and also points to the transfiguration, which is then supposed to be reflected in believers today (2 Cor. 3:18).

-He goes on to contrast himself with the wicked (17-18), before going back to contrast them with those who fear (follow) God. He ends this section with something that we saw earlier that I told you to keep in mind. “God is….so be…” 

-God is good, therefore he asks God to be good to him, and everyone who fears him. Another reminder that we ask things of God because of who He is. Friends, God is good! And He is always working things out for us but it may not look like that while we’re on earth. Notice how it’s “stored up” Goodness is piled up in heaven just waiting for us!

-We’ve seen that through our time in Revelation: God continues protecting and preserving His people despite increasing persecution on earth. This is why we worship and praise God – because of His goodness (He IS good), because of His love (He IS love), because of His faithfulness (He IS faithful), even when it doesn’t feel that way. 

-This is another remind how important this gathering is in the lives of Christians. I don’t know about you, but I get discouraged during the week! I beat myself up, I doubt things about God that I know are true! But then I get to come in and have my selfishness shaken up each week! I get reminded that there’s something bigger than me, someone supporting me, and some people that He has called me to, which is the same place David ends:

  • God Is Faithful Love (21-24)

-It’s almost as if David has spent time in church! His outlook has been shifted, his desperation has changed and he realizes that God is on his side!

-The word he uses here is important hesed Sally Lloyd-Jones in The Jesus Storybook Bible “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.” Because of all these truths about God, He always heard and always answers our prayers.

-We then see the need for us to live a certain way. Because God is faithful love, we can ask Him to be faithful in His love toward us, but we also need to respond by faithfully loving Him. If we do that then we can preach this last verse to ourselves and each other. We don’t need to fear, we don’t need to doubt, we can be strong, we can be courageous (bold!) because we know our outcome is as solid as the tomb is empty.

-End praying how this teaches us to pray. Spurgeon “We may pray to enjoy in experience what we grasp by faith. Faith is the foundation of prayer.”

-God is a refuge, so be a refuge

-God is faithful love, so be faithful love

-God is gracious, so be gracious

-God is good, so be good

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by mikethestrand on June 9, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on June 9, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/06/09/psalm-31-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 20 – Sermon Manuscript

-Both my parents grew up on a farm. There are a lot of things about it that sounded very enjoyable! Tons of room to run around, animals that are bigger than you to play with, farm equipment to drive around. I always liked going to the farm, they let me start driving as soon as I could reach the pedals! My dad’s side had 5 boys, so you can imagine that house. Interestingly enough, 4 of them have ended up in some kind of education role (the oldest still works on the family farm!). House of 5 boys who like to read & study. The older I get (and the older my dad & uncles get) the more stories get leaked out when they get together! 

-The youngest brother in particular had a bad habit during seeding of bringing books into the combine to not be so bored. As grandpa would drive around their acreage he would make comments about where each of the boys had gotten too invested in their book, or even note whole fields where books were being read! Do you know how he could tell? The plow lines weren’t straight! What was supposed to be a straight-lined field was covered with zig-zags. Each time my grandpa would apparently gently remind them to fix their eyes on a particular point in the horizon then never drift away from that spot, ensuring straight lines every time. But as boys are prone to do, there are far too many other things to focus on! A bird flying by, a rock in the pasture, contemplating when lunch is because they’re always hungry, or if it’s the Strand family the book you snuck onto the combine with you. 

-As Christians, we are all tempted to act like a Strand boy and be distracted by so many distractions around us instead of keeping our eyes focused and fixed on Jesus. Psalm 20 is a great reminder for us to be reminded to keep our eyes fixed on the right place so that our lives are marked by straight lines.

READ/PRAY

  1. God, Hear Our Prayers (1-5)

-A number of the Psalms we’ve studied together this summer as “royal Psalms” in that they are for/about/centered around the king. This one connects specifically to preparation for a battle.

-We miss some things as we don’t have a king, and are proud of it! I’ve been listening to the biographies of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams recently and was first of all struck with the differences in their approaches to life (Hamilton wasn’t a believer at least until the later end of his life, Adams was a committed believer), but secondly was struck by the strong debates related to whether positions of power should be passed down through generations, or whether it be merit based (if you didn’t know, merit based won out). 

-So since we don’t have a king, one thing we need to note is the king is meant to serve as the representative for the entire people. Our president is kind of similar to that, but not quite to the same extent. In the OT the king’s success determined the fate of the entire nation. Not too much of a stretch to say the nation was literally identified by the king, we can too easily dismiss identification with the president, even seen bumper stickers that say “don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him”

-A second piece we need to be aware of as we read a royal Psalm is the king is meant to serve as the best, most accurate representation of God on earth. Remember last week we saw one of the first things a king of Israel was supposed to do was write out God’s law himself, then read and meditate on it throughout his life, allowing the king to keep his eyes on the right path and not end up with zig zags in his life! But because the king served as God’s representative, wars weren’t as we often see today for land or resources, wars were meant to reflect spiritual realities, so if a nation won in battle, it signified the superior strength of their God. 

-This is why the people would join together to pray for the protection and preservation of their king as they would prepare for battle. That’s why this Psalm begins by asking God to answer when the king faces trouble.

-“God of Jacob” shorthand for “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” connects all the way back to Gen. 22:17. (Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac)

-This is another reminder, as we’ve seen before, to know the story you’re caught up in! David didn’t appear out of nowhere, there’s a history that he’s a part of. Whether you believe it or not, history has an ending point, but that also means there’s a purpose and a reason behind it. If we don’t know and understand the history and our place in it, we’ll miss where we’re aiming at. 

-“sanctuary/Zion” (2) similar to the shorthand above, refers to the place where God’s glory or manifest presences dwells. Same thing for us today praying “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Is he ONLY in heaven? Absolutely not! But it reminds us that He is not just like us.

-honor or accept the various offerings of the king. 2 different offerings mentioned in this verse (different Hebrew words to refer to different kinds of offerings)

-This isn’t (as I’ve heard far too many people say) putting God in your favor by offering, or tithing, or sacrificing something. These offerings refer to restoring the relationship between God and the king. 

-For example, the “burnt offering” refers to an atonement offering, as seen in Lev. 1. This specific offering is meant to deal with the sins the king has committed. There is nothing we can do to put God in our debt, yet as I talk to people there’s a tendency to treat God that way. “if I give this to God, he has to bless me back.” I even heard this from a pastor in town here! That’s not how God works!

-I liked the way one commentary put it: “it is the inward reality of right relationship that Yahweh remembers rather than the abundance of sacrifices offered. Rather than taking this to mean that God remembers how we make sacrifices (of time, money, suffering, etc.), this passage is talking about fulfilling our covenantal responsibilities of relationship to God. Have we acknowledged our sin and turned from it? Are we experiencing and celebrating a renewed and restored relationship with God? God “remembers” us when we are on the way of faithful loyalty to him and when we daily seek him with body, mind, soul, and spirit.”

–Selah: instrumental to stop and reflect on what was just sung. I’ll leave the Psalm on the screen for you to reflect on it, think about your relationship with God.

-“heart’s desire” does this mean the king get everything he wants?

-Think about 1 instance in David’s life: when he first looked down at Bathsheba, was God’s answer to allow her to be David’s wife? Doesn’t this just confirm what I talked about in the last verse, if we make all these offerings, then God will give us the desires of your heart? Think of Cinderella “a dream is a wish your heart makes” or the song I danced to growing up “listen to your heart, when it’s calling to you.” So God is in heaven as our fairy godmother to make our dreams come true?

–NIVAC: “this is a wake-up call to bring our hearts into alignment with the will and purposes of God.” Or this is a way of ensure our eyes are on the right place instead of being distracted by all the things around us.

-Notice what takes place right before this, acceptable sacrifices, not to place God in your debt, but working to align the king’s hearts with God. It’s only after being obedient to God that he’ll have the proper desires to ask for.

-This is the proper way to pray! ACTS, the Lord’s Prayer all reorient our hearts and minds before we get to asking.

–5: do we actually celebrate that we have been saved? We should be a joyful people! Even celebrating communion like we did last week is meant to be a joyful experience because we’re no longer dead in our sin.

-As I was growing up I had no clue that Christianity was meant to lead to joy! Not sure where I missed it, but it always felt like being a Christian meant there was no fun, just joy sucking rules to follow. Yet when Jesus came, he was accused of partying too much! We shouldn’t be partying too much, but there should be a level of joy and celebration at the daily victory we have in Christ!

  • The Response of the King (6)

-Notice the change in pronouns here. We go from “you/your” to “I”

-God sometimes calls the equipped, but He always equips the called.

-There is no question or doubt “I know this truth!” this is one of the reasons it’s so important to continue meeting together, we sometimes need each other to believe the realities of the gospel.

-Tami at last week’s music practice warned the team: be careful where you look when we sing this song! It’s a hard one when you know what’s going on in people’s lives! But think of how encouraging it is to see someone struggling with a cancer seeing someone else struggling with cancer and singing their heart out because God is still working in them!

-David wrote this 1000 years before the birth of Jesus, we now have the privilege of seeing the fulfillment of this promise. God’s salvation is done, accomplished, finished, now there’s nothing that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

  • The Response of the People (7-9)

-Literally: “some in chariots, some in horses, but we invoke the name of the one true God” What are you looking to as your ultimate source of identity, comfort, and strength?

–Deut. 17:14-20 Last week we saw the need to write down the law, this week I want you to look at another command: not acquire too many horses, aka find comfort in your nation, your tribe, your people. Since God created us, he knows our tendencies to look to anything else as the source of our confidence instead of Him, which is why we have vs. 7 in this Psalm. Specifically, what this is referring to the ancient near east is putting your ultimate confidence in geo-political power. The chariots/horses were the best weapon of the day, whoever had the most would most likely win in a battle. Has anything changed since?

-I say this with some trepidation, knowing that it may step on some people’s toes, but why is it that so many people today are looking to Politics as their primary source of identity? Why is everything that’s said filtered through a partisan lens instead of filtering it through a Jesus lens? We see this every 4 years from both sides! (actually seeing it pretty much daily now) Unless our candidate is elected into office our country is going to descend into anarchy, or if our candidate isn’t in office our country is falling apart and it’s OBVIOUSLY the fault of the policies of the other side. Unless this vote passes through the House our world is going to fall apart. It’s using fear and scare tactics to manipulate people, and the sad part is that it works! So then in response to the fear from one side, the other side doubles down on the opposite position and leaves no room for nuance. I wonder if today this verse would be more applicable if it said “some trust in the donkey, and some in the elephant.” 

-Neither party is completely aligned with every Christian virtue, which makes it hard to know how to vote. The problem in our culture today is because everything is viewed through a partisan political lens far too many assumptions are made about what someone truly thinks or believes. Instead of asking for clarification or trying to understand where someone is coming from, conclusions and assumptions are made about whether someone is “in” or “out” and then we decide if we’ll continue associating with them or not. This is the mark of following the ways of the world, not the ways of our Lord, and this cuts through both sides of the political aisle.

-This doesn’t mean we therefore throw up our hands and disengage (as tempting as that might be!), instead I think we need to work hard to find a better way forward together, and it MUST start in the church. 

-This is why I have said and will say in the future, leave your politics at the door when you come in here. What I mean by that (and what I should probably change what I say to) is leave your PARTISAN politics at the door, because there are political truths that must be shared in here: Jesus is Lord is a political statement, because it’s saying no one else has the ultimate answers or authority. The Bible makes it clear that every person who is in authority (kings, rulers, presidents, governors) is in there by God’s good plan and design, even ones you don’t like or agree with.

-I have read of, and even talked to, some pastors who have shared Bible verses over the past few years and then either been labeled a woke Marxist or a racist, and I know they were neither of those things! Why is it that sharing something like “blessed are the peacemakers” or “turn the other cheek” or “a gentle answer turns away wrath” are labeled “woke” today? If you didn’t know, I just quoted Matt. 5:9, Matt 5:39, and Prov. 15:1. I’ve been called some of those things since I got here! When everything is filtered through a partisan political lens there’s no room for nuance, subtly, or trying to understand someone else’s point of view. Yet that’s exactly what we as Christians are called to do.

-I’m not sure how this happened (I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it) but there has even been Christians I know who have said it’s time to move on from gentleness and start fighting fire with fire. 

-I need all of you to pay attention to this: demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit isn’t optional for anyone who is “In Christ.” Look at these 2 lists Paul gives us in Galatians 5: one of them is led by the Spirit, and one of them is not.

-Maybe politics isn’t important to you at all! You’re probably much more sane than many of the people you’re rubbing shoulder with! However, these 2 lists I think can serve as a litmus test of where you have idols in your heart that God is revealing to you. In what areas of your life are you marked by the flesh instead of the Spirit? When are you prone to respond with sexual immorality, etc. instead of love, etc. In God’s kindness, He is provided a way for you to see where you’re looking to comfort in the world instead of Him. Areas in your life where you’ve taken your eyes off the right place and turned them to worldly things.

-Vs. 8 doubles down on this idea: Those who trust in anything other than God collapse and fall.

-We’ve seen this all summer! Where is the foundation of your life, in rock or sand? Do you have enough foundation built to endure the difficulties of life, or are you building on a foundation from this world that will ensure destruction? 

-Do you want to have God answer your prayers? Entrust yourself to God. Do you want to have a flourishing life? Entrust yourself to God. Do you want to have the strength to endure under trials? Entrust yourself to God. Do you want to be a strong person who isn’t worried by the changing world around us? Entrust yourself to God. 

-The last verse is repeated in the NT. 1 Tim. 2:1-2 also commanded to pray this in the NT. Do you pray for “kings and all who are in high positions”? Once again, not just for the candidates whose policies you agree with, but for “all people.” 

-Similarly to many other Psalms, all this is pointing us to the ultimate and perfect king: Jesus. Today we can use this prayer when we remember that we are in a battle, not against flesh and blood, which means we can’t use the world’s weapons to fight!

-Don’t lower yourself to slander, dissensions, or divisions. That’s how the world will try to tempt us to fight! Instead we fight by demonstrating: love, joy, peace, etc. And who demonstrated those traits perfectly? Jesus! Therefore, as we saw at the beginning of this, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t be distracted by the things of this world, don’t let your eyes wander away from Him. It’s only by faithfully keeping your eyes on Him that the lines of our lives will be straight.

Bene: (Heb. 12:1-2)

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

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by mikethestrand on August 21, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 21, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/08/21/psalm-20-sermon-manuscript/

Holy Week Services

This past week was the celebration of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. This is one of those holidays that both Protestants and Romans Catholics celebrate together. I always look forward to this week and enjoy the opportunity to try some new things throughout the week. Last year we did our first ever Maundy Thursday service and continued that tradition this year. This year’s service was focused on the communal nature of our faith. I set up 12 tables in our sanctuary and had people gather sit around those tables. The service itself was divided up as following:

Greeting

What is Maundy Thursday? (John 15:12-17, Luke 22)

SING: Jesus Paid It All

Celebrate

The Passover (Exodus 12)

SING: In Christ Alone

Remember

SING: Mercy

The Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

At each table was: Matzah, bitter herbs, hoaroset, and grape juice.

This was the longest time of the service, and each table had instructions to guide them through the various elements, as well as Scripture readings and explanations of what each element stood for.

Go

Love One Another (John 14:15-31, 1 John 4:7-21)

SING: Give Us Clean Hands

Each of the 4 parts also had a responsive reading and all 3 of the pastors on staff shared speaking responsibilities. Our time together was helpful in thinking through how the Passover applies to today, as well as being able to slow down and reflect more deeply about the Lord’s Supper.

On Friday night I divided the night into 5 parts and focused on the individualistic part of our faith. We are called into a community, but we are still still individually members of that community. Since February, we had been going through a series titled “Christ in the Psalms” so I carried that idea into our Good Friday service. It was divided into 5 sections with a Gospel passage being read aloud, followed by a Psalm displayed on the screen for people to pray through, and a station for people to participate in. As people were walking in there was a half sheet of paper with instructions, a nail and a pen to grab and take in to the service. It was divided as follows:

Remember

Luke 22:14-23

Psalm  105:1-11

Think back to when the cross and the Gospel message first began making sense to you. Write out that story in the space below, if there is not enough room, use the back of your paper.

SING: The Wonderful Cross

Betrayal

John 18:1-32

Psalm 55

IMG_2814

On each side of the front of the sanctuary is a cross painted on a canvas, when you’ve had enough time to reflect, walk down the middle aisles to paint the canvas red. There are wipes for your fingers once you’re done. Please walk back to your seat on the farthest outside aisles.

Suffered

John 19:1-16a

Psalm 73

In the front middle of the sanctuary is a bucket for you to drop the nails you picked up when you entered. Whenever you have had enough time to reflect, please walk down the middle aisles and then return to your seat on the outside aisles.

SING: Were You There

Crucified

John 19:16b-30

Psalm 22

At the bottom of this paper is a space for you to write out why Jesus had to die for YOU. Write out as few or as many sins in that space as God lays on your heart.

It Is Finished

John 19:38-42

SING: Once Again

Psalm 25

On your way out the door, tear off the paper below where you wrote your sins and place them at the foot of the cross at the back of the sanctuary.

If you would like to “borrow” any of these ideas for your services, please do! They were enjoyable to plan and hopefully encouraging to the congregation.

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by mikethestrand on April 8, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 8, 2015

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2015/04/08/holy-week-services/