Sermon Cloud

psalm 136

Good morning everyone… Last week we began by meditating a bit on times when God seemed very distant, very far away. This week, let’s start with opposite. I’m going to ask you, if you are comfortable, to close your eyes, try to quiet all the voices of this past week and even this morning… This is a time when we have come to be present as a community to God- so, feel free to turn off work, home, disagreements and disappointments, lunch, whatever- and just for a moment, be fully present to God.

As I said, last week we began by meditating a bit on times when God seemed very distant, very far away. And now, I want us to think back on those times along the way when God seemed very close, very immediate, very present in your life. When were those times?

Let’s pray…

**Prayer

We’re in the middle of some weeks in the psalms, just working through various chapters of these songs that the people of God have meditated on, sung, been comforted by, challenged by, confused by for thousands of years… This week we come to Psalm 136… this was a song that the people would sing as a call-and-response, and I’d love for us, this morning, to read it that way…

Let’s read 1-9 together, one person reading the beginning, all of us reading the response.

This is one of the great praise songs of the Hebrew people, that favorite song they would sing at just about every festival. Maybe the ancient equivalent of Shine, Jesus, Shine… or maybe not.

This psalm tells us who God is, and calls for a response from us because of that knowledge. We’re going to respond in various ways today…

Prayer Station- tree

VS 1-3

What are some things we see about God right up front in this Psalm.

He is good- what does that mean?

His love endures forever- we’ll talk about that in a bit

He is the God of gods, the Lord of lords…

What do you make of that statement?

Let me ask it another way… how do you feel about the claim of God in our lives, the claim He puts on the first place, the idea, back to the Ten Commandments of “have no other god before me.”

I know it really rubs us the wrong way sometimes when we not just hear, but feel God’s claim of priority in our lives… when our idolatry is exposed, when we realize exactly what it is we really worship… that can be a hard thing. And so God reminds us- He is God of all our gods, Lord of all our lords, and just as important, He is good. 

We give ourselves to so many things. We will absolutely ruin our lives chasing a high, chasing an orgasm, chasing a promotion, chasing someone who will tell us us we are loved… And over and over and over again, God calls us back to that place, not just of recognizing His primacy as God over and against all those things, but His goodness as well- His goodness and His love that endures forever, over against all the things we chase that last for a moment and are gone and make promise after promise of happiness and never quite seem to come through.

But that’s not the only difference between God with a capital G and all our gods with a lowercase g…

VS 4-9

If you can walk out in the mountains, or sit in the middle of the desert at night and look up at the stars, or stand in front of the ocean and try to wrap your brain around how big it is and not be absolutely amazed, there’s something in you that needs to come alive. But most of us, when we get out of our everyday routine, in nature, or even when we just stop and contemplate all that’s around us, we tend to feel a sense of amazement…

And if we are that amazed at the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains and the desert… how much more amazed should we be at the one who made them all?

And who made them, in a way, for us.

I want you to stop and think- Did God need to make stars? Or did He need to make our atmosphere and the reaches of space such that we could seethose stars?

God made those stars and they serve no other purpose than to show His power and might, to delight you and me, and to bring those two concepts together- to cause us to delight, to take pleasure in and enjoy the awesome might and power and loving care of the God who made it all.

“Give thanks”- literally “confess, acknowledge” and so calls us to thoughtful, engaged, grateful worship…

Many of us are the people who left the traditional, institutional, do it by the book without feeling church behind. Right? My biggest complaint was that the worship in my church growing up was dead- noses in hymn books, singing words we could have meant, but never made the emotional investment to mean.

So should we go hard the opposite way? No…

Many of us are also the people who left the emotion-over-thought, manipulative, everybody put your hands together happy clappy worship behind.

We have always, from day one at evergreen said- adopt whatever posture in worship you need to adopt. But what we have never said, at least for those who have moved beyond exploring and have decided to become a follower of Jesus, is that worship is optional.

So what’s left? Exactly what this psalm calls us to- thoughtful, engaged, whole mind, whole body, whole spirit worship of the God who is. The God who made us. The God from whom all good things come. The God whose faithful love for us endures forever.

2 songs

vs 10-22

Read 10-22 together, one person reading the beginning, all of us reading the response.

There’s this real sense of sweet and sour as I read these middle verses in this passage…

Some of the pieces of God’s history with the Hebrew people read very differently to us. We’ve never been physically held captive, and seen our children used as slave labor, or had to witness the pagan worship of gods like Baal and Molech when the people would sacrifice their own children in fire… so when the psalmist cheers God for striking down their oppressors, pagan kings, it’s hard for us to connect with that in the same way the original readers and the people who sang this song first would have.

But if the first section is about thanking and praising God for who he is, what is this section about?

This psalm tells us who God is, and in so doing, it tells us who we are, but that’s not where we stop. We need to close that loop…

This psalm tells us that God loves us with an enduring, faithful love. We really don’t have a single English word to capture the Hebrew of the word here for love- maybe “loyal love”, maybe covenant faithfulness… In our minds, love is something you can fall into and out of or something that can be so injured as to die. That’s the farthest thing possible from this kind of love, the loyal love of God that endures forever.

God’s anger, His wrath at injustice, evil in the world, those last only a moment. Those things are judged, done away with, forgotten. But His love… thatlasts forever.

That’s Who God is… and when we understand that, we understand something about ourselves, our fundamental identity as loved, valued, cared for. And that’s really important knowledge to carry around, to keep with you, to remember as fact even when you feel very differently.

But it’s not the point here.

It’s good for us to understand the character of God, the attributes of God and all the implications for us, all that those things tell us about ourselves… but it’s not the point. Self-knowledge is not the ultimate goal of seeking knowledge about God. The knowledge of God is the ultimate goal of seeking knowledge of God. We seek to know God because we love God, and in order to love Him, and because out of all the things we could give ourselves to, everything fades away, but as this Psalm tells us, one thing lasts forever- God and His love.

The God who takes immense joy in setting people free, even people whose slavery is of their own making, the God who leads us safely through, who takes us through the wilderness and Himself deals with all the enemies who want to ruin us. The God who acts, who shows up. The God who gives to us freely and loves us with a fierce, loyal love.

1 Song- This is our God

**What are you thankful for- what’s a piece of your story where you have seen God move, seen God act, seen God show up?**

1 Song- Thank You for Hearing Me

Vs 23-26

Read 23-26 together, one person reading the beginning, all of us reading the response.

This Psalm moves… it moves from the story of creation, down through the years with the story of the Hebrew people, down to my story, your story…

I love seeing the Gospel in the Old Testament… this was not only the experience of Israel in being saved by God out of slavery in Egypt, but it is our experience too- this is the path the Gospel takes in my life- the recognition of my own weakness as well as recognizing that God sees it, knows it, has provided for it… That recognition leading to salvation and to the understanding that whatever we have, all good things, food- physical, spiritual, emotional- comes from Him, and so a thoughtful, grateful recognition of that… In other words- thanking Him for His love for us- His faithful love that endures forever.

This is the Gospel we hear the first time- that time we reject it, and say- no- not for me. It’s the Gospel we hear the second and third and fourth time as it really begins to sink in- our weakness, our inability to save ourselves, to do what needs to be done in our lives, and God’s provision for us- provision for forgiveness, provision for life. It’s the Gospel we hear that finally- sometimes suddenly, sometimes over a long period of time, but that finally brings us to a place where the recognition of our weakness and God’s provision moves beyond the intellectual, but into the deepest parts of who we our and moves us from that place of personalization- when Jesus moves from being the savior to being my savior.

And, if we are wise, this is the Gospel we will preach to ourselves until the day we die- because no matter where I am spiritually, no matter how long I have been doing this thing, it has not yet finished it’s work in my life. Every day I discover a new area where the Gospel is impacting me, changing me, humbling me, strengthening me. The Good News of God’s rescue and renewal of all creation through the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf is the medicine I need every day, the active ingredient that is pushing me towards change, towards growth, towards participating in the rescue and renewal of this world around me, and ultimately, it’s the thing that is pushing me towards God Himself, the One who loves me with a love that never fails, never ends…

2 songs