God Is My Portion

SERMON: 2011-10-16--ps7311--god-is-my-portion SOURCE DURATION: 00:34:25.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates 0 through 14 form a sustained benediction/closing thought (part of the sermon). Candidate 15 is an abrupt single word following this continuous material and likely marks the transition into non-sermon content, such as music or an announcement. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:29:34.840-00:29:45.740, 00:29:46.960-00:34:25.220 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I was thinking the other day that the standard that the Lord sets for his people is impossibly high. Because listen again to these words that we just read from Psalm 73, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." I don't know about you, but I look at those kind of verses and I say, "Oh, really? Earth has nothing I desire beside you. Not my car, not my house, not my wife, not my kids, my job, my health, my reputation, my friends. And God, you are my portion forever. I'm content just with you, even if everything else was taken away from me. I would be content just to belong to you." Quite a standard, do you not think, if you really think about it? And yet that's precisely what scripture teaches from one end to the other. In Matthew chapter 22, the Lord Jesus is asked to summarize what is the great commandment. He responds with these words and you know them well. He says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." He says, "This is the first and greatest commandment and a second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself." And to love God, as you know, is to place him at the center of our existence. It is to draw our life fully from him. It is to trust him completely and to obey him unquestioningly. Try that. See how far you get. And to love your neighbor means at the very least you want for your neighbor what you want for yourself. In fact, scripture will go further and says that you would want more for your neighbor than you would want for yourself. "Whom have I in heaven but you? Earth is nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." When you begin to think through that a little bit in terms of its practicalities, then it just blows you out of the water, that standard that God is looking for among his people. It means, for example, if you're a young man or a young woman and you're looking for that life partner and you fall in love with somebody who is not a follower of Jesus, you break off that relationship rather than compromise your loyalty to Jesus, even if that should mean you'll never ever get married. Who can live with that kind of demand? It means if you're married and your spouse makes your life miserable and you have opportunities galore to break the covenant of marriage by being unfaithful in thought, word, or in deed, you resist that temptation even though that will cause you great grief and pain. It means when you're struggling financially and you have an opportunity for ungodly or illegitimate gain, you'd rather starve and go broke than dishonor the Lord. It means if my friends choose a course of action that doesn't honor Jesus, I not only refuse to go along with them, I take my stand for Christ even though the result may be ridicule and the loss of friends, that is a high standard. And it means when life is hard and when God disappoints and you're not getting from him what you thought he was going to give you and you cast an envious eye upon your ungodly neighbor for whom life seems to go so well, you not only do not give in to that envy, but you continue to serve God even though it costs you everything. Because you see that's really the theme, as perhaps you know, of Psalm 73. Psalm 73 begins with these words, "Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold. I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles, their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man. They are not plagued by human ills." Goes on to describe then the prosperity of the wicked in contrast to the difficulty of the believer, "In vain have I kept my heart pure. In vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued. I have been punished every morning." The reality is that sometimes life for the believer is more difficult than it is for the unbeliever. And when that happens, it's pretty easy to get bent out of shape and to wonder what good is it to serve the Lord. Let me make a personal confession this morning. I have not very often in my life been jealous of people who are better off economically or in other ways than myself. It's not because I'm so righteous or holy, I've always been well looked after. And I've mostly been pretty content with my lot in life, except a number of years ago my wife and I were visiting a young couple. They were living together. The young man had just graduated from university with a degree and had taken a position with a leading company in Canada with an enormous paycheck. I think his pay was going to be something like $75,000 a year, fresh out of college. And it was a time when personally and as a family we were going through financially very difficult times and I remember a stab of envy like I had never experienced in my life. I have to be honest with you about that. And I remember saying to myself and to the Lord, it's just not fair. Here I have been trying to serve you as best as I know how, I'm sure not perfectly, but you know my heart in this. And here we are struggling and we've been struggling for years and it's just not going our way. And here's this young fellow living with his woman, barely out of school, no intent on serving you, and life is just coming his way. Now I don't know if you've ever been in that spot. If you haven't, I can promise you that probably one day you will. Because what the Lord is after of course in all of our lives is to bring us to this place where with the psalmist we can say, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And on earth there is nothing I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." See the biblical picture of reality, God is of course the source of all life. And what God is after is that we find our life in him and that we find our relationship in him. Human nature being what it is, we often drift away from God. And the analogy that I sometimes use to describe that is, think of a young woman from the poorest section of town, she has no future, she has no riches, she has great poverty. And then along the lines of the Cinderella story, the handsome prince comes along, invites her into our relationship with himself, marries her, she becomes his queen, and all his wealth and honor and glory suddenly become hers. And that's of course the story of creation. God in creating Adam and Eve created them in relationship with him so that in relationship with him all his blessings would flow. And as I've often said, you want to see what that looks like, read the opening two chapters of the book of Genesis and you see that everything the human race longs for, everything the human race fights for, it was all given as a gracious gift to Adam and Eve simply by virtue of their relationship with God. But now think of the queen letting her newfound status go to her head and instead of recognizing that everything she has is by virtue of her relationship with him, she thinks she owns it all. And she not only begins to spend it promiscuously, but she starts living promiscuously instead of loving her husband and being faithful to him. She begins to entertain other lovers in other relationships and the relationship between her and the prince deteriorates to the point where he says, "You can't be my queen any longer." And he takes away from her all the riches that she has inherited by virtue of her relationship with him. What she has is because of him. And when she denies that relationship, whatever she had, she loses. And therein of course you find the story of the fall. Adam and Eve thinking they could have their cake and eat it too, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, denied the Lord God, and in so doing got kicked out of the garden and every last one of us from that day to this, we live with the consequences. And when our heart and our flesh failed and when life is filled with difficulty, then we know that we taste the aftermath. And the good news of the gospel of course is that God didn't leave us in that kind of situation. He's been at work throughout the course of all of history to bring us back into a relationship with himself so that he can be our all and in all. What he wants is to bring us to a place where we can say truly from the heart, "Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." The big question then of course is, how does he get us there? Because I think we will all agree if we're honest with ourselves, we're a long ways away from that kind of unquestioning obedience and unquestioning trust. And the reality is that it always begins by having our eyes opened to where we really find ourselves. The Lord has to wean us away from those things that we so readily trust in, in addition to him. Because see, even though as Christians we have made that commitment that says, "Lord, I want to trust you, I want to obey you, you're more important than anybody else." The reality is that if we really look at life and we really look at our hearts, then yes we trust God and we obey God, but it's God plus, isn't it? God plus my money, or God plus my security, God plus my relationships, God plus my life. And what the Lord has to do is he has to wean us away, because even while we say, "Whom have I in heaven but you," yet the fact remains that when the principalities and the powers come along with their tempting whispers to say there is another way to become happy besides the cross, there are other means of success besides Jesus, then how readily do we not submit to those lies and try all these dead end roads until we discover none of them ever leads anywhere. And while we say there is nothing on earth I desire beside you, yet the reality is that we spend far more time and energy pursuing our goals and dreams in this world generally than we do cultivating our life and our relationship with God. Is that not true? I don't think I'm being too hard on us when I say that. I'm only describing my own life and I suspect yours is not much different. We say my heart and my flesh may fail but God is the strength of my heart and yet why is it that when I'm lonely or when I'm driven into a corner or I'm in pain, God is often the last one we turn to and we try to find comfort in anything from alcohol to drugs to relationships to pleasure to work, Lord knows what else. And while we say God is my portion forever, how often are we discontent with our portion? How often do we cast an envious eye at the neighbor? How often do we wish that life was different from what it is that we're experiencing? And God has to bring us to that place of recognizing that all the things that we so readily lean on are not ultimately going to fill the deep neediness of our hearts and of our lives. Now please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that God doesn't bless us. I'm not saying that God doesn't delight in giving us friends and doesn't delight in giving us family and doesn't delight in giving us a job and doesn't delight in giving us food and a table, but you know as well as I do that very often we love the gift more than the giver and when we love the gift more than the giver, we place ourselves in a difficult situation just as Adam and Eve did because ultimately our security lies in the relationship with God, not in the gifts that He has given us because the gifts that He has given us can be taken away from us, but if we have a relationship with Him then everything we need can be provided by Him whenever we need it. That is the freedom of the life of Christ and so even as He opens our eyes to our true condition which is what He does in Psalm 73 by the way because the psalmist overcomes his hissy fit hell by going into the sanctuary and discovering what is the end of those who do not know God or serve Him. He says they're in a slippery place, they're going to be wiped out, but you will receive me to glory. One of the earliest Old Testament examples of life beyond here, the psalmist understands by faith that if you have Jesus you've got it all and you know as well as I do that only Jesus could ever honestly say these words from the heart, "Whom have I in heaven but you? Earth is nothing I desire beside you, my flesh and my heart may fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." I'm often reminded that when Jesus hung on the cross and He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He still was able to say, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." I don't know if you ever thought about the faith that that required, "God, you're good. You love me. You will fulfill your promises to me even when all the evidence in the world doesn't look like it." And when by faith we're joined to Jesus, not only is His faith, hope, and love ours imputed to us by faith, but by His Holy Spirit, He also imparts that. And you know as well as I do that as you grow in Christ, then the Lord uncovers those places where sometimes our hope and our trust is in something other than Him. And even as He shows us the reality of that, in the middle of that fire, in the middle of those trials, He imparts to us the gift of faith. And He gives us the ability to believe, "God, you're good, even when I don't see it. God, you're blessing me, even though your blessings seem to come in many strange and different forms. And Lord, you're creating hope in my life that no matter how bleak this situation might happen to be, you're bigger than it all, and I can praise you because I know that night is going to turn today." And then when our hearts are all strung out and we think we've not got enough for our own needs, we discover through union with Christ that He gives us an ability to remain living in love and giving to the people around us, not because we're so strong or good in and of ourselves, but because we are joined to Jesus. Because you see, what God is doing more than anything else is preparing us for the party in eternity where we dance with Him. And while He delights to bless us and we can think of many blessings that we celebrate on Thanksgiving today, we also know that even when sometimes those blessings are withheld, it's to give us the greater blessing of our relationship with Him and a life and a joy that can never be taken away. And to put some flesh on those bones, I've asked Al Boonster to share with us a little bit of his journey. As many of you know, back in June, he was diagnosed with cancer that is medically incurable. And when you go through valleys like that, the Lord uncovers what lies underneath. And is the faith that I have the faith that has been given to me by Christ? Can I remain in an attitude of thanksgiving and praise and trust, or does my life fall apart and do I lose the joy of living? Here's Al. Whom have I in heaven but you? Earth has nothing I desire beside you. My heart and flesh may fail but God is the strength of my heart. The journey that I am on now has part of its origin in a journey my sister underwent six years ago and at its conclusion now sees her standing at the feet of Jesus. Six years ago, my sister died of stomach cancer and before she died, I went through a journey where I'm told I wasn't especially happy at God. I started asking him questions like why her if there was a saint that was my sister? Why at all? I mean, why do people get sick? She never heard of flea. Everyone loves her. She is such a witness for you. People came to her church because of the witness she bore to those people in her place of work. That was my sister. Why? God never answered that question, I don't know why, but it was during that time that I read a book by Charles Swindoll. The book was called Job and obviously an exposition on the book of Job in the Bible. So during the reading of that book, I came to realize that God is in control, that he knows what he's doing and that he doesn't need my help or anybody else's into the decisions that he makes. Job 38, verse 2, God asks Job, "Who is it that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?" And verse 3, "Brace yourself like a man. I will question you. You will answer me." God asks Job where he was when God made the heavens and the earth and everything that is in it. Who is Job? Who am I when faced with the magnitude of God? After 40 and Job begins with these words, "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him." I learned there that God's judgments are good. I learned there that he knows what he is doing and like it or not, he is in control. I found out then that I could live with that. God is God. His judgments are just. So here we are, roll the clock ahead, six years. During that six years, I observed the marriages of more of my children and have come to know and love my grandchildren and generally grew in love for God. Then comes the prospect of cancer not yet diagnosed. I had time to figure out that what the doctor was looking at may or may not be cancer. The possibility of cancer then also included the prognosis of live or die. That's the nuts and bolts in its crudest form. That's what it is. In this case, it was cancer. In this case, the prognosis is also terminal. Statistically, I have six to 12 months to live from June 1st. But this is not a story of how I beat cancer and this is not a story of how cancer beat me. I don't know the conclusion of this story yet either way. But this I do know. First, that God created heaven and earth and all that is in it. He made it out of nothing and that also includes me. Second, I am God's child through Jesus Christ, my Redeemer King, and that's all. This knowledge gives me security knowing that whatever my circumstances, God is in control and that He knows the conclusion of the matter even though I don't. And since He knows the conclusion of that story, I don't have to worry about what lies ahead even if I don't like it. Yes, I do pray for healing, but I don't pray this for my sake. I pray for healing for God's glory and for God's glory only. And anyone who has ever prayed over me and asked me if they could pray for healing, I tell them this. They can only pray that this happens for God's glory. You see, God's perspective is a little bit different than mine. Just a little bit. My view is a really short one. I know what happened yesterday. I know what happens today right to right now. Beyond that, I couldn't surmise, but that's as far as it goes. God's view of time is eternal. God sees things in terms of eternity. And the neat thing about that is that God doesn't have a calendar. He doesn't know that it's Tuesday today or it's Wednesday in spite of the fact that He made time. He doesn't operate in those terms. So whether I live to be 58 or 85, it's still the same day in God's eyes. The calendar doesn't change from Tuesday to Wednesday in that time. This has made me realize then that I do not need to fear death because when I stand in front of Jesus, I'm not 58 and I'm not 85. God is with me. This disease, ugly as it is, is something I need not fear. This knowledge gives me security, security because I know that whatever happens, God knows of it before it happens and God is in control of it. So even if it happens on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, God is in control and He still loves me, but not still loves me, He loves me, period. So what does this have to do with today's sermon and the fact that today is Thanksgiving Day? This, that I have no one in heaven but God. There is no one on earth I desire but God. My flesh and my heart have failed, not may fail, they have failed. But God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever. He gives me reason to believe in Him. He gives me reason to believe Him. At the same time, I have taken steps to treat the disease. I don't know that my work here is done, but I do know that the Lord is my shepherd. I do know that He is in control. I do know that He knows what is happening to me. I also know that He has given me renewed strength and I know that without fail, God has provided my daily bread. He has shown me that He loves me. He has shown me that I am not my own. He has shown me new mercies each day. Every morning when I see the sunrise, I have another day to live for Him. At this point, I don't know if I'm going to live a long life or to die relatively young. This I do know without a doubt that God, live or die, is my healer and for that I give thanks. I want to read a section from the Heidelberg Catechism. This first question and answer in the Heidelberg is something that has grown to mean a lot to me in my life. And the question that is asked there is what is your only comfort in life and in death? And the answer there is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Heavenly Father. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to Him, Christ by His Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. Thank you Al, pray with me. It's easy, Lord, to say those words when life is good and our future secure. Quite another to say those words when life is uncertain and questions beset our hearts. And I just really want to thank you for the grace that you've demonstrated in Al's life, for preparing him six years ago for this moment. And Lord, it occurs to me that sometimes when we ponder the future and when we worry about things that we might have to give up in order to grow stronger in you, how readily we feel inadequate and how scared sometimes we feel that we can't measure out. But Lord, you give grace for the moment and you prepare us in such a way that we may find life and joy in you eternally. And so we thank you for Al's story, for his quiet confidence in the fact that he belongs to you and not in life or in death. And can separate him from that love. And we pray, Lord, that even as we seek to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus ourselves, and even as on a day like this we give you thanks for so many things, Lord, help us more than anything else to give you thanks this day for our union with Christ. And may we grow in our relationship with Him. May we know that no matter what it is that we possess in the here and now, it is temporal. We're going to lose it whether we live to be 58 or whether we live to be 85 as Al says. But there's one thing nobody can take away from us. And that is the eternal blessing that we have in Christ. Because if we have Jesus, we have it all. So Lord, bless us, make us a blessing, we pray it. In Jesus' name, amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:29:34.840; remove through 00:34:25.000] Amen. I could wish you joy and peace, to love and to love and to love and to love and to love, to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love and to love. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you sunshine or a cheerful little song. I wish you all the happiness that this life could bring. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you sunshine or a cheerful little song. I wish you all the happiness that this life could bring. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you sunshine or a cheerful little song. I wish you all the happiness that this life could bring. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. I could wish you joy and peace, to last a whole life long. [CUT] you [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:34:25.000; resume after this marked segment]