The God Who Saves

SERMON: 2017-08-13--ac17176--the-god-who-saves-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:41:33.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates represent continuous prayer and benediction material (a liturgical conclusion to the sermon). Since there is no clear transition into non-sermon material (music, announcement, etc.), the final candidate must be selected. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, over the past couple of months in my own personal devotions, I have been re-reading the book of Psalms. Not so much to look at specific Psalms or specific passages in specific Psalms, as it is to sort of get an overall feel for the message of the book of Psalms. And as I've been doing that, there are several themes that have sort of come to the foreground in my reflection, and those are the themes that I want to try to share with you this morning in the time that we have as we prepare for the celebration of communion. The first theme that has really jumped out at me in my personal reading of the book of Psalms is that life can sometimes be very difficult, even, or I should say, especially for God's children. Life can sometimes be very difficult. Verse three of the Psalm that we've just read is a good case in point. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me, I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. There are, as you know, I trust 150 Psalms in the book of Psalms. Of those 150 Psalms, 45 can be said to be Psalms of lament or contain portions of lament. And a lament is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. It is a crying out about the painful condition of the human experience. Psalm 80, the verses four to seven, is a good case in point. Let me read it with you. O Lord Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears, you have made them drink tears by the bowl full. You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors and our enemies mock us. Restore us, O God Almighty, make your face shine upon us that we may be saved. That's a Psalm of lament. And there are many laments in the book of Psalms. Even God's people experience lament when they encounter the difficulties of life. And as I've reflected upon that further, I have found there are at least three reasons given to us in the book of Psalms as well as the broader scriptures as to why life, even for God's people, can sometimes be difficult. None of this will be news to you, but it's good to refresh our thinking on this score. The first reason that we find in scripture is that simply we live in a fallen world. Genesis chapter three, God speaks to Adam. These words, "Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all of the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return." My father, who was a very wise person, used to say, "Nobody ever fully escapes the power of the curse, young or old, rich or poor. We all experience that downward pull. And sometimes things happen not because we've done anything wrong, but because we live in a world where there is so much wrong." Let me show you a picture and tell me what you see there. When you look at that, what do you see? What you're seeing there are all that remains of two houses that have burned down. Those are the chimneys of the houses. Now here's what's interesting. The house on the left burned down a year ago in the wildfires in Fort McMurray. You remember how many homes burned down and how many people had to be evacuated. The house on the right burned down just a couple of months ago in B.C. with the wildfires in the region of Williams Lake. But here's what's tragic. Both of these houses were owned by the same person. His name is Jason Sherman, and he is presently living in a trailer in Fort McMurray. His family is living in Edmonton, and he is making payments waiting for insurance payout on both houses that burned down a year apart in two entirely different locations. And sometimes you say, "How many bad things can happen to one person?" That's a fallen world that we live in. And Christians are not automatically immune to that. The psalmist cries out in Psalm 44 verse 7, "All this happened to us though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant." So we live in a fallen world, and the rain falls on the just and on the unjust, and the sun shines on the just and on the unjust, and things happen, and it doesn't always make a lot of sense. Sometimes though, and this is the second reason that there is a lot of trouble in the world, we often bring it on ourselves. I've often been struck by these words from Psalm 107 verse 17 where the Bible says, "Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities." The word "iniquities" in another translation is also translated as sinful ways. Sometimes the trouble we encounter isn't just because we live in a fallen world, it's because we do very foolish things. God has structured life to operate according to certain laws and rules. He has put structure into creation, and when we violate those structures, whether knowingly or unknowingly, with intent or accidentally, then we suffer the consequences of that, and sooner or later, the fruit of our sin overtakes us. Many things that happen in the world happen because we live in violation of God's ordinances. When we violate marriage, when we violate his laws of finance, when we violate his laws of relationship, then there are consequences that sooner or later overtake us, even in the age of inflation, somebody said a long time ago, the wages of sin is still death. I thought of that a while back with reference to all the talk that there is about climate change. We live in a world of extreme weather right now. I think most everybody would agree to that. We've had tons of rain locally. Out east, interestingly enough, it's been really dry. Out west, it's been so dry that the canola crop in southern Saskatchewan has virtually withered and died. That hasn't been in the news very much. Europe experienced temperatures into the 40s, which is unprecedented for that part of the world. Of course, everybody talks about climate change, and everybody's trying to figure out what causes these difficult weather patterns. Of course, the big argument is, are we producing too much carbon dioxide, and are we ruining the planet? That may or may not be true. I'm not a person to be sitting in judgment to that, because I don't know enough about it. But I know that scripture tells us repeatedly that what happens to the earth is always a reflection of the sinful behavior of the human race. I have often found it interesting, and someday, Lord willing, I want to preach on that, is that Isaiah chapter 24 has a very interesting insight into climate change. I don't know if you know these words, but let me share them with you. Here is what Isaiah said many years ago. The earth dries up and withers. The world languishes and withers. The exalted of the earth languish. You get a picture there of weather changing. But then notice how it goes on, verse 5. The earth is defiled by its people. They have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse consumes the earth. Its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth's inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left. Remember God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you." And while it's good to have all these conversations about carbon emissions and carbon tax and God knows whatever else, I don't believe anything is ever really going to change until, as a human race, we are prepared to bend the knee, cry out to God, and say, "God, forgive us for violating." Notice how Isaiah puts it, if we can put that verse up back one more time. He says, "They have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. The earth groans under the travail of our sin." And that's one reason. Bad things sometimes happen, even to supposedly good people. Well, there's one more reason that I just want to lay before you, and this is very common in the book of Psalms. We are surrounded by enemies, 92 times in the book of Psalms. There is reference to the enemies of God's people. Here are just a couple of verses, "Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head. Many are my enemies without cause, those who seek to destroy me." 25, 19, "See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me." Psalm 143, verse 3, "The enemy pursues me. He crushes me to the ground. He makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead." And we know from scripture that the enemy that we experience in the Christian life is twofold. First of all, there is Satan, the great enemy of our souls. He hates God. He hates the children of God. And if he can frustrate the purposes of God in your life and in my life, he will not hesitate to do that for one moment. The more determined we are to serve God, the more we know his real presence. And of course, he is assisted in that by the nations of the world who are not in tune with God and with God's purposes. And together, they fight against the Lord, as Psalm 2 puts it, against the Lord and His anointed. And as I said, the more determined we all are to be faithful to the Lord and to stand up for what is right, the more we will discover the pushback from the devil and all those who are in league with him. Paul describes it this way in 2 Timothy 3.12, he says, "All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." I thought about this past week, what are the stories in the news? And I don't know if you've heard this story or not, is the story about the Google guy. Anybody hear about the Google guy? This past week, he's got a name. His real name is James Damore, and he got into big trouble with the Google people because of a 10-page memo that he sent around taking issue with the diversity training program that Google had undertaken. See, Google is a huge company. They have 70,000 people worldwide, imagine doing that payroll every week or every month. And most of the people that work for them are either white or Asian, and they are predominantly male, because they're into a lot of computer programming, as you can imagine. Well, the company wants to diversify its workforce, they want to include more people of color, and they want to include more women, and so that means changing the culture. Well, I'll tell you, changing the culture of a church is hard enough. You could imagine trying to change the culture of a corporation with 70,000 people. So here's what they've done. They're putting everybody through what they call diversity training. And the purpose of this diversity training is to get rid of stereotypes, and the training is focused on trying to minimize any differences between male and female, so as to make all positions equally accessible to both genders. That's the culture that we live in today, right? Well, the Google guy, Daymore, took issue with that. And he put together a very thoughtful memo of 10 pages that he circulated that somehow or another got to the press, and it blew up all over the place, as you could imagine, the net result being that he lost his job, he got fired because he took issue with Google's vision of diversity. Now I'm not in a position to judge whether he's a Christian or not. I'm not in a position to judge whether he's right or whether he's wrong. All I can tell you is that we live in a day and age. Remember the book 1984? Some of you will remember from your school days where we live in this magical world where everybody has to think the same way. So we're rapidly approaching a society that if you don't buy into society's views of gender and male-female relationships and what the unique qualities of each are, you get pushed off to the side because the world is in rebellion against God's created structures. And we deceive ourselves if we think that we're immune to that because that's the kind of world that we live in. So we live in a world of trouble. Christians experience trouble. We experience trouble sometimes because we have nothing to do with it, sometimes because we do stupid things ourselves, and sometimes because the enemy of our souls does not want us living a life of godliness. That's one theme that is major in the book of Psalms. It repeats itself again and again and again. One of the reasons the Psalms remain so relevant to people of all generations is because they give voice to just about every emotion of sorrow and anguish and pain that you can possibly experience. But thank God, that's not the only theme in the book of Psalms, lest you go home depressed this morning. The reason the Bible emphasizes this theme is because it is life and it is reality, but it sets the stage for an even more important theme in scripture. And that theme is that God delights in saving his people. God delights in saving his people. Listen to how Psalm 116 continues in verses five and six. "The Lord is gracious and righteous. Our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simple-hearted when I was in great need, he saved me." That word "saved" occurs repeatedly in the book of Psalms. As a matter of fact, it occurs 56 times. The word "salvation" occurs 44 times. If you add similar words like "rescue" or "rescued" or "deliver" or "delivered" or "deliverance," it's close to 180 times in the book of Psalms that you find a reference to the fact that God delights in saving his people. It's always in the context of God saving his people. Listen to how the psalmist puts it, Psalm 68 verse 20, "Our God is a God who saves. From the sovereign Lord comes escape from death. But you, O God, are my King from of old. You bring salvation. You bring salvation upon the earth." My favorite definition of salvation, and you've heard me talk about this before, is the process whereby God the Father, through faith in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, delivers us from sin and all of its consequences and restores us to our rightful position as the children of God. It involves being delivered from Satan's power, restored to relationship with God, released from the power of the curse, filled with the Holy Spirit, so that in fact we can live before the face of God in a way that gives him life and joy. Notice how Psalm 116 puts it in verses 8 and 9, "For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living." You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. There isn't a one of us who doesn't question or wonder sometimes, "What is it that I can reasonably expect from God in life? To what degree can I expect physical healing? To what degree can I expect emotional healing? To what degree can I expect spiritual healing?" Because we live in what theologians call the already in the not yet. We live in the dawn of the kingdom, but it isn't yet the completion of the kingdom. What can I trust God for? And I've discovered over the years that my theology about that has become really simple. What God will give us in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit as we cry out to Him is whatever it is that we need to accomplish His purposes for our lives in our generation. And if God wants me to do this, that, or the other thing, whatever the mountains are that come against it, we can in faith expect God to move them because God is a God of salvation. He is a God who wants to deliver His people. He is a God who saves. Read through the Psalms, and that comes out again and again, no matter how desperate the psalmist is, how badly the chords of death have encompassed him. As he cries out to God, "God is the God who saves." Very important for us to understand that, and I think it's very important for us to understand that biblically, God's desire and God's ability to deliver us, to enable us to walk before Him in the land of the living. I like that phrase, the land of the living. For us to accomplish the purposes of God in our day and in our age, it's very important for us to understand two things about God. First of all, that it's rooted in His character. It is God's character, listen to me, it is God's character to hear the cries of His people and to deliver His people from the anguish which they are experiencing. Listen again to the psalmist, verses five and six. We read this verse earlier, Psalm 116, five and six, "The Lord is gracious and righteous. Our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simple-hearted. When I was in great need, He saved me." Here's a good test to try to determine where your faith lies. When you think of God, and when you think of the practical situations of life that you find yourself in, whether that's a marriage that isn't working or a job that isn't going anywhere or relationships that have blown up on you or health issues, Lord knows whatever else, how do you picture God, angry, standoffish, waiting to clobber you over the head, waiting to make you squirm until you kneel brokenly into the ground, or do you see Him as a God who is gracious, a God who is compassionate, a God who wants to give of Himself to His children so that they can live in the land of the living and who, like Jesus says, is like a hen who wants to gather her chicks under her wings and is often limited by our stubborn, rebellious, go-our-own-way-we-can-do-it-hersels attitudes. You see what a difference that makes? How you view God is very much a determination of what you will have faith for and what you can lay hold of Him for. And the psalmist says not only is life difficult, but God, my God, delights, He delights in saving me. He wants to rescue me. He wants to deliver my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, my life from falling apart. He wants me to live before His face in glory and in joy. So it's rooted in the character of God. But more than that, it is rooted in His covenant. It is rooted in the agreement that He made with Abraham and his offspring that He would deliver them from bondage, bring them into the fullness of His inheritance and fill them with the joy of His blessings. Listen to how the psalmist put it. He remembers His covenant forever. The word He commanded for a thousand generations. The covenant He made with Abraham. The oath He swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, to you I will give the land of Caden as the portion you inherit. Now we don't have time this morning to talk about that in great detail other than to point out that that covenant that God made with Abraham and with his offspring, we know from the New Testament has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. And the promises that God made to Abraham that He would become a mighty nation and that He would have a mighty land and that He would inherit the earth has been fulfilled in Jesus who by His suffering and death on the cross is now seated at the right hand of God in glory. And the message of the New Testament is that when by faith we are joined to Him, what God has given to Him, He has given to us. And so when we struggle with the practical realities of life and we wonder where God is, God says not only is it my character to save you, it is my covenant that I have made at the expense of my son to make it possible for you to experience my saving grace and my saving power. And so this morning as we in a few moments turn to the celebration of communion, here are three things that I would ask each of us to do as we celebrate communion. Number one, think back. Think back to a time and a place in your life where you were, in the words of the psalmist, encompassed by, how does he put it, "The cords of death encompassed me." Think back to a time in your life when life was hard. Maybe you were not happy with who you were. Life was not unfolding the way that it should. Maybe your marriage went through a really tough patch or your business or working world fell apart and illness perhaps plagued you or depression gripped your soul. Think back to when you felt the horrors of that place and it might have been caused by your own sin, might have been caused by the enemy, might have just happened because you live in a crazy fallen world and the rain falls on the just and on the unjust and you cried out to God and God heard you. You don't quite know how he stepped into the situation but you can point back to a time and a place where life was hard and where you were without hope and somehow or another God saved you, forgave your sin maybe, revealed his character to you, showed you his face and his joy. If you can't think of a spot like that, then ask him to open your eyes to those times in life when he was actually there even when you didn't know it. Most of us know the poem Footprints how the single set of footprints was the time when he carried you. Sometimes when we are least aware of God's presence and glory in our lives, he most was there to carry us and ask him to show you that kind of place and then as we celebrate communion this morning, not only thank him for his saving grace because that's another whole theme in the book of Psalms that I had wished we could talk about this morning but we don't have time for, the overflowing gratitude of being rescued out of the chaos of life and knowing that God my Father loves me and he cares for me and he speaks into my situation and he does it because of Jesus. Give him thanks, for notice how Psalm 116 ends, "I will sacrifice a thank offering to you. Call on the name of the Lord, I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people in the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst, O Jerusalem, praise the Lord." That's hallelujah in the Hebrew. So thank him, praise him, and then ask yourself this question because that's another whole theme again in the book of Psalms that we don't have time to talk about this morning. Who is there in my life or in my sphere of influence that I can share this story of God's deliverance with? Because one of the reasons I believe that God allows us to go through tough times and one of the reasons that he sometimes shows his face so gloriously in the context of doing that is because he wants to reveal his character through us to give hope to people all around us. Psalm 9 verse 11, "Sing praises to the Lord who dwells in Zion, tell among the peoples his deeds." Psalm 96, "Sing to the Lord, praise his name, proclaim his salvation day after day, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples." I believe we are entering into a season in the church community where God is opening the heavens and he is hearing our prayers and he wants to pour out his grace and one of the ways to set the stage for that, one of the ways to increase our level of faith is to share with each other stories of his saving grace. I want to end with just one practical little story that I experienced just very recently not in my own life but in the life of a family member. I said a little earlier that one of the reasons we traveled out east this summer was to attend the wedding of a nephew of mine, a lot of you know my sister and her husband, Brahman Willie Hamming, they've been here many times and the wedding was for their oldest son Daniel. The story here is this, some of you will recall about a year ago that Rachel, who is Daniel's younger sister and who interned here with us and with Valerie, got married to her husband Mofid about a year ago or so in this church and Daniel and his family of course were all out to attend that wedding and Daniel was heartbroken up because his sister was getting married but because he had just come through a little romance that had broken apart, he was getting along in years around the age of 40 and he was just really filled with sorrow. Like will I ever get married? It was one of those rare moments, you ever have that where God gives you the gift of faith? And I said Daniel we're going to pray that God will take care of your need and that He will give you a spouse, not a word of a lie. Six months later he meets the girl of his dreams and a fascinating story of how that happened and now this past July he and his bride got married and they are just back now from a two week honeymoon in Sweden of all places and they're setting up house. And I said to myself and I said to the Lord you are a God who saves His people, you never know what God might do. And I think God wants to increase our levels of faith so that we can step out into each other's lives and say you know God is gracious, it's His character, He's made covenant in the person of Jesus, let's lay hold of those promises until all hell moves and the purposes of God are accomplished for His people, amen? All right let's stand as we pray together and get ready for communion. Father we are so reminded in your word that you have delivered our souls from death, our eyes from tears, our feet from stumbling, that we may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. And Lord we acknowledge that sometimes life's hard and sometimes it's because we've done stupid things and made bad mistakes, sometimes it's because other people have done bad things and that has cost us dearly and sometimes it's just because we live in a fallen world where bad stuff happens. Thank you that you have not left us. Thank you that you are a God who is compassionate and gracious, a God who delights to save, and that Lord you have sent your Son to make it possible for us to be redeemed, to be restored to you, and to walk before you in the land of the living. Show us those places Lord where you have blessed us, increase the level of gratitude within our hearts, help us to praise you more and more, and then Lord help us to share with each other those stories of faith that will stir our hearts and in those places where our prayers seem to go unheard, where we wonder where you are, help us to know from scripture that no one who trusts in you ultimately will be left ashamed because even if we never see the promised blessings in this life, we will be more than compensated for in the life that is to come because you are our God and you are our Father. And so now Lord as we turn to communion, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit just flood our souls until every part of us is vibrantly alive with your goodness and your grace because that is your heart and that is your desire. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:29.000; remove through 00:41:33.000] We pray it in Jesus name, Amen. 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