Sermon Podcast
Injustice (Video)
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here with us. As Andy said, great to be in a cool, comfortable place. I was at an outdoor wedding last evening. It was very hot, and the reception was in a barn, and I was not in front of a fan, it was even hotter. So very glad to be inside, and with all of you here this morning. As you heard in our announcements, there are opportunities for you to serve. If you're not plugged anywhere, there's a great way for you to get connected. If somewhere during the morning, your mind drifts a little bit, okay? There's a card right in the seat back in front of you. Everybody see that card in the seat back in front of you? You can scan that with your phone, and you can look at all the opportunities to serve if your mind drifts while I'm speaking this morning. So I just want to encourage you to consider that. It was exciting this morning, I was staying out in the lobby, and one of our senior adults came by, and I said, where are you serving this morning? And she said, I get to hold babies this morning. She was very excited about being able to do that today. I also want to thank those of you that were praying for our middle school students. They are away at camp last week, so thank you for those of you that were praying for them this past week. So when have you felt like you have nothing left? When have you felt like you have nothing left? You're completely spent. Everything is out of the tank. One of my ventures into losing a few pounds years ago, I decided to try the South Beach Diet. I had heard about it from a friend who told me it was helpful, thought I might give it a try. I started on it in the first few weeks, seemed to be helpful. I was losing a few pounds, but during that time, I was also starting a training program for a race that I was going to do later in the fall, and so I was ramping up my miles. I had never experienced this thing that you hear runners talk about called bonking or hitting the wall and not being able to run. What I did not fully understand at that time was that the South Beach Diet was a carb reduction in intake, which over time has a very negative effect on your energy level. I distinctly remember the experience of running through Reemstown and literally feeling like I could not run anymore. I actually sat down on the curb for a couple of minutes because I just couldn't run. I finally had the energy to walk to someone's house in our church, it was just down the street. I said, "Could you spare me some water?" They're like, "Of course. What do you need?" They gave me a bottle of water. I thought maybe if I would drink a little water and sit down, then I'd be able to get up and move and run again. I couldn't. I was completely depleted. I actually had to walk home, and it was before the time of cell phones. I had to walk home about two miles just to get back to my house. I didn't have the physical capacity because of the carb cutting to run anymore. I had nothing left. When have you found yourself in that situation? You might call it when you hit the wall. You don't have anything left. Maybe it's a demanding season with not as much sleep and you find yourself just dragging and you're feeling spent. Maybe you're in a season where you're taking care of your parents and they have health needs and you're constantly caring for them and doing something that's needed and you're giving, giving, giving, and nothing left. Maybe you're in a job situation where the boss says, "We just have this big push and everybody needs some extra hours and extra time." We get to there and he's like, "Now we have the next," and you're like, "I don't have anything left. I gave everything to get to that spot and now you're telling me to go a little bit more." You're having conversations with your students and they just seem to be going nowhere night after night after night and you're like, "I don't know what to do. I'm kind of at the end of my rope. Where do you turn? Where do you turn?" Well, today we're going to look at a psalm that was written in which the psalmist was at the end of his rope with nothing left. If you haven't been here with us this summer, we're in a series of psalms entitled The Psalms of Ascent, The Psalms of Ascent, the songbook of the Bible. Some of these psalms were written by David, some of them were written by different authors and you can think of them as almost like the playlist for the Jewish people as they would travel three times a year to the land of Israel. These psalms would be repeated. They would be read. They would be recited. They were likely chanted as they would make this trip. And if you haven't been here with us, let's review where we've been over these last couple of weeks. These are on your handout that you receive when you came in. We started with Psalm 120, the psalms of Ascent are Psalm 120 to 134. The Psalm 120 was a cry out to God for help and this is going to have a familiar feel to it as we walk into this psalm. Psalm 121, "God is watching over me." God is watching over me. Who's watching over you? God is watching over you every day, all of your life, morning, noon and night, if you are a follower of his for the rest of your life. And then lastly, we talked about Psalm 122 anticipating coming into God's house, looking forward to coming into God's house. I love on Sunday mornings when I get a chance to stand in the lobby and watch, it's primarily the little boys. They come running in here to go into kids ministry and sometimes I get a fist bump from them, sometimes I don't. The moms are like, where did they go? I'm like, they went that way, you know. They are so excited to get in there and to be able to be in their classes and the experience of being in God's house. But as we've done each time, let's read together Psalm 123, if you have a Bible, if you want to turn to that, Psalm 123, if you don't have a Bible, you can turn to page 500 in the Bible's there in your seats or you can follow along in the screen. So I'll give you a minute to turn there if you're looking for it. Psalm 123 and then we'll read this together. All right, let's read. I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit and thrown in heaven. As the eyes of the slave look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of the female slave look to the hand of her mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord, our God, till He shows us His mercy. Have mercy on us, Lord. Have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt. We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant of contempt from the proud. A pretty short Psalm, not very long, but there's some valuable lessons and some valuable truths that I think can support us and walk with us in our journey to follow Jesus. This is one of those Psalms where we don't know when it was written. Because we don't know the author, we can only speculate. And so there's a couple times in the life of the people of Israel when they found themselves in situations like this is describing. One of those times was when David was running from King Saul. You can read about this in the book of 1 Samuel, the latter chapters. He's me in chase. He was being hunted down. He didn't have anywhere else to turn. There were several different times. He was trapped, and he didn't know how to escape. And this could have been the context that that was being written. Another time in the history of Israel when this could have been being written is a time in which the King of Israel was a guy by the name of Hezekiah. It's written about in the book of Isaiah. And they were surrounded by the nation of Assyria. Assyria had come to conquer them. They had surrounded them. And the ruler of that army was a guy named Sennacherib. And these are some words that Sennacherib said to the people of Israel. I don't know how they got magnified because they didn't have amplification, but somehow they got shouted over the people of Israel. Look what he said. He said, "And what are you basing your confidence? Don't let Hezekiah, the king, this is Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, don't let him mislead you when he says God's going to deliver you. Has the God of any nation ever delivered you from the hand of the king of Assyria? Has anybody been spared by this powerful nation? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?" He's basically mocking them and saying, "God hasn't saved any nation. We are powerful. No one has been able to stop us. And who were you to think your God is going to show up and stop me?" Right after that was said that night, an angel of the Lord came and wiped out 185,000 of the Assyrian troops and they were defeated. Another time when this might have happened in the history of Israel was in the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was coming back after the people of Israel had been taken into captivity, came back to the land of Israel and they were rebuilding the temple. They were rebuilding. Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls. As he's rebuilding the walls, this is what is being said to him by some opponents of their efforts. In the presence of his associates in the army of Samaria, he said, "What are those feeble Jews doing?" Well, they finished in a day. Can they bring the stones back from those heaps of rubble burned as they are? To buy the Ammonite who was at his side said, "What are they building? Eat it a fox climbing when it would break down the wall of stones." You hear what they're saying? They're like, "What are you guys doing?" This is ridiculous. If an animal walks on this, it's going to fall. You are not going to protect yourself. Nehemiah says, "Hear us, our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads." And if you read in the story of Nehemiah, eventually they were able to rebuild the walls and re-establish Jerusalem as a nation. So we don't know which one of those scenarios, and it could have been a different one was happening. But as you get the picture, these are times in the life of the people of Israel or the leader of the nation of Israel. When they felt surrounded, they were under oppression, they were under attack. They weren't sure how they were going to make it through it. They were at the end of their rope. And the psalmist here turns his eyes upward and he's looking for some help. And in verse one there, he repeats a statement earlier that we heard when he said, "I will lift my eyes to the mountains." But he doesn't start with this problem. He doesn't start with this dilemma. He starts with the direction that he goes for help, the direction that he goes to for help. And my question for you to think about this morning as we get started is, "Where do you turn most consistently for help? Where's the first place? What's your first call? Where do you go when you need some help?" For David, he looked up. He said, "I lift my eyes to you. I lift my eyes to you." My wife and I are both in this role of supporting our parents in their latter years. And when my dad or mother-in-law need an answer to a question, they have, I'm not sure why, but they've assumed my wife and I know all answers to everything. They just do. Somehow, we know everything about error codes in their car, spam email that arrives, creatures digging holes in their yard, mail trying to sell them life insurance or a door-to-door salesman offering to replace their roof. And we just answer all these questions all the time. And when you have a parent that's older and when they call you, you feel the need to pick up the phone because you don't know it. Are they okay? If something happened, you never know. And they're like, "Hey, I got this piece of mail. Can you take a look at it and tell me, is this really something?" And you're like, "Could that have waited until later?" No, it had to happen right now, in that moment. I apologize for those of you that may be in that same situation right now. But they look to us as their help. We're the first ones. We're the ones that they call. And maybe that's because I'm the oldest son and my dad and I have a pretty good relationship and my daughter lives close by and her mom lives in Bowman'sville, but when they need help, they call us right then, right at that moment, right away, we're the ones that they go to. On the opposite end of the extreme is my grandson, who, if he needs help, he just turns to anybody bigger than him, which is generally everybody in the room, except his little sister. And I ask them for help. But the question is for you this morning is where do you turn, where do you turn when you need help? What is your go to? What is your go to? I love the fact and we're going to see this all throughout these Psalms of Ascent, where it kind of pictures you climbing, going up. He challenges us that our eyes, when we need help, are turned upward. He wants us not to lose sight. And think about this, three times a year, the Jewish people would be reminded over and over and over again, multiple times. When you need help, where do you go? You look up, you look up, you look up. We're all wired differently. Some of us, when we need help, we internalize it. We solve it ourselves. Some of us, when we need help, we phone a friend right away and we get someone else. But how often, when we need help, do we look up? Where do you turn most consistently for help? But then second of all, not only where do you turn, but why do you turn there? Why do you turn there for help? Why do you turn there for help? Look at the second phrase of that verse, "To you who sit and thrown in the heaven." It kind of describes for us the one that the psalmist is looking to for help. He is in heaven. He's above all. He's ruling over everything. He's completely and fully in charge. He's the one that gave the people the brains to create the technology, to create AI that's supposed to change the world, right? They created Google. He gave them all of that capacity, all of that skill, all of that know-how. And he repeats this phrase in the end of verse two when he says, "So our eyes look to the Lord our God." He wants us to know where to turn, then we turn there. There are no options. And when we turn to God, what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? Look in verse two. It references three times our eyes, the eyes of the slaves, the eyes of a female slave, our eyes. Kind of pictures visually. What are we doing? We are turn and focusing our attention on someone else. The slave that it's described here is a slave and a master, a female slave and a mistress. Slave is the lowest position in the household. I don't know who's got the low, that the bottom of the totem pole in your household. It's usually the youngest kid, sometimes the dog. Who's at the bottom of the dog doesn't ever get the bottom of the totem pole. Somebody's taking care of the dog. But who's at the bottom of the totem pole? That's what the slave was. The slave had no power, the slave had no capacity to protect themselves. They were at the mercy of their masters. We don't really have a picture or a metaphor to understand this in our current culture. We just don't. We have to look at the images and the eyes picture their entire body, their entire being, looking and waiting for help. Then it goes on to say they look to the hand of the master, the hand of the mistress. They are waiting for them to move towards them. The master or the mistress, they have the power and authority completely over that slave. That slave is waiting with eager anticipation for a response. And as I thought of what pictures that, there's only one picture that came to my mind and it was this. It was this. Beagles live and die for food. They live and die for food. And if you have a piece of food in your hand, if you have a treat in your hand, they will laser focus, lock, stop, look, not move, not breathe. Their whole body is shaking. They're quivering. They're whining. Yeah. Not like that, but something like that. I mean, they're just at your mercy. You could do anything because you have that right in front of the snout of that dog. And that's the picture that I thought of when I saw this. Their eyes are not wandering and I know what's happening. What's going on? Maybe I'll go to see if somebody else has a treat. No, they are locked and loaded. Their eyes are there and you have something in your hand and they're not going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. And the psalmist says that when I am at the end of my rope and that when I look to the God of the heavens, he invites us. He challenges us to have our eyes locked and loaded, waiting for the hand of the ruler of the universe to move towards us. Laser focused, nowhere else to turn, looking to God and waiting for him. What is the psalmist waiting for? What is he waiting for? You get a glimpse of this. It's the end of verse two when it says, "Till he shows us his mercy." His mercy. He repeats this in verse three and four when he says, "Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we have no endore, no end of contempt. We've endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant of the contempt from the proud." Think about those three illustrations I gave you earlier. People, contempt, that's what was being unloaded on the Israelite people. But he's asking for mercy. What is mercy? What is mercy? Mercy is those enduring hardship looking for someone to resolve their plight or conflict. There's something else that happened in these last couple of verses. The personal pronouns shifted from where do I look, I look to my God to have mercy on us, have mercy on us, for we have endured no end, we have endured no end. Something happened to a group of individuals, not just one person, not just a family unit, but something happened to a group of individuals in which they were the recipients of ongoing verbal mistreatment, ongoing ridicule, ongoing contempt, contempt usually is something that comes from someone who is more powerful to someone who is not. From the rich to the poor, from the powerful to the weak, it's viewing someone as worthless of no value. He says here, "We have endured no end of this ridicule." He said, "It won't stop. It just keeps coming and coming and coming." And this phrase, endure no end, it literally describes their throats and their mouths are so filled with scorn and ridicule, ridicule, there's so much that's been poured on them, they can barely catch their breath. They're like, we're at the end, we can't take it any longer. Some type of verbal abuse, verbal threats on this community of people, and they're waiting for mercy. They're waiting for mercy. My question to you is, what are you waiting for God for today? If you are feeling at the end of your rope in some way, what are you waiting for God for? Are you waiting for God to provide some direction where it's really muddy? And when there's no direction and it feels weighty, I found myself in a place like that this week. I was not sure of direction and it felt incredibly, incredibly weighty. I was like, God, please make this clear, please make this clear. When you're in a relationship and there's conflict and there's no resolution, you're like, God, please, please make a way. Please make a way. What are you hoping God will do? And then what do you do when God doesn't show up? And God doesn't respond. I found this quote from a guy named Martin Luther. He said this, "For in that he, referring to God, defers his help, he does it not because he will not hear us, but to exercise and serve faith, to teach us that the ways whereby he can deliver us are manifold and miraculous. God is not limited, that we are never able to conceive them. Therefore, let us think that the thing which we ask is not denied but deferred and assure ourselves that we are not neglected because of the delay. We're not neglected because at times, God delays." But what is our initial response? Let's go back to this scenario when there's bad press about us. What's our initial response when we're hearing rumors or statements or things that are being said by other coworkers through the grapevine, by family members, by someone in another group or another ministry setting? What's our initial response when this happens? Well, we've got to make sure they know the truth, right? We've got to set them straight. We have to defend ourselves. We have to convince everyone we know of our truth, of our truth. Because we assume that if I tell them the truth, they will then believe me and everything will be, "Okay, I hate to tell you, it doesn't work, it doesn't work." There's something about when we hear truth. We hear information. There's a thing called first truth. The first thing that we hear has this amount of weightiness to it. And even when we hear actual truth, we have to hear it over and over and over again for it to replace that first truth that we have heard. What does God want us to do? What does the psalmist do? He waits for God to change their mind. Is that what he's waiting for? I don't think so. He's waiting for God to strike them dead. Well, that would be nice. He's waiting for God to move them to another country, to sway public opinion, to humble them, none of the above, none of the above. He simply says, "God, just mercy. Just mercy. I'm going to trust that you will do what's best. I'm going to trust that your way is best. I don't know what that is. I know what I would like in the moment. I've got clarity around that. But God, when I'm at the end of my rope, all I'm asking for is a little bit of mercy. And he turns his request to help in God's direction, and he waits like the slave waiting for a word from his master, like a beagle waiting for a treat from his owner. He's just waiting for God. He's waiting for God." Another question for you this morning, to ask yourself, is what is keeping you from going to God for help? What is keeping you from going to God for help? I want you to sit with that for a moment. Because I think if we're all honest, we all have had times in our life, and we all assume that there will be times in our life when we will need help. We will be at the end of our rope. We will need help that's beyond our capacity, beyond even the people in our lives that love us and care for us, they can't even offer, and we don't know where to turn. And we find ourselves saying, "God, help." What's keeping you from that? Your pride, your stubbornness, your belief in yourself, your lack of faith in God to right the wrongs. And especially in this story, in this psalm today, when the psalmist is being attacked, these people are being attacked. Our visceral response is to protect and defend, but God says, "No, trust me, I will take revenge." God says, "Trust me, the guilty will not go unpunished." God says, "Trust me, leave this fully in my hands, fully in my hands." As I thought about this, I thought, "What is God telling us not to do?" What is God saying, "Don't do." What is He saying, "Don't do." I think God's saying, "Don't retaliate." I think God's saying, "Don't retaliate." And I will be the first to tell you that when you are being treated with injustice, when you are being verbally attacked, when things are being said about your character, your reputation, your credibility, this is incredibly difficult, especially today because of the demon of social media. We can attack in all kinds of ways. We can attack overtly, we can attack covertly, we can attack all different kinds of ways. We can attack around the back door, we can do a front attack right to their face. And God says, "None of them, none of them, none of them." God says, "Look to me, cry out to me for mercy, and just wait, just wait." And what is that going to require? That's going to require me to trust, that's going to require me to trust, that's going to require me to pray and wait for God to show up, pray and wait for God to show up. As we close our service this morning, we're going to do so by just giving you a couple minutes to do that. Some of you are living with this reality right now. You have experienced some pretty serious injustice. You've been wrongly treated at a job, at some extended family, maybe someone here. And you're in a difficult place, and I want to give us just a few minutes for you just to bring your heart to God, to be honest with Him, He knows what's going on, tell Him what is true, and then as for His help and His grace and patience. Maybe you're not in a place like that right now, but you know someone who is, and so I want you to pray for them. And if you don't know of anyone to pray for, I want to invite you to pray for people of faith around the world who are living with the level of injustice and they don't know when it's going to end. You're like, what are you talking about, John? People of faith in Ukraine, people of faith in China, people of faith in Israel and Palestine. And just take a couple minutes and say, God, I don't know that situation, I don't know what's going on, I know what it's like to be at the end of my rope, I have no idea what it's like that I don't know if my life will end tomorrow because of where I'm living, but God somehow show up for them. So we're going to put a little bit of music on and just invite you to take the next couple minutes and let's just bow our heads and turn our hearts to the God of the heavens and pray. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] God, I pray first of all this morning for those who are living with some level of injustice in their lives right now. Things have been said, things have been done that are wrong God and they're living with that lack of resolution in their lives and for some it's become almost more than they can bear. God, give them your grace today, your presence, your comfort, the hope that the God of the heavens is going to show mercy to them. And Lord sometimes these situations very much seem unresolvable and I know even as I think of in my own life I'm like God I don't really have any idea how you would do this. Lord God, give me a sense of hope that you can and that you will. Father we pray for people of faith around our world who live in situations, who live the day in and day out because of their faith, because of what they believe, face incredible oppression, contempt, ridicule God. Lord may our prayers that we lift up on their behalf today bring them a measure of hope, bring them a measure of comfort and a sense of peace that you the God of the heavens are there that you know what's going on and that you and your time will act in the right way. Lord receive our prayers and give us the grace and patience we need for you to show up, help us to keep looking up God when there's nowhere else to go in your name we pray, Amen. (gentle music)