Psalm 146
There are some childrenās movies that adults find appealing and one of those is Mary Poppins. If you are not familiar with this movie, it is about a British nanny with magical powers who comes to take care of the children of a British banker.
There are many wonderful songs in this movie. The one that made me think of this movie is a song with a one word title, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! If you are not familiar with this, let me share with you the first verse:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious!
If you say it loud enough, you’ll always sound precocious,
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
I know you may have a difficult time believing this, but the soundtrack is even better than me singing the song.
Walt Disney, who made the film, defined Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as a word that is used when you donāt know what else to say. And, incidentally, if you want to show off a bit you can say it backwards: docious-ali-expi-listic-fragi-cali-repus. But forwards or backwards it is still just a word.
There is a word like this that Christians sometimes use when they donāt know what else to say and that word is Hallelujah! or as it is often translated, Praise the Lord! But however you say it, it can be no more than a word to use when you donāt know what else to say or a word said just to make you feel better.
When I was first a Christian, I encountered a Christian group that went around saying Praise the Lord! to each other all the time. It did not matter what they felt, it was always, Praise the Lord! They greeted each other with Praise the Lord! They said goodbye with Praise the Lord! And everything in-between was peppered with Praise the Lord!
It could be they were sick and discouraged but they would smile and say Praise the Lord! It could be they had lost their job, their mother had just died and their dog didnāt like them anymore, but they would smile and say Praise the Lord!
There is nothing automatically spiritual about saying Praise the Lord! It is no more magical than saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Unless what we say comes from our heart, then it is just empty words that tumble out of our mouths, no matter how spiritual they sound to those around us.
I will be away for the next three Sundays. In my absence David Hutton and Mike Russon will be preaching and when I return we will turn to I Samuel and begin to look at the life of Saul.
But today we finish the summer series of sermons on the psalms with Psalm 146.
The last five of the 150 psalms all begin and end with the word, Hallelujah! or as it is often translated, Praise the Lord! These praise psalms bring to a close the book of psalms and Psalm 146 is a fitting end for our summer series.
The psalm begins with
Hallelujah!
O my soul, praise God!
All my life long Iāll praise God,
singing songs to my God as long as I live.
When we step into church Sunday morning, it may be that we donāt feel like praising God. It could be that the shower did not work and you had to use cold water to wash. It could be that you stepped in dog poop on the sidewalk on the way to church and had to scrape and scrape and wipe your shoe on grass to get rid of it and the terrible odor. It could be that people cut you off in traffic and as you parked your car and walked into church, you were still cursing the idiot who was driving.
When I lead worship, I am very conscious that I need to help the congregation move from the aggravations of daily life, the irritations of the street and the pressures of living overseas to an awareness of the presence of God.
Have you ever noticed that the praise at the beginning of the service is rarely as powerful as the praise at the end of our worship time? It is not often that most of us can step into church and say, Praise the Lord! and mean it from our heart. It takes time for us to wake up to the presence of God.
Psalm 146 ends with
Godās in chargeāalways.
Zionās God is God for good!
Hallelujah!
The seven verses in-between the opening and closing praise of Psalm 146 give us reasons to praise. The praise at the end of the psalm or the praise at the end of a time of worship are more powerful expressions of our heartfelt sentiment because they are informed by the content that has come before them.
We begin with praise of God but then after our hearts and minds have been engaged with the wonders of who God is and what God has done for us, then our praise has been informed by content that allows us to praise God who is present with us.
Let me reveal in verses 3-9 the three reasons why Psalm 146 says we should praise God.
Donāt put your life in the hands of experts
who know nothing of life, of salvation life.
Mere humans donāt have what it takes;
when they die, their projects die with them.
The NIV translates this as:
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
This first reason we are to praise God is framed in the negative.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
This is a wise observation that was true at the time this psalm was written and is still true today. This is true and yet it is our human nature to continually put our trust in princes, to put our trust in experts who cannot save us.
It is the political season in the US and for the next sixty-five days there will be animated debate about who will be a better president for the US, John McCain or Barak Obama or one of the other minor candidates. There will be heated discussion as supporters of McCain argue with supporters of Obama.
I remember one time coming home to my parentās house and talking with a friend of my mother who became so angry that I disagreed with her about who should be president that I thought she might hit me.
Why did she become so angry? Why will people debate so fiercely over the next couple months? It is because it is our nature to put our trust in a political leader and believe that this man or woman will change our life for the better.
People commit to a candidate and then go to great lengths to get that person elected. They donate money to the political campaign. They go door-to-door to raise awareness and support for their candidate. They put up signs for their candidate around their town or city. And a supporter of Barak Obama might say, āIf John McCain is elected president, I am going to move to Canada.ā (In the US, for some reason, it is always to Canada that people say they want to go if the person they do not like is elected. Iāve heard this for years and I wonder how many US citizens have actually moved to Canada for this reason.)
We become highly invested in political leaders and yet how often have you been disappointed by a politician you supported? How often has the political leader you supported failed you? Political leaders are revealed to be corrupt, they have affairs, they betray the people who voted for them.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
Christians put great trust in their pastors and other church leaders. In many churches what the pastor says carries great weight and if the pastor endorses a political candidate, most of the members of the church will vote for that person.
Many Christians live vicariously through their pastor. It may be that they struggle to live a Christian life but they take great pride and comfort that their pastor is living a perfect Christian life. They feel better about their own Christian faith because of how wonderful a Christian their pastor is.
In some churches, people who struggle to pay their bills and find food to put on the table take delight that their pastor drives a fancy car, has a nice home and dresses well. Their trust and hope is in the lifestyle their pastor lives.
Christians put their trust in their pastors but how often have you been disappointed by a pastor or church leader you looked up to? Pastors are revealed to be corrupt, they have affairs, they betray the members of their congregation.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
If you have enough money to invest, you probably have someone who helps you select the best investments. Is it better to invest in real estate, the stock market, bonds or mutual funds? You look to this advisor and trust that he or she will help you have a secure future.
But real estate can fall in value so the land you bought is now worth less than what you paid for it. The stock market can crash so you have lost money rather than made money. There is risk in investments and many people have been disappointed by the advice the experts gave them and seen the money they saved for retirement slowly and sometimes rapidly disappear.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
If there is a lot of crime where you live, you put your trust in the police who will protect you. But the police themselves can be corrupt. Our house was robbed about five years ago and it finally came out that the ones who broke into our house were the children of the police living just across the street.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
Parents want their children to be perfect and go to great lengths to give them a perfect diet, help them be stimulated so they will have a fine intellect, encourage them to be active so they develop athletic skills and take them to sports programs, music lessons, ballet lessons and art lessons so they will be multi-talented. Parents take their children to Sunday School and church and have devotional times at home so their children will enter into a relationship with Jesus.
No parents are perfect, but parents who are close to perfect, despite all their best efforts, still see their children walk away from Jesus and avoid the church. Wonderful Christian parents see their children struggle with drug and alcohol addiction and move from one sexual relationship to another.
Parents need to know that they cannot put their trust in their own parenting skills or in the advice of James Dobson or some other child psychologist.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
Business men and women work hard to make their business profitable. If a business does not make money it is not a business. It must make money and the more the better. But when you work in a business, it is very difficult not to put your trust in the business and put your dreams for the future on the back of what you hope to earn from your business.
But half of all businesses started in the US fail in the first year and eighty percent fail in the first five years. With one million businesses started each year, that is a lot of people who had high hopes and dreams for what they would do when their business started making a lot of money – only to see their dream collapse into bankruptcy.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
I am not discounting hard work and the need for parents to be wise, but be very careful where you put your hope.
Let me come back to the example of putting trust in pastors. If you lose faith when your pastor has a moral failing, it is your fault for putting your trust where it did not belong.
When Paul came to speak in Berea, Luke wrote in Acts 17:11
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Listen with eagerness to the teaching and preaching of your church leaders but be wary of putting your trust in them.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
The men and women in whom we put our trust are going to die, just as we will. Why put our trust in those who are not ultimately going to be able to save us?
If we are not to put our trust in princes, in experts, in whom are we to put our trust? Psalm 146 continues with a second reason to praise God:
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in themā
the Lord, who remains faithful forever.
Why does the psalmist write, God of Jacob? Why not God of Abraham or God of Isaac or God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Why God of Jacob?
Remember who Jacob was. He was the second born of twin boys and when he came out of Rebekahās womb, he was grasping onto the heel of his brother, Esau. So he was named Jacob, which means heel-grasper. The implication was that from birth he was trying to hold back the birth of his brother so he could be the first born.
When he was older, his brother was hungry and he took advantage of his brotherās hunger to trade him a bowl of stew he had made for his birthright.
Later when his father, Isaac, was dying, Jacob, along with his mother, deceived his father so he received the blessing that should have gone to Esau.
Esau was upset when he heard about this and Jacob fled to where his mother had come from. There he met his match in Laban. He worked for seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel but Laban got him drunk at the wedding banquet and snuck into his marriage bed his oldest daughter, Leah. Jacob had to work another seven years for the right to marry Rachel.
But even with a trickster like Laban, Jacob outwitted him. He maneuvered things so he ended up with the best of the sheep and goats and headed back to where he had been born.
All his life Jacob manipulated, cheated and deceived in order to get what he wanted and finally at Peniel, the night before he was to meet his brother Esau and face the consequences of his deceit many years earlier, Jacob met God in the form of a man. He wrestled with this man all night until he finally received his blessing.
So his name was changed from Jacob to Israel. From the grasper to one who wrestles with God.
Now this is the point I want to make. If God is the God of Jacob, the grasper and deceiver, then we can have confidence that we can put our hope in God who pursued imperfect Jacob and will pursue imperfect us.
The God of Jacob pursued Jacob all his life. The God of Jacob did not wait until Jacob had his act together but pursued him and wrestled with him to help him come to faith.
The God of Jacob pursued Matthew the tax collector and the God of Jacob pursued Saul who was persecuting his church and the God of Jacob pursued me and he pursued you.
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in themā
the Lord, who remains faithful forever.
Put your hope in the God of Jacob and you will not be disappointed. He is the creator of everything and he is faithful. He is faithful and he will always be faithful.
I am in an accountability group that meets each month. One of the questions we ask is this: Where have you been struggling in your thought life? which is a question about our fantasies. For several months my answer has been that I have spent a lot of time fantasizing about being wealthier and smarter. I play back the events of my life and consider how I could have invested to make more money. I think about what I could have done at different times of my life if I had been more intelligent.
It became embarrassing to me that I came month after month with the same response to this question but at our meeting this month, I was able to say I had found a way to break this fantasy. Whenever I began to fantasize about being smarter and wealthier, I said, āI put my trust in you, O Lord,ā and that broke the power of the fantasy. āI trust in you, O Lord.ā
Donāt put your hope in princes or experts who will die in the grave along with you. Donāt put your hope in princes or experts but put your trust in the God of Jacob.
Who is the God of Jacob?
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
8 the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the alien
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
This is the third reason in this psalm for giving praise to God. The God of Jacob is a god of justice. It is not that he turned a blind eye to the deceit of Jacob but that his love was powerful enough to overcome the deceit of Jacob.
Jacob was not one of the righteous. Jacob was not oppressed but he was an oppressor. Jacob created some of the injustice in the world and yet God pursued him and made him righteous.
The words in this psalm sound familiar to us because they are similar to the words Isaiah used when he talked about the coming ministry of the Messiah. When Jesus stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth to announce the outset of his ministry he read these words of Isaiah.
Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lordās favor
The God of justice is also a God of love and so Jesus came to bear the penalty for our injustice.
Jesus came 1,000 years after Psalm 146 was written and it has been 2,00 years since Jesus came and injustice still abounds in the world. We continue to create injustice with our sinful natures. And yet God has worked consistently through these years to redeem us. God continues to pursue us as he pursued Jacob to bring us into his kingdom.
Why should you praise God this morning?
When you put your trust in him, he will not disappoint you. When those you trust fail you, God will be faithful and keep his promise to you.
Your children are in Godās hands and when you are raising children, you have to trust in God that he will pursue them as he pursued you.
Your country is in Godās hands and it is more important that the citizens of your country open themselves to Godās work than who leads your country. We can trust God with our country, our family, our retirement, our lives.
When you give in to temptation and sin God will pursue you and bring you back into a righteous relationship with him. God does not wait for you to become perfect. God takes you as you are and works with you to make you what you will be.
His justice demanded that you be punished for your sins but his love took your punishment on himself. Jesus came to bring the justice God had promised so long ago through the prophet Isaiah.
You had no hope but God gave you hope.
You had no future but God gave you a future.
You were headed for destruction but God set you on a path to eternal life.
Isnāt that enough to make you want to say, Praise the Lord!?
Your love is amazing
Your love is amazing,
steady and unchanging,
your love is a mountain,
firm beneath my feet.
Your love is a myst’ry,
how you gently lift me
When I am surrounded,
your love carries me.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
hallelujah, your love makes me sing.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
hallelujah, your love makes me sing.
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Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
