Mercy for the Desperate – part 1

Psalm 107

On July 17 the home of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computers who died last year, was burglarized and $60,000 of computers and personal items were stolen. Two weeks later a 35 year old man was arrested and he told police he burgled the home because he was desperate for cash.

Desperation causes people to do things they would ordinarily not do.

Hannah, in the book of I Samuel, came to the temple in Shiloh and prayed for a son. Year after year she was barren while her husband’s second wife produced child after child. She stood in front of the temple praying so emotionally that Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk and rebuked her. When he heard her desperation he told her she would return next year with a son and she did, naming him Samuel.

In the gospels there is an account of a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. This meant she had been considered unclean for twelve years and kept at the perimeter of her community. Twelve years is a long time. She had seen children, perhaps her own children, grow from being toddlers to teenagers, from teenagers to adults with children of their own. After twelve years she knew the rules. She knew she needed to stay away from people and not defile them with her uncleanness. But she was desperate and when Jesus came by, she crept up and made her way through the crowd around Jesus, touched his robe and was healed.

Four friends of a man who was paralyzed wanted Jesus to heal their friend but there were so many people they were stuck outside the building where Jesus was teaching. But they were desperate and so made a hole in the roof and lowered their friend down next to Jesus who healed him.

Desperate people call out to God for help.

Psalm 107 is a psalm written after Israel returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. There are other psalms written about the return from exile. Psalm 126, one of the psalms of ascent Jews chanted as they climbed up the hill into Jerusalem for the annual feasts, expresses the exhilaration of that return. (Psalm 126:1–3)
When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.

Psalm 107 takes a different tack. The psalmist begins with praise for what God did, bringing Israel back from exile. But then he paints four word pictures describing what it was like to be in exile and how God restored those who were suffering. In each word picture there is a description of the suffering followed by this verse that comes in the middle of each word picture:
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
and then the word picture concludes by describing how God rescued them in his great mercy and compassion.

Each word picture is a facet of the suffering of Israel in Babylon in exile and we will take a look at each one and draw our current situation into it. We will look at the first two pictures this morning and pick up the second two next Sunday.

The psalmist begins with thanksgiving.
1–3 Oh, thank God—he’s so good!
His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.

After 70 years in exile, Israel was back in Jerusalem and the temple, as well as the walls of Jerusalem, were being rebuilt. They were becoming a people in their own home once again. This was such good news that it needed to be shared. The psalm begins by reminding us that when God acts in wonderful ways, we need to share the good news with others.

There are some who say we are to keep our religious views to ourselves and are critical of those who share their faith. But it is an act of disobedience to keep silent about what God has done for us. From Genesis to Revelation there is the consistent message that God wants us to share what he does in our lives with others.

Jesus taught that just as we do not cover a light in the house, (Matthew 5:16)
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

And Peter wrote that when people see the light in us, we are to (1 Peter 3:15)
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Psalm 107 begins by telling us to tell the world about God’s wonderful act of bringing his chosen people back to Jerusalem from their exile. We can take encouragement from this exhortation to be reminded that we need to share the good news of Jesus with others. Let people see the light of Jesus in your life and then be ready to explain why it is you believe.

This brings us to the first word picture.

Word picture #1 Neglecting God’s Word
4–9 Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.

This word picture is probably a reference to the forty years Israel spent wandering in the desert before they entered into the Promised Land of Canaan. But anyone who has been a follower of Jesus for some time can identify with this as well. We all go through dry periods when it seems we are just plodding along. When we do read the Bible, it seems as dry as dust and we cannot find anything that inspires or refreshes us.

Sometimes the problem is that we have been worshiping false idols. Our success in a career is more important to us than anything else. Or we seek after the approval and acclaim of those around us. In some way or another, what the world offers and will eventually be left behind when we die, becomes most important to us. So we worship at the idols of fame, power and wealth or perhaps the idols of pleasure and comfort.

The popular theology of the day has replaced the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit with the unholy trinity of diversity, tolerance and inclusion and the pursuit of this unholy trinity by far too many churches does not satisfy our spiritual longings.

And so we pursue what cannot satisfy and become more and more dry. It is possible to worship false idols for years and years and be deluded that eventually they will deliver what is needed, and some may go to their death still determined to pursue what will never satisfy.

The fortunate are those who come to a point of desperation and call out for help, convinced there must be something more than this. Many of us became followers of Jesus when the pursuit of false idols led us nowhere.

Sometimes we get dry, not because we worship false idols, but because we get so busy with our work and family responsibilities that we neglect God. We move along, being “Christian” in our lives, but neglecting to fill our spiritual reservoir with daily dips into the refreshing water of the Bible.

This was my experience in 2005 when at the end of August, I ran out of gas, emotionally and spiritually and did not have the strength to fulfill the responsibilities I carried in Morocco.

2005 had been a very stressful year for me. It started in the spring with the deportation of Deon Malan, the pastor of the church in Marrakech, and continued on with the ongoing concern of Christians about what was happening in Morocco. Little did we know that five years later, the events of 2005 would seem insignificant compared to the deportation of 150 foreign Christians and the takeover of the Village of Hope, a home for abandoned children where I was, and still am, chairman of the board.

That summer of 2005 was very hectic and it seemed every time I turned, I was dealing with another crisis. So many people were having major struggles that summer.

But I persevered and God was good to me in granting me the strength to carry a candle safely through the storm. I was able to go from situation to situation, listen and be of some help.

But then at the end of the summer, a week before I left for the US, I came to the end of my resources and was depleted. In that last week we had two days of strategic planning for the Village of Hope which included discussing a very stressful personnel crisis and although I was present in those meetings, I was too emotionally and spiritually drained to be a full participant.

The evening after the first day of the strategic planning, while I was having supper with a friend, I received a phone call from Annie telling me my mother had died. I crashed. There was too much for me to deal with and I did not have the resources to cope.

I headed to the US for my nephew’s wedding and my mother’s memorial service. In those weeks I found myself in the situation where I could respond to some need around me but it was as if the battery had developed enough charge to beep the horn but not start the car. I had enough for the moment but nothing more. I didn’t want to come back to Morocco because I had nothing to give and nothing to say. Preaching seemed impossible to me.

How did I get to that point? There are those who said I was doing too much. I was heavily involved with the Village of Hope and the new church association, l’Eglise Protestante, as well as being pastor of RIC, and some people told me I had too many responsibilities and needed to cut back.

But this was not the problem. There were many in the world who were doing far more than I did, who carried much more responsibility than I carried. It was true that I needed to have more people come along and assist me in what I was doing, but to have reduced my responsibilities would not have solved the spiritual crisis I was facing.

The problem was very clear to me. For too long I had been operating on my own strength and relying on the faith of others to get by. I woke up in the morning, went out to exercise, came back and rested on the hammock and prayed about the day that was coming, who I would meet, what I needed to do. I asked for wisdom and help. I came in to shower and sat down at my desk, turned on the computer, checked emails and I was off and running. I read the Scripture for my preaching and sometimes I read a chapter or two in the morning, but for a long time I had lacked a dedicated time to sit and be present with God.

God graciously sustained me but finally allowed me to come to the end of my rope to get my attention.

Annie sent me an email from her devotional reading with this quote from Oswald Chambers.
We imagine we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us. ‘If God gives the call, of course I will rise to the occasion.’ You will not unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there. If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it, when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crises always reveal character.

‘I can’t be expected to live the sanctified life in the circumstances I am in; I have no time for praying just now, no time for Bible reading, my opportunity hasn’t come yet; when it does, of course I shall be all right.’ No, you will not. If you have not been worshiping as occasion serves, when you get into work you will not only be useless yourself, but a tremendous hindrance to those who are associated with you.

Do you see yourself in this? I look at my schedule and list of things to be done for the day and so I skim a few chapters of the Bible, pray a quick prayer and then get on to the real business of the day. I respond to emails. I prepare for meetings. I write sermons. I do all the things on my list that need to be done. And in the process I drain, bit by bit, the reservoir of strength available to me until one day the crisis comes that exhausts all I have and I find myself in a spiritual muddle.

If you want to know more about how God helped restore me that fall, you can go to our church website and read the sermon titled, Preparing for Crisis, where I talked about how God helped me.

What I want to say this morning is that when I was desperate and called out to God, he did not abandon me. God did not leave me in my emptiness. God, in his love and mercy, restored me. I came to him in desperation and he poured great draughts of water down my parched throat. Over the months my spiritual reservoir was refilled.

Since that time I have realized that the reason I need to take time to read the Bible and journal and pray on a daily basis is because I need to be prepared for the inevitable crises that will come in my life. We are capable of limping along week after week but when crises come, we need to have something in the reservoir to keep us going.

Five years after this experience I came to the far more difficult and tragic events of 2010 when so many Christians were deported, including the parents of the children at the Village of Hope. This made the events of 2005 seem relatively insignificant and my faith took a huge blow. But I persevered and I credit my ongoing devotional life with having put enough in my spiritual reservoir to keep me from collapsing in that incredibly difficult year.

Are you neglecting God’s word? You can do this for a period of time but let me warn you from personal experience, you are in danger of having insufficient spiritual resources when a crisis comes. You may be able to limp along now, but you need a reservoir of spiritual strength to sustain you when really difficult times come.

WORD PICTURE #2 Disobeying God’s Word
10–16 Some of you were locked in a dark cell,
cruelly confined behind bars,
Punished for defying God’s Word,
for turning your back on the High God’s counsel—
A hard sentence, and your hearts so heavy,
and not a soul in sight to help.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell,
broke open the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shattered the heavy jailhouse doors,
he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!

The seventy year exile in Babylon was a prison term for Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, and the psalmist doesn’t sugar coat why they were exiled. Judah deserved the prison sentence because of their disobedience. While the southern kingdom of Judah did much better than the northern kingdom of Israel, only 8 of the twenty kings of Judah are described in the Bible as having been good kings and in the last 100 years of Judah’s history, only one of seven kings did not encourage the worship of idols.

God was very clear about what he demanded. The first two of the ten commandments given to Moses are of highest importance. (Exodus 20:2–6)
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

God rescued Israel and promised to protect them and provide for them, but there was this condition which was repeated over and over again. When Joshua came to the end of his life, he reminded Israel once again of this condition.  (Joshua 23:16)
If you violate the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.”

But despite this constant reminder, the people of Israel continued to worship the gods of Canaan, Asherah and Baal, and finally enough was enough and God allowed his chosen people to be taken away into exile.

Our disobedience to God’s word has a similar effect. We become imprisoned by our sin which becomes our master

Jesus taught in John 8:34
I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

This idea, that sin becomes our master and enslaves us is picked up by Paul. In his letter to the church in Rome he talks about the mastery of sin over us. (Romans 6:16)
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

What does it mean to be a slave? A slave is owned by his master. A slave is controlled by his master. A slave does not do what he wants to do, he does what his master tells him to do. A master does not concern himself with what his slave wants, the slave serves the desires of the master. The master is the slave-driver, not the slave-server.

When Paul says we are slaves to sin, he tells us that sin controls us. Sin gives us our orders. We do what sin tells us to do, not what we want to do. It is evident from what Paul wrote in Chapter 7 of Romans that he had personal experience with this.  (Romans 7:14–15)
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

He was not speaking from a vacuum. He knew what it was to struggle with sin that was his master.

How is that we become slaves to sin? How does sin become our master, our slave-driver? It helps to think of sin as an addiction, like a drug.

Crack cocaine is a physically addictive drug. Someone at a party encourages you to try something you will enjoy and when you smoke it, it delivers “an intensity of pleasure completely outside the normal range of human experience. It offers the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive, the user will ever enjoy.”

The ecstasy of this experience demands another try but the initial euphoria requires more and more of the drug and the initial experience becomes more and more difficult to achieve and the user begins to waste away physically as he or she pursues this feeling.

When you first smoke crack cocaine, you are the master. You choose to smoke it. But then it pulls you in with the pleasure it provides and you smoke again, less because you choose to but because you are pulled to that pleasure you first experienced. As you go on you have less and less choice and crack cocaine becomes the slave-driver and you are driven to steal, cheat, and deceive to get more of the drug.

Like cocaine, sin pulls us in and takes over our lives.

We get trapped in sexual relationships and find ourselves unable to break them off. The illusive thrill of gambling and pornography pull us in and we become helpless to stop. Shopping can become an addiction in which I buy something to make myself feel better. I feel good when I buy something and so I continue to shop to medicate my depression.

For similar reasons people become addicted to shoplifting. There is a thrill of risking and stealing something from a store and whenever there is a period of stress in your life or to satisfy feelings of worthlessness, you shoplift. It is not because of financial need but because of psychological need that most people shoplift.

This is how we become trapped in sin. This is how we become slaves to sin. We make a choice to do something and the physical, or emotional feeling that results or the psychological need that drives us makes us want to do it again. As we continue we develop habits that reinforce our behavior and pretty soon it is almost impossible for us to stop what it is we are doing.

Talk to a crack addict, smoker, or an alcoholic, someone who is anorexic or bulimic, someone who has tried to lose weight for years and cannot stop eating too much, someone who cannot stop gambling, someone trapped in pornography or some other sexual addiction – talk to any of these people and tell them they can change and whatever reaction you get, it will not be a belief that change is possible.

When we are trapped by sin we are without hope. But do not deny the power of God to work in your life. God does miracles and delivers those who are addicted to sin. All it takes is to turn in desperation and call out for help.

Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell,
broke open the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shattered the heavy jailhouse doors,
he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!

It is possible for us to live lives pleasing to God. It is possible to break off addictions. It is possible to drive through the roads of Morocco during Ramadan and not get angry. It is possible to become less judgmental about people. It is possible to diffuse the anger that boils under the surface. It is possible to change. It is all about being desperate enough to surrender and call out to Jesus, asking for help.

Next Sunday I will pick up the last two word pictures in Psalm 107 and talk more about what it means to be desperate. Today I want to leave with you a window of hope that will encourage any of you who feel trapped.

God has the power to deliver you from any addiction. God can change your habits. God can mold and shape your character. As a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is at work in you to help you overcome any addiction, any sin.

You are not the first person in the history of the world to struggle with sin. You are not so creative that you have discovered a new sin. God has thousands of years of experience with people just like you and there are thousands of people who were in your situation and were set free. You can join them. You can be delivered from the power of sin over you. Sin does not have to be your master.

The word pictures in Psalm 107 each end with hope because of two factors. Most importantly, they end with hope because God is loving and merciful. But in order to be the recipients of his love and mercy we need to call out to him in desperation. God does not force himself into our lives; he wants us to choose him.

So if you feel trapped in some sinful behavior, call out to Jesus and ask for his help. You can’t do this half-heartedly. You have to call out in desperation. Call out in desperation, surrender to Jesus, and receive the miracle he has for you. He will deliver you because he has the power to deliver you from your sin and because in his love he wants you to life a life of freedom, no longer controlled by your sin.