Second City Sermons

Jesus interacts with a rich young man seeking to know what he must do to get eternal life. The man's pretense is that he has done many good things but still thinks he has something else he needs to do. Jesus shows the man his own heart, in that he is more focused on himself and his many possessions than on God. The seemingly very capable man turns away causing Jesus' disciples to question whether anyone can get eternal life. Jesus makes it clear that it is impossible for a man or woman to get eternal life, but it is possible with God. Eternal life, peace with God is a gift that is given by God, as He sees fit, to those of His own choosing.

Are we in the habit of praying to the Lord and recognizing his answers to our prayers? It was an amazing time in the history of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Hezekiah was a good king. Isaiah was prophesying – one of the best kings ever – one of the greatest prophets ever. There was also one of the worst adversaries ever - the Assyrian Empire. In those days this Hezekiah became proud. In those days this Hezekiah became very sick and was at the point of death. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord and he answered his prayer and gave Hezekiah restoration of health. Hezekiah asked for a sign that this would happen and the Lord caused the shadow to return ten steps on the stairs his father Ahaz had built. This was a global event as the princes of Babylon sent envoys to inquire about it. Hezekiah misslead them about the true treasure of Israel. He showed them all of his wealth! He did not point them towards Isaiah the prophet or toward the proper worship of the Living God in the temple. Is our hope the same as the hope of everyone else in the world? Or are we living in such a way that others can see that our hope is in the Lord.

Are we in the habit of praying to the Lord and recognizing his answers to our prayers? It was an amazing time in the history of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Hezekiah was a good king. Isaiah was prophesying – one of the best kings ever – one of the greatest prophets ever. There was also one of the worst adversaries ever - the Assyrian Empire. In those days this Hezekiah became proud. In those days this Hezekiah became very sick and was at the point of death. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord and he answered his prayer and gave Hezekiah restoration of health. Hezekiah asked for a sign that this would happen and the Lord caused the shadow to return ten steps on the stairs his father Ahaz had built. This was a global event as the princes of Babylon sent envoys to inquire about it. Hezekiah misslead them about the true treasure of Israel. He showed them all of his wealth! He did not point them towards Isaiah the prophet or toward the proper worship of the Living God in the temple. Is our hope the same as the hope of everyone else in the world? Or are we living in such a way that others can see that our hope is in the Lord.

When a person first receives Christ, the natural question that is upon their heart is, what do I do now? How do I live this faith that has been given to me by God's holy spirit? How do I live my life now that Jesus is my savior lord? And new believers tend to answer that question by looking at people that they perceive are, further along in their spiritual walk and patterning their lives after those people by imitating people who have been believers for a while. Here in First Timothy Four Paul directs Timothy how this should look - and what he and we should do.

Transitions in life are difficult. The birth of a child; the death of a parent/someone you love; a major change in your health; a change in marital status; graduation from school, college, university; going off to college; losing a job; starting a new job… MOVING. I could go on and on. How long has it been since your last major transition? The Children of Israel were getting ready to make THE BIG Move: The biggest transition since God brought them out of Egypt. They were on the far side of the Jordan River when Moses spoke the words of Deuteronomy. Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, and to explain the law, he gave them…a travelogue! “I will bring you into the land of promise.” You will have children and you will teach your children and they will dialogue with you and they will ask questions about this religion you are teaching them and you will tell them a story. We need to get our story straight. Your story with God through this life which involves his salvation from slavery, his continual provision for our needs and a future forever with the Lord.

Numbers 6:24-27 may be the most common benediction in Christian worship. "The Lord Make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you" is at its center. What do we make of this? What does it mean for a deity to "turn his face toward you?" Is this a good thing? Is God's grace all that we need?

This lovely parable of Jesus has a simple message of living life with all that God provides for each of us for His glory and honor. No comparisons are needed. Some are given more, and some are given less. Each of us can enjoy the Master's Happiness by using the best we can, that which He has given to us for His pleasure. We do all of this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can work with what He gives us and wait upon Him as we work to bring the increase and results as He sees fit.

Psalm 23:4-6 highlights the core of Psalm 23 with the statement of David that he knows, The LORD, his Shepherd is always with him . David proclaims that it is The LORD who is with him in the Valley of The Shadow of death. It is the LORD who comforts him with correction and instruction. And it is the LORD who guides and directs him through life and unto eternal life in Jesus Christ by the almighty power of the Holy Spirit.

In Psalm 23, David describes the reality that Yahweh, the One true and living God, revealed in Jesus Christ, is the Shepherd of His blessed people. He is our Creator and He is our Sustainer. He provides all that is needed for His people, "His sheep", in this world and in the next. He is the One who enables us to be at peace with ourselves, with Him and with others. Out of this relationship in Jesus Christ as our Good Shepherd, we are useful in His perfect care to be His lovely instruments in showing His love and speaking His truth to our world.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the foundation of our Christian faith. If surveys are correct, Christians spend little time in the Scriptures, let alone delighting in them, yet they are our foundation and “rule faith and life”. We learn to delight in the Scriptures by letting go of needing to have all the answers, accept the mystery of the ambiguities and difficulties of Scripture and through meditation and delighting in the things in the word of God we affect of our own hearts and minds and encounter the living Jesus.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the very first book in the Bible God speaks and brings the world into existence. He places all things where he wants them. At the end of his creative work God makes us. He makes humankind, male and female. He makes us after his image. And what we read there, right at the very beginning, is that the first thing that God after making us is to bless us. “And God blessed them.” We are made for God’s blessing – it is what we each long for. It comes to us in Jesus.

After the long Emmaus road resurrection narrative where the Cleopas and his companion have burning hearts for God's Word and their eyes opened by the broken bread of Jesus, Jesus appears to the eleven disciples and he leaves them with a commission that they would take the news of Jesus from Jerusalem with the aid of the Holy Spirit, the "power from on high"! But what news of Jesus are they to take? What is the core of the message that they are to proclaim? Christ's death and his resurrection, his suffering and his glory! And because of that suffering on the cross and because of that glorious resurrection the door is open for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. When Jesus sums up what they are to say he sums it up with suffering and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins and it is to be proclaimed to all people!

It is very easy to get lost in the theological ramifications of Jesus’ death and miss the perspective of those who witnessed his crucifixion in all of its gory spectacle. As they walked home from Jerusalem, after Jesus’ death, Cleopas and Mary were most likely emotionally overwhelmed. Despair was their companion when they meet one whom they did not at first recognize. In describing Himself in the scriptures He would enter their despair, and showing them what a “body broken” means.

Jesus has risen. Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James have encountered the empty tomb and an angel. Peter races to the tomb and finds only empty strips of cloth. What is going on here? The obvious answer has yet to manifest himself. Next in his account, Luke tells us the experience of Cleopas and his wife Mary as they walk back to Emmaus reflecting on the tragic events in Jerusalem, where they encounter a mysterious traveler....

Henry David Thoreau said "The price of anything is the amount of life you are willing to exchange for it". That's an amazingly insight for budgeting and for how we spend out resources, whether that be our money or our time or our intellect or anything else that we have. It is also an amazing insight into the gospel of Jesus. New life broke forth into the world that first Easter morning and we are told in Holy Scripture that just as Jesus rose from the dead, so also death itself doesn't have the final say for those who are in Jesus. But at what cost? What was the price of Christian hope? What did it cost to bring life where death was the order of the world? The price for that was the very paschal passion of God's Son, our Lord Jesus himself. That is the cost of our hope and Jesus paid it all!

The last words in Jesus' ears were not "Crucify him!" but rather "save yourself." He had entered Jerusalem to cries of "Hosanna!" which means "Save us!", Jesus stays on the cross not to save himself, but to save us. He doesn't save himself, but rather he saves the guilty, he saves us. This is the good news. And this good news is received as we, like the thief on the cross, know that we have nothing to bring to Jesus and all we can do is receive him. "Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom", is answered with "Today, you will be with me in paradise!"

lm branches swaying, cloaks being thrown on the ground and shouts of Hosanna in the air. All of these things that took place on that first Palm Sunday during our Lord's "Triumphal Entry" were asking Jessu to be a savior and a king of their liking, establishing their nation, doing away with Rome and having an Israelite back on the throne. They wanted the cosmis yes-man in their court. How similar are we today? Maybe especially in an election year, we want Jesus to back our causes. But in that short first Holy Week that same crowd's voice went from "Hosanna!" to "Crucify him"! Why? Quite simply, because he is the Savior and King that we need, but often the one that we don't really want. He is savior and king in a way that demands our total allegiance to him, rather than his allegiance to us and our wants and desires.

As we make our way our way with our Lord through the streets of Jerusalem to the place of the Skull, Luke gives us two short vignettes, two short encounters with others. There are women mourning what is happening to Jesus. They are likely mourning death, but even more mourning the fact that the Romans have the power they have and kill the way they do. To them, Jesus says, "Mourn for yourselves, because if they do this to me who they have declared innocent, how much more will they do to you?" Cancelling one another is the way of the world, from Cain to the Romans to us here today in the 21st Century. But also Luke tells us of Simon of Cyrene. Simon made the long journey (17 days walk!) to specifically celebrate the Passover, the great feast that remembers that God saved his people from oppressors. But as he is entering the city to celebrate this great story he is tapped on the shoulder by the current great oppressor of Israel, the Romans, and he is made to carry their symbol of oppression, the cross. Somehow - we are not told how, but how could it not have been at the foot of the cross! - Simon becomes a Christian and so do his children. Through the forgiveness of God, the people that are inclined to cancel, to write off, to dismiss and discard, become the people of forgiveness and grace. 

One of the rather strange aspects about the death of Jesus is that it seems as though many of the characters do it almost unintentionally, or at least their circumstances just kind of lead them into it.   Of course, that's not the case with all of the characters; the chief priests and elders and scribes had clearly planned it out, paying off Judas, arresting Jesus at night, lying to Pilate and all of the rest. But think of Pilate, he initially declared Jesus innocent; think of Herod, he seems to just want to see the spectacle of Jesus but not to have him killed; and think of the crowd, they are there for Passover and they are shouting crucify him. But the truth is that we have all killed him. We all are at work against God. We are all guilty. And the wild, wild story of Barrabas is that the guilty one goes free while the righteous one suffers. And right here, right at the point the crowd yelling for the release of Barrabas and the death of Jesus, is the heart of the Christian message: the blameless for the wicked, the capital "S" Saint for the sinner, the righteous for the unrighteous. Who's guilty? We are. Who bears the guilt. Jesus does.

This week we continue Jesus' trial, but this time it's not with those who are part of the Faith but rather those who are outside of it. Interestingly, they seem a lot more open. Whereas the religious leaders already had their minds set against Jesus, Pilate and Herod both appear to be open to him, Herod is even said to be "very glad". But openness doesn't equate to acceptance. In fact, their openness leads to the same hostile action Jesus' had just received in the High Priest's courtyard, Herod mocks him and Pilate "punishes" him. Interestingly enough, many non-Christians find Jesus incredibly compelling, but finding him compelling is much different than worshipping him as Lord and Savior. 

What do religious people make of Jesus? And in a more specific way, what do the Christian religious people make of Jesus? After all, the Jews were God's people. And it was the Chief Priest and Scribes and elders that had him arrested and are now putting him on trial. What do they make of him? And what do religious people today make of him? The truth is, that Jesus is first put on trial by his own people, and most specifically he is put on trial by the religious leaders who should have known better. And what does that say to us today? Well, it says an awful lot. It says a lot abotu fake religiosity and the grabbing for power. It warns us against complacency and the very real possibility that our theology and our positions can get in the way of a real relationship and a true worship of the true God. There is a lot of danger in being religious and in being powerful.

What a fitting passage we have for the first week of Lent. Judas and the band put together by the religious leaders of Jerusalem have just arrested our Lord, his disciples have scattered and now we are given the story of one of the leaders of the disciples and how he denies his Lord. And it isn't just one denial. He does it again and again. And that is what sin is. It's the denial of God and of who he is to us and for us. But what brings the change in Peter? What brings his tears of repentance? What brings them is the words of our Lord. This is just like our own life. Our own sin is a denial of our Lord and his words still bring us to repentance.

Christians have always been made up of all kinds of different folk. The disciples demonstrate that for us very clearly. They come from different backgrounds and have different personalities and seem to have significantly different faith stories. It's no wonder then that just like the church, there were those in the midst of the disciples who had spent years with followers of Jesus, had sat at his feet and dined at his table, had gone out and shared the gospel and seen God work through them, and then betrayed the Lord. Judas is not far from us. And though there are many lessons to learn from Luke's narrative of the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, likely the greatest lesson for us is: take heed, lest we do likewise.

Leaving the Upper Room, Jesus takes his customary evening trip to the Mount of Olives and his disciples accompany him. Jesus goes to pray to his Father. In Jesus' prayer we see both his agony as well as his desire and commitment to follow the will of his Father even if it means his own death. This prayer is put in stark contrast to the sleepy disciples, to whom he twice commands to pray that they may not enter into temptation. The truth is that not entering into temptation is the very key to why Jesus alone can drink the cup of God’s wrath for the redemption of the world. The cup of the agony of our Lord is the cup that also brings the blessing of his people. 

Still in the upper room, having just transformed the great salvation meal of Passover around his own work of salvation through his broken body and shed blood, Jesus now has to deal with some misconception of the Christian life with his disciples. You could say these are parting words, last words to accompany his last supper. The disciples began to argue over who will be greatest in the Kingdom of God and Jesus says you must become like a servant. He then says the Christian life will be a life of faith. Finally it will be a life of trials and adversaries. None of this should surprise them or us, given that the Christian life is the life of following the way of Jesus, but it sure isn't what we so often expect or hope for.

Having just taught his famous Olivet Discourse, our Lord and his disciples celebrate the Passover meal together. While it is the Passover, the great meal that Israel would eat that would celebrate what God had done in rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, Jesus works this great salvation meal around himself. In so doing, he gave us the great meal that marks the Christian life, Communion, the Lord's Table, the Eucharist. This meal is the act of Christian faith because in it so much that is in the heart of Christian faith is found.

As we return to Luke for the next few months, we hear Jesus' last extended teaching before his death. Here he tells us to stay awake, to keep watch, to be careful to not fall asleep in our faith or to be overcome by the cares and delights of this world. There is debate around this passage, whether or not it spoke just to the destruction of the Temple or whether it speaks primarily of the time to come when Jesus's returns. But the big picture is the same for both ideas - stay awake! Keep watch! Don't let the cares of this world or the delights of this world numb you to being ready for our Lord!

Part of the wonder of Christmas is God saying that the way things are not the way they should be and he's going to do something about it. Isaiah says it like this: Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall become level; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Part of how Luke teaches us this is the way John the Baptist comes into the world, preparing the way for Jesus. His parents are barren, long desiring a child. And God does the miraculous, saying again to us that his power is made perfect in our weakness.

Mary comes at the end of the genealogy and, really, at the end of a long and painful story. And when she comes, for Matthew, she comes with scandal. Joseph is a righteous man, we are told, and he wants to divorce her quietly. After all, how did she get pregnant? It's all wrong. And the story keep going with the wrong! No room in the Inn, Herod killing babies. So much wrong. And Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and exile. All of this wrong. But God is working in all of it. "But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman"! In all of the long, painful darkness, God knows just when to let the light in!

Flemming Rutlage wrote that, "Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness." In his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew has forced us to look at the darkness. Tamar and the hard-hearted and hurtful hubris of Judah, Rahab and the sickening sin of the Cannanites, and the sad reality of family and death in the story of Ruth. And yet, in each of these dark stories, light begins to break. They all prepare us for Jesus. And then Bathsheba, or maybe we should just say, like Matthew says, "the wife of Uriah the Hittite". Lust and murder bound up in the light coming. God's mercy of the victimizer and the victim. What grace! What scandalous shining in darkness!

Matthew is intent on us not missing the point: Jesus comes with the deep and wide mercy of God! Tamar was an Adullamite, Rahab a Cannanite, and Ruth a Moabite. He just keeps saying it again and again: "This gospel is for everyone!" Of course, each of these women teach us more than that. Ruth teaches us that God's good news is even in the particulars of our own stories, our own longings, our places of deep desire for God to show up. And Ruth teaches us to look for the kinsman-redeemer, the one like us who would redeem us. It teaches us to about Jesus in so many ways, Jesus, the was born as one of us in the incarnation and redeems us in his crucifixion and resurrection.

Of all things, the New Testament begins with a long list of people, a genealogy of Jesus. In the ancient world, as in our own, when you have a genealogy, you are often telling something about the person. When you consider the women who are highlighted in Matthew 1, you see just how deep and wide the scandalous mercy of God is. This second week of Advent we are looking at the second woman mentioned in Matthew 1, Rahab. The story of Rahab is found in Joshua 2, in the beginning of the story of the Canaanite conquest and the fall of Jericho. Rahab, a prostitute is the woman of faith and faithful works (as Hebrews 11 and James 2 tell us) and God spares her. She is a great lesson of the great mercy of God for all who turn to him.

If you were writing your own genealogy, if you were recording your ancestry for posterity sake, who would you include? You can't includer everyone, after all, especially if you are going to go back 2000 years. Certainly, you would give the highlight, the big characters; you'd want to record those who shed light on who you are. Well, this Advent we are looking together at the women who are mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in very beginning of Matthew, the very beginning of the New Testament. And these women show up the depth and breadth of the scandalous mercy of God. We don't have Rebecca or Leah or Rachael, nope, instead we start with Tamar. Tamar and Judah's story is unquestionably one of the more scandalous stories in the Bible, but, after all, we are dealing with a God who comes to bring us his scandalous mercy in Jesus.

John ends his little letter of 1 John by going back to what he has been saying all along. It may seem odd to end with "Little children, keep yourself from idols," but in that phrase we see the love that he has constantly shared and the theme that he has returned to again and again. Don't give up the faith! Don't buy the philosophy of your day. Don't give up on what you heard from the beginning. Don't buy the other offers of love and life from the would-be saviors around you. There is one God and one God alone and he has revealed himself in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus - in the water, the blood and the Spirit.

Love is not god. God is love. So, we don't get love right if we don't get God right. One of the key themes in John is the right understanding of the key of Christian faith - the gift of God in the incarnation of Christ. If you don't get that right, you don't get love right. But if you don't love one another, then you also haven't understood god. So, we learn love by abiding in the revealed love of the Father, Son and Spirit.

Job is described as "blameless," yet Job suffered - terribly. The book of Job is frequently consulted for answers about suffering. It may ask more questions than it answers. Job was blameless. Why would he repent? Why did he suffer so?

John continues on in Chapter 4 with various tests of true faith. He's given the churches in Asia Minor and the churches of today, here and now, moral tests of how we live our lives and social tests of how we live together in love. He now turns his attention back to a doctrinal test. There were many other teachers coming up who claimed to be from God but they had given in to the thinking of their day. John calls his readers back to the confession of God coming in the flesh in Christ. This, of course, challenged the idea of a distant god, it challenged the idea of household gods and it challenged the idea of a god who doesn't care much for the physical, bodily life. To deny the confess that Jesus came in the flesh is to miss the whole point of Christian faith.

Naaman is wealthy and powerful but he has an incurable disease. While he knows he needs help beyond what he can buy, he has no idea of the extent of what he really needs. In 2 Kings 5 we see God’s salvation in full force bringing the victory of life over death, freedom over captivity, and grace over greed.

Throughout First John the Apostle is calling us to be like God. But what is God like? John takes us back to the beginning to see the generosity of God. The call to imitate God is a challenge. Certainly, we can not create like He can, yet He calls out of scarcity and into generosity. He calls us to care for those he puts before us.

A consistent truth of Scripture is that we become like what we worship. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus (and in the NT book of 1 Peter) we hear this taught in this way: "Be holy as I am holy." God actually desires that we imitate him. After all, we are made in his image, to reflect his goodness. 1 John 3 tells us that we are children of God. And if we are children of God, then we will reflect our Father in Heaven.

John continues his discussion that he started early about being people of the lie. In Ephesians Paul tells us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic power over this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12). Here in 1 John 2, John tells us not to love the world and by that he means don't buy into a world where the lies of the evil one reign supreme. There were those who had given into the anti-messiah idea that the offspring of the woman hadn't crushed the head of the serpent, because God can't come in the flesh. John says that's the great lie. The desires of eyes that brought destruction to Eden is the same lie that brings death now. It's the lie that says we don't need God. We don't need his word and we don't need him walking with us then or now. But the light shines in the darkness, exposing the evil and revealing truth.

John began his first epistle with the declaration that the eternal has been manifest in the flesh in Christ and because of the incarnation we have fellowship with God and with one another. But sin breaks fellowship, so through the rest of 1 John chapter 1 he was addressing some errors of our understanding of sin - it's not a big deal, we don't really sin anyway, and God doesn't care about it too much. All of these are deceptions and he speaks to each one in order that we might test ourselves so that we would have fellowship with God and with one another. Well, John continues to address the issue of the revelation and fellowship of light and love through some tests - a moral test, a social test and a doctrinal test. John is intent all throughout to speak to temptations of his day to give up on some of these basics of the faith

We all know life can be difficult. Suffering is part of our walk. Families are broken by sin. Ones we love, sometimes even our children, die. Job's story provides us with guidance, especially about how we should approach God as our world crumbles.

John began his first epistle by reassuring us of the truth of the incarnation of Jesus, but also told us that because of the truth of the incarnation and resurrection we have fellowship with the Father and the Son and one another. It makes all of the sense in the world then that what John has to address next is that which breaks fellowship and what we do about it. Sin breaks fellowship and our temptations with sin is to downplay them, or to deny them, or to despair over. But thanks be to God is not a liar but deals is honest about sin and what has to be done with it. Jesus is the propitiation, the atonement for our sins. He turns away the wrath of God by the gift of his own life for us who break fellowship with him and others.

Though we are not totally sure the exact circumstances which gave rise to the writing of 1 John, what is very evident is that some, even by the end of the apostolic era, had turned from the true faith. Maybe they had given up on Jesus altogether, at the very least they had given up on the idea of God in the flesh in Christ and all that that truth calls us to. Jesus is the Word of Life. He is not the esoteric word (logos) of the popular philosophy of the day, he is not a God to make in an image that suits our ideas. He is the one who came and because he came as God in the flesh he is the one, and the only one, who brings life. He is the Word of Life and through him we have fellowship with the Father and with one another.

School is upon us. That means Fall is right around the corner. The beginning of school and the beginning of fall present us with dueling thoughts and emotions. We are presented with the hope of a new year and the bounty of produce, but also the limitations of all that is demanded of us. We know that so much of our fear and our sin that comes out of that place of fear is connected to the idea of scarcity. Will we have what it takes to raise our kids well? Will we be able to be present to others? Will God provide? Psalm 65 is widely considered one of the great creation and harvest hymns. It tells us again and again of God's Bounty. And it isn't just his bounty that is held up in heaven is some heavenly safe, but it is here and for us. Psalm 65 tells us of his bounty in redemption, in creation and in preservation.

A lot of times it feels like things just don't go right. Maybe it is we ourselves that seem to be our own worst enemy, sometimes it's other people and sometimes it just seems like the world in general. And we sure wonder if God knows all about it. Maybe we think of him as Rowan Williams points out, as sort of a failing billionaire and we are trying to manage his estate and we wonder if he has any clue what is happening down here. Does he know how people plot? Does he know how they scheme? Does he know how bad things are sometimes and how we feel like we just aren't going to make it through? Does he know how deep and how dark the hearts of people can be? Psalm 64, like the Bible as a whole says time and time again, reassures us that he will. None of it is lost on him and he will act suddenly. When the time had fully come, he sent his son. And the Son, Jesus, tells us that he will come like a thief in the night. He will come. He will act. He will make all things right.

What do you do when the worst happens to you? What does the worst bring out in you? When you lose your job, or when your spouse criticised you for the 25th time today, or when your children decide you just are old and can therefore be dismissed as not knowing anything. What about when the tragic happens: when you have another miscarriage, when COVID sticks around and keeps sticking around? What do you do? What do you do with God? David has some of the worst things happen. His own son kicks him out and some of his closest, most trusted advisors leave him and plot against him. He's out in the wilderness, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually and relationally. As Gordy Zubrod asked us a few weeks back: Does it break you are remake you? Or, similarly, what Psalm 62 asks us: do we give up on God or do we long for him all the more? What do you do? What does the worst bring out in you?

If there is one thing that most everyone longs for it is peace. We want to know that we are alight, that our kids are alright, that the future is alright. We stay up late and are restless in bed with the worries that occupy our minds. We dream of winning the Mega Millions with the thought that if we had enough money all of our worries will go away. We don't forgive because what will that demand of us? What kind of place will that bring us to? In the beginning of Luke, John the Baptist is preparing the people for Jesus, he is "guiding their feet into the way of peace." At the end of the gospel, Jesus shows up to a fearful group of disciples (and comes in with the door locked!) and the first thing he tells them is "Peace to you!' And all along Jesus speaks of his healing others and his forgiving the sins of others as bringing them peace. Psalm 62 invites us to silence and to stillness and to find that the only place of peace is in God alone.

Psalm 96 invites us to sing, to bless the Lord and declare his glory among the nations. David penned this Psalm. He knew much of God’s faithfulness and love. We know more! David could only imagine the coming Messiah. We can offer greater praise because we have seen the marvelous work of Jesus in the Gospels and in our own lives.