Psalm 145
In the comedy, Napoleon Dynamite, a character named Pedro Sanchez, an expressionless transfer student from Juarez, Mexico, speaks to an assembly at his high school in Idaho. Not knowing quite what to say, he remembers words his friend advised him to speak. In the most extreme deadpan imaginable, Pedro looks at his audience and practically mumbles, “If you vote for me, all your wildest dreams will come true.”
As it turns out, even though the movie is something of a satire of everything conventional, even of conventional Hollywood movies about teens, Pedro, in more typical Hollywood fashion, gets elected. Presumably, in the sequel they’re making, we’ll see his classmates’ disappointment when, lo and behold, their wildest dreams don’t come true.
How about you? Ever had a wild dream? Did it come true?
Some people, of course, experience the disappointment of having their wildest dreams and fondest hopes not coming to pass and then, become embittered by it.
Some offer prayers to God and feel that they’ve been ignored.
Others look at the anguish in the world and conclude that God simply isn’t around.
Last week, we began a worship and sermon series in which we’re looking at facing the real world with a real faith in a real God. We began last Sunday by saying that people of real faith pray. But what happens when we followers of Jesus Christ pray? Is God like Pedro Sanchez, promising to make our wildest dreams come true only to disappoint us?
Our Bible lesson for this morning, as was true last Sunday, comes from the Old Testament song book called the Psalms. The Psalms is a collection of Hebrew poetry used by ancient and modern believers in worship. Their themes run the gamut of the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of people who live in fellowship with God.
Some express remorse for sin.
Some complain and express anger and impatience with God.
Some praise God for His provision.
Some celebrate the enthronement of ancient kings.
Some remember God’s promises and blessings.
But throughout, you find a believing people praising and looking to God in good and bad times.
Today’s lesson is the whole of Psalm 145. There are a total of 150 songs in the Psalms we have today. But many scholars believe that in ancient times, Psalm 145 was the last one in what’s also called the Psalter. That’s because the ancient Hebrew believers (as well as the early Christian believers) were fond of what are called inclusios or inclusions. These segments of Scripture would be bracketed at their beginnings and at their ends with verses that either were exactly the same in their wording or that trumpeted similar themes. Scholars point out that both Psalm 1 and Psalm 145 talk about the universality of God’s reign over everything and about the blessedness of people who surrender themselves completely to God.
Be that as it may, I want to focus on just three verses in this fantastic Psalm 145 this morning, verses 17 to 20:
The LORD is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings.Pastor David Stark says that there are three things we learn about praying from these four verses. I think that he’s right. So, I’m “stealing” his outline. (I once heard church administration and growth guru Norm Shawchuck say that there is an eleventh commandment for us in the Church: Thou shalt steal good ideas!)
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them.
The LORD watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
So, what are the three things this passage from Psalm 145 tells us about prayer?
First: When we pray, we can be confident that God is close by. Recently, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, people have been asking, “Where was God when Katrina hit? Where was God in its aftermath?”
We live in a world, Jesus reminds us, in which the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, a world that groans under the aftereffects of humanity’s ancient declaration of independence from God. Until the day the resurrected Jesus returns to us, disasters both natural and humanly-created, will happen.
But it won’t alter the fact that the God we know through Jesus Christ, the Savior Who suffered on a cross for us all, is “near to all who call” on Him.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel tells a moving story from his life. When he was a boy growing up in Europe, he and his family, who were Jewish, were taken to Nazi concentration camps. All but Wiesel died in those horrible places. Once, Wiesel recalls, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to watch some of their fellow Jews as they were hanged to death.
One of the scaffolds malfunctioned, though, and one of those being hanged was allowed to dangle and twitch in a painful place between life and death for some time. Among the prisoners, a sobbing and plaintive cry arose. “Where is God now? Where is God now?” a person asked. Finally, another prisoner, perhaps angered by the question, replied, “He’s on the end of that rope.”
Where was God when Katrina hit? He was with the patients who died in the hospitals without food or power. He was with the Coast Guard personnel who were lowered from helicopters to pluck people from danger one by one. He was with the desperate masses who suffered unjustly in the Super Dome.
The people who died or who have lost homes or jobs may be the victims of a natural order that was long ago disordered by human rebellion and by massive failures of human competence or compassion today. But whenever God’s Name was called, you can bet that the One Who came into our world as a Suffering Servant was there, close by.
Second: The Psalm says that God fulfills the desires of those who call out to Him. That’s not the same as Pedro Sanchez’s promise in Napoleon Dynamite.
You see, the person who submits prayers to the God we know through Jesus Christ prays “in Jesus’ Name.” That means also that we submit to doing things Christ’s way. We give Christ access to our minds, hearts, and lives. When that happens, our desires become more like God’s desires for us. Jesus says in the New Testament book of Revelation that He comes to live in us. A change happens in our desires, rooted in delighting in doing God's will above all.
This doesn't mean that we all suddenly become perfectly virtuous beings; the old self finds it hard to give way and won't this side of the grave.
Nor does it mean that we dream smaller; it means we dream better.
It means that God sets to work on recrafting us from the inside out.
Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Life, you may remember, talks about a group from his church who are successful businesspeople with a proven ability to make money. Maybe at one time their wildest dreams included being fabulously wealthy. But under Christ’s Lordship, an internal change has come to these folks. Warren is still encouraging them to make us much money as they can. They've obviously been gifted for that, after all. But instead of making it just for themselves, these folks are turning their profits over to efforts to bring help to the poor and hope to the hurting throughout the world. Like Warren, they’ve put themselves on salaries and give the rest they make to God. Those are the kinds of things that people whose desires are subordinated to God will do.
So, when we pray we can be certain that God is near and that God will pay heed to our transformed desires. The third thing we can know is that God watches over those who pray. This doesn’t mean that God makes all the pain of living go away. Or that God turns our lives into playgrounds of personal pleasure. As Warren also points out, God is a lot more interested in our character than our comfort. God is shaping us to be useful people in this life, but in the one to come.
When I was a boy, I knew a pastor who said that he couldn't wait to get to heaven. He was a good student and teacher. He loved learning and imparting what he learned in memorable ways. He was sure that heaven will have a fabulous library and that God had work for him to do as a teacher. He knew that in this life, he might endure adversity and challenges, but that, in the lives of those who surrender to Jesus Christ, God doesn't allow a single experience to be wasted.
But God is building our character not just for the world to come, but this one.
True story of a guy I knew back in my college days. Joe was with some friends in his dorm room one night when they learned that a young woman down the hall had stationed herself in a resident’s room, on a bed, offering herself to anyone and everyone who might be interested. Joe looked down the hall and saw the line-up of young men who were going to take up this offer. Joe was sexually inexperienced. This looked like a cheap and easy way to find out what it was about.
But Joe was also a Christian. He seemed to sense God telling him, “Don’t do this, Joe.” You see, God was watching out for Joe, for his well-being, and for his character. Joe could have said No to God like the young woman and the young men who lined up on that dorm hallway that night. But he decided to say Yes to the God Who looked out for him. From this, Joe learned that he wasn’t the center of the universe, that more than his own personal preferences needed to be accounted for when he made decisions.
God isn’t a cosmic vending machine: We don’t insert our requests and pick up what we want, even the wild dreams that could harm us or others. But when we pray, we can know that God is near, that God will grant our godly desires, and that God will watch over us.
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