All My Life
Notes
Transcript
Introduction/Scripture
Introduction/Scripture
How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works— he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord. But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord, my soul. Praise the Lord.
Pray.
I really wanted to preach a different sermon today. It’s Pentecost, so I was hoping for fireworks, flames, and power. However, where we landed is perhaps in an ordained place designed by God. Today is also confirmation for 19 6th graders. We are baptizing 4 and confirming 19 as they make a personal declaration to live out of the waters of their baptism. Psalm 104 is a declaration of praise and a life surrendered, an appropriate posture for Pentecost Sunday.
Background for psalm 104
Background for psalm 104
This song is a creation hymn. It is as if the psalmist steps outside into creation and begins to meditate on the entire work of creation.
The whole psalm is framed with the same phrase:
Praise the Lord, my soul
More rigidly than that is Praise the Lord, I tell myself.
In between these personal admonitions are two stanzas that provide a litany of amazement and praise for all that God has done. The first stanza Acknowledges God’s Supreme power as King-Creator:
The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent
He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.
He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
You separated the sea from the land, made valleys and mountains.
Then the second stanza is about God’s complex and diverse supply on the earth:
almost forgotten small things like…
He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth:
or the spectacular:
He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down.
All of it is a response to the glory of God in creation. Most of us affirm there is a good that created everything. How that played out and in what scientific verifiable reality…that is not what is most important. But most of us affirm that God did create.
We are apathetic to creation. One of our church members is a photographer and he took this amazing picture of a cross in a field. That it looks like a tornado or a storm passed over this field and yet the cross is still standing. Leaning but standing. And the wind has blown a piece of material onto the cross so it looks like it has been draped intentionally. It is a haunting photo that tells of the power of the cross that defeated the evil storms of this life, withstood the forces of evil, and stands as a triumphal victory on our behalf. It has been hanging in my office for so long that I barely notice it. The other day someone came and visited me and that walked into my office and stopped, almost in a trance to ponder this picture. He reminded me of the power of this photo.
The Psalmist is reminding us of that which we have missed. The power of God in creation.
A few weeks ago, we had the eclipse, which by all means was a wild event. And we all kind of freaked out, but if we thought about God…we largely pondered if this was the end of the world, instead of another reminder that our God is the God of all creation and under every leaf, in every stream, and in the seemingly normal cycles of the skies are reminders of the God who created us.
We need pentecost
We need pentecost
Today is pentecost. We celebrate the birth of the church as the Spirit was poured out to create again. Just like the Spirit hovered over the darkness in Genesis 1 and then brought forth life. In Jerusalem, in the stillness and darkness of the upper room as followers of the way waited, the Spirit came and created again. This time bringing new life and establishing the reign of his kingdom on the earth.
We do not know what to do with this day. It is difficult for us to imagine it and we have sort of distanced ourselves from it.
Some observations:
We need pentecost
We need a transcontinental movement of God. Where God calls the multitudes to respond to him.
A friend and mentor described this week what our day has been about:
I live in a country heavy-laden with entertainment and junk food and sex and debt. We lose ourselves doom scrolling for hours on end. Facebook has become our emotional vomitorium and schadenfreude our national pastime. We want and take and consume and smirk and rage. The idea of God is receding into distant cultural memory. In its place is not a secular void but a return to the pagan gods, sometimes with different names, gods of might and luck and erotic desire, gods who do not love, who give divine sanction to the lower aspects of our nature. These gods inhabit the halls of government and academia and even churches. We call them “goodness” or “wisdom” or “justice” or even “God,” but they know better, and deep down so do we.
Technology, consumerism, hyperindividualism, forces of evil that convince us busy, success, satisfaction are to be valued above all us.
We need a pentecost.
2. We are not sure we believe in Pentecost
In his recent volume, The Scandal of Pentecost: A Theology of the Public Church (T&T Clark, 2024), Wolfgang Vondey writes, “There exists a persistent stereotype of Pentecost as an extraordinary and unrepeatable event accentuated by miraculous charismatic manifestations that find little continuity in the subsequent history of Christianity” (7).
We see pictures, art, and hear the story of pentecost and we have a hard time understanding it. tongues of fire, different languages.
We read through the book of Acts and the believers healed the sick, caste out demons, raised the dead, preached in chains, and gave their lives. We have anxiety about the 5 o’clock news and it is difficult to imagine such an experience.
3. We have mystified it and missed some critical ingredients of pentecost and the movement of God in our history.
For a moment, dont worry so much about what happened when God came in the Spirit. Focus on the posture of those he came to.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
They were gathered in prayer. Waiting for God. Surrendered completely. Trusting not in themselves but dependent and desperate for God to move. In the room is Peter who weeks before learned the act of surrender and repentance when resurrected Jesus came and met him. In the room are all of the disciples that finally laid down their agendas, their prescriptions for how Jesus should do things, their material lives, their careers, complete abandonment.
The truth is, this is the same in any story of Holy Spirit movements:
January 1, 1739: John, Charles Wesley and Charles Whitfield gathered in a room to pray and surrender
1906: a one-eyed son of freed slaves, William Seymour surrendered his life to God and began to preach about the power of God. After he was shut out of churches, a few began to join him in a home and revival broke out on Azuza Street in L.A. 10 years of this movement.
1949 in Scotland. Two old women, one of them completely blind, began praying for young people in their community to come to know Christ. Surrendered. After doing this for a few weeks, they got their minister involved. After a couple months, the Spirit fell and revival that reached tens of thousands over 3 years began to take place.
Asbury University last year. Chapel ended and a few students lingered in the chapel, began confessing sin to one another….
I yearn for this again in our day. Don’t you? I dont know why and when God seems to choose to move. But what I do know it he wont if we are not willing.
I will sing to the Lord all my life
I will sing to the Lord all my life
So the response of the psalmist is one of this posture. As he tells himself… I will praise the Lord.
I will sing to the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
This surrender is one of humility and repentance.
Our response today twofold:
Surrender
Worship
