Psalm 111

The Deeds of the Lord Are Glorious & Wise

8.18.24 [Psalm 111] River of Life (13th Sunday after Pentecost)

(Ps. 111:2-3) Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds and his righteousness endures forever. Amen.

Nowadays, it seems like people will complain about just about anything. It’s not just shoddy workmanship, poor service, or bland food that rankle them enough to leave a bad review. Cynical folks will even complain about some of the most beautiful locations. And they don’t just mutter these criticisms under their breath. They post them on the internet for the whole world to see.

One individual, after visiting Arches National Park in Utah, wrote: “Nothing like the license plate”. Another advised those yearning to see Yellowstone: “Save yourself some money. Boil some water at home.” A third person grumbled that at Yosemite, “Trees block the view and there are too many gray rocks.” Another complained that Glacier NP was “too cold.” The never-satisfied folks didn’t spare our state’s national parks. For Saguaro they said: “Ok, if you like cactus.” For the Grand Canyon they wrote: “A hole. A very, very large hole.”

Amber Shares, an artist from North Carolina, created a series of retro-looking posters for these parks and their not-so-nice reviews. Each one you read you almost can’t help but roll your eyes. People complain about not seeing enough wildlife, that the scenery was too distant, and that Mt. Rainier wasn’t big enough. It’s ridiculous.

Don’t you wonder who they’re complaining to? The shy animals? The small mountains? The park rangers? The national parks system?

Ultimately, you could say they’re complaining against the Lord. Today’s Psalm reminds us that those places didn’t just come to be by accident. They are great works of the Lord. The glory of a sunrise over a volcano and the majesty of the sun setting over purple mountains—God made all these delightful sights and so many more.

Maybe you’ve viewed some of these great works and been less than delighted. Maybe, to you, the Grand Canyon is overrated. Maybe, the desert isn’t a place that charms you. At times, we may need to take a step back and just allow the great works of God to wash over us.

But the critiques of the parks are part of a deeper and wider issue. We live in a culture that loves to complain. We live among people who are very quick to point out problems in everyone and everything else.

Our society is ready and eager to point out red flags in others but reluctant to take responsibility for themselves & their own actions.

You see it everywhere. This critical spirit is not hard to find here in our local community—even among our friends and neighbors. You see it when you travel, too. Customers complain. Employees make a fuss. Supervisors raise a stink about consumers who work the system and employees who don’t work that hard. Everyone is complaining about everyone and everything. You hear and see unhappiness everywhere.

But do you hear in your own thoughts?…in your private conversations?

Do you see it in how you react to personal inconveniences and other people getting what you thought you deserved? Do you recognize the critical spirit that is unmasked when things aren’t going your way, or aren’t going according to your timeline or your plan?

Even though, on Sunday mornings, we may be quick to praise the Lord for all he has done, our attitudes change as our week progresses. When our expectations are not met, we grumble. When things don’t go to our plans, we pout. When our frustrations mount, we complain.

Think about how many times you and I grumble about things that our great-grandparents would be blown away by. We grumble about traffic and how there’s nothing to eat in the house or nothing to wear in our closets. We grumble about the internet being slow and how the temperature of the room just isn’t quite what we want at the moment.

More times than not our grumbling is the byproduct of having too many blessings. We grow impatient and entitled and discontent.

When our children or spouse don’t listen to us as well as we think they should, we are quick to denigrate the wonderful gift of family that God has given to us. Perhaps, more times than not, you don’t say anything mean or nasty to them—but (Ps. 139:2) the Lord knows your thoughts. He also hears your words, which are not always building up those God has given to you, much less thanking and praising him for all he has done for you.

Not only do we grumble and complain about our pretty cush lives, we find fault with our Heavenly Father when we think he has been too kind, gracious, or compassionate with someone else. Sometimes, we do this when someone else gets something we were longing for. Sometimes, we do this when we think God is being too patient with someone who has ignored his commands or needs to learn from their mistakes.

Of course, we also complain about God’s timing in all these things, too. How many times have we grown impatient with God’s perfect timing? How many times have we wondered what he’s waiting for or why he’s making us wait so long? How many times have we openly questioned what does he have us here for?

We do a lot more bellyaching than we'd like to admit. It’s more than a little embarrassing. All the blessings God has given us and this is how we treat him? Well, yeah. We’re sinners. Discontentment is our default.

But one of the great troubles we have in combatting this critical spirit is how are supposed to treat it. We think the solution to our complaining is to just knock it off. Cut it out. Stop it. But if this is our resolution we are revealing that we don’t really think of complaining as a real sin. It’s a bad look, a bad behavior, but not wickedness, not rebellion against God.

If it’s just a bad look, we will only complain when we think no one is looking. If it’s just a bad behavior, we will rely on self-discipline, rather than running to our Savior for forgiveness. Our complaining is, at its root, an expression of faithlessness. We are telling God we don’t really trust him. We don’t trust him to do what’s right for us, for the people around us, for the world we live in. We don’t trust God to understand the urgency or get the timing right.

The only way to uproot a spirit of discontentment is to replace it with the gift of the Spirit, faith in our Triune God. And faith comes from hearing the message, from marveling at all that God has done, from delighting in the redemption he provides. This is what God does for us through his Word!

In his Word, we learn why God blesses us with so many wonderful things and relationships. Every good & perfect gift comes from above, from our heavenly Father. He gives good gifts because they are an expression of his nature. The conveniences that we enjoy in medicine, travel, shopping, and entertainment are because God is gracious and compassionate. He has blessed mankind with laws that govern nature. He has given us the ability to ponder, study, and understand how things work so that we might make life in this world a little better.

He has blessed us with relationships and emotional connections because he wants us to grasp that we have a loving heavenly family. A loving Father doesn’t just love you when you are easy to love. A loving Father doesn’t just love you by spoiling you. Love means perseverance. Love means discipline.

In his Word, God reveals to us what real love is and does. Love is less about making someone happy in the short-term and more about being committed to someone for the long haul.

God shows that his love is not limited to people we may think of as good, either. He is patient with all people. He wants all people to come to a knowledge of the truth and to be saved—to be led to repentance and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, faith which trust in God above all things.

God is glorious and wise in how he distributes his blessings to us and others, in his patience with sinners. We can trust him in these areas. But we can also trust his timing. God is not slow to act. He keeps his promises, perfectly. When the set time had fully come, he sent his Son, the promised Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

God did not dawdle or delay. But he also will not be pressured, hurried, or rushed. We get hints of this throughout Jesus’ ministry. At Cana, the site of his first miracle (changing water into wine), Jesus tells Mary that his time had not yet come. He did not want yet to be known publicly as a miracle worker. The time for his death had not yet come. When he healed the sick and cast out demons and raised the dead, he often told them not to say anything—the time for glory to be known and seen was not yet. When the crowds wanted him to establish a kingdom now, he refused. When he was back in his hometown of Nazareth and they became enraged at him enough to throw him off the cliff—he walked right through the crowd. When another crowd in Jerusalem planned to stone him to death, he slipped away.

At the same time, when the time for his death had come, Jesus didn’t dilly-dally. He prayed for strength and then told his disciples “Rise, here comes my betrayer.” When he was on the cross, he suffered the full weight of the wrath of God against sinners. But God his Father did not let him languish in agony. Jesus died sooner than the Roman soldiers expected. And when he was buried, he rose from the dead in the morning of the third day. Our eternal God understands time and perfect timing. We can trust him.

Not only can we trust him. We can and should praise him. Because he has made this marvelous world. Because he has provided for our bodies and families. Because he is patient with sinners. Because he is great and so are the works of his hands. God replaces our critical spirit with a new spirit, the spirit of the New Man who knows and believes that God does all things well. We don’t just marvel at the mountains or the intricacies of the human body. The most incredible thing God has ever made is you. He made you, a sinner, righteous in his sight. He made you, an unhappy rebel, into his beloved and joyful child. He made you his own. Amen.