Rescuing Dirt Balls

Scripture Introduction:

Watch Sagan’s pale blue dot.

Hold up BeyBlade piece. See this little piece. About 8 years ago I’m on the couch attempting to relax. I’m just starting to get into relaxation mode when this agitated little boy comes up to me whimpering and crying. I’m no longer in relaxation mode. I check to make sure he isn’t bleeding or something really serious…then I’m informed through the sobs of what the issue is. We’ve lost this little piece.

It’s a piece that he has 8-10 others just like. He could still play his game if he didn’t have this little insignificant piece. Unfortunately for my relaxation this piece is not insignificant to him. My solution to our little conundrum is to settle for a similar piece. We can search for the other piece later. In fact I bet if we just go about our day it will turn up somewhere. No need to call in a search party.

“Ahhh, yes…finally a little time to…”

An agitated little boy approaches me. He’s whimpering and snot crying. My relaxation will have to wait.

Finally, after a couple minutes of wailing, I am informed of the problem. He has lost a piece to a toy. It’s a piece that he has 8-10 others just like. He could still play his game if he didn’t have this little insignificant piece. Unfortunately for my relaxation this piece is not insignificant to him.

My solution to our little conundrum is to settle for a similar piece. We can search for the other piece later. In fact I bet if we just go about our day it will turn up somewhere. No need to call in a search party.

His solution is different. He wants to call in a search party. Stop everything. Grab the flashlights. Disassemble the entire house. All of this to find a one-inch piece that is barely discernible from his 10 other one-inch pieces. I’m thinking to myself, “Son, in the grand scheme of things this little toy is about as significant as a piece of dust. In a hundred years from now it won’t matter that you used this piece over the other. Why should we start a search party for what amounts to me as a ball of dust?”

It’s but a pale blue dot. And my estimation is, I suppose similar to that of Carl Sagan in that video we watched. Did you hear the hopelessness of one little statement there.

I’m thinking to myself, “Son, in the grand scheme of things this little toy is about as significant as a piece of dust. In a hundred years from now it won’t matter that you used this piece over the other. Why should we start a search party for what amounts to me as a ball of dust?”

In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

If that little piece wants to be rescued and if it’s up to me. It isn’t happening. You’re on your own tiny little piece. There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Sagan is right about one thing…that pale blue dot has a way of humbling us doesn’t it. Kind of makes things not feel so significant. We’re but specks of dust on a tale pale blue dot in the grand scheme of the universe. Why would we be rescued? Why would we matter?

Thankfully, the heart of God is more like that of my son. His searching heart is so much bigger than mine. He left the glories of heaven to “seek and to save” that which amounts to nothing more significant than a pile of dust.

The searching heart of Jesus

I’m thankful that the searching heart of Jesus is more like my son’s than my own. He left the glories of heaven to “seek and to save” that which amounts to nothing more significant than a pile of dust. (see )

Dust. Sweep up into the vacuum with a push of the button, dust.

Insignificant…

But not to it’s Maker. Just as that little “insignificant” piece was everything but that to my son, so also we are significant to our Maker.

Dust balls? You bet.

But dust balls that matter to the Maker. Dust balls that cause angels to rejoice. Heaven to swoop. And the Creator to bleed.

That is significant.

--

But I need to add a bit of a ripple to our story. That little piece was a helpless victim in our story. A poor pathetic little thing—a speck of a speck on a big pale blue dot. There’s something within us that wants to rise up and rescue the vulnerable. It’s a noble thing. But that’s not fully the story of the Bible. You see we aren’t just innocent little insignificant specks of dirt. We are rebels. If we want to keep our searching for a toy analogy we are a LEGO piece that you’ve just stepped on.

And so this rescue—if there is to be one—is far more than just rescuing insignificance. It’s rescuing insignificant rebels who’ve consistently dishonored you, brought shame to your good name, rejected you, disobeyed you, mocked you, on and on. So place yourself, as we rightly are, as dust on a pale blue dot. And marvel at what I’m about to read you.

Don’t believe me? Listen to the greatness

Psalm 103 ESV

Of David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Read

There are a few different responses that we might have to such a text like this. There may be some who are a bit like Carl Sagan’s comment. The evidence just doesn’t match up. You don’t believe it. Maybe you’re jaded. It’s just to unbelievable of a thing. And so you doubt that such a thing is true. I’d just say to those that I don’t know many who can live consistently with such despair. Sagan’s comments in that video are humbling if we have a gospel perspective---but they are utterly decimating if we fully and consistently buy into his words. We’re insignificant. Period. Full stop. You can’t live with such hopelessness. My prayer is that God may open up your heart to hope.

But there is another type of questioning that might happen when you hear a text like this. You may say, “this would be really great news if it was true. I would love to believe it but I don’t dare. I’ve been burned too many times”. Or maybe you’d say, “That might be wonderful for someone else but I’m far too messed up. I’m too far gone. I’m too dirty. There is no way that I could truly be loved like this.” My prayer for you this morning is that God may speak tenderly to you and overwhelm you with his love.

There’s another response that can happen sometimes to the love of God. And oddly enough it’s boredom. We’ve grown accustomed to grace and love and mercy and all those Christian words and they’ve almost started to mean nothing. Not soul rattling and heart stirring anymore. I think this is even what David was doing in this particular Psalm. He’s telling his soul. Hey, soul wake up! Don’t forget his benefits. Don’t let yourself fall into a slumber and get bored and distracted and complacent and just kind of wither away. Don’t check out. Recite his blessings, soul. Remind yourself. And so that’s my prayer this morning that as we walk through this text you’ll be reminded and excited again.

And I suppose there are those here this morning who are already excited about the Lord and remembering his benefits daily. This will just be like your daily exercise. It’ll just add to the growing excitement. My hope for all of us is that we marvel at what the Lord has done. That we remember and obey this text and that at the end we bless the Lord.

What does that mean? What does it mean to bless the Lord?

Questioning.

Doubting.

It means to honor him. To be overwhelmed with gratitude. And it’s here in these first 5 verses that we are given a time-honored strategy for rescuing our souls from apathy and dullness and boredom and discouragement and depression and hopelessness and a whole host of other enemies to our joy. David here is preaching the good news to himself. He is counting his blessings naming them one by one. And telling his soul to not forget them. You get the idea that he begins the Psalm weary but ends with exuberant praise. He ends up renewed like a young eagle. And that’s what happens when we remind ourselves of the benefits of the Lord. It puts things into perspective.

So in the first five verses we have kind of a progression. We are forgiven and we are restored and we are blessed and satisfies. Notice this. He forgives you. That means removes the obstacles to fellowship. We’re reconciled to God. But he doesn’t just leave you there. He heals. This isn’t saying, “you’ll never get sick if you get saved”. Instead its saying God begins this process of healing us—all the consequences from our sin he begins working out and healing and fixing and such. He redeems our life from the pit. To redeem something means to buy it back. Here we are in the pit. It’s the place of death. And we are bought back from there. We are rescued. No hope of rescue from this pit. But the Lord went down into it…that place where you are…with all the darkness and fear and yuck and sorrow and shame and filth and mire and muck and anger and rage and hopelessness and addiction and hatred and defeat. He goes down into that pit and he grabs you and he pulls you up from it. You aren’t in that pit anymore. He goes into the mess you’ve made of your little slice of that pale blue dot. No Carl Sagan…there IS a rescuer.

And what does he do when you’re out of that pit. He gives you a crown. He surrounds you with his steadfast love and mercy. That’s what it means that he crowns you with it. It means there isn’t one square inch of this earth…not one place where you aren’t going to be met with his love and mercy. That means there is nothing for us to fear. There is no pit where he won’t go. There is no mess so messy that he won’t redeem and untangle and restore and heal and set upon that rock and crown with his love and mercy. Steadfast love is a love that refuses to give up. That’s what we are met with.

And he satisfies us with good. Can you believe this? He doesn’t just pull us out of the pit. He doesn’t just forgive us. He doesn’t just surround us with his love and mercy but he satisfies us. He works for our joy for all eternity. God is radically dedicated to making you mind-blowingly eternally joyful. And he knows how to do it.

David continues by placing his own personal benefits into the benefits of God’s larger story.

And that’s helpful isn’t it. I know we live in a highly individualized culture. I think we might not be incredibly unsettled by the thought that we would be utterly unique in the universe and that we are uniquely amazing and awesome and wonderful. But there is also—and we might not even realize it—something a little unsettling and lonely about that isn’t there? There’s a certain entrapment which comes from being so unique that nobody really understands what is going on. We might even use that to be able to play the role of a victim who is stuck and unable to change—when reality is that we are unwilling. But David here places our benefits in the middle of a much larger story.

You aren’t alone in this. That’s good. Because if I’m the only one seeing this and experiencing this and declaring forgiveness and all these blessings i might just be crazy. But if I’m part of a story. And that story is much much older then it kind of transcends my situation. It places me in a story. And that’s what David is doing here. But here is how I picture us receiving this portion of the Psalm.

You come to this text and this good news with a mountain of debt. Yes, you’re guilty. Yes, you’ve blown it a million times over. But you’re still oppressed. You’re still enslaved. It doesn’t matter if those chains were put there by your own bad decisions or by somebody else. You’re still in chains. This was so often the story of the Israelites. They found themselves in desperate spots so many times. One of them was at the beginning of the book of Exodus. It’s a time of awful and bitter slavery. But at the tail end of chapter 2 the people cry out to God and he hears them. And that changes everything.

You see at the beginning of the Exodus story, Moses had seen the difficult time of his people and it moved him to do something about it. But he ends up failing miserable. He ends up murdering a guy and has to flee Egypt for 40 years. He really wanted to do something to help his people but he is now on the sidelines. As another as put it:

He really wanted to do something to help his people but he is now on the sidelines. As another as put it:

“He was a failure as a deliverer of his people, a failure as a citizen of Egypt, unwelcome among either of the nations he might have called his own, a wanted man, a now-permanent resident of an obscure place, alone and far from his origins, and among people of a different religion.”

If this guy is your rescuer…if he is your deliverer…the story looks pretty bleak at this point, doesn’t it? Have you ever been there? You’ve had your eyes opened and your heart stirred and so you jumped in with both feet and messed the whole thing up. Your heart was in the right place but you checked your brain at the door. You’ve got the heart of a deliverer but not yet the wisdom, not yet the patience. What Moses needed, and often what we need, is the Midian desert.

Have you ever been there? You’ve had your eyes opened and your heart stirred and so you jumped in with both feet and messed the whole thing up. Your heart was in the right place but you checked your brain at the door. You’ve got the heart of a deliverer but not yet the wisdom, not yet the patience. What Moses needed, and often what we need, is the Midian desert.

But something happens in that changes everything.

This will be the fuel for the whole Exodus story. The Israelites are desperate. They did not have the luxury that Moses had…they don’t have the option to take matters in their own hands. They cannot rescue themselves. All they have and all they know is slavery. Their rescue must come from without, it certainly cannot come from within. And so they do the only thing that helpless people can do…they groan…they cry out to God for deliverance.

And God hears.

This is amazing. This changes everything. He remembered his covenant. Now, it reads almost like God was sitting on his throne and then all of a sudden realized, “oh, man I forgot all about my people”. But that’s not what is happening here. That “God remembered” is an intimate term. It’s God saying that he is going to make right on his promise to Abram. Even his promise that he’d rescue them from the hands of their oppressors in .

Now you’ve got something.

Groaning accomplished what grit couldn’t. Prayer accomplishes what personality could not. A sigh to God does more than any human effort. Rather than taking matters in their own hands the Israelites placed the matter in God’s hand. Now, don’t hear me wrong. God will accomplish his purposes. He isn’t doing something here that he didn’t intend to do all along. But when we cry out like this God hears us. I’ve heard that prayer changes things….I might agree with this…but I think it’s better to say that God changes things. We pray to God because we are desperate. He is sovereign. We are not. Prayer is placing our situation in His hands.

What a lesson this is for us. We all have dreams and things we’d like to see happen don’t we? Some of these might be silly. They might just be wish dreams. They might be foolish and for God to answer them would be our destruction. He won’t answer those in the way we want. But perhaps we’ve got our heart exactly in the right place but our knees aren’t where they should be. Our hands are calloused from grit and not folded in prayer. (That’s not to call for an unholy passivity, but to say that we can learn from Moses here.)

THE LORD words righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He makes his way known to Moses. He shows himself mighty to the Israelites. And he shows himself not only mighty but also merciful. What’s David doing here. He’s placing you in that story. He’s saying you need somebody to come through for you? You need somebody to rescue you. He did it with Moses. And He’s doing it with you. He’s big and his mighty and he’s merciful.

Now marvel at this. He does not deal with us according to our sins. He doesn’t repay us according to our iniquities. As high as the heavens above the earth as far as the east from the west does he remove them.

Commentary on the Book of Psalms Psalm 103

From the comparison of the eagle, the Jews have taken occasion to invent, for the purpose of explanation, a fabulous story. Although they know not even the first elements of any science, yet so presumptuous are they, that whatever may be the matter treated of, they never hesitate to attempt to explain it, and whenever they meet with any thing which they do not understand, there is no figment so foolish that they do not bring forward, as if it were an oracle of God.

Sam Storms makes this point well:

Biblical Studies: Meditations on the Psalms Meditations on the Psalms (36): Before the Throne of God above (Psalm 103:10–12)

The Hubble Telescope has given us breathtaking pictures of a galaxy some 13 billion lights years from earth. Yes, 13 billion light years! Remember, a light year is 6,000,000,000,000 (six trillion) miles. That would put this galaxy at 78,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth! In case you were wondering, we count from million, to billion, to trillion, to quadrillion, to quintillion, to sextillion. So, this galaxy is 78 sextillion miles from earth.

If you traveled 500 mph non-stop, literally sixty-minutes of every hour, twenty-four hours in every day, seven days in every week, fifty-two weeks in every year, with not a moment’s pause or delay, it would take you 20,000,000,000,000,000 years (that’s 20 quadrillion years) to get there! And that would only get you to the farthest point that our best telescopes have yet been able to detect. If the universe is infinite, as I believe it is, this would be the mere fringe of what lies beyond.

Who heals all your diseases.

Biblical Studies: Meditations on the Psalms Meditations on the Psalms (36): Before the Throne of God above (Psalm 103:10–12)

My point, the point of the psalmist, is that the magnitude of such distance is a pathetically small comparison to the likelihood that you will ever be dealt with according to your sins or repaid for your iniquities! If you were ever inclined to pursue your transgressions so that you might place yourself beneath their condemning power, 78,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles is an infinitesimally small fraction of the distance you must travel to find them!

Who redeems your life from the pit.

Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

Do you know what that means? Your sin, in Christ, is gone!

Who satisfies you with good.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. He knows our frame he remembers that we are dust.

Oh, this is so unbelivably great news. God used this text for me so long ago to blow me away with the goodness of the gospel. You see I was running on a treadmill of sorts. Trying to be a good enough person. Trying to be a good husband. A good pastor. A good dad. A good son. A good everything. And I just wasn’t living up to my expectations for myself. I felt so miserable. So low. I felt like a dirt ball. The lowest of the lows. So small. So insignificant. So not up to the task at hand. So weak. So frail. So helpless. So hopeless. So much of a failure. I felt like dust.

Do you know what that’s like to just poor your guts out and have a big pity party about how much you are blowing it and you really are and it’s all true and you’ve hurt people and yourself and made a mess of things. And you share all of that to a friend and the response is just. “Yep. And then you’re pulled in for a hug.” God knows that you are but a speck of dust. You don’t have to be God. You don’t have to be the Rescuer. Carl Sagan is wrong. It isn’t just up to us. We can’t rescue ourselves. There IS a rescuer from outside who knows our frame.

This story isn’t about you. Moses? Dirt ball. Israelites? Dirt ball. You and I? Just specks of dust. Dirt ball.

Jesus? Rescuer. God of the universe who took upon himself flesh. Who became as the dust to redeem us. He comes and lives out life on this pale blue dot to rescue us.

Look at verses 15-17. We don’t last. We’re like a blade of grass. But God…his love outlasts our insignificance. It’s bigger than our inadequacy and sin and everything.

Suppose I could find out a sinner so vile that Jesus Christ could not reach him; why then the devils in hell would take him through their streets as a trophy; they would say, "This man was more than a match for God; his sin was too great for God's grace." What says the Apostle? "Where sin abounded"—that is you, poor sinner;—"where sin abounded"—what sins you plunged into last night, and on other black occasions,—"where sin abounded"—what? Condemnation? Hopeless despair? No, "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." I think I see the conflict in the great arena of the universe. Man piles a mountain of sin, but God will match it, and he upheaves a loftier mountain of grace; man heaps up a still huger hill of sin, but the Lord overtops it with ten times more grace; and so the contest continues till at last the mighty God plucks up the mountains by the roots and buries man's sin beneath them as a fly might be buried beneath an Alp. Abundant sin is no barrier to the superabundant grace of God.

And so the Psalm ends—in a sort of way where it began. With praise. With calling upon all of creation to bless the Lord.

You going to be ungrateful and not bless the Lord? You going to make your life on this pale blue dot about the pale blue dot or you going to be swept up into something greater!

So how do you know that these promises are yours? Notice there are some conditions on this. “Those who fear him. Those who hold his covenant. etc.” It almost sounds like it’s something we have to earn. But that’s contrary to the good news of the gospel. No what it means to be a covenant keeper what it means to fear him what it means to be part of the story part of the us is to be united to Jesus Christ. To be connected to him.

Our sins they are many. Yes. But his mercy is more.

What do you say when you are in heaven? I’m with him...

His identity is my identity.

Two things I know. I’m a great sinner. (I’ve come to accept that I’m but dust) But Christ is a greater Savior. His mercy is more.

There’s not a single person here who is outside the realm of God’s ability to save.

But one last question…if God is as high and mighty and wonderful and not like us and He has such a heart for specks of dust. Why are we sitting comfortably and trying to relax on the couch? We’ve got to put together a search party and find that missing piece.

Bored.

Excited.