Is God a stranger to us?
Notes
Transcript
[ Introduction ]
Anybody watch the Superbowl? I didn’t care too much who won but it was one of those games where the score didn’t tell the whole story. There were so many times the losing team came close to scoring and something unfortunate would happen to them, whether it was a bad play by a player or just a questionable call by the referees. Some of the most incredible plays I’ve seen in my life were made by the losing team. There was one play where the quarterback was being chased by about 5 guys running for his life, gets tripped up, is parallel to the ground and somehow throws the balls 30+ yards to his teammate in the end-zone, hit’s his teammate in the face-mask and drops the ball. I don’t see any spiritual relation to sports but I feel like that play is a classic example of how sometimes in life you feel like you overcame so much to accomplish your duties to achieve something, but in the end things don’t work out and it’s the stuff that’s out of your control that caused the final result and you just feel like God must be mad at me. Because if things would have worked out it would have been great for me and the ones close to me. Our response and attitude towards events in life often times relate to how much trust we have in God.
[ Prayer ]
So the question for today is, “is God a stranger to us?” or it could also be “is God a threat to our lifestyle?” I believe these are the two biggest reasons why we choose not to trust in God.
We’re going to focus on Psalm 31:19-24 today. Before we dive in let’s just start out with giving some context. Psalm 31 is a Psalm of David and it’s a lot about him in pain and sorrow, but here in verses 19-24 he is giving praise to God.
How great is the goodness
you have stored up for those who fear you.
You lavish it on those who come to you for protection,
blessing them before the watching world.
You hide them in the shelter of your presence,
safe from those who conspire against them.
You shelter them in your presence,
far from accusing tongues.
Praise the Lord,
for he has shown me the wonders of his unfailing love.
He kept me safe when my city was under attack.
In panic I cried out,
“I am cut off from the Lord!”
But you heard my cry for mercy
and answered my call for help.
Love the Lord, all you godly ones!
For the Lord protects those who are loyal to him,
but he harshly punishes the arrogant.
So be strong and courageous,
all you who put your hope in the Lord!
So starting out we read about how great God’s goodness is, and that He lavishes this goodness upon us, He blesses us in ways that the watching world will notice it. And what is required to be lavished with this Goodness?
Beginning of verse 19 - “How great is the goodness you have stored up for those who fear you.”
Next - “You lavish it on those who come to you for protection”
so we:
Fear Him
Come to Him for protection
How do we do that? Well being a God-fearer means having a reverence towards God. It’s someone who believes in His Word and trusts in Him. But if he’s a stranger to us it’s pretty tough to do that. We must get to know Him as our savior and protector.
Think about a young kid at the pool, before they know how to swim or not, whether they got their arm floaties on or not, if their Dad is in the pool waiting for them to jump into his arms, the kid is going to jump in, trusting his Dad is going to catch him and protect him from drowning. The kid will have a great time and not be scared at all because they know and trust in their Dad to catch them. No matter the situation, we need to know God’s loving hand of protection is always there for us, and we can experience great joy and peace in that.
God’s goodness isn’t given to us by what we accomplish, but how we accomplish the things that we do. After all in the classic story about one man who built a house on the rock and one who built the house on the sand, they both built a house. They accomplished the same thing, but one did it the right way with the right foundation.
Moving on to verse 20
You hide them in the shelter of your presence,
safe from those who conspire against them.
You shelter them in your presence,
far from accusing tongues.
The Greek word for “Shelter of” here is “Se’ter” which means protection. Another verse about being in the Lord’s shelter is found in Psalm 91:1-3.
Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
This I declare about the Lord:
He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
he is my God, and I trust him.
For he will rescue you from every trap
and protect you from deadly disease.
We find rest and protection in God’s presence. Notice, though, it does not say the traps and deadly diseases don’t come for you?
It says he will rescue you from traps and he will protect you from deadly disease. I don’t know about you, but too many times for me danger is only approaching or starting and I panic, “Why is this happening?!” We need to continue our trust and faith through the events of life not just to the start of them and bail on everything we claim we believe. If that’s the case we probably never trusted in the first place.
I think even David can relate to that.
In Psalm 31:22 it says:
In panic I cried out,
“I am cut off from the Lord!”
But you heard my cry for mercy
and answered my call for help.
The Greek word for panic here is hpaz, meaning “make haste” or “Run away in haste”. It’s tough to control our emotions in the moment of distress, but we just need to bring our requests before the lord, and He will hear and answer our call for help. His love is unfailing as said in verse 21.
Praise the Lord,
for he has shown me the wonders of his unfailing love.
He kept me safe when my city was under attack.
God’s love never fails, we fail to acknowledge it. We can fail to see and feel it if we’ve lost focus and trust in God. To know Him more is the way to solve that. Let’s finish this passage and read verses 23 and 24.
Love the Lord, all you godly ones!
For the Lord protects those who are loyal to him,
but he harshly punishes the arrogant.
So be strong and courageous,
all you who put your hope in the Lord!
God’s love and protection on us is reiterated over and over again just in these few verses. If you truly believe the Word, we surely can’t miss this part about it. But it’s still a choice we have to make, to trust, if we get prideful and comfortable and try to do things our own way, God will allow it. It just won’t be enjoyable. He harshly punishes the arrogant. I saw a meme the other day, it showed a man decked out in all this armor from head-to-toe. And it read something along the lines of “I’m so spiritually strong right now nothing can take me down” And then the next picture had an arrow going through the tiny eye hole and it read “Pride”
To be a Christian and persevere with Trust through the storms of life we really need to be in the Word and be strong and courageous. Without that we’re not a lot more than the lukewarm Christian. Very easy to talk about trusting in God, living it is completely different. And this doesn’t only apply to storms and trials of life. Trust definitely comes into play when we think we need something so bad, when in reality we should not have it. Picture a dog, what many call “man’s best friend.” Usually they are super loving. One things Dogs love is table food, especially if it has bones. Now I know there are many bones that a dog can have, but some are not so good. A chicken bone for example can break easily so they’re considered to be dangerous because they can puncture the dog’s gastrointestinal tract or get stuck in their throat and cause them to choke. Have you ever tried to take a bone away from a dog? Not a very fun thing to do because they get so angry. They can go from one the most friendly animals to the most aggressive. Sometimes I feel like that’s how we are with God. When our ears are being scratched and life is good no worries, but you try to take something from me, something that to me logically seems fine, after all, the other “bones” we’ve had in the past were fine. Now suddenly this one I can’t have?! The dog doesn’t have all the information. Its knowledge of the situation is more limited than ours and it doesn’t trust that we are looking out for it. Now with God, He knows all and we are the ones with limited information. The thing about trust is it can’t be dependent on your knowledge of a situation, it’s completely about sacrificing or doing the thing that God asks strictly on the fact that He told us to, no matter how much or little we understand about it.
Another thing I like about this passage is if you look at the preceding text David makes some requests.
I’m just going to read snippets from verses 15-18
15: “…Rescue me from those who hunt me..”
16: “…Let your favor shine on your servant...”
17: “...Don’t let me be disgraced...”
18: “Silence their lying lips...”
After these requests, in 19-24 as we just read he goes instantly into praise to God. Usually we only give praise and thanks to someone after we’ve received something we requested. Only with God can we truly request something and instantly follow it up with deserving praise. And David was doing this because he trusted God.
Verse 14 says:
But I am trusting you, O Lord,
saying, “You are my God!”