Our God is Worthy of Our Trust

Intro

Well good morning and Happy 4th of July. Thanks for taking time out of your holiday to be here this morning. Since it is a holiday, as we were planning out the preaching calendar for our Sermon on the Mount series we thought it would be good to step out of the Sermon on the Mount today and do something from the Psalms that is related to Jesus’ sermon.

And there are several places in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus seems to be alluding to or echoing one or more of the Psalms. For example, Psalm 37:11 says “The meek shall inherit the land,” which is almost exactly what Jesus says in Matthew 5:5. Ps 24 talks about the person who has a “pure heart” as one who can come into God’s presence, which sounds a lot like Jesus saying that the “pure in heart…shall see God.” And maybe the most obvious example is Ps 1 which begins by saying “Blessed is the man...” and then goes on to describe this blessed man, which is very similar to what Jesus does in the Beatitudes.

Any of those Psalms would have been a good choice to provide some background information for the Sermon on the Mount and inform our understanding of Jesus’ teaching, but a couple of months ago Chris emailed me after one of the 6:30 Psalms Men’s Group meetings and said I should look at Ps 111 and 112 together and consider preaching over them on July 4th.

And the reason these Psalms made the Men’s Group think about the Sermon on the Mount is because Ps 112 starts out just like Ps 1 and the Beatitudes talking about the blessed man and it says, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.” But what really struck the Men’s Group and what made me decided to pick these Psalms is the way they go together.

You may or may not know this but the Psalms are not just a randomly put together collection of individual Psalms. There are many different authors of the Psalms and many different types of Psalms and subject matter in them and sometimes they do just jump from one to the next without any obvious connection between the two, but more often than not, the Psalms were intentionally organized in a specific way.

And oftentimes you know this is the case because two or more Psalms in a row will repeat some of the same phrases or have very similar structure. So for example, Ps 42 and 43 both end the same exact way saying, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” The subject matter in both Ps 42 and 43 is the same and so in order to read these two Psalms for all their worth, we should consider them together.

And so as we come to Ps 112, which talks about the blessed man and has a clear link to the Sermon on the Mount, what we see is that the Psalm just before it, Ps 111, starts out with the same exact phrase, “Praise the Lord!” And, just as significant, is the fact that both Ps 111 and 112 are acrostics in Hebrew, which means that each line starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So it’s not as obvious for us in English but anyone reading these Psalms in Hebrew can clearly see that Ps 111 and Ps 112 were meant to fit together.

And here’s why I think that’s a really big deal and can really help inform our understanding of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Ps 112, the second Psalm in this pair, reads a lot like the Sermon on the Mount. It talks about the blessed man, and being light in a dark world, and being generous with money, and living a life of flourishing. It really is a mini Old Testament Sermon on the Mount. But remember, we shouldn’t read it without Ps 111. So what is Ps 111 about?

Well Ps 111 is all about greatness of God. In other words, what these two Psalms taken together teach us is that before we decide to live life according to God’s way, before we can live like the blessed man and be generous and be light in the midst of darkness, we have to know who God is and whether or not he’s even worth following. You see, the Sermon on the Mount calls us to life live God’s way and promises that we will flourish as a result, but that assumes that God is even worthy of our trust and knows what’s best for us.

And here’s the problem. I think for many of us, the goodness and trustworthiness of God has never been more than assumption we’ve always had. And here’s what I mean. Most of us grew up in Christian families and for many of us we grew up in Christian families here in the Bible Belt. And because of that, from a young age we assumed God existed, we assumed that going to church was a good thing to do, and we assumed that even if we didn’t always do it, we should live the way God wants us to live. But because we grew up with those assumptions, we never really looked at the facts and the evidence and the claims and decided, is all of this really true? What is God really like?

And we’ll have the leave the questions of does God even exist, did Jesus really rise from the dead, and is the Bible trustworthy for another day, but what we can answer today is, “Is God worthy of my trust?” Have you ever really asked that question? Here’s what happens when we haven’t.

There’s at least two possible outcomes. The first thing that can happen is we can become legalistic. This is one of the main problems Jesus is combatting in the Sermon on the Mount. The religious people were doing the right things on the outside but they didn’t have a heart that loved God on the inside. So what that might look like in our context is someone who goes to church, reads their Bible, prays, and doesn’t commit any “big” sins, but they only live that way becuase it’s what they’ve always done and they can’t imagine doing anything different; it’s not because they love and trust God and want to please him.

Another possible outcome is our faith can become meaningless. This might be a person who believes in God but they may or may not go to church, they may or may not read their Bible and pray. They think the gospel sounds good and is probably true, but it doesn’t really have any affect on their life. Both of these things, legalism and a meaningless faith, are huge problems in a culture where it’s normal to believe in God and go to church and be a Christian.

And I think the issue is that we are trying to live out Ps 112 without understanding Ps 111. We try to live life God’s way because we think we should, but we really haven’t even looked at God himself and asked ourselves, “Is God worthy of my trust?” So let’s do that this morning. First, we’ll look at Ps 111 and see 6 reasons why God is worthy of our trust and then we’ll look at Ps 112 and see 5 areas of our lives where we can trust God. Let’s jump in.

Psalm 111

He is Our Creator (Ps 111 v. 2)

Ps 111 verse 1. [Read Ps 111 1:1]

In verse 1, the Psalmist starts out praising the Lord and thanking the Lord with his whole heart. And then in the remaining 9 verses he tells us why he’s praising the Lord and that’s where our focus is so let’s read verse 2. [Read verse 2]

In this verse and the next two verses the Psalm says something about God’s works or work. And in English that same word “work” or “works” is used, but in Hebrew it’s actually three different words in each verse and each word usually refers to a specific kind of God’s work. And the word used here in verse 2 generally refers to God’s work of creation. So verse 2 could read, “Great is the creation or the creative works of the Lord.” This verse is actually written over the entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. The Psalmist is talking about God as the creator of all things.

And that’s our first reason why God is worthy of our trust: he is our creator. From the sun to the ant, the mountains to the ocean, you and me, God created everything that exists. And this point is really the foundational point of these Psalms. If the earth came into existence by random chance, then there is no God who is worthy of our trust, and if there’s no God worthy of our trust then there’s no way of flourishing to be found outside of ourselves. If God doesn’t exist we might as well just do what makes us happy because that’s all there is to anything.

But hopefully you’re here because you do believe God exists. And if God exists and if Ps 111 is right, that he created all things and his creation is a “great work”, then God is worthy of our trust. What else could we trust in? Why would not trust the one who knows how everything works?

Imagine you get an opportunity to play an incredibly complex new board game that’s just been invented and the inventor of the game is there to play with you and so is your friend who is pretty good at board games but he’s never played this one because it’s new. And as your learning the rules and finding out how the game is played you decide to ask your friend about how the game works and about the best strategy instead of asking the inventor of the game who is sitting right there. That would be dumb right? It makes sense that the inventor of the game, the one who designed it would be more helpful, more trustworthy, when it comes to helping you play the game.

And since God is the creator of all things, the same is true about the way we live our lives. We have access to a cheat sheet right here. The one who set up the rules of the world has told us how to flourish in it. He’s the creator! Yet often do we forget how worthy that makes him of our trust?

He is For Us (v. 3)

Well the next reason God is worthy of our trust is because he is for us. Verse 3. [Read verse 3]

This word for work speaks more about God’s providential acts, the ways in which he’s at work in the world. And the Psalmist says that what God is doing in the world through each of our individual lives is full of splendor and majesty. It’s the same sense as Romans 8:28, “That for those who love God all things work together for good.”

And this doesn’t mean that because God is for us nothing bad will ever happen to us. We all know that’s not true. Gos isn’t worthy of our trust because he keeps all bad things from happening; he’s worthy of our trust becuase he’s proven over and over again that he’s making all things new. And this is closely related to the next point in verse 4. [Read verse 4]

He is Our Savior (v. 4, 9)

This time the word wondrous work in verse 4 is one Hebrew word that most often refers to God’s saving work. We see that the Psalmist calls these words gracious and merciful, which fits with the context of God’s saving acts. And this is the 3rd reason why he is worthy of our trust: becuase God is our savior. And the Psalmist says that these acts are remembered so he’s most likely thinking about specific things in Israel’s history as he writes this.

Maybe he’s remembering Israel’s terrible time of slavery and oppression, but how God brought them up out of the land of Egypt and saved them. We don’t know when this Psalm was written but maybe he’s thinking about some of the events in David’s life that we studied over the past year and a half such as his sin with Bathsheba but subsequent restoration by God. Or any of David’s hardships on the run from Saul or when he son dies, and how God comforted David in the midst of those moments of sorrow and delivered him. He might be thinking about the constant conflict and exile that Israel faced, but how God always preserved and saved a remnant of the people because he made a covenant with them and told them he would.

I think verse 9 fits into this theme as well. [Read verse 9] God sent redemption to his people because of his covenant. Our God is a God of redemption. Great name for a church by the way. Over and over again in the Old Testament through the sacrificial system, from slavery, from their enemies, from their sins, we see God acting as savior, redeeming his people. And as the Psalmist is thinking about this he’s led to exclaim “Holy and awesome is his name!”

But here’s the deal. We have even more reason to say “Holy and awesome is his name!” because we know about the greatest act of redemption. The Psalmist feels this way about God because he’s saved Israel from their enemies and is willing to forgive their sins if they follow a complex sacrificial system. But we know that God’s greatest act of redemption was sending his own Son to die in our place in order to save us from our greatest enemies, sin and death. Holy and awesome is his name. And if God would send his own son to die in order to save us from our sins, surely he’s trustworthy when it comes to how we live our lives, right?

That’s what Paul said just four verses after he said “all things work together for our good.” In Ro 8:32, he says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In other words, what Paul is saying is if you look around and you doubt that God really is for you, that all things really are working out for your good, remember what he did for you. If he allowed his son to die for you, which is probably the hardest thing anyone could do, why would he not do the easier thing and be for your good now?

He is Provider (v. 5-6)

Let’s keep going. Verses 5 and 6. [Read verses 5-6]

The fourth reason God is worthy of our trust is because he is our provider. The Psalmist says that God provides food. This is why we pray “Give us today our daily bread.” God provides food, one of the basic necessities of life. It’s hard for us to recognize God as provider today because very few of us grow our own food or even buy it from the person who does. But up until very recently, most human beings recognized just how dependent they were upon God to provide food. No matter how well you plant your crops, if it doesn’t rain or if it rains too much you wouldn’t have food. And for us, we should recognize that whether we get all of our food by farming or we buy it all at the grocery store, God is providing for our needs.

The Psalmist also says that God provides his people with an inheritance. For Israel, they didn’t really experience this fully. They were given the Promised Land of course and with that came the conquering of many nations, but there was still more to come. Ps 2 also uses this same language and there God is talking about Jesus and says, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.”

And Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says that the blessed man will inherit the earth. Paul also talks about Christians receiving an inheritance in Christ in Ephesians. So I think the point here is that God is worthy of our trust becuase he provides for our daily needs such as food to eat, but he’s also worthy of our trust because he's going to lavish us with way more than we need and give us the whole earth as our inheritance.

He is Trustworthy (v. 7)

Next reason God is worthy of our trust is because he is trustworthy. Verse 7. [Read verse 7]

The things God does and the things God says are trustworthy. We won’t spend much time on this one because in a way this sums up everything the Psalmist has been saying about God. Look at what God has done; he’s trustworthy. Look at what God has said; has it proven true? He’s trustworthy. So trust him.

He is Unchanging (v. 8 and others)

Last reason God is worthy of our trust. He is unchanging. We see this in verse 8 but really it’s all throughout the Psalm in the repetition of the word forever. “His righteousness endures forever,” verse 3. “He remembers his covenant forever,” verse 5. “His precepts are established forever and ever,” verse 8. “His praise endures forever,” verse 10.

God is worthy of our trust because he is unchanging. If God wasn’t unchanging, if he changed his mind about the best way to live or about how gravity worked then he wouldn’t be trustworthy. Yet in the midst of a world where everything is constantly changing, God does not change. And that’s good news.

I love this nighttime prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. “Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” God is worthy of trust becuase he never changes, and therefore those of us who are wearied by the changes of this life can rest in him.

So there’s six reasons from Psalm 111 for why God is worthy of our trust. He’s our creator, he’s for us, he’s our savior, he’s our provider, he’s trustworthy, and he’s unchanging. Don’t you want to trust this God and live your life according to his way? I do. So let’s move to Ps 112 now and see how the person who trusts this great God lives their life.

Psalm 112

Our Obedience (Ps 112 v. 1)

Psalm 112 verse 1. [Read verse 1]

Again the Psalmist starts out praising the Lord but then instead of moving on to discuss the greatness of the Lord, he tells us about the blessed man who lives his life in response to the greatness of the Lord. And the first thing we see is that the blessed man fears the Lord and delights in his commands. In other words, the blessed man lives a life of obedience to God.

Can’t we just go back and keep talking about how great God is? Do we really have to talk about obedience to God’s commands? But here’s the deal. This kind of obedience isn’t just legalistic rule keeping, it’s not just the laws of some ancient and outdated religion, it’s obedience to the way in which the creator and designer of the universe who is for us has called us to live. That’s why it’s important to get the order right.

Why we not want to obey the Bible’s commands when we understand them as the path to flourishing in a world given by the one who created the world? As Christians we don’t just believe that sex is reserved for marriage, marriage is between one man and one woman, getting drunk and doing drugs is wrong, and murder is bad, because those are our personal preferences. We try to obey these commands because we believe they playbook, the cheat sheet, the best way to live in the world, given to us by the one who created and designed the entire thing. Therefore we can trust the commandments of God and seek to obey them.

Our Families (v. 2)

We can also trust God with our families. Verse 2 says, [read verse 2].

The family that trusts God experiences blessing. Now it’s easy to read this verse as talking about material blessing and to get a picture of a prominent family in society that has a lot of wealth because that’s what we think of when we think about a “mighty” family. But when the Psalmist says that the blessed man’s family will be “mighty in the land” he’s probably talking more about respect and character.

If you look at Israel’s history, the mighty men like Moses, Joshua, or David, were not the wealthiest and most powerful, they were the morally upright, for the most part, and the respected leaders. The Psalmist is saying that teaching your family to trust God and entrusting your family to him is the way of blessing. So may we trust God with our families and teach our families trust him as well.

Our Finances (v. 3, 9)

The third thing we can trust God with is our finances. We see this addressed in verse 3 and also verse 9. [Read verse 3 and 9]

The Psalmist says the person who trusts God will be blessed financially and also ought to be a blessing to others. Now we talked about money last week and it will come up again next week as well so I won’t spend much time here but real quick, the Bible promises that God will provide for his people. It doesn’t promise that he’ll provide for all of our wants but it does promise that he will provide for all of our needs.

But the Bible also teaches that one of the primary reasons God does bless us financially is so that we might be generous givers who bless others financially and contribute to the mission of the church. The most famous passage on giving in the Bible is probably where 2 Corinthians 9 where Paul talks about being a cheerful giver and Paul actually quotes Psalm 112 verse 9 in that passage.

Here’s what Paul says: “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.  As it is written, ‘He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.’ He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”

This is really a remarkable passage. Paul says that if we give generously and cheerfully “God is able to make all grace abound,” God will “multiply your seed,” and we “will be enriched in every way.” But Paul isn’t teaching a form of the prosperity gospel where if we give our money away we will get rich. He says that all of this is “to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” A blessed or flourishing person is a giving person who understands that God has blessed us financially in order to bless others and build his church.

Our Actions (v. 4-6, 10)

Alright, the next thing we can trust God with is our actions. Read verses 4 through 6 with me. [Read verses 4-6]

This is similar to our obedience from verse 1 but I think it’s slightly different because the Psalmist seems to be contrasting the way of the blessed man and the way of the ungodly. I get that from his imagery of light in the midst of darkness and conducting business with generosity, which would not have been a normal practice and still usually isn’t a normal practice today. And I think verse 10 is probably connected here as well which talks about the wicked man being angry at how the righteous man lives. But the result of living this way, according to verse 6, is that “the righteous will never be moved.”

It’s almost as if the Psalmist is combating objectors who might say, “If I live differently than everyone else, if I’m generous and gracious and merciful, if I give my money away, then I won’t be successful.” And the response from the Psalmist is “You will be remembered forever.”

You might not be successful as the world counts success but worldly success and even the world itself is passing away. Success as God counts success, righteous living according to God’s way, is forever. So even if it looks like living according to God’s way isn’t getting where you want to go, he is worthy of your trust, and living his way is the way to flourishing in the end.

Our Circumstances (v. 7-8)

Okay, last one. This is my favorite section of the Psalm so hang in there for a few more minutes. Verses 7 and 8. [Read verses 7 and 8]

Are you afraid of bad news? So am I. And on one level why wouldn’t we be? We live in a world where bad things happen all the time. We lose our jobs, the car breaks down, family members get cancer, tornadoes destroy homes, global pandemics come out of nowhere, the people we love die.

So why does the Psalmist say that the blessed person is not afraid of bad news? Becuase he trusts in the Lord. And he doesn’t just trust in the Lord as if God is a magic genie granting wishes or a distant diety who doesn’t care. He trusts in God our creator, God who is for us, God who is our savior, God who is our provider, God who is trustworthy, and God who is unchanging. Because God is all of these things and only because God is all of these things is he worthy of our trust whether the news is good or the news is bad.

As human beings we all long for much of the same things. We want to have enough money to never worry about money and probably even more than that. We want enough to buy nice things and have fun experiences. We want to have family and friends that are on our side and are trustworthy. We want to have ease of circumstance and a comfortable and exciting life. And we want to live forever and never die and we want the same for our loved ones. And every single human being for the most part is seeking these things.

My wife and I were in Mexico a few weeks ago and we saw this sign outside of a shop across the street from where we were staying. It says “What you seek is seeking you.” And I didn’t ask the store owner but I’m sure what they meant by the sign is something like, “The universe is on your side.” If you’re seeking happiness just keep seeking because happiness is out there looking for you too. If your seeking wealth, that opportunity to get rich is seeking you out as well.

But of course that’s nonsense. It might be worthwhile to seek out happiness or wealth but there isn’t some cloud of happiness or wealth out there doing all it can to try and seek you out at the same time. It sounds good on a sign and we want it to be true, but there’s no reason to think that it actually is.

But when my wife Madison saw the sign she said, “Hey, for us that’s actually true.” And she was exactly right. What we seek is actually seeking us! We seek peace, we seek a sense of belonging, we seek provision for our needs, we seek riches beyond what we can even imagine, we seek to live forever, and our Creator, Savior, and Provider who is trustworthy and unchanging, and is on our side, is seeking us as well. He’s worthy of our trust and he’s inviting us to trust him. Let’s pray.