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Jesus knew the Psalms. Paul knew the Psalms.
In fact, the entire early Christian community was steeped in the same Psalms that have served as the central prayer and hymnbook for the church since its beginning-until now.
Reading, studying, and praying the Psalms is God’s means for teaching us what it means to be human: how to express our emotions and yearnings, how to reconcile our anger and our compassion, how to see our story in light of God’s sweeping narrative of salvation. Our intent this summer is to help provide the tools for understanding and incorporating these crucial verses into our own lives by exploring 10 hymns from the books of the Psalms.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
We continue through the Psalms together this summer. As much as I may personally or professionally dread having to follow Jeremy or Devin or Darcy or Jess up on this stage, the reality is that it's good for all of us to have different voices to maybe connect with. As each of us teaching team search the heart of god as we pour over these scriptures and as we share what we are each seeing and sensing and learning and what's forming that us personally that way. And I did intentionally use the term dreading having to follow these folks, not just because they are great teachers, but because I 100% have impostor syndrome when I stand on this stage. I'm terrified that I'm gonna be found out a fraud when I stand up here.
Speaker 1:And we'll spend a little bit more time on that idea a little bit later as we go into Psalm one zero three together. So what I'm gonna do is I am going to pray, just to maybe focus us a little bit. Then I'm gonna read through all of Psalm one zero three, and you can follow along on the screen if you'd like to as I read it or if you wanna stay in the posture of prayer and just let these words, resonate inside of you. Let's do that, but let's pray first. Jesus, right now, we pause, and I take a physical breath, and we all take, maybe an internal breath.
Speaker 1:As we gather in this space, would you help us allow these words to shape us somehow? Either by informing us with something that changes how we think, or if we're open enough, maybe you will meet us somewhere deeper inside today. We can welcome you in and possibly be reformed in your image a little bit more. Psalm one zero three. Praise the lord, my soul.
Speaker 1:All my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord my soul and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, and crowns you with love and compassion. Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
Speaker 1:He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse nor will he harbor his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.
Speaker 1:As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass.
Speaker 1:They flourish like a flower of the field. And the wind blows and it is gone. Its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him. And his righteousness with their children's children and with those who keep his covenant covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
Speaker 1:The lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all. Praise the lord, you, his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the lord, all his heavenly hosts, all his servants who do his will. Praise the lord all his works, Everywhere in his dominion. Praise the lord, my soul.
Speaker 1:As with each Psalm that we read this summer, this one has a lot of familiar language. Maybe there's a verse or two or a line that's locked into your psyche or your memories from the past. Maybe these invoke songs if you grew up in the church, maybe some praise songs. I'm thinking specifically of one for me right now, especially if you grew up in church in the nineties, as the East is from the West. So far has he yeah.
Speaker 1:There's nostalgic bells ringing inside my heart right now. I don't know if anyone else is sensing that. Maybe not. Or as bringing up a very bad distaste in your mouth too, that could be happening. But either way, a little bit on the format of Psalm one zero three.
Speaker 1:Psalm one zero three is this long, beautiful, far reaching hymn of praise. Its scope is universal. It covers all the bases, and some commentators reference the wingspan of the poetry in this psalm. And the psalm, in its praise, doesn't just name abstract attributes of God's goodness, but it describes the Lord in action. There are concentric circles of this poem.
Speaker 1:So it begins and it ends with this all inclusive, very well known phrase. Praise the lord, my soul, and all that is within me. Praise his holy name. And then it takes three passes at the loving kindness of God. The first pass is from the perspective of the individual, verses three through eight.
Speaker 1:The second pass is from the perspective of the community verses nine through 16. And finally, from the perspective of humanity or the cosmos or all of creation verses 17 to 19. So there's a call to praise and then these three unfolding perspectives and then it is closed with this exact same call to praise at the end. And the Psalmist realizes how all that is within him should be praising god. That line is in there.
Speaker 1:This opening verse is the psalmist's attempt to tell us to hold nothing back when praising god, to commit our entire being to it. And this language that we get as we translate it into English, the inmost being. We have trouble translating it into a word or a phrase that we English speakers can maybe fully comprehend that gets the full meaning. Basically, the call is for us to praise God with every part of ourselves. Martin Luther, his best description of the phrase inmost being is body and soul, eyes, ears, and all limbs, and sense, reason, and all faculties.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful. The general concept of this verse and consequently the whole Psalm is that this type of total praise is a response. It's a response to god's loving kindness. This whole Psalm is a beautiful reflection on all of god's loving kindness. And the Hebrew word here used is chesed, which in its simplest translation is loving kindness.
Speaker 1:But even again, this translation doesn't fully do it justice. One commentator I read this week said that Hesed is a concept so rich and so deep that no amount of words could adequately plumb its depths. So for the rest of the day, we will settle, and we will use describe Hesed. And this loving kindness of God inspires this song, this poem from start to finish. Loving kindness in this sense is not a mood.
Speaker 1:It's not just something God feels. Loving kindness is one of the defining characteristics that makes up god. Just like I would say that love is not something we just feel, but it's something that we do. So loving kindness in this sense then is love and kindness acted out. And the psalm goes on to list the ways that god acts out his loving kindness.
Speaker 1:Again, it's not an abstract distant thing that we talk about when we talk about god, but this loving kindness is described in this psalm and painted out as the things that God is about and the things that God does. This Psalm lists the actions of how God saves us. The Lord is described as the one who forgives, who heals, who redeems, who crowns, who satisfies, and renews. And god also offers us the ability to choose him Regardless of which direction we are heading, god offers us opportunities every second of every day to turn from east to west. And this east to west language, not only as I said, evoke some memories of some praise songs from the nineties for me, but it is a powerful image of how thoroughly god forgives.
Speaker 1:How far is the East from the West? Well, I'm obviously not a topographer, I guess, but I'm pretty sure that it's far. In fact, it's immeasurable. God takes our transgressions and removes them infinitely far from our identity, from what makes us who we are. We are not the things that we've done.
Speaker 1:We are not the choices that we've made. No matter how much those things or those choices affect us every day, they don't make us who we are first. Not just the negative choices, even the good things. No matter the good things that we have done. We don't hang our hat on those things being our identity either because then it can become a competition, and we can easily compare ourselves to each other.
Speaker 1:But as the East is from the West, so basically, further than is measurable, those things have been taken away from what makes us us. Our true identity. God does this for us. As the East is from the West, it's this beautiful line. And as I read it again this week, wow, did I notice how much it's the opposite of myself.
Speaker 1:I'm oversensitive, and I hold a grudge. So I don't know if you resonate with that this morning either. But as I worked through this, obviously, this does get me thinking about myself, not just because I am a normal selfish person, but because we're humans. And I remember I mentioned this impostor syndrome before. This identity, this question of identity comes up again, the identity issue.
Speaker 1:And the biggest question from this Psalm as we were dreaming up this series was what does it look like to live forgiven? Or how can we sink forgiveness deeper into our identity? Our identities are always a topic of conversation as God tries to form our identity instead of anything else forming it. Talk about those tapes, the tapes that we play in our own heads that are constantly speaking to us, trying to form our identity, and tell us who we are. And so what are the tapes that you play?
Speaker 1:How can we play the forgiven tape more? The tape that just calls you child of God, loved by God. The truest tape is the one that says we are made of love, of loving kindness. God is love, and we are made in God's image. We are forgiven, love bearing children of God.
Speaker 1:This is the tape that God hopes we play on repeat for ourselves. It's even mentioned in verses thirteen and fourteen of this Psalm. As the father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he knows how we are formed. And he remembers that we're dust.
Speaker 1:And what I hear in these words is that God knows how he made us, but the compassion language lets me find hope. And the reality that god also knows how hard it is for us to find and to live fully in that one identity as formed by him and loved by him. So where do we get the other tapes? Where do I get these other tapes? Where do they come from?
Speaker 1:I have been at a lot of weddings this summer and had a lot of fun. It's been great. It's just I was talking to a friend last night, and they have also been to, like, six or seven weddings this summer alone, and it's just really fun to watch this all unfold. My brother got married in May, and, obviously, I was the best man. But they also didn't have a DJ.
Speaker 1:So this is how this all played out. Their first dance, the song was on my brother's phone. And so I had to plug the headphone jack in, play the song from there. Then when that song was over and they finished that dance, all I had to do was unplug the headphone jack and then plug it into the computer, which had the rest of the playlist for the night. That was it.
Speaker 1:Done. I can do that. No problem. I'm very smart. I can handle these types of things.
Speaker 1:And so I did it. I switched it over, plug it into the computer, and then I just kinda step back and then watch the rest of the dances. Oh, father daughter dance. That's nice. And I'm waiting, and then the music picks up and goes.
Speaker 1:And pretty quickly, someone runs up to me, and they're like, hey. The music's not loud enough. Turn it up. Oh, okay. I guess I can do that.
Speaker 1:So I find the thing, and I turn it up a little bit. And then I step back to the table and just wait and wait. And then a few minutes later, someone comes up to me, and they started requesting songs. They're like, hey. Play YMCA.
Speaker 1:That'll really get things going. People really start moving around. And I was like, woah. Woah. I am not the DJ.
Speaker 1:And I realized I was still standing too close to the sound system. And so I just booked it to the other end of the room, and I stayed there the rest of the night. But about two and a half hours later, someone that I barely knew came up to me, and they were like, hey, man. People are mad at you because there's not enough country songs being played right now, and they want a line dance. And I was like, I'm not the DJ.
Speaker 1:I am not the DJ. Where else do we get the tapes? Where do we get those other tapes? Our circles of friends, the media, the Internet, our family systems, our regular memories, or even our Facebook memories if you use that app on Facebook, reminding us of who we are and what we were and what we have done. These tapes, our identity, and our memories, they're good questions.
Speaker 1:What do I really think of myself? Am I living in guilt or self doubt? Probably. Because I am not who I wanna be or who I should be or who I can be. These tapes ask all these questions.
Speaker 1:And what does that do to me? And the call is to lose those destructive tapes. Change them out. Put in the tape that repeats child of God, loved by God, forgiven, then I am free to love and live more fully. And it ties into this other reality about God's saving movement within us.
Speaker 1:How much it matters to tell and hear the stories of God's loving kindness and God's faithfulness. Remembering matters. Retelling, recalling. How has god been faithful to me and shown me loving kindness? How's god been faithful to us and shown loving kindness?
Speaker 1:When you retell your story, what does it look like to retell things with the wisdom or insight that you have gained since the past? Because it always changes. I know I mentioned Facebook memories, but I like to look back at those, and I ask on repeat the same sorts of questions. I thought that was funny, or I liked that music, or that's what a friend was to me. Way too often, I think this.
Speaker 1:Why did I think that was a good idea, especially to post on the Internet? I'm not cool enough to have tattoos. A lot of you are. But this is especially dangerous for those of us that have tattoos. Because, obviously, they are super meaningful at that time, but there is a reason that it's a stereotyped mistake to get someone else's name printed on your body.
Speaker 1:There's a reason that that's a stereotyped mistake. One of our friends here at church is named is Jay Brazeau. He has lots of tattoos, and he was at my house one afternoon. We were just talking, and Frank, my three year old, was there. And so the three of us were talking, and Frank started asking Jay about his tattoos.
Speaker 1:And so Jay told him about a couple, and then he was like, there's a few I don't wanna show your son because he'll have nightmares. And I was like, thank you. Anyway, we continued this conversation. And then later, we asked Frank. We said, Frank, do you wanna get tattoos?
Speaker 1:And he's like, yeah. Oh, I totally wanna get tattoos. I said, well, Frank, what tattoo would you wanna get? And he thought for a second, and he was like, I wanna get a tattoo with Jay's face. As flattered as he was, even Jay knew that was a bad idea.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be a regret. That's gonna be a regret. But regardless, remembering matters, and changing out those tapes matters. After Psalm one zero three opens with this call to worship, the poem meditates on the loving kindness of God from the perspective of the individual. We talked about that.
Speaker 1:And the psalmist actually does this beautiful job of speaking to his own self and his own soul. He literally talks to himself about all of god's benefits. And the psalmist does this work of reminding his soul that the Lord is the one who forgives all sins and heals all diseases and so on. And this is an exercise in changing the tapes remembering this way. I had hoped to share a story of my health because it really, really helps me communicate this final point of my message.
Speaker 1:But then last week, Jess bared her soul by sharing her health struggles, how they've affected her, and they've made her faith and doubt come to the surface and how that's really impacted her, and it was really, really powerful. So I thought, if I'm going to say this, everyone just gonna assume that I wanted to ride that wave because she was so good last week. Why wouldn't I wanna capitalize on that? Yeah. Let's pile on.
Speaker 1:I'm sick too. But Jess's psalm tied in perfectly. She talked about living with faith and doubt in her health and her relationship with God. So maybe we did all think about our faith or our health or our doubt in those moments. And so I decided to talk about this a little bit today because I realized in the bigger picture, we are all living with something broken or painful in our health or in our relationships.
Speaker 1:It's maybe part of why we connected so well with Jess last week. If you're not dealing with any of those things, you are lucky. But what made Jess's point great is that it was not just Jess's story. And this one's not just mine. We're all humans.
Speaker 1:We're all frail. And it's all over the Psalms and it's all over this room right now. Fear and pain and doubt at the same time as faith and hope. This real life for normal people. I have glaucoma, and it's a weird one for a young 30 year old man to have.
Speaker 1:Most of my doctor's appointments are with myself and a bunch of, like, 160 year old ladies. Seems. It seems. But, basically, I am losing my peripheral vision because there's pressure in my eyeballs, and it's destroying my optic nerves. So I take eye drops, steroids, and the side effect is these incredibly freaky long eyelashes, which I wear glasses to help me see, but it's also to, like, protect people from, like, getting fink and turn.
Speaker 1:If you ever look really closely, that's a little bit scary, so don't look for too long. Hillary trims them sometimes. It's helpful. But it means, though, that I am on a one way road towards blindness. In twenty years, thirty years, it's a weird it's a really weird diagnosis.
Speaker 1:It's like if I told you you're going to lose an arm in twenty years or thirty years. Well, yes. That sucks, but it doesn't really change what I do right now. So how do I live with that? How do I grieve that even?
Speaker 1:My good friends wanted to spit in the dirt and make mud and rub it on my eyes the way Jesus healed a blind man in the gospels, But I think they just wanted to vicariously spit on my face, and so we have not tried that yet. And so as Jess's psalm said to me, that it's okay to have faith and doubt at the same time and to wrestle with that always. What Psalm one zero three says to me is that finding some confidence in my forgiven identity lets me tell the stories of God's faithfulness and loving kindness no matter what's going on with me. After we do the work to try to trade out those tapes, we start to tell our story from that perspective. When we stop, when we know who we really are, when we forget not all of his benefits, including that we are forgiven children of god.
Speaker 1:We continue the praise. Maybe I will be healed but maybe I won't. I cannot count on that. What this Psalm tells me is to not take for granted what I can see now. To forget not all of his benefits.
Speaker 1:Forget not what you can see now, your children, your wife, sunsets, mountains, stars, colors, obviously yourself in the mirror. My friend Ray told me this joke, about perspective, in the meantime. There's a man who falls out of the of a window at the top of a really tall building. And as he's falling down, someone inside, as he passes the third story, someone hears him say, well, so far so good. A blind or not blind.
Speaker 1:I can tell and I can retell how god was faithful to me by letting me see for as long as he did. And for the things I was able to see, if my posture is man, god was so good to have let me seen that. It's a posture of living forgiven. And it's not easy to get to, and there are not a lot of days where I'm really actually there. In regards to my eyes or anywhere.
Speaker 1:But it's a place we can get to if our identity is child of god, loved by god first. Not what we do or what we think or what ailments or infirmities or brokenness or hurts that we have. Which is exactly why this Psalm is written this way. Remember, the call to worship is sung at the beginning and it is exactly the same at the end and what this means is that the Psalm does not end. The ending is not for closure.
Speaker 1:It sort of just comes to a crest. The idea being that the Psalm actually never really ends because the praise that it's initiated continues whenever and wherever it is heard. To praise is to recall god's past acts and then remember those acts for the present moment. If you noticed, rather than using the word remember, the psalmist uses the phrase, do not forget. And saying it this way adds to the nuance of the meaning that if god's people fail to praise the lord, the lord's benefits will eventually be forgotten.
Speaker 1:Whether that's personally in our own stories or together as a community. Remembering is powerful. Remembering is very powerful. And it reminds me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, and we'll read it together. The sexiest part of a woman is where the small of her back meets her flawless second by second recall of something I did wrong in 2002.
Speaker 1:Told you that my sense of humor would be on display. Remembering matters. So may we learn to let god's forgiving, loving kindness form our identity. May we retell god's loving kindness. How he has shown and been loving kindness to us individually.
Speaker 1:Now, he has shown and been loving kindness to us as a community or as families. And then how he has shown and been loving kindness to all of creation. Tell it and remember it. That's part of why we even get together on Sundays. So whether your memories are about good choices you've made or poor ones, whether you are calling the good that god has been by saving you or healing you or satisfying you.
Speaker 1:Or whether you are learning to be aware of and grateful for the goodness in the here and now regardless of your circumstances. Can we learn to tell and retell and encourage others to notice and not forget the loving kindness of god. As we say, love god, love people, and tell the story and we mean the tell the story part. Amen.