God's Way, the Way of Hope (Psalm 25)

First Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2018

In Psalm 25, the singer appears to have had enough of life lived by his own wits.  “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust” (25:1-2a). He speaks of enemies and appears to fear the power of those enemies he is sure hate him.  In my own life, I am blessed to say I don’t have specific people I cite as enemies. I don’t view Muslims as my enemies. Most are not terrorists and the encounters I have had with Muslims in Ethiopia, in Egypt, and in here in triangle have been very positive.  No, Muslims are not my enemies.

Nor are unbelievers and unchurched people.  I have a lot of friends who don’t go to church at all and are unsure of what we do here.  Certainly their worldview is different than mine. But, they love their kids. They are friendly people.  I believe they need Jesus and are lost without him. But, I don’t count them as enemies.

Petty rivalries, family conflicts, disputes with neighbors; none of these amount to anyone I would describe as ‘enemy.’  Maybe you have specific people in mind when you hear that word. I don’t. But, I have had many moments when I have prayed that prayer uttered by the singer of Psalm 25.  “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust.” Pressure in life builds, stress mounts, and I feel I cannot meet all my responsibilities or handle all that life throws my way.  With Christmas, the most materialistic of holidays looming, shopping and parties and expectations add financial strain and demands on our time to the list. Yes, I bet many of us find ourselves with the need to lift our souls to the Lord.

The singer has something specific in mind.  Do you bark orders at God? You and I do, if we take the words of this song and sing them as our own.  Three times from verses 4-5, we sing it. “Make me know your ways, O Lord; lead me in your truth, and teach me.”  Ways.  Truth. Teach me.  Then, verses 8-10; we know the Lord is good and upright because He instructs sinners, directing them away from sin to God’s way.  “He leads in what is right and teaches the humble his way” (25:9). When we keep his decrees, we are on God’s path, and that path is unfailing love.  

This singer, originally David, perhaps, and then the community that canonized his words for worship - the singer is not bashful and is not playing around.  As if God needs reminding, the singer says, “Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord” (v. 6). Remember me. Forget my sins. Remember your love. Remember me. That’s Biblical prayer.  He sets the course he wants God to take. He wants God to make sure he, the helpless sinner, is rescued and set in God’s way.

As we “do” the holidays, are we on God’s way, in-step with God?

Or, is the world out of step?  Have we along with the world around us, lost a deep sense of the way of God?  Over and over and over, this Psalm invites any who would sing it to sing it directly to God.  We can do that. The Bible makes it plain here and in many places. At any point in life and especially when life is falling apart, we can sing and pray and shout and cry to God, and we expect God to hear us and respond.  If this Psalm is our cue, then when we seek the Lord, what we’re asking is to be gently guided back onto the way of God. We pray this because the way of God seems to be the best way to live, the only way.

Signs that the world, and maybe us with it, are falling away from God instead of walking joyfully hand-in-hand with God are all around.  The lostness of the world is on display in every direction we look. I heard of a high school student passing out brownies that his classmates gratefully accepted and hungrily gobbled up, not knowing they were laced with marijuana.  Regardless of your views on the efficacy or evil of this drug, it’s deceptive to give it to people without their knowing.

A more drastic sign of how lost the world is:  The porn industry is one of the most profitable in our country and in the world, a multimillion dollar business that degrades the consumer and the producer.

Even more drastic, a sign of how evil spills over humanity, bringing and sorrow with it: the “caravan.”  A throng of desperately poor people are stuck in limbo along the border of the United States and Mexico. Families seeking the American dream and escape from dangerous, oppressive situations are met with closed doors and tear-gas.  Whatever your view of immigration is, this is evil.

And this: I recently read that 6,000-10,000 churches in the United States close their doors every year.  In a world run amuck, the church is to be the body of Christ bearing witness to the salvation people have in Jesus. Yet, more churches die than thrive.  Six thousand-10,000 American churches close their doors permanently, every year. ‘To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; ... make known to me your ways.”

Perhaps worse than churches dying are Christians dying.  In Nigeria, it is common place for Christians near the North to be physically assaulted and rendered homeless or murdered by the Boko Haram Muslim terrorist group.  Even more deadly are the Fulani sheep herders who live all over the country, who are Muslims, and now, thanks to Boko Haram, are armed with assault rifles and willingly use them without warning against Christians.  Our Nigerian brothers and sisters in Christ will celebrate Christmas as we do. As they do so, they will pray Psalm 25 with an urgency we might not recognize. “Do not let our enemies exult over us,” they pray, singing the Psalmist’s words.

Churches die because Americans aren’t interested enough to attend.  Christians die because some deranged people in Nigeria decide to kill them.  Both are signs that the world is falling away from God.

Where’s the hope?  We might point to China, where Christianity is spreading like a wildfire.  Similar stories come out of Korea and India and South America. Rejoice! The world will never be without a witness testifying to the salvation God gives in Christ.  Rejoice!

But what about the weary Nigerian church?  What about the impassive, disinterested American church?  Or, the great cathedrals of Europe that stand empty, museums pointing to a now dead age. Is Christianity here destined to be a thing of the past?  We serve a living God, one more powerful than any sinful temptation, one able to turn back the seeming inevitability of history. If we didn’t believe in God’s great power, we wouldn’t waste our time in worship and prayer, would we? But we do believe.  Yes, the growth of the church in the global south is a cause for hope. Yes, though churches are dying America, there are still some American churches thriving. These stories are testaments of hope.

The greatest testament of hope is the reality of God himself.  That was all the singer had. Verse 15 - “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.”  David held this trust when King Saul tried to run him through with the spear and later when his own son Absalom raised an army and went to war against him.  David’s hope always came back to his unwavering trust in the power and love of God.

David never got to see God come in human flesh, in Jesus of Nazareth.  We know God in Jesus - the ultimate expression of God’s love. Jesus is our model for walking in the way of God. Assessing the lostness of the world, we know our hope is in Christ.  Whether that hope is for revitalization in a ho-hum American church, or for life itself in a threatened Nigerian church; or, for hope in a desperate crisis you are facing in your own life; the hope is Christ who guides us back to the way of the Lord.

Just a few days before he would be arrested and crucified, Jesus was in Jerusalem in the temple district with his disciples.  Taking in the grandeur of the temple and the hypocrisy of the worship, his disciples wondered when God would act dramatically to turn history around, in their favor.  Jesus warned that the moment would come and would mean judgment because God punishes sin. God casts out those who reject His way.

But, as terrifying as God’s wrath might seem, hope comes with it because Jesus sets things right.  Our sins are nailed to his cross. He takes our death on himself. He takes his resurrection and shares it with us.  In the sermon he gives his disciples there in the temple’s outer court, he promises, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Luke 21:33).  That’s our hope: the promise of Jesus; the promise that he will guide us into the way of God and the way of God is the life we want to live.

As we prepare our hearts for the Lord’s supper, bring to mind the struggles in your life, or the signs of lostness in the world that threaten to diminish your hope.  Let this prompt you to cry out the words of the Psalm. “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” And lift your soul to God. Bring your burdens to God. The Holy Spirit will help you, God will take your load, and Jesus will tenderly, lovingly open before you life lived God’s way, the way of hope.

AMEN