Blue Lake Presbyterian Church | 7-26-2015
Good morning,
Thank you for asking me back. It is great to be here with this warm congregation.
Our opening hymn this morning, the Churches one foundation is very fitting for this small Church community. In the book of Acts we read about the early church, small groups of believers proclaiming and advancing the good news of Jesus Christ. That is the bedrock, the foundation of our faith. This Presbyterian Church right here in Blue Lake exemplifies this very well.
Today’s scripture readings are from Psalm 14, 2 Samuel 11, the story of David and Bathsheba, Ephesians 3, one of the most powerful prayers in the whole bible and John 6 the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water.
These readings are very rich in content…… Imagine being in a land with four rivers and suffering from incredible thirst while these rivers are full of cool, fresh water that could help quench your thirst for a lifetime.
So it is with the word of God as these four scripture readings are analogues with four rivers satisfying the spiritual thirst of our souls. Today I invite you to come along on a journey along the shores of these rivers and take a sip from each of them and weave pieces of all four readings into our message this morning.
Dale Carnegie in his timeless bestselling book “How to win friends and influence people” starts in the first chapter describing some notorious criminals.
He analyses what makes these folks tick and how each and every one of them found rationale for their actions. Like two gun Crowley regarded at the time as one of the most dangerous offenders ever encountered in New York City. The police commissioner said he will kill at the drop of a feather. In a note that was left he wrote: under my coat is a weary heart but a kind one, one that would do nobody any harm.
Carnegie quotes Al Capone, one of the most infamous criminals in US history: I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures , helping them have a good time and all I get is abuse.
Yes Capone, Americas most notorious public enemy, the sinister gang leader ravaging Chicago, didn’t condemn himself he actually regarded himself as a public benefactor, so did Dutch Shultz before he crumpled up under gangster bullets in New Ark .
Dutch Shultz one of New York most shameful villains said in a newspaper interview that he was a public benefactor and he actually believed it.
Dale Carnegie wrote his book in 1936. Those were the criminals of that time. Are things any different now?
Turn on the television watch the news and we are bombarded with images of shootings and killing of innocent souls.
Or watch programs like Forensic files, Nancy Grace, Americas most wanted or The hunt with John Walsh, these shows give an endless account of the criminals of today, highlighting the darkness in our society.
Going back in time 3000 years, a disillusioned David found himself in the darkest hour of his life time when he wrote in Psalm 14. (Page ?? pew bible)
1Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good.
2The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.
3They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.
4Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord?
5There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company of the righteous.
6You would confound the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge.
7O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.
David wrote this Psalm as he fled from Jerusalem during Absalom’s rebellion against his father it was written during his darkest hour as he was forsaken by family and friends.
How did David get to this darkest hour of his life?
We find the story in the book of Samuel. And it’s sequel Samuel 2. It starts out as an autobiography of Samuel himself. He is sent out by God to anoint Saul as Israel’s first King. But Saul loses favor with God and Samuel is sent out again to anoint his successor.
This is where the amazing story of David comes into the picture. Here we have the son of Jesse the sheep herder, he is just a kid, the youngest one in the family with 7 older brothers.
It is the ultimate rags to riches story; in today’s vernacular we would call it living the dream. He is the one who kills Goliath in this unlikely matchup with the giant philistine.
David succeeds Saul and he makes it big. King David is one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He reigns as King of Israel for 40 years.
He wins battles against enemies; lead Israel to great prosperity, in other words God has blessed him in many ways.
One could argue that the more a person is blessed the greater the likely hood of that person taking things in his own hand and actually believing that the fortunes came about because of own doing rather than a blessing of the Lord.
Earlier this week I visited our farm in Ontario Canada, on the way back while in the Toronto airport I noticed all these blond haired folks boarding my flight to LA, upon takeoff the pilot came on the air and welcomed Team Denmark with players, coaches and fans that filled most of the plane travelling to the special Olympics held in LA this week. Denmark is an interesting case study of a Country that has seen much prosperity. Denmark is ranked 6th in the world in terms of GDP per capita clearly making this one of the most prosperous countries on earth. Yet Denmark also ranks in the top 3 in the world in terms of atheist and agnostics rates. God is quickly forgotten when things go well, and we feel he is no longer needed.
So it went with David, he had it all; a palace built in the middle of Jerusalem, tremendous wealth, several wives with many children. God had truly blessed him, but guess what it wasn’t enough.
When his army was off fighting battles he stayed home and in the middle night he wakes up paces around on the roof of his Palace and looking down into the city of Jerusalem he spots this stunningly beautiful woman called Bathsheba as she is bathing herself, and suddenly lust overcomes David, he can no longer control himself.
He orders her up into his palace. You guessed it, next thing we know she is pregnant. Then he tries to cover his tracks by ordering her husband Uriah back from battle in hopes that they would spend time together so nobody who ever know the difference.
But the husband refuses to sleep with his wife, he is still battle wary. David get frustrated and uses his power in an act that could only be characterized as murder, as he instructs his top General to put Uriah out at the front line and don’t give him cover.
After David commits his sin the prophet Nathan ( Samuel had passed away by then) is sent by God to reprimand David.
He says that he has come to inform the king of a great injustice in the land. A rich man with many sheep, stole the one beloved sheep of a poor man, and had it slaughtered for a feast.
Furious at what he hears, David says, “As God lives, the one who has done such a thing deserves to die.”
Than Nathan responds, “Sir You are that man!”
In other words David is busted, caught with his hand in the cookie jar, more accurately, caught with his pants down,
Great so here we have the king that had it all, commits adultery and murder….. What was he thinking????
Let’s go back for a moment to these characters in Dale Carnegie book, or the ones we see on the tube every night how would they have reacted? Would they have found justification why this was an OK thing to do? Like blame the women for being flirtatious, or even blame the husband for not cooperating in the cover-up?
But here is where the story takes a turn; David gravitates to the proverbial sackcloth and ashes. He is deeply distressed about his actions.
This is the pivotal moment in the story. He repents and asks God for forgiveness in one of the most moving times of his life, he cries out in Psalm 51:
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness: blot out my transgressions.” “Cleanse me from my sin.” , ”For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.”
“Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.”, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
How often have we found ourselves in a spot where we know we did wrong, we know we made a step in the wrong direction. Do we justify it away and pretend things are fine? Did we drift from God? Are we living in iniquity? Or do we ask for forgiveness and repent from our sins. Take a moment tonight and read Psalm 51. Make it your prayer.
God forgave David, but he did not give him a break.
The torment followed David for the rest of his life. The child that was conceived out of wedlock died. He did marry Bathsheba and God blessed her with another child. A very special child, a son, called Solomon. God blessed Solomon with incredible wisdom, today we can still tab into this wisdom like drawing water from a deep well when reading Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
Looking back at David’s lifetime, his greatness shined in both his ability to take responsibility for his actions and the humility of his admission and the repentance that followed.
This is part of the reason that the ultimate redeemer of the Jewish people and the world descended from David’s line ― 1000 years later when Jesus Christ Messiah son of David.” from the little town of Nazareth was born.
During Jesus ministry he quoted scripture from multiple OT sources including Exodus, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, but he quoted the Psalms more than any book.
He cried out at the cross words that came straight from Psalm 22: My God My God why have you forsaken me. After feeding of the 5000 he quoted Psalm 78 recalling the raining down of the manna to eat.
The story of feeding the 5000 and walking on water are familiar to most.
How often have we heard the term he can walk on water, it typically describes a person who can do a lot, a busy beaver, a type A personality.
But there is only one person in the history of mankind who actually walked on water while the seas were rough and stormy and that was Jesus Christ.
Peter did so for a brief moment but then lost faith and down he went but he didn’t drown because Jesus was right there to pull him back up, just like he watches and keeps us from drowning even when we are sometimes in the middle of our own storms.
Paul found himself in the middle of storms a few times as he survived two ship wrecks. He became one of the mostly fervent disciples who ever lived. His letters to early believers helped memorialize this. Sometimes these early believers like the Ephesians would go astray.
In his letter to Ephesians he is clearly in distress, his is in jail, he is been forsaken by his followers and friends, in other words he is in the middle of a different type of storm, and hence this letter.
In chapter 3 Paul wrote a prayer that is not a timid prayer is it one of the most powerful prayer in all of scripture. He bows down on his knees before the Lord he asks for inners strength from the power of the Holy Spirit, he asks that Christ may dwell in our hearts with faith. That we may know the love of Christ and that his power will do far more than we can ever imagine.
Earlier I mentioned people turning from God when they feel they can go it alone, and God’s help is no longer needed. But the reverse is true as well, throughout history great awakenings and revivals typically came after calamity struck, after ravaging storms of life. Churches filled back up during and after World War Two. The weekend following September 11 in 2001 millions flocked into churches in New York and across the nation.
According to a report from the Barna group, Church attendance in New York City has grown from 31% in 2000 to 46% today.
Why? Because people are looking for more, like the setting of feeding the 5000, connotes a large crowd that is hungry, just like today there are millions of souls that are hungry.
Hungry not only for food but more so for spiritual nourishment, in countries such as Denmark and others and right here in the USA we see many people looking for other ways to satisfy emptiness by using drugs, alcohol, perversion, over eating, gambling, or whatever else.
But none of these habits satisfy the soul. The crowd of 5000 was hungry, nobody thought that there was any hope of food, but in Jesus Christ anything is possible.
Here we are in the little church in Blue Lake with believers in Jesus Christ.
Just as Paul writes this to the Ephesians we ask God to strengthen the inner being of today’s church with power through his spirit and that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, rooted and grounded in love.
How about you? Do you have faith in Jesus Christ? Jesus that can walk on water in your storm, the storms in your lives and come and reach out his hand and say come I will get you out of your troubles and tribulations.
Jesus said in John 6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Jesus is patient, he is waiting for us to ask for help.
Surrender your heart to Jesus and repent of your sins .He is ready to provide us with the gift that is available to all who believe.
Thank you,
Amen,
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