Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent Psalms on a Clothesline
Theme: The Psalms apply to you—all promises in God’s Scriptures apply to you—because you are the baptized of Christ, whose hope is firmly rooted in the resurrection of all flesh. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Introit from Psalm 91, God makes a solemn promise: “He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” That is nice to hear, but to whom is God speaking? Do you and I have any business applying this promise to ourselves, or is the promise spoken to someone else? Dear Christian friends, Yesterday, as a way of helping my fellow pastors, I officiated a funeral for a lady who was a member of our sister congregation in Kansas City. Standing graveside, we prayed Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. … The Lord is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life (vv 1-2, 5-7). It probably does not sound surprising to you that we would pray such Words at a funeral because most of you have attended Christian funerals before. The Words are familiar. But put yourself into the shoes of the passerby, or the unbeliever who is attending a Christian funeral for the first time. Such a person could easily chuckle at such Words and take them as proof that our Christian faith really amounts to nothing at all. How can you say that the Lord is watching over this person whom you are now burying? How is it possible for you to say, “the Lord will keep you from all evil”? Death is evil and this woman has died and your Lord did nothing to prevent it! Any Christian would answer such protests quite easily: · Yes, this woman from Kansas City has died and is now buried, but God her heavenly Father is by no means finished with her! Every promise that God spoke to this woman when He baptized her will yet be fulfilled in the resurrection on the Last Day. · Yes, she has died, but the evil of her death has been removed by her Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, which means she will never die. · The LORD has indeed kept her life. This Christian lady is now securely at rest and at peace in heaven with her Lord Jesus and His heavenly Father. Her body will be raised and glorified soon enough. We can rightly apply the promises of Psalm 121 to this lady from Kansas City for two reasons: because of her Baptism and because God promises to raise all the dead on the Last Day. If Baptism and the Resurrection of all Flesh could be compared to two posts planted in the ground, then Psalm 121 is pinned to the clothesline that stretches between the posts. I am telling you about Psalm 121 and its application to those Christians who have died so that you can have a foundation for understanding Psalm 91 in today’s Introit and its application to you Christians who are yet alive. He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. To whom is God speaking? Do you and I have any business applying this promise to ourselves, or is the promise spoken to someone else? Tread carefully Christian! If you think about your life’s experiences while you hear these Words, you might be tempted to head in the wrong direction. · If you flatly say, “These Words apply to me! I personally claim them as my own!” then you might still end up with some explaining to do. If these Words indeed apply to you, how do you account for the physical injuries you have suffered in your life? If you have ever sustained any sort of injury at all—if you have even once stubbed your toe—you might have a hard time convincing people that God’s angels hold you up in their hands. · Some Christians—including many pastors—might say, “Psalm 91 does NOT apply to you or to me. These Words apply to our Lord Jesus Christ and Him only.” That certainly is one approach, and it is given support by the devil in today’s Gospel, but that approach does not give very much day-to-day comfort to you and to me. At face value the whole “protection of angels” thing did not even work out that well for Jesus. He might not have literally struck His foot against a stone, but plenty worse was dished out to Him. Remind yourself of Psalm 121 prayed for those who have died. “The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” Baptism and the Last Day Resurrection make it right for us to apply the promises of Psalm 121 to Christians who have died. If Baptism and the Resurrection of all Flesh could be compared to two posts planted in the ground, then Psalm 121 is pinned to the clothesline that stretches between the posts. In the same way that Psalm 121 can be applied to those Christians who have died, Psalm 91 can likewise be applied to you Christians who are alive. He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. If Baptism and the Resurrection of all Flesh could be compared to two posts planted in the ground, then Psalm 91 is also pinned to the clothesline that stretches between the posts. 1. Jesus was baptized (Matthew 3:13-17) and Jesus had been promised a resurrection (Psalm 16, Acts 2:25-28) and the devil was right: Psalm 91 applies to Jesus. Because of the certainty of His resurrection from the dead, Jesus could receive fist and scourge, nail and spear, all while comforting Himself with these Words, “He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.” Even while He was bruised for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, Jesus could reason to Himself, “God’s angels even now bear Me up. What are these injuries compared to the resurrection that waits upon My horizon? These whips and blows do not even measure up to a stubbed toe, all things considered!” 2. You, like Jesus, have also been baptized and you also have been promised a resurrection. As Paul says, when you were baptized Christ Jesus your Lord came and wrapped Himself eternally around you (Galatians 3:27), forever yours and always with you. Because of this: a. You get the benefit of Jesus’ forgiveness of sins, delivered personally to you in Baptism and confirmed for you in every worship service. Even more than that, b. You also get to apply to yourself every Word and every Promise in God’s Scriptures that was first spoken to Jesus. If these Words apply to Jesus and if Jesus is wrapped all around you and through you (John 14:20), then the Words must likewise apply also to you. Even while He was bruised for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, Jesus could reason to Himself, “God’s angels even now bear Me up. What are these injuries compared to the resurrection that waits upon My horizon? These whips and blows do not even measure up to a stubbed toe, all things considered!” You, dear Christian, can reason to yourself in exactly the same way. Car accident or sports injury, serious illness or seasonal allergies: we Christians suffer these things and much worse. These things are not good things to suffer. Even while we Christians experience the hardships and treacheries of life, we can reason to ourselves as our Lord was able to reason before us: “God’s angels even now bear me up. What are these injuries compared to the resurrection that waits upon my horizon?” Live or die, skip through life or drag: Psalm 91 is yours. Psalm 121 is yours. All of God’s Psalms are yours. They speak about you and about the eternal life that is now yours because your sins have been forgiven in Holy Baptism. God’s Psalms speak about you because they speak about Jesus and because Jesus is now yours. Use the Psalms for your nourishment. Use them for your endurance. Use them to gain perspective on the bad things that you experience, even as a way of defying the bad things you experience: He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster. Subscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons...@cat41.org Unsubscribe? 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