2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

01-09-05

Bless The Lord

1/9/05 Bless The Lord, O My Soul

PSA 103 Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits; Who pardons all your iniquities; Who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from the pit; Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; Who satisfies your years with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.

The Lord performs righteous deeds, And judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us; Nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.

As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more; And its place acknowledges it no longer. But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children's children, To those who keep His covenant, And who remember His precepts to do them.

The Lord has established His throne in the heavens; And His sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word! Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will. Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul!

I know I said that we would pick up this morning

where we left off last week,

but I’m going to put that on hold

so that I can spend this morning reminding myself

of the truths I need most to know

and yet the ones I find it easiest to forget.

It is January once again in the far north,

that time of year when, at 9:30 in the morning,

the trees outside my office window

are still just back silhouettes against a dark grey sky,

and at 10:30 the sun still has not quite peaked over the horizon.

Layers of ice and old snow

cover the grass that I fussed about mowing four month ago,

and the knowledge that it will be another four months or more

before I will need to pull out the mower

makes me wonder

why I’ve invested nearly 30 years of my life here.

It is January

when everything is dark,

and cold,

and frozen,

and slippery,

and apparently dead.

It is January

when I need desperately

to once again remind myself

of those truths about my God

that form the foundation for all of life.

And to help me remind myself of the truth

we’re going to spend our morning in Psalm 103...sort of.

The 103^rd Psalm

is thought to have been written by David in his old age.

It is the Psalm of a man

who has lived his entire adult life

in the presence of his Lord,

a man who could recall a time

when he was nothing more than a shepherd boy,

unknown to anyone outside of his family,

with no expectation for anything more than a life lived in unbroken obscurity in the years ahead.

It was during those early years,

when he was most certainly still in his teens,

that he first discovered

and then built his life upon the truths

that became the foundation for all that was to follow...

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake...Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

There were things that happened between David and his Lord

during those years of obscurity

that altered his life,

and then ultimately the entire nation of Israel forever.

And as David wrote the words of this 103^rd Psalm

he could remember those early days.

And he could remember, too,

the dramatic changes God brought into his life in the years that followed -

his sudden rise to prominence throughout the nation as a result of his battle with Goliath,

his service to and then rejection by King Saul,

his years spent running, hiding from a King determined to kill him,

and then ultimately his own ascension to the throne.

He could remember God’s faithfulness throughout those years,

but he could remember, too, not just his own victories but his own failures as well,

those times when he allowed his flesh to run wild

driving him into sin against his God,

and into the despair of the soul that followed.

This Psalm is, I think,

in a very real sense David’s attempt

at a single unified statement of his life theology.

But it will make no sense to us whatsoever

unless we understand how David discovered this theology,

how David discovered the true nature of his God.

This is the man who knew God

as few men in history have ever known Him,

describing for us

who our God really is

and what our response to Him should be.

But knowing what we do of David’s life from the extensive Biblical record given to us,

I am convinced that what we have here

is not the product most of all of his victories,

it is the product of his times of despair.

If I were to put it into the terms of what I’m saying today,

I believe it is the product most of all

of the Januarys in his life,

those times of darkness,

and bleakness,

and failure.

I spent most of three days this past week

attempting to write up teaching notes on this 103^rd Psalm without success.

The Psalm itself draws me powerfully,

it encourages me,

and gives me great hope

and great comfort.

But when I began to write up my notes I ran into trouble

because when I took the doctrines, the truths about our God contained in this Psalm

and tried to separate them from those January experiences in our lives

it simply didn’t work.

There are statements within this Psalm,

statements about our God

and about our relationship with Him,

that can only be heard and correctly understood

when we hear them from a soul

that has been driven into a personal discovery

of our desperate need for our God.

The simple truth is that,

though most of us are more than willing to offer our Creator

some measure of respect and even submission,

as long as our own human resources seem to be adequate,

we will not really reach out to our God as GOD.

Only when our own resources fail us utterly,

when we have no human answers left,

only when we are driven in desperation to our God,

knowing that either He really is there and He really is God or there is no hope,

only then will we learn at the spirit level

those truths about our Creator that we most desperately need to know.

And the important thing here

is not WHAT we need,

it’s THAT we need.

For some of us

what we will need most of all

is our God’s forgiveness.

For others what we will need

is His healing in our minds,

or our bodies,

or our souls.

And for some

what we need most of all

is simply His strength and His love to get us through one more day.

And here is the remarkable truth about life on this planet -

everyone of us will avoid that desperation at all costs,

and yet it is only that desperation

that can provide us with the doorway we need

into the discovery of the living reality of God

and of the depth of His love for us.

I wanted very much to find some way

of helping you to hear what I’m trying to say here,

and I’ve decided to use a few pages from The Fisherman

because they contain my best attempt

to put into words

the kind of desperation of the soul I’m talking about here.

Before we finish this morning

I will bring us back once again to that 103^rd Psalm,

but first I want to see if Peter

can help us better recognize

the kind of doorway that leads to the personal discovery

of the truths contained in that Psalm.

We will pick up the account of Peter’s life

in those few hours just preceding the crucifixion of Christ.

Those of you who know your New Testament

know that there was a point during Jesus’ trial

when, in a desperate attempt to save his own skin,

Peter publicly denied any connection with Christ three times.

What I read to you now

will pick up his story

at the point of that third denial.

After more than an hour, as we stood there in helpless agony, I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to face a man who appeared to be wrestling with some intense emotion.

“Did I not see you in the garden with him?” His accusation caused all those in our immediate area to turn and look at me.

At first I tried to make my denial sound casual and disarming. “No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous!”

“No, you’re lying! That was my brother’s ear you cut off. Your Galilean speech gives you away.” Then he turned to those around us and said, “Certainly this man was with him, for he too is a Galilean.”

The explosion that erupted from within me burst forth with such violence that it caused even the high priest himself to stop midsentence and look in my direction. “Listen, you little fool! I don’t know that man, and I never have!” As I spoke, I stretched out my arm in Jesus’ direction and punctuated my words with a jabbing index finger. “I have nothing to do with him, do you understand? I don’t know him. I don’t want to know him. I couldn’t care less what happens to him. He’s no friend of mine, and I assure you that I’m no friend of his!” And then, just so there could be no misunderstanding, I finished my tirade with a string of profanity intended to make it clear to all that I shared nothing in common with this Galilean rabbi on trial for his life a few feet from where we stood.

I did not realize I had been screaming until I heard the silence in the courtyard that followed. No one spoke. No one moved. I became aware of my arm, still suspended in midair, aimed at Jesus. The sound that finally shattered the oppressive stillness in which I stood was the sound that also marked the end of my life as I had known it. Somewhere in the distance a lone rooster crowed his declaration of an approaching dawn and at the same time announced my entrance into the darkest night of my life.

“This very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Jesus’ words surged into my consciousness.

I turned toward Jesus. Our eyes met, and in that meeting at last I saw myself. There was no hiding place left for me. So this was the great Simon Peter. This was the great leader of men. This was the great defender and guardian of the king.

Tears flooded up from deep within me. Agonizing sobs broke through my lips. Through blurred vision I shoved my way past those who blocked my exit and fled into the darkened street. I ran until at last I found some ancient, deserted alleyway, a place reserved for the filth and refuse of the city. Several curious rats squeaked their concern at my intrusion. It seemed a fitting place in which to live out the remainder of my existence—just another piece of worthless garbage in among the rest.

I sobbed my anguish until I could sob no more. Then at last I slept and in that sleep entered the only world in which I knew I could ever again find some measure of peace.

I don’t know what woke me. Perhaps it was the growing stench of the surrounding filth as it warmed in the morning sun. Perhaps it was the increasing noise from the street at the end of the alley. I do know, however, that the world to which I returned was unlike any I had ever known before. It wasn’t the filth. It wasn’t the odor. It wasn’t the noise. It was something else altogether, something deep within me, at the very core of my being.

Simon was dead. My heart continued to beat. My lungs continued their endless expansion and contraction. My senses continued to relay information to my brain. But whereas once there had been hope and life and aspirations and desires and a purpose for being, now there was only pain and shame and emptiness and death.

It was far more than simply regret for my failures or anxiety over the fate of my Master. Regret I understood. Failure I understood. Anxiety I understood. This was none of these. There was simply no longer any life within me.

Each of us constructs our lives on beliefs we accept as unshakable. These beliefs form the great support pillars of our existence, pillars on which everything else is built. We rarely or perhaps never acknowledge their existence in our conscious minds. Yet every choice we make, every word we utter, every goal we hold for the future, assumes their certainty.

For me, the greatest of those pillars, the one upon which all the others depended, the one rooted in the deepest core of my being, was the understanding that Simon Barjona would always ultimately prevail. If I tried hard enough, if I worked long enough, if I learned from my mistakes, if I regrouped following my failures, I could and I would succeed. This was not simply something I hoped for; it was the foundation of my life.

When this man, this Jesus, entered my world almost four years earlier, he brought massive changes with him. When I finally submitted to his lordship, he became my reason for being. His goals became my goals. His successes became my successes. His techniques became my techniques. His affirmations became my greatest joys, and his reprimands pierced me deeply. In a word, he became the center of my world.

But even though I had forsaken all and followed him, the central pillar of my life was still undisturbed. My goals were different. My techniques were different. My hopes were different. My reason for living was changed. But the means by which I pursued all of these remained unaltered. Whereas once my determination, my strength, my wit, my charisma, indeed, all my fleshly attributes had been focused on becoming Simon the great fisherman, through Jesus all those fleshly attributes had been refocused on becoming Simon the great disciple. The goals were radically different, but the means were identical—me.

Then, in one terrifying instant, at the very moment when he knew all my weight rested upon it, Jesus reached his almighty arms around that pillar and wrenched it out from under me, and everything that rested upon it came crashing down. Now there was only the shattered ruins of my existence surrounding a cold, black, gaping chasm where once my pillar had been.

If you have ever been there, you will understand. It wasn’t just that I had failed. Failure I understood. Failure was simply a call to try harder and reach higher. This was not failure; this was death. The foundation of my life had collapsed, and now my spirit wandered aimlessly through the piles of rubble, through the broken bricks and crumpled mortar, listening to the wind whistling through the ruins of my life.

OK, I have taken the time to read that

not because we will all go through a point at which we deny our Lord,

but because there is within Peter’s experience

something that is truly universal

to all those who ultimately reach that point in their lives

where they proclaim along with David,

PSA 103:1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.

It is that point of helpless despair of the soul,

that point at which the great foundation pillars of our lives,

whatever they are,

have crumbled into dust and rubble.

I know that this is a terrible type of talk to give

because it utterly fails to provide you

with what you reasonably expect me to offer.

What you very likely expect me to offer

is some guidance in what you can do

in order to grow in your walk with the King.

And what I offer here

gives you none of that.

The truth is

that if you are still doing,

and the doing seems to be meeting the need,

then you are not yet at a point in your life

where anything I have to share this morning will make any sense.

But I know, too,

that in a group this size

there are some of you

who have felt the pillars of your life

beginning to give way.

And it is to you that I speak now.

It is very likely that right now

you feel as though your God has failed you utterly.

You have cried out to Him for help,

you have prayed,

you have searched His Word,

you have claimed every promise you know how to claim

in a frantic attempt to get Him to help you hold your world together

and it appears as though your God has not heard,

or simply doesn’t care.

What I offer you this morning is not an “answer”,

what I offer you is a sure and certain affirmation of hope.

What you think you need right now

is a God who will hold your foundation together,

a God who will keep those pillars in place.

But what your spirit really longs for

is not a God who will help you hold your crumbling foundation together,

it is a God who loves you enough

to allow your foundation to collapse,

and then who will step into your life at that level

and become your foundation for you.

It won’t feel like the one you’d built for yourself

because this new one brings with it

a desperate daily dependance upon the living realty of God.

Either He’s there,

and He cares

or there is no hope.

But once we get use to the feel of it

we’ll never go back to the old one ever again.

And it is that foundation

that will bring into our souls

our own personal discovery of those truths contained in the 103^rd Psalm.