Psalm 123 – 09/29/2024

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Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord join us this morning.
In a world full of bickering and hate,
let us be peace
In a world of lies let us be truth
In a world that is ever striving let us be contentment.
In a world that makes endless demands on others
let us be generosity
In a world that worships money let us be contentment
In a world that seeks endless power let us be surrender
In a world that destroys souls let us be sacrifice
Move us Lord
No longer content to talk about the thing
No longer gratified to judge others because they are not the thing
Teach us to be the thing
Transform us to be the thing
By your loving hand
Amen

Morning Talk: Guest speaker, Guy Gray

Psalm 3 is the most loved, most quoted, and best known of all Psalms
There are lots of reasons for this.

It’s short – just six verses. But though it’s so short it’s incredibly deep.
It’s simple – easy to understand.  The Lord, the shepherd is God.  I am the sheep. I get it!
And there is something uniquely encouraging, comforting, and empowering about this Psalm.

So, this morning, I’d like to give you Psalm 23 as a “fixed focal point” for your faith – through all the different seasons and experiences of your life.

When I was a boy I used to go deep sea fishing with my father.  Often the sea would be rough and I would get sick.  He used to say to me, “If you can find a fixed focal point on the horizon, keep your eyes on that, and that’ when you will find your balance once again.”

That’s good advice for a storm at sea.
But what if we could apply that idea to our life of faith in God?
That is how I have come to see Psalm 23 in my life experience.
It has become a fixed focal point for my faith – through all the ups and downs of life.

So now, let’s think through Psalm 23, with a special focus on Vs. 4.

First, we need to get a feel for how this Psalm unfolds.
It has a beautiful beginning, a hope filled ending, and a valley of deep darkness in the middle.

THE BEAUTIFUL BEGINNING Vss. 1-3

These verses give us this incredible portrait of: peace, nurture, movement forward, and purpose. 
This is a life “fully alive” and “flourishing”.
I love this. I want to be in this scene!

A HOPE FILLED ENDING Vs. 6

This verse gives us the most profound picture of hope you can imagine. It’s a hope that seems to transcend even the grave itself. 
In Psalm23, hope gets the final word!
I love this. I’m trying to learn to live in this perspective more an more in my life.

Illustration: The blank book gift and not knowing what to write.  Then I wrote “I choose to live in faith.”  (I was so excited about it that the next Sunday I preached a sermon on this.)

THE DARK VALLEY IN THE  MIDDLE Vs. 4

I think of this as the unexpected and uninvited intrusion into the perfect picture
But this is also why we love Psalm 23 – because it meets us where we live, in our broken lives and our broken world.

Here are 3 key ideas from Vs. 4:
1. The darkness described in Psalm 23 is darkness in the extreme
There are lots of words for darkness in the OT, but this is a rare word that is the most extreme of them all.  Two other passages help us get a feel for this: Psalm 107:10 uses the image of being chained in prison to describe this darkness. Job 10:20-22 describes this as a darkness so deep that it swallows all light – like a black hole.
But we know this deep darkness is a metaphor for the most painful and difficult experiences of our lives.
In 2 Cor 7:5-6 the Apostle Paul describes deep distress in his life that has two sources – external circumstances and internal anxiety.  He describes himself as “downcast”. Even the amazing apostle Paul had times when he needed a strength beyond his own to keep going.

2. The comfort that God brings into our lives might be different than at first we would think
The modern definition of “comfort” is something like this:
“The state of feeling better after felling sad or worried; something that makes your life easy or pleasant.”
This is primarily about feeling better.  This is why we talk about needing “comfort food!”
But the biblical definition of “comfort” is different:  gaining the courage you need to face the adversities of your life because you know you are not alone.”  This is much like the “antiquated definition of “comfort” found in the dictionary: Comfort (obsolete meaning, from the Latin comfortare) “To aid, support, encourage, strengthen.”
The purpose of God’s comfort in our lives is to give us the strength to go on, through the darkness, not just to make us feel better.

3. In Psalm 23 it is the promise that God is with us in and through the Darkness that makes all the difference. It brings the comfort of God’s presence to us; it brings the strength of God to us.

Vs. 4 – “for you are with me.”
“God with us is the great gospel promise of the Christian faith.  In the Gospel of Matthew Ch. 1 we are told that his name shall be called Emmanuel – God with us.  In Matthew 28, in the very last phrase in the gospel, Jesus says, “and I will be with you to the very end of the age.”
This is the core message of the Gospel.  God is with us in Jesus Christ.  In his incarnation; in his life; in his death on the cross for our sins; in his resurrection victory over death; and in the giving of the Holy Spirit to be with us in our lives. 
Jesus said, in John 14, I will ask the Father and he will give you another “comforter” to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.”  Comforter is the Greek word “paraclete” that word means “one who comes alongside to help.  Sometimes it is translated as “comforter”, but other times as, advocate, or counselor, or helper.  And God is with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit in all of those ways, through all the seasons and experiences of our lives. 

It’s amazing to know that we can bring this comfort to other people.  Like Titus did for Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:5-6.  And God can use other people to bring his comfort into our lives as well.
This is what God did for me when, at a very dark day in my life, God sent a man I had not seen in several years to encourage me. It was a “random” encounter in passing at an airport.  He said, “Do you remember that sermon you gave years ago on hope?” I want you to know that I was listening. And he rolled up his sleeve and showed me his arm where he had tattooed the words “I chose to live in hope.”  That encounter was a strong affirmation to my life that, indeed, God is with me. What comfort!

These are the themes from Psalm 23 that have become a fixed focal point for my faith in my life journey.  When I fix my eyes on Psalm 23 in this way, it helps me find my balance again through the different seasons and even the dark storms of life.