Be confident, He is good.

Consecration Sunday - October 21, 2007

The Rev. Gordon Smith

My good friend and fellow Pastor (now retired) Martin Kessler, tells me that Hindus in the Danville area are seeking to purchase property on the hillside over looking the town of Danville.

Ancient religions, Hinduism included, often choose the hill tops, the high places, for their worship site – closer to god and all that…

Ancient Israel, the Jewish nation, often found itself in the midst of competing belief systems.

Psalm 121, a psalm for the worshipping body is a psalm proclaiming first God’s sovereignty and secondly His providence.

In a land where Baal worship with its fertility cults were prominently placed on the hills, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob speaks plainly:
“not those gods but me, Worship me, I made and own everything.”

In the worship the cry goes up:
“I lift my eyes to the hills, from whence does my help come.” The response to the question is meant as an affirmation: “My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”

The whole created order, all that can be seen, and that which exists but is hard to measure is owned and belongs to the Lord God. Jesus, God made visible to the apostles and others, runs the universe, and as much as this seems to us a logistical nightmare, He does it, and needs not our help.

God owns everything. Yes, you and I think that since we hold the deed our home’s ownership belong to us- we may even put directives in our will so that certain property is transferred according to our expressed wishes, but once we are in the grave how can we control our inheritors?

Have you ever talked to someone who sold their house but are beside themselves – agitated to distraction? Why? Because the Jones painted “their” Cape Cod that milk of magnesia pink!!! Horrors!

Imagine the heartburn our Lord Jesus has when He sees us abuse and misuse all that’s His. He gives us a will to exercise management over what’s His; the Lord is not an absentee landlord though – hear the phrases the Psalmist uses:
     The Lord watches over you
     The Lord will preserve you
     The Lord watches over your going out and your coming in.

The Psalmist writes: “He will keep your life.” We who benefit from the New Covenant signed, sealed and delivered in the blood of Jesus ought to know that He is our head and we are His Body. This is not just a word play. My head and body go together, I would be quite extinct if they were separated. So too Jesus joins us in lives comings and goings. The cross proclaims that He joins us in sins sufferings – life’s struggles and pain.

Our head Jesus grieves when we have a loss. He wears our moral failures and the hate and mistrust sin always brings with bad behavior. Often you and I have tried to exercise our independence from our Lord Jesus in acts of defiance – breaking His commandments. He is angry and disappointed by, He does not abandon us – always wooing us to return to Him. Calling us through the Holy Spirit to honest sorrow and repentance.

It is this Jesus whom the world sorely needs. God comes down to live among us. He routes sin, defeats death and deposits truth to counter the devil’s lies. What he does for you and me he certainly can do for others. Since He is raised from the dead death’s icy grip is broken. Just as we say in our Funeral worship service:
“Alleluia, Jesus Christ is the first born of the dead; to Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Alleluia.”

So it is with us – when Jesus returns will He not raise us to new life? Why, we have His own promise now from John 5:24,25:
“Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life’ he does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life…the hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of Man, and those who hear will live.”

We were dead in our trespasses and sin, but now we are alive in Jesus, our Lord.

This message of eternal importance must get out! First, so that you and I are strengthened in our walks and secondly so that those indifferent, or enemies of Jesus might turn and live.

Since the Lord is maker and owner of all that is, He impresses on us the need to support the gospel work.

He calls all Christians to sort out the Lord’s giving plan – we all have resources which rise and fall, right? Truly there are some years that we make more than others. The scriptures call us to percentage giving. We are called to give a portion, a percent – ten percent, more or less, less or more, to the work we share.

If you’ve never given a percent … give it a try – two, three, or four percent – then you are giving proportionate to your income. Sometimes God changes His giving plan – say you have some medical problem that eats through your earnings – who would fault you if you changed your support?

The only tow figures that matter to the Christian is: the Lord’s give to you and secondly your response to His plan.

Our response is the figure we chose to support the gospel work we share. Our response to God’s care has nothing to do with St. Mark’s budget – we give in response to God’s care is not mediated by the response of other Christians. It would be wonderful if Gladiola Pinchface (do you have a G. Pinchface here?) gave a cool million for the work we share here! But that’s her response to God’s goodness. You and I have our responses not conditioned by how the Holy Spirit moves Gladiola. Once we understand that the Lord is looking out for us – the more our confidence grows in His providence – then and only then will we grow in our support of this mercy that redeems the soul from darkness.

He who neither slumbers or sleeps will see us through the darkest of times. He’s always on duty, whether we sense Him or not.

Be confident, He is good.

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.