Sermon: Jesus’ Prayer Book: Blessed is the Nation
July 5th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Psalm 33 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Let’s take a[nother] look at verse 7 of this 33rd Psalm: The Lord gathers the waters of the sea into jars; God puts the deep into storehouses. How many jars do you think that would take? How many storehouses of jar would be needed to gather up the seas? No one had to wonder anything very long any more – you can just google it! So I did. The world’s oceans and seas contain 321 million cubic miles of water. How much is that in gallons? Well, 1 cubic mile of water = 1.1 trillion gallons. So multiply 1.1 trillion times 321 million and you get the number of gallons in the seas – whoa! Then add to that the amount of water that is in the storehouse of ice caps and glaciers – it’s more than our small minds can comprehend, is what the answer is!
God created this massive storehouse of water for the earth – kept in its place by shorelines. Then, each day 300 trillion gallons are withdrawn from that storehouse by way of evaporation. The water is carried along by clouds and winds till it’s released to water the land. On the continental United States, 4 ½ trillion gallons of water rain down (or snow, sleet and hail down) each day. What an amazing way God designed for this earth to be cared for, to be refreshed and watered and given life! It gives us a glimpse of our Creator’s heart – of faithful protection, of caring compassion, of unfailing love.
Our response when we contemplate these incredible things is to worship, and to call others to join us to praise the Creator God! Psalm 33 starts with that call to worship – a 3-fold call and response: Rejoice! Praise! Sing! – like we often do at the start of worship. Turn to the back of your bulletin and let’s alternate reading the lines.
1 Rejoice! Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
Yes! Sing and play skillfully, and if that’s not your gift then just shout! The writer reminds us that it is fitting for us to give God praise. It is fitting not because God needs to hear how wonderful God is, but because we need to hear it and to say it. In praise, we name the ways in which God is good, we declare the reasons that God is great. We remind ourselves of who God is and remind one another of what God has done. The more we praise God, the closer we get to a right perspective of ourselves and a right perspective of God. Praise accomplishes in our lives, what the course correction device does in a navigation system. It recalibrates, recalculates, realigns our lives with Jesus to move in the direction of God’s will.
Following the call to worship in this Psalm, is the opening prayer. The pray-er begins to list reasons for praise:
4 For [because] the word of the Lord is right and true;
[because] He is faithful in all He does.
5 [because] the Lord loves righteousness and justice;
[because] the earth is full of His unfailing love.
Then come the illustrations, the examples of how we can see with our own eyes the wonder and power of God’s word in the world – the creation that God spoke into being. We see the greatness when we look up into the night sky on a clear, dark night and imagine God breathing the stars into existence. We see the wisdom when we consider the vast quantities of water that cover nearly three-quarters of the earth’s surface. If we imagine that water poured out over the continental United States, it would cover the land to a depth of 107 miles! At its deepest spot, Lake Michigan is only 922 feet deep – so stack up 600 Lake Michigan’s and you start to get close!
We see God’s greatness, not just in creation, but also in history, the psalmist reminds us. The history of nations and peoples are shaped by God’s word and God’s will. Like the destructive power of the oceans contained by shorelines, the destructive power of humanity is contained by God’s purposes. When the shoreline of God’s lordship and rule is what holds and guides a nation, it too will be an illustration of God’s faithful protection and goodness. It is then that all can declare with verse 12, the verse at the very center of this psalm: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the peoples He chose for His inheritance!
Four-thousand years ago – about as much time before Jesus was born as has now passed since then – God chose a man named Abraham. God made a promise to him and to his wife Sarah, saying, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing… all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”(Gen.12:2-3)
God was faithful to that promise. Abraham and Sarah’s descendants grew and formed the nation of Israel. Not Israel, the political nation which exists today – that nation Israel was more an ethnic group, a people who had committed to living in God’s ways, under God as their leader and Lord. Over centuries God guided them so that they were cared for in times of famine, even moved them as refugees to Egypt. When they were exploited for their labor in that land, God called Moses to rescue them and bring them to a land where they could live in peace, with God as their God, fulfilling their purpose of being blessed so that the world might be blessed through them.
But as time went by, that nation turned their devotion to God into devotion of other things. They began to look to the leadership of their rulers and kings more than to the Lord. They built up their armies as they began to fear their enemies more than they feared and trusted God. They neglected the way God had directed them to live as reflections of God’s mercy, and justice, to love one another and bless those around them. So finally, they were defeated by their enemies, lost their land, and those who survived were marched into exile in Babylon.
Decades later, a man named Daniel, who had been just a teenager when force out of his homeland, played an important role in the nation’s realignment and restoration. Because of his abilities, Daniel had been recruited to serve the Babylonian administration. You know this Daniel from Sunday school stories of Daniel in the lion’s den – saved by God from being eaten by the lions because Daniel was faithful and had made worshipping God his first priority. When he was in his 70’s, Daniel recognized that his nation’s failures had brought terrible consequences and Daniel knelt down in prayer. Though he himself had not personally been involved in the failures of leadership in the past, Daniel confessed those sins to God. He repented on behalf of his people and asked for forgiveness, that they might be restored and be blessed again. Daniel praised God, with many of the same praises lifted up in our psalm today. He said, “Lord, great and awesome God, who always keeps your promise of unfailing love to those who love and obey you…” Daniel recalled God faithfulness, his mercy and forgiveness, saying, “for the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does, yet we have not obeyed Him.” He confessed the sins of his people. He confessed them as if they were his own. He prayed, “Lord, listen. Lord, forgive. Not because we are righteous, but because you are merciful.” (Daniel 9)
As Daniel prays and praises, God begins to answer that prayer, preparing to again bless the nation, to bring them back on course with God’s ways and God’s will. The exiles returned to their land; they rebuilt their place of worship to God. But again, over the centuries their leaders failed to live in God’s ways. They could not live in peace with those around them. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer. Serving the structures of power became more important than serving God or serving the people. And God knew that the time had come to fulfill the original purpose of that nation Himself. God sent His son, Jesus, inviting people to see how they had gotten off track, to repent and return to the ways of God and the praise of God, to live again as a blessed nation with God as their leader and Lord.
Only this time the nation would be different. This time the borders of the nation wouldn’t run along the lines of particular seas or rivers or mountain ranges; this time it would run through every continent on earth. The borders of this nation would run through every city and every town, across oceans and open fields. The borders would cut through families and through each and every human heart. The citizens of this new nation would come from every race and culture and language, for the borders are open and porous, welcoming all who seek to live within the borders of God’s will and God’s ways. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”(Jn.12:32) He directed his followers to make disciples of all nations (Mt.28:19).
The writer of Psalm 33 may have anticipated this future for right after declaring, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” he explains, “From heaven the Lord looks down and see every human being; from his dwelling place God watches all who live on the earth – God is the one who forms the hearts of all, who knows all that they do.”
God watches everyone and knows us all. God is aware of the crisis moment we are in today, in the world, but particularly in this nation – the crisis of illness and obstinance, the crisis of climate with dust clouds and floods and fires, the crisis of facing up to the oppression and exploitation of human beings that shaped this nation, the crisis of poverty and policing, the crisis of leadership and of truth.
In this time of crisis, we have a calling, like Daniel, to recognize where our primary citizenship and allegiance lies, as well as a calling to pray and to guide the earthly nation we live in back into realignment with our true leader and Lord, Jesus. You became a citizen of Christ’s nation when you were baptized, invited to live freely within the borders of God’s protection and blessing. We pledge allegiance, first and foremost, to that nation. But then, as with the nation God founded with Abraham, so too citizens of Christ’s nation are chosen and blessed by God to be blessing to others.
We take up that task, starting with the work of praise. We rejoice because we know God is paying attention to us, cares about us, and has His eye on us. We praise because we know that it is by God’s strength we are saved, it doesn’t just depend on us, on the intelligence of our doctors or the power of policing. We sing because we know that we are loved and that God is so gracious as to use us to help fill the whole earth with His love. We also confess our failings, both personal and collective, to be set back on course.
Would you pray with me: Holy God, you have filled this world with wonders that show us just how good and great You are. You have even sent your Son, to let us meet you in person. Yet we have fallen short of our call to reflect your love into the world – we have treated others as less than fully human, as undeserving of being fully loved, we have acted in greed for land and wealth, we have put our trust in all sorts of things, hedging our bets rather than trusting in You to provide and to protect and to act justly. Lord God, remind us that blessed is the nation, blessed is the community, the church, the family, whose God is the Lord, who recognizes that You chose them to be Your precious people, Your partners in filling the world with Your love. Realign us again with Jesus, with his ways and with his will. We wait in hope, for Christ is our help and our shield, in Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His Holy name. Put that song on our lips this day, Father God; let us sing your new song of peace, taught to us by your Holy Spirit.
Communion Song: “This Is My Song”
Sermon: Jesus’ Prayer Book: Blessed is the Nation
July 5th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Psalm 33 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Let’s take a[nother] look at verse 7 of this 33rd Psalm: The Lord gathers the waters of the sea into jars; God puts the deep into storehouses. How many jars do you think that would take? How many storehouses of jar would be needed to gather up the seas? No one had to wonder anything very long any more – you can just google it! So I did. The world’s oceans and seas contain 321 million cubic miles of water. How much is that in gallons? Well, 1 cubic mile of water = 1.1 trillion gallons. So multiply 1.1 trillion times 321 million and you get the number of gallons in the seas – whoa! Then add to that the amount of water that is in the storehouse of ice caps and glaciers – it’s more than our small minds can comprehend, is what the answer is!
God created this massive storehouse of water for the earth – kept in its place by shorelines. Then, each day 300 trillion gallons are withdrawn from that storehouse by way of evaporation. The water is carried along by clouds and winds till it’s released to water the land. On the continental United States, 4 ½ trillion gallons of water rain down (or snow, sleet and hail down) each day. What an amazing way God designed for this earth to be cared for, to be refreshed and watered and given life! It gives us a glimpse of our Creator’s heart – of faithful protection, of caring compassion, of unfailing love.
Our response when we contemplate these incredible things is to worship, and to call others to join us to praise the Creator God! Psalm 33 starts with that call to worship – a 3-fold call and response: Rejoice! Praise! Sing! – like we often do at the start of worship. Turn to the back of your bulletin and let’s alternate reading the lines.
1 Rejoice! Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
Yes! Sing and play skillfully, and if that’s not your gift then just shout! The writer reminds us that it is fitting for us to give God praise. It is fitting not because God needs to hear how wonderful God is, but because we need to hear it and to say it. In praise, we name the ways in which God is good, we declare the reasons that God is great. We remind ourselves of who God is and remind one another of what God has done. The more we praise God, the closer we get to a right perspective of ourselves and a right perspective of God. Praise accomplishes in our lives, what the course correction device does in a navigation system. It recalibrates, recalculates, realigns our lives with Jesus to move in the direction of God’s will.
Following the call to worship in this Psalm, is the opening prayer. The pray-er begins to list reasons for praise:
4 For [because] the word of the Lord is right and true;
[because] He is faithful in all He does.
5 [because] the Lord loves righteousness and justice;
[because] the earth is full of His unfailing love.
Then come the illustrations, the examples of how we can see with our own eyes the wonder and power of God’s word in the world – the creation that God spoke into being. We see the greatness when we look up into the night sky on a clear, dark night and imagine God breathing the stars into existence. We see the wisdom when we consider the vast quantities of water that cover nearly three-quarters of the earth’s surface. If we imagine that water poured out over the continental United States, it would cover the land to a depth of 107 miles! At its deepest spot, Lake Michigan is only 922 feet deep – so stack up 600 Lake Michigan’s and you start to get close!
We see God’s greatness, not just in creation, but also in history, the psalmist reminds us. The history of nations and peoples are shaped by God’s word and God’s will. Like the destructive power of the oceans contained by shorelines, the destructive power of humanity is contained by God’s purposes. When the shoreline of God’s lordship and rule is what holds and guides a nation, it too will be an illustration of God’s faithful protection and goodness. It is then that all can declare with verse 12, the verse at the very center of this psalm: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the peoples He chose for His inheritance!
Four-thousand years ago – about as much time before Jesus was born as has now passed since then – God chose a man named Abraham. God made a promise to him and to his wife Sarah, saying, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing… all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”(Gen.12:2-3)
God was faithful to that promise. Abraham and Sarah’s descendants grew and formed the nation of Israel. Not Israel, the political nation which exists today – that nation Israel was more an ethnic group, a people who had committed to living in God’s ways, under God as their leader and Lord. Over centuries God guided them so that they were cared for in times of famine, even moved them as refugees to Egypt. When they were exploited for their labor in that land, God called Moses to rescue them and bring them to a land where they could live in peace, with God as their God, fulfilling their purpose of being blessed so that the world might be blessed through them.
But as time went by, that nation turned their devotion to God into devotion of other things. They began to look to the leadership of their rulers and kings more than to the Lord. They built up their armies as they began to fear their enemies more than they feared and trusted God. They neglected the way God had directed them to live as reflections of God’s mercy, and justice, to love one another and bless those around them. So finally, they were defeated by their enemies, lost their land, and those who survived were marched into exile in Babylon.
Decades later, a man named Daniel, who had been just a teenager when force out of his homeland, played an important role in the nation’s realignment and restoration. Because of his abilities, Daniel had been recruited to serve the Babylonian administration. You know this Daniel from Sunday school stories of Daniel in the lion’s den – saved by God from being eaten by the lions because Daniel was faithful and had made worshipping God his first priority. When he was in his 70’s, Daniel recognized that his nation’s failures had brought terrible consequences and Daniel knelt down in prayer. Though he himself had not personally been involved in the failures of leadership in the past, Daniel confessed those sins to God. He repented on behalf of his people and asked for forgiveness, that they might be restored and be blessed again. Daniel praised God, with many of the same praises lifted up in our psalm today. He said, “Lord, great and awesome God, who always keeps your promise of unfailing love to those who love and obey you…” Daniel recalled God faithfulness, his mercy and forgiveness, saying, “for the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does, yet we have not obeyed Him.” He confessed the sins of his people. He confessed them as if they were his own. He prayed, “Lord, listen. Lord, forgive. Not because we are righteous, but because you are merciful.” (Daniel 9)
As Daniel prays and praises, God begins to answer that prayer, preparing to again bless the nation, to bring them back on course with God’s ways and God’s will. The exiles returned to their land; they rebuilt their place of worship to God. But again, over the centuries their leaders failed to live in God’s ways. They could not live in peace with those around them. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer. Serving the structures of power became more important than serving God or serving the people. And God knew that the time had come to fulfill the original purpose of that nation Himself. God sent His son, Jesus, inviting people to see how they had gotten off track, to repent and return to the ways of God and the praise of God, to live again as a blessed nation with God as their leader and Lord.
Only this time the nation would be different. This time the borders of the nation wouldn’t run along the lines of particular seas or rivers or mountain ranges; this time it would run through every continent on earth. The borders of this nation would run through every city and every town, across oceans and open fields. The borders would cut through families and through each and every human heart. The citizens of this new nation would come from every race and culture and language, for the borders are open and porous, welcoming all who seek to live within the borders of God’s will and God’s ways. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”(Jn.12:32) He directed his followers to make disciples of all nations (Mt.28:19).
The writer of Psalm 33 may have anticipated this future for right after declaring, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” he explains, “From heaven the Lord looks down and see every human being; from his dwelling place God watches all who live on the earth – God is the one who forms the hearts of all, who knows all that they do.”
God watches everyone and knows us all. God is aware of the crisis moment we are in today, in the world, but particularly in this nation – the crisis of illness and obstinance, the crisis of climate with dust clouds and floods and fires, the crisis of facing up to the oppression and exploitation of human beings that shaped this nation, the crisis of poverty and policing, the crisis of leadership and of truth.
In this time of crisis, we have a calling, like Daniel, to recognize where our primary citizenship and allegiance lies, as well as a calling to pray and to guide the earthly nation we live in back into realignment with our true leader and Lord, Jesus. You became a citizen of Christ’s nation when you were baptized, invited to live freely within the borders of God’s protection and blessing. We pledge allegiance, first and foremost, to that nation. But then, as with the nation God founded with Abraham, so too citizens of Christ’s nation are chosen and blessed by God to be blessing to others.
We take up that task, starting with the work of praise. We rejoice because we know God is paying attention to us, cares about us, and has His eye on us. We praise because we know that it is by God’s strength we are saved, it doesn’t just depend on us, on the intelligence of our doctors or the power of policing. We sing because we know that we are loved and that God is so gracious as to use us to help fill the whole earth with His love. We also confess our failings, both personal and collective, to be set back on course.
Would you pray with me: Holy God, you have filled this world with wonders that show us just how good and great You are. You have even sent your Son, to let us meet you in person. Yet we have fallen short of our call to reflect your love into the world – we have treated others as less than fully human, as undeserving of being fully loved, we have acted in greed for land and wealth, we have put our trust in all sorts of things, hedging our bets rather than trusting in You to provide and to protect and to act justly. Lord God, remind us that blessed is the nation, blessed is the community, the church, the family, whose God is the Lord, who recognizes that You chose them to be Your precious people, Your partners in filling the world with Your love. Realign us again with Jesus, with his ways and with his will. We wait in hope, for Christ is our help and our shield, in Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His Holy name. Put that song on our lips this day, Father God; let us sing your new song of peace, taught to us by your Holy Spirit.
Communion Song: “This Is My Song”
Communion Song: “This Is My Song”
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