God’s Tangible Grace
Pastor Mathew Magera – 3/2/16 – Sermon 148
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
I want you to take a moment
and think of a time in your life when you could really feel God’s salvation?
When did you really feel God’s forgiveness? When was his unfailing love
especially tangible in your life? When things were going great, when nothing
could possibly go wrong. You had a handle on everything you were doing. Your
faith was on cloud 9. It could be several years ago or it could be very
recently. But, I want you to think of that and try to re-experience what it
felt like to be in that position. What did it feel like?
Now,
I want you to take the next step here and take a moment to think of a time in
your life when you saw a great reversal of fortune, let’s call it. Think of a
time when God’s salvation seemed very far from you when you couldn’t feel that
divine forgiveness and God’s love was nothing you could feel, taste, touch or
see. Think of a time when you might have been stopped in your tracks for
whatever reason and unable to go any further down the path you had started
down. It could even be related to the good times you were just thinking of.
But, I want you to go ahead and try to re-experience what it felt like to be in
this position of reversal. What did it feel like to have everything start to
crumble? Maybe things are still crumbling around you today. Maybe you are
starting to see signs of cracks in the foundation and it’s only a matter of
time.
It’s very painful to dwell
on the memories in which our lives have seemed to fall apart and we can’t
understand why. With all that we put into preserving these dreams that we were
building, to have them fall down like a sand castle on the beach. If only
something had gone differently we wouldn’t be in this position, would we? If
only we had approached that time knowing how to prevent the fallout effects, we
would be fine. Nevertheless, we fell. And it hurt. And we may still be sore on
the inside even years later.
The Israelites, having come
back from their punishment in exile were so very much expecting everything to
go back to normal after their punishment had been completed. Everything was
bound to get better. However, they were disappointed to return home without a
welcoming party. They struggled to get back on their feet. It was not the grand
entrance they had made with Joshua after Moses died. It wasn’t easy getting
their home back into shape. Some of the current inhabitants didn’t leave. Some
of their religious practices, as a result, didn’t leave either. There was
conflict of all kinds. It became a difficult life for the Israelites and they
blamed God. The Psalm starts, “You, Lord, showed favor to your land; you
restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people and
covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your
fierce anger.” They’re basically saying, “God, you did that with them. Do that
with us! Restore us. Will you not revive us again? Powerful language there to
use the word revive. They felt as if they were already dead having these
struggles. God, you give other people around us relief. Why does their
situation get better but mine doesn’t? Do that with me! Restore me! So, how do
we cope when our life is changed, when our foundation crumbles and we can’t
seem to get back on track? What do we do when life is a struggle rather than a
walk down Main Street? What do we do when God feels so incredible far away if
we even feel him at all in the first place? From this Psalm come at least two
words of encouragement that I wish to give you.
God Won’t
Leave You
When we find ourselves in
the pits of struggle, we have to know that God will not leave us. As far away
as God may seem from us, our point of view might be so skewed it may be near
impossible for us to see or feel God’s presence, but it doesn’t mean that God
has walked away. God will never walk away from us. Verse eight says, “I will listen to what God
the Lord says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants – but let
them not turn to folly.” That last part, ‘but let them not turn to folly’ is
what can happen if we can’t believe that God is right by our side. In our
struggle, it might be natural for us to think of better days when we could
easily feel God’s presence with us. As we do this, it might drive us to find
our way back to those days because perhaps if that’s where God is for us,
that’s where he’s waiting. What we don’t realize is the trouble we might find
trying to turn the past into a present reality.
I read this story of a
farmer who had a bunch of hogs. One day the feeding barn started on fire and
his hogs were inside. The fire department arrived but it was too late to save
the building. The hogs were obviously distressed and the farmer tried to go in
and save a few of them before it was too late. He chased some out of the
building but, in their distress, wanted nothing to do with being outside and
they ran back in to the burning barn and died as a result. Those pigs, though
being saved by the farmer, were insistent that their well-being would be much
better in the feeding barn while unable to notice the flames that engulfed it.
God won’t leave us when
we’re outside of the feeding barn, but God may be taking us out of one
environment for our own good. Verse nine says, “Surely his salvation is near to
those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.” God won’t leave us.
Observe The
Grace
In every circumstance we are
in, good or bad, but particularly the bad, it is helpful for us to see God’s
presence by observing the grace. Our stubborn nature doesn’t want to find the
grace, it wants to place a blame. But, the more we are able to look for and observe
God’s grace in our struggles, the better off we’ll be. Because of what God has
done, especially in Jesus Christ, each one of us has already experienced God’s
salvation, glory, love and faithfulness. We just need to observe the grace. How
do we find it? We simply have to look around.
Looking at the last few
verses of this Psalm, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and
peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and
righteousness looks down from heaven.” What the Psalmist is doing is putting
God’s grace into imagery that we can use to find it. “God’s attributes of
steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace are anthropomorphized
as tangible forces” that act on behalf of God’s people.[1]
These very abstract qualities of God are now concrete realities that embody
God’s benefits. Love and faithfulness meet together. They hang out. They’re
good friends. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. They are very much
involved with each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the ground. What do
we know that does that? Plants, flowers, trees, life. Righteousness looks down
just like the sun looks down on us lighting up what would otherwise be a very dark
existence. The Psalm itself is turning to us now and showing that God’s
promises, while abstract qualities, are as real as the more obviously tangible
parts of creation that surround us. If we take a moment to look for God’s grace
around us and begin to make a list of the amount of grace we see against the
amount of struggle we feel, if we really look hard, there’s a good possibility
that the grace will outweigh the struggle.
“But, Pastor, my struggles
weigh so much more than grace. The grace is so light.” Do you know why the
grace feels so light and the struggle so heavy? It’s because we have our hand
on the scale right on top of the struggle. If we remove our hand to see and
believe in God’s grace, His promise of love, righteousness, peace and faithfulness,
we’ll see the weight of God’s grace makes our struggles appear like nothing.
The last two verses of the Psalm echo this by saying, “The Lord will indeed
give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes
before him and prepares the way for his steps.”
It’s a daily challenge to see
God in all of this because we are constantly struggling within ourselves to
believe in God yet the very tangible struggles we face cry out for our
attention. Believing in God’s promises may not make our struggles disappear,
but as the Israelites would have to believe that God was with them and that God
wasn’t leaving them, it means that when we look around the ups and downs of
life, we too can realize that God was always with us, that God is not going
anywhere and that His grace abounds, and His promises of peace are dependable
to the end of the age. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.