Sing Praise

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Bernard Levin was an English journalist, author and broadcaster. He died about 6 years ago to the day, but shortly before he died he wrote something in his regular column in The Times that I think we can all relate to. Here’s what he wrote:

“Would my readers please note, that when I’ve finished this column, I shall be on my way to Christmas Island never to return. The choice of Christmas Island was made in the belief that it is the most remote inhabited place in the world. I’ve been told that only one ship goes there, and that one only goes once a year. I’ve already been in touch with the postmaster of Christmas Island and he has agreed to burn any letters that are addressed to me without opening them. If the yearly ship approaches and the coastguard has reason to believe that the ship is carrying newspapers from Britain, he has orders to fire on it without warning. And what has brought on this sudden urge towards misanthropy? You ought to be able to guess by now and many of you surely have. It is that another bundle of papers from Amnesty international have landed on my desk… (and he ends) ...How much wickedness can the world stand? That is not a cry of despair, but a wish to know. For I now begin to believe that at some point the world will be drowned in evil, and evil will rule the world. Yes, but I will be on Christmas Island ignorant of what is going on elsewhere. As I write these words a packet of papers lands on my desk. They tell of another country in which murder, torture and starvation are the daily lot. And I am asked to do something about it. Well I’m not going to. First because I cannot do anything about it, and secondly because I’ve given up this business entirely. For half my life I’ve been banging my head against wickedness. And all I’ve got for it is a sore head. Christmas Island, here I come. Amnesty International please note.”

Now if you’re any kind of sensitive, thinking human being, you’ve got to have felt like that at some point or another in your life. Watch the news, pick up a newspaper, surf the BBC website and everyday you will encounter stories of pain and injustice and rampant immorality that are truly enough to make you want to run away from it all. Millions affected in flood hit Pakistan. A 7 year old child is starved to death. Greedy bankers get away with blue murder. A man shoots 3 people and becomes a Facebook folk hero. Disaster, wars, poverty, abuse. Those are the news headlines, aren’t they? And they make us wonder if there is any justice in the world at all.

But it’s not just world news that has us asking that. There’s not one of us who doesn’t encounter injustice on our doorstep. We like to think that God will be good to good people. Fear God faithfully, obey the commands, and God will bless you. But then we look around our office, lecture theatre, or classroom and things don’t square up to that creedal position. If anything it’s the opposite. It’s not the pure in heart who prosper, but the immoral. They seem to be having the time of their lives, while those of us who put God first find that our faith does not make us immune to trouble and pain.

You see there is an awful lot that happens in this life which contradicts a breezy confidence in God. That shakes our faith and makes us ask the “why” question. Why does a good God allow that? For if we’re honest to all effects it often looks as if evil is winning. That evil does indeed rule the world. And that there is no end in sight for evil’s reign.

This is the issue which burns at the heart of the Psalms that we’re going to be diving into over the next month or so. Psalms 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13 all have as their backdrop this theme of honest frustration at the injustices of our world. And though it might be more pleasant to do a Bernhard Levin and run away from these issues – The Bible never does. For one of the wonderful things about the Psalms is that they do not shy away from the full range of human emotion – they go through the whole gamut. And they tell me not only what God has to say to me, but they show me how I can speak to God in a world that is often very confusing.

That’s what Psalm 9 does. It shows us how we can speak to God in a world in a messed up world. In fact it teaches us how to praise God in a messed up world. Because in amongst all the pain and confusion David wants us to celebrate some wonderful deeds of the Lord. Verse 1 he says:

1I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. 2I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

What is this wonder that fills the heart with praise? What is it about God’s name that brings rejoicing to the lips? It is the fact that:

1. THE LORD DELIVERS

Dive into the middle of this Psalm and you will see that this prayer of praise is not the devotion of a carefree comfortable Christian. No, check out verse 13 and you will see that David is under the cosh!

O LORD, see how my enemies persecute me! Have mercy on me and lift me up from the gates of death...

I’m not sure what exactly is going on here - but that sounds serious doesn’t it? This is a genuine cry for help in a life or death situation. And yet David can still not only cry out for mercy, but sing the Lord’s praise! How?

Well, where you and I may see only doom and gloom the Psalmist looks back and remembers God’s wonders. He remembers specific acts which require a cause beyond humankind. The kind of things that are beyond us mere mortals. He might have thought of God’s wonders of creation. Or his mind might have turned to wonders of his hand on history. But David is remembering something much more specific than that. He is remembering incidents from his own personal history. He’s dug out a few old tapes from his camcorder and stuck them in the VCR for review and this is what he sees:

3My enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before you. 4For you have upheld my right and my cause; you have sat on your throne, judging righteously. 5You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. 6Endless ruin has overtaken the enemy, you have uprooted their cities; even the memory of them has perished.

David has seen overwhelming opposition before. In the blue corner there was David – resourceful, cunning, and brave. In the red corner his enemies – they were powerful, ruthless and terrifying and nothing that David threw at them could stop their advance. But God could. David’s enemies stumbled and perished on God the rock. God stepped in and brought about justice. David was in the right, his enemies the wrong and God stops them in their tracks as easily as a teacher rebukes a pupil or a parent tells off a toddler. They thought they were something, but God made them into nothing. Do you remember them? No. I don’t either. No-one does any more.

And that’s what David sees as he presses the rewind button on his life. He looked back at a previous set of troubles and remembered how God delivered him then, and it helps him to trust God now.

And he came to the conclusion that that little slice of God’s deliverance must have come from a bigger cake. That may be the kind of sentence that only makes sense in my head. Because I love cake – so whenever I see a slice of cake I assume that there must be the rest of the cake lurking somewhere nearby. BUT stay with me here – David gets a taste, a little sliver of God’s powerful, just deliverance and he comes to the conclusion that that is just a part of the bigger picture of what God is like. That this is who God is - a powerful, just deliverer. AND so he declares verse 7:

7The LORD reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. 8He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. 9The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. 10Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.

David is saying something like this: “My deliverances, my victories, are simply mini-demonstrations of God’s character. They reveal the bigger picture that we struggle to see in the day by day out. That the Lord reigns forever! That he is king of this world! And yet, and yet, and yet... he is utterly concerned with every neuron of our lives.” You see God hasn’t just made the world like a clock - wound it up and threw it down into the Milky Way and let it do its thing while he retires to his rocking chair to listen to Classical FM and suck Werther’s Originals. No! The world is not running amok out of his control. God is still sustaining, directing, judging, intervening in the world he created - day in and day out.

And David says to us that if we only look we will see glimpses of this truth all around us. For his deliverance was typical of the way God acts towards his afflicted ones. “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.” Press the rewind button to review your story and you will see that the most faithful, reliable, dependable, ever present person in your life has been, and always will be the Lord.

So when our faith is being shaken. When we live in a world or a family or workplace or where everything is uncertain. When everything is falling apart and no-one can put humpty together again. We need to look back and remember the Lord’s past deliverance - His previous interventions in our lives and the lives of those around us. That’s why we find hearing testimonies in church so encouraging and why it’s good to read a good Christian biography every now and again - because those stories remind us of how God is at work in his world. For our God is a God who loves to deliver people.

If we can remember that truth then we can pick up a newspaper without descending into despair. The headlines will no longer be an object of frustration, they are fuel for our prayers. Was a child rescued from danger? Praise the Lord. Are you concerned about the cuts? Ask for God’s will to be done. Are unemployment rates climbing? Intercede for the needs of the poor. Pray through the headlines to a distant, impotent God and you will soon give up praying. Pray your way through the headlines to the God of Psalm 9 and you will keep praying as David does “Lord... have mercy...!”

For the Lord delivers. To which you might say: “Yes, but he’s not delivering everyone. No matter how hard I rewind my memories I still find just as much misery and pain as gracious deliverance.” Well that leads us to our second point:

2. THE LORD WILL JUDGE

Seeing as we’re desperately trying to pretend that it’s still summer, let me throw in a quick Wimbledon fact here. The last British man to win the men’s title at Wimbledon was Fred Perry. I think he makes T-shirts now. But when he was playing Tennis he so distrusted the umpire and the linesmen from getting it right that he would keep his own private personal score. So he’d say to himself “My smash was called out, but it was really in: 15-love to me. That second serve was an inch long, so double fault and 30-love to me.” And so on. At the end of the match he’d have a different score and he’d even tell his opponent what the “real” score actually was.

Well we may think that even with God at the helm of this world evil is still winning the day, but God is keeping his own score. God is just as dissatisfied with the state of the world as we are. And one day he plans to do something about it. Skip back to the verse 7:

7The LORD reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. 8He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice.

Did you get that? David says: “God’s judgement is coming. There is an appointed time when God will judge. He’s already on his throne ready for the day when all the world will have their day of reckoning. And evil will be utterly defeated.”

And that judgement will deliver real justice. There will be no bent witnesses, no muddleheaded juries, no corrupt judges, no fat cat lawyers, no need for legal aid, no interminably long appeals process. Only God can get can get it right- and get it right first time. He’s our only hope justice. And the Bible promises us that God’s judgement will bring justice for all!

And one of the reasons that God’s justice is so fair is that nothing will be forgotten on that day. That’s what David goes onto say in verse 11 & 12 doesn’t he? Not only is the judgement coming, but not one detail will be missed:

11Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion; proclaim among the nations what he has done. 12For he who avenges blood remembers; he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.

Anyone can evade justice - the rich & famous through their cash & celebrity, the powerful through their influence, Ronnie Biggs through running away, even ourselves through the deceitfulness of our hearts. And we can all think that we’re getting away with it. That it’s forgotten. But this enthroned God - reigning on high “remembers”. He doesn’t just make a note of it and then lose the paperwork. His documents never mysteriously get eaten by a shredder or tied up in bureaucracy. God can be trusted with the details. He doesn’t forget them.

And neither does he just ignore them. There is nothing too inconsequential for him to bring back to our attention. He will avenge everything. Every broken promise, every hurt inflicted, every victim wounded by our words and our actions - God remembers.

And David proclaims this fact to the nations - Because the world needs to hear this! The victims of evil must be told that justice will be done. That no cry for justice is ever brushed aside - For at his judgment God will right all wrongs. There is not one wound that will not be healed on that day. That promise may seem like small beer to you, but it may be just the assurance some of us need to have massaged into our pain at this very moment. This should be a 5 star guarantee to all who are frustrated by or suffer injustice this side of heaven.

But we need to also see that this it as a warning. For the losers in God’s judgement are the wicked. Can you see them there in verse 15?

15The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. 16The LORD is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. 17The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God.

I don’t know what picture you have in your head of “the wicked”. Maybe you see a bald man sitting behind a bank of tv screens stroking a cat and cackling to himself as he launches the nuclear device that will ensure the success of his plans for world domination. Maybe it’s a green faced witch with a crooked nose gathering round her crystal ball with her flying monkeys plotting revenge on poor old Dorothy. Or maybe it’s just the Uruguayan linesman who failed to award Frank Lampard’s goal against Germany a month or so ago in the World Cup.

But in the Bible the wicked are not just those who embezzle money, rig elections and commit murder. The wicked are those in verse 17: Who live ignoring God. That’s who the wicked are. They live without reference to God in his world. They take his gifts, but ignore the giver. They can do that very charmingly and they can appear incredibly reasonable, but they do it none-the-less. The wicked are just as likely to be your work colleagues, family members, or friends as Pol Pot, Hitler, or Jack the Ripper. Because in God’s book there is nothing more wicked than to murder our maker and live as if he is not there.

And David says that on God’s day of judgement he will right that most horrific of wrongs by returning the wicked to the land of the dead. For if we live all our life effectively saying to God “I don’t want you to live life with you as King” - Then at the end of our lives he will give us our wish and send us to a place where he does not reign. A place where he does not hold back evil with his goodness and justice. A place where his light provides no comfort. A place as cold and dark and black as the grave.

Those who live without God today may look like they’ve got it all together. We can be incredibly envious of them. They can have every appearance of success today - Health, wealth, popularity and happiness. But all who refuse to kneel before God the King are building themselves as verse 15 warns us - they are building themselves a trap door into hell.

Which is a desperate situation. Truly desperate. Especially as it doesn’t need to be this way. Passing sentence on the wicked gives the Lord no pleasure at all. He longs for no one to be tripped up by the net of his judgement. But somehow he must put us in our rightful position – Which is on our knees!

And there are echoes of that in the way David finishes his prayer:

17The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God. 18But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish. 19Arise, O LORD, let not man triumph; let the nations be judged in your presence. 20Strike them with terror, O LORD; let the nations know they are but men.

I don’t know what you would say your greatest need is? Or the greatest need of the world? But when confronted by the reality of God’s coming judgement - it’s not justice we should cry out for but mercy. Because whereas the wicked are dispatched to the grave - the “needy will not be forgotten”. Remember point 1? The Lord Delivers! He loves to deliver broken needy people from their troubles. And if we in our pride have forgotten, neglected and disrespected God then there is no greater trouble for us than the day God returns to be our judge. But the Lord has not forgotten our need which is why he sent Jesus to go to the cross and defeat the grave for us. He saves us from the coming judgement - if only we are willing to confess our need of a saviour.

For - you see, here’s the crunch point: We can either bow the knee now asking the Lord for his forgiveness, or we will bow in judgement as the Lord reminds us that we “are but men”. It’s our choice. In fact it’s everybody’s choice.

So if you’re here tonight and the Christian faith is very new to you - Well can I plead with you to examine this and come to Jesus admitting your need? Deliverance is just a prayer away.

And can I also ask those of us who know the Lord already to warn others. I have a friend who’s just the loveliest person you’ll ever meet. He’s also one of the happiest too. He’s a top bloke. Much nicer than me that’s for sure. But he’s forgotten God – so he has a desperate need to be warned of judgement. And I need to warn him. If I love him I will warn him, even though I have butterflies in my stomach at the thought of that conversation.

You’ve probably got friends and family members like that too. And if we really register the truth of this Psalm then we will warn them of what’s coming. And we will pray for them as if their very lives depended on it. For they do. Their lives depend on God’s mercy.

I wonder who do you need to warn? Let’s pray.

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