There is an image of God in Psalm 11 as both seated on high and stooping down to see and lift up. It reminded me of pictures of the royal family on walk about stopping and getting down to talk with a child. It reminded me of all the photo opportunities that disasters afford world leaders to go and be seen as comforting their people. like the well posed pictures of a US president hugging grieving people in the wake of natural disaster. But there is more here in God going to see which gives us hope and confidence in a God who cares, who isn't just breezing in to see or hug one or two or even toss some paper towels out as a dramatic gesture, but who makes a real difference.
Psalm 113 is a communal call to worship. In verses 1-3 it
calls God’s people to come and praise the name of the Lord. Then the next six
verses it give us reason to praise God and content for praising God. In verse 4-6 we have the big picture
stuff, because of God’s glory and his grace and then in verse 7-9 it zeroes
into two specific cases of God’s grace.
AS I said it’s a communal call to worship God, to alleluia.
It calls God’s people to give him praise. In fact it used the word his
servants, and looks to us corporately and individually to carry out this wonderful
task of Giving God praise, of reverently coming into God’s presence and
acknowledging his goodness and greatness and the good things he has done. It’s
a duty but also an honour. In 1 Peter 2:9 Peter picks up this idea and applies
it to us as followers of Jesus when he says that we are a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a peculiar people that we may declare the praises of him who
bought us out of darkness into his wonderful light”.
This does not simply mean in prayer or in worship but also
as we sang in the hymn before the sermon Ye servants of God your master
proclaims, it is a telling forth of the good things God has done the good news
of Jesus Christ. The apostles were called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ risen
from the dead to go and tell people of that and teach them what it meant. We
often think evangelism or witnessing is something you wouldn’t do to your worst
enemy, but in the end it is simply letting people know about the goodness of
who God is and what he has done in Jesus Christ. Likewise speaking God’s truth
in the face of evil and injustice is letting people know about the goodness and
grace of God.
The call for God’s servants to praise the name of the Lord,
then steps into the realms of time and space. This is such an amazing and
wonderful task that it will take up eternity ‘now and forevermore’, to know God
and experience all his goodness and to then give its due attention and
acknowledgement is a task that will take forever. It’s will fill our days from
the rising of the sun to the going down”. But not in that this is being drawn
out, when is it going to finish, is this going to take all day, I’ve got better things to do kind of way, but
in a way that we are filled with awe and amazement as we see God’s faithful
love being new every morning.
The Psalmist then goes on to give us reason to praise the
Name of the Lord. In verse 4 we see it is because of God’s sovereignty and
glory. Then in a rhetorical question the psalmist presents us with the view of
God seated on high but also the God who humbly stoops down to look on both the
heavens and the earth. For little Israel
who is concerned about the powerful nations around them, the rise of empires
God as being the one on the throne is of great importance. No matter which
world power seeks to move against them there is the acknowledgement of God’s
sovereignty, God’s rule and reign. When we face difficult issues and
overwhelming situations, there is hope and assurance in the fact that God is
sovereign. To praise him and acknowledge his as such in those hard times is
both an affirmation of hope and trust in God’s ability to act and move.
The picture here of God stooping down to look, shows God’s
grace. It is a posture of humility to get up off the throne and to see what is happening.
This isn’t a glimpse from a far off distance, a cursory exploration so the
ruler can simply shake his head and go back to the life of luxury, it is an
engagement. In quantum mechanics there is a principle that by simply observing
something that it changes it. The example that is often used is in checking the
pressure of a tyre, you will let some air out and that changes the pressure,
very slightly on that level but at a quantum level, it is enough to change what
you are looking at. Now I can’t get my head round quantum mechanics, I struggle
enough with basic car mechanics, But when God looks and sees, it talks of God
acting and moving. At the burning bush, Moses is told that God has heard the
cry of his people and that God sees their oppression, and so God sends a
messiah and God goes with. The Aaronic blessing is that God might look upon his
people… the Lord Bless you and keep you… the Lord make his face to shine on
you… the lord lift up his continence upon you and give you peace.”
We see that stooping to look, which show God’s grace even
more in Jesus. Humbling himself, stooping down, as it says in Philippians, to
become one us, even a servant, obedient unto death, death on a cross.’ Almighty
God, stooping down to be one of us, enthroned on high, king of creation, with a
crown of thorns, because God has seen the pain and suffering of our sinful and
broken world and wants to bring the great reversal of the kingdom of God to that.
The Psalm then applies God’s glory and grace to two cases. God stoops down to raise up and lift
up the poor and the needy where they have been tossed to the side line of
society. Th dusty beggar on the side of the road, the image of sitting in the
ash heap echoes the lot of Job, as his whole world has come crashing down
around him his wealth, his family his health all gone and there he is sitting
in the ashes. But as this psalm says the one who stoops down is the one who
lifts up as well. We have this great reversal, those who are bought low and
marginalised will be lifted up and given the place of honour at the royal
table.
The Psalm follows closely the wording of Hannah’s prayer at
the beginning of Samuel as well, Hannah was a woman who was unable to have
children and came to plead with God even to the point of trying to make a deal
with God. She was Samuel’s mother…and the Psalmist turns to address the issue
of a women unable to have children. He may have even had Hannah in mind. In our
day it is a matter of great pain and sorrow for many women and couples as they
wrestle with fertility, in the psalmist’s day when the status of women was in
their ability to produce children and sons in particular to carry on their husband’s
family name. Their status in society, the love and care of their husbands and
their ability to look after themselves or be looked after in later life
depended on it. Here God’s grace is shown in his care for a childless woman in
allowing her to bear children.
In both these instances Israel and later we can identify
with God’s sovereign power and his grace.
We’ll at St peter’s October is the season of prayer and what
does this Psalm have to say to us.
I want to just focus on two things. The first is that while
the psalm focuses on praising the name of the Lord. It provides us with a
picture of God that encourages us to bring our prayers for other and for
ourselves to God. The Psalm calls us to praise God for his sovereignty and for
his grace. We have confidence because we have a God who is both almighty but
also who stoops down to see. We have a God who sees and hears and cares and
moves and responds… not just a disinterest observer but whose seeing leads to
his lifting up and placing on high those.
The Psalm talks of God’s universal sovereignty over all the nations, big
enough to hear and see our prayers for the big things that happen round the
world. But also the God who acts in the lives of the marginalised and those
considered the least.
Part of praising God is that it speaks to our hearts and
tells us the very nature of God. Yes it praises him but it also gives us
confidence and assurance of who it is we are serving. We praise God for what
God is like and what God has done and not only is that proclaiming it in the
world who needs to hear it… It is also inspiration for us who know this God to
become like him. We are his servants and friends and as we see more the
goodness of God we want to put it into action in our own lives. The more we see
the power of god the more we are willing to facedown the evil and injustice in
this world.
The second thing is that this psalm speaks of the sacredness
of Time. We are given the great honour of praising the name of the Lord, from
the rising of the sun to it’s going down. We are invited to boldly approach the
throne of grace and cast all our cares on him for he cares for us. Now it is not practical to spend all our day
in prayer, although we shouldn’t separate things into sacred and secular. Work
is a way of praising God as we use our god given skills and abilities to provide
for ourselves and our family, when we enjoy the world around us it is using it
for what God intended it, and in a way giving praise to its creator, when we
care and show love for others or serve we are expressing the very nature of who
God is and his love for us. We do all things unto the Lord.
Historically it has meant that people will regulate their
lives and time around setting aside time for prayer and worship and devotions.
We are used to seeing this in Islam with its insistence on five times praying a
day, and a month of Ramadan for fasting and praying. The Jews had set times
during the day for prayer, we see that in our New testament reading where peter
and john go to the temple to pray and the time of prayer. Monks and monastic
orders, order their day and week and months and years round a rhythm and
practise of prayers. The modern monastic movements build not so much on people
living in the same place and keeping these hours of prayer but living close to
each other and keeping the same rhythms and rituals of prayer and service and
life, that bind them together as a community.
Of course you look in various hymns books and prayer books are set up
for people to have morning and evening prayers.
When I was in youth group one of the questions that used to
come up again and again was ‘have you had your daily quite time? Have you
started the day in prayer and bible reading. This was the evangelical
equivalent. In fact, it got pushed so much when I was growing up I called it
evangelical guilt.
There was also a move against this rigidness of setting time
aside for prayer, as Christians we can pray anytime and anywhere, we don’t need
these set times, they stifle the spirit and spontaneity. There is truth in that that we have this
wonderful ability to spend time with God all the time, I love Juan carols
Ortiz’s comment when he was asked about how did he find time to be alone with
god and he replied, when you leave then I’ll be alone with God. However anytime
can easily become I don’t have anytime to spare, and anywhere can become I
can’t fit it anywhere in my busy calendar.
In our reading from Acts the amazing thing was that God
showed up by his Holy Spirit and did a miracle in healing the man born lame at
the regular hour of prayer. During establishing a routine and rhythm a
spiritual habit of regular prayer we may be surprised how much God actually
turns up, stoops down, sees and lifts up as we praise him and bring his world
to him in prayer.
There used to be this old TV ad for bell tea that said “ I
don’ feel alive till have had my cup of bell tea”, if you’re younger than me
you might not remember it. And you may have added to the end of the sentence I
don’t feel alive till I’ve had my…’ with a cup of coffee. But apart from being
a declaration of chemical dependency, the challenge today is to find a routine
and rhythm where you can come alive as you encounter and praise and pray to the
God who loves us: Who is seated on High, but who stoops down to see and who lifts up on high.
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