Sunday
07/21/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “Trusting in God Alone”
Old Testament
Scripture: Psalm 52
New Testament
Scripture: Colossians 1:15-28
Gospel Lesson: Luke
10:38-42
Welcome again,
friends, dear brothers and sisters, on this the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.
Six Sundays after the Holy Spirit moved in that Upper Room in Jerusalem on Pentecost
nearly two-thousand years ago, and the Christian Church was born. For nearly
Two-Thousand years as Christians, we have gone forth loving, healing,
forgiving, preaching the gospel, and baptizing in the name of the Father, the
Son, and Holy Spirit. Christianity is the largest faith in the world, and there
are many denominations and expressions of our faith.
Historically speaking though, what unites us as Christians across
space and time, is our faith in the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The God who creates, the God who came among us as Jesus Christ, and the God who
fills and guides us, that is the Holy Spirit.
We are called to have faith and trust in God. We are called
to trust and follow the Triune God in all things. This morning, my sermon, as
you may have read in our bulletin for this morning, is called, “Trusting in God
Alone”. I took this title from our reading from Psalm 52 for this morning.
In this Psalm, King David has had a falling out with Saul,
and some experts think that this Psalm is reflective in part of that. Once
again Psalm 52 says:
“Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against
the godly? All day long you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a
sharp razor, you worker of treachery. You love evil more than good, and lying
more than speaking the truth. Selah You love all words that devour, O
deceitful tongue.
But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear
you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer, saying,
“See the one who would not take refuge in God, but trusted in abundant riches, and
sought refuge in wealth!” (Ps.
52:1-7, NRSV).
So King David is not happy with Saul, and says that his evil
and his treachery will be his undoing. He says that God will judge Saul
accordingly. Once again, Psalm 52 ends with King David saying this:
“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I
trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because
of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your
name, for it is good” (Ps.
52:8-9, NRSV).
Even
though King David is having a falling out with Saul, he says that he trusts God,
that he is thankful to God, and that he will proclaim the name and the goodness
of God.
I
planned this sermon topic for this morning, and I read our lectionary
scriptures for this morning over weeks ago. At the time, my plan didn’t include
a baptism, but now I see why God had me focus in a little bit on Psalm 52 for this
morning.
I
hear so often as a pastor that people are worried about the world that they are
leaving to their children, their grand-children, and even their great-grand-children.
We live in a broken and a sinful world that is so full of hurt, violence, and
pain. This is the world that we are giving over to the next generations. Some
people even lose faith, because the world is not what they think it should be.
Some people lose faith because life has not turned out the way they had planned
it.
Some
young Methodist pastors think that they know what God wants them to preach on, on
July 21, 2019, and then God says, “Nice try kid!”
When
I read Psalm 52 and all the Psalms, I see King David at his best and at his
absolute worst. Yet I see him trusting God through it all. I worry that some
Christians in this Post-Modern Era are living and are teaching and spreading a
version of Christian faith that is what I like to call “the candy gospel”. They
are teaching and spreading the love of God, which is great, but they are
neglecting to talk about the full realities of this world. The brokenness, the
sin, and the hurt all around us.
This
morning, I have had the great pleasure and the honor of baptizing Quinn into
our universal two-thousand year faith, and we pray blessings over her. We pray
that she would feel God’s presence every day of her life, that God would use
her to do great things, and that one day she will stand at an alter rail like
this one and confirm her own faith in Jesus Christ. That she will love her
neighbor, and do her part to change the world.
This
is our historic faith, and as part of this faith, we get the great gift of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yet, we have trials and tribulations at times.
Sometimes we struggle, sometimes we suffer. Through all of this though, God is
with us. Jesus is still risen, and he is still coming back one day.
As
the community of faith, we are called to love God, to love each other, to serve,
to heal, to preach the gospel, and to forgive. In doing this, sometimes we are
strong, and sometimes we are weak. “Trusting in God Alone” doesn’t mean that
every day of our lives will be perfect, but it means that a perfect God is with
us through our struggles. King David certainly had his struggles, but he
trusted God. Do we trust God with our lives, knowing that they won’t always be
perfect?
Some
of the great heroes of the Christian faith that I love and admire, are people like
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Their lives were far
from easy, but they knew God was with them. Did they struggle, did have doubts
at times? Sure they did. In Mother Teresa’s personal letters she had great
struggles with her faith and her life, but ultimately she trusted God. The love
of God is with us, through thick and thin, and Jesus gave us the gift of the
church so that we can love each other, care for each other, pray with each
other, and share the love that we have for God with each other. “Trusting in God
Alone” is not always easy, but we have the promise that God is with us. When we
get baptized, God it with us. When things are good, God is with us. When things
are bad, God is with us.
I really love our reading for this
morning from the Apostle Paul’s epistle or letter to the Colossians, and in it,
we hear about who Jesus is, how great he is, how loving he is, how full of
grace he is, and how he is the supreme Lord over all of creation. Once again
this scripture says of Jesus:
“He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation; for in him all
things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created
through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the
head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the
fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was
pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by
making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:15-20,
NRSV).
The Apostle Paul is saying that
through Christ and his cross, we have truth, salvation, love, hope, and faith.
That God is with us. When things are hard, he is with us, and he is with us when
things are great. As the church, we are called to love each other, care for
each other, and to seek God in all things. Our faith is alive and is abundant,
through the highs and the lows of life.
When looking at the gospel of Luke
reading once again for this morning, we have a great example of trusting God.
The reading from Luke for this morning, once again, is the story of Mary and
Martha. Once again it says:
“Now
as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named
Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet
and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many
tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has
left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord
answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there
is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will
not be taken away from her” (Lk.
10:38-42, NRSV).
Martha was working hard, but took her
full focus and trust off of Jesus, off of God. God is with us.
My mother Susan, my step-father Mike,
my brother, his wife, and their two sons just recently spent a week in
Wisconsin. My little nephew Everett told my mom one night that he was worried
about the monsters in his bedroom. My mom told Everett, but God is here with
you. Everett said really grandma? She said yes, he is. She said he is all
around you, everywhere, all the time, and he loves you so much. My mom then
said that Everett began asking questions, such as, “Is God in the drapes”. “Yes
he is she said. Is God here in the bedroom? There in the bedroom? Yes he is,
she said. She then said that the next morning she asked little Everett how he
slept, and he told my mother Susan that he slept great. It’s not that things
will always be perfect, even though we wish they would be. It’s that God is
with us through it all.
In closing this sermon for this morning, I want to
tell you a story about the founder of the Methodist Movement, who was an
Anglican or Episcopal Priest, named Rev. John Wesley. This is a story about
John Wesley’s death. This story was taken from www.awesomestories.com, and this
is what it says:
“Just
before his death, John Wesley wrote a letter to William Wilberforce. Soon
after, with friends gathered round him, Wesley died on the 2nd of March,
1791. Grasping the hands of those who loved him, he repeatedly told them
farewell. At the end, when nearly all his strength was gone, his reported
last words were:
“The best of all is, God is with us” (https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/John-Wesley-on-His-Deathbed).
Friends, God is with us. May we “Trust
in God Alone”. Amen.
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