Sermon: "Providence"

Second in the "Nomads and Pilgrims" Series,
Delivered February 20, 2005 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Theme: Providence: The same God that we trust with the big things of Salvation and Eternity is the God who is over all the little details and hassles of life. "The Lord will keep you from all harm" does not imply a cushioned life but a well armed one. We will have everything we need to face the messy parts of life, without it having any spiritual power over us.

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Sermon Notes are at the end.

We have been talking about being Nomads or being Pilgrims. To be on a pilgrimage means that we are not just going anywhere in life. We are not just looking for the place where the grass is greener, but that we realize there is a destination that is actually beyond life that God is calling us to and part of pilgrimage means that God is our companion along the way. If you are a Nomad you just pick out wherever the next place seems right. If you are a pilgrim you might have to go through some places that you don't want to go because the destination is beyond. And so we looked at that and we looked last week at the fact that there is a big choice, a choice of repentance that has to come into our lives. The primary difference between a nomad and pilgrim, is that you decided not to listen to the lies around us, but instead to hear God's voice and to respond to that by turning from the old ways and turning to His way.

Now this week we are looking at this issue of providence. This idea of providence is that God has created and controls the world so; therefore, God is involved in the everyday life to provide and to protect. And so, that is what providence means, is that God is the one who protects in creation, God is the one who provides for us in creation.

Now Psalm 121 is an amazing Psalm that talks about this issue of providence, of God being involved to watch over us and keep us. So I would like to look at that verse together, but I would like us to read it together. So if you would pull it up on the screen, I would like us to stand and read the scripture this morning together.

"I lift my eyes to the hills- where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip- he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you- the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm- he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore."

Let's pray: Lord we thank you for this your word and pray that you will just open our eyes to whatever we need to know and hear, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, I would like to read to you from my journal, from June, 1980. Now this was actually a popular sort of style at the time. It's not so good looking today, but anyway. June in 1980. You know what is sort of sobering is that many of you weren't even born yet. Okay.

Last night I had figured out that we needed considerably more money than what is coming on the next month's paycheck to go to Panile. Panile was a Bible conference in New York State and we lived in Louisiana and it cost a lot of money to get up there. I resolved that we would give our tithe in spite of the tightness in money. We would also pay all necessary bills and trust that God would provide the needed money and I prayed. Today, when getting Ed to sign some papers he offered to pay a couple hundred dollars of the total cost of the Volkswagen before we go if we need it.

Now what was happening was I was getting ready to sell a car. We were selling it at the end of summer. Naturally we expected to be paid when we gave them the car, but the guy said " Oh, no. I will give some of it ahead of time if you need it now." I hadn't even thought of that being a source of help since we made arrangements not to be paid until August. Praise God. Now this comes a week or two later.

We are now at Panile; the chronicle of God's wonderful provision is long. First of all, Ed paid us $100 of the cost. It was a great help, but not enough to go. Saturday night I realized that I had yet to put aside $30 of our tithe, nor any of our extra love offering, but instead had inadvertently figured it into our budget for the trip. It was difficult to become really free and joyful about giving these gifts, but during the Sunday service my heart was greatly freed. After the service, the treasurer of the church, I don't know their name, gave us a $25 gift from Canal Street totally unexpected. A final gift came when my Mom offered to give the $40 that she normally puts our support with Inner Varsity, to give it to us directly instead for our expenses. We were then provided with new tires from Debbie's family and despite car trouble was spared a towing expense in Georgia.

Now, you know this is a long time ago because $25 meant something. A little miracle. It was just an amazing sign of God's faithfulness. God's in control of the world. He made it. He made us. He called us to himself. He has a relationship with us through Jesus Christ and so it's natural that as God's children inside of his creation that we would expect that our needs would get met. And so part of this is in these little miracles that happen where we step out and stretch out a little bit and God comes through.

And sometimes it is not little things. Sometimes we pray for a person who is ill, seriously ill and they are healed. Little miracles or big miracles, it's just a wonderful experience of seeing God's presence inside of our lives.

This is what we associate in our minds when we think about God being our provider. We get what we need. We are protected from evil and illness. Things that happen to normal people don't happen to us; desperate loneliness, divorce, an accident that puts us in the hospital. These things happen to people who look for their answers in the world. The nomads. They don't happen to the pilgrims, not to us because we are looking to God. God protects us. Is that the way you think? That bad things just don't flat out happen to good Christians? Now, it might be happening to someone else, but maybe not a good Christian. It's easy to see God in miracles.

But what about the other times when it's not a miracle, but it's a mess? What about the time that a deeply spiritual one, and each of these cases are real things that happened. I've got real people in mind. What about the deeply spiritual woman that we pray for, that gets sick and we pray for and dies anyway? What about the young Christian college student, young woman, who gets killed by a drunk driver, while she is college, while she is coming home from a Bible study? What do we do with God's like that? What do we do for a smaller thing, but still an aggravating thing where a Christian seminary student gets her identity stolen on her bank account and loses $1,000? What do we do? What is God's providence? What does his protection, what does this supply and support mean at times like this?

This is an important issue to deal with because when we encounter times like this, we are either tempted, on the one hand, to blame ourselves and to start looking for the guilt in our lives that has brought us in to this bad situation, and face it, in most of our lives there is plenty of guilt. So we are bound to find something big enough to explain the fact that this is why God isn't listening to me anymore, He doesn't care about me anymore, He's looking after other people's live, not looking at my life. And if we can't find enough in our own life, we will be able to find enough in the lives of the Christians around us and the people around us to blame them. This is why my life is so bad and if we don't blame ourselves or blame others, we end up blaming God. We come up whining to God saying, "Why me? You know, it's not supposed to be this way God. You don't do this in everybody's life, why me?" We've got to get some answers because the fact is we don't always get the miracles. Sometimes we get the mess.

Now Psalm 121 that we just read together deals with this issue of God's providence. God providing and protecting for us. It's a great Psalm. Five times in it it talks about God watching over us and keeping us. Again and again God is the subject of this Psalm, the subject of every sentence. The God watches over us. God provides for us. God won't let this happen. God won't let that happen. Now, it talks about the road. It's written from the viewpoint of the pilgrim. The pilgrim is on the road and the road turns out not to be a safe place. Now, there are three kinds of dangers that come up in this Psalm. The first comes up in Verse 3 where it says, God will not let your foot slip. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. So, the first problem on the road are the rocks in the road. You can sprain your ankle, you can break a leg, and you can fall and break your hip. If you are on the road and you get injured, that's a serious thing.

Verse 5 talks about another danger on the road, actually it comes out more clearly in Verse 6. The sun will not harm you by day. The Lord is your shade at your right hand, the sun will not harm you by day. So here's another danger on the road. Sunstroke. Heat stroke. If you are in a hot, dry climate and you are on the road, on foot, having to carry all your water and everything with you, the road can be a formidable place and the heat of the day can actually be one of the dangers that can physically hurt you. The third danger, nor the moon by night. There is sunstroke and there is moon stroke. Lunacy. Okay? Physical danger and emotional danger. Often in cultures they associate the moon and night time in general with the emotional traumas and dangers of life. And so there are physical dangers. There are emotional dangers on the road. Now, it's not just the big problems that are in mind. Because the big problems are the bandits and the landslides and the cliffs. Not the stones. Even the little issues, the everyday issues of life, the everyday issues of our walk as pilgrims with God are issues that God is willing to deal with. God is our protector in the everyday problems.

Now, do you only go to God with the big problems, when it's a deathly illness, when it's divorce, when it's a financial crisis that could ruin you? Or do you realize that God is the one who protects you in the everyday? On Monday and not just on Sunday? This is the viewpoint that comes out in this Psalm. Along the road, along the everyday problems and dangers of the road, God is our protector.

Now the Psalm begins with a phrase that says, it's very famous and it comes up in Psalms all the time, "I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?" It's an amazingly popular phrase and I love that because it is really hard to figure out what the Psalmist is saying, but yet it is so popular. There is three ways of looking at this. The first way is that the pilgrim is on the road and are getting to a steep and mountainous section and they are seeing the path go up ahead of them and the person thinks aha, this is the dangerous place. This is where the bandits are going to be. This is where I could fall off a cliff. If I trip on that rock I am going to go down and so seeing the extra danger of the mountains, then the Psalmist says, " Well where do I get my help? I get my help from God. So over against the danger they say my help is from heaven.

Now another way of seeing it, is that the Psalmist is on the path and there is that thought of ascending to Jerusalem and then there is the mount of the temple in the middle of Jerusalem and so they look towards the mountains, and it brings to mind that their destination is the mountain where the temple is. And so they look to the mountains and they say, "Where do I get my help? I get my help on that other mountain. The mountain where the Lord is that represents the maker of heaven and earth." That's another way of viewing this.

There is a third way. The third way is that the pilgrim who is on his way to Jerusalem or she is on her way to Jerusalem looks at the mountains and thinks to themselves, people who look for their help on the mountains are the idolators, because so many of the shrines for the false Gods in Israel were put on the tops of the hills and mountains of the area. In fact, in the Old Testament one of the words for an idolatrous shrine, a shrine to another God, one of the terms is a high place, because they would put them in the high spots and plant trees there and make it a nice place, erect some kind of stone, and so the pilgrim looks and says, " Unlike the people who worship bale and the other false Gods, I don't look to the mountains for my help. My help comes from the one who made the mountains."

You could look at it any of those three ways, but all three ways, the point is we don't look for our help inside of creation. We look for our help from the God who made it all. Now, that becomes a big issue when God doesn't answer, when something goes wrong and we pray and we expect a certain result of our prayer and it doesn't happen or it doesn't happen quickly. At times like that it is easy to panic and although we might say my help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth, what we are actually doing is we are panicking and trying to find any possible way of help, right or wrong to deal with the situation. So, we are willing to do whatever we have to do politically to get our situation straightened out. We will do whatever we have to do financially, even if it's not on the up and up. We will cheat if we have to to resolve this issue. It is too hard. We are going to get this dealt with no matter what God says.

I was talking to a woman one time in church. We were talking about praying for somebody. I think it was in her family and she was praying for this person to get well. Things were not developing and she said, " Well, I asked my Buddhist friends to pray too. It can't hurt." That's the sort of attitude where we start, it doesn't matter whether it's God or not. It doesn't matter whether it's right or not, we just want to deal with the situation. And so one of the things that this Psalm tells us is that there is really one place to really look for help and that's from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will watch over us. Another way of translating that, He will keep us. He will guard us. He will protect us.

Now it culminates in Verse 7. "The Lord will keep you from all harm." What an amazing line. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. That brings up the biggest question of Psalm 121 and it's the biggest issue of the whole Christian teaching on God's providence and that is, what does that mean? Does that mean that Christian's don't sprain their ankles? Does it mean they don't get sunstroke? Does it mean they don't have emotional problems? Christians seem to, so what does it mean? Let me read to you from another journal. This is also from June, but it is 17 years later. This is June 1997.

Not feeling too bad, but it's been a rough few days. Trying to get out papers in line to get the car and it's not only tedious and confusing, but I have also gone to Osaka to get papers finished only to find no one there. Nothing is easy here. I have been here nine years and still facing enormous frustration working with the system. We had been given a car free and we are still having this incredible complicated process of getting it into our name. Debbie's been hit hard across the last few days too for other reasons. We are hanging on by the skin of our teeth. Lots to endure. Little joy. Confused, tending even to bitterness. Where is the victory in this? Where is the victory in us, even if it must wait around us? Help. I knock Lord. I knock. I ask for your promise. I ask for the visible and unambiguous answer to our prayers, in anyway right in your eyes hasten the day. Uphold us. Protect us. Encourage us.

It's a lot different than the other one. The miracle. This one is a mess. This one is confusion. We are disoriented, not feeling that we are delivered at all. I didn't have to use my journal. I could have used yours. Anybody who has walked with God for a while has seen both the wonderful provision of God, but has also seen those complicated, confusing times where it's hard to see how God is at work. It's not just my story; it's all of our stories. One of the things that I like about the Bible is it doesn't hold back on this issue about what life is really like. It talks about the harsh realities of life and it is willing to be honest about it. In the Old Testament we have David who is a person after God's own heart, chosen to be king, and yet even after he hears a prophet tell him that you will be the future king of Israel, he has a miserable set of years where he is running from the person who was then king. He finds himself hiding in caves, barely escaping with his life. And the Bible is quite open about that.

In the New Testament we have the church in the Book of Acts, great faith in God, filled with the spirit of God, a delight to God and yet they run into persecution. In the Book of Romans there is a really famous passage that comes up in Chapter 8. We have read it before in worship here. I am going to begin on the 35th Verse of Romans 8 and just read to you a few verses here.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: " For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Here is an incredible passage of scripture that talks about the fact that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, but it presumes that we are in trouble. It says right in here, "for your sake we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." So it assumes that something is going wrong, but in the midst of this we are not separated from God. The Old Testament, Psalm 23,

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod, and your staff they comfort me."

Again, it assumes that there are times in life that we actually have to walk in that valley and yet we will not fear because God is with us. The Bible is quite honest about the fact that God's people face problems. But then we come to Psalm 121 and it says the Lord will keep you from all harm. What does it mean? Well the very next part of the verse helps to begin to explain it where it says, he will watch over your life; that in the midst of all of the things that assail us, God will be there to protect the very essence of who we are. It never means that the life of faith exempts us from difficulty. What is promised is that as we face evil, as we face the troubles of being on the pilgrimage that the evil will not destroy what's inside of us, that we are safe. That's what the Roman's passage talks about. You face the difficulty, but you are safe in the middle of it because nothing can separate you from the absolute total power that's in the love of God. So it does not promise that life will be smooth sailing. What is says is that even as we face the storms of life, we won't sink. Eugene Peterson puts it this way. He wrote a book called, "The Long Obedience in the Same Direction" and that book is influencing this sermon series and this is what he says,

"All the water and all the oceans can not sink a ship unless it gets inside, nor can all the trouble in the world hurt us unless it gets inside us. The Lord will keep you from all harm. It does not imply a cushioned life; it implies a well armed life."

And so what that means is that as Christians we have everything we need to face the evil that we are going to encounter in life. And that evil is not going to ultimately have a final spiritual power over us and so we have the power to face the evil, sometime it's going to be the miracle where we have an immediate authority over the evil. It's demonstrated, we conquer it and the miracle happens. There will be other times where we will face the evil and we will have the grace they had endured without failing in faith, without stopping our love for God and the people around us. That's the mess. In both cases, its victory and we see it played out again and again in the lives of people in scripture and in the life of the church. So what does victory look like in the messy times? We know what it looks like in a miracle, it's when everything changes around us because we prayed, immediately, visibly, close enough to the time we prayed that we can claim it. We know what that looks like, but what about the messy times? What does victory look like then? The first is that we don't panic. We might not know why we are in this situation, why God let it happen. We might not know where we are going or how is God going to use all this in the future? Those things are unanswered, but there are some things we know in the midst of those times. We know what it means to obey God at that moment. Those things we do.

I want to read again from my journal, 1997. Same part I read just now, just the very next paragraph.

What is it that I truly believe? Deep as I can discern about our current situation. I believe we are in this calling, facing these delays and struggles, meeting regularly with reminders of what we don't have, being overlooked by many we desire to know us, being wounded and tested afresh everyday, wanting, praying and yet not having. We are in this situation by the good and sovereign will of God. I do not get to choose my crisis, however, I do get to choose my response to it. Therefore, by God's grace I will not give way to fear that I am wasting my life. I will not harbor resentment towards the people involved in our difficulties. I will not despair that it is all meaningless. I will not try to short circuit the process, nor seek deliverance in any path except those, which the Lord chooses. God provides. God protects. God does this through the miracles yes, but God provides and protects in the mess of life as well.

Let's pray. God, we hold before you each of us has a different set of struggles and confusions in our lives. Lord, we hold this before you, wanting to know what it means to be faithful, what it means to experience your provision and your protection in the midst of our problems. Lord, naturally we ask for the full miracle, we ask for the best possible solution, but we also trust you when the answers don't come, and we pray then you will do whatever work you want to do in us, help us to obey, help us to trust you and take the next step. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Sermon Outline Notes:

• The Bible is honest with the harsh facts of life.
• What is promised is that evil will not destroy what's inside of us.

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt.
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org