Psalm 28, for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost 2021 (B), "Does the Bible read you?"

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. These are ordinary questions: “Do you read the Bible?” “How do you interpret that passage?” Now flip them around. What if I asked you: “Do you let the Bible read you?” “Are you letting this passage interpret you?” God’s living and active Word reads and interprets our lives. Sharper than any two-edged sword, God’s Word searches our hearts and minds (Heb. 4:12). The real question is how God’s Word is reading and interpreting our lives. How is God’s Word at work in us? So instead of us acting on God’s Word, God’s Word is acting on us.

Let’s try this with Psalm 28, our Introit. On the one hand we could read the Psalms like a Bible study of the prayers and hymns and laments of Old Testament believers. But that wouldn’t let God’s Word “read us.” It keeps God’s Word at arm’s length. For God’s Word to “read and interpret us”, we must find ourselves, our unnamed fears and emotions in the Psalms. Identify with the prayers and hear our emotions echoing in their words. While God’s Word reads and searches our hearts and minds, we’re also learning to pray. Not learning a method to pray, but the words and example to repeat, inspired by God. Just like a child learns to speak, first by imitating their parents’ speech, imperfectly, so we imitate these God-inspired prayers, so our heart is taught to pray, and we learn to pray more freely.

Psalm 28:1-2,

To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me,
lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.
Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help,
when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.

 

Hear yourselves in this prayer? Identify with David, insisting that God pay attention, and listen to us? What does it feel to become like those who go down to the pit? It’s saying, “God, if you are deaf to me, if you don’t answer, I’m like a person stuck in a hole, a dark pit.” Like Joseph thrown in the bottom of the dry well, while his brothers plotted to sell him and pretend he was dead. Or like Jeremiah sinking in the mud of a cistern because he dared to warn the king that the nation was going to be conquered and go into exile, and resistance would be futile. Or like you, fill in the blank. Sunk in a pit is to be at our lowest, our rock-bottom, or maybe mud-bottom.

            It’s almost a demand—“O Lord…be not deaf to me.” To call on the Lord in faith doesn’t leave a question mark whether God will listen or not. We feel God is deaf, or experience may make us think so. God doesn’t give us text messages in answer to our prayers…or wait…isn’t God’s Word a “text message?” In writing? On the page? Yeah, God speaks to us, He answers, but not individual text messages for you and me. His Word, the Bible, is the text message that applies to all people in all times and places. So, David demands: “God, pay attention to me!” It’s like a toddler in their parents’ lap grabbing them by the chin and to turn their face and say, “you’re not listening to me! Look at me!” God is delighted to listen to us, which is why Luther explains in the Lord’s Prayer: “God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear Father who is in heaven.” God turns His face to us when we pray to Him!

            Praying with David that God would listen to our prayers and our plea for help, David says his hands are stretched out to God’s most holy sanctuary. That was in the tabernacle or tent of worship, and later the Temple. The Holiest place on earth, where God’s presence touched down, connecting Himself to our worship, and answering our pleas for mercy. The most holy sanctuary contained the ark of the covenant, on which was found the “mercy seat.” So David’s prayer is directional. He’s focused on where God has located Himself to be found.

            But with no more Temple in Jerusalem, where do we direct our prayers? Where has God located Himself to be found? Jesus discloses this in John 4 to the Samaritan woman who asks the same question. Not in Samaria or Jerusalem, that’s not where God will be worshipped or found, but true believers will worship God in spirit and in truth. Jesus also taught that He was God’s new temple, that would be destroyed and raised back up in three days. In Jesus, God’s presence touched down in human flesh on earth, God-in-the-flesh, connecting Himself to our worship and answering our pleas for mercy. Outstretched hands in prayer, reach to Jesus, our mercy seat, our mediator with God. Jesus is where God is to be found and accessed. Prayer is directional to Him.

            The Psalm continues, 28:6-7,

Blessed be the Lord! for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.
The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.

This is an emotional turning point in the Psalm. We find this in almost all of the Psalms. So how does God’s Word read our lives here? It’s the movement from frustration and despair that God seems deaf or unaware, to hope and confidence, knowing God does hear and answer. How do we get this emotional turning point? Did God already answer his prayer? Or is it more likely, as another pastor explains: maybe it’s the new voice of faith that is rising up within David? Even when we don’t yet see God’s answer, God’s saving deeds in the past are evidence enough to know that God is not deaf. To reassert the confidence that God listens, answers, cares. Even though “outward circumstances do not presently seem to support that conclusion”, he believes God hears (Saleska, 469).

God’s Word brings us to this same turning point as we it reads our lives and supplies the faith we’re lacking. Your voice of faith rises over the noise and clamor of worries, fears, and seemingly unanswered prayers, to say: Blessed be the Lord! for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. Bless the Lord; call Him good. He is our strength and shield; we are protected. In Him my heart trusts, and I am helped. Faith voices these words, not from our own strength or confidence, but from God’s Spirit of courage and strength in us. God pouring His gifts down into us, creates this turning point to confidently face whatever is in our way. We sing with a thankful heart.

            Psalm 28:8, the antiphon or refrain of our Introit, ends like this,

The Lord is the strength of his people;

he is the saving refuge of his anointed.

What do we need strength for? What do we need a saving refuge for? I hear strength for battle and a secure place of refuge; a launching point. Some pastors say the hymn “A Mighty Fortress is our God” sounds too much like retreating into a castle and hiding from the enemy. But what if God gives us strength and courage not to hide, but to reenter spiritual battle with His strength? The Lord is the strength of his people. Doesn’t that sound more like it? Yes, the wounded, the suffering, the weary take refuge in God, but renewed in strength, do we hide? Or do we take the battle to the evil one? Remember what else “A Mighty Fortress” says about the evil one? One little word can fell him! That’s the name of Jesus! The one word that drives fear into the heart of the devil! God is the strength and saving refuge of His anointed, and in the Name of Jesus we destroy the strongholds and power of the evil one! By prayer we wage war against the devil.

            We began with the thought that praying the Psalms will let God’s Word “read and interpret us”. Let’s listen to it again, and allow God’s Word to work on us:

¹ To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. ² Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.

⁶ Blessed be the Lord! For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. ⁷ The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. ⁸ The Lord is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed.

We see the emotions of our heart when we feel like prayers go unanswered. How do we face that fear and anxiety? The direction of our prayers is aimed at Jesus, God’s mediator in the flesh. We hear the emotional turning point, as faith rises to proclaim that yes, God does hear and answer. In Him there is strength and protection. He is our strength and refuge, our secure home. But it’s not for hiding, He gives strength to go and face the spiritual battle!

            Prayer exercises our heart, lining up and marching behind God. Following His will, and not our own. We let out our fears, worries, and concerns. But God supplies the rising voice of faith to answer with confidence. Faith looks back at all His faithfulness and deliverance before and trusts Him to guide our future. Prayer is directed to Jesus, and keeps us connected to God’s presence, where He acts for and with us in mercy. Even now, gathered in His Name, we’re connected to His presence and mercy! Exercising our heart gives new strength. The strength of the Lord for spiritual battle. This is the good result of God’s Word reading and interpreting our lives! Let faith arise to trust and praise Him, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.