Sunday Sermon: "God's Answer"
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Sunday Sermon • Psalm 118:19-21 • Doug Dortch
“God’s Answer”
April 5, 2020, Palm Sunday
My wife and I moved into our new home a month or so ago, and its physical address is not yet on any of the navigation apps. So, when we have needed people to find us, unless they know the neighborhood, getting to our house is evidently impossible.
I know what you’re thinking. “Why don’t you just give them directions?” Do you remember the last time you gave someone directions? I can’t. I can’t remember the last time I tried to explain to someone how to get somewhere. Actually, I do; and I got so frustrated by my inability to do so that I just told them, “Stay where you are, and I’ll come and find you,” which I did.
The fact of the matter is that we’ve been spoiled by these navigational aids that we have learned to lean on so that when an address doesn’t show up, we have no answer; we just have to find peace with not knowing exactly where we are, which in the end is the same as being lost.
Of course, finding peace with being lost is one thing when it comes to physical addresses. It’s quite another thing when it comes to matters of the soul and navigating through this life and arriving at a place of wholeness and peace.
The concept of “lostness” is something that is at the core of Christian faith; is it not? From the very beginning of our Bible, we find that all of us, male and female, having been created in the very image of God, have chosen to go our own way instead of God’s way, which has caused us to fall out of fellowship with Him. We have distanced ourselves from God by our desire to have our own way so that we are “out of place,” which is the essence of any kind of “lostness.”
That reality begs the question, “So, how do we get back into fellowship with God?” “How do we become reconciled to Him?” “What must we do, or, better yet, how much must we do to get back into place with God?”
All of those questions are essentially directional ones; and while the Bible describes a God whose very heart is to help us find our way back to Him, it also is patently clear that finding our way back is something that none of us can do on our own. It is instead something that God must do for us so that instead of merely offering us detailed directions, God comes to where we are in our lostness in order to reclaim us and restore us and show us the way. We see that truth in every book of the Bible, both Old Testament as well as New.
For example, this Psalm that is before us this morning, the 118th Psalm, is considered a Messianic psalm. In other words, it is a psalm that celebrates a victory only God could have made possible, a victory accomplished by God’s representative, an Anointed One through whom God would work to remove every barrier and obstruction that would keep God’s people separated from Him.
In this section of the Psalm, the Anointed One, more than likely the king, maybe even David himself, has returned to Jerusalem having won a hard fought victory over one of Israel’s many enemies. As he nears city gates, he implores the sentries, who are perched atop the city walls to “Open for (him) the gates of the righteous (so that he might) enter and give thanks to the LORD.” In other words, the king knows that the victory that has come to him is not something he has earned by himself or on his own. It is a victory that God has made possible, and so he returns to the city to with a heart full of gratitude for something he did not deserve – a victory that was uncertain and up in the air, until God showed up and saved the day.
I am especially drawn to the twenty-first verse: “I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation.”
What interests me about that verse is the word salvation, which in the Hebrew is yeshua. If that word sounds familiar, it should. It means “Jesus.” It was the very name that the angel of the Lord had in a dream commanded Joseph to give to the child that would be born to his betrothed Mary by the Holy Spirit, because that child would grow up “to save his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). I don’t know how the Bible could be any clearer in terms of how Jesus would be the Anointed One sent by God to show us the way back to the safety and security, the wholeness and the health that being in relationship with God alone can bring.
Is that how you might characterize your life today? Would you say that even in this present season of isolation and sheltering in place that you have this abiding sense of safety and security, that your soul is whole and well because of how Jesus has opened up the gates of righteousness into God’s presence for you? If not, it’s because of how you are still trying to pry them open in your own power, when it’s your own power that has shut them by your inability to live into God’s expectations and purposes. But if so, it’s because you gave up on that futile exercise long ago, and you have chosen instead to order your life around the victory God has made possible through your faith in Jesus Christ.
Today, of course, is Palm Sunday. It marks the beginning of the last week in Jesus’ life, when Jesus came down from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate, otherwise known as the Gate of Righteousness, where Jesus would spend the rest of that week preparing himself to do battle with the powers of darkness and where on the cross he would win a victory that would make our salvation complete.
On the Thursday of that last week, Jesus gathered with his disciples in an Upper Room to share with them a final meal, which we know as the Last Supper. At that supper Jesus would offer them final directions on how they might always remember the way back to God. He took the bread, gave thanks for it, broke it, and offered it to his disciples telling them that the bread they were sharing would symbolize his broken body, which they should continue to do “in remembrance” of him. n after they had finished eating, he took the cup and in the same fashion gave it to his disciples, telling them that it symbolized the new covenant in his blood for the forgiveness of sins and that they should do it as well “in remembrance” of him. And then they did one last thing. They sang a hymn (Mt. 26:30; Mk. 14:26). What hymn did they sing? In the church where I grew up, we always sang “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” after celebrating the Lord’s Supper, but of course that hymn wasn’t written when Jesus inaugurated this memorial meal. So, what did his disciples and he sing? Most biblical scholars believe that Jesus and his disciples sang this 118th Psalm, a psalm that God’s covenant people had been singing at festivals such as Passover since the time of King David himself. It was for them a reminder of how in seasons of trial and tribulation when God’s People might find themselves dazed and confused and with countless questions as to what their future might hold, this Psalm would be a reminder that God would come to them in their lostness and He would show them the way home. “I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation, my yeshua.”
Our salvation is not just something; it is someone. It is Jesus. God’s ultimate answer to our deepest and most pressing questions is His presence that has drawn near to us in Christ Jesus, in Jesus the Messiah.
Tim Keller is an author and theologian, who established and served as the first pastor of the famed Redeemer Church in the Manhattan section of New York City. In his book The Reason for God, Keller tells the story of a woman in the church who complained to him how she had been praying over and over the prayer, “God, help me find you. God, help me find you. God, help me find you.” But her praying had gotten her nowhere. It ws then that a good friend had suggested that she might change her prayer to a different sort of plea: “God, come and find me.” The friend’s reasoning was that the Bible speaks of Jesus, God’s Messiah, as the Good Shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep. So, she did just that. She changed her prayer completely. And as she recounted her story to Pastor Keller, she concluded in this way: “The only reason I can tell you this story is because he did” (The Reason for God, p. 240).
So, on this Palm Sunday, the beginning of a week we call Holy, let us pray to Jesus to open to us the gates of righteousness so that we may enter and give thanks to the Lord, for Jesus is all the answer any of us should require. He has become our salvation, the Author and the Finisher of our Faith, and the one upon whom we rely in every situation and circumstance to show us the way so that we might know both the joy and the peace of being found, both now and forevermore.