8/22/2010 Sunday message at Cornerstone Mission Church
Back in 2001, there was a report about a British kayaker who capsized in heavy seas off southern England. Mark Ashton-Smith, 33 year old a lecturer at Cambridge University, knew he was in serious trouble. He clung to his upturned kayak in treacherous seas off the Isle of Wight. Immediate thought wasn’t to call nearby emergency services. I guess in England the emergency number to dial is 999. He told the reporters, “I spent several minutes racking my brains to think of someone who could help and could only come up with my sister and my dad.”
His father Alan Pimm-Smith was training British troops in Dubai 3500 miles away when he got the call from his son. Without any delay, the father called the Coast Guard nearest to his son. Within 12 minutes, a helicopter was dispatched and Mark was rescued.[1]
Today, I want you to get this. No matter what kind of troubles you may face, you can always count on God to help you. You call on him and he will come to help you! When you are stuck in life, you can count on God.
Yesterday, I was walking down the neighborhood with my oldest girls and one of the members from our church. We pray for people who lived in each of the homes we stopped by. We prayed according to the acronym, BLESS. “B” for bodily needs like sickness, “L” for labor needs like jobs, “E” for emotional needs like depression, “S” for social needs like broken marriages, broken parent-child relationships, and another “S” for salvation need. We didn’t know anyone personally, but we prayed anyway because we believe that our God is God who helps.
One of the great things about reading Psalms is that they are very honest about life. Psalms don’t sugarcoat life as something sweeter than it really is. Psalms tell it like it is. Psalm 40 was written by David, a king of Israel, and he told it like it was. No pretense. He was honest and transparent about his problems to God. He was also verbal about how God helped him.
To receive God’s help like David received, you begin by being honest with God about your problems.
Be honest about your problems with God.
During our prayer walk in the neighborhood around Joyce Kilmer Elementary School, we put a door hanger at each of the homes we stopped to pray. One side has a picture of a turtle. But, the turtle is upside down. And, the above the picture of turtle is one word with a question mark, “stuck?” Do you feel like you are stuck and need help? You begin by being honest with God about your problems.
David was brutally honest about how he was stuck in life. Psalm 40:12, he told God about the sad reality of his troubled life. “For troubles surround me-too many to count! My sins pile up so high I can’t see my way out. They outnumber the hairs on my head. I have lost all courage.” He described his life of problems in verse 1 as being stuck in the slimy, muddy and slush pit. Imagine being stuck in quick sand. Every move in panic does nothing but sink you deeper. Soon it will be over your head.
The fancy word that describes what David did would be confession. Confession is simply telling God like it is. “God, I did and said some stupid, mean and thoughtless things to people. It seems like I screw things up every time I open my mouth to say something or I do something. God, I am just in over my head. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”
But, don’t confuse confession to God with just spewing out your complaints about your problems to yourself or to other people. Don’t confuse confession with thoughtless saying, “Oh my God.” Confession is honesty directed to God.
The King David said this about himself, “I am poor and needy” in Psalm 40:17. How can a king with so much possession say such things about himself? Can a rich person be poor and needy? David thought so.
- To be poor is to feel like you are nothing, unvalued, forgotten; you words don’t seem to count. Your life doesn’t seem to matter.
- To be needy is to be in want. A day laborer who stands on a corner of a street is in want for someone to pick him up for a day’s worth of labor. But, a person of wealth may have no such need, but still struggles being needy; their neediness is in want for bigger, better, brand new stuff. It is pity to have so much, yet to feel like you don’t have enough.
David was gut-honest with God about his problems. Have you been honest with God about your problems in order to seek his help?
But, in order to be truly honest with your problems with God for help, you need to be confident that God cares for you and that he isn’t going to brush you off when you come to him with your problems. You need to trust God in order to seek his help.
How can you place your confidence in God?
The best place to start building your confidence in God is to look back and consider what he has done. If you don’t have much history with God, the great place to start is to read God’s word. The Bible tells you God’s credential and his ability to help you; the Bible gives you great reviews about who he is and what he does.
It’s like this. When I go to a mechanic shop, I want to make sure the shop displays ASE, Automotive Service Excellence certification of its workers. I want to make sure it is listed in Better Business Bureau with A+ grade. I want to make sure it has good customer reviews. When I know these facts about a particular mechanic shop, then I can place my confident in it, I can trust my car to the shop to get fixed right at the right cost.
In the Bible, you find the wonders God has done and his thoughts, his plans (v. 5). The Bible tells a story of God how he opened David’s ears to hear him, to understand him. That’s what David meant when he wrote that God pierced his ears in verse 6. It is in the Bible, you can see God who is pleased to save you and quick to help you as in verse 13. It is in the Bible you begin to grasp God the Father’s love for you. In Psalm 40:14-15, you see David confidently praying to God to put to shame, confusion and disgrace those who tried to harm him and mocked him. Why? It is because David understood God’s protective love for him.
But, the greatest story in the Bible that gives you the confidence in God’s willingness and his delight to help you is the story of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. In the immediate context, Psalm 40:6-8 recounts David’s own faithful commitment to doing God’s will. “Here I am, I have come- it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O my God.” Although this is David talking about himself, it looks beyond David to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10:5-10 in the New Testament imports the Psalm 40:6-8 to illustrate the truth about Jesus Christ. “Here I am, I have come,” Jesus has come and broke into the history through his birth. And, Jesus was completely committed to carrying out God’s salvation plan and he allowed himself to be killed on the cross for our sins.
Jesus has come and he has taken the center stage as all history converged to the moment of his birth, his life and his resurrection, and again all history races to converge to the moment when Jesus Christ will come back to judge the living and the dead.
It is this Jesus, the Son of God who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” in Matthew 11:28. How can you be confident of God’s help? You can be confident because God demonstrated his passion to be your helper, your deliverer, your God by sending his Son Jesus Christ on mission to give you true rest.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-25 this about himself, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain comes down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” This is the basis of David’s confidence you see in Psalm 40:1-4. How can you be confident for God’s help? You can be confident in God’s help because he is going to turn and hear your cry, he is going to lift you out of the slimy, muddy pit, out of sinking sand, he is going to set your feet on a rock and help you stand firmly. And, you are going to sing the God-song of salvation. He is going to do all these in his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Rock. He is the Cornerstone. On you, you will stand!
After David made his confession about being poor and needy, David asked this of God in Psalm 40:17, “may the LORD think of me.” When you are poor which is when you feel like nothing, unvalued, forgotten, when your words and what you do don’t seem to count, when the world seems to think nothing of you, it is God who is going to make your life count in Jesus Christ. Asking God to think of you is asking God to make your life count. When you are needy in want because you really don’t have anything or because you are enslaved in want for bigger, better, brand new stuff, it is God who is going to give you contentment. That’s what it means to ask God to think of you, to make your life count in him with abundance.
Wait patiently for God’s timing.
As you turn to God of the Bible, as you seek after God’s help in Jesus Christ, you are going to feel like God doesn’t seem to work around your schedule, your expectation. But, be assured that God’s not going to waste any time to come and help you. But, he is going to work around his schedule, his plan, his time. That’s God’s prerogative. (Psalm 40:1).
Make your life’s mission to verbally make God look great.
If you are Christian, you know that you’ve received the greatest help; you have received the greatest help of God’s salvation through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You have received the incredible gift of help from God and what do you with it? You got to express it. Look at Psalm 40:16. It says all those who seek God and love what he has done (salvation) rejoice and are glad in God and to “always say” that is always be verbal about making God look great.
Let people know how God has helped you, how God has saved you. You are not grateful to God’s help if you don’t want the world to know about how he has helped you. To hide and to conceal how God made it possible for you to have relationship with him in Jesus Christ (righteousness), how God has loved you, and how God has spoken his truth into your life, is to betray him, is to tremble on the gift of his life, and is to cheapen the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Instead, when you receive God’s help, make your mission in life to share with others how awesome God is, how much he has helped you. Spread the good news about the solid, secure, joyful, abundant life in Jesus Christ. Tell the world how your life counts because of Jesus Christ, that you are not poor and needy anymore, but you are esteemed and rich in Christ.
Make no mistake about this. Making your mission in life to share with others requires you to be verbal. Don’t think that you can just live a good life and hope that those around you will connect your good life to God’s help. People may think that way, but more likely they will think you have a good life because you work hard, because you are smart, because you are good person. You have to be verbal about God’s help if you want people to know it is God who helps you. That’s what the call to proclaim (v. 9) means. It means be verbal about God’s help in Jesus Christ. That’s how you are going to express your gratitude to God who helps you.
