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God Takes our Loads: A Sermon on Psalm 81:1-10 (Part 3 of the series God at Work in Our Lives)
God at Work in Our Lives
God Takes our Load
Psalm 81:1-10
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be revealed in your lives, as you are freed from your load of burdens!
- Why We Praise Him
I want you to hear the words you just sang again…
So take me as You find me,
All my fears and failures,
Fill my life again!
It is as we realize this prayer will be answered that we move from crying out for God’s mercy to crying out His praises:
Savior, He can move the mountains!
My God is mighty to save!
He is mighty to save!
Forever, Author of salvation!
He rose and conquered the grave!
Jesus conquered the grave!
The last song we will sing in the service has a similar format –
My sin O the bliss,
Of this glorious tho’t:
My sin not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross!
And I bear it no more,
What comes after that?
Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
As we look this summer at how God is working in our lives, we will see that as He works, our praises just erupt. To see God removes that which crushes us, as He heals that which rips our hearts in two, as He restores us after life breaks us into a million pieces it is unbelievably powerful! And our hearts just sing His praises…
This is why we praise the Lord who is here…
- Jubilee Worship
The psalm this morning starts out encouraging us to do something:
Sing praises to God, our strength. Sing to the God of Jacob. 2 Sing! Beat the tambourine. Play the sweet lyre and the harp!
In other words- rejoice! Praise Him! Glorify Him!
Side note – to glorify something means to establish and recognize how valuable/invaluable Someone is in your life!
Get that definition again – in fact read it.. to glorify something means to establish and recognize how valuable/invaluable Someone is in my life!
Why – it will sound silly, but because of what is described in the next verse:
Blow the ram’s horn at new moon, and again at full moon to call a festival! 4 For this is required by the decrees of Israel; it is a regulation of the God of Jacob.
A brief explanation here – it is the blowing of a ram’s horn at the monthly feast, and especially at the 50 year sabbath, that results in the praise. You see, that Horn was used as a alert to not only the presence of God, but the pouring out of his mercy—which was celebrated at an incredible festival giving thanks to God.
It signified the cancelling of debt – and at the 50th year – the restoration of all that was lost, sold off, surrendered to others. It required the restoration of relationships long thought dead.
In other words—the removal of every burden that could weigh people down….which is described in the next two verses,
5 He made it a law for Israel when he attacked Egypt to set us free. I heard an unknown voice say, 6 “Now I will take the load from your shoulders; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks.
That is why we worship our LORD Jesus Christ—that is why “The is with YOU is so an incredible statement
It is life changing.
- No foreign gods –
He is a God who listens! Unlike the foreign gods that were worshipped at the time and the ones people entrust themselves now, God cares! He listens. Hagar, the servant girl of Sarah, who Sarah forced to sleep with Abraham her husband, and then drives her and her son away in jealousy describes it better than any other:
13 Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the LORD, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.” She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?” Genesis 16:13 (NLT2)
To see the one who sees you… who knows you, who listens to your cries!
That is why the psalmist writes on God’s behalf, the law part of this passage:
8 “Listen to me, O my people, while I give you stern warnings. O Israel, if you would only listen to me! 9 You must never have a foreign god; you must not bow down before a false god.
God is clear—He will invest all the power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. SO what sense does it make to entrust your life, your soul, your heart to some other “god?” For that is what a god is, who are what you entrust yourself to, depending on that to help you live. Whatever you decide to invest your time, your talents, your happiness, your life. It is what you turn to when the burdens of life are more than you can bear….
And only one God can do anything about those burdens. Only one God can lift them, and remove the burdens from your hands!
- Burdens relieved, filled with Good things!
Again, hear the promise:
“Now I will take the load from your shoulders; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks.
That is what the cross is all about—for Jesus frees us from the heaviest of burdens there!
He washes them away here – something we need to remember.
Here, at the altar, He lifts the burdens off of your shoulders, He frees your hands from these heavy weights…. All of these hurts, all of the scars, all of the the crud in your life.
This is why we worship Him, and this is the time and place to remind you of this in a tangible way that Ihope you remember. So this is what I want you to do.
In your bulletin, there is a sheet of paper with the word burden on it.
To often we hang onto these burdens to long, we think we have to deal with them. So when you come up for communion- bring the piece of paper. Hold onto it, grasping onto it like we do with our brokenness.
When you are here at the rail, I will take it from you, exchanging it for the Body of Christ, and Deacon Bob will give you the Blood shed for the forgiveness, the removal of allt he weight of your sin…Try to see God at work in this, for this is what He’s promised to do, to remove those burdens, to care for all you care deeply about…
And you will leave the paper here… and the load it represents…and walk away free of it…try not to take up the burdens again, but be confident in His love and care.
For God promised to fill you with good things – even as He removes the load off your shoulders, and what filled your hands..
For He sees you, and lives with you- determined to overwhelm you with His peace that passes all understanding – for you are His… you are Christ’s
Let’s pray!
Show Me the… Works?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
18 But someone will say, “One person has faith, another has actions.” My answer is, “Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I will show you my faith by my actions.” James 2:18 (TEV)
Since faith brings the Holy Spirit and produces a new life in our hearts, it must also produce spiritual impulses in our hearts. What these impulses are, the prophet shows when he says (Jer. 31:33), “I will put my law upon their hearts.” After we have been justified and regenerated by faith, therefore, we begin to fear and love God, to pray and expect help from him, to thank and praise him, and to submit to him in our afflictions. Then we also begin to love our neighbor because our hearts have spiritual and holy impulses.
Even more upsetting, the devil can take your best works and reduce them to such dishonorable and worthless things and render them so damnable before your conscience that your sins scare you less than your best good works. In fact, you wish you had committed grievous sins rather than done such good works. Thus, the devil causes you to deny these works, as if they were not done through God, so that you commit blasphemy.
That is why it is important to learn and practice all one’s life long, from childhood on, to think with God, to feel with God, to will with God, so that love will follow and will become the keynote of my life. When that occurs, love of neighbor will follow as a matter of course. For if the keynote of my life is love, then I, in my turn, will react to those whom God places on my path only with a Yes of acceptance, with trust, with approval, and with love.
In the movie Jerry MaGuire, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character lashes out Tom Cruise’s character with the phrase, “show me the money!” Except it is not about money. It is a plea for Tom’s character Jerry to show how important the relationship is, that it isn’t just about the money that can be made from negotiating a deal.
Inside the Christian faith, our actions often speak louder than our words. They testify as to whether the words we say are true, or whether we are those who call out “Lord! Lord!” and yet don’t have a solid relationship with the Lord, in fact,t hey don’t have a relationship at all.
It is not about our works, it is not about the obedience, it is about the relationship. Works simply testify that the relationship exists. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, we think with God, we feel with God, and love follows as a matter of course! That love causes action, it creates the work, but the work is never apart from the presence of God.
We know we aren’t saved by works (the Lutheran phrase based on Ephesian 2:8-10) and there is nothing we do that merits salvation, it all depend on the grace of God which precedes anything (which is the way the Roman Catholic Church in the Council of Trent put it in Session Vi chapter V)) Yet the faith that depends on God for salvation will result in praise and worship – the latter being what we do with out lives.
Luther’s concern in the green text above must be heard, if we are to understand his version of “Faith Alone.” He isn’t denying the believer can do good works, or encouraging them to not even bother with the idea. Our good works, done in communion with Jesus Christ, are to be encouraged, extolled, and the glory given to God, whose light we are simply reflecting by those works. An attitude that denied this, that caused us to view the our good works with disdain Luther considered influenced by Satan!
As the Apology to the Augsburg Confession puts it, these works are the result of the impulses the Holy Spirit puts on our hearts. This doesn’t sound like we are denying that the Christian can do good works, does it?
And that is the point we need to clarify, that we need not be afraid of trying to do something the Holy Spirit is driving us towards. It my be simple, like holding the hand of someone struggling with old age and being feeble. It may be sitting and reading the catechism with a child, helping them to know God’s love. It could be something different, like heading to Africa or Asia on a mission trip. It could be… well, you fill in the blank. What is God calling you to do?
Then do it, and we can both rejoice in the faithfulness of God, who is close enough to you to put that idea on your heart, and give you the desire and ability to see it through! AMEN!
Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 124.
Martin Luther, Luther’s Spirituality, ed. Philip D. W. Krey, Bernard McGinn, and Peter D. S. Krey, trans. Peter D. S. Krey and Philip D. W. Krey, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007), 212–213.
Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, ed. Irene Grassl, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy and Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 276.
