The sermon that follows is based on a Psalm that was almost undoubtedly a prayer during a time of war. Likewise, I have used an illustration from United States Military History. As Christians, we know that war is never God’s primary will. It may sometimes be the lesser of two evils. Reinhold Niebuhr, a great 20th century Neo-Orthodox theologian, saw that Christians must sometimes accept compromises. He was still a pastor in a small church. One Sunday he told his congregation that a Christian must always do as Jesus commands. When struck on one cheek, we must give our enemies the other. A newsboy in the congregation stuck up his hand and asked, “What about me?” He went on to explain that he was the only support of his widowed mother. He did his best to respect her, as per the 4th commandment, and to provide for her needs. “Each day I pick-up my papers,” he said, “then I have to fight the other boys for a place to sell my papers. If I did not fight, my mother would go hungry.” Niebuhr admitted that Christians must sometimes do things we had rather not, like fight, and go to war. He said that in these cases we must still do all that we can to bring good out of the bad.
The Divine Distance
6 For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he knows from afar. Psalm 138:1-8
Douglas MacArthur spent fifty years in the United States Army. For more than thirty years he was a General Officer. He was one of five men in U.S. history to wear five stars. MacArthur fought Bandits in Mexico and Communists in Korea. He fought in World War I under Pershing, and he commanded the Pacific Theater during World War II. He won the Medal of Honor, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, Seven Silver Stars, 2 Purple Hearts and a host of other medals. He was patriotic, brave, and a man of faith. According to critics and friends alike MacArthur had only one weakness: He lacked humility. He thought too highly of himself, and he thought too little of the abilities and opinions of others. He surrounded himself with “Yes” men, and he refused outside council. This led to costly mistakes, especially in the Korean War. MacArthur had been in the orient for more than a decade. He thought he knew more about the oriental mind than any other American. Therefore He refused to allow the CIA to gather intelligence in Korea, and he ignored the concerns of President Truman that the Chinese would enter the war.
You know the story. The North Koreans had invaded and overrun South Korea. MacArthur began his counterattack brilliantly. Acting against the advice of virtually everyone, he landed his troops at Inchon. The communists never expected it. The American forces quickly rolled up the North Koreans, took Seoul, and then rushed headlong toward the Yalu River. U.S. Forces moved so fast that they left their winter gear in the south. The war looked like it would be over in months, before deep winter came. Then commanders began to see things that made them uneasy. From time to time, they picked up soldiers who looked more like Chinese soldiers than North Korean Soldiers. One unit captured an enemy soldier who wore a North Korean uniform over a Chinese uniform. In several cases, advance units began to report seeing troops they believed to be Chinese massing in incredible numbers. They passed this information back to Macarthur’s headquarters at the Daichi building in Japan, but MacArthur and his yes-men ignored it. The General continued to insist that China would not enter the war. He passed on his false confidence to most (but not all) of his commanders in the field. Many of them were so over confidant that they spread their troops too thin, and did not take the time to prepare proper defensive positions. They did not dig proper fox holes, set up interlocking fields of fire, or preregister their artillery. The American Army paid huge price for MacArthur’s hubris. In November and December of 1950 the Chinese Communists crossed the Yalu River into Korea, and attacked ill-positioned and ill-equipped U.S. troops in unbelievable numbers. Using stealth, small arms, and primitive communication techniques, they overran the poorly prepared U.S. positions, decimating platoons, companies, battalions and regiments. Several entire brigades were rendered combat ineffective. Thousands of Americans were killed. Thousands more were wounded. With a few notable exceptions the Americans withdrew to the south in a panic, scrambling for their lives. It was one of the darkest times in United States History. It would not be reversed until Truman relieved MacArthur, and he was replaced. David Halberstam called it “The Coldest Winter.”
In the text before us this morning, we read that God regards the lowly. God certainly has a special regard for the poor, but according to this Psalm, the kind of lowliness that God regards is not just the kind that is based on poverty, or ignorance. This Psalm is presented as “a Psalm of David,” and David was the greatest of Israel’s kings. The kind of lowliness that God regards is the humility of those who worship God, obey God’s word, and wait patiently for God’s deliverance. David probably prayed this prayer “toward the temple” when he was out with his army.
Likewise, the text declares that God is “far from the haughty.” In the context of the Davidic Psalms the haughty are “the kings of the nations” who worship false gods and array themselves against the LORD and his anointed.
I call this Psalm “a praise and confession sandwich.” Praise is the bread and confession is the meat of this prayer. The author, whom the Psalm calls “David,” begins and ends by praising God, but right in the middle, where the cheese goes, he puts in a two-fold confession.
Let’s pretend this is one of those reality-cooking shows, and I will describe this praise and confession sandwich as succinctly as I can.
In the first slice of “praise” David says several things:
- He praises God with his “whole heart,” meaning his entire being.
- He praises God “toward” the temple, in defiance of all false and idolatrous gods who populate the heathen world.
- He remembers a time when he cried out for help, and God delivered him. He confesses that when God answered his prayer, his “soul” was “strengthened,” meaning his faith grew stronger. Our faith always grows stronger when God answers our prayers, especially when the answer is, “No.”
- He looks forward to a day when the “kings of the earth shall praise God.” In the Psalms of David, “the Kings of the earth” are usually in opposition to “the Lord and his anointed.” Here David predicts that their opposition will crumble as they “hear the words of God’s mouth,” and see God’s action on David’s behalf.
- He confesses that though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. God keeps his distance from pride.
Then comes the confession in the petition sandwich. His first slice of confession is directed to God. He says:
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou dost preserve my life; thou dost stretch out thy hand against the wrath of my enemies, and thy right hand delivers me.
The second slice of confession, he addresses to those who “over-hear” or “re-pray” this prayer. He says:
“The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.”
Then David finishes with another slice of pure praise and a petition. In a single sentence he sums up all his experience of God and ours. He says, “Thy steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.” The words are few, but they equal all those who have gone before. They are the sum total of all God’s people have even known of God.
“Thy steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.”
His petition? “Do not forsake the work of thy hands.”
The centerpiece of the Psalm is humility. In this Psalm the David makes a remarkable claim for the virtue of “lowliness” or “humility.” He says that humility not only determines the divine distance, and draws God close, but implies that humility is a key ingredient for success in temporal matters, too. As always in scripture, there are three aspects of humility.
I
The first aspect of humility is one’s relationship to God. The humble person recognizes that God alone is God.
In David’s day those who rejected the LORD God of Israel worshiped a plethora of false Gods, and invariably represented those Gods with an idol that they believed to be somehow a part of God himself. Jeremiah chapter 10 is a wonderful picture of idol worship. Here is a condensed version of verses 3-15:
A tree form the forest is cut down, and worked with an ax by the hands of craftsman. Men deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. They cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good. They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish.
Today, we often dismiss idolatry. It is still among us, it just takes on a more subtle form. According to Colossians 3:5, “covetousness is idolatry.” According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, covetousness is “an unreasonable desire for what we do not possess.” David coveted Bathsheba though she was the wife of Uriah. His desire led him to adultery and murder. Covetousness can also be an unreasonable attachment to that which we do possess. In his Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkein tells the story of a “ring of power” that makes all who wear it covet it. First they possess the ring, then the ring possesses them. Tolkein was a Christian. He was trying to warn us against covetousness. Anytime our possessions, or something we want to posses, begin to posses and control us, we are guilty of covetousness and idolatry.
Of course, there is a still more subtle and heinous form of idolatry, the kind of idolatry that makes human beings the highest and best of all that is in the universe. When I was in seminary, one of my professors told me how he learned of the “God is dead” movement in the 1960’s. A professor at a major university came into his class and announced, “God is dead!” He said that science had taken the mystery out of life, and God was no longer necessary. One of his students stood up and responded, “I am glad that God is dead; now my mind can expand until it fills the universe.” The professors hung his head and said, “I feel a little differently; I am still grieving God’s passing.” The professor lost God, and was smart enough to recognize the loss. If we are without God in the world, we are also without hope. We pursue happiness for a few years, then it escapes us, and we are left to dusty death. Without God, death is the God of this world, it devours everything.
The Psalmist believed in a God who lives. His God was not a powerless idol made by human hands, but the creator of heaven and earth. His God was not just vaporware built upon superstition and false hope. David’s God had revealed God’s self to Israel when God delivered them from the land of Egypt and led them to the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. David’s God revealed himself to David when he crowned him king and delivered him from his enemies.
David believed in a God who lives. As Christians we believe in a God who lives, and raises the dead. We believe in the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, and rose again to give us a future and a hope, not just in this life, but in the next. The first aspect of humility is humility toward God. We place ourselves under the protection and direction of the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ.
II
There is a second aspect of humility that is just as important as the first. In the Bible humility does not stop with the worship of God. Humility shows respect for the others with whom we share our world.
David respected even his enemies. He held out hope that they too would praise God. Douglas MacArthur did not respect his enemies. Some of his commanders regarded the Chinese as “laundry men.” MacArthur should have corrected them. (It is a shame that he did not live to see the Beijing Olympics—whatever the Chinese are, they are mostly certainly not a nation of laundry men. The worst thing we can ever do is underestimate our enemy—or our competitor.
For King David, respect for the Law given by God through Moses was the foundation of respect.
The Law is an interesting phenomenon. According to the count of Rabbis ancient and modern, the Pentateuch, including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy contains 613 laws. That is a lot of Laws. Great teachers always try to simplify, and that is just what the ancient Rabbis did. Some suggested that the Decalogue, that we know as the Ten Commandments, was the heart and soul of the Law. Others suggested that the seven laws of the so-called Noahic Covenant that God gave to Noah in Genesis 9, was the heart and soul of the law. Some Rabbis even taught that Gentiles who live by the Noahic Covenant have no need of converting to Judaism, but may be justified before God simply by keeping those seven commandments. The commandments include commandments to worship God, to refrain from murder, and sexual immorality, to set up courts for judgment of human affairs, and to refrain from cruelty to animals.
Other Rabbis were more radical in their approach to the Law. One modern Rabbi says that 613 commandments were reduced to 10, and the 10 were then reduced to 7, and the 7 were finally reduced to 1. The one commandment to which he referred was found in Leviticus 19:18. There we read, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
When asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus responded that the first commandment was to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength. He said a second is like it—or flows from it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He said that all the law and the prophet’s were built upon these two commandments. (Matt. 22:39) Twice, once in Romans 13, and once in Galatians 5, Paul says that the whole law can be summed up in a single sentence, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” In 1 John 4 we see that Jesus is in perfect harmony with Leviticus 19:18 and with St. Paul. There we read that “he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” We love God by loving our brothers and sisters.
Love in this case is not an emotion. It is an action. In 1st Corinthians 13 St. Paul says:
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
If Douglas MacArthur had practiced love toward President Truman, and the CIA, and the commanders under him, he would have acted in humility, and partnership, and he might have made a great success in Korea. He ignored the value of the people around him, and refused to obey his Commander in Chief, and Truman relieved him.
We show humility in other ways.
The greatest salesman I ever knew once told me the secret of his success. He said, “I believe that anyone who walks into my store, regardless of dress, or sex, or age, or color, has the money in his or her pocket to buy me out to the bare walls.” That is economic humility, but it is humility.
Will Rogers said, “I never men a man I did not like.” That is social humility, but it is humility.
I have a friend who says, “I never met a man from whom I could not learn something.” That is intellectual humility, but it is humility.
From time to time people outside of this church ask me how we have been so successful here at New Philadelphia. My answer always boils down to humility. I tell them that at any given time we have 24 people serving as Elders and Trustees. Once each year, at congregational council, we elect roughly 1/3 of each board to serve a single three-year term. A person must take off two years following his or her service. Because of that we have lots of people giving their time and their talent. In recognizing the ability of all, we are reflecting a degree of humility.
It is impossible to be successful in life without humility. We worship and respect God and God asks that we worship and respect one another.
III
The final aspect of humility is the respect that we show ourselves. David said, “I know that the LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.”
David believed that he had a purpose in life. Not a purpose he himself determined, but a purpose given by God himself. Pastor Rick Warren has written a book entitled, A Purpose Driven Life. It has sold more than twenty-five million copies. The book is far from perfect, but Rick Warren struck a nerve. People want to know that life has a purpose. As Christians our primary purpose is to continue the work of Jesus Christ in the world. We are his hands and feet in the world. Paul said that he was, and by implication we are, ambassadors of Christ. We must speak and live his grace, forgiveness, and hope.
I believe that each of us also has a unique purpose in life. I cannot tell you yours. You cannot tell me mine. Only God can do that. We can encourage each other to remember that God will fulfill his purpose in our lives, no matter the odds.
I don’t know how the situation David describes in Psalm 138 was resolved. I do remember a time when he went out against the greatest of enemies, Goliath of Gath, with only a sling and five smooth stones. Yet David had the advantage. As he said to Goliath, you come against me with sword, and spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. David emerged victorious. God fulfilled God’s purpose in David’s life. If we will only allow it, God will fulfill God’s purpose in our lives, too.
Finis