Psalm 6

Preached: Feb 21, 2010 - Des Arc First UMC - Nursing Home

SCRIPTURE READINGS Psalm 6: 1—7

This is a petition for healing that many of us here today can agree with. How many of us as we grow older wish that we did not:

  • Ache so much

  • Had so many things wrong with us

  • Felt as if our bodies and our minds have given out on us at the wrong time.

  • Do not feel that we should be in this bad of shape, because that is what God has promised us.

How many of us also fear for our very soul and existence now that we are becoming older and closer to the doorway of death. I have yet to meet a person who really does not wonder what is on the other side of that veil that we all must pass through.  Especially as they grow old and feel the pains of age more and more. It should give you comfort to know that this is not a new expression of fear.  The writer of today’s Psalm had the same fear that we too have. He had the same desire to go into the Presence of the Lord for eternity and not to waste away in some forgotten place, never to know joy again in life.

This again is a psalm of lament but in verse 8 we hear something new.

Psalm 6: 8—10

The lament turns into a “Psalm of joy” because this writer knows and understands that God does hear him and will give him comfort and peace. We to can read our assurance that God is and can and does hear our please for peace and mercy and he is and can and will help us through even the tough times that we are going through into a place of peace in the end. It is no my firm belief that God did not create us to live in constant torment, not now or in the future eternity. He can and does know what we go through and most of this is brought on by our own self desires and our bodies playing out the abuse that we heaped upon them during this life.

Isn’t it comforting to hear at a funeral that someone who is like us, with a broken body and sometimes broken sprit. Have now taken off the perishable, the fragile, the aches and pains of disease, and death and put on a new body, full and proper and full of new possibilities in the Lord. I know I am looking forward to getting out of this skin of misery and into my new imperishable container.

Are you also ready to make that change? That is the funny thing about living and dying, we must give up this life to begin the next. Sometimes we wish we were like Enoch or Elijah whom we think of as having moved from this life to the next without having to die. Supposable they were both taken by the Lord to be with him. Well we all shall be that way for we all shall at some point come before the Lord to stand in front of his holy presence and be judged.

That is the kicker isn’t it. We don't want to be judged. We think we can judge ourselves by our own standards and not have to worry about someone else judging us by standards we profess to not understanding.

A lot of people are ignorant of what the Lord asks and requires and want to stay that way. They want to enjoy this life and do not care about what is to come until the very last moment. I wonder sometimes if we would have enough faith to face the lions as the early martyrs did. Or if we could stand up to the forces of evil that torture us as the early protestant martyrs' were tortured for their beliefs.

We all say that we love our God and are willing to do anything for Him. But are you really ready to die for him. Are you really ready to die to your old self? And become new again.

The Bible teaches us that unless a seed dies and is planted into the soil. It cannot spring forth and bring an abundant harvest.

So to must we die and be planted in the ground so that we too might come to a new life.

  • Nothing that is evil.

  • Nothing that is obscene

  • Nothing that is wicked

  • Nothing that is unclean can stand in the presence of God.

What needs to die in your life so that you too might stand in front of God whole and new and clean?

What need to die in your life that you too might start to bear a good and abundant harvest for God?

It is not a matter of being “Saved”.  You already have been “Saved” because of the Act of Jesus Christ upon his cross. It is now a matter of your old self dying so a new life and spring forth and grow and fruit out.

It is now a matter of remaking our life, not as we want it but as God intended it. Worshiping and loving God with all our Hearts, minds and souls and loving our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.