Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2004 : July 18, 2004
Life Is a Bowl of Cherries
Pentecost 7
Don't try this at home. "Wow, this has been such a good weekend with the weather going just how it needed to for our Bible Carnival and now our outdoor service and picnic. I sure hope it continues. [Cross fingers. Knock on wood.] It's a good thing all of you brought you lucky rabbit's foot or we'd never get through the day. What? You didn't bring your lucky rabbit's foot! The whole day is doomed!"
What was I just doing? Demonstrating how people can be superstitious. That's why I said, "Don't try this at home." God doesn't want us to rely on superstitions to get us through the day. Why not? Because he wants us to rely on him alone. Plenty of superstitions developed during the Middle Ages because people's lives were tough. I'd always wanted to live back in the Middle Ages, maybe being a knight and doing chivalrous things, you know, rescuing helpless maidens, that sort of thing. Then I found out that only half of the babies born lived past age two; the Black Plague decimated Europe, leaving 1/3 of the population dead; many people lived as slaves or worse. So maybe the 40 year life expectancy wasn't really a bad thing. Since life was so tough, people realized that they needed help to get through not only life but each and every day.
But instead of turning to God, most people turned to superstition. For example, knocking on wood came from the Middle Ages. Since a person's life was usually filled with pain and misery, when anything good actually happened it was out of the ordinary. Then people would find the nearest tree, especially an oak, and tap it a few times. They believed, of course wrongly, that spirits inhabited the trees. When anything went well for them, they would tap the tree so that the good spirits in the trees would protect them from any evil things that might ruin their good luck. Today many people say, "Knock on wood" for that very reason, even though most of them don't know where that saying originated.
Today, even with all our modern conveniences, life usually isn't a bowl of cherries. Many difficulties come into our lives as well. It is the result of sin invading God's creation. That's why we're going to look at Psalm 34. Based on the words of Psalm 34 we will consider the idea that Life is a Bowl of Cherries for a redeemed child of God.
The first reason I can say that life is a bowl of cherries is obvious the first time you bite into a cherry -- it has a pit. Our lives are full of pits, aren't they? They come in all shapes and sizes, too. One person might have a headache. That's the pits! So they take a couple of Tylenol and it's gone in half an hour. No big deal. Another person keeps getting headaches and finds out that it's an inoperable brain tumor and she only has one year, if that, to live. That's the pits! Having to deal with children whose sole purpose in life is to make yours miserable -- that's the pits! Having to deal with a divorce in the family or some other issue that's tearing the family apart -- that's the pits! One person might not have many pits, or they're just small pits; others might have huge pits to deal with every day that seem insurmountable. What do you do when you have to face a tough day, whether it's just another day at work or taking care of the kids or going in for brain surgery? Before you answer, let's see the pits that David, the writer of the Psalm before us, had to deal with, and let's see how he did deal with them.
The superscription, or title, to the Psalm tells us exactly when David wrote the Psalm. It says, "When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left." This is still relatively early in David's life. He knew that God had chosen him to be the next king of God's people. He had already, with God's help, killed Goliath. But now King Saul wanted to kill David because he saw David as a threat to his throne. So David fled from Saul and left his best friend Jonathan and tried to find protection in the land of Israel's enemies, the Philistines. But that king, Abimelech, found out who David was. He didn't like it that a man who had already killed many Philistines was seeking protection from him. When David discovered this, he did what any of us would have done -- he acted insane. He foamed at the mouth; he ranted and raved so that the king of the Philistines wanted nothing more than for David to get out of his sight. Even though David's life was spared, the road ahead of him would be dark. He would be a fugitive, with no home, with only a small band of loyal followers, and with a death sentence on his head from King Saul. That lasted over ten years!
David had to deal with a lot of pits, didn't he? He could have said, "Lord, why don't you make my life easy for a change! I'm doing your will, yet I'm still a fugitive and living a difficult life. Lord, let it stop!" Instead of saying those things, though, listen to what David says: "This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles." David, unlike many people, knew where to turn in difficult times -- to his Lord and Savior. David was a poor man. Not poor in the sense of having no material goods, but poor in the sense of one who is in a situation where he realizes that he cannot help himself. Help must come from someone else. For David, his help came from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. David also says that he is brokenhearted and crushed in spirit. If you have a broken heart, it is one that sees no hope. There is no escape. Your heart has been torn to pieces like a piece of paper. You have been crushed in spirit when your spouse dies, when your son or daughter is in Iraq and you have no control over keeping them safe, when you have one medical emergency after another. Why do all these troubles, these pits come into a person's life, even a Christian's life? I thought God was a loving God. Why would a loving God have us deal with such terrible things in this world? All those little pits are a result of the big pit that we all have to deal with -- that big pit is sin.
We are born and conceived with it; it seems that when we put one sin behind us another two or three jump in to take its place. We can never be rid of sin. It's always with us. And verse 22 tells us the result of those sins -- condemnation. Eternal death in hell. Many people don't like to talk about it because it shows them that they are responsible to God for living a good life, in fact, a perfect life. And even one little sin -- whether it is talking putting someone down, not trusting completely in God and his will, worrying about our troubles instead of praying about them, being lazy in our Christian lives -- one little sin condemns us forever. Every sin we commit is like taking one of those cherry pits and spitting it out, not on the ground, but on God himself. How arrogant, how corrupt, how disrespectful that would be -- spitting cherry pits at God himself! But that's what we've done. And we deserve to be punished for those sins. And God did just that -- punished sin, all of them. But instead of sending us into pit of hell for all the pits we have spit on God, God instead condemned his Son in our place.
Listen to the words David writes: "The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him." Jesus, God's Son, has redeemed us, bought us back from hell and the devil's power, as Luther says, "not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood and his innocent sufferings and death." The Apostle Paul says the same thing in his letter to the Christians in Rome: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1) In this Psalm there is even a prediction of when Jesus would die for the sins of the world on the cross. David said, "[God] protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken." While he was speaking of how God protects the believer, David was also prophesying about the time when the ultimate Righteous One would be one the cross after his death. Remember when the Roman soldiers came to Jesus to break his legs on the cross to make sure he was dead? When the soldiers got to Jesus, they found that he was already dead, so they didn't break his legs. The Apostle John says, "These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: 'Not one of his bones will be broken.' " (John 19:36) That prophecy found its final fulfillment when our Savior had completed his work of saving us from our sins. This Psalm is just one more assurance that Jesus was, in fact, the Savior that God had long ago promised.
When we place our lives and our eternal welfare in God's hands and don't try to save ourselves, an amazing thing happens. We find out that God has taken away all our sins. Jesus paid the price of our sins for us. He took all the pits of sin that we spit out at God in our insolence and sinfulness, and he took each one to cross. Big pits, small pits, pits you can remember and pits that you can't. No pit, no sin, can now condemn you because Jesus already paid the price for taking those pits away. David says the same thing in our verses: "This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles." "A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all." Every sin is gone. God has delivered us.
Since God took care of the biggest pit in our lives -- sin -- do you think he might be able to help you through all the other small pits in our lives? David thought so: "The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them." God surrounds us with his love and protection; nothing can harm us in God's hands. "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." You don't have to be brokenhearted any longer or crushed in spirit because your sins are forgiven in Christ. But if any other things in life make you feel that way, God is close to you, only a prayer away, only as far as your nearest Bible. You aren't crushed because God has lifted you up and made you strong. So when any pits come your way in life, let Jesus take care of them. "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall." (Psalm 55:22)
Life can be the pits. Jesus takes care of your pits. Without the pits, a cherry tastes very good. Isn't that exactly what David says: "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." You may not think that life is always so good, but from the Christian perspective, it's not only good, it's a bowl of cherries. Just keep spitting out the pits, and let Jesus take care of them. Amen.
