You guys sound fantastic tonight.
You know, congregational worship is different than a lot of other styles of music.
The most important instrument in congregational music is your instrument.
And so our sound people do a really great job at keeping the instruments out of the way.
And you guys are up to the challenge tonight. It sounds really great.
Just saying.
Today is our sixth and final Sunday meditating on Psalm 23.
And it feels like it's been just the right time to be doing this sermon series.
As this psalm has been intensifying verse after verse in its expression of intimacy with God.
And culminating today with verse 6.
Which is as concise an explanation of hope as you can find.
So also has this summer been drawing to a close.
A summer which might teach us to do anything but hope.
We live in an age of cynicism.
And just like you learn certain behaviors and safeguards after getting your fingers burned.
So can we become more deeply cynical after a summer like the one we've had.
And what a summer it's been.
Now for those of you who are visiting and haven't been aware of what's going on in our congregation.
You should know that for many of us it was a summer of sickness and even death.
Extended stays in hospitals.
Death of parents.
Relationships sick and shattered.
And I don't mean to sound flippant when I say this.
But it's enough to make you actually believe in the underlying message of a zombie film.
Zombie films teach us that death is constantly pursuing us.
Climbing through windows to get to us.
And over walls to grab us.
Bursting from the ground to snatch at our ankles.
Death always having the final word.
A cynical take on this summer could be that surely sickness and death will pursue me all the days of my life.
For many of us it was the headlines that we'll remember.
Things happening in our country and our world that feel unprecedented to us.
Or at the very least things happening the likes of which few can remember.
Surely anger and disappointment will follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in a world of fragmentation forever.
There's a man in the Bible whom none would fault if he had become a cynical person.
David, who wrote this psalm, faithfully served his king as a young man.
And then he married the king's daughter and became best friends with the king's son.
But when David's father-in-law became jealous of him,
Saul tried to kill him.
King Saul drew him into exile and hunted him like a dog.
Later when David became king, he would lose an infant son to death.
Later in life, one of David's sons, Amnon, would sexually assault David's daughter, Tamar.
And another of David's sons, Absalom, murdered Amnon in revenge.
A while later, the same son, Absalom, would rebel against David and try to usurp the throne from him.
And once again, David was driven into exile.
David would survive this coup d'etat but would see yet another one of his sons killed.
At the end of his life, at the end of David's life, yet another son, Adonijah,
didn't even wait for David to die to set himself up as king.
So you can imagine the cynicism that David must have felt tempted to
about family and relationships and love and closeness.
And yet David didn't really need to look outside the confines of his own heart to be made cynical, did he?
Early in David's reign as king, from his palace, he sees a beautiful woman bathing,
decides that he must have her, so he seduces her, he gets her pregnant,
and then to cover this all up, he has her husband killed, and then he quickly marries her.
And in reflecting on this episode, in deep remorse and regret,
David very correctly would write,
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet history would not remember David as a bitter cynic,
but as a man after God's own heart.
In spite of everything that happened in David's life,
David's refrain was,
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
So let's look more closely at the hope found in this verse,
and then we'll look briefly at cynicism,
and then we'll talk about how we might replace cynicism with this hope.
Let's pray.
Father, we're acutely aware that as we talk about hope,
we're sitting in a dry sanctuary in full safety,
while many people are facing catastrophic flooding and devastation.
They need to know your hope.
They need to know your presence.
Would you provide?
Would you protect?
Would you rescue?
Would you be with the ones who are doing the rescuing?
And God, through all of this, would your church shine?
Would your church come to the aid of many?
Would your church show mercy and be generous?
All for your glory, Lord.
Help us in these next few minutes to also learn about hope.
Replace our hope, replace our cynicism with hope, Lord.
We really would love to hope.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
If you were here last week, you may remember the tone of this psalm shifting
from David talking about a shepherd and his sheep
to God being a gracious host.
And in verse 6, we shift back to the familiar imagery of being a sheep and a flock.
We find the shepherd at the front of the flock.
And there we see his staff in his hand.
We hear the familiar sound of his voice that we are following.
But what's behind us?
What's in the back?
What might be coming up from behind, lurking in the shadows?
With many flocks, we would find predators.
Predators standing back, waiting for that one sheep to lag behind,
perhaps to get lost, perhaps to get caught.
And there, a predator would find his supper.
But David doesn't have that anxiety in this verse.
David pictures there being a rear guard to this flock.
God's own goodness and mercy, personifications of two of God's most essential attributes.
The word goodness is a translation of the Hebrew word tof.
And you've probably heard this word before when you've heard the Hebrew expression for congratulations.
Mazel tov, right?
At the end of each day in the creation account of Genesis 1,
God declares the things he has made to be tof, to be good.
The shepherd's tof, his goodness, is demonstrated in his abundant care,
in his order of things, in his promises, in his blessings.
Now, the word for mercy here is the English translation of the Hebrew word chesed.
And it's often translated as loving kindness.
God's chesed, his love, is his covenantal commitment
to love and bless his people with his own goodness.
In Exodus 34, when God describes himself, he uses this word a couple of times.
The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in chesed,
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
Now, cynicism teaches us to look over our shoulder,
because surely there's something pursuing us.
Surely the world isn't as it seems.
Surely there's something in the darkness that's lurking for me.
Surely God doesn't have his eye on every single thing.
But David tells us,
sometimes God leads us beside quiet waters.
Sometimes he leads us through a valley of deepest shadow.
But what remains the same is God's steadfast love and his goodness,
always hemming us in behind and before,
always having our back.
For that reason, David can say that he will dwell in the house of the Lord for the length of days.
In other words, every day of my life, I can experience God's presence.
Every day I can experience intimacy with him.
Every day is defined by the reality of redemption and salvation.
Every day, what is more real than the deluge of media and noise and fragmentation,
is the nearness of God.
And now, 3,000 years later, after David wrote this,
we have a fuller understanding of God's goodness and loving kindness,
demonstrated to us in his son, Jesus Christ.
Chesed is God's faithfulness, his covenantal commitment to love us.
Well, we have an obligation in this covenant, and we couldn't keep it.
So God himself came and kept that part of the covenant for us,
so that we can experience intimacy and nearness of the Father.
Plus, Jesus died and rose again, destroying death and sin,
so that we can dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
So this intimacy that we know here, in the here and now,
we can experience and know through eternity.
This seems to me to be the very definition of hope.
Being hemmed in by God's goodness and love,
knowing his presence every day of our lives.
But a person who has this kind of hope today,
let's be honest, would seem rather peculiar.
Like, very attractive to run across a person like this.
But still, peculiar.
Because in our culture, we are all immersed
in an amniotic fluid that's made of cynicism.
So let's shift to cynicism.
And let me just briefly, just paint a picture of cynicism for us, okay?
Cynicism tells you to look over your shoulders,
and when you do, you will really see the reality
of what's going on in this world.
Cynicism is constantly looking for threats.
It's constantly looking through people and institutions
to get their angle.
So while cynicism makes us feel in the know,
at the same time, it destroys intimacy.
Because it breeds isolation.
The cynical person can't find the joy in things.
Cynicism makes us feel like we are hyper-aware,
preventing us from really trusting or hoping.
Cynicism makes us feel energized at times.
But what it really is,
it's just a concoction of indifference
and apathy and discontentment.
There's a guy named Paul Maxwell.
He describes it as an emotional rocket launcher
mounted on a lazy boy.
Cynicism gives us a feeling of superiority.
That's right, it's intoxicating.
Paul Miller writes,
since the fall,
that's the fall of man.
Since the fall of man,
evil feels omnipresent,
making cynicism an easy sell.
Because cynicism sees what is really going on,
it feels real, authentic.
That gives cynicism an elite status,
since authenticity is one of the last remaining public virtues in our culture.
Cynicism teaches us not to pray,
because nothing is going to change.
And if I pray about something,
and it does change,
well, that probably means it was just going to change anyway.
Lastly, because cynicism is the spirit of the age,
then cynicism is our great temptation.
It's more than a disposition.
Cynicism is a sin.
And I must confess,
it is one of my big besetting sins,
and it always has been.
I would like to think,
well, it's just part of my calling card as a Gen Xer.
But it's more than that.
And I've always wrestled with it.
I remember being in elementary school,
and I went to get my pictures taken.
I don't know what I said to the photographer,
but he said,
go ask your parents what the word cynicism means.
Like, cynicism?
I was like, yes,
you are very cynical.
So I went home,
like,
Mom,
the photographer called me a Seneca.
Like,
what's a Seneca?
Oh,
you mean,
he said you were cynical.
So she told me what it is.
And so from that point,
I just kind of thought,
oh,
that's just my disposition.
That's just the way I am.
That's fine,
right?
Like being,
I didn't know these words back then,
but it's like being like sanguine,
right?
Or melancholy.
It's just a disposition,
right?
But it's not.
It's not.
But cynicism is a sin
because at the root of cynicism
is questioning the goodness of God
on our behalf.
It's doubting God when he says he loves us.
It's the original sin.
Adam and Eve doubting God
and his trustworthiness
and his love
and his protection.
Cynicism
is disbelieving
that goodness and love
are following you
all the days of your life.
So what are we to do?
So we've talked about hope
and we've talked about cynicism.
How do we replace one
with the other?
If Psalm 23 verse 6
tells us that we're to have hope,
but if the spirit of the age
is constantly telling us
and calling us to cynicism,
then what are we to do?
So I think the answer is
a liturgical one.
Okay?
When I say liturgical,
I mean that we're to address
the habits and rituals
that shape our imaginations.
It starts by realizing
that our cynicism
is shaped
by a liturgy,
by a posture.
It's not like
isolated outbursts
of emotions
here and there,
but it's the constant,
subtle reactions
to the things around us.
The rolling of the eyes.
The snarky tweet.
The Jim Halpert
smirk and raise eyebrow.
Combo.
It's a constant fixation
that excludes
the presence
of the shepherd.
In his book,
The Praying Life,
Paul Miller takes Psalm 23
and he crosses out
all references
to the good shepherd
and everything
that the good shepherd does.
And this is what is left.
I shall be in want.
Me.
My soul.
Me.
I walk through the valley
of shadow of death.
I fear evil.
Me.
Me in the presence
of my enemies.
My head.
My cup.
Me all the days
of my life.
Cynicism ignores
the presence
of the shepherd
and all we're left
with is ourselves.
Therefore,
to move from cynicism
into hope,
I would suggest
that we practice
the presence
of God.
He's always present,
but we have to practice that.
St. John of the Cross
tells us
that human health
consists
in the continuous
and conscious
experience
of God's presence.
Human health
consists
in the continuous
and conscious
experience
of God's presence.
This is why
the philosopher
and author
Dallas Willard
meditated on
Psalm 23
every day.
In his book
The Divine Conspiracy,
Dallas Willard wrote,
the 23rd Psalm
is an exquisite
summary of life
in the kingdom.
The mind
of the disciples
should have it
prominently displayed
within
to always foster
the joy
and peace
of the kingdom
as well as
to orient
all of his
or her actions
within it.
This is an essential
part of any
curriculum
for Christ-likeness.
Positive engagement
with these scriptures
will bring kingdom
order into our
entire personality.
We really come
to think
and believe
differently
and that changes
everything else.
So what I recommend
for us
at this end
of our study
of Psalm 23
is very simple.
It's to memorize
Psalm 23.
Memorize it
and return
to it
often.
As Dallas Willard
says,
a constant awareness
of God's presence
and our place
within his kingdom
shapes the way
we think
and believe
and feel
and respond.
It pushes out
cynicism
and it gives us
a childlike faith.
Hope is different
than naive optimism.
It doesn't blind us
to the realities
of the world.
If anything,
we see them
more realistically
as we did before
but we don't despair
because we know
that King Jesus
is intent
on crushing
all those things
that set themselves
up in opposition
to his kingdom.
Hatred,
hostility,
brokenness,
sin,
and death.
We become
more realistic
than a cynic
and we become
more optimistic
and hopeful
than the idealist
and this is what
gives us our fuel
and our power
to actually go
into the world
and to make a difference,
to join in God's mission
of recovering
and redeeming
a broken world,
sunken
in cynicism.
Now,
if you're a skeptic,
that is,
if you don't
fully believe
all the things
that we're saying here,
if you don't believe
what Jesus said
about himself,
then memorizing
the Bible
might seem
a little much
to you
or a little weird.
Let me just explain
that a little bit.
Christians memorize
the Bible
because we believe
it's the very word
of God, right?
So,
you know how
when you really
love somebody
you hang on
their every word,
right?
Well,
that's what we do.
That's what we do.
We hang on
as every word
and we read
scripture all the time
and we memorize it.
But if you're
a skeptic
of Christianity,
maybe instead
of memorizing
this passage,
maybe just start
with this.
Just start with this.
Just be open
to the idea
that cynicism
in its truest form,
in its purest form,
in its most
consistent form,
is an impossible project.
C.S. Lewis
explains it this way.
You can't go on
seeing through
things forever.
The whole point
of seeing through
something
is to see
the thing
through it.
To see through
all things
is the same
as not seeing
at all.
Now,
once you agree
to that,
that the purpose
to see through
something
is to see
a something
on the other side,
then I'd say
the next thing
to do
is to look
at the thing
that Christians
base their hope on.
That's the resurrection
of Jesus Christ
from the dead.
Start with the eyewitness
accounts.
We call those
the Gospels.
We read those
every Sunday
in worship.
And I read
from John chapter 20
tonight.
Those eyewitness
accounts
tell
Jesus' testimony
about himself
from eyewitness
perspectives.
And if you want
to go from there,
ask me
or Tommy
and we'd be happy
to direct you
further
in your investigation.
If you are
a Christian,
then choose
to remember
this summer
as the summer
of the shepherd.
Remember it
as the summer
of the shepherd.
Does that sound
cheesy to you?
It's because
you're being cynical.
Jane Olson
gave us
the psalm challenge
at the beginning
of this summer.
Like,
memorize a psalm
and then video
record it
and perhaps
put it on Instagram.
I won't ask
for hands.
People who did that,
I did not do it.
But it's not too late
to memorize a psalm
and make it this one.
Make it this psalm.
And once it's memorized,
let it give you hope.
Let it give you hope.
I think you will go on
remembering this summer
as it really was,
full of challenge,
and sadness
and disappointment.
But if you do it right,
you'll remember
most of all
the presence
of the shepherd
as he led you
beside both quiet waters
and as he led you
through a valley
of deepest shadow.
You'll remember
that he fed you
and that he sustained you.
You'll remember
that he restored your soul.
You'll remember
that he spread a table
before you
and threw a party
for you.
You'll remember
that his goodness
and mercy
had your back
and that they'll
continue to follow
and pursue you
all the days
of your life.
The Father
is present.
Jesus is with you.
The Holy Spirit
is near.
In the name
of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.