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Good morning.
My name is Brian.
I'm a member of the Alameda Community Group.
Today's scripture is from the Old Testament, a reading from Psalm 146.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, my soul.
I will praise the Lord all my life.
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground.
On that very day, their plans come to nothing.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.
He is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them.
He remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free.
The Lord gives sight to the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.
The Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow.
But he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
The Lord reigns forever.
Your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.
The grass withers and the flowers fall.
But the word of our God stands forever.
Good morning, Christ Church.
Christ Church, congratulations for making it here this morning through all the barricades.
And I understand we had a few Christ Church runners as well.
Look forward to seeing the results later today.
We've been calling this sermon series, Holy Habits of Grace.
And the driving question has been, how can we make our whole lives a grateful response to the grace of God?
How can we change our daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal habits so that less time and less attention and less energy is given to God and to his grace in our lives?
Another way to say that is, if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, then how can we not just trust his truth, but how can we also walk in his way?
How can we live his life?
And we have this handout for you today.
Some of you have seen this maybe before.
But the first side says, what kind of community do we want to be?
And we tried there to name the dominant cultural paradigm that we're living in.
And then we also tried to sort of map out this alternative counterculture, this creative minority that we would like to be.
And we try to put words to a particular spiritual practice that creates and sustains such a culture.
And in doing this, we're trying to define our values, to define the way of life that we hope to embody together
and the kind of things that we could be expecting to pray for each other, for example.
If you turn to the other side, the second side of that sheet, it says, you know, what kind of person do I want to be?
And you can see the list of practices, the list of habits there, and the ways that those might fit into our daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal rhythms of life.
And you can think about that like an organized trellis upon which the organic vine of your life and your life with God is meant to grow up on.
It needs structure.
It needs support.
And so we're encouraging you to take that today and make some notes on it.
Write some things down that God has been speaking to you about, things He's been inviting you to do, things He's been challenging you to do.
As we finish up 2024 and head into 2025, what are the next steps that He's calling you to take to experience real life transformation by His grace?
Notice that two of those practices at the bottom are outward facing.
So it's not just about God's grace in our lives.
It's also about God's grace in the lives of others.
And I think about these as kind of for the city habits that are oriented to our neighbors, to our friends, our coworkers, and our family members.
One of those habits we call witness.
And two weeks ago, we encouraged you all to write down the names of three people that you'd like to see explore faith, perhaps for the first time.
And begin praying for those people.
Some of you have emailed those names to us at alpha at Christchurcheastbay.org.
And we have a list of people in our prayer room that we prayed over this morning.
I think the list is now at about 75 people that we're praying for that they would begin to explore their questions about faith and God and eternal matters.
And we had an amazing seminar yesterday where we got some equipping and some training about how to just pray that God would lead us into more simple conversations that can become serious conversations that can become serious conversations where we can talk more about our faith.
And if you weren't there, we're going to email the link out to that video.
We strongly encourage you to engage with that very helpful training.
But this habit of witness or this habit of evangelism, whatever you want to call it, it must never function alone.
Right?
It always needs to be paired with this other habit of service, of justice, of mercy, and compassion.
Because witness has to do with gospel proclamation, but service has to do with gospel demonstration.
And Jesus, in Luke chapter 24, it says Jesus of Nazareth was powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.
And that tells us that his disciples, his church, are also called to be powerful in gospel word and gospel deed.
Gospel witness and gospel service.
Gospel proclamation and gospel demonstration.
And so today we're going to look at this habit of service, gospel service, through the lens of Psalm 146 that you just heard read.
And I want to just engage that text with three simple questions.
First of all, who deserves our trust and our praise?
Secondly, how does God relate to the vulnerable?
And third, how does the gospel compel us to serve?
First of all, who deserves our trust and our praise?
So this is the first of the final psalms that conclude this 150 psalm book called the Psalter.
And these final psalms, they're all joy, they're all praise.
And each one of them begins and ends with praise the Lord, or in Hebrew, hallelujah.
And you'll notice in line one, the psalmist is summoning other people to praise.
It's implied, he's saying, praise the Lord, y'all, or praise the Lord, you guys, wherever you're from.
He's saying, praise the Lord, all you people.
And then in line two, he summons himself and he says, praise the Lord, my soul.
And notice what he does next.
He resolves and he commits himself to a lifetime of praise.
He says, I will praise.
I intend to praise.
I mean to praise.
I am bound and determined to praise the Lord all my life.
It's a resolution that my praise is not going to rise and fall on whatever my mood happens to be or however my circumstances might be changing.
No, as long as I have breath in me, he says, I will praise God.
And then he begins to contrast something.
He contrasts praising the Lord and trusting in princes.
And he says this in verse three.
He says, do not put your trust in princes and human beings who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground.
On that very day, their plans come to nothing.
Now, we don't have many princes in our culture, but we do have a lot of powerful politicians,
billionaires, intellectuals, celebrities, influencers, whose help and whose hope, whose protection and whose provision,
whose policies and promises may seem at times more solid and more practical than God's.
And the psalmist would not have written this down for us if people were not as naive and as gullible as we very often can be.
To put our trust, our ultimate trust, in human individuals and human systems.
And he gives us two reasons.
He says, why should we not invest our trust in these people and these systems?
And he says, reason number one is they don't have the power to save.
I mean, they might be able to give you a more reliable economy, more stable immigration at home, less conflict and chaos abroad.
But they cannot give you salvation.
And the second thing the psalmist says is they may be very powerful financially or socially or culturally,
but they're finite mortal creatures just like you and me.
And all of their plans, all of their projects are going to perish with them.
When they die, someone's going to put them in a box, lower them into the ground, throw dirt on them,
and the news cycle and the election cycle is going to move on to the next set of mortal human beings.
So who then deserves our trust and our praise?
While humans in high places can give us some help, they cannot give us basic help.
They can't give us ultimate help.
So who can?
Verse 5, blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.
Now, our trust and our praise is to be redirected from high-powered human beings to this one true God
who is the help and the hope of sufferers and sinners.
And Jacob was one of the greatest sinners and the greatest sufferers in the first book of the Bible.
If you know anything about his story, even in his mother's womb, he's grasping his brother's heel.
As he comes out, you know, on day one, the rest of his life, he spends scheming and deceiving people.
And yet this God of amazing grace comes to Jacob, the deceiver, and he befriends him.
By his grace, he transforms Jacob.
He blesses Jacob and he gives Jacob these enormous privileges and massive responsibilities as his covenant partner.
And in the second book of the Bible, we see that this God is not only the God of Jacob,
he's the God who's the help and the hope of Jacob's offspring.
Because he comes to them and he dismantles the entire empire of Egypt on their behalf.
He leads the 12 tribes of Jacob, the 12 tribes of Israel, out of their captivity in Egypt
and into their freedom in the promised land.
And so in light of this revelation about who the God of Jacob is,
the psalmist makes this fundamental decision that rather than trust and praise ephemeral human helpers
in temporary positions of power, I'm going to trust and praise the Lord.
And I don't know if this is a word for some of us in this post-election season.
Like who is your help and who is your hope?
Verse 10 says,
The Lord reigns forever.
Your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.
Princes are going to return to the dust
and the Lord is going to rule without end.
So put your trust and put your praise in him.
Amen?
Okay.
Who deserves our trust and praise?
Secondly, how does God relate to the vulnerable?
How does God relate to the vulnerable?
Verse 6 goes on and it says,
The Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them,
he remains faithful forever.
The creator God keeps faith.
He remains faithful forever.
Human beings fail to do this over and over.
And history is just littered with the disappointments of people
who put all their marbles in the basket of mortals who fail them.
But who is this God of Jacob, our help and our hope?
Who is this God who remains faithful forever?
Well, it says he's the maker of heaven and earth.
And that means that he's transcendent in glory.
He's infinitely and eternally powerful.
And he's sovereign and supreme over every square inch of created reality
and over every creature whom he's formed in his image.
But here's the thing.
Verses 7 and 9 does not say that he remains faithful forever
only to powerful people,
only to princes, only to elites, only to people at the top.
No.
Who does this creator God,
who does this God of Jacob especially help?
Verse 7.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free.
The Lord gives sight to the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.
The Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow.
But he frustrates the way of the wicked.
It's characteristic of this God of Jacob
to be active on behalf of the burdened and the afflicted,
on behalf of the lowly and the suffering.
He cares for the oppressed,
for those who are poor and therefore are hungry,
for those who are prisoners,
for those who are blind
and otherwise physically sick or impaired.
He cares for those who are bowed down and soul weary.
He cares for immigrants, orphans, and single moms.
It's quite a list of people in chronic and critical conditions.
And if you turn back again to the first book of the Bible,
who do we see God helping?
Whose cause is He upholding?
And this is just, you know, astonishing to me
because in ancient Near Eastern patriarchal culture,
it's amazing how much attention is being given
in that very first book of the Bible to women.
And not just to women, but to barren women.
Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel.
And even in the midst of those stories
and all the time that's given to those stories,
you have this other woman,
her name's, she's an Egyptian slave.
Her name is Hagar.
And she's a pregnant woman.
She's a single mom.
She's been very badly mistreated by the people of God.
And yet she's honored to be the first person in the Bible
to name God.
She says to God, she looks to God and says,
you are the God who sees me.
You're the God who sees me.
And later on, she's grief-stricken,
she's sobbing,
and God comes to this woman
and he asks her this tender question.
He says, what troubles you, Hagar?
Calls her by name.
What troubles you, Hagar?
And he comes and he meets her need
and he cares for her son.
He upholds the cause of this oppressed woman
who has no one caring for her.
And if you turn to the second book of the Bible,
who do we find God helping there?
He's helping slaves.
Hebrew slaves, powerful men,
are oppressing these Hebrew slaves with forced labor.
They're using them for profit.
They're destroying their children.
And who are the heroes that we find on page one of that story?
Again, it's women.
Shipra.
Puah.
This whole league of amazing Hebrew midwives
who, like God,
are upholding the cause of oppressed,
expecting mothers and their babies.
Is there any literature in the ancient world
that talks about God
and women
and slaves
and children
like our scriptures do?
I haven't found any yet
and I've studied them quite a bit.
So I want to invite us for a moment
to just take a closer look at
two particular Hebrew words
because in verse 7,
the Hebrew word therefore upholds the cause
is mishpat.
Let's say that together.
Mishpat.
It occurs 200 plus times in the Old Testament
and its most basic meaning
is to execute justice,
to treat people fairly,
to give wrongdoers
the punishment that they are due
and then to give vulnerable people
and victims of injustice
the rights,
the protection,
the care
that they are due.
And if you look at every place
that this word mishpat
is used in the Old Testament,
there are several classes of persons
that continually come up.
Over and over,
it describes
taking up the cause
and the care
of widows,
orphans,
immigrants,
and the poor.
Very often called
the Quartet of the Vulnerable.
And the reason they're called
the Quartet of the Vulnerable
is because these groups
have no economic
or social power.
They lived at subsistence level
and were only days away
from starvation
if there was any kind of famine
or invasion
or social unrest.
And this means that they were
easily trampled on,
easily exploited,
easily harmed.
Today,
this Quartet of the Vulnerable
could be expanded
to include the refugee,
the migrant worker,
the homeless,
many single parents,
and elderly people.
These groups of people
are most often neglected,
ignored,
and uncared for.
And yet,
the one true living God
of the Bible,
the maker of heaven and earth,
he loves,
he defends,
he upholds the cause
of justice
for those with the least
economic and social power,
and so should we.
We must have a strong concern
for the vulnerable
like God has,
but there's more
to the biblical idea
of justice than that.
And we get more insight
into this second Hebrew word
in verse 8
where it says,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord loves the tzadikah.
Mishpat and tzadikah.
The righteous,
the tzadikah,
are willing to
disadvantage themselves
in order to advantage
the community.
The wicked are people
who disadvantage the community
in order to advantage themselves.
But the righteous
do the opposite of that.
And in verse 7,
it says that God
upholds the cause,
He gives food,
He sets free,
He gives sight,
He lifts up,
He loves,
He watches over,
He sustains,
and the idea is
that that is also
what the righteous,
the tzadikah,
do as well.
And it's not surprising
to us then
to discover
that these two Hebrew terms,
mishpat and tzadikah,
justice and righteousness,
are brought together
over three dozen times
in the Bible
as the characteristic ways
that the people of God
are to reflect
the character of God
into the world.
Here is this transcendent
creator God
of enormous power.
He made heaven and earth
and the seas
and everything in them.
And what it says
is that He loves
to use His power
to uphold the cause
of the oppressed.
If you look at the other literature
of the ancient world,
the gods of the pagan nations,
they use their power
mainly for kings
and for princes
and for the elites
and the people at the top.
But no,
this God of the Bible,
He loves to exercise
His power
on behalf of people
at the bottom.
And think about that.
Where do the concepts
of human rights,
of the equal dignity
of every person,
the concept of the value
of the poor and the weak
or the necessity
of caring for
and advocating
for the vulnerable,
where do these concepts
even come from?
They don't come
from modern secular narratives.
They don't come
from atheistic frameworks
whose metaphysical
and moral assumptions
should actually lead
in the exact opposite direction
that might makes right
and the strong
should devour the weak
and the rich
should trample upon the poor.
No.
Anyone you talk to
who values the idea
of upholding the cause
of the oppressed
somewhere deep down inside,
they know
that the God
of Psalm 146 exists
and that they have
a longing
to know Him
and be in a relationship
with Him.
And anyone
that you meet
who values
upholding the cause
of the oppressed,
somewhere along the way,
they have unconsciously
and just culturally
kind of absorbed
this biblical vision
of divine justice
and righteousness.
And it's our incredible privilege
as the people of God
to champion
the vision
of the justice
and righteousness
of God
both in word
and in deed,
both in witness
and in service,
both in proclamation
and demonstration.
Does that make sense?
This is who God is
on behalf
of the vulnerable.
So,
third thing,
who deserves
our trust and praise?
Not princes,
but the Lord
who will reign forever.
How does God
relate to the vulnerable?
He relates to them
in justice
and righteousness.
But then,
how does the gospel
compel us
to serve?
How does the gospel
compel us
to serve?
Well,
verse 6 says this.
It says,
the Lord remains
faithful forever.
And that means that
this is a God
who stands with you.
He's a God
who stands by you.
But how can God
do this?
Because we've seen
that there are
two aspects
of mishpat.
There are two aspects
of justice.
Number one,
it's giving wrongdoers
the just punishment
that they're due.
And secondly,
it's giving vulnerable
victims of oppression
the protection
that they are due.
But this is where
I personally find myself
on the horns
of a dilemma.
Because if I've not
loved my neighbor
as myself,
if I've not
consistently
and comprehensively
upheld the cause
of the oppressed,
if I have in any way
contributed to the misery
of people
or the suffering
of the world,
then have I not
violated God's demands
of justice?
And if I've in any way
disadvantaged the community
in order to advantage
myself,
if I have in any way
ignored the hungry
and the foreigner,
if I've neglected
the widow
and the orphan,
then shouldn't God
be just
in giving me
the punishment
that is my due?
Right?
Doesn't verse 9 say
that the Lord
who made heaven
and earth,
He frustrates the way
of the wicked
or most translations
say He brings the way
of the wicked
to ruin.
Is that not me?
Is that not what
should happen
to me?
Is that not what
I deserve?
And the answer
of the Scriptures
is yes it is.
It is what I deserve.
But the Gospel
says this,
the Gospel says
that Jesus
came not to bring
that judgment on me,
Jesus came to bear
that judgment for me.
The Gospel says
that God loved us
so much
that He became
a helpless baby.
He became
a powerless
and vulnerable mortal.
And in that
He came
and He lived
a life of perfect
justice and righteousness.
He came,
Jesus came
and He upheld
the cause
of oppressed
men and women.
He came
to the sick
and He healed them.
He came to people
who were imprisoned
in darkness
and taken captive
by demons
and He released them.
He came to people
who were sick
and He healed them.
He came to people
who were lame
and He caused them
to walk.
He came to people
who were blind
and He gave them sight.
He came to people
that were lepers
and He cleansed them.
People who were deaf
and they could hear.
People who were dead
and He raised them to life.
Jesus, if anybody has ever come to stand with us
and to stand by us and to remain faithful,
Jesus is the one.
But at the climax of His ministry,
Jesus didn't just come and stand with us.
He didn't just come and stand by us.
Jesus came and stood in for us.
Jesus came and He took our place on that cross
and He bore that punishment that we deserved.
God's just judgment for our sins came down on Him
so that it wouldn't come down on me and on you.
And that gospel, that good news,
is the very thing that compels us and motivates us
to serve other people and embody His love.
Right?
When I go out and I look at the poor and the weak,
I should say to myself,
you know, that's me.
That's where I was.
And yet Jesus saw me in my poverty
and in my weakness and in my vulnerability
and He emptied Himself
so that He could fill me up.
He lowered Himself so that He could raise me up.
He impoverished Himself so that He could make me rich.
And because of what God has done for me in Jesus Christ,
I can now go and serve the poor
and embody His character
that's been revealed so clearly on His cross.
And so I just want to conclude
with some practical pastoral guidance
for how we might serve in this way.
I don't know exactly how God is calling you
to exercise mishpat and zadikah,
how He wants you to live a life of justice and righteousness,
but I do want to offer a few suggestions in closing.
And you can go actually to our website,
you can scan that QR code on your worship folder
and it will take you to a webpage
that says everything I'm going to say, okay?
So if you forget it, it's okay.
You can go find all the details.
But here's some opportunities for us
to serve in the way that we've been served
in the season ahead.
Number one, House of Faith Church in Hayward,
you'll hear more about this later,
they're going to be distributing Thanksgiving boxes of love
to their neighbors.
And we get to go and serve alongside them.
And each box is going to feed a family of six
with turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings.
And our goal is to distribute 300 of these boxes,
100 of which have been contributed
by our Loaves and Fishes ministry here at Christ Church.
So the next step, if God is calling you to serve in this way,
is just to come join us on Saturday, November 23rd.
Secondly, we heard about this last week,
but 80 newly baptized brothers in Christ
at St. Quentin Prison need study Bibles
for their weekly training provided
by the Urban Ministry Institute.
And these study Bibles will equip these men
with tools that they need to deepen their walk with Christ.
And so the next step for us is if you go on that webpage
that I mentioned, it will have instructions
for how you can support this Bible project
or even how you can begin to serve
in the Urban Ministry Institute over at St. Quentin Prison.
Third thing is Harbor House in Oakland
is a Christ-centered community development organization.
They run an annual Christmas store
that will allow us to empower parents from the community
to come and buy gifts for their kids.
It's significantly reduced prices.
And the next step for us in that,
if that's a way that God's calling you to serve,
is that we can donate toys through their Amazon wish list
or we can go shop for the toys themselves
and bring them here by Sunday, December the 8th.
And we will deliver them to Harbor House.
They also need some volunteers
to help set up that Christmas store
on Friday, December the 13th,
and to run the store on Saturday, December the 14th.
And again, all these details are on our webpage.
The fourth thing I want to mention
is that last fall,
we helped to launch a child development center
in Guatemala
in partnership with Compassion International
and with a thriving local church there,
which is providing a foundation
for spiritual, physical, cognitive,
and social, emotional development
for 200 children in that child development center.
75 of those children are directly sponsored
by us here in our Christchurch family.
And the next step that we could take
is to just deepen our impact
by logging into our Compassion account.
You can go write a letter to your child.
You can give a special Christmas gift
to your sponsored child.
If you've not yet had the privilege
of sponsoring a child,
you can make a lasting change.
There's actually four children left
in that center to be sponsored.
My prayer is that they'd have a sponsor
by the end of today.
And if God's not calling you to sponsor a child,
you can go and make a one-time Christmas donation
to their Christmas fund.
The last thing I want to mention as I close
is just that as we look ahead to 2025,
as we begin to sort through all the demands
on our time and attention and energy,
as we build our calendars,
where do the weak,
where do the vulnerable,
where do the poor factor into our lives?
How is God calling you to join in His work
of upholding the cause of the oppressed,
of using your time, your talents,
your treasures to reflect His character
of justice and righteousness into the world?
I'll just close with this great word
from the Apostle John.
He says this in 1 John chapter 3.
This is how we know what love is.
Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives
for our brothers and sisters.
If anyone has material possessions
and sees a brother or sister in need
but has no pity on them,
how can the love of God be in that person?
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech
but with actions and in truth.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.