No. 10112-Inspiration Hope for the Soul that Waits on God A sermon by Rev. Amos Jones Nashville, Tn SCRIPTURE:”Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waiteth for the Lord: he is our help and our shield.” Psalms 33:18-20 Introduction   The great British preacher, Charles Hadden Spurgeon, once mused that references to the coming of Jesus the Christ in the Old Testament are like a rope that is used by the British Navy. That rope, Spurgeon said, has a scarlet thread that runs from one end to the other. So it is with references to the coming of Christ in the Old Testament. From Genesis to Malachi, the references to the coming of Christ abound. In Genesis, he is Jacob’s Shiloh acoming. In Exodus, he is Moses’ bush aburning. He is Joshua’s battle ax. He is David’s Shield and Buckler. He is Solomon’s Rose of Sharon. He is Isaiah’s Trampling Warrior. He is Jeremiah’s Hammer that breaks the rocks in pieces. He is Ezekiel’s Wheel aturning. He is Daniel’s Stone arolling. He is Amos’ Plumbline. And, He is Malachi’s Refining Fire. Throughout the Old Testament, in every book, page, and paragraph, one can behold, methinks, the abundant references of the coming of Jesus the Christ. So it is with this Psalm, Psalm 33. If you listen with an attentive ear to this expectant tune, if you muse with the mind the music of this man of anticipation, and if you heed with the heart this hymn from heaven, you will perhaps hear from the psalmist a hark and hope for the coming of Jesus Christ. The psalmist begins what I might call, his Christmas Psalm, with an invitation to his fellow worshipers to “Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous! .Praise the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song, play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts” (vss. 1-3). Though separated from the advent of the Christ child by several hundred years, the psalmist anticipated that the Lord’s coming would be altogether the right time and reason for praising the Lord with harp, lute, and lyre and singing unto Him with a new song. And so it is with our time. Pondering the power of the fulfilled promise of God as told in the Christmas story has moved men sacred and secular alike to fill the air with the music of Christmas. At Christmastime, the blues singer and the blessed, the raucous and the righteous find themselves making music with their instruments, humming their hymns of praise, and singing a new song to the Lord because it is Christmas. It is at Christmastime when we yet can hear Charles Brown’s blues song which says, “Merry Christmas, Baby, you sure been good to me.” It was Christmastime that moved Nat “King” Cole to croon, “Chestnuts roasting by an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose; Yuletide songs being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like Eskimos.” Thoughts of the great Act of God at Christmas moved a master of music, George Frederic Handel to write the immortal Messiah; and while he was writing the Hallelujah Chorus. He said, “I think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.” It is at Christmastime when we still can hear the melancholy melody of Mahalia Jackson when she sings, “Sweet Little Jesus Boy, we didn’t know who you wuz.” There is no other time in the year when a man sings so elaborately, so extensively, so happily, so hopefully as at the time of Christmas. So, the psalmist, standing on tiptoe in great anticipation of the Lord’s coming, exhorts his fellow worshippers to sing, for there is no better time to sing than when you are anticipating The Lord’s coming; there is no better time to make melody to the Lord with the harp, lute and lyre than when you know the Lord is on His way. As the psalmist develops his hopeful hymn, as he waits for the Lord, he does so with full awareness of God’s providential rule and reign over history. As he waits for the future coming of the Lord, the psalmist wonders at the past workings of God. In verse six and following, he marvels over the universe which God has created by His Word. He says, “By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle; he put the deep in storehouses. He spoke, and it came to pass, he commanded and it stood fast.” For this psalmist, God was awesome in creation; and, as He was awesome in creation, He is awesome in history. He remembers that God parted the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh’s army and let Israel walk over on dry land. He remembers that God caused the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down. And, He made the sun and moon to stand still in the Valley of Ajalon while Israel put the enemy to flight. So, he says that “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to naught; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.” He does not worry about the kings of Egypt, the kings of the Philistines, and the kings of the Assyrians, for he says, a king is not saved by his great army, a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for the victory, and by its great might, it cannot be saved. And so, because of what God has done in history, this man in the Psalms places his future in the hands of God, he waits for the Lord. If we subscribe to the psalmist’s thinking, then this tells us something about how confident we should be in Christmastime because God rules the universe and He rules this world. The terrorists may have held hostage those passengers on a Kuwaiti Airliner in Tehran, but we do not have to be held hostage by our fears and frustrations because God rules the universe and He rules the world. We do not have to worry about what is going to happen with another four years of Reagan, Reaganomics and Reaganism, God set up Reagan and God will take him down. He speaks and it is done, He commands and it stands fast. Because God rules and super rules, we can say in this Christmas season like our forefathers used to say, like I heard our people singing in Florida a few days ago, “I got a feeling, everything is gonna be alright; I got a feeling, everything’s gonna be alright.” The psalmist moves another step in the development of his Christmas psalm; for him, God is The One who watches the strugglings of man. God is not only The One who simply rules, who sits enthroned in the heavens as an insensitive Czar, unmoved by the miseries of man, God is not a cold-hearted dictator or a munificent manipulator, God for the psalmist, is not only The One who rules but who reaches out to His people, waiting for the right time to deliver them. The psalmist says, “The Lord looks down from heaven, he sees all the sons of men. . .Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine”(vss. 13, 18-19). Christmas, then, is a time when we reflect on the fact that God is The One who watches over His own. He sees our strugglings and strivings. He knows our hopes and aspirations. And, He watches for the right time to come to deliver our souls from death, as the Psalmist says. The Bible is filled with testimonies that God watches over his own and waits for the right time to deliver them from the storm. God watched old man Job, as he was sinking down in the slippery mire of misery and afloat in the shifting sea of affliction. He did not come when Job wanted him, but he was right on time. God watched as the Children of Israel cried out under the hard hand of their taskmasters in Egypt. And, when the time was right, He came down to see about them. In Exodus the third chapter, God said to Moses, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.” In Mark 6:48ff., the disciples had launched out onto the sea to go to other side. But, while they launched out, Jesus bowed down and prayed in the mountain. In the midst of the sea, a storm arose, contrary winds began to blow. The Bible says that Jesus was watching and saw that his disciples were toiling in rowing and at the fourth watch of the night, the darkest hour of the night, when hope was dying in the soul, when the heart leaped with alarm, at the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came walking on the sea and said, “Be not afraid, it is I.” We can take comfort in this Christmas season and know that God watches over his own. Fresh hope comes to us, as it did when James Russell Lowell mused that;   Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne Yet that scaffold sways the fu ture, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above his own. THE PRESENT CRISIS The psalmist moves on with his Christmas psalm. He says, while God watches, we will wait: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield...our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let thy steadfast love, O Lord be upon us, even as we hope in thee” (vss. 20-22). Christmastime ought to be a time for all of us to join in with the psalmist and say that while God watches, we will wait to see what He will do for us. When I was a little boy, I used to wait impatiently for Christmas, to see what my daddy and momma were going to get for me, a humming red train, a bright red wagon, a shiny new bicycle. But, now I have come to the point where Christmas means that I want to wait to see what God will do in my life. The Bible helps us to know the power and virtue of waiting on the Lord. In Psalm 27, the psalmist says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the Lord.” Psalm 130 says, “. . .my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Isaiah 40:31 testifies that, “. . .they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” There is power and virtue in waiting on the Lord, I tell you. For in waiting on God we can collect our resolve to hold on to God’s unchanging hand until our changes come. While we wait on God, to see what He will do, a soft blanket of calmness covers our soul, to drown out the noise of confusion; for in our moment of waiting, we get a feeling that everything’s gonna be alright. In our moment of waiting on God to do what He is going to do for us, we get a new meaning of what the poet said:   Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease. Take from our souls The strain and stress And let our ordered lives confess, The beauty of Thy peace.   On a cold winter’s night, a long time ago, in the rustic hills of Bethlehem-Judah, men were waiting, standing on tiptoe in anticipation and expectation to see what God was about to do. The air was filled with mystery. The atmosphere was charged with magic. An unusual star was seen on the seratted, sable, and solemn horizon. Shepherds were waiting for God to act in history as they kept their flock by night. Wise men waited, perched and ready to make their trek to a barn in Bethlehem where a little babe lay in a manger. Old man Simeon had been hanging around the temple for a long time, waiting for the consolation of Israel. Angels were waiting for the Divine command to sing the first Christmas song. The whole world had taken the position of the psalmist when he said, “Our soul waits for the Lord.” With the psalmist, the world sang the refrain, “let thy steadfast love 0 Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in thee.” And, you know, if you hope in God, and keep on hoping, God will come. This is what Christmas means, “hope and keep on hoping.” You may not have lots of money, but you can have lots of hope. You may not have houses and land, but you can have a lot of hope. Your lot may be suffering, your plight may be sickness, your condition may be the sadness of the soul, but if you hope and keep on hoping the Lord will come. For, Paul said, suffering brings about endurance, and endurance brings about character and character brings about hope and hope, he says, does not disappoint us because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. It was in hope that the world waited on that first Christmas. God did not disappoint those who waited and hoped in Him. For, as Paul said, “In the fulness of time, Jesus was born. . .” (Gal. 4:4). The Lord came when the time was right, he did not come before the time, or after the time, He came in the fulness of time. And you know, nothing happens before its time. Tomorrow cannot come before today has run its course. Next month cannot come until 30 days have passed. Next year cannot come until twelve months have passed. Everything happens in the fulness of time. Flowers blossom, in the fulness of time. Fruit ripens on the vine, in the fulness of time. Rivers run their course, in the fulness of time. Babies are born,in the fulness of time. In the fulness of time, Jesus was born. That moment was pregnant with meaning. In the fulness of time: --The philosophers had spun their systems of thought which had shaped human thinking for centuries. --The Roman Empire had risen to great might and power. --The heavens were ready. --The earth was pregnant with promise. --The shepherds were perched in a field waiting, while Wise men were watching. --Suddenly, an angel from the heavens sprang before the shepherds and said to the shepherds, --“. . .Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born unto you this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  There is hope for the soul that waits on God! Amen!