Sermon for Sunday,  October 16, 2005  

What Shall I Return To The Lord For All Of Gods Goodness To Me?

1^st in a series “What Shall I Return to the Lord?”

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

¹² What shall I render to the LORD for all his bounty to me? ¹⁸ I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people ¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!

We have just heard some profound words from one of our most important resources for growth –the book of Psalms in our Bible.

What would we do without the Psalms? They offer us the whole range of human emotions from anger and disappointment in God to trust and faith and praise! We might think of Psalm 8 where the author praises God for the creation and asks how we little humans fit in and then reminds himself and us that God has created us just a little lower than God! 

We might think of Psalm 22 which Jesus quotes from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – a Psalm that ends up as a statement of faith and trust in God even when we have experienced loss and grief and danger.

Or we all know some parts of Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want (Or as the  8-year-old girl in Sunday School remembered it, “The Lord is my Shepherd, that is all I want.”

Some of us know Psalm 51, traditionally written by King David after he had broken four of God’s commandments by sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of another man and then had her husband killed so David could marry her: “Have mercy on me O God according to your unfailing love… Wash away my iniquity and cleanse me of my sin… Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me.”

Or Psalm 122: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

I hope you have discovered the Psalms as a resource for your spiritual life and that you are using them regularly. The little maroon pocket versions of New Testament and Psalms are always available on our bookshelves and I try to have one available with me most of the time, even carrying a copy in my car.

Today’s psalm is the foundation for all of our conversations about how we respond to God. The psalmist has gone through a tough time – perhaps an illness or the loss of a loved one and the psalmist is still standing and hopeful and finds strength and comfort in God. Can you identify with that – going through a tough time and even after the grief or the tragedy, still being able to thank God for life and for hope and for light in the darkness.

This psalm says that even after the tears and the darkness, he/she is grateful to God and that God has been good to them. It sounds like some of the interviews we have seen with survivors of Katrina when people in spite of tragedy and loss, expressed hope and trust in God.

I think this kind of outlook is the attitude that the apostle Paul showed us in the midst of all of his hardships in carrying the message of Christ across the world and enduring shipwrecks and beatings and jail time and still writing words of encouragement telling us to give thanks in all circumstances, not FOR all circumstances but IN all circumstances because God is with us and God is at work for our good.

How blessed do you feel this morning – despite all the difficult things that might be happening in your life – and there are plenty in each of us every Sunday when we gather here –how blessed do you feel? 

One of our church members who went through some difficult job changes a few years ago and started out in a whole new direction as a step of faith has the sort of positive faithful outlook that the psalmist has. Almost every time I see this person in church and ask how he is, he tells me how blessed he feels, how fortunate he feels, or in the words of Psalm 116, how good God is to him and his family.

How blessed do you feel?

I went through a routine medical test this past week that required me to be on a liquid diet for 24 hours – no food except for Gatorade and chicken broth. I was somewhat hungry during that time, but I was also helped to be in touch with the millions of people on our planet who have to worry about food daily and who do not even have the liquid sustenance that I got during that fast. Most of us just happened to show up at a time and place in human history where we do not have to worry about being hungry – most of us. And most of us have been given skills and intelligence and abilities to make our way in the world so that food is not our primary concern.

We are, by accident of birth, different from one third of the people on our planet. How do we respond to that gift? What do we do when we really understand that? Jesus says that of those to whom much is given, much will also be expected. And the psalmist in Psalm 116 has an answer to that insight also: God you have been so good to me that I will return to you a portion of what I have been blessed with.

How shall I thank you, Lord, for the bounty I have received? I will give my offering to you. I will remember that it is you that has brought me to this place. This is the same insight that Moses talks about with the Israelites when they are about to go into the promised land in the 8^th chapter of Deuteronomy when he says, We will go into this place God has promised us and we will prosper and we will be safe and comfortable and will have many possessions. But, he says, that will be a very dangerous thing. The danger is that we will forget God. We will forget that it is God who has brought us here and that God has given us the ability to prosper and the talents to do well. And so he warns the Israelites and us, when you prosper, DO NOT FORGET THAT IT IS GOD WHO HAS HELPED YOU TO PROSPER. DO NOT FORGET GOD.

Be sure you honor God in how you live your life and how you manage your blessings and how you spend your time and your money

The psalmist in this Psalm does not forget and promises to bring an offering to God and to thank God publicly for God’s blessing in his life. His attitude is different from a man that Jesus tells about in a parable in the twelfth chapter of Luke’s gospel who has a very successful year. His farm has prospered. If we were telling the story today, we would talk about him having a good year in the stock market or his business doing well. When he realizes how well he has done, what does he say? Do you remember? He congratulates himself and pats himself on the back and says he is going to share what he has? No. Return to God a portion of what God has blessed him with? No.

He says he is going to build more buildings and just sit back and feel smug about how smart he is and how well he has done. And Jesus ends the parable by calling him a fool and telling him he is about to die and saying this is how it is with those who are greedy but are not rich in the things of life that really matter.

He has not focused on his relationship with God, he has focused on himself. He is a good example of why Rick Warren is right in the Purpose Driven Life when he says “It’s not about you.”

What it is about is you and God, you and your relationship with God. It is about instilling in each of us the kind of relationship that Psalm 116 tells us about: God, in spite of the hard times in life and the dark times in my life, I know that you are good to me and that you have seen me through and that I can count on you, and because of how blessed I am, I want to give myself and my offering to you. It is because I feel so fortunate and so blessed.

It is about your relationship with God. How is that relationship today? How blessed do you feel in spite of the difficult times? Will you think about that with me for a moment?

The Psalmist says, Lord you have been good to me. I will walk in your presence and I will return an offering to you, some of what you have blessed me with and I will praise you in the gathering of all your people.

Can we say that as well?

There is an old song about this theme for this morning. Will you sing it with me?

GOD IS SO GOOD. GOD IS SO GOOD. GOD IS SO GOOD, GOD’S SO GOOD TO ME.

I’LL PRAISE GOD’S NAME. I’LL PRAISE GOD’S NAME. I’LL PRAISE GOD’S NAME, GOD’S SO GOOD TO ME.

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