I Lift Up My Soul (Psalm 25)

How much turkey did you eat this week?  Have you stepped on your scale lately to see how much weigh you’ve gained?  Be careful what you eat and how much you eat during the holiday season.  I noticed that I haven’t been sick for a long time.  Remember in the past, during this season, I tended to have cold, followed by cough, and a long period of bronchitis?   I’ve also noticed that, when I am healthy for a long period of time, my empathy quotient becomes lower, and I lost some ability to sympathize with those who are sick.  So, I believe, sometimes, God allows us to be sick, so that we can relate to those who suffer from illness.  God says, “Sam, I want you to take care of my sheep, especially those that are sick and suffering.  If you don’t know how to relate to them, I have to make you taste some sickness.”

In the same way, God can use the recession to make us understand what most of the rest of the world has always experienced.  For many people, in many countries, recession is not just a season, or simply part of an economic cycle.  For them, recession is like forever.  This week, I checked the latest list of so called “developing countries” where the majority of people are living in poverty.  There are more than 150 of them.  For them recession is forever!  We can make the most out of recession by developing our empathy quotient and by increasing our understanding of those who have always been suffering like this; in fact, much worse than this.  Recession also teaches us to be more dependent on our God than on our money and material things.  It eliminates some idolatry of materialism and forces us to reorder our lives.  It makes us aware of the fact that apart from God, everything is sinking sand.

This is the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent is a Christian season setup for us to prepare our hearts and minds to for the coming of Christ.  Similar to the Season of Lent, only in a smaller way, we prepare our hearts with self-searching, confessions, and refocusing our relationship with the Lord.  This is the season for house cleansing, or temple cleansing.  By house or temple, I mean our body, because the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”  So,
Advent is a season of self-searching to make sure that our body, mind, and spirit are worthy of the coming and indwelling of Christ. 

For some people, self-searching can be painful and that’s why many people avoid it.  It’s much easier to bury our heads in the sand—bury our life in our rat race, our busyness, our hobbies, or our choice of intoxication.  Advent reminds us to face the reality of life.  The problem is that, the moment we unplug our head from the sand and face the reality of life, we will encounter fear, lost, guilt, and loneliness.  Why?  Because we live in a fallen world, where God’s will is not always done.  That’s why Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  If God’s will is done on earth, it is heaven here already. 

But, God wants you to face the reality rather than burying your head in the sand because when you face the reality, God’s power will be at work in your life and He will help you overcome your problems, and God’s name is glorified.  God cannot help someone who is in denial.  Advent is the season when we quit denying the truth.  Today we will learn from King David through his psalm, Psalm 25, to learn how we can best handle life’s difficulties because, in this Psalm, David revealed his secret of handling fear, loss, guilt, and loneliness.

Unlike Psalm 23, which focuses on the attributes of God as a Shepherd in a more poetic, scenic, and artistic way, Psalm 25 describes a similar relationship in a more realistic and practical way.  What’s similar to Psalm 23 is that the key verse is at the very beginning of the psalm.  The first verse of Psalm 23 is the key to the entire psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”  Without this key relationship—having the Lord as the Shepherd—the rest of the psalm won’t happen.  We won’t be lying down in green pastures, beside the still waters.  Our souls won’t be restored, and we won’t be led to the right path.  When we go through the darkest valley, we will have a great deal of fear.  And so on.

In the same way, the key wisdom of the entire Psalm 25 is in verse 1, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” My soul represents my being. To lift up my soul to the Lord, is to give up my being, or my life, to the Lord as an offering.  Of course, that’s easier said than done.

One of the most difficult tasks in life is to let go and let God.  The fallen nature of human beings doesn’t like to let go and let God.  We want to have control on everything, and we want to feel powerful in controlling everything.  We try to accumulate data and techniques to control things.  I have heard some people say, “Information is power.  Whoever controls the most information controls the world.”  So, many people try to accumulate information.  They read several newspapers a day and watch TV all day long to make sure they have the latest information.  What they don’t know is, information expends and has no end. 

With the advent of the Internet, we have a great deal of data in our figure tip, but we still wait for more new websites to show up with newer information, thinking that if only I get a little more information, I will be in control of everything.  That horizon of “a little more data and techniques” seems ever expending. 

I believe the worse substance abuse of all in the 21st century is human addiction to data and techniques.  If only I get a little bit more information and techniques, I will be able to solve all my problems.  The Internet becomes a major “dealer” to feed this addiction.  The underlying assumption is that I am on the brink of accumulating all the data and techniques I need that I won’t need God anymore.  In fact, Chairman Mao had said something similar in the past.  He said that we don’t need God because science will ultimately solve every human problem, including the fear of death, but he died with that that solution far from becoming a reality.  The truth is that brink keeps moving; the faster we run after it, the faster it moves.

Psalm 25 teaches us that when we can give our entire being to God, it eliminates a myriad of problems in life.  That’s the eternal wisdom of verse 1, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.”   It is a very counter culture statement for the 21st century in which we often lift up our soul to the data and techniques. 

Another reason that we don’t let go and let God is because we have a wrong conception of God.  A. W. Tozer once said, “All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him. The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems.”

I don’t know what kind of problem you are encountering this morning.  You might have financial problem, health problem, emotional problem, or relational problem.  I know I don’t have the ability to alleviate every problem we have among the members of our church.  But, every week, as I prepare a message to deliver to you, I pray that if only I can help you develop the right belief of God, help you build a right relationship with God, it will eliminate ten thousand temporal problems. 

Many people think letting go and letting God will make them lose their soul because, for them, losing control feels like losing their soul.  In fact, it is exactly the opposite.  Jesus said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mat 16:24-25). When you offer up your life to God as a living sacrifice, you end up finding it. It’s like a seed that falls into the ground, dies, and rises up to bear fruit.

How do I lift up my soul to the Lord that can help us overcome every problem we encounter?

1 – Trust Him when I have fear
“O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.”  David had many enemies as he tried to do God’s will. When you try to do the right things in life, you will have enemies.  If you don’t know what I mean, just try to eat right, exercise, or get rid of a bad habit.  Your enemies will come from both inside and out to put you to shame, waiting to call you “loser!”  This is just a small example.  You might have bigger fear than that.  Trust Him, and you will never be put to shame.

2 – Wait for Him when I am lost
“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long” (v. 4-5).  To wait for the Lord means to listen expectantly, or to meditate on the Lord.

Isaiah said, “Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for 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.” (Isaiah 40:30-31)  That’s powerful!

3 – Confess to Him when I feel guilty
“Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!” (v.7)  Confession does not just bring us forgiveness but also instructions for our path.  Verse 8-9, “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.  He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.”  Confession requires humility and God teaches humble people.

4 – Focus on God when I am lonely
Verse 15, “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.”  I am sure David is not talking about the Internet.  He is talking about our affliction, like a creature caught in the net.  We feel lonely because no one understands our affliction.  The Psalmist continues, “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.”

This Advent season, let us lift up our soul to the Lord, by trusting Him when we have fear, waiting on Him when we are lost, confess to Him when we feel guilty, and focus on Him when we are lonely.  May God bless all of you, Amen!

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I Lift Up My Soul

Sermon on Psalm 25

By Sam Stone

Delivered on November 29, 2009