Sermons

Through The Wilderness 5-3-26

Scriptures: Nehemiah 9:6–15 and John 10:1–10 

Video: https://youtu.be/A5zvkqAbU-M?si=7uZASSyB-N3NxkNY 

Most of us have had a moment in life when we looked around and could not figure out how we ended up where we are. The road took more turns than we expected. The timeline stretched in ways we never planned for. The landmarks that used to orient us have disappeared. And somewhere in the back of our minds, a quiet, persistent question begins to form: Is anyone still with me out here?

The Israelites knew that feeling well. They had been spectacularly rescued from Egyptian slavery, led out by signs and wonders they could never have imagined. And then the wilderness came. Hunger. Thirst. Fear. And if that was not enough on top of all of that, temptation. Temptation to believe that God had liberated them only to leave them to die out there in the sand.

Centuries later, the priest Ezra gathered a rebuilt but still-fragile Jerusalem community and led them in a sweeping prayer of confession and remembrance recorded for us in Nehemiah 9. And in the New Testament, Jesus stood in the Temple courts and offered an image immediately recognizable to anyone who knew the Hebrew Scriptures: the shepherd, the flock, and the gate. Taken together, these two texts offer us a portrait of God’s faithfulness so layered, so rich, and so personal that we might spend a lifetime trying to take it all in.1

Today we are living in the space between Nehemiah 9:6–15 and John 10:1–10. And the theme that ties them together is this: even when we wander, God remains faithful. The God who guided Israel through the wilderness is the same God who, in Jesus, opens a gate and calls each of us by name. His grace provides bread, water, and a way forward for every leg of the journey.

And here is the answer to that opening question—the one that whispers in the hard seasons: someone is absolutely still with you out here. That is not wishful thinking. That is the testimony of Scripture from Genesis to John. Let’s dig in.

1. THE GOD WHO MADE EVERYTHING IS THE GOD WHO COMES LOOKING FOR YOU

Ezra’s prayer in Nehemiah 9 opens with one of the most expansive theological statements in all of Scripture. Before he mentions Israel, before the wilderness, before any of the failures and rescues that fill the rest of the prayer, he starts with creation:

“You are the LORD, you alone; you made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.”  —Nehemiah 9:6, NRSVA

This is a deliberate theological choice on Ezra’s part. He is establishing the frame before filling in the picture. The God he is about to talk about—the one who parted the sea, rained down bread, and brought water from a rock—is not a local deity, a tribal protector, or a god specialized in one particular kind of trouble. This is the Creator of everything. Which means there is no wilderness He cannot see into, no dry season outside His reach, no wanderer invisible to His eye.

Now hold that image and listen to how Jesus opens the shepherd passage in John 10. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.” Jesus is drawing a contrast between the one who sneaks in and the one who comes through the front door. The legitimate shepherd does not need to be sneaky. He walks right up to the gate, the gatekeeper recognizes him, and the sheep hear his voice.2

Here is what strikes me about the parallel between these two texts: the God who created the universe and the shepherd who walks openly through the gate are not two different kinds of divine power. They are two views of the same reality. And that God’s response to wandering, lostness, and wilderness is not distance. It is presence. He does not wait for us to find our way out. He comes in.

John Wesley called this prevenient grace: the reality that God is already at work in our lives before we are even aware of it, already moving toward us before we turn to move toward Him.3 The shepherd does not wait for the sheep to wander back. He goes to the gate, calls the name, and leads them out. Before you knew you were wandering, God knew where you were. Before you called for help, grace had already moved in your direction.

I know what disorientation feels like from the water. I was once kayaking on the Tennessee River when the camp decided to pull the dock in. That dock was my one reliable landmark. Without it, every bank started to look the same. I lost my sense of direction and just kept going with the current. Five hours later, down to my last bar of cell service, I finally called for help. In those moments, what steadies you? Not more paddling. Not convincing yourself that the landmark will reappear. What steadies you is remembering that someone else knows the river better than you do.

The same God who created the river knows every single bend in it. You are not lost to Him, even when you are thoroughly lost to yourself. That is the comfort of starting with the character of God—not with the problem, not with the pain, not with the gap between where you are and where you hoped to be. Begin with who God is: Creator. Shepherd. The one who made everything, and who comes personally through the gate to find you. And when you remember that, the answer to that quiet question becomes clear: yes, Someone is still with you out here.

1. GOD’S FAITHFULNESS HAS A TRACK RECORD AND HIS VOICE IS STILL SPEAKING

From creation, Ezra’s prayer moves to covenant and action. He recalls how God chose Abraham, remained faithful through generations, and heard the cries of a people ground down by four hundred years of slavery. And then he describes what God actually did about it:

“You saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea. You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted insolently against our ancestors. You made a name for yourself, which remains to this day.”  —Nehemiah 9:9–11, NRSVA

Randy Maddox makes the important point that Wesley’s entire understanding of grace is grounded in God’s concrete, historical action—not in abstract doctrines or theoretical thought.4 Grace is not just a concept. Grace is something God actually does. Grace parts waters. Grace calls names. Grace opens gates that were locked and leads people through them. Ezra is not reciting poetry here. He is reciting history. God showed up at a specific moment, in a specific place, for specific people who were in a specific kind of trouble. And because it happened once, we have solid ground for believing it can happen again.

Now listen to what Jesus says next in John 10: “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”5 The sheep follow because they know the voice. There is a history between the shepherd and the flock. This is not the first time he has spoken. This is the one whose voice they have learned to recognize over time, through experience, through a repeated pattern of being called, being led, and arriving somewhere safe.

That is exactly the logic of Ezra’s prayer. He is helping the people of Jerusalem recognize God’s voice in their present moment by reminding them of all the times they have heard it before. The God who parted the Red Sea is the same God speaking now. You have heard this voice in an earlier chapter of your life. You can trust it in this one.

So let me ask you something, and I want you to sit with it for a moment: Do you have a story? A moment when you heard a voice you recognized, and it led you somewhere you could not have reached on your own? A door that opened in a season when every door seemed closed? A provision that came from a direction you never would have anticipated?

Hold onto that story. It is not just a nice memory. It is evidence of a faithful God whose voice has been consistent across every chapter of your life. And that same voice is speaking today. The God whose track record stretches from the Red Sea to Resurrection Sunday has not gone quiet. He is still at the gate, still calling names, still leading people through.

III. GOD PROVIDES FOR THE WHOLE JOURNEY, AND THE GATE LEADS TO ABUNDANT LIFE

Now we reach the heart of both passages. After the Red Sea and the covenant renewal at Sinai, the real wilderness begins. No GPS. No roadmap. No guarantee of the next meal. And what does God do?

God gives the people three gifts in the wilderness. Guidance through the Torah given at Sinai. Bread in their hunger. Water from the rock. And none of them were earned. They were all grace. Now hear how Jesus crystallizes those same three gifts into a single image in John 10:

“I am the gate for the sheep…Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”  —John 10:7, 9, NRSVA

The gate of the sheepfold in the ancient Near East was not just an entry point. It was the structure around which the entire life of the flock was organized. The flock came in through the gate to safety and rest at night. They went out through the gate to pasture and sustenance during the day. The gate was the threshold between protection and provision, between shelter and nourishment. And Jesus says: I am that. I am the one through whom you find both safety and sustenance.

First, the gift of guidance. The Torah was given in the wilderness because the people were disoriented and did not yet know how to be a free people. The law was not a cage. The law was a compass.6 In the Wesleyan tradition, law and grace are not adversaries—they are partners. The law shows us where we are, and grace carries us toward where God intends us to be.7 And in John 10, Jesus, as gate fulfills that same function: the sheep who enter through Him find direction, purpose, a shape to their days.

Second, bread from heaven. Manna appeared every morning in exactly the quantity needed for that day. Not a week’s supply. Not a year’s worth. Just today’s bread. God rarely gives us more than we need for the present moment, because He is not trying to make us self-sufficient. He is inviting us into daily dependence, daily trust, and daily communion with the One who provides. Coming in and going out through the Gate of John 10 is the same invitation. You do not stockpile enough grace to last a lifetime and then go it alone. You come back through the gate every morning. And there is bread again.

Third, water from the rock. Of all the wilderness provisions, this seems the most impossible. Not from a spring or a stream. From solid rock. From the hardest, most resistant, most unyielding material imaginable. If God can bring water out of a rock, He can bring life out of whatever hard, dry, unyielding thing you have been up against. Whatever that is for you this morning, you are not in a situation beyond the reach of the God who provides water in the wilderness.

And Jesus does not just point to the gate and tell you to find your own way in. He says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”8 This is not just survival. This is not enough bread to make it through today. This is abundance. This is life that is full, not merely functional. The Wesleyan tradition has a word for this: sanctifying grace. The ongoing work of God in our lives that moves us not just toward rescue but toward wholeness, not just toward forgiveness but toward the full, flourishing life God intends for every person He has made.9

The wilderness provisions in Nehemiah 9 and the gate in John 10 are pointing in the same direction. The manna, the water, the Torah, the pasture through the gate; all of it is oriented toward a destination. All of it is saying: you are not staying in this wilderness. This is a passage, not a destination. There is a Promised Land ahead. There is abundant life on the other side of the gate.

CONCLUSION: THE SHEPHERD AT THE GATE OF THE WILDERNESS

For those of you who are in a hard season right now, I want you to hear this clearly: God has not forgotten you. The same faithfulness that led a nation through forty years of desert, that rained down manna in the hunger, that brought water from solid rock, that parted the Red Sea and brought an exiled people home to rebuild Jerusalem—that faithfulness is not a fable. It is the character of the God who is standing at the gate of your life right now, calling your name, and offering you a way through.

And for those of you who have already come through a wilderness, who can look back now and trace the path of God’s provision in it—your testimony is not just for you. There are people in this room who are still in the middle of theirs. Your story of hearing the shepherd’s voice in a dark season is their bread today. Do not keep it to yourself.

Faithful through the wilderness. That is the testimony of Nehemiah 9. That is the promise of John 10. And it is the story God is still writing in our lives—including yours, starting today.

———

Invitation

Some of you are in it right now. Some of you have just come through. Some of you can feel it on the horizon. The invitation is open. Come to the Gate. His name is Jesus Christ, and He is the voice you can trust. He will give you bread for today, water from the hard places, and guidance when you have lost your way. The gate is open. Come through.

Benediction

Go now in the confidence of God’s faithfulness. When the road is unclear, trust the One who sees every step. When the season feels dry, remember the God who brings water from the rock. When you feel lost, listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd calling your name.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace.

———

Notes

1 Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 50.

2 John 10:1–2, NRSVA.

3 John Wesley, “The New Birth,” in The Works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 2:187.

4 Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 83.

5 John 10:3–4, NRSVA.

6 Tremper Longman III, How to Read the Psalms (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1988), 67.

7 Kenneth J. Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 39.

8 John 10:10, NRSVA.

9 Maddox, Responsible Grace, 172.

———

Works Cited

Brueggemann, Walter. The Psalms and the Life of Faith. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997.

Longman, Tremper, III. How to Read the Psalms. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1988.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob. Faithfulness in Action: Loyalty in Biblical Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version Anglicised. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989.

Wesley, John. “The New Birth.” In The Works of John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler, 2:186–201. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984.

Walk And Talk With Jesus 4-19-26

Scripture: Luke 24:13–35

Video: https://youtu.be/vfEj1C0SuJ8?si=0Y7gIUrzHQ3QZREs 

Theme: Recognizing and connecting with Jesus Christ

Two disciples walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a journey of about seven miles, leaving everything they had hoped for behind. The crucifixion had shattered their expectations. The tomb was found empty that morning, but they didn’t yet know what to make of it. So, they did what heartbroken people often do: they walked, they talked, and they tried to make sense of what had just fallen apart. Then, a stranger fell into step beside them.

Luke tells us that "their eyes were kept from recognizing him" (Luke 24:16). They poured out their grief to this unknown traveler, recounting the whole story of Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in deed and word, who had been crucified. The stranger listened. Then he spoke. And

everything began to change. Fred Craddock, reflecting on this passage, notes that the disciples on the Emmaus road experienced something that would define the entire Easter season: the risen Christ is not a memory to be mourned but a presence to be encountered.1 This morning, we walk that same road, and the question Luke presses upon us is not simply whether we believe the resurrection happened. The question is whether we recognize the One who walks beside us.

I. Are We Lost On The Road?

Before the recognition, before the burning hearts, we notice two disciples walking away from the holy city, unaware of the whole story. They are not pretending to have it together. They are not putting on brave faces for the sake of anyone else. They are grief-stricken and bewildered, and

they say so. "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). That phrase, "we had hoped," carries the full weight of past tense loss. They believed something. They staked their lives on something. And it seemed to have been buried in a tomb outside Jerusalem.

Walter Brueggemann writes that the biblical tradition is never embarrassed by honest lament. The God of Scripture isn’t threatened by our grief; God enters it.2 These disciples on the Emmaus road aren’t weak for walking away. They are human. And it is precisely into that honest, disoriented humanity that the risen Christ chooses to appear. How many of us have had our own Emmaus road moments? A surprise diagnosis, a failed relationship, or a season when the faith that once felt so alive went strangely quiet. We kept walking and talking, but we just couldn't find our way back to the joy we thought we had lost. Grace does not demand we pretend. Wesley understood that God’s grace goes before us and

works in us before we are even aware of it, is already present in our most lost and wandering moments.3 God doesn’t wait for us to get our bearings before beginning to move toward us. We may not always recognize him, but Jesus is already on the road.

II. Scripture Sets Hearts on Fire

The stranger the disciples met on the road doesn’t simply announce the resurrection. Instead of producing his wounds as evidence, He opens the Scriptures to His friends. Luke 24:27 says, "Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself

in all the scriptures" (Luke 24:27). There’s something deeply important here in a world that feels dark. Before there was the breaking of bread, before there was recognition, there was the Word. Jesus walked them through Israel's story and showed them that suffering, death, and resurrection weren’t a detour from God's plan. They were the shape of it.

John Wesley believed that Scripture is the primary means by which God forms us and draws us toward holiness.4 He described himself as "a man of one book," not because he was anti-intellectual, but because he understood that the Bible is the indispensable lens through which we learn to see the world as God sees it. The disciples on the Emmaus road didn’t just receive information on that walk. Something was happening in them at a deeper level. Their hearts were burning. They said it themselves, after the fact: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32). That burning heart isn’t a metaphor for deep interest. What happened on that road was a transformation of truth. Something was being kindled in them that their fear and anxiety had extinguished.

Kenneth Collins describes sanctifying grace as the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit that moves us from the new birth toward the fullness of love for God and neighbor.5 The Emmaus road is, among other things, a picture of that ongoing work. On that road where the disciples walked in depression and confusion, they were renewed, redirected, and set ablaze. Sanctification isn’t a one-time transaction. It is a long walk, and Christ walks it with us, opening the Scriptures as we go.

III. Jesus Makes Himself Known At The Table

They reach Emmaus as evening falls. The stranger acts like he’s going to keep going, but they urge him to stay. So, He stayed. They sat at the table together, and in that moment of fellowship and grace, the Holy Spirit of God enlightened them. "When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight" (Luke 24:30–31). The moment of recognition, not a dramatic appearance in glory. Bread, broken and given. Their eyes opened. Brueggemann observes that the table is one of the most powerful places of encounter in the biblical tradition, a place where strangers become known, where boundaries collapse, where the holy interrupts the everyday.6 Something about the familiar gesture, the way he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it, must have been unmistakably, heartbreakingly, joyfully familiar. They had seen those hands before.

This is why we come to the table of Jesus Christ. Not as a ritual performance, nor as a religious obligation, but because Christ makes himself known in the breaking of bread. Wesley himself held that Holy Communion is a means of grace, an outward sign through which God actively works inward transformation.7 The table isn’t a memorial for the dead; it’s a place of meeting and connecting with the living Lord.

Notice what the disciples do the moment they recognize him. They get up immediately, in the dark, and walk all the way back to Jerusalem. The seven miles they had walked in despair, they now walk in urgency and joy. They have news that they can’t keep to themselves. The resurrection turns lives around and redirects the lost and directionless towards life and holiness. It reverses the direction of the Emmaus road and turns despair into proclamation. They don’t arrive to tell a story about a past event. They arrive to say, "He is alive, and we met him on the road, and we knew him in the breaking of bread."

Where is your Emmaus road right now? Many of us know what it feels like to walk away from our spirituality. We have been through things that left us disoriented. We have had seasons where the faith that once burned felt dim. We have kept walking, kept putting one foot in front of the other, but the joy felt distant, and the hope felt used up.

The risen Christ is already on that road with you. He’s not waiting for you to get your theology straight. He’s not standing at a distance, arms crossed, waiting for you to muster enough faith before he takes a step toward you. Jesus Christ is walking beside you right now, asking what you are carrying, listening to the whole story, and gently, patiently, opening the Scripture so that your heart can begin to burn again. Then, Jesus invites you to the table. Not because you deserve it or have figured everything out, but because that’s where eyes are opened. That’s where the risen Lord makes himself known.

If you’ve been walking away from Jerusalem, this morning is your invitation to turn around. Not in shame. Not in self-recrimination. But with the urgent joy of people who have seen something too good to keep to themselves. The road you’re on right now, wherever you’re walking, isn’t beyond the reach of the risen Christ. He has a way of catching up with us. He has a way of making our hearts burn when we least expect it. He has a way of breaking the bread and opening our eyes. And when that happens, there is only one thing left to do: get up and go tell someone.

There are people at different places on the road this morning. Some have never confirmed and professed their faith in Jesus Christ. You may have grown up in church, or you may be brand new to all of this, but there has never been a moment when you said, "Yes, I want to know God

on a personal level. I want to follow this Jesus. I want my life to be shaped by God’s love." This morning is that moment, if you want it to be. The invitation of the Gospel is not complicated: turn toward Jesus, trust him with your life, and let him walk with you from here. That is it. And if that is the step you want to take today, I would be honored to pray with you and walk alongside you as you begin.

Some of you are already followers of Jesus, but you have been doing it alone, or you have been away, or you have been looking for a community where you can belong, serve, and grow. Pleasant View United Methodist Church is that kind of place. We are not a perfect church, because there is no such thing. But we are a church that is serious about following Jesus together, about loving our neighbors, about opening our doors and our table to whoever walks through them. If you are looking for a church home, we would love to be that for you. Our membership is not just a name on a roll. It is a commitment to walk together, to hold each other accountable in love, and to carry the good news of the risen Christ into this community and beyond.

And some of you are deeply rooted here, faithful and committed, and you have been walking with Jesus for a long time. For you, this morning's invitation is simply this: keep walking. Keep letting Scripture set your heart on fire. Keep coming to this table. Keep looking for the risen Lord in the breaking of bread and in the faces of the people around you. The world needs what you carry.

Closing

In a moment, we will pray together. And as we pray, if any of these invitations are speaking to you, I want you to know that you do not have to respond with fanfare or drama. You can simply open your hands, right where you are, and say, "Yes. I want this. I am ready to walk with you, Jesus." That quiet yes is enough. Heaven hears it. The disciples on the Emmaus road turned around and walked seven miles back to Jerusalem in the dark. Not because someone guilted them into it. Not because it was easy. But because they had seen the risen Lord, and they could not keep that to themselves. My prayer is that we leave this place the same way: hearts burning, eyes open, and a story too good to keep quiet. I will be praying at the altar, I hope some will join me. If you would like me to pray with you, just kneel next to me. If you would like my wife to pray with you, just grab her on your way up. Let’s pray.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, you are the one who walks beside us on every road. You are the one who opens Scripture and sets our hearts on fire. You are the one who meets us at the table, breaks the bread, and opens our eyes. We are grateful. We are grateful for your grace. We are ready, Lord, to stop walking away and start walking with you.

For those taking a first step toward you today, go before them. For those finding their way back, welcome them home. For those who have walked with you for years, renew them. For all of us together, make us a community that carries your presence into every corner of this town and beyond. We pray in the name of the risen Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Footnotes

1 Fred B. Craddock, "The Emmaus Road, " in Interpretation: Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 284.

2 Walter Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 55.

3 Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 86.

4 John Wesley, "The New Birth, "in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon

Press, 1985), 198.

5 Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon Press,

2007), 211.

6 Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense, 72.

7 Maddox, Responsible Grace, 176.

Works Cited

Brueggemann, Walter. The Bible Makes Sense. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 2007.

Craddock, Fred B. Interpretation: Luke. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood

Books, 1994.

Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley. V ol. 2. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon

Press, 1985.

AFTER THE STORM 4-12-26

Scripture: Genesis 8:6–16; 9:8–16

Video: https://youtu.be/8KpIJcXmw4Y?si=dUhgHnV9MGupXvZx 

Theme: God's covenant reminds us that mercy follows judgment. His promise of peace endures through every flood.

1. Watching from the Window

Have you ever watched the rain? Not a passing shower, but a days-long, driving rain that makes you wonder whether the sun still exists somewhere above all those clouds? There is a particular loneliness in that kind of weather. The world closes in. The yard becomes a pond. The road disappears. Everything familiar is swallowed up, and you begin to wonder whether things will ever look normal again.

Noah knew that feeling. He had been on the water for more than five months. The text says that on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and still the water covered the earth. Noah couldn’t see land. He couldn’t see the end. All he had was a window, a raven, and a dove. So he sent the raven out. It flew back and forth, finding nowhere to land. He waited. Then he sent the dove. The dove returned, exhausted, with no evidence of a world to stand on. He waited seven more days and sent her out again, and this time she came back with a fresh olive leaf in her beak.

A leaf. A single green leaf in the beak of a small bird. It was not a trumpet blast or a parting of clouds or an angelic announcement. It was a leaf. And it was enough. It was the first visible sign that the waters had begun to recede, that life was pushing back through the mud, that God had not forgotten the world He made.

One writer notes that the flood narrative is not primarily about destruction but about the radical reordering of creation in response to human violence, and the equally radical commitment of God to not abandon what He has made. The leaf is not incidental. The leaf is the sermon within the story.

The Second Sunday of Easter finds us in a similar posture. We have come through the long season of Lent. We have stood at the foot of the cross. We have sat in the silence of Holy Saturday. Easter rang out last week with alleluias and empty-tomb wonder. And now we are settling back into ordinary life, and some of us are already wondering whether the resurrection was a bright moment that has already begun to fade. Some of us are sending out our own doves, looking for evidence that hope is still alive in the world we wake up to every morning.

This morning, the story of Noah and the covenant at the water's edge has something to say to us. Three things, in fact. Three movements in the text carry us from the watching window to the standing rainbow, and every step of the way, Christ is present.

1. The Storm Was Real. Before we can receive the comfort of this text, we have to sit inside its honesty. The flood was not a metaphor. It was not a minor inconvenience. For Noah and his family, it was the end of everything they had ever known. Their neighbors were gone. Their community was gone. The fields, the roads, the ordinary rhythm of a day on earth had been erased. The storm was real, and the loss was real, and the grief that comes with that kind of ending is not something to be rushed past.

John Goldingay points out that the Book of Hebrews tells us the waters prevailed on the earth for one hundred and fifty days. Month after month of water, waiting, and wondering. And yet Noah waited faithfully, tending to every living creature in his care, sustaining life inside the ark while the world outside raged.

Here is the lesson we learn from the long-suffering of Noah and his family through the storm: don’t be ashamed of the storms in your life. Don’t pretend the floods aren’t real. Don’t hurry past the grief, fear, or weariness because you think that a person of faith should be past it by now. God didn’t smother Noah. God doesn’t speak to him until the waters have truly receded and the earth has dried. Verse sixteen says simply, "Go out of the ark." God waited until it was time. And in the meantime, Noah watched. And waited. And tended to what was in his care.

Some of the deepest damage done to people in pain comes from other people of faith who try to hand them the rainbow before they’ve finished grieving the flood. The resurrection doesn’t erase the cross. The empty tomb does not forget Good Friday. The risen Christ still bears the wounds in His hands and His side. Easter doesn’t pretend the storm wasn’t real. It meets us in the aftermath.

What storm have you been riding out? What has the last season cost you? A relationship. A diagnosis. A dream that did not come true. A grief that sits in your chest like standing water. Name it. Be honest about it. Because the God who speaks to Noah at the end of this passage is the same God who sees you in it.

III. Mercy Follows Judgment

The second movement in this text is the one that surprises us if we have been taught to read the flood story only as a story of punishment. Yes, there is judgment in it. Genesis 6 is painfully clear that the wickedness of humanity grieved the heart of God. But this text, Genesis 8 and 9, is not a punishment text. It is a mercy text.

Look at what happens. Noah steps out of the ark, and the first thing he does is build an altar and offer a burnt offering to God. And the text says something astonishing: "When the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.'" God sees the same human heart He saw before the flood, and He makes a different choice. Not because humanity has suddenly become righteous. But because God is merciful. Mercy does not wait for us to deserve it. Mercy moves first.

This is one of the most staggering theological moments in the entire Old Testament. The reason God gives for His mercy is the same reason He gave for judgment: the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth. Same condition. Different response. Because this is who God is.

God’s grace reaches toward us before we take a single step toward God. John Wesley understood that the human condition, left to itself, is inclined away from God. But he also understood that God does not leave us to ourselves. God moves first. God plants the seed of conscience, the capacity for repentance, the restlessness that drives us toward something more than what we are.

Randy Maddox writes that for Wesley, prevenient grace is the overflow of a God whose very nature is holy love. The flood story confirms this. God looks at the same broken humanity, and rather than repeating the flood, He binds Himself to us in covenant.

And here is where the resurrection becomes the final word on this question. If you want to know whether mercy truly follows judgment, look to the cross and the empty tomb. On the cross, God absorbed the full weight of human sinfulness, the full consequence of everything we are inclined toward when we are left to ourselves. And three days later, God walked out of the tomb and offered not condemnation but commissioning. "Go," He said to Mary. "Go and tell." Mercy does not just follow judgment. Mercy swallows it. Mercy has the last word.

Are you still waiting for the other shoe to drop? Are you still living as though God is keeping a ledger and you are running a deficit? I want to tell you this morning that the flood has already come; it came to a hill called Golgotha, and the mercy of God has already spoken. The question is not whether God is willing to show you mercy. The question is whether you are willing to receive it.

Genesis 9:8 through 16 records the covenant God makes with Noah, with his descendants, and, in the most sweeping language in all of Genesis, with every living creature on the face of the earth. This is not a small promise. This is not a private arrangement. "I am establishing my covenant with you," God says, "and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you."

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld's work on covenant faithfulness in the Old Testament draws out the relational depth of the Hebrew term berit. This is not a contract between equals. It is a pledge made freely by the stronger party to the weaker, binding God to a course of action regardless of the response of the other party.

And then God does something remarkable. He sets His bow in the cloud, and He says something that we tend to gloss over. He says it is not only a sign for us. "When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant," God says that the rainbow is a reminder to Himself. The covenant is so important to God that He sets a visible sign in the sky to keep the promise before His own sight. That is the kind of God we worship. A God who takes His own promises so seriously that He builds reminders into the fabric of the world.

The rainbow is not a prize for good behavior. Noah did not earn it. His family did not earn it. The animals on the ark did not earn it. The rainbow is a gift, an unconditional sign of a covenant that flows from the character of God rather than the character of the recipients.

Collins observes that Wesley's doctrine of sanctifying grace works in precisely this way: it is not a reward for progress but the continuous gift of a God who refuses to abandon the work He has begun in us.

I want you to think about the rainbows in your own life. The moments when something so unexpectedly beautiful appeared in the middle of a hard season that you knew, you just knew, it was not an accident. The phone call that came at exactly the right moment. The word of encouragement from someone who could not have known how much you needed it. The small mercy that appeared in the middle of a week when you were barely keeping your head above water.

Those are not coincidences. Those are the covenant faithfulness of a God who has set His bow in the cloud and said, "I will remember." God is always remembering. God is always working. Even in the storms, even in the waiting, even in the exhausted silence of Holy Saturday, God is moving toward us.

Wesley wrote in his sermon "The New Birth" that God's grace is never absent from the soul, that even in the depths of human sinfulness, the divine image is not entirely erased but waits to be restored by the renewing power of the Spirit. The rainbow is the outward sign of that inward reality.

This is what Easter does. Easter tells us that the God of the rainbow is also the God of the empty tomb. The same divine faithfulness that moved God to set a bow in the cloud after the flood moved God to raise Jesus from the dead after the cross. The covenant was not broken at Golgotha. It was confirmed. The resurrection is God saying, in the loudest possible voice, "I will remember my covenant. I will not let death have the last word. I will not abandon what I have made and what I have loved."

Brueggemann writes that the covenant at the end of the flood story is nothing less than the beginning of Israel's understanding of a God who is characterized by tenacious, irreversible commitment to the creation He has made. The resurrection is the New Testament's fullest expression of that same tenacity.

Noah stood on dry ground and looked out at a world that was wet and changed and new all at once. He had survived something that should have killed him. He had come through waters that swallowed everything he had known. And now the air smelled like mud and new growth and the particular sharpness that comes after a long rain. He was alive. His family was alive. And over his head, in the clearing sky, the colors began to appear.

That is where some of you are standing this morning. You have come through a flood. You have come through a season that felt like it would never end, a storm that took things from you that you did not know how to lose. And you are standing on dry ground now, a little unsteady, a little amazed that you are still here, looking out at a world that is wet and changed and not quite what it was before.

Here is what I want you to hear. The fact that you are still here is not an accident. The God who remembered Noah is the God who has been remembering you. The God who set His bow in the cloud is the God who set His Son in history and raised Him from the dead, so that every time death tries to have the last word, resurrection answers it. The storm was real. The grief was real. The loss was real. And the covenant of God is more real than any of it.

This is the Wesleyan vision of sanctifying grace at its richest: not a single crisis moment but a life-long process of being made new, day after day, in the faithfulness of a God who never stops working on us and never stops working for us.

After every storm, there is a morning. After every cross, there is an empty tomb. After every flood, there is a rainbow. And the one who sets that bow in the cloud is the same one who says to you this morning, "I will remember my covenant. I have not forgotten you. Go. Step out of the ark. The ground is dry. New life is waiting."

Invitation to Response

This morning I want to invite you to do one of two things, or maybe both. If you are in the middle of the flood right now, if you are still on the water and you cannot see land, I want you to come to this altar and let this community stand with you in it. You do not have to pretend the storm is over. Come and let us pray with you in the middle of it.

And if you have come through a storm and you have been carrying the weight of it alone, if you have not yet told God or told anyone that you made it through, come and give thanks. Come and stand on the dry ground out loud. Come and let us celebrate with you the faithfulness of a God who remembered His covenant when the water was rising and is still faithful now that it has receded.

The God of the rainbow is alive. The tomb is empty. The covenant holds. Come.

Footnotes

1. John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, vol. 1: Israel's Gospel (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003), 174.

2. The Hebrew term berit carries the full weight of an unconditional divine pledge. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 136.

3. Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 87.

4. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Faithfulness in Action: Loyalty in Biblical Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 55.

5. Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 193.

6. John Wesley, "The New Birth," in The Works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 198.

7. Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 46.

8. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 220.

Works Cited

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Brueggemann, Walter. An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007.

Goldingay, John. Old Testament Theology. Vol. 1: Israel's Gospel. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob. Faithfulness in Action: Loyalty in Biblical Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.

Wesley, John. "The New Birth." In The Works of John Wesley. Ed. Albert C. Outler. Vol. 2. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. 187–201.

The Power of An Empty Tomb

Scripture: John 20:1-18

Video: https://youtu.be/wd0049b9xhs

Theme: Resurrection changes everything. Christ's victory over death opens the way to new life for all who believe.

I. Running Toward What You Cannot Explain

It was still dark when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Before the city awakened, before the birds sang. Mary came in the dark because grief does not wait for sunrise. Grief wakes you up at three in the morning and sends you out into the cold. Mary watched him die. She stood at the foot of that cross when most of the disciples scattered. She witnessed them take his body down and take it away to a borrowed tomb. And when the Sabbath ended, she went back. Not because she expected anything. Just because love required her presence.1

What have you gone back to when you did not know what else to do with your grief? Mary came to the tomb looking for a body. What she found instead was that the stone was rolled away. The tomb was open. Before the morning was over, she would encounter the risen Christ himself, not a ghost, not a vision, but the Living One who called her by name. Mary runs to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and she says, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” In that moment, it’s reasonable to think that someone moved the body. She is still reasoning inside the only framework she had, the framework of death as a permanent, final reality. That is the only framework any of them had.2 Death wins. Everyone knew that. Death always wins. But then Peter and the other disciple race each other to the tomb. John gets there first. He bends down, peers in, sees the linen wrappings lying there, and he hesitates at the threshold. Then Peter charges right past him and goes straight in. Classic Peter, always leading with his feet before his head. And what do they find? They find the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. A grave robber does not fold the laundry. Whatever happened here, it was purposeful. It was intentional. It was ordered.

John tells us that the beloved disciple saw and believed. And then this remarkable admission: as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. They believed before they fully understood.3 That is still what faith looks like. You do not always get comprehension before you get faith. Sometimes, you get faith, and comprehension sometimes follows. Is that where you are this morning? Somewhere between the skepticism of Mary, thinking that someone must have moved the body, and the faith of the beloved disciple, seeing and believing? You are in good company. The resurrection does not demand that you have it all figured out before you believe. It just asks you to come.

II. When He Calls You by Name

Peter and John go back home. But Mary stays. She stands outside the tomb weeping. And then she bends down and looks into the tomb, into the very place of death. And she sees two angels sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the feet.4 The angels ask her, Woman, why are you weeping? And she gives them the same answer she gave Peter and John. She is looking for the body. She turns around and sees someone standing there, Jesus himself, but she does not recognize him. She thinks he is the gardener. She says, Sir,

if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. And then Jesus says one word, “Mary.” She heard her name in a voice she recognized from the depths of her being, and suddenly everything shifted. Rabboni! Teacher. She reached for him. And Jesus said something curious. Do not hold on to me. Not because he was pulling away, but because the old way of relating to him was over. Something new was beginning. The resurrection was not a return to what was.5 It was an arrival at what had never existed before.

John Wesley would have recognized something profound in this moment. He wrote about the God who meets us personally, who does not save us in a crowd but calls us each by name. God's love that works in us before we turn toward God had been drawing Mary toward this moment her whole life.6 And now, in the garden, in the dark that was becoming light, the risen Christ spoke her name. At the heart of our faith is a risen Lord and Savior who knows your name, who has been pursuing you with love that was working in your life long before you recognized it, and who meets you in the garden of your greatest grief and calls you back into life. Where in your life has God been working before you were paying attention? Where has love been present in a place you only later recognized as holy ground?

III. Resurrection Changes Everything

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples, saying, “I have seen the Lord.” Firsthand testimony. Eyewitness account.7 The announcement of the resurrection was first given to a woman who had refused to leave. Who stayed when everyone else went home? Who kept showing up even when it seemed pointless. This is deeply consistent with the way Jesus moved throughout his ministry, overturning the social order of who gets to carry the good news. And it tells us something about resurrection logic: the first to receive the risen Christ are those who kept faith in the dark. Those who stay. Now, what does this mean for us? Sometimes, we let this day become so familiar that we lose the staggering weight of what we are saying. We are saying that death is not the final word. We are saying that the same power that rolled away that stone is available to you, right now, this morning, in whatever tomb you have been sealed inside.

God’s sanctifying grace is available to you right now. This is nothing less than resurrection power at work in the human soul.8 The resurrection is not just a past historical event we commemorate once a year. It is a present, living reality that changes how you walk out of this building this morning and live the rest of your week.

The relationships you thought were irreparably broken, resurrection says, “Arise.” The hope you buried three years ago, resurrection says, “Come forth.” The version of yourself you gave up on, resurrection says, “Come out of the tomb.” When we say Christ is risen, we are not just talking about a man who came back from the dead two thousand years ago in Palestine.9 We are announcing that the whole order of creation has been reoriented. Death, sin, fear, despair. They do not have the last word. Love does. Life does. Jesus Christ does.

Resurrection is never just for you. The experience of the risen Christ always sends you out.10 Mary went. She did not stay in the garden processing the experience indefinitely. She went and told. Who in your life needs to hear that the story is not over? Who around you is standing at a sealed tomb, believing that death, or failure, or loss, or shame has the final word? You are Easter people. You carry the announcement. I want to invite you into that same calling this morning.

Not just to believe in the resurrection, but to live like it is true. Living like the resurrection is true means you treat every person in your life as someone for whom Christ died and rose. It means you do not give up on people. It means you do not give up on your community. It means when you look at Pleasant View, when you look at your neighbors, the people at the gas station, the kids at the school down the road, you see people who are beloved by a God who defeated death to reach them.

Living like the resurrection is true means you live with an open hand instead of a closed fist. Generosity becomes possible when you know that abundance, not scarcity, is the final word. Courage becomes possible when you know that death itself has been conquered.

The empty tomb is not the end of the story. Every time one of us leaves this sanctuary and lives differently because of what we believe, we are continuing that story.

Your Name in the Garden

Let me bring you back to the garden. It is still dark when you arrive. You are carrying whatever you have been carrying, whatever has felt sealed up and final and too far gone for hope. You come because you love Jesus, even when you are not sure what that means anymore, even when the faith feels more like a habit than fire. You come. And in the garden, someone calls your name. Not your title. Not your role. Your name. The name your mother gave you. The name written, as the Scripture says, in the palms of his hands. That is the power of an empty tomb. Death could not hold Love down. The worst thing is never the last thing. There is a future for you that is larger than your past. You are not alone in your grief! You are not abandoned in your darkness. Jesus Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. And he knows your name.

Closing Prayer

Risen Lord, we have come this morning carrying things we could not leave at the door: doubt, grief, exhaustion, the weight of our sorrows. And yet you meet us here. You roll the stone away not just from a garden tomb but from the places in us where we have sealed off hope. Speak our names this morning. Let your resurrection be more than a doctrine we hold. Let it be a power that holds us. Send us from this place as people who have seen the Lord, who cannot help but go and tell. To your glory, and in your name. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Footnotes

1 The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. John 20:1-2.

2 Walter Brueggemann. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984. 168.

3 Randy L. Maddox. Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994. 87.

4 Kenneth J. Collins. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. 214.

5 John Wesley. "The New Birth." The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2, Sermons II. Ed. Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. 187-201.

6 Maddox 158.

7 Collins 221.

8 John Wesley. "Salvation by Faith." The Works of John Wesley, vol. 1, Sermons I. Ed. Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984. 117-130.

9 Brueggemann 172.

10 Maddox 91.

Works Cited

Brueggemann, Walter. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994.

Wesley, John. "Salvation by Faith." The Works of John Wesley, vol. 1, Sermons I. Ed. Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984. 117-130.

Wesley, John. "The New Birth." The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2, Sermons II. Ed. Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. 187-201.

When God Seems Silent 3-29-26

Scriptures: Philippians 2:5-11 | Psalm 22:1-21

Video: https://youtu.be/gG3-5rUz0yo?si=Emv4KrrNhNyNONTm

Palm Sunday is a day of contradictions. Crowds line the road, waving branches and shouting "Hosanna," which means "save us" literally. Yet, the one they are cheering is riding toward a cross. There is triumph in the air, but there is something heavy underneath it. The same crowd that sings his praises on Sunday will shout, “Crucify Him!” on Friday. And Jesus Christ, who rides into the city fully aware of what is waiting, carries with him the weight of what it means to be human, including the terrifying thought that His God and Father may let him go through excruciating pain and loss.

The psalmist writes prophetically but also while in his own pain. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (v. 1). You know those words. Matthew and Mark both record Jesus crying these words from the cross. Jesus, in his most agonized moment, quoted this ancient, prophetic prayer of his people, a prayer that had been on human lips for centuries before he was born. He takes the cry of human desolation and makes it his own. 

So today we hold both things in our hands at once, the palm branch and the lament. The parade and the psalm. Because Palm Sunday teaches us that the road to resurrection runs straight through abandonment and loss. The cross is not the end. It is the doorway to redemption. But we have a road to walk before we get there.

This morning, we will look at three realities that we find in our scripture readings today. We will end where everything ends: with the grace that refuses to let death have the last word.

First, Honest Lament Is an Act of Faith. Second, Silence Is Not Absence, and Third, Grace Has Always Been Present. 

Point 1: Honest Lament Is an Act of Faith (Psalm 22:1-10)

The first thing Psalm 22 gives us is permission to be honest. That might sound like a small thing, but in religious culture, it is actually fairly radical. We have been trained to perform spiritual wellness; to tell people we are fine, to sing the upbeat songs, to put on a brave face in the sanctuary. Psalm 22 does none of that.

'I am a worm and not a man,' the psalmist says, “scorned by everyone, despised by the people' (v. 6). Walter Brueggemann calls psalms like this “psalms of disorientation.” These are raw, unvarnished prayers for those seasons when the polite religious language simply will not do. The psalmist is not losing faith by praying this way. The psalmist is demonstrating faith because you only cry out to someone you believe is actually there.

Notice the pattern in the first ten verses. The psalmist moves back and forth between anguish and memory. First, he says, “You are far from me.” Then, “Our ancestors trusted you, and you delivered them.” (v. 4). The psalmist cries, “I am scorned and mocked.” Then, “You brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you from birth” (v. 9). This back and forth is normal. It is the most honest form of prayer there is. The psalmist is saying: I know who you have been. I know what you have done. So where are you now?

Think about your own prayer life. Are there things you have been afraid to say to God? Are there questions you have held back because they felt too raw, too faithless? What would it mean to bring those things to God exactly as they are?

Here is what the lament teaches us: silence toward God is far more dangerous than honest anger at God. Job argued with God for thirty-seven chapters. The psalmists brought their full humanity into prayer. They brought their rage, their grief, their confusion, and their despair. In all those moments, God never once told them to clean it up. The invitation of the Gospel is always, “come as you are.” Not, “come when you have it together.” Honest lament is the beginning of healing. It is not the opposite of faith. It is faith refusing to pretend.

Point 2: Silence Is Not Absence (Psalm 22:11-21)

The second reality is harder and more important. Verses 11 through 21 take us deeper into the suffering. We feel the pain of bones being out of joint and a heart melting like wax. We feel the anxiety as we witness encircling enemies and the casting of lots for his clothing. The psalmist did not endure a mild inconvenience. Nor did Jesus. This psalm brings us along with them as a people at the absolute end of our rope. Even so, the silence of God, from the psalmist's point of view, as experienced by Jesus, and sometimes where we experience it as well, appears total.

But here is what we have to hold: the silence of God is not the same as the absence of God. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld's work on hesed, the Hebrew word for covenant love, makes this clear. Hesed is the love that shows up precisely when circumstances would give it every excuse to stay away. It is not a love that waits for favorable conditions. It is a pursuing, persisting, covenant-keeping love, and it does not take days off, not even the worst days.

And then we add what Philippians 2 brings to this picture. The hymn Paul quotes is the Carmen Christi, the song of Christ, and it describes a deliberate, chosen descent. Jesus Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness” (v. 7). Jesus Christ “emptied himself.” This was intentional. The Son of God did not die outside of human suffering. He died as part of it. Jesus descended into the experience of abandonment so that every person who has ever felt abandoned would know: he has been here. He knows this place from the inside.

Has there been a season when God seemed absent, when your prayers felt like they were bouncing off the ceiling? Looking back, can you see any evidence that God was at work even in that silence?

One writer observes that the psalm's lament in these verses does not resolve because circumstances change. The resolution, when it comes, happens because the psalmist chooses to entrust the unanswered question to a God whose track record is longer than the current moment. And another writer notes that the ancient congregation was not meant to observe this lament from a safe distance. They were meant to enter it, to claim it as their own, to stand with the sufferer in solidarity. That is what we are doing here today. Somewhere in this room, someone is living inside these verses right now. And the rest of us are called to stand with them.

The silence is not abandonment. The darkness is not permanent. And the cross, which in the moment looks like the end of everything, turns out to be exactly where God is most fully present.

Point 3: Grace Has Always Been Present (Philippians 2:5-11)

Now we come to the most important reality of all, the one that changes everything else. John Wesley taught that prevenient grace, the grace that goes before, is not simply the grace that precedes conversion. It is the grace that precedes everything. Before you called out, grace was already present. Before you cried, the answer was already in motion. Before the stone was rolled across the tomb, resurrection was already God's intention. Prevenient grace means that God is never playing catch-up with your suffering. God was already there before you arrived.

This is what Philippians 2 makes visible. The hymn moves from the heights of divine glory, down through human flesh, down further through suffering, down to the very bottom; death on a cross, and then to verse 9, “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name” (v. 9). The descent was purposeful. The cross was not a detour from God's plan. It was the plan. And embedded in the going-down was always the coming-up. Grace was working even in the dying.

The Wesleyan tradition teaches that God is already at work before we are aware of it. How does the idea of prevenient grace change the way you face a season where you cannot feel God's presence? What would it mean to trust that grace is already ahead of you in the hardest places?

Randy Maddox argues that for Wesley, prevenient grace is the continuous, sustaining presence of God in all human experience, including suffering. And seminary professor and author, Kenneth Collins, shows us that Wesleyan sanctification is never a journey away from suffering; it is a journey through it, with the heart being shaped toward God precisely in the furnace of trial. The furnace does not destroy the one who trusts in God. It does something more terrible and more beautiful: it burns away everything that is not love. What remains, Wesley would say, is a heart increasingly conformed to the image of Christ, the one who went through the furnace first.

Wesley himself knew seasons of spiritual dryness. Wesley taught that grace was working even in the waiting, even in the wilderness, even in the not-yet. The question is not whether grace is present. The question is whether we will trust its presence when we cannot feel it.

And here is the word I want to leave with you from Psalm 22, a tiny word that holds everything together. In verse 9, right in the middle of the lament, the psalmist says, “Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother's breast.”

Yet. There is no resolution yet. No visible deliverance. No answer to the silence. But there is a yet; a stubborn, battered, beautiful insistence that God's track record is longer than this moment's pain. The yet is not denial. It is not pretending that the suffering is not real. It is the language of the Wesleyan Christian faith: trusting the character of God when all the felt evidence has gone quiet.

Where do you need to place a 'yet' in your own story right now? What would it mean to say to God: I cannot see you, I cannot feel you, yet I know who you have been, and I choose to trust that you are still at work?

Prevenient grace means the yet is always warranted. God has already gone ahead of you. The empty tomb is already on the other side of Friday. Grace was there before you arrived at the darkness, and grace will be there when you walk out of it.

Conclusion: The Doorway

Today, we walk into Holy Week holding palm branches and a lament. We do not rush past Good Friday to get to Easter. We do not paste resurrection on top of crucifixion and pretend the darkness was not real. Psalm 22 earns its praise through twenty-one verses of unflinching honesty. The church earns its Alleluia by walking through the week, not around it.

But here is what we know, even now, even on this side of Friday: the cross is not a period. It is a comma. A hinge. A doorway. The purpose of God does not stall at Golgotha. It moves through it, because the God we worship is a God who has never yet been stopped by a sealed tomb.

So if you are in the dark today, if the silence has gone on longer than you can bear, I am not going to hand you a simple answer. I am going to hand you a Companion. One who rode into Jerusalem knowing exactly what was coming. One who wept in a garden, who cried from a cross, who entered the silence all the way to its bottom.

Jesus Christ knows the silence. Jesus has been in it. And Jesus did not stay there. Neither will you.

Closing Prayer

Lord of the parade and the passion, of hosannas and hard silences, meet us here. Some of us have been crying out for a long time. We have carried questions with no easy answers, and sat in the dark, wondering if you were anywhere near. Today, remind us that the cross was not the end of your story, and it is not the end of ours. Shape in us the same mind that was in Christ Jesus: humble enough to trust you in the descent, and certain enough in your character to wait for the dawn. In the name of the one who goes before us, even into the grave. Amen.

Works Cited

Brueggemann, Walter. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville: Abingdon, 2007.

Goldingay, John. Psalms, vol. 1. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.

Longman, Tremper III. Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob. Faithfulness in Action: Loyalty in Biblical Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.

The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue). Washington, DC: National Council of Churches of Christ, 2021.

Wesley, John. "The More Excellent Way." In The Works of John Wesley, vol. 7. Edited by Thomas Jackson. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1979.

Out of the Depths 3-22-26

1st Reading: Romans 6:16–23  |  2nd Reading: Psalm 130

Video: https://youtu.be/AFbM-AFB8Vk?si=kYHcW6mEgOIwml5l 

Theme: From our lowest places, God hears our cry. His forgiveness restores our hope and our souls.

Have you ever been in a place so low you didn’t even know how to start praying? Not the kind of low where things are inconvenient or stressful, I mean the kind of low where the weight of life feels like it’s pressing you into the ground. The kind of low when you have lost all you can lose, and you want to cry out to God, but you don’t even know what words to say. Maybe it was after the death of a good friend or loved one. Maybe it was in the midst of deep shame brought on by continually giving in to your own desires. Maybe it was after a broken relationship, a lost job, in the midst of a health crisis, or a sin you’ve been carrying so long it feels like it’s become part of you.

Some prayers begin with confidence. Others begin with gratitude. Psalm 130 begins somewhere else entirely. It begins at the rock bottom: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” Many of us know something about those depths. It is a place that is not always visible to others, but it is real, nevertheless. Sometimes the depths look like grief that settles in and will not lift. Sometimes they look like shame you cannot shake, or fear you do not know how to name, and even prayer feels out of reach.

Psalm 130 speaks into that place. It is one of the Songs of Ascents, sung by pilgrims making their way to Jerusalem for worship.1 Yet this pilgrim song does not begin with celebration. It begins with a plea. The psalmist cries, “Out of the depths.” The Hebrew word is maʿămaqqîm (mah-am-awk'), a word that suggests deep places, the kind of waters where a person loses footing and cannot recover.2 In the imagination of ancient Israel, the deep was often a place of danger, chaos, and helplessness. It was where human strength ran out.

That is what makes this psalm so important for us in this season of Lent. Lent is not a season for pretending. It is a season for truth. Lent calls us to bring our real selves before God, not the polished version, not the brave version, not the version we hope others will admire. In Psalm 130, God meets people in the place where there are no speeches left, only that deep hunger from a soul that has found itself in a deep, dark hole with only one way out.

So this morning, I want us to hear this psalm in three movements. First, the cry from the depths. Second, the gift of forgiveness. Third, the hope that waits for dawn.

First, we encounter The Cry from the Depths

The Psalm opens with urgency: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!” There is nothing polished here. The psalmist does not begin with an explanation. He does not defend himself. He does not tidy up his emotions before speaking to God. He simply cries out.

Many have been taught they must sound a certain way before God will hear them. We imagine prayer has to be composed, measured, and complete; perhaps even prayed in King James English. But Psalm 130 tells the truth. Real prayer often begins before our thoughts are organized. It begins with desperation. It begins with tears. It begins with a single sentence repeated in faith: Lord, hear me.

John Wesley understood that grace does not begin when we have mastered ourselves. It begins when we come honestly before God.3 He expected Christians to practice self-examination, confession, and accountability, not to crush the soul, but to clear away illusion. Grace works in truth. The heart cannot be healed while it is hiding. That is why this Psalm is such a faithful Lenten text. It permits honesty. It reminds us that God is not waiting for a performance. God is listening for the cry of the heart. God is waiting for your soul to wait for Him and to stop chasing something else to lift you from the depths.

Paul says something related in Romans 6. He writes, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?”4 His language is stark because sin is not merely a bad habit or an occasional mistake. It is a power that entangles, distorts, and leads toward death. Left to ourselves, we do not drift toward freedom. We drift deeper into what binds us because it is not in our nature to let our souls wait on God.

And yet the psalmist cries out. That is the first act of faith. He cries because he believes there is a God who hears. He cries because he knows that even at the bottom of the depths, God is present. There are seasons when all a person can do is look up and cry. Not solve the problem. Not explain the sorrow. Not see the way forward. Just cry out. Scripture does not despise that kind of prayer. Scripture honors it. Psalm 130 says that the road back to hope begins here, with a voice lifted from the deep.

Some people arrive on Sunday carrying burdens they have not named to anyone. Some sit in the pews looking composed, while inwardly they are struggling to keep their heads above water. Some are weary in body. Some are weary in conscience. Some are tired of pretending to be stronger than they are. To all of that, Psalm 130 says, “cry out.” Don’t run to chase a false solution. Don’t seek a temporary high. Cry out to God because the Lord is merciful. You don’t have to say anything. God does not require eloquence. The cry from the depths is the beginning of faith. It is faith in its purest form.

Next, we encounter The Gift of Forgiveness

Then the Psalm reminds us that we are not calling out from the deep just because we feel lost, but because we are lost and we need a Savior. He says, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.”

Here, the psalmist moves beyond trouble in general and speaks directly about sin. The depths are not always caused by our own wrongdoing, but sometimes they are. Sometimes what weighs us down is not only pain from the outside, but guilt from within. We know what we have done. We know where we have failed. We know the words we cannot take back, the duties we neglected, the habits we excused, the mercies we resisted.

The psalmist does not argue with God about this. He does not say, “I’m a good person.” Or, “I am mostly innocent.” He says, if you kept a full account, who could stand? That question answers itself. No one could.

This is where Christian faith must be clear. We cannot understand grace unless we are honest about sin. Wesley never softened that truth. He preached repentance because he knew the human heart needed rescue. But he also refused to let sin have the last word. 5 Grace comes before our response, not after it. Prevenient grace is God moving toward us before we know how to move toward God. Before confession is complete, grace is already at work. Before the sinner finds the way home, the Father is already watching the road.6

That is the turning point in Psalm 130. “But there is forgiveness with you.”

That one line changes the whole tone of the psalm. The depths are still real. The guilt is still acknowledged. But now the character of God stands at the center. The psalmist’s future does not rest on his innocence. It rests on divine mercy.

God does not forgive reluctantly. God forgives because mercy belongs to God’s own nature. He is not surprised by our need. He is not disgusted by the penitent heart. He does not wait for us to repair ourselves before he receives us. He forgives.

And this forgiveness does not overlook sin. Romans 6 reminds us that Jesus Christ does more than excuse us. Christ frees us. Paul says that those who have been set free from sin become servants of righteousness and, ultimately, servants of God.7 That means forgiveness is not only release from guilt. It is the beginning of a new life. In Wesleyan language, forgiveness opens into sanctification, the ongoing work by which grace restores the image of God in us.8

So when the church speaks of forgiveness, we are not speaking of a spiritual eraser. We are speaking of a gift that changes a person. We are speaking of a pardon that becomes a transformation. We are speaking of grace that not only lifts us from the pit but teaches us to walk in newness of life.

That is why the psalm says, “there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.” Forgiveness does not make God less holy in our eyes. It makes him more wonderful. It does not lead to carelessness. It leads to reverence. When a person knows he has been spared, restored, and welcomed, gratitude deepens into worship.

Many people carry guilt for years because they cannot imagine grace being large enough to hold the truth about them. They believe forgiveness might apply to others, but not to them. Psalm 130 answers that fear directly. The question is not whether sin is serious. It is. The question is whether God is merciful. He is.

And because he is, no one here needs to stay where shame has kept them. Confession is not the doorway to rejection. In Christ, it is the doorway to mercy.

Finally, Hope That Waits for Dawn

After the cry and after the confession, the psalm gives us one more word: waiting. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”

This is one of the most beautiful images in all the Psalms. The psalmist is not pretending the night has already passed. He is still waiting. He is still in that place between prayer and fulfillment, between confession and complete restoration, between darkness and dawn. But his waiting has changed. It is no longer empty. It is anchored in hope.

The Hebrew word behind that hope is yachal, which means more than wishful thinking. It is a waiting marked by expectancy, a confidence grounded not in circumstances but in the character and promise of God.9 The psalmist is not crossing his fingers. He is leaning his whole soul toward the Lord.

That is a hard word for us, because we do not like to wait. We want healing now, peace now, resolution now. When answers are delayed, we often assume silence means absence. But Scripture teaches otherwise. There is a kind of waiting that is itself an act of trust.

The watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem knew the night could be long. Their task was not to manufacture the morning, only to watch for it.10 They did not create the dawn, but they lived in expectation of it. That is the image the psalmist chooses. He says, in effect, my soul stands at attention for God that way.

This kind of waiting is essential to the life of faith. Forgiveness may be immediate, but restoration often unfolds over time. The soul that has cried out and received mercy still has to learn how to live in hope. Old wounds heal slowly. Habits lose their grip gradually. Communities are renewed by patient grace. Holiness is not instant maturity. It is the long obedience of a heart shaped by love.

That, too, is deeply Wesleyan. Sanctification is not stagnation, but it is rarely hurried. God works in people and among people patiently, faithfully, and thoroughly. Grace awakens, justifies, and then continues its work, drawing us toward holy love.11

And this hope does not rest on our endurance alone. The psalm ends by widening the promise from the individual to the whole people of God: “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.”

Here we come to one of the richest words in the Old Testament: hesed.12 Often translated “steadfast love,” it means the covenant love of God, faithful, committed, and enduring. Hesed is love that does not walk away. It is love that keeps covenant. It is love that remains when our strength does not. The psalmist’s hope is secure because the God he waits for is a God of hesed.

That is why we can hope, and why we must help others hope. None of us lives the Christian life alone. There are times when one believer waits for the morning on behalf of another. There are seasons when the church becomes the keeper of hope for those who cannot yet see light for themselves. We pray for one another, bear one another’s burdens, and remind one another who God is.

And who God is has not changed. With the Lord there is steadfast love. With the Lord, there is power to redeem. With the Lord, there is more mercy than sin, more grace than shame, more future than fear.

Conclusion

So, where does this leave us on this Sunday in Lent? It leaves us with an invitation. If you are in the depths today, cry out to the Lord. Do not wait until your prayer sounds better. Do not wait until your life looks cleaner. Do not wait until you can explain everything. Cry out from where you are. The God of Psalm 130 hears prayers that rise from deep water.

If what weighs on you is guilt, hear the center of the psalm again: “But there is forgiveness with you.” Not an excuse. Not denial. Forgiveness. Real mercy for real sin. In Jesus Christ, pardon is offered, and new life is opened before us.

If you are in a season of waiting, do not mistake waiting for abandonment. Hope in the Lord. Watch for the morning. Trust the God whose hesed does not fail and whose grace continues its work even in the dark.

And if today is not a day of depths for you, then remember that someone near you may be there. Be gentle. Be patient. Be a witness to hope. Stand watch with the weary. Pray with the broken. Remind one another that God’s redeeming love is deeper than the pit and stronger than the night.

My calling, and the calling of the church, is to connect people with God through Jesus Christ, the One who meets sinners with mercy, the wounded with compassion, and the waiting with hope. The Lord does not abandon his people in the deep. He comes near. He forgives. He redeems. He sanctifies. He leads us, step by step, toward life.

So hold on to this today: the depths are not the end of your story. They may be the place where your truest prayer begins. They may be the place where grace becomes unmistakable. They may be the place where, at last, you learn that your hope was never in yourself to begin with.

Let us cry out without shame. Let us receive forgiveness with reverence. Let us wait with hope in the steadfast love of God. When our souls wait for God, God will be faithful to pull us from the depths.

Footnotes

1. The Psalms of Ascents, Psalms 120–134, were associated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem. See Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger Jr., Psalms (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014), 553.

2. John Goldingay notes that maʿămaqqîm evokes the deep and dangerous waters associated with chaos and helplessness. See John Goldingay, Psalms, Volume 3: Psalms 90–150 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 523.

3. Wesley’s understanding of confession and self-examination appears clearly in the structure and purpose of the Methodist societies. See John Wesley, “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies,” in The Works of John Wesley, edited by Rupert E. Davies, vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 67–73.

4. Rom. 6.16 NRSV. All Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

5. Wesley’s preaching consistently joined repentance and grace, refusing both moral indifference and despair. See Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 211–38.

6. On prevenient grace as God’s prior action that enables human response, see Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood, 1994), 83–93.

7. Rom. 6.18, 22.

8. Wesley’s account of sanctification describes grace as restorative and transformative, not merely forensic. See Collins 211–38.

9. The Hebrew verb yachal carries the sense of hopeful waiting grounded in trust. See Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907), 403.

10. The image of watchmen waiting for morning reflects disciplined, alert expectation. See Tremper Longman III, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014), 450.

11. On holy love and the shape of sanctification in Wesleyan theology, see Collins 211–38; John Wesley, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” in The Works of John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 153–69.

12. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld describes hesed as covenant loyalty, steadfast and enduring love. See Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible: A New Inquiry (Missoula: Scholars, 1978), 233.

Works Cited

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Clarendon Press, 1907.

Brueggemann, Walter, and William H. Bellinger Jr. Psalms. Cambridge UP, 2014.

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Abingdon Press, 2007.

Goldingay, John. Psalms, Volume 3: Psalms 90–150. Baker Academic, 2008.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. National Council of Churches of Christ, 1989.

Longman, Tremper, III. Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary. IVP Academic, 2014.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Kingswood Books, 1994.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob. The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible: A New Inquiry. Scholars Press, 1978.

Wesley, John. “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies.” The Works of John Wesley, edited by Rupert E. Davies, vol. 9, Abingdon Press, 1989, pp. 67–73.

---. “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” The Works of John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler, vol. 2, Abingdon Press, 1985, pp. 153–69.

The Shepherd Still Leads 3-15-26

1st Reading: Ephesians 5:1–14  |  2nd Reading: Psalm 23

Video: https://youtu.be/vx9wcCQuIpk?si=KqmF69yzYyhwGoFn 

Theme: God’s presence comforts us through every valley;

His goodness follows us all the days of our lives.

When was the last time you felt like you were walking through a valley? Not a metaphorical one but a real, bone-deep, heavy-in-your-chest kind of valley? Maybe it’s been recently. Maybe you’re in one right now. Maybe someone you love is. If so, I want you to know you are in exactly the right place today, and I want you to lean in, because the Word of God has something powerful to say to you this morning.

We are four Sundays into Lent. We have been walking a road of honesty, reflection, and repentance. Two weeks ago, we discussed creating in us a clean heart. Last week, we anchored our hope in God’s steadfast love. Today, on this Fourth Sunday in Lent, we arrive at one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture: Psalm 23.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. “I’ve heard Psalm 23 a hundred times. I memorized it in Vacation Bible School. I’ve heard it read at funerals. I know it.” And maybe you do. But I want to suggest that there is a difference between knowing Psalm 23 and living Psalm 23. There’s a difference between reciting it in a pew and clinging to it in the valley.

I. The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23:1–3)

The very first line of Psalm 23 is a declaration, not a question, not a request, not a maybe. David writes, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Full stop. That is a statement of identity. That is a statement of relationship. And notice it is personal. Not “the Lord is a shepherd.” Not “the Lord is our shepherd.” The Lord is MY shepherd.

Now, David knew what it meant to be a shepherd. He spent his early years in the fields, watching over sheep. He knew that sheep are not the most capable animals. They wander. They get stuck. They fall into ditches. They panic. They need constant care and guidance. And yet the shepherd goes after every single one. The shepherd knows each one by name. The shepherd provides green pastures, still waters, and safe paths.

That’s the image David uses for God. And that’s who God is for you and me today. 

In our first reading this morning, Paul writes to the church at Ephesus: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” That word “beloved” is the key. You are a beloved child. Not a tolerated one. Not a barely-accepted one. Beloved. And if you are beloved, then you have a Shepherd who knows you deeply, loves you completely, and is actively at work in your life; even when you can’t see it.

The Wesleyan tradition has always taught that grace is not something you earn or achieve. It is something you receive. John Wesley called it prevenient grace, the grace that goes before us, that draws us toward God before we even know to look for Him. The Lord is already your shepherd before you ever decide to follow. He was already leading before you knew you were lost. That is remarkable.

II. The Rod: Keeping Danger Away (Psalm 23:4)

Hold the staff upright, showing the straight end, the rod side.

Now here’s where it gets real. Psalm 23 doesn’t say, “The Lord is my shepherd, therefore I will never walk through dark valleys.” It doesn’t promise that following God means a life without pain. What it says is, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

In the ancient world, a shepherd carried two tools. The rod was a weapon. Shepherds used it to fight off wolves, lions, and bears. When a predator came for the flock, the shepherd did not run. He stood between the danger and the sheep and drove that threat away. David himself described fighting off a lion and a bear to protect his father’s sheep. He knew what the rod was for.

Think about what that means for you and me. The threats that come for us: fear, addiction, despair, the voice that says you are too far gone for grace, the enemy of your soul who whispers that God has forgotten you, your Shepherd does not stand back and watch. He steps between you and the danger. He drives it away. The rod is not a symbol of punishment. It is a symbol of protection.

Ephesians 5 tells us that we were once in darkness, but now we are light in the Lord. That transition from darkness to light required someone to fight for us. And that someone is Jesus Christ, who on the cross drove away the ultimate predator: sin and death. The rod of the Good Shepherd swung in our defense at Calvary. That is why we do not have to be afraid.

III. The Staff: Pulling the Wandering Sheep Back (Psalm 23:4)

Flip the staff to show the curved crook end.

Now look at the other end of this staff. That crook, that curve at the top, is the staff. And the staff served a completely different purpose. Where the rod kept danger away from the sheep, the staff kept the sheep from danger. When a lamb wandered too close to a cliff, when a sheep got its wool caught in a thornbush, when one of the flock slipped down a rocky slope, the shepherd reached out with that crook, hooked it around the sheep’s neck or chest, and pulled it back to safety.

I think many of us know what it feels like to need the staff more than the rod. We have not been attacked from the outside so much as we have wandered away on our own. Little by little. One choice at a time. One small drift that turned into a long distance from the flock and from the Shepherd.

Maybe it was grief that made you pull back from the church. Maybe it was disappointment with God, with people who claimed to represent Him, with a prayer that felt unanswered. Maybe it was just the slow drift of a busy life, where Sundays got traded for other things until God moved to the periphery of your week. If that’s you, I want you to hear this: the Shepherd has been reaching after you with that staff. That nudge you felt. That moment when a song came on and your eyes filled with tears and you didn’t know why. That conversation went somewhere unexpected. That was the crook of the staff. That was the Shepherd pulling you back.

Wesley spoke often about what he called “scriptural holiness.” Not withdrawal from the world, but wholehearted love of God and neighbor, obedience born from grace rather than fear. The staff of the Shepherd is grace: pursuing, persistent, patient. Not yanking us harshly, but firmly redirecting us toward the path of life.

Hold the staff horizontally between both hands for a moment.

Rod and staff. Protection and redirection. God fighting for you and God guiding you. Both are acts of love. Both are the work of the Good Shepherd.

IV. He Prepares a Table (Psalm 23:5)

Let’s look at verse five, because I think we often rush past it. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Now this is a fascinating image. In the ancient world, to share a meal with someone was to honor them, to protect them, to claim them as your own. If you sat at someone’s table, you were under their protection.

And here, God prepares a table right in the middle of enemy territory. Not after the battle is over. Not once the danger has passed. He sets a table in the presence of your enemies. That means God is not waiting for your circumstances to improve before He shows up. He is present in the middle of the hard stuff. He is feeding you, strengthening you, anointing your head with oil, which was a gesture of welcome, of honor, of blessing right there in the thick of it.

That is the kind of God we serve. Not a God who says, “Come back when things settle down.” A God who says, “Sit down. I’ve got something for you right now, right here, in the middle of your struggle.”

Friends, that’s why we gather around this table on the first Sunday of each month. That’s why communion matters. Because at the table of Christ, we are reminded that we are fed, we are sustained, we are beloved even in the middle of our valleys, our doubts, our failures, our fears. The table is not just a religious ritual. It is a declaration of God’s presence and provision in our lives.

And here is the progressive, grace-filled truth at the heart of Wesleyan theology: that table is open. John Wesley served communion in fields, in barns, to people who didn’t have fancy clothes or polished theology. The table of God is not for the perfect. It is for the hungry. If you are hungry for God today, there is a place set for you.

V. Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me (Psalm 23:6)

The Psalm closes with one of the most beautiful promises in all of Scripture. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

I want to camp here for a moment. The word “follow” in Hebrew is rāḏap̄ (raw-daf).  It means to chase, to pursue, to secure. Goodness and mercy are not lazily trailing behind you. They are in hot pursuit. 

They are chasing you down. On your good days and your bad days. On the days you feel close to God, and the days you feel like you’ve wandered a thousand miles. Goodness and mercy are coming after you.

Now read that alongside Ephesians 5:8, “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” This is what it means to live as God’s people. We have been pursued by goodness and mercy. We have been called out of darkness into light. And because that is true, because God’s grace has found us, we live differently. We love differently. We treat people differently. We approach our valleys differently.

Paul tells us to “walk as children of light” and to “expose the unfruitful works of darkness.” That’s not about being morally superior or judgmental. In the Wesleyan tradition, we understand sanctification; that ongoing process of being made holy, as participating with God in becoming more loving, more just, more compassionate, more Christlike. It is not about perfection. It is about direction. It is about walking toward the light, even on the days when the valley feels dark.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent has traditionally been called Laetare (Leh-TAH-Ray) Sunday, a day of rejoicing in the middle of the Lenten journey. Because even in the season of fasting and reflection and repentance, there is joy. Because we already know how the story ends. We are walking toward Easter. We are walking toward the empty tomb. We are walking toward resurrection. And that changes how we walk through every valley in between.

Conclusion: The Shepherd Is Still Leading

Psalm 23 is not just a poem for funerals. It is a map for living. It is a reminder, especially on the difficult days, of who God is and who we are to Him.

You are God’s beloved. You are God’s sheep. God knows your name. God knows your valley. God knows what you are walking through right now. And God has not left you.

I think about the times I’ve been on the river kayaking, paddling through sections where you can’t always see what’s around the bend. You just have to trust the current, trust your paddle, trust your training, and keep moving forward. Life is a lot like that. We can’t always see what’s coming. We can’t always see the end of the valley. But the Shepherd can. And He is out front, leading the way.

Hold the shepherd’s staff up one final time.

This staff tells the whole story. The rod, fighting for you. The crook, reaching for you. Both ends of this tool express the same love. The Good Shepherd wields them both on your behalf, every single day.

The Shepherd still leads. Through grief and uncertainty. Through political upheaval and personal failure. Through the quiet moments of ordinary life. Through every valley you will ever face. He is there. His rod and staff comfort you. His table is prepared for you. His goodness and mercy are chasing you down.

And all the days of your life. Not just the good ones, not just the easy ones. All the days of your life, you will dwell in the house of the Lord.

That is not wishful thinking. That is the promise of God.

If you desire to give your life fully to Christ, to trust Him as Savior and follow Him as Lord, today is the day. If you wish to join Pleasant View United Methodist Church by profession of faith, by transfer of membership, or by affiliate membership, the invitation is open.

The Shepherd is calling. Come.

Let us pray. Lord God, our Good Shepherd. Thank you for not leaving us in the valley. Thank you for your rod that fights for us and your staff that reaches for us. Thank you that your goodness and mercy relentlessly pursue us. On this Lenten journey, remind us that we are walking toward light, toward resurrection, toward you. Lead us today and all the days of our lives, through Jesus Christ, our Shepherd and Savior. Amen.

Reflection Questions for the Week

1. Where is the “valley” in your life right now? How do you sense God’s presence with you in it?

2. The rod protects you from outside threats; the staff redirects you when you wander. Which do you need most from the Shepherd right now?

Works Cited

Craigie, Peter C. Psalms 1–50. Word Biblical Commentary. Word Books, 1983.

Keller, W. Phillip. A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. Zondervan, 1970.

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Abingdon Press, 1994.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. National Council of Churches, 1989.

Wesley, John. “On Working Out Our Own Salvation.” Sermon 85 in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 3. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986, 199–209.

Wesley, John. “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” Sermon 43 in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985, 153–169.

Wesley, John. The Journal of John Wesley. Wesleyan Methodist Book Room.

White, James F. Introduction to Christian Worship. Abingdon Press, 2000.

The Heart of Worship 3-8-26

A Sermon on Psalm 95, Romans 5:1–11, and John 4:5–42

Video: https://youtu.be/0y6fcnGolBY?si=Zx-ykFEImDXqQRAw

A pastor was visiting one of his longtime members; a sweet older lady who'd been attending the same church for sixty years. He asked her, "What's your favorite part of the worship service?" She thought about it a minute and said, "Well Pastor, I love the singing." He smiled. "That's wonderful!" "And I love the Scripture reading." "Excellent!" "But honestly," she said, leaning in a little, "my very favorite part... is when you say 'Amen' at the end." The pastor laughed. "Well," he said, "I'll take it. At least you're paying attention to something I say." She patted his hand and smiled. "Honey, I always pay attention. Right up until the moment you start." [Pause.] I want to earn your attention today; because what we have in front of us from Psalm 95 is one of the most honest, direct, and personally challenging songs in all of Scripture. It is not a comfortable psalm. But it is a life-changing one. Let's pray.

I. The Invitation to Sing (Psalm 95:1–5)

Psalm 95 is a song that moves. It begins with joy and ends with warning. It starts in celebration and ends in confrontation. It lifts our hands and then searches our hearts.

The psalmist writes, "O come, let us sing to the LORD;  let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;  let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!"

This psalm was likely used in temple worship in Jerusalem. Pilgrims would gather, perhaps at a festival like Sukkot or Passover, and this call would ring out across the courtyards: Come! Sing! Shout! Give thanks! Worship in ancient Israel was not passive. It was not politely muted behind a bulletin. It was embodied. It was communal. It was loud.

I think about the energy of those gatherings. Picture thousands of pilgrims who had walked days; some from Galilee, some from the Jordan Valley; converging on Jerusalem. They were tired. Their sandals were worn. But when that call went out to sing, something stirred. Because worship begins not with how you feel when you walk in the door. It begins with who you are walking toward.

Notice the language: "the rock of our salvation." In the wilderness, rock meant stability, refuge, and life; because water flowed from rock. God was dependable when everything else shifted. Sand blows away. Rock holds.

And then verse 4 opens up something beautiful: "In his hand are the depths of the earth;  the heights of the mountains are his also." From the deepest ocean trench to the tallest summit; from things we've mapped to things we haven't yet reached; all of it is held in God's hand. You are held in that same hand.

During Lent, we sometimes think worship must be quiet, somber, subdued. And yes, Lent is a season of reflection and penitence. But Psalm 95 reminds us that repentance and rejoicing are not opposites. In fact, Romans 5; our New Testament reading today; tells us: "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ… and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God."

We worship joyfully because we have peace with God. That peace was not cheap. It cost everything at the cross. But it was freely given. And when you truly receive that; when it moves from head to heart; gratitude becomes praise.

John Wesley believed that assurance; knowing we are forgiven, knowing the grace of God is real in our lives; is central to authentic faith. Joy in worship is not emotional hype. It is not manufactured enthusiasm. It is the fruit of grace received. In Wesleyan theology, prevenient grace has already been working on us before we even knew to look for God. Justifying grace reconciles us to the Father. And sanctifying grace; ongoing, transforming, and relentless; continues shaping us into the likeness of Christ. When we truly know we are forgiven, when we have felt the warmth of that grace, gratitude becomes praise.

So worship begins with remembering who God is: Our Maker. Our Shepherd. Our Rock. It begins with gratitude that overflows into song. But Psalm 95 does not end there.

II. The Invitation to Bow (Psalm 95:6–7a)

The tone shifts in verse 6: "O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!"

Singing turns into kneeling. The Hebrew word for worship here; shachah; literally means to bow low, to prostrate oneself. This is not a polite head nod. This is full-body surrender. True worship bends us. It humbles us.

The psalm continues: "For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." This shepherd imagery echoes throughout Scripture; most famously in Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd." A shepherd leads, protects, and corrects. Sheep are dependent creatures. They require guidance. They get into trouble when they wander from the flock and from the shepherd.

I want to pause here because I think we sometimes resist this image. We are an independent-minded people. Nobody wants to be called a sheep. In our culture, "following the flock" is an insult. We celebrate the lone wolf, the maverick, the one who goes their own way.

But the psalmist offers this image not as an insult; it is an invitation. You are not alone in a dangerous wilderness. You have a Shepherd. You have someone who knows your name, who counts the flock, who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. Dependence on God is not weakness. It is wisdom.

Here is the movement: worship is not merely celebration. It is surrender. In Romans 5, Paul tells us that "suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope." That formation does not happen in a shallow faith. It does not happen in a faith that only celebrates and never bows. It happens when we trust the Shepherd enough to follow Him through valleys as well as green pastures.

Wesley spoke often of "scriptural holiness." Holiness is not withdrawal from the world. It is not a life of avoiding everything fun. It is wholehearted love of God and neighbor. It is obedience born from grace; not fear-based compliance, but love-based response. Worship that does not shape obedience is incomplete. You can clap your hands and still hold a grudge. You can sing about grace and still refuse to extend it.

Consider Jesus's encounter at the well in John 4; our Gospel passage this morning.

He meets a Samaritan woman at midday; the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong person by every social standard of the day. She had been coming to this well for years. Routine. Familiar. Safe, even in its loneliness. But when she meets Jesus, the conversation moves somewhere unexpected; from "Give me a drink" to "Are you the Messiah?" She goes from drawing water to drawing people. She bows to the truth. She surrenders to encounter.

The psalmist is pressing us deeper: Do you merely sing, or do you bow? Do you come to worship to feel good; or to be changed? There is a difference. And the psalm is not done pressing.

III. The Invitation to Listen; and the Warning (Psalm 95:7b–11)

Then comes the strongest word of all: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness…"

This references Exodus 17, when Israel tested the Lord; complaining and doubting despite witnessing miracle after miracle. They had seen the plagues. They had crossed the sea on dry ground. They had watched water turn to blood and bread fall from heaven. And still; they hardened their hearts. "Is the LORD among us or not?" they asked. That is the question of a hardened heart.

Psalm 95 is quoted again in Hebrews 3 and 4 as a warning to the early church: do not miss God because of unbelief. The same people who had witnessed Christ, who had heard the gospel proclaimed; they were in danger of drifting. Not because of dramatic apostasy. But because of slow, creeping hardness of heart.

Notice the urgency: Today. Not yesterday; you cannot go back. Not someday; you may not get there. Today. The word lands like a gavel. Now is the moment of responsiveness.

This is what makes the psalm so uncomfortably personal. You can sing every hymn in the United Methodist Hymnal and still harden your heart. You can attend every Sunday; Christmas and Easter and every ordinary Sunday in between; and still resist the Spirit's prompting. You can celebrate grace and refuse transformation.

Wesley feared nothing more than what he called "almost Christians"; those who have the form of religion but resist its inward power. Almost Christians pray. They attend. They give. But they draw a line; right around the heart. Right at the point where transformation would require something costly: forgiving the person who hurt them, releasing the control they've gripped so tightly, stepping into a calling that feels too big.

Heart hardening rarely happens all at once. It is a series of small refusals. The nudge you ignored. The prompting you dismissed. The person God put in your path and you looked away. The word of grace that came to you and you said, "not yet." Layer by layer, the heart grows calloused.

But here is the good news: the same God who warns is the God who heals. Romans 5:5 tells us that "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit." God does not harden hearts; God softens them. The warning in Psalm 95 is not condemnation. It is an invitation wrapped in urgency: Your heart does not have to stay hard. Today you can receive grace.

Lent confronts us with this question: Is our worship actually shaping our hearts? Are we being formed, or are we simply filling a seat?

IV. The Response: From Singing to Surrender

There is a hymn that captures this movement from celebration to surrender, from song to obedience. Frances Ridley Havergal wrote it in 1874, after a night of prayer in which she yielded every part of herself to God. She was so moved that she stayed up writing. These words came:

Take My Life and Let It Be

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee; 

Take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love; 

Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King; 

Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold; 

Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will, and make it Thine;  it shall be no longer mine; 

Take my heart, it is Thine own;  it shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure-store; 

Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

Notice what Havergal does. She starts with hands and feet; the external, visible parts of life. But she moves inward. Voice. Lips. Silver and gold; meaning finances, security, the things we cling to. Intellect; meaning we don't just believe in our heads, we yield even our thoughts. And then the deepest surrender: will. Heart. Love. Self.

That is the movement of Psalm 95. Sing first; celebrate who God is. Bow second; surrender who you are. Listen third; let God speak into the places you've been protecting. And respond today; before your heart grows any harder.

Psalm 95 ends with sobering words: "They shall not enter my rest." Rest is not merely heaven someday. In Hebrews, rest is the settled life of trust in God; right now, in this life. It is freedom from striving. It is peace in obedience. It is the life the Samaritan woman discovered when she left her water jar and ran to tell her neighbors. She had found her rest. Not in a different situation; but in a transformed heart.

V. The Invitation Is Open; Today

God is still speaking. Today.

He speaks when you open your Bible at the kitchen table in the quiet of early morning. He speaks when you choose to forgive someone who hurt you; not because they asked for it, but because grace has been poured into you. He speaks when you choose generosity over fear. He speaks when you kneel in prayer not because you are performing religion, but because you genuinely need Him.

He speaks in ordinary moments: at the dinner table, on a drive to work, in a conversation you didn't expect to go deep. He speaks in the prompting you feel to check on a neighbor. In the discomfort you sense when your life doesn't line up with what you say you believe. That is not guilt; that is grace. That is the Shepherd calling the sheep.

The heart of worship listens. And obeying what you hear; that is worship too. Calling your dad. Being patient with your kids. Telling the truth when a lie would be easier. Showing up for someone who can't do anything for you in return.

As we continue this Lenten journey, let us move:

From singing to surrender.

From gratitude to obedience.

From routine to transformation.

If you are here today and your heart has grown hard; through loss, through disappointment, through years of going through the motions; today is the day to receive grace.

If you have been attending but not yielding, today is the day.

If you have been singing but not listening, today is the day.

Come. Bow. Listen. Respond.

If you desire to give your life fully to Christ; to trust Him as Savior and follow Him as Lord; today is the day. If you wish to join Pleasant View United Methodist Church by profession of faith, by transfer of membership, or by affiliate membership, the invitation is open.

Let us not harden our hearts. Let us worship with our whole lives. Amen.

Works Cited

Havergal, Frances Ridley. "Take My Life and Let It Be." 1874. Public domain. In The United Methodist Hymnal. Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989, no. 399.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989.

Long, Thomas G. Hebrews. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997.

Mays, James L. Psalms. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994.

Outler, Albert C., ed. John Wesley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Peterson, Eugene H. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002.

Wesley, John. "The Almost Christian." Sermon 2 in The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 1. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984, 131–141.

Wesley, John. "On Working Out Our Own Salvation." Sermon 85 in The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 3. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986, 199–209.

Wesley, John. "The Scripture Way of Salvation." Sermon 43 in The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 2. Edited by Albert C. Outler. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985, 153–169.

Willimon, William H. Acts. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1988.

Wright, N. T. Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Our Hope Is In Him 3-1-26

Scripture: Psalm 33:12-22

Video: https://youtu.be/0HICrlcfH5M?si=mszL0-LV8NPOM13q

This Scripture that was planned for us in advance speaks clearly regarding the events of yesterday morning when military strikes were carried out on Iran. As United Methodists, we are guided by our Social Principles, which remind us that "war is incompatible with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ."¹ We are people who believe in the Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9). We grieve the violence. We pray for the innocent. We call on all parties to choose diplomacy and dialogue over aggression. Pray for peace, advocate for peace, and live as the peacemakers God has called us to be. May God guide our world toward a hopeful future where nations and peoples can live in harmony and mutual respect.² And in that spirit, this morning's message could not be more timely, because we need to talk about where our hope actually lives.

Let me ask you something this morning. Where do you put your hope? I mean, really, when the pressure is on, when the diagnosis comes back, when the bank account is running low, when the news hits you before you've even had your first cup of coffee, where do you actually go? What do you actually lean on?

We live in a world absolutely overflowing with options for hope. We can put our hope in politicians. We can put our hope in the economy. We can put our hope in our own strength, ingenuity, and carefully laid plans. And sometimes those things come through. And sometimes, eventually, they don't. And when they don't, we're left standing there wondering what went wrong, wondering why hope let us down.

Here's the thing, though. Hope didn't fail us. We just put it in the wrong place.

This morning, we are spending time in Psalm 33, specifically verses 12-22. And the psalmist has something urgent to say to us. He's saying: I've looked around at this world, I've seen the nations rise and fall, I've seen armies march and plans collapse, I've seen the mighty brought low and the humble lifted up, and here's what I know for certain. Our hope is in Him. Our hope is in God. Not in chariots. Not in the strength of horses. Not in the size of armies. Our hope, real hope, lasting hope, unshakeable hope is in the Lord our God.

Psalm 33 says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance. From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth, he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.”³

Point One: God Sees You, And That Is Good News

The psalmist opens this section with a sweeping declaration. From heaven, the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. From his dwelling place, he watches all who live on earth. He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.

Now, your first reaction to that might be a little uncomfortable. God sees everything I do? Is He watching everything? That sounds less like good news and more like surveillance.

But think about what the alternative would be. Think about what it would mean if the God who created this universe who spoke light into existence, who breathed life into the first human being what if that God was distant? What if he was unaware? What if he created us and then turned away, checked out, left us to figure things out on our own? That would be genuinely hopeless.

But the psalmist is telling us something beautiful here. God is not distant. God is not distracted. God is not checked out. He sees. He knows. He considers. That word "considers" in Hebrew carries the weight of deliberate, careful attention.⁴ God isn't just glancing your way. He is fully present and fully aware of your circumstances, your struggles, your heartaches, and your joys.

And not just your circumstances, verse 15 says he forms the hearts of all. The God we worship didn't just make your body. He shaped your inner life. He knows you from the inside out. He understands you better than you understand yourself.⁵

I traveled to India years ago, and one of the most striking things I encountered was a deep, sincere spiritual longing in so many people. And yet so much of it was directed toward gods who were distant, gods who had to be appeased, gods who were not particularly interested in the lives of ordinary people. And my heart broke for that, because I knew a God who looks down. A God who sees. A God who considers. A God who knows your name.

Before we can trust God with anything, we have to believe that God sees us. And the psalmist says he does. He absolutely does. That is the foundation of everything. That is where hope begins. Not in the circumstances getting better, but in the certainty that the God who made you has not taken his eyes off of you, not for a single moment.

And on a weekend when we woke up to news of military strikes and the threat of widening conflict, that matters more than ever. God sees the innocent civilians in harm's way. God sees the families afraid for their loved ones. God sees the world spinning in confusion. And he has not checked out. He is still on his throne, and his eyes are still on those who put their hope in him.⁶

Point Two: Human Strength Will Always Let You Down

Now the psalmist gets very practical. Verse 16: "No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength, it cannot save."

In the ancient world, an army, horses, and chariots were the ultimate expression of power. That was the equivalent of military superiority, economic dominance, and technological advantage today. If you had a big army and a lot of horses, you were untouchable. You were secure. You were powerful.⁷ And the psalmist looks at all of that and says, "Vain. Empty. A dead end."

Now, let me be clear. The psalmist is not saying that preparation is wrong or that effort is foolish. I grew up spending summers on my grandparents' ranch in Oklahoma, and my grandfather did not just hope the cattle would feed themselves. You work. You plan. You prepare. That is wisdom.⁸

What the psalmist is saying is this: don't put your ultimate trust in your own resources. Don't make your strength the foundation of your hope. Because here's the truth about trusting in your own strength your strength has a ceiling. Your resources run out. Your plans encounter things you didn't plan for. Your army faces an enemy it cannot defeat.

I love kayaking. When I'm out on the water, I have learned sometimes the hard way that you cannot fight the current. When you paddle against a strong current with everything you've got, you exhaust yourself and you don't get anywhere. But when you learn to work with the water, to read the river, to trust the flow, suddenly you're moving. Suddenly, the journey makes sense. Trusting God instead of your own strength is something like that. You stop fighting. You work with the One who made the river.

And this is exactly what makes this morning's news so sobering. World leaders are making decisions right now based on military calculations, political positioning, and displays of strength. And the psalmist writing thousands of years ago is telling us that none of that will be enough. Nations that trust in their chariots will find their chariots insufficient. Power rooted only in human strength will eventually run out.⁹

Walter Brueggemann, one of the great Old Testament scholars of our time, writes that the psalms consistently call us to reorder our trust to stop investing our security in the things the world tells us are most powerful, and to invest instead in the covenant faithfulness of God.¹⁰ That is not naïve. That is not a weakness. That is the most radical act of faith a human being can perform.

The armies and horses of the ancient world couldn't ultimately save anyone. Neither can the modern equivalents. But that doesn't leave us hopeless because the psalmist is not finished. He is about to tell us where real hope actually lives.

Point Three: Real Hope Is Anchored In God’s Unfailing Love

Here it is. Verse 18: "But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love."

That word unfailing love in Hebrew is hesed.¹¹ And hesed is one of the most important words in the entire Old Testament. It appears over and over again and carries layers of meaning that no single English word can fully capture. It means covenant love. Loyal love. Steadfast love. Love that doesn't quit. Love that doesn't walk away when things get hard. Love that is not contingent on your performance, your worthiness, or your consistency.¹²

This is the foundation of our hope. Not our own effort. Not our own goodness. Not our own ability to hold it all together. The unfailing, covenant, steadfast love of a God who chose us and will not let us go.

And look at what that hope produces, verse 19: "to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine." These are not small promises. Deliverance from death. Sustenance in famine. Real hope, rooted in God's hesed, produces real results. It is not wishful thinking. It is not spiritual sentimentality. It is a genuine, life-sustaining, death-defying power that comes from being anchored to the living God.¹³

I think this is where so many of us quietly struggle. We believe in God. We believe God is good. But when we're honest, we're not entirely sure our situation specifically qualifies for God's intervention. We think God is big, but is he paying attention to my situation? Is my struggle significant enough? Does he really care about what I'm going through?

And the psalmist answers that with a resounding yes. The eyes of the Lord are on you. His hesed is extended toward you. You are not too small, too broken, too far gone, or too ordinary for God's attention and care.

One of the reasons I love the United Methodist tradition is that we have always emphasized the wideness of God's grace. John Wesley understood this. He preached it in open fields to coal miners and working people who had been told they didn't matter and he told them that God's love was wide enough for them. God's grace was sufficient for them. And lives were transformed.¹⁴ That's not a historical footnote. That's the truth of hesed lived out in real human lives. And it is available to every person in this room today.

Now look at verse 20: "We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield." Waiting is one of the hardest spiritual disciplines there is. We live in a culture of immediacy. We want our prayers answered by the end of business. But the psalmist says waiting is not passive. Waiting in hope is an act of faith, a declaration that says: I believe God is working even when I cannot see it. I believe his timing is better than mine. I believe the help I need will come.¹⁵

Think about the disciples between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Those three days of silence and darkness. They didn't know Sunday was coming. But Sunday came. It always comes.

And notice what the psalmist says happens even in the waiting. Verse 21: "In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name." Even in the waiting, even on a hard morning like this one, there is joy. Not manufactured happiness. Not pretending everything is fine when it isn't. But a deep, settled joy that comes from knowing who has you.¹⁶

Conclusion: Let Your Hope Rest Here

The psalmist closes with a prayer. Verse 22: "May your unfailing love rest on us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you."

That is my prayer for you today. That is my prayer for Pleasant View United Methodist Church. That is my prayer for our nation, for the Middle East, for every world leader making decisions this morning, and for every innocent person caught in the crossfire of those decisions. May your unfailing love, your hesed, rest on us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.

Not in the size of our military. Not in the strength of our economy. Not in who's in office or what the markets are doing or whether the circumstances line up the way we hoped. Our hope is in him.

And here's the beautiful thing about hope that is rooted in God's unfailing love: it cannot be taken from you. The stock market cannot take it. A diagnosis cannot take it. A broken relationship cannot take it. A missile strike cannot take it. Death itself cannot take it because the God in whom we hope has already conquered death. Easter is coming, friends. And Easter reminds us every single year that our God is more powerful than the worst thing that can happen to us.¹⁷

So here is my challenge for you this week. Identify one place in your life where you have been trusting in your own strength your own army, your own horses, and deliberately, in prayer, transfer that hope to God. Say to him: Lord, I've been white-knuckling this. I've been trying to carry this myself. And I'm tired. So I'm placing this in your hands, and my hope is in your unfailing love.

And then wait. Not passively. Not in despair. But in the active, expectant, joyful posture of someone who knows that the eyes of the Lord are on them, that his hesed is extended toward them, that he is their help and their shield.

And while you wait, pray for peace. Advocate for peace. Live as a peacemaker because the same God whose eyes are on you has his eyes on the whole world. And he is still in the business of bringing hope out of hopelessness, life out of death, and peace out of chaos.

Our hope is not in chariots. Our hope is not in horses. Our hope is not in the strength of any earthly thing.

Our hope is in him.

And he has never, not once, not ever let his people down. Let us pray.

Lord, we come to you this morning carrying the weight of a troubled world. We grieve the violence. We pray for the innocent. We intercede for the peacemakers and ask you to raise more of them. We confess that we too often trust in things that were never designed to hold the weight of our ultimate hope, and today we transfer that hope to you. Your unfailing love, your hesed, is what we stand on. You are our help. You are our shield. In you, our hearts rejoice. May your unfailing love rest on us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you. In the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace and our greatest hope, we pray. Amen.

Footnotes

¹ The United Methodist Church, The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, § 166.A (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2016). The Social Principles affirm that "war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ."

² The United Methodist Church, The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2016). See also Matthew 5:9 (NIV): "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

³ All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

⁴ John Goldingay, Psalms, Volume 1: Psalms 1–41 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 471. Goldingay notes that the Hebrew root bin carries the sense of attentive discernment, not passive observation.

⁵ Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 134. Kidner observes that God's formation of the human heart speaks to intimate, personal knowledge of every individual.

⁶ Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 37. Brueggemann argues that psalms of orientation consistently affirm God's sovereign attentiveness even in moments of national and personal crisis.

⁷ James Luther Mays, Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 151. Mays notes that horses and chariots represented the apex of ancient military technology and national security strategy.

⁸ Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 18. Peterson distinguishes between faithful preparation and misplaced ultimate trust.

⁹ N. T. Wright, The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential (New York: HarperOne, 2013), 97. Wright connects the psalmist's critique of military power to the broader biblical theology of God's kingdom superseding earthly kingdoms.

¹⁰ Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms, 41. See also Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger Jr., Psalms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 158–159.

¹¹ Willem A. VanGemeren, "Psalms," in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 276. VanGemeren provides an extensive treatment of hesed as covenantal loyalty and steadfast love.

¹² Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 115. Alter translates hesed as "steadfast kindness" and notes its irreducibility to any single English equivalent.

¹³ Mays, Psalms, 152. Mays writes that the promises of deliverance from death and sustenance in famine are not metaphorical abstractions but concrete affirmations of God's saving activity in real human circumstances.

¹⁴ John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions (1825; repr., Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011), 9–10. See also Wesley's sermon "Free Grace," in which he articulates the universal availability of God's prevenient grace to all people without exception.

¹⁵ Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 97–99. Peterson's extended reflection on waiting as an act of active faith rather than passive resignation is particularly instructive here.

¹⁶ C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), 45. Lewis argues that the joy expressed in the psalms is not circumstantial but rooted in the character and presence of God himself.

¹⁷ Wright, The Case for the Psalms, 152. Wright connects the resurrection of Jesus directly to the hope expressed throughout the psalter, arguing that Easter is the ultimate fulfillment of the psalmist's confident trust in God's power over death.

Works Cited

Alter, Robert. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.

The Bible. New International Version, Zondervan, 2011.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Augsburg Publishing House, 1984.

Brueggemann, Walter, and William H. Bellinger Jr. Psalms. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Goldingay, John. Psalms, Volume 1: Psalms 1–41. Baker Academic, 2006.

Kidner, Derek. Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1973.

Lewis, C. S. Reflections on the Psalms. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958.

Mays, James Luther. Psalms. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994.

Peterson, Eugene H. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society. InterVarsity Press, 1980.

The United Methodist Church. The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Publishing House, 2016.

The United Methodist Church. The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Publishing House, 2016.

VanGemeren, Willem A. "Psalms." The Expositor's Bible Commentary. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 5, Zondervan, 1991, pp. 1–880.

Wesley, John. Sermons on Several Occasions. Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1825. Reprinted by Hendrickson Publishers, 2011.

Wright, N. T. The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential. HarperOne, 2013.

Create In Me A Clean Heart 2-22-26

Scripture:  Psalm 51

Support Text: Romans 5:12–21

Video: https://youtu.be/YmeBEM-4FpU?si=ajkFVrER3nqHwSCQ 

The season of Lent promotes honesty and clarity. The Christmas lights are down and put away. We don’t see or smell Easter lilies yet. There are no loud trumpets. Just ashes. Silence. Reflection. Lent invites us to stop decorating, celebrating, and moving about. In these weeks, we are invited to take a long, quiet look at our own hearts. And Psalm 51 gives us the language to do exactly that.

Psalm 51 is raw. It is neither polished worship nor triumphant praise. It is a prayer by someone who knows he has blown it badly.

The superscription tells us the historical context: “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”¹

You know the story from 2 Samuel 11–12. King David, powerful, admired, “a man after God’s own heart,"² commits adultery with Bathsheba. She becomes pregnant. David arranges for her husband Uriah to be placed in the front lines of battle so he will be killed. And he is. Adultery. Deception. Murder.

For a while, David lives as if nothing happened. Until the prophet Nathan confronts him with a parable. And David finally sees himself clearly. Psalm 51 is what repentance sounds like when pride collapses. When pride finally collapses, it opens the door to true repentance. True repentance opens us to transformation. God restores joy when we surrender guilt and pride to His mercy.

Let’s walk through this Psalm together with three movements of repentance. Repentance Requires Ownership. Repentance Requires Renewal. Repentance Requires Reflection.

I. Repentance Requires Ownership

David begins. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:1).³ Notice something immediately.

He does not say, “Have mercy because I meant well,” “Have mercy because Bathsheba tempted me,” or, “Have mercy because I was stressed.”

He takes ownership and says things like, “my transgressions," “my iniquity,” and “my sin.”

Verse 3 continues, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”⁴ Repentance begins when we stop managing our image and start telling the truth. David even says in verse 4, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”⁵

While he sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, he understands something deeper: all sin is ultimately rebellion against God. As Robert Alter notes, the psalmist’s language reflects an awareness that sin is “a violation of the covenantal relationship with God.”⁶

Paul echoes this truth in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…”⁷

Sin is not just mistakes. It is not just poor judgment. It is a condition that affects us all. As N. T. Wright explains, Paul presents Adam as the representative head of humanity whose failure ushered in universal brokenness.⁸ But here’s what’s beautiful: David doesn’t hide. He says in verse 6, “You desire truth in the inward being.”⁹

God isn’t impressed with spiritual performance. He desires honesty. That’s where repentance begins. But owning our sin, by itself, doesn’t change us. It opens the door, but something deeper must happen.

II. Repentance Requires Renewal

We ask God to do what we cannot do for ourselves. I heard someone say that this sounds too simple, as though God will bring full and complete renewal the moment we ask.

Listen to what Psalm 51, verse 7 says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”¹⁰ To purge is to purify and to cleanse completely.¹¹ Have you ever burnt sugar? Or maybe you’ve cooked eggs in an iron skillet. I have done both. If you have done either or both of these things, you know that to clean either is a process. In neither case is the pan or skillet going to get clean the moment water touches the pan. They have to soak, and they have to wait. You have to clean them with patience because you don’t want to ruin the pan, or the skillet in the process. Everyone knows you don’t put soap in an iron skillet. Just water. Sometimes it works better if you put the skillet back on the fire for a bit to get the water boiling to loosen up the gunk. You also can’t leave the skillet alone afterwards. You have to make sure you don’t leave it wet. Otherwise, it will rust. It needs one more thing. Oil. Oil is used as a sign that points to God’s healing love and the action of the Holy Spirit.¹² Renewal is a process that takes time.

Hyssop was used in purification rituals, starting with the requirement of God given in Exodus 12:22 to dip the blood of a sacrificed lamb in blood, then apply it to the door of every house so the angel of death would not enter in.¹³ David is not asking for a cover-up. He is seeking true and deep renewal, as promised through God’s covenant and as accomplished through pain, blood, and even death.

Then comes David’s defining plea in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”¹⁴

The Hebrew verb bārā' (“create”) is the same word used in Genesis 1:1 to describe God’s creative act.¹⁵ It is used in Scripture exclusively of God’s creative activity. David is not asking for self-improvement. He is asking for a new creation.

True repentance is not behavior modification. It is a heart transformation. We cannot scrub our own souls clean. We cannot manufacture purity. We cannot engineer holiness.

Romans 5:15–17 reminds us that because of one man’s sin, many people fell under death and condemnation. But God’s gift in Jesus is far greater: God’s grace overflows to many, and instead of condemnation after sin, God offers justification. So if death gained power through Adam’s trespass, even more will those who receive God’s abundant grace and the gift of righteousness live in victory through Jesus Christ.¹⁶

Wright notes that Paul contrasts the “trespass” of Adam with the “free gift” of Christ, emphasizing the superabundance of grace over sin.¹⁷

David continues in Psalm 51:11, “Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.”¹⁸ His concern for losing intimacy with God is followed by a plea for a change of heart in verse 12, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”¹⁹ Joy is restored when guilt is surrendered.

William Cowper beautifully captured this cleansing grace when he wrote:

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power,

Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.”²⁰

Cowper’s hymn reflects Psalm 51’s conviction: cleansing is God’s work, not ours. But the Psalm ends with something much greater than private forgiveness.

III. Repentance Requires Reflection

Repentance transforms us into people who reflect God’s mercy. Repentance turns us outward toward God’s heart and our neighbor with mercy leading the way. Psalm 51, verse 13 says, “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.”²¹ Grace received becomes grace shared.

David continues in verse 16, “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.”²²

Ritual alone cannot repair rebellion. Alter observes that the psalmist shifts from sacrificial language to inward disposition, emphasizing interior transformation over ceremonial compliance.²³

Then comes the theological climax in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”²⁴

This is the turning point. God is not after religious performance. He is after surrendered hearts. Paul echoes this in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”²⁵

New creation. Clean heart. Restored joy. Romans 5:20 assures us, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”²⁶ Grace does not excuse sin. Grace overwhelms it. Grace transforms sinners into witnesses. Grace restores joy to weary souls. Grace turns shame into testimony.

So here are some piercing questions for us: Where do you need a clean heart? Where has pride kept you silent? Where has guilt kept you stuck? Where have you tried to manage appearances instead of surrendering to truth and seeking real change?

Psalm 51 teaches us to admit our faults. Ask God to recreate you. Receive restored joy. Reflect God’s mercy outward.

Don’t wait for Easter to experience resurrection. Resurrection and renewal can begin today. The God who created the universe can create a clean heart in you. The Christ whose obedience overcomes Adam’s failure can overcome your brokenness. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can restore your joy. True repentance opens us to transformation. God restores joy when we surrender guilt and pride to His mercy.

So pray it boldly: “Create in me a clean heart, O God. And then rise. Rise forgiven. Rise renewed. Rise restored. And go teach transgressors His ways. Go sing of deliverance. Go live as people who have been made new. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If God is calling you to make this your church home, we would be honored to welcome you today. You can join by profession of faith, saying “yes” to Jesus Christ and committing your life to him in the fellowship of this congregation. You can join by transfer of letter, bringing your membership from another church into this one. Or, if you are already a member of another church and want to worship, serve, and stay actively connected here, you can join us through affiliate membership, remaining a member of your home church while also taking your place in the life and ministry of this congregation.

And now, a second invitation; an invitation to repentance. Psalm 51 shows us that repentance is more than feeling bad; it’s letting God do deep work in us. In this season of Lent, God is calling us to repentance that requires ownership. That requires telling the truth and naming our sin without excuses. Repentance that requires renewal; asking God to do what we cannot do for ourselves, to create in us a clean heart. God is calling us to repentance that requires reflection; receiving mercy so fully that we begin to reflect God’s mercy outward, so grace received becomes grace shared.

So, come home to Christ. Come home and make this your church family. Come home to honest prayers, to ownership of reality, to renewal and to God’s reshaping grace. The altar is open.

Foototes

1. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Psalm 51 superscription.

2. Ibid., 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22.

3. Ibid., Psalm 51:1.

4. Ibid., Psalm 51:3.

5. Ibid., Psalm 51:4.

6. Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), commentary on Psalm 51.

7. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Romans 5:12

8. N. T. Wright, Romans, New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 526–32.

9. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Psalm 51:9.

10. Ibid. Psalm 51:7.

11. Blue Letter Bible, “Lexicon :: Strong’s H2398 - ḥāṭā’,” Blue Letter Bible, accessed 16 Feb. 2026, https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2398/kjv/wlc/0-1/.

12. Discipleship Ministries, “Healing Services and Prayers,” Book of Worship (The United Methodist Church, 1992), https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/book-of-worship/healing-services-and-prayers (accessed 16 Feb. 2026).

13. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Exod. 12:22.

14. Ibid., Psalm 51:10

15. Blue Letter Bible, “Lexicon :: Strong’s H1254 - bārā',” Blue Letter Bible, accessed 16 Feb. 2026, https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h1254/kjv/wlc/0-1/.

16. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Romans 5:15–17.

17. N. T. Wright, Romans, New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 526–32.

18. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Psalm 51:11.

19. Ibid., Psalm 51:12.

20. William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” in Olney Hymns (London, 1772).

21. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Psalm 51:13.

22. Ibid., Psalm 51:16.

23. Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), commentary on Psalm 51.

24. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition, Psalm 51:17.

25. Ibid., 2 Corinthians 5:17.

26. Ibid., Romans 5:20.

Works Cited

Alter, Robert. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. W.W. Norton, 2007.

Blue Letter Bible. “Lexicon :: Strong’s H1254 - bārā'.” Blue Letter Bible, n.d., https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h1254/kjv/wlc/0-1/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.

Blue Letter Bible. “Lexicon :: Strong’s H2398 - ḥāṭā’.” Blue Letter Bible, n.d., https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2398/kjv/wlc/0-1/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.

Cowper, William. “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” Olney Hymns, 1772.

Discipleship Ministries. “Healing Services and Prayers.” Book of Worship, The United Methodist Church, 1992, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/book-of-worship/healing-services-and-prayers. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.

The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition. National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989.

Wright, N. T. Romans. Vol. 10 of The New Interpreter’s Bible. Abingdon Press, 2002.

Written On My Heart 2-15-26

Scripture: Psalm 119:9-16

Video: https://youtu.be/-71hc61GB9U?si=9apl1ie1aYxYouTI 

Transfiguration Sunday 

Transfiguration Sunday is a day of glory. Jesus stands on the mountain, shining with unearthly light. Moses and Elijah appear beside him. The disciples are overwhelmed. And then the voice from heaven speaks in Luke 9:35: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

Before we rush past that moment, notice what God commands. Not, “Build something.” Not, “Explain this.” Not, “Capture the glory.” But: “Listen.”

Psalm 119 places us in that same posture—attentive, listening, receptive. It is steady, patient, repetitive. It is a long meditation on the Word of God: the laws of God, the commandments

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in Scripture, containing 176 verses. It is an acrostic poem, structured around the Hebrew alphabet, with eight verses devoted to each letter.¹ It is carefully crafted, disciplined, and deliberate. The structure itself communicates something important: life with God is not random. It is ordered around God’s Word.

This psalm was likely shaped during or after Israel’s exile; a time when the people had lost land, king, temple, and stability.² What remained was the Word, the covenant, the promise.

When everything else was stripped away, God’s Word became their anchor. Psalm 119:9–16 asks a question every generation must answer: How can we live faithfully in a complicated world? The psalmist answers simply: By living according to God’s Word. Here is what we need to hear, ingest, and live by: God’s Word cleanses us, shapes us, and guides us because it is written on our hearts. 

I. God’s Word Instructs Our Steps

“How can young people keep their way pure?” The word way refers to a path; a direction of life. In the Hebrew imagination, life is not random wandering; it is a road, and every road leads somewhere. The psalmist says that God’s Word guards that road.

In ancient Israel, Torah was not understood as a legal burden but as a covenant gift. The Law was given after deliverance; grace first, instruction second.³ The commandments are not chains; they are guardrails.

We live in a culture that resists boundaries. We are told freedom means the absence of limits. Scripture insists the opposite: true freedom is found within God’s design.

God’s Word instructs us:

• It warns us when we drift.
• It corrects us when we stray.
• It directs us when we are unsure.

But instruction alone does not change the heart. You can teach a child rules without teaching love. You can memorize Scripture without allowing it to reshape your desires.

Hebrews speaks directly to this tension. In Hebrews 4:6–7, the writer warns against hardened hearts; people who heard the Word but refused to let it penetrate them.

Hearing without surrender produces hardness. Church attendance without attentiveness produces stagnation. Bible knowledge without obedience produces pride. God does not want mere rule-followers. He wants people who walk with Him.

II. God’s Word Shapes Our Desires

The psalmist moves from obedience to delight in verse 14, “I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.” That is heart language. He does not merely tolerate God’s Word; he treasures it.

Psalm 119 repeatedly uses eight different terms for God’s instruction—law, statutes, decrees, ordinances, precepts, commandments, word, and promise.⁴ This repetition is intentional. The psalmist immerses himself in God’s revealed will until it becomes instinct.

What if Scripture were not something we visited occasionally, but something we lived inside Here is an uncomfortable question: What delights you most? Achievement? Security? Recognition? Comfort? Or does your heart truly delight in God’s ways?

Hebrews warns that resisting God’s voice hardens the heart (Heb. 4:7). Remaining receptive allows God’s Word to reshape what we love. Spiritual maturity is not measured by how much Scripture you know, but by how deeply Scripture has changed what you want.

III. God’s Word Lives and Works Within Us

The psalmist declares in verse 15, “I will meditate on your precepts.” To meditate means to rehearse, to internalize, to dwell deeply. Here Psalm 119 meets Hebrews 4:12, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword… able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

God’s Word is not passive ink. It is living, active, and surgical. It cuts—not to harm, but to heal. It exposes motives, reveals hidden pride, confronts secret compromise, and pierces the distance between what we say and who we are.

What remains hidden cannot be healed. The prophet Jeremiah anticipated this promise, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). That promise is fulfilled in Christ.

On the mountain of Transfiguration, the Word shines. The Law and the Prophets stand beside Him. And the Father says, “Listen.” Listen not only to admire, but to obey. Listen not only to hear, but to be changed.

George Herbert captured this transformation in The Elixir (1633):

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things Thee to see,

And what I do in anything

To do it as for Thee.

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.

This is the famous stone

That turneth all to gold;

For that which God doth touch and own

Cannot for less be told.

When God’s Word lives within you, even sweeping becomes sacred. Ordinary life becomes holy ground. Many Christians admire Scripture. Fewer meditate on it. Even fewer allow it to search them.

It is easy to lean on verses that confirm our biases while ignoring context. Taken literally and selectively, Scripture can be distorted. If every law is applied without context, pork and shellfish are forbidden (Lev. 11:7–12), mixed fabrics are prohibited (Exod. 23:19; Deut. 14:21), planting mixed seeds is unlawful (Lev. 19:19), and working on the Sabbath carries the death penalty (Exod. 35:2; Num. 15:32–36). Some want preaching that confronts sin unless it confronts their own.

In the Old Testament, “the word of the LORD” (dābār YHWH) refers first to God’s living speech; God revealing, commanding, promising, judging, and creating. Within Psalm 119, “your word” means God’s covenant teaching and promises: God’s revealed will meant to be internalized, not merely possessed.

When was the last time you allowed God’s Word to confront what is keeping you from God When did you last allow the Spirit to cut through your excuses? When did you last repent, not from behavior alone, but from motive?

Hebrews reminds us that the Word judges “the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” That goes deeper than actions. It reaches the reason you serve, the reason you give. Or,  don’t. Why you speak, or remain silent. God’s Word is not meant to decorate a shelf or justify comparisons. It is meant to reshape your soul.

The Invitation

• Commit to daily Scripture reading—unhurried and attentive.
• Meditate deeply. Ask, What is the context? What is this revealing in me?
• Confess quickly when the Spirit convicts.
• Delight intentionally. Train your heart to love what God loves.

Do not settle for casual Christianity. Let God’s Word pierce, cleanse, and guide. When the Word is written on your heart, your life becomes testimony—not only to holiness, but to joy.

So listen to Him. Walk in His ways. And let the Word made flesh continue His transforming work within you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Footnotes

1. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 36.

2. Ibid., 37–39.

3. N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (London: SPCK, 2004), 56.

4. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms, 38.

Works Cited

Brueggemann, Walter. The Message of the Psalms. Augsburg Publishing House, 1984.

Herbert, George. The Temple. Cambridge, 1633.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. Hebrews: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition. National Council of Churches, 1989.

Wright, N. T. Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians. SPCK, 2004.

Fearless Faith 2-8-26