Psalm 139 Where Can I Flee from Your Presence

This morning we are going to talk about some hard things, about depression and suicide. We will start and end with hope though.

This is one of my favourite psalms, a psalm of reassurance and hope. Over the years, the promise in this psalm that I never have to feel alone, no matter where I might find myself, I can be confident that Jesus is right there with me. When I was younger, that thought sometimes scared me because that meant that Jesus was also there when I was doing something that I probably shouldn’t be doing, but Psalm 139 is not meant to scare us, but to give us confidence that no matter where life takes us, “You’ll never walk alone,” as the old song by Gerry and the Pacemakers sang a lot of years ago.

Growing up, I often felt lonely. I didn’t quite fit in at school or church and only found a place where I really fit in at Air Cadets and the Naval Reserve. I was frustrated with God and the church and so I dropped out of school at 17 and went to sea. I left family, church and God behind. I wasn’t trying to flee from God so much, it was more because of my loneliness and not feeling I really belonged, even in church. Today it might be considered depression. Depression is something both my mother and grandfather wrestled with also.

Then one night I was standing watch at the stern of the ship, responsible for making sure that if someone fell overboard, I would keep an eye on them while raising the alarm so they could be saved. It was a calm evening and the night sky was filled with stars while the Northern Lights danced and it was all being reflected off the ocean. The padre wandered back to where I was and began talking with me, we had had a few conversations in the past. Then he asked when I had last gone to church and I couldn’t remember, then he asked if I still believed in God. I told him I wasn’t sure, so he told me to look at the sky and ocean and tell him that that there is no God. He said he would stand my watch for me for 15 minutes while I looked and thought.

So, I stopped and looked and wondered at the amazing sight and realized that this couldn’t have happened by accident, that there is a God. I went back to the padre told him that I do believe there’s a God and then he told me that I only have 2 choices now, either seriously follow God or continue to ignore him, there is no other choice. It was the start of my journey back to Jesus. Some of the things that went through my head are reflected in this psalm. Jesus knows me, he knows my thoughts and my heart. He knew my loneliness and frustration; there was no place I could be, even on a ship on the North Atlantic, where he didn’t know where I was.

I’ve often wondered what was going on in King David’s life that he stops and writes this song of trust and praise because he knows that no matter what’s going on, he’s not alone, that God is with there. Was it when he was hiding in the caves, running from King Saul, or maybe when his son Absalom was rebelling against him and turning the people of Israel against him, or maybe it was during the time when Bathsheba was losing her baby and David was helpless to stop the baby’s death? David went through a lot of hard times, and I’ve wondered when reading many of his psalms, if he might not have suffered from times of depression through them. The psalm ends with David cursing those who are wicked and are talking against God. Even though David often messed up, he still trusts God and keeps coming back to God. In his times of deepest grief, David turns to God for his hope, for his strength. God never gives up on David, not even darkness or night, distance or anything else stops God from being there through the Holy Spirit.

In this psalm, David marvels out loud about who God is. God knows him! God knows his thoughts and his heart, all his habits and ways of doing things, knows how David’s first focus, even though he slips time and time again, is to follow God in complete trust. For the people of Israel like King David, knowing is not about head knowledge, it’s the kind of knowing that comes from being in a relationship. It’s like when you ask a guy about a new girl that he is dating. He knows that she’s pretty, that she has a nice laugh, and brown hair. He might know the colour of her eyes, but early on in their relationship, that might be all. He knows things about her, but doesn’t really know her yet, know what makes her cry, what hurt she might have experienced in the past, her dreams for the future, what fills her with hope, how she experiences love from someone, or her relationship with Jesus. He doesn’t know her heart and soul yet, and that takes a life time to learn, ask anyone who has been married for a while.

David knows that no matter what is going on, that God’s there with him. Even when David’s doing something that goes against what God wants, even then God is there to guide him and hold him fast. God was already with David when he was in his mother’s womb, forming him just as he formed Adam out of the dirt of the ground and Eve out of the side of Adam. Let that settle in a moment, you’ve been formed by God himself. Because of sin we get twisted in all kinds of ways, but Jesus came to us, became one of us, being in a womb just like us, to let us know that we don’t have to be afraid of ever being alone because he’s giving us the Holy Spirit to live right inside of us. God in us, meaning that Jesus knows us, knows our hearts, our loves, our fears, our disappointments, our anger and passions and even our depression and hopelessness. Jesus laughs with us and he weeps with us. Jesus brings heaven close, though we don’t completely experience it yet because the effects of sin are still here with us and in us.

This week, a mega church pastor in the US took his own life. Pastor Jarrid Wilson was respected deeply for helping those who struggled with mental health issues, those who wrestled with suicidal thoughts because of hopelessness, difficult backgrounds, bullying and the stress of being a young person and adult today. Pastor Jarrid kept pointing us to Jesus, reminding us that Jesus came to us, that God keeps coming after us because he cares so much for us. Because life can be hard, because so many people struggle with loneliness, with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, we’ve been given the church so that we have people around us who care about us with the love and presence of Jesus. Being a Christian does not make you immune to depression, hopelessness, and suicide.

When this psalm speaks of enemies, today David could easily talk about those feelings and thoughts that hurt us so deeply and tempt us to try to flee from life and family and friends and even God. Ed Stetzer writes, “There is a perception, and a deeply dangerous one at that, that teaches that once we've been born again or are walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the very real challenges of depression, of psychological struggle, of spiritual difficulty, of mental illness, cease. This is a lie. And when we believe this, we make dangerous assumptions.” Often, we don’t have the strength and ability to fight these battles on our own, we need to reach out when we’re struggling, whether a suicide hot-line, a school counselor, to a friend, a parent, pastor or elder who can walk with us and pour strength and hope back into us. As a church we need to be willing to talk about hard things, provide a safe place without judgement for people to honestly and transparently share what they are going through.

Jesus has made you; you are fearfully and wonderfully made and he invites you to come to him, he knows your thoughts, your heart and he is with you always; you are not alone! We are here with you as well! On Pastor Jarrid’s website, he posted this a few days before his death, “September is #SuicidePrevention month, and we want everyone to know that #YourLifeMatters!... We want everyone to know that God loves you, life matters, and you have a purpose in this world. Hope is here!” Jesus is always reaching out to you, he is here. So, my friends, be ready to be found out by the God who seeks and searches, and don't resist. Receive God with an open heart.

Matthew 25:31-46; Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 Time

I love both these passages this morning, they both reach me in different ways, but both speak to how I see and understand the world around me. Matthew 25 reminds me of the importance of what we do and how we relate to each other and taking the time to notice the people around me and how I can be a blessing, while Ecclesiastes 3 reminds me that time is important and that our lives are made up of different seasons and times. Ecclesiastes 3 also reminds me, that even though there are so many people who don’t accept Jesus or God or have only a really loose connection to Jesus, the world still recognizes much of the beauty and wisdom in the Bible. The Byrds wrote a song called Turn, Turn, Turn, see if you recognize where the lyrics comes from. (play video)

Ecclesiastes is mostly known for telling us that everything is meaningless. The writer repeats this over and over again. It’s no different with time. Time gets its meaning from how we spend it. How many of you have felt like time gets away from you, that it seems to move too fast at times? I find when I’m online looking for something specific, that I can find myself following rabbit trails, clicking from one site to another, and then discover that an hour has slipped by. You need a healthy regular diet to be your physical best, in the same way, we’re called to use time in a healthy way to be healthy spiritually, emotionally and physically to become who God has created us to be.

There is just so much time; we all have the same amount of time each day-24 hours-so how we spend our time is important. I find it interesting that how I feel about the way my day has gone often depends on how I spent my time and whether I believe I accomplished anything of value with that time. That can be so subjective because what I consider valuable may be different from someone else.

Paraphrasing Pastor Lora Copley, “Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature that recognizes the reality and rightness of these different times. We challenge the assumption that we ought to be happy all the time, realizing if we’ve lost someone to divorce or Alzheimer’s or a miscarriage, it’s right to weep. We recognize there’s a time to scatter stones, breaking down physical and relationship walls that keep us from healthy relationships, and a time to hate the wrong and evil that’s in our world and destroys so much. Often what’s so hard in life is we don’t know which times are which. Say you have a relative who doesn’t know Jesus, when is it the time to speak or the time to be silent? Or a friend has really betrayed you, is it time to walk away from the friendship or heal it? Wisdom encourages us to recognize the importance of balance and the discernment of different times and seasons.”

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes reminds us that there’s a variety of times; a time for our families, a time to take care of our needs, a time to work hard, a time to play and rest, a time to love our families and ourselves, a time of love our neighbours and our community, and always it’s time to love God and follow his leading. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25 that we need to be aware that our time is also his time and that when we use our time to help and serve others, we are actually using our time to serve and love him. Rev. Peter Marty writes, “Our incognito Lord takes up residence in people who don't seem to count. We ought to forget all fascination with some moral virtue in the sheep and some grievous fault in the goats. The king in our story never says a word about anyone compiling an impressive moral record. The only difference between the sheep and the goats appears to be the willingness of the former to look other people in the eye and meet them in their circumstance. Faith is more than feeding and caring for others - it is believing that these other ones actually have a place in our heart.”

Jesus enters into our time to show us God’s love and call on our lives and hearts and time, not just with words, but through an outward focused, other focused life where there’s always time for someone else. Jesus was always aware of the people around him and never let time stand in the way of serving and getting to know these who came searching for him. There was Nicodemus who came in the dark of night to find food for his soul, there was Jairus’ daughter who was dying and yet when a woman who had been bleeding for years and whose only hope was Jesus touched him in a last gesture of hope, Jesus stopped and acknowledged her even though it meant Jairus’ daughter died. Even then, Jesus continued to go with Jairus and took the time to show his power over death by raising her from the dead. Jesus took time to kneel beside a woman caught in adultery and protected her from being stoned to death. He then took the time to raise her up by the hand and speak into her heart, asking her where her accusers were and then gently and firmly telling her that he also doesn’t condemn her, but to go and sin no more.

Jesus enters into time to save us from our selfish use of time that focuses on “me” rather than Jesus and other focused. Jesus spends his time with us to show us the Father, to model what a God focused life looks like, and to take our sin onto the cross, to take the punishment we earned on himself to make us right with God again, to bring healing into our relationship with God, each other, ourselves and with creation. Jesus gives us his time to transform our hearts, to help us become more like Jesus, focused on being a blessing instead of receiving blessings. Jesus shows us that there’s time for study of the Scriptures, times for prayer and solitude, times for fellowship and weddings and meals with friends, times for serving, and time to sacrifice our lives to God’s purposes. There is never a sense of time getting away from Jesus so that he runs out of time, Jesus is very conscious of how valuable his time is.

Jesus shows us in Matthew 25 what a life of blessing looks like, it looks like taking the time to bless and help those who don’t have the same blessings we do. This isn’t brand new to the people, Jesus simply reminds us that this is who God has created us to be as his people, his children. Proverbs 19:17, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Isaiah 58:6–7, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” Then there is Paul’s encouragement in Romans 2:7, “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.” To live like this, to be shaped by the Holy Spirit means that we open up the time in our lives to the moving of the Holy Spirit when it opens our eyes to see the people around us, showing us the opportunities we have to be more like Jesus in their lives.

At the beginning of a new church season, it’s a good time to stop a moment before we allow ourselves to get too busy and take stock of how we spend our time, to reflect on how much of the time we’ve been given we’re using for ourselves and how much we use to know God better, to spend time with Jesus, how much time we focus on being a blessing and to use the gifts we’ve been given to serve the church and our community. Time is both meaningless and precious, it all depends on how it’s filled. There’s a time to work, a time to study, a time to rest, a time for yourself and a time to serve others; “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens,” but we need to use the wisdom the Holy Spirit gives us to wisely to figure how to use the time God gives us.

Revelation 22:1-6 The Leaves of the Tree are for Healing

It’s Labour Day weekend, the end of summer and the end of our summer series looking at various tree images in the Bible. We’re ending it by looking at the end of the story which also brings us back to the beginning of the story. The Bible mentions trees in the very first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible and now here in the final chapter of the Bible we encounter trees again. Here we find the tree of life, the tree Adam and Eve failed to eat from in Genesis 3, choosing to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil instead. Through the Bible we find references and images of the tree of life while the tree of knowledge of good and evil is never spoken of again. Now here, when Jesus returns and brings heaven down to earth again, the tree of life is available to eat from again. It’s not just the fruit of the tree of life that’s good for eating, but the leaves are good for the healing of the nations.

In this city garden, we see how history has moved from a simple garden filled with streams flowing through it, a place where everything lived in harmony and humanity’s task was to nurture and discover the potential in creation and help creation become everything that God created it to be. Things got messed up when Adam and Eve chose to go against God’s plan in order to make themselves equal to God by eating from the one tree in the garden God had said not to eat from. The punishment for their disobedience is death and a curse placed on the ground so that life becomes filled with painful toil, with thorns and thistles and sweat and achy muscles and bones at the end of the day. We’re separated from God’s presence; no longer does he walk with us at the end of the day in the cool of the garden. But now the Apostle John shows us that with the return of Jesus, the tree of life returns and, as Robert Mounce writes, “there will be no more physical or spiritual want any longer.”

This image touches my soul because my brother Glen was born with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental retardation, among other things, when his birth mother fought against him when she began labour. Life was hard for him, he lived with pain all his life. This image in Revelation points to physical, mental and spiritual healing and renewal and I look forward to walking alongside the river under the shade of the tree of life with Glen and hearing him speak for the first time and getting to know him more deeply as my brother, learning how he experienced life here while he was with us, and then life with Jesus after Jesus took him home years ago.

There are so many people who need to hang onto this image of Jesus’ return and the promise of healing, the promise of life. There’s so much suffering in our world, so much brokenness that is put on too many people and children. I’ve walked with people who have been broken by abuse, neglect, hatred and rejection; walked with those who have inherited disease and hurt through no fault of their own and there’s no healing this side of heaven and so they hang on fiercely to this promised vision that John gives us as to what the future holds, of the healing and restoration that’s coming. Too often I can only helplessly walk alongside people, weep with them, rail at the injustice in our world, do the best we can to ease the hurt and then point to Jesus and his return. Our lives are brief in the grand scope of eternity, but that doesn’t lessen our suffering here and so we walk as best we can with compassion and grace, helping each other see Jesus and the compassion of the Father. But it also gives us a vision to work towards as we prepare for Jesus’ return.

John’s writing this revelation and vision to churches going through severe persecution. John himself is in exile on the rocky island of Patmos, writing to the churches to give them hope and help them see God’s presence; giving them the strength of knowing that Jesus is returning and bringing healing and new life through himself. We already have a taste of the new life because of Jesus’ death on the cross where he paid the penalty for our sin. We’ve received the Holy Spirit that Jesus sends after his resurrection from the grave and return to heaven. The book of Revelation is the story of the battle that Satan is fighting against Jesus, a battle that Satan lost at the cross. The tree of life points us to Jesus’ victory.

When I read this passage, I close my eyes so that I can see in my mind’s eye the picture John’s giving us here. The wide street running through the center of the city and the river of the water of life, an echo of Psalm 1, flowing beside it with the trees of life lining them both, providing shade from the sun, think of the trees on 51^st Ave, as they draw their life nourishment from the water of life flowing from the throne of God. John echoes images found in the book of the prophet Ezekiel and the Psalms. John echoes Jesus’ own words to the Samaritan woman he met at a well, where Jesus calls himself living water. He offers her new life, offering this woman who’s an outcast in her own village living water and acceptance and respect in spite of her past. Grace and salvation come from Jesus, not from what we have done, especially when our past has been filled with brokenness and hurt.

Matthew Sleeth wrote Reforesting Faith, a book that reflects on how trees in the Bible help us see and understand God more deeply He loves how John describes heaven and Jesus’ return, “Like others, I wonder what heaven will be like. On the earth most people place their best chair or couch facing the television. In heaven God’s throne faces a tree. “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” I want to get to heaven to see God. I want to meet the saints. And I want to eat the fruit of heaven.” He encourages us to have as our goal “an orchard in heaven.”

Scott Hoezee, the professor of preaching at Calvin Seminary, says this passage “Generates Hope. But true, biblical hope is no opiate, no excuse for passivity, no reason not to rage appropriately against the machinations of injustice, poverty, corruption, and violence today. Rather hope is what animates us precisely to begin leaning into and living toward exactly the vision for abundant flourishing that John sketches in his vision. Hope is what gives us the steel and the grit to soldier on for the truth, to preach the Gospel, to denounce that which Christ died to end and anything that will not have a place in the New Creation.

Hope is what got Mother Theresa to bathe the putrid flesh of lepers in Calcutta. Hope is what made Martin Luther King, Jr., and the others walk across that bridge in Selma. Hope is what let Nelson Mandela get out of bed every morning across long years of unjust imprisonment. Hope is what moves every volunteer in a soup kitchen to ladle out bowls of chicken and rice and to griddle up some toasted cheese sandwiches for the homeless. It is not the hopeless who found Hospices, establish Ebola clinics in remote parts of Africa, or stand in the breach when rival drug gangs threaten to shoot up whole neighborhoods. It is the hopeFUL who do all that precisely because they even now serve a risen Savior who also right now has all the power to accomplish what will fully come when the vision of Revelation 21-22 becomes each creature’s everyday reality.”

The tree of life reminds us that what we experience today is not the end of the story, especially when times are hard. Every time you see a tree, let it remind you that God is a God of abundance, a God of life, even when your life feels stunted and withered. When our roots are in the water of life that is Jesus, there is always hope. Let this inspire you to work to be a person who changes things, who works to be a blessing wherever you are. May those same trees also point you to Jesus again and his amazing love, a love stronger than death, stronger than evil, a love that will bring us into the presence and light of the Father one day where we will find complete healing for all our wounds in the tree of life.

Matthew 12:33-37 Make Your Tree Good

Our passage this morning is part of a bigger story where Jesus heals a man possessed by a demon and then is accused by the Pharisees of being a servant of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. This is the kind of crazy thing that you couldn’t make up; you would think that the very people who spent so much of their time studying the Jewish Scriptures would recognize that Jesus’ power doesn’t come from the prince of demons, but from God. The regular people who followed Jesus got it, they asked good questions, “Could this be the Son of David?” another way of asking, “Is Jesus the promised Messiah that God is going to send us to save his people?”

So how did the Pharisees get it so wrong even though they knew so much about who God is and how God relates to his people and all his promises to us? Jesus points to their hearts, using the image of a tree that bears fruit. Likely Jesus is teaching outside the city and is using an orchard that is right there as his example, an orchard of olive trees full of healthy olives right for the picking. The people in the crowd know how much work it takes to grow healthy trees that bear good fruit, and how easy it is to let an orchard fall apart through neglect and a lack of farming skills. Good fruit doesn’t just happen, any farmer or gardener can tell you that. Lots of work and training goes into growing good fruit.

Good fruit in our own lives doesn’t just happen, it comes out of a healthy deliberate relationship with God through Jesus. Health doesn’t come through just knowing the stories of the Bible, being able to recite the attributes of God, or being able to pass a Bible knowledge test, it comes of being connected to Jesus and getting our life from him. In John 15, Jesus talks about this, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

A fellow pastor told me he knew when he was heading to a breakdown because he stopped caring about other people. But he mentioned that it began long before that as over time he slowly became more cynical about people, looking at the negative in life rather than how God was blessing him. He began to fill his head and heart with things that focused on making him number one instead of Jesus and he stopped trusting that Jesus really cared about him or was working in him or through him. He could feel his heart and soul whither, but he didn’t pay any attention to the early signs of spiritual rot and disease slowly growing in him. The Pharisees revealed the spiritual rot in their souls by refusing to acknowledge that Jesus’ power came from God, not from demons. They rejected Jesus because his message and teaching threatened their place in the community. 

If the Pharisees couldn’t recognize that they were unhealthy and the fruit they were growing was bad, how can we know we are healthy and producing good fruit? It all begins with Jesus, with making Jesus the number one thing in our life. It’s easy to say, but much harder to live out because we are easily distracted and our hearts, as the catechism reminds us, that we have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbour and that unless we are born again, we are inclined to all evil. This is why Jesus calls us to remain in him so we can bear good fruit. Jesus has made us clean and healthy by taking our sin that makes us unhealthy to the cross where he paid the price for our disobedience by dying for us. But he was also raised from the grave so that we can experience new life in him through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

If you’re wondering how your fruit is doing, start by taking a closer look at your day to day life. What kinds of things do you regularly talk about and how do you talk about these things? How do you talk about other people, with grace and understanding, looking to build them up, or are you more negative and critical? How do you treat others, the girl pumping your cash or the guy bagging your groceries, do you even acknowledge them and thank them? How do you react to the joys and challenges in life, do you give thanks regularly to God and do you really trust him or are you regularly filled with worry and stress because all you can see is what is going wrong instead of looking for the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life? This will give you a pretty good starting point for evaluating the kind of fruit you’re growing in your life. As Jesus tells the Pharisees, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good person brings good things out of the treasury stored up in him, and an evil person brings evil things out of the treasury stored up in him.”

I came across a meme that basically said: dancers dance, musicians make music, artists create art, administrators administer, salespeople sell, farmers farm, caregivers nurture, and I would add that followers of Jesus act more and more like Jesus. For a tree to be well nourished, it needs sun, water, pruning, and fertilizer at the right times. For us to be well nourished, we need to be filled with Jesus, our hearts, souls and minds with his teaching, his life, his Spirit, allowing the Spirit and Scripture to shape our lives, our thoughts, our words and deeds. This is why over the years the church has developed the spiritual disciplines: things we do in order to allow the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus. Some of them are prayer, meditating on the Bible, tithing, acts of mercy, simplicity in life, fasting, worship and others. As John Ortberg says, “Practices such as reading Scripture and praying are important—not because they prove how spiritual we are - but because God can use them to lead us into life.”

There are things we need to prune from our lives, ways of thinking and doing in order to be healthy spiritually so we can bear good fruit for Jesus. Sometimes it means changing what we listen to, watch or do because they lead us away from Jesus instead of closer. Over time I’ve had to give up certain friends because they influenced me in unhealthy ways, feeding my cynical or sarcastic side, feeding the anger that I’ve worked so hard over the years to control. I’ve learned there are certain kinds of shows or movies I shouldn’t watch, certain music or books that feed unhealthy parts of my soul. We need to cut away some of the unhealthier and wild branches off once in a while so the stronger healthier branches can produce more fruit.

Then there are the things I’ve added into my life, times of reflection and solitude, deeper study of the Scriptures and of the world around me in order to train myself to be able to see where Jesus is at work, even when it’s not always easy to recognize. These help us to remember that Jesus has a purpose for us, as the young man in the video mentioned, one of the reasons we are here is to love; to love God, each other and our neighbours. This creates healthy lives, healthy churches and healthy communities.

One of the key things I’ve learned about being healthy and bearing good fruit is that we don’t do this alone. We’re placed in a church community to help each other grow, to offer love and to receive love. Time and again we read about encouraging each other, about building each other up, about being a blessing. We follow Jesus and worship him together, we love each other and our community together, we serve each other and our community together, we share our faith in Jesus with others. Faith is not an individual activity; we’re created to follow Jesus together and together we help each other bear good fruit.

Psalm 1 Planted by Streams of Water

I grew up in Northern Ontario, home of a million plus trees. There are big differences between trees, not just because they are different kinds of trees, say jack-pine, spruce, oak or popular trees, but differences because of where they grow and how much water they have access to. Being on the Canadian Shield, we have a lot of scrub type of trees, trees that grow in places you would never expect them to find a place to set their roots, crevices in cliff faces, narrow ledges, cracks in the shield itself, in places where the soil is only a couple of inches deep, but the one thing in common with all of them is that they aren’t able to flourish in the ways they should because of the lack of water and proper soil conditions. I grew up by a stream that flowed through the woods behind our house and the trees there were all tall and strong because of the abundance of water always available, even when the rain didn’t fall for months.

The book of Psalms is a book about wisdom, about what a well lived life looks. Wisdom is about living in good relationships with God, our community, ourselves, and with creation. It’s about being honest about life, about how it often feels unfair and confusing and yet in our confusion, anger, pain or sorrow, God wants us to keep coming to him in honesty. He’s not going to turn his back on you if you cry out in rage or fear or hurt; he wants you to know that you can be completely honest with him and you don’t have to pretend. The psalms are poetry, meant to reach our hearts even more than our heads since biblical wisdom is about how you live.

Psalm 1 starts this wisdom book by showing us what a blessed happy life looks like. The psalms will often describe the difference between a healthy wise way of living and an unhealthy way of life and Psalm 1 is no different. It begins by letting us that happiness comes from not doing certain things, by not hanging around with certain kinds of people. “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.” If you’re looking for happiness in life, for a blessed life, don’t walk with those who are wicked. This is that more casual relationship with those who worship themselves over God, who consistently turn away from God’s way and walk their own way. When you walk with someone, your conversation is often distracted by the things around you and it quickly shifts from one thing to another.

But when you hang out with people who don’t honour God, it’s not hard to get drawn deeper into a relationship with them that draws you further away from God. When you’re walking and talking and something the other person says connects with you, what often happens? You stop to go deeper into the conversation, this is what the psalmist is getting at, don’t stand in the way sinners take, don’t open yourself up to being drawn away from God and into a way of life that pulls you away from how Jesus has called you to live. This is often the time you start getting used to saying “No” to Jesus more and more often.

The next step is sitting with those who walk a different way than the Jesus way, giving them the serious time and attention that can change you. The psalmist identifies “mockers” specifically, people to take joy in knocking people down, in laughing at the morals and values of others with the intention of making them feel small while implying their view is untouchable. Mocking is meant to hurt, to belittle and dismiss people because they’re different while saying that if you feel hurt it’s because you have no sense of humour, that you’re too sensitive, placing the fault on you. Coming from a family that has raised sarcasm to an artform, I know how hurtful words can be, sorry to say.

The saddest thing is that we’re so attracted to these people, it’s like they’re able to reach into our souls and grab hold of us, tickling these places inside us that want to be in control, that don’t want to submit to Jesus or anyone. Tim Keller writes that “all sin against God is grounded in a refusal to believe that God is more dedicated to our good, and more aware of what that is, than we are… we believe that God has put us in a world of delights but has determined that he will not give them to us if we obey him. This is the lie of the serpent, the original temptation of Satan to Adam and Eve.”  

The psalmist now shares with us what a person who is feels blessed, who experiences happiness out of life is like, it’s someone “whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.” It strikes me that happiness, being blessed isn’t about what we do or accomplish, it’s not about how much we have, it’s about being well watered like the tree planted by streams of water. At first it sounds rather random, not every seed gets to land by a stream, so is our happiness based on something out of our control?

The streams mentioned here are not like Wolf Creek which meanders through our area; these are irrigation canals that are planned out and placed in such a way that all the trees in the orchard, vineyard or garden all receive generous amounts of life-giving water so that they’re constantly nourished, even during times of drought. These canals are fed by streams and rivers that flow through the area and which are diverted into the fields. The farmer works hard to make sure his trees receive everything they need to produce luscious wonderful fruit.

The farmer here is God and the streams of life-giving water is the Torah, the teachings of God. This usually referred to the first 5 books of the Bible that Moses wrote, but now can mean the entire Bible as we know it. For the Jews, God’s teaching is life giving, life changing, showing them the way to a well lived life. Jesus takes this teaching and summarizes it as loving God with everything we are and have, and loving our neighbour as ourselves. The Torah shows us who God is and who he has created us to be as his people, his children. This is why Psalm 1 tells us that we find happiness in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night because that’s how we get to know God, we get to know Jesus and ourselves.

I often talk to people who find wisdom for life, nourishment and encouragement from writers such as the Dalia Lama, Jordan Peterson, and various Christian writers and preachers, but the psalmist points us back to the Bible, to the word of God himself for these things. Along with the words of the Bible comes the Holy Spirit who gives us guidance, life, wisdom and encouragement from the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is that stream of water that nourishes us and the Spirit flows from Jesus who is the ultimate life-giving water. In Jesus we receive life through his sacrifice on the cross for our sins, we receive forgiveness and acceptance and a renewed relationship with our heavenly father. In Jesus’ resurrection, we share in the promise of eternal life. This shapes our lives as we embrace Jesus’ way of life, his teaching and example as the structure for our lives and this leads to lives lived out in gratitude and grace.

Meditating on Scripture connects us to Jesus. It’s learning to see how Jesus is present in our day to day lives and we do this through spending time regularly in the Bible and in prayer, learning to see how he’s present in our lives. It’s about learning to see God in the creation around us, being aware of how a tree by a stream of water shows us who Jesus is as the living water, how he provides by observing how the tree provides a home for different animals, food for us and other creatures, reminding us that when we are nourished through Jesus, we are also called to produce good fruit and can find rest under his shade.

Psalm 1 is about who we’re becoming, not about what we do. Meditation on God’s word shapes us into the people he has created us to be, shaped by his love, his righteousness, his mercy and justice to be a blessing wherever we are.

Genesis 2 The Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil and of Life

For the rest of the summer we’re going to be looking at trees found in the Bible. The Bible is full of trees: from the first chapter of the Bible until the very last chapter of the Bible, you find references to trees and plants and the gifts they give us. Trees are an important part of the cycle of life that God has embedded as part of creation. Trees contribute to their environment by providing oxygen, improving air quality, climate enrichment, conserving water, preserving soil, and supporting wildlife. During the process of photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide and produce the oxygen we breathe. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “One acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and puts out four tons of oxygen. This is enough to meet the annual needs of 18 people.” Trees, shrubs and turf also filter the air by removing dust and absorbing other air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. After trees capture unhealthy particles, the rain washes them to the ground.

Trees also supply us with many things that make our lives better: tree sap that can be made into glorious syrup, bark for canoes and utensils, wood for building and other purposes, fruits and nuts for food, and beauty to enjoy, among other uses. In Genesis 2, creation is completed in all its vast array, and it’s very good. Now God plants a garden in the east, in a place called Eden. It’s a garden filled with trees that are pleasing to look at and good for food. Right in the middle of the garden, where they’ll always be noticed, God plants 2 more trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. This is where God places the man, it’s the first home for humanity and humanity’s task is to take care of the garden, to discover the potential in everything and then help it all to flourish and be everything God has created it to be. We have a deep relationship with creation, having been made from dirt and then formed by God’s own hand and then being told to care for it.

We discover in the garden that we’re not meant to be alone; so, God creates a woman from the rib of the man because God saw that the man was alone and it was not good. Relationships are key to our health and our flourishing and are important to God as well. His desire is to have deep relationships with us, but he doesn’t force himself on us. God gives Adam and Eve the opportunity to choose relationship with him by commanding the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.” There’s a choice here, a test of obedience and trust, Adam and Eve are able to eat from any tree in the garden, free choice from any tree except one, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It’s so easy, and yet proves to be so hard. The tree is good, it’s designed and created just as God intended. For the Jews, knowledge is less about knowing stuff with our heads, for them, knowledge comes from experience, from doing or not doing something. It’s like teaching your children that the stove top is hot when you’re cooking, they know it because you’ve said so, but it’s only after they’ve touched the hot stove top that they really know that it’s hot when you cook. This is the kind of knowledge the Jews hear about when God calls the tree the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The choice is to trust God that knowledge of evil through having done it, is not the best kind of knowledge for us, that God’s word is good enough. Yet it’s hard because we often learn best by doing, and the reality is that because we know evil through having done evil, we recognise it quickly. We still face the same issue today. We look at who God calls us to be, the limits he places on us and we question God’s limits and commands. We’re told that if it looks good and doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s fine and don’t worry about what God says, after-all, the Bible an ancient book and doesn’t really apply today. The question is: do we trust God and put our relationship with him first, or do we satisfy our desires at the possible cost of our relationship with God? God allows us to choose.

This story is about being faithful to God. God doesn’t want a relationship based on rules and religious rituals, as God says later through the prophet Hosea, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to me there.” Just like you want your boyfriend or girlfriend, or your spouse to stay faithful to you because the relationship is precious to you, in the same way, God wants you to see your relationship with him as precious too, he wants you to come to him and tell him that you want to follow him, to live like his child.

Satan uses the tree to test humanity’s commitment to God by casting doubt on God’s commitment to them. Satan offers Adam and Eve the opportunity to step out of a dependent relationship with God and become independent, to be their own gods. As Bob George writes, “Adam and Eve choose lie over life,” they choose a relationship with themselves rather than with God, which explains why there is so much loneliness today, because we’ve stepped back from our best relationship for much less. Adam and Eve choose death over life and this is why we need Jesus; he chooses death on the cross, taking our sin and dying for us so that we can have life through and in Jesus; a new life where our best relationship is being renewed again. Paul writes in Ephesians, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

The wonderful thing is that there’s another tree in the garden, the tree of life is there, right beside the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Matthew Sleeth reminds us, “The tree of life is always here, right beside temptation—just to remind you. Beside every bad decision in life, there is a good alternative.” Adam and Eve are kicked out of Eden so they cannot eat from the tree of life and escape death. Can you image a creation where sinners could never die and we would simply drift further and further away from God forever? There would be no hope because the penalty for sin could never paid, we could never experience a relationship of love and grace with God again, there would be no salvation.

Jesus uses the image of a vine rather than a tree in John 15, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” When Jesus describes himself as the vine, it reminds me of what Paul says in Romans 1, that when we walk through the woods, when we take a close look at the trees and vines and fruit and nuts, and birds nesting in the trees, that we see God, that we can recognize him through creation, through the trees and vines.

Trees and vines provide life to their branches, they’re the source of life for the branches, and the only way that the branches can produce fruit and abundance. In the same way, our life strength and nourishment come through Jesus. If you are feeling wilted and depressed, Jesus can revive you, bring you back to your feet again with strength and hope. He does this through many different ways: Scripture, preaching, friends and family, through creation itself as you walk through the woods or along a stream or river, or work in your garden, or sip a cup of coffee and allow the taste, aroma, and energy connect you to the life giving relationship with Jesus he’s calling you to.

Just like oak trees produce more oak trees and pine trees produce more pine trees, being connected to Jesus, the vine, produces followers who look like Jesus. As you leave here this morning, take a look down the tree lined street and let the beauty of the trees remind you of the beauty of Jesus and the life that we have being connected to him.

Jonah 4 Angry at God

Is there anyone you find it hard to forgive, because they’ve hurt you deeply and God seems to have let them get away with it? This morning we’re wrestling with two themes that run through the entire Bible, how God is a compassionate God and how God is a just God. Both compassion and justice are rooted in God’s love. It’s easy to see how compassion is rooted in love, but justice is also rooted in love; both for the one being hurt, but also for the one doing the oppressing because justice is about drawing them back to God and God’s will for their lives and for the society at large. Justice is meant to transform hearts.

Jonah preaches destruction to the people of Nineveh and Nineveh, led by their king, repents and God shows them grace and compassion. Now we see Jonah’s reaction to God’s grace, and while it’s easy to condemn Jonah for being so angry over God’s grace, yet I get it. It feels so wrong when those who do something horrible and evil are shown mercy and seem to walk away without any sort of consequences for the brokenness they’ve caused, even if they have said “sorry.”

Jonah prays to the Lord, basically challenging God, I told you so, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” Jonah’s praying scripture, Exodus 34, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” But Jonah fails to pray the second part of this passage, “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Our God is a God of both compassion and justice.

We see this especially in Jesus, who on Palm Sunday, looks down on the city of Jerusalem and cries for the people there, the same people who less that a week later will unjustly crucify him. Jesus, even while weeping over the people, takes their injustice and sins on himself, and pays the penalty for our sin on the cross because God is a just God and there needs to be justice done for sin and evil. In Jesus, compassion and justice come together and brings us new life, new beginnings for those who accept Jesus. We are connected to Jesus in his resurrection.

The Lord comes back to Jonah and asks, “Is it right for you to be angry?” God intends for the answer to be “No,” because who can tell God what he should or should not do, yet Jonah’s unspoken answer is, “For sure it’s right to be angry, and you should be too because these people you’re showing mercy to are evil and hurt your people!” Jonah gives God a chance to carry through on his judgment of Nineveh by camping out east of Nineveh to watch God destroy them like he had promised. I get it. I’ve walked with way too many people who’ve been hurt deeply, so deeply it completely changed their lives, changed who they are, and then watched their abuser walk away free with a slap on their wrist, or even worse, with no consequences at all. Movements like #metoo or #churchtoo are so powerful, because they speak to a lack of justice, a failure for society to take into consideration the one who has been hurt. Hurt people need to see some form of justice done in order to find some healing in themselves. To be honest, wouldn’t it give you a tiny bit of pleasure to see justice done to Nineveh?

God shows Jonah a little grace by providing a plant to give Jonah a little shade. I always think of Jonah as being a grumpy old guy, but this plant actually makes him very happy, maybe even bringing a smile to his face, but that joy is short lived as the Lord then sends a worm to eat away at the plant and it dies, leaving Jonah unprotected again from the beating sun. God seems to have a bit of an in-your-face sense of humour here, setting Jonah up for disappointment. Jonah’s response is, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” This is the second time that as soon as something doesn’t go his way, Jonah’s response is, “Let me die, life isn’t worth living if I don’t get what I want.” Not only won’t God show justice to Nineveh and destroy the, now he takes away his compassion from Jonah, at least this is how Jonah experiences God’s action.

God asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah doubles down on his whine with, “It is. And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.” Think about this, Jonah cares more about a plant that he didn’t plant, water or take care of over living breathing people, including children. God now asks Jonah, “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” They may be enemies of Israel, but they are still people, all who are also created in the image of God, even if they don’t know it, this is what God means when he says they don’t know their right hand from the left; they’re ignorant about who he is.

Israel hears this story and challenge, and it’s a story of hope because God is a compassionate God, but also a just God who demands that they turn back to him. Israel is not as different from Nineveh as they claim; the rich and powerful in Israel also oppress the poor, the widows and those who were vulnerable, and God sends prophet after prophet to keep calling them back to him. The reality is that we so often hurt people because we go through life with a me-first attitude that comes so naturally. How many people are waiting for us to experience justice for the things we’ve done?

The story ends here with no answer from Jonah. I wonder how long he sits there waiting for Nineveh’s destruction before heading home. We’re still left with this question of how does compassion and grace fit together. God is complex, we don’t easily understand who he is. Sometimes he blesses the believer and punishes the pagans and other times he blesses the pagans and punishes the believers. Sometimes the punishment for injustice is quick and harsh, other times there’s unexpected grace. God’s not just a God of wrath or love, but as one woman in a Tim Keller Bible study notes, he’s both!

Jesus calls us into a deep and difficult faith. Hear who he calls us to be in Matthew 5, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” This is easy to teach and say; it’s so hard to live out.

Jonah couldn’t, many people I’ve walked with who have been deeply hurt find it extremely difficult to live this out as well. I find it hard to tell the person who has been hurt to work on forgiving, it seems wrong to put that on the victim, and yet in forgiving, there is healing and we become more like Jesus in doing so. This is why Jesus calls those of us "who are weary and burdened, to come to him, and I will give you rest. take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your sols. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The reality is that we can’t forgive in our own strength, we can't find healing in ourselves, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to forgive and show grace to those who’ve hurt us deeply. It’s also important that while we practice forgiveness, we also hold others accountable for their actions, for it’s not love to let people get away with hurting others, it is love to make sure they experience the consequences of their actions, but with the goal that they might be transformed, that their character becomes shaped by Jesus as they learn to love instead of hurt.

This is about our character, about who Jesus is shaping us to be. We find healing and rest in Jesus and as we find healing, Jesus helps us to forgive, even as we hold others accountable for who they are and what they’ve done. God will also hold them accountable for their actions. Compassion and justice can come together, but in a messy world, it can only be done through Jesus.