Psalm 112 • Our Living Legacy
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
When, a year or so ago as the search committee was talking to us, we wondered if this could be our home long term.
And the way in which you have received us, the way in which we have just had such joy here, it's close to Kathy's home, but even more, what we have felt every week is the resonance of your hearts with ours.
I couldn't help think of that but where I've been the last few weeks, and that has been working on a book.
You know, when the search committee was talking with me before we ever thought it would even be reasonable for me to come, one of my questions was: Would this church be willing to extend its mission through me, letting me continue on the mission field at particular times and also with a writing ministry that the Lord has blessed where I can write the things of the gospel for people who are far beyond our walls?
And the search committee was enthusiastic about that, saying, "We believe you will find a church that is so concerned for the gospel that if we can extend beyond our walls we would love to have you be part of that instrumentation."
So where I was the last few weeks is trying to finish a book.
I didn't quite get it done, because in this last week, there's a company out in Washington state called Logos Bible Software and they had agreed to take courses that I have taught and to put them in digital format in video so that they can be put on the internet for pastor training all around the world.
And I hope you think that you have this tremendous blessing that you are to people.
You're a blessing to Kathy and me.
But by your concern for mission, as I think what you even did through Vacation Bible School this week, over and over again we feel our hearts in synchrony with yours: that you want the gospel to go.
And that's what we want, too.
And we just delight to be a part of what you are doing in God's purposes in this place.
I want to ask if you would look with me in Psalm 112 this morning as we think of God's work among His people.
This Sunday I'm starting a Summer Psalms series, a way in which we think about spiritual fitness for God's purpose.
Now, you know that summer is often a time for many people to be getting physically fit, right?
You got to fit into that wedding dress.
[Chuckles]
You got to get ready for that last foray under the sport's field for one more moment of glory, right?
Or fit into whatever form of spandex you have to fit into.
[Laughter]
And so, you know, we go to the gym, and we work and we hear the music, you know, that supposedly goes with the beat to get us to exercise and hopefully get physically fit.
Well, you recognize the music of scripture is the psalms, right?
That's scriptures playlist as God is getting His people fit to glorify Him.
As I told my wife, Kathy, that we would be working through the psalms this summer, and I trust even in future summers, she said, "You know, I so love the psalms, because in the psalms, people say things that you wouldn't think you could say unless it were in the Bible."
Do you know why that's the case?
Because almost all of the Bible is God declaring to us who He is and what we should do as a consequence.
But the psalms are more frequently the heart's response to the truth of God.
And sometimes the heart's response is questioning.
And sometimes it's even anger.
And sometimes it's thanksgiving.
And sometimes it's to ask for help.
Over and over again the psalms are saying what we wish we could say if we could.
And the psalms say, "Not only can you ask that; God's people have.
He lets them so He can show His great grace, even to the people who respond in these ways."
Let's see how the psalm, psalmist talks to us that we might respond to God.
Let's stand and I will read Psalm 112, because it's fitting for Father's Day and because it lets our hearts respond to the great grace of God.
Psalm 112, the psalmist says, "Praise the Lord!
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!
His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.
Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.
It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice.
For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.
He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.
He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor.
The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish!"
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, on a Father's Day, we thank You that we can address You that way.
Because we know that what You are doing in calling Yourself Father is allowing us to understand that however faulty might have been the fathers who raised us or the fathers we are that You have shown the perfection of Your fathering in providing for Your children what they most need: a way into Your arms.
And the way You did that is through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we pray that even this day as we consider what it means to be fathered by You that You would so work in our hearts that we would be led away from self and to the Savior and understand how great is Your heart toward us in providing Him.
Grant that we might even be better fathers or advisors to them by what we learn this day.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
The writer, Roy Atwood, writes this: "The days of my father's life were by reason of strength and God's grace 80 years.
He died a year ago.
We still grieve his death, of course.
But as the pain of his passing fades, we are struggling with a new pain: the realization of how swiftly the memory of someone as close as a husband, a father and a friend can fly away.
If each day dims the memory of the contours of his face and the sound of his voice, what will we remember of him ten or twenty years distant?
What will his children's children know of him, of his life, his hopes and fears, his failures and successes or his view of God's world?
What will be the legacy of his life?
Over time, we will forget.
We'll forget the things that he enjoyed.
He loved the company of his well-oiled tools and rifles.
He loved the rhythmic pulse of the waves against the hull of his sailboat running ahead of a fresh breeze.
However, over time the waves will not reflect his image, and his precious tools and guns will be recycled into someone else's rusty barbeque pit or dented wheelbarrow.
We will forget the work of his hands.
We will forget his strengths.
We will forget his weaknesses.
We'll even forget how his illusions of independency and self sufficiency were shattered when he fell off the roof of his home while cleaning the gutters in the rain.
He landed on the corner of a concrete sidewalk.
He broke his spine between his shoulder blades.
The fall almost killed him.
But in a split second, his pride and his dreams and many of the things that he loved were gone.
He never walked or worked or sailed again.
He struggled with depression.
He talked of suicide many times.
He never wanted to be a burden to his wife or to his children, but his self sufficiency was gone.
In an instant, gone forever."
We do not like the words, but we know that they are true.
All that we seek to accomplish, all that we build, all that we hope will last will not.
It will fade.
Wind and erosion and time will take it all away.
So the question is: Why bother to live for the Lord, to give ourselves for our families and children?
Why bother if it will all just blow away in the breeze ultimately?
The answer is because it is not the whole truth.
There are some things that will never pass away.
And the psalmist has in fact identified that three times in this particular psalm.
The first appears at the end of verse 3.
Did you see it there?
I slowed down as I was reading it.
It says of the righteous man, "Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever."
There is something that endures forever, and it is the righteousness of the one who follows after God.
Now, there are many blessings identified in this particular psalm that come to the righteous man.
It talks about wealth and wisdom and offspring.
And you have to say those are generic references.
They are not unqualified statements of what happens to righteous people.
Right?
Even in the psalm itself you remem--, may remember in verse 4 it talks about darkness coming in to one's life.
In verse 7, bad news.
In verse 8, adversaries or enemies.
And, yet, despite the statement of reality, there is this overarching understanding that there is righteousness that when we do that that has an enduring quality.
How can that possibly be?
We've already said.
You build a business, it may outlast you, but it's unlikely to last forever.
You may build some building.
There may be some architecture that you can participate in, but even the pyramids are eroding.
Your family will forget you.
Ultimately, yes, my writings will fade away.
It will all go.
And, yet, we are told of the righteous man, his righteousness endures forever.
How can that possibly be?
Maybe some hint of that is in verse 2.
In describing the righteous man, the psalmist says, "His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed."
Here is the sense that part of our righteousness in its impact is its influence upon others.
And one of the way in which righteousness endures is by righteous influence as life touches life touches life touches life.
As a child by the example and teaching of parents understands who God is and what it means to trust in Jesus Christ, there is some transfer of righteousness as that righteous influence reverberates.
It's really a wonderful thought.
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the funeral service of a well known Christian.
His name was Stu Parin.
He was a pastor.
And the one who was delivering the eulogy, the funeral sermon, was his son who was also a pastor.
And the son gave a little of the high, life history of his father.
His father, growing up in the upper midwest, had been raised by parents at the time that some of the influenza epidemics were crossing this country.
And when he was still a boy, Stus lost both his mother and his father to an influenza epidemic.
So he was raised by his grandmother.
But not too many years after his grandmother took over his upbringing, she too contracted a terminal illness.
He was going to lose her, too.
And as he was losing this grandmother, at some point she called him to her bedside.
And she said, "My child, I do not have things of this world to give you.
But this word of God I share with you.
'Do not fear; I am with you.
Do not be afraid; I am your God,' declares the Lord.
'I will uphold you by my righteous right hand,' declares the Lord."
The words of Isaiah 41:10.
And she passed on to the child the message of faith.
Now, as Stu's son was preaching the funeral sermon and told that account of how that grandmother had passed to her grandson the message of faith, not only did that particular son recite the story, but his brother, another pastor, nodded his head.
He knew the story.
And their spouses nodded their heads; they had heard the story.
And their children nodded their heads; they knew the story.
Now, just think of that.
A grandmother had passed to her son's son the testimony of faith.
And that son had passed to his sons the testimony of faith.
And now their children knew that same testimony.
Five generations knew the testimony of faith from that faithful grandmother.
Listen, her goods and in many ways her memory had passed away long ago, but the testimony of faith had been maintained in that family.
The generations of the upright were blessed.
I don't know how many things you think you can do in this life that will last five generations.
Not many.
But God's promise is greater.
He is promising that when we are faithful, that He will use that to touch life upon life upon life so that ultimately in the annals of heaven what will happen is the righteousness that we are establishing will endure forever.
I mean, it just is an amazing thought, made more amazing because you understand that what God is saying here is not just that righteous influence is maintained but that righteousness itself is maintained forever.
I mean, if you look at verse 3 closely, it doesn't say that a man's righteous influence will endure forever.
It says, "His righteousness will endure forever," as thought the good itself is enduring, not just by influence but the righteousness itself is enduring.
Now, that is a larger thought.
I mean, even secular sciences can talk about cascade theory, you know, where a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can by influence upon influence upon influence become a thunderstorm in San Francisco three weeks later.
But this is saying something different.
Not only does righteous influence continue, but the righteousness itself endures forever.
How can that possibly be?
Maybe a verse that helps us is one like Ephesians 2:10, that "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that He prepared in advance for us to do."
So that we understand as believers that every righteous action is a link in an eternal chain of the purposes of God.
So that by doing what God calls us to do, in a moment, perhaps even unnoticed by the rest of the world, is nonetheless vital in eternity to what God is doing.
I must tell you that when I was a solo pastor in a much smaller church, I used to think that one of the purest things that I would do would be to visit an Alzheimer's patient in a nursing home.
Now, the reason I say it was one of the purest things that I would do is because of the sin in my heart.
There are lots of reasons that pastors and caretakers, those of you who do these things, I know, there are lots of reasons that we care for people who cannot express their gratitude.
We do it because we want to show the compassion of Christ, because we want to show our own care.
But I must tell you as a pastor there's another reason that I will sometimes check in in a nursing home: Because there are people who are keeping count.
They want to know: Did you visit?
And you'll get in trouble if you don't.
And there's just a human part of me that wants to stay out of trouble.
[Laughter]
But when you visit an Alzheimer's patient, there is no record.
And three seconds after you're gone, there may be no memory of your even having been there.
And it just, it stretches my faith as well as my imagination: to believe that that, that act of care, that gentle righteousness will actually endure forever.
How is that so?
Maybe by the witness to other people.
Maybe by the witness of the other people in the nursing home.
Maybe by the caretakers themselves.
Maybe just because of the change it makes in me to be willing to care for another person selflessly.
But for whatever reason, what God is promising is that that act of righteousness endures forever.
And it just changes what you're willing to do, the significance you perceive and your actions that are, in many ways, just bypassed by the rest of the world.
I thought of it as we had six hundred and thirty-eight children here and three hundred and sixty-eight volunteers.
And I think: What brought you here?
They won't remember your names.
They won't remember all that you're doing.
But as I witnessed a special needs child being helped up these stairs in that final night program by adults and then by other children, to think it is eternal; it is a righteousness that endures forever.
That God is by testimony and witness and the changing of hearts who would care for the unlovely and the needy and the orphan and the widow in distress.
When all of that is happening, though the world pays no attention to it, it endures in the purposes of God, and that is His promise.
And we are willing to extend that cup of water or to let the business deal go or to help the neighbor or to sacrifice ourselves at times for our own children, because we profoundly believe that it is not forgotten by God.
It is actually a righteous thing that God is going to make glow on in His eternal purposes.
And that makes you do things for God, even when the world takes no notice whatsoever.
We do it not only because the righteousness endures; there's actually something even better said.
It occurs halfway through the psalm at the end of verse 6.
Now again describing the righteous man, verse 6 says, "The righteous will never be moved; he will be in--, remembered forever."
Not just the righteous action: But it says the righteous person will be remembered forever.
Again, it sounds impossible.
I mean, you and I have walked in the graveyards where the names are carved in stone, and even now we have trouble reading them because the names are being erased by the weather of the world.
How can it possibly be that the person would be remembered forever?
I mean, I know you can trace a long way back on Ancestry.com.
But you can't go all the way back.
There are many names you will never know and will not be remembered by anyone in this generation.
And, yet, it is so precious to us that God is saying, "I remember you.
The world may forget, but I will remember those who stand for righteousness in this world."
I so much want that, because I ultimately do not want to be remembered for my accomplishments, for what I do.
Listen, I don't know what you've accomplished in life, even if you've accomplished a great deal.
I will tell you, if you are truly honest, you will confess that if you have accomplished a great deal it's because the right things happened at the right time by the grace of God.
You have known smarter people who have not done as well.
And you have known better people who have suffered more.
If you have been blessed, it is by the grace of God.
Ultimately, I don't want to stand before God and be remembered for what I have done.
And time after time God is reminding us of the ephemeral nature of our own works so that we will recognize how blessed it is that He remembers us.
Some of you may know the verse Malachi 3:16, not John 3:16 but Malachi 3:16.
In that particular verse, it describes the hosts of heaven speaking to one another.
And God listens in.
And then at some point, there is taken out what is called the scroll of remembrance, whereupon are written the names of those who fear and honor the name of God.
That when earth's records fade away that there is a record in heaven of those who have honored God, and that doesn't fade away.
You know that becomes important to me, because we were moving.
You know how you go through papers and boxes and all that sort of thing?
So I found my last report card from my senior year of college.
[Laughter]
Yellowed, I know.
But what became more interesting to me as I began to go back to tally my accomplishments and my good grades.
Not all of you can see this, maybe just the pastors on the front row.
It's just a yellow sheet to most of you.
But there are no grades on this report card.
The ink has faded away.
[Laughter]
There are no names of courses.
There are no names of professors.
I can't record, even myself, what I got in those courses.
It's all faded away.
How wondrous to know that God not only knows the grades: He knows me and remembers me.
Why is that important?
You can work for a company for thirty years and three weeks after you're gone they do not know your name.
You can be forgotten by your company.
You can be forgotten by your family.
You can be forgotten by your country.
You can be forgotten by your church.
And God says, "I remember you."
God does not forget.
And our knowledge of what is precious to Him is held in His heart including us, makes us willing to live for Him.
When the world says it is foolish.
It's hard for me at times, I must tell you, to visit my own father these days.
I mean, all my life my father has been one of the smartest, most generous, gregarious, fun people to be around that I have ever known.
And now when I see my father as I did a couple of weeks ago, where the heart disease and the kidney disease and the more recent stroke have taken energy out of him and at times even the ability to remember his children's name, I grieve for that.
And rejoice that God knows him.
And more than that, right now, I remember what's been precious about him.
I remember during the older years of my high school years and my family was really struggling and my dad got this great opportunity for a promotion in Kansas City where he could move and make better income and have a, you know, more prestige in his title.
And he turned it down.
"Dad, why are you doing that?"
"Because our family needs stability more than it needs income right now," he said, "so we're staying here."
He gave up what was best for him.
One day I'll forget that, too.
As much as a treasure that knowledge of my father sacrificing for his family, I will one day forget.
God will not forget.
It makes us willing to do whatever we need to do.
It is why, as the psalmist describes, the righteous man, the one who truly understands he is the fulfillment of the purposes of God that he is, at the end of verse 4, willing to be gracious and merciful.
Why in verse 5 he deals generously and lends.
The world may say, "That's foolish; that's wrong."
But he says, "These resources are from God.
I'm going to make them count for the purposes of God."
And God will remember it, even if the world does not.
Verse 9, "He gives to the poor."
Because the poor can give back?
No.
Because it's an eternal act that God will remember as much as He remembers the man who lives in righteousness for the purposes of God.
It's a blessing to know that the world may disdain it or forget it and God remembers.
Not just the act but the person himself.
But now we have a problem.
If I think about the actions of my life, I must tell you that they are not always righteous.
And my guess is you will think the same about yourself.
So if the reason that God remembers things is because the act is righteous or the person is righteous.
[Chuckles]
We're all in trouble.
And so one more thing is said in this passage that is so beautiful and dear to us.
It's two-thirds of the way through the passage.
It's at the end of verse 9.
God again is describing through the psalmist the righteous man.
And it says again of him in the middle of verse 9, "His righteousness endures forever."
Now, we're heard that before.
That's not new.
But then this phrase follows: "His horn is exalted in honor."
Now that is strange wording to us.
And it will say down in the footnotes of some of your bibles that the horn is a person's dignity, their significance or their life's honor.
What you need to understand is that God is saying, "Someone else will lift up this man's honor."
He is being rescued by another.
His horn, his dignity, his life's honor is being lifted up.
He's not doing it.
Someone else is doing it.
It is the great reminder that we are made right before God.
We are remembered in our righteous maintained not by the work of our hands but by the goodness of God who rescues us from our own unrighteousness.
It's incredible how way back in the Old Testament in this psalm that the grace of God in gospel form is being unfolded, so that as you read Psalm 112 and you read just about righteousness, you can kind of pump up your suspenders and say, "Well, good; I'm going to be remembered," unless you know there's not cause for that, in which case this psalm is terribly depressing.
It's only the righteous that will be remembered.
And I might not meet that qualification.
And then you need to remember that while I read to you Psalm 112 by itself, no good Hebrew would do that.
It is a tandem psalm.
It is meant to be read with another: That is Psalm 111, the psalm that precedes it.
All of Psalm 112 is about the blessings to the righteous man.
All of Psalm 111 is about the honor of a righteous God.
What does the psalmist say about God in Psalm 111?
Just verse 3 might help you.
Psalm 111 and verse 3, "Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.
He has caused His wonderful works to be remembered.
The Lord is gracious and merciful."
The words "his righteousness endures forever" that were applied to the righteous man came out of Psalm 111 describing the righteous God.
It actually happens ten times between the two psalms: that some attribute of God is described as being applied to the righteous man.
It's not just a holy rescue: There has been a holy transfer.
As God in His grace takes the attributes that are His own and He applies them to the righteous man.
It's what we learn about more fully in the New Testament.
"God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become," what?
"The righteousness of God."
Because I'd earned it?
Because I deserve it?
No.
But because God in His grace has said, "I will provide for a people who cannot provide for themselves."
And what God is doing to His people, to father and to mother and uncles and aunts and we who live in faith before the others, is saying, "You need My grace.
I will preserve your righteousness.
You need My strength to do that.
And when you have not lived the righteousness you know you should, you need Me forgiveness so that My righteousness becomes your own."
And when you know that He has picked you up again and brushed you off again and called you His own again, you know what you want to do?
You want to live for Him and produce the righteousness that endures forever by His great blessing and grace.
Roy Atwood describes the end of his father's life when he began to understand his lack of self sufficiency.
Atwood writes this: "In a state of almost complete physical and spiritual dependency, God turned my father to Jesus Christ and His sufficiency.
We will not soon forget how dramatic and obvious was the change in his life."
Listen to the holy transfer.
"His anger was replaced by joy, his bitterness by tenderness, his hardness by a gentleness of spirit, his final years as a faithful Christian man, husband, father, grandfather, were his finest.
But even these will fade with time in our memory.
So what will be my father's legacy?
My father's legacy to his children's children will be that God's grace and covenant faithfulness were sufficient even for a man whose face and voice had faded from our memories.
Because Christ's person and work that came to life in that person will endure forever."
This is the promise of God.
As we bring that reality of the righteousness of God into our families despite our weakness, our sin, our frailty, that God begins to show His faithfulness in such a way that as we respond with love for Him in faithfulness to Him, God makes that righteousness endure forever.
It is the promise of His grace and the wonder of the gospel that He uses people like us, fathers like us, to make His righteousness endure forever.
So we live for Him.
What a blessing, what a joy, what a privilege, what a promise: that living for Him endures forever.
>>> Father, would You take Your Word and seal it to our hearts: that in those days when we wonder: Is it worth it?
Is it worthwhile?
Will it be remembered?
We have echoing in our hearts the promise of Your Word: "I remember you.
And I will make what is done for Me endure forever.
Not because you're worthy.
But because you believed in My grace.
And that so filled you with hope and joy that your children and children's children and those around you began to be able to see in you the righteousness that is in your God and the compassion and the love and the grace.
So use us we pray, for Christ's purposes we ask, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Let's stand and sing of the One's power that is our power, even He who gives us His grace.