Psalm 84 • The God Who Refreshes

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Don't you love Summer Sing?
With all the vibrancy and life of what happens in so many people participating who are not able to during the regular year, it's just a special time for us and a great time to anticipate the vibrancy of Vacation Bible School.
This place will be rocking.
And a lot of you will be helping in that.
Thank you for so many of you willing to help when we organize so many kids, not only out of the church but out of the community.
And in a strange way, that's preparation for our psalm today, which is Psalm 84.
As you get to Psalm 84 in your bibles, you'll see that it is composed by the sons of Korah, which is unusual for us to hear, the sons of Korah.
Those were the ones who arranged the worship for other people.
So those of you making all the arrangements, I don't know if there were table leaders among the sons of Korah, but there were those who did all kinds of chores to enable others to worship.
Let's stand and see what they have to say to us about the worship of God in Psalm 84.
The psalm begins, "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!
Selah."
Which is again that musical notation that's like an amen planted right in the middle of the psalm.
"Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah.
Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!"
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, blessed are those who trust in You.
And we do that this day, walking through a psalm whose composers knew the easy and the hard and still sought to trust in You and lead others to do the same.
Equip us this day to be such a church and people.
We recognize that we will welcome into this church young hearts and voices over the next several days, some who have been walking with You, some who haven't a clue what that means.
So, would You use this church to make lovely to young children the message of the Savior?
There may still be people down the block from us, in our neighborhoods; friends of ours may have children that we need to remember to ask.
So work in our hearts, that You would work in children's hearts.
Use us, we pray, for Christ's sake.
We pray in His name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
A little bird stole my sermon.
It actually happened with some frequency at a church that Kathy and I ministered in in Southern Illinois some years ago.
It was a historic church in an old building over a hundred years old, which means there were a few cracks in the seams every here and there.
And one of the particular cracks was where the vertical exterior wall met the eaves to the roof, so that little birds could crawl into that crack.
And then because inside the wall it was too narrow to fly, they would fall all the way to the floor level and begin to work their way toward the light, which typically was the nearest grate of the registers in the floor of the sanctuary.
Which meant that at any time in the worship service, even the most poignant point in the sermon, suddenly you would hear this little flurry of a frenzied bird's wings.
And the bird would pop up into the sanctuary and would fly from window casement to chandelier to balcony rail to chandelier to.
And the sermon was just done at that point.
[Laughter]
I mean, nobody was paying any attention to me.
I think I tried one time to compete with the bird, and then it was just done.
You know, let's just have the benediction:  This is over.
[Laughter]
Well, the psalmist is a better sermonizer than I, because the birds in this psalm do not steal the sermon:  They are the sermon.
In particular, a sparrow catches the eye of the psalmist.
And that's kind of cute in a way but also a little curious, because, you know, a sparrow is kind of small and insignificant and a little bit trashy.
So you wonder why the psalmist is paying so much attention to sparrows.
And the answer has to be because we gain our hope by recognizing that God even has a place for sparrows, even in His house.
Though small and insignificant and a little bit trashy, though caught in the cracks and lost in the darkness, if God cares for them, then maybe there's a place for us.
And that has to be the case for those of us who have experienced enough of the cracks in our lives and the darkness of our journeys that we wonder if we can trust God after trouble.
Is He real enough for a realistic world?
And the psalmist answers that question just by pointing first to a sparrow and then to a pilgrim and then to a doorkeeper, each one telling us that God is real enough for a real world.
The first message is just about sparrows.
And if you could take the journey with the psalmist, it begins in verse 1.
"How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!"
You can almost imagine a person walking in to the ancient temple and looking about and saying, "Wow, how lovely is this temple."
And then beginning to recognize in that loveliness the cry of one's own heart:  "My heart and my soul cry out for the God of whatever this is to be real, to the living God."
That's what I want to know.
That's who I want to know.
I actually want to believe the God of a lovely place can be living and real enough for my life.
But then something catches the writer's attention.
Verse 3, "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself."
Even the sparrow is taken care of in this place.
And as inappropriate as it may seem to talk about it, it comforts the one who is seeing things.
Even a sparrow has a home here.
Of course, it's the ancient days.
There wasn't H.V.A.C.
There weren't screens on the windows.
So even in the temple with all its paneling and embroidered curtains and priests robes, the birds came in.
And the psalmist just says, "Even the sparrow has a place for its young here, builds a nest here."
Now, you have to think about what's happening.
He's in a place of worship, but he's thinking about little birds.
Now, I know this never happens to any of you, but occasionally when I listen to other peoples' sermons, my mind wanders a little bit.
[Laughter]
I know that never happens to any of you.
No.
[Laughter]
And I can remember some years ago being in a church service where I was thinking about other things.
Translation:  Worried about other things.
Sitting by a window and just kind of getting lost in my thought and worry and then a little motion up toward the eaves outside the window caught my eye.
And I watched a sparrow with a nest go back and forth, taking care of its young.
And knowing this psalm, it came back to my mind:  If even a sparrow has a place under God's roof, taking care of its young, God has care for me too.
If He takes care even of the sparrows, surely He has a place for me as well.
It's a simple truth.
You know it, if you can remember it in the moments you need to.
 7 Why should I be discouraged  7
 7 Why should the shadows come  7
 7 Why should my heart be lonely  7
 7 And long for heaven and home  7
 7 When Jesus is my portion  7
 7 My constant friend is He  7
 7 His eye is on the  7  7
>>> Sparrow.
 7 And I know He watches me  7 
 7 His eye is on the sparrow  7
 7 And I know He cares for me  7  7
>>> I actually want to believe that.
I know it's hard at times.
Maybe Jesus knew it too, which is why He said, "Don't you sell two sparrows for a penny?
And yet your heavenly Father knows when even one of them would fall to the ground.
Don't be afraid.
You are worth more than many sparrows."
I need to remember that, and you do too, that the things that we think of as being worthless, insignificant, the ones who are a little bit trashy and messed up are the ones that God has a place for.
And that message comes even closer as the verse talks not just about sparrows but swallows.
Verse 3, "And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God."
If the sparrow is indicative of those who feel worthless, the swallow, those who are just restless, right?
What does a swallow do?
Flits from here to there, here to there, here to there, and yet builds a nest out of mud and straw.
And as the psalmist sees it right against the altar of the Lord, the very place where the most holy and important things that the nation of Israel could do to make itself right with God:  There is the swallow with its mud and straw nest taking care of its young.
And God makes a place for it, even at the altar.
I wonder if that meant something to the ancient Israelites as they thought that God had redeemed them from making mud and straw bricks from slavery in Egypt as the way that they had to make their own way in the world.
And now God is still saying to them, "You know, even the swallow with its mud and straw is cared for by Me.
Do not doubt your own care."
It's hard to do at times.
We sometimes think more easily of the God of the vastness.
Last time, I talked to you about how God has made the universe with so many stars that the stars actually, according to the scientists, number even more than the grains of sand in all the earth's deserts and beaches.
Just incredible.
But that vastness still doesn't compare to the reality that there are more molecules in ten drops of water than all of those stars, just ten drops.
And God puts that all together too, as though the vastness is measurement of His greatness and goodness but so also is the minuteness.
And if God is saying, "Listen, I don't just care for the hosts, O Lord God of hosts, but I also care."
[Chuckles]
"For the sparrows and the swallows," that there is a science of the universe that's great, but it's also important to remember the science of the swallows:  that that too is to be comforting our hearts.
I wish somebody had spoken of that science to a Christian metal band known as The Order of Elijah.
Some of you may know that just a few weeks ago this Christian metal band, playing what's known as Jesus Metal, ended up denying the faith, renouncing faith in Jesus Christ.
And, listen, if heavy metal is not your style, you may simply say, "Well, you know, what do you expect from that kind of music?"
It's not really fair.
As I actually read the testimony now of the head vocalist of that band, I see something very different than just music style that led down a hard and difficult path, something different and deeper and quite a bit sadder.
This is what the vocalist of The Order of Elijah wrote.
"About a year after our daughter was born, I could easily say that was the hardest year of life I ever had.
After five years of being sober, I found myself drowning in alcohol again every night.
I decided to return to church in search of inner solace.
And I was welcomed with open arms."
And then the blog goes on to talk about matters of hypocrisy and illogic and, in candor, the young man's own misunderstanding of some things.
But he concludes this way:  "After a few months, I read about the science of addiction and life trauma.
I stopped trying to pray my alcoholism away and began combating it with real methods.
I began confronting my problems head-on rather than giving them to God.
I became very interested in researching science and the culture of other religions.
I eventually completely gave up alcohol, got my health back, enrolled in college.
I'm proud to say that I have a 3.75 G.P.A."
I wish somebody had said, "The science of God does not deny the science of this world," that the God who made the heavens is not somehow sitting at the end of some spiritual pipeline that you construct only with appropriate Thee's and Thou's.
But the God who made the stars understands your addiction.
The God who made the stars understands your body.
And we are not denying the reality of what we struggle with when we say, "We approach a God who controls the universe and knows the swallows and knows your soul."
All of that, that the angle of the earth's orbit is not somehow contradictory to the love of a man and a woman, that those are both realities, yet both are ultimately ruled and controlled and made best by the will of God in them.
And that reality, that we have a science of nature and we have a God of science and we have a science of the soul, are not contradictory things, but yet all put into the employ of a God of all creation who intends to nurture our souls by what He knows is right and good, even of the creation He has made.
These things do not have to be denied.
Our God knows us and knows our world and gives us access to both, that we, in trusting Him, might turn to what He has made as well as to the God who makes them for the help that we need.
The goal of scripture is not to divorce God from the real world but to remind us He is the God of the real world.
"My heart and my flesh cry out to the living God," not some sort of icon or idolatry or imagination:  the real, in my life, active not passive, present Person who created the stars and cares for the swallows, who knows the magnitude of creation and knows the minute needs of my body and soul.
That's who I want.
That's who my heart is so cry out for, that God.
And that is the God that the scriptures are presenting to us and yet so honest to say, "And yet it's hard for us to believe that at times."
I mean, my--, it just touched my heart when I read those words on the blog of that musician where he said, "It was after the roughest year of my life."
How can I believe in a God who says He cares for the stars and the swallows when I'm going through this valley right now?
And for that reason, the psalmist doesn't just talk about the sparrows:  He talks about pilgrims.
And I'm not talking about the ones who have buckles on their black hats and teach us to eat turkey at Thanksgiving.
I'm talking about the pilgrims of Israel's time.
Remember in the tradition of that time, if you were being faithful, you made your annual sojourns to the temple in Jerusalem, for wherever you lived in other parts of the country, even in other countries, to honor God according to the worship that He required.
And, yet, even the psalmist says that was not the easiest thing in a real world with real life.
The subject of the pilgrims begins in verse 5.
"Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose heart are the highway to Zion."
They are those people whose heart truly desires to go along the highway to the place of God's worship, to Zion.
And it's not just a physical highway.
He's saying there are those hearts of God's people who want Him, who yearn for Him, who want to see Him in Zion.
That's good:  hearts turned toward God.
But what can happen even to them?
Verse 6, "There heart is the highway to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs."
Revelation:  There's no such thing as a Valley of Baca in a real geographical place.
The word Baca means weeping.
Their heart is a highway to God.
They are seeking to be that pilgrim making their way to the worship of God.
And, yet, as they're seeking to do the right thing, seeking to honor God, their journey takes them through a valley of tears and of weeping.
It's the real word for a real world that says just because you're trying to do that right thing, just because you're seeking after God doesn't mean all tears go away.
Even those who are on the highway of holiness to the place of worship have to go through the valley of Baca, of weeping.
And, yet, as that is said, that reality is put in front of us, there are the amazing words that follow in verse 6:  They make it, the pilgrims, "a place of springs."
It's visually part of the poetry of the hymn that's here, right?
That as they are weeping, that their tears are virtually causing springs to well up in this desert valley, as though God is saying the tears themselves have a purpose.
Yes, it can be really tough, but the tears are welling up to a good and better purpose, maybe even better said toward the end of verse 6, "The early rain also covers it with pools."
As though you start out on your journey and you go, "Oh, no, it's going to rain."
But the rain in the desert creates the pools, the reservoirs, that are needed for the journey through the desert.
That the things that we once see as the early rain that's messing us up, messing up our lives, messing up our families, that God is saying, "Actually, those are the pools, the reservoirs of faith and goodness and purpose and providence that God is preparing for the journey that's ahead."
So much so that he would actually say in verse 7, "They," those pilgrims, "go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion."
That there is this amazing process of God as He is preparing for eternal things, that the journey with its tears is actually preparing the reservoirs of water and nourishment spiritually that are needed for the full journey.
So you start out seeking God with the strength of the moment, but then the tears and the weeping and the struggles are actually creating the greater strength that is needed for the full journey as strength goes to strength in the plan and purpose of God.
Hard to believe.
Of course it's hard to believe.
And, yet, over and over again we begin to recognize how faith that is not tested at all is not trustworthy at all.
And in a real world, you need a faith that is trustworthy.
If faith has never been tested, it's not strong enough for the real world that we have to face:  a broken world, a fallen world in which there are real tragedies and troubles that we can't always explain.
And so God is saying, "The early rain is not without purpose, not without plan, actually providing the reservoir that is needed for the full journey.
What would seem to break you is actually making you stronger for the full journey."
This church staff a few weeks ago went on a little excursion to the Caterpillar Testing and Research Centre in Mossville where so many of you work and spend your lives working at Caterpillar and just wanted to see what some of that was about.
And one of the things that captured my attention was the place where pistons are made, or at least tested, for these huge, huge engines of almost incomprehensible power.
And I looked at where the pistons are put together, manufactured and then put together, where there's this amazing large thing in the engine, this large piston head with its large shaft beneath it, taking such stresses upon it where the engine is under pressure, that the shaft is going to break; it just cannot withhold the pressures.
And so what is done to create the proper shaft strength for that large piston head is that shaft is put under immense cold, scored, and broken and then repaired with bolts around it, knowing this:  If you just cut the shaft smooth, that the bolts could not hold it for the immense pressures it would be under.
And so there is intentionally created a unique break where that which is rough binds against which is rough beneath it.
And when you bolt that together, it's stronger than it would ever have been without the test that it has gone through.
That the testing actually makes it sufficiently strong for the job that it has to do.
Why make so much about weeping and breaking?
Because life is real.
This past week, I spent some time with Pastor Deveraux Hubbard, who's the pastor of St. Paul's Baptist Church, and, some of you will know, lost his oldest son a couple of years ago.
And as I was traveling with Deveraux, he talked about the struggles that he and his family have gone through, what it is like to be facing such brokenness of heart and family.
And one of the ways that their family has responded is that Deveraux has written music to be sung in different churches to help people understand how faith helps you face trauma.
But the words are hard, I mean, really hard in the things that he has written.
I asked him if I could relate these to you.
He said yes.
He first, in one of the songs, quotes the words of Job:  "Have you ever wanted to curse God and die?"
And then he answers the question:  "I have.
Have you ever wanted to curse God and die?
I have."
Why make so much about being broken?
Because as any of us looks through a mature life, we recognize that until that scoring of our lives has occurred where something has happened to prepare us to look to God in faith beyond our own resources, we could not have maintained what God called us to ultimately do.
Listen, I'm a preacher.
I preach about such things.
And I recognize even I have played those games in my mind.
And I have said, you know, if I lost this person or if I lost that position or if I lost that reputation, would I still have faith?
And I always say yes.
But as I look back over the really tough things in my life, they were not the things that I anticipated.
They were not the things that I could have handled in my own planning and apprehension of my strength.
Ultimately, the things that I needed to learn that the Lord taught me, that the Lord helped me with, were the things that I could not handle on my own.
Where my flesh and my heart had to cry out to the living God.
"God, I can't fix this.
I don't know how to take this.
I don't know how to prepare for this.
I desperately need You."
And in that reality, there is the formation of faith at that unique break that actually strengthens us, not just for the moment, but for the eternity that we and our families and our friends and coworkers actually need us to understand.
Not what we can handle in our strength, not what we can handle in our own understanding, but that which says I now recognize my great weakness; I know recognize my great hurts; I recognize that apart from Christ I can do noth--, I can't take another step without Him now.
And in that reality of that brokenness, I begin to understand why the pilgrims need to understand as they go to worship God:  You go through a valley of weeping, but this is strength unto strength, because God is always playing the end game.
He's not just thinking about today:  He's thinking about eternity and not just for you but for everyone who witnesses your life and is touched by it.
And it's that eternal purpose, that eternal faithfulness that He is experiencing and showing to you so that you would trust Him beyond your strength, beyond your doing, beyond this moment, beyond these circumstances for the eternal realities that are the ultimate plan of an eternal God who made the stars and cares about the sparrows and knows your soul.
And that God is the one that the psalmist is speaking about.
I need Him, and you do as well.
And so that we will understand it, we don't just hear about sparrows and pilgrims but ultimately about doorkeepers.
Doesn't that seem strange?
But it comes out of such a good place.
After this desperation of people going through the Valley of Baca, you recognize why verse 8 is here.
"O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!"
God, I just need You to hear me now.
And as people begin to cry out, what do they ultimately do if they are the pilgrims now arriving at the temple of God, bringing their petitions?
Verse 9, "Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!"
Now, the words are strange to us, but think how special they are.
God, hear my prayer, but look on the face of your anointed.
Now, for an Israelite at the time of the writing of this psalm, probably just thinking:  Hear the people of Israel, Your anointed.
But you and I should recognize that that word anointed gets translated in the New Testament as the word Christ, the Messiah.
Lord, look on His face.
And I begin to recognize that what God promised me in the New Testament, what He promises to do under the work of Jesus Christ is that I have an intercessor at the right hand of God in my behalf.
And when I go before God and say, "I'm broken by my circumstances or by my own sin, Lord, hear my prayer; don't look at me, though; You look at Him; look at the--, my shield; look at the one who stands in my place; look at His face," because that is the Christ in my behalf, the one who right now at the right hand of God intercedes for you, so that when you go before God and in your brokenness you say, "God, it's me who caused the trashiness; it's the mud in my life; it's the difficulty that I didn't respond well to, but hear my prayer but not because of me.
I hide myself behind Jesus and look to Him as You hear my cry."
And then amazing things begin to happen.
Verse 10, "For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness."
Now, we just love the words, because they come from the songs of our youth, many of us, right?
I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.
Better is one day in Your house than a thousand elsewhere.
But we have to see the context.
I mentioned to you right at the outside of--, outset of this message that this is a psalm of the sons of Korah.
The Levites who were in charge of temple worship were divided into clans.
The sons of Aaron offered the sacrifices.
The sons of Asaph, the music.
And the sons of Korah:  They were the doorkeepers.
Now, when you think doorkeeper, don't think of the guard at Buckingham Palace that stands still and doesn't move, okay?
What would a doorkeeper be when there are people from all nations, by Jesus' time, different languages, coming to Jerusalem by the hundreds of thousands to go to the temple to worship and offer their sacrifices?
I mean, you just don't say, "Listen, get in line; get three back."
No, no.
I got thousands and thousands of people to organize, and there are the doorkeepers, the Korahites, that are organizing what God is doing, so that all these people can worship as God intends.
This is a heavy, intense responsibility.
Instead of thinking of the impassive soldier, think of the Sergeant at Arms in the United States Senate who ushers the president in for the State of the Union Address.
Oh, that's a pretty good seat to see the president come in to do his work.
And if you begin to see it that way, the doorkeeper, while it's not the position of greatest prestige, it often gives you a front row seat.
It's like being an usher at the World Series.
Right?
I get to see what God is doing.
And here's what's happened:  There have been all these pilgrims coming from different parts of Israel, coming from different nations, ultimately, coming from different languages, and they're coming in to the place of worship to offer their petition to God after the weeping, after the journey, after the struggle, and they're saying, "God, hear me."
And now wouldn't you love to be a bug on the wall?
Wouldn't you like to have the best seat in the house to see God begin to work?
Like those of you who are table leaders for Vacation Bible School or song leaders or cookie servers, I mean, just to be there and see God take kids out of the neighborhoods, out of different families, some churched, some unchurched, some dechurched, and begin to do the work of salvation and eternity among them.
And you begin to say, "Oh, I'd rather be here than a lot of other places.
I'd love to see the hand and the work of God in this place."
And that is what we see the doorkeepers doing.
It's what we rejoice in as the people of God when we begin to see those of different nationalities, ethnicities, and languages come into our own church and begin to say, "Whoa, I want a front row seat for this; I want to be able to see what God is doing in this place.
This is great.
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
God, do Your work; I want to see it."
And that reality is what begins to fill people with joy so that they would say in verse 11, "For the Lord God is a sun and a shield."
Think spring tomatoes, everybody.
Okay?
What does a spring tomato need?
It needs sun to be nourished.
It also needs some shield from maybe the cooler temperatures early on, right?
You need both.
You need nourishment and protection.
And that's what's being called upon here.
God, I recognize if You have brought these different people here, if You are working through these people for prayers for eternal things, then You are the sun and the shield not only to them but that I need.
So that verse 12, "O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!"
If I can really begin to see God at work, begin to recognize it's real enough for the real world, then even when I go through my Valley of Baca, through the weeping and the trial and the disease and the distant relationships and my own sinful embarrassment, then I will trust that God is still by His Son my sun and shield, nurturing me with the Spirit of God in my life with what I need to move forward but a shield from the circumstance or even my own actions that would deny me eternity.
That what God is promising is:  I will maintain the end game.
The end is secure because God is a sun and a shield through the work of His Son, and when I trust that, it actually is what gives me the reason to sing in the hard circumstances, so that we would actually say, "My heart and flesh cry out to sing to the Lord of hosts."
I may not be understand--, able to understand this, but I trust Him, because He is my sun and He is my shield, nourishing what I need, protecting from what I cannot be protected from myself.
He is my sun and shield, and so I trust Him.
Not always easy but necessary for people of faith.
We're approaching the anniversary of a mass shooting at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Do you remember?
A young man, 21 years old, Dylann Roof, came into a midweek Bible study, went down to the basement of a church, began to participate in the Bible study for an hour or more before taking out a .45-caliber and shooting 14 people, killing nine.
Because of the laws of South Carolina, the families of those killed were allowed to show up for the bond hearing of Dylann Roof.
Can you put yourself back in that situation?
This nation was about to explode with racial violence in that summer.
City after city had experienced things where the streets were enraged.
And with that mass shooting across racial lines, people expected more explosions.
I want you to remember what the people of the church did at the bond hearing.
Families with voices trembling with emotion and anger nonetheless spoke of the grace of forgiveness for a nation looking on.
Nadine Collier, because Collier is the name of my grandmother it caught my ear:  Nadine Collier, who lost her mother, spoke directly to the murderer, "I forgive you.
You took something very precious away from me.
I will never get to talk to my mother again, but I forgive you.
And I have mercy on your soul.
You hurt me.
You hurt a lot of people.
But if God forgives you, I forgive you."
Amazing.
Even as that man will experience the incarceration he deserves, there are people who said, "For the sake of the gospel, we want the message of salvation to be known."
And all of us through the TV cameras who were on that hearing and on the church service the following week became the doorkeepers in the house of the Lord, looking on at the amazing thing that God was doing as the message of the grace of the gospel just exploded across a nation in such a way that was more powerful than people could actually believe.
Could they really mean that?
Could the gospel really mean that?
That those that are so in the ess--, in the eyes of the culture, trashy and filthy and awful to have done this thing, could experience the grace of God and the families who had experienced such hurt would still talk about the grace of God.
I must say:  There are any number of us who would say, "If that's what it means for God to be a sun and a shield, I don't need that."
Who does need it?
We do.
If the grace of God is great enough to cover a mass murderer, if it's great enough to soften the hearts of people that have experienced life's greatest hurts and they still have hope and they still believe in a God of eternity and they believe that He is working past the immediate hurts in a real world for an eternal good, I need that sun and shield.
And so do you too.
And how do I possibly believe in it?
I believe in a God of eternal things, because He sent His Son to make it true.
He experienced the murder that was caused by my sin and yours.
He was the one that went through the hurt in my behalf and your behalf, so that the grace that God intends would flood into our lives, not just for the moment but for eternity.
And the God who is concerned for that end game, for that eternal purpose, is working not just in the vast but in the sparrows.
His eye is on the sparrow, so I know He cares for me.
And you.
That's why He sent Jesus, for the eternal things.
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He cares for you.