Magnified! Sunday, June 22, 2015

I think, over the course of the five days, we had, not all at the same time, but we had, I think, 19 different kids from a bunch of different families, and I'm thankful for all of our teachers and for all of our help and support and getting snacks and keeping everybody safe and crafts and games. We had a good time, and so we are very thankful for that. We're going to take a look at our theme verse this morning, "Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together." If you want to follow along, you can do so either in the Bible. There are some sermon notes in the bulletin if you want to kind of keep an eye on where we are going. Let's pray, and we'll dive right into it.

Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus. We thank you for grace. We thank you for all your goodness. We thank you for all the kids that were here this week, learning about your goodness and your greatness. We just thank you for all of your blessings. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. Psalm 34, verse 3. When we talk about magnifying, there's two kinds of magnifying we can do. There is the magnifying where we take something small and make it look big, like in a magnifying glass. There is also a magnifying where we take something that is big and it helps us to see it and its bigness more clearly. So, for example, a telescope would help us to see something that is big more clearly. For example, when we look up at the stars, what do we see? A whole bunch of tiny little dots. Maybe we can see some difference in colors.

One of our VBS crafts this week really helped us see who could see red and who could see green very, very clearly. We learned a lot about ourselves during that. But what a telescope does is take for what us, our little tiny dots, seemingly an infinite distance away, and with the right equipment, it takes it and we truly see their great signs. And the remarkable thing about God is whether you look at His creation with a magnifying glass and you blow it up to see all of these tiny, beautiful details, we see God's glory. But also through a telescope that shows us the biggest and greatest, and we see God in those things as well. And for us to magnify, it doesn't mean that we're trying to make God look greater, but rather we are focusing our attention on Him in such a way that He is what we are seeing and rejoicing in.

And so as we went through this week, we talked about Jesus and the little children. How the Creator, John says, the Word made flesh, as He is sitting surrounded by people with all kinds of needs, and some of them probably very important, and a bunch of children wanting to come see Jesus. And the disciples say, "No, no, no. Jesus doesn't have time for you." What we find is Jesus says, "Let the little children come to Me." And then in the midst of the storm, as Jesus is with His disciples, the one who keeps the whole universe going still cares about the disciples in the boat. And with the woman at the well, this woman who felt unworthy and distant and whose life was filled with sin, saw the love of Jesus personally in her life.

And as Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the middle of the night, we looked at on Thursday, we find that Jesus comes to save the world, and that includes us. And then on Friday, we looked at the fact that God cares about us. And we looked at how Jesus teaches about worry, and we see that God is faithful not just in those big things in our life, but in the smallest ones as well. And one of the games that day that kind of really hit home in a very picturesque way for me as an adult was that the kids were all given pieces of paper, and Jerome had them write down their worries. They didn't have to show them to anybody. You know, some people wrote a few things. Some couldn't think of anything. Some had, you know, a manifesto of worries, right?

And you take them and you crumple them all up, and then they tried to deal with all of their worries on their own in this scrambling game with paper, and it just didn't work. And one of the things that we learned, not just in the lesson, but in the game, is that we take those worries of brokenness to God, and He's the one who brings us peace. Now here, when we hear, "Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together," right, it's easy to magnify the Lord when things are good. When life is easy, when it's bunny rabbits and ice cream, right, it's easy to be joyful and to be excited and to say, "Let's magnify the Lord." But the question in this verse is not, "Magnify the Lord when things are good," but, "What do I do when things are not good?"

What happens when it doesn't work out? What happens when life is difficult? What happens when life is painful? What happens when my plan isn't working? What happens when my expectations, what happens when I am broken? And this is where the 34th Psalm comes to us with such power. It's not just in those moments of joy, but this Psalm comes to us in those moments of life. Now some Psalms, if you ever look through the book of Psalms, some Psalms are just sort of there. It'll say like, you know, Psalm 17, and then the Psalm just starts. Now there are other Psalms that have what is called a superscription. And sometimes that's a thing like a title, like trust in the Lord. Sometimes it's an author, a Psalm of David, or a Psalm of Korah, or a Psalm of Moses.

Some Psalms in their superscription have the musical terms or instruments, you know, with a lyre, with the drums, with the flute. And then sometimes Psalms in their little superscription that goes at the top tell us the circumstances that surround these words. And so let's take a look at the circumstances that surround these words, "Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name forever." Now the superscription to this Psalm starts with a Psalm of David. And to sort of put this into context, Israel has asked for a king from God. Saul is ultimately chosen as king, but King Saul chooses to pursue his own agenda and his own authority rather than submit to the authority of God. And God in 1 Samuel 15 will reject Saul as king. And so in 1 Samuel 16, God sends the prophet Samuel to this little town, and he's sent to anoint another young man who will ultimately replace Saul as king of Israel.

And so Samuel goes to the house of a man by the name of Jesse, and Jesse has seven sons. And the prophet is coming to dinner, and they don't know why necessarily the prophet's coming to dinner, but he is. And so out of his eight sons, Jesse invites seven of them to dinner with Samuel. So if you've ever felt left out, the beginning of David's story is for you, right? Family dinner, the important prophet over all of Israel. He's coming to dinner, and your dad goes, "All right, guys, prophet's coming for dinner, but not you." Right? You go to the field. You take care of the sheep. And David, in that moment, is left out. And what will happen is each of Jesse's sons will stand before Samuel. Samuel will say, "Oh, man, this guy looks like a king." And the guy goes, "It's not him." And he goes, "That guy is definitely king material."

And God goes, "It's not him." And he goes through seven of these sons. Finally he goes, "Do you have any more sons?" They're like, "Yeah, we got the little guy, and he's out with the sheep." He goes, "Bring him in." And it is then that David is anointed as the future king of Israel. And so in this strange turn of events, in 1 Samuel 16, Saul, as he sort of descends deeper and deeper into madness, oppressed with an evil spirit, it turns out the only thing that really can calm Saul's spirit is music. And so somebody asked around, "Does anybody know anybody who's good with music?" And they said, "Yeah, there's this guy who lives over in Bethlehem. His name's Jesse. He has a son. His name's David. He's a gifted musician." And so they go, and they hire this young man, David, to come and play music before Saul

during these fits of madness. And in this weird turn of events, the guy who is going to replace Saul becomes Saul's personal musician. And more than that, he becomes his friend in 1 Samuel 16:21. It says that David came to Saul and entered his service, and Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. And so what seems to happen between 16 and 17 in 1 Samuel is that David will, sort of as needed, leave home, go play music for the king to calm him down, and then goes back home. And then what happens is Israel's sort of traditional enemy, the Philistines, and they don't just come with an army, they come with a giant. And arranged on either side of this valley are God's people on one side, the Philistines, and they're giant on the other, and there is a challenge to Israel and David, not in the battle,

but bringing food to his brothers who are fighting. Here's this giant challenge in single combat, one of God's people, and God's people are quaking in fear. And David, this young guy goes, "Well, I'll take care of it." And everybody goes, "No, you can't." And Saul, grasping at straws, goes, "Well, let's try it out." He doesn't fit Saul's armor, so David steps out to face this giant who is significantly bigger, significantly more experienced in war, complete with armor and weapons, and David simply has his sling, but he has something else. The power of God is with David. And David defeats this giant. And so David stands between God's people and God's enemies, and through God's strength defeats them. And in 1 Samuel 18, David then becomes best friends with Saul's son, Jonathan. And at the end

of 1 Samuel 18, he marries Saul's daughter, who was a genuine princess. However, in between the beginning and the end of this, David is playing music before the king, and Saul, overcome with jealousy, throws a spear at him, not once, but twice. Right? We sometimes joke when people are singing. It's like, "Well, let's get some tomatoes. Let's get some rotten tomatoes and throw at them." Sort of as a joke, but here is Saul trying to kill David as David seeks to calm his spirit with music. And so you begin to see this relationship that was once deep and mutual, where Saul loves David greatly, has become contentious. By 1 Samuel 21, David is running for his life. And he's running out of places to run. And in verse 10, it says, "David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath." The giant that

David kills back in 1 Samuel 17, his hometown of Gath. How desperate does David have to be to go to this place where his archenemy was from? And it is not going well in Gath. In fact, let's read together what happens in the town of Gath. And David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath. He's been seeking asylum there, so he changes his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. And so he comes seeking asylum. He gets there, and he realizes that these people don't like him, so he pretends to be absolutely insane in hopes that they will simply dismiss him. That's exactly what happened. Then Achish

said to his servants, "Behold, you see this man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack mad men? Have you brought this fellow to behave, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?" And while it is tragic for David because he has nowhere else to go, the words of Achish are a little bit humorous. He goes to his servants, "Why would you bring another weirdo in here? Like, I have enough." And David is sent away. Now look what happens next. He departed from there. Nowhere else to go. No other civilization to go to. And he escaped to the cave of Abdullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. So David is now hiding in a cave. His family

comes to him, but so does everybody else. And everybody who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him, and he became the commander over him, and there were with him about 400 men. So here is David. He's gone from a family in Bethlehem to the service of the king, to deeply beloved by the king, to being friends with the king's family, to marrying into the king's family, to defending God's people, to now a hunted fugitive, and he is in a cave. And Psalm 34, the superscript reads this. A Psalm of David. When he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away. David writes this Psalm, and he writes these words about magnifying God, and proclaiming his goodness. Not when everything was good.

Not when he was married to the princess, and his best friend was the prince. Not when he was the king's most beloved musician. He writes these words as he is living in a cave. So I want us to think for a moment, how do we respond when things don't go well? I don't know about you, but when things don't go well, it's real easy to complain. It doesn't take a lot of effort for us to see all of the problems and all of the brokenness. And when things aren't going well, not only do we complain, so often we begin to compare. Well, why is this happening to me? I'm a better person than they are. Why can't they have this struggle? Why do they have what's good and I have what's bad? Why is this happening to me?

So we complain and we compare, and then we become angry. And what happens in our anger is that we begin to snap and lash out at people who have no part of our problems. They may even be trying to help and support and be close to us, but because of the anger over the brokenness in our life and because of the comparison and the complaining, we begin to attack those who've had nothing to do with our brokenness. And here's what is so remarkable about this psalm. Now there are times David feels emotions like this. But Psalm 34 is not one of those places. David, it would seem at least to me, he has every right to complain. He has every right to compare, "I'm the godly one. Saul's ungodly. He's got a palace." But David says this, verse 1, "I will bless the Lord,

at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth." How does David do it? How can he say as he's running for his life, there's no good food, his princess is in the castle, there's no bed, there's a cave filled with spiders. How can David say, "I will bless the Lord at all times"? Does he just have really forceful will? Does he just sort of keep calm and carry on? Here's what David does that's so wonderfully. He humbly takes his heartbreak to God. It says this in verse 2, "My soul makes its hope to the Lord, not in itself. Let the humble hear and be glad." You see, David will see in this verse, in the next one we read, he humbly takes his heartbreak to God. And you might say, "Well, why does humility matter?"

It's because pride trusts in itself. That's what Adam and Eve do in the garden. As through their rebellion against God, everything breaks. One of their first responses is to try to fix it. And it doesn't work. Abraham and Sarah do it both by going to Egypt and with Hagar. Israel, as they come into the Promised Land with Joshua, and a nation approaches them with a treaty rather than going to God. Scripture says they just made the decision without consulting him. It ends in heartbreak and brokenness. More recently, Saul has lost the kingdom of Israel because of this very same attitude. That I've got it figured out. I can do it. And David, by contrast, says, "My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad." And David here is saying, "I don't have it all together, but I know the one who does."

And David understands that this is bigger and more difficult than he can handle, and he's not trying to solve the problem by himself. He's saying that God is in control. Look at the humility in verse 4. "I sought the Lord, and He answered me and delivered me from all of my fears." David doesn't look at his problems and say, "I can figure it out." Or like we do sometimes where we say, "Well, I don't want to bother anybody with my struggles." You see, there is no too small with God. David just simply says this, "I sought the Lord, and He answered me." You see, David trusts God for both his present and his future. In verse 7, he'll say this, "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers Him." And maybe at some point you've heard somebody say something like they don't want to do something,

and somebody's trying to get them to do it, and they'll say, "Well, you and what army?" Or I guess if you're Dave, "You and what navy?" The answer here is God's army. And here's David, and he's in a cave, and he has 400 people with him, but they are not the cream of the crop. Yes, there are some mighty men who fight with him at times, but what does it say? It's people who have no money, and they're in debt. The people whose souls are bitter, their hearts are broken, and they have nowhere else to go. And David, in this moment, looks both to the present and to the future that God's provision. And he said, "It is God's army that surrounds me." And in part, it may be likely that David is thinking back to that time

where Jacob, who comes back to the Promised Land, about to face his brother Esau, who he has lied to, who he has cheated, who he has treated poorly. And as Jacob is coming back, Jacob comes back toward the Promised Land. And Jacob will say, "This is God's camp. This is where God's army is." And we'll call the name of that place Manahem. And maybe David, in this, is saying, "Just as God sort of took care of Jacob and encamped around him, God will encamp around me." In 2 Kings, there's a story that's familiar. A man by the name of Elisha is being hunted by an enemy army. And his servant goes out and looks and sees the enemy army surrounding Elisha. And he says, "What are we going to do?" And Elisha prays like this, "Lord, please open his eyes that he may see."

And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Think about how courageous we would be if we, like David, like Jacob, like Elisha, understood that we are not alone in the midst of our struggle. But David also looks to the future. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall not be ashamed. Now this does not mean that there will never be any hurt or brokenness or struggle. It means the end of the story isn't here yet. That through the power and strength of God that it turns out okay in the end. And what happens when we magnify God is we start putting things back in the right order. Rather than magnifying ourself and our goodness and our plans and our strength, when we magnify God,

what we're doing is putting things in light for the proper Lord. The one who hears our prayers, the one who is with us and surrounds us and encamps with us, the one who brings all things together for the good of those who trust Him. So David says this: "Paste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him." And I love this picture, especially if you've ever been around little kids. So today, I think I would call today's children, I don't know if you've ever watched Bluey. They're very much the Bluey generation, right? You've got, you know, Bluey and Bingo and, you know, Mom and Dad Bandit, and I can never remember the mom's name. Chili! There we go, right? And it's wonderful. Now, our kids, especially the older ones, they were what we call the Daniel Tiger generation.

And if you've ever watched Daniel Tiger, the lesson in every Daniel Tiger show is always in song, right? If you have to go potty stuff and go right away. And so the one we always quote to our kids is this, "If you try new food, it might be good." Now, I'm not going to sing it for you like Daniel Tiger does, but what David is doing, and if you're part of the Daniel Tiger generation, you'll understand this. He says, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good." He says, "If you try new food, you're going to find out that it's good." What he is saying in the midst of the darkness of the cave, in the midst of his struggle, running for his life in a place filled with spiders, he goes, "Magnify the Lord."

And in magnifying the Lord, it rearranges all of his worries and his fears under the power of God. And he says to us, "Paste and see that the Lord is good." Try it. Be your hope. Magnify it. But all of those other things, by doing that, it reorders everything in our lives. Blessed is the man in the breath of Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, help this to be true of our life. Maybe there are some who have looked and who have seen, but have not tasted your goodness. We just ask that you would help them to see your glory and your greatness. Both in the beauty of your creation, in things like butterflies' wings, and in the greatness like the mountains and the stars of the seas. May we see you, and may we glorify you, and may you reorder our life in a way that is perfect.