Praise and Trust God – Sermon 9 June, 2013

Praise and Trust God
Palm 146   Luke 7:11-17

It is interesting to hear children pray. Their prayers are honest, simple and sincere. Prayers such as:

Dear God, Please send a new baby for Mommy. The baby you sent last week cries too much.

Dear God, this is my prayer. Could you please give my brother some brains? So far he doesn’t have any.

Please help me in school. I need help in spelling, adding, subtracting, science, reading, history, geography and writing. I don’t need help in anything else.

These are simple and yet honest prayers.

I remember when our boy was little and we asked him to say grace before the meal, he was always ready to pray and give thanks to God for the food. He used to say: “O Lord God, thank you for the food you give, thank you for the water you give, thank you for mum and dad, thank you for grandma and grandpa, thank you for the cousins”. Then opening one eye and looking to the table go on: “Thank you for the bread, thank you for the spoons, folks and knifes, thank you for the water and cups, thank you for the salt and pepper ….” and the list goes on.

How about our prayers? Often our prayers are “asking” prayers. While it is true that we are encouraged to ask of God, there is more to prayer than just asking for things.

If you look at the Book of Psalms, many of these prayers and hymns are songs of praise.

The first words of the last five psalms, 146, 147, 148, 149 and 150, are “Praise the Lord.”

Praising God is not like thanking God. When we thank God, it is a prayer of thanking God for the specific things He has done. Giving praise to God is more of adoration for what makes God who He is.

Thanking God is somewhat self-centred – “Thank you, God, for what you did for ME.”

For different reasons sometimes we forget to praise God.

This Psalm reminds us to show our appreciation to God by praising Him.

When you look at the Praise Psalms, every one of them starts off with a Call to Praise and with the same words – “Praise the Lord.” In fact, they all end with the same words – “Praise the Lord.”

In our prayers we focus on asking for things WE need, which makes us self-centred. We have to praise God and focus on Him rather than on ourselves.

But why we have to praise God?

There are many reasons why we should praise God.

First, we should praise him because God is someone we can trust. He will not fail us.

Psalm 146 says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”

We should trust God in everything, but in reality people put their trust on money, technology, power and military might.

What will we put your trust in?

It is God alone we should trust because He alone is eternal. Everything else will someday disappear. But God existed before creation and He will always exist.

If we begin to develop an attitude of praising God, then we will find that we put our trust in God, not in things that will fail you.

Second, we should praise God because He gives us hope.

Psalm 146 says, “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them.”

There is reference here to Jacob – a reminder of the history of God and his people in the Old Testament. We know what God did for Jacob – and we know what God has done for his people through the centuries. In other words, God has a record in which you can find hope.

The psalmist talks about God creating the heaven, the earth, the sea and everything in them. We can look around at the glories of the universe.

Where do we find our sense of hope?

If we begin to develop an attitude of praising God, then we will find that we put our hope in God, not in things that will fail us.

We should also praise him because God loves us.

Many times we have praised people, our favourite musician, our favourite movie or television star.

It amazing that God – who made this universe and sustains this creation – pays attention to us. God loves us. For that we should have the attitude of praise for God.

Our gospel lesson this morning deals with this very subject, it is about a lady, a widow who lost her only son. This is a tragic situation.

Then we see that out of the chaos, confusion, and disorder, Jesus comes. Jesus was traveling with His disciples and He was coming into the city of Nain. He saw the funeral crowd with the mourners with their cries of grief.

The text says, “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “don’t cry.”

Jesus was moved to action because He could sense her pain, her despair, her loneliness, and her hopelessness. Jesus was moved to compassion because of His great love, because of sense of caring for the human family that is why He acted.

Jesus went and touched the coffin and said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak.

The point is that God through Jesus came to someone in the moment of hopelessness and that person, the mother, was given renewed hope. Her life was filled with purpose and meaning as she realized that God cared even for her……she was not alone and forgotten any longer.

We need to look beyond the miracle in this story to the action and heart of Jesus. The woman didn’t ask Jesus, the woman didn’t even exhibit faith. Jesus was moved to action because of His love, because He understood the despair of this woman.

Because Jesus is the suffering Messiah, because He was a victim on the cross, because He suffered and experienced pain and all the sinfulness of creation on the cross, He knows and can feel with us. He can feel all the chaos, all the confusion, and all the despair in our lives.

Jesus can reach into our lives with His hands of love and compassion as He did to that widow at Nain because His heart still aches, His heart still longs, His heart still feels the pain, the heartache, the helplessness of His family. Because Jesus suffered, because He experienced what we have experienced, His heart can reach to us as one who knows and as one who has been there.

When we are in grief and despair, we want a Saviour who will come and be with us. Jesus being with us is all that is required. Seeing God’s love and compassion to how we cannot praise Him and give thanks.

We praise God for what He has done and for who He is, a God to whom we trust.

Krikor Youmshajekian