Danger and Delight

Scripture: Psalm 18: 1-19

Sermon: Danger and Delight

Topics: danger, delight, paradox

Preached: May 10, 2015

Rev. Mike Abma

Psalm 18

To the leader. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said:

¹ I love you, O Lord, my strength. 

² The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,

   my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,

   my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 

³ I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;

   so I shall be saved from my enemies. 

⁴ The cords of death encompassed me;

   the torrents of perdition assailed me; 

⁵ the cords of Sheol entangled me;

   the snares of death confronted me. 

⁶ In my distress I called upon the Lord;

   to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice,

   and my cry to him reached his ears. 

⁷ Then the earth reeled and rocked;

   the foundations also of the mountains trembled

   and quaked, because he was angry. 

⁸ Smoke went up from his nostrils,

   and devouring fire from his mouth;

   glowing coals flamed forth from him. 

⁹ He bowed the heavens, and came down;

   thick darkness was under his feet. 

¹⁰ He rode on a cherub, and flew;

   he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind. 

¹¹ He made darkness his covering around him,

   his canopy thick clouds dark with water. 

¹² Out of the brightness before him

   there broke through his clouds

   hailstones and coals of fire. 

¹³ The Lord also thundered in the heavens,

   and the Most High uttered his voice. 

¹⁴ And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them;

   he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them. 

¹⁵ Then the channels of the sea were seen,

   and the foundations of the world were laid bare

at your rebuke, O Lord,

   at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. 

¹⁶ He reached down from on high, he took me;

   he drew me out of mighty waters. 

¹⁷ He delivered me from my strong enemy,

   and from those who hated me;

   for they were too mighty for me. 

¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my calamity;

   but the Lord was my support. 

¹⁹ He brought me out into a broad place;

   he delivered me, because he delighted in me. 

INTRODUTION

In case you had not heard, there was an earthquake in Grand Rapids last weekend.

On May 2, an earthquake

measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale,

began just southeast of Kalamazoo

and caused all of southwest Michigan to tremble.

As far as earthquakes go, it was not a big deal.

On May 2, there were 18 other earthquakes in the world,

all measuring over 4.0 on the Richter scale.

But here, it was a Big Deal.

It was a big deal because we do not get many earthquakes.

The last one was in 1947.

The one before that: 1883.

That means we get them once every 65 years or so.

Apparently the landmass way beneath us is moving west at about 2 cms a year.

After 65 years, we feel it.

Our little tremor is seemingly nothing compared to the 7.8 earthquake in Nepal recently.

We felt a tremor. They endured a tragedy.

The Indian landmass that crashed into Asia

causing the Himalyan mountains

is still moving northward.

When it shifted on April 25

it was an earthquake of astonishing power.

Towers fell.

Temples crumbled.

The city of Katmandu was left in rubble.

TROUBLE

In Psalm 18,

you would think the cry for help would come

after some natural disaster.

But no, the cry for help

comes first.

The person asking for help

is being threatened by death.

We do not know why.

Was it enemies?

Was it a disease?

What was it?

We do not know.

All we know is that death was near:

Its cords strangling

Its snares dragging

Its waves drowning.

The call for help goes out.

In my distress I cried to God for help.

And God in his temple, heard my voice.

GOD SHOWS UP:

….IN POWER

The next number of verses are all about God showing up.

What is so shocking is that,

even though the Psalmist is in danger when praying this prayer,

when God shows up, he is in even more danger.

The God who shows up is breath-takingly powerful.

The psalmist uses every

picture of raw natural power at his disposal

to describe God’s arrival.

God is an earthquake,

An earthquake off the Richter scale altogether

So that the whole earth rocks and reels.

So that the foundations of even the most solid mountains tremble.

Our little Michigan quake is to the Nepal earthquake

what the Nepal earthquake is to God’s coming presence.

There is no comparison.

Next, God is described in the language of a volcano.

Talking of volcanos,

Did you see film footage of the volcano in Chile

that erupted just two days before the Nepal earthquake.

That volcano was amazing,

with its explosion of fire and ash,

its lightning flashes in the night,

its huge billows of smoke.

That is the picture of God in Psalm 18

Smoke billowed from his nostrils

Glowing coal and ash flamed forth from him.

Of course, we have the recent events

of the earthquake in Nepal

and the volcano in Chile

in mind when reading this psalm.

The psalmist, the one writing this psalm,

had another time and place in mind

when writing this psalm.

The psalmist had in mind

Mount Sinai of the Exodus,

with its mountain of smoke and fire

with its mountain that trembled and shook.

The Psalmist had in mind

the presence of God

in all his power, and in all his danger.

…. IN HIDDENESS

No one could face God and live.

So when God descends,

He is shrouded in darkness,

thick darkness

for our own protection.

The language of Psalm 18 is like a reverse tornado.

Instead of a normal tornado in which things are pulled up,

In this tornado,

God descends

In a shroud

In the cloud

In the darkness.

… IN A VOICE

God also descends in a thunderous voice.

Again the Psalmist takes the most dramatic type of descent he can think of,

that of thunder and lightning descending from a great storm.

That is how he describes

God’s voice:

Blasting

And rumbling

And flashing forth.

Lightning is a pretty good image of power.

A bolt of lightning carries something like a trillion watts of power.

It sizzles at 20,000 degrees Celsius – that is 3 times hotter than the sun.

This is creation at its most dramatic.

Now reading this description of God showing up,

As an earthquake,

A volcano,

A tornado,

A thunderstorm.

What impression do you think we are supposed to get?

Don’t you suppose we should think DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

ANNIE DILLARD

Some of you may know the name Annie Dillard.

She has written books like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

and For the Time Being

and Holy the Firm.

What Annie Dillard does better than anyone else I know is write about

both the beauty and the danger of the world we live in.

On one page, she captures how radiant and glowing and glorious creation is

Then on the next page it is ruthless, and gruesome, and filled with death.

These are the two things she constantly holds in tension:

The blood-soaked

Grief-striken

Pain-plagued planet,

And the God-infused

Divinely saturated

Glorious creation.

Why does she do that?

Because she thinks one of the greatest mistakes of

our modern world

is that we have tried to tame God.

We have tried to down-size the Divine

We have tried to tame the Trinity.

In one of her essays, “Teaching a Stone to Talk”

she writes that if we really knew the God we worshipped

we would come to church with crash helmets on.

Annie Dillard takes to heart

What C.S. Lewis expresses in his Narnia books.

When Aslan the Lion is referred to,

He is described this way:

“He is not safe. But he is good.”

We only pay attention to the second phrase.

We forget the first.

We assume we have a Manageable God.

And that results in a loss — a loss of awe, a loss of wonder, a loss of fear.

We no longer fear God.

….AND DELIGHT

Here is the amazing thing about Psalm 18.

God in all his raw power,

in all his dangerous presence

stoops down

and does not destroy us.

He delivers us.

In one of the sweetest phrases in the whole Bible

Psalm 18:19

He delivered me, because he delighted in me.

So where do we see

the earthquake

the darkness

the thunder

the flashes of light in the New Testament?

Is this simply an Old Testament description of God?

Well think a moment.

What happens at the cross?

What happens at the resurrection?

There are earthquakes

There is darkness

There is thunder

There are flashes of light.

The all-powerful, glorious, dangerous God,

Himself become vulnerable to danger

becomes blood-soaked

and grief-striken

and Pain-plagued

Because he delights in us.

When he rises from death he says, “Do not be afraid.”

PARADOX

Danger and delight are the two things every Christian must hold in tension.

It is how we see Creation

but also how we see our Creator.

One of the ways we live this tension out

is by remembering two common calls in the Bible:

the call to Fear God and the call to Not be Afraid.

Fear God,

Know his holy presence

Acknowledge the danger of his divinity

Realize there is no power that comes close to his power.

And yet,

Do not be afraid

When come to the new Mount Sinai,

When we enter into the new tabernacle

When we are in Christ

We are in a place of holiness and danger

And yet it is for us

A place of God’s pleasure

That is too much for words.

He delights in us and we do not need to fear.

CONCLUSION

Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See recently won the Pulitzer Prize.

It is the story of two teenagers:

A young girl in France

A young boy in Germany.

It is during the outbreak of World War II.

The storms of war swirl all around them.

So how can one navigate in such a time as that?

How can you keep from becoming as hateful as those around you?

The title of the book All the Light We Cannot See

is rather theological.

It reminds me of what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4

about what is seen and what is unseen.

Paul writes that what is seen

Is this body – like a jar of clay, filled with cracks and fragile and ready to fall apart.

What is unseen is a treasure.

What is unseen is a power.

What is unseen is all the Light we cannot see.

It is God’s light, Christ’s resurrection power, living in us.

Psalm 18 was written for people facing death and the threat of death.

Death’s cords entangling

Death’s tentacles entwining

Death twisting us and confusing us and threatening to drag us down.

The Lord comes down,

Down into our pain

Down into our weakness

Down into our danger

And the Lord tells us

He rejoices in us

He delights in us

And our destiny,

Is to have resurrected bodies

Which share in his own Light.

We fear God….and are not afraid.