Practicing Merciful Service in a Culture of Injustice and Division

We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.

This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other

use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.

Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org.

Good morning.

My name is Brian.

I'm a member of the Alameda Community Group.

Today's scripture is from the Old Testament, a reading from Psalm 146.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life.

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save.

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground.

On that very day, their plans come to nothing.

Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.

He is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them.

He remains faithful forever.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets prisoners free.

The Lord gives sight to the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.

The Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

But he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The Lord reigns forever.

Your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord.

The grass withers and the flowers fall.

But the word of our God stands forever.

Good morning, Christ Church.

Christ Church, congratulations for making it here this morning through all the barricades.

And I understand we had a few Christ Church runners as well.

Look forward to seeing the results later today.

We've been calling this sermon series, Holy Habits of Grace.

And the driving question has been, how can we make our whole lives a grateful response to the grace of God?

How can we change our daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal habits so that less time and less attention and less energy is given to God and to his grace in our lives?

Another way to say that is, if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, then how can we not just trust his truth, but how can we also walk in his way?

How can we live his life?

And we have this handout for you today.

Some of you have seen this maybe before.

But the first side says, what kind of community do we want to be?

And we tried there to name the dominant cultural paradigm that we're living in.

And then we also tried to sort of map out this alternative counterculture, this creative minority that we would like to be.

And we try to put words to a particular spiritual practice that creates and sustains such a culture.

And in doing this, we're trying to define our values, to define the way of life that we hope to embody together

and the kind of things that we could be expecting to pray for each other, for example.

If you turn to the other side, the second side of that sheet, it says, you know, what kind of person do I want to be?

And you can see the list of practices, the list of habits there, and the ways that those might fit into our daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal rhythms of life.

And you can think about that like an organized trellis upon which the organic vine of your life and your life with God is meant to grow up on.

It needs structure.

It needs support.

And so we're encouraging you to take that today and make some notes on it.

Write some things down that God has been speaking to you about, things He's been inviting you to do, things He's been challenging you to do.

As we finish up 2024 and head into 2025, what are the next steps that He's calling you to take to experience real life transformation by His grace?

Notice that two of those practices at the bottom are outward facing.

So it's not just about God's grace in our lives.

It's also about God's grace in the lives of others.

And I think about these as kind of for the city habits that are oriented to our neighbors, to our friends, our coworkers, and our family members.

One of those habits we call witness.

And two weeks ago, we encouraged you all to write down the names of three people that you'd like to see explore faith, perhaps for the first time.

And begin praying for those people.

Some of you have emailed those names to us at alpha at Christchurcheastbay.org.

And we have a list of people in our prayer room that we prayed over this morning.

I think the list is now at about 75 people that we're praying for that they would begin to explore their questions about faith and God and eternal matters.

And we had an amazing seminar yesterday where we got some equipping and some training about how to just pray that God would lead us into more simple conversations that can become serious conversations that can become serious conversations where we can talk more about our faith.

And if you weren't there, we're going to email the link out to that video.

We strongly encourage you to engage with that very helpful training.

But this habit of witness or this habit of evangelism, whatever you want to call it, it must never function alone.

Right?

It always needs to be paired with this other habit of service, of justice, of mercy, and compassion.

Because witness has to do with gospel proclamation, but service has to do with gospel demonstration.

And Jesus, in Luke chapter 24, it says Jesus of Nazareth was powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

And that tells us that his disciples, his church, are also called to be powerful in gospel word and gospel deed.

Gospel witness and gospel service.

Gospel proclamation and gospel demonstration.

And so today we're going to look at this habit of service, gospel service, through the lens of Psalm 146 that you just heard read.

And I want to just engage that text with three simple questions.

First of all, who deserves our trust and our praise?

Secondly, how does God relate to the vulnerable?

And third, how does the gospel compel us to serve?

First of all, who deserves our trust and our praise?

So this is the first of the final psalms that conclude this 150 psalm book called the Psalter.

And these final psalms, they're all joy, they're all praise.

And each one of them begins and ends with praise the Lord, or in Hebrew, hallelujah.

And you'll notice in line one, the psalmist is summoning other people to praise.

It's implied, he's saying, praise the Lord, y'all, or praise the Lord, you guys, wherever you're from.

He's saying, praise the Lord, all you people.

And then in line two, he summons himself and he says, praise the Lord, my soul.

And notice what he does next.

He resolves and he commits himself to a lifetime of praise.

He says, I will praise.

I intend to praise.

I mean to praise.

I am bound and determined to praise the Lord all my life.

It's a resolution that my praise is not going to rise and fall on whatever my mood happens to be or however my circumstances might be changing.

No, as long as I have breath in me, he says, I will praise God.

And then he begins to contrast something.

He contrasts praising the Lord and trusting in princes.

And he says this in verse three.

He says, do not put your trust in princes and human beings who cannot save.

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground.

On that very day, their plans come to nothing.

Now, we don't have many princes in our culture, but we do have a lot of powerful politicians,

billionaires, intellectuals, celebrities, influencers, whose help and whose hope, whose protection and whose provision,

whose policies and promises may seem at times more solid and more practical than God's.

And the psalmist would not have written this down for us if people were not as naive and as gullible as we very often can be.

To put our trust, our ultimate trust, in human individuals and human systems.

And he gives us two reasons.

He says, why should we not invest our trust in these people and these systems?

And he says, reason number one is they don't have the power to save.

I mean, they might be able to give you a more reliable economy, more stable immigration at home, less conflict and chaos abroad.

But they cannot give you salvation.

And the second thing the psalmist says is they may be very powerful financially or socially or culturally,

but they're finite mortal creatures just like you and me.

And all of their plans, all of their projects are going to perish with them.

When they die, someone's going to put them in a box, lower them into the ground, throw dirt on them,

and the news cycle and the election cycle is going to move on to the next set of mortal human beings.

So who then deserves our trust and our praise?

While humans in high places can give us some help, they cannot give us basic help.

They can't give us ultimate help.

So who can?

Verse 5, blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.

Now, our trust and our praise is to be redirected from high-powered human beings to this one true God

who is the help and the hope of sufferers and sinners.

And Jacob was one of the greatest sinners and the greatest sufferers in the first book of the Bible.

If you know anything about his story, even in his mother's womb, he's grasping his brother's heel.

As he comes out, you know, on day one, the rest of his life, he spends scheming and deceiving people.

And yet this God of amazing grace comes to Jacob, the deceiver, and he befriends him.

By his grace, he transforms Jacob.

He blesses Jacob and he gives Jacob these enormous privileges and massive responsibilities as his covenant partner.

And in the second book of the Bible, we see that this God is not only the God of Jacob,

he's the God who's the help and the hope of Jacob's offspring.

Because he comes to them and he dismantles the entire empire of Egypt on their behalf.

He leads the 12 tribes of Jacob, the 12 tribes of Israel, out of their captivity in Egypt

and into their freedom in the promised land.

And so in light of this revelation about who the God of Jacob is,

the psalmist makes this fundamental decision that rather than trust and praise ephemeral human helpers

in temporary positions of power, I'm going to trust and praise the Lord.

And I don't know if this is a word for some of us in this post-election season.

Like who is your help and who is your hope?

Verse 10 says,

The Lord reigns forever.

Your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord.

Princes are going to return to the dust

and the Lord is going to rule without end.

So put your trust and put your praise in him.

Amen?

Okay.

Who deserves our trust and praise?

Secondly, how does God relate to the vulnerable?

How does God relate to the vulnerable?

Verse 6 goes on and it says,

The Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them,

he remains faithful forever.

The creator God keeps faith.

He remains faithful forever.

Human beings fail to do this over and over.

And history is just littered with the disappointments of people

who put all their marbles in the basket of mortals who fail them.

But who is this God of Jacob, our help and our hope?

Who is this God who remains faithful forever?

Well, it says he's the maker of heaven and earth.

And that means that he's transcendent in glory.

He's infinitely and eternally powerful.

And he's sovereign and supreme over every square inch of created reality

and over every creature whom he's formed in his image.

But here's the thing.

Verses 7 and 9 does not say that he remains faithful forever

only to powerful people,

only to princes, only to elites, only to people at the top.

No.

Who does this creator God,

who does this God of Jacob especially help?

Verse 7.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed

and gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets prisoners free.

The Lord gives sight to the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.

The Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the foreigner

and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

But he frustrates the way of the wicked.

It's characteristic of this God of Jacob

to be active on behalf of the burdened and the afflicted,

on behalf of the lowly and the suffering.

He cares for the oppressed,

for those who are poor and therefore are hungry,

for those who are prisoners,

for those who are blind

and otherwise physically sick or impaired.

He cares for those who are bowed down and soul weary.

He cares for immigrants, orphans, and single moms.

It's quite a list of people in chronic and critical conditions.

And if you turn back again to the first book of the Bible,

who do we see God helping?

Whose cause is He upholding?

And this is just, you know, astonishing to me

because in ancient Near Eastern patriarchal culture,

it's amazing how much attention is being given

in that very first book of the Bible to women.

And not just to women, but to barren women.

Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel.

And even in the midst of those stories

and all the time that's given to those stories,

you have this other woman,

her name's, she's an Egyptian slave.

Her name is Hagar.

And she's a pregnant woman.

She's a single mom.

She's been very badly mistreated by the people of God.

And yet she's honored to be the first person in the Bible

to name God.

She says to God, she looks to God and says,

you are the God who sees me.

You're the God who sees me.

And later on, she's grief-stricken,

she's sobbing,

and God comes to this woman

and he asks her this tender question.

He says, what troubles you, Hagar?

Calls her by name.

What troubles you, Hagar?

And he comes and he meets her need

and he cares for her son.

He upholds the cause of this oppressed woman

who has no one caring for her.

And if you turn to the second book of the Bible,

who do we find God helping there?

He's helping slaves.

Hebrew slaves, powerful men,

are oppressing these Hebrew slaves with forced labor.

They're using them for profit.

They're destroying their children.

And who are the heroes that we find on page one of that story?

Again, it's women.

Shipra.

Puah.

This whole league of amazing Hebrew midwives

who, like God,

are upholding the cause of oppressed,

expecting mothers and their babies.

Is there any literature in the ancient world

that talks about God

and women

and slaves

and children

like our scriptures do?

I haven't found any yet

and I've studied them quite a bit.

So I want to invite us for a moment

to just take a closer look at

two particular Hebrew words

because in verse 7,

the Hebrew word therefore upholds the cause

is mishpat.

Let's say that together.

Mishpat.

It occurs 200 plus times in the Old Testament

and its most basic meaning

is to execute justice,

to treat people fairly,

to give wrongdoers

the punishment that they are due

and then to give vulnerable people

and victims of injustice

the rights,

the protection,

the care

that they are due.

And if you look at every place

that this word mishpat

is used in the Old Testament,

there are several classes of persons

that continually come up.

Over and over,

it describes

taking up the cause

and the care

of widows,

orphans,

immigrants,

and the poor.

Very often called

the Quartet of the Vulnerable.

And the reason they're called

the Quartet of the Vulnerable

is because these groups

have no economic

or social power.

They lived at subsistence level

and were only days away

from starvation

if there was any kind of famine

or invasion

or social unrest.

And this means that they were

easily trampled on,

easily exploited,

easily harmed.

Today,

this Quartet of the Vulnerable

could be expanded

to include the refugee,

the migrant worker,

the homeless,

many single parents,

and elderly people.

These groups of people

are most often neglected,

ignored,

and uncared for.

And yet,

the one true living God

of the Bible,

the maker of heaven and earth,

he loves,

he defends,

he upholds the cause

of justice

for those with the least

economic and social power,

and so should we.

We must have a strong concern

for the vulnerable

like God has,

but there's more

to the biblical idea

of justice than that.

And we get more insight

into this second Hebrew word

in verse 8

where it says,

the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord loves the tzadikah.

Mishpat and tzadikah.

The righteous,

the tzadikah,

are willing to

disadvantage themselves

in order to advantage

the community.

The wicked are people

who disadvantage the community

in order to advantage themselves.

But the righteous

do the opposite of that.

And in verse 7,

it says that God

upholds the cause,

He gives food,

He sets free,

He gives sight,

He lifts up,

He loves,

He watches over,

He sustains,

and the idea is

that that is also

what the righteous,

the tzadikah,

do as well.

And it's not surprising

to us then

to discover

that these two Hebrew terms,

mishpat and tzadikah,

justice and righteousness,

are brought together

over three dozen times

in the Bible

as the characteristic ways

that the people of God

are to reflect

the character of God

into the world.

Here is this transcendent

creator God

of enormous power.

He made heaven and earth

and the seas

and everything in them.

And what it says

is that He loves

to use His power

to uphold the cause

of the oppressed.

If you look at the other literature

of the ancient world,

the gods of the pagan nations,

they use their power

mainly for kings

and for princes

and for the elites

and the people at the top.

But no,

this God of the Bible,

He loves to exercise

His power

on behalf of people

at the bottom.

And think about that.

Where do the concepts

of human rights,

of the equal dignity

of every person,

the concept of the value

of the poor and the weak

or the necessity

of caring for

and advocating

for the vulnerable,

where do these concepts

even come from?

They don't come

from modern secular narratives.

They don't come

from atheistic frameworks

whose metaphysical

and moral assumptions

should actually lead

in the exact opposite direction

that might makes right

and the strong

should devour the weak

and the rich

should trample upon the poor.

No.

Anyone you talk to

who values the idea

of upholding the cause

of the oppressed

somewhere deep down inside,

they know

that the God

of Psalm 146 exists

and that they have

a longing

to know Him

and be in a relationship

with Him.

And anyone

that you meet

who values

upholding the cause

of the oppressed,

somewhere along the way,

they have unconsciously

and just culturally

kind of absorbed

this biblical vision

of divine justice

and righteousness.

And it's our incredible privilege

as the people of God

to champion

the vision

of the justice

and righteousness

of God

both in word

and in deed,

both in witness

and in service,

both in proclamation

and demonstration.

Does that make sense?

This is who God is

on behalf

of the vulnerable.

So,

third thing,

who deserves

our trust and praise?

Not princes,

but the Lord

who will reign forever.

How does God

relate to the vulnerable?

He relates to them

in justice

and righteousness.

But then,

how does the gospel

compel us

to serve?

How does the gospel

compel us

to serve?

Well,

verse 6 says this.

It says,

the Lord remains

faithful forever.

And that means that

this is a God

who stands with you.

He's a God

who stands by you.

But how can God

do this?

Because we've seen

that there are

two aspects

of mishpat.

There are two aspects

of justice.

Number one,

it's giving wrongdoers

the just punishment

that they're due.

And secondly,

it's giving vulnerable

victims of oppression

the protection

that they are due.

But this is where

I personally find myself

on the horns

of a dilemma.

Because if I've not

loved my neighbor

as myself,

if I've not

consistently

and comprehensively

upheld the cause

of the oppressed,

if I have in any way

contributed to the misery

of people

or the suffering

of the world,

then have I not

violated God's demands

of justice?

And if I've in any way

disadvantaged the community

in order to advantage

myself,

if I have in any way

ignored the hungry

and the foreigner,

if I've neglected

the widow

and the orphan,

then shouldn't God

be just

in giving me

the punishment

that is my due?

Right?

Doesn't verse 9 say

that the Lord

who made heaven

and earth,

He frustrates the way

of the wicked

or most translations

say He brings the way

of the wicked

to ruin.

Is that not me?

Is that not what

should happen

to me?

Is that not what

I deserve?

And the answer

of the Scriptures

is yes it is.

It is what I deserve.

But the Gospel

says this,

the Gospel says

that Jesus

came not to bring

that judgment on me,

Jesus came to bear

that judgment for me.

The Gospel says

that God loved us

so much

that He became

a helpless baby.

He became

a powerless

and vulnerable mortal.

And in that

He came

and He lived

a life of perfect

justice and righteousness.

He came,

Jesus came

and He upheld

the cause

of oppressed

men and women.

He came

to the sick

and He healed them.

He came to people

who were imprisoned

in darkness

and taken captive

by demons

and He released them.

He came to people

who were sick

and He healed them.

He came to people

who were lame

and He caused them

to walk.

He came to people

who were blind

and He gave them sight.

He came to people

that were lepers

and He cleansed them.

People who were deaf

and they could hear.

People who were dead

and He raised them to life.

Jesus, if anybody has ever come to stand with us

and to stand by us and to remain faithful,

Jesus is the one.

But at the climax of His ministry,

Jesus didn't just come and stand with us.

He didn't just come and stand by us.

Jesus came and stood in for us.

Jesus came and He took our place on that cross

and He bore that punishment that we deserved.

God's just judgment for our sins came down on Him

so that it wouldn't come down on me and on you.

And that gospel, that good news,

is the very thing that compels us and motivates us

to serve other people and embody His love.

Right?

When I go out and I look at the poor and the weak,

I should say to myself,

you know, that's me.

That's where I was.

And yet Jesus saw me in my poverty

and in my weakness and in my vulnerability

and He emptied Himself

so that He could fill me up.

He lowered Himself so that He could raise me up.

He impoverished Himself so that He could make me rich.

And because of what God has done for me in Jesus Christ,

I can now go and serve the poor

and embody His character

that's been revealed so clearly on His cross.

And so I just want to conclude

with some practical pastoral guidance

for how we might serve in this way.

I don't know exactly how God is calling you

to exercise mishpat and zadikah,

how He wants you to live a life of justice and righteousness,

but I do want to offer a few suggestions in closing.

And you can go actually to our website,

you can scan that QR code on your worship folder

and it will take you to a webpage

that says everything I'm going to say, okay?

So if you forget it, it's okay.

You can go find all the details.

But here's some opportunities for us

to serve in the way that we've been served

in the season ahead.

Number one, House of Faith Church in Hayward,

you'll hear more about this later,

they're going to be distributing Thanksgiving boxes of love

to their neighbors.

And we get to go and serve alongside them.

And each box is going to feed a family of six

with turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings.

And our goal is to distribute 300 of these boxes,

100 of which have been contributed

by our Loaves and Fishes ministry here at Christ Church.

So the next step, if God is calling you to serve in this way,

is just to come join us on Saturday, November 23rd.

Secondly, we heard about this last week,

but 80 newly baptized brothers in Christ

at St. Quentin Prison need study Bibles

for their weekly training provided

by the Urban Ministry Institute.

And these study Bibles will equip these men

with tools that they need to deepen their walk with Christ.

And so the next step for us is if you go on that webpage

that I mentioned, it will have instructions

for how you can support this Bible project

or even how you can begin to serve

in the Urban Ministry Institute over at St. Quentin Prison.

Third thing is Harbor House in Oakland

is a Christ-centered community development organization.

They run an annual Christmas store

that will allow us to empower parents from the community

to come and buy gifts for their kids.

It's significantly reduced prices.

And the next step for us in that,

if that's a way that God's calling you to serve,

is that we can donate toys through their Amazon wish list

or we can go shop for the toys themselves

and bring them here by Sunday, December the 8th.

And we will deliver them to Harbor House.

They also need some volunteers

to help set up that Christmas store

on Friday, December the 13th,

and to run the store on Saturday, December the 14th.

And again, all these details are on our webpage.

The fourth thing I want to mention

is that last fall,

we helped to launch a child development center

in Guatemala

in partnership with Compassion International

and with a thriving local church there,

which is providing a foundation

for spiritual, physical, cognitive,

and social, emotional development

for 200 children in that child development center.

75 of those children are directly sponsored

by us here in our Christchurch family.

And the next step that we could take

is to just deepen our impact

by logging into our Compassion account.

You can go write a letter to your child.

You can give a special Christmas gift

to your sponsored child.

If you've not yet had the privilege

of sponsoring a child,

you can make a lasting change.

There's actually four children left

in that center to be sponsored.

My prayer is that they'd have a sponsor

by the end of today.

And if God's not calling you to sponsor a child,

you can go and make a one-time Christmas donation

to their Christmas fund.

The last thing I want to mention as I close

is just that as we look ahead to 2025,

as we begin to sort through all the demands

on our time and attention and energy,

as we build our calendars,

where do the weak,

where do the vulnerable,

where do the poor factor into our lives?

How is God calling you to join in His work

of upholding the cause of the oppressed,

of using your time, your talents,

your treasures to reflect His character

of justice and righteousness into the world?

I'll just close with this great word

from the Apostle John.

He says this in 1 John chapter 3.

1 John 3 · chapter mention

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.

And we ought to lay down our lives

for our brothers and sisters.

If anyone has material possessions

and sees a brother or sister in need

but has no pity on them,

how can the love of God be in that person?

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech

but with actions and in truth.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.