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First Presbyterian Church of Inglewood

100 North Hillcrest Ave

Inglewood, California 90301

Telephone numbers: (310) 677-5133 Fax (310) 330-8342

Electronic mail: PRESBYTS@SBCGLOBAL.NET

Sunday, September 4, 2005

Rev. Dr. Harold E Kidd

Psalms 119: 9-16

Psalms 72

A WORD TO LIVE BY

"Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee." Psalm 119:11

The theme of Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the book of Psalms, is that God's Word is true, dependable, and wonderful. If one were to compare the wisdom and truth of God's Word against the wisdom of Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius or any earthly system of higher learning -- philosophy, sociology, humanism, intellectualism -- God's Word will always give us the right answers and the right direction in the midst of life's problems and perplexities. This is not to discount the learning of the human mind, for the mind is a gift from God, but it is to say that God's Word is, in the words of this Psalm, a "lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path beyond all others.”

Psalm 119 encourages us to stay true to God and His Word no matter how bad things might become, and He will see us through. Not only will he see us through, but we will be a blessed people. "Blessed are those who are blameless and walk according to the law of the Lord. Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart."

Psalm 119 is a repetitive meditation on the beauty of God's Word and how it can help us to stay pure and grow in our faith. Reading and living God's Word is the only sure guide for living a pure and acceptable life unto God. Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. God's Word helps us to try to live holy. It gives us a hunger and thirst for his righteousness. It encourages us to live the way we talk. So God's Word, when it’s in the heart, is a restraint against sin.

And irrespective of the time in which they lived, God's people have always asked the same question: Is there a word from the Lord? A Word to guide us through. A Word to direct our path. A Word to help us in our time of need.

This was the question that King Zedekiah, King of Judah, asked the prophet Jeremiah (37:17), when he found himself between a rock and a hard place. Is there any Word from the Lord? Egypt had withdrawn her support from Judah, and Babylon was massing to attack Jerusalem and burn it to the ground. And Zedekiah discovered, as you and I do, his politicians couldn't help him, his military leaders didn't have the answers, but he sent for the man of God, hoping for some better news from God. Isn't it interesting that when we have exhausted all other sources of wisdom and learning, and their answers fall short, then we turn to God.

And what we are in need of in these days are words that we can live by. We need a word that can keep us, and help us to interpret all of the things that are happening to us and to others. One of the blessings of God's Word is that it helps us to make sense of life and to interpret the days of our lives from a faith perspective. I wonder how does one make it through life without God and without His Holy Word?

Without the Word of the Lord, one might believe that the sky is falling.

Without the Word of the Lord, one might believe that one should “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” There are some this morning who are living that lifestyle. Without the Word of the Lord, one might succumb to the pressures of this life.

Without the Word of the Lord one might lose their Joy. Their sense of equilibrium, their perspective that God is love, that God is good, that God is rich in mercy, and that in all things God is still working for our good.

In the midst of global terrorism, wars on just about every continent, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, massive poverty in many areas of our world -- in the midst of man's inhumanity to man, God's Word gives us a perspective on these events that we will not get from watching CNN, CBS, or reading the Los Angeles Times.

I am afraid that we give God a bad name when we are so quick to suggest that events causing destruction in the form of earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes are caused by God, without affirming that earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes are parts of God's creation which attest to his awesome power and majesty. In Job 38 God declares to Job that he has all the forces of nature at his command and that He can unleash or restrain them at will.

"Where were you Job, when I laid the earth's foundation?

Who marked off its dimensions? Who stretched out a measuring line?

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain? Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?" The Psalmist declares in Psalm 72, "Blessed by the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed by His glorious name forever; may His glory fill the whole earth."

God is not the author of confusion or death, for God is love; but He does have ways of getting our attention. And it is not for anyone to say what this all means, the hurricane destroying an entire city, New Orleans, and bringing so much destruction to the gulf port region of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

But the greater question to be asked is what can we learn from this event. One lesson I think we can learn is that many of these natural disasters -- earthquakes, hurricanes, El Ninos, tsunamis -- which are beginning to occur with such frequency in our world may in part be related to global warming, resulting from our destruction of the ozone layer and tropical rain forests. We've become poor stewards of God's creation. God did not create an imbalance in the natural order of things. We have. What it has taken God millions and billions of years to create, we are destroying in a matter of a few centuries.

A second lesson I think we see from this event is that it doesn't take very much for us to be leveled to the status of a third-world country. The Lord can lift you up, but in the twinkling of an eye He can bring you down. Maybe we had forgotten about how much we have in comparison to those who live in other parts of our world. Maybe too many of us have taken our freedoms and blessings living in America for granted when compared to the living standards of other countries. Maybe Hurricane Katrina will inspire someone to get right with God.

Here we are today, third-world conditions in our own country. Reporters are using the term 'refugees' to describe some of America's own people. Hospitals have had to practice medicine in a third-world manner -- no electricity, no plumbing, no water, no use of machines, but you've got to save that life. In other words, they had to go back to old school medicine.

Let me suggest to you this morning we need to look beyond what just happened after Katrina did her damage. Maybe what the Lord is trying to show us is that we've always had third-world conditions in America. When you have people living on the streets, when you have persons dying because they cannot get health care treatment, when you have over 1 million children going to bed hungry every night, when you have thugs and hoodlums roaming the streets terrorizing innocent people, it’s third world. Lord have mercy.

Don't get so caught up in the glamour and the glitter of Bourbon Street, and Hollywood, television and SUVs, and the bling bling, that we fail to see the third-world conditions right in our own neighborhoods.

In the Deep South, in a tri-state area that perhaps many of us don't think very much about, God can use a hurricane to draw attention to the needs of the many. Beyond the glamour and tourism of a Bourbon Street or a Biloxi, there is a whole lot of need. This hurricane is going to come at a price tag of what has been estimated at between 22 - 29 billion dollars. And we pray that it will by used to help those who need it most, who live in this gulf port tri-state area.

Those 3,700 soldiers of the Louisiana National Guard 256^th Brigade couldn't help because they are over in Iraq. Well, when we needed use of our military choppers to airlift those caught in flooding waters to safety, we couldn't because much of this heavy equipment is over in Iraq. Have we sought to police the world, at the expense of looking after the needs and unforeseen emergencies that are here in our own land?

One thing about an event such as Hurricane Katrina is that tragedy and crisis have ways of bringing people together like few other experiences common to us all. We look beyond our differences and divisions and find that we need each other. We begin to see humanity, ourselves, in the faces of those we otherwise may have never been in contact with. We begin to understand what it means to hold life precious. We begin to understand that suffering and tragedy are no respecters of persons. Crisis moves the church to involvement as at no other time.

One of the sad reports among many coming out of Hurricane Katrina is the report that one officer said many of those trapped in New Orleans were starting to lose their minds. Sweltering heat and humidity, no water, no food, sleeping on bridges and on tops of roofs and bridges for that past week, families have been separated, some can't find loved ones, the flooded waters have become a cesspool, which would make anybody lose their mind.

And that's why we are encouraged to "hide the Word of God in our hearts". Tuck it away in the heart. Store it up like our most treasured possession, in the heart. Put it away where neither thieves nor robbers can take it away, in the heart. Because we never know when something will come our way and the only thing we have to live by is God's Word. We don't like to think about it but what just happened in the gulf port area could easily happen right here in California in the form of a major earthquake. And if it ever does happen, we're going to have to have something tucked away on the inside to get us through. I wish I knew how to make it plain.

In secular thought, "to hide" means to keep out of sight, to keep from being seen by covering up. But what the psalmist meant by hiding God's Word in his heart was that God's Word is so precious, so valuable that it needs to be placed in a vault, and that vault is our heart. A more accurate reading of this verse is "I have treasured your Word in my heart." Yes, God's Word is the treasure and our heart is the treasure chest.

Notice if you will, that at the time this Psalm was written they didn't have Bibles in every home, the Bible had not yet been written. They didn't have a Bible in every pew. They did not have the Bible on CD. So what they were encouraged to do with God's Word was to hide it in their hearts.

We need a word to live by when we are going through. We need a word to live by when sin creeps at our door. We need a word to live by when we are being tested. When someone has gotten on our last nerve, we need a word to live by. When we are beset by some lingering illness or heartache that will not go away, we need a word to live by. When our resources have evaporated until there's just a morsel left at the bottom of our barrel, we need a word to live by.

Thy Word O Lord, have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

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