Here are sermon notes from my last sermon:
Psalm 139:1-6; 14 (NRSV)
1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
Sometimes I’m not what some would call a smart person. When I found out I was going to be preaching on “diligence” as a pillar of faith, I was pretty sure I knew what it meant, but it’s a big word for me so I had to make sure. Here’s what I found:
Cambridge dictionary: the quality of working carefully and with a lot of effort
Careful and persistent work or effort
Steady, earnest, and energetic effort: devoted and painstaking work and application to accomplish an undertaking
Have you ever thought about how your work ethic is important and applies to scripture? Well think about the prophet Jeremiah when God tells him that before his birth God had called him to be a prophet, for his whole life.
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” ~Jeremiah 1:5 (NRSV)
God is at work in ourselves and at work in one another. So God knows us before we know ourselves and God knows our every move, every day, so why not do something with that knowledge? As I looked at the Psalm 139 and diligence I boiled to down to being diligent meant being:
1. Constant
2. Attentive
3. Hard Working
First, diligence must be Constant
The core of Psalm 139 assures us that God is with us every moment of every day. God’s omnipresence means that God knows us completely. So God is with us every moment of every day. God knows we are hard-working and when we are being lazy. As some of you know I am not a fan of Dallas sports teams. As far as the NBA goes, I’m a Spurs fan so bear with me. The Spurs recent history has really boiled down to constants. A constant leadership model. Winning five titles and being in the playoffs for 22 years leading up to last year speaks to a leadership model of consistency. They have had the same head coach for 24 years and have also had pillars (see what I did there) in the middle such as David Robinson and Tim Duncan for so many years provided consistency. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. That consistency of leadership. An official Spurs blog is titled Pounding the Rock which in basketball terms means pushing the ball down inside in the paint closer to the basket. But is has a deeper meaning when you read the sign in the Spurs locker room:
When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it…yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
This statement is referred to as the stonecutter’s creed and it speaks to consistency and continued work when trying to complete a task. Practice after practice, day after day, they work. Getting better every day. The first 100 blows may not yield the outcome they hope for but eventually the work pays off. Having to work hard to complete a task. A stonecutter splitting a rock has to be an arduous task that times time and effort.
Second, diligence means being Attentive
Take a look at the first three verses of Psalm 139: O, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
God is diligent in knowing us. God is so diligent that he knows every detail for every single one of us. God knows every detail, down to the number of hairs on our head. I don’t even know how many hairs I lost in the shower this morning. But God knows the count of every hair on every one of our heads. God knows us so well that he knows our actions and our thoughts. We have the time, the opportunity, and the capacity to do so much with our lives. God knows this. The core of the psalm assures us that God is with us every moment of every day. God’s omnipresence means that God knows us completely.
Third, diligence involves hard work.
My grandpa (along with my mom) was the person who taught me the value of hard work. I wanted to share a story with you about him. Grandpa and Grandma lived in Aurora, Colorado which is a suburb of Denver. In the picture, if you get past the colorful shorts, bright orange Broncos shirt, and dog Blecka you can see a garden. Grandpa had a huge backyard and in the very back was this garden that he worked on constantly from the time he retired from the Air Force until he moved to assisted living. And every time we visited we would play baseball in that backyard and lose baseballs in that garden that had tomato plants that reached over our heads. And every time we visited we had to “earn our keep” by helping in that garden. If we wanted to play baseball out there and trounce around and step on vegetable plants and such we had to help with the upkeep of the garden. My grandpa taught me many, many lessons but none was as important and reinforced as much as teaching me the value of hard work.
These three points lead to God. Think about that.
1. God is constant because God is always with us
2. God pays attention to detail
3. God gives us the ability to work hard
The power of Psalm 139 is its honesty. The psalm is like a mirror revealing us as we are: “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (v. 14) So if we are fearfully AND wonderfully made what does that mean for us. It means, we are fearfully made because God has created us and not we ourselves. We are fearfully made, and we are wonderfully made: we have unique capacity for so many things: love, relationship, restoration, and redemption. We have to capacity to do so, so much BECAUSE God created us. It is clear that the author of Psalm 139 believes that God knows all about him. God has looked deeply into the psalmist and knows him. God knows the very thoughts of the psalmist: “Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.” (v. 4)
God knows our movements and thoughts intimately. Not only does God surround us but God is involved in our very existence, so why not let God work through us?
So how does diligence apply today?
We as individuals are perhaps less known than at any point in history, especially with COVID over the last fifteen months. We have more online communication than usual, our attention is divided between family, work, recreation, etc. We now have the more meetings via zoom which doesn't allow for much time to talk before or after meetings-hence less personal connection.
As we continue to get back to normal and see COVID on the decline we are going to have to be diligent in our relationships. Because that is where God starts with us, with a relationship. We can restore relationships and build new ones. After all, if God knows us truly in and out then shouldn’t we give our very best. Humans want to belong, to share lives with others, to love and be loved, to feel valued. This psalm shows a sense of belonging: being search and known by God. The speaker in Psalm 139 seems to know he belongs to God. God watches over us from the moment of our being made until we die and God knows us better than we know ourselves.
So back to work ethic and think about this verse from Proverbs
3 Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. ~Proverbs 16:3
This is one of my favorite and most straight forward bible verse. Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. To me it means that if we commit our own work and work ethic to the Lord, the plan will take care of itself. Just remember that means our plan is in sync with God's plan.
I was trying to think of an example of how diligence was important. Last week I had a conversation with Julio Casablanca and a friend of his and I wanted to share what we talked about.
So if you can’t tell this is a guitar, or at least the makings of one. A friend of Julio’s gets pieces and parts of old guitars and then takes the time to fixed them and restore them. Julio and I met with his friend Lynn to talk about a connect group centered around the restoring old guitars.
Making these guitars is a process. These are some pictures of the process from start to finish. As we talked it was such a cool conversation centered around restoring guitars and applying meaningful biblical concepts throughout the entire process of restoration.
The group will meet this summer to go through the entire process of restoration and as we go to write a curriculum of talking points that can be used when we have this group available for youth in the Handley neighborhood and Trinity community to fellowship with one another and work on the restoration process. The point is that we have to be diligent and that takes consistency, being attentive, and a strong work ethic. Rebuilding guitars or building relationships takes diligence. During the process of building the guitars we will be building relationships with those who are working with us. We will see where the conversations take us but I have a sense we will be able to bring God into the conversation on ideas such as brokenness, making mistakes, working hard, and restoration. I can't wait to see where these conversations lead. (Feel free to contact me at kevin@trinityarl.org if you want more information)
Below is the finished product from the first picture that you saw. Now how long do you think it took for Lynn to restore this guitar from start to finish? Any guesses?
It took him seven months to finish this particular guitar. Well you know how some musicians name their guitars. Well Lynn gave this one a name and I thought it was very fitting. It’s name: Lazarus-because he brought the guitar back from the dead.
As we begin this connect group it will be really cool to see guitars "brought back from the dead" but that's not why we are doing it. We are doing it so we can bring some relationships with others and with God back to where they need to be.
Grace & Peace
Kevin
