Every Hour I Need You!
Psalm 107:1-22[1]
You may have noticed that we talk a lot about God’s
“unfailing love” in our worship. As is the case with other elements of our service
that I repeat week after week, that’s an intentional choice on my part. My
understanding of God based on the central affirmations of the Bible is that God
loves us all with a love that will never let us go. God loves us all, along
with the whole human family, with a love that is unconditional, unchanging, and
irrevocable. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it (and as I am fond of quoting),
“There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. There is nothing you
can do to make God love you less.” That’s my understanding of God’s love, but
it’s also an understanding that’s based on and informed by almost 50 years of
studying the Bible.
A statement like “50 years of studying the Bible” might
sound impressive. It might sound like after 50 years of personal, professional,
academic, and spiritual study of the Bible, I should have it all down. But I
don’t. There are still lots of questions that I can’t answer. There are still
questions about God’s unfailing love that I can’t answer. One question that I
often struggle with is the fact that the Bible speaks about God’s love in
“expansive” language. For example, as I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite
verses is Psalm 36:5, which says that God’s “unfailing love is as vast as the
heavens.” The idea is that there is nothing in all of creation that’s beyond
the reach of God’s unfailing love. It’s a comforting reminder. But when I think
about the vastness of all creation, I can sometimes wonder with the author of Psalm
8, “what are mere mortals that you should think about them” (Ps 8:4, NLT)?
How can my problems really matter to a God whose love fills the whole universe?
That tension lies at the heart of what the Bible teaches
about God. God is so far beyond us that his love can extend to the vast reaches
of the whole universe. But God is also so close to each and every one of us
that his love reaches into the everyday details of our lives. Another of my
favorite Bible verses says it this way: “I am the high and holy God, who lives
forever. I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are
humble and repentant, so that I can restore their confidence and hope” (Isa
57:15, GNT). It may be hard for us to understand how God’s love can
extend to everything in all the vast universe and also at the same time can relate
to the everyday concerns of our lives. But that is precisely what the Bible
affirms about who God is and how God loves us.
I think our lesson from Psalm 107 for today addresses this
question. The whole Psalm is a reflection on God’s love for people in various
real-life situations they may have faced. And the point of it all is that God “is good to us, and his love never fails” (Psalm 107:2, CEV).
Just to make sure that the message sinks in, there are several “stanzas” to
this Psalm that demonstrate God’s goodness and unfailing love. The Psalmist
reminds us that God’s love is such that “To everyone who is thirsty, he gives
something to drink; to everyone who is hungry, he gives good things to eat”
(Ps. 107:9). God’s love means “He breaks down bronze gates and shatters iron
locks” to set free those who are unjustly imprisoned (Ps. 107:16). God in his
love can “turn deserts into lakes and scorched land into flowing streams.” (Ps.
107:35). God’s love is such that “When you are suffering and in need, he will
come to your rescue” (Ps. 107:41). The idea is that there is no situation in
which we may find ourselves that God’s love cannot reach us and restore us.
More than that, this Psalm reminds us that God’s love for
us is such that he seeks us out when we’re lost. That seems to be the point of
spelling out the various real-life situations in the Psalm. The point is not
only that God helps those who turn to him, but rather that God himself actually
seeks out those who are in distress. Of course, there’s a balance here as well.
God seeks us out, but it’s also up to us to turn to him. There’s a “refrain”
that repeats through the Psalm. In each and every challenge, it says, “You were
in serious trouble, but you prayed to the LORD, and he rescued you” (Ps. 107:6,
13, 19, 28). No matter where we may find ourselves in this life, we can turn to
the Lord and ask him for help. And when we do, what we find is that God is
always seeking us out in all the places of distress, shame, and even danger
into which we may have wandered or gone astray. This is also what it means when
the Psalm affirms that God loves us with a love that never lets us go.
The promise is that no matter where our lives may have
taken us, God not only seeks us out, but he restores us to life. Of course, one
of the big questions that I can’t answer is what to make of it when we turn to
the Lord, and nothing seems to change. We go on being hungry and thirsty, we go
on wandering in the wilderness, we go on suffering and there’s no rescue from
it. It’s one of the biggest questions with the Bible’s teaching about God’s
love, and I don’t think anyone can really answer it. Sometimes we turn to the
Lord and call out to him to help us, and all we seem to get in response is
silence. But I think it’s important, especially in those times, for us to hear
the message of Psalm 107: God is always “good to us” and “his love never
fails.” Even and particularly when it seems like God has turned a deaf ear to
our cries for help, even and particularly when we feel like God has abandoned
us instead of answering our cries for him to help us, we need to remember that
God loves us with a love that will never let us go.
Some of you may wonder why I spend so much time preaching
on passages like this one from the Hebrew Bible. I know that there’s a
tradition of preaching from the Gospel lessons every Sunday in the Presbyterian
world. I would answer that question by saying that in my opinion we have to
understand the Bible as a whole in order to understand any of its parts. The
foundations for the faith that Jesus proclaimed in his life and ministry are
found in the Hebrew Bible. Without an understanding of how Jesus viewed God, we
can easily turn everything he said into a rigid system that restricts access to
God’s love only to those who “live up” to a certain standard. In other words,
the very same kind of system for which Jesus challenged the Jewish religious
leaders of his day. The point of his challenge was that God’s love is
unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable for everyone, not just for those who
“measure up.”
For me, the lesson of this passage is that wherever we may
find ourselves in this life, whether in good times or in hard times, the truth
about us is that God loves us, always has and always will. And the truth about
us is that we can look to God to care for us in any and every hardship we may
be facing. When I read this Psalm, I think of that great old hymn, “I need thee
every hour.” I think that’s the lesson of this passage for us today: every hour
of every day, we all need the Lord. We need the Lord’s love in our lives every hour
of every day. We need to know that the Lord is looking out for us, no matter
what circumstance in which we may find ourselves. We need to be able to trust
that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there’s nothing
we can do to make God love us less. And that love isn’t just some nice
sentiment. It makes all the difference in our ability to cope with all that we
may have to face in our lives. We can face it all knowing that God is always
“good to us” and “his love never fails.”
[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by
Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/10/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.
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