On You Was I Cast from My Birth

15th Sunday of Pentecost September 1, 2024

The texts for this message are from the Psalms and Luke 12:6-7 and John 14:18-20

    For your convenience, the Psalm reading is

Splendor and majesty are before God;
    strength and glory are in God’s sanctuary.

Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    bring an offering and come into her courts.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of God’s holiness;
    tremble before God, all the earth.

The wicked draw the sword
    and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy,
    to slay those whose ways are upright.
But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
    and their bows will be broken.

As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for she knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.

But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord
    both now and forevermore.

It was you who took me from the womb; 
you kept me secure on my mother's breast.

On you I was cast from my birth, 
and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Psalm 96:6-9; 37:14-15; 103:13-14;  131:2-3; 22:9-11a

In these texts the psalmists describe God with different metaphors to help articulate what they believed to be God’s nature and intentions toward us.

We begin with the metaphor of God as King
The psalmist of 93:1 says 
The Lord is king, God is robed in majesty 
the Lord is robed, God is girded with strength.

In Psalm 96:10, the psalmist says
Say among the nations, The Lord is King!
The psalmist of 97:1 says
The Lord is King! Let the earth rejoice.
God reigns
The psalmist of 89:19 says
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; 
faithful love and faithfulness go before you
describing what God’s throne or rule is righteous and just and God’s nature of love and faithfulness radiates from that rule, defines the nature of that righteousness and justice.

These psalmists declare that God has sovereignty over Israel, but also over all nations, the cosmos
and over all other gods.

According to Psalm 99:4, this cosmic, almighty God establishes equity
Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity, 
you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

These declarations call forth a response to this loving, righteous, just King. And the psalmists are clear, it is to be one of worship and praise. Psalm 96:7-9 says
Ascribe to God, O families of the peoples;
ascribe to God glory and strength.
Ascribe to God the glory due God’s name; 
bring an offering and come into God’s courts
Worship God in holy splendor; tremble before God, all the earth.

Another metaphor employed by the psalmist is that of God as Warrior

With this metaphor the psalmists speak to God's salvific action which is likened to war. Kings wage war.  God wages war.

In Psalm 74:12-14a we have these words

God my King is from old, working salvation in the earth.
You divided the sea by Your might;
You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters,
You crushed the heads of Leviathan.

God does battle with those forces that seek to wound and break us. The purpose of God's war is to rescue us, to save us. Psalm 18:7-19 describes the fierceness with which God wages war for the sole purpose of rescuing us:

The earth trembled and quaked,
    and the foundations of the mountains shook;
    they trembled because God was angry.
Smoke rose from God’s nostrils;
    consuming fire came from God’s mouth,
    burning coals blazed out of it.
God parted the heavens and came down;
    dark clouds were under God’s feet.
God mounted the cherubim and flew;
    God soared on the wings of the wind.
God made darkness his covering, his canopy around
    the dark rain clouds of the sky.
Out of the brightness of God’s presence clouds advanced,
    with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
The Lord thundered from heaven;
    the voice of the Most High resounded. 
God shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
    with great bolts of lightning God routed them.
The valleys of the sea were exposed
    and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, Lord,
    at the blast of breath from your nostrils.

God reached down from on high and took hold of me;
     God drew me out of deep waters.
God rescued me from my powerful enemy,
    from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
    but the Lord was my support.
God brought me out into a spacious place;
    God rescued me because she delighted in me.

And our proper response to this rescue? Should it not be an embrace as fierce as the embrace of a perishing person to her rescuer? as a drowning person to his lifeguard?

But even as we have these metaphors of King and Warrior, we also have the metaphor of 
God as Teacher.
Psalm 25 says

Make known to me your ways, God; teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation…
Good and upright is God: therefore God teaches sinners in the way.
God leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way.

God's instruction leads us to salvation to being made whole and in right relationship with God.

God's instruction or teaching is a form of Refuge as we’ve mentioned before. It constructs within u a fortress of protection from wickedness and the wicked. Psalm 94:12-13 describes the outcome of God’s instruction this way

How fortunate are those whom you discipline, God,
and whom you teach from your Word;
giving them respite from the days of trouble

And our proper response to God’s instruction. We are to heed the instruction, to become teachable, serious students of God’s teaching. We do this by recognizing our need for God’s instruction and therefore, cultivate a disposition of surrender and repentance as Psalm 32:8-9 tells us:

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; 
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Do not be like a horse or a mule without understanding,
whose gallop must be curbed with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.

And the outcome if we heed this counsel?  The psalmist of Psalm 25 tells us that we will walk on that loving faithful Path or in the Way of God: 

All paths of God are faithful love and faithfulness, 
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

And then, there’s this metaphor: God as Parent
Psalm 22:9-11 describes God’s parenting this way:

Yet it was you who took me from the womb; 
you kept me secure on my mother's breast.
On you I was cast from my birth, 
and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

God is both Father and Mother to us: there is watchfulness, protection, tenderness in this image is there not? It’s more than adoption, the biblical scholar William Brown says this parent relationship is of inviolable solidarity: unbreakable, sacrosanct, firm, unchallengeable, sacred.

So our right response to this incredible, amazing attribute of God? What kind of response does a young child have of its parent? Is it not trust. The default at birth is trust--trusting dependence; trusting in the inviolable solidarity God has with us.

So, what should define our devotion to God? It is to worship, to embrace, to heed, to trust.

Let us enter with whole heart into the song of King David as recorded in Psalm 16:

Keep me safe, my God,
    for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
    “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
    I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
    or take up their names on my lips.

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Thanks be to God! Yes?

L Quanstrom