Not in Princes But in the Prince of Peace:
A Homily on Psalm 146 for the 3rd Midweek Advent Service
1)
Opening: In the name of the Father,
and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
a)
Grace, mercy, and peace to you all
from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
i)
Tonight as we draw closer to
Christmas day, we continue our Advent services with another reading from the
Psalms. This time it comes to us from the 146th Psalm, which begins
the final five Psalms known collectively as the Final Hallel, or perhaps
to use a clearer Hebrew word you may be more familiar with, the Final Halleluiahs.
This is because they all open with the phrase “Praise the Lord!”
ii)
Certainly, it is fitting for us to
to join in with these final halleluiahs of the Psalmist as we bring 2021 to a
close.Even more so in this Advent season as we prepare our hearts and minds for
Christmas Day when we remember Christ’s first coming, and eagerly await His
second coming. And it is good and right for us to sing this Psalm with the
writer and chant together “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord O my soul! I will
praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have
my being!” This is a good, right, and salutary thing to do.
iii)
However, the Psalmist immediately
give us a warning, and perhaps a pitfall of his own; “Put not your trust in
princes!” This is what we will focus on tonight.
2)
Introduction of Theme: This phrase,
“put not your trust in princes,” is something we hear seemingly all the time as
Christians. But do we really do it? When nations rage, kingdoms totter, and men
perish, do we really continue to put our hope in them? Or do we place our
faith, hope, and trust into the Prince of Peace alone? When the world is
teetering on the edge of oblivion, we must continue to profess, “Come Lord
Jesus,” “Whose Kingdom will have no end.” Thus it is imperative that we
remember this, that “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope
is in the Lord his God.” In this Advent season we champion and celebrate the
Christ has come into human existence and taken human form, a form that would be
nailed to the cross, and then raise again from the dead to deliver us from sin,
death, and the Devil. So as we await His second coming, we praise Him from whom
all blessings flow.
a)
That’s all fine an well, you may
say, truly I believe. But we don’t always live that way. We are not alone in
this either! The Holy Scriptures are rife with examples of ancient believers
placing their hopes in princes, be they literal or metaphorical rulers of their
lives. Perhaps, the best example of this, and most vocal, is the account found
in 1st Samuel chapter 8, wherein the Israelites came to Samuel in
his old age, asking him to appoint a king to rule over them.
i)
The Israelites had been ruled over
by a series of Judges, and they became discontent with this form of leadership.
They, in their own exact words, wanted Samuel to “Appoint for us a king to
judge us like all the nations.”
ii)
Did you hear it? They not only just
want a king, but perhaps, more importantly, with the intended purpose that they
could be like the other nations they constantly encountered. God’s holy and
chosen nation was not content with their sacred ownership by Yahweh who had
lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. No longer did they remember
or care how the Lord their God had brought them safely through the Red Sea, who
provided mana from heaven for them in the depths of their starvation in the
desert, who gave them the of the Ten Commandments, who had continually and
mercifully spared and saved them from the ruin of their own idolatrous
passionate sinful lusting. NO! The Creator who cared for them deeply and
intimately time and time again, despite their unworthiness, He was no longer
good enough for them. They did not want the Infinite God to lord over them
through His divine provision of leaders. Instead, they clamored in a cacophony
of cries for a mortal and finite king to rule over them. 1st Samuel
tells us that Samuel was displeased with this request and turned to God in
prayer, who, in His holy patience answered Samuel, and in turn the people,
saying, “Obey the voice of the people… for they have not rejected you, but they
have rejected Me from being king over them… forsaking Me and serving other gods.”
b)
The Warning of Consequences: Now God
the Father is not without mercy or plan on how to make beautiful and sanctify.
He does command Samuel to inform in a formal warning what form this king will
take once he is established over them. Samuel dutifully relays this information
over to the Israelites. In chapter 8 of 1st Samuel, verses 10-18,
Samuel lays plain the ways of the king and they include taking mother’s sons
for his bloody wars to be soldiers, picking out commanders to lead his armies.
He will force men to plow and build machines of war to support his violent
intentions. He will take daughters from fathers and make them into his servants
in the palace. And he will take the fruit of their labors and divvy them up
amongst himself and his inner circle, as well as your workers and use them for
his work. Samuel succinctly sums up what how the people will be under the king
in the statement that “you shall be his slaves.”
i)
Does this sound to you like how God
treated His people? No! Of course not. And this goes even further, When Samuel
informs the people that when they get what they asked for that “In that day you
will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the
Lord will not hear you in that day.” Yes, the Lord is just, and will allow for
the people’s decision, but they must face the consequences of their actions.
ii)
And even after Samuel lays plain the
ways of their coming king, the Israelites ignore his warning, and ultimately
continue doubling down on their flagrant and obscene rejection of God as their
king, and we read that “But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And
they said, ‘No! But there shall be a king over us!’” Now whom do they end up
with as their first king, it is none other than Saul. In Samuel’s farewell
address to the people he reminds them of the errors of their ways, reminding
them that they said to Samuel, “No, but a king shall over us.” Then afterwards,
the people finally acknowledge their sin admitting to Samuel crying out, “Pray
for your servants to the Lord your God, that we do not die, for we have added
to all our sins this, to ask for ourselves a king.”
c)
Doesn’t this sounder familiar to us?
The plight of the people is that they are plagued with their own preoccupations
that are not focused on devotion and love to Yahweh, their God. We do this to,
in our own way, both collectively and individually. Now, we do not live in a
theocracy, and long gone are the genuine monarchies of ages past wherein the
king could claim divine appointment over the people. But we do experience
similar trials as our forefathers in the faith
i)
We can look at the past few years
and see examples of this all over the place in our contemporary American
culture.
ii)
For example, every election cycle,
particularly these last few, we see the continued bifurcation of families,
communities, and churches over whom they side with on this issue or that. It
becomes a vicious circle of drawing lines in the sand and throwing your support
behind a person, claiming that “if only this person were in charge than the
issues would go away.” But this is false thinking, it only takes a short
overview of history to see that we have not done away with the exploitation of
the oppressed, the widow and orphaned who are still without home, to
propagation of tumult, conflict, and war, and the general destitution of the
world who sorrowfully groans in constant agony. We can rest assured in the
knowledge that we cannot ever hope to attain world salvation through world
power, much less eternal salvation. To quote the preacher of Ecclesiastes,
“there is nothing new under the sun,” and “everything is vanity.”
iii)
This does not that we should turn
our efforts solely to achieve utopia. That is a fool’s effort. With sinful man,
that will never be possible on this side of paradise. Our Gospel is not merely
a social gospel of simple liberation from the woes of this temporal world, from
wicked oppressors, blood thirst men, and sinful people who take joy in seeing
the world burn. This is where we can return to the Psalmist’s words.
3)
We take comfort in knowing that this
present darkness is just that, only present. It too will dissipate when Christ
comes back in glory on that final day. But we have hope, a hope that cannot be
defeated or snatched away from us. We join in with Saint Paul the Apostle’s
confession that we are sure “that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We are to take comfort in knowing that
“the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory
that is to be revealed to us.”
a)
Yes, and the Psalmist reveals this
to us in his words. He comforts us, informing us that when wicked men die, “when
their breath departs, [they] return to the earth,” that it is “on that very day
[their] plans perish.”
b)
It is the believer who preservers in
the true faith, that is faith in Christ and His works, that is blessed.
i)
The Psalmist reminds us of God’s
great power. It was He who created all that is in existence. Land, sea, and
air, heaven and earth, and all that is in them, God spoke into existence. This
very same Creator keeps His promises and keeps His faith forever. In this Psalm
we are explicitly told what are the works of God, which are that He “executes
justice for the oppressed, [He] gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the
prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those
who are bowed down… The Lord watches over the sojourners; He upholds the widow
and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked He brings to ruin.” Doesn’t this
sound so much better than the ways of the king that Samuel warned the
Israelites about?
ii)
Further, in this Psalm, notice how
it is not man who does good works, but solely God. That isn’t to say that God
doesn’t use men to bring about goodness to many. However, the Psalmist here is
explicit and intentional to once again show us that we are to have faith in God
from whom all good things flow. It is God who brings about, grace, mercy,
peace, justice, and salvation to people.
iii)
These words of the Psalmist are
echoed in the Magnificat, which Mary, mother of God sung at the annunciation of
the angel. Here part of it now:
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
He has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as He spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
iv)
In Mary’s song, we are reminded that
it is God who does all these great works. Now while this too emphasizes God’s
more temporal actions when He intervenes directly or indirectly in the affairs
of men. However, both the Magnificat and Psalm 146 have their key lines. With
Mary, it is found in the line “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” for “His
mercy is on those who fear Him.” And with the Psalmist it is “Blessed is the
man whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord his God.”
4)
Tying it All Together: Found in
Christ.
a)
Where then do we find our hope,
trust, and salvation, if not in princes or powers or ourselves? We find it in
Christ and in Him alone!
i)
In this season of Advent we turn our
eyes to the manger wherein the King of kings lay in swaddling cloths, softly
cooing as shepherds praised, and animals kept guard over the holy family. It is
this Lord of Sabaoth who will execute justice for those oppressed by the
rampages of sin. It is the tender babe laid in a feeding troth who will give us
His very Body and Blood for holy food to the hungry. It is this friend of
sinners will set the prisoners free from sin. It is this Lord and Giver of
Light who will open the eyes of the blind. This second person of the Trinity
who was rejected in His home town will watch over us as we are sojourners and
exiles in this world for now. It is this Christ child who will uphold the widow
and fatherless.
ii)
You see in the incarnation that we
see the Son of God who was present at the creation of the cosmos, come and take
on human frame and flesh. It is in this very real, very tangible birth of
Christ that Jesus enters into the messiness of humanity.
iii)
While others awaited an earthly king
to free Israel from the yoke of Roman oppression, Jesus, King of Creation who
came to free us from the oppressive weight of the yoke of sin. He does so in in
His perfect life, and perfect sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary. When He raises
from the dead, He does so in beautifully triumphant victory. It is the Prince
of Peace who we are to put our trust in, with whom there is absolute hope in
salvation. For when His breath departed from Him on the tree, and He cried out
with a loud voice, that “It is finished.” It truly was finished. Sin’s curse
had been broken. It is in our resurrected Christ that we trust in that His
death was all atoning, and it is the very same Christ whom we anxiously and
eagerly await to return. Now while, whether we reunite with Jesus in our
deaths, or when He returns with trumpets’ sound, we all the while continue to
“Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O’ my soul! We will praise the Lord as long
as we live; We will sing praises to our God as long as we have our being,”
knowing that Christ reigns forever, and ever. World without end. Amen.
I bring this to
you all in Christ’s name. Amen
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