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Jun 27, 2021

Close Call

Close Call

Passage: Psalms

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Ascend

Israel knew the disappointment of what it felt as though God had abandoned them. Here they sing of His clear intervention in their rescue. Apparently it was a close call. How do we sing--live moreover--with the same vigor and confidence they do, knowing some of the same disorientations they did?

REadings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Isaiah 63:7,9
LEADER: 7 I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. 8 For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely.” And he became their Savior. 9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;

ALL: he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

CORPORATE PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer
ALL: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

For Thine is the Kingdom
and the power and the glory
forever and ever Amen.

BENEDICTION: Philippians 1:6 & 2 Corinthians 13:14
LEADER: 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
ALL: 14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Illustrations

InView Media Album

Related SCRIPTURES:

Genesis 7:11-16
Genesis 39:1-4
2 Samuel 5:17-25
Nehemiah 4:20
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 20
Matthew 16:15-20
Luke 13:1-5

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Ever had a close call before--a brush with severe injury or worse? What was it? How did you respond?
  2. Here’s a question with no single answer--only thoughts and answers: how do you interpret fortunate or unfortunate experiences? How do you wrestle between thoughts of God’s providential Hand and random occurrences?
  3. You might notice a distinction between the earlier Psalms of Ascent and this one: how to this point the psalms have focused on the individual’s experience of God’s help, whereas here the focus shifts to His providential care of Israel as a whole, the community. In belonging to God you also belong to all those who do likewise. Why is it crucial to believe that you as an individual are also a “we”? 
  4. On the basis of just this Psalm, how does the Psalmist understand himself? How does he want Israel to understand its collective self? (cf. v. 1 “let Israel now say”)? We haven’t been through the precise experience(s) Israel has. But how are we to understand ourselves at some fundamental level--no matter how else we might define ourselves?
  5. Quick--don’t think, just respond: what is your personal, primary objective in coming to a Sunday morning service? How is this Psalm more than an account of a moment in Israel’s history, but a model of what it is to live before God? What is being modeled?

QUOTES:

  • It’s not a nightmare at all. It’s perhaps the most beautiful story I’ll get to experience in my life. Aron Ralston
  • Suppose that in a novel a character gets killed in a railway accident. Is his death due to chance (e.g., the signals being wrong) or to the novelist? Well of course, both. The chance is the way the novelist removes the character at the exact moment his story requires. There's a good line in Spenser to quote to oneself: ‘it chanced (almighty god that chance did guide). C.S. Lewis
  • I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice. “Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta. “There was only one lion,” said the Voice… “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you. From C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy
  • I practiced Zazen and studied the teachings of the Buddha. It is clear enough why Buddhism is taking off in the West as Christianity declines: Its metaphysical claims seem convincing, its practices, when taught properly, yield results, and as a tradition it is even older than Christianity. It is, in short, a serious spiritual path, but with none of the cultural baggage of the church. And yet. As the years went on, Zen was not enough. It was full of compassion, but it lacked love. It lacked something else too, and it took me a long time to admit to myself what it was: I wanted to worship. My teenage atheist self would have been horrified. Something was happening to me, slowly, steadily, that I didn’t understand but could clearly sense. I felt like I was being filed gently into a new shape. Paul Kingsnorth

SERMONS / TALKS: 

“A Narrow Escape,” Sinclair Ferguson