OT Sermons

We don’t like plagues. We shudder to think what it must have been like to live through the various runs of Bubonic Plague in the middle ages. We fear illnesses like swine flu because of what they might do to our community. We get very anxious when we hear that Iraq might have biological or chemical weapons, that could make life very painful and uncomfortable for us.

So, if we are honest, the account of the plagues of Egypt is a difficult part of the Bible to stomach. It’s hard to read. It’s hard to preach on. It’s hard to listen to a sermon on. We start to ask: How could God do such horrible things to the Egyptians?

Introduction

“… and they all lived happily ever after”.

We like stories that end like that. They’re lovely. At least – they’re lovely if you live in that period called “ever after”. The trouble is: That is only the ending because the rest of the story is somewhat more complex and somewhat less happy. That’s what makes “… and they all lived happily ever after” newsworthy.

For the people of God, the Bible is a story that ends “and they all lived happily ever after”. The trouble is that before we get to “ever after”, things don’t feel happy. In fact, it often doesn’t feel that we are living in a story that is going to end with the words, “and they all lived happily ever after”.

In real life, the fact of the matter is, the difficulties and pressures of daily life easily seem far more real to us than the promises and purposes of God. And the danger is that we end up with a mismatch between Sunday and Monday to Friday. On Sunday we come to church, and what we hear is that it all ends happily ever after. We hear about God, what he promises, and how he will look after us. Then we go out into Monday to Friday, and we wonder if it all makes any difference at all. What we see before us for six days of the week are not the fine statements we heard on Sunday, but the often cruel details of life.

I could have gone to a shelf in the newsagents and brought with me pretty much any half-dozen magazines, and the chances are that on their cover or inside they would have their own version of “Ten ways to be happy”. Whether it be “21 ways to have a celebrity-type romantic relationship”. Or, I think it was Men’s Health on the cover, “30 guaranteed ways to burn fat”. Or whatever it might be. “10 ways to find true and lasting happiness.”

Psalm 1 is the Bible’s alternative to those magazines. Psalm 1 starts, “Happy…” or “Blessed… is the man (or the woman) who…”. Psalm 1 tells us where we will go to find true and lasting happiness. Psalm 1 is for men and women. It’s as much the Bible’s answer to FHM as it is to Cosmo; it is as much the Bible’s answer to Men’s Health as it is to Red. Psalm 1 is the Bible’s answer to those magazines: where we go to find true happiness.