Church of the Oaks

Church of the Oaks We are a Congregational Church located at 841 Rosita Road, Del Rey Oaks, California. Welcome to the Church of the Oaks page. Pastor: Rev.

Dr. Robert Hellam. Worship services are held every Sunday morning from 10:30 to 11:30. We share Holy Communion on the first Sunday of each month. Fellowship hour immediately follows our worship service. The Congregational Way is a way of following Jesus. People of a Congregational Church do not seek to be led by a creed, but by the Spirit. Ours is the tradition of a free church, gathered under the

headship of Jesus and bound to others by love, not law. We are voluntarily affiliated with the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (NACCC). By voluntary membership in a National Association of free churches, a local church can join in efforts which one church could not undertake by itself and experience the fellowship of kindred minds, while maintaining full control of its own affairs. We support and affirm the mission statement of the NACCC: "Bringing together Congregational Christian Churches for mutual care and outreach to our world in the name of Jesus Christ."

09/06/2026

“See Rightly, Love God, and Do Not Worry” by Joshua Converse
[Matthew 6:19-34]
This last week I assigned a famous short story to my class called “A Scandal in Bohemia.” This is a famous Sherlock Holmes story by Victorian author Arthur Conan Doyle about a King who comes to Holmes to help him retrieve a compromising photograph of himself with a certain American lady. The lady in question threatens to ruin the King’s prospect of engagement with the princess of another kingdom by sending that royal family the photograph in question. The King knows the lady has hidden it somewhere in her house, but cannot discover where. By some theatrical contrivances, Holmes stages a fight outside the lady’s residence and disguises himself as an injured priest who tried to intervene in the melee. She has him brought into her parlor and then, per arrangement, Watson shouts “fire!” The lady rushes to the secret, hollow drawer in the wall where the blackmail photo is secreted, and gives away the game. Holmes says he has used this trick before. A mother will run for her baby if someone shouts fire. Irene Adler, the lady in the story, ran for the item most important to her and thus revealed its hiding spot to the great detective. Of course, the story doesn’t end there and the lady gives Sherlock Holmes quite a surprise in the end. Nevertheless, his trick worked; she ran for the photo, her treasure, when she believed the house might burn down.
Our Lord understood how people work, too. In the midst of his great Sermon on the Mount, he said the following:
[Read Matthew 6:19-34]
Jesus understands human nature perfectly. He understands the way we order priorities. Christ understands the way the world counts wealth and prestige. He calls on those who follow Him to order their lives by a different standard.
He says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” One cannot help but marvel at the sheer economy of words with which Our Savior communicates the truth. Can you bring your stocks and bonds with you to the grave? Where is the gold of King Solomon now? Where is the wealth of pharaoh? Where are the fortunes of Rockefeller and Vanderbilt? They have gone the way of all flesh.
The Temple of Solomon was ransacked and looted by the Babylonians in 587 BC. All that gold went to Babylon. Before that, the pharaoh of Egypt who pursued the Hebrew people to the banks of the Red Sea to destroy them was himself destroyed in those waters along with his splendid chariots and fine army, and all his rich palaces are buried beneath the sand. John D. Rockefeller, mogul of Standard Oil, died of heart failure at the tender age of 97 in 1937. All the oil money in the world did not save him. Time, the thief, comes for all those riches. Death, the moth, comes for every mortal. What does Jesus say? Store up your treasures in Heaven. Orient your heart toward the eternal things of God, not the temporal and temporary things of this earth. How do we do that? We do that by making the things God treasures the things we treasure.
Returning to the text for this morning, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” How do we decide we want that big house on the hill but by first seeing, then admiring, then coveting? How do we decide we want that shiny red car but by first seeing with the eye? What we look upon, we first begin to desire. When the Lord says, “if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light” I don’t believe He means the medical state of one’s eyes. I believe He means the covetousness you feel over what you see every day. Instead of seeing the beauty of the red car or the spaciousness of the big house, we need to see as God sees. The car will break down on the side of the road one day. The house will one day be a ruin. Meanwhile, the souls aboard the car, the home that people make of the house, those are the things Jesus has a heart for and for which we also should have a heart. To return to my earlier example, Irene Adler in the Holmes story runs to rescue a blackmail photograph, but Holmes says ten out of ten mothers run for their babies; this is precisely what Jesus is describing. A mother who runs to save her baby has eyes full of light and what she regards is her true treasure. A blackmailer who runs for her instrument of lucre or vengeance is full of darkness greater than the darkness of a lampless room.
Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” This is a central principle of our God; He must come first. Everything else follows if He does. Only Hell follows if he does not. This is a basic fact of the universe as fundamental and as powerful as gravity. Do we serve Him, or do we serve ourselves (and thereby serve evil)? It is an old saying, but a true one, “the things you own end up owning you.” Consider the “rich young ruler” who wants to follow Christ, but when Jesus says he must give away his many belongings to the poor, the young man goes away sad because he cannot part with his riches. Our Lord knows very well what idols we erect in our hearts that work day and night to squeeze Him out. We can ask the Holy Spirit to break these idols and scatter them across the floor of our hearts to be trampled underfoot by the Lord of Lords. [Prayer]
Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Just as the original audience was concerned with the quotidian things of the day, so are we eaten up with the washing up and the preparing of meals, the clearing away, the brushing of teeth, the washing of bodies, the doctor’s appointments. And yet, Jesus says, while all those things may be necessary, do not worry about those things. Don’t fuss over clothes and shoes and bags and haircuts, though you may need all those things to go about in the marketplace. The ordinary things of life are not beneath the notice of the Ancient of Days. God knows what you need. Bear in mind, this is not Jesus saying no one shall ever be hungry or cold, that no one ever will go about in something shabby for want of better things. No, rather He says God will give us what we need in the end. Remember, Jesus is speaking to people during the Sermon on the Mount who will die as some of the first Christian martyrs. He cannot possibly be offering them comfort and ease and plenty forever on this earth. Rather, he is promising that something higher and more eternal awaits them, and therefore it is folly to worry and fuss and bite one’s nails; the greater victory is Christ. The greater future is God’s. The greater plenty is not where thief and moth, Time and Death can lay waste. Rather, it is the Kingdom of God that will see all believers clothed in eternal and surpassing beauty--that begins here. It begins in our lives today with trying to see with eyes full of light, as the Lord of Light sees. It begins with our trying to love what God loves; the baby in the house afire, not the tawdry means of a blackmail photo.
Jesus says, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” God sees beauty in the lilies of the field and gives them their beauty. God sees beauty in every person, and gives them their beauty. If we possess beauty, in face or form, it is from God, but the deeper beauty is inside, and God is the source of that, too. Consider the case of our Roman Catholic brother, Peter Kreeft, whose wife of many decades recently passed away. In her wasted, emaciated, almost skeletal form after death, Kreeft says he fell in love with her all over again, for in that husk he saw an image as beautiful as the crucified body of Christ. This is how God must see us; lilies of the field of surpassing beauty. The designer jeans and fancy jackets are nothing. They are food for worms and moths. The eternal beauty that comes from the Lord touches us all and clothed in that, no king in this world is or ever will be as unutterably lovely.
Jesus says, “But if god so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you -- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry saying ‘What will we eat’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘what will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” In the end, Jesus says, God will give us more than we could possibly imagine. More than we could ask for. He will give us things no one can take away. First, though, we must learn to see as He sees and love as He loves. We must trust Him and His will. Food is important, but God is more important. Cold is bitter, but a life spent trying to get the body warm that neglects the things of God will end up colder than the coldest glacier, and distant from the warmth and light of He who Created all the Light there is.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, on this Communion Sunday, let us dedicate ourselves anew to trying to see the world as God sees it, to love His people as He loves them, and to try not to worry so much about the things that are passing like the seasons before our very eyes.
Amen.

08/30/2026

“Have You Ever Seen God Run?” by Connie Hellam

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

In the 1980’s, Bette Midler sang a song that became a big hit, called “God is Watching Us.” Some of the words are these:
From a distance, there is harmony,
And it echoes through the land.
It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace,
It’s the voice of every man.
God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.

This song typifies the deist’s idea of a Creator God who watches us from afar with the perspective that all humanity which He made is marching lockstep towards peace and harmony. He’s a hands-off sort of God, content in just observing things on earth as the maker of a well- oiled machine. Of course, we know our world hardly looks like that today. Peace and harmony are far from stretching from sea to shining sea or even being spoken from the voice of every man. The song also makes our loving God look cold and aloof, which He is not. He is just the opposite, as our passage for today will show.
Read Luke 15:1-32, beginning on page 874 in our pew Bible.
Months ago when I was deciding on a Scripture verse to speak on this morning, I was directed in several ways by the Holy Spirit to Luke. I was telling Bob that many thoughts like marbles were rolling around in my mind about this passage; and, not wanting to lose any of my marbles, I decided to put them all together for you today.
In this passage, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors and sinners drawing near to hear Him. Also watching Him, but not too close to the sinners and riffraff, are the Pharisees, always hanging around to criticize and judge Jesus. They mutter about Jesus welcoming sinners and eating with them. Jesus is always aware of everyone there in the crowd and why they are there. He begins to teach them by telling them these three parables one right after the other. Now Jesus, being the Son of God, is the ultimate teacher. We find in the Bible that He will use teaching tools such as sermons (like my favorite, the Sermon on the Mount), signs and wonders such as turning water into w**e, but most often telling stories or parables to get His point across. Although the parables are offered to the crowd surrounding Him, these parables are pointedly directed to the judgmental Pharisees.
So, Jesus tells them three stories of the lost and found. He relates these three parables one right after another, three examples of one theme. Lost things that are of such value to the owner that when lost, the owner actively searches for them. In finding them, His joy is so intense that it spills out to others because He cannot contain His happiness.
Like the sheep in the first parable, we are not too smart. We can be tempted to leave the fold—that is, our parents, our friends, and our way of life—to seek what may appear the greener grass on the other side of the fence. The fence that doesn’t keep us in, but keeps the evil out. Sometimes the desire to control our lives, against the supposed restrictions of boundaries, causes us to wander away from the Shepherd of our life. I think that most of us at one time wandered away like that dumb sheep, but God our Shepherd wants to protect us so much that He goes after us and carries us back on His shoulders. Each and every sheep in His fold is important enough for Him to leave the ninety-nine and go after the one which is lost. What we sheep don’t realize is the complete freedom we have in His pasture controlled by His love and security.
When I was an instructional aide at Del Rey Woods School, I noticed that the children were the happiest in play when they knew explicitly what the rules were on the playground. The boundary lines—perfectly marked—allowed them the freedom to play without the fear of harm or punishment, but allowed them to go wherever they wanted. But without those lines, they stayed closer to the building. Their fear of unseen harm was heightened if there were no boundaries.
The second of the parables points out how each of the ten coins belonging to the widow is so valuable to her that if she loses one on her dirt floor, she lights the lamp and she scours the whole house until she finds it. Now this coin has no independent will to hide itself. It is an inanimate object, but it has potential for offering great things to the widow. We have the potential to do great things for our Lord and God. We are valuable to Him; and in His love, He will find us, even in the dirt and sin that we might be in, and use us for His purposes.
In Genesis chapters 16 and 21, we find the story of Hagar. Hagar was the Egyptian maidservant to Sarah, Abram’s wife who God promised would have a child. In the long years that passed before this promise was fulfilled, Sarah grew impatient and gave Hagar to her husband, Abram, as a surrogate to have a child for her. However, in her doing so, the dynamic nature of mistress and servant changed between Sarah and Hagar. Having a child elevated Hagar’s standing in the community, and in realizing this she became arrogant towards her childless mistress. Maybe a bit of jealousy for Abram’s intimate connection with Hagar also prompted Sarah to eventually throw Hagar out of the family and the security of their tent. However, God goes out to Hagar and, finding her by a spring in the wilderness, He tells her to go back to her mistress and submit. In her doing so, God promises, her descendants will be numerous. Hagar follows God’s command, has her child and is at peace until Sarah has her own child. Once again in jealousy, this time for her son’s position, Sarah banishes both Hagar and her son, Ishmael. Abraham himself sadly sends them away. It seems quite final that Hagar is on her own, lost. Hagar in this society has no control over her own life. She is someone’s property at the will of her owner, but Hagar has value in God’s eyes and He loves her. Finding her again in the wilderness, God calls to her from Heaven itself, saying that He hears the crying of her son and knows the desperation of her heart. He reiterates the promise He gave to her the first time He ran to her in the desert. Ishmael will be the father of a great nation. Even in servitude, both Hagar and Ishmael have value, and God uses their potential for greatness in His plan.
The third and last parable Jesus tells to the people is so familiar to us today. The scenario resonates to us more than other parables found in the Bible. It tells so eloquently of God’s great and gracious love for us, sinners all. In most Bibles, it is titled “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” However, we might think of it as the Story of the Lost Son. The correct definition of prodigal is “wastefully extravagant,” not “something lost,” and in this story we see a young man wasting a great amount of money and precious time, away from his father to follow the temptations of the world.
We know the story. A man with two sons is asked by the younger son, a son so greedy and selfish that he demands his inheritance now. Everyone knows you don’t collect your inheritance until your parent dies, so essentially he is telling his father he wishes the father was dead. The words aren’t explicit, but the intent is still hurtful. Now who would do that? I know of a person that did just that. His reasoning was that it would be his anyway, so why not let him have it now? Property does not belong to anyone but the owner, no matter how the world believes it should be disbursed when that person dies. But just like the father in the parable, the man’s stepmother gave him his portion. I mention this just to make the point that parables found in the Bible still point to present-day situations.
The father gives the son his inheritance and soon after that Sonny Boy takes everything he has and goes as far away as he can, far away from Dad, far away from the rules that Dad seemingly imposed. Was he thinking, as we all do when we reach a certain age and are given freedom to act as we want, maybe going off to college or the military or some other opportunity, “I can handle this, I am in control”? This naïve kind of freedom can actually turn into a rebellion that never ends well, and it doesn’t for this prodigal son. He spends all his money on wild living and perhaps on people who could finagle funds from him. He finds himself without a penny and in need, even the need for food. Then even nature conspires against him, and there is a famine in the whole country. In desperation, he finds work feeding pigs, which is the bottom of the proverbial job ladder for a Jew. He is so hungry that even the pigs’ slop begins to look appetizing to him; but as we read, no one gave him anything.
In the darkness of his existence, he remembers home. His father’s servants have plenty to eat, and he has nothing. He also remembers his past actions, his damning words to his father, his fleeing from the father’s presence. He decides to go back, but with no expectation of acceptance. He will just humbly ask to work as a servant, knowing that he is not worthy to be called a son anymore. His hope is that his father will take pity on him and let him stay. But this pity that the son expects is actually compassion for him. Watching from a distance and recognizing his son in those rags, the father is compelled by his great love and mercy to run to the repentant son and gather him up in his arms. His father has always waited and watched for him. The son’s feeling of unworthiness is wiped away when the father clothes him with his own robe, adorns him with a ring, and puts sandals on his bare feet. Then the father calls for a big celebration, kills the fattened calf and calls his friends to feast with him. His joy is so immense that he has to share it with others. That’s what Jesus did for us on the cross. In his great love and mercy for us poor sinners, he covered us with his blood, wiping away our sins, gave us the right to be called heirs of the kingdom and crowned us with salvation. And there is great rejoicing in Heaven when even one sinner who was lost is saved.
As we focus on the younger son’s repentance and redemption, it is easy to overlook the older brother. To me he is the more complex character in the parable and the most like me. He’s been working in the field, presumably alongside the servants. He hears all the noise and music of the father’s celebration. Then he is informed that Dad is throwing a big party for his brother, who has just returned from his wandering. Instantly, he is angry. He, too, remembers his brother’s hurtful words to their father, and his abandonment soon after he gets his money. He, the older brother, has stayed behind, always working with devotion to their father.
He refuses to go the party. He isn’t going to forgive this selfish and greedy brother who comes crawling back home after he has had his fun. Not only is the older brother unforgiving, but he is also envious of the obvious love their father has for this brother. He never got to have a party with a fattened calf, not even a young goat. However, his father is watching from a distance again—this time for the older son. He comes out to him, inviting him in to the party. Hearing all the excuses of why the older son is unhappy, he says, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
In fact, when the younger brother received his inheritance, the older brother received two thirds of his father’s estate, as was the custom. The father gave up everything he had to his two sons.
Don’t we sometimes as people of the church feel as if we deserve more than the sinners outside our doors? Do we ask God, “What about me, Lord, why is my life so hard? Haven’t I been faithful to You? I am here to worship you every Sunday, feed the hungry, and support the sick, but my efforts go unnoticed and unappreciated by You, God.” Do we ask, “Why do I suffer with so much pain every day, why does disease eat at my body, why do I struggle financially, and why is there such division in my family? Where is my son that I love so much?” And God, watching from a distance, reminds us, “Everything I have is yours. You were in the dirt of sin and the darkness of despair, but I found you and lifted you up. There is a party for you in eternity with me.”
Shouldn’t we pray for the sinners outside and invite them to the celebration of God’s love for all of us? I was dead, but am alive again; lost, but now found in Jesus Christ my Savior.
In closing I would like to quote some of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs:

I love You, Lord.
Oh, Your mercy never fails me.
All my days, I’ve been held in Your hands
From the moment that I wake up
Until I lay my head.
Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God.

’Cause Your goodness is running after me, it’s running after me.
With my life laid down, I’m surrendered now.
I give You everything
’Cause Your goodness is running after, after me.
And all my life You have been so, so good.
With every breath that I am able,
Oh, I’m going to sing of the goodness of God.

Amen.

08/25/2026

Schedule of Sermons for September 2026:
September 6 Psalm 44 "Why?"
September 13 Exodus 14:19-31 "All the King's Horses & All the King's Men"
September 20 Acts 12 "Struck by an Angel"
September 27 Habakkuk "The Wicked Surround the Righteous" (Josh Converse preaching)

08/23/2026

“In the Wonderful Name” by Rev. Dr. Robert Hellam
Psalm 124
Church of the Oaks, August 23, 2026

Thomas Aquinas—the one the Catholics call Saint Thomas Aquinas—is often considered to be the father of modern Roman Catholic theology. Aquinas says something interesting about what he calls “intellectual creatures,” meaning angels and human beings: “This must be the end of the intellectual creature, namely, to understand God.”
The Westminster Shorter Catechism that was followed by our Puritan ancestors was more modest: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”
The word “end” has more than one meaning. In this context, it could mean either the perfected development of a thing or a person, or it could mean the desired goal of any individual. For example, the end of the caterpillar is the butterfly; but in the short term, we might say that the end of the caterpillar is a big fat juicy leaf to chew on.
Aquinas does qualify his statement a little later: “The human intellect has a greater desire, and love, and pleasure, in knowing divine matters than it has in the perfect knowledge of the lowest things, even though it can grasp but little concerning divine things. Man naturally desires to know God.”
That’s for sure. We all want to know God. But can we completely understand Him, as Aquinas suggested earlier? Not according to God Himself, when He spoke to Moses in Exodus 33:18-23. So it appears to be impossible for human beings, probably even in the next life, to understand God and His greatness completely. Even the angels will never have that kind of complete understanding, I believe. It’s impossible.
Many of you know that the Psalms have captured my heart. I think one of the things I like best about them is that they keep on trying to do what is humanly impossible.

[Read Psalm 124, p. 517 in the pew Bible.]

What I was getting at in my words of introduction is the fact that God’s greatness is beyond human words. It is indescribable. It is unimaginable. It is beyond anything we can conceive. That’s why many Bible scholars have concluded that all we can be certain about God is what He is not. For example, He is not unkind. He is not evil. He is not untrustworthy. He is not weak. He is not indifferent. He is not arrogant. He is not small. And the list goes on.
All the words in the whole Bible put together don’t quite give us a positive picture of everything that it might be possible to know about God. Some even say that our feeble imagination is the greatest proof that God is with us. They say that since God is greater than anything that could be imagined, then the fact that we can conceive of such a Person Who is great beyond anything we can think, dream, or imagine proves that such a Person is present in our lives.
Still, even though words—even the words of Scripture—can never capture Him, we do get some clues to God’s greatness in the words of the Bible, especially in the Psalms. Many of the psalms are really love songs to God, full of passion and a kind of painful aching to reach out to Him and really know Him, really understand Him completely, really describe Him as He actually is. I think there’s a marvelous spontaneity in the Psalms—a sense of reaching out on the spur of the moment for words that are elusive, of trying over and over again to find words that could capture God’s greatness, as if it were possible for us to do that.
In this morning’s psalm, David is speaking for Israel. “If it had not been the LORD,” he repeats, possibly as a kind of antiphonal reading for people in the Tabernacle or the Temple or later the synagogue. “If it had not been the LORD”? Wow! What a thought. That feels like an unthinkable thought, if we can say that there is such a thing as a thought that can’t be thought. I think that to think “God is not” is unthinkable. It’s impossible, even more impossible than trying to get our arms around God’s greatness. But that is one way of considering God’s greatness—to wonder what life would be like for us if we didn’t have Him. Old-time Congregational writers would say that in speaking for Israel, David is speaking for the Church. And never mind the differences between Israel and the Church. As lovers of good literature and lovers of God, we can certainly put ourselves into David’s head and heart and accept his words as speaking also for us, for the Church in our time, right here and right now. To paraphrase: “If the LORD had not been on our side, let the Church now say—”
Don’t we want to know God, and isn’t there a kind of painful longing, an aching pleasure, in our reaching out to One Who in many ways is unreachable? Some of you are tall enough to lift up your hands and touch the standard eight-foot-high ceiling. I’m not that tall, and often that movement of stretching for the ceiling is part of my exercises at home. No matter how hard I try, how far I reach, I never reach that ceiling. I think that aching feeling, that experience of a painful stretching out to a point beyond our reach, is God’s way of awakening in us a kind of homesickness for our eternal home in the never-ending presence of our Father in heaven, in fellowship with Jesus, in the glory of the Holy Spirit.
One of those things that God is not is Noah’s Ark. And yet that’s how David pictures Him in this psalm. If the Lord God had not been on our side when life seemed to be against us, we would have been like all those sinners who died in the Flood. David portrays Israel’s enemies—and we could say the Church’s enemies—rising up like a ferocious flood. Nobody spoke Japanese in Israel in David’s time, but thinking of a flood could make us picture a tsunami rising up here on our own shore, waves tremendously high that would swallow up this part of Del Rey Oaks and downtown Monterey and all our houses, except maybe for those who live inland in Prunedale or Salinas.
Noah and his little family—wife, three sons, three daughters-in-law—were all of humanity, after the Flood. There wasn’t even any Israel yet, and there would never be if God were not on Noah’s side. Noah possibly spent over a hundred years working on that big barge, expecting rain when no one had seen rain and when no one ever dared go near the sea. All those people around him could not have helped but pay attention to this man constantly at work, or at least to notice that something unusual was going on, and maybe some guessed that there might have been a reason for it. If things had been different—if people had been different--maybe there could possibly have been dozens, or hundreds, aboard the Ark, but it was not to be. Only a tiny remnant of humanity was saved. In David’s time, he looked back and saw that remnant as like Israel. In our time, we see the Remnant as Jesus, His Church, and His people. Just think: If it had not been for Jesus!
Without our Ark, Jesus, we would have been drowned in this world of sin. We would have been helpless against the devil and his helpers. Even our own sinful thoughts and desires would have risen up, the way a full bottle of water plunged into a lake would feel its own waters joining the overwhelming waters that would sink it down into total lostness.
So what is this flood that David sings about here? It represents three things: wicked people, sin, and death. Wicked people are those who deny God, who love everything that He opposes, who value short-term pleasure over long-lasting good, who pursue a lifestyle that is a worship of death and a rejection of life. And those wicked people include you and me as we used to be and sometimes still are, with the only difference being that God has chosen to see us as righteous and good like Noah and his family.
The only thing that made Noah’s family special and worth saving was God’s favor. The same thing is true of us, and that special favor of God is only one measure of His greatness. Even so, it’s a pretty impressive measure. Why would God pick me and enable me to trust in Jesus, when there are so many really wonderful people who seem better than me but never became Christians, so they have no hope of eternal life, no matter how good they are in human terms? It is inconceivable, beyond understanding, and yet I believe it, and so do you and all true Christians. How wonderful God’s greatness is, and how elusive it is when we try to understand it, to describe it, to explain it.
When we talk to others about God’s greatness, as David is doing in this psalm, we can never explain fully. We have to become poetic, like David, and speak in terms of emotion more than logic, in terms of the abstract rather than the concrete, in terms of our feelings rather than our theology.
People want to know that knowing Jesus will make a difference in their lives. It will make a difference, as you and I know, but that first knowledge of Jesus has to grow. When I was a new believer, any theology I had in my head was almost all wrong. You don’t have to have good theology to give your heart to Jesus. Once a person knows Jesus and loves Jesus, then is time for that person to start thinking about theology and start being taught about theology.
One evening in a theology course at seminary, I displeased a professor when I concluded a paper by saying that in reality theology is unfaithful to God, almost blasphemous, because it claims to teach about Him with a complete understanding of Who He is and what His motives and His thoughts are. That professor was not happy with that statement, but I think that in his heart he must have known that all his theology brought him no closer to God. What was important was that he loved God. It’s love for God, the kind of passion we see in David as he speaks through this psalm, that brings us near to our indescribable Maker.
And to give more credit to that very good professor, one evening in our class he reminisced about another class he had taught years before, I think at Liberty University, when the presence of God seemed so real that no one could even speak but just be enveloped in the Lord’s presence. That long-ago class had sat in silence for the better part of an hour, awe-inspired and quietly joyful. And I think the professor brought up that memory because he was wishing for the same thing to happen on that evening with all of us; but I guess you can’t make such a thing happen. It has to be a spontaneous action of the Holy Spirit.
Sin might sometimes seem spontaneous, but we are still responsible. Sin is anything that does not please God. On the large scale, it is not just individual sins, little mistakes that we all make. Sin is that great flood that is inside us and all around us, that rebellion against God that we human beings started in the Garden of Eden. We are powerless against that flood. We need protection. Noah had the Ark for protection. He also had God, Who was his real Ark. And Jesus is also our true Ark against the great flood not only of wicked people, people like who we used to be, but also of the great tsunami of sin that floods the whole world.
David’s picture of the great flood also stands for death. Death is all around us. One funeral service says, “Give us now your grace, that as we shrink before the mystery of death, we may see the light of eternity.” Fear of the dark is closely related to the fear of death. Something that has disappeared from sight into the darkness seems to have disappeared from reality, to have died. Somewhere inside us that childhood fear of the dark probably still exists in each one. It’s really a fear of things disappearing. Nothing lasts. Everything dies. Everyone dies. What do we do about that? What could we do, if it had not been the Lord Who was on our side? He shines the light of eternity into this dark world.
Death, along with all the other negative things in this worldly reality, is not only seen in this psalm as a flood. Just as a flood can overwhelm and destroy and sweep away all life, so could a predatory animal swallow us up alive. Death is like a great white shark, with greedy eyes looking for prey. The shark doesn’t always find what he’s looking for; but unlike a great white shark, or a mountain lion or a grizzly bear, death never misses its prey. He is going to get us. What do we do about that? What could we do if the Lord God was not on our side, if He was not infinitely bigger and greater than that great white shark?
We are seeing plenty of pictures in our imagination about how great God is, aren’t we? And yet like David we recognize we have not comprehended Him, no matter how hard we’re trying, no matter how many analogies come to mind. But we keep trying, don’t we?
The darkness of death tries to overcome the light of God; but as John says in his Gospel, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Or in the old translation, “the darkness comprehended it not." And neither have we completely comprehended that light with our minds. But our comprehension, our understanding, is as complete as it needs to be. Despite our great longing for full understanding, we have the wonderful compensation of loving God and knowing that He loves us beyond measure. That should be good enough, shouldn’t it?
Notice also David’s choice of words: the enemies’ anger has been kindled against God’s people, he says. The word “kindled” points to fire. We know about fire. It’s already fire season in California, and in all coastal states from Baja California up to British Columbia; and also in Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Utah. Beautiful places like Big Sur are in the path of fire. Death and sin and the devil are like a raging fire that would destroy everything in its path, just as a raging flood or a rampaging predator would do
But David, the poet behind our psalm, realizes that even now—with the picture of the great flood and the alarming predator and the ferocious fire and the One Who overcomes them all—even now, David has not fully captured the greatness of God. The picture is still incomplete, although he’s doing the best he can. He tries again. He changes the picture, hoping to come closer to God’s greatness.
Now we are no longer Noah in the Ark, riding on the waves in a craft with no means of propulsion or steering, an unwieldy barge that relies only on the wise guidance of God. Now we are a little bird. In previous centuries, even little birds like sparrows and hummingbirds found their way to the supper table, especially the table of the wealthy who hired fowlers to trap the little birds.
Before, we were preserved from the great white shark. Now we are a vulnerable little bird, all thin legs and feathers, with hardly any strength at all. The fowler has caught us in his trap. We can’t get out. We’re done for. At least that would be true if it had not been the Lord Who was on our side. God is bigger than the fowler, the birdcatcher who represents sin and death and the devil. God has destroyed the trap—smashed it to smithereens. We are free. A big strong man, much stronger than the fowler, has shown up to overpower the fowler and crush the trap. That is another picture of God. We see Him as like that big strong man. But do we even yet finally know the completeness of God? Do we fully comprehend God’s greatness?
Has David finished? Is he done? Has he captured God’s greatness? No. He can’t do that, try as he might, any more than the fowler could capture us in spite of God’s protection. Now, as his poem comes to an end, David seems to give up on the project of painting a complete picture of God. His canvas is too small, and his palette is too limited. So instead of continuing to try and complete the picture, David just pauses to summarize what we do know, and what is really enough for us to know: God is the Maker of heaven and earth, and He is on our side; He is our Help. No greater Help could be imagined.
Let me share with you some of my own feeble words. I’m not as great a poet as King David, but here in my paraphrase of David’s psalm is my try at capturing the greatness of God, or at least doing what is good enough: admiring and praising and loving this great God.

If Not for the Lord

“If God our Lord had not been on our side,”
Let the House of Israel now proclaim,
“If God our Lord had not been on our side
When fearsome enemies against us came,
They would have swallowed all of us alive
In their fierce anger, raging like a fire,
Like roaring waters no one could survive
That would have drowned us, swallowed us entire,
Yes, swallowed us entirely, drenched us, drowned us
Where we would never see the light of day.”
We bless the Lord. The wicked have not found us
And have not been allowed to take us prey.
Freed, as a bird from the fowler’s net flies,
Our Help is the Lord, Who made earth and skies.

As God’s angels tell people throughout the Bible, “Fear not.” If God had not been on our side, we would have to fear. But we do have the great and incomprehensible God, Who may not be comprehended, but all the same He is knowable through His love for us and our love for Him, and we fear not. We trust in the wonderful Name of the Lord.

Amen.

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