There’s a powerful song by “The Old Paths Quartet” Called “Who Better Than Me” (Play from 0.01 thru 0.59 mark of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQEeUbB6H_A)
I really like that song because (like Psalm 18) that song declares “You’ve heard sermons telling what the Lord can do. Read the stories of the lives the Lord made new. And if you’re wondering, wondering if it’s true. If you need someone to tell you what His precious blood can do. Who better than a wayward, wandering, weary sinner who’s tasted saving grace. A man who’s come up out of the river with a past that’s been washed away. If you’re thinking that you need first-hand proof from a soul that’s been set free WHO BETTER THAN ME?”
IT’S A GOD-STORY KIND OF SONG.
Psalm 18 was David’s way of declaring HIS God-story. David was singing praise to his God for the mighty things that God had done in his life. And he was telling all who would listen to his song: Let Me Tell You WHAT My God has done in my life. Let me tell you… my “God-Story”
ILLUS: Joe Freeman used to go here some time back, and he told us his God-Story. Joe was a black man who’d been living on the streets of Chicago for a long time. And he would move from soup kitchen to soup kitchen, and from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. And in good weather life was… ok. But when bad weather set-in he’d find himself sloshing thru the snow, or dodging mud puddles as he walked to the next shelter/kitchen. On one particularly bad day he showed up at a soup kitchen and he decided he was tired of his life on the streets. He bowed his head and prayed to God “Oh God, just get me off these streets. Take me someplace where I can have a chance to live a normal life.”
And no sooner had Joe finished his prayer then he heard a couple men talking behind him. They were in Chicago to find men who desperately needed work and take them to Logansport and work for Tyson. They were going to pay for their room and board and make sure they were paid well, and hopefully these men would become solid workers for Tyson. Joe made his way back to their table and asked about their program, and they explained that he wasn’t eligible, because this program was only for ex-felons who wanted a new start in life. But Joe kept after them, begging for a chance to change his life. And finally… they told him to come back the next day and they’d see what they could do. So he came back and they sent him to Logansport. Not long afterward, he was baptized into Christ and joined church here. THAT WAS JOE’S GOD-STORY
Joe did his part… he prayed. and then God did his part and became the mover and shaker in Joe’s world.
The thing about God-stories is that they are often the result of a person who has run out of options and turn to God for help. And then God does something dramatic in their lives, and these folks begin to tell others what God had done for them - and God gets the praise.
ILLUS: When I was a boy, my dad would tell me his DAD-STORIES. He’d been a fairly good baseball and basketball player, and he was almost drafted by Purdue to play for them. Dad would tell his stories, and he was always the hero in those stories. Dad got the praise, and that never bothered me because dad was my hero and I wanted to grow up to become like him. Dad was reliving his past thru his stories and there’s a lot of people do that… nothing wrong with it. Those were his DAD-STORIES.
But it’s better to have GOD-STORIES because when you tell a God-Story, God receives the praise. God is described as the hero that other people may want to find in their lives. That’s why Joe told his story about leaving Chicago. It wasn’t about Joe’s own skill or cunning… it was about his God’s faithfulness. It wasn’t a story to glorify Joe - it was a story to glorify God.
And that what David was doing in Psalm 18. If you were here last week, you heard about Psalm 142. And in that Psalm David told of being in a dark place where nobody cared for him. He’d lost everything and became a fugitive. He’d been a man of importance, but life fell apart. David had run out of options and God was all he had, and in Ps 142 David cried out to God for help. For 13 years (or so) David had been on the run from King Saul, but NOW Saul was dead, and David became king of Judah. And God had protected David all that time. And now David returned the favor by praising his God. So he told his GOD-STORY.
David started out in Psalm 142 declaring “I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
God became the shelter that David depended upon. God was the rock upon which he set his feet. About 200 years before Christ, there was a Greek scientist named Archimedes who said: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.” And what David was saying in Psalm 18 was this: I HAVE A PLACE to stand. I stand on God! He is my rock, fortress, stronghold, and when I stand on God HE CAN MOVE THE EARTH!
So David did his part… he stood on God’s faithfulness, but God was the real MOVER and SHAKER of David’s world. David wrote: “I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him.”
In other words, David was saying: “Don’t mess with my God, because He can do stuff!”
Being a preacher I have bunch of my own God-Stories. And in each and every one of them I faced situations I could not control. I found myself in conflicts I wasn’t smart enough to fight. But I did my part… and then God showed up, and He moved the earth under my feet. I wasn’t the hero of these stories… God was. And He got the glory. So, let me tell you one of my stories.
When I was younger I went to Purdue University for a couple of years. My brother thought I needed to get the chance to sing in the Purdue Glee Club and dad was willing to pay the freight, so I figured – why not? But I still wanted to go to Bible college, so when I saw a class listed that was called “RELIGIONS OF THE WEST” (which dealt with Judaism, Christianity and Islam) I thought – “This will be great! I can take this class and I can get a leg up on my studies to be a preacher.”
And that’s what I had in mind. But unfortunately, that’s not what the instructor of this class had in mind. The first day I walked into class it became apparent that this professor’s objective was to destroy people’s faith in Scripture. He started out attacking the Old Testament. He said Moses didn’t write the first 5 books of the Bible and then he started talking about a JEDP theory I’d never heard about before. Now, bear in mind, my entire theological education was what I’d learned in Sunday School… but I raised my hand anyway. He called on me and I stated that this wasn’t what I’d been taught, and he just gave me a patronizing smile and said that the majority of scholars agreed with HIM. Then he went on to attack another part of the Old Testament - and I raised my hand again. “That’s not what I’d been taught” and again he said: “the majority of scholars agreed with HIM.”
Now, as you might imagine, this wasn’t going well for me. I was out of my league… and I knew it. In fact, I have to admit that I’d been a little bit on the slow side. But eventually I realized that if he attacked the Old Testament when dealing with Judaism, he’d do the same thing to the New Testament when he got to Christianity. So I went to the Campus House and asked if they had any books that would help me prepare for what I was sure he was going to do next. I think I studied harder for that class than any other class I took at Purdue.
Sure enough, when he got done trashing the Old Testament he moved on to attack the New. He started out by saying that Matthew didn’t write Matthew and Mark didn’t write Mark and Luke didn’t write Luke and John didn’t write John. They’d all borrowed from something called the “Q Source”. But this time I was ready. I raised my hand. He said “What?” And I explained he was wrong because this scholar and that scholar, and that they’d said this, that, or the other thing that debunked his statements (to be honest, to this day I couldn’t tell you what I said, I just remember thinking it sounded good). The prof paused for a couple moments and then said “Well, the majority of scholars agree with me”, and we were off to the races. Every time he’d attack the Bible, I quoted a few of my own scholars.
Now I’m pretty sure the rest of the students weren’t impressed with me. They hadn’t paid to hear ME argue with the professor, and I’m pretty sure I annoyed many of them. Then it came time for mid-terms and I sat down to take the test. At the bottom of the test I wrote that I was sorry I’d challenged him so much in class, but he’d been attacking something that was important to me. And I promised I’d never interrupt his lessons again. He was going into Islam and I frankly didn’t care about Islam. I was done with the professor… but apparently God wasn’t.
I swear, in the next class, this is roughly what he said: Islam got him to black Muslims. Black Muslims got him to racial prejudice and racial prejudice got him to WWII. And then he said the reason we dropped the Atom bomb on the Japanese and not the Germans was because the Germans were white and the Japanese weren’t. Now I’m kind of history buff… and that didn’t sound quite right. But I’d made a promise I wouldn’t cause any more trouble in his class so I just kept my mouth shut. But people tell me that when I’m frustrated – I sigh. And I must have sighed, because the teacher looked right at me and he said “Alright Strite. What’s wrong now?”
I hadn’t said anything! But since he asked, I responded that from everything I’d ever heard we didn’t have the bomb when Germany surrendered. He responded: “We did too. We had the Atom bomb in 1942!”
You need to understand, this was in the era of the war in Vietnam, and the government lied about all kinds of things back then. I figured – well, maybe they lied about this too! And I just slumped at my desk – defeated again. And that’s when God nailed him. One row back, and about 4 seats over, a young woman raised her hand. She said “I’m sorry sir, you’re wrong. My father worked on that project and we didn’t have the Atom bomb until after Germany surrendered.”
You couldn’t have found a student in that class that was more shocked than I was. I’d done my part… but my part wasn’t all that impressive. But at just the right time God stepped and moved the earth under my feet.
My point in this sermon is this: All Of Us Have God Stories. We can tell stories about how God changed our lives or helped us when we didn’t know what to do, and your GOD STORY may be more powerful than you think
CLOSE: We have a lady who attends evening services who told me last Sunday that she was baptized about this time of February – 3 years ago. And she went back over the type of life she’d led. There were the drugs and the parties and… sin. But then one night she being chased by a nasty man on the streets who intended to hurt her. And she ran toward a church building where the congregation was just getting out of services. There was a couple walking up to their car and so she ran up to them and asked for protection. They hustled her into their car and drove away… and they talked with her for a long time about Jesus. They talked about a God who could change her life, and this woman determined that night she was going to turn her life over to Christ. And she was baptized into Christ. Now, 3 years later, she tells everyone who will listen to her about her past, the difference that Jesus has made in her life. She’d been a wayward, wandering, weary sinner who’s tasted saving grace. A person who’d come up out of the water with a past that had been washed away. And she declared “If you’re thinking that you need first-hand proof from a soul that’s been set free. WHO BETTER THAN ME?”
That was her God-story. That was her story of what Jesus had done to turn her life around, and now every day is better than ever before. She did her part… she turned to God for help, but it wasn’t her cunning and wisdom that changed her life. It was the God who she appealed to who became the mover and shaker of her world.
INVITATION: The same is true for appealing to God for salvation. God’s done all the heavy lifting… He’s the hero of this story. God became a man and died on the cross for our sins. God shed HIS BLOOD so we could be forgiven and start again. All that God asks is that we respond and accept that gift. BELIEVE that Jesus is the Christ; REPENT of your past and determine to leave your sins behind; CONFESS that Jesus will now be the Lord and Master of your life; BE IMMERSED in the waters of baptism and rise up a new creation; and then live your LIFE for Him.
