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[ Music ] [ Music ] His work was full and before his sight, Was for the freedom and the liberation, ♪ In that which you now yield to me is mine ♪

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♪ Our golden values when we storm the line ♪ ♪ For all I see is the reason why ♪ ♪ Let love be first, peace follow through ♪ ♪ And in elevation ♪

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♪ O take me for born ♪ ♪ A real woman ♪ ♪ I ask the heaven to bring us salvation ♪ ♪ Sing and rejoice, O blessed Fruits of our land ♪

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[ Music ] Sing and rejoice, O blest Jerusalem, Of all the sons in living rejuvenation, The boundless love of Christ, our heavenly Heav'n.

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Great God, the hope to give our heavenly home, ♪ Joyful and sing of love ♪ ♪ Let every voice be sung in glad demonstration ♪ ♪ For great Theodore, for great Theodore ♪

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♪ Yes, he will join to bring us a new creation ♪ ♪ Praise the Lord ♪ - Amen. - Amen. - For a number of months now,

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our messages have been based on the book of Psalms. We've been involved in a sermon series. And we come now to the 70th number of the Psalms. Psalm number 70, the first verse.

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Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord. The subject of the message, pace for the race, pace for the race.

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Life's tempo is like that of a race. We are all involved in a race against time. And in Western society we pride ourselves in getting from place to place as quickly as possible. We use this somewhat as a measure of progress. The time that it took to get from one place to another when we We had the horse and buggy days and how it improved as we got the Model T Ford and then

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how it has improved with the cars that we now have. And then it improved even greater, not only with cars that are supposed to run as much as 120 miles an hour and more, but the airplane which we have that enables us to fly faster than sound. All of these are indications of the progress of

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civilization. We pride ourselves in our push-button gadgets that make it possible for us to have instant results. We're in the habit of living in a hurry.

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Some roads have a section of the traffic that is designated for the fast lane. And there's another section that's designated for those who travel slowly.

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And it seems to me that these also are symbolic of life. When I was growing up I'd always hear my grandmother as well as my mother and parents and older people say, you know that child is just too fast. When you were saying something that they didn't think you need to be saying or doing something that you didn't need to be doing

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that you were too fast. And I'd hear them talk about people living too fast in the fast lane. Fast lane. I can remember a number of years ago when I was driving from Texas to New York and I came to Washington DC early in the morning, wee hours of the morning, and I was tired and I was going through one of those tunnels in Washington and I was driving rather slowly and they had a certain

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rate of speed that you were to travel through those tunnels and there was a huge bus right behind me honking all the way for me to hurry up and get through that tunnel at a much faster rate of speed. Well it seems that this is sort of the attitude of the psalmist. The psalmist is saying here, Hurry up God. Move on. Accelerate your speed. Make haste to help me. Because you

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see the psalmist is bogged down in trouble. He's trapped by the adversary. He's suffering in the hands of the opposition. His is an urgent message directed to the one who is supposed to be able to change his condition. His message is addressed to the eternal.

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Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. Make haste to help me. Yes, we want things to happen in a hurry because life is short. Longfellow puts it well in his psalm of life when he says, "Art is long and time is fleeting and our

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hearts though stout and brave still like muffled drums are beating. Funeral marches to the grave. Life is short." And it seems to me that these words express The tension between the temporary and the eternal. You know, everything we control, we think we control, is temporary.

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Temporary. All of it's temporary. Our bodies, it's temporary. Things that we have, even the money, it's temporary. The market reveals one thing that the dollar's worth today

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and there's something else tomorrow and maybe something else week after next. All that's temporary. So here is tension between the temporary and the eternal.

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That's the human predicament. We'd like things to move according to our schedule. We want right to be vindicated right now. You know, the things that really get to us,

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we want them to be upheld, we wanna get relief right now. When I went to the hospital many years ago for surgery, And I had what I thought was the most painful experience that a person could have.

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I got really acquainted with pain, pain, pain. And I remember that you had this button that you could push, you know, when you really were in pain

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and the nurse would come and give you the needle. And you really want them to hurry when you are really in pain. They can't get there soon enough

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to relieve you of your misery. you really want it to happen right quick. That's the way it is. Whenever you find yourself in a crisis,

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you want relief as soon as possible. But you know, life doesn't move like that. I can remember the experience at my alma mater, Bishop College,

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the crisis which we just experienced a number of years ago involving the president. Most of us knew the president was innocent of the charges that were being brought against him.

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But the bad press that was given to the college and to the institution, and all the long drawn out trials in the court took a number of years,

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and by the time it got down to the time when he was declared innocent, people had almost, well it almost destroyed the image that he had in the community. It took so long for justice to be done.

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And there's so many things that happen in our lives that you know it's right, and you have to wait. And even the saints in glory as they look down upon the suffering for goodness that we who are following the way of the cross must endure, they say, "How long, oh Lord? How long?

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How long will that have to go on? How long?" What is the pace of the race? You know, we've become so impatient.

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And the psalmist is impatient. We don't like delays. We say procrastination is a thief of time. We are the now generation.

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We want to celebrate the tempo of life, but when we think about the eternal, sometimes it seems that God is just moving too slowly. And like the Psalmist, we cry out ourselves, make haste.

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Oh Lord, hurry up and help me. You see, this is a cry that's born out of human frustration. It points up the fact that as human beings, we are poor and needy.

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It points up the fact that God is in human history. Here, it points up the fact here is a pilgrim of faith who is looking to God, who is active in human history. He's there, he's present,

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but he wants him to come to his aid quickly. God seems to move so slowly, and there are times when he does not seem to move at all. Jesus is carrying on his ministry,

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and he receives a message, a very urgent message. Come at once. Lazarus, he whom thou lovest is sick. And Jesus just keeps on doing what he's doing. Several days pass and this doesn't seem to be the kind of behavior that we would encourage. Here is someone you really love, why don't you hurry up and get the quickest means of transportation

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so that you can be at the bedside and when Jesus finally arrives, Lazarus is dead and buried. And God seems to move in that way so often when we look at the circumstances of history. And we can all identify with the cry of the psalmist, "Make haste, O Lord. Hurry up and help me." Have you ever had a real serious problem that you wanted solved?

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Did you want it solved in a hurry? And wasn't there something that cried out deep down in your heart to God as you sent up your prayer to heaven? Hurry up, Lord. I've been waiting a long time.

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Sometimes just a few moments seem like a long time. Hurry up to help me. It's born of human frustration because the psalmist is a creature troubled by temporary circumstances and you see God can't be made subject to the creature.

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He's the creator. The God steps can't be altered by man's tempo. We don't determine the tune by which God makes his triumphal march through history. How long must we wait for healing?

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That's the cry of the sufferer. How long must we wait for justice? That's the cry of the oppressed. Can't you hear the people in South Africa saying, "Hurry up, Lord.

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Look what we're going through. Look at all of the deaths that we have had. get out of the funerals. How long must this last? Hurry up Lord. How long will you let this small minority suppress us? Hurry up. Please hurry to help me. And when we carry our burdens we cry out to him hurry up and lift this burden. So

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we're troubled by despair and yet the psalmist utters here a cry of hope. He believes that help is on the way and his concern is he wants it to get there in a hurry. You see as we celebrate Palm Sunday we have a people that have waited for centuries for the new age to dawn and we're still waiting in some way for

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a new day to come. They were waiting for truth to triumph, for love, for justice, and for peace, all of these to triumph. They'd send up their prayers to heaven for hundreds of years, pilgrims of every age saying, "Lord, hurry up. Be pleased to save me, make haste to help me, make haste. But you know we can't hurry God.

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We don't give him the marching orders, we march according to his orders. And watch if you will the eternal manifested in the flesh, watch him on on Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday. And he comes into the city of Jerusalem

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riding on an ass on a donkey. Now that's not a fast way to ride. That's not a fast way to ride. And yet this is the temple of the eternal

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who somehow comes into time and moves within the time frame. He submits himself to all of the circumstances of time, and yet while he has the power to move

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at a much more rapid rate, he moves at such a slow pace. That's the pace, pace of a donkey. Oh, we would suggest that he would have a prancing steed. One of those Arabian steeds that's known

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for its speed that can hurry through the streets of Jerusalem. That's what we would suggest and have him all there bedecked with all of the robes. But he comes on a beast of burden riding upon the donkey. Yet somehow I hear this cry, as ancient as man himself, saying, haste, O Lord, to help me. Make haste. But God does not move according to our time schedule.

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I don't understand it. It's a mystery. We have on our crosses this morning made of palm leaves. Palm leaf itself is a symbol of victory. Victory. And yet we have it in the form of a cross that the victory we we celebrate involves a cross and the very thought of a cross is painful. Cross is painful. It's a burden and we all got our crosses. We may not say much about it but we've got

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We've got crosses in our personal lives. We've got crosses in our family. We've got a cross on our jobs. We've got a cross in our communities. We've got a cross to bear in our church relationships all through life. I see a cross. Where sons of God give up their breath, there is no gain except by loss. There is no life except by death. So if we would celebrate with him today, we must celebrate the fact that we must travel

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with him the way of the cross and we must travel at his temple. There is a lesson for us here. We must travel according to his temple. You know the story of the hare and the tortoise, of a turtle, how the hare jumps out in the

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race, gets way ahead in the race, and feels that he's so far ahead in the race that he can just play around. But that turtle just keeps on itching along and wins the race. the race isn't given to the swift. Not a battle to the strong but to him who

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endures to the end. So what's the pace of the race? What's the pace? What's the pace of the race? You see, you see the tip that the eternal, the eternal is above time. Thousand years! But it's yesterday when it's passed as far as God is concerned, the temporary, time flies we say. So we have the temporary on the one

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hand, we have the eternal which is above, but what really happens is through Jesus Christ the temporary and the eternal come together and we have what Paul Tillich calls the eternal now. That when you get hooked up with God that Right now, in the midst of all of the temporary circumstances, you have the eternal.

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And so you don't really have to be disturbed. You don't really have to be frustrated by what's happening right now, because you know that there is an after a while. That you may never live to see it, but you know that things are going to get better because

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God is in control of history. And that's good news. That's good news. good news that when we move according to God's schedule that you don't try to

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determine the pace for the race he does that you just move with him oh it says there that they that wait on the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles and And then it says that they shall run. And then it says they shall walk.

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They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. So you would have eagles, eagle speed. Then you have the speed of the runner, and then the walker.

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All of those are given as a different pace that you may have set. But all of them have to do with waiting on God. So you don't know what God's tempo is gonna be.

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You just submit yourself to him. And you don't try to tell God how he's gonna march into Jerusalem. You don't tell him how he's gonna travel

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at what rate of speed. You just say, well, Lord, whatever your will and way is, here I am, I wanna be identified with you. and I'm willing to go with you all the way.

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Your will is my will. Make haste, oh Lord, hurry to help me. Well, God has already done that. He's already answered our prayer.

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He's already has arranged the outcome before we know it. He already knows. And we can sing that you're gonna be with the king. One song said, I'll walk with the king.

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that no matter what the tempo may be of the race, what the pace may be, that I'm gonna walk with the King. - That's right. - That I walk with the King, hallelujah.

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- Hallelujah. - That I walk with the King, no matter how high may be the hills, no matter how deep may be the valley, I walk with the King.

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- That's it. - Hallelujah. - That's it. - And that's enough.

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- That's right. - To know that he rules. - Yes. - He has charge of the fog.

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He controls the rain. He controls the winds, He controls the stormy seas, and all is well when we walk with the King because He determines the pace for the race. He may not come in the way we want Him to or just exactly when we want Him to, but He

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He always comes and He comes in triumph as He enters His holy city triumphantly and we can celebrate His goodness because we know that He has entered our lives and that He reigns on the throne of our hearts. Have thine own way Lord, have thine own way.

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[inaudible] [ Music ] ♪ And I don't wait no more ♪ ♪ And I don't wait no more ♪

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♪ I'm not the fortune ♪ ♪ I ain't the fame ♪ ♪ O ye that faith in me ♪ ♪ O ye that faith in me ♪

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♪ O ye that faith in me ♪ ♪ For I am waiting ♪ ♪ Till then until ♪ ♪ Hell-like old way home ♪

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♪ Hell-like old way home ♪ ♪ Search me not in my dream ♪ ♪ Faster today ♪ ♪ Wider than small ♪

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♪ But we just know ♪ ♪ As if by presence ♪ ♪ Now here I go ♪ ♪ And I don't care ♪

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♪ And I don't care ♪ ♪ 'Cause you can't help me ♪ ♪ Help me, I pray ♪ ♪ Father, oh Father ♪

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♪ Turn me into one ♪ ♪ Touch me and heal me ♪ [music] Almighty God, our Father,

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as creatures of the dust, we often find ourselves caught in the tension between the temporary and the eternal. And we cry out, "Make haste, O Lord, to help me." Hurry up. We attempted to try to determine the pace for the race.

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But help us to have that faith, that confidence in you that would enable us to rest our will in your will. And to somehow feel assured that all will be well.

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Grant unto us this assurance that we may live triumphantly this day and every day so that the experience of Palm Sunday suffering for the way of the cross in a redemptive manner may truly be manifested in our lives.

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Grace, mercy, and peace be with you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [ Music ]

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