Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Tommy Dorsey, the Gospel song writer, was at a Christian gathering in St. Louis when he got the message that his wife had died in child birth.

He rushed back to Chicago and found that the baby also had died.

Both were buried in the same coffin.

He was a preacher's kid and so he had been exposed to death and funerals, but he was angry with God.

He went through a deep valley of darkness and doubt.

The following Saturday he went to the piano, and the words of this well-known song came to him.

Precious Lord take my hand,

Lead me on let me stand,

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on to the light,

Take my hand precious Lord

Lead me home.

He found peace with God in his valley, and he made it a place of springs.

He wrote, "And so I go on living for God willing and joyfully, until that day when He will take my hand and gently lead me home."

This is what verse 6 of Psalm 84 is all about.

It is about turning burdens into blessings.

It is about getting good out of evil.

It is about experiencing pleasure in pain.

The valley of Baca was a dry waterless valley that Pilgrims had to pass through to get to Jerusalem and the temple.

It was not a pleasant place, and so it was called the valley of weeping, or the valley of tears.

The implication is, God's people living in a fallen world cannot escape the reality of that fallenness.

They can be Pilgrims on their way to the house of God to worship, and yet have to suffer the experience of the Valley of Baca.

Charlie Brown and Linus are standing by a fence with their faces resting in their hands as they lean on it.

Linus says, "Sometimes I feel that life has just passed me by.

Do you ever feel that way Charlie Brown?"

In his typical melancholy mood he replies, "No, I feel like it has knocked me down and walked all over me."

Life does this to us even when we are God's children.

The Pilgrimage to God's best, which is Jerusalem, often takes us through the Valley of Baca-the place of pain.

Down in the valley, valley so low are words that convey the idea that the valley is a low point in life's journey.

Here is a saint of God who has a passion for praise and a passion to experience the pleasures of worship, and a passion for God's presence, and he sings of the blessedness of others with like faith and passion.

Yet, he is honest, and faces the reality that they too must pass through the Valley of Baca.

God has not built a by-pass for His people.

The place of pain and problems is somewhere in the itinerary of every traveler.

Sam Shoemaker, one of the great Christians of the 20th century said, "Everybody has a problem, is a problem, or lives with a problem."

The fact is, all three can be true at the same time.

Life is a packaged deal.

You can't just choose the pleasure and reject the pain.

The valley is part of the package, and so the question is, how is the Christian to deal with the valley in a way that is distinctive from the way non-Christians go through the valley?

The answer is surprising, for it is another of the major Biblical paradoxes.

The way the believer is to deal with the valley of pain is to make it a place of pleasure.

Notice verse 6 again, "As they passed through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs."

The dry barren Valley of Baca is to be made a place where life-giving and refreshing water is to flow freely.

If God works in everything for the good of those who love Him than those who love God are to work with Him, and strive to make a spring in every dry valley; and oasis in every desert.

It is not just in God's hands, the believer has to cooperate.

The Psalmist does not say that God makes it a place of springs, but they do-the Pilgrims passing through the valley.

The autumn rains that cover it with pools are God's doing, but they have to make it a place of springs.

The bringing of good out of evil is a joint project of God and man.

One of the greatest examples of this is from the life of King David.

We all know of his valley of Baca.

His lust and adultery led him into the driest valley of his life.

It was the major mess-up of his whole career, and he suffered a lot of pain because of it.

But he worked with God in that valley, and he made it a place of springs.

He did not cast Bathsheba aside, but he took her into his life and loved her the rest of his life, and by her brought into the world his most famous son-Solomon.

Solomon went on to give Israel it's golden age.

He wrote a large portion of God's Word and gave every age the blessings of his wisdom.

David went on to write many of the Psalms so that out of his pain, out of valley of Baca, there has flowed the springs of great pleasure for millions of believers.

David did not let his sin, folly, and pain stop him from being a channel of the water of life.

He is the great Old Testament example of passing through the valley and making it a place of springs.

The Son Of David, the Lord Jesus Christ is the great New Testament example.

"He left the splendor of heaven

Knowing His destiny,

Was the lonely hill of Golgotha

There to lay down His life for me."

The valley for Jesus was not just the cross, but the whole incarnation experience.

He gave up equality with God the Father, and all the glory of heaven, to endure the sin filled environment of a fallen world.

He was despised and rejected, and then crucified.

Jesus experienced pain beyond our comprehension.

Yet, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus made His valley of Baca, His valley of weeping and tears, a place of reaping and cheers.

Heb.

12:2 says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

The pain of the cross was also a pleasure because Jesus knew the consequences of that pain.

There would be a vast race of the redeemed who would enjoy the pleasures of eternity with Him.

A doctor told me of a mother who was giving birth, and in her pain she groaned, "Oh Jesus, Jesus-but you are a man, you wouldn't understand."

The fact is, the suffering of Jesus was very much like the giving of birth.

He even used birth to illustrate the pain and pleasure of His disciples.

In John 16:20-21 He said, "I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.

You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world."

The point of Jesus is, pain is real and it is bad, but when you know it is a passing experience that will lead to a permanent pleasure you can anticipate that pleasure, and realize the pain is a process you have to go through to get to the pleasure, and then you can experience the pleasure of the pain.

That is how Jesus could endure the cross.

He could see the end result: The great pleasure of salvation, and so on the cross Jesus was like a mother giving birth.

He was giving birth to the whole plan of the new birth that would bring forth millions upon millions of children of God.

The paradox of pain and pleasure mixed is a part of the whole plan of God.

The cross is the great example.

It is a terrible symbol of pain, yet, also the Christians greatest symbol of pleasure, for it represents the price Jesus paid for the eternal life of pleasure for all God's people.

One of the best pains of life is the pain of the conviction of sin and repentance, for this pain leads to the pleasure of salvation.

It is very good suffering that leads a person to salvation in Christ.

Blessed are the pains that give birth to pleasure in Christ.

The analogy of the pain and pleasure of child birth run all through the Bible.

Paul even uses it to describe the whole creation of God as it waits for its new birth into a new heaven and new earth with all evil abolished forever.

In Rom.

8:22 he writes, "We know the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of child birth right up to the present time."

In the next verse he includes all Christians, male and female, in the child birth pain.

"Not only so, but we ourselves, that have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

We are all waiting for the new birth of our bodies.

Our spirits are born anew by faith in Christ, but our bodies will not be born again until Christ comes again.

Paul confirms the message of Psalm 84.

We as Christians cannot escape the valley.