Devon Berry delivers his last message as a pastor at Trinity Church, before he and his family follow God's calling to Texas. Thank you Devon for sharing your heart and life with us! We will miss you.
Transcript
Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. Well, this morning we’re going to be taking a quick break from our time in Jonah to hear the mighty Lord speak through Devin Berry one last time. So, would you please turn with me over to Psalms? We’re going to be in chapter 48, working through verses 1 through 8.
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation
— Psalm 78
(ESV)
the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might and the wonders He has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God
— Psalm 78
(ESV)
. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, good morning, Trinity Church. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Devin Berry. I’m one of the pastors here at Trinity Church. Probably the most important thing for you to know about me is I cry a lot.
The Power of Testimony
And I don’t want my crying to be a distraction, but I do want to forewarn you that this morning you may see some of those tears. I told my wife this morning I should have intentionally dehydrated myself for like the past 72 hours to dry up everything that could possibly come out. I cried my way through my sermon notes this morning in hopes that I will have some of that out and it won’t be too much. But if I do break into tears, don’t be concerned. Again, lots of you have seen me do that plenty of the time. For those of you that haven’t, just know that it’s normal. And we’ll get through and everything will be okay. Was the singing good this morning? Yeah, that was great. So thank you so much, worship team, for leading us in that music. And thanks to all of you for projecting your voices and engaging your hearts
in a way that brings glory to God. Because that’s what we’re here to do. That is indeed what we’re here to do. And when we take every element of this service and we work hard at that, the joy is just all the more and the glory for our Savior all the more. So thanks for blessing our family this morning and, more importantly, blessing the Lord with your good singing today. I want to thank the pastors of Trinity Church for letting me have the pulpit this morning to say goodbye on behalf of my family. I won’t be preaching this morning, at least in the sense of expositing the scriptures all the way through my time this morning. But I will be taking some time to give testimony. That is, share stories of God’s faithfulness in our lives in order that you might rejoice in God with us,
that you might give glory to God with us. And as Psalm 78 says, set your hope anew on God, not forgetting His glorious miracles and obeying His commands. And so maybe I will end up preaching a little bit. We’ll see how this goes. So turn with me to Psalm 78. If you’re not there, turn or tap your way to Psalm 78. And this is a long psalm, but it really simply tells the story of God’s people in a way that acknowledges His sovereign hand in the midst of their circumstances and their choices as a nation. This psalm is testimony. The author tells us at the outset, however, that this retelling, this testimony has a point. And Josh just read for us verses 1 through 8. I just want to highlight 5, 6, and 7 again. In verse 5, the psalmist says, He that is God established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach their children that the next generation might know them. Even the children yet unborn. And to rise and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God. Why does this psalmist recollect, retell, remember, give witness to? Why does he share testimony? Well, verses 5 and 6 are plain. They tell us that the perpetuity of God’s church is to be sustained by one generation handing down to the next generation the truth. And just as it does in this psalm, that truth, that theology, that redemptive history will not only shape the thinking and understanding of future generations, but it will shape lives as it is lived out in the context of the circumstances that God providentially uses to day by day transform His children into the image of His Son,
our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we say it a lot from this pulpit, and I hope it is not lost on you. Thomas said it powerfully over the past several weeks. The truth is not meant simply to be understood or rehearsed or recited or heard. The truth is designed to transform our lives. And if it is not doing that, then it has not become truth to us. Truth changes us. As we share the stories of our lives with each other in a way that biblically acknowledges as the hand of our Father, two things happen. First, verse 7 tells us that we will be compelled to remember His glorious miracles and obey His commands in a way that causes us to hope in God. Second, verse 8 tells us we will be warned, as the New Living Translation puts it, we will be warned against refusing
to give our hearts to God. Have you thought about the power of testimony this way? That it remembers, causes us to remember? That it warns us against forgetting? That it has this shaping influence on our lives? So let me say this really simply, for those of you who have spent time with me, know that this is sometimes not my forte. I can take a very simple thing and make it incredibly complex. Ask my wife. We all talk about our lives. We talk about our goings-on all the time. We do it with our friends, we do it with our parents, our spouses, our children, our roommates, our coworkers, even strangers. And in each one of these exchanges, we are telling a story. When we tell our stories, no matter how short or how long they are, in a way that biblically acknowledges God’s hand in those stories,
we do the very serious work of building up the church. We sustain this when we tell our stories in a way that acknowledges the work of God. Let me urge you then, learn to tell true stories about your day, about your life, your journey, your mess. Do not try to make meaning out of life without interpreting its events through the lens of what your father has told you is true. Let me say that one more time. Do not try to make meaning out of your life without interpreting its events through the lens of what your father has told you is true. This is the best form of testimony. So let your child know that daddy’s job loss will be ultimately for his good and God’s glory, and that your good and gracious heavenly father and his steadfast love will use the hardship to expose dad’s sins and idols,
and to teach dad that his father can be trusted in all things. Let your parents know that yes, while Portland is probably one of the most volatile and ungodly cities in the nation presently, it is also one of the most lost cities in the nation, and that the great commission must be lived out here too, so that those who are God’s enemies, just as we once were, can hear the good news of the gospel. Let your friends on social media know that while the pandemic is hard, confusing, and difficult to navigate, that you will fight to the end, not about masks or vaccines, but for the unity of the church, which God is so obviously attempting to purify in this season. Beloved, tell true stories about life, and do that by interpreting your life through the lens of what your father has told you is true.
Three Stories of Faithfulness
So on to our stories, our testimonies. Many of you have mercifully walked alongside our family over the last 18 months since my professional life melted down. For those of you who have not been around for this Odyssey-like event, and for the sake of brevity, suffice it to say that God in his perfect providence allowed a bomb labeled injustice to be lobbed into the building of my professional life. That bomb blew the building up entirely. This resulted in the abandonment of a cross-country relocation nine days before it was to take place. Our house had been sold, our belongings packed, and our new life in another city prepared for. We scrambled to find a new place to live here in Portland. We navigated the knot of insecurities that joblessness brings. We weathered a prolonged and complicated job search, and we attempted to mitigate the professional fallout. And most profoundly, we watched as the Lord
demonstrated his steadfast love, at times in conjunction with our efforts, and at other times in spite of our efforts, to rebuild life. He kept every promise he has made to us, and in many, many cases, he used you, his people, to do it, again and again and again. Even the handkerchief I hold today was given to me by Mark and Ann Bowman. Thank you, Mark. Today is our last day in Oregon. And we want to use it to give testimony to God’s goodness and his greatness, that it might encourage you, even compel you, to set anew your hope in God. So I want to share just three short stories that acknowledge God’s hand in our lives. And Rachel, if you could turn my mic off for a second, I’m going to blow my nose. Okay. Thank you.
I told my wife that the mask I’m wearing today will have to burn after this service because you don’t want to be on the inside of that mask. You don’t want to be on the inside of that mask. Testimony one. I have not seen the righteous forsaken. So first, with David in Psalm 37, my family is able to say with more confidence than ever,
commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. I have been young and now I am old. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. He is ever lending generously and his children become a blessing. Turn away from evil and do good. So shall you dwell forever
— Psalm 37
, 25-27 (ESV)
. For the Lord loves justice and he will not forsake his saints.
God cares for his children. Whether through life or death, he cares for us as a gentle and loving father who knows exactly how to train us, discipline us, transform us evermore into the image of his glorious son. My family did not have the skill set for joblessness. We’d never been there. In my self-confidence, I’m sure that I had come to believe that it was something I would never experience. We did not have much experience with the impulse toward revenge. We struggled to understand what not doing evil and doing good looked like in our situation. We wondered who would speak up for us. when we were being digitally drowned by our enemies.
Beloved, the Lord used each and every one of these struggles to deepen our belief, to mature our thinking, to extend our trust into greater humility and greater obedience. His provision for us in the spiritual realm was sufficient for us in the material realm. Don’t get those reversed. We wanted for nothing that was necessary. And he gave us many opportunities to be on the giving and receiving ends of generosity just as he promised in Psalm 37. Our impulses toward revenge were tempered by his warnings in Romans 12 and helpfully reshaped by many wise counselors, including the pastors here at Trinity Church. And pastors, thank you for being a steadying hand and keeping us from retaliating or seeking revenge when that impulse was so strong.
The pastors gave us biblical advice on practical steps to take as we dealt with slander and material harm. And you, the church, you spoke up for us when we were being maligned. You were God’s very practical expression of advocacy and allyship by defending our character and refusing to socially marginalize us. You sat with us in our grief. You stood with us in our anxiety. And you walked with us on the only path available through, not around, the mess.
God Meant It for Good
Thank you for doing that. Testimony two. But God meant it for good. So second, with Joseph, my family is able to say with more confidence than ever, you meant evil for me, but God meant it for good. And if we go back to Psalm 37, David says this, fret not yourself because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers. For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not yourself, it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off. But those who wait for the Lord, they shall inherit the land. Even though we knew that our experience of evil occurred under the full control of God’s sovereignty, experiencing it in such a blatant and harmful way tested the shoe leather of our theology. It is easy to take the story of Joseph in Genesis
and look at his eventual rise to power and fame and rationalize that all the difficulty he experienced earlier in his life paid off because everything obviously came out okay by earthly standards. That, however, beloved, would be missing the point by a very wide margin because this is not where biblical thinking leads us. God’s promises to us in the midst of evil are not some kind of quid pro quo where we agree to take the evil so long as he eventually blesses us with the good life here on earth. It’s not the economy that God has ordained for his people. Consider, Jesus certainly did not see it all work out on this side of the death line. King David’s life ended in a relative mess. The apostles Peter and Paul likely suffered terrible endings to their lives. As for our family, we’re headed off to a location that we’re not that excited about
to a job that is less prestigious and less lucrative. We will have no church, no friends, no community, and I’ll spend inordinate amounts of time being confronted with how navigationally challenged I really am. For those of you who have driven with me anywhere, you know how bad that can be. On my ride to church this morning with Ryan Lister, I was still asking, left here, right here? It’s a horrible problem and will only be greatly exposed and exaggerated in Texas. So what was the good that Joseph was speaking of? If we the Barrys were to see suffering evil as our ticket to our best life now, this whole experience would radically undermine our faith. When will David’s evildoers fade like the grass? How will those who wait for the Lord inherit the land? When will my family experience the blessings Jesus promised in the Beatitudes
to those who are reviled and persecuted? As with so many of the promises in scripture, there is an already and a not yet. And whether the promises are fulfilled now, later, or in many cases, both times, the answer to the question of whether or not the promises will be kept is forever and always yes in Jesus. As Paul tells us, in the already, Joseph, David, Peter, Paul, and even Jesus came to know their God more fully for who he is in their lifetimes. Through the hardship, they witnessed his wisdom, his faithfulness, his love, his sovereignty, all wrapped up in their lived experience of his providence. This beloved far exceeds any earthly riches. As David said, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. As Paul said, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him. Let our belief in this paradox that suffering leads to intimacy with God and intimacy with God leads to joy function as a measure of our maturity. When our delight in God exceeds or better yet is persistently enhanced by our earthly experiences, both good and bad, we are coming to know God as he wants us to know him. Earthly ease and material abundance are not the signs of his blessing. Authentic and resilient joy in him is. Earthly ease and material abundance are not the signs of his blessing. Authentic and resilient joy in him is. Hardship gives us the opportunity to double check what we’re really after in this life.
So though we as a family are genuinely sad to be leaving all that we have here in Portland, we understand ever better that God is growing us through this difficulty. We trust him more. We rest in him more. We delight in him more and we see the hardships of life as exercises which continually enhance our joy and contentment in him and in him alone. God has Texas all planned out for us. God has Trinity’s future all planned out for you. He will give all of us what we need to please him and he will bring us into greater and greater experiential knowledge of himself. And that, beloved, will be a very beautiful and satisfying enough. It may not look like earthly comfort, but that’s not the point, is it? We will have the great comforter. And that is enough. More than enough. More than we deserve.
Wait on God Alone
And far more than this world offers. As for the not yet, Jesus himself says, when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right but the goats on the left. And then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world. We will, beloved, inherit the land just a little bit longer. We will live in the perfection of the new heaven and the new earth. We will see the wicked finally and fully dealt with by God our judge at the great white throne.
All will be made right. It is only a matter of time. And in the meantime, we will continually see that God will not allow the wicked to frustrate his perfect plan. He simply gathers up their evil and uses it to his very good ends. Testimony three, wait on God alone. And this brings us to our third and final testimony and to John with whom my family is able to say with more confidence than ever, Come, Lord Jesus, quickly, as you promised. Revelation closes the canon with waiting. We are a waiting people. It is a normative state for God’s children to be in waiting. In Psalm 62, a psalm I preach from when we were in the middle of our mess, the author counsels his own soul during his hour of need to wait for God alone. That idea of alone that is the exclusivity of where we place our hope, our trust,
and upon whom we look to rescue us is the prominent emphasis in that psalm of one who is torn down by his enemies. To put it in David’s own words, he says,
for God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. For he alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. For God alone, oh, my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from him. Trust in him at all times, oh, people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Those of low estate are but a breath. Those of high estate are a delusion. Put no trust in extortion. Set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. Once God has spoken, twice I have heard this, that power belongs to God, and that to you, oh, Lord, belongs steadfast love
— Psalm 62
, 5, 8-12 (ESV)
.
Wait on God, not on people or earthly devices to save you. Perhaps more than anything else in our season of hardship, we have been brought a little further in our abandonment of placing hope in this world and all its trappings. We are hopefully a little less likely to find our refuge, our hope, and our help in the things of this earth. Beloved, I don’t know where you go looking for fulfillment and meaning and hope, but think about how much of our time is wrapped up not in hoping in the living word or waiting on God, but in never-ending attempts to build a semblance of heaven here on earth. We relentlessly pursue sexual satisfaction through fornication and pornography, successism through career growth, self-worth through physical attractiveness, athletic superiority, or intellectual one-upmanship, spiritual fulfillment through outdoor experiences in nature or financial security or attention-getting creative expression, happiness through the perfectly decorated home
or perfectly trained children. For me, it is probably in control and comfort that I seek meaning and hope. If I can just plan enough, just get the accoutrements of my life organized close to perfectly, just have everything I need or want in arms reach, if I can just be fully prepared for everything, then I tell myself I shall not be greatly shaken. You see how fast and how quickly our minds do that? If I can just get everything in this world squared away, then I will not be shaken. Whereas David tells us in Psalm 62, that’s not how it’s going to be, that’s not how it’s going to play out, that the Lord is determined to get you to a place where you put all of your hope, all of your trust, all of your confidence in Him and Him alone. Why? Well, it’s an act of mercy
because He is the only person that will not fail you. Your job will fail. Your relationships will fail. You will fail. But the Lord? Never. Never. And He will do whatever it takes to get us to realize that. God in His great and wise mercy once again exposed my idols. He removed them from my hands that I might stop being distracted by my playthings and be able to give my full attention to the one thing, the one person that I can trust in at all times. You see, left to myself, I would build my fortress out of the sand of this earth while in the shadow of God my rock. Every single time. Thankfully, just as with Jonah, God does not stop pursuing me. He will have His way and praise Him that He does lest we all be lost in our false hopes and our foolish pursuits.
And just to make it just real, real, we’re moving to a new home in Texas. There are a lot of things we want to change about that home. We want to tear out floors, paint the walls, do this, do that, and so on and so forth. And in time, the Lord has hopefully matured my wife and I enough to know that this has got red flags all over it for just being yet a new idol to take control of our lives. If we can just get our house looking like something on the cover of a Pottery Barn catalog, then we’re going to be happy. And so I said, babe, please make a folder in our email that all the Home Depot receipts go to because we got to track this idol. We got to see how it’s consuming us. And tracking our money in this case
will be a really good way of doing that. So many things, beloved, that are vying for our trust. Place your trust in God alone. Trust in Him at all times, Trinity Church. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. So this is our testimony. Our circumstances rehearsed through the lens of biblical truth. Our stories told as one small part of the much larger and linear story of redemptive history. Our personal narratives as lovingly governed and guided by the hands of the all-powerful creator of the universe who sent his son to die for us that we might be redeemed from our sin and might be made into sons and daughters of the high king. Our story, it falls far short of the most tragic story you’ll ever hear. It falls far short of the difficulty that many of you have experienced personally
and even recently. As I explained to Reuben, my son, earlier this week, the details of our story are not the point. The point is what God has done through our story. And that is where we want to leave our relationship with Trinity Church. Focused on where we started today in the words of the psalmist in Psalm 78, telling the coming generation and the going generation of the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might and the wonders He has done in our lives, that you, you, Trinity Church, should set your hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments. We love you. We will be praying for you regularly. We thank you. We thank God for the many, many ways He has used so many of you so generously and graciously and kindly in our lives. We could not be doing anything better
on this Sunday morning than being here with you. There’s no other place we would rather be than with His people in His place, giving Him worship. Let’s pray. Father, You’ve been good to us. You certainly have not forgotten us. And Father, You have shown Yourself to be faithful. And again and again as a loving Father, You have placed Your hands on us and You have pried and pulled and loosened our grip on all those things, Lord, that might distract us from You. And this is the way. This is the way, Father, that You engage, that You sanctify and transform Your children. You put us through hardship and suffering, Father, that we might enter into greater joy as a result of being pressed ever deeper into Your bosom. We come to know Your heart and the great love, the sacrificial love that You have for us best seen and demonstrated
in the power and the glory of what took place on the cross through Jesus Christ’s death and then His resurrection, which ensures, Father, that indeed You will take us home and all things will be made right. We give You glory and we give You praise. In Jesus’ name, amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com. ♪♪♪