Psalm 2 – Reflections

 

 

The history of the world is bound up in Psalm 2 and Daniel 2. There are two trajectories, that of the Kingdom of God and that of the rulers and peoples of the earth who are in rebellion against God. Professing Christians pray that the Kingdom of our Father will come and His will be done, but often we’d rather He would wait to bring the fulness of His Kingdom – for the fulness of the Kingdom of God means the final destruction and end of the rebellious kingdoms of this age…and we’d rather not have to experience that.

 

Why do we invest ourselves in attempting to shore up and save that which cannot be saved? Why do we think that we can exempt our own nation or political system from the image of Daniel 2 or the peoples and kings of Psalm 2:1 – 3? Why do we not live as citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20)?

 

The agenda of the rulers of the earth is “Against Yahweh and against His Anointed.” They are perpetually saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!”

 

There is no aspect of life in which this agenda is not active, from education to the arts to sports to government to economics. Sometimes the agenda may appear uplifting, sometimes benign, sometimes wicked – but it is always there; sometimes it may appear quite religious, quite “Christian.”

 

While we are called to serve those affected by the collapse of moral and spiritual order and compassion, we are not called to align ourselves with the agendas of this present age – no matter their political color. We are not called to participate in the chaos around us but rather to be exceptions to the chaos, to be safe places, in Christ, for others.

 

Jeremiah and Gedaliah are two examples of men faithful to God in the midst of religious, political, and military chaos – virtually no one listened to them, but they remained faithful – do we not want to remain faithful to Jesus Christ?

 

When Jesus says that the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, is He not also speaking about His People? Where can we lay our heads, where can we find rest on this earth, during this pilgrimage? It is not in an economic or political system, it is not in sports or entertainment, it is not in education or the arts, it is not in moral improvement – it can only be in Jesus, He and He alone is our Sabbath and the fulness of our Sabbath awaits us when we enter into the City whose Builder and Maker is God (Hebrews 11:13 – 16).

Two Psalms, Two Ways

 

This was originally written and published on my blog Kaleidoscope on January 1, 2021. As I look back, little did I conceive what was coming within a few days. I had forgotten writing it until this morning, when I began working on reflections on Psalm 2. I am reposting it and also sending it to friends.

 

Jesus must always be our All in all…always and forever…and when we arrive in “Forever” we will be glad He is.

 

Much love,

 

Bob

 

 

Two Psalms; Two Ways (January 1, 2021)

 

Over the past several weeks, as I have dealt with my own fatigue regarding the chaos surrounding us; from the pandemic, to the suffering of the world and the people in my own country, to a failure of political leadership which fiddles while its citizens suffer and its national security rots, to much of the white “Evangelical” church trading the Lamb of Revelation Chapter 14 for the political and economic beast of Revelation Chapter 13, I have faced the temptation to just “go fishing.”

 

What I mean by “go fishing” is to hang a sign on the shop door which says, “Closed, gone fishing,” meaning that I’ll shut down for a while and come back in a few weeks or months and see how the world and church are doing. But, life is a marathon and when we hit our heartbreak hills the importance of patient endurance becomes more apparent than ever – we continue in faithfulness to Christ and others, we continue in intercessory prayer and living, we continue in desiring to serve people in Jesus Christ; we remain on the course no matter how painful it is to put one foot in front of another. We do this because we love Jesus Christ and we love people – we do not do this primarily for ourselves; this is not about me (or you), it is about Christ and others (Hebrews 12:1-3; 1 John 3:16; 2 Timothy 2:10).

 

I’m reminded of a book that Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote, The Priest Is Not His Own, in which Sheen’s central thrust is that the priest is both priest and sacrifice, which of course speaks to us of our Lord Jesus. If we are indeed a priesthood in Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6), then our calling to be priest and sacrifice is clear – no matter what “Christian” self-centered heresies may teach.  

 

No doubt there have been times when you’ve seen photos or video of the aftermath of earthquakes in nations with shoddy and unscrupulous building practices. Multistory apartment buildings lie in rubble, beneath which are lifeless bodies whose lives were snatched from them in what they thought was a secure home. The morning of the tragedy it is unlikely that any of the deceased wondered, “Will my home crumble today, will it fail to withstand the shock of an earthquake?”

 

When watching such scenes have you ever thought, “That would never happen in the United States because our building codes are better than other most nations and they are enforced”?

 

Paul writes that we, as God’s People, are to grow up in the unity of the faith, becoming a mature corporate Man, “to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. So that we will no longer be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming…” (Ephesians 4:13b – 14).

 

One of the things that the present chaos has revealed, to those who care to “see”, is that the professing church in the United States is childish, and that our insatiable desire to be entertained, to have our egos stroked, to be fascinated by talking heads and political events, to be excited by eschatological fancies that require nothing of us but imagination and gullibility; has led to us being buried beneath piles of rubble. In our drunkenness we cannot see the rubble, we cannot feel it, for we are blinded and desensitized.

 

I do not think it hyperbole to consider that we are seeing a great apostasy in the professing church (2 Thess. 2:3) in which we would rather have Barabbas than Jesus, in which we would rather be imprinted with the mark of the beast than of the Lamb (Rev. chapters 13 and 14). I am not saying that this is “the” “falling away/apostasy” of 2 Thessalonians, but whatever it is, we see the working of the “man of lawlessness” when we see professing Christians abandon fidelity to Christ for fidelity to political, national, cultural, and economic agendas. There is a reason the Apostle John discusses the world and the antichrist in the same breath (1 John 2:15 – 17).

 

There are no better passages with which to begin the new year than Psalms 1 and 2. In Psalm 1 we have two ways, sinful man’s way and God’s Way. In Psalm 2 we have two kingdoms, the kingdom of this present age and the Kingdom of God; we can either align ourselves with the rulers of this world (Ephesians 6:12) or we can live under the dominion of the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ.

 

Every day of this new year we will either be living in the “way of the wicked” or the “Way of the Righteous” (Psalm 1:6).

 

Every day of this new year we will either be living as citizens and subjects of the nations and rulers of this age, or as citizens of the Kingdom of God and subjects of the King of that kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Which shall it be in my life?

 

What about your life?

 

Perhaps you might consider making these two psalms a focus of meditation for January?

 

The Rock of My Refuge (6)

 

 

“But Yahweh has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” Psalm 94:22.

 

What can we see in the immediate context of our verse?

 

Here are the two verses that precede it:

 

“Can a throne of destruction be allied with You, one which devises mischief by decree? They band themselves together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.”

 

Here is the verse that follows our verse, and which concludes Psalm 94:

 

“He has brought back their wickedness upon them and will destroy them in their evil; Yahweh our God will destroy them.”

 

There are three explicit ideas in this passage, and others that we can extrapolate from them – I am sure that there are more than I can see and share, hopefully you can complement them with what you also see…is this not the nature of God’s Word?

 

1.    We ought not to ally ourselves with powers of destruction – no matter how attractive they may be, no matter how pragmatic they may appear.

 

2.    The world is in rebellion against God and is intent on destroying those who belong to Him. Can we see the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Psalm 94:21?

 

3.    God will destroy the wicked – their own wickedness will consume them.

 

In the midst of the foregoing, those who belong to Christ can say with the Son of God, “But Yahweh has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” (See also Psalm 71:1 – 3, especially the idea that God is our “rock of habitation”.)

 

Our hearts and minds, our souls, can either live in the world or we can live within our Stronghold, our Rock of Refuge. We can either take our ideals and images from the world, or we can participate in the Image of God, Jesus Christ, and convey His image to the world as we are given grace. We can either live as if the world accurately portrays ultimate reality, or we can live with God being our present and enduring Reality.

 

Are we convinced, as Peter was, that Jesus Christ has “the words of eternal life”? (John 6:68).

 

Is Jesus Christ our Rock of Habitation? Are we living within Him?

 

As we conclude our reflections in Psalm 94, I want to encourage us to live in the Psalms, to ponder at least one Psalm each day – for in Psalms we will encounter the depth and length and height and breath of the Divine – human relationship and experience. In Psalms we will see Christ and His Body. In Psalms we will see teaching, such as that on theodicy, that will partner with us through the vicissitudes of life. In Psalms we can learn to see life as it really is, in the light of ultimate reality.

 

In Psalms we can discover the Voice of Christ, the Voice of His Body, and our own voices as we are drawn into the Trinity, and into koinonia with one another – drawn into the communion of the saints.

 

Will you accept your Father’s invitation to live with Him and the Son and the Spirit in Psalms?

The Rock of My Refuge (4)

 

 

“But Yahweh has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” Psalm 94:22.

 

Where are we seeking refuge?

 

Where are we centering our thoughts? What do we talk about? What do we watch and listen to? What do we read? What impresses us? What or who do we emulate? What do we aspire to?

 

The answers to these questions will tell us where we are seeking refuge, they will tell us where we are living.

 

The Apostle John has some stark words for us today, for we seem to be so impressed with success and glitz and glitter – both inside and outside the professing church:

 

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15 – 17).

 

“We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19).

 

We want the world when the world is good to us, we don’t want the world when the world is bad to us. Are we not fools? We want to make the world into our image rather than allow ourselves to be transformed into the image of God in Jesus Christ – we trade the temporal for the eternal – isn’t this foolish? We would rather receive the image of the world rather than the image of God – thereby rejecting our eternal glory in Christ…now tell me…isn’t this a peculiar type of insanity?

 

We can either dine at the Master’s table or we can delusionally eat from the slop bucket of the world…a slop bucket dipped into an outhouse. Let us make no mistake, no matter how good the things of the world look – behind the “look” is ugliness and dung – the fragrance of the world always turns to a stench – air freshener is a mask, it is always a mask.

 

All the more puzzling why so many Christians are impressed with the world, all the more tragic why much of the professing church now looks more like the world than the lowly Man of Galilee, the Servant Lord and Savior; the One who came, not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.

 

Well now, the psalmist sees that the “Yahweh will not abandon His people” and that a Day will come when God’s judgment will be manifested (verses 14 – 15). Indeed, the psalmist sees that while it appears the wicked are prevailing, that a pit is actually being dug for them (verse 13) – in fact, the wicked are digging their own pit, their own violence is consuming them.

 

Throughout the Scriptures we see the motif of God’s enemies consuming themselves – evil feeds upon itself, evil people consume one another, they eat wickedness and wickedness eats them – demonic birds of prey feast upon fools who reject God and seek to desecrate His image.

 

But you see, we really only know this when God’s Word becomes embedded in our souls, when our hearts and minds are anchored in His Word – when He is our Refuge and Stronghold, our Way of Life. What I write may be helpful – but only if it leads you to His Word, to living in His Word and His Word living in you – is He your Rock of Gibraltar? Are we living within Him?  

 

When the psalmist seeks someone to stand up for him, he recognizes that Yahweh is his help, and that God’s lovingkindess is holding him up (verses 16 – 18). Economics will not help us, politics will not help us, the Constitution is not our sacred text (nor any of its amendments!), cotton candy Christianity is not our support, popular (and usually ill-founded) Christian teaching on prophecy is a distraction, particular worship motifs can be poor substitutes, military might is a weak savior – there is no help for the follower of Jesus Christ other than the Person of Jesus Christ in the koinonia of the Trinity and the People of God. If we are to live in Him in eternity, ought we not to live in Him now? If we are to be joined with one another in eternity, ought we not to be joined with one another in Him now?

 

The psalmist asks, “Can a throne of destruction be allied with You, one which devises mischief by decree?” (v. 20). The answer of many professing Christians and their leaders would seem to be “Yes, it can.”

 

How else can we explain the political – religious alliances we see in our own nation? How else can we explain churches (such as the Russian Orthodox Church) endorsing the invasion of other countries? How else can we understand our rejection of our heavenly citizenship? (Phil. 3:20; Heb. 11:13 – 16).

 

How can we be appalled at the wickedness of the world outside the professing church and not be disgusted with the wickedness within the professing church? I’m not talking about other tribes within the church, I’m talking about our own tribes.

 

Who will be identified with Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Who will be determined to know nothing but Him, to have no other message than Him? (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:5). Who will proclaim and teach that in Jesus Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”? (Col. 2:3).

 

The longer we dwell in a Psalm, in a passage of Scripture, the more we can see in Christ, the clearer our vision becomes. How do we know we are moving in the right direction in Scripture? When we see Christ, when we are drawn to Christ, when our hearts delight in Jesus Christ.

 

How are you seeing Jesus Christ in Psalm 94? How is He coming to you in this psalm?

The Rock of My Refuge

 

 

“But Yahweh has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” Psalm 94:22.

 

I am so thankful that the Word of God, the Bible, awaits me every morning. I am so deeply thankful that God speaks to me every morning and every day through the pages of Scripture by the Holy Spirit and in our Lord Jesus Christ. I am also thankful that every morning I know what I am going to read in the Bible as my daily foundation; I may read other passages for sure, I may build on my daily foundation, but I always know where I am to go for my foundational reading and that reading is anchored in the Psalms.

 

As I have written before, while “devotionals” such as Our Daily Bread have their place, there is no substitute for reading the Bible as it is written, that is, there is no substitute for reading the Bible in its context, reading the Bible book by book. For example, right now my daily reading beyond the Psalms includes Jeremiah, Thessalonians, Revelation, and John.

 

As I have also written, I am talking about reading the Bible without any commentary notes – whether those are in a study guide or a commentary or a study Bible – those can all have their place, but I am speaking of spending time with the Trinity, pondering and meditating and listening and communing and speaking with God – as we would with a friend - for He is our Abba, our Father, our Elder Brother.

 

My flight plan is on file before I wake up every morning and it begins with Psalms; I know where I am heading after takeoff (this morning it is Psalm 71 and Psalm 101). I don’t have to think, “Now what am I going to read this morning?” Nor do I need think about whether I am going to watch or read or listen to the news or check my email – my flight plan is about my life in Christ, not about the fast food of the world, food without nutrition.  I am called to worship God and be a blessing to others – that is the way I want to live and that is the way I want to die.

 

I am writing about this because of our temptation and propensity to be distracted by the world and its headlines and to have our equilibrium upset. I am writing because we can buy into the lie that it is more important for us to be “informed” about the world than it is to worship God and share His life with others. I am writing because, sadly, there are those professing Christians who live by headlines and teach via headlines and pull us away from our Lord Jesus using headlines, as they appeal to our curiosity and speculative nature – our desire to know future events rather than know the Person of Christ.

 

Also, our fears and anxieties can drive us into the world and away from devotion to Christ – and fear and anxiety feed upon one another, fear breeds fear breeds fear – and while it makes no logical sense, we keep consuming that which destroys us.

 

If we truly wanted to be informed then we would realize that terrible tragedy and suffering permeate the world every day, not just those days there is a crisis in the Middle East. If we really wanted to be informed then we would realize that children, the elderly, and other innocents are dying and being killed every day in conflicts and genocides outside of the Middle East. Perhaps we don’t really want to be informed, perhaps simply entertained with news from the Middle East – for it does seem to be more intriguing to many of us.

 

And after all, professing teaches of prophecy aren’t going to sell themselves or gather followers by asking us to think about suffering and wars in places that are not mentioned in the Bible.

 

I recently heard that Americans spend more on Halloween costumes for their pets than they do on reaching people with the Gospel who still don’t have the Bible in their native language. As for the professing church, where do we spend our money? On reaching others with the Gospel, on feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless and serving the sick – or on ourselves…whether “ourselves” means us as individuals or as local congregations?

 

How is that children are going without nutritious food just miles from local congregations who have more than enough to eat? Do we really want to be informed?

 

How is that we send our children to be educated in places – whether in lower or higher education – which attack the image of God? Can it really be true that as long as the basketball and football teams win that we don’t care what our children and teenagers and college students are taught? Do we really want to be informed?

 

Perhaps at the end of the day we only want to be informed if it affects our bank balances and retirement and investment accounts?

 

Having a flight plan helps me to focus on Christ and others, it does not mean that I am not tempted to be self-focused and entertained by headlines, but it does better equip me in Christ to resist these temptations through the Word of God. When I do wander off course, I know how to regain my navigational bearings because I have a flight plan, I’ve learned to fly by God’s instrumentation (the Bible) and not by sight. Isn’t the Word of God how Jesus responded to temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 4)?

 

We’ll continue, the Lord willing, with Psalm 94:22 in the next reflection.

Psalm 23

 

Below are two emails I sent to a friend who preached on Psalm 23 this past Sunday. He sent me the text of his message and there was a quote in it that I wanted to explore with him.

 

Good morning…,

 

Of course I don't know the context of the quote you used, so acknowledging that:

 

“He’s the only Shepherd who knows what it’s like to be a sheep.  He became a Lamb and lived among us and then died as the perfect Lamb of God to take away all the sins of the other sheep.  He said in John 10, “… I lay down my life for the sheep.””

 

But what about you?

 

What about the elders of 1 Peter 5:1 - 2?

 

What might we say of Colossians 1:24? And Phil. 3:10 "the koinonia of His sufferings"?

 

And 2 Timothy 2:10, "For this reason I suffer all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory."

 

Not to mention 2 Cor. 1:6; 5:12.

 

Are we not to be laying down our lives for the sheep?

 

Is not your congregation to be a collective Good Shepherd for your county and beyond?

 

If Jesus is sending us even as the Father sent Him...then Psalm 23 is our calling as lambs and as shepherds.

 

I recall that last Christmas you pointed out in one of your Sunday messages that Christ lives in us. So I am asking, What does Psalm 23 look like incarnationally?

 

Good morning beloved of our Lord,

 

When I awoke this morning I was thinking again of Psalm 23, and a comment that another friend sent me yesterday made me realize that we can also "see" this Psalm as being prayed by the Corporate Christ...the Body of Christ.

 

The anointing of the Head speaks of Jesus Christ, the Head of our Body. Consider the Table that we are called to. The Valley of the Shadow of Death - ah Gethsemane and the Cross...and indeed we, His Body, continue to walk through these valleys.

 

Glorious love in Christ

 

Bob

The Nearness of God

 

“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord Yahweh by refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” Psalm 73:28. 

O how I love Psalm 73. Verse 25 has been with me as long as I can remember:

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.” (NASB)

My earliest readings were from men and women who quoted Psalm 73:25 as a way of life, and hence this verse, this passion, was planted in me at an early age as I was coming to know Jesus Christ, much as Galatians 2:20 and Mark 8:34ff were also sown in my young soul. 

All the learning, all the education, all the advancement among men and in the church, mean nothing without the cry of, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.” Can we hear the Father emphatically say, “This is My Beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased, hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5)?

After all these years, I am still captured and captivated by Psalm 73:25, I am still exploring its depths, its claim on my soul, my heart and mind – my entire being. 

As I read Psalm 73, I am also drawn back into the early hours of a day in Baltimore, MD in the early 1970s. My job required me to be at the office around 5:00 AM, and my custom was to read the Bible upon arriving at work. This particular morning I read Psalm 73 and I was transported not only back to the Psalmist and his experience, but into the heavens where I saw the psalm as never before. The joy that filled my soul was intense, and as I recall I called a friend around 6:00 A.M. to share my excitement.

A couple of days ago, on the 13th, Psalm 73 was on my reading list. Verse 28 struck me, “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord Yahweh my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” 

“The nearness of God is my good…” 

This reminds me of Philippians 4:4 – 5: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is near.” 

How sweet, what reassurance, “The nearness of God is my good…the Lord is near.”

To abide in the Vine, to walk with Christ every day in every way, to live in His Presence, to know that He is always with us in a deeply personal and intimate fashion…this is for our good…and so we make Him, we know Him, as our refuge, our place of abiding, our shelter, our Friend, our kind and gentle Shepherd…and then knowing all of this, we tell others of His works, His love, His character, His ways. 

We say to others, “Come to Jesus and experience His nearness, His friendship, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light." And the joy? The joy is inexpressible and full of glory.” (Matthew 11:28 – 30; 1 Peter 1:6 – 9). 

Yes, dear friend, the nearness of God is our good.

Just Some Thoughts on Some Psalms

 

Have you ever had a morning when this is all you wanted?

 

“O God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God do not be still” (Psa. 83:1).

 

Have you ever had times when you just wanted to feel His touch? To sense Him? To hear Him? To see Him? Is doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it? Just a soft sensation that He is with you, just a faint whisper, just a flicker of eternal light in the distance – are there times when this would be reassuringly enough?  

 

Pretty simple isn’t it? A basic desire. “O God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God do not be still.” It isn’t like we’re asking for the Red Sea to be parted, or to walk on water, or to have great-aunt Nellie come back from the dead after fifty years. We just want some communication. We just want to know there is Someone who takes the initiative and makes a call to us every now and then.

 

Well, anyway, this seems like a good prayer to me.

 

Then there is Psalm 88. Do you read Psalm 88? We really should read this Psalm, after all it is part of the Psalter and the Psalter is part of the Canon, and a rather significant part at that. I’m not sure that we’d miss Obadiah or Nahum if a thief absconded with them, but I’m pretty sure we’d miss the Psalter…or at least I hope we would. Why with Obadiah and Nahum most of us would say, “Nahum? Obadiah? I didn’t even know this furniture was in the house; how can I miss them?”

 

Job could have prayed Psalm 88. “…my soul has had enough troubles, and my life has drawn near to Sheol…Forsaken among the dead…I have become like a man without strength…You have put me in the lowest pit…O LORD why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?” This will put a smile on our faces, this is great, this will draw folks to church! You gotta love Psalm 88!

 

There is no resolution in Psalm 88. Have you ever ended a day, a week, a month, or maybe even a year with no resolution? I have more than one thing in my life that I’m not likely to see resolution on before I leave this earth. Since I am one of those people who drive for closure, often whether closure is smart or not, not having resolution is like having a toothache, or like a sock that keeps inching its way down into your shoe – it can be painful or just irritating, but you know it’s there whether you think about it or not.

 

Psalm 118 calls me home to Jesus, the Stone which the builders rejected. Many of us have sung, “This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psa. 118:24). However, we typically sing this verse in ignorance of its context, for its context is, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the LORD has made…” In other words, the context is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ – the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the Day the LORD has made.

 

When I read verse 20, “This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous will enter through it,” I think of the Cross of Jesus Christ. What other gate is there that we must enter, other than the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ?

 

Psalm 88 finds its resolution in Psalm 118. Life finds its resolution in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was victorious through suffering and death, and our Psalm 88 experiences will lead us to Easter morning as we live in Christ and the koinonia of His sufferings.

 

When I cry out to God to speak, to not be quiet, to “just do something!," I can look to Psalm 118 and see that the Father has indeed spoken, that He has indeed done something…He has sent His Only Begotten Son, and He has given Jesus Christ to me and He has given me to Jesus Christ.

Psalm 23 and Incarnational Mission

 If, “Even as the Father sent Me, so also I send you,” (John 20:21; 17:18), then certainly as the LORD is our Shepherd we are called, in Christ, to be a shepherd to others; individually and especially as His Body.

 

When the world looks at us, does it see the Father? Does it see the Good Shepherd living His Life in and through His Body? Are we leading others into places of peace? Are we walking with others through the valley of the shadow of death? Are we preparing tables for others?

 

To be sure, the crucifixion of Psalm 22 precedes Psalm 23; do we love our Lord Jesus? Will we embrace His Cross and the rejection associated with it? When we know the koinonia of His sufferings we are better able to walk with others through the valley of the shadow of death – for we have been there before.

 

We are called to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth so that we may be the mature sons and daughters of the Living God (Matthew 5:43 – 48). Is this not a grand time to learn the ways of our Father and our Lord Jesus?

 

Psalm 23 is, among other things, a call to Incarnational Mission. What does this look like in my life? In your life? In the lives of our congregations?

 

Psalm 103 (6)

To continue with the last two posts in this series: What is the linkage between verses 7 and 8 in Psalm 103, and how does this speak to us of intercession?

In our previous post we saw Yahweh revealing His name and His glory to Moses on Mount Sinai:

“Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.” Exodus 34:5 – 8.

In today’s post we want to consider Numbers Chapter 14 and how knowing the ways of God, as opposed to knowing only the acts of God, leads us not only into communion with God, but also enables us to intercede on behalf of others.

Numbers chapters 13 and 14 contain the account of 12 spies going into the Promised Land and returning to Israel with a description of what they had seen. While all 12 men agreed that the land was bountiful and would be a great place to live, 10 of the 12 were fearful of the inhabitants of the land and they did not think Israel could defeat such a strong people – it made no difference to them that God was telling them to go into the land. These 10 men spread fear into the people of Israel; we find the verdict of the people in Numbers 14:4, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.”

Moses and Aaron were stunned, and Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who believed God and had courage in God, tore their clothes and said to the people, “The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If Yahweh is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us – a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against Yahweh…” (Numbers 14:7 – 9).

The people of Israel responded by attempting to kill Joshua and Caleb – at which point God intervened. During God’s intervention He said to Moses, “I will smite them [the people] with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they,” (Numbers 14:12).

In other words, God was going to put an end to Israel’s persistent rebellions and start all over with Moses. If you had been Moses, how would you have responded? Would you have said, “I’m with you God. I’m tired of them too. Let’s begin again.” Or, would you have done what Moses did again and again, would you have prayed for the people, imploring God to be merciful and forgiving?

(Consider Moses’s earlier intercession in Exodus 32:32, when he prayed, “But now, if You will, forgive their sin – and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”)

In Numbers 14 Moses once again intercedes for Israel, and within his intercession we read these words:

“But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”” (Numbers 14:17 – 19)

Compare what Moses said to God in Numbers with what God had previously said to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus:

“Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of  Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.” Exodus 34:5 – 8.

Yahweh declared His nature, His glory, His ways to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34; later, when Moses intercedes in Numbers 14, Moses appeals to God’s nature, God’s glory, God’s ways – Moses is echoing back to God what God revealed to him previously on Mount Sinai.

The basis, the ground, of intercession is the nature of God; as we know His nature, as we know His ways, we can intercede on behalf of others.

This brings us back to Psalm 103:7 – 8: “He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.”

(Note that Jonah, disobedient and petulant though he was, knew the ways of God – Jonah 4:2. Also note Nehemiah 9:17 and Psalm 86:15).

God has called His people to be a people of intercession.  We are to be a people of intercessory prayer and intercessory living. This means that it is not enough for us to know the acts of God, the things that God does – we are called to know His ways, to know His Way (John 14:6), to know His nature (John 15:4), to know His glory (John 17:22 – 24). If the Trinity lives in us (John 14:16, 17, 23), then we certainly ought to learn and know the ways of our God.

Yet, most of us have been taught and conditioned to stand afar and only observe. We live either outside the Tabernacle or, often at best, live in the Outer Court. We talk about what we see, not about Who we know. We talk about Jesus as we talk about a historical figure, or as we speak of a current political leader who we know only through others, or at a distance through media.

Our calling is to know God intimately, and in knowing Him to live in Him as He lives in us; and to live for Him and for others – laying our lives down in intercessory prayer and intercessory living.

Are we interceding for others in the midst of the present fears and uncertainties? Do we know the ways of God? Are we manifesting those ways to our generation?

Psalm 103 (5)

To continue with the last post in this series: What is the linkage between verses 7 and 8 in Psalm 103, and how does this speak to us of intercession?

In Psalm 103:7 we see that God made His ways known to Moses, and then in verse 8 we read that, “Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.”  Verse 8 speaks directly to God making His ways known to Moses, for Moses knew the ways of God as God revealed Himself to Moses; Israel saw God’s acts, Moses knew God’s ways. To see a person’s actions is one thing, to see a person’s heart is another.

God’s ways express God’s nature, if a distinction can be made, and I really don’t know if it can – human thinking and words often fail us when considering the Divine essence; at least they fail me. I hope you will bear with me. 

We cannot always rightly understand God’s nature from His acts, in fact we can misinterpret them. An example is when God disciplines us (see Hebrews 12:4 – 11). We are reminded in Scripture that God disciplines those He loves (see again Revelation 3:19) and we are reminded of this because our natural tendency is to interpret difficulties and bad times as evidence that God does not love us when the opposite is true.

If we will take the time to ponder two passages of Scripture that provide the backdrop to Psalm 103:7 – 8 I think we’ll gain insight into both Moses knowing the ways of God and into an essential element of intercession.

The first passage is Exodus chapters 33 and 34, with a particular focus on 33:12 – 34:9.

While Moses has been up on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the people of Israel have been making a golden calf to worship. Moses comes down from the mountain, is shocked and angered at the idolatry, breaks the two tablets of stone containing the Commandments, and intercedes with God on behalf of the people (Exodus 32).

In Exodus 33, as Moses communes with God and prepares to once again ascend Mount Sinai to receive, one again, the Ten Commandments, we read:

“Now therefore I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight…” (Exodus 33:13).

“Then Moses said, I pray You, show me Your glory.” (Exodus 33:18).

Moses is asking God to show him His ways so that Moses might know God, and Moses is asking God to show him God’s glory.

Yahweh responds in verse 19, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you…”

Let’s please keep in mind that in the Bible a person’s “name” speaks of that person’s “nature”.

What happens as a result of this?

“Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of  Yahweh. Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.” Exodus 34:5 – 8.

Do you see Psalm 103:8 in the above? Yahweh is proclaiming His Name, His Nature, His ways, to Moses; He is showing Moses His glory. Psalm 103:7 speaks of Moses knowing the ways of Yahweh, Psalm 103:8 reveals the nature and ways of Yahweh.

In the next post in this series we’ll connect this to intercession; the basis, the ground, of intercession is the nature of God; as we know His nature, as we know His ways, we can intercede on behalf of others.

Are we interceding for others as we navigate the uncertain waters of our times?

Psalm 103 (4)

“He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.” Psalm 103:7 – 8.

There is a linkage between verses 7 and 8. In fact, verses 8 – 14 flow from verse 7. Can you see this relationship? We’ll explore this in the next few posts on Psalm 103, including  how this relationship can help us understand  intercessory prayer and intercessory living. Can you see how verses 7 and 8 provide a foundation for intercessory prayer?

But let’s first consider that God made known His ways to Moses and His acts to the children of Israel.

It is one thing to know what a person does, to see a person’s actions, and another thing to know a person well enough so that you know his or her ways. An element of friendship is when we accept another person for who he is and we come to understand that he has certain “ways” about him…and usually those ways are not likely to change, especially as we advance in years. This confronts us with a choice, if this person is truly my friend then I will choose to live with his “ways”, especially those ways that I don’t care for – but I realize they come with the package, they are part of who my friend is, so I get on with life and with our friendship.

Of course with God, since His ways are perfect, if I have a problem with His ways I had better ask Him to search my heart and conform me to His image and His ways – because somehow my problem with the ways of God is rooted in my sinfulness and in the effects of sin on my soul and cognitive abilities. The problem is never with God, it is always with me.

This does not mean that we do not speak with God about our struggles to understand and accept His ways; Moses had conversations, perhaps even arguments, with God about God’s actions and ways – if we won’t talk to our Father and listen to Him how will we grow? This is a process because it is a relationship, a relationship that God initiated and that God sustains through our Lord Jesus Christ.

But…let us remember, let us always remember, that our Father is holy; Moses was denied entrance into the Promised Land because he did not remember that God is holy, he did not sanctify, hold holy, God in the presence of the people of Israel. Let us not be foolish, let us learn from Moses…both the good and bad. The fear of the Lord remains the beginning of wisdom.

God made His ways known to Moses. In Deuteronomy 34:10 we read, “Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face.” In Exodus 33:11, “Thus Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.”

Abraham was called “the friend of God” – 2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23.

Jesus says, “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,” (John 15:14 – 15).

Friends know the “ways” of friends. It is one thing to observe the acts of someone, it is another thing to know the ways of someone.

We can live our lives standing afar off from God and observing His acts, or in Christ we can enter into the Holy of Holies, into an intimate friendship with God in Christ…and in doing so we can learn His ways. As we learn His ways we will find that His ways become our ways in Christ.

In this time of uncertainty, let us ask our Father to draw us ever closer to Himself through Jesus Christ so that we can learn His ways and reflect His love, mercy, compassion, truth, and glory to the world.

Psalm 119 – The Grand Canyon

Yesterday I encouraged us to spend time in the Psalms of Ascent, today I want to touch on Psalm 119. As you probably know, Psalm 119, with its 176 verses, is not only the longest psalm in the Bible, it is the longest chapter in the Bible.

About the time I reach Psalm 110 in my daily Bible reading I become aware of Psalm 119 looming before me. It is a mountain of a psalm, and yet it is also a Grand Canyon of a psalm – it has both incredible height and incredible depth.

Since Psalm 119 was written as one psalm, I believe that it ought to be read at one sitting in order to experience its fulness. Yes, we can also read sections of it and meditate on those sections. I recall that once I read the same section every day for a week, and then moved onto another section for a week, and so on and so forth – it took me 22 weeks to read through the psalm this way, but it is an approach I wanted to take; of course I also kept reviewing the entire psalm so I could maintain a sense of perspective and interrelatedness.

As the Grand Canyon, Psalm 119 takes my breath away when I approach it, look over the rim, and then begin to explore its intricacies. If you’ve been to the Grand Canyon you know that just one overlook offers perspectives enough for a day. As I read and ponder Psalm 119 at one sitting I see the glory of God’s Word bursting forth in wave after wave of light and glory – and I see God revealing Himself to us through these waves and drawing us into communion with Him as we journey on our pilgrimage.

Perhaps it is not an accident that Psalm 119 precedes the Psalms of Ascents in that Psalm 119 portrays the author as a pilgrim on this earth:

“Your statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage” (119:54)

“I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me” (119:19).

To travel from my home in Virginia to the Grand Canyon requires a commitment, but the reward is well worth it. To make a commitment to journey to, down into, and through Psalm 119 also requires a commitment – the reward is far greater than what the Grand Canyon offers – (though of course they have the same Author and they do compliment each other!) – and that is saying something.

Perhaps once you’ve journeyed through the Psalms of Ascent you might consider a trip to Psalm 119?

A Favorite Place in Psalms – The Ascents

I love meditating in the Psalms! They are the first thing I read in the morning; it is like opening the window shade in the morning and being engulfed in brilliant sunrise.

While I have followed various reading patterns in my life, my current pattern begins each day with a psalm, which is then followed with other Bible readings and readings from other Christians. Of course, these are more than readings, they are ponderings, meditations, seasons of communion with our Father, our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit – in the communion of the saints (Hebrews 12:18 – 24).

On February 29 I started the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120 – 134, this morning was Psalm 125 (today being March 5). While there are different perspectives as to how these psalms were first used as a group, and as to how they may have been used subsequent to their original usage, I don’t think there is much dispute that the theme of this collection is “upward and onward” – whether it is upward to Jerusalem from Babylon, from Egypt; or upward while ascending steps in the Temple; or upward while traveling from towns in Israel and Judah to appear before Yahweh in Jerusalem for the three Great Feasts every year.

The fact that much as been written and preached on these psalms speaks to their unity and diversity, for there seem to be countless ways to view their interrelatedness as they are woven together and as they build on one another. I often read them in one sitting, and more often I scan them all as I focus on one of them. As you will note, most of them are rather brief, and yet while they may not be wide, they are deep, very deep – I have yet to see the bottom of this ocean trench.

How do these psalms speak to you? How does Christ reveal Himself to you through them? What patterns do you see? How is the Holy Spirit revealing your heart to you in these psalms?

Why not take four weeks and spend daily time in Psalms 120 – 134? These are psalms of pilgrimage, what will your pilgrimage be like for this four-week journey? The only way to know is to take the trip!

Psalm 103 (3)

“Bless Yahweh O my soul, and forget none of His benefits; who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases; who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; who satisfies your years [or desires] with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle.” Psalm 103:2 – 5 NASB.

Where do we seek satisfaction and fulfillment? Where do we seek renewal?

We need more than food for our bodies to eat, we need food for our souls to eat. We not only need to nourish our bodies; we need to nourish our souls. Where do we seek such nourishment?

What does it mean that God “satisfies your years [or desires] with good things”? Does this mean that whatever our desires are that God is the source of their fulfillment? Does this mean that God will fill our years, our lives, with the good things that we want?

We see in Ephesians 2:10 that “…we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them”.

It seems to me that one of the challenges of the Christian life is to, by God’s grace, remain on the Potter’s wheel so that our hopes and dreams and desires are molded into the will of God. We are to present our bodies, our entire selves, as living sacrifices, well – pleasing to God; and our inner persons are to be transformed so that the will of God will unfold in our lives to His glory (Romans 12:1 – 2).

When we repent of having ourselves at the center of the universe and submit to Jesus Christ as our Lord, as the center of our universe, we relinquish what we want for what God wants. Then our lives, our years, become not a quest to fulfill what we want, but rather as our desires are displaced by God’s desires and our God’s desires become our desires – we then experience fulfillment because we are living as the sons and daughters that God called us to be.

The years of our pilgrimage are not to be years seeking what we, outside of Christ, might want, but are rather to be years seeking the will of our Father and Lord Jesus. Those who call Jesus Christ “Lord” are called to say with Paul, “I have not been disobedient to the heavenly vision” and to say with Jesus, “I have glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.”

As the will of our Father unfolds in our lives, as the desires of God become our desires, as our years are lived “blessing the LORD” and living in the light of God’s redemption and forgiveness, then our years will know the satisfaction of good things and our youth, our vitality, our inner person, will be renewed like the eagle’s – for we will be increasingly living in the eternals, in the things of the Holy Spirit of God.

“…though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day,” 2 Corinthians 4:16 (see also 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Proverbs 4:18).

What does this look like in your life today?

Psalm 119 (6)

Musings on Psalm 119

He: Verses 33 – 40

Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes;

    and I will keep it to the end.

The Way of God’s statutes is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Word, the Logos, of God; as we follow Jesus we guard and keep God’s Word. We may know the Bible without knowing Jesus Christ (John 5:39 – 40). We may know the Bible as a member of any number of religious traditions, but until we encounter Jesus Christ in the Scriptures we are numbered with the religious leaders of John 5:39 – 40, or we are like those in 2 Timothy 3:7 who are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

As Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians Chapter Two, only God can teach us His Word. Our Father teaches us horizontally and vertically; we hear from Him both ways as He communicates to us directly and as He communicates to us through other members of the Body of Christ – we ought to seek harmony and confirmation in our understanding of God Word.

We can trust our Lord Jesus to keep us so that we may keep His Word to the end of life in this world and into the age to come. We cannot keep God’s Word by ourselves, but only as we abide in the Vine (John 15). All that we do must be done as we abide in Christ – He must be our Way of Life; without Him, outside of Him, we can do nothing that is of any worth.

Give me understanding, that I may keep your law

    and observe it with my whole heart.

We ask God to teach us, and we ask Him to give us understanding in what He teaches us. It is one thing to recite a verse or a paragraph or even an entire chapter of the Bible. It is another thing to understand it. We often sing hymns we do not understand. We read Scriptures that we do not understand. When we view the Scriptures we do not “see” their interconnectedness, we view many small pieces without “seeing” that they all combine to present a comprehensive portrait of God and His purposes. We are often like children playing with bricks at a construction site, not knowing that those bricks are to be joined together to produce a home in which people will live. We stack a few bricks together and think we have produced an award-winning structure, when all the time God’s wants us to build His Temple. We mistake our stack of bricks for a palace – God has so much more for us in His Son.

Lead me in the path of your commandments,

    for I delight in it.

Teach us, give us understanding, and now “lead” us in the Path of your commandments – again, Jesus is the Path, the Way. Jesus promises us that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:12 – 15). Jesus greatly desires to reveal Himself and His ways to us through the Holy Spirit, are we coming to Him expectantly? Are we anticipating the revelation of Jesus Christ through His Word and the Holy Spirit? “All things that the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he [the Holy Spirit] takes of mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:15). Is this our experience? Our Father wants to give to us, do we want to receive?

Incline my heart to your testimonies,

    and not to selfish gain!

We need to be taught by God, we need the Holy Spirit to give us understanding in what we are taught, we need to be led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14) into Christ, and we desperately need the grace and mercy of God to incline our hearts to His testimonies and away from self-centered lives. Our hearts and souls are bent inward, they are made crooked by sin and self-deceit, what we consider gain is loss, and what we consider loss is gain. The way of self-denial and of Christ-confession is the Way of the Cross; the Cross is the Way of Life.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;

    and give me life in your ways.

Not only do we need our hearts inclined toward God, we need our eyes turned away from worthless things. Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear (or healthy), your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness…” (Matthew 6:22 – 23). Then Jesus says in the next verse, “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and wealth.” We are be “Looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2), our eyes are to be on Christ and His Word as we are transformed into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:18; 1 John 3:1-3). The ways of this age can bring nothing but death, the ways of our Father give us life in His Son.

Confirm to your servant your promise,

    that you may be feared.

Hebrews 11:33 tells us that our fathers and mothers of faith “obtained promises”. This speaks to us of our intimate relationship with God; an intimacy that includes the Parent making promises to the child.

In 2 Corinthians 1:20 – 22 Paul writes, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [Christ Jesus]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”

In Christ not only does God say “Yes” to His promises, all His promises point to Christ, reveal Christ, and have their substance in Christ. God’s promises are to establish us in Jesus Christ, to root us deeply in Him. The seal of the Spirit of God is the Promise of the Father given to us by the ascended Christ Jesus (Acts 2:33).

How does God confirm His promise? He does so through His Son, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and His Word (Hebrews 6:17 – 20; Romans 8:15 – 16; 1 John 3:23 – 24; 4:13). As the writer of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 6:17), we are “heirs of the promise”. This promise is eternal life in Jesus Christ, this is the Promise above all promises – koinonia with God, living in the Trinity, by the Trinity, through the Trinity.

God is “other” than we are, and the more intimate we are with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the greater our awareness of His “otherness” will be. The otherness and awesomeness of God leads to a holy fear and recognition that our God is indeed the Almighty One; we fall on our faces, we bow before Him, we worship Him – and in the midst of our holy fear we hear Him say, “Fear not.” Only those who fear God and stand in awe in His Presence hear Him say, “Fear not.”

Turn away the reproach that I dread,

    for your rules [ordinances] are good.

What does this mean? What is this reproach? It is linked to the ordinances of God. As Paul makes clear in Romans Chapter Three, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, not one of us is righteous, not a single person on earth. Can there be any greater reproach than the reproach of sin? Of our unrighteousness? Of our rebellion against the holy One?

“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:19 – 20).

There is only One who can take away our reproach, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21 – 26). As we believe in Jesus, as we trust in Him, as we come into a relationship with Him, acknowledging our sin and rebellion and turning from our evil ways by His grace and following Him, a twofold miracle occurs; on the biological side we receive the very life of God in Christ Jesus, on the forensic (legal) side we are justified in Christ and by Christ and through Jesus Christ.  God’s Law convicts us of sin and drives us to Christ and delivers us into the hands of grace and mercy, which are the hands of Jesus Christ – the wounded hands.

Behold, I long for your precepts;

    in your righteousness give me life!

Here is a second cry, a second plea, of “give me life!” Is this not the cry of the dead man who knows he is dead? Isn’t this the plea of the man who knows that he is on a trajectory of death? Might not this be the request of the woman who realizes that she lives in an atmosphere of death? In a society that is dead and dying? God does not desire to resuscitate that which is dying – the Cross is here that we might die to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that we might die to ourselves and live unto God (Romans Chapter 6). We will only find life in the righteousness of God, and that Righteousness is Jesus Christ.

As Paul writes (1 Corinthians 1:27 – 31), “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.””

Psalm 119 (5)

Musings on Psalm 119

Daleth: Verses 25 – 32 (NASB)

My soul cleaves to the dust;

Revive me according to Your word.

The image of cleaving and clinging appears twice in Daleth, once in verse 25 and once in verse 31, “I cling to your testimony”. This is the same Hebrew word in both verses, and while the NASB translates it with “cleave” in verse 25 and “cling” in verse 31, the ESV provides consistency in translating it as “cling” in both verses. I don’t know why the NASB folks used two English words for the same Hebrew word, but I think the ESV does the English-language reader a better service because it allows the reader to see the repeated image and the juxtaposition of clinging to the dust and clinging to God’s testimonies.

The psalmist is clinging to the dust and cries out for revival, but not just any revival, but rather revival according to God’s Word. Is our desire to “feel good” or is it to be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29)? If our driving desire is to feel good then we may not care how we go about it, we may not care whether our revival is according to the Word of God. 

If our preaching and teaching is designed to attract people and keep the people we attract and not designed to bring others to Jesus and to sow the seed of the Word, trusting the Holy Spirit to bring forth fruit – we may have people feeling good but not being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We may even have people who think they are Christians but who do not know Jesus – they may think they’ve joined a club, a fraternity or sorority, but they may not have surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ; Christ may be their mascot but not their Lord and Savior.

We tailor our words and actions to move us toward our goal, toward our heart’s desire – consciously and unconsciously. If we treasure religious “success” then we will serve cotton candy in our preaching and music; if we treasure the Christ of the Cross then we will serve the Word of God.

When our souls cleave to the dust we need God’s Word, God’s Word is the only way to revival.

I have told of my ways, and You have answered me;

Teach me Your statutes.

There are man’s ways, and there are God’s ways; there is the Way of Life, and there is the way of death. Our ways lead only to misery and grief, we may think otherwise because our hearts are deceitful, as we read in Proverbs 28:26, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool…” I think that the author’s cry in verse 29, “Remove the false way from me…” may indicate that the “ways” he speaks of in verse 26 are the ways of man and not the ways of God, hence the cry to “teach me Your statutes.”

We ought to know who we are in the First Adam, and who we are in the Last Adam. Who we are in the First Man, who is of the earth, and who we are in the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven. We are called to bear the image of the Heavenly Man, our Lord Jesus Christ – we can only bear His image as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit and the Living Word of God.

Make me understand the way of Your precepts,

So I will meditate on Your wonders.

What is the “way of Your precepts”? It is Jesus Christ; Jesus first, Jesus last, Jesus always. The Scriptures testify of Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:27, 32, 44, 45), Jesus is the Way of God’s precepts. Jesus is the Wonder of God, He is the Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6). We may read of the wonders of God, we may see the wonders of God, but if we do not “see” Jesus as the Wonder of wonders then our vision lacks clarity and unity – for we are called to “see” Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ brings unity to the Scripture and to our lives. All things are on a trajectory of being “summoned up” in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:10).

My soul weeps because of grief;

Strengthen me according to Your word.

We may weep because of our sin, and we may weep because of the sin of others – we ought to do both. It is not just the eyes of the psalmist that weep, but it is his soul. Our society is one of hardened and medicated souls. We live in a collective opium den – we deaden our souls with money and lust and entertainment and sports and “things” and ego and electronics. Sadly, many of our churches fail to preach the Word that can penetrate the smoke of collective deceit and convict us of sin, bringing tears to our souls. The harden soul must be broken at the Cross and the pretense of human righteousness must be exposed once and for all – our sin must be confessed and we must repent, otherwise we remain in our sins and in our “sin”.

I recently met a man who was raised in a Gospel-preaching church, but he ignored the preaching and teaching of God’s Word. Then one day he realized that he no longer felt convicted of his sin – that frightened him! At that moment he repented of his way of life, confessed his sins, and took up the Cross of Jesus Christ as a disciple – that was some 70 years ago and this man has not looked back for he has been “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Remove the false way from me,

And graciously grant me Your law.

We are all born with the false way in us; it is the way of sin and rebellion against a Holy God. As Paul argued in Romans Chapter Three, none of us are righteous, not one of us; we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – the glory that God desires to bring us into, the glory that we experience when we are in an intimate relationship with Him – the glory of Himself. 

The way we think, the way we feel, the way we see life – all have been polluted by the false way; Christ comes to deliver us from the false way, He comes to give Himself to us as our New Way – and so Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Christ the Truth sets us free, Christ the Life raises us from spiritual death, Christ the Way becomes the road we travel, the air we breathe, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel – He becomes the Bread of Life for our souls.

The false way is removed from us as the Word of God in Jesus Christ works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The engrafted Word saves us (James 1:18 – 21) and heals our souls, it renews our minds, it cleanses our hearts, it purifies our emotions as we submit to Jesus Christ. In Christ the false way is displaced by the True Way, and the True Way is the Living Law and Word of God.

I have chosen the faithful way;

I have placed Your ordinances before me.

Who is the Faithful Way if it is not our Lord Jesus? He is the only one who can be fully trusted; He, out of all who have ever walked this earth, is the only one ever found to be perfectly faithful. To walk in His Way is to live faithfully toward God’s Word, toward God, and toward mankind. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ is never to be doubted, it never wavers, it never changes. As Paul writes (2 Timothy 2:13), “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” God cannot contradict His nature.

Jeremiah wrote (Lamentations 3:22 – 23), “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;  his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

To choose the Faithful Way is to focus on the Word (the ordinances) of God. We cannot credibly claim to be followers of the Word that was in the beginning with God (John 1:1 – 3) if we are not followers of the Scriptures through which God the Word has revealed Himself. To say we are followers of Jesus Christ and to disobey His Word in the fabric of our lives is to indict ourselves as imposters (1 John 1:5 – 2:6). We may sin, but we do not live lives of sin; we are not sinners; in Christ, by Christ, through Christ, and unto Christ those who are in relationship with Christ are saints, they are sons and daughters of the Living God – and they are called to live accordingly.

I cling to Your testimonies;

O Lord, do not put me to shame!

To cling to the dust (verse 25) is one thing, to cling to the Word of God is another. Our lives on earth began in the dust of the natural “man”, apart from God, alienated from the life of God. The Word of God was an unknown language to us; we could not hear it, we could not speak it. For some of us, our religious environments drowned the Word of God out so that we could not hear it. For others, pagan thinking clouded our hearts and minds. For others, the insidious lie that only the material is real was as a lead prison encapsulating our souls.

As we are raised with Christ (Ephesians 2:1 – 10) we learn a new language, we hear a new music – we learn the language of God, we hear the music and singing of God (Zephaniah 3:17; 1 Corinthians Chapter 2).

Yes, there is a “shame” in the world’s eyes in following Jesus, there is a reproach to bear (Hebrews 13:13), but the woman or man or young person who trusts in Christ will not be ashamed of Him (Romans 9:33; 1:17; 2 Timothy 1:12). How can we be ashamed of Him who is not ashamed of us?  

I shall run the way of Your commandments,

For You will enlarge my heart.

What shall we do with the Word of God? Shall we plod with it or shall we run with it?

Paul writes (2 Timothy 4:1 – 2), “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”

“For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 13:12). As we receive the Word and give the Word to others our hearts will be enlarged and our capacity to receive will be increased – the more we give the Word the more of the Word we can receive; for as we give to others we are drawn ever deeper into the fellowship of the Trinity.

There is a joy and exhilaration in running with the Word of God, a freedom as we breathe in the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of God envelops us; our feet become beautiful in Christ (Romans 10:15) as they run with the Gospel.

Can we say with Paul (2 Timothy 4:7 – 8), “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”?