“This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” We must live every day as though it could be our last.
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It is difficult to imagine a lovelier Psalm than Psalm 103. When our children were growing up, the price they “paid” for their first leather-bound Bibles was memorizing Psalm 103. Across the centuries, countless believers have turned to these lines to find their spirits lifted, a renewed commitment to praise and gratitude, an incentive to prayer, a restoration of a God-centered worldview. This psalm could easily claim our meditations for the rest of the month, for the rest of the year. Instead, we focus on three of its features.
(1) The psalm is bracketed by exhortations to praise. At the front end, David exhorts himself, and, by his example, his readers: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name” (103:1). Implicitly David recognizes that it is distressingly easy to preserve the externals of praise, with nothing erupting from within the heart of God’s image-bearers. This will not do: “all my inmost being, praise his holy name.” By the end of the psalm, however honest and profound this individual’s worship, the framework for praising such a God is too small, for after all, God’s kingdom rules over all (103:19): “Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. Praise the Lord, all his works, everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul” (103:20–22). Now the psalmist’s praise is one with the praise of heaven, with the praise of the entire created order. (2) When David starts to enumerate “all his benefits” (103:2), he begins with the forgiveness of sins (103:3). Here is a man who understands what is of greatest importance. If we have everything but God’s forgiveness, we have nothing of worth; if we have God’s forgiveness, everything else of value is also promised (cf. Rom. 8:32). (3) David soon moves from the blessings he enjoys as an individual believer to the Lord’s public justice (103:6), to his gracious self-disclosure to Moses and the Israelites (103:7–18). Here he stays the longest time, turning over and over in his mind the greatest blessings the Lord has granted to his people. Above all, he focuses once again on the sheer privilege of having sins forgiven, removed, forgotten. All of this, David perceives, stems from the character of God. “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (103:8). He deals with our sin—but compassionately, fully bearing in mind our weak frames. We may be creatures of time, but “from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him” (103:17). You probably remember the “What Would Jesus Do?” trend from the late ’90s. It seemed everywhere you looked, plastered across T-shirts, hats, jewelry, and all kinds of other merchandise, the WWJD slogan was a blithe, shallow reminder to live up to Christ’s moral code.
But Christianity is not about mere morality. It’s about the atoning work of Christ on our behalf. With that in mind, we can ask much better and more sanctifying questions, like “What did Jesus do?” and “What did He say?” Our ability to avoid and defeat sin comes not from imagining Christ in our circumstances but from obeying His clear commands and following the example of His life in Scripture. Knowing what Jesus said about sin is key to overcoming it. We’ve been discussing our natural bent toward anxiety, and what God’s Word says about how we must control and conquer our worry. In Matthew 6:25 Jesus commanded His followers, “Do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” The tense of the Greek text is properly translated, “Stop worrying.” The tense in Matthew 6:31 is different, however, and means, “Don’t start worrying.” Thus Jesus brackets our passage with this meaning: If you are worrying, quit; if you haven’t started, don’t. The Greek word for “life” is psuchē. It has to do with the fullness of earthly, physical, external life. Don’t be anxious about this temporal world—and the food, clothing, and shelter associated with it. Jesus said previously, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Focusing on earthly treasures produces earthly affections. It blinds our spiritual vision and draws us away from serving God. That’s why God promises to provide what we need. As children of God, we have a single goal—treasure in heaven; a single vision—God’s purposes; and a single Master—God, not money (Matthew 6:19-24). Therefore, we must not let ourselves become preoccupied with the mundane things of this world—“what [we] shall eat, or what [we] shall drink” (Matthew 6:25). Perhaps in our modern society, such a warning seems a bit obscure. After all, there’s a market of some sort on practically every corner. And we’ve got so much water in our homes, we don’t often think about running out. It usually takes some kind of disaster—like the massive storm that hit the eastern United States recently—to shake loose the cobwebs of sustained comfort and remind us that our basic necessities are often abundant, but never guaranteed. And even then, such disasters usually amount to only a temporary interruption of our normal routine. Life in the world of the New Testament was not so simple. There were times when the snows didn’t come to the mountains and, as a result, the streams didn’t run. Sometimes a plague of locusts would devour the crops, bringing about famine in the land. When there was famine, there was also no income. And when there was no income, no one could purchase food, clothing, or other necessities. Jesus’ saying not to worry about such things is especially powerful in the context of His day. Certainly that is an indictment of our own worry about life’s basics. Jesus then asks rhetorically, “Is not life more than food, and the body than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25). Of course it is, but you wouldn’t know it judging by what’s advertised today and what people seem to feel they need to be pursuing. So many people in our society are totally consumed with the body—they decorate it, build it up, extravagantly clothe it, put it in a nice car, send it off to a nice house, stuff it full of food, sit it in a comfortable chair, hang a bunch of jewelry all over it, take it out on a boat, let it swim, teach it to ski, take it on a cruise, and so on. But life is not contained in those things; it transcends all the externals. Life comes from God—and the fullness of life from Jesus Christ. We finished up with our study of Colossians 3:10-19 talking about what it is that the New Man is to “Put On” as he seeks to walk in the manner that God desires to walk. To view the video just click on the link below:
Early Christianity developed several “centers of gravity”. The first was Rome, home of what we know as Roman Catholic Christianity (and eventually emerging from it, Protestantism). Another came to be in Constantinople, source of the Eastern or Orthodox branches of the church. Constantinople was born in 324 when Emperor Constantine, believing the future lay in the East rather than the West, decided to move his capital from Rome to Byzantium, a site on the eastern flank of Europe, astride the Bosporus, near to modern Turkey. He led his aides, engineers, and priests on a march around its harbor and hills, tracing the boundaries of his envisioned capital. He imported thousands of workers and artisans to build its walls, buildings, palaces, squares, streets, and porticoes. He placed sculptures in the parks and fountains in the forums. Before long there was a fabulous hippodrome, a prized university, five imperial palaces, nine palaces for dignitaries, 4,388 mansions, 322 streets, 1,000 shops, 100 places of amusement, splendid baths, magnificent churches, and a swelling population. It was a city that shimmered in the sunshine. The New Rome was dedicated as capital of the Eastern Empire on May 11, 330. Paganism was officially ended, Christianity was embraced, and the bishop (or patriarch) of Constantinople rivaled the bishop of Rome. Here the world’s most beautiful church was built called the “Hagia Sophia” - the Church of Holy Wisdom, St. Sophia. For 1,000 years, Constantinople served to preserved the Eastern Roman Empire (also called the Byzantine Empire). Christianity moved along parallel tracks, Catholic and Orthodox. The pope and the patriarch rivaled each other, then rejected each other. The greatest division in Christianity was not the Reformation in 1517, splitting Catholics from Protestants, but what came to be called “The Great Schism” in 1054, splitting apart the Eastern and Western branches of Roman Christianity. From Constantinople came great Eastern Orthodox families of the church, such as the Russian and Greek Orthodox traditions. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Church of St. Sophia was converted to a mosque, then to a museum. Constantinople is now called Istanbul, and Turkey, once the bastion of Christianity, is pretty much the largest “unreached” nation on earth. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of you nations, come praise the Lord! Let everyone praise him. His love for us is wonderful; His faithfulness never ends. Shout praises to the Lord! (Psalm 117:1,2) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We finished up with our study of Colossians 3:10-19 talking about what it is that the New Man is to “Put On” as he seeks to walk in the manner that God desires to walk. To view the video just click the link below:
A common theme of Psalms 46 and 47 is the sovereign authority of God over all the nations. He is not some mere tribal deity. He is the Most High (46:4). Nations may be in an uproar; kingdoms rise and fall. But God needs only to lift his voice, and the earth itself melts away (46:6). By his authority desolation works its catastrophic judgment; by his authority wars cease (46:8–9). The Lord Most High is “the great King over all the earth” (47:2, 7). “God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne” (47:8).
This ensures the security of the covenant community. The surrounding pagan nations may threaten, but if God is in charge, the covenant people of God can testify, “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (46:7). “He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet” (47:3). Indeed, as for Jerusalem, the “place where the Most High dwells”: “God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day” (46:4–5). The psalmist sees at least two further entailments. First, sooner or later God “will be exalted among the nations” (46:10). “For God is the King of all the earth” (47:7). These last two references could be understood as a threat rather than a promise of blessing: God will be exalted among these pagan nations in exactly the same way he was exalted by destroying the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. But in the light of Psalm 47:9 we would probably be unwise to insist on so negative a reading: “The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham, for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted.” In other words, one of the entailments of monotheism is that God is the God of all, whether acknowledged as such or not. And one day he will be acknowledged by all; in many cases such acknowledgment will be accompanied by worship and adoration, as the nobles of the nations assemble before God exactly as do the people of the God of Abraham. To use Paul’s categories, here is the inclusion of Gentiles as Abraham’s sons (cf. Rom. 4:11; Gal. 3:7–9). “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (46:10). The second entailment is praise. “Come and see the works of the Lord” (Ps. 46:8). “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. How awesome is the Lord Most High, the great King over all the earth!” (47:1–2). “Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises” (47:6). We got the sermon from Sunday Posted up for y'all to take a look at - click the link below:
 In 1 Samuel 1:10, 11, Hannah vowed in “bitterness of soul” to give the Lord her son in return for God’s favor in giving her that son. She prayed as a “maidservant”—a humble, submissive way of referring to herself in the presence of her superior, sovereign God. “Remember me,” she requested, asking for special attention and care from the Lord. She would give the child to the Lord “all the days of his life,” which was in contrast to the normal Nazirite vow, which was only for a specified period of time (see Num. 6:4, 5, 8).
In contrast to the prayer that came from her bitterness, Hannah prayed from joy in 2:1–10. The prominent idea in Hannah’s prayer is that the Lord is a righteous Judge. He had brought down the proud (Peninnah) and exalted the humble (Hannah). The prayer has four sections: 1) Hannah prayed to the Lord for His salvation (vv. 1, 2); 2) Hannah warned the proud of the Lord’s humbling (vv. 3–8d); 3) Hannah affirmed the Lord’s faithful care for His saints (vv. 8e–9b); 4) Hannah petitioned the Lord to judge the world and to prosper His anointed king (vv. 10d—e). This prayer has a number of striking verbal similarities with David’s song of 2 Samuel 22:2–51: “horn” (2:1; 22:3), “rock” (2:2; 22:2, 3), salvation/deliverance (2:1, 2; 22:2, 3), grave/Sheol (2:6; 22:6), “thunder” (2:10; 22:14), “king” (2:10; 22:51), and “anointed” (2:10; 22:51). Last Sunday, I had some seizure issues and an was unable to preach so one of our Church Elders - Stephen Diem stepped in and preached for me! He talked about Psalm 32 and really ministered to our people! The clear, Biblical truth of Christian living is that Confessing our sins is far better than hiding it. We will be physically affected by our actions, good or bad. This ought to be something we ponder and meditate upon in our hearts! David understood that THIS was primary part of living in manner that pleased His Lord and Master! We posted it up on YouTube this morning...click the link below to listen to it: Let me know any comments you might have...
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