Psalm 99: A psalm too beautiful to rush

This beautiful Psalm is so delightful to read that it is easy to enjoy it on the surface and fail to notice its powerful, majestic theme.  This Psalm is a wonderful point of meditation if, when we slowly say the Lord’s Prayer, we contemplate “hallowed be thy name.”  Worshipping God because of His holiness is expressed in three spheres.

While God revealed Himself to the Jews He is not just the God of the Jews, He is God over all. His special presence in Zion is an occasion for all people to honor and worship Him because “Holy is He.”

His holiness or moral character is expressed in justice.  Justice is more than a ruling in court.  It also includes systems that are fair, that protect the weak and restrain the powerful.  Notice right treatment is closely linked; be at the “foot stool” of God.  Noble ideals that are not connected to understanding God become second-hand ethics and will always spiral down into personal preference for our own ethics.   Instead, we worship Him because “Holy is He.”

Thankfully, God is not some distant deity; but rather, is here with us interacting with us.  Verse 8 offers three powerful lines that every follower needs to remember.  God is involved in our lives.  He answers us.  He is an active participant in our every day living.  God forgives us.  Were He completely retributive we would all die with our first sin, but He is gracious to us. At the same time He chastises us for our misdeeds.  God’s discipline towards us is always corrective and not just punitive.  The last line of verse 9 returns to our theme,  “For holy is the Lord Our God.” 

Don’t read this Psalm too fast and miss the power and the beauty it offers. 

When my attitude about the church gets really bad here is what I do.

Psalm 106 (read the Psalm before reading this devotional)

Of late I have been in an ill temper, sort of a faith frustration that is the result of working with many churches across denominational lines in American Christianity.  The bottom line is the news from the American church is not very good.  If you read about the situation of the American church you know the news of which I speak.  Almost all the measurables of the Christian faith are down, declining and have every indication of continuing to do so.  I have been looking for the bright spot in American Christianity, but other than a few glimmers here and there, haven’t found much about which to be positive.  Then I found the hopeful picture, that glimmer that said, “Maybe the church in American will not go the way of the church in northern and western Europe.”  That moment of hopefulness wasn’t here and now, but in the distant past and in the wilderness.

Psalm 106 retells the history of the Exodus, but from a specific perspective and to make a specific point.  The Exodus seems the very symbol or icon of Israel’s life.  It also gives us a picture too often of ourselves.  The history of Israel is a repeating cycle of God’s grace and intervention, Israel’s deliverance and rebellion, Israel’s falling and God’s rescue.  The cycle is summed up in the description of vs. 13-15.  Six phases or stages are clear in each of the lines of those three verses. 

What is truly wonderful in this Psalm is the determination and persistence of God’s mercy and grace.  Time and again Israel in its rebellion rushes head long toward destruction only to have God, for reasons that seem so small, bring about rescue.  Here is the point, God is looking for any reason, any excuse (if you will) to rescue His people.  Rather than a picture of an angry, wrathful God the picture is of the judge who wants to find a technicality to release or forgive.  Sometimes that reason is nothing more than, “We made ourselves miserable.” 

As disciples we need to recall that if God was so gracious to a people bound to Him by the covenant of circumcision, how much more is He bound to us by the covenant of the blood of His son.  The church is deeply flawed (always has been) and is in many cases rushing head long away from God.  She seems to be bent on prostituting herself for trifles.  It would be easy to imagine that God is readying His wrath and He may be.  But His history proves something more.  God is eager to forgive and bless; all He is waiting for is perhaps the smallest sign that we realize this whole thing is not about us, but about Him. 

The Agony of Holiness

Isaiah 6

We live in, relative to most of history, a pain free world.  For many of us pain is an occasional, unwelcomed guest that makes a short visit until we take the appropriate medication.  We have in our medicine cabinets compounds and potions that would have 200 years ago been considered miracle drugs.  Naproxen Sodium, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen not to mention the humble Aspirin are all so common place we don’t even think about them until we have a twinge of a pain.  But they would have been worth a king’s ransom in the days of Queen Elizabeth.  If our pain goes beyond the effects of OTC medications we enjoy the options of prescriptions that can work wonders.  For the most part and for most of our lives we live pain free.  This is a good thing in that most of us avoid pain because, well, it hurts. 

But ancient people were more accustomed to pain as a factor of daily life.  Pain was the reality of life before the medical revolution of the 19^th century.  For the most part pain was endured until it went away.  This mindset of awareness of pain might have given them insights that we miss.  Pain is not a factor in our thinking, so we might miss something they caught.  In Isaiah 6 we have one of the most amazing visions of the Bible.  There is so much to see and notice, to learn and hear, to contemplate and consider that we, because we don’t think of pain much, might overlook something.  In verses 6-7 we read:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

There is so much here to process but one thing I have never heard anyone ask is, “How did that feel, Isaiah?”  It is worth noting Isaiah didn’t ask for help in his purification.  He never prays, “Lord, give me pure lips.”  The admission of guilt prompts the angel to apply a burning coal to his lips.  We see the symbolisms in the vision and we understand the bigger picture.  But there is a moment when the burning coal touches some of the most sensitive skin on Isaiah.  In a world where potions and pills do not expunge pain, early readers might have seen the agony that is often the process of holiness.  Fire is often a picture of purification in Scripture, but I don’t recall any promise that it will not hurt. 

I have worked with those recovering from addictions and heard them describe the pain that is part of not relapsing.  I know from my own personal experience that the path toward righteousness is more often marked by pain than pleasure.  In almost every journey of holiness there is pain.  C.S. Lewis once said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  Pain not only awakens us to our need, it is also often the byproduct and part of the process of our purification. 

I am neither masochist nor sadist but we need to embrace the reality of pain.  We do no favor to our world nor the disciples we would teach if we present pain as an avoidable aberration.  The abundant life is not a life that is completely free of pain but rather it is the life that comes on the other side of pain.  It is the life beyond taking up our cross and dying.  For the joy set Him before Jesus endured the cross.  There was no short cut for Him; there is none for us.  As we teach what it means to follow Christ we must not present a life free from pain.  Rather a life in which pain works for us and is part of the extraction of evil so that we can live out being a disciple.

So the next time you think about Isaiah being approached by the angel, let’s lose the image of a euphoric man being approached by a lover holding what maybe a strawberry.  Let’s use an image more like, a man who can’t take anesthetics but is having a root canal or molar extraction preformed.  So painful but so worth it.

Who will show us any good?

Psalm 4

This Psalm asks a question in verse 6 that resonates and resounds in every generation and with every person, “Who will show us any good?”  Every man-made attempt at Utopia, at good, at the brave new experiment that improves man’s situation by his own goodness and great ideals has been a house built on sand.  On the back of a U.S. one dollar bill is the motto: Novus ordo seclorum Latin "New order of the ages".  From our founding, we in America have believed that we have given birth to a new epic in human history.  Naturally, it would be better than all those that preceded it.  But like all great epics that last long enough there are cracks forming, signs of erosion and fears that the “New Order” of the ages might be just one of many.  Witness the mass shootings, a highly divided and hostile people, the inadvertent worship of the gods Himeros, Ares, Hedone, and Ploutos, and the near absence of compassion as a few of these signs that the epic, the New Order of the Ages is in trouble.  What are the alternatives?

The answer is the God who is both the source of righteousness and who is perfectly righteous, who is actively involved in the life of the righteous person.  Verses 2-3 describe the two options.  The first option is men and their plans, which by the way treat God’s servant’s ethic as a reproach or a mockery.  The other option is the life under God’s special attention. The reasonable and wise response to these options is to conform our lives to the will of God.  It begins with the command to, “Tremble and do not sin.”  The word tremble would be better translated be angry.  Sin ought to make us angry, so angry that we want to do something about it.  We have often become so familiar with sin (our own) and that of the world around us that we have developed a certain comfort level with it. 

We need to think about what is happening in our lives-a time of serious introspection.  Not in a morbid or self-absorbed way, but to contemplate the terrible cost of sin.  David calls for sacrifices.  As Christians our sacrifice has been made, but the worship of the One who made that sacrifice is our response when we meditate on our sin and His grace.  That, by the way, is the beauty and power of the Lord’s Supper.  This meditation brings us to the conclusion which is trusting God.  Our works can never make things right.  But trusting God for the grace He provides is the only life that is worth living.

Verses 6-8 show us a picture of the good life.  It is a life of God’s blessing.  He smiles on us, which is better than a bumper crop of grain.  No new order for the ages, no plan of governments, no great new epic can provide for us what being under God’s care gives.  In confidence and contentment we rest being assured of his protection.