Keys to the Kingdom

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I looked at this. I wasn’t online much last week, but I did keep up the praying through the Psalms, for the most part. Some things got in the way, however, but hopefully I’ve moved past them now. When last we examined the Psalms, I was on 3. I’ve gotten through 4 and 5, 5 being spread over two to three days (I’ll deal with it either tomorrow or Friday). It’s a little bit longer, so I broke it up a bit. I’ll do the same thing as they go on. There’s also a great deal in even one or two verses of these prayers…more than I had realized, despite the tradition of psalter in the Presbyterian church. I guess I just didn’t get them before. Anyway, some reflections.

First, I’m sure you’re wondering about the ‘keys to the kingdom’ of the title. It relates to the one or two verses that leap out of the psalms when you pray through them and meditate on them in your heart. For example, Psalm 4:2 gives the penitent specific areas in which God is not glorified, areas that we can pray into in our own lives to great extent. I’ll relate it here:

“O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?” Where in our lives are we turning the Lord’s honour into shame, for example? If we honestly look, and reject the accusations of the devil for the light of the Word of the Lord, we’re given opportunity to repent of sins that He puts his finger on. The same is evident in the cry of His heart ‘how long will you love vain words and seek after lies?’ How long will we reject the truth – that we are sinners, and far from holiness, and that we are not the centre of the universe – and seek after the lies we’re told by the world on a daily basis?

I want to look at something in particular that sticks out from the last portion of Psalm 4 as well…verses 7 and 8. “You have put more joy in my heart than they [those who say 'who will show us some good'] have when their grain and wine abound. In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” I noticed it first in Psalm 3… the illusions we have of security, and the promise that comes from God in that security. We take for granted that we are preserved from judgement, wrath and righteous anger even when we sleep, despite being saved only by the blood of Jesus. Jesus, in the parable about the rich fool in Luke 12 gives us an idea of how easy it is to take for granted the things we work for and rest from. ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ This, of course, comes on the heels of the rich man saying to himself ‘you have ample goods laid up for many years’. So here’s one thing. The other is the joy that David declares here, a joy that I for one strive for. That’s a topic for another time, though.

"my glory, and lifter of my head"

Take some time now to meditate on one thing:

Psalm 3:5 – I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

Do you often take for granted the fact that you wake up each day by the grace of God? Do you let the fact that you continue to draw breath, and are saved from death only by the sufferance of the Sovereign Lord, pass you by now and again? And, to draw it into words a little less harsh (though God knows we need hard words), do you thank the Lord that you are not surrounded by many thousands of people who have set themselves against you all around, as David was? I know I do. You’re not going to think about it lightly after this one, though.

Look a little further:

Psalm 3:7 – Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.

This is God the brawler, the Lord mighty to save (with a little help from a strong right hook!) This is the God that many men, in particular, seek after, but don’t seem to recognize. The literature I’ve been reading and the sermons I’ve been hearing over the past months have been showing me this God and this Jesus, in ways I’d never considered before. Who wouldn’t want to worship a God who’s going to deck your enemies for you because he loves you?! He’s going to fight for you, contend for you, because He has a jealous heart for His people. What this means for marriage is an entirely different thing. But take note…this does not exclude the endurance of the betrayal, the flogging and the cross in humility that was also in the plan of the God who’s going to answer from his holy hill when we…yes, we…call aloud to Him.

Some things to keep in mind.

Talk to you next time.

One Hundred Fifty Days

Two entries in two days! My goodness. You’d think I was starting something big. The title would also have some ability to give that away, certainly. So here it is:

There are one hundred and fifty psalms in the Bible, some short, some long. For the next 148+ days, I will be praying through each one. I will also be trying to include some insights and promises from those Psalms in posts that may happen, at most, three days apart. This should be a rockin’ good time, so here you go: Psalm 2 today.

Psalm 2 is all about Jesus. Prophetic in the least, it gives the promise of the Lord to his Son, King Jesus, on the day of his begetting. The Lord says in verses 8 and 9 “Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” It ends on a note of caution and also of promise…”Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” This is Jesus the King. Jesus who has all authority in heaven and on earth given to him, who can break the nations like the potter’s vessel. This is the exalted Jesus. You may or may not remember, some time ago, I mentioned that I was looking into Jesus as prophet, priest and king, something which I’m afraid I’ve never quite taken up again until now. But this is oh so clearly Jesus the general, who has a sword coming from his mouth and a robe dipped in blood.

Praise God for Him.

Personal prayer that can come from this psalm includes prayer for the persecuted church, and for those who persecute. We are told that kings and rulers plot in vain from the get-go, that the Lord looks on them with derision. This is not a weak word, folks. We are also told that “the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed”, which pretty clearly speaks to persecuted believers. We can also pray that the rulers of the nations would together kiss the Son, that they might find refuge in Him and be blessed.

Talk to you soon.

Sunrise

We exist in an unnatural state. Sure, you’ll say ‘I know’, but do you really? This particular point of living the Christian life has been strongly brought home as we come out of the Easter season. For the first time since I came here, I attended the Easter morning sunrise service on Signal Hill. The day was dark, and you could barely see two feet in front of you for the fog, and the grass and paths were iced over with sleet and freezing rain. So of course, I had to explore, taking a look at some of the paths around the hill. I was the first person present for the service as well, so I had a bit of an adventure. There’s nothing quite like it – being the first person in a new place. It reminds me of the recently-completed Wild at Heart, a book which has spoken particularly strongly to me. Anyway, these are musings, when the meat’s still to come. I said it to begin, I’ll say it again…we exist in an unnatural state. Here’s why:

In the beginning, God created man to glorify and work for Him. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Gen. 2:15) Tell me why, then, work is so toilsome and wearying, we ask God. Here’s what he says: “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen. 3:17c-19) Part of this comes from thoughts on my earlier posting since last I looked at it, but most of it comes from an intense awareness that in the half-hour of worship on Easter Sunday morning, I felt more alive than I do in an entire week of work. This is a sad state, but one that reminds you exactly how much we need to seek God’s company in our lives, that we might feel alive. Essentially, the full life simply cannot exist without a work of God being accomplished through the living of one’s life, nor can it exist without an exclusive seeking after the Lord in all of what we do. We exist in an unnatural state because we do not glorify Him in all things. We are not the workers of Eden, we are the broken-backed, the weary-limbed, and the sweat-stained. We cannot live but for the Lord, if we claim His truth. But it’s not easy. Especially when we see so few results sometimes. I seem to have this heart of striving, but not of rest. This is not mitigated by the fact that my work in particular encourages such striving, as does the voice of what our world has become. ‘Be all you can be’…’Make your money work so you don’t have to.’…It’s a corruption that you can’t really see, just live out. Satan’s lies tell us that our lives will be more meaningful if we seek to serve ourselves and our future, instead of the Lord’s extra-temporal all things for His glory. Satan’s accusations tell us that we can’t work hard enough, that we’ve got to consistently beat the competition, become the best, the most, the biggest. When we don’t do well, he makes sure we take no satisfaction in having done the best we can. So much of what we have grown accustomed to in the world is false. We exist in an unnatural state because we can’t see anything better for the fog of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Lord, burn the fog away, as you did on Easter morning.

Chris