What you praise defines you

During a recent funeral service I spoke from Psalm 145. It is titled, “A Psalm of Praise”.
Spurgeon suggested it was a favorite of King David’s and summarises his entire view of God, the world and himself. Yet the Psalm has no personal requests or cries for help. It is purely singing God’s praises. In so doing, it presents a liberating worldview.

This Psalm invites us to see is the profound hope and peace that is generated when we rightly praise God and treasure him as the most important, crucial, valued, sacred person and thing above everything else in life.

Slightly modifying Spurgeon’s suggested outline there are four things David praises God for.

1. His Greatness and Power
“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.” v3
“One generation will commend your works to another;
they will tell of your mighty acts. They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty” vv4-5

Greatness without goodness could make God a selfish powerful tyrant and goodness without greatness could make him willing to help us and show us kindness, but be unable to.

So David also praises God for

2. His Goodness
“celebrate your abundant goodness” v7
“The Lord is gracious and compassionate” v8
“The Lord is good to all;” v9

God displays his goodness indiscriminately, to all – not because we deserve it but because of his compassion.

David also praises God for

3. His Government – how God rules as King
“Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” v13
“The Lord is faithful to all his promises”

Because he is sovereign we have the assurance that he is in control and that his promises will prevail.

Where we stand today, we can see that in Jesus, God has fulfilled his promise to restore us and our broken world. Jesus death has paid the just penalty for our sin and his resurrection is the first validation that death is a defeated foe and life everlasting is his to give to all who cling to him in faith.

God’s power, greatness, goodness and government are not distant abstract concepts. David also praises God for

4. His Grace
“The Lord upholds all those who fall” v14
“The Lord is near to all who call on him” v18
“He fulfills the desires of those who fear him” v19

This is a God who, though he is powerful, is not some far off distant deity worshipped only for fear of punishment or worshipped to bribe for some favour.

Jesus Christ came near to us and experienced all our limitations as well as all of our sorrow, pain and loss to the point of death.

Despite all that, he lived as we ought to, but are not able to, in complete dependence and obedience to God. Because of that the Bible tells us he has made atonement for the sins of the people and because he suffered when he was tempted, he can help those who are being tempted.

In fact, he doesn’t just help us in our frailty and weakness he sympathizes with our weaknesses – yet without sin, so we can approach him with confidence and receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

We will all praise and worship something. There is something that you treasure, value above everything else in your life. It is something you adore and worship.

When you are alone, that’s what your mind will drift to – your most treasured possession. Comfort, food, control, making more money, career, house, holiday, pleasure. They never satisfy – you’re always seeking more.

When we learn, like David, to make the praise of God our greatest treasure. When the praise of God dominates and saturates your life, then everything else is put into it’s proper perspective and you gladly let it go for the sake of treasuring God above everything else.

As Keller notes in ‘Counterfeit Gods‘, praising (treasuring/valuing) God has a way of bringing sweetness and rest to the heart that heals you and frees you to relax your grip on anything else you think you must have and you will come to see he is all you need to have.

That gives you a profound hope and a confident peace.

 

Competitive Worship

As a kid you were involved in sibling or peer rivalries. You competed with your brothers, sisters and friends for attention. However, adults are much more sophisticated when it comes to attention seeking. When our friends, colleagues and coworkers don’t acknowledge us as better and superior we find a way to put them in their place. Or maybe we smile, nod and then stab them in the back because we prefer a passive aggressive approach and don’t love them enough to be direct.

James 4:1-2 “What causes fights and quarrels? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but you don’t get it.”

James says that a cause of conflict is competing desires to be worshipped. Our society teaches us instant gratification. When my needs conflict with your needs, we have trouble.

The gospel diffuses this competition because it places us on equal footing. No one is more deserving, than another, of God’s grace. Yet we jostle for attention and get offended that we are not the centre, because it offends our pride. We behave as though we do not believe the gospel. If we believingly trust in Jesus, then we are not offended by someone who is different (for whatever reason!) – instead, we can love them and work with them in spirit and purpose because God loves them and they belong to Jesus and need his forgiveness – JUST LIKE US.

What are some things you can do that will defuse competition with those closest to you this week?

 

The temple must be cleaned out first

The temple in Jerusalem was the centre of both worship and public life, in it’s various iterations, from the time of Solomon through to 70 A.D. when it was destroyed and never rebuilt. It was a place where true worship was conducted as well as a place where superficial mimicry was paraded in the guise of worship. c.f. Luke 18: 9-14

It parallels our own soul and spirit. We can, as a result of Jesus, worship in spirit and in truth. We can also have a variety of idols of the heart – things & behaviors that are central to our affections in place of God. Before true worship can take place, a cleansing is required. You cannot retain the idols of your heart and worship God. Ezekiel warned the people in his time and it remains so for us today:

For any one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart and putting the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to a prophet to consult me through him, I the Lord will answer him myself. 8 And I will set my face against that man; I will make him a sign and a byword and cut him off from the midst of my people, and you shall know that I am the Lord. … 10 And they shall bear their punishment … 11 that the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord God. ~ Ezekiel 14:7-11

Jesus own ‘renovation‘ of the temple shows us that prior to seeing and receiving him as Saviour, you must meet him as judge. Until the empty mimicry and the false devotions are removed there is no place for the genuine affection and worship. Let Jesus clean out your temple.

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? ~ 1 Peter 4:17

 

 

holy nanna nap

In Mark 6:30 Jesus invites his followers to enjoy a time of rest and leisure. In the midst of struggle, persecution and distress – Jesus is our safe haven – the cleft of the rock into which we taken by God and are kept safe.

Rest is a common grace from God to everyone – it is a demonstration of God’s compassion and kindness. As rebels we are not deserving of rest, it is his grace that allows us opportunities to stop, rest, recuperate and give thanks for his provisions.

Public Worship with other people is a type of “rest” – we are refreshed by drawing near to God through Christ, hearing his word and encouraging each other.

The famous miracle of the ‘feeding of five thousand‘ provides a strong allusion and comparison here between the bread the men ate & the miraculous manna Israel ate in the wilderness.

Knowles in ‘The Bible Guide’ notes that:

As Jesus directs the crowd to sit down in groups of hundreds and fifties, some would think of the prophet Elisha. He fed 100 men from just twenty barley loaves (2 Kings 4:42–44). Others, seeing 5,000 men sitting in ordered ranks (like an army), would remember how God fed Israel in the desert with manna and quail (Exodus 16; Numbers 11). For Christians, the way Jesus takes the bread, thanks God, breaks and shares it, is an anticipation of Holy Communion. The twelve baskets of scraps seem like a promise of enough for all future generations.

Just as they didn’t run out of bread and fish, God’s compassion and love is inexhaustible. There is no end to the “steadfast love of the LORD”, “his mercies never come to an end” (Lamentations 3:22).

In some cultures being over worked is taken as a virtue. Here it is an indication of pride and idolatry. Rest & Provision is God’s gift of compassion. Don’t miss the opportunity to receive this from God. The ultimate rest awaits those who know & trust in Jesus. Every small rest, every ‘nanna nap‘, we have now is an anticipation of that final rest.

 

Always Enough

Image via Wikipedia

For something a little different, here is A Communion Meditation – as read on Sunday February 13, 2011.

Last Sunday in our sermon we looked at a famous account called the feeding of the 5000. At the end of that account we read that there were 12 baskets of food left over.

God’s supply of grace is never exhausted. In the Old Testament, each day, God fed Israel with heavenly bread called manna. Those that gathered much had no waste and those that gathered a little never went hungry.

It’s just like Jesus – whether you come this morning as someone who has followed Jesus for 50 years or whether you are a brand new believer in Christ this week – He is sufficient for you. He is our heavenly bread.

But how do we eat this heavenly bread? This gift of salvation in the Christ? How do we bite, chew, taste, and swallow? How is that done? The biblical answer is that we do all this by believing in Jesus. We do this by faith. How can we do that? We cannot do that unless God gives us the gift of faith.  (HT: Doug Wilson for the analogy)

Ephesians 2:8 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God

Faith is not something we can generate on our own steam. Faith is not something we can pull up, like socks, by some kind of self-effort. Faith is “by grace”. You eat grace, and you eat by grace. And this is why we say grace.

If you have eaten this heavenly bread – believed in Jesus then join us and eat this earthly bread as a celebration and reminder of God’s gift to us. If not, please do not take the bread and the cup, instead, as they come around, take Jesus. Receive him in your heart as those next to you receive the food and drink.

[1 Corinthians 11:23-29]

Let us thank God for this meal and for Jesus, the bread of life:

Heavenly Father, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed or imagined, but through your Son Jesus, I can be more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you that he lived the life I should have lived, and paid the debt and punishment I owed. Receive me now for his sake. I turn from my sins and receive him as Saviour … Amen.

As the bread is broken and distributed – remember Jesus broken body – the payment of your sin debt and thank God for this.
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The juice of the vine is a symbol of joy and gladness and a promise of resurrection. Jesus shed his life blood for the joy that was set before him of knowing it paid the price of our rescue. As it is distributed we remember that Jesus gave his life in exchange for ours. As we drink this cup, we drink in the water of life that is Jesus.
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John 6:35 – Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

 

The Church of Climate Alarm

SMH’s Miranda Devine comments on the new fundamentalism.

…essentially Plimer’s message is that the idea humans cause climate change has become a fundamentalist religion which is corrupting science. It is embedded with a fear of nature and embraced principally by city people who have lost touch with nature.

He likens the debate to the famous 1990s battle he had in the Federal Court, where he accused an elder of The Hills Bible Church in Baulkham Hills of breaching Australia’s Trade Practices Act by claiming to have found scientific evidence of Noah’s Ark in Turkey.

Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that “we’re dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational”.

Human-caused climate change is being “promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance.”

Somewhat akin to Jesus’ warning to some ancient fundamentalists, beware what you “swallow” without thinking:

You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Matthew 23:24