The Trembling Earth

Posted on by korgrocker

“The Red Sea waters saw them coming and ran the other way!
Then later, the Jordan River too 
moved aside so that they could all pass through.
The land shuddered with fear. 
Mountains and hills shook with dread. 
O sea, what happened to you to make you flee? 
O Jordan, what was it that made you turn and run? 
O mountains, what frightened you so? 
And you hills, what made you shiver? 
Tremble, O earth, for you are in the presence of the Lord, 
the presence of the God of Jacob.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭114:3-7‬ ‭TPT‬‬

We read the historical and prophetic accounts contained within what we Christians call the Old Testament, and wonder about the nature of the events described. Are they accounts seasoned with traditional, word of mouth legends handed down from one generation to the next, or did the described events actually happen? Did the Red Sea really part? Did the Jordan River really stop flowing? And there are other events that took place in the Bible that seem against natural laws. Did the rock really release rivers of water when Moses struck it with his staff? Did the Jericho walls really collapse when the Israelites gave a shout and blew their trumpets? Did the ground really collapse and swallow up the family of Korah in the Numbers 16 account? Over the years I have heard two categories of response to these questions – one is the secular and liberal theology approach, that these Bible stories are just that, stories. Fictional accounts, or at least myths that some people try and explain away or discount by applying modern thought and archaeological research. But the other response is one of a fundamental belief in the infallibility of Scripture. A belief that these events really happened, just as they had been written. Sometimes people adopt a hybrid approach to these two extremes, accepting some accounts and not others. Others protest with the thought, “What does is all matter anyway?” 

This Psalm contains a fundamental, irrefutable theme – that God is the Creator of the Earth and everything within it. That He is able to make things happen in His creation because He is God. He is the all-powerful, ever present Almighty. And the palpable sense of awe in God’s presence manifests itself in the Psalmist’s graphic language of how the earth was responding, our world that we take to be fixed and immovable, but in his account frightened and shivering when God was there. 

As pilgrims in this life, we can trudge along, bounded by what we think are “natural laws”, or we can develop a sense of excitement that we are in the presence of Almighty God, our Creator who is able to do anything because he is all-powerful. Adopting an expectant feeling that whatever is facing us in our journey, God is there to help us, able to move the mountains in our paths. Without God’s intervention, the Israelites would have been recaptured or destroyed by the well-equipped Egyptian army when they encountered the Red Sea. Without God’s intervention, they would have been unable to pass over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. However, such miraculous events were not just for the Old Testament; Jesus Himself taught about the power we have over the natural world in Matthew 17:20, “I promise you, if you have faith inside of you no bigger than the size of a small mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move away from here and go over there,’ and you will see it move! There is nothing you couldn’t do!” Jesus walked on water. He stilled the storms. He healed the sick and raised the dead, and, amazingly, He said in John 14:12, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Now that’s challenging. 

So what do make of all this? Are we feeling a sense of excitement building within us at what we can do though and with our amazing Heavenly Father? Or are we going to continue to tramp through a monochrome world, bounded and limited by our puny and inadequate natural abilities? We may not have the faith to make one of our local hills disappear, but what about stretching our faith to pray for the sick old lady next door, believing for her healing? Or believe God for …. (fill in your own faith need)? Tasha Cobbs sings a song, “This is a Move”. Let’s sing it together today – it’s on YouTube if you don’t know it. Here are the first two verses.

Mountains are still being moved
Strongholds are still being loosed
God, we believe
‘Cause yes, we can see it
That wonders are still what you do

And bodies are still being raised
Giants are still being slayed
God, we believe
Yes, we can see it
That wonders are still what you do

Paupers to Princes

Posted on by korgrocker

“No one can be compared to God, enthroned on high! 
He stoops down to look upon the sky and the earth. 
He promotes the poor, picking them up from the dirt, 
and rescues the needy from the garbage dump. 
He turns paupers into princes and seats them 
on their royal thrones of honour. 
God’s grace provides for the barren ones a joyful home with children 
so that even childless couples find a family. 
He makes them happy parents surrounded by their pride and joy. 
That’s the God we praise, so give it all to him!”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭113:5-9‬ ‭TPT‬‬

I’ve opened up Psalm 113 this morning, using the Passion Translation. It’s a Psalm that starts with the praise of God, “from sunrise-brilliance to sunset-beauty”. And it continues with how God “stoops down to look upon the sky and the earth”. The Psalmist highlights the poor, the needy and childless parents, the least favoured in the society of his day because he knows God has compassion for them. In fact, the Psalmist says that God “promotes”, “rescues”, “turns” and “makes”, all action words describing what God does for them. So we have read this Psalm and are about to leave it, feeling a warm glow of gratitude for our wonderful God, when this problematic thought lands – how many times had the Psalmist seen a poor person, one who was dirt-poor, hanging desperately onto life by rummaging in a garbage dump, and all of a sudden finding themselves “sitting on a royal throne of honour”? How many times had the Psalmist seen a childless woman have children? But on top of all that, when have we, in the 21st Century, many years after this Psalm was written, seen paupers becoming princes, or the childless having a family? Because even today, with all our societal and medical prowess, we find that there are still poor people rummaging in garbage dumps and there are still childless couples, in spite of amazing medical advances with IVF. At this point, we might walk away perplexed by a situation that seems to be elevating God to a place where He is praised for things He hasn’t done.

And then we realise – there are two kingdoms – the earthly kingdom and the Kingdom of God. And from the latter, God looks into our world, with compassion and love, His heart breaking when He sees the life-challenges and agony that some people are enduring. Of course He is able to perform miracles because he is all-powerful, but in our Godless world, riven with a lack of faith, where He is rejected by those who deny that He even exists, in a world blighted by sin, His opportunities are limited by our choices. Even Jesus was constrained on one occasion from doing many miracles by the people’s lack of faith (as we read in Matthew 13:58). But nevertheless, God’s love for mankind knows no bounds and so He offers the opportunity for us all to translate from being a pauper in the world’s kingdom to being a prince in His Kingdom. 

We all have this invitation. We all have this opportunity. By repenting of our sins, looking in faith at Jesus, God’s Son, acknowledging who He is and what He has done for us, we can become citizens of the Kingdom of God. We can become princes, royal sons and daughters of the Creator of the Universe. And we can bank our heritage, waiting for the day when we are welcomed into Heaven and shown the “royal throne of honour”. 

But what about today? How does this impact the pilgrims like us, trudging through the mud of this world, perhaps wishing that we had some of our eternal benefits in this life now? Well, we do. We may be poor in worldly terms but we are rich in God’s kingdom. We may be paupers in the world’s eyes, but in God’s eyes we are princes. And we have the wonderful presence of God’s Spirit with us regardless of our worldly status. Wherever we are. Wherever we go. But more than that, somehow God’s provision in this life is always available in answer to our faith-filled prayers. We only have to ask. “That’s the God we praise, so give it all to him!”

Confidence

Posted on by korgrocker

“Good comes to those who lend money generously
    and conduct their business fairly. 
Such people will not be overcome by evil.
    Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
They do not fear bad news;
    they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
    and can face their foes triumphantly.“
Psalm 112:5-8 NLT

To be a confident person in this day and age can be a wonderful place, and is even better if that confidence is based on our trust in the Lord. You see, to be truly effective, the confidence we have must be founded on a place of security, and that doesn’t include our own human understanding and abilities. Our prisons contain many confident people, but their confidence was misplaced and underpinned by wrong foundations and motives.

This Psalm presents a counter-cultural world, in which fairness, in this case in regard to money, is recognised and imputed as righteousness. And from that place, such people know that they are aligned with God’s Kingdom and therefore can trust God to look after and care for them. In today’s Covid-ridden society, bad news is also pandemic, and it induces high levels of anxiety in people, bringing on ever-increasing degrees of mental health challenges. But the “such people” in our Psalm are balanced mentally and “do not fear bad news“. And from their position of God-confidence, they can face the world fearlessly. 1 John 4:4 reads, “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.”

So on our pilgrimage in this world, a journey full of the pandemics of life, we are in a position of unassailable confidence. Quite simply, we have a God who cares for us, and we have the knowledge that the Holy Spirit within us is a true foundation, stronger than anything to be found in this world. But what should we do with our confidence? Sit at home in a smug, warm glow, thinking like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11, “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people…”? No. God has given us a confident ability to reach an anxious and sin-soaked world with His message of hope. Let’s do it! 

Obey for Wisdom

Posted on by korgrocker

“Praise the Lord! 
I will thank the Lord with all my heart
as I meet with His godly people. 
How amazing are the deeds of the Lord! 
All who delight in Him should ponder them.
All He does is just and good, 
and all His commandments are trustworthy. 
He has paid a full ransom for his people. 
He has guaranteed His covenant with them forever. 
What a holy, awe-inspiring name He has!
Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom. 
All who obey His commandments will grow in wisdom. 
Praise Him forever!”
Psalms‬ ‭111:1-2, 7, 9-10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

A Psalm that starts and ends with the praise of God. And the Psalmist scratches down his thoughts of God’s goodness and mercy, His provision to His people, His trustworthy commandments and the wisdom available to His people. In this Psalm there is perhaps even a prophetic glimpse of the coming Messiah, peering round the edge of the parchment. 

But there is a profound, far-reaching, and even mind-blowing statement in verse 10. Can we really achieve “true wisdom” by following God’s commandments? It might be said that there are many around lacking wisdom but who have still kept the commandments. But the Bible has many more “commandments” than those we find in Exodus 20. The word implies what is perhaps a way of life, a mindset devoted to follow and understand God and His ways. A devotion to mine the diamonds contained within His Word, the Bible, bringing to the surface all the wisdom-thoughts contained there. A commitment to assimilate God’s ways, thoughts and instructions, that have been implanted in print over a period of 4000 years or so. Accumulated wisdom that is available for our use. It’s all about aligning our lives away from the materialistic and worldly secularism around us and instead adopting a life-style crafted and modelled on God and His Kingdom. The driver for all of this is the use of the word “fear”. But it’s not a meaning that implies the thought that God could zap us any time we stray out of line. Instead it is the thought that He is our real, living, and ever-present Creator, inviting us to respond to Him with a holy respect, a sense of awe, and a serious appreciation of who He is. 

The word “obey” isn’t a popular one either. It conjures up thoughts of subservience at odds with our “Me – it’s all about me” society. Thoughts of “Who are you to tell me what I should do” rise up within us and lead us down a destructive path of rejection of God’s ways, of God’s commandments. But God has placed His wisdom within His Word for us to find and apply in our lives, and to do that we have to adopt an obedient and willing attitude, gratefully embracing all God has for us. And by doing so, His wisdom makes the transition from the pages into our hearts. 

The Bible is a wonderful book. It is truly “God-breathed” and I constantly marvel that every time I read a few verses, something new leaps out of the page. Let’s redouble our efforts in reading His Word – it won’t do us any harm, and it might just save our lives.

Difficult Questions

Posted on by korgrocker

“The Lord says to my Lord: 
‘Sit at my right hand 
until I make your enemies 
a footstool for your feet.’”
Psalms‬ ‭110:1‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

Psalm 110 is another Davidic Psalm, full of prophetic and apocryphal language. The verse I’ve chosen today was quoted by Jesus during one of His conversations with the Pharisees; He used it to ask a difficult question of the religious leaders of His day, one that they couldn’t answer. The details of the conversation were recorded in Matthew 22. 

I read this Psalm, and find myself at a loss to understand at first how it will help the modern day pilgrim, in his or her journey through this life. There is obviously a time coming, prophetically laid out, of when Jesus, the Son of God, will rule and reign one day in the future. It will be a time of judgement, of battle, of triumph, of defeat of the forces that will be arraigned against Him. It’s encouraging to know the contents of a future chapter in the book of this world’s history. As I scan the verses in this Psalm, some nuggets of truth emerge. About God’s unchanging promise that His enemies will one day be defeated, by His Son Jesus ruling at the head of an army of His troops. About His priestly role, leading the spiritual future of His people. About judgement bringing about the justice God’s people can only dream of today. It is these thoughts that will sustain us when our lives are difficult and challenging. 

The Bible contains difficult questions, like the one Jesus asked of the Pharisees when He quoted this Psalm. And in some places the Biblical records and accounts can be interpreted in different ways. So how do we handle challenging Biblical and theological questions when asked by those around us? I’m sure some people lay awake at night trying to dream up traps to undermine us. A genuine seeker after truth should be answered and carefully helped to understand the answer to their difficulties; if necessary we must go away and research the answer with the help of the Holy Spirit; if we don’t know the answer we should say so. And we thank God for the apologists who interface the Bible truths to everyday life, and provide light in dark corners; such people we can refer our questioners to if necessary. 

In our everyday lives, we too can have questions about difficult-to-understand passages in the Bible. At such times, we keep close to our Heavenly Father, trusting Him to provide all the answers we need for our journeys. And we need to take our life-steps, with the faith that God knows what is best for us. Perhaps Proverbs 3:6 is a good go-to place today: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Sometimes we don’t need answers to difficult questions – we just need God.

‭‭

Evil for Good

Posted on by korgrocker

“O God, whom I praise,
don’t stand silent and aloof
while the wicked slander me
and tell lies about me.
They surround me with hateful words
and fight against me for no reason.
I love them, but they try to destroy me with accusations
even as I am praying for them!
They repay evil for good,
and hatred for my love.”
Psalm 109:1-5. NLT

David is being slandered by people telling lies about him. And he appeals to his Heavenly Advocate for vindication. He appeals to God Himself, that He will get involved in the injustice David is experiencing. David feels particularly aggrieved because the people he loves, the people he prays for, are all paying back his goodness to them with a wicked and evil response. And much of the Psalm is devoted to a list of what the evil people are saying about him and what they would like to do to him. 

I’m sure we have all been in a place where we think or feel that people are saying negative things about us. Those whispers and sidelong glances apparently pointed towards us in the office, at a party, in the school playground or on a university campus (for those of us young enough to remember!). It’s human nature to amplify what might not really be a negative situation or a problem into a full blown disaster, with our thinking extrapolating into worries that people might want to murder us, or slander us at the very least. And before we know it we retreat into a corner, behind our front doors, anywhere, away from the potential or imagined abuse that we’re suffering, to a place where we anxiously dwell on the injustices of life. Was David suffering from paranoia, or was there a real problem with his friends and relatives, with those people he knew? Either way, it doesn’t matter, because the attack upon him was to him very real.

What about us? Do we suffer from paranoia, or are we too experiencing all sorts of unmerited abuse? We can take a lesson from David and his life. Having listed all the abuse being lined up against him, he finishes the Psalm with this: “May my accusers be clothed with disgrace; may their humiliation cover them like a cloak. But I will give repeated thanks to the Lord, praising him to everyone. For he stands beside the needy, ready to save them from those who condemn them“. That’s the place we need to find. In the end it doesn’t matter what others think about us. For me, God is enough. He has told me, and still tells me, that He loves me. The Passion translation of the Bible translates 1 John 3:1 as, “Look with wonder at the depth of the Father’s marvellous love that he has lavished on us! He has called us and made us his very own beloved children.” Somehow, as we rest in our status as God’s children, it doesn’t matter much what others think of us. It’s what God thinks that matters. And He loves me.

Confident Faith

Posted on by korgrocker

“O God, my heart is steadfast [with confident faith]; 
I will sing, I will sing praises, even with my soul. 
Awake, harp and lyre; 
I will awaken the dawn! 
I will praise and give thanks to You, O Lord, among the 
people; 
And I will sing praises to You among the nations.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭108:1-3‬ ‭AMP‬‬

David once again picks up the Psalmist’s pen. And he immediately bursts out in praise for his God, our God. It seems strange that we are linked to David through our loving Heavenly Father, over the centuries, over the miles. Linked with someone long dead but very much alive through his writings. David was a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam 13:14) yet spent most of his life warring with people both inside and outside his country. We have a parallel with this too, as we journey through life, warring with our sin, struggling with the increasing secularisation of our society, and facing into our own sets of individual “giants”. But David had a quality we would do well to grow and emulate – he had a heart that was steadfast and confident in faith, faith that he had a loving Heavenly Father, as close to him as a brother. And that relationship prevailed through all of David’s life, a life devoted in his service to God. It did not mean that David’s life was not without its challenges. He battled with people, he battled with his family, he battled with his sin. David was in many ways a larger than life character who encountered many giants, not just Goliath, but, and here’s the thing, he had a steadfast, unmovable and confident faith that God was there for him and would come through for him no matter what he was facing into.

David was a pilgrim through a life set in a certain period of history. David faced into challenges we will never experience, but his faith in God carried him through.  We too are on a pilgrimage through life in our period of history, facing into challenges that we perhaps would rather not face, the clocking ticking away just as it did in David’s day. But just as God was there for David, He will be there for us too. We too can awake the dawn with our praises, thanking God for His wonderful love and grace. And we too can stand strong with a steadfast heart, with confident faith in our wonderful and awesome giant-killing God.

Distress

Posted on by korgrocker

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! 
His faithful love endures forever. 
“Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, 
and He rescued them from their distress. 
Let them praise the Lord for His great love 
and for the wonderful things He has done for them.
Those who are wise will take all this to heart; 
they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.”
Psalms‬ ‭107:1, 6, 31, 43‬ ‭NLT‬‬

This is a wonderful Psalm full of testimonies about the goodness of God, about His saving grace and response to His people’s distress. The sixth verse is repeated a further three times, on each occasion defining a pivotal moment, when God answered His people’s cries for help in their times of trouble. Two rescue themes in this Psalm emerge – one of them when God responds to His people’s predicament caused by their own bad choices, and the other when they were caught up in a natural calamity. The Psalm concludes with a section outlining the consequences of “wickedness” being applied to the environment in which the people live, and then how the hungry and poor are blessed, while the leaders, the “princes” are let loose into “wastelands”. This Psalm could almost be the plot of a movie, setting out as it does a storyboard of how the oppressed and the distressed come through in the end, with God’s help, into a place of rescue.

What about distress today? There is certainly enough of it around us, even in the supposedly affluent Western societies in which some of us live. In particular in the UK the Food Banks are in great demand, as people in need are provided with sufficient provisions to keep them going in their time of distress. Charity shops abound in shopping centres once thrumming with commerce but now full of empty shops. There is almost a society within society, defining a distressed underclass, surely defining a modern equivalent of the Biblical times that we read about in this Psalm. And a thought of compassion enters my mind, perhaps a God-thought, of how people, rich and poor, stagger through life without God in their lives. Everyone, at one time or another, will endure a crisis where they need Someone to call out to, Someone who will “rescue them in their distress”. As verses 10 and 11 say, they sit in darkness and deepest gloom, imprisoned in iron chains of misery, their rebellion against God compounding their distress.

Are any of us in difficulties this morning? The loving Heavenly Father that I know is there for us and with us. And as we cry out in our troubles, The Psalmist says that He will save us from our distress. As I look back over my life, to the times when I offered up to God my prayerful cries for help, to each I received one of three possible outcomes. The first was an instant Divine rescue – an immediate answer to my prayer. The second was also a positive God-response, but one that took place over a period of time, in one case nearly a year. And the third was no response at all, leaving me in a hard and difficult place. But through it all, whatever the response, I know that God was there for me. So today, I not only believe that He answers prayer. I know that He does. And a negative or lacking response does not mean that God doesn’t care for me. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans – “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord“. So in the times of silence, while I walk in my life-pilgrimage through difficult times of trouble, I know that God is there with me. I only have to reach out and feel His touch. Somehow the troubles don’t seem nearly as bad then.

Heritage

Posted on by korgrocker

“Remember me, Lord, when You show favour to Your people;
    come near and rescue me.
Let me share in the prosperity of Your chosen ones.
    Let me rejoice in the joy of Your people;
    let me praise You with those who are Your heritage.”

Psalm 106:4-5 NLT

The Psalmist, in these two verses, seems to have adopted a position of observing the benefits of being a member of God’s “chosen ones“, without being one of them. He recognises God’s people as being prosperous and full of joy. He thinks that God every so often favours and rescues them. And the Psalmist wants to join them. He wants to be part of that sharing, praising and rejoicing people. Part of God’s heritage.

Heritage. That’s an interesting word. It’s usually used in connection with possessions such as valued artefacts or buildings. But in this context it is used as referring to God’s people. His valued possessions. If I floated the idea that we are someone’s “valued possession” the thoughts of slavery and a loss of freedom start to emerge. But if that idea was associated with being a member of an exclusive club with many benefits we might think differently. We would weigh the apparent loss of liberty with the benefits of being a “possession”. But all this is a worldly perspective. 

Taking the two verses today, the Psalmist seems to long to join God’s people but without the knowledge of how to do that. He asks God to “remember him” when His favour is dispensed. But as Christians we have the knowledge of how to become one of God’s people, because we have already transitioned from the kingdom of the devil to the Kingdom of God. How did we do that? There are many Scriptures in the Bible that show the way. Here are two verses from John 1. “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.” Because we believe in Jesus and all that he did for us at Calvary, we have the opportunity to become part of God’s heritage. We are born again into His Kingdom. I’m sure that the Psalmist would have fallen over himself to change his heritage, had he been able to read, understand, and apply these verses.

Do we know anyone today, who is longingly looking over the fence into God’s Kingdom? We have the Gospel message ready and waiting to help them. Let us polish up our stories of God’s grace and mercy – we never know when we might get an opportunity to help someone to climb over the fence.

Covenants

Posted on by korgrocker

He always stands by his covenant—
    the commitment he made to a thousand generations.
Psalm 105:8 NLT

This verse describes God’s faithfulness in the covenant He made to His people, the Jews. It’s a covenant He is going to keep. What was it? A covenant is a binding agreement made between two parties. And in Genesis 17 we read, “.. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you“. He will not try and wriggle His way out of it, when the going gets tough, as humans might do. But the covenantal agreement between God and His people was in two parts. God promised for His part to be always with them. And for their part they had to be obedient to Him and His laws, with a regime of sacrifices to atone for their sins. And as far as God was concerned His promise was eternal. Sadly, we see from the Old Testament the constant struggle the Jewish nation had in keeping their part of the agreement. 

Through Jesus, God brought about a New Covenant. This New Covenant was mentioned by Jeremiah – he could see, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a time coming when God would initiate a New Covenant. We read in Jeremiah 31:33, “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” In Hebrews 7:22, we read, “…Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God“. In the New Covenant, God offered the free gift of forgiveness for our sins through Jesus’ sacrificial death at Calvary, and our responsibility is to have faith in what He did for us, in the process enjoying an eternal relationship with God.

But will God’s commitment come to an end? In today’s verse the Psalmist points out that God has limited His covenant to a thousand generations. It doesn’t seem so much until we realise that the genealogies in the Bible add up to around one hundred generations from Adam until today. So a thousand generations is as good as eternity.
But the important point of the Covenant is that God is a real, loving, Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus died to redeem us from the consequences of our sins, and we have an invitation to spend eternity with Him. Seems a good deal to me.