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They Trusted in God

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced.”
Psalm 22:3-5 NLT

David wrote that his ancestors and the ancestors of those in his nation “trusted in [God]” and as a consequence were rescued. And because of that trust, they were saved and “were never disgraced”. The ancestry of the Jews was well recorded in the Bible, with frequent listings of the ancestry of a particular person. Women were only rarely mentioned, these lists being male dominated, but the most significant can be found in Matthew, with the “record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). There follows a list of Jesus’ ancestors starting with Abraham, and the list terminates with “All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17). Worthy of note were four remarkable women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba, but there were forty two generations listed in total. But if we select various men in the list we can indeed find many whose trust in God was recorded in the Old Testament. In Genesis 15:6 we find, “And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith“. In Psalm 56:4, David wrote, “I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?” And then we have, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time” (2 Kings 18:5). It is remarkable that there is such a genealogy backed by occasional stories of Jesus’ ancestors trusting in God, but when the Angel Gabriel visited that young Jewish woman, little more than a girl herself, God knew what was behind her, and He was never disappointed, because Mary was a remarkable woman, ready and willing even at a young age, to take on the responsibility of raising God’s own Son, Jesus, and trust God in the process.

How much of our ancestry do we pilgrims know? I know very little beyond my grandparents, with just a few hints remaining in fading sepia prints of their parents, and even then I know nothing about their spirituality other than my mother’s parents went to a particular church and their remains are buried in the graveyard there. But I suppose the question remains about the legacy we are leaving for the generations that will follow us. Near where I live is a graveyard with grave stones recording the names, and sometimes families, or people who died in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the church, the Dunfermline Abbey, there are other plaques that go right back to the 11th Century I believe. King Robert the Bruce was supposed to be buried there in 1329, but the Abbey is an old building, solid and reassuring, but sadly now little more than a mausoleum, standing there as a reminder of a move of God’s Spirit in a previous generation long ago. 

But the important fact about our ancestry is that, although records of people and their names are long lost, their impacts live on in the generations that followed them. By that I mean that they laid a Christian foundation that has stood the test of time. We may have ageing congregations in some churches, with dwindling numbers, but God is once again on the move. I was greatly encouraged to receive an email from Gavin Calver, CEO of the Evangelical Alliance, yesterday, and the first paragraph reads, “It was hugely encouraging to see new research ‘The Quiet Revival’ released by the Bible Society this week. The research says that Gen Z is leading a massive rise in church attendance, with 16% of 18–24-year-olds attending church and more men going to church than women. Overall church attendance has risen by 50% over the last six years, resulting in over two million more people going to church”. Jesus is in control of His church and He made a promise to His disciple Peter one day, “Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18). And the fact that we pilgrims are here today, proclaiming the Lordship of Christ, is an indication that Jesus’ promise still stands, with not even all the powers at the disposal of the devil able to destroy it.

What legacy are we pilgrims leaving our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond? For myself, I pray that it will be more than an epitaph on a tombstone somewhere. But if we don’t have a legacy plan in place it will be a lost opportunity. As David said in the verses from Psalm 22 we are considering today, we trust in God to rescue us, to save us, and to keep us from disgrace. That’s what happened to his ancestors and because of that he knew that the Lord was holy and there was nothing more he enjoyed more than seeing God “enthroned on the praises of Israel”. We pilgrims look forward to the future generations in our family lines and we pray that they too will look back at us, assured that their ancestors did something special in God, trusting in Him with their lives.

Dear Father God. We declare our trust in You, the only One worthy of all the praise and all the glory. Amen.

Abandonment

Posted on by korgrocker

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help? Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief.”
Psalm 22:1-2 NLT

Why did David write Psalm 22? What was he going through at that time? We don’t really know of course, but we do know that he wasn’t in a good place. Riven by depression, his prayers failing to penetrate the clouds above him, he could find no relief. Perhaps he was sick, with some form of debilitating illness. Perhaps he had been through a situation where he felt trapped in a hopeless place, with no remedy in sight. But he did what he did often – he reached for his pen and starting writing, and we’re so glad that he did, because across his Psalms we have a legacy of situations with which we can often relate. How many times have we pilgrims woken in the small hours, anxious and worried, eventually praying but finding no answers? At such times perhaps we too think that God has abandoned us. David’s situation seemed to be going on day after day, with no relief in sight, but one thing does emerge – he calls on God. Would we have turned our backs on God, if we had been standing in David’s shoes? But in those small hours there is nothing better than for us to pick up our Bibles, head for a comfortable seat, and read a Psalm or two. And the God of comfort will minister to us I’m sure.

As we pilgrims know, Jesus cried out the words of the first verse from Psalm 22 in His dying moments on the cross. We read in Matthew 27:46, “At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”” Did Father God really abandon His Son? Jesus thought so, but did God really abandon His Son to take on our sins so that we could take on His Son’s righteousness? Sad though it might seem, that is what the Bible tells us and we have the poignant scene of Jesus, for the first time ever, cut off from His Father. David described His pain so clearly, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Jesus really thought.

There is nothing worse than being abandoned. A newborn baby abandoned on a church step, a child abandoned by its mother in the hope that someone would hear the cries echoing in the darkness, bringing salvation to a young life. And then we hear of a child being abandoned through no fault of the parents, perhaps killed in a car crash or having succumbed to an illness. There is also something sad about old couples separated by the death of one of them, sometimes after 60 or 70 years even, leaving the surviving partner with a deep feeling of loss and abandonment. Jesus’ parents were riven with guilt when Jesus was lost as a young man. Mary and Joseph each thought that Jesus was with the other, and they quickly returned to Jerusalem to find Him. He wasn’t abandoned, but I expect that was what Mary and Joseph thought had happened. Abandonment is not uncommon in our day and age, and it is never pleasant. But to be abandoned in the way that Jesus was by His Father that Easter Friday – that shows just how much God loves us and how He desires for us to be with Him one day.

We read in Psalm 68:5-6a how God is interested in those who have been abandoned. “Father to the fatherless, defender of widows— this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families…”. Paul gave us a glimpse of God’s heart for His people when he wrote, “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). No matter how we feel or whatever the situation, abandoned or otherwise, that we find ourselves in, God will always be there for us. 

One thing is for sure. We pilgrims will never abandon God. Jesus asked His disciples if they wanted to follow other less committed followers who had abandoned Him, but Peter spoke up for all of them when he said, “ … Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life” (John 6:68). There is no place where we would rather be, than in God’s presence forever.

Dear Lord God. You have placed eternity in our souls and we never feel that You have abandoned us. We praise and worship You today. Amen.

Celebrating God’s Mighty Acts

Posted on by korgrocker

“You will wipe their children from the face of the earth; they will never have descendants. Although they plot against you, their evil schemes will never succeed. For they will turn and run when they see your arrows aimed at them. Rise up, O Lord, in all your power. With music and singing we celebrate your mighty acts.”
Psalm 21:10-13 NLT

If there is ever a time in history when we need God to “rise up” in all His power, it is today. We look around at the world and see the wars, not just in a physical sense, but also in the sphere of global macro-economics. We see the misery of people stuck in a hopeless cycle of drug and alcohol addiction. We read about the people who want to end their lives because living doesn’t appeal to them anymore. We see the tragedy of unborn babies being eliminated in the name of women’s health. But I expect many in our past have called upon God to rise up in power. What prayers and cries to God were going up during the last world war? What were relatives praying when their loved ones were dying in the Covid pandemic? What about the times when untreatable sicknesses were rife in Victorian days? And all the way back to David’s day and beyond, there were crises, one after another, when people cried out to God for help. And how many people are suffering today, persecuted and abused just for believing in God? Part of living in an evil and sinful world is the reality that there will be times of difficulty, misery, pain, and hopelessness. But having written all of this, there is hope. David finished Psalm 21 with the words, “With music and singing we celebrate your mighty acts”. That implies that there were, and are, times when God does act. In fact, I am sure that God is holding back most of the evil that is poised, waiting to be unleashed on a helpless world full of God’s creation, evil that the devil and his assistants are concocting to bring unbearable misery. 

When God created the earth and all that is upon it, He said it was good. All that we perceive as evil just wasn’t there, but a Heavenly being, an angel called Lucifer, or Satan, rebelled against God and had to be removed from Heaven, which is the sinless domain where God lives. Unfortunately, the angels are immortal beings so there was only one other place that the rebellious angels could go and that was Planet Earth. Isaiah 14:12, “How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world“. And so there is a struggle between how God created us, good and perfect, and the devil and all his evil ways, that has resulted in a world tainted with sin. Many of David’s Psalms portray the struggle that has resulted. But in it all, David was close to the Lord, and could testify to the mighty acts of God worked out in his life during his reign as king of Israel. 

In our lives today, we pilgrims too can testify to the mighty acts of God. The first is the act of redemption and atonement that God Himself brought right down to Planet Earth. An act of love and compassion never before seen, and it will never again occur. It was a once only event, a time when Heaven and earth, the spiritual and the natural, collided and one that signed the death warrant for the devil and all his schemes. The devil thought that by bringing about the crucifixion and death of God’s only Son, Jesus, he would finally win the war between Good and Evil, but how wrong he was. There is now a conduit between earth and Heaven that allows human beings to escape from his clutches. Yes, we pilgrims are still living in a world of evil and sin, even to the point where we too are entangled in sinful ways, but as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, we have been set free and we are assured forgiveness and redemption through Jesus. 

We pilgrims can also sing and praise God for His “mighty acts” in the way He has brought about events in our own lives. I can personally testify to many occasions when God has come through for me and my family, as we trusted Him for direction and favour in a time of crisis. And I’m sure my readers also have their own stories of how God has blessed them. And so together we can celebrate His “mighty acts” with singing and music. There is no God like our God. Who else is there who can pour out on us so much love and compassion? Who else can forgive us for our sins and bring us ultimately to our Heavenly home? Who else is there who can wipe away our tears and heal our diseases? But even in times when it appears the doors of Heaven are shut and our prayers bounce back unheeded, we can stand firm as Habakkuk did when he wrote, “Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!” (Habakkuk 3:17-18). We know that the battles waging around us will ebb and flow, but we are certain, as Jesus said, ” … the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). In the meantime we will sing and make music in honour, and to the glory, of the One who has performed “mighty acts”.

Dear Father God. You and only You are the One who loves and cares for us and our souls. We worship You with grateful hearts today. Amen.

The Fiery Furnace

Posted on by korgrocker

“You will capture all your enemies. Your strong right hand will seize all who hate you. You will throw them in a flaming furnace when you appear. The Lord will consume them in his anger; fire will devour them.
Psalm 21:8-9 NLT

‭‭Apocalyptic language from David. He set out a terrible end for God’s enemies, graphically describing their end in life, “devoured by fire”. There is no escape for the God-haters in this world, because God has a “strong right hand” that will “seize all who hate” Him. Notice too that there will be a “flaming furnace” ready and waiting, and it is there that God’s enemies will be consumed. But who are these “enemies”? The thing about God is that He is not a physical, natural, Being, who walks around Planet Earth in Person today. For many people it would be a relief if He did, because it would bring encouragement for His people, and provide a focus for all those who decided that they didn’t like His goodness and holiness. But then we pause, because God did walk around this earth two thousand years ago. His Son, Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, came to this earth, and God’s enemies soon came out of the woodwork with accusations and aggressive antipathy, a triple-A package of hate. But how could anyone, no matter how bad they are, ever resent and even hate the Man who brought love and forgiveness to a world steeped in sin. However, a mob stirred up by the Jews’ religious leaders ultimately engineered His death on a Roman cross, thinking that they were bringing religious stability to a fractious region in the Middle East, but instead bringing God’s plan for the salvation of mankind to a momentous and complete conclusion. Why was Jesus so contentious, and how did He become such a figure of hate? Because those people who were quite happy living a life of sin became very uncomfortable when faced with the sinless Man Jesus. A Man who pointed out to them their hypocrisy, their devil-inspired ways, their hatred of the God that Jesus represented. As Jesus once pointed out, their God was the devil and he called him the god of this world. And so, Jesus died as he predicted and as the Old testament prophets foretold, lifted up above the earth nailed to a cross.

Jesus said to the Pharisees and the other religious leaders, “For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). God’s enemies emerge as those who love evil, and hate good. There is no middle ground, however, because human beings are natural sinners and by default are God’s enemies. After all how can a perfectly pure and holy God ever allow evil of any kind into His presence. Intuitively, people know that but it doesn’t stop them changing their ways. The pull and attraction of sin is too strong for most. It is only by the acknowledgement, confession, and repentance from sin that forgiveness and righteousness can result. And then, at this point, people cease to be God’s enemies. 

There will come a day when God’s enemies will be dealt with. Thankfully, the eternal flaming furnace has not yet been lit. Its first inhabitants will be the devil and his minions, but they will be followed by God’s enemies. We can read the account in Revelation 19 and 20. Grim reading, but even then God’s enemies have rationalised that such an event will never happen. After all, many claim, how can a God of love even treat a person in that way, human thinking that underpins the doctrine of Universalism. But the Bible is clear, that although God is indeed a God of love, full of mercy and compassion, He is also a God of holiness and righteousness. So how can sinners steeped in evil ever appear in His presence? 

But enough of the negatives of how God will deal with His enemies. We start with Romans 3:23-26, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus”. These are forever words, simple but eternally effective, and difficult to present in any other way. We move on to Romans 10:9-10, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved“. ‭‭The process of acknowledgement and repentance from sins and believing in God, will transform an enemy of God into His friend. At a stroke. But a decision made to believe in Jesus will insure that we will never have to be thrown into that fiery furnace. Ever.

Dear Father God. The thought of the flaming furnace is surely enough to convince all of Your enemies of their sin. Please help us to share Your love and justice with those around us, in a way that helps them realise that You are the only way to eternal life. Amen.

Trust In The Lord

Posted on by korgrocker

“Your victory brings him great honour, and you have clothed him with splendour and majesty. You have endowed him with eternal blessings and given him the joy of your presence. For the king trusts in the Lord. The unfailing love of the Most High will keep him from stumbling.”
Psalm 21:5-7 NLT

Just a simple statement lacking drama, almost written as an aside – “For the king trusts in the Lord”. It stands as the tip of an iceberg, with much implied explanation and background information hidden beneath it. The sentence doesn’t include the how or why of David’s trust. It’s just a statement of fact. But David’s journey to the point when he could state that he trusts in the Lord began at the moment when Samuel anointed him in front of his father and brothers – “So as David stood there among his brothers, Samuel took the flask of olive oil he had brought and anointed David with the oil. And the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David from that day on …” (1 Samuel 16:13). In those pre-Messiah days the Holy Spirit didn’t live in each of God’s people all the time; instead He visited and empowered chosen people for certain tasks when the need was there. So, for David to experience the indwelling Holy Spirit was remarkable. From that moment forward, David learned through his life experiences how to trust in the Lord. Day by day, battle by battle, crisis by crisis, and David went on to write that “the unfailing love of the Most High” would keep him from ever stumbling.

But what does it mean to “trust in the Lord”? Proverbs 3:5 provides a clue, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding“. Our own understanding is flawed because so much of our humanity gets in the way. Our sins, wrong choices, lack of wisdom, and many other factors can all combine to skew our understanding and put us on a path that is far away from what God has planned for us. And, sadly, it is often the case that when we find ourselves in a place of difficulty, there through our own choices, we then turn to God for the guidance that we needed right at the beginning. Proverbs 14:12 reminds us, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death“. 

To be able to trust in someone, we need to get to a place where we can find something in that person that inspires that trust. I trust in my wife of many years because I have come to know her and have experienced her wisdom on many occasions. I know her Godly ways and her willingness to spend long hours in prayer to find God’s will. So before any important decisions are made, I trust her to have the wisdom needed. But can I say the same thing about our politicians? But we won’t go down that rabbit trail today. There is only one way to say, as David did, that we trust in the Lord, and that is through spending time, a lot of time, with God, and trusting Him with everyday matters, in the process building up a relationship on which we can depend. We make sure that we honour and treasure our “Quiet Times” in God’s presence, reading His Word, and engaging Him in prayer. We bring before Him all the hassles and problems, the decisions to be made, our difficulties and stresses, that we face in the day ahead. 

God has made many promises to us. Let us consider one from Philippians 4:6-7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus“. In another Psalm David wrote, “Once I was young, and now I am old. Yet I have never seen the godly abandoned or their children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25). God said that He will supply all our needs and, as David said, if we look around at our fellow believers we see that this is indeed a true statement. But we do see those suffering around us as the result of choices influenced by their own understanding, tainted as it is by sin and a lack of wisdom. We pilgrims search out God’s promises in His Word and apply them in our daily lives, finding that God is indeed unchangeable and true to His Word.

When we trust in God, we are handing control of our lives to the One who knows what is best for us. God sees the End from the Beginning, and when Jesus asked His disciples if they wanted to leave Him, Peter replied, “ … Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life” (John 6:68). There is no other way to complete our journey through life. There is no other ideology, or doctrine, or religion, that will assure us a place in the Home our spirits desire. Only God knows the way we need to take in our lives and we trust Him in the process.

Dear Father God. We proclaim our trust in You today and every day. We praise and worship You. Amen.

Eternal Blessings

Posted on by korgrocker

“Your victory brings him great honour, and you have clothed him with splendour and majesty. You have endowed him with eternal blessings and given him the joy of your presence. For the king trusts in the Lord. The unfailing love of the Most High will keep him from stumbling.”
Psalm 21:5-7 NLT

David testified that God had “endowed him with eternal blessings”. But we need to unpack this a bit, and define what we mean by “blessings”. Our first though is to think about all the material things we have. Our houses and cars, clothes and food, jewellery and ornaments.  And then there are all the “toys” we men in particular enjoy, like cameras and computers, a football season ticket. The list is endless it seems. But none of these are eternal. They are all mostly artefacts that decline over time, and they certainly won’t survive the transition over the Great Divide. As we are only too aware, we arrived in this world with nothing and that is how we will exit it. There was a story, that was supposed to be a joke, that circulated in Christian circles some years ago about a businessman who persuaded God to allow him to take all his gold with him into Heaven. When he subsequently arrived at the Pearly Gates, St Peter asked him what he had in his bag. When the businessman explained and said it was all his earthly wealth, showing Peter all the gold bars and coins, Peter replied that there was no point in bringing that with him, because they only used it to pave the roads in Heaven. A silly story, but it makes the point that earthly wealth has no value, and is not a blessing in Heaven. Jesus warned about being overly obsessed with our material blessings when He said, “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be” (Matthew 6:19-21). Jesus went on to say, “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money” (Matthew 6:24).

So, if eternal blessings are not the ones we enjoy on Planet Earth, what are they? To start with, these are not anything tangible, able to be traded as a commodity on our world stock markets. Put simply, our blessings are eternal only as far as our relationships with God allow. Romans 12:1-2, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect“. To experience eternal blessings, we need to know and understand the meaning of these verses and the impact they must have on the way we live our lives in the here and now. To look at this from the other perspective, if we have no relationship with God, then we will have no “eternal blessings“. And our “eternal blessings” start with Jesus, the greatest blessing of all.

Our treasures must be something we bank in Heaven, where they will be indestructible and in a place of security. We accumulate Heavenly treasure through the ways we live in our natural lives. This comes from establishing the importance of our relationship with Jesus. If it is as it should be then we will always be on the look out for ways to please Him in all we say and do. For example, every time we help someone, another item gets added to our Heavenly treasure chest. Our deposit account in Heaven builds every time we respond to Jesus in obedience and do the things He has asked of us. That even includes our working for a living – Paul wrote, “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24). 

Paul wrote that he was expecting a crown when he arrived in Heaven. “And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8). In Revelation 22:12, Jesus said, “Look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds“. 

‭‭We can experience “eternal blessings” even though we are not yet in Heaven, because we are children of God. Jesus taught His disciples while sitting on the side of a mountain, and we can read the blessings, the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5. The poor, mourners, humble, justice-seekers, merciful, pure, peacemakers, and the persecuted are all blessed and “the Kingdom of heaven is theirs”. But to sum up, the material things we crave for can never bring genuine happiness or contentment. True fulfilment can only be found in a relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1-2 to finish today. “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”

Father God, we are grateful for the many blessings You have poured out on all Your people. We praise and worship You today. Amen.

Eternal Life

Posted on by korgrocker

“You welcomed him back with success and prosperity. You placed a crown of finest gold on his head. He asked you to preserve his life, and you granted his request. The days of his life stretch on forever.”
Psalm 21:3-4 NLT

These verses today are rich with several themes interwoven but all coming together in acknowledging God and giving Him the glory for all He had done for David. David had returned victorious from a battle, or had won an important political argument, and he and his followers, his people, were celebrating. The crown signified that he was the undisputed king and the fact that it was of the finest gold represented the quality of his kingship. David was a royal appointee, successful in all that he put his hand to, and prosperous through his receipt of taxes from the subservient foreign nations and his own people, and through his own activities in Israel. 

But the Psalm records that “the days of [David’s] life stretch on forever”. We know of course that David died at the age of 70 so it could not mean that he was going to be immortal on this earth.  We could assume that David was referring to eternal life, as we read in Psalm 16, another of his Psalms. “You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever” (Psalm 16:11). Or this could have been referring to his dynasty, as we read in 2 Samuel 7: 11b-13, “ … Furthermore, the Lord declares that he will make a house for you—a dynasty of kings! For when you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants, your own offspring, and I will make his kingdom strong. He is the one who will build a house—a temple—for my name. And I will secure his royal throne forever”. This was of course a reference to the coming Messiah, and we see the fulfilment of that in the angel’s message to Mary, recorded in Luke 1:31-33, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

Returning to the royal implication in these verses, we know of course that we pilgrims are also of royal stock. Peter wrote, “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). We may not have crowns of gold in this life, but Paul wrote, “And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). We pilgrims will be supplied with a “crown of righteousness” when we cross the Great Divide into God’s presence, a crown of far more worth than something made with a commodity used to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem.

So, in a sense, our lives will also “stretch on forever” but without all the hassles of human life. Again, a verse from Paul’s epistle to the Romans, “And because you belong to [Christ], the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death” (Romans 8:2). Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free” (John 8:36), and one day we will experience that freedom, as though a huge weight has been lifted from us. No more sickness. No more death. And eternal life spent in God’s presence. David asked God to “preserve his life, and [He] granted his request”. We too come to the Cross and ask Jesus to preserve our life, and as we  ” … confess our sins to him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (1 John 1:9). This was the moment when we passed from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light, enabling us to commence our eternal lives at a time when we are also human beings on Planet Earth. Is that a “Hallelujah” or whoop of praises expressed to God I can hear in the distance? 

Father God. David knew that he would live forever in Your presence, as will we pilgrims. Please help us complete our journey, giving You all the praise and all the glory. Amen.

Shouts of Joy

Posted on by korgrocker

“How the king rejoices in your strength, O Lord! He shouts with joy because you give him victory. For you have given him his heart’s desire; you have withheld nothing he requested.”
Psalm 21:1-2 NLT

Something significant happens when God comes through for us. With David it was the realisation that God had given him victory over his enemies. In fact, David testified that God had “given him his heart’s desire” and had “withheld nothing he requested”. The “something significant” for David was a manifestation of “shouts of joy”. David had a freedom in his personality that allowed him to outwardly express the feelings of joy within him. In our conditioned cultures today, such an ebullience is unusual, although it can be seen in healing meetings, where people have been divinely healed of illnesses or disabilities, people expressing “shouts of joy” following the realisation that God had freed them from an incurable condition. But I have never heard anyone, including myself, offering “shouts of joy” in public just because God is who He is. Instead, we act all religious and sing hymns or worship songs. Or offer up long-winded prayers of thanks. We consider ourselves so much more refined than those who outwardly show their emotion. But in a private place, sometimes on my early morning prayer walks, I can be heard to call out the name of Jesus, startling the birds close by. 

There was an occasion when the Jewish exiles had laid the foundation of the new Temple, being built to replace the one destroyed by the Babylonians. An amazing outpouring of emotion followed, as we read in Ezra 3:12-13, “But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple’s foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. The joyful shouting and weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance”. The Jews had no hang ups in those days about expressing their emotions in public, and in many places in the world today we find the same. But not in the West, with our “stiff upper lip” culture. It takes a momentous event, usually the death of a loved one, to release a public display of emotion, but this is usually well suppressed by the person involved – after all what will people think? Bottling up our emotions within us is not a good idea because that is not how God designed us, and a physical or mental illness can result in many cases. (Try Googling “problems caused by suppressing emotions”).

But it was the realisation that God had answered his prayers completely that David thought worth recording. This builds a picture of a relationship so close that he seemed to walk hand in hand with God, in constant communication and with effective outcomes. Nothing that David asked God to help him with was refused. Is that the experience of us modern day pilgrims? Jesus said to His disciples, “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:13-14). This is a hard scripture to believe because we intuitively know that it can’t be true in every case. For example, if two people ask God to change the weather, each praying prayers with opposite requests, one for sun and the other rain, how would God answer such a prayer? The significant bit about what Jesus said was “in His name”. Our prayers must align with His will and character, and anything we ask for must therefore bring glory to God. And even then, adding “in Jesus’ name” to our prayers won’t always bring on the result we require, because the name of Jesus is not a magical incantation. David realised the importance of a relationship with God, and tempered his request accordingly.

Looking back over my life, there are many occasions that deserve “shouts of joy“. God has brought about miracles in my life, and in the lives of most believers, where prayers have not been uttered. Jesus said, “Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!”(Matthew 6:8). There are other times when our spirits and the Holy Spirit are in direct communication, bypassing our mental faculties. Paul knew this when he wrote, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” (Romans 8:26-27). 

Why don’t we pilgrims rejoice with “shouts of joy”? Without the manifestation of even a little squeak or suppressed whoop? We watch athletic events or football matches and observe outpourings of corporate emotion when our favourite athlete wins a race, or when our team’s ball crosses the line of the opposing team’s goal. Why can’t we “shout for joy”, when we remember again all that Jesus has done for us, an event infinitely more significant, with eternal consequences, than any human victory. Jesus died for us so that we can live forever. Surely that is worth “shouts of joy”, isn’t it?

Dear Father God. Please forgive us for suppressing the praise that is Yours by right. You deserve all the glory. Amen.

Nations Will Fall

Posted on by korgrocker

“Now I know that the Lord rescues his anointed king. He will answer him from his holy heaven and rescue him by his great power. Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God. Those nations will fall down and collapse, but we will rise up and stand firm. Give victory to our king, O Lord! Answer our cry for help.”
Psalm 20:6-9 NLT

David wrote that the boasting nations will “fall down and collapse”, in spite of all “their chariots and horses”. And as we look back through history we find that is indeed the case. But there was a man in the Old Testament who had some remarkable visions and in one of them, “… four huge beasts came up out of the water, each different from the others” (Daniel 7:3). There was a lion with eagles’ wings, a bear, a leopard, and then one with ten horns. Daniel then recorded, “As I was looking at the horns, suddenly another small horn appeared among them. Three of the first horns were torn out by the roots to make room for it. This little horn had eyes like human eyes and a mouth that was boasting arrogantly” (Daniel 7:8). Notice the “boasting” bit. Daniel asked an angel for an explanation. Daniel wrote, “I, Daniel, was troubled by all I had seen, and my visions terrified me. So I approached one of those standing beside the throne and asked him what it all meant. He explained it to me like this: “These four huge beasts represent four kingdoms that will arise from the earth. But in the end, the holy people of the Most High will be given the kingdom, and they will rule forever and ever”” (Daniel 7:15-18).

David wrote that nations that rely on their own strength will ultimately fail and there is only one kingdom that will ever succeed. We pilgrims know that the only successful kingdom is the Kingdom of God, and its King is Jesus. There will come a time when all the earthly kingdoms and nations will finally collapse, as they have in the past. Where today is the “Third Reich”? The Roman Empire? The Persian and the Babylonian empires? All gone. And today the efforts of deluded men waging war and creating mayhem in the 21st Century will ultimately fail. If only they would read the Bible, learn from it, and history, and accept that their kingdoms will fall.

Jesus told His disciples about His return one day. Matthew 24:30, “And then at last, the sign that the Son of Man is coming will appear in the heavens, and there will be deep mourning among all the peoples of the earth. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” We pick up the account in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever“. Finally, we read about the thousand year reign of Christ in Revelation 20, followed by the establishment of a new Heaven and a new earth in Revelation 21. We pilgrims know what will happen one day. We might still be here on earth when it happens, or we might not, but happen it will. In the meantime we will do what David did – “rise up and stand firm”. 

We do not need to fear the world events. They are just a transient phenomenon when viewed from the perspective of eternity. Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). We pilgrims are people who look after our souls, feeding them and caring for them, because they will live for ever. We feed them, not with physical food, but with the Word of God and prayer to our wonderful Heavenly Father. He cares for us we know (1 Peter 5:7). 1 John 3:1, “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him“. Let us reach out to Father today and feel the love. And the grace. And the mercy. And it will all be there tomorrow as well. We praise and worship the Father today.

Father God. What can we say? Our only response is one of deep gratitude and worship. We give You all the glory. Amen.

Boasting

Posted on by korgrocker

“Now I know that the Lord rescues his anointed king. He will answer him from his holy heaven and rescue him by his great power. Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God. Those nations will fall down and collapse, but we will rise up and stand firm. Give victory to our king, O Lord! Answer our cry for help.”
Psalm 20:6-9 NLT

To boast about something is not normally a good thing to do. As the old saying goes, “pride comes before a fall”. We are all aware of the children in the playground trying to outdo each other with stories of their families, toys, prowess at sports and so on, boasts abounding. But in a less obvious way, boasts take place in the workplace or the pub. Fishermen boast about the size of their catch. Gardeners boast about the size of their prize marrows. Boasting is a human trait that spans many generations. And here we have David writing about how he “boasts in the name of the Lord” when other nations “boast of their chariots and horses”. 

In the Bible, boasting is considered to be evil, with one exception which we will come to later. James 4:16 is a verse in the context of a man making business plans and arrogantly saying what will happen. James wrote, “As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil“. Proverbs 27:1-2, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips“. On a national level we are familiar with the boasting of nations with their stories of armaments, their modern equivalents of “chariots and horses”. The Psalmist wrote, “How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked be allowed to gloat? How long will they speak with arrogance? How long will these evil people boast?” (Psalm 94:3-4). On the world stage today, we are familiar with the boastings of leaders in all sorts of disciplines, but we know that they rise and fall, much as we read in Isaiah 40, “ …  And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade,  … ”.

However, it is acceptable to boast in something that is invincible, indestructible, and all-powerful, as David wrote in our Psalm today. In confidence, and in the face of boasting from others, he could “boast in the name of the Lord our God”. Paul clarified the situation over boasting in 2 Corinthians 10:17, “As the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”” Paul also wrote, “As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me has also died” (Galatians 6:14).‭‭ And that is the important distinction. We can boast about Jesus because there is something eternal and complete to boast about. No other person, nation, or religion can match the claim that God came to this earth as a human being and died on a cross for the sins of mankind. That was an event so significant that it can never be exceeded. 

Dear Father God. At every opportunity I will boast about You and Your saving grace. There is nothing like You and never will be. Amen.