Gates

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Open for me the gates where the righteous enter, 
and I will go in and thank the Lord. 
These gates lead to the presence of the Lord, 
and the godly enter there.”
Psalms‬ ‭118:19-20‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Gates. What picture comes into our minds when we think about gates? There’s the wooden gate at the entrance to someone’s garden. Or the motorised gate that can be triggered remotely to allow a vehicle through. Wrought iron fancy gates are sometimes fashionable. Or perhaps a substantial oak door complete with cast iron studs. The picket gate in the gatehouse, perhaps, at the entrance to a churchyard. But whatever pictures we form in our minds, the Psalmist highlights three things about the gate that is set before him. Firstly, he has to ask someone else to open it – its not something that he can do. Secondly, he has to be righteous to go through it,  and thirdly, once through the opened gate, he can join the godly to enter God’s presence. And the reason he wanted to go through it was to thank the Lord. What a gate that must have been! 

But many years later, Jesus made an astonishing statement. He said, as recorded by the Apostle John in John 10:9, “Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.” But is Jesus the Gate described in Psalm 118? Is this a prophetic glimpse of the coming Messiah? Well, Jesus is the Gate, the Someone who opens the gate for us. I once was shown around the cash handling hall in a major British bank. To get in was difficult. It needed someone to vouch for me, and sign me into the compound in which the cash hall was located. And this analogy aptly describes what Jesus does for us. He vouches for us, and because we have been saved through His blood shed for us at Calvary, we can securely and confidently enter His gate. You see, to enter the Gate that is Jesus we meet the qualifications required to get in. And the essential qualification is righteousness. Only the righteous can enter into God’s presence. Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God“. Because Jesus took on Himself all our sins, past present and future, we can receive the gift of God and stand righteously before Him. Lastly, when we pass through the Gate we enter into God’s presence. In Hebrews 10:19 we read, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus.” 

The Psalmist asked for the gates to be opened. Tick. The Psalmist said the righteous can enter. Tick. We can go into God’s presence. Tick. So what the psalmist said in Psalm 118 was confirmed many years later by the first coming of Jesus. However, there is just one more thing we must do once we are in the presence of the Lord. That is, we must thank Him, and never stop thanking Him. Joining with many saints around the world and in past, present and future times. Thanking God for all He has done for us. Must be worth an amen?

Lost Sheep

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I have wandered away like a lost sheep;
    come and find me,
    for I have not forgotten your commands.”
Psalm 119:176 NLT

Psalm 119 ends with a strange verse. How can the Psalmist find himself in this position, describing himself as a “lost sheep”, after such a cornucopia of expressions of the greatness of God and His wonderful works and laws, and His relationship with the writer, who had been clever enough to devise a Psalm of sections, each of eight verses and each beginning with a letter in the Hebrew alphabet? What happened to him?

Sheep are animals with a predisposition to get lost. They wander off, steadily grazing their way into places where they shouldn’t be. And then they can’t find their way back to the rest of the flock or a safe place. A lost sheep is very vulnerable, at the mercy of predators and prone to get caught up by its wool in thickets or trapped somewhere by a difficult terrain. In spiritual terms, we can be like “lost sheep”. We wander off the track marked out for our pilgrimage through life, and before we know it we are in a place of great danger, in a place of temptation and sin.

Jesus was very aware of the challenges facing us, God’s “sheep”. In Matthew 18:12-13 we read, “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away!“. There are two significant pieces of information here that are worth considering. Firstly, Jesus Himself searches for His lost sheep. He calls, He looks, He goes to extraordinary lengths to find us when we stray. Secondly, finding us is not guaranteed – we also can go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being found by Jesus. We can ignore His calls. We can hide away from His gaze. I have known good men and women who have wilfully deserted their Christian faith, no longer counted in Jesus’ flock.

A sheep gets lost when it abandons its familiar territory. When it thinks the grass elsewhere is greener and more palatable. And so it is with us. We can leave the familiar territory of God’s Word and be attracted to something new. Then we can become “lost”, and the frightening thing is that we might not even know it. I think the Psalmist ended this Psalm, with a warning. Don’t abandon God and get lost. Always keep home in sight by checking things out with His word. Always be aware of dangerous terrain, where sheep should never go.

Seven Times

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I will praise you seven times a day
    because all your regulations are just.“
Psalm 119:164 NLT

The Psalmist says he is going to praise God seven times a day. Why seven? Why not six or eight? What’s so special about seven? In Scripture, the number seven refers to completeness, perfection even, so the use of this number by the Psalmist is particularly significant. In essence, he was saying that he was going to praise God continually and totally. Why? All because he attributes justice to God’s ways. 

To someone today this might appear to be archaic, unnecessary, unachievable or even just plain wrong. But nothing could be further from the truth. Superficially, we probably associate praising God with singing a hymn on a Sunday morning in church. Perhaps, “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven..”. Or if we’re really bold we might praise Him every day in our “Quiet Times”. And our praise merges into thankfulness for things God has done for us. But when was the last time we praised God for the justice of His ways? Either this Psalmist was on a different planet to us, or there is more to praising God than we might think.

When we become a Christian we embark on a journey aligning our lives to God’s ways. And as we do so, the Holy Spirit works in our lives producing fruit, the fruit of the Spirit that we read about in Galatians 5:22, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,”. (We have that number again, with seven different flavours of fruit.) We praise God with our lives as we get closer to Him, following His ways more closely. As we remain in contact with Him. As we respond to Him in obedience. 

We are on a pilgrimage of praise. We praise God when we are faithful to Him. We praise God when we refuse to get angry with the bad driver in front of us. We praise God when we love those around us. We praise God when we wait patiently in the queue for our Covid jag or the supermarket checkout. We praise God when we offer a kind word to someone we meet in the street – sometimes just saying “Good Morning” might cheer someone up – who knows – they might not have heard a kind word for days. The list of praising opportunities are endless. And don’t forget, we praise God because of who He is – our wonderful and amazing Creator, our Heavenly Father. Let’s look around for even more opportunities to praise Him today.

Being Double-minded

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I hate double-minded people,
but I love Your law.”
Psalm 119:113 NIV

Two strong, emotionally-charged, words come out in this verse – “love” and “hate”. In meaning, they are opposites. But in the context of this verse what is the connection between being double-minded and God’s law? Is the implication something to do with the reality that we must be single-minded when it comes to following God and His ways? Is being “double-minded” something that is at odds with a Godly life?

First of all, what does “double-minded” mean? One dictionary definition says that “double-minded” means “wavering in mind, vacillating”. Perhaps we get some idea what these verses mean from James 1:6-8, “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.” What James is describing here is a person who has divided loyalties. On the one hand he or she wants to follow God and His ways, but on the other hand they still want to live a worldly life. They are “double-minded”. 

But surely “hating” the “double-minded” isn’t right. I think the Psalmist uses such strong language to highlight the importance of not wanting to keep a foot in both camps. There is no middle ground. I think we have all seen videos of someone who has tried to step out of a small boat onto dry land, only to end up in the water because the boat wasn’t attached to the bank. It’s a bit like that – if we try and keep both feet dry, we will end up wet in a place we didn’t want to be! We need to “hate” the thought of trying to be two things at once. In Revelation we read about the message from Jesus to the Laodicean church. He said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth“. Jesus used strong language in referring to double-minded people.

In our pilgrimage, we can’t afford to be double-minded. We have to press on towards the goal that Paul described in Philippians 3:14. If we persist in pursuing other goals we will fall by the wayside, unable to finish the race. The key in doing this is the second part of our verse in Psalm 119. The Psalmist said, “I love Your law.” Single-mindedly, we pursue God and His ways, sure of our destiny, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 3:1). There is no other way.

Payback

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“What can I offer the Lord for all he has done for me? 
I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the Lord’s name for saving me. 
I will keep my promises to the Lord in the presence of all his people. 
O Lord, I am your servant; yes, I am your servant, born into your household; 
you have freed me from my chains.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭116:12-14, 16‬ ‭NLT‬‬

In our culture we hate being anyone’s debtor. “Neither a borrower or a lender be” is a saying from one of Shakespeare’s plays, and it underpins the proudful independence so respected in British society. But when it comes to God, we’re in a different league. There we were, bumbling along in our sinful worlds, heading like lemmings over the cliff of self-destruction into a lost eternity, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. And all of a sudden, by a series of circumstances, Jesus found us, and we read in Romans, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” All of a sudden, as we embrace our salvation through the love and blood of Jesus, we find that we owe a debt to God that is unpayable. We can never earn enough to repay God for all he has done for us. In fact, even the whole world would be insufficient to pay the debt. Through God’s grace, our salvation cost Jesus everything but cost us nothing. But none of this stopped the Psalmist from saying, “What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?” It’s a trap we can fall into if we try and answer that question by our own efforts. The reality is that there is nothing I can do to earn God’s gift. I can only approach Him with a humble heart, overwhelmed in gratitude for “all His goodness to me“. 

I have heard people plead with God saying things like, “God, if you only heal my mother, then I promise I will go to church every Sunday for the whole of this year.” or, “God, if you help me give up smoking I’ll put the money saved in the offering every week.” I’m sure we have all walked that road at some time in our lives. But nothing we do to tug a concession from God’s heart will ever work. It’s because He knows what we need. He knows what our problems are. And through His grace and mercy, through His goodness and love, he will answer our prayers of faith, simply and effectively.

But that is not to say we should sit back waiting for our new life, basking in God’s grace. He has work for us to do. And we will be obedient, not to earn His salvation of course, but because we love Him. What does He want us to do? The Psalmist writes, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the Lord’s name for saving me. I will keep my promises to the Lord in the presence of all his people.” And then in verse 16 he writes, “O Lord, I am your servant”. God has things for us to do. We are His servants and we delight in doing His will. We might ask, “What is God’s will for me?”. If we don’t know we only have to ask Him – He will soon answer.

Sense

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“You made me; you created me.
 Now give me the sense to follow your commands.”
Psalm 119:73 NLT

This is an important verse from the Psalmist. He is saying that to fully maximise the potential of God’s creation, we need to engage something he called “sense”. But if God created us, why didn’t He put within us the sense-quality to do things His way? Then we wouldn’t have to pray our psalmist’s prayer – we would be sensible intuitively. Imagine a world where every human being knows who God is, knows all about His laws, and has the built-in sense to follow them, not even needing to think that by doing so they are aligning their lives to God’s ways. 

So why didn’t God put within His created beings an organ, companion to the liver and kidneys, called “sense”? An organ that will play up painfully should we violate its designed purposes. An organ that secretes a wonderful enzyme that automatically aligns us to God’s ways, countering the ways of “non-sense”. Is there a bug in the design and build of human beings? Of course not. Our loving Heavenly Father created us with something called “free will”. We have the opportunity to make choices and nothing pleases our Heavenly Dad more than for His children to praise and worship Him and choose to follow His ways. He created within us a God-shaped hole, so that His creation would know Him and fill it with His presence. Now that’s sense. So He didn’t need to create our imaginary “sense” organ. 

Of course there is a dark side, for people without sense. People who have rejected God and don’t give a hoot about following His commands. They fill their God-shaped hole with counterfeit “gods”, of material things, of the trappings of debauchery. And they stagger through life, increasingly lurching down the spiral that leads to a God-less eternity. So let’s get hold of this verse. Repeat it. Meditate upon it. And pray this simple prayer – “Please, God, give me the sense to do things Your way rather than doing things my way. Amen.”

Breakthrough

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Lord, if you measured us and marked us with our sins,
    who would ever have their prayers answered?
But your forgiving love is what makes you so wonderful.
    No wonder you are loved and worshiped!
This is why I wait upon you, expecting your breakthrough,
    for your Word brings me hope.”
Psalm 130:3-5 TPT

There will be many people hoping for a breakthrough in this New Year. People who feel as they have been ground down by an incessant tsunami of bad news from the media, who are traumatised from the rigors of the pandemic, successive lockdowns and societal restrictions. And in the UK, rising taxes and energy prices are threatening to increase the cost of living, bringing more worries and concerns, and adding to the misery mix. But it doesn’t matter which era we find ourselves in. Each generation has to face into its own set of problems.

However, there is one thing that never changes, regardless of the era in which we live, or have lived. And that is the goodness and grace of God. In the current age of Black Friday, Boxing Day Sales and other good deals, there is one deal that is unbeatable. Trust me – it really is! Can you believe it? God sent His Son, Jesus, to this world, to be born and live as a human being. To teach wonderful truths about His Kingdom, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and in the process challenging the religious stereotypes of His day to the extent that the authorities crucified Him as a terrorist and thief. Sinless, He died a common criminal’s death, but in the process He took upon Himself all the sins of the world. And if we believe in Him and repent of our sins then – now here’s the deal – He will take on board all our sins and instead give to us His sinless righteousness. It won’t cost us a cent, or a penny, even. What a deal! What a breakthrough! And the only thing in the way of claiming our breakthrough this New Year is our unconfessed sins. Wearing Jesus’ cloak of righteousness we can stand before God as though we had never sinned. The breakthrough we experience will last for both this life, and our lives in eternity.

Looking at our verses today, the Psalmist spells it out. God forgives us our sins and answers our prayers. He dispenses His forgiving love to all who come to Him in repentance. And if we spend time in His presence, soaking in His Word, we will be infused with hope and can expect a breakthrough. Folks, it doesn’t get better than that. We have no need to spend time in misery because we are loved and forgiven by our wonderful Heavenly Father. Let’s make a commitment this New Year to move from misery to a new life in God, the breakthrough we have yearned for. Hang on a minute, I hear you say, “What about the misery mix I’m experiencing?” Don’t forget, as the Psalmist says, God answers our prayers.

A New Year

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 5:16-17 NLT

Strictly speaking these are not Scripture verses specifically about the New Year but they are appropriate none the less. The old year, 2021, has gone. We will never have another year like it (thank goodness I hear you say!). We are today at the start of a New Year, 2022. So what are we going to do with it? Traditionally, people set “New Year’s Resolutions”; a list of good intentions that seem to dissolve into thin air within a few days. But instead do we continue to bumble along in the same old way, tired and weary, trapped in a merry-go-round of drudgery, wishing that some light would penetrate our gloomy lives?

Today’s verses bring the light that we yearn for. For those who don’t know Jesus in a personal way, they highlight the opportunity we have to begin a new life. For those who are Christians, and perhaps have been for a long time, they provide the opportunity to hit the reset button. You see, becoming the “new person” highlighted in verse 17 isn’t a one off occasion that has passed into dimming memories. It is a daily opportunity. Notice the exclamation mark at the end of verse 17. It highlights and emphasises the momentous possibilities that we have when we start a new life in Christ. 

But back to our question – what are we going to do with this New Year? More specifically, what am I going to do with it? I have a few ideas, but are they God-ideas? The amazing thing about this new life in Christ, is that He will help us all as we commit our ways to Him. A life of service to Him is an exciting place to be. The opportunities are endless. Here’s a radical suggestion, which I am going to follow this morning. I’m going to ask Jesus to show me what He wants me to do with this year, 2022. I think I might be surprised at His answer. Try it. He might surprise you as well. But be prepared – God always answers our questioning prayers.

Speaking to Kings

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I will speak to kings about Your laws,
    and I will not be ashamed.”
Psalm 119:46 NLT

When was the last time any of us had the chance to speak to a king? You know, the head of state in a monarchist nation. The guy who sits on a throne pontificating about national matters, and perhaps dispensing justice when appropriate. Here in the West, monarchies are rare, though we have democratically elected leaders who behave as though they are kings or queens in all but name. Sometimes I see the mess our leaders make or the shenanigans they get up to, and wish that a good old fashioned benign but Godly monarchy was re-established in our lands. But before I get slated by social media republican trolls, let me ask the question – if we had the chance to speak to a king, what would we say to them? The Psalmist was clear. No pleasantries here. No wasting time discussing what repeat was shown on television last night. No, the Psalmist went straight to the point, speaking to the king about God’s laws. But why would he be ashamed? I think he would have been ashamed if he hadn’t put God at the front of any royal conversation. Or wasted an opportunity to remind the king of God’s laws. In some times in history, putting God above the monarch was a capital offence. We read about such an event in Daniel 3, when the three Jewish lads refused to bow down to a gold idol erected by King Nebuchadnezzar. Reminding the king about the greater King and His laws might be something to be careful about. But perhaps the Psalmist had access to a local king, and had the desire to remind him about the importance of setting laws in line with God’s Law. 

So what relevance does this verse have to our modern day pilgrim in his or her life-journey? One response would be to ignore it, on the grounds that getting in front of royalty was never going to happen. Not in our lives. But we should remember that on occasion we call our leaders “law makers”. So let me substitute “leader” for “king”. Now that is more achievable, because our law-making leaders are much more accessible. We can at any opportunity write to them, ring their office, or even meet them face to face in one of their democratic surgeries. And we therefore have the opportunity to speak to them about God’s laws. Here in the UK there is an increasing tendency for our secular law makers to bring in legislation that is distinctly at odds with God’s laws. What do we do – put our heads in the sand, hoping that the problem won’t affect us? Or do we use our democratic right and “speak to kings about [God’s] laws“? A challenge to think about as we lurch from the Covid-ridden 2021 into a New Year?

The Love of Money

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Give me an eagerness for your laws 
rather than a love for money! 
Turn my eyes from worthless things, 
and give me life through your word.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:36-37‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Aah! The love of money. It is only a matter of time before it emerges from the dark recesses within a person’s heart. I suppose there is a spectrum, from the money-dominated Scrooge, gloating over his piles of cash, through to a money-denying monk living a life of austerity in a bare cell. But we are all on that spectrum somewhere. Money has its uses of course – it lubricates the wheels of life in our secular and materialistic societies, and we need it to survive – but it can dominate our thinking. If we let it.

The Psalmist sees the danger of a life with a pecuniary focus. He sees the importance of dwelling in a place of eternal currency rather than in a world populated by “worthless things“. It is interesting that the Revelation picture of the new Jerusalem includes so many precious jewels, pearls and gold. What is considered of value in today’s world will be considered building materials in the world to come. Ubiquitous items of little value when compared to our Almighty God. 

But for the pilgrim working his way through this life, what is the correct balance between money and God? Jesus could see the dangers of getting this wrong, and taught that the service of both at the same time was impossible. He said in Matthew 6:24, “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.” The key is in the use of the word He used to describe how we see and use money – “enslaved”. The Psalmist was trying to get to a place of the correct balance, where money would be used but not worshipped. A place where the value of money would be eclipsed by our great and glorious God and His Word. 

The pilgrim of course needs money to make his way through this life. But he must not succumb to the temptation to acquire more and more glittering temporal objects, call it “stuff” if you like, at the expense of the eternal jewels in God’s Word. The one will be left behind when we pass the Great Divide. The other will be waiting for us on the other side. Let us join the Psalmist in declaring our eagerness to mine those precious jewels and nuggets from His Word so that we can accumulate them in our hearts and lives. A last word today from Jesus. “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.”