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.

The Flood

Posted on by korgrocker

“You placed the world on its foundation 
so it would never be moved. 
You clothed the earth with floods of water, 
water that covered even the mountains. 
At your command, the water fled; 
at the sound of your thunder, it hurried away. 
Mountains rose and valleys sank 
to the levels you decreed. 
Then you set a firm boundary for the seas, 
so they would never again cover the earth.”
Psalms‬ ‭104:5-9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Now here’s an interesting and fascinating account, appearing as it does inside this Psalm of praise to God. Clearly and succinctly, the Psalmist describes the Genesis flood, an event that has been the subject of constant debate between those who believe in God and those who don’t. What paradigm do we believe in or put our faith in? The evolutionary account that is underpinned by the assumption that the earth is incredibly old? Or the creation account that places the age of the earth at just a few thousand years? One thing is for sure – the two belief systems are irreconcilable. It’s one or the other. Sadly, there are Christians today who try and fit the Genesis account of Creation into contemporary thinking by saying that a creationary “day” could mean many thousands of even billions of years, interpreting “day” as “age”. But linguistic research indicates that the Hebrew word for “day” means just that. A period of 24 hours.

But what does all this matter anyway? It all happened in the past anyway so it is of little more than academic interest. But denial of the Genesis account of the world’s origins places the Bible in a perilous situation, because passages of Scripture like we have read today have to be omitted from its pages. As 21st Century pilgrims we have to have our feet firmly planted on the truth, and nothing but the whole truth, of the Word of God. Otherwise doubts as to the authenticity of God’s Word will grow into textual boulders that block our way through the paths of life. The Bible is the inspired Word of God. It is His only written work. Let’s treat it with respect, having faith that through it our loving Heavenly Father will lead us and guide us through the valleys and pathways, over all the mountains and obstacles that will come our way in our pilgrimage onwards and upwards to our Heavenly home.

Eternal and Infinite

Posted on by korgrocker

For His unfailing love toward those who fear Him
    is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us
    as the east is from the west.
The Lord is like a father to His children,
    tender and compassionate to those who fear Him.
For He knows how weak we are;
    He remembers we are only dust.
Psalm 103:11-14 NLT

David is back writing at the Psalmist’s desk. Scratching away with his God-thoughts, recording eternal words through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And once again his thoughts turn to how much God loves His children. In describing the relationship we have with God, he uses the word “fear” but that can have negative connotations. In our world and culture, perhaps a better word would be “respect”, though with a depth far beyond a man-limited meaning. In the Lord’s Prayer, we “hallow” His name. Another good word. And David points out that God’s love for His hallowers is so great that it is unmeasurable. The heavens extend a distance above us, a distance measured in eternal units, with a hint of infinity creeping in. In other words, God’s love is so great that it is unlimited and eternal, unmeasurable and unquantifiable. We must never think that there is insufficient to go around. 

And David then moves his thoughts away from God’s love to our sins. The reality is that once we have confessed and repented of our sins, God removes them. In fact, He puts them a place that is as far away from us as the East is from the West. A wonderful analogy, because we don’t know the start and finish of either place. No sooner then we define a place as being “East” then we know there is another place further “East”. The circular nature of our world, rather than the flat representation on a school room wall, drives the compass points. But what is the implication of all that? God forgets our confessed and repented of sins. They don’t exist anymore. That have been erased from the Heavenly record books. Have we ever been in a situation where we have repented of a past sin again, perhaps from many years ago, just in case we forgot? Well, God takes out His record books and can’t find any mention of it. So He comes back to us and tells us so. He is the perfect Father, divinely tender and compassionate. 

In all the world religions there is only one, Christianity, in which the worshipped god came down to earth as a human being. Jesus, God’s Son, therefore knows what it is like to be human, and he shared our weaknesses when He walked around the Palestinian countryside. He got tired and hungry as we do. He was tempted as we are. And when He returned to Heaven, we read in Romans 8 that He is sitting at God’s right hand, interceding for us. Our loving Lord is the only “god” who knows “how weak we are”.

Today, we have been granted another opportunity from our allotted time span on earth to come before our tender and compassionate Heavenly Father, resting in His presence, feeling His heartbeat of forgiveness, and assured of His love. Let’s not waste the moment.

Write it Down

Posted on by korgrocker

“Let this be recorded for future generations,
    so that a people not yet born will praise the Lord.
Tell them the Lord looked down
    from his heavenly sanctuary.
He looked down to earth from heaven
   to hear the groans of the prisoners,
   to release those condemned to die.
And so the Lord’s fame will be celebrated in Zion,
    his praises in Jerusalem,
when multitudes gather together
    and kingdoms come to worship the Lord.”
Psalm 102:18-22 NLT

Psalm 102 details the troubles the poor Psalmist is enduring. But through it all he never lost his faith in God. And he appeals to his readers to make sure they record the Lord’s goodness for future generations. He highlights information about where God lives, and how He interacts with human beings, looking down, hearing and releasing. He looks down to see what is going on and straight away the injustice of those being imprisoned gets His attention. He hears their “groans” and he “releases those condemned to die“. And as a consequence the Psalmist points out that one day, at the end of the age, Jerusalem will see the congregation of all the world’s nations coming “to worship the Lord“.

But who are these prisoners? Those condemned to die? In the UK we have prisons bursting at the seams, full of people incarcerated for doing wrong. And I know in some countries, there are people languishing in death rows. Waiting for their end. But why would God single these people out for “hearing” and “releasing”? God is interested in all people. He loves them all. No, more likely, the Psalmist is referring to people who are prisoners because of their sins, and who are condemned to die as a consequence. God looks down from Heaven with a breaking heart, yearning for His people to understand that the prison doors are open. That their choices are keeping them there and, worse, keeping them on death row as well. The Apostle Paul wrote in his epistle to the Galatians that, “But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.” That’s the open door, folks. 

Those of us who have embraced God’s gift of freedom, who are no longer locked in a prison of sin, need to write down our stories. Write down our testimonies of how God’s grace and mercy opened our prison doors. Because the generations coming behind us need to know too about our wonderful Creator God. About His love and compassion. About what He has done for us. 

If there is anyone reading this blog today, and feel as though they are locked in a prison cell, unable to escape. Oppressed by the enemy. Blighted by negative thoughts of how bad they are. Their self image plumbing depths of despair. Then reach out to the only One who can set us free. The only key to our prison cells is soaked in the blood of Jesus, our wonderful Saviour, our wonderful Releaser, our wonderful Lord.

Ferreting

Posted on by korgrocker

“I will not allow deceivers to serve in my house, 
and liars will not stay in my presence. 
My daily task will be to ferret out the wicked 
and free the city of the Lord from their grip.”
Psalms‬ ‭101:7-8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Removing the wicked from amongst us is a wonderful idea. After all, we would all like to live in a Godly and sin-free environment. We would all like to eliminate anti-social behaviour in our communities. Or drugs, or drunkenness, or ….. But how do we do that? The statute book in our societies lists what we should and shouldn’t do. Misdemeanours are treated according to their severity, and some miscreants end up without their liberty. Police forces do their best to uphold the law of the land. But who are the wicked the Psalmist was writing about? If we read through this Psalm, we find words describing people, including “vile”, “vulgar”, “perverse”, “evil”, “slander”, “conceit”, “pride”, “deceivers”, “liars” and “wicked”. Hang on a minute, though, I can’t somehow see a policeman arresting someone with any of these qualities. They need to be translated into something tangible that the person can be arrested for. Some crime defined by our laws. But here’s the thing – only God can see the thoughts in a person’s mind and so only he knows how to “ferret out the wicked“. Only He has that right.

Jesus taught about wheat and weeds in a parable in which the farmer planted good seed but the enemy, the devil, came along and scattered weeds. When the wheat and weeds started growing, the farm workers suggested to the farmer that they go into the field and pull up the weeds, leaving the wheat. But the farmer stopped them, because of the potential for damaging the growing wheat. We then read in Matthew 13 that Jesus said, “Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” In other words Jesus was saying that there will come a time of judgement one day and the qualities of the “wicked”, the “weeds” in the parable, will be exposed and consequently dealt with then. 

Back in Psalm 101, the Psalmist’s intentions of achieving purity among the inhabitants of God’s city was a noble one. One that at least superficially sounds like a good idea. But then the thought crosses our minds – do we suffer from any of the qualities of the wicked? Have we never had a proud thought? Have we never gossiped about a neighbour? Have we never …? And before we know it, the application of the Psalmist’s “daily task” would soon result in no-one left in God’s city. We wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship in God’s city either. 

But there’s a tremendous section of Scripture in Romans 3. We read, “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. So there we have it. Although none of us can meet God’s standard of righteousness, we can nevertheless have the right to live in God’s presence, in His city, through the blood of Jesus. Through His grace and mercy. Too good to be true? Too good not to be true.

Old 100th

Posted on by korgrocker

“Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth! 
Worship the Lord with gladness. 
Come before Him, singing with joy. 
Acknowledge that the Lord is God! 
He made us, and we are His. 
We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. 
Enter His gates with thanksgiving; 
go into His courts with praise. 
Give thanks to Him and praise His name. 
For the Lord is good. 
His unfailing love continues forever, 
and His faithfulness continues to each generation.”
Psalms‬ ‭100:1-5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The 100th Psalm. An icon in the Book of Psalms. A pillar of praising poetry that has passed the passage of time. Enriched by words such as “joy”, “gladness”, “praise”, “thanks”, “faithfulness” and “love”. All words expressing God’s character and our response. And the whole Psalm describes a relationship between our wonderful God and His people, you and me. So before Him we shout, we worship, we sing, we give thanks, we praise, and we bask in His love and faithfulness. There’s not much else to say about this Psalm. It is an essential part of the pilgrim’s library. A place to go to on the journey through life. A place where our souls can be refreshed in this topsy-turvy world. Let us all read it again this morning, eating and drinking soul-food beyond anything that the secular world around us can provide.

A Stern Parent

Posted on by korgrocker

“Moses and Aaron were among His priests; 
Samuel also called on His name. 
They cried to the Lord for help, and He answered them. 
He spoke to Israel from the pillar of cloud, 
and they followed the laws and decrees He gave them. 
O Lord our God, You answered them. 
You were a forgiving God to them, 
but You punished them when they went wrong.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭99:6-8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

This is the Old Covenant, the Old Testament. There were priests who called on the name of the Lord, on both their own behalf and on behalf of the people. And God spoke to His chosen people from inside a pillar of cloud, perhaps of smoke. As an aside, I wonder how big it was – its diameter, its height. Was it totally opaque? But come what may, it must have been an amazing sight. The Psalm continues with the statement that God’s laws were being followed, and God answered the people, presumably when they cried for help. Was it an audible voice, like the thunder at Mount Sinai? Or Elijah’s still small voice?  But here’s the thing, when they followed His laws and decrees, God forgave them. But when they didn’t He punished them. 

How do we view our wonderful God? As a stern parent who praises us when we do right in His eyes, but punishes us when we don’t? The society in which we live will leave us largely alone if we abide by what’s written in the statute book, but will apply “the full force of the law” when we don’t. Keeping to a speed limit when driving through a town will invoke no penalties, but exceeding it will result in fines and points on our licence (if we’re caught). And that’s the thing. In our societies, getting caught out if we commit a misdemeanour may or may not happen, but in God’s Kingdom, our actions will always come before His gaze. 

So back to our question, what picture, what impression, do we have of God in our minds? I meet people who never knew their fathers, or who never had a good experience with them. And they have then projected their bad experiences into the image they hold in their minds of God. They are fearful of God’s response to their behaviour, good or bad. 

Thankfully, through Jesus, God’s love and concern for us shines through with the light of the New Covenant. The New Testament bulges with the excitement of the Isalm 99ncarnation, bursting out with the news of our God who came to this earth to save us. No longer do we need to fear a stern and remote parent. Through Jesus we have the very means to enter God’s presence at any time. We can call Him “Abba” or “Daddy”. We can have an intimate personal relationship with Him, enjoying Him as a true Father. Can we feel His love and grace today? He’s ready and waiting to delight in us, His children.