Paupers to Princes

Posted on by korgrocker

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

God’s Majesty

Posted on by korgrocker

“The Lord is king! He is robed in majesty. 
Indeed, the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength. 
The world stands firm 
and cannot be shaken. 
Your throne, O Lord, has stood from time immemorial. 
You yourself are from the everlasting past. 
Your royal laws cannot be changed. 
Your reign, O Lord, is holy forever and ever.”
Psalms‬ ‭93:1-2, 5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Here’s another short Psalm. Only five verses. But it says so much about God and His majesty, His royalty, His strength, His longevity,  His laws, and His holiness. And verse 1 also makes the point that His world, the world He created, cannot be shaken. I would take from that the thought that this world, Planet Earth, cannot be destroyed. In Genesis 1:31, we read, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” I don’t know about you, but the God I know wouldn’t have called His creation “very good” if man could come along and destroy it. What God created, He built to last. At least, until He decrees it is time for the new Heaven and Earth to be rolled out. 

But back to this word-picture from the Psalmist. You can just imagine our amazing God sitting on His throne, robed, not just in any old cloth, but in Majesty, a fabric too holy and precious to pass through even the best tailors in London’s Savile Row. A fabric infinitely beyond the capability of even the best weavers to make. A fabric made of special threads, with strands of holiness, strands of God-strength, strands of grace, strands of love, and strands of eternity. It is no wonder that from that throne God can issue laws so profound and true, so righteous and gracious, that they have the tag, “God-royal”. Mankind tampers with and amends His laws at their peril. 

I wonder, if the One who sits on the throne is so majestic and holy, what sort of throne it must be to support such a Worthy. And it is even a greater wonder to think if we, mere mortals, will ever get the chance to find out what it is like. But I’m now going to amaze you all. That throne can be approached by each one of us right now. Yes, right now. We read in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence…“. Through Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary we can enter into the Most Holy Place where God lives. Confidently expecting the grace and mercy we need.

So today, from this short Psalm we can have the wonderful experience of getting a glimpse of God in all His finery sitting on a throne so vast and extensive that we can only marvel in awe. If the boss shouts at us today, just imagine God and His throne. The local problems will disappear before His majesty. 

Lifespan

Posted on by korgrocker

“Seventy years are given to us! 
     Some even live to eighty. 
But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; 
     soon they disappear, and we fly away.”
Psalms‬ ‭90:10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Psalm 90 is the first Psalm of Book Four within the Book of Psalms, and this time it is Moses’s pen that records another lyrical expression of God. At apparent odds with today’s verse, Moses didn’t start God’s work until he was 80 years old. But what a life of service! Moses lived until he was 120, but how long will we live? “Three score years and ten” is often quoted in relation to our expectation of lifespan, but we don’t really know. None of us know the day when we will leave life on this earth and cross the Great Divide. The young seem to believe that they will live forever. Certainly many seem to act like it. But those who are older become more measured in their approach to life, particularly when they reach the “twilight zone”. Some terminally ill people want to legislate control over when they leave this life, but the sanctity of life prevails, at least for now. But whatever we feel about those last moments of our lives, worrying won’t be helpful. Jesus said, as recorded in Matthew 6:27,  “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” I have read somewhere that over 90% of deaths occur when the person is asleep, which many will find reassuring. Certainly that was the case for both my parents.

So what is the impact on our daily lives of our lack of knowledge of when we will die? How should we respond? Most people don’t want to talk about it. They become fearful and depressed. Others park the question, preferring to live each day as it comes. Still others become frustrated because they know they have to age and leave this life one day and they regret that death is one aspect of their life that they have no control over. Some get paranoid when they observe the signs of ageing staring back at them from the mirror, reaching for magic potions to delay the inevitable. Cosmetic companies advertise the extraordinary powers of their products in halting the ageing process. And one topic of scientific research is sure to get the attention of many readers – how our natural lives can be extended. There are even a few wealthy people who go to extraordinary lengths to preserve themselves after death in the hope that one day in the future there will be technology that can resurrect them from a deeply frozen state.

But there is one sure-fire way of ensuring we can live forever. For eternity. Most people, particularly those who have rejected God, think that life ends when they die. But those who believe in, and follow, God, are convinced that there is a life beyond the grave of far more importance than the life we experience now. In faith, such people, Christians, believe that Jesus is preparing a place for them, so that they can live with Him forever. We can read what He said in John 14. 

I have heard the often-quoted verse, John 3:16, used at funerals to assure the relatives and the friends of their departed loved one that he or she is now in Heaven, along with their mum and dad, and Auntie Mary thrown in for good measure. That may or not be true, but such soliloquies often ignore the following verse, verse 17, where Jesus said, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” There is only one way to join God in Heaven, and that is through Jesus. In John 11, Jesus said to Martha, the sister of Lazarus,  ”… I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die ….” It’s all about the word “Believe”. It implies not just an acknowledgement that Jesus is real. That God exists. Even the devil believes that! It implies aligning our lives during the time we have in this life to how it will be in the next. Dealing with our sins. Following God’s teachings. Building up a relationship with Him. Otherwise we will be unable to enter into God’s presence – how could we if we don’t know Him?

So today, let us stop worrying about how much time we have left for us in this life. Instead, let us ensure our future in the life to come.

A Holy Kiss

Posted on by korgrocker

“Unfailing love and truth have met together. 
Righteousness and peace have kissed! 
Truth springs up from the earth,
     and righteousness smiles down from heaven.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭85:10-11‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I love the poetic language in the Psalms. The descriptive words used, even in a translation, capture the Holy Spirit inspired message, lyrically flowing from the writer’s pen onto whatever medium was used in those days. In verse 10 we have four God-words – love, truth, righteousness and peace – coming together in a cosmic coincidence, intimately acquainting us with a glimpse of God in his Heavenly home. It’s the purity behind these words that has grabbed my attention today. Not just the limited human love, but unlimited, unfailing, God-love. Not the truth tarnished by human minds, but total God-truth. But what happens when just these two aspects of God’s character meet? A priceless jewel is birthed and it has a new word to describe it that hasn’t yet been conceived, awaiting us in Heaven. Something so significant has happened in Heaven that it can’t be held back, and in response, truth, a poor copy though, emerges in our sin-ridden domain here on planet earth. The imagery continues when two more God words appear on the Psalmist’s parchment – God-righteousness and God-peace. We are bounded by our very limited human understanding of what these words even mean, but we read that they come together in a kiss, in an intimate embrace, producing another jewel. Heaven is full of priceless objects that totally escape our human comprehension. An unlimited treasure chest of precious jewels that will take us eternity to discover and enjoy. Jewels safe in an environment uncorrupted by sin. I appeal to my readers this morning – make every effort to ensure your future. Make every effort to make the right investment. Make that faith-leap through the blood of Jesus into an assured future, beyond human understanding and comprehension, safe and sound in God’s presence.

The Son of Man

Posted on by korgrocker

“Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; 
at Your rebuke your people perish. 
Let Your hand rest on the man at Your right hand, 
the son of man You have raised up for Yourself. 
Then we will not turn away from You; revive us, 
and we will call on Your name.”
Psalms‬ ‭80:16-18‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

After the frenetic and dark days of Psalm 79, Asaph, the Psalmist, seems to be calming down and looking at his predicament with a more contrite and objective heart. Three times in the Psalm he appeals to God to ”make your face shine on us”. And he ends the Psalm with the reason for his request – “that we may be saved.” But, in a prophetic glimpse in verse 17, he introduces “the son of man”. This was the phrase that Jesus used to describe Himself when He walked in the highways and byways of Palestine. A phrase used many times in the Old Testament and the Gospels. But in his prophetic glimpse, perhaps Asaph saw that the solution to the national distress of the Jewish nation was a Messianic figure who would lead the people and keep them close to God. He wasn’t to know that a few hundred years later such a person would emerge, the Son of God, but also the Son of Man. Jesus, the divine and human Messiah. Amazingly, and sadly, the Jewish people failed to recognise Him, because by then they had lost sight of the reason for the Messiah’s coming, which was, according to verse 17, to bring God’s people back into His presence. Instead their expectation was for a Leader who would free the Jewish nation from the tyranny of the Roman occupation. And then there came the dark day when they crucified the very Man who was their salvation.

But Jesus died once, not just for His people, but for all mankind. His mission was accomplished. And by believing in Him, that His death brought forgiveness for our sins, we can fulfil the prophetic insight from this Psalm, turning back to God. And then we will find that His face will truly shine on us.

The Good Old Days

Posted on by korgrocker

“I think of the good old days, long since ended, 
when my nights were filled with joyful songs. 
I search my soul and ponder the difference now.”
Psalms‬ ‭77:5-6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Asaph, today’s Psalmist, seemed to be in a place of trouble. A place where he was calling out to God, but there were no answers to his cries of distress. And he wrote in verse 4, “You don’t let me sleep. I am too distressed even to pray!” Have we ever been in a place like that? One where the Heavens seem to be made of brass and we wonder if God is taking a holiday?

The Psalmist did what we tend to do when life is difficult. He reflected on times past, the “good old days”. When life seemed so much easier than it is today. “Why did I ever leave that job – it was much easier than today and the people were much nicer”. Or, “I wish our old minister had never retired”. Or “I always seemed to have money in my pocket then – it’s difficult making ends meet today because things are so much more expensive.” The list is endless. But the problem is that we tend to look back with what have been called “rose-tinted glasses”. Remembering the good bits in our lives but conveniently forgetting the hard and difficult times. And, like the Psalmist, we compare our memories with life today and ponder.

But such a strategy is unproductive. Though it is good to take our memories out of the closet where we keep them and dust them off from time to time, we would do well to remember that we cannot relive those times. They are gone. As I keep reminding myself when times seem tough, what lies before me is what I make of it. With God’s help I can deal with any issues and move on. We must use the memories to remind ourselves of how we handled tough times, not lapse into self-pity, dwelling on “if only…”.

The Psalmist does the same. He turns away from the nostalgic analysis of his memories, instead leveraging them for his current situation. He wrote, “But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works. O God, your ways are holy. Is there any god as mighty as you? You are the God of great wonders! You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations.” And that is all Asaph needed to do. He remembered himself into a place where he knew God would “do it again”. In faith we too can reach out to God, reminding Him of His grace and mercy in years past and asking Him to help us again. God never changes. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever. If He helped us through a crisis a year ago, He will do so again. And He delights in answering the prayers of His children.

The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippian church, “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” (Philippians 3:13-14). Our lives today can’t be tougher than Paul’s. But nothing was going to deter him from finishing well in the race of life. Let’s press on together.