GLADDEN MY SOUL...

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
    for I am poor and needy.
² Preserve my life, for I am godly;
    save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God.
³ Be gracious to me, O Lord,
    for to you do I cry all the day.
⁴ Gladden the soul of your servant,
    for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
⁵ For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
    abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.   Psalm 86:1-5

I am not a sad person.  What I mean is, I have a generally optimistic, positive outlook on life.  Sad things happen but I don’t tend to dwell on them.  I know I’ve had some really difficult things happen in my life.  I have experienced great loss.  I have had people betray me and turn against me.  I have been dealt with unfairly.  And I have had times of real struggle.  But God made me in such a way that none of these things have weighed heavily on my spirit over a long period of time.  Some people might say (and have said) that it is because I am so shallow; that I don’t reflect enough on the seriousness of these things.  Maybe they are right.  I don’t know.

The other day I was praying through Psalm 86 and meditating on it.  (I’m pretty shallow so my meditations aren’t very deep!)  The thought that really struck me is verse 4, “Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.”  I don’t know what David was experiencing when he wrote this psalm.  I can see that he was burdened and downhearted.  I think he was more than just “sad.”  It seems deeper that mere sadness to me.  His soul needs to be lifted up.  So what does he do?  He turns to God.  He calls out to God to gladden his soul.  He bares his heart to God. 

On the surface it seems like someone might say, “Oh, I see.  David was really down so he prayed about it.”  As I reflected on the passage it occurred to me that David was doing something far more important than simply “praying about it.”  I began to think about how people tend to deal with deep sorrow and heavy burdens when the sadness seems to touch even their very souls.  Very often we seek to change our circumstances.  In other words, go do something fun, get some really good friends to spend time with, anything to change the circumstances in which we find ourselves so very sad.  I think David knew that such things would not be able to change the burden on his soul.  There is a spiritual aspect to such deep sorrow and it must be dealt with on a spiritual level.  Only God can touch our souls no matter what the romantics write.  So he turns to the One who can gladden his soul.  My friends can identify with my sad; they can empathize with me; they can weep with me; they can try to comfort me.  But they cannot touch my soul like God can.

So we turn to God to gladden us.  David says in verse 5 that God is “good and forgiving abounding in steadfast love…”  Ah, it begins to become clear!  What my soul needs is goodness because my sorrow may be caused by evil.  I need forgiveness because my sad could be the result of sin in my life.  I need steadfast love because human love can be shallow and fickle.  God is what my soul needs!  I need God himself and all that he is!  It is God who gladdens the soul!

LIVING STONES AND SACRIFICES

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  (1 Peter 2:4, 5)

Peter says that Jesus is a “living stone.”  The purpose of this living stone is shown to us in verse 6, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious.”  Jesus, the living stone, is the cornerstone upon which God will build.  He is the foundation, the rock.  He was rejected by men, Peter says.  Even though he was rejected by his own people, he was chosen of God, a darling and precious stone.  It is man’s nature to reject God and his Son. 

We are not surprised that Jesus was rejected.  What is surprising is that any human being would come to Christ!  That’s the amazing thing we read at the beginning of verse 4, “As you come to him…”  I get the feeling here that Peter is saying, “As you somehow discover that you yourselves are coming to Christ in spite of your own personal desires…”  Can I really read that intent into the text?  Peter speaks to believers as if they have been practically passive in the whole process!  He says, “…you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house…”  That is obviously passive!  We are not building ourselves into the spiritual house; God is the only one who can build a spiritual house upon the cornerstone who is Jesus!  He has made us into the image of Jesus.  He has made us living stones like Jesus!  And we find ourselves being placed into this spiritual house, this temple.  God has taken us from being spiritually dead and made us alive.  I have the picture of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones in my mind.  He preached to the bones and suddenly they began to come together as God made something that was dead into something alive!

But there is something that is so amazing that it stops me in my tracks.  Why does God build us into this living spiritual temple or house?  “…To be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  I was dead in trespasses and sins.  Dead.  Unable to do anything of a spiritual nature at all.  Unable to do anything to please God.  As King David wrote, “Can the dead please you, O Lord?”  So God made me alive.  But what is more, he made me a priest who is able to offer spiritual sacrifices to God!  And even more, my sacrifices are acceptable to him!  But they are only acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  Jesus took my sin upon himself and carried it away.  He left me robed in his own righteousness.  It is through the righteousness of Jesus that I am able to offer acceptable sacrifices to God.  What are those sacrifices?  I lay down my life.  I offer praise and worship.  And God accepts these!

How good God is!  How gracious and merciful!  How astonishingly powerful!  He makes what is dead alive and lovingly makes us into priests who offer sacrifices of worship to him…and then he accepts our worship!  Praise be to God!

SURPRISING GRACE

Matthew 1:1-17

Having been in ministry for many, many years now it seems like I have met with almost every kind of problem possible.  Some problems are small and some are really big.  Some make me want to weep and some tempt me to get angry.  Some problems are easily addressed from scripture and others require much prayer and study before they can be discussed.

In this latest chapter of ministry here in the Central Valley of California there has been one issue that has cropped up over and over again as I have served this congregation.  I have encountered this issue in the past but it has taken on a very new dimension in this particular situation.  In short, it goes like this…

I am sitting with someone who has had a very hard life.  Perhaps there has been substance abuse or addiction.  Maybe it has been jail or prison time.  It might be recurring sexual immorality and broken relationships.  I share the good news of freedom and a fresh start through the gospel of Jesus Christ with the person.  And whatever their situation, I have heard this more often than ever before, “Pastor, I don’t think the gospel applies to me.  You really can’t imagine how bad I really am.  I’m not worthy of being saved!”

That is a much more difficult problem than it appears to be on the surface.  I have found that it just doesn’t suffice to say something like, “Oh we are all sinners!  No sinner is too wicked to be saved by God’s grace!  Surely you must understand that there are many Christians who were far worse than you have been!”  Those kinds of statements come across as pastoral platitudes and they almost always fail to move the person.

So I was thinking about Matthew 1:1-17 recently.  You know the passage.  It is the genealogical passage that gives us the ancestors of Jesus, the royal line of Israel.  We find all the famous names of the Old Testament story there.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  King David and Solomon.  Hezekiah and Josiah.  It is a testimony to the faithfulness of God as he kept his covenant with Abraham and David.

But there are four people mentioned in this genealogy who don’t really seem to belong.  One reason they don’t seem to fit is that they are women.  But that isn’t the main reason for the discomfort.  The thing that stands out is the character and/or the ethnicity of these women. 

Tamar is the woman who deceived her father-in-law, Judah, by playing the part of a prostitute.  She conceived twins, Perez and Zerah, who are both mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus.

Rahab was the Canaanite prostitute who was delivered safely from the destruction of Jericho because she hid the Hebrew spies.  She married Salmon and became the mother of Boaz.

Ruth was the Moabite widow who gleaned in the fields of Boaz.  He became her kinsman redeemer, married her, and she bore him a son named Obed who was the grandfather of King David!

Finally, we have Bathsheba, who is not mentioned by name.  The text reads, “And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah…” (Matthew 1:6).  An adulteress, she married David after he had her husband abandoned and killed in battle.

All four of these women received the highest possible honor; they were introduced to the royal line of David and Jesus, the Son of David.  They are examples of grace, as we all are.  No one ever needs to worry that he or she is too great a sinner.  None needs be concerned that they can’t receive grace.  It seems that God has a history of showing us that his grace is sufficient for anyone, including me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CALLED TO BE SAINTS TOGETHER...

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (1 Corinthians 1:2)

Paul’s greeting to the church in Corinth gives us a great deal for which to be thankful.  He addresses the “church of God” in Corinth.  It is God’s church, not the church belonging to the Corinthians.  In over 40 years of church ministry I have met far too many people who speak and act as if the church is their church.  How much better would church life be if we all recognized that the church is God’s, not ours?  That what we do as a congregation of believers is all about God and not about us?  Thanks be to God that it is his church because if it was ours it would have died out centuries ago!

Paul addresses the members of God’s church as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus.”  This is truly humbling!  The apostle is about to mention a number of serious problems and sins in that church from divisions to sexual immorality, yet he reminds them that they are “sanctified” (past tense!).  We believers are set apart by God to be his own even though we continually sin.  In God’s eyes we are already holy in spite of our consistent failure.  Again, thanks be to God that our position in Christ is secured by his sanctifying work and not by our own efforts to be righteous!

Then Paul reminds his readers that they are called to unity with believers everywhere, “called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Another humbling description of God’s church!  There is no room for any sense of superiority over Christians from third world countries.  No place for denominational prejudices.  It is not acceptable for believers to fight and divide over perceived theological differences or worship practices.  If people call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ he is both their Lord and ours!

This is a call to unity!  Instead of focusing on our differences we need to work together to major in what Jesus did to make us one!  The church is not about us, it is us!  And all who call upon the Lord Jesus are part of us!  May God help us to see all true believers as our brothers and sisters!

CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS

I want to wish my friends a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year.  I haven’t posted anything here on Window Reflections in a very long time.  I’ve been thinking.  This Christmas has been very different for us.  We actually went on a two week vacation right in the middle of Advent season!  Never did that before!  Best thing I’ve done in years!  You know why?  We were not as busy doing Christmas so I had much more time to reflect on Christmas and what it means to me.  This post is the collection of thoughts the Lord brought to my mind this Advent and I just wanted to share them with you.  I hope the Lord opens your heart to see the same thing he has shown me this year.  Merry Christmas!

In reflecting on the Christmas story this season I have been amazed at the frequency with which we encounter the working of the Holy Spirit.  No, he is not mentioned in every instance, but there is no other explanation for the actions of the people in the story.  It is obvious that the Holy Spirit is doing a work in them.  When Gabriel came to Mary to announce her pending pregnancy she wondered how she could bear a child when she was still a virgin.  Gabriel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” (Luke 1:35).  Then her response to Gabriel’s words can only be explained by the working of the Holy Spirit in her heart.  She said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).  She is receptive and appears to be completely at peace with the amazing news. 

When Joseph learned that Mary was expecting he did not believe that it was a work of God and he came to a resolution; he was going to divorce her quietly in order to spare her the shame of public humiliation.  He came to a resolution!  It was not merely an inclination or a feeling.  He was resolved!  Then he had a dream in which an angel came to him and told him to take Mary as his wife because she really was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.  When he woke up, not a few days or a week later, he did exactly what he had resolved not to do; he took Mary to wife.  How can such a dramatic change take place in an embarrassed man’s life unless it is the Holy Spirit at work? 

The now-famous shepherds also heard from an angel about the birth of the Savior.  They obeyed the words of the angel, went to Bethlehem, found the Christ child, and turned into evangelists!  “And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told the concerning this child.  And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them” (Luke 2:17, 18).  It is almost impossible to understand such a transformation apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in the shepherds!

            We come to Simeon in Luke 2:25ff.  Luke describes him as being “righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him” (Luke 2:25).  The ancient Jewish writings identify Simeon as a great scholar and theologian.  He was a member of the Sanhedrin and the head of a Jewish school.  This Simeon is known as the father of the great scholar, Gamaliel, under whom Paul studied.  The writings also say that late in life he was removed from both the Sanhedrin and the academy because he did not adhere to the common view that the Messiah was going to establish merely an earthly kingdom based on the restoration of Israel.  He was banished and his name was erased from the records.  Yet Luke says the Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die before he saw the Lord’s anointed one (Luke 2:26).  So we see the Holy Spirit working in the heart of Simeon.  And on this very day when we meet him he is in intimate communication with the Holy Spirit.  “And he came in the Spirit into the temple” (Luke 2:27).  What does that actually mean?  Very simply, Simeon was living so closely to God that when the Spirit urged him to go up to the temple, he did!  Next, the Spirit pointed out the young couple bringing their newborn son into the temple for his presentation.  The Spirit told him that this infant was the Lord’s Christ!  The work of the Holy Spirit is everywhere in Simeon’s life!

            But there is more!  This old man approached Joseph and Mary and took Jesus into his own arms!  How does an old man take a baby from his parents?  Was he very well-known?  Did they recognize him?  Was he still wearing priestly garb at this point in his life?  Or did the Holy Spirit give Joseph and Mary a sense of assurance that he was working through this old man?  It seems unlikely that a mother would have allowed this to happen unless the Holy Spirit had given her confidence in him.  Simeon took Jesus in his arms and began to pray (see Luke 2:29-32).  The content of Simeon’s prayer amazed Joseph and Mary!  They knew who Jesus was and the shepherds knew and maybe a few other folks in Bethlehem knew; but how did this old man know about Jesus?  It could only be the revelation of the Holy Spirit!

            So we see the Holy Spirit at work throughout the Christmas story.  It is as if he is going here and there and revealing God and his message all over the place.  The very words of the story seem to have a weight and gravitas about them that tell us that this is a very important moment and God is saying something most significant. 

THE LORD ASSIGNED

1 Corinthians 3:5-7   “What then is Apollos?  What is Paul?  Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.  I planted, Apollos watered but God gave the growth.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

 When the Lord puts a passage of scripture before my eyes several times in a week I take it as a sign to pay attention.  This passage, 1 Corinthians 3:5-7 has been one of those.  I came across it in my devotional reading first, then in a book I am reading, and finally it jumped out at me from our denominational magazine this morning.  God says, “Pay attention!”

Paul is speaking to me here.  In fact, he is speaking to all of us who are involved in doing ministry of any kind.  No, he is speaking to all of us and he is reminding us about our role in kingdom work. 

Do you notice that Paul writes, “What is Paul?” not “Who is Paul?”  That is because he wants his readers to know that in the great work of evangelism and kingdom-building it doesn’t matter who we are!  The thing we need to remember is what we are!  Paul says we are servants.  The Greek word is diakonos, “servant, helper, minister.”  I am God’s servant.  He has assigned me a task.  Sometimes I plant the seed of the gospel.  Sometimes I water the seed.  I am merely a servant who is supposed to do what the master assigns me.

Our church is made up primarily of farmers and farm workers.  Early every morning the farm workers assemble at the farm shop and Steve gives them their assignments for the day.  Some of the workers are supervisors.  The rest are laborers.  But Steve assigns them all their work for the day.  Even the supervisors are under Steve’s direction.  They may do one thing today and something very different tomorrow. 

We are harvesting the almonds now.  Countless truckloads of almonds!  Mountains of almonds sitting in the yards of the hullers!  Which laborer gets the credit for which almonds?  Which supervisor gets the credit for the harvest?  Does it matter?

And so it is with me.  One day Christ will return and bring his kingdom with him.  The earth will be filled with God’s sons and daughters.  He won’t say, “Okay, who is responsible for this one?  Who shared the gospel with this one?  Who spent time explaining the message to this one?  Who gets the credit?”  He won’t ask such questions because we are servants and we aren’t responsible for the salvation of any of them!  God sends us to plant or water but only he can make the seed grow.  He is responsible for life!

So God put this passage in front of me this week.  What does one do in such situations?  I ask God what he wants me to see.  He reminds me that I am a servant.  Okay.  Good.  “Then, Lord, I want to be the best servant I can be!  How can I be a better servant?”  And the Lord said, “Pay attention to my daily assignments.  Do only what I ask you to do.  Don’t get caught up in measuring results or assigning credit.  Be humble and give me the glory for the harvest when it comes in.  Don’t ever give up!”

Okay….

CHRIST IN ME

Galatians 2:19, 20  For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

           Paul says it is impossible for a person who has been justified through faith in Christ to return to his old sinful lifestyle.  It is not merely his standing with God that has been changed.  He has been changed!  He has been united with Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.  He now has new life.  His faith is Christ is a result of the work of God through the Son and the Spirit.

            Paul explains this new life through his own experience.  He describes it in two ways in verses 19, 20.  “I died to the law, so that I might live to God.”  “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”  This is why Christians cannot continue to live in their sin!  Through faith in the work of Christ we have joined, by faith, in his crucifixion.  Day by day we die to sin and the old way of living.  Every day we die to our pride and our confidence in good works.  We have been united with Christ and through his Spirit he now lives in us, putting sin to death and clothing us with his righteousness.  We are being shaped into the image of Christ through death to sin and new life in Christ.  Our lives are no longer our own to live any way we please.  Christ lives in us and our lives are his to do with as he pleases.  Paul says he lives like this because Jesus “loved me and gave himself for me.”  Christ changes us spiritually.  We no longer desire to live the old way.  He puts a passion for holiness in us.  We are moving in a completely new direction, away from the old life toward God.  By grace through faith he changed us!