Thoughts on Ps 135 pt 2

So, it’s been a few days since my previous post. I left off noting that the second part of the psalm involves a remembrance of the great deeds of God in the history of the Israelites and how this remembrance is a reliving of for the Israelites. I begin with verse 13:

Here the psalmist goes into a declaration of God’s glory based on His actions that he has just remembered. Consider the depth of his words:

Your name, O LORD (or Yahweh,God’s covenant name), endures forever, Your renown, O LORD, throughout all the ages.

“Your name”-this is the sum total of all that God is. This is all of His holiness, righteousness, sovereignty, mercy, love, covenant faithfulness, etc. The placement of this declaration is important. It isn’t made in a vacuum. The psalmist says this after he has spoken and remembered God’s great acts of creation and redemption. This is not, “Well, I feel like God’s name is great and it will endure forever,” or “It seems like God’s name will endure forever.” It is known to last forever because of God’s actions. He has shown Himself to be good and holy and righteous and faithful by His actions. He has shown Himself to be completely consistent with His character.

In this we see that His name endures. It has lasting power. It won’t wear out or break down. God will remain consistent with Himself. he won’t change. His name endures forever. This isn’t just staying power, like a football team having endurance for the entire game. It’s not endurance like the universe. It’s not something that lasts a long time. The Roman empire endured for a long time, nearly a millennium, but it ceased to be. The island of England hasn’t been invaded for almost a millennium; it may go longer. However, God’s name endures forever. God remains steadfast. He won’t change. This is shown in the psalmist’s remembrance of God’s works. He has been consistent. He will remain so forever. This is indeed a comfort for us. God is consistent even though our world changes. his name, His character will endure!

The psalmist also says that Yahweh’s renown is through out all the ages. “Renown” could also be translated as “remembrance.” This is about God’s deeds being remembered and recognized. God has proven and shown Himself to be good and all can see that. One could say, “Your reputation precedes you.” Now, God’s reputation is so great that it will be remembered throughout the ages. This is just another way of saying forever. And yet it is more active in a sense; some translations render the last words from “generation to generation” or “throughout all generations.”

Verse 14 flows out of these two statements about Yahweh. In recalling that God’s character is unchanging the psalmist declares:

For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants.

This verse captures the anticipation of worship. Worship draws to look into the future. We are assured by God’s actions in the past and can have hope in the future. God will vindicate His people, He will once more prove Himself faithful. All those who trust in God can hope and look forward to this. This anticipation is grounded in one’s remembrance of God’s past deeds. Without remembrance and recall, we have no ground for a future hope. We have no ground for hope without our contemplation of God’s past deeds. And our remembrance has no focus if it does not lead to an anticipation of the future. For if our remembrance only leaves in the present, we run the risk of thinking our current circumstances are all that there is.

This latter though is something we are especially prone to in our culture. We are so comfortable in our present state; we act like this present state is the goal of our Christian walk. We end up emphasizing only the here and now if we neglect the future hope we really do have.

But, we must see what this vindication is though. It is not our souls being freed from this material world. it isn’t spending eternity in some amorphous spiritual realm. Our vindication is God declaring us free from sin and our bodies being purged and renewed in the likeness of Christ. It is us being glorified and perfected. But it is not only us that his happens to! It is all of creation, the whole physical universe being renewed and glorified, being given a state of perfection that exceeds the Garden of Eden far and above what the Garden exceeds the current state of this world!

Why though is all of this possible? How is it that all of creation can be renewed? It is because of the second Adam, because of Christ’s death and resurrection that this is possible! All who trust in Christ are vindicated because Christ was vindicated! In His death, the sin of the whole world was placed upon Him because it pleased the Father to do so. Christ willingly accepted this even though He didn’t deserve it. And God was so pleased and appeased that He showed forth His satisfaction by raising Christ from the dead. Christ was raised and glorified by the Father and through Christ the Holy Spirit has been given to renew us and to begin to renew all of creation, just as the Father had planned. At the Final Judgment, we, all who have trusted Christ’s work for us, will be vindicated in Christ because sin death and the Devil will be cast into the Lake of Fire and all the cosmos will be renewed. This is the anticipation that worship leads to and needs. The psalmist, of course, did not know all these details, but he certainly could anticipate God’s work even when he wrote this psalm. Why? Because he could recall all of God’s past works of redemption for Israel and see that God would never be inconsistent with Himself. Vindication for God’s people would come and it would be God who would accomplish it!

We can now see why an admonition against idolatry would follow the psalmist’s remembrance and anticipation. This, however, will have to wait for part three. I think that I have written enough to consider for the time being.

Thoughts on Psalm 135 pt 1

Recently, I’ve been reading Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Engaging God’s Narrative. The book begins by saying, “Worship does God’s story.” This feels like a weird definition. One expects a definition to include the word “is” in it. However, Webber sees worship as something that is action oriented, a definition that I tend to agree with. Worship is about doing something. What is the something that we do in order to do God’s story? This is done through remembrance and anticipation. We recall God’s great acts of redemption in the past and call one another to hope and look forward to what God is doing as a result of that past redemptive action. This is all done in the present, thus making real the past and the future to the worshipper and making real God’s love for the whole world before the congregation.
Webber goes on to note that worship that really worships will dwell on creation, incarnation, and re-creation. That is, it follows the flow of the Bible. In Scripture, God is recognized as creator. He is the one that made all things that exist. Mankind screwed all of that up by choosing to rebel against God. All of creation was then thrown into a fallen state. God, in His mercy, becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ. God the Son enters into creation as a creature! Why would God do something like that? It is because He is going to redeem all of creation! Jesus didn’t just come to save me, He came to redeem the whole world, to fix all that is wrong in it. To do that He had to die for sin and conquer death and the devil. By His resurrection from the dead, He ensures that all of creation will be re-created and glorified. This is the overarching theme of the Bible.
However, in our modern worship, we mess everything up. We truncate worship and make it all about me, myself, and I. We only focus on what God is going to do for me and if it makes me feel good then I respond with worship. But then my worship becomes all about feeling a “liver quiver.” I want to get something out of worship, I want to feel good about myself. This is completely wrong! Worship isn’t about me! It’s about God and showing who God is!
So, how does this all relate to Psalm 135? Go get a Bible and look it up.
The psalm can be broken down into four parts:

1. A call to praise God. vv 1-4
2. A liturgical creed about all that God has and will do. vv 5-14
3. An application of the creed for life. vv16-18
4. A call to praise the God. vv 19-21

The first four verses are pretty self explanatory. They are a call to praise. It is a call for all people, the whole assembly of God, to give Him the praise that He deserves. In verses 3 and 4 we are given two statements that will be expanded up on the verses that follow. God is good and He has chosen Jacob for Himself. These are important verses to remember throughout the rest of the psalm. They tell us about God in shorthand. It is especially important to recognize the psalmist’s use of the name Jacob to speak of the people. Jacob was a cheat who ran from God and his family, yet he was chosen by God to be the father of the sons who would represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel has no standing before God for they are just as bad as Jacob. They are cheats and scoundrels, just as he was, yet God has chosen them as His own possession. God owns them. We should keep this in mind when we talk about God. He owns us and we literally have nothing to offer to Him. There is no good in us, nothing that should make God look upon us with love. We really only deserve His derision, yet in Christ he chooses to save us and the whole world! He chooses to take away our sin and do away with it! That is what grace is all about! We can’t do anything except trust that God is good and that He has done this!
The next verses I call a liturgical creed. It’s because they have the format that our most basic creed, the Apostles’ Creed, follows. It declares God as the one who has made everything and what He has done to redeem that creation and what God will do in the end. For the Israelite, recalling something is extremely important. It is absolutely needed in worship. Recalling means remembering something from the past so much so that it makes is present to yourself. Israel did this all the time. The people constantly remembered God’s redeeming them from the hands of Egypt even though it was generations and generations ago. Yet, they were there for their ancestors were the ones redeemed. There is a deep, deep corporate solidarity here; a corporate oneness that we ultra-individualized people of today cannot even begin to grasp (but we must begin to grasp it if our worship is to be full worship).
It begins with a recalling that the LORD is great and that He is above all gods. Because of this he can do all that He pleases throughout all of creation. God can do this because He is the creator of all things! He makes the clouds, the lightning, and the winds!
Next, the psalmist recalls to the people how God brought them out of Egypt by reminding them of the climax of the plagues that led the Pharaoh to drive them out! He also recalls the many victories of the Israelites during their time in the wilderness and their coming into the land of Canaan as their inheritance. All of this is credited to God. All of this is part of God’s redemption for the people of Israel. We do well to remember the great redemption ourselves. When we recall what God did for Israel, we remember God’s faithfulness to a people that had ignored Him for generations! We must also see that the Exodus was a type, something that God did in history that would be a marker pointing forward to Christ. The Exodus was a great thing for Israel, but it was small compared to what it pointed to in the future!
Another note about this: Sometimes people feel embarrassed about verses like 8-11, speaking of God striking down the firstborn of Egypt and his killing mighty kings. We think, “How can a God of love do something so horrible??” We forget that God said that He was going to punish the peoples of Canaan for all their sins (see Gen 15:16, God says that Abraham’s children will return to the land when the iniquities of the Amorites are fulfilled). God is a God who deals with sin and it is important to not down play what God does to sinners, to those who persist in their sin, because God is a holy God.
Finally in verse 12, the psalmist speaks of God giving the land as an inheritance to the Israelites. This is the completion of God’s redemption of them from Egypt and the beginning of their lives as a nation that is set apart before God and from all the other nations. They were to be a light to all the nations, showing that God is a God full of mercy and steadfast love, but one who will punish the sins of people who resist Him and insist on doing everything their own way.
Verses 5-12 serve as the act of remembrance that is needed for worship. They are verses that bring to life the story of God’s actions in the past to the people of the present and set the context for their anticipation. That anticipation is what I will deal with in the second part of this post.

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Psalm 135

Your Name, O LORD, Endures Forever

¹ Praise the LORD!Praise the name of the LORD,

give praise, O servants of the LORD,

²who stand in the house of the LORD,

in the courts of the house of our God!

³Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good;

sing to his name, for it is pleasant!

⁴For the LORD has chosen Jacob for himself,

Israel as his own possession.

⁵For I know that the LORD is great,

and that our Lord is above all gods.

⁶ Whatever the LORD pleases, he does,

in heaven and on earth,

in the seas and all deeps.

⁷ He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth,

who makes lightnings for the rain

and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.

⁸He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt,

both of man and of beast;

⁹who in your midst, O Egypt,

sent signs and wonders

against Pharaoh and all his servants;

¹⁰ who struck down many nations

and killed mighty kings,

¹¹ Sihon, king of the Amorites,

and Og, king of Bashan,

and all the kingdoms of Canaan,

¹²and gave their land as a heritage,

a heritage to his people Israel.

¹³ Your name, O LORD, endures forever,

your renown, O LORD, throughout all ages.

¹⁴ For the LORD will vindicate his people

and have compassion on his servants.

¹⁵ The idols of the nations are silver and gold,

the work of human hands.

¹⁶They have mouths, but do not speak;

they have eyes, but do not see;

¹⁷they have ears, but do not hear,

nor is there any breath in their mouths.

¹⁸Those who make them become like them,

so do all who trust in them!

¹⁹ O house of Israel, bless the LORD!

O house of Aaron, bless the LORD!

²⁰O house of Levi, bless the LORD!

You who fear the LORD, bless the LORD!

²¹Blessed be the LORD from Zion,

he who dwells in Jerusalem!

Praise the LORD!

A pointless post :D

Well, this is something new for me.  I’m trying out “Windows Live Writer” to write a pointless blog post.  I hope that one day I will begin writing like I use to when I was only on Xanga.  I don’t know what happened honestly…I just suddenly found myself unable to think clearly or concisely like I used to.  Maybe it was that there was no longer a crisis in my life.  I think that my main blogging was during the time that Rachel and I weren’t dating…Who knows?  Anyway.  I’ll hopefully write again!

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Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

• I think everyone should read and dwell on this passage for a while. Just consider how Paul builds up his comments here. He goes through the entirity of salvation making various comments on it. I think that the main thrust of the chapter is vv 8-11 (which begins with "Indeed, I count everything as loss..." and finishes the paragraph there). This is a beautiful passage dealing with who we are in Christ and the hope that we have of attaining the goal that He has for us in this life and the here-after! Blessings!

2 Mission trips later...pt 1

There is much to be said about life in the aftermath of a mission trip... There is even more to be said about life in the aftermath of two back to back mission trips. I survived. I went. I returned. I am tired. I am mostly recovered and gearing back up for the usual preparation for Bible studies and quiet times and activities with the youth. I wonder at the work that the Lord has done these two weeks in my life. I have seen Him work in the kids lives. I've seen them stretched beyond their strength, seen them pulled to do what they would normally not do. I have seen them grow deeper into Christ in the midst of hard labor and obedience. I have seen what true spirituality is and it doesn't involve seeking out spiritual experiences outside of serving God, but it involves doing what God has told us to do, what Jesus Himself reiterated in the Sermon on the Mount. Our actions are to reflect that which is on the inside. If the inside is dead and nasty, no matter how glamorous our actions on the outside look, they are just as dead and nasty. If we are clean and have God's Spirit on the inside, then no matter how small our outward action, it is approved by God because we are able to do it with the right intentions. However, if outward obedience doesn't follow from the inward change, then how can we believe there is an inward change?? That is pure presumption!

I'll start with the Middle Schoolers and Chattanooga.

This trip came out of nowhere! Not that we hadn't planned on doing a middle school trip, but the original idea was canceled due to a lack of youth groups coming on it. So, instead of trying to do another trip with Son Servants (the organization that sets up and plans the trips) for the same week which would have cost a great deal more, the parents opted for a trip in a different week. So, we ended up going to Chattanooga the week before the High School mission trip. That was quite the hard decision for me to make. I was torn between feeling like I needed to do both trips, being the youth intern who had signed up for two mission trips this summer, and trying to find someone else to make one of the trips. After much prayer and consideration, I decided to do both trips, which Rachel agreed would be good. And so began two weeks driving a fifteen passenger van over 2700 miles!

On our way to Chattanooga we stopped in Montreat, NC to pick up our other adult advisor for the trip. Carolyn, the advisor I was picking up asked if the kids had known we were stopping to get her. She thought it would have been funny had I not told them I was going to be picking her up. Had I done that, I could've got them believing that I was picking up a random hitchhiker that happened to be sitting in the Bilo parking lot waiting on a ride (which I must say would have been pretty funny).

So, we set off from there and drove through the mountains of North Carolina and then through the mountains of Tennessee and stopped for lunch in Newport, TN. From there we progressed on toward Chattanooga, with a brief stop in Athens at the Wal-Mart that I had only visited once since they built the new Supercenter there. It was quite a trip, remembering all the places I used to hang out at and things that I used to do when I lived down there. It made me sad that I couldn't make it over to Tellico Plains, my hometown, being only a short 25 minutes off of the interstate. But that couldn't be worked in, not justified, though I think it would have surprised the kids to see such a rural town because most of them have been raised in and around the huge city of Charlotte or something that compares to it. I can't imagine the shock many of them would have had to see all the rural back country that made up one town and total lack of every kind of fast food restaurant that they were used to! Granted, we did get off the interstate in Cleveland and take Hwy 58 to the campground where we would be staying for the next 5 nights, which offered up quite a bit of farmland and open stretches of country side, though none of them noticed it that much since I didn't have anything to say about considering it was an area that I was unfamiliar with.

So, we got to the campground, checked in and began meeting other people from other youth groups. It was mostly southern kids (if my memory isn't failing me, which it might be with as much as it took in during these two weeks of traveling) with a big group from Florida (which as we all know is not really Southern at all ;)

The neat thing about Son Servants is that when they do a mission trip, they take care of all of the logistics and Bible Studies and what not. They also partner with a local ministry in the area where the mission trip is so that we are giving aid to the local ministry in accomplishing their goals in the area. In Chattanooga, we partnered with Widows Harvest Ministries. This ministry's sole reason for existence was to go take care of widows. Their work ranged from simple house hold things (changing light bulbs, fixing doors, etc.) to re-roofing houses to simply visiting the widows in their homes and offering Bible Studies for them to attend in order to meet other people. It is truly a God-sent ministry for these women! The founder of it in Chattanooga, Mr. Mason, has been doing this for something like 30 years! He has a heart for ministry and wants to do this all for the sake of Christ! Truly a man of God that we should remember in our prayers!

Our typical day involved wake up at 6:30a, breakfast at 7, quiet time at 7:30, quick group devotional at 8, then to the vans and to our work sites at 8:15. We left the work sites at around 3 (maybe a few minutes earlier if you were really far away from the campground, or a few minutes later if you were finishing a project). From when we got back to the campground to 6p was free time. Dinner started at 6p, with adult counselor meetings at 6:30-7:15ish. Our big meeting was from 7:30-9 with family time going from 9-9:45 and everyone needing to be in their respective cabins by 10 (this didn't always happen, but they weren't too hard on us if any kids wandering from the bathrooms had an adult advisor with them to keep them out of trouble). Lights out at 10:15p, with sleep coming when you felt like it, which was pretty quick considering the work we had just accomplished that day and doing it all over again the next! All in all, a good schedule to keep for a week for the kids (though for me it was two weeks).

One of the hardest things for me that week was being the leader for the work group I was part of. The first day was torturous for me because I'm used to just jumping in and doing work and people following my lead. That's how it usually works with adults (and I say "usually" because of my time at Wal-Mart as a Lead Night stocker in Frozen and Dairy because the guys they gave me weren't always the best at following the leader...). So, I had to hold back and teach the kids what they were doing and stay aware of them in order to correct or help them accomplish their job a bit better. Our job was to scrape an old house and then prime and re-paint it. One of the difficulties in scraping the house was the fact that its siding was made of asbestos, which meant we needed to be careful about how hard we scrape lest we send up bits of fiber for us to inhale. That was something I had to really watch out for because some of the kids really wanted to do a spectacular scrape job and get every shred of paint, even if it wasn't in the least bit willing to come off, off! Doing that was sure to cut into the siding and send asbestos fibers into the air.

I do have to say I asked the kids in our youth that went with me to pray for me in this area, that I would able to delegate work and oversee without trying to do everything myself. God answered that prayer in an abundant way that week! He truly worked through me! I didn't even have to try to not do everything, it never crossed my mind! I just helped the kids do the tasks that i assigned to them and kept an eye out for anything else that needed doing! All in all, God really worked through me during that week of leading my work crew (a job that I had prayed would not be given to me, but God had other plans in mind, I suppose!).

I only got to work with two youth from GSPC, Maddie and Harris, but it was a good time with them. I got to know them a bit better since I was working with them everyday and I hope to continue to cultivate that relationship. And even though I didn't work with any of the others, the week provided a great deal of time for getting to know everyone else. I especially had a good time connecting with Zach and I do look forward to how the Lord is going to work through him in the future as he grows in Christ more and more!

The most impressive thing about the week was what all the kids learned from the experience. When I say "all," I mean everyone that came to the mission trip. On the last night, there was a time of sharing what the Lord had done in them and taught them throughout the week. The theme that all of them had was basically, "It's not all about me, it's really about God and Who He is." These testimonies were truly breathtaking! All of these kids came with so much selfishness in their hearts, but through working with widows, who had nothing in comparison to our plentiful lifestyles, but were more thankful than anyone I have ever met, God changed them little by little to see that all their toys amounted to nothing! I pray that that lesson is something they continue to learn and take hold of as our own culture becomes more and more superficial and materialistic and that maybe they can be part of God's plan, I hope, to stem this tide away from Him and show others the pure love of Christ in everything that he does!

I think that is about all I can say for the time being. I don't think that I am done just yet talking about Chattanooga. I haven't mentioned our trip to the Church of the Firstborn, where VBS was held all week and how the kids responded to the speaker! This, again, was a truly amazing night in my life, as well as all the kids who experienced the same thing that I did!

Until then, may God grant you peace and grace as you travel through this alien land on your pilgrimage toward the Son!

"The end of preaching is not information, it’s persuasion."
Mike Bullmore

Papers

So, I'm sitting at Caribou Coffee drinking a sweet mocha and trying to start on a paper. *sigh* I just can't figure out how to get started. I'm writing an exegetical paper on Rom. 3:21-26. I guess I'm just going to try to start on something. At least I have a title that most people think is cool. "But Now..." I think that is at least the beginning point of it! Well, time to get out of here and get started.