Sing the Psalms

December 29, 2013 in Bible - NT - Hebrews, Bible - OT - Psalms, Christmas, King Jesus, Meditations, Singing Psalms, Word of God, Worship
Hebrews 4:11-13 (NKJV)
11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must giveaccount.
Much has transpired in the last week. We have moved out of the time of Advent and into the time of Christmas. And in the season of Christmas we celebrate! We celebrate the arrival of the long anticipated One; we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises in the life and death and resurrection of His Son. The Lord our God has come!
In our sermons this Advent and Christmastide, we have focused upon Jesus in the Psalms. One of the things that we have emphasized is that Jesus is the true Singer of the Psalms. In Him the psalms, all the psalms, reach their fulfillment and culmination. Throughout His life Jesus sang these psalms, meditated upon these psalms, absorbed these psalms into His life and made them part of His being.
Our text in Hebrews urges us to have this same type of faith. After exhorting us to enter into God’s rest, Paul directs us to the Word of God, which is able to slice and dice us, able to show us our faults and illumine our shortcomings. Why direct us here? Why direct us to the Word of God? Because this is the same place that our Lord Jesus went to direct His own walk with His Father. He was a student of the Word of God. He allowed the Word of God to make and fashion Him into the type of man His Father desired Him to be. And though He was free from sin, free from the necessity of going back and redoing things that he had messed up, He nevertheless grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man through the things that He learned in the Word.
And so the author of Hebrews directs us to be students of the Word of God. We are called to be disciples. To hear what He says to us that we might correct our faults and that we might be reminded of the great promises that He has made to us.

So reminded of our calling to be singers of the psalms, let us kneel and confess that we have often failed to permit His Word to shape us and have instead been shaped by other, contrary voices.

Unless the Lord Builds the House

November 25, 2013 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Confession, Ecclesiology, Liturgy, Meditations

Psalm 127:1–2 (NKJV)
1 Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep.

This morning we wish to join our voices together in thanks and praise to God for His goodness to us – especially in bringing us into this new facility. We welcome those of you who are visiting with us this morning. There are many hands, many hearts, many minds, and many backs that joined together to make this purchase and move a possibility. But were it not for God’s favor and kindness, none of this labor would have borne any fruit. Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it. So it is fitting that we join in giving thanks and praise to God and that we dedicate this building to His service and glory.

Millennia ago, when Solomon dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem, he prayed that God would listen and give heed to His people as they prayed towards the Temple in Jerusalem. His words have shaped our service of dedication today. Yet we live at a different time than Solomon. In the new covenant, we no longer pray to a central sanctuary in Jerusalem; we pray to the Living Temple of God, Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus’ Name that we seek God’s favor and forgiveness. So as we come into God’s presence today, we adapt the words of Solomon to the New Covenant era when God has raised up Jesus as Lord over all. And even as Solomon knelt in prayer at the dedication of the Temple, I would invite you to kneel as we seek the Lord’s mercy in the Name of Jesus.


Kneeling, let us beseech the Lord’s forgiveness: (Based on 1 Kings 8:22–53)
Minister: LORD God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like You, who keep Your covenant and mercy with Your servants who walk before You with all their hearts.
People: Let us praise the Lord forever, and give thanks to the God of gods.

M: LORD God of Israel, you have kept what You promised Your servant David, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man sit before Me on the throne of Israel.’
P: You have raised up Jesus, Son of David and Son of God, to be Ruler over all the Kings of the earth.

M: But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You.
P: Yet you took on human flesh in Jesus, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, the Word of God who tabernacled among us.

M: So regard the prayer of Your servants and our supplication, O LORD our God, and listen to the cry and the prayer which we are praying before You today: that Your eyes may be open toward us night and day, 
P: For here in this building we would worship Jesus, the One who bears Your Name, and in whose Name we come into Your presence.

M: Hear in heaven Your dwelling place; 
P: and when You hear, forgive. 

M: When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when our enemy besieges us in the land of our cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your Church, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward Your Christ:
P: Then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men), that we may fear You all the days of our lives. 
M: Moreover, concerning an unbeliever, who is not of Your Church, but who comes to this place for Your name’s sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward Your Christ;
P: Then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the unbeliever calls to You, that all peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as does Your Church, and that they may know that Jesus is Your Chosen King.

M: When we sin against You (for there is no one who does not sin), and You become angry with us and deliver us to our enemy, yet when we come to ourselves, and repent, and make supplication to You in the Name of Jesus, saying, 
P: ‘We have sinned and done wrong, we have committed wickedness,’

M: And when we return to You with all our heart and with all our soul, and pray to You through Your Son Jesus;
P: Then hear in heaven Your dwelling place our prayer and our supplication, and maintain our cause, and forgive Your people who have sinned against You; and grant us compassion before those who have conquered us, that they may have compassion on us (for we are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You delivered through the death and resurrection of Jesus). Amen.

God Gave Wine

October 7, 2013 in Bible - NT - 2 Timothy, Bible - OT - Psalms, Covenantal Living, Law and Gospel, Meditations, Mosaic Law
Psalm 104:14–15 (NKJV)
14 [God] causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the service of man, That he may bring forth food from the earth, 15 And wine that makes glad the heart of man, Oil to make his face shine, And bread which strengthens man’s heart.
As we anticipate moving soon to our new facility, I’d like to take a momentary break from our meditations on the Ten Commandments to prepare for our move. We have rented from the good folks here at the Seventh Day Adventist Church for almost three years. In an effort to respect the convictions of our brethren, we have refrained from the use of wine in communion. But when we move into our new building, we’ll be resuming the use of wine and wanted to give a brief defense. After all, some of you joined us while here at the SDA building and may not even know that we use wine in communion. So in the interest of no surprises I wanted to address the issue.
It is always a temptation for us as the people of God to substitute our own wisdom for the wisdom which God has given in His Word. We can be tempted either to permit things that God has forbidden or to forbid things that God has permitted. It was in the midst of addressing this latter temptation, the temptation to forbid things that God has permitted, that Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4:4-5:
For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Paul reminds us that God has fashioned and molded the world and that we are to receive the things that he has given with gratitude and thanksgiving. So notice the psalmist doing what Paul articulates:
[God] causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the service of man, That he may bring forth food from the earth, And wine that makes glad the heart of man, Oil to make his face shine, And bread which strengthens man’s heart.
Within the American church, there has been a strong impulse to edit out the first half of verse 15 and eliminate the psalmist’s praise of “wine that makes glad the heart of man.” Vegetation – yes! Oil – yes! Bread – yes! But wine? We’re not so sure. Grape juice yes; but wine?
Our reticence often stems from the frequent abuse of alcohol – and make no mistake that the abuse of alcohol, drunkenness, is a sin. Paul commands us, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” But the same Scriptures that identify drunkenness as a sin also identify wine itself as a gift from God – a gift to gladden the heart of man.
Jesus testified to the blessing of wine at the wedding of Cana when he turned the water into wine and brought joy to the bridegroom and the bride. And it is wine that Jesus drank with his disciples on the night he was betrayed – and so it is wine that we will use when we are at liberty to do so in our own building.
So why is it that we often create these extra strictures and forbid things that God permits in His Word? One reason is our persistent temptation to identify the cause of our sinfulness in something outside of us. If alcohol is the problem, then my heart is not the problem, my desires are not the problem, my love for someone and something more than God Himself is not the problem.

But the Word of God does not let us off so easily. My problem, your problem, is not outside of me or outside of you – our problem is in our hearts. Out of the heart proceeds drunkenness, our abuse of the good gift of wine that God has given. So why does God give us wine in the Supper? He gives us wine to remind us that Jesus died to rescue us from our sinful inclinations and to enable us to use his gifts aright. So reminded of our propensity to twist God’s good gifts and use them for evil, let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

Worship and Posture

June 2, 2013 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Worship

Psalm 95:6–7 (NKJV)
6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. 7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand.
One of the most frequent questions visitors have about our service of worship, one of the questions that you may also have, is this: What’s the deal with all the different postures? We sit, we stand, we kneel, we bow heads, we lift hands – why all the variety?
The answer to these questions is threefold: first, God did not create us as ethereal beings but as creatures with body and soul. As those who have bodies, God expects us to use our bodies in self-conscious service of him. Paul concludes his warning against sexual sin this way, “For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” As human beings and as Christians we belong to God and so what we do with our bodies is not irrelevant. What we do with our bodies should reflect our relationship with Him.
So this leads us to the second answer to our question: why all the variety? The answer is that in worship there are a variety of things we do. We praise and thank the Lord; we confess our sins; we hear the assurance of pardon; we listen to the reading of the Word of God; we confess our joint faith; we present our tithes and offerings; we petition the Lord for mercy; we learn from the Scriptures; we feast with the Lord at His Table. This wonderful variety demands a variety of responses – both verbally and bodily. There is no “one size fits all” way to express ourselves to God.
 And this is why, third, the Scriptures invite and command us to worship God with a variety of postures – including standing, kneeling, sitting, lifting hands, etc. So notice our text today from Psalm 95 – Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. This is simply one example of the types of commands given to us in the context of worship.
Would it not be alarming, therefore, if we failed to respond to God with such variety? For all this variety is an attempt to embody what is going on in our hearts and souls when we appear in the presence of God each Lord’s Day. God has no interest in mere ceremony; no interest in a people that gather before Him to kneel and scrape and stand and sit but who have no heart for Him; who do all such things as a mere show or parade.
So what of you? Why do you stand? Why do you kneel? Why do you sit? Do you do it just because that’s what you’re being told to do? Do you kneel so you won’t appear out of place? Do you sit so you can take a nap? Or do you do all these things because you recognize with awe and wonder the glory of the One in whose presence we appear every Lord’s Day?
For this is the ultimate reason that our posture changes – we worship in the presence of God. He is here with us. So have you come here today recognizing this – that the Lord of glory is here and we dare not treat Him lightly? He calls us to worship; we respond by standing to praise Him. He thunders at our sin; we respond by kneeling to confess it. He assures us of pardon; we stand to listen and enter boldly into His presence through the blood of Christ. He instructs us from His Word; we stand to give our attention to its reading. This is the drama of the Divine Service – but it’s a drama that is meaningful only when accompanied by hearts that love and cherish Him.
So today God has thundered at our sin – let us kneel and confess that we have often just gone through the motions.

Why does praise precede confession?

May 5, 2013 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Confession, Meditations, Thankfulness, Worship

Psalm 95:1–7 (NKJV)
1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. 3 For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. 5 The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. 7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand.
In the Reformed tradition of which we are a part, the service of worship has begun with a psalm or hymn of adoration and praise. We are summoned to worship by the minister and then we begin with worship. Why?
The answer, quite simply, is that God is worthy of all the praise we can give Him. And it is this that the psalmist reminds us:
Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
Why should we do this? Why worship and praise Him and enter into His presence with thanksgiving?
For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land.
Beloved, we enter here today not just into any place; rather today we enter through the blood of Jesus into the very presence of God Himself, into the Holy of Holies; not into the copy and shadow of the heavenly realities but into heaven itself now to appear before our Great God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. Ought we not to worship Him? Is He not worthy of our praise, worthy of our love and adoration?
And so this is why the Ten Commandments begin with worship, with loyalty to the Creator of all. “You shall have no other gods before me.” God is the One whom we have come here to meet.
So is he the One whom you came here to meet? Were you thinking this morning: Oh that I may enter into the courts of the Lord and proclaim his praise? That I may worship my Creator and Redeemer, that I may hear Him speak to me, that I may feast with Him at his table? Or did you awake just going through the motions?
Beware, brothers and sisters, we are here to worship the Lord, to acknowledge that He is the Lord of glory. Let us not enter into his presence lightly – and as we enter, let us confess our sins. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand.

The Call to Worship

April 14, 2013 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Worship

Psalm 95:1–3 (NKJV)
1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. 3 For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods.
Each week as we begin the Lord’s Service, I summon us to stand and worship the Lord. This section of our weekly liturgy is called the Call to Worship. Why begin each week this way?
The Call to Worship reminds us of two things. First, it reminds us that we are part of one body. Listen to the words of the psalmist: Oh come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms. As one body, we all are joining our voices together. And even as a body has many members and yet is one body – so also is the Church. We are each integral parts of the body, given to one another to join our various voices together as one voice.
So why do we join our voices together? To worship. We are here to praise and honor and exalt God Most High. Oh come, let us singto the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfullyto him with psalms. We are here to sing joyfully, to utter thanks, and to shout joyfully to Him with the psalms. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the Lord was seeking out men and women and children to worshiop Him. Every week the call to worship summons us to fulfill this calling.
So why are we here to worship? Because God is worthy of our praise. The psalmist reminds us, after calling us to join him in worship, For the Lord is the great God, and the great King above all gods. To worship God is to acribe worth to God – it is not to add something to God that he lacks but to praise Him because He does not lack anything. God is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
So how ought we to worship? Remember the words of the psalmist – we ought to shout joyfully, we ought to enter into his presence with thanksgiving, we ought to shout joyfully with psalms. So where is your heart today? Are you prepared to worship with joy and thanksgiving? Or are you filled to the full with other things, with other worries and concerns? As we enter worship this day, let us confess our sin to the Lord and beseech him to empower us to worship with joy and thanksgiving. Let us kneel together as we do so.

Envying the Wicked

February 10, 2013 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations

Psalm 37:1–4 (NKJV)
1 Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.
This morning David warns us to beware how we relate to the wicked. David’s warning reveals a keen insight into the wiles of the human heart and the way in which the righteous can be subtly ensnared by the lure of vice.
Notice that David’s warning is two-fold. Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. In typical Hebrew parallelism the two sides of David’s statement help to reinforce and explain one another. So note that David warns us lest we fret because of evildoers. To fret is to worry, to fuss, to agonize or be vexed. But fretting can manifest itself for a variety of reasons – so David explains the trajectory of the fretting with his second warning: don’t be envious of the wicked. The type of fretting is an envious fretting – a fretting that secretly or openly casts a longing glance toward the apparent prosperity of the wicked or their indulgence of certain sins.
David’s twofold warning – don’t fret; that is, don’t be envious –reminds us that one of the reasons we often get in a huff and puff toward those who are practicing wickedness is that secretly, in our hearts, we would like to be doing the same thing. We think that the wicked are getting a free pass to do all the fun stuff while we have to be all prudish and stick with the straight and narrow. Starched collars and all that. Secretly, in our hearts, we are still defining the good life according to the world’s measure. We’re saying to ourselves, “My, I wish I could get away with that.”
But David reminds us that if we think this way, we are being deceived and our hearts are not right before the Lord. If we find ourselves fretting and worrying because of evildoers, envious of their supposed liberties, then we haven’t yet reckoned with the Lordship of Christ. God rules and reigns and this means that these folks are going to be destroyed and that their wickedness is as foolish as pouring kerosene on kindling amid a forest fire. Their days are numbered and the folly in which they are engaged is not something we should envy – no more than envying a child who is preparing to stick his hand in the beautiful blue flames on the stovetop.
So what of you? What are you treasuring in your heart? Have you been secretly envying the state of the wicked? Saying to yourself, “My, I wish I could get away with that.” Then consider and take to heart the word of the Lord:
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb. 3 Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Reminded that we often envy the wicked rather than pity them for their folly, let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

January 24, 2013 in Abortion, Bible - OT - Psalms, Children, Meditations

Psalm 127:3–5 (NKJV)
3 Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.
Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, a day fitting for us to meditate on the gift of life. As men and women made in the image of God, we rejoice in the gift of life and are reminded by the psalmist that the arrival of another child is a reward from God.
But our culture is askew. Rather than view the arrival of another child as a blessing, a gift from God, we frequently view children as a burden, a weight, a shackle. The fruit of the womb is not a blessing but a curse. We have become so consumed with our love of convenience and pleasure and ease that we have come to hate children. We have come to embrace fruitlessness and to reject fruitfulness.
This embrace of fruitlessness is manifest in many of the policies of our current president. He has openly sanctioned the abomination of abortion, has refused to reissue a proclamation for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, has instead used the month of January to advocate his contraceptive mandate, and has officially declared June to be gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered month. And what are all these things but an embrace of fruitlessness and death?
As we consider this national sin, we need to beware lest we as individual believers in Christ give way to the spirit of the age and subtly embrace this love of fruitlessness ourselves. Children are a heritage from the Lord – and we need to receive them and shepherd them and train them as such. Even as a man is called to care for the inheritance he has received from his fathers, so a man is called to care for the inheritance God has given him in the form of his children. We are called to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord – teaching them, training them, instructing them.
So fathers, how are you doing? Don’t just proclaim that children are a blessing – act it out by being engaged with the blessings God has given you. Take time to shepherd them, to correct them, to admonish them, to encourage them – invest in your children so that they can indeed act like a blessing and not a curse – to you and to their neighbors. Your goal is that your children rise up to worship and serve the Living God by loving their neighbors.
In the same fashion, as God’s people generally, we need to beware that we are receiving and welcoming all of God’s people into our congregation – particularly the little ones. For of such is the kingdom of God.
Reminded that we have rejected the blessing of fruitfulness and embraced fruitlessness instead, let us kneel and confess our sin to the Lord.

God is the Judge

December 20, 2012 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Discipline, Meditations, Sovereignty of God

Psalm 75 (NKJV)
1 We give thanks to You, O God, we give thanks! For Your wondrous works declare that Your name is near. 2 “When I choose the proper time, I will judge uprightly. 3 The earth and all its inhabitants are dissolved; I set up its pillars firmly. Selah 4 “I said to the boastful, ‘Do not deal boastfully,’ And to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up the horn. 5 Do not lift up your horn on high; Do not speak with a stiff neck.’ ” 6 For exaltation comes neither from the east Nor from the west nor from the south. 7 But God is the Judge: He puts down one, And exalts another. 8 For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, And the wine is red; It is fully mixed, and He pours it out; Surely its dregs shall all the wicked of the earth Drain and drink down. 9 But I will declare forever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. 10 “All the horns of the wicked I will also cut off, But the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.”
Mary’s song of praise following her visit to Elizabeth centers on the theme of God as Judge. Saturated as she was in the hymnody of the Old Testament, Mary used the words and themes there to shape her praise. And her praise sounds remarkably like Psalm 75.
Psalm 75 celebrates that God is the Judge. God raises up one and casts down another. It is God who is the Lord – who rules in the affairs of men and nations. What then is our duty and responsibility? Our duty and responsibility is to humble ourselves before Him and to honor Him. Why? Because He swears that He will destroy all those who are proud and stiff necked.
This is true both of the rulers of nations and of we simpler folk as well, whether men, women, or children. God takes pride seriously. He hates a haughty countenance, despises him who thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think. Therefore, because God is the Lord and we are not, we are to be humble, open to correction. We are to bow the knee before God lest we be destroyed. We are not to be like the fool who advertised his pride on the billboards of Spokane: “Bow the knee? Not me.” But he will bow the knee – either now willingly or in the future unwillingly. Solomon warns us in Proverbs 29:1, “He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” So what does this mean?
Men, are you cultivating relationships that provide you with accountability and correction? If you are married, do you listen to the wisdom of your wife and treasure the gift that God has given you in her? Married or unmarried, have you established relationships with other men who can correct you and exhort you? Men to whom you are directly accountable? If not, do so.
Women, are you cultivating relationships that provide you with accountability and correction? If you are married, do you listen when your husband endeavors to fulfill his calling of shepherding and husbanding you, correcting you? Are you willing to humble yourself before him as though he were God Himself and honor your husband for the office he holds? Married or unmarried, have you sought out relationships with other wise women who will speak the Word of God to you and not comfort you in your sin and complaint? If not, do so.
Children, are you listening to the correction and rebuke that you are receiving from your parents? God has put them into your life so that you can learn and grow and develop into godly, mature young men and women. Beware hardening your neck. Beware the hand of pride that would lead you to say, “I know better! My parents are foolish! They just don’t understand.” Listen and cultivate an obedient and humble heart. For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus the Lord.
Reminded that this is our calling as the people of God – to be humble and open to correction – let us kneel and confess that we have often been proud and froward instead.