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I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills – Psalm 121

Psalm 121

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,

from whence cometh my help.

I don’t know about you, but I have had a rough week. Perhaps you have had a tough month or maybe this past year didn’t go how you had hoped. So we come to a Sabbath rest, a time of stillness and contemplation and ask, ‘What to do now?’

On a night of exhaustion from one such time a song came to mind, a song of ascents.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?

From familiar scripture read in my youth, sung in church, taught in a classroom and contemplated in the weak and lonely hours, the question echos in the darkness of despair as an echo in seemingly empty mountains. Where does my help come from?

Ever feel helpless? Has a moment of sense humbled you in your selfish thoughts that you control your every day, each move toward success and joy and riches? Has a brief moment with your own soul brought you to a place where you must look up to something, lest you look down in despair forever?

My help cometh from the Lord,

which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 10:4 challenges the self of one who does not believe the God who made all things can help:

‘In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”’

Yet another Psalm [19:1] sings out even to the unbeliever:

‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’

How could the God who watches over universes, solar systems, innumerable planets, incomprehensible sub-atomic systems and intricately engineered cell structures be so powerless as to not watch over your soul?

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:

he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Even the most powerful of mankind and the richest of rulers will bow down to the One Almighty God, Creator and LORD over all things!

Can the Judge of all souls not keep you? Will the LORD not help those who bow down to His will and not our own selfish ways?

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Do not be thrown that the LORD is worshiped as the God of Israel. This Psalm of David is humble acknowledgement by a powerful King who united twelve tribes of Israel. The Lord was glorified though David, King of a chosen people.

Christ Jesus, crucified on a cross as ‘King of the Jews’ for redemption of our sins brought the very humility of God to the promises of the generations. A thousand years after King David and two thousand years ago, the LORD God, Father of all creation, chose not only the chosen of Abraham but the chosen of the nations, those in generations to come.

Christ was lifted up on a cross as perfect sacrifice for our sins. He IS raised up in righteousness as redemption before Almighty God. Jesus Incarnate, the Messiah Jesus, is keeper of our souls.

You who have bowed down to the LORD, God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, have a help higher than the hills. We have Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit of the LORD God as our help from above, a guide to our soul.

The Lord is thy keeper: שָׁמַר

the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. צֵל

The sun shall not smite thee by day, נָכָה

nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil:

he shall preserve thy soul.

The Lord seeks humble followers, even powerful kings and lowly peasants. The Lord is keeper of His own sheep. He watches over the souls of His beloved. Christ keeps the lives of true believers.

Is it not evil that torments us – evil of our own and evil of our enemies, the unrelenting hand of wickedness of the enemies of the Lord of love?

Pray for your enemies, that they may see the Lord in your love. Is it not peace the Lord would have for His own?

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in

from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Amen

July 23, 2016
Fully Trained – 5

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The gospel of Luke carefully records truth from eyewitness accounts of numerous historical citizens of the first century.

The following is a fictional representation continued from our previous episodes of eyewitness by one of Jesus’ first disciples.

I have told you of how I became an early disciple of the Messiah Jesus and followed our Lord in the early days. It has been many years ago now; before the good news of our Lord’s crucifixion by the Jews and resurrection and appearance to many witnesses, including me and my family.

We continued in the Way. We worshiped our risen Lord with the Apostles and many others. John Mark, who had been with Saul, and Luke the doctor have shared the increase in the good news with us. In fact, Mark has just returned to us from a time he has spent with Paul, who we knew as Saul.

Acts 13: 13 Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem

John Mark brings us good news that the Roman proconsul of Cypress has witnesses the power of Christ in Paul and has come to believe in the Way.

Now that we have become fully trained just as Jesus had mentioned in those early days I wanted to share some of our Lord’s teaching with you; not as we heard it then as uncertain believers, but as we now consider how our Lord’s teaching has changed us over time – now, years later and after Jesus’ resurrection, many appearances and glorious ascension into heaven.

Thinking back to our Lord’s teaching to the crowds, which we heard consistently many times in those early days… He was teaching on a mountainside one day, as Jesus often did. Jesus would stand with His back toward the highest hillside above the gentle slopes populated with disciples from every locale. Jesus could look around into their faces and most of us could see His probing gentle eyes.

Luke 6:

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

We didn’t understand this then; for we were all poor and all the kingdoms of Judah, Samaria, Rome and all the others were powered by the rich – those who could buy influence or high office, whether Herod or Octavian or other rich men and women who bought their way into leadership.

Other times Jesus had said:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:7

It is this poorness of spirit we now understand – a poorness desired we had never sought, before our Lord and Master had lived out its meaning before our very eyes.

Jesus had never had anything by which men might consider him anything but poor. In Nazareth he made a more meager living as a sort of handyman carpenter than most of us town’s people. He never wore fancy clothes. His well-worn shoes were just like mine.

Jesus’ humility showed more than just his lowly station in life, his beleaguered place in our small community isolated from the seats of power. He was in every way as the scriptures say, “a bruised reed” himself. His gentle sincere smile always encouraged us. His happiness from deep within overflowed into the depths of our own souls. After a time I too sought to show others this same poorness of my spirit, that they might see the richness of the blessings of the Lord.

Yes, during all of the years of Jesus’ teachings and the many years since His resurrection we were poor. We were all poor. We were oppressed by Rome. We were miserable and afflicted by our own rulers in our day to day lives and often our insignificant deaths. Followers of the Way were soon and often persecuted. We suffered financially and physically.

We were poor. Yet in our Messiah Jesus we have inherited the Kingdom of Heaven.

Psalm 40:

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry…

3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord…

..my iniquities have overtaken me,
and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
my heart fails me.
13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!

17 As for me, I am poor and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God!

To be continued…

May 14, 2016
Follow After Me 9 – Exhortation from an Evangelist

John 20:27b “Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

REPENT! Isn’t that your first impression of exhortation from an evangelist?

What is the mission of the evangelist? Is it not to get all of those sinners to come to Christ?

Yes. It is.

For if any man love another, is it not the duty of every Christian to seek the lost and to show all the true and lasting love of Christ Jesus, who won our own hearts to eternity?

Matthew 12: ³⁰“Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me. ^31a“So I tell you, every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven—

The evangelist has a passion for it – a passion to win new souls to the Lord. Yet there is more to it – much more – even for you and for me, my fellow believer, dear follower of Christ.

Exhortation the world may think is a loaded gun of scripture pointed squarely at the non-believer, but nothing could be further from the truth of the Lord’s teaching.

Exhortation is for the Christian – for the wavering believer, at times certainly for you and for me, dearly beloved brother and blessed sister in the Lord.

Hebrews 12: ²⁵Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven!

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The church stands as watchman of the faith and sentry of scripture awake to the word of the Lord.

Ezekiel 33:

The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, speak to your people…

7 “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. 8 If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. 9 But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul…

13 Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die.

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Believer, do you trust in your own righteousness over your faltering faith in the Cross of Christ – the resurrection and return on the clouds of Jesus?

Should the church not call out to our wayward to repent?

Therefore return, o wayward christian, to the truth of scripture and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. For I am a watchman looking near to the clouds of heaven and here to the embrace of your soul beloved by our Lord.

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17 “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just,’ when it is their own way that is not just.

18 When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it.

19 And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. 20 Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.”

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Are you, fellow believer or confessor of your own wickedness, prepared that the Lord would judge YOU according to your ways?

Jesus confronted those who held onto their own righteousness, the fine leaders of the religious community, the preachers with not one regard for the Living God:

Matthew 23:28 Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. 29 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites!”

These false preachers are always seeking to lead the faithful away from the Cross of Christ! How unlikely are these worldly wise men and leading women to admit to the existence of God and the authority of the Lord.

Galatians 6:12b They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save.

The Evangelist of Bunyan describes these worldly hypocrites well:

The man that met thee is one Worldly Wiseman, and rightly is he so called; partly because he savoreth only the doctrine of this world, (therefore he always goes to the town of Morality to church;) and partly because he loveth that doctrine best, for it saveth him best from the cross: and because he is of this carnal temper, therefore he seeketh to pervert my ways, though right.

Are you convinced by false christians to keep Christ silent? Are you told to be tolerant of false gods by preachers of darkness cloaked as whitewashed tombs? Is your faith rooted in scripture and grounded in the truth of Christ’s death, resurrection and return?

Sound the trumpet, says the Lord; for the Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly!

Repent, christian in name only, to the only One by whom your soul may be saved: Christ Jesus!

April 15, 2016